Paredes, Américo

Folklorist, academic teacher and administrator, novelist, poet, singer, activist. Américo Paredes Manzano (1915-1999) was born in Brownsville, Texas. His father, Justo Paredes Cisneros, a rancher whose family had settled north of the Rio Grande around 1749, and his mother, born Clotilde Manzano Vidal, taught their eight children to love and respect the history and folklore of the Lower Rio Grande Border region.

As a youth, Américo Paredes studied guitar and piano, learned Border folk songs, and wrote poetry in Spanish and English. While a student at Brownsville High School, he won a statewide poetry contest and aspired to teach literature at the University of Texas at Austin. He published his poetry in San Antonio’s La Prensa and worked as a proofreader and writer at the Brownsville Herald while attending Brownsville Junior College. After earning his degree (1936), he reported and wrote features on folklore for the Herald, published a volume of his poetry in Spanish, and wrote George Washington Gómez, an unpublished English-language novel about Mexican American life in Brownsville. He pursued his love of music by hosting a Brownsville radio program and performing publicly. His 1939 marriage to singer Consuelo (Chelo) Silva was brief, though the couple had a son, Américo, Junior.

...