Dan Ruprecht
History 209S
Topic Statement
Zoot Suit Manhood
Before
his family was displaced by Dodger Stadium, Gene Cabral grew up in the Chavez
Ravine in Los Angeles, California. He turned 15 in 1943, still too young to
follow his four older brothers to join the military. He remembers writing to
one of his brothers, a Marine: “He was in four major battles in the Pacific. He
was my hero. I wrote him in respect to the riots. He couldn't believe it. He
was so ticked off. Here he was fighting, and we were getting beat up because of
our dress, which, looking back now, was probably just an excuse. I'm pretty
sure now that people were just racist.”[1]
Cabral’s story, like his analysis of the Zoot Suit Riots, is typical. While the
servicemen who attacked Mexican American youths across Los Angeles and then the
nation cited the young men’s subversion of the war effort or lack of patriotism,
the fact remains that most of those boys planned on serving once they became of
age and had family in the military.[2]
Race, then, seems to have been the primary motivator of the attacks.
No
doubt, of course, the truth is much more complicated. Los Angeles mayor
Fletcher Bowron maintained that the riots—during which hundreds of American
servicemen, mainly sailors, beat and stripped hundreds of Mexican Americans,
and for which upwards of 600 Mexican Americans were arrested—were caused by “juvenile
delinquents”.[3] Media
at the time capitalized on this interpretation, portraying the riots as the “Zoot
Suit Front,” and telling how the heroic American servicemen were fighting
against a perceived “Mexican crime wave.”[4]
Neither of these interpretations hold water against even the slightest
investigation—there was no crime wave. So, there is a case to be made that the
Zoot Suits themselves, the incredibly conspicuous suits, were the reason for
the riots: that the soldiers were outraged by the Zooters’ affinity for extravagance,
using rationed fabric and wearing expensive watch chains which, during wartime,
seemed an assault on patriotism. But again, many of the young Mexican Americans
who were attacked did not wear the suit, and most of these boys worked in
wartime factories and planned on joining the military. Thus, as Cabral says, “I’m
pretty sure that people were just racist.”
I believe,
however, that there is still more going on. Servicemen focused on public
humiliation, burning and urinating on the zooter’s clothing while the boys
watched, naked and beaten. These kinds of attacks focus on establishing the
dominance of the servicemen, first by physically forcing the boys into submission
(beatings) and then shaming them (burning their clothes). It is a style of
attack which, I propose, was motivated in no small part by clashing ideas of
what it meant to be a man in America.
The
young pachucos, as they called
themselves, were parts of families recently migrated to America who felt doubly
alienated; both their Mexican roots and their American surroundings seemed
foreign. They responded, as other subcultures of ethnic minorities in the
United States have, when confronted with rejection on all sides, by loud
self-assertions of manhood and sexuality. This meant conspicuous suits, a brazen
attitude of non-compliance to the point of arrogance, and the oft-repeated
insult “cock-sucker!” hurled at each other and at the servicemen, calling each’s
sexual identity into question. This, I think, alongside the racial aspect,
ought to be considered the attacks’ motivation. To be “a man” in America meant
different things to different communities, but one was empowered by the state
to employ violence upon the other, and did so to reassert their manhood.
Thankfully
for my research, there is an abundance of primary source material from both
sides. Over the past 70 years, interest in the topic has grown and there are
many interviews of living pachucos to
place against the newspapers and sailors’ letters of the day. Most secondary
literature has still focused on the racial aspect of the conflict and will help
contextualize my discussion.
The Zoot
Suit Riots are, without a doubt, one of the defining moments of the Mexican
American experience. Analysis of the attacks racially has already provided
insight into how each group saw themselves and their perceived aggressor, and
it has provided a firm base for the study of the modern Mexican American
experience. What I propose to do will add a new topic to that discussion by
exploring how the conflict was gendered as well. A better understanding of pachuco manhood, in contradistinction to
the idealized American soldier’s manhood, forces the historian to confront the
ever-relevant questions: what does it mean to be a man? Who can be a man? Who
dictates these answers, and what’s the punishment for not following the rules?
I cannot offer answers, but my analysis of the topic will, hopefully,
complicate the discussion.
[1] Baeder, Ben, “Zoot Suit
Riots: Racism underlies week of violence in Los Angeles” San Gabriel Valley Tribune (California, June 1, 2013).
[2] Pagan, E.O. “Los Angeles Geopolitics and the
Zoot Suit Riot, 1943.” Social Science
History, Spring 2004, no 24, p237
[3] “Zoot Suit Riots," Britannica
Academic, accessed January 26, 2016, http://academic.eb.com/EBchecked/topic/1317905/Zoot-Suit-Riots.
[4] Ibid
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