Argues that the folksong is a viable and important document chronicling the history of Chicano. This work traces Mexican emigration to the United States from 1848 to 1991 through the lyrics of Mexican ballads and contemporary popular songs. These songs reflect the relationship between individual experience and the history-making process.

"Northward Bound" argues that the folksong is a viable and important document chronicling the history of Chicano/as in the United States. It traces Mexican emigration to the United States from 1848 to 1991 through the lyrics of Mexican ballads (corridos) and contemporary popular songs (canciones). These autobiographical songs reflect the relationship between individual experience and the history-making process. Over a century of Chicano history unfolds in the more than 150 folksongs Herrera-Sobek has gathered: lives of cowboys and outlaws; construction of the railroad; the Mexican revolution; the Roaring Twenties and subsequent Depression; the bracero experience; the C sar Ch vez farmworkers' union movements; responses to racism; Border Patrol brutality and border-crossing strategies.

Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part One.
1848-1964
One
Cowboys and Outlaws
Two
Working and Traveling on the Railroad
Three
Revolution and Hard Times
Four
Of Migrants and Renegades
Five
Repatriation and Deportation
Six
The Bracero Program
Part Two.
After 1964
Seven
Songs of Protest
Eight
Border-Crossing Strategies
Nine
Racial Tension
Ten
Poverty, Petroleum, and Amnesty
Eleven
Love
Twelve
Acculturation and Assimilation
Thirteen
Death
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Index