The older borderland ballads--or corridos as they are called in Spanish--necessarily derive from the area first settled by Spanish colonists along the lower reaches of the Rio Grande, from the Great River's mouth in the Gulf of Mexico upstream as far as the twin cities of Laredo and Nuevo Laredo. Over the long years, as the far-flung provinces of New Spain ultimately became Mexico, and later as large areas of Mexico became parts of the United States, conflict and strife flowed all along the newly determined border.

Borderland residents, individuals to the core, whether heroes or antiheroes, were often given to taking matters into their own hands. Not infrequently they found themselves in conflict with existing regimes on both sides of the long boundary, at times seeking to effect political coups for which there existed only minimal popular support. In short, many such men seemed marked from the outset for noble failure.

Numerous corridos celebrate incidents befalling those running afoul of the law--from bandits to smugglers, large landholders with a taste for yet more landed acquisitions, Texas Rangers and, inevitably, cattle dealers and rustlers (who often were one and the same). Still others recount the derring-do of such once well-known border figures as Juan Cortina (the "Red Robber of the Rio Grande") and Catarino Garza, dreamers of lost causes and proponents of independent border republics who were perhaps ahead of their time in hosting allegiance neither to Mexico nor to the United States.

But the corridos of the border country relate much more than mere tales of revolt, banditry and overtures to a sort of hybrid patriotism born of fomenting new empires. The borderland ballads are the voice of a people coming to feel themselves hemmed in, contained, pushed in one way or another from both sides of the international boundary. The once-magic curtain falls; once vacuous and open space becomes steadily institutionalized, standardized.

Hero or antihero becomes caught up within the framework of an ongoing rivalry from which there is seemingly no way out and thus emerges as either an outlaw with slightly elevated motives or merely a motivated brigand with no elevated aims at all. Both are the result of swift and compelling change in the internationalized order; along the border, change is so rampant that the most stable life becomes little more than that of continuing conflicts.

The boundary itself becomes an arbiter of moral codes, the dispassionate evaluator of which action is that of the patriotic revolutionary and which only that of the plunderer motivated by self-interest. The magic of the border itself draws the fine distinction between what might be considered reasonable commercial endeavor on the one hand and simply smuggling and black marketing on the other. Even honest labor and the route to gainful employment become an area of illegal activity when governed by the economics of the border, or the exploitation of the already exploited.

Corridos of the borderlands faithfully reflect those aspects particularly as the boundary becomes a settled institution, entrenches itself as an economic as well as a political force in daily life. It becomes the grist of the corridos, just as it becomes the duty of the ballad makers to recite those things which have come to pass. The protagonists--gringos, fuereños, pochos--are thus, if not immortalized, then at least awarded their proper roles in the hybrid cultural transformation that has shaped the border populaces both to the north and south of the once-magic curtain of escape.

The people south of the international boundary have long been a ballad-making public. Such ballads, or corridos as they are known in Mexico, are not only a vital part of life beyond the magic curtain, they also have played a significant role wherever Mexicans and Mexican Americans have gathered. And while corridos may be simply recited or read, they are designed to be sung to the accompaniment of the guitar, so long the favored instrument of transient minstrels and troubadours.

After centuries of existence as one of the most popular of poetic forms in the public domain, corridos, necessarily perhaps, have become highly stylized, simplistic even; unabashedly they are no more than what they purport to be--rhyming couplets or quatrains that unfold some tale, episode, anecdote or virtually any event considered worth calling to attention, either for pleasure or to convey some moral precept.

Translated, they become, much like any other creation, subject to transplant shock, losing their rough brilliance in foreign linguistic soil.

A few--not many--of the corridos of Mexico have risen above their normally mundane level; a handful have attained the unlikely status of symbolizing some national event, a feat little less than remarkable in a nation noted for its regional differences.

La Cucaracha has indeed become truly international. For many it is not only the primal ballad of the Mexican Revolution, it is Mexico itself. Other Revolutionary ballads of renown, Adelita or La Valentina, do not rise to such heights. Indeed, the bulk of corridos are largely provincial and far less imbued with the patina of grand events.

Taken as a whole, such ballads convey a part of the history of the great social and political revolt even while at the same time they celebrate the diverse cultural backgrounds of the republic. Mexico has long had its extensive regional differences, which have persisted even under the leveling of social orders under pervasive technological change.

On a broader scale, it has its very different east and west coasts, its own great north and south, each quite dissimilar, not only geographically but culturally and demographically. An Emiliano Zapata of the south can never be quite the same as a Pancho Villa of the north, and much of what is related in corridos attuned to Revolutionary unity is still regionalistic, even parochial.

As a poetic form, the corrido is readily traced back to Spain and the short lyrical epic poems known as romances, which, by the time of the Castillians' great moment on the world stage, the Golden Age of the sixteenth century, had become quite a significant part of what was to emerge as Spanish culture. By then they were a part of the heritage of the peoples of the Iberian peninsula, but the stories and sentiments embedded in the romances were not destined for enduring success in the New World. Not only did they deal with incidents and figures peculiarly Castillian, they were also Moorish in scope as well. Indeed, they had much to say about counts and kings of an alien order and they reached across seven hundred years of religious conflict between Christians and Muslims in the land that had become Spain.

Romanceros, creators of such lyrics, delighted in embroidering themes of treachery and tragedy, seduction and love, the cultural as well as the color line between the dark-skinned Islamic Moors, the Saracenic invaders of Spain and their descendants who were to remain there for seven centuries, and the fairer Christian Iberians. Idealized poetic epics, they were carved from that sphere wherein history and legend intermingle to become one.

The theme of religious and cultural conflict between the followers of Mohammed and those of Christ in fact runs through much of the romance literature. It was carried forward by later writers, such as Lope de Vega, the eminent and prolific playwright of the sixteenth century, in his Romance de Zaide:

--Mira, Zaide, que te aviso
que no pases por mi calle
ni hables con mis mujeres
ni con mis cautivos trates . . .

Confieso que eres valiente,
que rajas, hiendes y partes
y que has muerto más cristianos
que gotas tienes de sangre. . . .

"Look, Zaide, let me warn thee
That thou not pass through my street,
Neither speak with my women
Nor with my captives treat . . .

I admit thou art brave
Thou canst slash and stab and club,
And thou hast slain more Christians
Than thou hast drops of blood. . . ."

More commonplace events were worthy topics of anonymous romances also, particularly if they fueled the ever-smoldering strife between the two groups. A further example is provided in the historic ballad exemplifying the volatile relations as seen in the kidnapping of three young Christian girls, all sisters, who had strayed into Moorish or Morisco territory, as depicted in the anonymous Las tres cautivas (The Three Captives):

En el campo moro
entre las olivas,
allí cautivaron
tres niñas perdidas;
el pícaro moro
que las cautivó
a la reina mora
se las entregó. . . .

On Moorish land,
Among the olive trees,
There three lost maidens
They did seize;
The knavish Moor
Who captured them
To the Moorish queen
Did surrender them. . . .

A certain majesty and grandeur, however, winds through most of the medieval romances. Accounts taken from happenings memorializing numerous figures of the nobility were ready to hand. They ranged from such vaunted exploits as those of the heroic Count Fernán González and Conde (Count) Arnaldos to the renowned saga of El Cid. Or they recounted the infamous slaughter of the seven young Lara brothers as the result of treachery in their assumed "wicked" marriages in an ongoing blood feud as told in the Romance de los siete infantes de Lara or celebrated the noble reign of Alfonso el sabio (Alfonso the Wise, king of León and Castille, 1252-84).

Some of the bolder romanceros might indeed wax political, imparting counsel to their rulers, such as that given Sancho Ordóñez of the kingdom of León:

--Rey don Sancho, rey don Sancho
no digas que no te aviso,
que de dentro de Zamora
un alevoso ha salido. . . !--
"King sire Sancho, King sire Sancho,
Do not sayest I do not thee warn,
That out of the city of Zamora
Comes treachery to do thee harm. . . !"

It goes almost without saying then that in the New World many of the stories, even the sentiments, embedded in the old romances were not destined to be transplanted, although certainly the basic poetic form was to endure. There are ballads in print in Mexico from the time of the conquest by the Spaniards in the sixteenth century, however the bulk of Mexican corridos date from the 1800s. Thus, while they are well grounded in the past, they are continuing fragments of the national epic, created usually by a folk, or unlettered, people.

Corridos, though--it bears repeating--were not so much written as they were recited or sung, and stored in the heart as well as in the head. They are personalized moments from the past. And like the sentiment expressed in one of the ancient anonymous romances, one sang one's song only to those who followed the singer: "Yo no digo mi canción, sino a quien conmigo va."

Not only does it become the object of corridos to foster a pride in regional consciousness and indeed to exalt those insular features that make the community distinctive, it also becomes the mission of the ballads to pay homage to their particular audience. Perhaps in no better way is this done than in paying tribute to their women.

Because the making of corridos has been properly the province of men, it has fallen to balladeers to celebrate--sometimes with faint scorn--the women of the regions and communities of which they sing. One of the more salient examples may be seen in the ballad, La Iguana, from the Mexican-American border state of Sonora. First taken to task, in a manner of praising with faint damns, are the young women of Nacozari, one of the state's principal towns:

Las muchachas de Nacozari
son altas y delgaditas;
pero son mas pedigüeñas
que las ánimas banditas.

The girls of Nacozari
Are lissomly tall and slight,
But they beggar for more attention
Than the vesper bells at night.

The battle of the sexes, of course, is traditionally part of the general theme and baggage of corridos. And, rather traditionally, too, if a compliment is rendered on the one hand, then with the other it is taken away. A leavening process, so to speak, is the result.

But such flowery judgments must be weighed against something else, some other form of comparison inveighing against utter provinciality. Thus, as if to display what might be termed a cosmopolitan regionality, the balancing out of feminine wiles in La Iguana is continued. The focus turns to another Sonoran city, that of Navojoa:

Las chicas de Navojoa
pasan la vida en la plaza,
mirando por todas partes,
por ver si un marido pasa.

The girls of Navojoa
Spend all their lives on the square
Surveying the scene about them,
In search of a husband to snare.

While sexism is one of the primal themes of popular treatment, it is rather the ballads that commemorate some epic event or a quasi-political figure of renown that are capable of transcending their own regionality and achieving a much broader appeal. Some of those, such as the ones stemming from the chaotic days of the Revolution, endure not only because of their celebration of the drama common to the national heritage, but also because of some of the memorable melodies on which the themes are strung. In that, they rise above the recitations of individual boasting or personalized recollections.

In those, moralistic prescripts are conveyed only infrequently, but when they are, the ground is laid early on for such preachments. A typical opening for the recitation of a woeful example of errant behavior is provided in that which the prodigal son is about to unfold in the Corrido del hijo pródigo:

Señores, vengo a contarles
una triste narración,
de lo que sufre hoy en día
por no tener reflexión.

Gentlemen, I've come here to tell you
A truly sorrowful tale,
Over which I today still suffer
For not having considered too well.

Prodigality, the sexist battle, the penalties of flirtatious behavior, the marital quest, all are grist for the mills of balladeering, of course. And at times a corrido may relate some happening so characteristic, so typical of life everywhere that it, the event itself, becomes a handy reference to the consequences of such conduct.

Thus, for example, in the Corrido de Rosa, the warning administered at the outset typically conveys the aura of prospective fear, the universal notion of "I told you so" that seems bound to happen. Disregarding her mother's counsel, Rosa herself sets the stage for what might be the seemingly inevitable:

Su mamá se lo decía:
Rosa, esta noche no sales.
Mamá, no tengo la culpa
que a mí me gusten los bailes.

Her mother kept on telling her,
Rose, please don't go out tonight.
Mama, it isn't my fault that
To me dances are such a delight.

But while the very personal, the familial, is treated in such a ballad as the Corrido de Rosa, others are sufficiently broad in scope as to deal with social history itself, with things of the moment as well as with change itself. A stunning example is apparent in the ballad celebrating the birth of electric power lighting in La luz eléctrica. Even more to the point is the mark of progress heralded in the coming of streetcars in Los trenes eléctricos:

Es una invención magnífica
la que se mira hoy en México
y que sorprende muchísimo
a toda la capital.

'Tis a magnificent invention
That today in the capital is viewed,
Through the whole of Mexico City
It astonishes the multitude.

Variations on the general themes of the corridos are virtually inexhaustible; they are, after all, not only of the people but also by and for the people. Moreover, with the highly rhythmic sense for which the Spanish language is wondrously fitted, the corridos, the true offspring of the medieval romances, relate with a straightforward simplicity the seemingly surface happenings that, for the most part, require little embellishment in order to convey the underlying psychology and course of action of which the brief stories speak.

It is indeed in that very simplicity that the corrido has its reason for being, its lifeblood, and in its rudimentary, even simplistic, poetic form lies its greatness as well as its continuing folk-like appeal. And although the stanzas may vary, from four to six, even eight lines, the most common by far remain the quatrains, and especially those that contain eight syllables to the line.

As balladeers, the people of north Mexico, and the descendants of those whose lives have been changed if not directly shaped by the Mexican-American border, have had no less a role than others thoughout the republic in creating corridos that depict their own special history and experience. But the corridos of the north country--of the border--do differ from the general run in that the contact of so many corrido protagonists has so often been with Americans, as well as with certain episodes and events of the United States experience in general.

They are, then, the living history of the strife and conflict flowing always over the international boundary, from one side to the other, across the magic curtain of escape, the invisible--at times only imaginary--line of change. As long as ballad makers, copleros, endure in the border country, such will be the case.

Excerpt from The Magic Curtain: The Mexican-American Border in Fiction, Film, and Song Copyright © 2002 by Thomas Torrans. No portion of this excerpt may be used or reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher, Texas Christian University Press.