Los Martinez

“anos atras en el rancho habian 5 hermanos que se appelidaban Martinez. Esos hombres eran bien presumidos y no le callian bien a nadien. Entonces como ellos siempre presumian que tenian much dinero y esto y quell otro, un dia en el baile, so ollieron 5 balasos y resulta que habian matado a los 5 hermanos en la sierra… yo me acuerdo que pues yo estaba chiquito en ese entonces y cuando escuchamos los balaso, pensabamos que habian sido cuetes pero resulta que no. eran balasos y les habian dado a los 5 hermanos. Esto paso en el rancho de Lobatos en los 60s se me hace.”

“years ago in the ranch, there were 5 brothers whose last name was Martinez. Those men were show offs and nobody liked them. So since they were always showing off that they had a lot of money and all that stuff, one day at a dance, we heard 5 shots and it turns out that they had killed the 5 brothers out in the mountain range… I remember that well I was little back then and when we heard the shots, we thought that it was firecrackers but it turned out that no. they were bullet shots and they had hit the 5 brothers. This happened in the ranch of Lobatos in the 60’s I believe.”

The informant is a 61 year old man who was brought up and lived in mexico until the age of 26. He then migrated to the US and has lived there since. He never attended school, so most of his education came from knowledge others around him bestowed upon him. He also relies on many first hand experiences to account for the things he believes in. therefore, most of the stories he knows have been directly informed by himself.

In my point of view, this story seems a bit too harsh to be true, however, I cannot say whether this story is a fallacy or not because I was not there at the time of occurrence. Also, trying to learn more from this story, I stumbled across a couple of corridos (folk songs) that tell this story as was described by my informant. Unfortunately, they are in cassette format, but the point is that this is evidence that the story my informant gave was true. The 5 brothers were murdered before getting to the dance and that was it for them. This is a very common story among those native to the specific village in which this incident occurred. This story is fascinating because it shows that people have evolved in sharing their stories, they have begun making songs about them which is genius because that way, not too many variations from the original story will happen since it has been recorded and played in the same format each time. However, the content of the story is alarming because murdering 5 people at once seems all too horrible, but regardless, this has now become a common folk tale.