The iRead source for this week is a border corrido. The corrido (or ballad) describes an incident that occurred in 1901 in South Texas between the Texas Rangers and Gregorio Cortez Lira (1875-1916).

Step 1. Read about corridos and their historical context from the the Handbook of Texas Online: Handbook of Texas Online, Dan W. Dickey, "Corridos," accessed August 28, 2016, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/lhc01. Uploaded on June 12, 2010. Modified on May 24, 2016. Published by the Texas State Historical Association.

Step 2. Read and listen to the source. As with oral tradition, there are multiple versions of the lyrics as analyzed by Américo Paredes in his monograph With His Pistol in His Hand: A Border Ballad and Its Hero (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1958). The transcript and the YouTube track represent “Variant A.” Audio on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9Jp4p8_fH8

Step 3. Write a short narrative (about a page) about the source covering all of the points on the iRead worksheet.