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The Theatrical Politics of Chicana/Chicano Identity: from Valdez to Moraga Jacobs, Elizabeth

Published in: New Theatre Quarterly DOI: 10.1017/S0266464X06000601 Publication date: 2007 Citation for published version (APA): Jacobs, E. (2007). The Theatrical Politics of Chicana/Chicano Identity: from Valdez to Moraga. New Theatre Quarterly, 23(1), 25-35. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0266464X06000601

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Download date: 18. Apr. 2020 Elizabeth Jacobs The Theatrical Politics of Chicana / Chicano Identity: from Valdez to Moraga

Critical opinion over the role of popular culture in relation to ethnic and cultural identity is deeply divided. In this essay, Elizabeth Jacobs explores the dynamics of this relationship in the works of two leading Mexican American playwrights. Luis Valdez was a founding member of El Teatro Campesino (Farmworkers’ Theatre) in California during the 1960s. Originally formed as a resistance theatre, its purpose was to support the Farmworkers’ Union in its unionization struggle. By the early 1970s Valdez and the Teatro Campesino were moving in a different direction, and with Zoot Suit (1974) he offered a critique of the race riots that erupted in East Los Angeles during the summer of 1943, the subsequent lack of reasonable judicial process, and the media misrepresentation of events. Valdez used setting, music, slang, and dress code among other devices to construct a sense of identity and ethnic solidarity. This provided a strong voice for the Chicano group, but at the same time a particular gendered hierarchy also distinguished his aesthetic. Cherríe Moraga’s work provides a balanced opposition to that of Valdez. Giving up the Ghost (1984) helped to change the direction of Chicano theatre both in terms of its performativity and its strategies of representation. Elizabeth Jacobs explores how Moraga redefines both the culturally determined characterization of identity presented by Valdez and the media representation of women. She also utilizes theatrical space as a platform for a reassertion of ethnicity, allowing for the innovation of a split subjectivity and radical lesbian desire. Giving up the Ghost, Jacobs argues, provides a trenchant critique of communal and popular culture discourses as well as a redefinition of existing identity politics.

IN THE following essay I explore the relation owners in New Mexico, the urban working between Mexican American identity politics classes of the Southwest and Midwest, and and popular culture through the lens of two the increasingly radicalized student groups plays. Firstly I read Zoot Suit (1974) by Luis across the country. The politics of these dif- Valdez as a reflection of the politics of the fering groups initially coalesced around a Chicano civil rights movement of the 1960s consensus of socio-politico and cultural con- and 1970s, particularly in its gendered repre- cerns. These included arguing for such basic sentation of identity. I contextualize my read- rights as just representation in government ing of the play in terms of its radical critique and the courts, fair treatment from the police of historical events as well as some of the and the military, a decent standard of living, more dominant concerns of the Chicano and bilingual and bicultural education. movement. I then go on to read Cherríe The organizations established to press the Moraga’s Giving up the Ghost (1984) as a existing authorities and to achieve these aims counter-discursive critique of Zoot Suit’s included the UFW (the United Farmworkers’ political configuration. As I go on to show, Union), the United Mexican American it is important to place Moraga’s text in this Students (UMAS), and the Movimiento context in order to explore more fully its dis- Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (MEChA) in ruption of Chicano theatrical canons as well California, the Alianza Federal de Mercedes as dominant narratives of identity proposed (Alliance of Free City States) in New Mexico, during the movement decades. the Mexican American Youth Organization The Chicano movement grew out of an (MAYO) and La Raza Unida Party in Texas, alliance of diverse groups including farm and the nationwide Mexican American Legal workers in California and Texas, land grant Defence and Education Fund (MALDEF).1

ntq 23:1 (february 2007) © cambridge university press doi: 10.1017/s0266464x06000601 25

http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 22 Feb 2011 IP address: 144.124.16.28 To this end several plans were also drawn other cities a year later. These events, repre- up, including El plan de Santa Bárbara (1969), senting one of the many miscarriages of jus- MEChA’s educational programme, and El tice in Chicano history, profoundly affected plan Espiritual de Aztlán (1969), arguably the the community of the East Side barrios. In the movement’s most radical statement concern- Sleepy Lagoon trial, which one character in ing issues of Chicano identity and land rights, the play describes as ‘the largest mass trial in and earlier than this the groundbreaking El the history of Los Angeles county’, twenty- plan de Delano (1965), a stated proclamation two youths were tried on sixty-six charges, of rights by the United Farmworkers’ Union. wrongfully indicted for the murder of an- Initially, Luis Valdez and his theatre group other gang member, Jose Diaz, and sent to Teatro Campesino (Farmworkers’ Theatre), prison. were closely linked to the farmworkers’ struggle in California, and their satirical skits, Legacy of the Sleepy Lagoon Trial known as actos, focused solely on farm labour problems. By 1967 this bond was The riots, which emerged as a result of the severed, firstly by the leader of the farm- trial, consisted of the mass beating and strip- workers, César Chávez, who made it clear ping of young Mexican Americans wearing that the Farmworkers’ Union did not support zoot suits by groups of US servicemen exud- Valdez’s leanings towards Chicano national- ing patriotic fervour. Conversely, general ism, and secondly by Valdez himself, whose opinion as to what had occurred almost own ambitions led him to move away from unanimously blamed the riots on Mexican the struggles associated with farmworkers American youth.2 Sometimes called cholos, and towards other sites of oppression. but more often pachucos, they were character- As the Chicano movement gained momen- ized by their sense of alienation from main- tum, activism from other quarters suggested stream America, most obviously by their use that the content of the plays had to be ex- of a hybrid slang known as calo, by their panded, and Valdez was also aware that the tattoos – and by their distinctive suits. vast majority of Chicanos lived in cities and These characteristics expressed the com- that it was this urban-based audience who plexity of Chicano identity at a transitional were most likely to be sympathetic to his historical moment. During the 1930s the con- form of cultural expression. tinued migration of Mexicans into the United In Los Angeles the politics of the times States contributed to the creation of a distinc- were characterized by organizations such as tive barrio culture in Los Angeles, particu- the Brown Berets, the Chicano Moratorium larly in Belvedere and Boyle Heights, which Committee, and the Centro de Acción Social became important settings for the definition Autónomo, or CASA, by student walkouts, of Chicano identity.3 These areas were also or ‘blowouts’ as they were called, and by distinguished by racial restrictions, class mass protests such as the Chicano Mora- barriers, poor and congested housing, and torium Against the Vietnam War. It was also police repression. Encountering such racial during this period that Valdez began to play discrimination only strengthened the quest for a pivotal role in the formation of Chicano a sense of identity among Mexican American identity politics, founding the theatre group youth, and in effect provided a unique con- TENAZ and contributing a prolific dramatic text for the development of the zoot suit and output, though it was Zoot Suit which be- the pachuco gang.4 came his most commercially successful play The representation of the pachucos by to date. Valdez in Zoot Suit clearly conforms to this Returning to a decisive phase in the perspective. The lead figure, ‘El Pachuco’, is Mexican American experience for its sources, a constant presence and serves as a commen- Zoot Suit depicts the Sleepy Lagoon murder tator on the action, providing the incarcer- trial of 1942 and the subsequent ‘zoot suit ated gang leader, Henry Reyna, with inner riots’ that erupted in East Los Angeles and strength during his trial and subsequent soli-

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http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 22 Feb 2011 IP address: 144.124.16.28 tary confinement. El Pachuco’s opening concrete evidence, an all-white jury indicts speech, delivered in a mixture of calo and seventeen gang members for first-degree English, clearly articulates his central impor- murder during courtroom proceedings that tance to the forthcoming action and, together were clearly racially biased. with the directions for the stage settings, sets In the play this is most obviously reflected the tone of the play and foreshadows much in the uncompromising efforts of the prose- of the action: cution to stigmatize and pathologize the defendants. During the interrogation it is Setting: the giant facsimile of a newspaper front suggested that the young Mexican Ameri- page serves as a drop curtain. cans are ‘greasers’, ‘animals’, and ‘monkeys’.8 The huge masthead reads: los angeles Additionally it is said that they have ‘twisted herald express thursday, june 3, 1943. zoot-suiter hordes minds’ and are capable of ‘assault’ and ‘more A headline cries out: 9 invade los angeles. us navy and violence’. The prosecution lawyer also marines are called in. A switchblade manipulates evidence, openly intimidates plunges through the newspaper. It slowly cuts a the defendants, and draws attention to their rip to the bottom of the drop. el pachuco zoot suits as evidence of guilt. emerges from the slit. He adjusts his clothing, The fact that the judge at the same time he tends to his hair, with infinite loving pains. Then he reaches into the slit and pulls out his coat prevents the defendants from changing their 10 and hat. Now he turns to the audience. He proudly, clothes adds to the circumstantial evidence. slovenly, defiantly makes his way downstage. He Firstly this accentuates their ‘criminality’ mak- 5 stops and assumes a pachuco stance. ing them appear in the words of the gang leader, ‘bad’ and ‘disreputable, like mob- sters’; and secondly it strips them of their Differing Interpretations of Zoot Suit identities. In this sense, the court’s actions Jorge Huerta argues that this setting and mirror the events of the zoot suit riots them- prop design indicate the degree to which the selves, when the pachucos were similarly Los Angeles newspapers and the national demonized and ‘symbolically annihilated, media of the time contributed to the racial castrated, transformed, and otherwise ren- hostilities by demonizing pachucos during dered the subject of effigial rites’.11 the trial and subsequent riots.6 Several scenes Perhaps the most effective but also prob- substantiate this claim, and have actors and lematic attempt to counter this discourse actresses moving towards the audience hold- occurs in Act Two, Scene 6, when El Pachuco ing sensationalized front-page headlines and is stripped of his zoot suit by a group of editorial accounts that emphasize Mexican sailors and appears as a god-like descendant immigration, delinquency, and gangsterism. of the Aztecs: These headings are at the same time juxta- el pachuco posed with accounts of allied activities in the They fight now to the finish. is overpowered and stripped as henry watches war effort, which are similarly infused with helplessly from his position. The press and the fifth-column rhetoric that dominated the servicemen exit with pieces of el pachuco’s media’s output, thereby increasingly depict- zoot suit. el pachuco stands. The only item of ing the pachuco youth as the ‘enemy within’. clothing on his body is a small loincloth. He turns henry The scenes are interpreted from a slightly and looks at , with mystic intensity. He opens his arms as an Aztec conch blows, and he different perspective by Carl Gutiérrez Jones. slowly exits backward with powerful calm into He states that by thus highlighting the racial the shadows.12 bias of the media, Valdez counterbalances the widespread belief that the zoot-suiters With this climactic conversion scene, Valdez were guilty of deviating from what was an places the pachuco within a specific ideo- otherwise fair and democratic society.7 The logical locus. The gesture of ennobling Chic- fact that the trial is presented as a breach of anos with pre-Columbian attributes was a legitimate judicial procedures further em- well-used strategy throughout the move- phasizes this point. Despite the lack of any ment, and instilled a sense of pride and his-

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http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 22 Feb 2011 IP address: 144.124.16.28 torical identity, providing an antidote to Rendón, author of the highly polemical racism. Chicano Manifesto (1971), stated this connec- The subject position Valdez creates here, tion more explicitly. Machismo, he explained, then, is on one level oppositional to the kind of discourse perpetrated by the media and is in fact an underlying drive of the gathering courts. Rather than signalling a series of identification of Mexican Americans. . . . the essence of machismo, of being macho, is as much a pathologies, pre-Columbian attributes instil in symbolic principle for the Chicano revolt as it is a the pachuco a subliminal power. Thus charged guideline for family life.15 and justified by the identity politics of the Chicano movement, he is able to transcend Yet claiming machismo as the fundamental the barrio hierarchy, from the socially deviant dynamic of the movement was problematic, gang member as seen from the perspective of and set into motion a system of gender dif- the media, judge, prosecution, and American ferentiation designed to maintain a form of servicemen into a godlike, sacrificial entity. male power and female subjugation. A signi- ficant proportion of male cultural production both during and after the movement decades reinforced this notion, the family figuring A Reverence for Machismo prominently in its representations as a pater- But while redefining the pachuco’s place nalistic and largely conservative unit. within a larger framework of the social drama In many ways Zoot Suit overtly illustrates of emancipation and self-determination of this point. The problems the Reynas face are the 1960s and 1970s, Zoot Suit reinscribes a counterpoised by the many allusions to the repressive ideology. Much of its rhetoric, like bonds of familia, its strengths and values, and that of the movement, contains an underly- its abiding links with the community. Fol- ing dynamic that aims to recover manhood. lowing this logic, Valdez also depicts the At this time myths of descent were inflected father as being central to the Reyna home; he by a perception of the cultural past as a pri- dominates his wife and daughter, silencing vileged site where configurations of mascu- them and frequently evoking the masculine linity and identity merged. The hagiography heroes of the Mexican revolution as well as of the pre-Columbian past served to endorse his own experiences. Zoot Suit thus tends to a cultural legacy that embraced machismo reinforce the centrality of male subjectivity at and paternalism as unifying facets of Chic- the expense of and in relation to woman’s ano identity. The combined effects of male marginality within the organizational struc- domination and Chicano nationalism that tures of the household and the traditional shaped El Teatro’s productions effectively familial order. replicated these tendencies.13 Within this symbolic system, Henry One of the most overt expressions of this Reyna’s mother Dolores is stereotyped as ideology at work can be seen in the way that una madrecita sufrida (the suffering mother) Zoot Suit mirrors the emphasis placed on the who endures the aggression of barrio vio- interlinking systems of carnalismo, machismo, lence and endless domestic labour. But her and familia by movement discourse. Displays labour is consistently overridden by her sym- of carnalismo cemented the relations between bolic designation as mother, and thus her men at the time of the movement, culturally specificity as a female subject as well as her organizing gender in such a way as to labour are subordinate to her role as nurturer facilitate women’s exclusion. Ideologically of men. Lupe, Henry’s sister, is another case then, carnalismo worked to define all gender in point, since she is forbidden to wear the in relation to a clear and unambiguous male drapes of the zoot suit, and is told by Enrique, identity. At the same time, carnalismo worked her father, that things are ‘different for Henry towards defining the Chicano community ‘as . . . He’s a man. Es hombre . . . Bien macho! Like a social group consensually unified around a his father.’16 Henry’s girlfriend Della offers reverence for machismo’.14 another version of this ideology at work as

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http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 22 Feb 2011 IP address: 144.124.16.28 she plays a relatively submissive, even self- Suit. There are nonetheless productive ten- sacrificial role, and enacts certain cultural sions between the two plays, as the opening ideals that in turn inculcate the legitimacy of speaker tells us that the action, like that of gender hierarchies. the earlier play, also revolves around the ques- In this sense Valdez promotes an exclus- tion of ‘prison, politics, and sex’.18 However, ively male version of events and a perspec- the prison in Moraga’s play refers specifi- tive reflecting the essentializing tendencies cally to women’s repression by movement of movement ideology which dichotomized ideology. Moraga’s stage directions empha- a ‘monolithic’ male Chicano identity in res- size this, with the play centring on limited ponse to Anglo-American domination. In locations within which the female characters such a climate women’s politics faced strong move. These locations, which are described opposition. Although they had been calling as ‘the street, a bed, a kitchen’, reflect the attention to their specific gendered oppres- three main spaces offered to women by sion, race and class issues were seen as being movement discourse, and indicate its pre- more important and feminist issues, being scriptive and rigidly defined conception of closely allied to white feminism, were con- female identity. sidered to be divisive. Homosexual and gay The action mainly revolves around these issues were also by and large absent from the spaces as much as the three female characters political programme of the movement, and and the relationships between them. This attempts to gain recognition were largely ig- stands in strong contrast to prior depictions nored. Lesbian sexuality in particular became of Chicanas, not only in terms of high- outlawed, being seen as disruptive of the lighting women’s central presence, but also woman’s role as reproducer, deemed neces- because two of the lead characters are one sary for reconstituting Chicano masculinity and the same person. Marisa is a Chicana in and culture. her late twenties; Corky, her ‘other’ self, is shown aged eleven and seventeen. The other character is Amalia, a middle-aged Mexican Moraga’s Alternative Model woman who is Marisa’s lover. Cherríe Moraga’s dramatic output since the Although men are marginal to the narra- 1980s has consistently produced an alterna- tive, Amalia’s past male lovers, Alejandro tive model of gender relations to this male- and Carlos, haunt her, to the extent that they centred vision. Widely considered to be constantly interrupt the development of a instrumental in bringing about ‘a distinct fully erotic relationship with her new lover, transitional phase’ in the development of Marisa. At the opening of the play, Marisa Chicano theatre, her 1984 play, Giving up the declares that the figure of the male lover ‘is a Ghost, suggests the emergence of signific- ghost / always haunting her . . . lingering’.19 antly new representational strategies and And again, later in Act One, when Amalia modes of performativity that move beyond learns of Alejandro’s death she simultane- the confines of movement ideology.17 While ously feels her womanhood leave her and his evolving in relationship to the Teatro of Luis ghost being born in her. This sense of entrap- Valdez, Moraga’s approach to the represen- ment is contextualized through the strong tation of women is also clearly informed by association established between heterosexu- ongoing developments in Chicana feminism, ality and loss and melancholia. Amalia later which aimed to disrupt the existing repres- refers to the men who have used her sexually sive enactment of female identity within as a river of dead bodies, and through Chicano discourse. repeated allusions the predominant tone The action of the play, like that of Zoot associated with heterosexuality becomes one Suit, takes place over a period of years in of silence, trauma, and death. East Los Angeles, but while this urban space Marisa must also relinquish the ghost of resembles that of the earlier play, it is not her younger self, Corky, whose experiences overtly associated with the chicanismo of Zoot of rape and oppression haunt her older self

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http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 22 Feb 2011 IP address: 144.124.16.28 Marisa in the form of a pain that disables her, more culturally specific sense their relation- making her legs feel ‘like they got rocks in ship, based as it is on ‘wanting the woman ’em’.20 In tracing the events that have led to first’, is also a symbolic inversion of the this disablement, chronology in the sense of Chicano cultural mandate of ‘putting the a teleological narrative and normative tem- male first’ within Chicano families. Within porality are largely displaced from the action. this economy the mother is the betrayer of Despite being contemporaneous with Corky’s the daughter by loving the males in the adolescence, the history and politics of the family more than the females, thus bearing Chicano movement are decentred from the responsibility for the daughter’s subordina- action because they don’t enter the prota- tion and abandonment. gonist’s world. Moraga thus displaces an In her essay A Long Line of Vendidas (1983) overarching historicizing narrative such as Moraga states this more explicitly: that presented in Zoot Suit with several per- sonal narratives, which instead present mul- You are a traitor to your race if you do not put the man first. The potential accusation of ‘traitor’ or tiple interpretations that subvert established ‘vendida’ is what hangs above the heads and beats masculinist interpretations of the Chicano in the hearts of most Chicanas.23 experience and of Chicano identity politics. The juxtaposition of past and present Under the pressure of the conflation of her narratives also fragments the essentialized sexuality with betrayal, the Chicana must female subject of movement discourse.21 prove her fidelity through commitment to Throughout the drama, the social roles of the Chicano male, thereby initiating what women and men are constantly undermined Moraga terms ‘A Long Line of Vendidas’. By through complex and ironic manipulations putting women first in her dramatic produc- of normative expectations about sexuality tions, by excluding men from representation, and gender. At one point during Act One, and by imaging women as desiring subjects, Corky’s older self Marisa declares that: Moraga represents the possibility of libera- tion from this ‘prison of sex’. It’s not that you don’t want a man, Her strategies of female representation are You just don’t want a man in a man. You want a man in a woman. an inherent part of this liberating project. The woman-part goes without saying. Among the most significant is the simulta- That’s what you always learn to want first.22 neous appropriation and critique of the sym- bolism linked with Mexican Catholicism.24 Strategies of Female Representation During the play, women and women-centred relationships are often expressed in religious These transgressive gender positions can be terms as a site of worship, or as a ‘liberating read as a radical critique of female sexuality angel’, and are said to offer ‘salvation’ and by movement ideology, which promoted a ‘redemption’. At one point during the second binary logic that legitimized the oppression act, titled ‘La Salvadora’, Marisa declares, ‘Sí. of women. Marisa’s viewpoint in contrast is La Mujer es mi religion,’ and later she places not conventionally dichotomized by move- her mother at its centre, ment dogma, but sexualized in a way that undermines normative expectations. ’N’ it was so nice to hear her voice The interchangeably butch–femme relation- so warm like she loved us a lot ’n’ that night ship between Amalia and Marisa presents being cath-lic felt like my mom sexualities which are crucial to Moraga’s un- real warm ’n’ dark ’n’ kind.25 settling of the ‘violent hierarchy of the man– woman’ dyad on a number of different In this scene Moraga shifts the relations of levels. In one sense they enact a performance power from the patriarchal conventions nor- that parodies the entrenched inequalities of mally associated with Mexican Catholicism the phallic economy represented by the tra- to Marisa’s mother, who is instead figured as ditional heterosexual partnership. But in a the source of religiosity. This feminization of

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http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 22 Feb 2011 IP address: 144.124.16.28 religion subverts the macho ethic of aguantar my eyeballs glued to the screen (forbearance) and subservience normally asso- then during the week my friend Tudy and me ciated with the Church. The connection bet- we’d make up our own movies one of our favourites was this cowboy one ween the mother’s faith and the daughter’s where we’d be out in the desert belief in a vision of women bonding also ’n’ we’d capture these chicks ’n’ hold ’em up disrupts the usual hierarchies established for ransom we’d string ’em up ’n’ between God and the priest who exercises make ’em take their clothes off . . . the secular control of religious power. By strip we’d say to the wall all cool-like implication this also severs the ties that are in my mind I was big ’n’ tough ’n’ a dude normally established between the Church’s In my mind I had all their freedom institutionalized authority and its enactment the freedom to really see a girl through daily sexual domination. kinda the way you see Closely related to this positive identific- an animal you know? 28 ation between women and religion are the passages that describe the love between the Within Chicana/o discourse American movies female characters. In these scenes the rela- are often presented as symbols of the United tions between women are often figured as States’ colonial legacy. Within this economy fluid and in opposition to the gendered bi- representations of Mexicans have tradition- naries of movement logic. These exchanges ally been stereotyped and limited.29 The occur particularly in the scenes in which domination of the cowboy in the narrative of Marisa and Amalia are collectively remem- the American West is a particularly clear bering the discovery of their mutual desire. indicator of the ways in which United States At one point Marisa asks Amalia, cultural imperialism has historically oper- ated. The cowboy has effectively erased the Was the beautiful woman presence of the vaquero and substituted that in the mirror of the water historical figure with a colonizing figure who you or me? Who do I make love to? eventually came to preside over the south- Who do I see in the ocean of our bed?26 western landscape. Corky’s fantasy fails to acknowledge this fact and therefore displays The breaking down of physical borders and none of the traditionally vexed intersections the merging of one self with another repre- between Hispano, American, Indian, and sents a link between a lack of boundaries and Mexican cultures normally associated with female sexuality that effectively undermines this process. Instead, Corky in the main relies dominant narratives of identity promoted on Anglo-American heroics as a source for during the movement years. self-identification. Critical opinion over the role of popular culture in the construction of Chicano and The Role of Popular Culture Chicana identity is deeply divided. Within When the action switches to that period it- the Chicana/o context, some critics consider self, we are shown how, as a younger woman, that mass entertainment is ultimately a form Marisa’s sexual identity was also multiple, of oppression that manipulates the audience complex, and subversive. At times this com- into a complacent acceptance of the status 30 plexity is revealed through the performance quo, while others see it as inherently sub- of what she calls her ‘movie capture games’.27 versive, and as providing an opportunity for These ‘sick little fantasies’ ultimately disclose Chicana/os ‘to construct a form of political 31 an identity that problematizes the dominant agency’. interpretations of female subjectivity in move- These polarized perspectives can be seen ment discourse: in Moraga’s work. While she appears through lack of positive portrayals of Mexicans to When I was a little kid I useta love the movies turn to consumerized images of white male every Saturday you could find me there bravery in order to define herself, at the same

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http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 22 Feb 2011 IP address: 144.124.16.28 time Corky specifically entrenches herself in one hunerd percent female whether you act 34 the discourse against which Chicanas stand. it or like it or not. Her female ‘captives’ signal a profound lack of personal liberty, whereas freedom is equ- Marisa’s speech poses fundamental ques- ated with masculinity and the penetrating tions about constructions of gender identity force of the male gaze. In Corky’s fantasy, in the Chicana/o context. The guilt and women possess no power or agency over shame the rape mobilizes, while clearly re- their bodies, but occupy passive recipient connecting her to her female self, are also positions. She simultaneously objectifies strongly associated with the popular myth of these women while identifying with the Malinche, a central icon that contributed to male subject of the action. what Norma Alarcón calls the extensive ideological sedimentation of the . . . [silent] good woman and the bad woman arche- Agencies of Domination types that enabled the cultural nationalistic and 35 As the drama unfolds, it becomes clearer paternalistic ‘communal modes of power’. why Corky adopts an identity that necessi- tates the repression of her own femininity, as According to movement discourse, Malinche at the centre of the second act are graphic was the mujer mala (the bad woman), whose descriptions of her earlier rape, retold by sexual union with Hernan Cortes during the Marisa through a mixture of comedy and time of the conquest made possible the defeat pathos. Marisa’s speeches here, performed of the Aztec nation. in opposition to the sanctity of patriarchal Analyzing the stereotyping tendencies of culture and religion, in effect restage a kind this discourse, Emma Pérez argues how the of secular confession that presents a radical myth of Malinche and the contempt for Chic- shift in gendered power relations. Within ana women began with a colonial conquest Catholicism the vows of chastity and obedi- triangle, within which the indigenous male ence function as church laws, and any in- was castrated and lost his language to that of 36 fringement of them has to be confessed to the the white rapist father. It is significant, priest. As God’s corporeal substitutes and then, that Marisa’s violator is white, rapes emissaries, the father and the priest are in- her while speaking both English and Spanish, vested with the power to mediate, punish, or and is associated with a subtext that clearly absolve. demonstrates his paternal signification: A mainstay of this power is the ritual of ’n’ I kept getting him confused in my mind confession, which, as Foucault explains, un- this man ‘n’ his arm folds within a power relationship in which with my father kept imagining him my father ‘the agency of domination does not reside in returned the one who speaks . . . but in the one who come back listens and says nothing’.32 Moraga disrupts I wanted to cry ‘papá papá’ . . . ‘¿Dónde ‘stás papá?’ the paternalistic nature of these relations, as ‘¿Dónde ‘stás?’ Marisa’s point of address during her con- ’n’ finally I imagine the man answering fession is neither the symbolic father of the ‘aquí estoy. Soy tu papá’ church or the priest, but the audience who ’n’ this gives me permission to go ’head 37 act as her confessor.33 to not hafta fight.

Got raped once. Subliminally imaging these paternal rela- When I was a kid. tions, Marisa’s experiences establish their Taken me a long time to say that was exactly point of origin in the primal scene of colonial what happened. rape. But rather than suggesting a conti- But that was exactly what happened. Makes you more aware than ever that you are nuum in the economy of the masculinist one hunerd percent myth that effectively silenced and margin- female, just in case you had any doubts alized women, her speech disrupts the previ-

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http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 22 Feb 2011 IP address: 144.124.16.28 ously repressive coding given to Malinche’s 9. Valdez, Act One, ‘Opening of the Trial’, p. 62. 10. Gutiérrez-Jones, p. 47. legacy. This successfully enables a reconci- 11. Mazón, p. 64. liation of self and past experience for Marisa 12. Valdez, Act Two, ‘Zoot Suit Riots’, p. 81. in a way that 13. Emma Perez, ‘Speaking from the Margin: Unin- vited Discourse on Sexuality and Power’, in Building with Our Own Hands: New Directions in Chicana Studies, enacts her simultaneous recrossing of the ‘stages’ ed. Andela de la Torre and Beatriz Pesquera (Berkeley: of psychic development toward subjectivity and University of California Press, 1993), p. 57–71. subjecthood . . . from primary narcissism and auto- 14. Gutiérrez-Jones, p. 134 eroticism to the disavowal of castration and a new 15. Quoted in Angie Chabram Dernersian, ‘And, Yes body ego.38 . . . the Earth did Part: on the Splitting of Chicana/o Subjectivity’, in Building With Our Own Hands: New Directions in Chicana Studies, ed. Andela De la Torre and Moraga’s exploration of the politics of Chi- Beatriz M. Pesquera (Berkeley: University of California cana identity in relation to popular culture Press, 1993), p. 41. 16 35 and Chicano movement discourse thus forces . Valdez, Act One, ‘The Interrogation’, p. 17. Alicia Arrizón, Latina Performance: Traversing the a reconsideration of Zoot Suit. Displacing the Stage (Bloomington; Indianapolis: Indiana University binary logic which repressed women’s repre- Press, 1999), p. 76. 18 sentation during the protest decades, the . Cherríe Moraga, Giving up the Ghost (Los Angeles: West End Press, 1986), p. 1. multiple facets of Moraga’s characters not 19. Moraga, Act One, ‘La Pachuca’, p. 3. only challenge the female identity of the 20. Ibid., p. 7. 21 201. earlier play, but, given El Teatro’s masculi- . Neate, p. 22. Moraga, Act One, ‘La Pachuca’, p. 29. nist tendencies, by extension simultaneously 23. Cherríe Moraga, Loving in the War Years/ Lo nunca critique the homophobia, sexism, and opp- pasó por sus labios (Boston: South End Press, 1983), p. 103. 24 ressive gender definitions of movement dis- . Yvonne Yarbro-Bejarano, ‘Cherríe Moraga’s Giv- ing Up the Ghost and Feminist Theory’, in Critical App- course more generally. roaches to Hispanic Women’s Literature, ed. Norma Alarcón (Houston: Arte Publico Press, 1987), p. 21. 25. Moraga, Act One, ‘La Pachuca’, p. 13. 26. Ibid., p. 27. Notes and References 27. Ibid., p. 9. 28. Ibid., p. 4–5. 1. John Chávez, The Chicano Image of the Southwest 29. For recent discussions of the representation of (University of New Mexico Press, 1984). Mexicans in film, see Elyette Benjamin-Labarthe, 2. See Zaragosa Vargas, ed., Major Problems in ‘American Cinema: The Mask Of Zorro and the Chicano Mexican American History: Documents and Essays (New Canon’, in US Latino Literatures and Cultures: Trans- York: Houghton and Mifflin, 1999), p. 302–3. national Perspectives, ed. Francisco Lomelí and Karin Ikas 3. George Sanchez, Becoming Mexican American: Eth- (Universitätsverlag: C. Winter, Heidelberg, 2000), p. 81–98; nicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900– and Horst Tonn, ‘Hispanic Film in the United States: the 1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 274. Past Two Decades’, US Latino Literatures and Cultures, p. For other discussions of the complex cultural exchanges 71–80. José E. Limón also comments on the general and negotiations involved in the process of Mexican relationship between the cowboy and the Mexican American community formation, see Vicki Ruiz, ‘Border woman in film in José E. Limón, American Encounters: Journeys’, in From Out of the Shadows: Mexican Women in Greater Mexico, the United States, and the Erotics of Culture Twentieth-Century America (New York: Oxford Univer- (Boston: Beacon Press, 1998). sity Press, 1998), p. 3–32; Manuel G. Gonzales, ‘The Great 30. For a discussion of theories of mass culture in Migration’, in Mexicanos: a History of Mexicans in the relation to the Chicano context, including the works of United States (Bloomington; Indianapolis: Indiana Univer- Theodor Adorno, Roland Barthes, and Fredric Jameson, sity Press, 2000), p. 113–38; Richard Griswold del Castillo see Alicia Gaspar de Alba, ‘The Alternative Grain: and Arnoldo de León, ‘The New Colonias: Develop- Theorising Chicana/o Popular Culture’, in Culture and ment, Dispersal, and Diversification’, in North to Aztlán: Difference: Critical Perspectives on the Bi-Cultural Experi- a History of Mexican Americans in the United States (New ence in the United States, ed. Antonia Darder (Westport, York: Twayne, 1996), p. 59–82; and Arnoldo De León, CN: Bergin and Garvey, 1995), p. 108. ‘The Making of a Colonia’, in Ethnicity in the Sunbelt: 31. Ramón Garcia, ‘New Iconographies: Film Culture Mexican Americans in Houston, (Houston: Texas A&M in Chicano Cultural Production’, in Decolonial Voices: University, 2001), p. 3–21. Chicana and Chicano Cultural Studies in the Twenty-First 4. Sanchez, p. 272 Century, ed. Arturo J. Aldama and Naomi Quinones 5. Valdez, L., Zoot Suit and Other Plays (Houston, TX: (Bloomington; Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, Arte Público, 1992), p. 24. 2002), p. 64. 6. Valdez, p. 15 32. Quoted in Alicia Gaspar de Alba, ‘The Politics of 7. Carl Gutiérrez-Jones, Rethinking the Borderlands: Location of the Tenth Muse of America: an Interview Between Chicano Culture and Legal Discourse (Berkeley: with Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz’, in Living Chicana Theory, University of California Press, 1995), p. 44. ed. Carla Trujillo (Berkeley: Third Woman Press, 1998), 8. Valdez, Act One, ‘The Interrogation’, p. 32. p. 148.

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http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 22 Feb 2011 IP address: 144.124.16.28 33. Teresa de Lauretis, The Practice of Love: Lesbian neapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), p. 278. Sexuality and Perverse Desire (Bloomington; Indianapolis: 36. See Emma Perez, ‘Speaking from the Margin: Indiana University Press, 1994), p. 57–8. Uninvited Discourse on Sexuality and Power’, in Build- 34. Moraga, Act Two. ‘La Salvadora, p. 36. ing with Our Own Hands: New Directions in Chicana 35. Norma Alarcón, ‘Traddutora, Traditora: a Para- Studies, ed. Andela de la Torre and Beatriz Pesquera digmatic Figure of Chicana Feminism’, in Dangerous (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), p. 57–71. Liaisons: Gender, Nation, and Postcolonial Perspectives, ed. 37. Moraga, Act Two, ‘La Salvadora, p. 41. Anne McClintock, Aamir Mufti, and Ella Shohat (Min- 38. De Lauretis, p. 57-8.

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