UC Berkeley

Becoming Joaquin Murrieta: John Rollin Ridge and the Making of an Icon analyzes the transnational archive of Joaquin Murrieta narratives. An icon of Mexican resistance during the California Gold Rush era, Murrieta has been described by Luis Leal as "the only Californian hero on the level of art, history, and myth." This dissertation explores the incarnation of Murrieta's elusive subjectivity in the first novel written by a Native American: Cherokee writer John Rollin Ridge's 1854 publication, The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta, the Celebrated California Bandit. By examining the multigenerational influence of Ridge's novel as the textual origin point of the Murrieta archive, Becoming Joaquin Murrieta proposes a new understanding of Ridge's global significance.

Joaquin Murrieta is unique among folk heroes in that performers often assume his persona and metaphorically become the mythical hero, a pattern evident in the traditional borderlands ballad, "El Corrido de Joaquin Murrieta," and Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzales's poem, I Am Joaquin. This pattern is rooted in Ridge's configuration of Murrieta as a persona with the capacity to be anywhere at any time. Becoming Joaquin Murrieta reads Ridge's novel in conjunction with several notable and influential versions of the story: the 1859 California Police Gazette plagiarism of Ridge; Ireneo Paz's 1904 plagiarism of the Police Gazette; Adolfo Carrillo's 1922 short story; Walter Noble Burns's 1932 novel, The Robin Hood of El Dorado, and the 1936 MGM film of the same name; Los Madrugadores's 1934 recording of the corrido; Gonzales's epic Chicano poem of 1967; Pablo Neruda's 1967 play, Fulgor y Muerte de Joaquin Murieta (Splendor and Death of Joaquin Murieta); and Isabel Allende's 1999 novel, Hija de la Fortuna (Daughter of Fortune). In tracing the transnational production of the Murrieta narrative, Becoming Joaquin Murrieta exposes nationalist constructions that shape the archive's patterns of racialized violence and culturally sanctioned retaliation.