Nights of Wailing, Days of Pain: Life in 1920s South Texas Review

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(More customer reviews)I just finished reading "Nights of Wailing, Days of Pain: Life in 1920's South Texas". The book is labeled as fiction, but as a citizen born, reared, and still living in South Texas, I can discern the thinly-veiled fictional characters of the novel as some of our real life, local citizens, past and present, of our city and surrounding area. I grew up listening to stories told by my parents and grandparents that parallel the fictional story of Roberto Gutierrez, his family, and his friends. Mr. Lopez weaves his tale with substance and tenderness, evoking feelings of joy, anger, and frustration with the impotence of the underdog, in this case, the Tejanos in 1920's South Texas. This is a compelling story that must be told and never forgotten.

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Nights of Wailing, Days of Pain Life in 1920s South Texas Jose Antonio Lopez Summary Life in 1920s South Texas was mercilessly miserable for U.S. citizens of Spanish Mexican (Tejano) ancestry. The courageous descendants of Native Americans and the first Europeans to set foot in Texas had been reduced by this time to the status of foreigners in their own homeland. It had been over eighty years since the 1836 Battle of the Alamo, but the suffering of the native inhabitants continued unrestrained into the twentieth century. In short, Tejanos looked like the enemy, spoke Spanish like the enemy, worshipped as Catholics like the enemy, and thus were treated like the enemy. Akin to a never-ending nightmarish inferno stoked by constant Battle of the Alamo reminders, the damage to the tormented Tejano psyche persists to this day. Nights of Wailing, Days of Pain involves the day-to-day life of a Tejano family, whose members are living in two parallel worlds. One is the world of their Spanish Mexican ancestors, inventors of the ranch and cowboy phenomena, and the other is the world of Anglo Saxon Texas that treats them as strangers in the only homeland they have ever known. The first world is a sanctuary providing comfort, but it is slowly disappearing. The second world is fraught with overwhelming anxiety and continues unabated to the present time. The book typifies the saga of countless Tejano families struggling to make a living in the harsh brush country of South Texas while at the same time fighting off those who wanted their land at all costs. The story begins with a scene worthy of a Russian czar. A ranch foreman, bloodied by a brutal beating, hangs feet first from the arm of a large oak tree. Although not charged with any crime, he had been left there by the Texas Rangers. It was a most undignified sight! How could this be? After all, this was the 1920s. Wasn't the United States of America the land of the free, where a person was innocent until proven guilty? Wasn't So