Mexican Border Ballads and Other Lore Page: 19
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MEXICAN BORDER BALLADS
Se hicieron de los caballos They made off with the
De carabinas y sillas, horses
Gritaban los Pronunciados, The rifles and saddles.
Say! The Pronunciados shouted,
-Esto lo cargan a Diaz.- Ay!
"Charge this to Diaz."
Gritaban los Pronunciados The Pronunciados shouted
Con demasiado valor: With a great deal of courage:
---Esto lo cargan a Diaz, lay! "Charge this to Diaz, Ay!
Si, al cabo, es buen pagador.- After all, he's real good pay."
What an abysmal mockery of a revolution this attack must
have been. Citizens of the United States, willing or otherwise,
fancy somehow that they were concerned with the way the
affairs of the government of Mexico were conducted, and
interested enough to do something about it, attack a small
company of rural police at a place called, of all possible
names, the Tortillas Ranch. After a brief fight with the
rurales retreating, they gather up all available saddles, rifles
and horses, shout out orders to "charge it all to Diaz", and
ride triumphantly back to the United States. Perhaps if the
leadership had not deserted the cause in the very hour it
was to launch its campaign, we would have heard more
from the Pronunciados than just a skirmish at Tortilla
Ranch.
After the successes of their first engagement, the Pro-
nunciados settled down to a week of riotous living in the
vicinity of San Ygnacio, Texas. They lived off the local
ranchers, stealing cattle from the fields and tequila and
beans from the stores. By this time they were a dangerously
restless, unrully band, and the authorities in Laredo, Texas,
began to hear complaints about their depredations.
On December 15, 1892, Ranger Captain Lee Hall, the
Capitdn Jol of the second ballad about the Pronunciados, with
a company of American soldiers under the command of Cap-
tain Harding of the United States Army, left Laredo to round
them up.
The ballad is written by a member of the Pronunciados and
pokes fun at Captain Hall and his band. All the Mexicans on
both sides of the river were familiar with Captain Hall in19
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Mexican Border Ballads and Other Lore (Book)
Collection of popular folklore from Mexico and Texas, including ballads, personal anecdotes, folktales of the Alabama-Coushatta Indians and other miscellaneous legends. The index begins on page 141.
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Boatright, Mody C. Mexican Border Ballads and Other Lore, book, 1946; Dallas, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc67652/m1/27/: accessed April 24, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Press.