Water Spirits
See Chanes
Wedding Customs
Chicano wedding rituals vary from state to state in the Southwest and the Midwest, often incorporating emerging American customs, but there are still common traditions that originate with Catholicism and the Spanish heritage that are shared from community to community. The Spanish word for a wedding is boda, meaning “nuptials,” and often Chicanos will call a wedding celebration La Boda. The southwestern region with the most researched and documented wedding customs is New Mexico, because the descendents of the early Hispanos have been conscious of describing and writing down their traditions. For instance Fabiola Cabeza de Baca, Cleofas Jaramillo, and Nina Otero all wrote about the weddings of northern New Mexico. In her book The Good Life, Fabiola Cabeza de Baca has a brief chapter on wedding traditions, including recipes and a detailed description of the preparation of the food.
When a couple married, three main ceremonies took place. These were initiated after the groom and his family had asked the girl’s family for her hand in marriage. If the girl or her family refused the offer, she would send a letter to her suitor with her negative response. This was termed as giving cala-bazas (squash or pumpkin) and was a great insult to the wooer. Of the ceremonies, first there was el día del prendorio (day of the engagement), when the bride and groom came together publicly for the first time. A great celebration would take place, usually in the home of the bride, with food, drinks, and music. This festivity would be equivalent to an engagement party. The day of the wedding was called el día del casorio and could last from two to three days. The upper classes held lavish wedding ceremonies that would last for days with lots of music and food for their many guests; the poorer folks also followed many of the same traditions, although in a more modest fashion. It was the tradition that the bridegroom’s family hosted the celebration after the church service. There was always an orchestra that played while the guests ate, and a big dance on the eve of the wedding day. After the dance, or at the conclusion of the feast, there was the entrega de novios (delivery of the wedding couple), when the wedding couple was formally returned to their parents and placed under their guidance. Songs from this ritual were collected by Juan Rael and reveal the solemnity of the ceremony.
The Hispano folklore does not specify the actual religious sacramental rituals, but more recent publications do describe church ceremonies that are still observed today. In very traditional weddings, the arras, thirteen coins or pieces of silver, are given by the groom to his bride as a symbol of security. After the wedding vows are stated during the Mass, a lazo, a cord with two connected loops, is draped over the couple, to symbolize the union of bride and groom. Just before the couple leaves the church, the bride, or sometimes a designated child, will pay tribute to La Virgen de Guadalupe by placing flowers at the foot of her statue or picture. There are always lots of padrinos (godfathers) and madrinas (godmothers), bridegrooms and bridesmaids, and of course Mariachi music.
Frances Toor’s classic book on Mexican folklore, A Treasury of Mexican Folkways, relates wedding customs of the various regions and indigenous groups of Mexico. A not-so-typical Chicano wedding from southern California in the 1950s is depicted in the novel The Wedding by Mary Helen Ponce.
References Cabeza de Baca 1982; Espinosa 1985; Fernandez Mines 1977; Haralson 1980; Rael 1942, 1975; Rivera 1976; Sawin 1985; Toor 1947
Wetback
See Alambrista; Mojado
Witchcraft
See Brujería
With His Pistol in His Hand
The title of a book by the eminent professor Américo Paredes that has become a classic in American folklore and Chicano studies. With His Pistol in His Hand: A Border Ballad and Its Hero, published in 1958 by the University of Texas Press, is not only one of the most important academic works on the history of the Chicano, but it is also respected as major scholarship in the field of folklore studies, and specifically on the genre of the ballad. It is a study of a border ballad, “El Corrido de Gregorio Cortez,” which looks at the history of the Texas-Mexican border and the life of Gregorio Cortez, and presents an analysis of the man as a ballad hero. As stated by Paredes himself in the introduction, “It is an account of the life of a man, of the way that songs and legends grew up about his name, and of the people who produced the songs, the legends, and the man” (1958, 1). It was in this work that Paredes proposed his theory of the production of Chicano folklore, and especially the border ballad, as a result of a process of border conflict generated by the invasion of Anglo culture and values into the Texas region in the early nineteenth century. The balladry of the Rio Grande border was “one of resistance against outside encroachment” (1958, 244). There was an “inner need” for the people to compose ballads that sang of the deeds of a man standing up for his rights, who in the process is transformed into a hero. Often, the man is nonviolent, but is coerced through persecution or abuse into killing his enemy, often a Texas Ranger, and must escape to the border. “His defeat is assured; . . . often he is killed or captured. But whatever his fate, he has stood up for his right” (149).
When the book was published it caused quite a stir in Texas because of its negative portrayal of the Texas Rangers. The chief editor at the University of Texas Press asked Paredes to delete his critical references to Walter Prescott Webb, J. Frank Dobie, and the Texas Rangers. The book was eventually published in spite of his refusal to make any changes. The timing of its publication was crucial, in 1958, for its powerful influence on Chicano students and intellectuals, since it came out just before the start of the Chicano movement of the 1960s. Its intellectual and political impact on a whole generation of Chicano scholars cannot be overstated. Almost all publications on Chicanos and Mexicanos up to that date had been written by Anglo American sociologists or anthropologists, and the few published Hispano scholars, such as Aurelio Espinosa and Arthur Campa, were only known within a narrow circle of folklore specialists. Gregorio Cortez, the border hero, and Américo Paredes, the scholar hero, both became figures that young Chicano students could respect and emulate.
See also “El Corrido de Gregorio Cortez”; Corridos; Paredes, Américo; Los Rinches
References Limón 1980a, 1986, 1990, 1992; Paredes 1958
