PACHUCOS
FURTHER READING:
Brooks, Tim, and Earle Marsh. The Complete Directory to Prime
Time Network TV Shows: 1946 to Present. New York,
Ballantine, 1981.
Galanoy, Terry. Tonight! Garden City, Doubleday, 1972.
McNeil, Alex. Total Television: A Comprehensive Guide to Pro-
gramming from 1948 to the Present. New York, Penguin, 1991.
Metz, Robert. The Tonight Show. New York, Playboy Press, 1980.
Pachucos
The pachucos were Latino street rebels of the 1940s who
innovated a style and attitude that expressed their defiance of main-
stream America. Dressed to kill in zoot suits and with pompadour
haircuts they hung out on the streets of East Los Angeles, speaking
their own language and asserting their difference from everyone
around them. They were the first subcultural group to exhibit their
rebellion by display—through their clothing and behavior on the
street. Their unique brand of defiance opened up an avenue of
rebellion which was later followed by youth cultures in genres such as
rock and roll.
The pachucos were second generation Mexican-American youths
who lived in the barrios of East Los Angeles during the years of World
War II. They were branded ‘‘delinquents’’ by the Los Angeles Police
Department, and held responsible for the wave of juvenile crime that
was sweeping the city at the time. The pachucos also incurred the
wrath of their Mexican elders by their ‘‘degenerate’’ behavior of
draft-dodging, marijuana-smoking, and their foppish attention to
their clothes.
The style they sported was the zoot suit: a long drape jacket that
reached to the knees and high waisted trousers that were baggy on the
leg but tapered at the ankle. The suit was worn with a very long key
chain and often a crucifix or a medallion over the tie. The hairdo to go
with the look was the pompadour, a relatively long hair cut for men,
worn greased into a quiff at the front and combed into a duck’s tail at
the back. In the hair the pachucos kept their fileros (flick knives), the
thickness of the hair style providing a secure hiding place for
weapons. Distinctive tattoos, such as the Virgin of Guadalupe, where
also part of the pachuco look. Their female counterparts, the pachucas,
had their own dress code which consisted of short tight skirts, flimsy
blouses, dramatic makeup, and longer pompadour hairdos.
The name ‘‘pachuco’’ is of uncertain origin but is believed to be
derived from the word ‘‘Pachuca,’’ a town in east Central Mexico.
The pachucos spoke a hybrid slang called ‘‘Calo,’’ derived from the
gypsy tongue. The word ‘‘Chicano’’—a politicized term of self-
definition for Mexican Americans—is itself a Calo word. Music was
also an important ingredient in the scene, and much of the pachuco
lifestyle revolved around the dance halls where they would go to
dance and listen to swing bands. A bandleader called Don Tosti had a
hit with a song called ‘‘Pachuco Boogie,’’ a big band number with
lyrics in Calo.
The Sleepy Lagoon Case in 1942 brought the pachucos into the
national limelight. This was a murder case in which 13 Mexican-
American youths were convicted on varying charges, including that
of first degree murder, for the killing of José Díaz. The trial took place
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR CULTURE
at a time when William Randolph Hearst’s Los Angeles newspapers
had been running incendiary stories about gang violence. The image
of the pachuco circulated by these papers was that of a bloodthirsty
killer spurred on by the ancestral Aztec desire to let blood. Two years
later these convictions were reversed by an appeal court, largely due
to the efforts of the Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee, which
featured public figures as illustrious as Orson Welles and Rita
Hayworth amongst its number. Luis Valdez’s 1981 film Zoot Suit, an
adaptation of the stage musical, gives a part-fact, part-fiction account
of the case from the perspective of Henry Reyna, the leader of the
convicted gang of pachucos.
The pachucos’ brush with controversy, however, did not end
there. In early June 1943, disturbances broke out in East Los Angeles.
Mobs of sailors and marines began scouring the streets in taxis
looking for zoot-suited pachucos to beat up, supposedly in retaliation
for attacks on their number by pachucos. If no candidates could be
found the servicemen would storm into movie theaters and drag any
young males they perceived as pachucos from the auditorium, take
them outside and strip them of their zoot suits, and cut their pompa-
dour hairdos. Eyewitness accounts report the attacks as unprovoked
and, furthermore, that they were actively encouraged by crowds of
observing civilians.
At a time when national obedience was everything, the pachucos
were singled out by servicemen for being bad citizens. Not only were
the pachucos dodging the draft, but the zoot suits they wore contra-
vened fabric rationing regulations in the generosity of their cut.
‘‘Pachuquismo’’—or the pachuco style—was the total contradiction
of military discipline, order, measure, and effort. The pachucos
cultivated a manner of languid detachment and were not seen to have
a good work ethic. They performed their defiance through their
clothes, openly inviting hostile attention. The Mexican poet Octavio
Paz described the pachuco as a ‘‘sinister clown’’ who courted the
hunter by decking himself out as his prey.
The pachuco look was taken up by the mainstream and emerged
in the 1950s greaser style. Within marginal groups, the pachucos
served as inspirational icons for the Chicano Civil Rights Movement
that fomented in the late 1960s. As the first people to forge a position
for themselves in opposition both to the American mainstream and
their traditional Mexican backgrounds, the pachucos were the first
Mexican Americans to self-consciously style and define themselves
on exactly their own terms. In the late 1990s renewed interest in swing
music by groups such as the Cherry Poppin’ Daddies brought
‘‘pachuquismo’’ back into vogue. The 1994 film The Mask, starring
Jim Carrey, characterized the pachuco as the outrageous transforma-
tion of the wimpish bankclerk protagonist for the rebellious, maver-
ick, and magical qualities that the style evokes. Quixotic, sinister, and
theatrical, the pachuco is continually evoked as one of the mythic
figures of American popular culture.
—Candida Taylor
FURTHER READING:
Cosgrove, Stuart. ‘‘The Zoot Suit and Style Warfare.’’ Zoot Suits and
Second Hand Dresses. Basingstoke, United Kingdom, Macmil-
lan, 1989.
Mazón, Mauricio. The Zoot Suit Riots. Austin, University of Texas
Press, 1984.
Muñoz Jr., Carlos. Youth, Identity, Power. New York, Verso, 1989.
Paz, Octavio. The Labyrinth of Solitude. London, Penguin, 1985.