Brownsville, Texas, was established in 1850 on the banks of the Rio Grande. Every February since 1938, this thriving community of nearly 200,000 has joined its Mexican neighbor, Matamoros, to celebrate their shared cultural heritage. Charro Days burst upon the Rio Grande Valley scene in the depths of the Depression, bringing dances, parades, fireworks, boat races, and a rodeo to a dispirited populace. The celebration achieved instant success, followed by national recognition in magazines, radio, and television. Renowned dance bands and celebrities increased the enjoyment of revelers dressed in Charro costumes. As time passed, Charro Days evolved with the addition of events such as the Mr. Amigo presentation, which recognizes an outstanding Mexican, and the Sombrero Fest, which attracts a large number of attendees with its diverse entertainment.

Charro Days in Brownsville (Images of America)

Arts & Photography

Knopp, Anthony

Medrano, Manuel

Rodriguez, Priscilla

Brownsville Historical Association

Photography & Video

Arcadia Publishing

Charro Days in Brownsville (Postcards of America)

Américo Paredes (1915-1999) was a folklorist, scholar, and professor at the University of Texas at Austin who is widely acknowledged as one of the founding scholars of Chicano Studies. Born in Brownsville, Texas, along the southern U.S.-Mexico Border, Paredes’ early experiences impacted his writing during his later years as an academic. He grew up between two worlds—one written about in books, the other sung about in ballads and narrated in folktales. He attended a school system that emphasized conformity and Anglo values in a town whose population was 70 percent Mexican in origin. During World War II, he worked for the International American Red Cross and wrote for the Stars and Stripes army newspaper in the Far East. He returned to Texas with a new bride and a passion for continuing his formal education and his writing. Paredes did both at the University of Texas at Austin, where he completed his Ph.D. in 1956. With the publication of his dissertation, “With His Pistol in His Hand”: A Border Ballad and Its Hero in 1958, Paredes soon emerged as a challenger to the status quo. His book questioned the mythic nature of the Texas Rangers and provided an alternative counter-cultural narrative to the existing traditional narratives of Walter Prescott Webb and J. Frank Dobie, among others. For the next forty years he was a brilliant teacher and prolific writer who championed the preservation of border culture and history. He was a soft-spoken, at times temperamental, yet fearless professor. He was a co-founder in 1970 of the Center for Mexican American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin and is credited with introducing the concept of Greater Mexico, decades before its wider acceptance today among transnationalist scholars. He received numerous awards, including La Orden del Aguila Azteca, Mexico’s most prestigious service award to a foreigner. Paredes became a scholar of scholars, guiding many students to become academic leaders. Manuel F. Medrano interviewed Paredes over a five-year period before Paredes’ death in 1999, and also interviewed his family and colleagues. For many Mexican Americans, Paredes’ historical legacy is that he raised, carried, and defended their cultural flag with a dignity that both friends and foes respected.

Americo Paredes: In His Own Words, an Authorized Biography (Volume 5) (Al Filo: Mexican American Studies Series)

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

University of North Texas Press

<div> Américo Paredes (1915-1999) was a folklorist, scholar, and professor at the University of Texas at Austin who is widely acknowledged as one of the founding scholars of Chicano Studies.&nbsp;&nbsp;He was a brilliant teacher and prolific writer who championed the preservation of border culture and history. With the publication of "With His Pistol in His Hand": A Border Ballad and Its Hero in 1958, Paredes soon emerged as a challenger to the status quo. He was a co-founder in 1970 of the Center for Mexican American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin and is credited with introducing the concept of Greater Mexico. Paredes became a scholar of scholars, guiding many students to become academic leaders. "Medrano's biography offers an inspiring and necessary must-read for anyone claiming to have more than just a passing interest in studying the history and cultures of the American Southwest where Mexican Americans have a continuing and growing, important presence."--Texas Books in Review </div>

The land along the U.S.-Mexican border is often portrayed as the place where two separate cultures meet—or indeed collide. Yet this is not the first meeting of the two cultures, not their first collision, and not their first confluence. Their respective ancestral cultures in England and Spain, argue scholars Milo Kearney and Manuel Medrano, had common roots in medieval Europe, and both their conflicts and the shared understandings that may form the basis for their cooperation trace back to those days.Kearney and Medrano explore three interlinking themes. First, they assert that Mexican American Borderlands culture cannot be fully understood without knowledge of its medieval underpinnings in both Castile (and pre-Castilian Spain) and England. Second, they argue that certain parallels in the medieval evolution of Hispanic and Anglo societies make the two cultures much more closely related than is often realized and in many ways set them apart from the cultures of other European societies. Finally, the authors show how, despite these similarities, the origins of Anglo-Hispanic tensions trace back to the Middle Ages, predating Bartolomé de las Casas and the “Black Legend.” Although they demonstrate the Borderlands expression of these cultural phenomena, the emphasis is on their pre-modern European sources.The authors conclude that many of the foundations for the interaction of Hispanic and Anglo societies were laid by the year 1500. From science and learning through literature and music to art and architecture, medieval culture has defined many elements of Borderlands creativity.While the hostilities and negative stereotypes generated by the Hispanic-Anglo warfare of the Middle Ages passed on prejudices and problems that are still not entirely overcome, a recognition of the interlinked past can draw Hispanic and Anglo subcultures in the Borderlands together.

Medieval Culture and the Mexican American Borderlands (Volume 6) (Rio Grande/Río Bravo: Borderlands Culture and Traditions)

History

Kearney, Milo

Americas

Texas A&M University Press

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