Following the Mexican-American War, the first corridos (narrative folk ballads) are documented, drawing on indigenous and Spanish romance traditions. These octosyllabic quatrains (coplas) chronicle border violence, revolutionary heroes, tragic love, and folk saints (Jesús Malverde), using call-and-response performance. Corridos serve as oral newspapers, preserving local folklore and resistance memory.

Corridos provided essential raw material for Chicano poets (Luis Alberto Urrea, Gloria Anzaldúa, and the Chicano Movement poets) who adapted folk narrative structures, code-switching, and border imagery into English-language free verse. The tradition's 'corrido epic' form influenced Jimmy Santiago Baca and Gary Soto. Corridos demonstrate how folk balladry generates hybrid poetics in colonized regions, blending indigenous oral patterns with European romance structures.