Bailando con el Diablo (Dancing with the Devil)
A popularly narrated legend found throughout the Southwest, south Texas, and even parts of northern Mexico that tells of the appearance of the devil at community dances, dance halls, and discotheques. Called the “devil at the dance” legend or “devil haunts the dance hall” in folklore literature, it is considered to be an urban belief tale that has been adapted to contemporary situations. The devil makes his appearance elegantly dressed, usually in a suit; he is strikingly handsome, muy suave (smooth and poised), tall, and refined. Consequently, he stands out from among the rest of the men. Besides his stunning appearance, he is always an amazing dancer, knows the latest dance steps, and selects the prettiest girl to dance.
As the tale is often narrated, a disobedient young girl goes to the dance without her parents’ permission, or she goes against her mother’s express wishes. While at the dance a handsome beautifully dressed man asks her to dance. They dance all night, until she suddenly notices with a shock that he isn’t wearing shoes, and in fact he doesn’t even have feet; instead he has chicken feet, goat’s hooves, or a pig’s foot and a chicken foot. It is usually at this point, after he’s discovered, that he disappears into thin air, leaving the odor of sulfur in the air, or, in some versions of the legend, just runs out the door. The girl he was dancing with either faints or burns to death as she goes up in smoke. If the girl doesn’t die, as in some stories, she might suffer a burn on the shoulder or a man’s handprint might be found on her back. A small circle of people who are present at the dance observe this encounter, and the narrator of the story usually says that she or he heard it from someone who was there.
The lesson learned is that one must not disobey one’s parents, for the handsome man is known to be the devil and the personification of evil. It is noted that mostly women narrate these legends, among themselves or from mothers to daughters, in a didactic fashion, to instill fear in young women so that they will not disregard parental authority. In some variants a young girl specifically transgresses religious beliefs by insisting on going to a dance on Good Friday, a religious holy day, and a revered day of prayer in Chicano Catholic households. The appearance of the devil on this day is an especially ominous sign.
Robe’s collection of New Mexico legends contains thirty-four variants of the devil-at-the-dance tale. Although the legends in this collection are from rural northern New Mexico, collected in the 1950s and 1960s, we find contemporary versions of the devil-at-the-dance tales in south Texas and in Baja California from the 1980s. Limón and Herrera-Sobek discuss versions of the tale circulating in nightclubs and discotheques among urbanized young people.
Of course, not everyone believes such stories. Martin’s book contains a story by a man born in 1904, who says his friend played a trick on his community in Tucson by coming to a dance dressed in black, with a fake rooster foot. Eventually someone noticed his foot and yelled, “The Devil! The Devil!” The narrator says he was there when his friend played the trick, so he doesn’t believe in the legend (50).
References De Leon 1982; Glazer 1984,1994; Herrera-Sobek 1988; Limón 1994; Martin 1983; Robe 1951; Robe ed. 1980; West 1988
Baile (Dance)
El baile is an individual dance step, a party, or a ball. El baile is historically one of the most important social traditions among Mexicans and Chicanos throughout Mexico and the United States. Since the Spaniards conquered the Southwest, bailes have been important community social and cultural events. In Texas, New Mexico, and California, because of the isolation of the communities, dancing became the principal source of entertainment. The social status of women in Spanish colonial society was limited and cloistered, with their primary social venues consisting of church and home. El baile provided entertainment and physical activity. As an early California traveler put it, “I was astonished at the endurance of the California women in holding out, night after night, in dancing, of which they never seemed to weary, but kept on with an appearance of freshness and elasticity that was as charming as surprising” (Shay 100). It was at el baile that courtship occurred (since girls, although they may have gone to the dance chaperoned, were allowed to dance with boys); it was at el baile that families and relatives interacted, that the week’s work was forgotten, and that life’s mysteries were discussed. The local dance brought the community together and allowed interaction between the sexes. A girl was never able to reject a request to dance from a boy, because to turn down an invitation exposed the boy to embarrassment and ridicule for his failure in competition, and could be cause for revenge. Countless corridos (ballads), leyendas (legends), and chistes (jokes) narrate events that are supposed to have occurred at el baile, from fights to courtships to elopements. Encounters with the legendary weeping woman, La Llorona, often occur after a dance when a solitary man is finding his way home. From the devil-at-the-dance narratives to the tragic death of Rosita Alvarez, recounted in the corrido of the same name, we learn of the importance of el baile in both rural and urban Chicano communities. Major Horace Bell describes the difference between a baile and a fandango in Mexican California history and Arnoldo De Leon describes the baile in eighteenth-century San Antonio.
Most Mexican national holiday celebrations such as Cinco de Mayo and El Diez y Seis de Septiembre will end with a community dance. Even in modern times, professional Latino and Chicano associations often close their national conferences with a baile, bringing in popular Chicano bands. Jose Limón discusses the narratives of bailando con el diablo (dancing with the devil), and Manuel Peña shows us the ritualized structure of a Chicano dance.
See also Bailando con el Diablo; Cinco de Mayo; El Diez y Seis de Septiembre; Fandango; La Llorona
References Bell 1927; De Leon 1982; Limón 1983, 1994; Peña 1980, 1985b; Shay 1982
“Ballad of Gregorio Cortez”
See “El Corrido de Gregorio Cortez”
Ballads
See Corridos
Ballet Folklórico
The term refers to folk dance groups, grupos folklóricos, that perform traditional Mexican regional dances. The dances are carefully choreographed and well rehearsed; they are representative of the dances from the different regions of Mexico. An important characteristic of the dance performances is the elaborate beautiful costumes, very full and colorful dresses, that are the traditional dress from the various states of Mexico, such as Jalisco, Veracruz, Chihuahua, and Durango. The dances, many of which have been danced for decades, such as El Jarabe Tapatio and La Negra, are danced to Mariachi music, and performed on the Mexican national holidays, Las Fiestas Patrias, such as Cinco de Mayo and El Diez y Seis de Septiembre.
These folk dance groups became popular in Mexico right after the Mexican Revolution, but did not become prevalent in the United States until the 1960s. It was the influence of the Chicano civil rights movement, el movimiento Chicano, that launched the institution of ballets folklóricos as symbolic of a Mexican American cultural identity. El Ballet Folklórico de Mexico, founded and directed by Amalia Hernandez in the early 1950s, became the official cultural representative of the Mexican government and has often toured the United States. Amalia Hernandez based her folklore costumes and folk dances on the authentic folklore traditions of the Mexican people. This folklórico group became the model on which most Chicano folklórico groups are based.
Mexican folklore traditions, folk songs, and folk dances had been taught within Mexican colonias (neighborhoods), today known as barrios, since before the 1930s, usually through the efforts of a single individual in the community, in church halls and mutual aid society halls, but not in the public schools. There was one exception: in Tucson, Arizona, a teacher named Margarite Collier started a Mexican Folklore Club in 1937 in an elementary school, for the specific purpose of maintaining the cultural traditions from Mexico. This club existed until the 1970s, and it established a long tradition of performing Las Posadas through the streets of Tucson. Madelyn Loes Soloman documents that in Los Angeles the teaching of folk songs and dances was done by a Mexican-born man in the late 1930s. But it was in the late 1960s and 1970s that there was a revival in the formal organization of elaborate performances by large dance groups, many made up of young children and teenagers. Folklórico groups perform for community events, Cinco de Mayo festivals, school functions, Fiestas Guadalupanas (celebrations of La Virgen de Guadalupe, December 12), political events, and other holidays. Ballet folklórico dances are now taught in many schools, and students entering college often bring with them a knowledge of the dances and an interest in participating. Several university campuses in California and the Southwest have dance groups totally comprised by and maintained by college students.
See also Las Posadas
References Collier Archives; Griffith 1988; Najera-Ramirez 1989; Soloman 1941
“La Bamba”
The title of a song, as well as the title of a movie directed by Luis Valdez in 1987. The film is about the life of the Chicano singer Ritchie Valens, who recorded the song and made it very popular in 1958. The song actually goes back to early Mexican colonial history; it has been traced to 1790 when it was performed at the Coliseo Theatre in Mexico City. There are printed sources that cite the song being sung and danced in Veracruz during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By the 1830s it was also a popular dance in Mexican California.
“La Bamba” is considered to be a son jarocho (country folks’ dancing music), an example of the mestizo (mixed-race) musical tradition, with strong African influences, from the state of Veracruz. The instrumentation of the traditional son jarocho included a small harp, a small eight-string guitar (jarana), and a small four-string guitar (requinto). The dance that went with son jarocho was a zapateado, a foot-stomping dance. There are two different accounts about how Ritchie Valens learned the song, since he supposedly never learned Spanish. One source states that he heard the song on a short trip across the border into Mexico, and another states he learned the song from his uncle when he was five years old. His innovative style mixed jarocho music with a rock ‘n roll beat. His recorded version of “La Bamba” in 1958 is the first known U.S. recording. “La Bamba” has now been recorded more than 150 different times in the United States; for example, in 1966 by Trini Lopez, in 1979 by the Plugz, and in 1980 by Los Lobos. The Rice University Marching Band and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir have also recorded it. The movie, with the soundtrack recorded by Los Lobos, was very successful with mainstream audiences and launched the acting careers of several Latino actors.
References La Bamba 1987; Guevara 1985; Holscher, Fernandez, and Cummings 1991; -Lipsitz 1990; Loza 1982; Sheehy 1979
Bandidos
See Folk Heroes
Barbacoa de Cabeza (Barbecued Beef Head)
Barbacoa refers to a method of cooking meat, in a pit of hot wood coals. The English word barbecue comes from barbacoa. Barbacoa de cabeza is the cooking of a beef head in this manner. It is an old custom and cultural event that in parts of south Texas occurs every weekend, with the barbacoa eaten on Sunday mornings. In other parts of the Southwest this style of cooking is reserved for special events such as weddings, funerals, and large family gatherings. According to the Diccionario de Mejicanismos (Dictionary of Mexicanisms), barbacoa is “carne asada en un hoyo que se abre en tierra, y se calienta como los hornos” (grilled meat cooked in a hole in the ground heated like an oven). Cooking the beef head with this method means all the parts can be eaten, such as the brains, eyes, tongue, lips, literally everything. Although originally a discarded part of the cow, now it is considered a delicacy and is prepared and sold in many neighborhood stores and restaurants along the Rio Grande border region. Today the term barbacoa is used only to mean the cooking of meat in a pit, also called pit cooking.
References Montano 1992; Peyton 1994
Barrio (Neighborhood)
A barrio is a neighborhood, a city district, or a ward in an urban area where Mexicans and Chicanos live. In the early 1900s, Mexican communities were called colonias, as they are in Mexico today, but at some point after World War II, Chicano neighborhoods became known as barrios. In Chicano culture, barrios are identified by given names that in some way describe a characteristic of the neighborhood or reflect its history. Some barrios are only a few blocks, whereas others encompass large urban areas. Some of the oldest barrios can be found in major cities, like Los Angeles, Chicago, El Paso, and San Antonio. In San Fernando, also known as San Fer, two very early barrios were La Rana and El Bajillo (The Frog; The Little Low One). Hoyo Marvilla, another well-known barrio in East Los Angeles, was famous because it was where farmworkers lived and was extremely poor. Barrios are sometimes called ghettos; even though there are very negative and sometimes few positive attributes to living in barrios, they can’t always be presumed to be ghettos in the sense of places where a group is forced to live against its will. Vigil’s work on gang culture explains the allegiance felt by gang members toward their barrio. Mary Helen Ponce writes in Hoyt Street about the barrio where she grew up in Pacoima, California, during the 1940s and 1950s. Many Chicano novelists have set their stories in the barrios of the Southwest and Midwest. Raúl Salinas, in his poem “A Trip through the Mind Jail,” writes about his barrio, and all barrios, while he serves time in prison. In one section of his poem he affirms the positive role of the barrio:
LA LOMA . . . AUSTIN . . . MI BARRIO . . .
I bear you no grudge
I needed you then . . . identity . . . a sense of belonging.
I need you now.
So essential to adult days of imprisonment,
You keep me away from INSANITY’S hungry jaws;
Smiling/Laughing/Crying.
I respect your having been:
my Loma of Austin
my Rose Hill of Los Angeles
my West Side of San Antonio
my Quinto of Houston
my Jackson of San Jose
my Segundo of El Paso
my Barelas of Albuquerque
my Westside of Denver
Flats, Los Marcos, Maravilla, Calle Guadalupe, Magnolia,
Buena Vista, Mateo, La Seis, Chiquis, El Sur and all
Chicano neighborhoods that now exist and once
existed; somewhere, someone remembers
References Chicano Pinto Research Project 1975; Ponce 1993; Salinas 1970; Vigil 1988, 1996
Barriology
The social science of barriology was conceived of as a discipline of study in the pages of Con Safos magazine in 1969. Con Safos: Reflections of Life in the Barrio was one of the early Chicano periodicals published by college students; it printed humorous, political, and literary articles. It is an example of a publication where Chicanos could express cultural and political satire. Barriology was created as a spoof on the academic social sciences; it involved testing those Chicanos not so fluent in the traditions and rituals of living in Chicano neighborhoods or barrios. Con Safos carried monthly examinations developed by Antonio Gómez, “PhD, Barriologist Emeritus.” It was also a way of gently poking fun at Chicano culture, reminding the readers of the uniqueness of the Chicano culture. Some of the exam questions consisted of multiple-choice answers; others required the reader to fill in the answer. Some sample questions follow:
Menudo is made from tripe, which is:
a. the cow’s stomach, b. the cow’s flank, c. horse meat, d. mutton
Someone who is described as a lechusa is a:
a. lettuce peddler, b. leach, c. milkman, d. night person
Capirotada is the traditional food during what time of year?
Complete the following children’s chant:
Pelon Pelonete, Cabeza de quete, Vendiendo Tamales, (De cinco y de siete.)
Everyone knows that Juan Charrasquiado’s death was caused by
———————. (title and character from a corrido who was killed in a -cantina).
Each exam included a rating scale so that those who took the exam could determine their level of knowledge of the Chicano culture. For example a score of 23 to 28 indicated a Chicano Barriologist was “muy de aquellas” (very Chicano); 18 to 22 indicated High Potential, “o ya casi” (almost a Chicano); 13 to 17 was half Mexican, half American, or “keep trying, you”; 8 to 12 was a “vendido” (sellout or culturally deprived); and 0 to 7 was a “pendejo” (dummy, jerk).
References Gómez 1970a, 1970b, 1971
Bato (Dude)
Bato is a word centuries old that can be translated as “guy” or “dude.” Most recently it has been spelled vato, transposing the v for the b. In Chicano communities, in-group chatter, and published literature one frequently comes across the expression bato loco, meaning a “crazy guy,” a “cool dude,” or a “wise guy.” Bato was a word incorporated into the pachuco jargon of the 1940s, and it is still very much a part of Chicano vocabulary today. The bato loco, or vato loco, is the descendent of the pachuco and a close relation of today’s cholo (urban youth). The bato is often mentioned in connection with his barrio, as in el vato loco del Hoyo Mara.
The bato loco is tantamount to an archetype in Chicano culture; he is that crazy guy who isn’t afraid of life. He may be a gang member, a drug user, or just an entertaining street person. He could also be fully immersed in la vida loca as described by Luis Rodriguez in his book, Always Running, and by Oscar Zeta Acosta in The Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo. In the novel The Road to Tamazunchale, Ron Arias creates a streetwise character, a bato named Mario, who acts as a sidekick to the main character, Fausto. The two wander through a mythical Los Angeles in search of “the song of life.” For the contemporary Chicano male, el bato loco is not only a symbol of ethnic identity but also an icon of the urban coming-of-age experience itself.
In standard Spanish, bato means “simpleton” or “foolish fellow,” and it has been in use in rural areas of New Mexico since the seventeenth century. In Los Pastores, or the Shepherds’ Play, a mystery play performed in Mexico and the Southwest since the sixteenth century, the shepherd who plays the role of a buffoon, a jester, is named Bato.
Another good example of the life of a bato loco is “La Vida de un Bato Loco,” a short memoir written by an informant of Linda Katz, reproduced in her thesis on the pachuco language and culture written for a master’s degree at the University of California, Los Angeles.
See also Cholos; Pachucos; Los Pastores
References Arias 1975; Barker 1950; Cerda and Farias 1953; Katz 1974; Rodriguez 1993; Smethurst 1995
Bazaars
See Jamaicas
Beans
See Frijoles
Beliefs
See Creencias
The Black Legend
See La Leyenda Negra
Blankets
See Colchas
The Blue Lady
See Agreda, María de Jesus Coronel de
Bogeyman
See El Coco; El Cucui; El Kookoóoee
Bolillos (Bread Rolls)
A bolillo is a small loaf of white bread or a large dinner roll, which in the United States is sometimes called French bread. Bolillos, also known as birotes, can be found in most Mexican and Mexican American bakeries and are often served in Mexican restaurants. The folkloric use of bolillo occurs when it is derogatorily applied to Anglo Americans, supposedly because they are as white as bread, and because the Americans invaded and annexed Mexican territory, the Southwest. Although not as popularly known, it carries the same meaning as gringo or gavacho. Chicanos also often use the term, as they do agringado, to describe an overly acculturated Chicano, one who is trying to be “white.”
It is believed the word was originally used to describe French soldiers when they occupied Mexico in the 1860s. Although written references to its use in this way have not been found, there are references to the French eating small loaves of white bread in corridos. Américo Paredes cites a stanza from a corrido (ballad) the Mexican soldiers sang after the Battle of Puebla (celebrated on Cinco de Mayo) that taunts the vanquished French soldiers with the following words:
Qu’es de las piezas de pan?
Aguárdenlas que ahi’ les van. Pam!
(Where are the loaves of bread?
Get ready, for here they go. Bang!)
(1993a, 37)
See also Agringado; Cinco de Mayo; Gavacho; Gringo
References Paredes 1961, 1993a
Bone Setter
See Huesero
Bonfires
See Luminarias
Bonus
See Pilón
Bourke, Captain John Gregory (1846–1896)
An early writer of Chicano folk culture and folklore from the Texas-Mexican border. Although Bourke was first and foremost a military man, he became interested in ethnology and anthropology and wrote extensively on these subjects. Born in 1846 to Irish Catholic parents in Pennsylvania, he enlisted in the Fifteenth Pennsylvania Volunteer Cavalry during the Civil War. In 1865 he attended West Point, graduating in 1869 with a commission in the Third Cavalry. He served with General George Crook from 1871 to 1886, and in 1891 wrote a well-received book titled On the Border with Crook.
Through his friendship with the director of the Bureau of American Ethnology at the Smithsonian Institution, Bourke studied anthropology and broadened his interests to include ethnology and folklore. At various times he wrote pamphlets for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. He gained fame as an Indian fighter, but was also known as an anthropologist and writer. Although primarily a military man, he managed to conduct fieldwork among several -Indian tribes, and was considered an expert on the Apaches. He was stationed along the Rio Grande for two years, during the era of the Catarino Garza revolt, and his diaries from this period are a valuable resource on the Garza movement. He learned the Spanish language, apparently because of his ethnological interests, and wrote on the Tejano and Mexicano culture of the border region. During the 1890s he published ethnographic articles about the Texas-Mexican border in the Journal of American Folklore and the American Anthropologist. Bourke observed, chronicled, and wrote both as a journalist and anthropologist about the folk medicine practices and the folk foodways of the Rio Grande region.
His approach to folklore study was that of the established tradition of the times, which examined current customs, traditions, folkways, and folk narratives as survivals of an earlier civilization. Sometimes this survivalist perspective carried with it an attitude about the prior culture, where the customs originated, as having been a higher civilization. Accordingly, when Bourke became interested in Mexican customs and language, he approached them as the cultural remains of a higher Spanish-Arabic civilization. In spite of the fact that his nineteenth-century biases are very apparent in his writings, the data he collected are valuable for the study of Chicano folklore of the Texas-Mexican border. He was elected president of the American Folklore Society in 1895, and he died in 1896. He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
References Limón 1994; New Handbook of Texas 1996
Braceros (Laborers)
Mexican workers recruited from Mexico under the Emergency Farm Labor Program known as the Bracero Program, which was in effect from 1942 to 1964. The word bracero comes from the Spanish word brazo (arm), which is used, as English uses “hand,” to mean “laborer.” In the same way bracero commonly means a man who works with his hands, a laborer, and is used when speaking of all farm and agricultural workers. There was a shortage of farm laborers during World War II, and this program offered an answer to that problem, although some braceros also worked on the railroad. Until only recently bracero was applied to any Mexican farmworker, and is often used interchangeably with words like “wetback” or “greaser.” The number of workers brought from Mexico ranged from a low of 4,180 in 1942 to a high of 62,091 in 1944. It is estimated that by 1947 nearly 220,000 braceros had worked in the United States under this program. It continued even after the war, and between 1955 and 1959 over 480,000 braceros were still working in the United States. Some have compared the Bracero Program with legalized slavery, and the impact on the perception of the Mexican farmworker by American agribusiness has been to foster contempt and disdain. Many braceros chose not to return to Mexico when their contracts ended and -instead stayed and hid from la migra, the feared Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS).
Many Chicanos of the Southwest and Midwest are descendants of braceros who came to the United States and stayed, never returning to Mexico. The bracero experience has been written about in novels and depicted in numerous movies, and although the image presented is often a negative one, like other Chicano folk heroes the bracero has become an archetype of the culture. He is in the company of the historical mestizo character of Yo soy Joaquín, the revolutionary figure of Joaquín Murrieta, the mythical pachuco, the stately learned persona of Dr. Paredes, the gentle leadership of César Chávez; the bracero is the universally exploited farmworker, the campesino of the world. Many corridos (ballads) describe the experience of coming to work in the agricultural fields of the Midwest and the Southwest. Maria Herrera-Sobek -describes the prototype of the bracero, as represented in countless corridos, in her book The Bracero Experience. In Mexico the experience was written about from the perspective of those who returned, as in such books as Aventuras de un Bracero, by Jesus Amaya Topete, published in 1949 and reprinted several times, and in the United States the novel Macho! by Edmund Villaseñor, published in 1973.
References Acuña 1988; Galarza 1964; Gutiérrez 1995; Herrera-Sobek 1979, 1993b, 1998; Madrid-Barela 1975; Nelson 1971; Paredes 1993
Bread Rolls
See Bolillos
Brujería (Witchcraft)
Witches and brujería (witchcraft) are accepted facts of life in Mexican and Chicano culture. Belief in witches and witchcraft is common in the Southwest, as can be seen by the large number of folk narratives and legends about witches collected in New Mexico and Texas in the last century. This form of occultism is an integral part of the culture of Mexico and the Southwest. The Spanish conquerors and colonists who settled New Mexico in the sixteenth century communicated to the indigenous communities a belief in witchcraft. Beliefs in witchcraft were prevalent in Europe during the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, and the missionary friars brought these beliefs to the New World. The Spanish Catholic missionaries worked hard to convert the indigenous populations of New Spain, and any non-Christian belief that was not acceptable to the Spanish friars was often attributed to sin, evil, the devil, or witchcraft. Consequently it was easy to assign unexplainable natural phenomena to the work of witches, and these beliefs have persisted over hundreds of years. Contemporary witches can prepare love potions, lift spells, cure and cause illnesses, and in general cause great harm. They can also take on any form they desire, such as a cat, pig, or owl, and so can make themselves difficult to identify. In folktales from New Mexico, they often appear as balls of fire flying across the sky. Curanderas are sometimes mistaken for witches because of their healing power, but they are also often called upon to undo the work of witches.
Many of the folktales, legends, and cuentos (stories) collected in New Mexico by Aurelio Espinosa, Juan Bautista Rael, and R. D. Jameson (Robe 1980) are about witches and witchcraft. In the 1930s, writers employed by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) as part of Roosevelt’s New Deal collected many cuentos and legends about witches from the people of northern New Mexico, and many beliefs expressed then are still held today. For instance, the way to tell if a person is a witch is to stick two needles in the form of a cross into the sill above a door; if the person in the room is a witch, she won’t be able to leave the room. Another belief is that only men named Juan or Juan Bautista or women named Juana have the ability to catch or overpower a witch. Conversely the power of a witch cannot be exerted over a person named Juan or Juana. A witch cannot sense the presence of a Juan, so he may be able to trap her by drawing a circle on the ground and throwing his shirt, turned inside out, into the circle.
Witches often take the form of an owl, in New Mexican Spanish called a tecolote, from the Nahuatl word teolotl. The hoot of an owl is an evil omen, so one must be careful to stay away from owls. In other parts of the Southwest owls are sometimes known as lechuzas. A lechuza is a woman who has sold her soul to the devil and becomes an owl by night. Only a woman can become a lechuza.
A prayer meant to keep witches away was recited at night in a low voice:
Cuatro esquinas tiene me casa
Cuatro ángeles que la adoran
Lucas, Marcos, Juan y Mateo
Ni brujas ni hechiceras
Ni hombre malhechor
En el nombre del Padre,
Y del Hijo y del Espiritu Santo.
(My house has four corners
Four angels adore it
Luke, Mark, John and Matthew
Neither witches nor charmers
Nor evil-doing man
In the name of the Father,
and of the Son
and of the Holy Ghost.)
(Simmons 1974a, 11)
Besides being present in folktales and legends, the world of brujas seeps into discussions of love and lovers, literature, and other forms of Chicano folklore and culture.
See also Curanderismo; Espinosa, Aurelio Macedonio
References Brown 1978; Delgado 1994; Espinosa 1910; García 1992; Jaramillo 1972; Rael 1957; Robe 1980; Simmons 1974a, 1974b; Ulibarri 1977; Weigle and White 1988
Burritos
Literally a little burro or little donkey, a burrito has come to mean a taco made of a wheat flour tortilla instead of a corn tortilla, filled with meat, rice, frijoles (beans), and chile, then folded and rolled up. There are several theories about the origins of the name burrito, and there may be some truth to all of them. One theory is that when flour tortillas became available in northern Mexico, tacos de frijoles, or bean burritos, were easy to carry in the saddle-bags of the vaqueros (cowboys), so for this reason they came to be called burritos as though they were the sidekicks of the vaquero’s horse.
Tacos made from corn tortillas are much older; they have been around since the epoch of the Aztecs. Wheat and flour were introduced into New Spain by the Spaniards, and one can see that the flour tortilla is similar to the flat bread found in many Mediterranean countries. Once flour tortillas were discovered, the move to making tacos from flour tortillas was logical. Since corn tortillas are small, and can only bend or fold over once, and flour tortillas are more pliable and can be rolled several times, the flour taco was a natural outcome. A burrito can be made with any type of filling, such as beans, potatoes, chile con carne, chile colorado, carnitas (chile with meat, red chile, roasted pork meat), or even peanut butter.
Flour tortillas and burritos are found in northern Mexico and the Southwest, but are not known in other parts of Mexico. Since at least the 1920s, Chicanos from Texas have been making what came to be called burritos. Originally they were called tacos; another story about the origin of the name is that in the 1940s there was an establishment in Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico, called Los Burritos that sold tacos made of tortillas de harina (flour tortillas). It became a well-known place to go, and people spoke of going a los burritos (to the burritos) when they wanted tacos of that kind. Commercial burritos became available in San Francisco in 1961, according to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, and now there are supposedly over 150 burrito taquerías (taco restaurants) in the Mission District of that city. Burros is the name reserved for the very large tortilla burritos, in which the tortilla may be a foot and a half to two feet in diameter.
See also Tacos
References Griffith 1988; Roemer 1993
