Unsung Hiro

unsng hstry: Pachucos and the Zoot Suit Riots

Pachucos are Mexican American youths who developed their own subculture during the 1930s and 1940s in the Southwestern United States. They wore distinctive clothes (such as Zoot Suits) and spoke their own dialect (Caló). Due to their double-marginalization stemming from their youth and ethnicity, there has always been a close association and cultural cross-pollination between the Pachuco subculture and the gang subculture. For this reason, many members of the predominant (Anglo) culture assumed that anyone dressed in pachuco was a gang member.

The “Pachuca,” the female counterpart of the Pachuco, had as strong an aesthetic sensibility as the male zoot suiter. The Pachuca’s hairstyle tended to be a high “coif” (a more pronounced version of the typical hair style of the time), sometimes using hair grease. One very loud version of the Pachuca look entailed wearing the masculine zoot suit, albeit with modifications to fit the female form. This was very subversive at the time because of long-held gender roles that dictated how a person should dress. Another variation included full, knee-length skirts with the standard zoot suit finger-tip jacket. Sometimes, she donned the standard heavy gold pocket chain.

The Zoot Suit Riots were a series of riots that erupted in Los Angeles, California during World War II, between sailors and soldiers stationed in the city and Hispanic youths, who were recognizable by the zoot suits they favored. While Mexican Americans were mostly beaten, African American and Filipino/Filipino American youth were also targeted.

An eyewitness to the attacks, journalist Carey McWilliams, described the scene as follows:

Marching through the streets of downtown Los Angeles, a mob of several thousand soldiers, sailors, and civilians, proceeded to beat up every zoot suiter they could find. Pushing its way into the important motion picture theaters, the mob ordered the management to turn on the house lights and then ran up and down the aisles dragging Mexicans out of their seats. Streetcars were halted while Mexicans, and some Filipinos and Negroes, were jerked off their seats, pushed into the streets and beaten with a sadistic frenzy

The local press lauded the attacks by the servicemen, describing the assaults as having a “cleansing effect” that were ridding Los Angeles of “miscreants” and “hoodlums.”The violence only subsided when military authorities intervened on June 7. They declared that Los Angeles would be off-limits to all military personnel. Of the nine sailors that were arrested, eight were released with no charges and one had to pay a small fine.

A week later, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt characterized the riots, which the local press had largely attributed to criminal actions by the Mexican American community, as in fact being “race riots” rooted in long-term discrimination against Mexican-Americans. This led to an outraged response by the Los Angeles Times, which in an editorial the following day accused Mrs. Roosevelt of stirring “race discord.”

CITED FROM:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoot_Suit_Riots

http://www.oldmemorieslosangeles.us/zootsuittruestory.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pachuco

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoot_suit