On September 15, this year’s National Hispanic Heritage Month began. The reason for this is to reflect the anniversary of independence for five Hispanic countries: Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua in 1821. Without going further into detail, it inspired me to celebrate on The Memory Tourist in my own way. While I like to be welcoming of art from all voices, there are times when I like to emphasize those that I feel have had some impact on me, or the culture writ large. For me, this was a chance to explore an aspect of the Southern California lifestyle that informs this state’s identity and deserves to be shared with everyone.
If I had to think of prominent Chicano voices, there are few that feel as immediately significant to the arts quite like Luis Valdez. While he’s far from the first to turn to art for self-expression, he is the first to land a Chicano narrative on Broadway. Later on, he would direct the phenomenal Ritchie Valenz biopic La Bamba (1987) which goes further in showing the cultural divides even within the Mexican-American community while producing a memorable story and landing Los Lobos on the Top 40 charts.
He’s done so much that’s worthy of celebrating, and I think that it’s best to begin with his 1979 play Zoot Suit, which focuses on The Sleepy Lagoon Murder Trial. I have had two college courses that have focused on Valdez’s play while focusing on different aspects. The first was a theater class. The teacher began by playing Cherry Poppin’ Daddies’ “Zoot Suit Riot” with the intent of making us understand the atmosphere of Los Angeles during the 1940s. As the title suggests, people were getting beaten up for being different.
It was a brutal time, and I feel a story that often gets ignored. Despite living in this state for all of my adult life, the impact of Latino culture doesn’t feel as emphasized in history classes. Sure, we get The Civil Rights Movement or maybe a few minutes on Caesar Chavez, but I only ever had one class that forced me to read Lorena Oropeza’s “Raza Si, Guerra No: Chicano Protest and Patriotism during the Viet Nam War” and make me see how much more complicated California’s history throughout the 20th century was. As someone who had plenty of Mexican friends, there were things I knew about through osmosis, but never as more than a brushstroke.
But The Zoot Suit Riots was something that kept coming back around. It wasn’t just in the song. It was also in an English course where we studied the screenplay, understanding theatrical techniques to convey a story, focusing on how El Pachuco serves as a pseudo-guardian angel/negative stereotype that lingers over protagonist Henry Reyna’s shoulders. It’s a morality tale that makes you see how the culture weighs on Henry even as he tries to do good. After all, El Pachuco’s representation of the subculture is definitely attractive. They’re dangerous, masculine, everything that a teenage boy would want to be. But, at the same time, it’s likely to wind you up in jail, forever labeled a degenerate.
I suppose on the surface, I can get why the zoot suit as a fashion was so popular. It was a way to look wealthy, having more fabric than you know what to do with. You’re able to hide protection on yourself and have a flamboyance that makes you stand out. It was a form of pride, of something that was specific to your culture. It’s true that other cultures adopted similar outfits, but in relation to Valdez’s story, they were largely Mexican. This was a thing of pride, and while you can argue that it sometimes looks cartoonish, there’s no denying that you can’t help but be attracted by the curiosity of it.
Meanwhile, it was sometimes a terrible collision of opposing ideas. Young people inhabit clubs and that means that El Pachucos were often in the space of the military, specifically sailors who were on shore leave. The riots were caused by violent arguments that were easy to pin on The Zoot Suiters because the white man had more friends willing to believe them. As a result, it became dangerous to wear these suits, like a target on your back. As much as your own cultural identity shouldn’t be discriminated against, it was the perfect symbolism for how Americans were still divided, even if you can argue that these were just petty teenagers acting out.
This isn’t to say that Latino culture was ignored prior to this. I for one can’t speak to how media represented these issues because I wasn’t paying attention. I maybe first heard about these riots during high school, which even then felt like a brief and clinical detail that was more for flavor than any deeper context. For living in a region that has had a long and complicated relationship with Mexico, it feels strange to know how much gets ignored. It’s only when someone who cares steps forward that it ever gets allowed to be shared with the world.
Which is the value of Valdez, of someone who clearly was emotionally impacted by these events. I don’t know that there would be as much awareness or complexity around these events. It would continue to be a footnote instead of producing a stage show that was resurrected at The Mark Taper Theater in Los Angeles, CA in 2017 to commemorate the anniversary. The film became part of the Library of Congress in 2019 for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” Whether you accept it just for the story or Valdez’s approach, it s a rather fascinating and essential story that I feel opened doors in terms of theater.
So, what exactly makes Zoot Suit so special? For starters, it helps to introduce audiences to a significant part of American history, itself lionized as a story of youthful gangsters getting out of hand. It’s the type of story you’d make up for stereotypes as a shorthand, almost a reason to not engage with a group of people that makes you feel uncomfortable not because of what they do, but because of what they look like. Valdez wants to convey compassion, and his approach does this incredible job in creating art that I’d rank alongside El Norte (1983) as crucial to developing empathy for someone who may initially seem scary. It humanizes them, making you see that we’re all just trying to get through life while being happy.
While I have read the book for the stage version, most of my familiarity comes from the film. With a barely existent understanding of Spanish, there are portions of this Spanglish tale that go over my head. Still, I love how it embraces style and cultural differences. As my English teacher would joke: who wouldn’t want to be followed around by a singing Edward James Olmos? Olmos, who played El Pachuco, was this attractive phantom. He’s the poster child for everyone, symbolizing what young Chicanos would love while white suburbia hates. He is masculine, tough, and is probably hiding a switchblade in his pocket. And he’s our narrator, our figure that asks us to be open while deconstructing the story taking place.
I’ve read that some take umbrage with the formatting of the film, which mixes live theater with a “cinematic reality” that could be perceived as jerky. Just as the story embraces something symbolizing something natural, they’ll cut to the audience and create this confusing dichotomy. For me personally, it makes sense, commenting on how art manages to paint reality while giving us a certain divide. Sure, it could’ve been handled with a little more gravitas, but this whole story is about making the audience understand the story on a different level. Is what we’re seeing supposed to be real, or some fantasy concocted by the media?
Meanwhile, there’s Henry, who we see go through the motions that lead to The Sleepy Lagoon Murder, an event in 1943 that featured some white men from Downey, CA picking fights and, as the title suggests, ending with some murders. When we’re introduced to Henry, it’s just another story of a man wanting to have some fun. However, it comes to encapsulate so much more. There are morality issues where Henry is asked to either embrace or reject the actions of those around him, asking if he deserves to be seen as an individual, or fall into a stereotype that will haunt him, even as he sits in a prison cell and contemplates what the trial ahead will look like.
The movie is immersive and fun once you get into it. There are narrative songs sung in Spanish, and El Pachuco is putting on a show. It’s glamorous and alluring, serving as an antihero that has so much weight in The Hispanic Community. What are we to make of him? There are moments when the things he whispers into Henry’s ear are hurtful. It goes beyond peer pressure and becomes an awareness of how Henry is tempted not only by this cipher but how everyone is entitled to their own individuality, to follow a just life. It’s also to break down the stereotype that every young man needs to go down this path of righteousness. It’s full of questions that range from the personal to the social, and it’s rather innovative.
Again, I have no reference point for what the stage version looks like. While I’m sure there have been other stagings throughout the decades, it feels like it mostly exists as Valdez’s film. It’s proudly distinct in its approach, managing to keep the story alive for generations to discover. In a time where cultures’ histories are being given more of an awareness, it feels like a good time to recall The Zoot Suit Riots and various moments in 20th century America that are important but don’t get the attention they deserve. I feel like Valdez has made me care about and think of these events much more frequently just by filming it. It’s why I’m all for preserving every significant story. That way they can last for decades, standing for more than an evening of theater.
In all honesty, Valdez as a director isn’t my favorite here. He does an admirable job, but it’s clearly a weird hybrid of theater and film that makes you long to just see a stage version. It’s the work of a first-time filmmaker. For what it’s worth, La Bamba is a much more successful film with another impressive story, of an artist who broke language barriers and became a sensation before his life was cut short by a notorious plane crash. Even then, he puts so much heart into his work that you feel enriched for spending time with Zoot Suit and La Bamba.
That is why I ask those who wish to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month that you take some time to find these stories. Listen to what they have to say and recognize what makes their culture so wonderful, worthy of celebration. Valdez is only one example of Hispanic culture in theater, and one that has resonated with me for over a decade now, finding me thinking about its complex themes every now and then, recognizing how much history is out there that I still need to learn even about my own state. I am thankful that there are those who know how to translate it into a medium that I not only appreciate but think can last through the centuries, being told to our great-grandchildren and still hold the same weight that it did before we were born. That is what great art does, and Zoot Suit is a perfect example of this.
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