Acosio Cortez

After his Neapolitan training Gaspare Spontini settled in Paris for a few years, where he was nominated “compositeur particulier de la chambre” of Empress Josephine, Napoleon’s wife. It was indeed Napoleon who, in 1808, commissioned him the opera, Fernand Cortez, ou La conquete du Mexique, of which he attended the 28th November 1809 premiere. The strongly idealized figure of Cortez, presented as a brave, wise and merciful general, predestined to victory, was to be an image of Napoleon. His fight against Spanish “obscurantism” was Cortez’s fight against the cruelty, superstition and dark power intrigues of the Aztec sacerdotal class. Cortez frees the Mexicans from their “evil god”, and only the High Priest refuses his clemency. Like in a piece a sauvetage, at the last moment Montezuma’s niece, Amazily, who had offered her life in exchange of that of her beloved Cortez’s brother Alvar, is rescued. The Mexican chief Telasco promotes the cessation of hostilities: the marriage between Cortez and Amazily sanctions the peace between two peoples.

Forced to run from the Texas Rangers after a heated misunderstanding leads to the death of a lawman, Mexican American farmer Gregorio Cortez sets off in desperate flight, evading a massive manhunt on horseback for days. Producer-star Edward James Olmos, seeking to shed new light on a historical incident that had been enshrined in a corrido (folk song), enlisted director Robert M. Young, a longtime practitioner of socially engaged realism, to helm this trailblazing independent film, a landmark of Chicano cinema. Shifting its perspective between the pursuers and the pursued, The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez is a thrilling chase film and a nuanced procedural that peels away the layers of prejudice and myth surrounding Cortez, uncovering the true story of an ordinary man persecuted by the law and transfigured by legend.

Part of the four-book Queens of the Resistance series, saluting some of the most beloved boss ladies in Congress: a celebration of AOC, the youngest woman ever to serve in Congress and its newest superstar