[2] Paredes was a lover both of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan books and of Mexican poetry—his father composed décimas (a ten line poem with set rhyme scheme).

[citation needed] While in college, Paredes worked not only at the local grocery store (where he bought his first guitar from a co-worker), but also as a proofreader and reporter at The Brownsville Herald, a job he kept even after graduation in 1936.

In 1940, as World War II began for the Americans, Paredes took a second job with Pan-American Airways overseeing the outfitting of airplanes with fifty-caliber machine guns.

In 1956, Paredes’ dissertation, which was to turn into his opus With His Pistol in His Hand, told the story of the legendary Gregorio Cortez and his conflict with the Texas Rangers.

[3] When With His Pistol in His Hand was completed,[4] it garnered the attention of famous folklorist Stith Thompson, who was to recommend the work to the University of Texas Press for publication in 1958.

The book "sold less than 1000 copies by 1965, then exploded into dozens of editions as it became a foundational text and primer for the emerging academic movement of Chicano studies.

"[5] The same year With His Pistol in His Hand was published, Paredes was hired by University of Texas, Austin to teach, a decision which would change the face of their curriculum.

In 1989 Paredes would become one of five men to be awarded the Charles Frankel Prize of the National Endowment for the Humanities and in 1991 (the same year his high school and young adult poetry Between Two Worlds would publish) he received the Orden del Aguila Azteca along with Cesar Chavez and Julian Samora.