The corrida (ballad) of Gregorio Cortez is still sung on the Texas-Mexico border, but the true story of Gregorio Cortez is still a mystery (“a Texas mystery”), based on a misunderstanding that all the ballads in the world could never clear; the story of Gregorio Cortez is one of the century's first media events. In 1901 Texas--50 years after the bloody fight for Texas' independence from Mexico--Hispanic native Texans are subject to land confiscation, labor exploitation, segregation and harassment. It is in this environment that a vaquero named Gregorio Cortez is approached by an Anglo sheriff and his interpreter searching for a horse thief. A semantic misunderstanding leads to an attempted arrest that leads to a gunfight, and suddenly the sheriff is dead, and Gregorio Cortez has left his wife and four children and begun the life of a fugitive. Amazingly, he evades a posse of 300; legends spring up, rumors fly, and the Ballad of Gregorio Cortez is embellished. When he is captured, emotions are high on both sides. After a series of trials and mistrials, Cortez is convicted in 1904. In 1913, he is pardoned, and in 1916 he dies of “natural causes” at the age of 41, “after almost three years of freedom but very few days of peace.”
Edward James Olmos (who played El Pachuco in Zoot Suit) plays Gregorio Cortez, and Bruce McGill stars as the reporter to whom participants are telling this true story (in many versions) in flashback. Olmos has stated, “I portrayed Cortez not as a legend; I could have made him very mythical and very legendary like Errol Flynn.... But I chose to (make) him a very simple man and played the fact--the only fact we really knew--that there had been a misunderstanding. That is essentially what the story is about--the story the way we dealt with it....”
The True Story of Gregorio Cortez was produced as part of the PBS American Playhouse series. It is a joint project of the National Council of La Raza and producer Moctesuma Esparza. Esparza's other credits include the Emmy Award-winning Agueda Martinez (see 9:15 show) and Borderlands (see Sunday, August 22). Robert M. Young is the director of the widely acclaimed features Alambrista! and Short Eyes.