El Muerto

Shane Nicholson

Professor L.Brooks

Enlgish 114

26 September 2015

El Muerto

I’m a Mexican-American and I want to get to know more about Mexican-American legends. I came across the legendary story called El Muerto while asking my grandmother about Mexican-American legends. I asked my grandmother because she is the one who would tell me folk stories. She reminded me of the folk story I was most afraid of when I was a child El Muerto. The name seemed very interesting to me when I was a child. El Muerto in English means The Dead One and is also known as The Aztec Zombie. El Muerto is the name of the legendary story but the name of the legend was The Headless Horseman. The Headless Horseman was a thief who was killed in a gruesome way. My grandma would tell me if I became a thief The Headless Horsemen would kill me the same way Vidal was killed. My grandma wasn’t easy on the details of the death of Vidal.

In the 1850’s the time of the Headless Horseman, people feared him. El Muerto is story about a Mexican bandito by the name of Vidal also known as The Headless Hors Man of South Texas. He didn’t get the name The Headless Horseman until he died. Vidal was known for stealing cattle around San Antonio Texas. Vidal stole so many hordes of cattle that he had a bounty on his head, dead or alive. During the summer in the 1850’s Vidal had his most historic heist. He took advantage of the Comanche raid. The Comanche Raid was a war between Americans and the Native-Americans. The Comanche raids pulled most of the men northward leaving all the cattle unprotected from Vidal. Vidal and his compadres took hordes of cattle without any troubles, they ended up taking the cattle they stole to Mexico and sold the cattle. The point my grandmother was getting across to me was don’t take advantage of a situation.

Most of Vidal’s heists were when the people of Texas would have big public events. When everyone was having fun at public events Vidal was at their farms stealing their cattle. The moral that my grandma was trying to tell me was even when nobody is around looking stay true and not steal or do anything