From “Mexican Banditry” to “Woke Ideologues”: The Long History of Blame-Shifting and Controlling the Narrative in Texas, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

From “Mexican Banditry” to “Woke Ideologues”: The Long History of Blame-Shifting and Controlling the Narrative in Texas

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

December 6, 2025

In moments of political crisis, it is often our folklorists, historians, and cultural critics who offer the clearest lens. One of these is the late Américo Paredes,

whose scholarship on the U.S.–Mexico borderlands exposes the deep racial logics that have long shaped Texas politics. Paredes (1958/1990) documented how, as Anglo settlers expanded westward and seized Mexican land through violence, legal maneuvering, and state-sanctioned force, they simultaneously constructed the myth of the “thieving Mexican”—a folkloric trope meant to justify their own actions. The very people having their land stolen were cast as the thieves. 

As a side note, the movie based on Paredes' book, "With His Pistol in His Hand," is one of the most popular posts on this blog. I love it, too.

In any case, this rhetorical strategy exemplifies what scholars today term, "reactionary inversion," a political move in which those in power accuse marginalized groups of committing the very harms being inflicted upon them (Romano, 2020; Stanley, 2021). Other equivalent terms noted by scholars are "narrative inversion," "political reversal," or perhaps more commonly, allegations by political elites as "reverse discrimination." In this framing, perpetrators claim victimhood, and victims are rendered as the threat.

Once we learn to recognize this move—this insidious abuse of power by political elites—we begin to see it everywhere. 

Paredes’ analysis demonstrates that stereotypes of Mexicans as criminal or lawless did not emerge organically from Mexican communities. Rather, they were crafted to rationalize the takeover of land and to authorize the extraordinary violence deployed by state actors such as the Texas Rangers (Locke, 2014; Paredes, 1958/1990). Colonial violence became “order,” and Mexican resistance became “banditry.” The accusation became the alibi.

This same rhetorical script animates contemporary debates surrounding education, diversity, and academic freedom. Calls for equity from DEI practitioners, faculty of color, students, and community advocates have been reframed as dangerous, divisive, or discriminatory. Those seeking redress for long-standing inequities are cast as aggressors, particularly through the language of “cancel culture" (Romano, 2020).

In contrast, researchers have shown that "cancel-culture discourse" often

constitutes a moral panic—one that reframes legitimate public critique as censorship while ignoring or distracting from systemic inequities (Clark, 2020; Romano, 2020). In this discourse, historically marginalized communities are depicted as wielding outsized cultural power, while the actual censorship originates from political actors and state institutions working to restrict what may be taught, researched, supported, or even discussed in public universities (Stanley, 2021; Vogels et al., 2021).

Texas’s SB 17, which dismantles DEI programming and constrains the ability of universities to support historically marginalized communities, is a textbook case of reactionary inversion. DEI programs designed to expand access and belonging are recast as threats to “viewpoint diversity.” Faculty and students of color, long denied equitable treatment, are portrayed as the ones doing the excluding. Efforts to address inequality are reframed as evidence of “ideological coercion,” while state interference in academic freedom is packaged as a defense of free speech. In much the same way that Mexican landholders were labeled criminals in order to justify dispossession, DEI advocates are labeled ideologues in order to justify dismantling DEI itself.

This historical continuity matters. Paredes reminds us that myths are not just stories; they are weapons. They shape the public imagination, granting moral authority to those who already hold institutional power, and they normalize forms of domination that would otherwise be indefensible. 

The rhetoric surrounding cancel culture, free speech, and viewpoint diversity is not simply about ideas. It is about who gets to define reality, whose knowledge counts, and whose voices are allowed to shape our public institutions. 

Understanding this pattern reveals that SB 17 and related anti-DEI efforts are not novel disruptions but part of a long-standing historical strategy in which those advancing racial exclusion cast themselves as victims and frame equity as the threat. As Paredes’s work teaches us, when political leaders accuse marginalized communities of the very acts being inflicted upon them, we should look closely at what power is doing—and not merely what it is saying. Reactionary inversion survives because it is effective, but once named, it can be challenged.

References

Clark, M. D. (2020). Drag them: A brief etymology of so-called “cancel culture.”
Communication and Media Studies, 66(2), 1–7.

Locke, J. (2014). Teaching Local History as National (and Transnational) History http://www.teachingushistory.co/2014/03/teaching-local-history-as-national-and-transnational-history.html

Paredes, A. (1990). With his pistol in his hand: A border ballad and its hero. University of Texas Press. (Original work published 1958)

Romano, A. (2020, December 30). Why we can’t stop fighting about cancel culture. Vox. https://www.vox.com/ [also at: https://courses.bowdoin.edu/sociology-1101-spring-2020/wp-content/uploads/sites/319/2020/05/What-is-cancel-culture_-Why-we-keep-fighting-about-canceling-people.-Vox.pdf]

Stanley, J. (2021). How fascism works: The politics of us and them. Random House.

Vogels, E. A., Anderson, M., Porteus, M., Baronavski, C., Atske, S., McClain, C., Auxier, B., Perrin, A., & Ramshankar, M. (2021, May 19). Americans and “cancel culture”: Where some see calls for accountability, others see censorship, punishment. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2021/05/19/americans-and-cancel-culture-where-some-see-calls-for-accountability-others-see-censorship-punishment/