Looking back at the syllabus now, I am amazed at how much I have learned this semester in this class. The first few weeks of school I didn’t think I would be able to handle all of the reading and writing that this class required. Latino Literature truly helped me improve both my reading and […]
Jim Carey in “The Mask.” In this video, you see Jim Carey in “The Mask” dancing to “Hey Pachuco.” As you can see, he is dressed in an extreme form of pachuco dress (ironically enough even more extreme than pachucos themselves). It is interesting to see a performance of pachuco dress in mainstream media.
German Valdéz “Tin Tan”– Known for popularizing “pachuco culture” Zoot Suit dress in Latino community. In this video, you can see more of the pachuco “fashion.” German Valdez made this dress known in popular culture.
The pachuco has lost his whole inheritance; language, religion, customs, beliefs. He is left with only a body and a soul with which to confront the elements, defense-less against the stares of everyone. His disguise is his protection, but it also differentiates and isolates him: it both hides him and points him out. (Paz A102) […]
“The U.S.- Mexican border es un herida abierta where the Third World grates against the first and bleads […] Borders are set up to define the places that are safe and unsafe, to distinguish us from them. A border is a dividing line, a narrow strip along a steep edge. A borderland is a vague […]
The pachuco culture that emerged in the 1940s Southwest United States highlighted the ambivalence of those with mixed cultural identities. In this article, I will suggest the ways in which the group divulges into neither Mexican culture nor American culture, but rides the line in between and creates a unique border culture. In this article, […]
Judith Butler’s idea of “performativity” suggests that one’s identity is a mere “performance,” the repetition of certain socially constructed practices, such as appearance, actions, and attitudes. “In other words, acts, gestures, and desires produce the effect of an internal core or substance […] Such acts, gestures, enactments, generally construed, are performative in the sense that […]
In Durán’s “Nation and Translation:The Pachuco in Mexican Popular Culture: German Valdez’s Tin Tan,” Durán uses the idea of “mimcry” to explain how the pachuco culture “gives him a location in (and out of) culture.” Homi Bhabha’s theory on mimcry gives insight on how the pachuco culture uses mimicry: “Which is to say, that the […]
German Valdéz “Tin Tan”– Known for popularizing “pachuco culture” Zoot Suit dress in Latino community. “Wearing baggy, drape-like fashions, posturing defiantly before others, claiming possession of a street corner and using caló to communicate: all are exaggerated to such a degree that they become an exercise in mimicry…In the case of the pachuco, the […]
“The habitual speaker of such a mix ends by speaking not two, or even one complete language, but fragments of two that are no longer capable of standing alone or serving the speaker well with any larger audience. As a literary device with limited appeal and durability, ‘Spanglish,’ like other such blends, is expressive and […]
