The readings this week did a good job of explaining how criminals like the Billy the Kid became popular at the time. I think it’s safe to say that the Kid fits into the social bandit mold that White describes. He clearly benefited from the confused social structures of the time, and he has the three groups of support that define such social bandits. We will have to look into what makes the Kid different than the other gangs White talks about, and why he in particular became as famous as he did.
This week I found a short journal article called “Miguel Antonio Otero II, Billy the Kid’s Body, and the Fight for New Mexican Manhood” by John-Michael Rivera. Otero was the only Mexican American man to govern New Mexico, and he wrote a biography of Billy the Kid that sought to challenge the prevailing discriminations against Mexicans at the time (48).
As the frontier closed in 1893, many whites made marginalizing the new American citizens from the Southwest, mostly Mexican and Native Americans, a priority. One way they did this was by taking Billy the Kid and applying many of his attributes to the Mexicans he sometimes rode with (51). Rivera implies that for the decades after the Kid’s death, he was actually portrayed in a negative light by dime novelists across the country. On author, named Emerson Hough, said that Pat Garrett’s killing of the Kid showed that “the Anglo-Saxon civilization was destined to overrun this half-Spanish civilization” (51). Within these novels, writers would make the Kid indistinguishable from Mexicans, and readers across America came to associate them with the Kid’s murderous, barbaric ways. These were all white authors, of course, and Otero felt that the lack of literature from the other point of view was leaving Mexicans silenced forever.
After discovering this, Siringo’s book about Billy the Kid in 1920 seems like an attempt to rescue him from a terrible reputation. While it seemed straightforward to me, at the time of publication it may have been a revolutionary insight into a facet of the Kid’s personality the public had not yet seen. It provides some motivation for him to release a book about a criminal that died thirty years prior.
Otero himself tried to spin the Kid the other way, making him out to be a tragic hero who fought for Mexicans’ land. Billy the Kid then became a battleground of sorts, with each side trying to appropriate him for their own ends (55). As we’ve seen before, legendary Americans become legendary partly based on their ability to be appropriated for many different causes, but we’ve never seen two sides trying to use one at the same time. Rivera argues that Otero succeeded in redefining New Mexican manhood to be more accepting of Mexicans, at least a little, with his biography.
Also, a book called “Inventing Billy the Kid” by Stephen Tatum is apparently a great resource that tracks the Kid’s transformations over time, so I want to check that out for next week.
Rivera, John-Michael. “Miguel Antonio Otero II, Billy the Kid’s Body, and the Fight for New Mexican Manhood.” Western American Literature 35.1 (2000): 47-57. Print.
Interesting point about the appropriation of the Kid by two groups simultaneously! Sacagawea may be the closest parallel there, but I think you are right that it’s somewhat unusual.