Ireneo Paz - Life and Adventures of the Celebrated Bandit Joaquin Murrieta

Life and adventures
of the celebrated bandit

Joaquin Murrieta

His exploits in the state of California

Ramn Luis Acevedo
Universidad de Puerto Rico

Jos F. Aranda, Jr.
Rice University

Antonia Castaeda
St. Marys University

Rodolfo J. Cortina
University of Houston

Kenya C. Dworkin y Mndez
Carnegie Mellon University

Jos B. Fernndez
University of Central Florida

Juan Flores
Hunter College of CUNY

Erlinda Gonzales-Berry
Oregon State University

Laura Gutirrez-Witt
University of Texas at Austin

Luis Leal
University of California at Santa Barbara

Clara Lomas
The Colorado College

Francisco A. Lomel
University of California at Santa Barbara

Agnes Lugo-Ortiz
Dartmouth College

A. Gabriel Melndez
University of New Mexico

Genaro Padilla
University of California at Berkeley

Raymund Paredes
University of California at Los Angeles

Nlida Prez
Hunter College of CUNY

Gerald Poyo
St. Marys University

Antonio Saborit
Instituto Nacional
de Antropologa e Historia

Rosaura Snchez
University of California at San Diego

Virginia Snchez Korrol
Brooklyn College of CUNY

Charles Tatum
University of Arizona

Silvio Torres-Saillant
CUNY Dominican Studies Institute

Roberto Trujillo
Stanford University

Life and adventures
of the celebrated bandit

His exploits in the state of California

Ireneo Paz

Translation by Francis P. Belle

Introduction by Luis Leal

Introduction translated by

Francisco A. Lomel and Miguel R. Lpez

Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage

This volume is made possible through grants from the Rockefeller Foundation.

Recovering the past, creating the future

Arte Pblico Press
University of Houston
452 Cullen Performance Hall
Houston, Texas 77204-2004

Cover design by Adelaida Mendoza

Paz, Ireneo, 18391924.

[Vida y aventuras del ms clebre bandido sonorense Joaqun Murrieta. English]

Joaquin Murrieta, California outlaw / Ireneo Paz : English translation by Frances P. Belle ; introduction by Luis Leal.

p. cm.

ISBN 1-55885-277-8 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Murrieta, Joaqun, d. 1853. 2. RevolutionariesCalifornia Biography. 3. MexicansCalifornia Biography. 4. OutlawsCaliforniaBiography. 5. Frontier and pioneer lifeCalifornia. 6. CaliforniaHistory18501950. 7. CaliforniaHistory18461850. I. Title.

F865.M96P3913 1999

The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.

Introduction 2001 by Luis Leal
Printed in the United States of America

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To the memory of the Mexican
gambusinos in northern California
L. L.

Introduction by Luis Leal

Life and adventures of the celebrated bandit Joaquin Murrieta: His exploits in the state of California

The eighty years of the history of Upper California as part of Mexico, from 1769 (the first land expedition by Gaspar de Portol and Fray Junpero Serra) until 1848 (the California Gold Rush), has been called the Pastoral Age. The structural base of the period was the latifundio, the large landed estate whose social and cultural center was situated in the large houses of the so-called ranchos. Historians such as Hubert Howe Bancroft, with his book California Pastoral, 17691848 (1888); novelists, especially Helen Hunt Jackson with her Ramona (1884); and the films of Hollywood have all mythologized that culture, so that today we commonly accept their depiction of the restful and pleasant life of old California, where all social problems were resolved by Zorro, that mysterious and powerful character who was a sort of Hispanic Batman.

The origin of the ranchos may be found in the land grants given to the first settlers by the Spanish Crown in the eighteenth century. When Upper California ceased to be a province of New Spain and became part of the Republic of Mexico, the ranches multiplied as a result of the appropriation of the mission lands carried out by the central government in 1838. Land owned by the missions was auctioned off and passed into the hands of well-to-do families.

From 1848 on, as the Californios were being stripped of their property, the ranchos disintegrated, and the groups that had provided manual laborcowboys, laborers, shepherds, servantsmoved to the urban centers or began to work in the mines; some of them joined the gangs of bandits that were beginning to form. As Joseph Henry Jackson observes, These thousands of vaguely employed Mexicans found themselves displaced persons [and] could rarely find anything to do but the most menial work. Others simply took what they needed as they could find it, and if this meant living off a society which, as it seemed to them, had refused them support, why that was how it was. It is easy, then, to see how, in the mind of the Spanish-Californian, patriotism was equated with outlawry (1955: xvii).

Gold was discovered in Upper California on January 24, 1848, a few days before the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The discovery, however, did not become public until after February 2, the date of the signing of the treaty. The first flakes were discovered by a carpenter, James Wilson Marshall, while building a mill for John Augustus Sutter on his ranch in Coloma. During the first few months of 1848, the only prospectors were Anglos. Soon, however, the news of the discovery reached the entire globe, prompting an extraordinary influx of miners into California, which, at its peak in 1852, reached more than 100,000 (Nicholson 1990: 38). The first to arrive were the Sonorans, whose number increased to such a degree that the settlement where they lived was called Sonora or Sonorita. The presence of the Sonorans was of great benefit to the Anglo miners, who learned from them the methods of extracting gold by sluicing as well as panning, methods that had been used in Mexican mines since time immemorial. Attracted by the gold, other Latin Americans, particularly from Peru and Chile, soon arrived in Upper California. The theory of Joaqun Murrietas Chilean origins may be due to the arrival of some miner by that last name.

With the arrival of miners from other Latin American countries and other regions, Anglos became a minority, with the resulting rivalries and inevitable racial conflicts. John Rollin Ridge tells us: The country was then full of lawless and desperate men, who bore the name of Americans but failed to support the honor and dignity of that title (1955: 9).