6. Spanish-Mexican Strains
THE MEXICAN Revolution that began in 1910 resulted in a rich development of the native cultural elements of Mexico, the art of Diego Rivera being one of the highlights of this development. The native culture is closer to the Mexican earth and to the indigenes than to Spain, notwithstanding modern insistence on the Latin in Latin-American culture.
The Spaniards, through Mexico, have had an abiding influence on the architecture and language of the Southwest. They gave us our most distinctive occupation, ranching on the open range. They influenced mining greatly, and our land titles and irrigation laws still go back to Spanish and Mexican sources. After more than a hundred years of occupation of Texas and almost that length of time in other parts of the Southwest, the English-speaking Americans still have the rich accumulations of lore pertaining to coyotes, mesquites, prickly pear, and many other plants and animals to learn from the Mexicans, who got their lore partly from intimate living with nature but largely through Indian ancestry.
See "Fighting Texians," "Santa Fe and the Santa Fe Trail."
AIKEN, RILEY. "A Pack Load of Mexican Tales," in Puro Mexicano, published by Texas Folklore Society, 1935. Now published by Southern Methodist University Press, Dallas. Delightful.
ALEXANDER, FRANCES (and others). Mother Goose on the Rio Grande, Banks Upshaw, Dallas, 1944. Charming rhymes in both Spanish and English in charming form.
APPLEGATE, FRANK G. Native Tales of New Mexico, Philadelphia, 1932. Delicious; the real thing. OP.
ATHERTON, GERTRUDE. The Splendid Idle Forties, New York, 1902. Romance of Mexican California.
AUSTIN, MARY. One-Smoke Stories, Boston, 1934. Short tales of Spanish-speaking New Mexicans, also of Indians.
BANDELIER, A. F. The Gilded Man, New York, 1873. The dream of El Dorado.