Chicano Studies

THE PACHUCA PANIC:

SEXUAL AND CULTURAL BATTLEGROUNDS

IN WORLD WAR II Los ANGELES

ELIZABETH R. ESCOBEDO

This article examines the communal, familial, and individual dilemmas cre­ ated by the pachuca persona in World War II Los Angeles. Although reviled byAngloreformers and Mexican parentsalike, pachucas createdan affirming vision of racialized womanhoodthatbecame a key marker of a new Mexican Americanfemale identity.

ON 9 JUNE 1943, TWENTY-TWO-YEAR-OLD

Amelia Venegas left her East Los Angeles home, baby in arms, to buy milk at a lo­ cal market . Concerned by news of recent skirmishes between Anglo servicemen and Mexican American zoot suiters on city streets, the young mother impulsively grabbed a pair of brass knuckles found months earlier on a local sidewalk.' With wartime emo­ tions at heightened levels, a woman left alone while her navy husband fought overseas could never be too carefuL

Yet for all of her precautions, trouble would soon befall Mrs. Venegas. As she and her baby witnessed police officers harassing a group of zoot suiters, Venegas felt a sense of injustice rise within her. Unable to contain her emotions, the Mexican American woman cursed the law enforcement officials for their hostile treatment of the young men. "They should leave the zoot suiters alone," Venegas later explained vehemently to reporters. Unmoved by her verbal denunciations, the officers immediately arrested

ELIZABETH R. ESCOBEDO is an assista nt professor of hi story at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

I In this study, first-gener ation immigrants born in Mexico are called "Mexican" or "Mexican immigrant." I use the term "Mexican American" to denote the second-generation chil­ dren of immi grants, born in the United States. Wartime juvenile authorit ies and reformer s, how­ ever, often did not make a distinction in th eir terminology and frequently referred to young women born in the United State s of Mexican descent as "Mexicans." In these cases, I ha ve cho ­ sen to maintain the terminology of the time. The term "white" and "An glo" will design ate Americans of Europe an descent.

Western HistoricalQuarterly 38 (Summer 2007): 133-156. Copyr ight © 2007, Western History Association.

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Venegas for disturbing the peace and, upon finding the brass knuckles on her person, charged the young mother for carrying a concealed weapon.'

As newspapers got wind of the story, the Venegas incident seemed to confirm the then widely-held belief that a Mexican American gang menace was overtaking Los Angeles. Venegas had never beforebeen involved in criminal activity, yet the LosAngeles Times featured a photograph of her baring teeth and shaking a threatening fist at the camera. The press not only deemed Venegas a "pachuco" girl-a label suggesting gang affiliation-but her protests on behalf of zoot suiters-a much despised youth popula­ tion-also made her a perfect target for a sensationalist media campaign.'

Although a public relations nightmare for the young mother, the experience of Amelia Venegas illuminates much more than just an example of the press's inaccurate depictions of Mexican youths as dangerous wartime hoodlums. The Venegas story also sheds light on the changes taking place in the lives of Mexican American women in Los Angeles during World War II. Not simply victims of fanciful images created by the press to cause a stir, many second-generation Mexican American women did in fact adopt a new youth subculture that rejected both traditional Mexican and mainstream American culture. Known both as female "zoot suiters" and "pachucas," these young women blatantly rebelled against social conventions. They donned the controversial zoot suit or a modification of the drape attire-including the long fingertip coat, short skirts, exaggerated pompadours, and stark make-up-and kept company with male zoot suiters on city streets."

But more than just a fashion rebel, the wartime pachuca represented an important symbolic site on which debates regarding the changing social landscape of the war years unfolded. Using style and behavior as a way to challenge ideas of respectability and to assert a distinctive identity, pachucas defied mainstream notions of proper feminine decorum and endangered rigid, static definitions of Mexican femininity. As women's social roles broadened more generally in the wartime environment, and the Mexican

2 "Brass Knuckles Found on Woman 'Zoot Suiter," Los AngelesTimes, 10June 1943, sec. A.

3 Ibid.; People v, Amelia Venegas, Los Angeles County Superior Court, case number 93615, 1943,Los Angeles Superior Court Archives and Records Cenrer. Venegas is deemed a "pachuco" in Kendrick W. Watson, "Zoot Suit, Mexican Style," The (New York) Intercollegian (September 1943), 10. Interestingly, in spite of how Venegas is labeled, neither the court nor the press made mention of the young woman ever wearing a Zoot Suit.

4 For an excellent study of the pachuca's fashion style and representation, see Catherine S. Ramirez, "Crimes of Fashion: The Pachuca and Chicana Style Politics," Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism 2, no. 2 (2002): 1-35. Further descriptions of pachucas include: Emory Bogardus, "Gangs of Mexican-American Youth," Sociology and SocialResearch 28 (September­ October 1943): 56; Patricia Rae Adler, "The 1943 Zoot Suit Riots: Brief Episode in a Long Conflict," in An AwakenedMinority: The Mexican-Americans, ed. Manuel P. Servin (Beverly Hills, 1970), 152; Beatrice Griffith, AmericanMe (Boston, 1948),47; Carey McWilliams, North From Mexico: The Spanish-Speaking People of the United States (1949; reprint, New York, 1990), 219. Interviews with Mexican American women who lived in Los Angeles during World War II, conducted by the author, provide similar accounts of zooter styles and attitudes.

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Figure I. Mexican American woman in zoot suit, 1944. Photo courtesy of the Shades ofL.A. Archives/Los Angeles Public Library.

Elizabeth R. Escobedo

family struggled to maintain a hold on its daughters and its culture, the pachuca came to represent a female figure whose dangerous sexuality demanded restraint.

All the more dangerous was the fact that pachucas seemingly mixed their blatant sexuality with a politicized iden­ tity of Mexican American womanhood. Pachucas not only embraced a persona that both highlighted and celebrated cultural difference, but many of the young women also felt no qualms in expressing discontent with their second-class citizen­ ship in the United States. In struggling with the question of how to occupy both their neighborhood and their nation, pachucas often rejected the wartime vi­ sion of an America in which inhabitants claimed one common culture, or a view of nationhood that touted the importance of the unity of all races and creeds. Rather, the young women created an affirming identity that accentuated their status as racialized outsiders.

The struggles over the meaning of the pachuca often took place in the courts, where Anglo reformers and Mexican parents tried to make sense of what they found to be a troublesome, delinquent per­ sonality. Utilizing personal interviews and over 250 Los Angeles County Superior Court Juvenile Division case files of Mexican American women (excluding dependency cases)between the years 1939-1945, this article will explore the communal, familial, and individual dilemmas created by the emergence of the wartime pachuca. Immigrant parents blamed Americanization for their daughters' experimentations with zoot suit culture; reformers conceptualized the pachuca "problem" as a cultural pathology, a condition intrinsic to distinctive Mexican family patterns. At stake were the reformers' larger project of racial assimilation, and the ability of the Mexican community to find acceptance in the larger U. S. society. Pachucas threatened both visions.

Over time the notorious pachuca persona became both a source of new options for Mexican American women and a burden in terms of female reputation and community

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status. Initially associated primarily with juvenile delinquency and gang activity, the label eventually came to identify any Mexican American woman who, like Amelia Venegas, seemingly defied social norms in a troublesome manner. And in an effort to keep the gender and racial status quo in check, the Los Angeles populace-Anglo and Mexican alike-embarked on a campaign to contain and stigmatize the young second-generation women who flew in the face of convention and adopted aspects of the defiant public persona.

In the summer of 1942, the Juvenile Division of the Los Angeles County Superior Court first began to recognize a new category of wartime female delinquent: the pachuca. For months prior, the L. A. populace had relatively ignored zooter women, instead focusing almost entirely on male zoot suiters-Mexican American men who typically assumed a dress style consisting of an expensive, tailor-made fingertip jacket, draped trousers tapered at the ankle, and hair in a duck-tail cut . The zoot suit rep­ resented a spectacular style that was at once fashionable yet defiant. Amid patriotic appeals for conformity and austerity, the conspicuous clothing came to signify the second-generat ion's dissatisfaction with the poverty and discrimination faced daily by the Mexican community.' Moreover, because zoot suiters refused to abide by norms of segregation, and the presence of conspicuous minority men on downtown streets and dance halls spelled trouble to authorities, law enforcement and the press began to warn of a Mexican gang crime-wave taking over the city,"

ByAugust 1942,the Los Angeleno populace recognized young Mexican American women as an integral element of the gang menace allegedly plaguing city streets. After a young Mexican man named Jose Dfazwas found dead near a Los Angeles water-pit named the Sleepy Lagoon, police rounded up over six-hundred second -generation youths of Mexican descent in connection with the now-infamous case . In a tri al plagued by

5 For discussion of the rise of the second-generation Mexican community, and th eir contin­ ued status as second-cl ass citizen s during World War II, see George J. Sanchez, Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900-1945 (New York, 1993) and McWilliams, North From Mexico. The emergence of zoot suiters and pachucos in wartime Los Angeles is discussed in det ail in Edward J. Escobar, Race, Police, and the Makingof A Political Identity: MexicanAmericans and the Los Angeles Police Department, 1900-1945 (Berkeley, 1999); Eduardo Obregon Pagan, Murder at the SleepyLagoon: Zoot Suits, Race, and Riot in Wartime L.A. (Chapel Hill , 2003); Anthony F.Macias, "From Pachuco Boogie to Latin Jazz: Mexican Americans, Popular Music, and Urban Culture in Los Angeles, 1940-1965" (PhD diss., Uni versity of Michigan , 2001); Luis Alberto Alvarez, "T he Power of the Zoot: Race, C ommunity, and Resistance in American Youth Culture, 1940-1945"(PhD diss., University of Texas at Austin, 2001). Pagan and Alvarez document the zoot subculture amongst working-class Afric an American s, Asian Americans, and An glo Americans as well.

6 Histori an Ed Escobar challenges the percept ion of a "Mexican gang crime wave," arguing that although Mexican Americ an arrest statistics swelled during the war years, only small frac­ tions of the se arrests resulted in actual criminal prosecutions. Such findin gs suggest implementa­ tion of police control mechanisms rather than tremendous increases in criminal beh avior amongst Mexican Americans. See Escobar, Race, Police, and the Making of a Political Identity.

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Elizabeth R. Escobedo

Figure 2. Young women under invesrigarion for connection with the Sleepy Lagoon case stand in a lineup after the 1942police dragnet. Left to right : Betty Zeiss, Ann Kalustian, Frances Silva, un­ known, Lorena Encinas, Dora Barrios, Josefina"Josephine" Gonzales, and Juanita "Jennie" Gonzales. Photo courtesy of the HeraldExaminerCollection/Los Angeles Public Library.

bigotry, seventeen young men connected with the 38th Street neighborhood-all but one of Mexican or Mexican American ancestry-were subsequently tried and con­ victed for involvement in the murder. Law enforcement officials also investigated ten young women, ranging in age from thirteen to twenty-one years old, eight of whom bore Spanish-surnames.' This presence and involvement of young women of color in the scandal was one of the biggest shocks to the wartime populace. As the LosAngeles Evening Herald and Express stated: "Particularly disturbing in one of the new outbreaks was the participation of several girls. It was hoped that the prevalent delinquency might be confined to the boys who stand accused."

Although never found guilty of any involvement in the murder of Diaz, most of the young women involved in the Sleepy Lagoon case eventually found themselves sentenced to placement at the Ventura School for Girls, a California correctional facility, infamous at the time for its draconian disciplinary measures. The reformatory,

7 Two years later, due to a lack of evidence, the male defendants won acquittal upon appeal. See Frank P. Barajas, "T he Defense Committees of Sleepy Lagoon: A Convergent Struggle against Fascism, 1942-1944," Aztlan: A Journal of ChicanoStudies 31 (Spring 2006): 33-62; Escobar, Race, Police, and the Making of a Political Identity; Pagan, Murder at the Sleepy Lagoon; McWilliams, North FromMexico, and the PBS AmericanExperience documentary ZootSuit Riots (Boston, 2001)for the history of the Sleepy Lagoon trial and its outcome . On the young women involved in the case, see Elizabeth Rachel Escobedo, "Mexican American Home Front : The Politics of Gender, Culture, and Community in World War II Los Angeles," (PhD diss., University of Washington, 2004), 65-8.

8 "Youthful Gang Evil, Vigorous Action Imperative in View of Seriousness of Situation," Los Angeles Evening Herald and Express, 4 August 1942, sec. B, p. 2.

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the picturesque location and academic name of which masked a repressive atmosphere, typically housed girls with long histories of delinquency, sexual promiscuity, and unsat­ isfactory stays at other reform inst itutions. Seemingly the embodiment of a new wartime enemy-Mexican girl hoodlums-the young women were on average paroled from the Ventura School after stays of sixteen months, but remained wards of the California Youth Authority until they reached twenty-one years of age,"

Prior to the fateful n ight at Sleepy Lagoon, the term "pachuca" h ad not yet en­ tered the lexicon of judicial discourse. Juvenile court case files of Mexican American women living in Los Angeles between the years 1939-1945 reveal that it was not until immediately afterL. A. newspapers broke the story of Dfaz's death that juvenile authorities pinpointed female zoot suiters as a manifestation of wartime female delin­ quency. Subsequently, juvenile authorities began to use the words "pachuco-tvpe" and "pachuca" to describe a number of young women of Mexican descent brought before the court.to

According to legal records and contemporary observers, a pachuca could typically be identified by her controversial clothing, company, and behavior. One juvenile author­ ity described the "typical pachuco look" of a young Mexican American woman: "neat appearing, but ... with high pompadour, plucked eyebrows, short skirts, black socks. She likes to decorate herself with jewelry and trinkets,"!' The company a Mexican

9 My assessment of the type of inmate typically sentenced to th e Ventura School comes from my readings of court case files brought before the Los Angeles County Superior Court, Juvenile Division, between the years 1939-45. When the women of Sleepy Lagoon ente red th e school in late 1942, the inst itution's custodial and disciplinary procedures rivaled thos e of state prisons. A 1943 committee appointed by Governor Earl Warren to invest igate California's penal institutions, for instance, described the punishments implemented in the Ventura School disci­ plinary cottage as a "disgrace to the state." See "Final Report of Governor's Invest igation Committee on Penal Affairs," 21January 1944, pp. 110-1 , Administr ative Files, C orrections, Governor's Prison Committee, Reports , F3640:975, Earl Warren Papers, California State Archives, Sacramento (hereafter cited as Earl Warren Papers). For more informat ion on th e fate of th e young women involved in the Sleepy Lagoon case, and the condition s they faced at the Ventura School, see Escobedo, "Mexican American Home Front ," 65-70.

10 The cases cited in thi s article are examples of files where the labels "pachuco" and/or "pa­ chuc a" are included in th e probation officer's description of th e juvenile. Although th e records used in this study are officially closed to the public, I petitioned the Juvenile Division of the Los Angeles County Superior Co urt for special permission to look at th e files. Cas e files consist pri­ marily of Los Angeles Count y Probation Department Int ake Face Sheets and Los Angeles Police Departm ent Juvenile Investigation and Disposition Report s; Probation Officer Reports and Recommendations based on interviews conducted with th e juvenile family members , school, and reform atory officials, and other related partie s; and medical reports filed upon examination of th e juvenil e while in detention. To protect privacy and maintain confidentiality, I ch anged all names of th e youths, friends, and family members mentioned in th e juvenile case files. I have, however, tried to retain the ethnic characteristics of surnames.

II Superior Court of California, County of Los Angeles Juvenile Court, case number 104932, Los Angeles Superior Court Archives and Records Center (hereaft er cited as "case number").

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Elizabeth R. Escobedo

A merican fema le might keep with male zoot suiters, jitte rbugging in dance halls and loitering on street corners after dark, also served as an ident ifying characteristic. The probation officer of fifteen-year-old Amalia Ce rvantes recounted parental concerns in a 1944 report to the co urt: "Father sta ted that minor ... want s to be like a pachuco. . . . [She not only] wears heavy, vulgar make-up to school and in her home, [but] is quite impudent and defiant, stays out to 2 and 3 o'clock in the morning, cont inually necks and pets with boys on her front porch until all hours.?" But amongst the young women themselves, the label "pachuca" often remained a conte sted term. Many Mexican American females played with the pachuca look or associated with zoot suiters, yet did not necessarily self-identify as a pachuca." Others took great pride in the notorious pachuca persona as a badge of rebellion. According to the case file of thirteen-year-old Isabel Ramos, on more than one occas ion, the teen told her mother she was "a Pachuco, and wjould] do as she pleasejdj.?"

Most young women labeled pachuc as by the juven ile court were not cha rged with crimes comm itted against othe rs. Instead, authorities brought them before the cour t because they lacked adequate superv ision, roamed neighborhoods, and stayed out late with companio ns deemed "undesirable"-allegations based largely upon assumptions of patho logical, unrestrained sexual behavio r. While some of the young women did participate in a street-based culture of gang life, most simply flirted with the image of disrepute. Yet ultimately the line between what was considered involvement in a work­ ing-class youth subculture and what was merely troublesome public behavior on behalf of Mexica n A merica n women bega n to blur.

Court officials were not alone in their disdain for the female zoot suiter. In fact, almost no thing was more disruptive to Mexican families than the pachuca phenomenon. While few immigrant parents looked favorably upon sons who sported zoot attire, the behavior of young women proved especia lly unnerving. For the Mexican immigrant generation , women occu pying the public arena under most circumstances- let alone in quest ionable at t ire and with disreput able company-spelled trouble. Mexican par­ ents typically subscribed to a double standard in sexual relations, closely cloistering daughters until marriage, wh ile allowing sons the freedom to do as they pleased. Such strict rules traced back to the Cathol ic Church and social customs in Mexico, where virgin ity was highly valued and a family's reput ation usually depend ed on the chastity of its women."

During World War II familial control and authority eroded in the Mexican com­ munity, however, as expanded labor and leisure opportunities lured greater numbers of

12 Case numbe r 103922.

Jl Cas e num bers 107165, 116621.

H Cas e number 106170.

IS Vicki L. Ruiz, From O ut of the Shadows: Mexican Women in Twentieth-Century America (New York, 1998),51-2 and Mary E. Odem, Delinquent Daughters: Protecting and Policing Adolescent Female Sexuality in the United States, 1885- 1920 (Ch apel Hi ll, 1995),44-5, 49.

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second-generation daughters away from the home and into the public sphere. Enticed by the wartime leisure culture of dance halls, all-night cafeterias, and movie theaters, many second-generation Mexican Americans-men and women-left barrios to fre­ quent the typically white public arenas of Los Angeles. Although still limited, greater job mobility and better wages provided numerous opportunities for second-generation men and women of Mexican descent to experiment with American consumer and leisure culture. And with the recruitment of parents and older siblings into war work and the armed services, it became increasingly difficult to monitor the behavior of young women."

Benefiting from the wartime environment, female zoot suiters experimented with their social and sexual roles by adopting personas that asserted new claims to public life. Some used their status as wartime wage-earners to push for the privilege to social­ ize with peers outside of the watchful eyes of immigrant parents and to buy the latest fads in cosmetics and zoot-suit styles. During the summer of 1942, seventeen-year-old Aida Loya started her first job-making incendiary bombs-at a small defense factory in Los Angeles. Entering the work force in order to earn money for the family while her brothers fought overseas, Loya began saving for a tailor-made fingertip coat and matching mini-skirt. Although Loya had never encountered trouble with the law, and rarely participated in urban life without a chaperone, she hoped to flirt with the image of disrepute associated with pachucas. Despite her mother's adamant protests that such an outfit would cast a shadow of shame on the family, Loya flaunted her new zooter at­ tire at her high school graduation. "She never forgave me for that," Loya remembered. "My mother was very ashamed that day."17 Bystrategically creating a visual display that tested social propriety, female zooters experimented with clothing and make-up as a way to declare autonomy and claims to public life. Like Loya, many second-generation female zoot-suiters took pride in their appearance and public identity, welcoming the opportunity to be noticed and to assert control over their lives.

Other female zooters skirted notions of propriety altogether by entering public life for their own self-interest, completely outside the context of wartime necessity, wage labor, and familial needs . One thirteen-year-old, Alma Galvan, habitually ran away from her father's home in Pasadena and on one occasion spent over a week living hand-to-mouth, sleeping in cars and on the back porches of houses with other wayward Mexican American girlfriends. Although resorting to drastic measures, Alma's mean­ derings about the city allowed her, at least until she was picked up by the authorities, the opportunity to assert control over her leisure time and to engage in her favorite hobby-dancing with male zoot suiters-without parental interference."

\6 Stuart Cosgrove, "Th e Zoot-Suit and Style Warfare," History WorkshopJournal 18 (Autumn 1984): 77-91.

11Aida Loya [pseud.], interview by author, 6 January 1998, in author's possession .

\8 Case number 105230.

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Elizabeth R. Escobedo

At a time when official rhetoric stressed the importance of wartime sacrifice, the pachucas' acts of performance and self-indulgence suggested to some a striking disre­ gard for the gravity of war. Female zoot suiters ratted their hair and hiked up skirts to disrespectful lengths; jitterbugged the night away in downtown dance halls; engaged in fist-fights; and frequented street corners after dark. While young men left daily to join the fight abroad, and news of boys dying overseas dominated the airwaves, the contrast between sacrificing one's life for patriotic ideals and parading the streets in an effort to turn heads and find a late-night thrill grew ever more stark. Consequently, the immigrant generation grew increasingly concerned with the highly visible public activities of pachucas.

In a story detailing the alleged origins of Mexican youth gangs, the Spanish-lan­ guage daily, La Opini6n, bemoaned the scandalous appearance of pachucas, including their painted faces and short skirts. The newspaper also likened the young women to prostitutes, asserting that their male companions served as pimps. And although refer­ ring to male zoot suiters as "pachucos," the newspaper deemed their female counterparts "las malinches," a reference to the woman (La Malinche) historically known as the archetype traitor of the Mexican people. The editors of LaOpini6n found this a fitting analogy to describe the wartime pachuca. Like Malinche, the young women publicly betrayed proper female behavior and brought shame to the Mexican people."

The English language press also stereotyped the young women as hyper-sexed degenerates. Contributing to the state of moral panic, newspapers unleashed a sen­ sationalist campaign about sexually promiscuous barrio women. A 1943 Los Angeles Evening Herald and Express expose on juvenile delinquency claimed that pachucas "have been quick to admit the free relationships that some have with members of boy gangs." The newspaper also emphasized the participation of "sexy-looking" pachucas in "weird" sexual activity, insinuating their infection with venereal disease by claim­ ing that the girls were "not particularly clean." According to the article, a "gang girl gives herself freely, if she likes the boy. If she doesn't she knifes him or has other girls in her gang attack him."? Finding it difficult to accept and understand the changing

19 "Origenes de 'Pachucos' y 'Malinches,''' La (Los Angeles)Opini6n, 26 August 1942, p. 2. The attitudes of La Opini6n toward the pachuca/o population were not particularly surprising, given the political bent of the Spanish-language daily. Recognizing the vulnerability of the Mexican population in the United States, the newspaper urged the Mexican population to con­ duct themselves honorably while living in Los Angeles. See Mario T. Garda, "La Frontera:The Border as Symbol and Reality in Mexican-American Thought," in Between Two Worlds: Mexican Immigrants in the United States, ed. David G. Gutierrez (Wilmington, DE, 1996),95-6. Discussions of La Malinche can be found in Feminism, Nation and Myth: La Malinche, ed. Rolando Romero and Amanda Nolacea Harris (Houston, 2005). For further analysis of La Opini6n'susc of the term "malinches" to describe the pachuca, see Ramirez, "Crimes of Fashion," 12.

20 "Girl 'Zoot Suiters' Gird to Join Gangland Battle, Pachucas Stand By Beaten Pachucos," Los AngelesEveningHeraldand Express, 10June 1943, sec. A, p. 3.

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sexual roles of second-generation women in the Mexican community, officials often perceived the pachuca's sexuality as a perverse and destructive force, wreaking havoc on the wartime social body.

The immorality associated with pachucas deeply troubled many Mexican American women who came of age during World War II, and some refused to take the negative publicity sitting down. Nearly a week after the LosAngeles Evening Herald and Express expose of the pachuca's alleged sexual laxity, a group of about thirty Mexican American women-from the Los Angeles neighborhoods of Happy Valley, East Side, Hazard, and the Avenues-challenged these prevailing assumptions and vowed to undergo medical examination in order to demonstrate their chastity and respectability. Although many of the young women called themselves "zooters" and admittedly dressed in the zoot-suit fashion, they wished to make it clear to both the Anglo and Mexican public that the style did not go hand-in-hand with crime and sexual delinquency. As one protester stated, "to prove our side, to take a chance, to have a good reputation, we were willing to do anything. It means a lot for a girl to have a clean reputation, but the Herald Express doesn't care for that ." Mexican community leaders eventually deemed such extreme actions unnecessary; instead, the protesters decided to affirm their patriotism to the United States by donating blood at the local Red Cross." The young women hoped to show that those who dressed in the pachuca fashion were not a threat to a nation in crisis and would do their patriotic best to help out on the home front.

Ofcourse some young Mexican American women did in fact engage in sexual activ­ ity and a gang lifestyle during the war years. Evidence from juvenile case files suggests that many of the females considered pachucas by the court desired sexual autonomy and engaged in sexual activity, often within the context of steady relationships with Mexican American men." Even the names chosen by the young women to identify their peer group toyed with images of sexual familiarity and innuendo. Newspaper and court case file references to the "Cherries," "Black Widows," and the "Bow-legs" indicate that this generation of young women wished to play up their sexuality in a manner markedly different from that of their mothers.P For these young women of color, sex offered an opportunity to experience a sense of excitement and pleasure in the context of lives typically defined by discrimination, poverty, and severe social restrictions."

21 Griffith, AmericanMe, 322n6 and McWilliams, North FromMexico, 231.

Z2 Case number s 131627, 103259, 104932, 105230.

23 Pagan, Murder at the Sleepy Lagoon, 123. Sever al newspapers and magazines spoke of fe­ male gangs with names such as the "Black Widows," th e "Cherries," and th e "Bow-legs." See, for example, "Girl 'Zoot Suiters' Gird to Join Gangland Battle, Pachucas St and By Beaten Pachucos"; "Youthfu l Gang Secrets Exposed," LosAngeles Times, 16July 1944, sec. A, p. 1; "Origenes De 'Pachuc os' y 'Malinches,'" La Opini6n, 26 August 1942, p. 2. Lupe Leyvas recall ed the "Bow-legs" in a conversation with the author. Lupe Leyvas, interview by author, 2 March 1998, in author's possession. See also, Joan W. Moore, GoingDown to the Barrio: Homeboys and Homegirls in Change(Philadelphia, 1991), 27-9.

24 Mary Odem discusses similar issues regarding sexual del inquency charges and the social circumstances affecting turn-of-the -century working-class daught ers in Delinquent Daughters.

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Elizabeth R. Escobedo

Yet most Mexican American young women simply adopted aspects of the pachuca persona in a spirit of adventure and independence, not delinquency." As one thirteen­ year-old German-Mexican American girl reportedly explained to the court, "the girl in Pachuco clothes is just as good as any other girl, except that the Pachuco girls have a bad reputation.f" In fact, according to contemporary accounts, only a very small percentage of Mexican American girls required the attention of juvenile authorities. In 1942, for instance, one observer estimated that a mere 0.6 percent of the girls of the Mexican community demonstrated delinquent behavior," But the uneasy wartime populace failed to distinguish delinquent pachucas from any Mexican American woman who adopted aspects of the pachuca look.

To the Anglo and Mexican community, pachucas represented a dangerous example of the increasing public role of all women during World War II. With more women entering the work force than ever before, an anxious U. S. society feared that females with new-found freedoms would be unwilling to return to domestic life once the war ended. Women might be encouraged to enter the public sphere as a wartime necessity, but they were simultaneously expected to maintain their femininity and sexual purity. Whether pachucas actually retained "proper" sexual standards or not, their short skirts, heavy make -up, and pronounced presence suggested a tainted sexual reput ation that sounded alarms about the future role of women throughout the United States."

As women of color, pachucas also triggered both Anglo and Mexican fears of mis­ cegenation. The war years ushered in a time of heightened fears of unbridled sexuality,

25 Griffith, American Me, 52.

26 Case nu mber 112504.

27 Ruiz, From Out of the Shadows, 83. Similarly, during a meeting of the Coordina ting Council for Latin-American Youth-a community group founded in 1941 to address th e situa­ tion of Mexican Americ an youths in urban barrios-it was stated that only 9/10 of 1 percent of Mexican girls were considered juvenil e delinquents. See "CCLAY Minutes," 7 June 1943, Minutes, 1943,folder 8, box 3, Manuel Ruiz Papers 295, Special Collections, Green Library, Stanford University.

28 For a general discussion of fears surrounding women's changing roles during World War II, see Elaine Tyler May, "Rosie the Riveter Gets Married," in The War in AmericanCulture: Societyand Consciousness During WorldWar II, ed. Lewis A. Erenberg and Susan E. Hirsch (Chicago, 1996), 128-43. Luis Alvarez makes a similar observation, arguing th at those Mexican Americ an women who appropriated male zoot suit apparel might be viewed as problematic simply because their clothing made "an implicit statement for equality." See Alvarez, "The Power of the Zoot," 147. Other scholars who have investigated Americ an women and labor during World War II includ e Karen Anderson, Wartime Women: Sex Roles, Family Relations , and the Statusof Women DuringWorldWar II (Westport, CT, 1981); D'Ann Campbell, Women at War with America: Private Livesin a Patriotic Era (Cambridge, MA, 1984); William H. Chafe, The American Woman; Her Changing Social, Economic, and Political Roles, 1920-1970 (New York, 1972); Sherna Berger Gluck, Rosie the RiveterRevisted: Women, the War, and Social Change (Boston, 1987); Susan M. Hartmann, The Home Frontand Beyond: AmericanWomen in the 1940s(Boston , 1982); Maureen Honey, CreatingRosiethe Riveter:Class, Gender, and Propaganda During WorldWar II (Amherst, 1984).

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with authorities warning that the disruption of conventional family patterns and an increased lack of parental supervision could easily lead to a rise in sex delinquency. The press fed such fears with stories of sexually promiscuous "victory girls," women who allegedly enjoyed dressing in alluring clothing and loitering around military bases and transit depots, looking to proposition servicemen. Because of their patriotic desire to pursue sex with men in uniform, these women were considered tainted by sexually transmitted diseases and morally dangerous.i?

Media coverage of pachucas carrying venereal diseases and having contact with Anglo servicemen mirrored the public preoccupation with the so-called "v-girls," Since anti-miscegenation statutes did not consider sex between whites and Mexicans to be interracial, and thus unlawful, some did worry that, without legal deterrents, sexual relations between the two communities could easily occur.'? As one Newsweek reporter surmised, "a sailor with a pocketful of money has alwaysbeen fair game for loose women, and the girls of the Los Angeles Mexican quarter were no exception,'?' Yet by likening pachucas to the allegedly loose victory girls, the press and public attempted to limit miscegenation between the two groups, with hopes that Anglo servicemen and Mexican American women would not engage in sexual relationships. Pachucos may have proved troublesome as members of a minority group asserting a more public role in urban life, but the sexual power of pachucas posed an additional danger to the white social order.

Mexican parents expressed similar concerns over the prospect of second-genera­ tion daughters having sexual relations with white men, but worried simultaneously that their female offspring would become intimately involved with pachucos-Mexican American youths deemed too "Americanized" by the older generation. Apprehensions only grew as wartime work and leisure conditions increased bodily contacts that could potentially compromise Mexican culture and traditions. All too aware of the chang­ ing circumstances, in 1944 the parents of thirteen-year-old Sandra Garza became so troubled by her association with local pachucos that they placed her on a train bound

29 For information about "victory girls" during World War II, see Anderson, Wartime Women, 103-11;Campbell, Women at War with America, 208; Richard Lingeman, Don't You Know There's a War On?The AmericanHome Front, 1941-1945 (New York, 1970),88-9; Regina G. Kunzel, Fallen Women, Problem Girls: Unmarried Mothersand the Professionalization of Social Work, 1890-1945(New Haven, 1993), 156.Ramirez also compares V-girls and pachucas, arguing th at while the former were considered "patriotic," the latter were "vilified as uri-American and treacherous." See Ramirez, "Crimes of Fashion," 17.

30 For a discussion of twentieth century miscegenation law, and understandings of Mexicans as legally "white," see David A. Hollinger, "Amalgam ation and Hypodescent: The Question of Ethnoracial Mixture in the History of the United States," American Historical Review 108, (December 2003): 1363-90; Peggy Pascoe, "Miscegenation Law, C ourt Cases, and Ideologies of 'Race' in Twentieth-Century America," Journal of American History 83 (June 1996): 44-69.

31 "Zoot Suit s and Service Stripes : Race Tension Behind the Riots," Newsweek, 21June 1943,35-6.

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for Mexico to live with her aunt." Similarly, the parents of fifteen-year-old Consuela Corral tried to keep their teenage daughter home in the evenings by literally locking her in the bedroom. Ever determined, Consuela instead chose to leave by way of the window, meeting her pachuco friends on a nearby street corner.P

To many Mexican parents, a daughter's experimentation with the pachuca iden­ tity ultimately represented the corrupting influence of American sexual patterns on Mexican culture. As historian Vicki Ruiz observes, the Mexican immigrant community typically believed Anglo women were morally lax in their dealings with men. Anglo parents generally did not submit their daughters to chaperonage and, to the Mexican immigrant generation, seemed much more carefree in their attitudes about dating. Moreover, U. S. consumer culture, with its promotion of cosmetics and fashion, seemed to reinforce notions of loose American sexual mores." As one Mexican mother described her daughter's impending adolescence during the 1940s, there would be "none of this running around all night with one boy, the way those American girls up on Tenth do. There is a lot to be said for the Mexican way of keeping an eye on your girlS."35Mexican parents feared that adoption of American sexual attitudes, seemingly emblematic of the pachuca identity, might persuade daughters to leave their traditional values, and their cultural community, behind.

Aurora Preciado, a native of Mexico, expressed these concerns when she reported her fourteen-year-old daughter Cecelia to the Los Angeles juvenile court authorities in 1945. A devout Catholic, this Mexican mother had worried for some time about her daughter's desire to wear a high pompadour and to come and go as she pleased, both day and night, with a group of pachuco boys and girls from the neighborhood. Despite numerous parental remonstrations, Cecelia simply refused to stay home after dinner and even stopped attending mass with her family. Instead, the young teen preferred dressing in zoot attire and frequenting American movie theaters and dance halls with her peers. To Mrs. Preciado, such behavior suggested involvement in immoral activities; her fears only seemed confirmed when she found contraceptives in Cecelia's bureau. This traditional Mexican mother attempted to see her daughter "do right" by filing a petition with the juvenile authorities in hopes that court action might "scare" the girl into submission. Cecelia, on the other hand, insisted to juvenile authorities that-in

32 Case number 115630.

33 Case numb er 111288.

14 Vicki L. Ruiz, "Star Struck': Acculturation, Adolescence, and the Mexican American Woman, 1920-1950," in BetweenTwo Worlds: MexicanImmigrants in the UnitedStates, ed. David G. Gutierrez (Wilmington, DE, 1996): 125-47.

35 Ruth D. Tuck, Not With the Fist: Mexican-Americans in a Southwest City (New York, 1946), 127.

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spite of their pachuco attire-her friends were not "bad" girls, but young women who simply desired a little liberty from parental restrictions."

To parents like Mrs. Preciado, the pachucas' flagrant violation of gender expecta­ tions symbolized the flagging authority of the family to police sexuality and to retain Mexican culture. Like many of their Anglo American female counterparts, pachucas rejected chaperonage practices and enjoyed leisure activities with the opposite sex. Moreover, pachucas crossed geographic barriers by physically leaving urban barrios to

frequent traditionally white public venues. Aghast, Mexican parents thus watched in fear as daughters caked on make-up, teased their hair, and hiked skirts up to disreputable lengths, all in preparation for a night of jitterbugging in a downtown ballroom. Because women wereconsidered the purveyorsof cultural values within the Mexican community, mothers like Mrs. Preciado feared that a daughter's interest in the pachuca subculture might represent an end to Mexican customs and traditions for future generations.

But while parents troubled over their children's loss of cultural ties to Mexico, the larger Los Angeles populace typically characterized pachuquismo as a distinctly Mexican identity-anything but evidence of Americanization. According to a fact-finding report on pachuca/os by Adele Calhoun, branch assistant of the Division of Immigration and Housing in Los Angeles, "the idea that a child born in this country of Mexican parents is an American, is only technically true. In spirit and tradition and culture he is still more Mexican than American. . . . Emotionally [Mexican youth] are somewhat more tensed up and unrestrained than the average American, and this condition, coupled with ignorance, of course lends itself to gangster trends." 37 Community leaders similarly warned that the pachuco phenomenon could possibly be tied to a pro-Axis Mexican movement known as the Sinarquistas, while the press displayed coverage of crimes committed by Spanish-surnamed zoot suiters directly alongside stories of overseas Japanese atrocities. Because the zooter style failed to conform to standards deemed properly "American," Mexican American youths-like their Japanese American counterparts on the West Coast-came to represent yet another foreign enemy on the wartime home front ."

36 Case number 122004. For an in-depth discussion of working-class, immigrant parents' use of the juvenile justice system to reform behavior of troublesome daughters dur ing the late-nine­ teenth and early-twentieth centuries, see Odem, DelinquentDaughters.

37 Memo from Adele Calhoun to Frank J. DeAndreis, "Pachuco Situation in Los Angeles," 16June 1943, p. 1-2, Administrative, Department of Justice, Attorney General, Law Enforcement, F3640:2625, Earl Warren Papers.

38 For information on accusations of Sinarquista activities in th e Mexican American com­ munity, sec Barajas, "The Defense Committees of Sleepy Lagoon" and Escobar, Race, Police . and the Makingof a Political Identity, 221-2, 227-8. For an example of similar news coverage regarding the enemy Japanese and enemy Mexican gangs, see the front page of the LosAngelesTimes, 10 August 1942, where the headlines "Allied Bombers Hit [aps in Rear" and "Police Seize 300 in Boys' Gang Drive" sit parallel to one another.

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At the heart of the controversy was the fear that beneath the zoot suiter'soutwardly flashy appea rance lay a milita nt racial consciousness. Reports to the juvenile court frequently commented on the "race conscious" nature of pachucas and thei r propen­ sity to sti r up racial an tago nis ms between minor ity groups and whites. Concerns over the beh avior of Eva Flores, a fifteen-year-old Mexican Ame rican woman first brought before the Juvenile Court in 1942, reflect th e height ened anxieties surrounding race relations during the war years. Between 1942 and 1944, Flores found herself before the Juvenile Court for various crimes, including intoxicat ion, fighting, failing to return home at night, and petty theft . The young teen 's behavior, in addition to her style of dress- a fingertip coa t, drape pants, and h igh socks-raised sign ificant concern amongst juvenile officials.

But it was not until Eva's commitment to the county-run EI Retire Scho ol for Girls that Los Angeles juvenile court authorities connected her choice of attire to someth ing even more troubl esome- a politicized iden tity that threatened racialized norms. According to superintendent Adelaide Williams, EIRetiro had histor ically prided itself on easily assimi lating minorit y female delinquents into the reform schoo l'sdiverse population-that is, until Eva Flores arrived. Eva completely challenged the feeling of racial harmony at the Los A ngeles reformatory by "causing dissat isfact ion among th e Mexican and Negro girls." As Will iams explained: "She man aged to speak a Spanish word here, a message to ano the r there, talked her pachucoa [sic] slang to still another and almost before we knew it, she had developed a race feeling on campus." Williams furt he r lamented the fact that for the first time young pachuca women stood together, ta lked in groups , and organized amongst themselves. "She simply was 'dyna mite' on the cam pus and in the sho rt time we had her, [Eva] had all the Mexican and Negro girls surly, impudent and race conscio us," Will iams told probation officials." Iron ically, even as Mexican parents feared the potential of the pachuca to undermine Mexican culture, in the eyes of Anglo reformers these same daughters came to stand for a new kind of politicized and defiant Mexican ident ity.

Several court records, in fact , show pachucas in trouble with autho rities for th eir involvement in "racial disturbances."Teresa Quinones, a young woman caught "terror­ izing a group of white girls," compl ained th at she threw rocks at her junior high schoo l peers because "they are down on the Mexicans."? Similarly, Gloria Magana admitted that she and a group of "Mexic an girls" had been involved in a fight with "American girls" at G arfield High School after being called "dirty Mexicans.?" While pachucas ex­ pressed discontent with their treatm ent as second-class citizens, reformers lamented th e appea rance of "racial feelings," worr ying that in magnifying difference and stirr ing up antagon isms pachucas threatened the wartime vision of a unified American nation.

39 Case num ber 101591.

40 Case number 131627.

• 1 Ca se number 107502.

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To best understand reformers' fears it is important to consider notions of racial liberalism developing in intellectual circles during the war years. One of the most influential works, The Negro Problem, written by social scientist Gunnar Myrdal and published in 1944, developed an optimistic thesis about the ability of the United States to overcome racial hierarchies due to the power of the "American Creed." Myrdal based this creed on the idea that the United States "has a national experience ofuniting racial and cultural diversities and a national theory, if not a consistent practice, of freedom and equality for all."42 According to Myrdal, institutional structures like the church, school, trade union, and state all served to Americanize blacks and whites, allowing them to shed attachments to "caste" distinctions and to create a new, universal national culture based on sameness, not difference. Racial subjects, in essence, would inevitably become transformed into national subjects."

Myrdal came to his conclusions during the late 1930s and early 1940s when the culture-based concept of "ethnicity" was just coming into favor among social scien­ tists as a way to explain what scholar Nikhil Singh calls, a "difference different from 'race.'''44 With the egalitarian vision of the New Deal, and the rise of anti-fascism during World War ll, social scientists worked to re-fashion the race concept, exchang­ ing biological understandings of race for cultural and environmental explanations of difference. Immigrant populations living in the United States now found themselves grouped under the umbrella category of "ethnicity," a term which served to advance the notion that assimilation had eroded any and all "Old World" ethnic differences in favor of a common Americanism. As Singh points out, the idea that immigrant difference could gradually be incorporated into a "normative nationality," ultimately became the template for Myrdal and other social scientists interested in solving the race "problem" in the United States. Assimilation, it seemed, would be a logical solu­ tion to the dilemma of racism,"

Yet as the behavior of Eva Flores and her cohorts at the El Retiro School for Girls suggest, pachucas refused to fit the mold of ethnic immigrants who accepted a common

42 Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: The NegroProblem and Modern Democracy (New York, 1944), 1021.

43 My thinking is informed here by scholar Nikhil Singh's discussion of Myrdal's An American Dilemma, and contemporary understandings of race and nation in World War 11, in Nikhil Pal Singh, Black Is a Country: Raceand the Unfinished Struggle for Democracy (Cambridge, MA, 2004), 38-42, 107-14.

44 Singh, BlackIs a Country, 254n30. See also, Werner Sollors, Beyond Ethnicity: Consent and Descentin AmericanCulture (New York, 1986).

45 Singh, BlackIs a Country, 113;Michael Omi and Howard Winant, RacialFormation in the UnitedStates From the I960s to the 1990s (New York, 1994), 14-8; Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge, MA, 1998),95-6; Gary Gerstle, American Crucible: Raceand Nation in the TwentiethCentury (Princeton, 2001), 187-96. Gerstle calls this belief in the erosion of ethnic differences "the growth of a common Americanness." See Gerstle, American Crucible, 196.

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Americanism. Wartime reformers may have hailed the erhniciry model of ''Americans All" as a cure-all to social tensions, but the paradigm remained fundamentally flawed in its inability to appreciate the extent to which the historical experiences of racialized minority groups differed from those of white European ethnics, a difference pachuca youths remained all too aware of. Rather, the paradigm solidified whiteness as the normative American condition and rendered any hint of racial discontent or difference as deviant and uri-American. Thus, as pachucas failed to integrate easily into Anglo society, reformers increasingly feared that their wards represented not simply young women engaged in delinquent behavior, but, even more problematic, young women of color engaged in delinquent behavior with a dangerously political thrust.

In fact the persona created by pachucas did take on political meaning, as the young women outwardly challenged the vision of American commonality by embracing a wom­ anhood that emphasized cultural difference. Participating in one of America's favorite consumer pastimes-beauty culture-these second-generation daughters invented new, unique styles that did not attempt to look "American" or to wash off their Mexican ethnicity. Prior to the pachuca phenomenon, Mexican American women, like many other daughters of immigrant parents, often used make-up to look more "American" and to express their new sense of national identity and personal freedom in the United States. Cosmetic companies actively promoted white mainstream ideals of beauty and femininity to the Spanish-speaking public and, as Vicki Ruiz points out, the popularity of bleach creams and hair dyes attests to the influence of American beauty culture on many barrio consumers."

But pachucas adopted beauty rituals that largely defied white emulation. In fact, Mexican American female zoot suiters consistently re-appropriated cosmetics in order to fashion a racial identity that challenged the vision of mainstream U. S. beauty ideals. During World War II, cosmetic companies typically promoted the wearing of make-up as an affirmation of American ideals and a way for women to help maintain both national morale and femininity when engaging in "men's work."47 But the beauty standards these companies had in mind dictated that hair and make-up would be ar­ ranged and applied with subtlety and discretion. The wartime pachuca wanted neither. Pachucas parodied the understated up-des and subtle make-up of everyday women as well as Hollywood starlets. They also rejected the practical buns and braids of their more traditional Mexican mothers. Flashy and ostentatious, their shared adoption of exaggerated pompadours, overstated lipstick, and short skirts visibly signified a sense of belonging to a distinctly Mexican American subculture.

Fifteen-year-old Mary Macias, for example, spent many an evening painting her face, fixing "rat" accessories in her well-coifed hair, and decorating herself with cheap jewelry

46 Ruiz, FromOut of the Shadows, 57.

47 Kathy Peiss,Hope in ajar: The Makingof America's BeautyCulture (New York, 1998), 239-45.

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Figure 3. A young woman and her compan­ ion in 1944. She dons a pompadour and the feminin e style of the zoot suit. Lowrider 2, no. 1 [19781: 43. Reprinted with the permission of McMullen Argus Publishing Inc./Primedia, copyright 1978. All rights reserved.

before wandering L. A. streets to meet Mexican American girlfriends ." Looking for any opportunity to escape her dilapi ­ dated house and poverty-stricken condi­ tions at home, Mary enjoyed indulging in a defiant appearance that immediately signified rejection of certain social circles, while simultaneously sparking recognition and acceptance in others." Bysubverting mainstream consumer culture and visibly expressing discontent with the dominant society, pachucas created a racialized, col­ lective identity that helped many Mexican American women to escape their feelings as outsiders in the United States by claim­ ing an affirming identity as outsiders in the United States.

Even when confined to juvenile detention centers, delinquent Mexican American women often continued to engage rebelliously in the performative as­ pects of their public identities. Numerous court case files suggest the dismay of prob ation officers as they troubled over Mexican American women's insistence on altering the uniforms of various reform institutions to resemble pachuca attire. Young Mexican American women still pulled up their skirts to unacceptably

short lengths and styled the ir hair in exaggerated pompadours; some creatively used cleaning cloths, instead of the typical "rat" hair accessory, to keep the high do in place. Although lacking a significant amount of power as wards of the court and the state,

48 Mexican American women who came of age in wartime Los Angeles describe the "rat" as a beauty accessory, consisting of a patch of synthetic or hum an hair, placed on the head to add lift and fullness to the pompadour hairstyle. As described in Virginia Gonz ales Benavidez, int er­ view by auth or, 6 November 2000, in author's possession; Teresa Rivera Carden as, interview by author, 19 October 2000, in author's possession; Irene Malagon, interview by author, 14 March 2000, in author's possession.

49 Case numbe r 104932.

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the teenage women of color continued to use aesthetics defiantly as a means of public presentation and group consciousness.50

But it was the collective, stylistic non-conformity of pachucas that juvenile authori ­ ties feared most. In a 1944 study of the state-run Ventura Scho ol for Girls, Nan Allan, the reformatory's superintendent, explained to a California investigative committee that while juvenile women of Mexican descent made up approximately 20 percent of the inmate population at the Ventura School, it would be unwise to increase these numbers since it was "hard to assimilate .. . with the kind that we have here." To substantiate her opinion, Allan referred to difficulties caused by the young Mexican American women who were sent to the Ventura School after testifying at the infamous Sleepy Lagoon trial in Los Angeles. According to Allan, "they were a particularly difficult group to handle because they were so nationally conscious." Karl Holton, head of the California Youth Authority, agreed with Allan, stating that "pachuca gangs . . . have very much of a chip on their shoulder, as far a [sic] persecution is concerned. They feel that they have been discriminated against, and th at they haven't gotten a square deal, and they are looking for trouble all the time, and they usually find it." 51

In a period of heightened American jingoism, pachucas made a bold decision to engage in an oppositional culture threatening to the larger public. California juvenile author it ies strongly believed that the pachucas' "nationally conscious" style and behav­ ior represented an attachment to a country and culture other than that of the United States. Rather than conform to the "American Creed," pachucas instead desired to "speak a Spanish word," "to arrange .. . clothing in a gang fashion" and to insist on a "square deal," thereby endangering the reformist vision of integration and highlighting a strident refusal to concede to racialized norms and white privilege.52 Although for the young women the persona represented a positive affirmation of their diversity, reform­ ers found it difficult to accept an identity that challenged authority and emphasized a non-white womanhood.

The pachucas' visible discontent with the dominant culture prompted attempts by reformers to halt underpinnings of ethnic nationalism by discouraging any retention of Mexican culture. As one juvenile official told a young Mexican American woman in residence at the infamous Ventura School for Girl s, "Begin to plan and be ready when you leave Ventura to ... be a fine Americ an girl and a good citizen. Youwill be doing your part in our great nation." 53What then did it mean to be a "fine American

50 Case numbers 103922, 114005.For further discussion of attempts by Mexican American youths to resist authority in Ca liforn ia reform schools, see Miroslava Chavez-Garda, "Youth , Evidence, and Agency: Mexican and Mexican American Youth at the Whittier State School, 1890- 1920," Aztldn: Alournalof Chicano Studies 31 (Fall 2006): 55- 83.

51 "Reporter's Transcript of Proceedings of Governor Earl Warren's Special Committe e Investigating California Penal Institutions, Ventur a School for Girls, Vol. IX," 3 January 1944, F3640:956-1007, 1666-8, Earl Warren Papers.

52 lbid ., case number 101591 and Pagan , Murder at theSleepy Lagoon, 7.

53 Case number 102135.

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girl"?The general consensus amongst juvenile officials was that as individuals, young Mexican American women seemed quite pleasant and pliable. Once befriended and influenced by fellow Mexicans, however, trouble ensued. Thus, in an effort to combat cultural alliances, authorities frequently forbade Mexican American women from speak­ ing Spanish within reformatory walls; a young woman speaking Spanish represented a foreign enemy, not a citizen imbued with the proper values of American society."

In addition, court officials continually reprimanded Mexican American girls for interacting solely with young women of Mexican ancestry or for congregating in groups-behavior seen as a further hindrance to assimilation.55 One probation officer disparaged the "unsatisfactory" behavior of her Mexican American client, remarking that the juvenile was"veryclannish with Mexican girls and continue[d] to speak Spanish in spite of repeated requests not to do so."56 The young women themselves often ex­ plained this "clannish" behavior as a natural choice, given their cultural background. Eva Flores, for instance, admitted to her case worker that she "finds it easier to identify with Mexican girls and felt that some of the American girls did not like her."? But for many law enforcement officials, any manifestation of Mexican heritage amongst way­ ward youths represented a dangerous cultural pathology that posed a potential threat to the stability of the nation.

With such a stigma attached to the zooter identity, Mexican American women deemed "pachucas" often fell victim to discriminatory practices with very material consequences. At the Los Angeles Convent of the Good Shepherd, a religious board­ ing home and school for wayward girls of various backgrounds, the Sisters in charge refused to accept any young women considered to be of the "pachuco type ."58 Eva Flores, the young Mexican American woman who stirred up trouble at El Retiro, found herself turned awayfrom the Convent. As Sister Germaine explained, "It is our policy not to accept Pachucos. When [Eva Flores] came to the Convent her hairdress [sic], her clothing and her speech indicated that she was a Pachuco and the girl, herself, declared that she was one . We therefore felt it advisable not to accept her even on trial." 59 Those Mexican American women who did not demonstrate "pachuco tenden­ cies" until after their placement at the Convent inevitably found themselves removed from the institution. In 1945,the Convent admitted sixteen-year-old Sarah Villa, with some reservations, after the young woman was brought in for spending two nights away

54 George J. Sanchez discusses earli er reformers ' Americaniz ation efforts in '''Go After the Women': Americanization and the Mexican Immigrant Woman, 1915-1929" in Unequal Sisters: A Multicultural Reader in U.S. Women's History, ed. Ellen Carol DuBois and Vicki L. Ruiz (New York, 1990), 256.

5\ See case numbers 98670, 101978, 107165, 112504, 101591.

56 Case number 98670.

57 Cas e number 101591.

58 See, for exampl e, case number 131627.

59 Ca se number 101591.

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from home in the presence of African- and Mexican-American young men. Sarah's later participation in a dormitory disturbance at the reformatory, combined with her previous "immoral" behavior, led the Sisters to conclude that the young woman was "definitely of the Pachuco type" and that her removal from the institution would be "beneficial to the Mexicans we now have." 60 The Sisters of the Convent were not alone in their hesitancy to assist pachucas; individual boarding homes accustomed to taking in wayward youths also expressed concerns regarding "girls of this type." 61 Left with few options, many young Mexican American women failed to receive attention from juvenile authorities. Demonstrating a behavior understood as culturally pathological, these adolescent women were simply deemed irredeemable.

Mexican American women were not the only women of color to have their be­ havior considered a cultural pathology by justice officials. As historian Regina Kunzel argues, during the World War II and post-war era, social workers explained white out­ of-wedlock pregnancy as a symptom of individual pathology-and thus a condition that might be changed-while they simultaneously re-conceptualized black illegitimacy as a symptom of cultural acceptance and cultural pathology, intrinsic to black families. Reformers may have repudiated biological theories about African American life as racist, but in their place they invoked sociological, familial explanations for culturally deviant behavlor.f

Mexican parents faced similar blame . As biological understandings of race gave way to cultural and environment explanations, court officials typically blamed zoot-suiting teens' behavior on the failure of the immigrant family to adopt and adjust properly to "American" ways. As a 1943 article in the Los Angeles Times explained, "juvenile files repeatedly show that a language variance in the home-where the parents speak no English and cling to past culture-is a serious factor of delinquency. Parents in such a home lack control over their offspring." 63 Justice officials often assigned blame for the pachuca phenomenon on inadequate parenting skills, use of Spanish in the home, and low standards of living. According to Celia Harrison, a probation officer with the L. A. County Juvenile Court, "the pachucas (the girls) are taking to drink, often learning about liquor in homes with little or no furniture; if there is one bed it is a luxury."64

Similarly, the social case worker assigned to Cecelia Preciado's case decried the fact that the girl's mother was "not at all Americanized and d[id] not speak any English nor really understand a good many of the American ways, and that she ha[d] no discipline over [Cecelia]." The case worker continued: "[Cecelia] is an extremely smart child able

60 Case number 118703.

61 Case number 131627.

62 See Kunzel, Fallen Women, 163-4.

6J "Youth Gangs Leading Cause of Delinquenci es," LosAngelesTimes, 2June 1943,sec. A, p. 10.

04 Memo from Adele Calhoun to Frank J. DeAndreis, "Pachuco Situation in Los Angeles," 16June 1943, p. 5, Administrative, Dep artment of Justice, Attorney General, Law Enforcement, F3640 :2625, Earl Warren Papers.

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to outwit her mother at almost any point/" ? Disapproving of immigrant lifestyles and child rearing practices, juvenile authorities often treated Mexican culture as an impedi­ ment to the second-generation's "proper" integration into American life.66

Probation officers typically traced the roots of the pachuca phenomenon to the Mexican family's reliance on "Old World" moral standards in raising American-born daughters . According to juvenile authorities, the tendency of Mexican parents to restrict female behavior severely risked pushing daughters into a life of prom iscuous behavior and gang activity. In one 1943 juvenile court case, the probation officer of thirteen­ year-old Gloria Magana placed the blame for the young girl's sexual experience and participation in gang fights squarely on her Mexican mother's shoulders. According to the court, Mrs. Magana's refusal to grant any freedoms to her daughter had directly caused the girl's delinquent tendencies. ''A cultural conflict seems to be the basis of [the] girl's difficulties," the probation officer explained. "[The] mother[,] apparently coming from low peon parents[,] has not become Americanized and wants [the] girl to grow up according to Old World standards... . This American-born girl has rebelled against this paternalistic conception of the family and has sought an outlet in sexual freedom." 67

Ironically while the juvenile court system condemned Mexican families for their overly strict child-rearing practices, many immigrant parents-Mexican mothers in particular-also faced censure for parental behavior deemed morally lax. Reformers frequently traced the roots of the pachuca identity to a lack of maternal role models with proper moral standards. One official singled out blame for the phenomenon on Mexican mothers who were "leading immor al lives right in the home and that children were born to these mothers by different fathers." 68 Others found fault with the alleged propensity of Mexican women to engage in premarital sex since common-law marriages were socially acceptable in Mexico/" Many court officials simply considered Mexican parents-no matter what their child-rearing practices-incapable of supervising their daughters properly."

Ultimately the condemnation that Mexican parents faced at the hands of law en­ forcement officials and the Anglo press and public brought the immigrant community to a complicated cultural crossroads. On the one hand, Mexican families had a very

65 Case number 122004.

66 See also, Sanchez, "Go After the Women," 256 and Odem, Delinquent Daughters, 182.

67 Case number 107502.

68 Memo from Adele Ca lhoun to Frank J. DeAndrels.

69 Case number 109532. Richard Griswold del Castillo sta tes that amongst the lower class of Mexican Americ ans, there was often a tradition of acceptance of common-law, free-union liai­ sons. See Griswold del Castillo, La Familia: Chicano Families in the Urban Southwest, 1848 to

Present (Ind iana, 1984),88 and 131.

70 Here too, Mexican Americ an mothers were not alone in their condemnation. Ruth Feldstein discusses the perceived "materna l failure" of 1940s black and white women in her work Motherhood in Black and White: Race and Sex in AmericanLiberalism, 1930-1965 (Ith aca, NY, 2000).

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ElizabethR. Escobedo

critical awareness of how being "A merican" threatened their values and th eir hold on th eir chi ldren. Yet the immigrant generation simultaneously remained apprehensive that th ey and th eir American-born offspring would be treated as enemy foreigners-a dan­ gerous reality in a wart ime env iron ment of exacerbated nativism and xenophobia.

As rumors about hypersexed, dangerously nat ionalistic Mexican women overran Los Angeles, th e Mexican-born generation grew increasinglyalarmed th at the pachuca's spectacular public presence and failure to uphold mainstream ''American'' values would meet with severe retribution and harm the image of respectable Mexican families trying to eke out an honest living in th e Un ited States. The Spanish-language newspaper's depiction of pachucas exemplifiessuch fears: LaOpin ion carefully chose th e controver­ sial term "malinches" in order to depict the young women not on ly as whores, but as women who allowed pachucos-the hated enemy of respectable Mexican community members-to possess them sexually. Such terminology served to distance the more traditionally minded immigrant generation from the disreput able second-generation pachuca and to assert th eir own "civilized" position in contrast to th e morally degraded young woman." The defian t persona created by pachucas, women who rejected both traditional Mexican and mainstream American culture, significant ly raised the level of anxiety amongst immigrant communi ties struggling to make sense of a new homeland and th eir place with in it.

The immigrant generation's fears culminated as violence erupted between Anglo servicemen and Mexican American zoot suiters during the Zoot Suit Riots in June 1943. The local and national press publicized the clashes as yet anot her example of Mexicans' disloyalty to the United States, as well as their supposed propensity toward violence. In reality, many young Mexican A merican men were stripped of their clothes and beaten in th e streets, later to find th emselves arrested for disturb ing th e peace."

Not surprisingly, press coverage of the Zoot Suit Riots reflected heightened tensions about female zoot suiters as well. The Los Angeles Evening Herald and Express featured a story of a girl zoot suiter who robbed a young man with a "blow to his chin,"stealing five dollars from his pockets." Just a few days later, the newspaper warned its readership th at female "aux iliaries" to boy gangs were gearing up to join the battle in L. A.'s streets." And according to an article that ran on 11June 1943, merchants in Watts found "all their black sh irts and green sweaters sold out as 'pachuco girls' outfitted themselves to

71 "Origen es de 'Pachucos' y 'Malinches," La Opinion, 26 August 1942, p. 2. Eduard o Pagan makes a similar argume nt about pachucos and the middle class in h is unpublished 1993 O rganizat ion of A merican H istor ians paper entitled, '''W ho Are These Troublemakers?' The Mexican-Amer ican Middle C lass React s to Pachu cos, 1940-1944."

12 For in-depth discussion of the Zoot Suit Riots, see Pagan , Murder a t the Sleepy Lagoon; Mauricio Mazon , The Zoot-Suit Riots: The Psychology of SymbolicAnnihilation (Au sti n, 1984); McWill iam s, North From Mexico;PBS, Zoot Suit Riots (Boston, 2001).

n "Sailor 'Task Force' Hits L.A . Zooters, Send 5 to Hospit al in Riots," Los Angeles Evening Hera ld and Express, 5 June 1943, sec. A, p. I.

74 "G irl 'Zoo t Suite rs' G ird to Join Gangland Battle, Pachucas Stand By Beate n Pachucos,"

155

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join their menfolk in the mob disorders."The story ended with claims that "pachuquitas" staged a meeting to organize, shouting "We won't quit. It's them or us."75

This "us vs. them" perception caused great alarm in the Mexican immigrant com­ munity. The LosAngeles Times, for instance, featured a photograph of Mrs. Vera Duarte Trujillo, an "irate mother" of a fifteen-year-old zoot suiting youngster who suffered a shot in the leg during a skirmish at a movie theater in the Los Angeles suburb of Azusa. "We tried to keep him home but he kept slipping away and what has happened to him is his own fault," said the frustrated parents." Many years later, a woman from White Fence remembered her mother's humiliation over her choice of activities as a teen-age pachuca. She reflected, "My mother used to feel embarrassed with me when I used to go out on the street with her-especially downtown-because, you know, white people would look at the way I was dressed and my mother thought I was a punk."? As witnesses to their children's expressions of discontent in the United States, particularly during a time of hyper-patriotism, Mexican mothers struggled to maintain a respectable reputation and to demonstrate a certain amount of allegiance to their adopted homeland. Yet the immigrant community also hoped to see their Mexican culture and traditions persist, even once settled permanently in the United States. The wartime pachuca threatened both of these visions. And while Mexican parents and community leaders struggled to understand the youth subcultures of the second-generation, the debate over the pachuca came to embody both the contradictions, and mixed emotions, coming to a head in the wartime Mexican immigrant community of Los Angeles.

Ultimately the pachuca became both a part and a symbol of the changing cultural and gender landscape of World War 11. The United States looked for stability in so­ cial relations during this time: women were expected to patriotically fulfill sacrificial feminine roles; minorities were expected to embrace Americanism. Pachucas, however, seemed to do neither. Instead, they threatened the home front by flaunting a public sense of self and reveling in an unashamedly racialized identity. With increasing numbers of women and minorities challenging traditional social relationships during the war years, the sexual stereotyping and stigmatization of pachucas represented one way to keep customary power relations in check. Yet, despite such efforts, wartime conditions had provided young women with an important space to forge new social and sexual identities in the United States . The pachuca became at once the symbol and the reality of Mexican women's new assertiveness, her unwillingness to stay in her traditionally assigned place in Mexican and Anglo society. The flamboyant presence of pachucas in public places had become a key marker of a new Mexican American female identity.

75 "Train-Attacking Zoot Gangs Broken Up," Los AngelesEveningHerald and Express, 11 June 1943, sec. A, p. 1.

76 Sanchez, Becoming Mexican American, 268 and "Mother Tears Up Zoot Suit of Boy Wounded in Clash," LosAngeles Times, 11June 1943, sec. A.

77 Moore, GoingDown to the Barrio, 71-2.

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