From Conformity to Protest: The Evolution of Latinos in American Popular Culture, 1930s-1980s

A dissertation submitted to the

Graduate School

of the University of Cincinnati

in the partial fulfillment of the

requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

in the Department of History

of the College of Arts and Sciences

2017

by

Vanessa de los Reyes

M.A., Miami University, 2008

B.A., Northern Kentucky University, 2006

Committee Chair: Stephen R. Porter, Ph.D. Abstract

“From Conformity to Protest” examines the visual representations of Latinos in

American popular culture—specifically in film, television, and advertising—from the 1930s through the early 1980s. It follows the changing portrayals of Latinos in popular culture and how they reflected the larger societal phenomena of conformity, the battle for civil rights and inclusion, and the debate over identity politics and cultural authenticity. It also explores how these images affected Latinos’ sense of identity, particularly racial and ethnic identities, and their sense of belonging in American society.

This dissertation traces the evolution of Latinos in popular culture through the various cultural anxieties in the United States in the middle half of the twentieth century, including immigration, citizenship, and civil rights. Those tensions profoundly transformed the politics and social dynamics of American society and affected how Americans thought of and reacted to

Latinos and how Latinos thought of themselves. This work begins in the 1930s when Latin

Americans largely accepted portrayals of themselves as cultural stereotypes, but longed for inclusion as “white” Americans. The narrative of conformity continues through the 1950s as the middle chapters thematically and chronologically examine how mainstream cultural producers portrayed different Latino groups—including Chicanos (or Mexican Americans), Puerto Ricans, and Cubans. Popular culture portrayed Cubans, as exemplified by Ricky Ricardo on the television show I Love Lucy, as foreign, but able to easily assimilate because of class and race into mainstream, meaning “Anglo,” society. Puerto Ricans and Mexican Americans, however, fared worse as gang members and “illegals” and not acceptable participants in American society.

These chapters also explore how Latinos reacted to those portrayals, which ranged from ambivalence, acceptance, disturbance, and, later, rage. As the U.S. moved to an era of seemingly

ii greater equality and liberty in the post-World War II era, Latino groups demanded inclusion and social citizenship and openly rejected rhetoric and images that cast them as marginal and foreign.

The latter chapters of this dissertation also analyze the inter-ethnic coalitions that participated in this transformation and the occupying tensions within such relationships. By the 1980s, Puerto

Ricans and African Americans protested in the streets of New York City against demeaning portrayals, particularly of the film Fort Apache, The Bronx. These groups now demanded acceptance into American society as Americans and as culturally different. This new development not only caused a tension between cultural producers and consumers, but also among Latinos as they debated the appropriate or authentic way to portray their culture.

iii

© 2017 Vanessa de los Reyes

iv Acknowledgments

I am eternally grateful to the many people and institutions that supported me through the entirety of this long, rigorous process.

First and foremost, to my advisor and supreme mentor, Steve Porter, I probably would not have finished this dissertation without your persistent encouragement and optimism. I consider you a fine historian, patient teacher, and good friend. I will never forget your kindness and compassion and your unwavering confidence in my abilities. Thank you for gently pushing me outside of my writing comfort zone and for committing to this project from its very beginning (and my dabbles in foreign policy) to its completion. We did it!

Thank you to my committee, Isaac Campos and Lilia Fernández. Thank you for committing to this project and for your insightful feedback. I appreciate that you pushed me to think more deeply about the topic. I am a better writer because of your time and dedication to detail.

Thank you to the Taft Research Center, which not only awarded me travel funds for research, but also granted me the Taft Dissertation Fellowship for the 2016-2017 academic year.

I was able to fully immerse myself into this project because of their gracious financial and intellectual support. The Graduate Student Governance Association and the University Research

Council also generously funded my research through the Diversity/Interdisciplinary Research

Fellowship and the University Research Council Summer Fellowship, respectively.

I wanted to thank the archives I visited and all of the helpful people in the Lyndon B.

Johnson Presidential Library, the Benson Latin American Collection at the University of Texas,

Austin, the Richard M. Nixon Presidential Library, the UCLA Film and Television Archive, the

UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, the Institute for Latino Studies at University of Notre

v Dame, the Manuscript Division and Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress, and the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. Thank you to the individuals from the University of Texas, San Antonio library system and the Wisconsin Center for Film and

Theater Research who scanned and sent me electronic copies of archival material. A special thank you to the library system at UC, especially June at the Geology-Mathematics-Physics

Library. When I had over 100 books, monstrous bound magazines, and microfilm checked out, they never complained and worked so patiently to make sure I received everything I needed.

I would not have been able to attend and complete this program without the funding from the Department of History at the University of Cincinnati. Their assistantship helped me to focus on my studies financially and provided me opportunities to pursue and develop professional relationships and leadership roles within the department and the university. Also, thank you to the history department for their support and guidance including Ashley Bone and Hope Earls.

Thank you to Chris Phillips, Willard Sunderland, and Tracy Teslow for their leadership. Erika

Gasser and Maura O’Connor, thank you for your willingness to converse and advise. A special thank you to David Stradling and Brianna Leavitt-Alcántara for serving on my exam committee and for allowing me to barge into their offices whenever I wanted to discuss the complexities of academia and life.

Of course, I could not have done this without my colleagues and friends. Thank you all for helping me get this all on paper and making sure it made sense. I am so grateful for you and that we went through this process together. Thank you Alex Parker, Dustin Meier, and Peter

Niehoff for your eyes and for making my first two years so memorable (in a good way). I’ll never forget our irreplaceable cohort. Alyssa McClanahan and Nathan McGee, thank you for your friendship and for providing me with such excellent examples to follow. Debra, Angela,

vi and Bela, thank you for always being there for me as a friend and for giving me such insightful and honest feedback on everything. Melissa and Leah, I’m glad our paths crossed because of our crafty interests. Kristen, you have been with me since the very beginning (since we were prospective students)! You have patiently listened to my rants and have offered support and love.

The dissertation is not only getting things on paper, but also about having the mental state to do it. Thank you for keeping me sane and for giving the confidence I often lacked! I also appreciate my friends outside of the program. Kerri McKenna, thank you for supporting me in this venture.

Thank you, Julie Turner, for your friendship and advice all these years. Jenny Ernie-Steighner and Ryan Steighner, you two are amazing! Thank you for all the inspiration!

Last, but not least, a huge thank you to my family. Thank you to my parents who have been my rock from the very beginning. They never gave up on me and always taught me the value of education. Most of all, they taught me how to be a good human being. To Gabriel,

Ashley, and Eva, thank you for reminding me what family is and that there’s more to life than school. Finally, I have to thank the two people who have intimately endured the pain of this process, my husband and daughter. Jonathan, I cannot fully express how important it was to have your emotional and financial support. I’ve been in school during most of our life together and you never complained once about my aspirations. You are, and continue to be, my biggest cheerleader and my best friend. I am so fortunate to have you in my life. Emilia, thank you for pushing me to be a better person and for reminding me what’s important in life. This dissertation is dedicated to you. Do epic things, little bean!

vii

Table of Contents

Abstract ii

Acknowledgments v

Introduction 1

Chapter 1 Good Neighbor Rhetoric in Popular Culture, 1930s-1950s 16

Chapter 2 Ricky Ricardo, the Cold War Latin 49

Chapter 3 The “Wetback” in Postwar American Life 88

Chapter 4 Puerto Ricans in Postwar American Popular Culture 129

Chapter 5 The Chicano Struggle for Mainstream Representation, 1960s-1970s 164

Chapter 6 The Politics of Authenticity and Interethnic Coalitions, 1960s-1980s 198

Conclusion 239

Bibliography 244

viii Introduction

For Cuban exiles who left Fidel Castro’s regime in the 1960s and 1970s, the PBS television sitcom ¿Qué Pasa, U.S.A.? brings back memories of a challenging transition to the

United States in a humorous way. My family came to the U.S. from Cuba during this time. They still talk about the characters on the show, which aired from 1977 to 1980, and how it reminded them of people they knew. They still laugh at the uniquely Cuban expressions uttered by the older folks on the show, which featured a family of three generations, the Peñas, living in

Miami’s Little Havana neighborhood experiencing different levels of adjustment to American life. The grandparents, Adela and Antonio, spoke only Spanish and intended to return to Cuba.

The parents, Juana and Pepe, were born in Cuba, but interacted with the Anglo world every day through their employment. Joe and Carmen, the teenagers, grew up in Miami (Carmen was also born in the U.S.) and struggled to maintain their own identity, but were often caught between their American and Cuban selves. The Peñas maintained their customs and traditions while making a place for themselves in their new home.

Scholars have written very little about this program, which is surprising considering the show was groundbreaking not only because it was written and produced by Latinos and depicted a Cuban-American family at a time when such things were a rarity, but because it was bilingual.1

The Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) funded the show through a grant and required the show to be bilingual. The script was originally written as sixty percent in Spanish and forty percent in English for a South Florida audience, but when it became nationally broadcast after the 1977 season, it switched to forty percent in Spanish and sixty percent in

1 Yeidy M. Rivero, “¿Qué Pasa, U.S.A.?,” in Encyclopedia of Latinos and Latinas in the United States, vol. 3, ed. Suzanne Oboler and Deena J. González (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2005), no page number listed, under the letter Q.

1 English.2 Luis Santeiro, the show’s head writer, is still skeptical of the intent behind this cultivation of Latino identity on public television. He believes “HEW was trying to develop biculturalism, or perhaps was trying to pacify minority groups.”3 In other words, this was a change in a positive direction of accepting diverse cultural groups into the mainstream or it was an effort to quell the potential demonstrative action of marginalized groups. Nevertheless, the fact that it was on public television and used bilingualism demonstrated there was an effort to include more people into a narrative of understanding and acceptance of different cultures by the late 1970s.4

As opposed to the images in the 1930s, which included the bandit, the greaser, the Latin lover, and the sexy señorita, ¿Qué Pasa, U.S.A.? normalized Latinos. Here, they were not caricatures. They did not violate or menace people. They did not perform musical numbers or constantly seduce. Nor did they exhibit an unhinged temperament. This transformation between these images of the 1930s and the Peña family in the 1970s did not happen overnight and it reveals a long and complicated history of race, ethnicity, identity, and citizenship in the United

States during the twentieth century. “From Conformity to Protest” traces representations of

Latinos in American mainstream popular culture, specifically film, television, advertising, and newspaper coverage, from the 1930s to the 1980s and how Latinos navigated through those images. Through the 1950s, most Latinos attempted to assimilate into Anglo American society by conforming to the expectation of blending in by playing down cultural differences. Many groups, such as the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) and the American G.I.

Forum, reinforced their patriotism and loyalty to the U.S. by focusing their efforts on their

American citizenship and military service. By the 1960s and 1970s, the political and social

2 Humberto Delgado and Lorna Veraldi, “¿Qué Pasa, USA?,” Television Quarterly 37, no. 2 (Winter 2007): 48. 3 Ibid., 50. 4 Ibid., 52.

2 environment had changed immensely namely because of the Civil Right Movement and U.S. military involvement in the Vietnam conflict. As a result of these challenges to the established system, many Latinos began to publicly and persistently celebrate their cultures and their

Americanness. Ideas of citizenship and belonging changed significantly throughout these five decades. In the 1930s, social and legal citizenship was initially only allotted to “white,” or

“Anglo” people, whereas by the 1970s even government agencies took measures as the one in the case of ¿Qué Pasa, U.S.A.? to be, or at least appear, more inclusive. This change was largely achieved because Latinos did not sit idle and wait for the state to incorporate them into the narrative. Social transformations occurred as Latinos took action to inject themselves into the mainstream by resisting or challenging demeaning images and demanding accurate representation and inclusion.

Although the title of this dissertation, “From Conformity to Protest,” suggests a linear progression, history is never clean cut. The historical record is complicated. This is to say that not all Latinos participated in this discourse. Of course, there were Latinos in the early period who were not complacent and Latinos in the later periods that willingly assimilated (and many still do). The point is that there was a significant shift in the source material available through popular means that suggests that once the Civil Rights Movement occurred some quite influential Latinos became more vocal about expressing their culture and also in proclaiming their rightful place in American society. Latinos became much more critical of how they were represented in film, television, and advertising.

Historiography and Historical Significance

3 The concepts of identity and belonging are integral to the analysis of Latino representations from the 1930s through the 1980s. Many historians have recently explored the history of various ethnic and racial groups, but have not adequately addressed the question of identity. Identity, including the concepts of race and ethnicity, continues to be slippery in terms of historical analysis. Race and ethnicity have meant different things at different times and in different places. In 1877, for example, an Irish immigrant could racially be a despised Celt in

Boston and a solid Caucasian in San Francisco.5 “Caucasians [meaning whites] are made and not born,” argues historian Matthew Jacobson. He also states “one might be both white and racially distinct from other whites.”6 His emphasis here is on European immigrants, but it holds true for

Latinos as well, particularly Mexicans Americans, who were on the books as “white,” but were often separated, such as in schools, from the Anglo, or “Euro-American,” population and considered a different and inferior group.

Latinos were not “written out of whiteness” completely, but they were still often categorized as non-white along with Asians.7 While these two groups were positioned as non- white, they were also non-black, which complicates the rigid racial hierarchy. Historian Ellen

Wu pushes this discourse further by examining the process by which Asian Americans transformed from excluded individuals in the nineteenth century to a model minority by the

1960s. Both white Americans and Asian Americans created this stereotype as “a racial group distinct from the white minority, but lauded as well assimilated, upwardly mobile, politically nonthreatening, and definitively not-black.”8 As these historians suggest, this work continues to

5 Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 5. 6 Ibid., 4, 6. 7 Natalia Molina, How Race is Made in America: Immigration, Citizenship, and the Historical Power of Racial Scripts (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2014), 23, 50. 8 Ellen Wu, The Color of Success: Asian Americans and the Origins of the Model Minority (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014), 2.

4 expand beyond the white/black race paradigm and explore how other groups, such as Latinos, worked within or outside of that paradigm.

Race and ideas of whiteness have been more entrenched in American history, particularly in terms of the law, but ethnic identity has also had a significant role. This dissertation specifically examines how ethnicity worked in the relationships between Latinos and other groups. Historian James Barrett argues, “Identity in the United States…emerged from dynamic relationships among ethnic groups, as well as from particular groups’ own distinct history and traditions, and it can be understood only in the context of these interactions.”9 In other words, one’s identity was based on the interactions with other people of the same or of other identities.

The following expands this relational concept by examining how society treated Latinos in relation to other Latinos and in relation to Anglos and African Americans.

This dissertation contributes to the idea of “race making” by analyzing how race and ethnicity changed for Latinos over a span of fifty years. It employs historian Mae Ngai’s concept of the “alien citizen,” which she defines as “persons who are American citizens by virtue of their birth in the United States but who are presumed to be foreign by the mainstream of American culture and, at times, by the state.”10 Ngai argues some immigrants were unassimilable foreigners or “alien citizens.” No matter the legal status, in the eyes of American society, they were (are) always foreigners. This dissertation explores that tension between “alien” and “citizen” since many Latinos were technically citizens by birth, or permanent residents, but also constant foreigners. Although Ngai specifically refers to the “wetback” as an alien citizen, this dissertation expands this definition to all Latinos because despite the insistence on assimilating

9 James R. Barrett, The Irish Way: Becoming American in the Multiethnic City (New York, NY: Penguin Press, 2012), 2. 10 Mae Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and The Making of Modern America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), 2.

5 or accommodating, they were often excluded from the narrative of race and ethnicity in the

U.S.11

The chapters that follow contain a national story of identity, belonging, race and ethnicity. They include people and groups that concentrated in Latino-dominated areas such as

Texas, Florida, California, and New York City, but much of the evidence, such as movies, television shows, and advertisements, were available nationally and exposed the entire nation to

Latino representations. The narrative focuses on three particular subgroups of the all- encompassing Latino category: Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, and Cubans. These three groups were not only numerically larger, but were most prevalent in popular culture during this time. The later chapters of this dissertation also examine how many of these groups, particularly

Puerto Ricans and Chicanos, worked together with another marginalized group, African

Americans, for common causes.

Methodology

This dissertation places popular culture at the forefront of historical analysis and highlights the shift in power from the elites in the 1930s to the marginalized in the 1960s and

1970s. It argues that popular culture gives historians and scholars access to not only the voice of elites speaking to subalterns and imposing their expectations upon them, but also how later underrepresented groups, such as Latinos, also used the media and popular culture as sources of empowerment. Many social scientists have explored images of Latinos in twentieth century

11 Ibid., 129.

6 American popular culture, but have not adequately placed them within the historical context.12

The time frame of this dissertation (1930s-1980s) reveals great historical change and the impact of that change on depictions of Latinos. Historians have, however, explored issues of identity, representation, and subaltern agency concerning African Americans in the U.S. and different ethnicities and classes in Latin America. African Americans had power as both consumers and producers of popular culture.13 For example, in Making Whiteness, Grace Hale argues that middle class blacks with consuming power challenged the culture of segregation and white supremacy after Reconstruction.14 This dissertation examines the active participation of Latinos in popular culture, which encompasses a shorter period of time as a communal effort. In Latin

America, Greg Grandin, Mark Overmyer-Velázquez, and John Mraz examine how people in

Guatemala (Grandin) and Mexico (Overmyer-Velázquez and Mraz) expressed themselves

12 Scholars in sociology, media studies, communications, and Latino/a studies have explored the representations of Latinos in popular culture, but most of these disciplines are interested in contemporary (1990s to the present) issues of representation. Charles Ramírez Berg’s Latino Images in Film is widely cited on the topic. Trained in communications, he analyzes how the depictions of Latinos in films changed from the 1920s to the 1990s. Berg uses theoretical strategies in psychology, sociology, and culture studies to analyze the creation and employment of stereotypes. He also studies the physical attributes of filmmaking such as lighting, editing, and framing. Sociologist Clara Rodríguez also focuses her work on film. Her 2004 book, Heroes, Lovers, and Others, examines Latinos in film, but she, unlike Berg, provides some historical context of their representation. See Charles Ramírez Berg, Latino Images in Film: Stereotypes, Subversion, and Resistance (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2002) and Clara Rodríguez, Heroes, Lovers, and Others: The Story of Latinos in Hollywood (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Books, 2004). Other works on this topic include Alberto Sandoval-Sánchez, José, Can You See? Latinos On and Off Broadway (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1999) and Michelle Habell-Pallan and Mary Romero, Latino/a Popular Culture (New York, NY: New York University Press, 2002), Mary C. Beltrán, Latino/a Stars in U.S. Eyes: The Making and Meanings of Film and TV Stardom (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2009), Ilan Stavans and Frederick L. Aldama, Muy Pop! Conversations on Latino Popular Culture (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2013) and Priscilla Peña Ovalle, Dance and the Hollywood Latina: Race, Sex, and Stardom (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2011). 13 Caroline Goeser, Picturing the New Negro: Harlem Renaissance Print Culture and Modern Black Identity (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas, 2007), W. Fitzhugh Brundage, ed., Beyond Blackface: African Americans and the Creation of American Popular Culture, 1890-1930 (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2011), Erin Chapman, Prove It On Me: New Negroes, Sex, and Popular Culture in the 1920s (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2012), and Robin G. Kelley, Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012). 14 Grace Elizabeth Hale, Making Whiteness: The Culture of Segregation in the South, 1890-1940 (New York, NY: Pantheon Books, 1998).

7 through film and how they manipulated their identity through this medium.15 Bryan McCann argues in Hello, Hello Brazil that the negotiation of Brazilian identity occurred in everyday life through popular culture.16 This dissertation contributes to that scholarship by including Latinos in the U.S. into the narrative and how they, like many of these other groups, chipped away at the established social and political system, often inadvertently, through their everyday actions.

“From Conformity to Protest” fills a void in the historical analysis by including many different versions of visual depiction including television shows, films, photography, advertising, and theater. These sources give historians a sense of what Americans throughout the country were exposed to and how they responded. Popular culture tells communities and nations who they are. It reflects, but also creates the lived experiences. Popular culture and the media have been powerful tools that have carried authority, credibility, and legitimacy and have also perpetuated and reinforced racist stereotypes in American society.17

There are, of course, not just advantages, but also challenges to any source-base, and those derived from the history of popular culture are not an exception. The primary challenge is reception: how people responded and how they understood those images. Although it is nearly impossible to have a full understanding of responses, there were definite instances of objections from the larger Latino community to particular images, programs, and films, though even then there was not a united reaction; some in the community may have accepted or may not have found the images in question to be offensive or demeaning. The sources may be skewed in the

15 Greg Grandin, “Can the Subaltern Be Seen? Photography and the Affects of Nationalism,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 84, no. 1 (February 2004): 83-111, Mark Overmyer-Velázquez, Visions of the Emerald City: Modernity, Tradition, and the Formation of Porfirian Oaxaca, Mexico (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006) and John Mraz, Looking for Mexico: Modern Visual Culture and National Identity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009). 16 Bryan McCann, Hello, Hello Brazil: Popular Music in the Making of Modern Brazil (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004), 2. 17 Juan González and Joseph Torres, News for All the People: The Epic Story of Race and the American Media (New York, NY: Verso, 2011), 2-3.

8 former direction, but the opposing voices are also part of the narrative. Individuals were not entirely and wholeheartedly conforming to American ideals and accepting images of themselves as stereotypes, but rather there was not a space for opposition in the earlier period (1930s-1950s).

This dissertation provides multiple angles of this complicated story when the sources are available. It also gets into the minds of cultural producers, again when the sources are available, to tell their reasons for creating images of Latinos for public consumption. These individuals were affected by the social and political environment, by other cultural texts, and by their personal lived experiences. Historian David Ciarlo also suggests historians offer something new in the way they approach these sources because they look for patterns. “Viewing imagery collectively and coherently, as a corpus over time, allows us to see the existence of patterns—of ways of crafting and of seeing imagery—that are mutually reinforcing.”18 These images therefore establish a visual hegemony that allows us to see how people thought and interpreted those images, by what they saw repeatedly. Social practices generated images, but images also generated social practices.19

Terminology

In terms of terminology, conflict still exists over the collective terms “Latino” versus

“Hispanic.” Scholar Frank Javier Garcia Berumen utilized the term “Latino” in his work because he feels that “Latino” is “self-designated by the community itself” since the word encompasses

“peoples who were formerly under the colonial domination of Spain and Portugal.”20 In contrast,

“Hispanic,” to Berumen, refers to the Spanish Empire. Outsiders, namely the U.S. government,

18 David Ciarlo, Advertising Empire: Race and Visual Culture in Imperial Germany (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), 16. 19 Ibid., 17. 20 Frank Javier Garcia Berumen, Brown Celluloid: Latino/a Film Icons and Images in the Hollywood Film Industry, vol. I: 1894–1959 (New York, NY: Vantage Press, Inc., 2003), 1.

9 have used the latter term to define these individuals. To make matters more complicated, those from Spain or Portugal sometimes also refer to themselves as Latino, such as actors Antonio

Banderas and Penelope Cruz.21 There does seem to be a consensus among scholars on these distinctions and on their political implications, though. Sociologist G. Cristina Mora notes that to her the word “Hispanic” is conservative and emphasizes the cultural connection to Spain. She prefers the term “Latina” because “the term conveyed an alternative vision of panethnicity based less on a cultural link to Spain and more on how the legacies of colonization have united persons south of the US-Mexico border.”22 Even at the completion of this dissertation, those categories are debatable, but often used in the same way. “Latinos,” in this dissertation, indicates members of U.S. society who have Latin American heritage, and most of whom are legal citizens. In some cases, both “Latino” and “Hispanic” are used interchangeably, especially in the later periods because the sources used both of those terms as well. For example, one magazine article from

1978 even used Hispanic, Latino, and Latin interchangeably.23 In the earlier chapters, “Latin” and/or “Latin American” is used often to refer to anything Latin American, or anyone of Latin

American descent without regard to citizenship. In terms of “Mexican,” “Mexican American” and “Chicano,” Mexicans and Mexican Americans are U.S. legal citizens of Mexican descent.

There are places in the dissertation that refer to “Mexican nationals.” These individuals were born in Mexico, were not U.S. legal citizens, but resided in the U.S. Chicano becomes a term of identification in the late 1960s, when a younger, more militant generation claimed it in lieu of

21 Ibid. 22 G. Cristina Mora, Making Hispanics: How Activists, Bureaucrats, and Media Constructed a New American (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2014), xiv. 23 Time article entitled “It’s Your Turn in the Sun,” in the October 16, 1978 issue with the title, “Hispanic Americans, Soon: The Biggest Minority,” on the cover, Box 10, Folder 7, Domingo Nick Reyes Papers, Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas Libraries, the University of Texas at Austin.

10 “Mexican American.” Finally, non-Latino people are “white” or “Anglo” depending on the context.

Overview of Chapters

This dissertation is organized chronologically, but also thematically since many of the ideas and eras overlap. For example, Chapter 1 examines the “Era of the Good Neighbor,” which began in the 1930s and ends in the late 1950s/early 1960s. Chapters 2, 3, and 4 all focus primarily on the postwar era (1950s), but each chapter focuses on a different Latino ethnicity during that time. Lastly, Chapters 5 and 6 focus on the 1960s through the early 1980s and on issues of organization, authenticity, and interethnic coalitions. The debates over identity, race/ethnicity, and citizenship/belonging are threaded throughout the entire work.

Chapter 1 explores how the rhetoric and ideology of the federal government’s Good

Neighbor Policy seeped into popular culture particularly into films, newspapers, and magazines.

I look at how the state, or in historian Brian Balogh’s language, the associational state, included certain peoples into the American nation while excluding some of its own citizens. Federal and local governments, corporations, and the film industry worked together to promote a message of good neighborliness, but what a good neighbor meant or looked like was incredibly vague.

According to films, advertisements, and news stories, Latin Americans were exotic and interesting, while Latinos were a burden to American society. This chapter also begins a discussion that I carry throughout about race and ethnicity. Many Latinos at this time fought for their “Caucasian rights,” as historian Thomas Guglielmo called them.24 They wanted to be categorized as white because whiteness equated to Americanness and citizenship. Despite these

24 Thomas A. Guglielmo, “Fighting for Caucasian Rights: Mexicans, Mexican Americans, and the Transnational Struggle for Civil Rights in World War II Texas,” The Journal of American History 92, no. 4 (March 2006): 1212- 1237.

11 demands for inclusion and their status as citizens, many Latinos, particularly Mexican

Americans, remained outsiders or in Ngai’s term “alien citizens.”

Chapter 2 examines how one performer, Desi Arnaz, maneuvered between his ethnicity and the inclusion into white American society during the Cold War. I focus on the how the media, in magazines, newspapers, and television interviews, depicted Arnaz, how Arnaz played

Ricky Ricardo on the hit television series, I Love Lucy, and analyze the legacy of Desi

Arnaz/Ricky Ricardo in modern scholarship on the subject. Desi Arnaz bridges us from the era of the Good Neighbor, during which he participated in goodwill tours for the U.S. government, to the Cold War. I argue Arnaz was able to successfully navigate the political and social environment of Cold War by assimilating to white middle class norms, but that he also challenged conformity through his performance of ethnicity and masculinity. He was what I refer to as a Cold War Latin; he knew when to conform and when it was acceptable and encouraged to be different in order to present a diverse and inclusive American society to the rest of the world.

Like the Latinos in the previous chapter, he sought to be included as racially “white,” but

“ethnic.” He was also different and whiter than his racialized and vilified counterparts, Mexicans and Puerto Ricans.

Chapter 3 contrasts the Cold War Latin with images of the “wetback.” I explore how films, newspapers, and magazines depicted Mexican Americans, specifically the “wetback” or undocumented Mexican nationals. This representation portrayed them as filthy, dangerous, criminals, and overall threats to American society. It often dehumanized them, which justified exclusion from American society. It did not distinguish between those who were undocumented and those were citizens. Mexican-American organizations distanced themselves from the

“wetback” and stood behind their American citizenship. There was some resistance to those

12 images, however, as several American and Mexican filmmakers presented Mexicans as either resilient or as victims of systematic discrimination and oppression. Although they tried to engage and participate in American society as American citizens, Mexican Americans remained foreigners or “alien citizens” largely because of the “wetback” discourse.

Chapter 4 shifts the discussion from the southwest to New York City to explore how popular culture portrayed Puerto Ricans in mid-twentieth century film, television, and theater. As

I discussed in Chapter 2, there was an urgency to present a unified democratic country to the world during the Cold War, but there was also a proper way to be Other. Ricky Ricardo/Desi

Arnaz fulfilled this proper role (accommodationist, middle class, white), while “wetbacks” and

Puerto Ricans did not. Although Puerto Ricans were legally U.S. citizens since 1917, the common discourse was that they were immigrants and therefore foreigners. As an influx of

Puerto Ricans came to the mainland in the 1950s looking for employment and opportunity, popular sources connected them with poverty, criminal activity, and degradation. The legacy of colonialism also became part of their identity as Puerto Ricans and as Americans. I examine how the portrayals of Puerto Ricans changed from the 1950s to the 1970s, how Puerto Ricans responded to those images, and the various ways they demanded not only legal citizenship, but also social citizenship.

Chapter 5 argues that by the 1960s Latinos, particularly Mexican Americans, began to form organizations to specifically combat images of themselves in popular culture through the written word, through boycotts, and through picketing. Historians have spent countless hours analyzing and discussing the Civil Rights Movement, but few, until recently, have focused their scholarly endeavors beyond the white/black paradigm.25 Also, even fewer have investigated the

25 Examples of books on the Civil Rights Movement include: Carol Anderson, Eyes off the Prize: The United Nations and the African American Struggle for Human Rights, 1944-55 (New York, NY: Cambridge University

13 role of popular culture to discriminate against a group of people, but also serve as a form of political resistance. Like I have discussed in previous chapters, advertisements, television shows, and films portrayed Latinos as biologically inferior, lazy, and criminal and denied them citizenship and a sense of belonging in American society. This chapter argues that by 1968 several Latino media advocacy groups, including the Involvement of Mexican-Americans in

Gainful Endeavors (IMAGE), the National Mexican American Anti-Defamation Committee

(NMAADC), Nosotros, Justicia, and Mexican Americans for Political Action (MAPA), organized nationally to protest the depiction of Mexican Americans. This wide range of organizations included radicals, militants, congressmen, government officials, and Hollywood actors. Although I provide several examples of the images these groups targeted, the two main ones I discuss in this chapter are the Frito Bandito advertising campaign and the television character José Jiménez. This chapter also begins the discussion and the contestation of authenticity that appears primarily in Chapter 6.

Chapter 6 argues there was a tension evident in the 1970s and early 1980s between the issue of authenticity and organizing as a collective marginalized group. The Civil Rights

Movement had opened up the opportunity for groups to demand accurate representation of their ethnicities and cultures. They demanded citizenship and inclusion, but on their own terms, without having to assimilate. My main focus in this chapter is on the television series Chico and the Man and the protests of the film Fort Apache, the Bronx. Freddie Prinze, who played Chico on Chico and the Man, faced criticism because he was Puerto Rican (or Hungarican as he called

Press, 2003), Thomas Borstlemann, The Cold War and the Color Line: American Race Relations in the Global Arena (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), John Dittmer, Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1994), Mary Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), Jason Sokol, There Goes My Everything: White Southerners in the Age of Civil Rights, 1945-1975 (New York, NY: Knopf, 2006), Penny Von Eschen, Satchmo Blows Up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), and Von Eschen, Race Against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism, 1937-57 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997).

14 himself) and many said he was not able to accurately play a Chicano. Prinze responded that

Latinos should work together not against each other. Here, the issue of authenticity became the point of debate and was complicated by the idea that marginalized groups needed to work together to accomplish equality in American society. Historians have recently begun exploring the relationships of non-white groups to each other in the twentieth century and this chapter adds to the discussion. The celebration of an authentic and distinct group and the collaboration of marginalized groups was often at odds, but these two worked well together in several cases, one of them being the joint protests of Puerto Ricans and African Americans against the film Fort

Apache, the Bronx.

“From Conformity to Protest” examines how Latinos navigated through the ever- changing concepts of identity, race/ethnicity, and citizenship. From the 1930s images of the

Latin lover to the 1970s images of the militant Chicano or the image of a Cuban American family like the Peñas on ¿Qué Pasa, U.S.A.?, Latino characters became increasingly diverse and more emotionally complicated on television and in film. From the 1930s to the 1980s, Latino representations went through a transformation, not only because of the political opening created by the Civil Rights Movement and the institutional shift toward inclusion exemplified by the rise in liberalism, the reexamination of democratic ideals, and multiculturalism, but also because of

Latinos’ involvement in changing these images. It was also at this time that the Latino population grew immensely in the U.S. due to immigration, migration in the case of Puerto Rico, and natural population growth, which gave Latinos more of a sense of community and cohesion. More and more Latinos became invested in the American dream of equality and prosperity and demanded their rightful place. The stereotypes did not completely disappear, but many challenged them and how they cast them as eternal “alien citizens.”

15 Chapter 1: Good Neighbor Rhetoric in Popular Culture, 1930s-1950s

Introduction

Johnny Ramírez was an ambitious young man from Los Angeles’s “Mexican Quarter” determined to change his life as a juvenile delinquent. He worked hard and graduated from night school aspiring to become a successful lawyer like his idol Abraham Lincoln. He was on this path to achieving the American Dream, but it all slipped away because of his temper. During

Johnny’s first legal case, the defendant’s lawyer called him a “cheap shyster,” and Johnny reacted by strangling him. The judge disbarred him and he then went to a border town in search of riches, but ultimately faced more rejection and failure before he headed back home. In his community church, the priest asked Johnny where he was headed next. “Back where I belong,

Padre. With my own people,” Johnny replied.1 This response indicated he was headed back to the segregated “Mexican Quarter” to live out his life since he could not compete alongside his

Anglo peers.

Two years prior to the release of this film, Bordertown (1935), President Franklin

Roosevelt said in his inaugural address, he “would dedicate this Nation to the policy of the good neighbor—the neighbor who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others...”2 If the U.S. treated its international neighbors better, they would be more likely to trade and become political and military allies in moments of global conflict. The federal government, corporations like the United Fruit Company, and the Hollywood film industry engaged in promoting Roosevelt’s ideas of a good neighbor internationally through the media, but there were also products from these same industries, like the film Bordertown, whose

1 Bordertown, 1935. Inventory Number: VA1525 M, UCLA Film and Television Archive, University of California, Los Angeles, California. 2 Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, “Franklin D. Roosevelt: Inaugural Address, March 4, 1933,” The American Presidency Project, accessed March 10, 2017, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=14473.

16 messages excluded U.S. citizens of Latin American origin from American society and effectively from the Good Neighbor discourse. The pervasive rhetoric of mutual understanding and cooperation from the 1930s through the 1950s only applied to foreigners beyond the nation’s borders not to neighbors within them.

This chapter discusses the Good Neighbor Policy not as a strictly foreign policy initiative, as historians have traditionally written about it, but instead it explores the policy’s cultural implications, including the tension between America’s foreign policy pronouncements and the domestic circumstances of inequality and discrimination. As many scholars of transnationalism and “U.S. and the World” argue, foreign initiatives and domestic constructs are inseparable as domestic prejudices and behaviors affected the development and implementation of foreign policy measures.3 Latin America is an important place of analysis, as historian Greg Grandin argues, because it was the United States’ workshop, or testing ground, in terms of political, economic, and cultural policy and many of the tactics used in Latin America as part of the Good

Neighbor Policy became global during the Cold War.4

Another component to this discussion is the role of the federal government as the singular controlling apparatus in the implementation of policy. More recently historians have examined

3 Books that connect cultural initiatives with foreign policy throughout the world include: Laura A. Belmonte, Selling the American Way: U.S. Propaganda and the Cold War (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), Carl Bon Tempo, Americans at the Gate: The United States and Refugees during the Cold War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008), Gilbert M. Joseph, Catherine C. LeGrand, and Ricardo D. Salvatore, eds. Close Encounters of Empire: Writing the Cultural History of U.S.-Latin American Relations (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998), Christina Klein, Cold War Orientalism: Asia in the Middlebrow Imagination, 1945-1961 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003), Melani McAlister, Epic Encounters: Culture, Media, and U.S. Interests in the Middle East, 1945-2000 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001), Dennis Merrill, Negotiating Paradise: U.S. Tourism and Empire in Twentieth-Century Latin America, (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2009), Louis A. Pérez, Jr., On Becoming Cuban: Identity, Nationality, and Culture (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1999), Mary A. Renda, Taking Haiti: Military Occupation and the Culture of U.S. Imperialism, 1915–1940 (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2001), Jason Ruiz, Americans in the Treasure House: Travel to Porfirian Mexico and Cultural Politics of Empire (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2014), Penny Von Eschen, Satchmo Blows Up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004). 4 Greg Grandin, Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism (New York, NY: Henry Holt and Company, 2006).

17 the interconnection among the federal government, civil society, and the private sector in governing and how all three influenced American society.5 This chapter examines how the

Office of Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (OCIAA) of the federal government, the entertainment industry, and the massive corporation United Fruit Company (UFCO) worked together often to sell Latin America to the ordinary U.S. citizen.6 The state and the private sector cooperated in governing and in making policy.

This chapter argues popular culture provides a fruitful place to explore the embodiment of both the foreign/domestic tensions and the entanglement of the public and private sectors.

Popular culture painted a superficial and idealistic picture of Latin Americans, which excluded them from participating as equal members of the United States. The federal government and

UFCO attempted to humanize those south of the border to explicitly express commonalities among all Americans in the hemisphere. Though, the UFCO also wanted to sell more products to

U.S. Americans by using the ideology of the Good Neighbor. The entertainment industry was more obvious in its intentions often relying on established stereotypes of exoticism and novelty.

These were the images Americans encountered the most, which affirmed that the United States did not see their neighbors as equals.7 The federal government, the entertainment industry, and the UFCO used the media and popular culture to disseminate international diplomatic policy into the everyday lives of Americans. Americans were participants in this narrative whether they

5 Brian Balogh discusses what he calls this associational turn. Brian Balogh, The Associational State: American Governance in the Twentieth Century (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015). 6 Although many of the films this chapter discusses, like Bordertown, were not directly part of the official Good Neighbor Policy, but they were nonetheless evaluated by agencies within the federal government for material that may offend our good neighbors. The UFCO had a quid pro quo understanding with the federal government since the early twentieth century. The government protected the interests of the corporation and the corporation assisted in enacting the Good Neighbor Policy. 7 Mary E. Stuckey, The Good Neighbor: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Rhetoric of American Power (East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2013), 22.

18 knew it or not. This approach was part of a larger push to include mundane cultural aspects into the process of political or economic change.8

Not only does this chapter examine the ways popular culture portrayed Latin Americans from 1930s through the 1950s in films, advertisements, and travel articles, but it also examines how popular culture portrayed Latinos and how these portrayals changed over time. Latinos, those of Latin American extraction living in the U.S., fared worse in popular culture depictions than people in Latin America. Latin Americans were exotic, exciting, foreign, and most importantly over there, not here. When they crossed the border they became menacing figures who threatened American society. Latinos lived with these images and the related ideas surrounding issues of citizenship and inclusion. At the same time the U.S. promoted friendship abroad, American localities deported, or “repatriated,” Mexican people from the U.S., many of whom were U.S. citizens. It was during this juncture that historian George J. Sánchez argues the

Mexican-American identity was born. Those left behind by the repatriations reevaluated their identities and engaged in oppositional politics.9 Latinos took advantage of this moment and used the rhetoric of the Good Neighbor and of the global war to demand inclusion into American society. Like Sánchez, other scholars have connected the beginning of identity formation for

Mexican Americans to the 1930s.10 This chapter adds to that literature by incorporating the

8 Historians and other scholars have recently shifted to examining culture and cultural exchange as a significant avenue to study diplomacy or “soft power.” Some recent examples include: Dennis Merrill’s Negotiating Paradise (2009), Darlene J. Sadlier’s Americans All: Good Neighbor Cultural Diplomacy in World War II (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2012), and Christopher Endy’s Cold War Holidays: American Tourism in France (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2004). Although some scholars like Ian Tyrrell (Reforming the World: The Creation of America’s Moral Empire, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010) argue this was not necessarily “soft power” in action but, rather, cultural hegemony. 9 George J. Sánchez, Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900- 1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 13. 10 Richard A. García made this claim earlier in a paper presented at the 1979 American Historical Association meeting and then published a chapter based on the paper “The Mexican American Mind: A Product of the 1930s,” in History, Culture, and Society: Chicano Studies in the 1980s, ed. the National Association for Chicano Studies (Ypsilanti, MI: Bilingual Press, 1983), 67-93. Also see Mario T. García, Mexican Americans: Leadership, Ideology, and Identity, 1930-1960 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991).

19 narrative of the Good Neighbor Policy to the formation of a Mexican-American identity and the struggle for recognition as U.S. citizens. The media portrayed Latin Americans as white with ethnicity as a distinguishing marker defined by language and mannerisms. The context of the

Great Depression and the eugenics movement racialized Latinos in the U.S. and connected them to poverty and inferior racial stock. While the discourse of this foreign policy attempted to positively sell Latin America and its people to white Americans as allies and friends, it largely ignored or vilified Latinos in the U.S.

The United Fruit Company and the OCIAA Sell the Good Neighbor

President Herbert Hoover in 1928 began promoting the idea of a Good Neighbor Policy in Latin America as an attempt to right the wrongs of American economic, political, and military domination. When Europe and Asia became engulfed in war, the U.S. felt inclined to improve relations with Latin American countries.11 The region was a valuable ally to the United States both in terms of resources and military and political strategy. The United Fruit Company

(UFCO) controlled large swaths of land in Latin America and played a critical part in showing how the rhetoric of the Good Neighbor went beyond high politics. Through the methods they used to market their products, UFCO also influenced the daily lives of Americans. The UFCO and the federal government used the rhetoric of the Good Neighbor Policy for economic and political gain disguised as “goodwill” into the 1950s. Both of these entities wanted Americans to have a sense of familial obligation toward their neighbors to the south, their fellow “Americans.”

The UFCO sought to achieve this through a recipe campaign while the federal government,

11 Stewart Brewer, Borders and Bridges: A History of U.S.-Latin American Relations (Westport, CT: Praeger Security International, 2006), 103.

20 through the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, regulated the images of Latin

Americans on film.

UFCO aimed to create feelings of goodwill towards the particular area in Latin America where all of their business ventures occurred, in what UFCO called “Middle America.” Middle

America consisted of countries bordering or in the Caribbean Sea.12 UFCO hired Edward L.

Bernays as its public relations counsel in the early 1940s and he developed the Middle American

Information Bureau (MAIB) to maintain and increase United Fruit’s visibility in the North

American market.13 Bernays developed a strategy to sell Middle America to ordinary Americans by making them care about it in some capacity and introducing them to new UFCO products.14

Embracing this region as part of their everyday lives was one of the approaches in this successful campaign. A way to accomplish this goal was to spread recipes that included Middle American products through media outlets especially print and radio. Newspapers all over the U.S. also carried numerous articles on Middle America reaching nationally known papers such as the

Chicago Sun-Times to lesser-known papers in locations like Duluth, Minnesota and Bangor,

Maine.15

The recipes brought Middle America to the tables of Americans. The Americas were breaking bread together, literally. Media outlets featured recipes on stuffed peppers, chicken and rice, eggs and cactus, honey nougat (turron), and avocado with shredded pineapple.16 Several

12This included Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic. Haiti was included in this grouping, but rarely used in propaganda. The focus was on the Spanish-speaking countries. The Middle American Information Bureau, Middle America and the United States: Their Interdependence (New York, NY: United Fruit Company, 1943). 13 Larry Tye, The Father of the Spin: Edward L. Bernays and the Father of Public Relations (New York, NY: Henry Holt and Company, 1998), 161. 14 Ibid., 162-63. 15 Activities Report on Cooperation Secured Between American Leaders and Opinion Molders and Middle America Information Bureau, June 1945, Box I: 365, Edward L. Bernays Papers (hereafter ELB Papers), Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (hereafter LOC). 16 Scrapbook of newspaper clippings, Box I: 684, 685, ELB Papers, Manuscript Division, LOC.

21 directors of women’s radio programs commented on how successful these recipes were and how they promoted feelings of hemispheric harmony. June Wynn from WJPF in Herrin, Illinois said,

“Recipes, I feel are an excellent ‘understanding bridge’ between countries.” Eleanor Moore from

WSBT in South Bend, Indiana said, “Your material is very interesting. I feel it helps improve

Latin American relationships.”17 These women felt that they were doing their part in creating and maintaining hemispheric friendships through food. The Bureau often targeted women based on the assumption that they were housewives and the preparers of meals and they also assumed that women had a “natural neighborliness.”18 This symbolic familial connection of sharing food created a sense that these countries were at the same table and shared the same mission as part of the same family.

The Middle America Information Bureau’s use of familial connections to Middle

America was not limited to women; men also expressed feelings of familial associations. Frank

Green of Mid-Continent Airlines, Inc. wrote that “In this continent we are all Americans, all members of the same family…instead of thinking of the countries to the south of the United

States as ‘good neighbors,’ we should consider them brothers, and that our relations with them should he conducted with the intimacy due a member of the family.”19 S. Ralph Cohen, managing editor of National Aeronautics, agreed that “we are members of the world family…the ten countries of Middle America are our very close cousins.”20 The Bureau wanted Americans to have personal connections to Middle America by selling the idea of a good neighbor or family

17 Report of Public Relations Activities Middle America Information Bureau, April and May 1947, Box I: 367, ELB Papers, Manuscript Division, LOC. 18 The Middle America Information Bureau, Activities Program for Women’s Organizations (New York, NY: United Fruit Company, 1948), 2. 19 The Middle America Information Bureau, Every American has a Personal Stake in Our Relations with Middle America (New York, NY: United Fruit Company, 1945), 13. 20 Ibid., 30.

22 member.21 From the Bureau’s perspective, Americans would become familiar with the exotic

“Other” (the people and their tropical produce) through this campaign, but also feel obligated to their neighbor and hence buy their product.

The United Fruit Company had a tumultuous relationship with its host countries in the twentieth century in terms of exploiting its peoples and resources, but the U.S. government had often supported and protected United Fruit politically since it saw the company as a progressive force in a volatile place.22 During the Good Neighbor era, UFCO tried treating its host countries more respectfully and decreased its image as an oppressive power to promote the federal government’s Good Neighbor initiatives in Latin America.23 United Fruit even assisted when the

Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (OCIAA) wanted to film travelogues depicting the area, but the government also had its own programs to spread the word on hemispheric unity.24 Under F.D.R., the federal government created several agencies and departments, such as the Division of Cultural Relations of the Department of State and the

Interdepartmental Committee on Co-Operation with the American Republics, to head cultural activities in Latin America in support of the Good Neighbor Policy.25 The longest lasting and most expansive was the Office of Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (OCIAA) headed by

Nelson Rockefeller, which served as a liaison between government agencies to coordinate commercial and cultural policy in Latin America.26

21 Christian Klein analyzes this familial relationship in connection to Asia, but her focus is on the adoption of Asia as a child, both literally and figuratively. See Christina Klein, Cold War Orientalism. 22 Jason M. Colby, The Business of Empire: United Fruit, Race, and U.S. Expansion in Central America (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011), 101. 23 Ibid., 182. 24 Pennee Bender, “Film as an Instrument of the Good Neighbor Policy, 1930s-1950s” (PhD diss., New York University, 2002), 119. 25 Edward O. Guerrant, Roosevelt’s Good Neighbors (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1950), 117. 26 Ibid., 120.

23 The OCIAA worked with the entertainment industry to promote the idea of the Good

Neighbor, although often not overtly. Government officials persuaded Hollywood studios to direct their attention to Latin American markets to not only regain the millions of dollars in foreign revenue lost when Germany banned U.S. films throughout the territory it occupied during WWII, but also to spread the ideology of good neighborliness. This initiative included changing the way films depicted Latin America.27 At the same time, these studios sent celebrities, namely actors and musicians, to Latin American countries to spread the good neighborly love. In 1941, for example, actor and musician Desi Arnaz appeared in an engagement in Mexico alongside Hollywood stars such as Clark Gable, Bing Crosby, Norma

Shearer, and Mickey Rooney.28 Arnaz thought that the Good Neighbor Policy “was a wonderful idea and meant to get the people of North America, especially those who lived in the United

States, a little closer to the people who lived below the Rio Grande, not just in Mexico but in all

Latin American countries.” He knew the real reason he was on this trip with such A-listers: “I was on the trip not because I was in that same class. The only reason I was sent there is because they wanted me to get a reaction from the Mexican people about Mr. Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor

Policy.” When he returned, the State Department and the Rockefeller Foundation wanted to know how the Mexican people felt about this policy. Arnaz stated that they were suspicious.

They told him: “What is this all of a sudden? We’ve been here for a hundred and fifty years, nobody paid a goddamn bit of attention to us. All of a sudden they say, ‘I want to be your friend.’” He was content to help his government, but he was critical of sending men as ambassadors who did not know the language and were imposing this policy on a people who had

27 Ibid., 115. 28 Harry M. Benshoff and Sean Griffin, America on Film: Representing Race, Class, Gender and Sexuality at the Movies (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), 140-41.

24 been largely ignored before.29 Foreign policy and popular culture became irrevocably intertwined.

The OCIAA relied heavily on film as a medium to persuade the American public and took measures to monitor the portrayals of Latin America. Since approximately two-thirds of the

U.S. population went to the movies each week, Hollywood films, shorts, and newsreels were the most effective way to reach the American people. The OCIAA Motion Picture Division’s 1945 report claimed to have influenced 288 feature films and assisted in the production and distribution of 1,700 newsreels stories.30 They used Hollywood studios and filmmakers. In order to get the Latin American perspective, the OCIAA hired Addison Durland. Durland was Cuban- born and a former Latin American representative of the National Broadcasting Company. He then became part of the Production Code Administration, which the Motion Pictures Producers and Distributors Association had created in 1934 to review every film script and production.

Durland oversaw material related to Latin America and prohibited any negative depictions.31

This was especially important since some Latin American nations, like Mexico and Panama, had previously instituted bans on U.S. films in the 1920s due to the negative portrayal of Latin

Americans.32 However, this approach was not entirely successful. Durland was essentially a one- person department and his aim became to appease Latin American elites by showing them as urban and light-skinned.33 Racial hierarchies overruled the pursuit of authenticity.34 Durland was

29 Desi Arnaz, A Book (New York: Warner Books, Inc., 1976), 156-58. 30 Bender, 92-93. 31 Ibid., 112. 32 Allen Woll, The Latin Image in American Film (Los Angeles, CA: UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 1980), 17-18. 33 Brian O’Neil, “The Demands of Authenticity: Addison Durland and Hollywood’s Latin Images during World War II,” in Classic Hollywood, Classic Whiteness, ed. Daniel Bernardi (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), 386. It is also important to note that although Latin American cinema had stereotypes about certain segments of their own population, they did not coincide with American depictions. Mexican cinema, for example, focused more on the changes in life and identity after the Mexican Revolution, such as modernization. Mexico went through a golden age (1935 to 1955) when Mexican filmmakers wanted to separate themselves from Hollywood and

25 also not concerned about the depictions of Latinos in the U.S. as he placed characters in U.S. states rather than have the story take place in Latin America and possibly insult Latin American countries.35 Despite his best efforts, the stereotypes of the simpleton, the greaser, the bandit, the sexy señorita, and combinations of those did not go away. Since so many of the stereotypes related to Latin Americans were so ingrained in the American psyche, they were common tropes for filmmakers. In these years, they shifted, however. As historian Allen L. Woll argues,

“Hollywood abruptly reversed the old stereotypes” from depicting the Latin as an ignorant peasant and replaced it with another stereotype: musical and sensual.36

Although the film Down Argentine Way starring Betty Grable and Carmen Miranda was technically filmed before the OCIAA formed, it showed how ineffective it was to censor the demeaning and inaccurate depictions of Latin Americans. In 1939, studio executive and filmmaker Daryl Zanuck wanted to make a film that was located in Argentina that featured “the

South American-Portuguese samba.” From the beginning this film seemed to spell disaster since

Zanuck did not know the difference between Argentina, which is not Portuguese or connected to samba, and Brazil, where samba actually originated. This became the 1940 film Down Argentine

Way. This film featured one inaccuracy and stereotype after another. Carmen Miranda, a

Brazilian, sang in Portuguese (Argentines speak Spanish), a character danced the rumba (a

Cuban dance), and Latin Americans were the butt of jokes including how lazy or mischievous

create a distinctly Mexican cinema where national identity was a significant aspect of that process. In the narrative of modernization, there was an effort to culturally “uplift” the indigenous peoples. Carl Mora argues that “Indianist” films were the “distinguishing feature of the Mexican cinema” in the 1930s through the 1950s. Unlike the bandits in U.S. films, “[T]he moviegoers in the Mexican capital were for the most part unfamiliar with the Hollywood Western’s portrayal of the ‘Mexican greasers’ so familiar to American Western folklore.” Carl J. Mora, Mexican Cinema: Reflections of a Society, 1896-2004, 3rd ed. (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2005), 42, 23. Joanne Hershfield, “Race and Ethnicity in Classical Cinema,” in Mexico’s Cinema: A Century of Film and Filmmakers, eds. Joanne Hershfield and David R. Maciel (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, Inc., 1999), 81-82, 86. 34 O’Neil, 370. 35 For example, he changed Brazilians to Portuguese and Mexican locales to Texas. O’Neil, 376. 36 Woll, 62-63.

26 they were.37 Reviews were not overwhelmingly positive in the U.S., but they did connect the film to the rhetoric of the Good Neighbor Policy. One New York Times reviewer stated that the movie “will excite a powerful lot of good neighborliness in the countries south of us” especially among the men of South America as they “will bubble with amity when they see Miss [Betty]

Grable.”38 The sexual attractiveness of Grable offered men in both South and North America something they could enjoy in common. When it was released in the United States, the OCIAA responded to the negative images and persuaded the studio to spend thousands of dollars to edit the movie before it was released in Latin America. The film passed Argentine censors, but received negative reviews from audiences in that country.39 U.S. attitudes and prejudices towards

Latin Americans were still evident in the film and Argentinian audiences rejected it. The censors tried to prevent negative images of Latin Americans in American-made films, but there were still plenty of bandits, lazy peons, and hot-blooded Latin lovers.40

The OCIAA worked with Walt Disney Studios on the animated films Three Caballeros and Saludos Amigos in an effort to bring the Good Neighbor Policy and information of the region to a larger audience of Americans. The State Department even oversaw the script and storyline.41

In 1941, Walt Disney and company went on a tour of Latin America for research and promotion of goodwill. They met with locals, government officials, musicians, and others to get a sense of the culture. They even hired some Latin Americans as consultants, but often did not take their feedback.42 Interestingly, the films were financially successful in Latin America.43 Even though animators from the Disney studios tried to show Latin America without prejudice in Saludos

37 Bender, 123. 38 Bosley Crowther, “’Down Argentine Way,’ With Betty Grable, at Roxy,” The New York Times, October 18, 1940, 25. 39 Bender, 124. 40 Ibid., 17. 41 Ibid., 110. 42 Ibid., 142. 43 Ibid., 141-43. Some speculate this was because Donald Duck, the American, was a cantankerous and volatile jerk.

27 Amigos and Three Caballeros, it was impossible. They romanticized and exoticized the locations and the people. As scholar Julianne Burton notes, “The Latin is rendered synonymous with license and licentiousness.”44 In Three Caballeros particularly, Mexican women on the beach lavished Donald Duck, the fowl from the United States, with a lot of flirty attention. Panchito, the rooster who represented Mexicans, carried pistols and wore a sombrero resembling the bandit stereotype common in early silent films.45 These two images reinforced the sexual and violent nature of Latin Americans. Despite efforts of the United Fruit Company and the U.S. federal government to create familial ties to Latin America (even if it was for economic or political gain), the Good Neighbor remained foreign, which was part of the mystique.

Latin Americans on Film

During F.D.R’s era of idealistic goodwill, the film industry continued to use the same tropes they had been using since the late 1800s to portray the Latin American/Latino/a population: the simpleton, the greaser, the bandit, the sexy señorita, and combinations of those.

Scholar Frank Javier Garcia Berumen argues in his survey of Latinos in film that Latino—both

Latin Americans and U.S. citizens of Latin American descent—characters degenerated in the

1930s because they were less capable of controlling violent or sexual passions.46 Films both with and without government involvement depicted these characters with wild tempers and sexual prowess and/or as lazy and incompetent. Latin American countries also offered moviegoers an escape to an exotic locale that offered love, lust, mystery, and adventure. In the 1930s, many

44 Julianne Burton, “Don (Juanito) Duck and the Imperial-Patriarchal Unconscious: Disney Studios, the Good Neighbor Policy, and the Packaging of Latin America,” in Nationalisms and Sexualities, eds. Andrew Parker, Mary Russo, Doris Sommer, and Patricia Yaeger (New York, NY: Routledge, 1992), 32. 45 Walt Disney Caballeros Collection: Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros, directed by Norman Ferguson (1942, 1945; Burbank, CA: Buena Vista Home Entertainment, Inc., 2008), DVD. 46 Frank Javier Garcia Berumen, Brown Celluloid: Latino/a Film Icons and Images in the Hollywood Film Industry, vol. I: 1894–1959 (New York, N.Y.: Vantage Press, Inc., 2003), 94.

28 films, especially those starring Lupe Velez, showed how volatile Latin Americans were and that they did not easily assimilate to American norms and behaviors. There was a brief turn to more sympathetic characters in the 1940s in war-related films, such as Bataan and A Medal for Benny, which depicted Latinos as hard working and vital to the national fabric, but these were short- lived.47 In the 1940s and 1950s, actor Ricardo Montalbán became the go-to Latin lover playing a

Brazilian, a Mexican, and a “South American.” Hollywood created superficially interesting and exotic characters for Americans to devour in their desire for entertainment and escape.

The two most common attributes Latin characters had in films during the heyday of the

Good Neighbor era were an out-of-control temper and overt sexuality. Lupe Velez offered both of those. She made a career of losing her temper. Velez appeared in several films during the

1930s as Carmelita Fuentes, a talented Mexican singer and dancer, who had an incredibly short temper. Velez’s character pushed the envelope on acceptable behavior for women. When angered, she reverted to yelling in Spanish and throwing objects at people. She also liked

“men’s” activities like basketball, wrestling, racing, drinking, and bar hopping. People called her a firecracker because of her explosive nature to the point of even starting a brawl on her wedding day. Her husband’s aunt insisted that she would not accept this “Mexican Wildcat” as her niece.

The comparison to an animal dehumanized Carmelita, but she seemed unaffected. She was a lovable hothead, but not the person white Americans accepted as an equal. She pushed the norms of her gender, but was able to do so because she was not a proper lady to begin with.48 Lupe

Velez’s popularity depended on her displaying the expectations of a Latin American woman,

47 Berumen, 215. Allen L. Woll argues that the Good Neighbor Policy “reversed a…Latin stereotype of the violent, dirty, and lazy South American, and presented a continent with educated classes and indigenous tribes with a valid culture” and that “By the end of the war, the Latin had become a familiar film fixture, portrayed as basically equal to white Yankees and only slightly different in culture.” I contest this assessment since stereotypes continued. Woll, 67. 48 The Girl from Mexico, 1939. Inventory Number: DVD9664 and Mexican Spitfire, 1940. Inventory Number: DVD9664, UCLA Film and Television Archive, University of California, Los Angeles, California.

29 sexy, desirable, loud, and fiery. She was an interesting object to gaze upon, but not desirable within the family. This reaffirmed the idea of the Good Neighbor: they were enjoyable to watch, but needed to stay over there. Filmmakers not only connected the stereotype of sexual allure and unpredictable behavior to individuals like Carmelita, but countries, including Cuba and Brazil, also embodied these traits on film.

Many scholars have written about how Cuba was the playground for North Americans in the twentieth century since the country offered excitement, mystery, and romance.49 According to the film Week-End in Havana (1941), the island offered romance and enjoyment as you gambled or danced the night away, but it also showed Cuban men as sneaky and disloyal scoundrels who took advantage of women. Nan Spencer, played by Alice Faye, was a single

American woman who went to Havana searching for a good time and love, possibly marriage.

She met Monte Blanca (Cesar Romero) who thought Nan was wealthy and tried every way to con her out of her cash. He was also in a relationship with another woman, Rosita Rivas (Carmen

Miranda). Monte Blanca was the Latin lover and the criminal rolled into one.50 He was suave and romantic and a tad bit manipulative. These characters also appeared in Brazil.

In Latin Lovers (1953), Brazil offered Americans a taste of the exotic with dark, handsome men, mystery, sexual excitement, and a dash of danger. Ricardo Montalbán starred as the Latin lover in this movie, a character he was linked to for decades. In this film, a rich

American businesswoman, who had difficulties finding suitable beaus because of her position of power, found her match in Brazil. Nora Taylor (Lana Turner) wanted more aggression in her equally wealthy beau so they traveled to Brazil hoping its exotic essence would rub off on him.

49 Louis A. Pérez, Jr., Cuba in the American Imagination: Metaphor and the Imperial Ethos, (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2008), Pérez, On Becoming Cuban: Identity, Nationality, and Culture, Rosalie Schwartz, Pleasure Island: Tourism and Temptation in Cuba (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1997). 50 “Week End In Havana (Aconteceu Em Havana - 1941/LEGENDADO),” YouTube video, 1:20:35, posted by CarmenMirandaFC, March 15, 2014, https://youtu.be/qS2S5YCsy4Q.

30 She fell for a local instead. Their encounters were straight out of a romance novel. They quietly exchanged looks. He, Roberto Santos (Montalbán), passionately kissed Nora without them ever speaking a word to each other. Their paths crossed that evening and he literally carried her off the dance floor in his strong, bronzed arms. The bliss did not last. Roberto lost his temper and accused Nora of disrespecting him by showing up late to a meeting. They reconciled, but then came the time to discuss Nora’s money. Both Roberto and Nora felt uncomfortable about Nora’s wealth; therefore Nora agreed to give Roberto her money to remedy the situation.51 Ricardo

Montalbán said that this movie was supposed to make you laugh, “The story was nonsensical, but fun.” He argued that there was “nothing detrimental about the Latin lover.”52 However, there were many serious implications in this film. A woman only found happiness if she was economically dependent on a man. American women relied on their men for support not vice versa. Roberto Santos was an insecure, controlling man with a short temper, but this sense of

“danger” was something Americans apparently wanted. It played to the expectations American audiences had about Brazil and Latin America. It was foreign, but also familiar in a sense that audiences knew what to expect of the characters. The transfer of money between Nora and

Roberto also kept masculinity and patriarchy in place at the top where Americans expected them to be.

Montalbán would play the irresistible Latin lover in many films, but another worth discussing is the 1949 Neptune’s Daughter. This film starred Estelle Williams and followed two couples and the confusions that ensued as a result of mistaken identity. Betty Barrett (Betty

Garrett) mistook Jack Spratt (Red Skelton) for the South American polo player Jose O'Rourke

51 Latin Lovers, 1953. Inventory Number: VA22619M, UCLA Film and Television Archive, University of California, Los Angeles, California. 52 The Bronze Screen: Ricardo Montalbán, Tapes 1-3 M120465, VA70001, UCLA Film and Television Archive, University of California, Los Angeles, California.

31 (Montalbán). Jack pretended to be “Latin” in hopes of attracting Betty. When she prepared food for their first date, she made sure it was heavily spiced because “they like it hot.” They used jumbled up words of people, places, and things associated with Latin culture to communicate, such as Babalú and Sacramento, since neither knew the language. One of the few actual Latin

Americans in the film was bandleader Xavier Cugat. He performed throughout the film with

“Latina” women who danced with their exposed midriffs while balancing lit candles. One woman played an instrument sprawled on a piano with overflowing cleavage reinforcing the image of the sexually available Latin woman. The most famous performance and an Academy

Award winner for Best Original Song was “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.”53 Montalbán sang to Eve

(Esther Williams) as she attempted to leave his home for the evening. He gave her excuse after excuse of why she could not leave. Eve politely declined his advances, but eventually gave in to his Latin wiles. After all, Montalbán was an irresistible entity from the country of “South

America.”54 The Good Neighbor rhetoric appeared in this film when a co-worker persuaded Eve to meet with this foreign visitor for the sake of “Good Neighbor relations,” but this was not what the characters thought about while they consorted with their transcontinental guests.

In another Williams-Montalbán collaboration, Fiesta (1947), the film opened thanking the Mexican government and people for their cooperation during the creation of the film. This movie recounted the story of the family of a famous matador and his desire to have his son carry on his legacy. The son, Mario played by Montalbán, wanted to write music instead and became a successful composer in the end. This film contested the stereotypes about “Latins” as one- dimensional. They are not all bullfighters nor are they all dark or poor. This film focused on a light-skinned, upper class family. The entertainment paper Variety stated that Fiesta was made

53 This song now plays incessantly during the holiday season every December. 54 Neptune’s Daughter, directed by Edward Buzzell (1949; Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 2007), DVD.

32 for Mexican-American goodwill. “[T]he substance of ‘Fiesta’…is the atmosphere and color of the country south of the Rio Grande. All characters are treated with dignity and authority. There is no accent on the peonage; emphasis on the culture of the country is personified through the highly respected maestro…this is in contrast to the mass idolatry for the matador.”55 It challenged the perceptions Americans had of Mexicans, but at the same time reinforced the idea that this family was in some way an exception to the rule. The culture appeared refined, but there was also a “mass idolatry for the matador.” This film attempted to change the perception of our

Mexican neighbors at the expense of the poorer, darker populations of Latin American. They wanted the characters to be seem approachable to white, middle class moviegoers.

Montalbán was involved in various films connected to the larger Good Neighbor mission, whether political or social. He felt closely linked to this objective considering he was born in

Mexico and made his living in the U.S. He pushed the envelope a little more in his work, still within an acceptable range of subversion, by his involvement in a film about human trafficking at the border. Montalbán said in interviews that most of his early films were supposed to be fun and silly, but one was more serious and indicative of his politics and humanitarianism. He was proud of his role in Border Incident (1949), which made significantly less money than his other films. Montalbán was Pablo Rodríguez, a Mexican special agent who teamed up with his

American counterpart Jack Bearnes (George Murphy) in an attempt to control an illegal alien smuggling ring operated by the ruthless Owen Parkson (Howard Da Silva). This film showed how undocumented immigrants experienced exploitation on both sides of the border. The deaths of so many braceros forced both governments to act and work together. Rodríguez went undercover as a bracero to expose the root of the problem. In the seedy underworld of the coyotes (the smugglers), American men were the ones in power while Mexicans were their

55 Abel, “Review of Fiesta,” Variety, June 18, 1947.

33 cronies. This could be read two ways: Mexicans were incapable of heading such a massive operation, or that whites were also responsible for the exploitation of others. At the end of the movie, the two governments honored Pablo and Jack with the highest honors and both governments now supposedly protected the workers. It showed cooperation between these two nations, but in reality, it was a much different story as smuggling rings continued (and still do).56

But, the idea that Hollywood addressed this issue was a progressive humanitarian step to right the image of Mexicans and Latin Americans. Montalbán said this film would “awaken the conscious of the public.”57 It did not seem to have the effect he wanted, though. One of the reviewers commented on how beautiful the scenery was, but remarked that the story was

“undistinguished” and that two of the actors were “amusing as venal Mexicans.”58 The message was lost on critics and on audiences. Few people saw it and fewer, if any, felt compelled to act, as Montalbán had hoped.

The Problematic Neighbor Within

The rhetoric of the Good Neighbor served its political and economic purposes, but once that good neighbor stepped across the border, Latin Americans were no longer the familial or fantastical neighbors; Latinos were nuisances in the United States. While promoting the Good

Neighbor Policy abroad, American society treated its Latino residents poorly by pushing many to leave the country or committing subtle or violent acts of discrimination against the population.

Historian Frederick B. Pike ponders: How did Americans who went in droves to see the art of

56 Border Incident, 1949, Inventory Number: DVD2931M, UCLA Film and Television Archive, University of California, Los Angeles, CA. 57 The Bronze Screen: Ricardo Montalbán, Tapes 4, 5 M120466, VA70002, UCLA Film and Television Archive, University of California, Los Angeles, CA. 58 Bosley Crowther, “‘Border Incident,’ Adventure Film About U.S. Immigration, Service, Opens at Globe,” The New York Times, November 21, 1949, 29, ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

34 Diego Rivera and expressed such fascination and desire for all things Mexican at the same time display “savage intolerance” for Mexican Americans in the United States? He concludes that it was the Great Depression that had created this paradox. “[I]t was easy enough to empathize with far-distant Latins, but not those close at hand and competing for jobs.” It was also possible to separate the product from the culture and community that produced it. 59 By the 1940s,

Americans welcomed bracero workers from Mexico to help with the war effort, but there was still considerable mistreatment of this group and of Mexican Americans despite the considerable sacrifices and contributions many made serving in the war industry and armed forces. The Great

Depression and the Sleepy Lagoon and Zoot Suit incidents brought the tensions between Anglos and Mexican Americans to the surface. This period of upheaval brought up the issue again of where Latinos belonged in American society. They were foreigners or Americans whenever it was convenient. Latinos did not allow this image to go unchallenged, however. They used the

Good Neighbor rhetoric to question inequality and demand inclusion into American society.

People within the Mexican community in the United States became scapegoats during the hard years of the Great Depression. Newspaper articles, films, and government officials portrayed all immigration from south of the border as most likely illegal and suggested that all of these immigrants, and Mexicans more generally, took away resources from “real,” meaning

Anglo, Americans. Many Mexican nationals left due to lack of jobs and intense discrimination.

Some cities, local businesses, and civic groups participated in repatriation campaigns that assisted Mexicans, even if they were U.S. citizens, in leaving the country.60 Scholars Francisco

59 Frederick B. Pike, FDR’s Good Neighbor Policy: Sixty Years of Generally Gentle Chaos (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1995), 104-05. 60 Brian Gratton and Emily Merchant, “Immigration, Repatriation, and Deportation: The Mexican-Origin Population in the United States, 1920-1950,” International Migration Review 47, no. 4 (December 2013): 951. Juan Ramon García, Operation Wetback: The Mass Deportation of Mexican Undocumented Workers in 1954 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1980), 21.

35 E. Balderrama and Raymond Rodríguez take issue with the word “repatriation.” They argue “the term was commonly used by officials because it denoted or conveyed the impression that the exodus was voluntary, although such was not true in the vast majority of cases.”61 Whatever the exact number, there is evidence of the removal of hundreds of thousands of people of mostly

Mexican extraction during a time when the country was trying to make allies.62 Some officials reframed this situation as a goodwill gesture because the U.S. was sending home Mexican nationals with skills who would ostensibly contribute to the economic and social modernization of Mexico.63

The Great Depression had considerable influence on the treatment of Latinos, but the antagonism had been brewing under the surface for the last few decades because of the National

Origins Act of 1924 and then the growing eugenics movement. The National Origins Act of 1924 placed strict quotas on immigration from Europe, but it excluded the Western hemisphere from quotas. The United States became more dependent on Mexican labor after the 1924 Act. By closing the door to Southern and Eastern Europe, “we are bringing in the worst possible kind, the

Mexican peon,” commented Stanford University President David Starr Jordan in 1925 to the

President of the Eugenics Record Office.64 Secondly, as evident from the context of Jordan’s comment, the eugenics movement was at its peak in the 1930s placing Latin Americans as

61 Francisco E. Balderrama and Raymond Rodríguez, Decade of Betrayal: Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2006), 305. 62 The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights published a report in 1980 said that about half a million people of Mexican descent, many of them U.S. citizens, had been deported. The state of California even publicly apologized for its role in the deportations placing the numbers well over one million. In recent scholarship, Brian Gratton and Emily Merchant dispute the claim that so many people were deported during the 1930s. They argue that census data indicates lower numbers, limited government involvement, and more voluntary departures. Their numbers are about 350,000 migrants out of the U.S., mostly voluntary. Gratton and Merchant, 944-945. 63 Stephanie Lewthwaite, Race, Place and Reform in Mexican Los Angeles: A Transnational Perspective, 1890-1940 (Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 2009), 215. 64 Michael Calderón-Zaks, “Debated Whiteness amid World Events: Mexican and Mexican-American Subjectivity and the U.S.’ Relations with the Americas, 1924-1936,” Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos 27, no 2 (Summer 2011): 333.

36 biologically inferior to white, European-descended Americans. Since the Act could not block these undesirables, eugenicists and restrictionists then encouraged repatriation.65

The state, through the efforts of national and local governments, made significant attempts to racialize Latinos and deny them the rights they technically had, but not without remarkable resistance. For example, the 1930 census was the only census that categorized

Mexicans as a separate race, though it was reversed in 1936 at the insistence of Mexican

American leaders who used the ideology of the Good Neighbor rhetoric to contest this categorization. What would the world think of this?, they inquired.66 In another incident in 1936, the city of El Paso, Texas announced its intent to classify Mexicans as “colored” in vital records.

There was an outcry from the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), whose members identified as white. Mexican newspapers commented that Mexico had always

“extended the hand of friendship to the American people” and felt this classification was unjust.

Ambassador Josephus Daniels commented that putting Mexicans into the same category as

Negroes offended them. The Department of State and Department of Census then changed the racial category back to white and called it a “regrettable mistake.”67 A similar discussion occurred in Corpus Christi in 1941. A newspaper article revealed that there was some disagreement over the classification of Mexicans there. Corpus Christi recorded births and deaths in three different classifications: Negro, Mexican, and white. LULAC objected to this classification saying that “persons of Mexican extraction who are citizens of the United States

65 Ibid., 341. It is important to note that although the majority of literature from the time focused on how immigrants were detrimental to American society, historian Diana Selig argues educators and liberal reformers made efforts to accept new groups into American society in what she calls the “cultural gifts movement,” which promoted tolerance through the concept that immigrants brought “cultural gifts” that enhanced American life Diana Selig, Americans All: The Cultural Gifts Movement (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 2. 66 Calderón-Zaks, 325. 67 Ibid., 346-347.

37 are Americans and are members of the white race.”68 The Texas state legislature in 1943, after much insistence from Mexicans and Mexican Americans, declared “our neighbors to the South” in fact did fit into the category of “Caucasian” and were “entitled to the full and equal accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges of all public places of business or amusement.”69 This claim to whiteness changed during the latter part of the Civil Rights

Movement in the 1960s and 1970s as activists celebrated difference and distance from whiteness.

However, at this historical moment, a sense of belonging and citizenship as Americans (defined as white) was crucial. A resident from Hicks Camp, twenty miles outside of Los Angeles, commented, “Mexicans were here before the Americans. We are more American than they.”70

Some Latinos, particularly Mexican Americans, identified as “Latin American” to try to escape the implications of a racialized identity.71 After all, it was the Latin Americans that Americans were trying to befriend, right? Popular culture, specifically film, racialized Latinos nonetheless.

The film Bordertown demonstrated what happened when Latinos stepped outside of their expected roles in American society. Paul Muni72 played Johnny Ramírez, a Mexican American who worked hard to leave his criminal past behind and become a lawyer. During his first trial, the judge disbarred Johnny after he attacked another lawyer. The judge insisted that it was not about his nationality, but because he was a ruffian. After this violent altercation, he moved to a

68 Newspaper clipping “Vital Statistics Recorded by Races, LULACS Informed,” 1941, Refugio Lozano Collection, LULAC Archives, Benson Latin American Collection, the University of Texas at Austin. 69 Of course, they were still not equal to Anglos. Thomas A. Guglielmo addresses this struggle for whiteness in Texas and connects it to a transnational fight for civil rights. Thomas A. Guglielmo, “Fighting for Caucasian Rights: Mexicans, Mexican Americans, and the Transnational Struggle for Civil Rights in World War II Texas,” The Journal of American History 92, no. 4 (March 2006): 1212. 70 Quoted in Lewthwaite,180. 71 Ibid., 227. 72 Paul Muni also starred as the Mexican hero Benito Juarez in Juarez (1939). In Juarez, Benito Juarez was a man obsessed with Abraham Lincoln. He constantly wore a top hat, and when the opposition neared, he packed up his framed photo of the President. This movie also came out during the Good Neighbor era and suggested that Mexicans saw the U.S. as an example to follow and took away any agency from the Mexican people. The studio supposedly did a lot of research on Juarez to make it as authentic as possible. They used over 500 books on Juarez and consulted Mexican diplomats as advisors. Clara E. Rodríguez, Heroes, Lovers, and Others: The Story of Latinos in Hollywood (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Books, 2004), 78-79. O’Neil, 363.

38 border town and started working at a casino. He found himself in an uncomfortable situation when his boss’s wife, Marie (Bette Davis), repeatedly tried to seduce him and even gave him money to open his own casino when her husband died from carbon monoxide poisoning (her doing). Then Johnny’s love interest rejected him because according to her they were from different ‘tribes,’ which could refer to class or race, or both. This was not the answer he wanted to hear and grabbed her forcefully. She yelled, “let go of me, you filthy brute.” She ran into the street in an effort to escape his grasp and was killed by a car. Johnny sold his casino and moved back home relegated to a living a life in segregation and limited opportunities.73

Bordertown on the surface seemed to acknowledge the accomplishments of Mexican

Americans, but that idea faded quickly when Johnny lost his temper. His “nature” prevented him from competing successfully with Anglos. This movie showed what happened when Latinos stepped outside their place in American society. When they tried to emulate the white man they just ended up back where they started. Of course, the message was also clear when it came to interethnic relations with white women. Tragedy will only follow if one tried to leave one’s

“own people.” Although internationally the Good Neighbor message aimed to show Latin

Americans as our friends and neighbors, domestically there were clear divisions and expectations about Latinos’ place in society. Portraying them as brutes, thieves, hotheads, and sexual creatures made it evident that they were not equal to white Americans. We may be friends, but we were not equals. The director of the Production Code Administration, Joseph Breen, which censored negative depictions of Latin Americans, even felt that Bordertown “raises very vividly

73 Bordertown, 1935. Inventory Number: VA1525 M, UCLA Film and Television Archive, University of California, Los Angeles, California.

39 the race distinction between Mexicans and Americans which is bound to be offensive to our

Southern neighbors.”74 Despite his warning, no changes were made to the film.75

What the world thought about America seemed more important than trying to fix the problems at home with Latinos. During the 1940s, the U.S. experienced racial upheaval since the war promises of democracy and racial cooperation were not being met at home. The Sleepy

Lagoon Affair and the so-called Zoot Suit Riots made international news and created both animosity and opportunities for unification among Latinos and Anglos. During this time of war and domestic unrest, government officials attempted to blame the violent confrontations of sailors and Mexican-American youths on something other than racial tensions.76 Race, however, could not be ignored in these conversations.

During this tense era, a local violent incident became a rallying point for civil rights and

Good Neighborliness. In 1942, near a popular swimming hole called Sleepy Lagoon, Mexican-

American youths clashed with one another resulting in the death of a young man, José Díaz. The

Los Angeles Police Department arrested three hundred, mostly Mexican-American, youths for involvement in his death. There was neither evidence nor witnesses to incriminate these men.

Twenty-four were charged with murder and seventeen of those were convicted. The Sleepy

Lagoon Defense Committee began as an effort to provide emotional, monetary, and legal support to these men. They benefitted from the larger context on civil rights including the fight against fascism and Nazism. They also stressed the rhetoric of friendship and cooperation that stemmed from the Good Neighbor Policy and participated in dispelling stereotypes and dissolving class

74 As quoted in Chon Noriega, “Citizen Chicano: The Trials and Titillations of Ethnicity in the American Cinema, 1935-1962,” Social Research 58, no. 2 (Summer 1991): 420. 75 I have not found any reviews on the film in the Mexican press. 76 Mauricio Mazon, The Zoot-Suit Riots: The Psychology of Symbolic Annihilation (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1984), 83.

40 and racial distinctions.77 The Committee gained national support and interest from labor organizations and public figures.78 Many celebrities brought attention to this cause through their involvement including director Elia Kazan, singer Lena Horne, and actors Canada Lee, Rita

Hayworth, Anthony Quinn, and Gene Kelly.79

Although celebrities brought national attention to this case, ingrained prejudices prevented people from moving forward in pursuit of racial harmony. Anthony Quinn remembered when he worked on a war film at Camp Pendleton “some marines who were working with us came and asked if I wanted to join them. They were going up to Los Angeles to

‘beat up some Mexicans.’ Those poor misguided bastards. They were trying to tell me they considered me one of them [an Anglo]. I guess my name being Quinn, they never thought I was

Mexican.”80 Some officials involved in the Sleepy Lagoon trial also shared such prejudice, but acted in a more “sympathetic” fashion remaking Mexican Americans as slaves to their heritage.

Sheriff Edward Duran Ayres gave a written report to the jury in which he argued that Mexican delinquency was caused by biological or genetic traits. They had the violent Aztec genes and could not help their bloodthirsty nature.81 This kind of defamation did not go over lightly. Latin

Americans and the Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee challenged the accusation by articulating that it undermined the U.S.-Latin American Good Neighbor Policy and that Ayres contributed to the fascist thinking of the Nazis.82

Representatives from local and national governments initially blamed fascist or communist involvement or the jealousy of the youths as the source of L.A.’s problems to avoid

77 Gigi Peterson, “Grassroots Good Neighbors: Connections between Mexican and U.S. Labor and Civil Rights Activists, 1936-1945,” (PhD diss., University of Washington, 1998), 201, 208. 78 Mazon, 25. 79 Peterson, 207. 80 Anthony Quinn, The Original Sin: A Self-Portrait (Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company, 1972), 82. 81 Peterson, 223. 82 Ibid., 224-25.

41 the discussion of race, but this clash of cultures became an international incident that brought

Mexican officials to observe the living conditions of the Mexican people in the U.S. Former

Mexican President Adolfo de la Huerta, now a Mexican Consul, attributed “the rebellious attitude of the zoot suiters” to Nazi propaganda, but the American Consul General, William P.

Blocker, suggested that it was Communist influence instead. Los Angeles Mayor Fletcher

Bowron believed the Communists convinced the “zoot suiters” they “were being terribly persecuted and abused.” 83 The Chief of Police said, “There was no racial discrimination involved whatsoever.” These kids were hoodlums and they had targeted soldiers and sailors because they approached Mexican women “who were attracted by the ready money most of them had in their pockets.” Mexican Consular officers arrived in Los Angeles to assess the situation, the causes, and the reactions among Mexican Americans. Many of them, including de la Huerta, believed the condition of Mexican Americans had caused them to get involved in gangs. This demographic faced discrimination and inferior schooling. They were also denied their full rights as citizens of the U.S. However, the conditions of Mexicans in the U.S. were secondary to maintaining an amicable relationship between Mexico and the United States. De la Huerta tried to convince people of Mexican origin that “any acts against the naval and military officers, and for that matter anyone, were dangerous to the cause of the Allies, and were not only unpatriotic towards the United States, but Mexico as well.” The Mexican Consul had brought up the economic disadvantages of Mexican Americans, but in the end they were more interested in the

83 American Consul General William P. Blocker reports on the “Zoot Suit Disturbances at Los Angeles, California,” August 3, 1943, President's Secretary's File (PSF) Diplomatic Correspondence: State Department, 1943, Box 44, Mexico, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library and Museum Website. http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/_resources/images/psf/psfa0420.pdf There was a belief that Mexicans were incapable of organizing themselves so they had to be guided by communists. There were thorough investigations of possible Axis infiltration concerning the zoot suit riots and none were found. Mazon, 97-98.

42 stability of U.S.-Mexican relations. The U.S. government simply acknowledged this information and moved on with minimal action.84

The federal government made few attempts to rectify the domestic situation in the United

States. In 1941, when a Texan complained to Vice President Henry Wallace about how discrimination towards Latinos was undermining the Good Neighbor Policy, Wallace replied that the federal government had “no authority for dealing with a situation of this sort.” He recommended that local Mexican-American citizens and organizations needed to address the situation. “It is my observation that matters of this kind are usually handled better quietly and privately.”85 The next year the federal government tried to remedy the situation in a more concrete way by attempting to improve access to federally funded services for Mexican

Americans.

The federal government, through the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs

(OCIAA), established a Spanish-Speaking People’s Division in April 1942 to help improve the economic and social condition of Mexicans living in the Southwest. It attempted to tackle school segregation, curricula revision, and the promotion of cooperation and understanding through community and teacher workshops. The goal was to encourage cultural expression, but also educate Mexican-American children on industrial skills. These programs were problematic because they were immersed in middle class norms and clouded by paternalism. These initiatives proved ineffective and gave little room for actual leadership and opportunity within the community.86 Throughout this process, the OCIAA received many appeals to act on the domestic

84 American Consul General William P. Blocker reports on the “Zoot Suit Disturbances at Los Angeles, California.” 85 Quoted in Richard Steele, “The Federal Government Discovers Mexican Americans,” in World War II and Mexican American Civil Rights, ed. Richard Griswold del Castillo (Austin, TX: University of Texas, 2008), 32. 86 Lewthwaite, 220-22.

43 Latino issue.87 In one such request, Josefina Fierro and John Bright sent an eight-page report to the OCIAA in 1942 entitled, “Prospectus for the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American

Affairs on the Mexican-Americans of the Southwestern United States.” This report reminded the

OCIAA that Latin America was watching. “The sharpest test of Yankee friendliness toward the

Spanish-speaking people lies in our treatment of the ‘good neighbors at home.’”88 Many organizations run by the state and national governments were more concerned about the international agenda than the “good neighbor at home.” The Good Neighbor Commission of

Texas was one such organization.

The Good Neighbor Commission of Texas was a state agency “devoted to the betterment of relations between Anglo-Americans and Latin-Americans, wherever they reside…”89 The

Commission thought it would be a great idea to have an interchange of people, including students and tourists, between Mexico and Texas. It suggested that this exchange would “serve as a basis for tolerance, sympathy and goodwill, among the members of future generations.”90

Bishop C.E. Byrne, a participant in this group, responded to those proposals at the quarterly meeting. He argued that much had to be done within the boundaries of the U.S. before looking outward. Latin Americans in Texas were “not living their American citizenship.” They needed better education and the ability to vote. His suggestion was to focus on Latino children and

“make Americans out of them.” If they become part of American society, “a lot of this

87 Peterson, 213. 88 Ibid., 214-15. 89 “Good Neighbor Commission of Texas, Minutes of the Quarterly Meeting, December 3-4, 1950,” Box 18, Folder 1, George I. Sánchez Papers, Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas Libraries, the University of Texas at Austin. Interestingly enough, the Texas Good Neighbor Commission opposed the Spears bill that would prohibit discrimination against persons of Mexican descent and enforce a penalty consisting of $500 and/or thirty days in jail, because they feared the law could be applied to African Americans. Richard Griswold del Castillo, “Civil Rights on the Home Front: Leaders and Organizations,” in World War II and Mexican American Civil Rights, ed. Richard Griswold del Castillo (Austin, TX: University of Texas, 2008), 85 90 M.G. Calderon, “Proposal for the Interchange of Students,” and “Proposal for the Interchange of Tourists” 1948, Box 17, Folder 15, George I. Sánchez Papers, Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas Libraries, the University of Texas at Austin.

44 unfortunate stuff will be done with very quickly.” Consul General Calderon countered that:

“Their [Latinos’] welfare is not an international problem.” This problem was beyond the

Commission’s concern.91 Few wanted to deal with the domestic problem or the idea of inequality, which is why minority groups would rise up and challenge the system in the coming decades. This committee was indicative of the American mindset at the time. The Latino was not a significant concern to the overall governmental agenda, but at the same time the use of the

Latino as a violent pachuco in popular culture revealed that there was a contradictory message being sent to Latinos and Latin Americans about democracy and equality in the United States.

Images of the pachuco, or zoot-suiter in this context, in the media reinforced many of the long-standing stereotypes about Mexicans and justified their exclusion and separation from

American society. As actor Anthony Quinn recalled in his autobiography, “[B]eing a Mexican in southern California is not exactly an open sesame. For years they used to have signs at dance halls and restaurants: ‘No Mexicans allowed.’ Mexicans were lazy, thieves, greasy; they were either zoot-suiters or Pachucos, marijuana smokers.”92 The coverage of the riots in the media tended to focus on the suit itself and only sometimes on discrimination. Several southern

American editorials praised the servicemen’s actions and portrayed these young Mexican men as

“organized gangsters” who smoked marijuana while attacking servicemen and their women.93

Mexican writer, and later Nobel Prize winner, Octavio Paz was very critical of the pachucos. He said, “they act like persons who are wearing disguises.” Paz argued that the pachuco was a youth gang member of Mexican origin who was easily identifiable by his language, behavior, and

91 “Good Neighbor Commission of Texas, Minutes of the Quarterly Meeting, September 30, 1948,” Box 18, Folder 1, George I. Sánchez Papers, Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas Libraries, the University of Texas at Austin. 92 Quinn, 11. 93 Richard Steele, “Violence in Los Angeles: Sleepy Lagoon, the Zoot-Suit Riots, and the Liberal Response,” in World War II and Mexican American Civil Rights, ed. Richard Griswold del Castillo (Austin, TX: University of Texas, 2008), 45.

45 clothing.94 He was in a dangerous limbo, he did not want to be Mexican nor blend into North

American life. “His whole being is sheer negative impulse a tangle of contradictions, an enigma.” This was a cautionary tale and “one of the extremes at which the Mexican can arrive.”95 To Mexicans, the pachuco was an American caricature, a figure tainted by American society and neither American nor Mexican. Mexican comedian Germán “Tin-Tan” Valdez, who grew up in the Mexican border town of Ciudad Juárez, often played a pachuco character mockingly for Mexican audiences.96 To Anglos, the pachuco represented Mexican degeneracy.97

To Mexican Americans, like George I. Sánchez, a LULAC President and professor at the

University of Texas, the violence of the pachuco was connected to the segregation and poverty that resulted from mainstream racism.98 These opposing viewpoints revealed the larger problem of where the place of Mexican Americans was in American society.

American society through the use of film, magazines, and local and national initiatives labeled Latinos in the U.S. as foreign, but not in the same way as the fun, exotic, and romantic people from down south. Rather, they were foreign as in intrusive, unwanted, and detrimental to the racial stock and modern democracy Americans had cultivated. Anglo Americans did not seem to feel that F.D.R. was talking about the literal neighbor next door. Although racism was a part of this narrative, there were attempts to distance or deny any associations with racial prejudice because of the Good Neighbor rhetoric. For example, the judge told Johnny Ramírez it was not about his race or people and discussions of the Zoot Suit Riots purposely focused on

94 Octavio Paz, The Labyrinth of Solitude: Life and Thought in Mexico, Translated by Lysander Kemp (New York, NY: Grove Press, Inc., 1961), 13. 95 Ibid., 14. 96 Carlos Monsiváis, “Cantinflas and Tin Tan: Mexico’s Greatest Comedians,” in Mexico’s Cinema: A Century of Film and Filmmakers, eds. Joanne Hershfield and David R. Maciel (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, Inc., 1999), 68. 97 Mazon, 5. 98 Griswold del Castillo, 83. He was also appointed as the Latin American consultant to the U.S. Office of Civilian Defense and Education and a specialist-consultant to the Inter-American Educational Foundations. This meant that he was influential on both the national and local scale.

46 things other than race. The U.S. had a global image of democracy to uphold to the rest of the world, and if they could not exemplify that at home how was the world going to take them seriously? The Good Neighbor Policy helped to obscure the issues at home.

Conclusion

In 1966, a CBS Reports television program, “Mexico: a Lesson in Latin,” exposed that

Latin Americans were watching how American leaders treated, in the program’s words,

“dictators” and/or “murderers” while democratic leaders in Latin America received no attention from the U.S. By this broadcast it was clear the Good Neighbor Policy had failed since the U.S. intervened in Cuba and the Dominican Republic. According to Frederick B. Pike, the Good

Neighbor Policy started to wane by the late 1940s when Americans tended to focus on the stereotypes of pachucos and zoot suiters instead of the middle class driven LULACers.99 In 1947, singer Peggy Lee and her husband wrote and released a song called “Mañana (Is Soon Enough for Me)” in which Lee sang with an accent and performed the typical Mexican stereotypes. The song focused on how lazy these people were since they were constantly procrastinating until the next day, then the next day, and sleeping until then. They had no discipline and did not fit into the American ideals of work ethnic and progress.100 Despite the state’s efforts to sell the idea of the Good Neighbor, popular culture often undid much of the work. In the early 1960s, John F.

Kennedy attempted to replace the Good Neighbor Policy with another foreign initiative aimed to establish friendly relations with Latin Americans called the Alliance for Progress, but that did not work either.101 The use of stereotypes had always been a simplistic method to sell Latin

99 Pike, 109. 100 Ibid., 290. 101 Mexico: a Lesson in Latin, 1966-04-26. Inventory Number: VA6520T, UCLA Film and Television Archive, University of California, Los Angeles, California.

47 Americans. Both the U.S. government and popular culture had attempted to sell the good neighbor to American audiences through films, recipe campaigns, and presidential addresses, but in the end the mythical and fantastical good neighbor to the south was much more palatable and desirable in a time of economic depression and war. The struggle to keep the rhetoric of the

Good Neighbor functioning from the 1930s into the 1960s was impossible due to Americans’ lack of interest and U.S. military intervention. The relationship with Latin America had become bleak by this point. This was also true for Latinos in the United States. By 1966, the Civil Rights

Movement was well underway and the Chicano movement was growing. Images of Latinos in the media became increasingly contested. The years of stereotyping and/or neglect had been enough for Latinos to demand restitution in resources and inclusion.

48 Chapter 2: Ricky Ricardo, the Cold War Latin

Introduction

Television host Ed Sullivan sat between the two most famous people in the United States on the evening of October 3, 1954. On his right was actress Lucille Ball and to his left was her husband and co-star on I Love Lucy, Desi Arnaz. The three appeared on Toast of the Town, also known as The Ed Sullivan Show, that fall evening. Sullivan introduced Ball then Arnaz. Arnaz stood and spoke, “We came to this country and we didn’t have a cent in our pockets. From cleaning canary cages to this night here in New York, is a long ways. And I don’t think there’s any other country in the world that could give you that opportunity. I want to say thank you.

Thank you, America, thank you.” As Arnaz sat down, Sullivan stood and grabbed Arnaz by the neck in an awkward attempt at affection. Then, he placed his hand on Arnaz’s left shoulder as

Desi wiped his eyes with his palms.1 Arnaz’s patriotic proclamation of gratitude would not be his first or his last. Although he may have been truly grateful for the opportunities his new country had given him, his comments were also part of a larger Cold War context. The political and social environment of the Cold War valued patriotism and conformity, but also tried to present inclusivity and diversity within certain perimeters of race and ethnicity. Arnaz and his character,

Ricky Ricardo, were a significant part of that discourse as he was, what I have termed, a “Cold

War Latin.”2 He was a participant in Cold War ideologies, but also challenged the perception of

1 Writer Madelyn Pugh Davis documented this event in her autobiography: Madelyn Pugh Davis, Laughing with Lucy: My Life with America’s Leading Lady of Comedy (Cincinnati, OH: Emmis Books, 2005), 68. As of June 19, 2017, there is a clip of this event on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZkpVZUZ7Hk. 2 A note on the term “Latin”: As Christina Abreu argues, mainstream entertainment industries often used the word as a cultural marker, mostly referring to “Cuban,” but often in alignment with stereotypes of ambiguity and exoticism of Spanish-speaking countries. I use “Latin” to refer to the generic Latin American categorization at the time. Desi Arnaz did not use Latino or Hispanic to identify himself; he used “Latin.” I chose not to use Latino because it places a political context that was not easily accessible at this point. Even the use of “Latino” today remains a point of discussion. Christina D. Abreu, Rhythms of Race: Cuban Musicians and the Making of Latino New York City and Miami, 1940-1960 (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2015), 12. Mary C. Beltrán, Latino/a

49 what an American looked like.

Arnaz was the ideal “Latin” and immigrant in American popular culture at the time. He represented white middle class norms as a provider, entrepreneur, consumer, patriot, and family man. His ethnicity and nationality were also significant because he, like Cuba, the country he hailed from, was foreign yet familiar to Americans.3 The media and the U.S. in the 1960s and

1970s presented Cubans as exceptional immigrants because of their social status and “race.” Desi

Arnaz presented himself and his culture in a way that did not threaten the racial hierarchy. His immigrant experience and subsequent patriotism made him an ideal example of a tamed exotic.

He recited the classic rags-to-riches story to the American people and promoted the American ideal of freedom, echoing global propaganda of U.S. governmental agencies during the Cold

War.4 Desi Arnaz was part of a larger shift of the entertainment industry’s and the federal government’s way of using celebrities of color as examples of American opportunity and democracy.5 His allegiance to the U.S. and his assimilation made him more likable, although, he was also, not quite part of “us.” Media sources blamed his temper and often erratic behavior on his “Latin” disposition, but unlike Mexicans creeping across the border or Puerto Ricans causing havoc in New York City, Desi Arnaz/Ricky Ricardo was “ethnic,” but not racialized. Desi

Arnaz/Ricky Ricardo was a product of his time and symbolized acceptable way to be “Latin” during the early Cold War: Americanized, but still different enough, through ethnicity and

Stars in U.S. Eyes: The Making and Meanings of Film and TV Stardom (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2009), 43. 3 On the idea of Cuba as both foreign and familiar, see Louis Pérez, Jr.’s On Becoming Cuban: Identity, Nationality and Culture (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1999). 4 See Laura A. Belmonte, Selling the American Way: U.S. Propaganda and the Cold War (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008) and Christina Klein, Cold War Orientalism: Asia in the Middlebrow Imagination, 1945-1961 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003). 5 As historian Penny Von Eschen argues, Louis Armstrong also fit that symbol of assimilation, but when Armstrong’s U.S. government tours exposed him to the world, he became more critical of the U.S. Armstrong eventually continued working with the government on these foreign policy tours, but he was more vocal about his role and about civil rights back home despite that the younger generation saw him as compliant. Penny Von Eschen, Satchmo Blows Up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 75.

50 language, to add to the Cold War American tapestry.

This chapter discusses how Desi Arnaz successfully maneuvered through the Cold War ideologies of conformity, communism, and democracy. It illustrates how his performance of

Latino ethnicity and masculinity, both on and off screen, helped to create this new persona of a

Cold War Latin, an image that many Latinos contested in the 1960s and 1970s as the political and social climate changed and as Latinos resisted the push to assimilate and claim whiteness as their racial identity. As Desi Arnaz and his character Ricky Ricardo presented a model of assimilation, he simultaneously pushed the boundaries of American race relations. He fulfilled

American expectations as a white, middle class, patriotic conformist, but also exhibited ethnic difference by incorporating his Cuban (or “Latin”) culture into the television show, I Love Lucy.

He pushed for inclusion of difference, but also accommodated to American perceptions of Latins at the time. It could also be argued that he was mocking Americans’ simplistic or ignorant views of Latin American culture.

In the past twenty years, scholars have taken an interest in Desi Arnaz in terms of his cultural contributions and his performance of masculinity, but they have failed to place him into the larger Cold War context. This chapter argues that the Desi Arnaz and Ricky Ricardo represented a new era in Latino representation shaped by Cold War ideologies. Unlike the unwanted domestic Latinos during the Good Neighbor era, American media accepted Desi

Arnaz/Ricky Ricardo as an American. Although liberal reformers, educators, and the U.S. government supported some version of the cultural pluralist “Americans All” campaign during the Second World War, the Cold War further reinforced ethnic and racial inclusion to combat the evils of Communism and defend the superiority of the American way of life. Recently scholars have argued that the cultural and social factors, such as race relations, of the Cold War were

51 essential to the ideological battle and even as important as, if not more than, the actual political and military clashes. The censorship of racial strife maintained the perception of the U.S. as a racial democracy.6 A certain type of ethnic diversity was needed to maintain that image and Desi

Arnaz/Ricky Ricardo served as its model.

Scholarly Approaches to Ricky Ricardo

Academics, intellectuals, and cultural commentators have debated Desi Arnaz’s/Ricky

Ricardo’s contributions to the representation of Latinos in popular culture. Some saw him as a dignified straight man (in the comedic sense) or a bumbling stereotype. Some questioned the authenticity of his persona. Many have removed him from the historical context and its restraints and have imposed modern ideas of resistance. He was a symbol of the postwar world of acceptance, assimilation, and diversity in the United States. Desi Arnaz challenged conformity, but he also knew where his bread and butter came from: white/Anglo audiences. He played a role that American audiences accepted and largely saw this character as authentically Latin.

Audiences, specifically Latino audiences, challenged this issue of authenticity in the 1960s, but it is important to note how monumental his presence was in mid-twentieth century America and on television. This is something many critics have failed to recognize.

Scholars in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have been critical of Desi

Arnaz and Ricky Ricardo. Historian Louis A. Pérez, Jr. argues that Ricky Ricardo “easily reinforced the dominant images: rumba band leader, heavily accented English, excitable, always

6 Examples of this include: Belmonte, Selling the American Way, Mary Dudizak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), Klein, Cold War Orientalism, Richard Lentz and Karla K. Gower, The Opinions of Mankind: Racial Issues, Press, and Propaganda in the Cold War (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2010), Von Eschen, Satchmo Blows Up the World, and Penny Von Eschen, Race Against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism, 1937-57 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997).

52 seeming to be slightly out of place and hence slightly vulnerable, perhaps even childlike and nonthreatening.” He suggests that Ricky could only hold his own in Spanish when he was incomprehensible to the majority of television viewers. Pérez also uses Ricky Ricardo as a metaphor for Cuba. He claims that in many ways the United States created Cuba and in turn the

United States created Ricky Ricardo. Americans saw both of them as inferior, expressed through a perfect counterpoint: “foreign but familiar, exotic but civilized, primitive but modern, a tropical escape only hours from home in which to flout conventions, a place to live dangerously but without taking risks.”7 Charles Ramírez Berg in his 2002 book, Latino Images in Film, calls

Ricky a male buffoon. He describes Ricky as emotional and simpleminded, serving as the

“second banana comic relief.” Berg explains “what audiences are given to laugh at, are the very characteristics that separate him [Ricky] from Hollywood’s vision of the WASP American mainstream.”8 In other words, Ricky’s “otherness” became the source of laughter for American audiences.

Other scholars have been incorrect or confused about Ricky Ricardo altogether. Steven

Mintz and Susan Kellogg describe Ricky as the archetype of a “bumbling, clumsy fool and dreamer, taunted by his wife,” in their history of the American family. They continue:

“ultimately it is she [Lucy] who is responsible for counteracting her husband’s harebrained schemes by providing bedrock of common sense.” That, too, is a curious assessment. Lucy was rarely, if ever, the “bedrock of common sense.” Ricky was the straight man, fixing all the problems that Lucy created.9 Scholar Gerard Jones, likewise, is conflicted over Ricky. He praises

7 Louis A. Pérez, Jr., On Becoming Cuban: Identity, Nationality and Culture (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 194, 216-217, 493-494. 8 Charles Ramírez Berg, Latino Images in Film: Stereotypes, Subversion, & Resistance (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2002), 71-72. 9 Steven Mintz and Susan Kellogg, Domestic Revolutions: A Social History of American Family Life (New York, NY: The Free Press, 1988), 192.

53 him in certain areas and then critiques him in others. “Ricky is no bland, smugly knowing sitcom husband,” Jones wrote, “but a mercurial mass of cockiness, anger, self-delight, and stubborn authority, all made grotesquely funny by Arnaz’s accent and awkward delivery.”10 He praises

Ricky for not being the same as the other dull husbands on television, but then describes him as the male buffoon that scholar Charles Ramírez Berg argues he was. Jones then lauds Ricky for being the antithesis of Ozzie Nelson “and a couple of evolutionary steps beyond him” since all that concerned Ozzie were the simple things, like his tutti frutti ice cream.11

Some works dealing with ethnicity on 1950s television do not even mention Ricky

Ricardo. Nina C. Leibman’s Living Room Lectures argues that in films and television during the

1950s there was ethnic denial (an attempt to deny ethnic identity on the part of both creators and actors), ethnic repression (a character’s attempt to repress their ethnic identity), and an inferior portrayal of ethnic characters, meaning that they could not live in the environment with the

“white” people. Where did Ricky fit into this argument? He did not attempt to deny or repress his ethnicity and he lived with his “white” wife in a “white” environment. Leibman uses the example of the gardener, Frank, in Father Knows Best. His inferiority came through, according to

Leibman, in his broken English, heavy accent and refusal to assimilate.12 Without the Anderson family he would have been helpless. Ricky was not helpless without Lucy, if anything Ricky kept their lives together.

Interpretations of Ricky Ricardo have ranged from critical and negative to misguided to glowing revealing the messiness of the historical process and the difficulty of separating the contemporary moment of progress in the world of civil rights from the context of the Cold War.

10 Gerard Jones, Honey, I’m Home! Sitcoms: Selling the American Dream (New York, NY: Grove Weidenfield, 1992), 67-68. 11 Ibid., 95. 12 Nina C. Leibman, Living Room Lectures: The Fifties Family in Film and Television (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1995), 165-166.

54 Desi Arnaz/Ricky Ricardo worked within the limited space he had and excelled. His contributions in that sense should be revered and they have been. Scholar Gustavo Pérez Firmat praises Arnaz’s autobiography, A Book, for its contribution to Cuban-American literature and compliments Arnaz on not being a victim, but on taking advantage of the opportunities available to him.13 Douglas McGrath, writer and filmmaker, gives Desi Arnaz a glowing tribute in a New

York Times article that ran on the fiftieth anniversary of the premiere of I Love Lucy. McGrath praises Desi Arnaz rather than Lucille Ball: “It was Desi who built Desilu, and it is he, along with—no less than—Lucy, who is indispensible to the show’s undying appeal.” It was Arnaz, he says, who “gave ‘I Love Lucy’ both a comic balance and an emotional base that are at the heart of its longevity.” Although, as McGrath acknowledges, Arnaz got the part of Ricky Ricardo because of Lucille Ball, “from that point on, every important creative decision was his.” Ball never duplicated the success of I Love Lucy, despite countless later attempts. McGrath argues that this was because those shows did not have “Arnaz’s taste and guidance.” Finally, McGrath praises Arnaz as a performer: “undervalued in his time, he was the only one of the four principle characters never nominated for an Emmy (as an actor—he won as a producer). Yet what he created in Ricky Ricardo was infinitely more advanced and complicated that William Frawley’s cheap grump.”14

The Musical Good Neighbor meets the Zany Redhead

Desi Arnaz’s career began during the era of the Good Neighbor, which celebrated Latin

American culture. As depictions of Latin Americans shifted from criminals and peons to musical

13 Gustavo Pérez Firmat, Life on the Hyphen: The Cuban-American Way (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1994), 72, 76. 14 Douglas McGrath, “The Good, the Bad, the Lucy: A Legacy of Laughs; The Man Behind The Throne: Making the Case for Desi,” New York Times, October 14, 2001, 30.

55 performers, Arnaz unknowingly engaged in this discourse. He even went to Mexico as a celebrity to spread the Good Neighbor message. His ethnicity was a valuable commodity to the

U.S. government, but it became problematic as he ventured into the realm of television. The entertainment business valued his “Latinness” when he was singing or playing music, but married to white woman on television portraying a typical American family? Many in the entertainment business questioned his ability to assimilate into the homes of white America.

Despite his humble start in America, Arnaz proved that persistence, hard work, and his own deliberate use of “Latin” flavor could get one far in the political and social environment of mid- twentieth century America.

Arnaz began his career as a musician and an actor during the 1930s after his family fled political upheaval in Cuba.15 While he had been an aristocrat in Cuba, teenaged Arnaz performed odd jobs, such as cleaning birdcages, to make ends meet in his new Miami home. When he was in high school, a family friend recommended him to a local rumba band, the Siboney Septet, to play guitar and sing. One night Xavier Cugat, “the king of the rumba,” spotted Arnaz and, impressed by his performance, invited him to audition for his orchestra. After Arnaz graduated high school, he worked for Cugat for a short time before Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, the top musical comedy team in America, spotted him and gave him his first acting role in their new play.16 Rodgers and Hart needed an ambiguous Latin character and they chose Arnaz to play

Argentine football (not fútbol) star, Manuelito. Too Many Girls opened on Broadway on October

14, 1939 and became a big hit.17 The Broadway play brought Arnaz his first big role and pushed

15 Arnaz’s father was a senator in Cuba as well as the mayor of the city of Santiago. He lived comfortably as a child until 1933 when Cubans overthrew President Gerardo Machado and the Arnaz family fled because the elder Arnaz supported Machado. The information on Desi Arnaz’s youth comes from: Joe Morella and Edward Z. Epstein, Forever Lucy: The Life of Lucille Ball (New York, NY: Berkley Books, 1986), 23. Louis A. Pérez, Jr., Cuba: Between Reform and Revolution (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2006), 200. 16 Desi Arnaz, A Book (New York, NY: Buccaneer Books, 1976), 47-48, 50-53. 17 Ibid., 87-88, 99, 106.

56 Latin culture, or an interpretation of Latin culture, into the limelight with such tunes as “Spic and

Spanish” and “She Knew How to Shake Her Maracas” which began with the lines: “Ev’ry Latin has a temper/ Latins have no brains/ And they quarrel as they walk in Latin Lover’s Lane.”18 The play became a film in 1940 with many its original features including those songs just mentioned and a musical number at the end where Arnaz banged on drums to African beats. The film was a flop, but Arnaz’s music career increased in popularity. On April 1, 1940, Time, in its monthly section of noteworthy phonograph records, reviewed the record Dance La Conga by “the orchestra of Desi Arnaz, the supple Latin glamor boy of Broadway’s Too Many Girls,” which included instructions on how to conga by dance entrepreneur Arthur Murray.19

Arnaz quickly gained recognition as a performer because of his exotic good looks. No one seemed to care what he was, he was just Latin. At this time, American society made very little effort distinguishing peoples from the different countries in Latin American. They were, according to the federal government, the entertainment industry, and American audiences, all the same. For example, moviegoers who saw Too Many Girls commented that they liked the

“Spanish actor,” “the Mexican boy,” “the Cuban boy,” and “the little Argentine fellow,” referring to Arnaz.20 When Arnaz participated in the U.S. government’s Good Neighbor Policy campaign to recognize and celebrate the United States’ ties with Latin America in 1941, he understood that the only reason he was in such an elite crowd with Hollywood stars like Clark

Gable, Bing Crosby, Norma Shearer, and Mickey Rooney was his fluency in Spanish and his ethnicity. Although he was Cuban and travelling to Mexico for this mission, no one understood

18 Ned Sublette, Cuba and its Music (Chicago, IL: Chicago Review Press, 2004), 454. 19 “April Records,” Time, April 1, 1940, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,885864,00.html. 20 Beltrán, 46.

57 the cultural distinctions between Cubans and Mexicans.21 One Latin was the same as the other.

This confusion or, perhaps, conglomeration of cultures, would follow Arnaz into later acting roles.

He obtained minor roles during the 1940s, but studios often typecast him as the generic

Latin character. He only had singing roles in the films for RKO studios, which included Four

Jacks and a Jill, Father Takes a Wife (1941), and The Navy Comes Through (1942). His first non-singing role was in the war movie Bataan (1943) for MGM. This movie featured a group of soldiers from all walks of life who fought and died protecting American democracy. Arnaz played Felix Ramírez, a Mexican-American private who died from malaria. He was the token

Latin in this integrated regiment. Though Arnaz was aware of how the industry had pigeonholed him, he was unable or unwilling to challenge it. A job was a job, after all, which was something many ethnic actors had to accept in this pre-civil rights era. Interestingly, this was the role Arnaz was most proud of and even received recognition for in the form of a Photoplay magazine award for the best performance of the month. “It wasn’t the Academy Award but damn good enough for me,” Arnaz recalled in his memoir.

Arnaz’s role in the Good Neighbor campaign and his role in an American war film gave him more legitimacy during the Cold War, affirming his allegiance to the United States, and also conforming to the American idea of Latin culture as homogenous.22 He also served in the Army and became U.S. citizen to further solidify his commitment to his adopted country. Arnaz told the story of how he changed his name and his identity as a newly minted U.S. citizen in his 1976 memoir:

21 Harry M. Benshoff and Sean Griffin, America on Film: Representing Race, Class, Gender and Sexuality at the Movies (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), 140-141. 22 Desi Arnaz volunteered to serve in the Army, but he broke his kneecap and was assigned to limited service with the Army Medical Corps to entertain hospitalized servicemen. Lucille Ball, Love, Lucy (New York, NY: Berkley Boulevard Books, 1997), 132-133.

58 My full name is Desiderio Alberto Arnaz y de Acha. When I became an American citizen while in the United States Army, the sergeant in charge of the swearing-in ceremony had a hell of time pronouncing my name. He politely told me, “You know, son, you could shorten your name a bit, that is if you want to, of course, on your citizenship certificate.” I said, “I guess I better, Sarge. Make it Desi Arnaz.” “You don’t have to overdo it,” he said. “Don't you want a middle initial or something?” “No, thanks, Sarge. Just Desi Arnaz—period.”23

This story illustrated that he had an active role in creating the person he became. He chose, even after the sergeant questioned him, to shorten his name to make it easier for Americans to pronounce. He did not have control over the film roles that were available to him, but he did have control over his name. In this sense, he represented the model of assimilation in the early

Cold War. His marriage to actress Lucille Ball added to this acceptable middle class persona.

Desi Arnaz married his Too Many Girls co-star Lucille Ball in November 1940 and a franchise was born.

In the late 1940s, Lucille Ball played the role of an absentminded wife always involving her unsuspecting husband in absurd predicaments in the radio show, My Favorite Husband. CBS wanted to transfer this show to a new medium, television, with Ball in the part she had played on the radio. Ball and Arnaz thought that this could be their opportunity to work together in the same part of the country, but industry movers and shakers were skeptical. Arnaz recalled: “the network [CBS], the agencies, everyone involved said nobody was going to believe that a Latin bandleader with a Cuban Pete conga-drum Babalu [sic] image could ever be married to a typical redheaded American girl.”24 The couple disagreed with that notion and formed Desilu

Productions to produce their own show. They were determined to prove that the public would accept them as an interethnic couple and in the summer of 1950 they performed throughout the nation as a vaudeville act. The act highlighted the misadventures of a Latin bandleader and his

23 Arnaz, 8. 24 Ibid., 229.

59 movie star wife (the plot for the sitcom was later changed to a housewife who desperately wanted to be in show business). Variety saw them as “one of the best bills to play house in months” and they “should have no trouble lining up dates.” The audiences loved the project, yet

CBS still wanted nothing to do with it. Then, NBC started paying attention.25

CBS finally agreed to take on the project, but still had a problem with Cuban Desi Arnaz as part of the show. When lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II saw the pilot, he insisted, “Keep the redhead, but ditch the Cuban.” When he was told it was a package deal, Hammerstein responded,

“Well, then for God’s sake don’t let him sing. No one will understand him.” After hearing this, the sponsors (namely Phillip Morris) added a clause to Arnaz’s contract stating that his singing should be kept to a minimum in the show. Writers found a loophole in the contract and they cleverly made Ricky’s singing part of the plot of each episode. After the show hit number one,

Arnaz demanded a revision in his contract.26 He capitalized on his cultural difference and demanded more control over his performances. He gave audiences the Latin flare they desired, but on his terms. This represents a shift; Latin (later Latino) actors started to have more control over their characters. This increasingly become more prominent as Latinos became directors, writers, and producers in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Desi Arnaz was a pioneer in that respect, but additionally he was one of the very few Latins working in new medium that changed the way people thought about the world: television.

Television burst onto the scene in the postwar era replacing the radio as the primary source for entertainment and information within the home. By the end of the 1950s, ninety

25 Morella and Epstein, 74-75. Zabe, review of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz’s new act, Variety, June 7, 1950, House Reviews section, 55. Jones, 64-65. 26 Jess Oppenheimer and Gregg Oppenheimer, Laughs, Luck…and Lucy: How I Came to Create the Most Popular Sitcom of All Time (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1996), 172-173.

60 percent of American households had at least one television set.27 Families gathered around the set and watched their favorite programs, which by 1950 included game shows, situation comedies, children’s programs, and variety shows. For the most part, ethnic minorities were absent from the medium or often portrayed as domestic workers such as maids and gardeners.28

With Arnaz as a man in the leading role, I Love Lucy changed the way Americans saw Latins.29

Initially rejected as Lucille Ball’s husband on the series, with persistence and charisma, Arnaz created a Cuban persona suitable for American consumption. Arnaz used I Love Lucy as a vehicle to resist the conformity of 1950s television by incorporating his Cuban background into the show through music and language. At the same time, he realized that his American audience did not want him to stray too much from the image of an ideal middle class husband and capitalized on his whiteness.

Instead of turning off viewers, as many critics had predicted, Arnaz’s showy Cuban-ness attracted the interest of audiences. Many people apparently identified with Ricky, and viewers wanted to see the Ricardos’ mishaps every week. By the spring of 1952, 10.6 million households

27 Thomas Doherty, Cold War, Cool Medium: Television, McCarthyism, and American Culture (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2003), 4. 28 Amos ‘n’ Andy, a 1920s radio show depicting stereotypical black characters, was the exception, as it became a television show in 1951 with African-American actors. Ethnic serials, such as The Rise of the Goldbergs, depicted the lives of Jewish immigrants in a positive light. The TV Goldbergs premiered in 1949 and became the first successful television sitcom. Mama featured another ethnic matriarch of the Hansens, a Norwegian immigrant family living in San Francisco at the turn of the twentieth century. Both the Goldbergs and the Hansens focused on assimilating into American society. None of these shows had the lasting power, or the invincibility, as I Love Lucy. Lynn Spigel, Make Room for TV: Television and the Family Ideal in Postwar America (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1992), 26, 30, 32. James L. Baughman, Same Time, Same Station: Creating American Television, 1948-1961 (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), 2. Leibman, 81. Jones, 13, 58-59, 15, 41, 43. 29 In October 1951, a Cuban bandleader, his scheming redheaded wife, and their neighbors made their first television appearance. I Love Lucy premiered on CBS with the episode “The Girls Want to go to a Nightclub,” which had been filmed in front of a live audience (one of the first television series to do so). The characters of the show included Ricky and Lucy Ricardo, played by Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball, and their neighbors Fred and Ethel Mertz, played by William Frawley and Vivian Vance. Warren G. Harris, Lucy & Desi: The Legendary Love Story of Television’s Most Famous Couple (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 1991), 176. “The Girls Want to go to a Nightclub” was actually the second episode but was chosen over the first episode, “Lucy Thinks Ricky is Trying to Murder Her,” because the quality of the performances was better. Bart Andrews, The “I Love Lucy” Book (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1985), 64.

61 were turning their television dials to see Ricky and Lucy. This marked the first time in television history that a show had reached so many people.30 By late May, all four national TV rating services, Nielsen, Trendex, American Research Bureau, and Videodex, agreed that I Love Lucy was the nation’s number one television show. I Love Lucy became such a sensation that department stores, such as Marshall Field in Chicago, closed on Monday nights and posted a sign on their window reading: “We love Lucy too so we’re closing on Monday nights.” Even in

Detroit water levels in reservoirs drastically dropped on Mondays between 9:30 and 9:35 P.M.

Apparently, people were holding off showering, washing and using the bathroom until right after

Lucy was over.31 I Love Lucy’s great success was not met without controversy, though.

Ball became pregnant with their second child in 1952 and Arnaz insisted that writers include the pregnancy in the show. Producers had reservations since pregnancy was a taboo subject on television at the time. The network and the sponsors were uncomfortable about the idea and wanted Lucy to hide behind chairs and other props. Arnaz thought this absurd and wrote to Alfred Lyons, chairman of the board at sponsor Phillip Morris. After that, Lucille Ball’s pregnancy became part of the show. Arnaz found out years later Lyons had sent a memo from

England that read, “To Whom It May Concern: Don’t fuck around with the Cuban! Signed,

A.L.”32 This proved that Arnaz had become a powerful force within the industry. Because of

Arnaz’s insistence, viewers experienced the pregnancy from the moment that Lucy told Ricky the news to the delivery of their child. Lucy Ricardo gave birth to little Ricky on television on

January 19, 1953, just as Lucille Ball gave birth to Desiderio Alberto Arnaz IV. Forty-four million viewers witnessed this monumental event. The day before little Ricky’s birth, Dwight

Eisenhower took the oath of office as President of the United States and only twenty-nine million

30 David Halberstam, The Fifties (New York, NY: Fawcett Columbine Books, 1993), 199. 31 Ibid., 198. Harris, 182. 32 Arnaz, 276-280.

62 viewers tuned in. The Arnazes and the Ricardos became so popular by April 1953 that they appeared on the cover of Life magazine one week and Look, its competitor, the next. The first issue of TV Guide even featured baby Desi’s photo on its front cover. That same year Arnaz and

Ball signed an eight million dollar contract with CBS and Phillip Morris for two and a half years.33 Not only did this make the Arnazes very wealthy, but it also gave them an opportunity to expand the show’s storyline to include them as parents in this postwar era of “togetherness.”

Latin Lover Makes Good Father?

In post-World War II America, men questioned their roles in society - in both the corporate world and in family life. As historian Elaine Tyler May notes, the American family began to retreat to the home to gain a sense of security from the outside world and marriage and parenthood became the ultimate goal for both men and women.34 During this time television became the essential form of entertainment in the United States and Americans often defined idealistic expectations of masculinity, femininity, parenthood, and childhood on the basis of what they saw on the television screen.35 Each member of a TV family played a distinct role in the new domestic comedies. Ricky Ricardo on I Love Lucy, one of the most popular television shows at the time, modified the standard of white middle class American masculinity. Ricky’s character added an ethnic element to the masculine ideal that the American public accepted.

Warnings of a decline in masculinity bombarded Americans in popular culture during the

1950s. This perceived crisis in masculinity was not new. Similar questions arose several times throughout the course of American history, most significantly during the 1890s. Urbanization

33 Jones, 73. Harris, 193. “Lucy’s $8,000,000,” Time, March 2, 1953, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,822688,00.html. 34 Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York, NY: Basic Books, 1988), 129. 35 Jones, 5.

63 and industrialization changed American life by reinventing conceptions of masculinity. Men struggled to maintain a balance between overly primitive masculinity and feminization.36 Then after World War II, men’s roles changed again. From the 1950s to the 1960s, the masculine norms revolved around men as breadwinners, as soldiers, and as heterosexual.37 In a pattern underway throughout the twentieth century, they also began to drop the role of producers, yet not breadwinners, and defined themselves as consumers. Often confined to an office, the workplace became “feminized.” Men took on what they perceived as “feminine” traits, such as teamwork, cooperation and social skills, in order to succeed in this white-collar work. Instead of pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps, which they were still expected to do, men had to work together to get a job done, which posed a contradictory and impossible expectation.38

Not only did men perceive themselves as feminine in this corporate environment, but academics, intellectuals, and the popular media blamed women for the emphasis on domesticity and feminization. Writer Phillip Wylie claimed in his 1942 book Generation of Vipers that women, more specifically these men’s mothers, made them incompetent. “Momism,” he insisted, created feminized men: “The women of America raped the men, not sexually, but morally…”

Mothers turned their sons into “sissies” and homosexuals. In Wylie’s mind, technology also contributed to this passivity, for he believed that women controlled television through censorship and consumerism.39 The corporate world and domesticity were both restricting masculinity.

36 For more on masculinity in the 1890s refer to Gail Bederman’s Manliness & Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1995). 37 Robert O. Self calls this “breadwinner liberalism,” in which the mythology of the nuclear family and the assumption of man as breadwinner influenced social and economic policies. Robert O. Self, All in the Family: The Realignment of American Democracy Since the 1960s (New York, NY: Hill and Wang, 2012), 8. 38 James Gilbert, Men in the Middle: Searching for Masculinity in the 1950s (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 16-17. 39 Phillip Wylie, Generation of Vipers, rev. ed. (1942; repr., New York: Rinehart & Company, Inc., 1955), 200, 213- 214.

64 Men were incapable of running a household on television shows during the 1950s. Critics referred to them as “bumbling fathers.” TV Guide asked in 1953 “Whatever happened to men?”

The article continued: “Once upon a time a girl thought of her boyfriend or husband as her

Prince Charming. Now having watched the antics of Ozzie Nelson and Chester A. Riley, she thinks of her man, and any other man, as a Prime Idiot.” Instead of being the man of the house, he was now the “mouse of the house.”40 This article specifically referred to Ozzie Nelson on The

Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet and Chester A. Riley in Life of Riley, but it could have also applied to several other TV dads, such as Ward Cleaver on Leave It to Beaver and Jim Anderson on Father Knows Best. The concept of “togetherness” and expressions of masculinity were at odds with each other. Despite their perceived incompetence, television families never questioned the fathers’ authority. The fathers never raised their voices in anger towards their children or their wives. The programs focused on children and the trials and tribulations of parenting. The father’s and the mother’s primary identity was that of parent. This pattern did not appear on I

Love Lucy.

Desi Arnaz, through Ricky Ricardo, performed a different masculinity, a Latin masculinity that was exotic, yet acceptable to his white American audiences, since it did not threaten societal norms.41 His roles as father, husband, Latin lover, and straight man departed from those of other TV dads, which made the show more engaging to TV viewers. Ricky did not define himself, nor did others define him, as simply a father. Ricky and Lucy’s child did not play a significant role in the series until the last seasons. His method of parenting was quite unlike the

“ordinary” American’s. He wanted his son to be an all-American boy by playing baseball,

40 Spigel, 60. 41 This refers to Judith Butler’s theory of performative acts in which Butler argued that “gender is not a fact, the various acts of gender creates the idea of gender, and without those acts, there would be no gender at all.” Judith Butler, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory,” Theatre Journal 3, no. 1 (Dec., 1988): 522.

65 watching boxing on TV and going hunting and fishing like most American men at the time, yet unlike most of his viewers and against Lucy’s wishes, his son had to speak and understand

English and Spanish and not neglect his culture. This was evident in his parenting skills from the time little Ricky was still an infant.42

Ricky was a kind and loving father, but he also did not sacrifice his interests or his time to parent his son, nor did viewers expect him to. An example of Ricky’s parenting came in

“Ricky Minds the Baby,” an episode in the third season. Ricky had the week off from work since the owners were painting the club where he worked. He had planned to go a boxing match, play poker, and hunt—all very masculine activities. Lucy objected and insisted that Ricky use the week to do chores and spend time with little Ricky. Here, again the domesticity of postwar life conflicted with expressions of masculinity. Ricky agreed and went to tell little Ricky his favorite bedtime story, Little Red Riding Hood (Caperucita Roja). Ricky told a quite animated story in a mixture of Spanish and English as Lucy and the Mertzes spied in delight. Everyone, viewers included, enjoyed this tender moment, which showcased Ricky’s gentler side. At the same time,

Ricky was not confined to parenthood as Lucy was in this particular episode. Ricky insisted on taking complete control of the baby and gave Lucy the day off from her domestic obligations.

Ricky accidentally left their front door open and the baby wandered into the hallway while his dad and Fred were with immersed in the boxing match on TV. In the end, Fred found little Ricky and brought him back to the Ricardo apartment before Lucy noticed her son was gone. This episode comically showed Ricky as a good dad, although not an attentive one. His demeanor did not reveal him as bumbling or incompetent. Although he said he would help Lucy around the house, this never happened. He refused, even if passively, to become part of the domestic

42 Pérez Firmat, 44.

66 world—that was women’s work. It was clear to the audience that Ricky’s masculinity remained intact and his identity was not just as a father since he had other hobbies and interests.43

Ricky’s approach to childcare and his ability to remain in control set him apart from the

“bumbling” television fathers at the time, as did his relationship with his wife, Lucy. Lucy and

Ricky argued and yelled, but they also kissed and embraced passionately. The Nelsons, the

Andersons, and the Cleavers never raised their voices in anger nor was there ever much affection between them. Perhaps audiences accepted the turmoil in the Ricardo home because Ricky was

Cuban and therefore expected to have a stereotypical Latin temper. That would not explain Lucy yelling back, however, since women were supposed to be submissive and not question their husband’s authority. Articles in popular publications tried to explain the dynamics of the

Ricardo/Arnaz household emphasizing their cultural distinctiveness. According to the New York

Times, “Both households operate in the Mediterranean tradition.” This meant that the husband ruled the household and did as he wished while the wife raised the children and knew her place in the background.44 The turbulent relationship of America’s favorite couple was not censored, surprisingly, considering the expectations of the perfect marriage during this time. Family and togetherness did not always take center stage in the story of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, yet

Americans still were drawn to it. Another aspect of Ricky and Lucy’s relationship that was very visible was the affection that they displayed towards each other. Ricky and Lucy kissed on the lips as real-life couples usually did. They did not censor their displays of affection from the viewers. In fact, this was probably what made them so real and approachable. They ran into dilemmas that everyone related to and reconciled at the end. An example of this occurred when

43 “Ricky’s Minds the Baby,” I Love Lucy, DVD, directed by William Asher, 18 Jan. 1954 (Hollywood, CA: Paramount Pictures, 2005). 44 Cecelia Ager, “Desilu, or From Gags to Riches: The Lucy—and Desi—Everybody Loved Now Rule an Entertainment Empire,” New York Times, April 20, 1958.

67 Ricky forgot their wedding anniversary (again), but Lucy forgave him. They embraced and passionately kissed as if no one watched. It was a rarity when Ozzie and Harriet showed affection towards each other. If there was a kiss, it was a peck on the cheek. They did not say that they loved each other nor told their sons how much they loved them on screen.45

Many of television’s dads in the 1950s were portrayed as asexual, having no interest in sex whatsoever, or lacking any sexual appeal. Ricky Ricardo defied that image. Not only was

Lucy pregnant on the series (visible evidence that the couple had sex), but also the Ricardos’ bedroom played a large role in the series. Desi Arnaz even said in his autobiography “the lack of romance and sex does not help any show. I think our audience could visualize Lucy and Ricky going to bed together and enjoying it.”46 Another dimension to this sexuality was the theme of a philandering Ricky, which writers used repeatedly, at least once per season. Lucy suspected

Ricky of having extra-marital affairs several times throughout the run of the show.47

Ricky had sexual appeal as the modern version of the Latin lover. During the 1920s the image of the Latin lover recurred in Hollywood films, exemplified by Rudolph Valentino, who was Italian, and Ramón Novarro, who was Mexican. Before then, studios limited “Latin” actors to the “greaser” stereotype, of a dark skinned villain. The Latin lover, in contrast, had fairer skin, which made him exotic, yet desirable. Relations between the greaser and white women did not exist, whereas relations with the modern Latin lover appeared romanticized as seen on I Love

Lucy.48 Not only did Lucy constantly refer to Ricky as her “Cuban dreamboat,” but the show’s plotlines also repeatedly cast him as the Latin lover. In the fourth season, Ricky auditioned for a

45 “Hollywood Anniversary,” I Love Lucy, DVD, directed by William Asher, 4 Apr. 1955 (Hollywood, CA: Paramount Pictures, 2005). Laura R. Linder, “From Ozzie to Ozzy: The Reassuring Nonevolution of the Sitcom Family,” in The Sitcom Reader: America Viewed and Skewed, eds. Mary M. Dalton and Laura R. Linder (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2005), 69. 46 Arnaz, 322. 47 This actually hit close to home since Desi Arnaz was a womanizer and did cheat on Lucille Ball various times during the course of their marriage. 48 Benshoff and Griffin, 138-139.

68 movie role and got the part of the Don Juan-Latin lover type. The Ricardos and the Mertzes went to Hollywood for Ricky to film a movie. When they returned to New York City, the Ricardos’ elderly neighbor compared Ricky to Rudolph Valentino.49 Ricky was the new Latin lover. In another episode, Lucy and Ricky went on a vacation alone together and Lucy wanted romance while Ricky wanted to go to sleep in order to wake up early to go fishing. “Whatever happened to that hot-blooded Latin I married?!,” Lucy exclaimed.50 The expectation was that Latins, due to their culture and biology, should always be willing and able to engage in sex at any time and especially within marriage.51 Lucy held Ricky up to a different standard of masculinity than the average American man.

Ricky Ricardo challenged the ideas of what it meant to be a father and a man in this Cold

War era. He exhibited his own brand of masculinity, which strayed from the bland, conformist performances of other television dads. His ethnicity gave him a license to explore the ways his culture would affect his parenting and his relationship with his wife. He was a parent, but that was not all he was. He was also a lover, a passionate man, and importantly, a middle class light skinned man. He conformed in terms of class, but his ethnicity was what made this show different from the rest.

Cuba on Television

Ricky Ricardo’s ethnicity was a constant source of interest and laughter for viewers. Desi

Arnaz as Ricky Ricardo sold what audiences wanted, the image of a typical middle class

49 “Homecoming,” I Love Lucy, DVD, directed by James V. Kern, 7 Nov. 1955 (Hollywood, CA: Paramount Pictures, 2005). 50 “Lucy’s Summer Vacation,” I Love Lucy, DVD, directed by Jerry Thorpe, 8 Jun. 1959 (Hollywood, CA: Paramount Pictures, 2007). 51 Elaine Tyler May argues “sexual liberalism” was in full swing during this period, meaning that society encouraged fulfilling sexual relationship, but only within marriage. This is what May calls “sexual containment.” May, 102.

69 American couple, but he also inserted his Cuban background into the show and refused to overtly disregard his culture and assimilate completely. He portrayed Cuban culture in a particular way, though. I Love Lucy was televised in Cuba, but its American slapstick humor was not a hit there.52 Many of the images of Cuban culture on the show reinforced the perceptions Americans already held about Latin America; authenticity was not the goal of this show. Although Ricky sometimes tried to correct Lucy’s interpretations of Cuba, she pushed back, which may have created confusion for viewers on what exactly was authentic. Ultimately, the show aimed to make people laugh, and whether ideas or songs or cultural elements were authentically Cuban was not important. I Love Lucy gave the people what they wanted: laughs with a Latin flavor.

The second episode of the series, entitled “Be a Pal,” demonstrates the jumble of Latin

America viewers often saw before on film and now on television. Lucy recreated Cuba to regain

Ricky’s interest. After two failed suggestions from an advice book on relationships, she tried the author’s last piece of advice: become a mother. In this particular case, it meant to remind Ricky of his happy childhood in Cuba. She filled their apartment with items Anglo Americans associated with Cuba. There were chickens, a mule, several prop men taking siestas, Ethel dressed with a serape and a sombrero with a big moustache (obviously Mexican stereotypes), and Lucy performed a song in Portuguese dressed as Brazilian Carmen Miranda. This hodge- podge of “Latin America” welcomed Ricky home. Perplexed, his eyes bulged out and his mouth gaped. “You like?” asked Lucy. Ricky replied, “No, I dunt.” He said that if he wanted things

Cuban, he would have stayed in Havana. “That’s why I married you,” Ricky reassured Lucy,

“because you’re so different from anyone I’ve known in Cuba.”53

52 Sublette, 581-582. 53 “Be A Pal,” I Love Lucy, DVD, directed by Marc Daniels, 22 Oct. 1951 (Hollywood, CA: Paramount Pictures, 2005).

70 Although Ricky was obviously shocked by what he saw, he never questioned it. To audiences, this indicated that it was an acceptable portrayal of Cuba and of Latin Americans generally. This nod to Ricky’s ethnicity occurred early in the series—only the second episode in the show’s run. It set the precedent for the conglomeration and confusion of Latin American cultures that would follow in later installments including “Breaking the Lease,” “Tennessee

Ernie Visits” and “Lucy Writes a Novel.” In “Breaking the Lease,” Ricky and Lucy performed what Lucy referred to as “an old Cuban folk dance,” El Breako the Lease-o, which turned out to be Jarabe Tapatío more commonly known as the Mexican hat dance.54 In “Tennessee Ernie

Visits,” Lucy’s mother referred to Ricky as Xavier (as in Cugat, the Spanish-born Cuban-raised bandleader). Her mother knew she was married to a Latin bandleader, she just could not remember which one. Finally, in “Lucy Writes a Novel,” Lucy heard of a housewife who made a fortune from writing a novel and immediately got to work on her own masterpiece. In her writing, she placed Ricky as a lonely immigrant arriving at a New York City harbor in a leaky cattle boat weeping at the sight of the Statue of Liberty. Ricky tried to correct her by explaining that he came from Havana to Miami Beach on a plane with musicians, but Lucy insisted that she would not change her story.55 Again, Latins, and in the last example immigrants, were interchangeable.56

Although Ricky often shrugged at these attempts to poke fun at his culture, in episode 53,

“Lucy Hires an English Tutor,” he blatantly resisted.57 Lucy, adamant about having their child speak perfect English, insisted that Ricky should not talk to the child until he or she was 19 or 20

54 “Breaking the Lease,” I Love Lucy, DVD, directed by Marc Daniels, 11 Feb. 1952 (Hollywood, CA: Paramount Pictures, 2005). 55 “Lucy Writes a Novel,” I Love Lucy, DVD, directed by William Asher, 15 Apr. 1954 (Hollywood, CA: Paramount Pictures, 2005). 56 “Tennessee Ernie Visits,” I Love Lucy, DVD, directed by William Asher, 3 May 1954 (Hollywood, CA: Paramount Pictures, 2005). 57 “Lucy Hires an English Tutor,” I Love Lucy, DVD, directed by William Asher, 29 Dec. 1952 (Hollywood, CA: Paramount Pictures, 2004).

71 years old because of his accent and hired an English tutor to train the Ricardos and the Mertzes to speak the language properly. Instead of paying the tutor, Lucy promised that he could perform at Ricky’s club, The Tropicana. Mr. Livermore, the tutor, then had them carry out a simple exercise pronouncing the vowels. Ricky said them in Spanish and Livermore asked, “Wherever did you acquire that odd pronunciation?” Ricky fought back with “I went to school in Cuba, what’s your excuse?” In the end, Ricky made a deal with Livermore and, in front of Lucy,

Livermore took on Ricky’s accent and even sang Babalú, Ricky’s signature song. Lucy defeated, stated that Ricky had won the battle of the accents.

This interaction presented audiences with a puzzling role reversal and a dig at Anglophile supremacy. Lucy offered the English tutor a stint at the Tropicana in exchange for six months of

English lessons. Why did the uptight English tutor want to perform at a Latin nightclub? It seemed contradictory and baffled even Ricky, but according to Livermore he wanted to introduce his singing talent in Ricky’s “nocturnal bistro.” Perhaps, Livermore was unaware of the Latin theme of the club. Either way, Ricky appeared threatened by this man coming into his home and telling him how to speak, but instead of accepting Livermore’s assimilationist expectations, he refused to give up his culture. He overtly rejected assimilation, and denied Lucy the opportunity to Americanize her husband. The Cuban won, but also demonstrated an important quality of the

American man: Ricky’s cleverness as a prosperous entrepreneur. He ran a successful business and was a convincing negotiator.

Ricky Ricardo used his ethnicity not only to defy conformity, but also to challenge the censors. When Ricky got angry, he went into temper tantrums and he started speaking in

Spanish. He sometimes even used profanity but, since most of the viewers could not understand it, no one complained, nor did the censors catch it. He got away with a lot in Spanish that he

72 could not have in English. An example of this would be in a skit that Desi Arnaz and the other cast members did on The Bob Hope Show in 1956. They performed an I Love Lucy parody routine with Hope. Lucille Ball and Vivian Vance played their roles of Lucy and Ethel, but Bob

Hope played Ricky, Desi played Fred, and William Frawley played Captain Blighstone, the owner of a trained seal Lucy was using in an audition. In this skit, Lucy was once again attempting to get into show business and Hope then tried to dominate Arnaz through racist jokes.

At one point the seal tossed a hoop around Arnaz’s neck. Hope asked if he had just come back from a “‘wetback’ luau.”58 Arnaz replied: “Mira qué tiene cosas el narizón, sinvergüenza, zoquete éste, carajo,” which loosely translated to: “This big-nosed, chump, cad has some nerve, hell.” Audiences could not understand him, but they found amusement in the piece. Even critics reviewed the segment positively. Television critic Jack Gould praised it as “the broadest of farce but diverting fun.”59 This again proved that although Hope thought that he had won, for a

Spanish-speaking audience Arnaz was the winner with his subversive behavior.60

Babalú, Ricky’s most memorable song, showed how Arnaz, through his singing and acting career, resisted white supremacy and conformity by appropriating Afro-Cuban culture, again, without the awareness of his audience. Ricky performed Babalú for the first time in episode 6, “The Audition,” and the song reappeared throughout the series.61 Most Americans did not know that Babalú-Ayé was the Dahomeyan (West African) god of illness and disease, known to Cuban Catholics as St. Lazarus. Thus, a white Cuban aristocrat invoked Afro-Cuban

58 This remark also connected to the idea that all Latin Americans and Latin American immigrants were in the same category. Even the Cold War Latin was not immune from the label of “wetback.” 59 Jack Gould, “TV: Ray Bolger Show,” New York Times, October 22, 1956. 60 Mary Desjardins, “Lucy and Desi: Sexuality, Ethnicity, and TV’s First Family,” in Television, History, and American Culture: Feminist Critical Essays, eds. Mary Beth Haralovich and Lauren Rabinovitz (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999), 62-63. Pérez Firmat, 30. 61 “The Audition,” I Love Lucy, DVD, directed by Marc Daniels, 19 Nov. 1951 (Hollywood, CA: Paramount Pictures, 2005).

73 spirituality in his performance.62 Americans blindly embraced such elements of Santería and

African culture. He was not the one who first recorded it; that honor went to Miguelito Valdés.

Arnaz introduced it to white, middle class America, however. Ironically, his father Dr. Desiderio

Arnaz, the mayor of Santiago de Cuba in the 1920s, proclaimed he would “radically suppress” the parades, called congas, in the upcoming carnival because he, like most white aristocrats at the time, viewed the congas as immoral and representative of the lowest peoples (read: black).63

Yet, his son enjoyed commercial success because of these Afro-Cuban connections.

Significantly, Babalú was in nearly every episode even when it seemed less than appropriate.

One of these odd situations occurred in the third season in “Tennessee Ernie Hangs On.” The

Ricardos and the Mertzes performed on a country variety show as Ernie Ford and his Hot

Chicken Pickers. Ricky, in farmer’s overalls, broke into a spirited rendition of Babalú with his conga drum and the group won the contest.64 Writers even found a way to incorporate Ricky’s culture into a barn performance!

Cuba, through Ricky’s performances, was romantic, exotic, and lively, playing to many of the stereotypes of the time. This perception was complicated by the Ricardos’ trips to Cuba.

One episode made Lucy, the American, incompetent in the country. She knew nothing and continually insulted the Cuban people. Another portrayal reaffirmed many of those stereotypes once again and made Americans culturally superior to the Cuban people, who were musical drunkards. In season six, the Ricardos visited Cuba. Little Ricky knew Spanish and now the tables were turned since Lucy butchered the language.65 Ricky jested with her about her

62 Although scholar Ned Sublette argues that Arnaz failed in these attempts: “The black Havana dialect of the lyrics sounded fake in the mouth of Desi, a Santiago aristocrat.” Sublette, 581, 534. 63 Sublette, 370-371. 64 “Tennessee Ernie Hangs On,” I Love Lucy, DVD, directed by William Asher, 10 May 1954 (Hollywood, CA: Paramount Pictures, 2005). 65 “The Ricardos Visit Cuba,” I Love Lucy, DVD, directed by James V. Kern, 3 Dec. 1956 (Hollywood, CA: Paramount Pictures, 2006).

74 pronunciations, which she did not appreciate. Lucy replied that Spanish was a foreign language and Ricky countered that English was a foreign language to him. “The way you speak it, it is to me too,” Lucy responded. Lucy was now vulnerable in the presence of Ricky’s family and needed to impress Uncle Alberto, the patriarch of the family, who wanted Ricky to marry a

Cuban woman. She had to convince him that Ricky had made the right decision. Lucy called

Alberto a fat pig in Spanish, sat on his cigars, spilled punch on his light colored suit, and broke his straw hat. After a disastrous evening, Lucy proclaimed that, “Cuba may cut off America’s sugar supply.” At the end of the show, Ricky performed in the Casino Parisien in Havana and sang “I’m a Lucky Guy” with lyrics like “In Cuba I’m a Cuban/ In the USA I’m a Yank/

Wherever I am I’m Home/ and I’ve got you to thank…In New York or Havana/ People make me feel I belong.” Ricky then introduced his wife, and son to the audience. When Little Ricky joined him onstage, he addressed the audience: “even though Little Ricky was born in America I want to prove to you that there’s a lot of Cuba in his heart.” They played Babalú together and Uncle

Alberto finally accepted Lucy as part of the family saying, “anyone who’s the mother of a boy like that is all right with me.” This episode showed Ricky’s agency; it was his family, his culture that had to approve of Lucy. The American was essentially at the Cubans’ command. Lucy was the one who needed to impress her in-laws.

A depiction of Cuba that was not as flattering appeared in the episode “Lucy Takes a

Cruise to Havana” in the seventh season of I Love Lucy.66 Lucy and Ricky reminisced on their first meeting to real-life gossip columnist Hedda Hopper. Lucy had gone on a cruise to Havana with her co-worker, Susie McNamara, to find men. There they met their future husbands. When they arrived in Cuba, all Cubans played instruments and sang as well as drank rum, lots of it.

66 At this point, the series became a one-hour show. It was also called The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour or The Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Show.

75 This episode came as a surprise after a balanced portrayal of Cuban life just one year before.

Now Ricky’s culture appeared as a mix of stereotypes. Lucy was the one with agency in this episode, since it was she who convinced American crooner Rudy Vallée to hire Ricky as part of his orchestra so they could be together.67 This episode may exhibit such a bias because it was

Lucy’s recollection of the event and not Ricky’s. As viewers saw in the episode “Be a Pal,” Lucy was quite confused on what Cuban culture was and was not. As a result, Cuba, as a culture and a place, was still very vague to television viewers and Desi Arnaz was partly responsible for this.

He did have some creative control over the show and knew what American audiences wanted to see. He was also a product of his time and aware of the political and social environment of the

1950s.

Cold War Latin Fends off Accusations of Communism

The atmosphere of the Cold War rewarded conformity and patriotism and punished any challenges to those ideologies. Arnaz’s ethnicity and attempts at assimilation now became highly valuable outside the set of I Love Lucy as his wife became a victim of the Red Scare. In the fall of 1953, the public learned of Lucille Ball’s past affiliations with the Communist Party. Ball’s willingness to play the vulnerable female victim and Desi Arnaz’s way of using his ethnicity to portray a humble immigrant turned patriotic American and a male protector pulled on America’s heartstrings. Their individual roles in this controversy and their collective persona as an all-

American couple with middle class values allowed I Love Lucy to escape condemnation.

Lucille Ball was neither the first nor the last television star to be accused of communist involvement, but the way she and Arnaz maneuvered through Cold War expectations of race and

67 “Lucy Takes a Cruise to Havana,” I Love Lucy, DVD, directed by Jerry Thorpe, 6 Nov. 1957 (Hollywood, CA: Paramount Pictures, 2007). This contradicted Ricky’s story of how he came to the United States in “Lucy Writes a Novel.”

76 gender made her and the series invincible from the consequences others, like actor Philip Loeb, faced. In 1951, Philip Loeb, who played Jake Goldberg on the television show featuring a Jewish family, The Goldbergs, was blacklisted for his past affiliations with communism in the 1930s.

The results, however, were very different. Arnaz and Ball appealed to the public that she was only trying to please her ailing grandfather in the 1930s by registering for the Communist Party, but never really planned on taking it any further. Ball’s immense popularity and her relationship with television audiences made her untouchable. Fans and sponsors supported her. Two months after the scandal broke, the I Love Lucy cast performed for President Eisenhower and others, including FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, in a CBS special Dinner with the President. In contrast,

Philip Loeb was not as fortunate. Although Loeb, like Ball, denied his active involvement in the

Communist Party, the sponsors for The Goldbergs claimed he was too controversial and refused to back the show if he remained part of the cast. Loeb eventually resigned and after several years of unemployment, he committed suicide in 1955.68

Why did such similar cases have such different results? Ball and Arnaz were the embodiment of postwar values, exhibiting upward mobility and entrepreneurship. Timing might have been a factor as well. If this scandal had unraveled a year earlier, when combat was still occurring in Korea and before American audiences had attached themselves to the couple, I Love

Lucy might have suffered more.69 It also seemed that gender and ethnicity played significant parts. Ball effectively played the part of the naïve wife with her husband coming to the rescue to save her reputation. She was the dainty, unknowing housewife who did not understand the consequences of her actions.

68 Doherty, 58, 48. 69 Ibid., 52, 58.

77 Desi Arnaz spoke to the press on his wife’s behalf successfully fulfilling the societal expectations for men and women at the time. He insisted that Lucille was “100 per cent

American” and even compared her to President Eisenhower. He also added that they had voted for Eisenhower, demonstrating their devotion to the country.70 At the filming of an I Love Lucy episode, he addressed the audience with a typed note in his hand. Overcome with emotion, his voice cracked as he explained that Ball was not a Communist. The audience applauded for a full minute. Then he introduced Lucille: “Now I want you to meet my favorite wife, my favorite redhead—in fact, that's the only thing red about her, and even that’s not legitimate—Lucille

Ball.”71 They played their roles well within the Cold War context and American audiences allowed the controversy to die.

Ricky’s/Desi’s ethnicity and recent immigrant experience were also factors in why I Love

Lucy did not suffer the same fate as The Goldbergs. The Goldbergs were Jewish. Although scholars argue that whiteness became accessible for more people, including the Irish, Italians, and even the Jews, during the postwar era, anti-Semitism continued because of the perceived associations of Jews to leftist organizations.72 The McCarran-Walter Act of 1952 also strengthened the role of the government in deporting suspected Communists effectively pressuring new immigrants to “behave” and follow America’s rules.73 Although The Goldbergs were now mostly “white,” the media labeled the show as an ethnic comedy while I Love Lucy was not. Desi Arnaz’s/Ricky Ricardo’s immigrant experience, his desire to assimilate within the

Cold War context, and his skin color made it easy for him to slip into a degree of whiteness. In

70 Ibid., 56. 71 Ball, 191. 72 James R. Barrett, The Irish Way: Becoming American in the Multiethnic City (New York, NY: Penguin Press, 2012). David R. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class. (Brooklyn, NY: Verso, 2007). 73 Gary Gerstle, American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 262.

78 the postwar era, Ricky Ricardo was white enough. Ricky Ricardo came at the right time. He told the press of his experience with communism in Cuba and his hatred for the system that destroyed his family, while the U.S. enjoyed politically amicable and financially beneficial relations with

Cuba. All of these factors contributed to I Love Lucy’s resilience in the face of McCarthyism.74

The Resistance and Assimilation of the Cold War Latin

Although the rigidity of the era made it difficult for entertainers to significantly protest against white, middle class ideologies, Desi Arnaz did so playfully through the character of

Ricky Ricardo. Ricky often pushed back against the circulating ideas of conformity and white homogeneity. The mere fact that Desi Arnaz’s culture was a large part of the show indicated that he was not willing to shed that aspect of himself and completely assimilate. Yet, at times it did seem like he tired of fighting and merely gave in. This tension became more evident in the later seasons of the show when the Ricardos moved to the suburbs in Connecticut. Here he constantly negotiated his way between two seemingly opposing cultures.

The suburban move came halfway through the sixth season of I Love Lucy. Thirteen episodes (out of twenty seven) featured the suburbs. When the Ricardos became suburban dwellers, the plotlines minimized Ricky’s culture. The viewers no longer saw Ricky’s club, now called Club Babalú. The characters still mocked Ricky’s accent and Ricky had an occasional fit in Spanish, but the musical numbers that were so common in prior seasons, largely disappeared.

It seemed that Ricky’s assimilation was complete in the final episode of the sixth season, “The

Ricardos Dedicate a Statue” when Lucy persuaded Ricky to dress up in a period specific costume

74 Desi Arnaz expressed in various sources, including his own autobiography, that he believed Communists or Bolsheviks (he used both terms) had destroyed his home and pushed his family out of Cuba in 1933. I have not found concrete proof of this claim. Coyne Steven Sanders and Tom Gilbert, Desilu: The Story of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz (Chicago, IL: Chicago Review Press, 2001), 82. Ball, 191. Arnaz, 288.

79 to dedicate a Revolutionary War statue. Ricky initially refused to wear that “silly looking

Yankee Doodle Dandy outfit” stating he did not want “to be seen in those early American snickers.”75 In the end, he showed up to the dedication in the costume with powdered wig and all.76

During the sixth season (the final season of the thirty minute format) Ricky’s roles were smaller, but in the seventh season (the new hour long format) he was a crucial character once again and his culture resurfaced. In the first episode of the seventh season was “Lucy Takes a

Cruise to Havana.”77 A few episodes later, Ricky rehearsed a dance number in their suburban living room with actress Betty Grable and her husband, musician Harry James, while contractors redecorated the club. In the Caribbean inspired dance number, “The Bayamo,” Ricky and Betty danced for television viewers in a lengthy four and a half minute performance.78 His culture had become a significant part of the storyline again and his sense of identity and belonging also came up for discussion.

Ricky Ricardo identified as an American and as a Cuban throughout the series. He was adamant about his place in American middle class society. In the eighth season, he defended his

American citizenship while on trip to Mexico. In the episode “Lucy Goes to Mexico,” Ricky sang in Spanish for the USO in San Diego, along with French entertainer Maurice Chevalier who sang in French, and little Ricky who sang in English. Ricky could not reenter the United States after spending the afternoon in Mexico since he left his paperwork behind. A border inspector

75 Mispronouncing 'knickers.' 76 “The Ricardos Dedicate a Statue,” I Love Lucy, DVD, directed by William Asher, 6 May 1957 (Hollywood, CA: Paramount Pictures, 2006). 77 The sixth season (1956-1957) was the last season of the thirty-minute weekly I Love Lucy show. The show continued on for three more seasons with the same cast in a sporadic hour-long format instead of the weekly half hour format. These seasons have been referred as The Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Show, The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour and I Love Lucy Season 7, 8 and 9. 78 “Lucy Wins a Racehorse,” I Love Lucy, DVD, directed by Jerry Thorpe, 3 Feb. 1958 (Hollywood, CA: Paramount Pictures, 2007).

80 questioned Ricky’s American citizenship because of his accent. Ricky declared that he was a

U.S. citizen and that he had even served in the Army. The border inspector probed: “Which army?” Ricky yelled back, “The American Army!”79 With great frustration he defended his citizenship by mentioning his military service. He made a living providing Latin entertainment, but when it came down to it, he wanted to be considered a loyal American citizen. He distanced himself from the label of foreigner and reaffirmed the embodiment of the Cold War Latin. This particular scene showed the tension, literally in the form of an international border, between his identity as a Latin American and as a United States citizen.

The last season, the ninth, brought Ricky’s culture full circle. Not only did he perform the song “Cuban Pete” in Japanese at a geisha house, he also expressed his frustration with show business and his desire to return to Cuba.80 In the last episode of the franchise, “Lucy Meets the

Moustache,” Ricky, disappointed with his career in show business, wanted to move back to Cuba to run his uncle’s tobacco farm. Lucy found a letter in English that Ricky wrote to his uncle. He mentioned at the beginning of the note that it was easier for him to write in English now, since his Spanish was a little rusty.81 This final episode suggested that Ricky had assimilated in many ways but still struggled to maintain his Cuban identity. He was conflicted about who he had become. He constantly tried to balance two different cultures. Scholar Gustavo Pérez Firmat connects this confusion with the idea of nilingualism: the idea that one is basically caught between two cultures, or languages, and is no longer part of either. Desi Arnaz and Ricky

79 “Lucy Goes to Mexico,” I Love Lucy, DVD, directed by Jerry Thorpe, 6 Oct. 1958 (Hollywood, CA: Paramount Pictures, 2007). 80 “The Ricardos Go to Japan,” I Love Lucy, DVD, directed by Desi Arnaz, 27 Nov. 1959 (Hollywood, CA: Paramount Pictures, 2007). 81 “Lucy Meets the Moustache,” I Love Lucy, DVD, directed by Desi Arnaz, 1 Apr. 1960 (Hollywood, CA: Paramount Pictures, 2007).

81 Ricardo became the same person in instances like this. It was difficult to separate the two since

Desi Arnaz’s life and personality often bled into the character of Ricky.82

Desi in Print

Magazines and newspapers often interchanged Desi Arnaz and Ricky Ricardo, blurring the line between reality and fiction. They often reinforced many old stereotypes, like discussing his Latin temper or his exotic looks, but they also spoke of his family life as a white, middle class parent and husband. Arnaz had some control over the way the media depicted him to the

American public and used the media to his advantage by appropriating the immigrant narrative to describe his rise from humble beginnings to present prosperity. He became the embodiment of the American dream. This made him a contradictory and complex figure as a representative of the Cold War era.

Desi Arnaz knew how to appeal to white American audiences by capitalizing on his differences and also demonstrating societal norms and expectations. He knew that I Love Lucy would not be as popular as it was without his ethnicity. TV Guide reported he once told his cast mates, who were mocking his accent, that he could speak just as well as they could, but if he did

“we’d all be out of a job.”83 As this incident demonstrated, Arnaz had a special talent for sharing

Latin culture with the masses without posing a threat to the established order. This stemmed back to his early film career when RKO marketed his image in publicity stills as a clean-cut Latin lover type you could bring home.84 On I Love Lucy, Arnaz, as executive producer, controlled how the writers developed Ricky as a character. He appeased white America’s appetite for

82 Pérez Firmat, 46. 83 Earl Wilson, “Confidentially…,” TV Guide, January 7, 1956, 22. 84 Beltrán, 46.

82 exoticism, but also retained his dignity as a man, musician, husband, and provider.85 But, where did Arnaz end and Ricky begin? Sometimes this blurring did not work in his favor when negative characteristics attributed to Ricky also became part of Arnaz’s persona. The difference was that real life was not as funny as fiction.

The depictions of Desi Arnaz in print often paralleled what viewers saw on I Love Lucy.

Countless articles highlighted his “Latin temper.” Ricky’s temper was a constant part of the show from the very beginning. Lucy created havoc, Ricky flipped his lid, the audience laughed, and Ricky and Lucy made up at the end. In the episode aptly named “Ricky Loses His Temper,”

Ricky and Lucy made a bet over whether Lucy would buy a new hat first or whether Ricky would lose his temper first. In the end, Ricky lost his temper, but only after Lucy lost the bet by buying a hat without Ricky’s knowledge. This theme came up again.86 The most violent of these episodes was “Ricky Needs an Agent” in season four. In this episode, Lucy’s actions caused

Ricky to lose his movie contract. Ricky angered at the news, smashed vases and other trinkets in the hotel room. He trashed the room, but the audience was ecstatic.87

In print, references to Desi Arnaz’s temper appeared in nearly every article. A 1952 New

York Times article described him as “voluble, volatile Desi,” and suggested that he spoke in

“rumba tones.”88 Speaking of his success as a businessman, TV Guide stated, “all the success in the world can’t change the fact that he is an emotional Latin.”89 An article in Look Magazine commented along the same theme: “Desi has a Cuban temper which sometimes explodes on the

85 Ibid., 58. 86 “Ricky Loses His Temper,” I Love Lucy, DVD, directed by William Asher, 22 Feb. 1954 (Hollywood, CA: Paramount Pictures, 2005). 87 “Ricky needs an Agent,” I Love Lucy, DVD, directed by William Asher, 15 May 1955 (Hollywood, CA: Paramount Pictures, 2005). 88 Florence Crowther, “About ‘I Love Lucy’: Hard Work and Four Days Make a Half-Hour Show,” New York Times, September 28, 1952. 89 “Desi Arnaz Switched from Rumba Band to Businessman,” TV Guide, April 30, 1954, 17.

83 set…”90 A 1953 Cosmopolitan article on Ball described Arnaz as “the temperamental Latin,” but then went on to acknowledge his success with such headings such as “Desi Gets Credit for ‘I

Love Lucy’” and “Desi is a Talented Producer.”91 A Cosmopolitan article in 1960 described

Arnaz as “a Latin American dictator, relaxing in sports clothes” and said that he behaved “rather like a dictator too—not a relaxing one, but a hard-working, demanding one” “flailing his arms like a Latin windmill.”92 Lucille Ball also said in her autobiography, published years after her death, “the audience had to believe that I lived in fear and trembling of my husband’s wrath, and with Desi they could.”93

Those comments reinforced the stereotype of the hotheaded Latin, but they were commonplace during the 1950s, and Desi-through Ricky-used such acceptance to his advantage by playing the part and capitalizing on it. This was illustrated in the main photograph accompanying an article “The Cuban and the Redhead” in The American Magazine.94 Arnaz pointed a finger angrily at Ball as she cowered with her fingers curled up to her chest. This not only showed Arnaz playing up to the camera, but also revealed how Ball played her part as well.

This collaboration made the show, and the partnership, the success that it still is. As evident from that photograph, without the combination of the two cultures and personalities, the show would not have been so successful. The America Magazine wrote about the couple in 1952: “At first glance this oddly paired couple appears to have little in common, either with each other or with the plain family folk who find their weekly antics so amusing.”95 It went on to explain I Love

Lucy’s appeal: “The captivating thing about Lucy and Ricky is, we think, the fact that they hold a

90 Laura Berquist, “Desi and Lucy: The Love Story Behind their Six Years at the Top,” Look, December 25, 1956, 76. 91 Albert Morehead, “America’s Top Saleswomen: No.1: ‘Lucy’ Ball,” Cosmopolitan, January 1953, 15, 17-18. 92 Frederick Christian, “Lucille Ball’s Serious Life with Desi Arnaz,” Cosmopolitan, January 1960, 70. 93 Ball, 170. 94 Jack and Madeline Sher, “The Cuban and the Redhead,” The American Magazine, September 1952, 27-28. 95 Ibid., 27.

84 mirror up to every married couple in America. Not a regulation mirror that reflects truth, nor a magic mirror that portrays fantasy. But a Coney Island mirror that distorts, exaggerates, and makes vastly amusing every little incident, foible, and idiosyncrasy of married life.”96 TV Guide also agreed that the show had a “universal theme,” the institution of marriage: “It is the single story line above all others with which the audience can most readily identify itself.”97 The

American public’s acceptance of this bicultural couple likely had to do with the color of Arnaz’s skin. Had Arnaz been darker, there would not have been an I Love Lucy show or an I Love Lucy empire.98 Also, Arnaz’s ability to pull the heartstrings of Americans in the Cold War era with his stories of living the American dream contributed to Americans’ willingness to allow him into their lives.

In the press, Desi Arnaz openly praised his adopted home in several instances. In The

American Magazine, he hailed the United States and the opportunities that he had available to him as an immigrant. Appropriately entitled “America Has Been Good to Me,” Arnaz gushed about his country and the power of the American Dream: “I thank God for America’s gift of free opportunity, her greatest strength and glory. I am humbly proud to be part of a land of plenty.

Yet it took a long time for me to realize that I could be part of it, and so could be much happier and more secure than I ever was as an aristocrat.”99 In many other similar circumstances, he

96 Ibid., 100. 97 Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, after nearly two decades of marriage, divorced in 1960, as TV Guide indicated, “bringing to an end one of show business’s stormiest and most profitable marriages.” Jack Gould, “Why Millions Love Lucy: In the Comical Trials of Lucy and Ricky Ricardo TV Audiences Recognize the Exasperation and Warmth of Their Own Lives,” New York Times, March 1, 1953. Harris, 207, 235, 247-248, 254-255. Sanders and Gilbert, 96, 130. Arnaz, 371. Andrews, 217. Dwight Whitney, For the Record: National, TV Guide, May 14, 1960, A3. 98 Despite the success Desi Arnaz had as an actor, producer, and musician, he was completely exempt from prejudice and discrimination. In 1957, Arnaz built his own luxurious motel in Palm Springs, California, because the Indian Wells Country Club next door did not admit Jews or, in Arnaz’s case, Cubans. He vowed that he would not discriminate against Gentiles, Jews, or Cubans. Ball, 202. 99 Desi Arnaz, “America Has Been Good to Me,” as told to Al Stump, The American Magazine, February 1955, 83.

85 professed his allegiance to the United States and all of its ideals. This was why Americans loved

I Love Lucy and Desi Arnaz. He represented stability and pride in an era of uncertainty.

Conclusion

Desi Arnaz and Ricky Ricardo represented the ideology of the Cold War. He was immigrant who came from humble beginnings and rose to success in American society. He added the element of diversity and exoticism to white, middle class homogeneity. Arnaz presented white American audiences with a pleasant and comfortable representation of “Latin” culture that did not threaten the social order. He also became a global symbol that proved

American democracy worked and that the United States was a place of equal opportunity for all.

Desi Arnaz was an active participant in this narrative often facing the tension between resistance and assimilation. Even later in life, he insisted on demonstrating his patriotism while also maintaining his ethnic difference.

Desi Arnaz’s commitment to the U.S. was not unusual among Americans of Latin

American origin. What was unusual was that he decided to personally write to the president of the United States and offer his support and services. On April 20, 1961, Desi Arnaz telegrammed

John F. Kennedy’s White House and wrote: “Dear Mr. President, as a United States citizen I was very proud of our country today. As a native born Cuban I want to thank you with all my heart sincerely.” President Kennedy received this telegram after the Bay of Pigs invasion.100 It was unclear why Arnaz was “very proud” and grateful since the invasion had failed miserably, but what is evident is that Arnaz felt inclined to personally reach out to the president of the United

States at this pivotal moment as an American and as a Cuban. Seven years later, Arnaz wrote to

100 Telegram from Desi Arnaz to President Kennedy; April 20, 1961; CO 55, April 16, 1961-April 30, 1961, Executive; Box 47; White House Central Subject Files, Country Files: Cuba; John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

86 another president for an entirely different reason. In December of 1968, Desi Arnaz wrote a letter to newly elected President Richard Nixon giving him suggestions on how to address the Mexican

American situation. He included a Los Angeles Times clipping on the U.S. Commission on Civil

Rights’ report on Mexican Americans. The article mentioned that the Commission found significant discrimination and poverty in the long ignored Mexican-American community.101Arnaz hoped that Nixon could meet with Mexican Americans in the near future and even name one of them to a White House post because that “would be a tremendous help in getting more of them to our side.” He even made some suggestions of individuals he met while involved as national chairman of the Viva Nixon Committee. He commented, “Mexican-

Americans have an enormous amount of pride—not much else…” and having someone in the

White House to whom they could reach out would please them.102

In both of these instances, Desi Arnaz sent a president an encouraging and supportive letter in the midst of political crisis or tension, but there was more at stake than the actual words on the paper. He felt the need to prove his patriotism to the head of state. In the letter to

Kennedy, he took pride in his American citizenship and in the letter to Nixon he was offering advice on how to deal with the Mexican-American community as a good Latino citizen. He did not challenge the presidents nor did he contest their decisions. He was a product of his place and time; he was a Cold War Latin, well versed in the rhetoric of the time and assimilated accordingly.

101 This refers to the article by Nicholas C. Chriss entitled “Hopes for Latins Rise in Rights Panel Study” on page 14 in the Monday, December 16, 1968 issue. 102 Correspondence between Desi Arnaz and Richard Nixon, December 1968-January 1969; EX HU 2, Equality, Beginning-4/2/69; Box 1; White House Central Files: Subject Files, HU (Human Rights); Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, Yorba Linda, CA.

87 Chapter 3: The “Wetback” in Postwar American Life

Introduction

Paco was a poor excuse for a “lion hound.” He was easily distracted and could not perform his job successfully, which was to protect cattle from the prowling mountain lions in the northern Mexican border region. He curiously followed the tracks of harmless critters and jovial campers through the landscape, not the targets he was bred to keep at bay. One day he wandered too far. He found himself lost in a town and hoped for a handout to ease his weariness. He later stumbled upon the international border, but he could not pass the border because he did not have a health certificate. At this point the narrator said: “Paco doesn’t know it, but he’s about to become a wetback.” Paco adorably swam across the Rio Grande. The U.S. Border Patrol thought he might have been connected to an “illegal” trying to enter and followed the terrified pooch. He was now on the run and became suspicious of new people. He found one of his “kind,” another dog, on the back of a truck and climbed aboard. A rancher took him home and in the end, he became a good lion hound scaring the ferocious mountain lions away.1

The “Wetback Hound,” a 1959 episode of Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color, demonstrated how pervasive the discussion of “wetbacks” was in the postwar era. Appearing on a popular family oriented television show gave Americans a different and sanitized way to view the issue of undocumented immigration. This portrayal was uncomplicated; something that even children could understand. Paco needed papers to cross the border, he felt unwanted when he crossed, and in the end, he was given a second chance and performed well in his job. The hound was vulnerable and taken into a good home. The short film was immersed in Cold War rhetoric; it showed Americans as the protectors of the weak. At the same time, however, it fed into the

1 Disneyland. Adventureland. Wetback Hound, 1959-04-24. Inventory Number: VA12680T. UCLA Film and Television Archive, University of California, Los Angeles, California.

88 prevalent rhetoric in magazines and newspapers that dehumanized, literally, the “wetback” as a dog. Having these migrants represented by a dog was not unusual. Man’s loyal best friend was a step above the comparisons to insects and rodents as occurred regularly. This show also continued the rhetoric of the “wetbacks” as inherently filthy and criminal. Although the episode contained some misguided empathy, it was not enough to really address the problem or connect the problem to actual human lives. The “Wetback Hound” was just one of the many ways the media and popular culture dealt with the topic of Mexican immigration in the postwar era.

This chapter examines the antithesis of the Cold War Latin discussed in the previous chapter, the menacing “wetback.”2 It examines how the mainstream media depicted “wetbacks,” or undocumented/“illegal” Mexican laborers and their families, in newspapers, magazines, newsreels, and films during the post-World War II era. News outlets and films told stories of a dangerous “wetback” creeping across the border, posing a significant threat to American society economically, racially and even to its physical health.3 Most of the time the media made no distinction between undocumented Mexicans, Mexican migrants, and Mexican-American citizens. This chapter argues the media demonized Mexicans, as moral threats and dehumanized them, effectively excluding them from American society. At a time when inclusion and democracy were significant parts of the Cold War ideology, the media and the government ostracized a group of people. This discourse also made it challenging for Mexican Americans in their search for identity and belonging. In reaction, Mexican-American organizations, such as the

League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), worked diligently to distance themselves from this menacing image through their proclamations of citizenship, conformity, and anti-

2 The “Cold War Latin” modeled the proper role for immigrants to play in postwar society. The term “wetback” specifically refers to Mexicans who came to the United States illegally by crossing the Rio Grande (hence they would get their backs wet), but it was used to refer to all Mexicans, citizens or not. It is now a derogatory term. 3 Juan González, Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2001), 203.

89 communism. They resisted categorization as “wetbacks” whenever possible through their actions and voices in the popular media embodying an anti-immigration stance. Mexican Americans were not the only ones resisting the image of the “wetback.” Some Hollywood (and former

Hollywood) filmmakers resisted many of the stereotypes and sought to present Mexicans and

Mexican Americans as either strong and competent or as vulnerable and needing protection.

They were not criminals or “illegals” in this discourse, but rather victims of systematic injustices.

Some of these films exposed discrimination and racism toward this demographic and gave

Latino characters visible roles that diverged from the image of the “wetback.” Sympathetic portrayals in these films and in a few articles and books complicated the way Americans saw

Mexicans and the way Mexican Americans saw themselves. Mexico, specifically through the vision of Mexican filmmaker Alejandro Galindo, also contributed to the discussion of the

“wetback problem” by discouraging its citizens to become “wetbacks.”

Overall, this narrative of the “wetback” connects to the larger conversation on how immigration policy has shaped American understanding of belonging. The experience of immigration has been part of the American identity for centuries, but this has never included all immigrants. Historian Gary Gerstle argues the foundational principles of the country offered opportunities for a better life, but not to all. “Africans, Asians, nonwhite Latin Americans, and in the 1920s, southern and eastern Europeans did not belong in the republic and could never be accepted as full-fledged members.”4 Historian Mae Ngai pushes this idea further in her analysis of immigration. She argues some immigrants and their descendants were unassimilable foreigners or what she calls “alien citizens.” Alien citizens are “persons who are American citizens by virtue of their birth in the United States but who are presumed to be foreign by the

4 Gary Gerstle, American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 5.

90 mainstream of American culture and, at times, by the state.”5 No matter the legal status, in the eyes of American society, they were (are) always foreigners. This “wetback” discourse exemplifies how the law and media contributed to understandings of belonging and citizenship.

They worked together to racialize Mexican nationals and Mexican Americans and to justify segregation, discrimination, limited employment and educational opportunities. Ngai specifically refers to the situation for “wetbacks” as “imported colonialism,” meaning that the U.S. brought people into the country to work, but these same people were not allowed to participate politically or socially.6

Historians, such as Gerstle and Ngai, have explored how the law and government action have shaped and molded the American identity. This chapter contributes to that narrative, but also argues that the media, through print and film, also played a significant role in that process.

The images justified discriminatory practices and biases against Latinos, regardless of ethnicity or legal status. The portrayals ranged from sympathetic to oppressive and addressed issues of gender, race, and ethnicity within the Cold War context. Bracero/“wetback” history has often revolved around labor or legal issues, but this chapter extends beyond that. The movement back and forth across the border has contributed to the growing interest of how a border, in this particular case the U.S.-Mexico international border, influences and creates identity. This chapter adds to the broader conversations on Mexican-American identity and how it was formed during this period often against immigration. This discourse did not change markedly in the media through the 1960s and 1970s, but the shifting reactions Mexican-American organizations had to the media reflected the transformations created by the Civil Rights Movement.

5 Mae Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and The Making of Modern America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), 2. 6 Ibid., 129.

91 The “Wetback” in Print

Americans read articles about the “wetback” in in national magazines like Time,

Newsweek, Life, Reader’s Digest, Look, and in national and local newspapers, like The New York

Times and Los Angeles Times during the late 1940s and 1950s. At the movies, newsreels featured short stories on how “wetbacks” kept the border patrol busy and how immigration agents rounded up Mexican laborers and sent them back to Mexico.7 The term “wetback” became widely used in popular culture and in the news during the 1950s when Mexican migrants became such a perceived threat to the American economic and social system that local and federal authorities deported them by the millions in what became known as Operation Wetback.8 Before this Mexican nationals were welcomed as workers as part of the Bracero Program, but not as permanent residents.9

The United States and Mexico initiated the Emergency Farm Labor Program, commonly known as the Bracero Program, in 1942, which brought Mexican workers into the United States to participate in the war effort as temporary agricultural laborers. Two million workers signed over 4.5 million work contracts over this time and thirty states participated in the Bracero

Program, which lasted until 1964.10 The program was also an attempt to curb illegal immigration, but it actually increased this trend. It was easier for Mexican workers to come into

7 Hearst Newsreels- Listed as Narcotics/Street Crime, News of the Day Vol. 25, No. 250. “Excerpt – Mexico ‘wetbacks’ keep U.S. border patrol busy” (1954-02). Study Copy: VA4459M. Hearst Newsreel Footage. Mexican Immigration (1954). Includes: Telenews Vol. 7, Issue 23. “Excerpt –California: Labor tension along Mexico-U.S. border” (1954-02); Telenews. Vol. 7, Issue 31. “Excerpt –California: Border guards fight ‘wetback’ infiltration” (1954-02) Hearst Vault Material. “Labor unrest on U.S.-Mexico border: Mexicali, Mexico and Calexico, California” (ca. 1954-02); Telenews Vol. 7, Issue 121. Excerpt – California: Round up of Illegal Wetbacks Begins, Los Angeles (1954-06-18). Study Copy: VA9783M, UCLA Film and Television Archive, University of California, Los Angeles, California. 8 The term would still be in use well into the 1960s. Michael B. Salwen and Gonzalo R. Soruco, “The Hispanic Americans,” in U.S. News Coverage of Racial Minorities: A Sourcebook, 1934-1996, eds. Beverly Ann Deepe Keever, Carolyn Martindale, and Mary Ann Weston (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1997), 163. 9 Juan Ramon García, Operation Wetback: The Mass Deportation of Mexican Undocumented Workers in 1954 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1980), 97. 10 Ronald L. Mize and Alicia C.S. Swords, Consuming Mexican Labor: From the Bracero Program to NAFTA (North York, Ontario: University of Toronto Press, 2011), 3

92 the country illegally than deal with the complicated, lengthy, and expensive procedure of becoming an official bracero.11 It was also cheaper and easier for growers to recruit unauthorized workers. In 1954, the U.S. government, through the Immigration and Naturalization Service

(INS), attempted to eliminate undocumented immigrants by rounding up large numbers of

Mexican workers, regardless of status, and deporting them.12 The INS claimed that Operation

Wetback was responsible for the departure of 1.3 million undocumented persons.13 The media actively covered the “wetback” issue and the efforts to arrest, detain, and deport them.

The media regularly referred to undocumented workers not as individuals, but as masses or “faceless, shadowy, sinister-looking beings who skulked across the border in the dead of night in order to deprive Americans of their jobs and their livelihoods.”14 They were also compared to animals or to exhibiting animal behaviors. A Newsweek article in 1946 stated that “wetbacks” were a necessary evil, but their dangerous behavior was puzzling. “No one knows what mysterious inner compulsion forces the Lemming—an Artic rodent—to swim out to see until it drowns.” The article continued, “Less mysterious but equally compelling is the annual migration of the ‘wetback’—the Mexican farm worker who, each spring, swims or rows across the Rio

Grande to work illegally in the United States.”15 This article also mentioned the thousands of bodies that washed ashore, killed or drowned, as a result of this strange behavior.16 Other stories referred to “wetbacks” collectively as a mass, not as individuals. A border official stated in 1953 that trying to stop Mexicans from coming over was like “trying to stop birds from migrating.”17

11 García, 39. 12 Mize and Swords, 35. Ngai, 141. 13 Juan Ramon García claims that number was exaggerated because many of those individuals had left before June of 1954 when the Operation officially started. García, 227. 14 García, 143-144. 15 “Business-Wetbacks,” Newsweek, March 11, 1946, 70. 16 Ibid. “National Affairs-Wetbacks in the River,” Newsweek, September 12, 1949, 22. 17 “Latin American Affairs- Wetback Flood,” Newsweek, May 23, 1953, 56. “Wetback Invasion,” The Nation, August 20, 1949, 168.

93 Chief Patrol Inspector Ed Parker said that they were “swarming over the desert like ants.”18 This behavior, the act of risking one’s life for a better life and better paying job, baffled readers of these publications so that there was no apparent human equivalent. They resorted to animal or insect analogies. Another article distanced “wetbacks” biologically from white Americans: “He can always get a job because he can weed a 1,000-foot furrow without once straightening up, and he willingly works with the short-handled hoe which, so much more efficient around delicate plants, tortures American spines.”19 “Wetbacks,” rather than simply being more hardworking than Americans, were more biologically inclined to do hard manual labor. Their disposition was different, therefore, foreign. This rhetoric justified the poor living and working conditions

Mexicans endured. They were not humans or like “us.”

Part of this ingrained narrative of inferiority as subhuman was the connection to criminality, which effectively limited Mexicans’ and Mexican Americans’ rights, made them suspect of wrongdoing, and justified imprisonment and deportation based often on racist attitudes. INS officials concurred that since the “wetback” had already committed a crime by entering the U.S. illegally, it was easier, even necessary, for them to break other laws.20 Articles depicted them as sneaky, deceitful, running away, literally, from the law. One article in Life magazine contained images of faceless men running in the dead of night. It stated, “They sneak across, ride back and then sneak across again.”21 However, not all readers accepted wholly the image presented in this article. Monica C. Amador from Universal, Pennsylvania wrote, “The wetback is but a simple man trying to better himself…” and if the government wanted to really eliminate the wetback problem, they needed sterner laws and restrictions placed on farmers “who

18 “Immigration-The Ants,” Time, April 27, 1953, 29. 19 “Wetbacks Swarm In,” Life, May 21, 1951, 34-35. 20 Ngai, 149. 21 “Wetbacks Swarm in,” 34-35.

94 wait like vultures” for these men.22 This role reversal, the empathy for the Mexican worker and using animal language to refer to the American farmer exploiting these workers, showed that there were some challenges to this ingrained ideology, but those voices were rare. Amador defended the unauthorized immigrant but still referred to him as a “wetback” and even as a simpleton.

Other readers and professional writers expressed a similar tension between benevolence and prejudice in their thinking including Lewis W. Gillenson, a writer with a Masters degree in history from New York University.23 Gillenson authored an article about the living conditions of the Mexican-American population, the “forgotten people” of Texas, in Look magazine.

“Nowhere else in America is a group of people so downtrodden and defenseless, and nowhere are human dignity and life held in such low regard,” he wrote.24 The photographs supported his claims by illustrating the poor living conditions in makeshift shacks, rooms cluttered with trash and people, the faces of the young and old, and the faces of the hopeful and hopeless. He explained that there was a scarcity of clean water and a lack of medical care and education.

Gillenson did not rely on prejudices to justify the dire position of Mexican Americans. He pointed out that lack of education kept them in the lowest jobs and that their education was pitiful at best since “the Anglo school buildings got the best equipment; the leftovers went to the

Mexicans and Negroes.”25 Anglos typically deemed Mexicans as dirty and diseased, but did not consider the root causes of the stereotype. Many impoverished Mexican-American families did not have access to clean water nor could they afford interior toilets and instead had to share “pit

22 “Letters to the Editor,” Life, June 11, 1951, 14. 23 Gillenson was an editor and publisher. One of the editorial posts he held was at the magazine Coronet (no longer in publication) at which “he published the first major freelance articles by Alex Haley, author of ‘The Autobiography of Malcolm X’ and ‘Roots.’” Lee A. Daniels, “Lewis Gillenson, 74, A Magazine Editor And Book Publisher,” New York Times, September 7, 1992, http://www.nytimes.com/1992/09/07/nyregion/lewis-gillenson-74- a-magazine-editor-and-book-publisher.html. 24 Lewis W. Gillenson, “Texas’ Forgotten People,” Look, March 27, 1951, 29. 25 Ibid., 35.

95 privies,” or outhouses, with other families.26 Gillenson also noted that conditions were improving because “Latins” were organizing to bring action. Part of that action was to combat the

“wetback” problem.

Although he created a sympathetic piece on Mexican Americans in Texas, Gillenson largely dehumanized the immigrant worker. He stated that Mexican-American organizations, such as the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), the Pan American Progressive

Association, and the G.I. Forum, were focusing on the problem of the “wetback,” “a human flood that pours every spring.” These masses “swarm in” and “wander into the already overcrowded cities, compounding the problems of employment, health and housing.” The

“wetback” was foreign and, as described here, primitive, even animalistic. He focused his coverage on the Mexican-American perspective, which viewed the immigrants with resentment and contempt, but they were not the only ones who vocalized their concerns over the “wetback” issue.27

Look received many letters on this article over the next two issues that both criticized and empathized with the subjects of the piece. R.N. Jones from Corpus Christi praised the article for its truthfulness, but Mary Gilbreath from Plainview, Texas demanded an apology for all Texans for its inaccuracies. Ely I. Bergman from the Chamber of Commerce of San Antonio stated that its board of directors passed a resolution condemning the article and was agitated that the article did not mention the strides made to bring water to “outlying districts.” The mayor from San

Antonio also responded and acknowledged that there was a problem and that health and sanitation was the city’s number one concern.28 M.O. Benedict from Dallas, Texas wrote that the

Mexicans came willingly and if they were treated so horribly they have the right to go back.

26 Ibid., 31. 27 Ibid., 36. 28 “Letters and Pictures,” Look, May 8, 1951, 9.

96 Carey McWilliams from Los Angeles said these “forgotten people” were everywhere and the demonstration of political power was key to creating change within these communities:

“Communities do not ignore minorities which have learned to use political power…”29

These communities had used their limited local political power to try to improve the situation for the Mexican Americans, but not necessarily for immigrants. Gus García, a local leader Gillenson mentioned in the article, wrote to the magazine to reference important Mexican-

American figures in the community and the “countless Anglo-Americans who believe in democracy for all citizens [and who] have been militantly active in [sic] behalf of the Latin

American people.” He was sure to mention the military service of Mexican Americans and said that six of the fourteen winners of the Congressional Medal of Honor from Texas were Mexican

Americans.30 Since the media did not make distinctions between “illegals” and citizens, Mexican

Americans participated in vilifying the undocumented worker in an attempt to distance themselves from their shared ethnicity. They focused instead on their commitment to the United

States as good citizens and, particularly, as García demonstrated, through their military service.

García was also part of the Mexican-American professional middle class of doctors and lawyers, which often cared for and defended the lower classes of Gillenson’s article. They saw the lower class and the “wetbacks,” often in the same group, as a burden and a situation they had to clean up, literally. Many middle class reformers often attempted to improve the lot of their ethnic brethren, but poverty in these communities created the image of disease and filth that reporters often covered in their stories. Reporters ignored legal distinctions, but they also overlooked the class differences and unequal access to resources and assigned the dire situation of the poor to the biological inferiority of the whole group.

29 “Letters and Pictures,” Look, May 22, 1951, 6. 30 Ibid.

97 The press contributed to the long-standing association of all Mexican people with filth and decay. In the early twentieth century, the U.S.-Mexican border became a racialized space that required certain standards of health and cleanliness. As early as 1916, the U.S. Public Health

Service literally stamped the bodies of Mexican people to show that they had been disinfected and were ready to enter the U.S.31 This discourse persisted in the mainstream media well into the century as the Public Health Service and then the Border Patrol continued to disinfect and fumigate Mexican people and their possessions. Positioning Mexicans as diseased or as public charges removed them from the possibility of citizenship.32 According to this narrative, the presence of Mexican people also brought deterioration and decay. In the November 1948 issue of

Holiday, author J. Frank Dobie wrote about Mexicans living in the U.S., their contributions, and their living conditions. Dobie stated, “They are the major contributing factor in achieving for this richest of all valleys33 a position near the top of the list in such things as illiteracy, infant mortality, tuberculosis, death rate, and prevalence of venereal diseases.”34 In a place so fertile and full of potential, according to Dobie, Mexican people had turned it into squalor. Several years later, a member of the Texas legislature noted that the relations between Anglos and the

“Spanish-speaking people” were good, and racial discrimination was absent, but segregation was necessary because this group was unhygienic. It was not about race he claimed, it was about sanitation: “[W]e just can’t have all those dirty, possibly diseased people swimming with our wives and children.”35 This legislature’s position sounded much like the news articles of the time. They initially commented on the positive aspects of the community, empathized with their

31 Alexandra Minna Stern, Eugenic Nation: Faults and Frontiers of Better Breeding in Modern America (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005), 80. 32 Natalia Molina, How Race is Made in America: Immigration, Citizenship, and the Historical Power of Racial Scripts (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2014), 111. 33 Referred to as a “valley,” the Rio Grande Valley is actually a floodplain. 34 J. Frank Dobie, “Texas: Part II,” Holiday, November 1948, 129. 35 This interview was published in Lyle Saunders’s and Olen E. Leonard’s sociological study entitled “The Wetback in the Lower Rio Grande Valley” in 1951. García, 149.

98 plight, or stated racial harmony existed in the community, but, in the end, they reaffirmed the

Mexican’s inferiority and difference. Their kind would not be allowed into the lily-white swimming pools, despite their citizenship or class; they were still, in the minds of many, dirty

Mexicans.

Complimentary articles on undocumented workers were rare, but the book One Nation offered readers two chapters on the plight and contributions of Mexican crop workers and the troubles of the new generation of Mexican Americans. This book did not use the word “wetback” once. Most articles of the time did not differentiate between “bracero” and “wetback,” and used the terms interchangeably, but this article focused on the bracero and did not even bring up legal status. It showed images of Mexican people living in poverty, but it offered a rosier, albeit largely false, image of the situation. “In most areas where these Mexican nationals have gone to work,” it stated, “they have been a definite influence for better racial relations. They have done a good job, and generally they have been made to feel that what they done is appreciated.” This essay credited Mexican nationals as hard workers and vital to the economy. The relationship between Mexican nationals and Mexican Americans was contentious, but this piece argued otherwise: “And the presence of the nationals has been good for Mexican Americans…Mexican

Americans have learned that they go back when their contracts expire and do not become permanent competitors.”36 In the same essay in which the author stated Mexican nationals were not here to stay, a photograph featured a man lying in bed reading a book with the caption:

“many braceros spend their evenings studying English, their Sundays getting acquainted with

America.”37 If they were visitors, they were very committed to learning about their temporary home. This source contradicted many of the other articles that showcased Mexican nationals, or

36 Wallace Stegner and the editors of Look, One Nation (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1945), 97. 37 Ibid., 113.

99 more often “wetbacks,” as an unwanted presence in American society. While Wallace Stegner sold a cheery narrative of a diverse American life, the Mexican government and media insisted its citizens not go to the U.S. in search of wealth and opportunity because they would be victims of exploitation.

Mexico Warned “Wetbacks”

Mexico warned its citizens not to go to the U.S. as laborers. In the late 1940s, Mexican authorities publicly stated that they would not send any crop workers to “certain States” because of the discrimination and poor conditions these workers experienced when they got there.38 In

1954, the Mexican government fully supported Operation Wetback not only because so many people were leaving, but also because of the way employers in the U.S. treated its citizens.39

Having so many of its citizens become “wetbacks” was also an embarrassment for Mexico. It gave the impression that Mexican people wanted desperately to escape the country, or that the country was full of unlawful people. Xavier Castañeda, a Mexican public health official, addressed a group of undocumented workers returning to Mexico and stated that they had

“committed a great sin in coming to this country [the U.S.] without being asked for…” Mexico was “disgusted with their behavior.” This speech also had a racial component when he said: “Do not continue to make yourselves warehouses full of cheap Indians.”40 Castañeda’s message included avoiding shame by going through the legal system and not positioning oneself as an inferior, as an Indian. Some Mexican filmmakers in line with the official government stance

38 “Discrimination Charged, Mexico May Be Unwilling to Send Laborers to U.S. This Year,” New York Times, February 11, 1946, 12. 39 García, 175. 40 The English-language copy of this speech appears in George C. Kiser and Martha Woody Kiser, eds. Mexican Workers in the United States: Historical and Political Perspectives (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1979), 164-166. I did not have access to the original Spanish-language document, which is housed in the Harry S. Truman Library (Papers of David H. Stowe, folder labeled “Mexican Labor 1951, Folder 1”).

100 portrayed the “wetback” as a menacing, inferior character to discourage Mexican citizens from pursuing that life.

In the mid-1950s, the Distribuidora Mexicana de Peliculas S.A. distributed a cautionary film about undocumented Mexican workers called Wetbacks, or Espaldas Mojadas.41 It was a fictional account made to discourage Mexicans from going north to the United States by depicting the inhumane working and living conditions of immigrants who went over after World

War II. The film began by presenting its goal “to warn our nationals on the hardships of leaving the country illegally and of the risks and painful situations, which can even affect the existing good relations between two countries.” 42 The message to viewers was that not only would individuals suffer from this migration, but it would strain the relationship between the U.S. and

Mexico as well.

The film began in the border town of Ciudad Juárez (across from the neighboring Texas city of El Paso) where the main character, Rafael Améndolla Campuzano (David Silva), visited a questionable saloon looking for a coyote, a smuggler who made money illegally sneaking people across the border. Frank Mendoza (José Elías Moreno) was that man. Frank nonchalantly said that once the unauthorized persons waded across, they were no longer his concern. He would not be the one deported, arrested, or exploited. Rafael was desperate since he could not get immigration papers due to an infraction with the law concerning a domestic dispute so he asked for Frank’s assistance. Viewers then followed Rafael’s journey to the United States.

One of the scenes in this film captured how the U.S. Border Patrol supposedly treated

“wetbacks” in their attempt to cross the Rio Grande. The bright lights shining from a lookout

41 The archive placed this film in 1953, but it was released in Mexico in 1955 and in the U.S. in 1956. 42 In Spanish: “Nuestro propósito es advertir a nuestros connacionales de la incovencia de tartar de abandoar el país en forma illegal, con el riesgo de sufrir situaciones molestas y dolorosas que podrían hasta crear dificultades en las buensas relaciones que venturosamente existen entre ambos pueblos.” Translated by Michael Donnelly in 1993.

101 tower caught the bobbing bodies of men crossing the river in the dead of night. Chaos ensued.

The Patrol began shooting at them indiscriminately while they were still in the water and several died. There was no time for questions or human compassion. Here, the Border Patrol treated these men like animals escaping an enclosure at the zoo. They were vermin, a threat to the

American landscape. This fictional scene captured the drastic loss of life involved in crossing this boundary. The filmmakers, particularly director Alejandro Galindo, undoubtedly tried to depict how disposable the lives of these men were and how this journey, although enticing, was not worth the price.43 This scene also captured the slaughter that the American media was unwilling to discuss. Articles appeared reporting on Mexican bodies retrieved from the river after drowning or being killing by peers, but never recounted deaths attributable to the American

Border Patrol.44

Luckily, Rafael made it through the treacherous ordeal of border crossing alive and viewers followed him into the United States in search of work and a better life. He quickly met a

Mexican hobo who rode the trains and relied on the kindness of others to survive. He told Rafael that without papers he would have to do hard manual labor, not have job security, and get paid a measly wage of one dollar for nine hours of work. Rafael’s new life was unstable; he often had to run away when potential employers questioned his papers. He finally found work with a railroad company, but received little pay. He and his Mexican co-workers spent their pay quickly on items from the company store, alcohol to deal with the sadness and loneliness, and on prostitutes the company provided. On the job, Rafael’s boss demeaned him by spitting on him

43 Most of Galindo’s films focused on the Mexican underworld. In connection to Rafael, Galindo entered the U.S. illegally in the late 1910s or early 1920s to learn more about moviemaking and returned to Mexican as the Great Depression set in. Julia Preston, “Hector Alejandro Galindo, Mexican Film Director, 93,” The New York Times, February 10, 1999, http://www.nytimes.com/1999/02/10/arts/hector-alejandro-galindo-mexican-film-director- 93.html. 44 For a few examples, see: “Business-Wetbacks,” Newsweek, March 11, 1946, 70, “National Affairs-Wetbacks in the River,” Newsweek, September 12, 1949, 22.

102 and calling him a “dirty Mexican greaser.” He ran away from this job because of the constant abuse.

While on the run, Rafael met a waitress, Mary or Maria del Consuelo (Martha Valdés), at a diner and she confessed that she lived with the disgrace of being a Mexican born in the U.S.

She says: “I’m a pocha…”45

Our disgrace is greater than for blacks. Although they were born here like us, they don’t know where they came from. They don't have a notion, or the temptation of a homeland. Besides, they stand up for themselves. They form their own groups. They have their dances…their songs. They marry among themselves and console each other. On the other hand us…La raza doesn’t like us. And the whitebreads (bolillos)…want you for two months.46

Mary’s character demonstrated the ineffectiveness of assimilation. Even with American citizenship, Mexican Americans would always be considered outsiders, and be even more oppressed than blacks. This served as another warning to Mexican citizens who were thinking of going to the U.S. You will be depressed and lonely, without a family or a culture.

Rafael decided life in the United States as a “wetback” was not for him and went back to

Mexico, but Mexican authorities apprehended him when he swam back across the Rio Grande.

The officials complained that people like him cost the government a lot of money and paperwork. Also, they lectured him on how shameless employers were in the U.S. Rafael retorted that Mexican people would rather stay in Mexico, but hunger drove them to leave.47 This final scene placed guilt on “wetbacks” and the burdens they caused their mother country through time and money spent on their careless adventures.

45 This was a term of disgrace to describe a Mexican who was too Americanized (whitened). 46 Some clarifications on terminology: la raza referred to Mexican peoples. “Whitebreads (bolillos)” referred to Anglos. She referred to Anglos wanting to use her for sexual reasons in the short term. 47Wetbacks (Espaldas Mojadas), 1953, Inventory Number: VA11085M. UCLA Film and Television Archive, University of California, Los Angeles, California.

103 Espaldas Mojadas was released in Mexico in 1955 and in the United States in 1956, but its reception was not well documented. It was a low budget film and not well known today, but it does offer us insight into the Mexican perspective of the “wetback” problem. It also adds a more human and realistic portrayal of the decisions and consequences of undocumented Mexicans in the U.S. Although there does not appear to be a direct connection from the filmmakers to the

Mexican government, this film captured the attitude the Mexican government’s previously expressed sentiments on the issue of undocumented workers. While Espaldas Mojadas did not reach wide audiences in the U.S. to effectively convey the struggles of Mexicans and Mexican

Americans, several other films that touched on issues of discrimination and racism in American society did reach large audiences and had blockbuster appeal including Giant and High Noon.

Although another film, Salt of the Earth, was not a blockbuster, it was discussed widely for its controversial connections to Communism. These films also gave the Latino characters power and agency in an era in which their civil rights were restricted.48

Cinematic Resistance against the “Wetback” discourse

The movies Giant, High Noon, and Salt of the Earth complicated the “wetback” discourse of the 1950s by exposing the discrimination and racism Mexican immigrants and

Mexican Americans often encountered in their daily lives and by including significant Latino characters. Giant offered box office appeal with actors Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, and

James Dean and explored how a wealthy Anglo family dealt with the people who worked on

48 In 1977, filmmaker Robert Young created a film about an undocumented worker called Alambrista. The film garnered attention on public television and in film festivals, but was never released in theaters nationally. Like Espaldas Mojadas, Alambrista showed the struggle of the undocumented from their perspective and most of the film is in Spanish. In 2004, the film was edited, rescored, and rereleased on DVD. For a more thorough discussion of this film, see Nicholas J. Cull and Davíd Carrasco, eds. Alambrista and the U.S.-Mexico Border: Film, Music, and Stories of Undocumented Immigrants (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2004).

104 their ranch, most of whom were Mexican Americans. The family also confronted racism personally when their son married and had children with a Mexican-American woman. High

Noon, although set in the Old West, showed audiences that Mexicans, particularly Mexican women, could be successful and strong. The same goes for Salt of the Earth, which featured a

Mexican-American woman as the narrator of a story in which the wives of miners on strike demanded equality and brought change to their lives by picketing the mining company. While different in their approaches and intents, all three of these films added another layer to the discussion of the “wetback.” They humanized the individuals that many magazines and newspapers vilified, and challenged the idea that all Mexicans and Mexicans Americans were

“wetbacks.” This message that people should fight for equality and democracy for oneself and for others conformed to the ideology of the Cold War, which depicted the U.S. as the land of opportunity and racial democracy.

A. “Giant”

The film Giant (1956), based on Edna Ferber’s bestselling novel of the same name (1952), was the first blockbuster film to truly examine the discrimination against Mexican Americans.49

Leslie (Elizabeth Taylor), who married Jordan “Bick” Benedict (Rock Hudson), a Texas rancher, was an educated and highly opinionated woman from Maryland. Unlike the demure Texan ladies, she questioned the social and racial hierarchy in Texas. “We really stole Texas, didn't we,

Mr. Benedict? I mean, away from Mexico?” she said to a stunned Bick. She treated the Mexican workers on the Benedict ranch with respect and kindness, despite Bick’s admonition that she was a Texan now and that the Mexican workers needed to be controlled and told what to do. The

49 Monique James Baxter, “Giant Helps America Recognize the Cost of Discrimination: A Lesson of World War II,” in Hollywood’s West: The American Frontier in Film, Television, & History, eds. Peter C. Rollins and John E. O’Connor (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 2005), 161.

105 Benedicts lived with and worked with Mexican people on a daily basis, but did not see themselves as equals in any capacity; even comparisons to them elicited vicious responses. When

Leslie asked Jett Rink (James Dean), a former Anglo ranch hand and now rival to Bick, why other people cannot figure out a way to help themselves like he did, he responded, “Oh, that bunch of wetbacks. Well, I hope you don’t go getting me mixed up with none of them.” And he added that he was just as Texan as Bick Benedict, implying that the “wetbacks” were not.50 Even a man of low social standing placed his identity as a Texan (read: Anglo) higher in the social hierarchy than the nearby Mexican-American families. Although Mexicans were technically white in Texas, as opposed to black, Texan society still treated them as non-white.51

The situation that really tested the family’s views on racism and discrimination was the marriage of the Benedict son, Jordy (Dennis Hopper), to a young Mexican-American doctor,

Juana Villalobos (Elsa Cárdenas). Through her, the Benedicts experienced prejudice and discrimination. Guests at a formal party treated Juana as an inferior, possibly as part of the help, even though she was part of the Benedict family. Salon workers refused to serve her and Jett

Rink referred to her as a squaw. After his grandchild from Jordy and Juana was born, Bick became more accepting of the Mexican-American community, though he commented his grandson looked like a “wetback.” In a scene later in the film, the Benedicts, including Juana, went to a diner for a meal and Bick defended his daughter-in-law and another family in the diner when the service staff refused to serve them. Racism had finally hit home for Bick and he protected his family as the patriarch.52 He used his authority as head of the household and his high social standing as a wealthy rancher to protect those he saw as weak. He had not

50 Ibid., 165. 51 According to the census Mexican Americans were classified as “white,” but in daily life they were barred from restaurants, hotels, schools, and employment. Neil Foley, Mexicans in the Making of America (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2014), 50. 52 Baxter, 169-170.

106 fundamentally changed, but rather saw people commit injustices against those he viewed as inferior and unable to defend themselves. The addition of Juana as a member of the family also demonstrated that in fact to some degree sexual relations and matrimony between Anglos and

Mexicans was socially accepted because of their non-black status. Nonetheless, the film’s message was still paternalistic since it was the woman who needed protection because of her minority status. In other words, this film did not completely dismantle the expectations of race, class, or gender in the postwar era, but it helped shift the thinking of those ideas in a new direction.

The family went through a progressive, not radical, change in attitudes through the length of the film, finally recognizing the inequalities in their community and in the larger world. The end gave audiences a sense of hope in the future of race relations with the very poignant scene of the two Benedict grandchildren. Both children were in a playpen together. One child was blonde with fair skin and blue eyes; the other child had dark eyes and hair, and bronzed skin. The film indicated that racial harmony was possible. Comparing the film to the book, however, reveals that the film was a mere hollow replica of the controversial book, which forcefully criticized the open hatred the author witnessed in the state.

Pulitzer Prize winning author Edna Ferber wrote Giant in 1952 after extensive research in the area, including following Dr. Hector P. García (member of the League of United Latin

American Citizens and founder of the American G.I. Forum) on his rounds in the Mexican community. She listened to the stories of their daily lives along with the stories and feelings of tension between their community and Anglos. She was no stranger to discrimination having written extensively about her experiences with anti-Semitism. Curious Americans wanted to know more about Texas and the controversy the book had created. As a result, Giant quickly

107 climbed the charts becoming the Book-of-the-Month Club selection for October.53 The reactions came almost immediately. Texans venomously wrote to Ferber and to various media outlets.

Some even suggested that someone shoot or lynch her for spewing such rubbish about their precious Texas. When rumors circulated about the novel becoming a film, Texans became even more irate. One said that they would “shoot the screen full of holes” if Hollywood made and showed that “damn picture.” Director George Stevens and his crew eventually softened the aspects of oppression, which left the audience with a “far more affectionate portrait of Texas than did the novel.”54 The film promoted the idea of racial peace and togetherness in the face of hatred, but it also sanitized, completely ignored, or manipulated issues of inequality to make the characters seem more enlightened.

In both the film and the novel, the Benedicts were saviors. Both portrayed the Mexican people as eternal victims of poverty and disease, in need of help from outsiders. Leslie and her son Jordy came to the rescue to represent the interests of these poor unfortunate souls in the film and novel, while Bick fought for them in the film. When Leslie arrived in Texas she wanted to learn all of the helps’ (Mexicans’) names and was polite and gracious. In the film, Bick criticized her for this and she responded, “elsewhere being gracious is acceptable.” Leslie saw the conditions in the village where the Mexican people lived and sent a doctor over immediately. In the film, Bick contested that the doctor was “our” doctor and how dare “our” doctor treat the

Benedicts and Mexicans? The film redeemed Bick in the end when he defended a Mexican family in Sarge’s Diner when they were told to leave. A dramatic fight ensued causing destruction to the diner, and while Bick lost, he won in the eyes of Leslie. When Bick contemplated that his life had been a failure, Leslie contended that he was a success after what

53 Ibid., 162. 54 Ibid., 163.

108 she saw in the diner. He redeemed the Benedicts through his actions.55 This differed in the novel as Bick was not at the diner and did not stand up to injustice. Instead, on the last page of the novel Leslie says that after one hundred years the Benedict family would finally be a real success, because she saw the great potential in their children, Jordan and Luz, to make a change by helping others and standing up to injustice.56 The film did not indicate any subversive behavior, discontent, or activism on the part of the Mexican-American population. The novel did make an effort to at least include that something was brewing within the younger generation of

Mexican Americans.

Ferber exposed the dirty secrets of racism in Texan society for the world to see and even subtly foretold a change in the relations between Anglos and Mexicans. She described segregation, including the visual signs of Jim Crow such as different restrooms and the refusal of service and entrance in establishments. The Mexican people lived separately from the Anglos in the town of Benedict. Jett Rink told Leslie that only two whites lived in those parts. Leslie, confused, asked if Mexicans were not white? To which Rink responded, “they sure ain’t white for my money.” Leslie countered that these families had been there for centuries, “They’re more

American than you are!” Jett, threatened by this remark, insisted that if she were a man, he would have killed her for saying that.57 Ferber also explained how Anglos and their lackeys within the Mexican community exploited Mexican-American people. Leslie met a coyote who

“rounds up the Mexican voters and does a lot of dirty jobs.”58 Leslie was also appalled when

Bick described the horrid conditions of Mexican migrant workers and how he was not going to do anything about it. He said he was not a farmer, but a cowman. She retorted, “What’s that got

55 Giant, Blu-ray Disc, directed by George Stevens, 1956 (Burbank, CA: Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., 2013). 56 Edna Ferber, Giant (New York, NY: Double Day, 1952), 447. 57 Ibid., 217-218. 58 Ibid., 222.

109 to do with it! You’re a Texan. You’ve been a great big rich powerful Texan for a hundred years.

You’re the one to fix it.”59 The only thing Bick and his kind—rich, powerful, Anglo men—cared about when it came to Mexicans were their votes. They had been able to control their votes in the past, but things were changing. One of Bick’s colleagues said he had “heard some of the younger

Mexican fellas since the war’s over,”

They’ve been rabble-rousing, shooting their mouths off, getting together saying they’re American citizens without rights and that kind of stuff. They want to be called Latin Americans, not Mexicans anymore. I hear they’re setting up organizations, the boys who fought in the war, and so on. Spreading all over, they say. Got some fancy names for their outfits with ‘America’ in it to show how American they are.

This concern was historically accurate. Many young Mexican-American men had served in the war and came back to the same discrimination. They decided things needed to change and started actively organizing for their rights as Americans. Bick, representative of the old guard, calmly said he would handle it as he had always done. “They’ll quiet down.”60 Bick was unwilling to give his power or disrupt the social and racial hierarchy simply because of what he assumed to be a few bad apples who momentarily stepped out of line. This was not the only situation in which fiction mirrored reality. Ferber brought in a real incident of national shame into her story.

Angel Obregon, one of the Mexican-American children who grew up on the Benedict ranch, served in the military and was killed in action during World War II. In the novel, he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, and returned home, where the town funeral parlor refused to provide services and bury his body. Leslie anonymously wrote to the President of the

United States about this incident and Obregon was then buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Bick was indifferent at the death of this boy who he had seen grow into a man and had been friends with his son. He was even annoyed at having to attend the funeral. In reality, this case

59 Ibid., 269-270. 60 Ibid., 425.

110 paralleled the case of Felix Longoria who died in the war, and whose hometown refused to bury his body. After some pressure from the Mexican-American community, Senator Lyndon B.

Johnson arranged for his body to be buried at Arlington. The whole scene was excluded from the film. Instead, Angel died and the Benedicts and Obregons came together to mourn the loss of this family member.61 Instead of seeing Angel as just another Mexican, as he did in the novel, cinematic Bick was clearly saddened by this loss. This scene reinforced the idea of racial unity and harmony, not exactly what the readers took away from the novel.

Although the novel initially drew much criticism, especially from Texans, they ultimately embraced the film version of Giant, and it made millions at the box office. It also garnered nine

Academy Award nominations. Audiences and critics loved this film. It was a revolutionary film because of the way it treated discrimination, albeit lightly, but it did not feature a Latino in a prominent role. They were there, but they were backdrop to the Benedict family struggles. High

Noon and Salt of the Earth would give Latin American or Latino actors some agency and dignity in their roles.

B. “High Noon”

High Noon, a film set in a late nineteenth century western frontier town, featured Helen

Ramírez, a Mexican woman who was a force to be reckoned with. In the male dominated genre of Westerns, she was astute, intelligent, and a successful businesswoman. The men of the town respected her. They went to her for shrewd advice about money and business dealings. She was the only person of Mexican origin in a leading role. Other minority characters in the film were in the background, without speaking roles. Film reviewers noticed Helen Ramírez, but not the way

61 Jane Hendler, Best-Sellers and Their Film Adaptations in Postwar America: From Here to Eternity, Sayonara, Giant, Auntie Mame, Peyton Place (New York, NY: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., 2001), 132.

111 Katy Jurado, the actress who played Ramírez, hoped. Ramírez also has become a favorite topic for scholars to analyze since she was a departure from the common depictions at the time.

Finally, High Noon came under scrutiny for its underlying connections to Communist subversion.

Helen Ramírez was a businesswoman in a frontier town. She held her own in conversations with men. She talked back and even emasculated men when she referred to her current fling as a boy. In one scene, this “boy,” Harvey (Lloyd Bridges), grabbed her resulting in one of the lines that captured Ramírez’s persona: “I don't like anybody to put his hands on me unless I want him to, and I don’t like you to anymore.” She then slapped him to affirm her message. All this freedom and independence did not come without a cost. The film insinuated that she was romantically or sexually involved with at least three different men. While men have respect for her in financial decisions, they did not want to be publicly tied to her. One man noted that he was thankful she remained a silent partner in his business ventures. She told Amy Fowler

(Grace Kelly) that she had always hated “to be a Mexican woman in a town like this.”

Actress Katy Jurado said she enjoyed playing this character because: “She was a Mexican woman who was well-positioned and had much dignity…A Mexican woman with all of her pride.”62 Unfortunately, that was not how critics viewed her. One reviewer said Jurado was “a revelation” in the sense that “the Mexican temptress” was not just “a sinuous, rumba-type beauty; she is a woman of heavily sensual charm which is balanced against an older-than-Eve compassion and understanding.”63 Another compared her to her onscreen-opposite Grace Kelly,

62 Translated from: “Era una Mexicana buen puesta and con mucha dignitad.” The Bronze Screen: Katy Jurado interview, tapes 12-14 M120470, VA70003, UCLA Film and Television Archive, University of California, Los Angeles, California. 63 Al Hine, “High Noon is a Pistol,” Holiday, September 1952, 26.

112 the “femme assignment that has color and s.a. (sex appeal) is carried by Katy Jurado…”64 Critics seemed to only be interested in her femininity and her opposition to Grace Kelly’s character who was boring and compliant. In this way, she fulfilled her role as the fiery señorita for moviegoers, but film scholars disagree, as did Katy Jurado. Ramírez called the shots in business and in love.

She made wise business decisions with white men and chose her male companions and sexual partners.65 She had a tremendous amount of agency in this male-dominated world and in this film genre. Historian Carlos E. Cortés argues that Helen Ramírez was “a multidimensional woman and human being” and “the film’s moral and ethical fulcrum and its main commentator on events.”66 Phillip Drummond argues that Helen was “the mouthpiece for political judgments about the behaviour of the community…” agreeing with Arthur G. Pettit who wrote in 1980, “no other Mexican woman in modern movies holds the key moral position of Helen Ramirez.”67

Helen Ramírez, regardless of the era, made people comment, whether it was a remark on her physical attributes or an analysis of her depiction of Mexican women.

Contemporary commentators were not only interested in Ramírez, however, but in the aging Gary Cooper and the possibility of Communist subversion in the plotline. High Noon portrayed people unwilling to break from conformity to stand up against fear and intimidation.

Will Kane (Gary Cooper) was the only townsperson who was willing to take on the murderous

Frank Miller while others hid in fear of losing their lives or their property. This abstract critique of the House on Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) enraged some, including actor

John Wayne, who called the film Un-American. One of the writers of the film, Carl Foreman,

64 Brog., Review of “High Noon,” Variety, April 30, 1952. 65 Elyce Rae Helford, “What is the significance of Helen Ramirez in ‘High Noon’?,” January 11, 2016, http://screenprism.com/insights/article/what-is-the-significance-of-helen-ramirez-in-high-noon. 66 Carlos E. Cortés, “Chicanas in Film: History of an Image,” in Latin Looks: Images of Latinas and Latinos in the U.S. Media, ed. Clara E. Rodríguez (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998), 132-133. 67 Phillip Drummond, High Noon, (London: BFI Publishing, 1997), 80. Drummond quoted Pettit on page 80. Pettit’s original quote appears in Arthur G. Pettit, Images of the Mexican American in Fiction and Film (College Station, TX: Texas A & M University Press, 1980), 205.

113 appeared in front of the Committee, pled the fifth, and became an unfriendly witness in the middle of High Noon’s production, which added to the film’s controversy.68 Overall, though, it was a major hit and perhaps many ignored or did not see the political connections.

C. “Salt of the Earth”

Another film that created controversy because of its links to Communism was Salt of the

Earth, which the film industry banned in the U.S. During the 1950s, many people of color faced allegations of communist sympathies because they challenged inequality or discrimination.69

Many were blacklisted or even deported. The case of Salt of the Earth provided an example of this injustice. The film revolved around the true story of labor unrest in a New Mexico zinc mine. The mine’s Mexican-American laborers protested for fair working conditions and pay and were arrested shortly thereafter. Their wives then took up the cause. Their husbands were outraged since a woman’s place was in the home. This event exposed the treatment of Mexican-

American women within their own communities. The women later demanded full equality with the men.

Viewers immediately saw the struggles of Mexican women in the opening of the film.

They performed hard labor, chopping wood that would be used in the fire that warmed the water to wash their clothes. Esperanza Quintero (Rosaura Revueltas), the narrator, told of her deep familial roots in New Mexico. She led a difficult life maintaining their meager home without hot water or indoor plumbing, caring for her children, and worrying about her husband’s safety in the mines. She was also pregnant with her third child and expressed apprehension about bringing another child into this world. Her husband, Ramon Quintero (Juan Chacon), worked in hazardous

68 Drummond, 80. Drummond quoted Pettit on page 37. 69 Penny Von Eschen, Race Against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism, 1937-57 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997).

114 conditions and received little pay. He complained to his boss about the dangerous working conditions, but his boss told him that if he refused to do the work, he would find an American to do the job. When Ramon came home from work he and Esperanza argued over which was more important: the safety of the men in the mines or sanitation (plumbing) in the home. Both decided to fight for their own causes.

The men went on strike and the women followed. The miners and their families lived in company provided housing and felt the living conditions for the Anglo miners were better than theirs, because they had plumbing and running water in their homes. The Mexican-American women publicly protested and made signs that read, “We want sanitation, not discrimination.”

They also began attending union meetings to express their needs, but the men usually dismissed them; that is, until they took over the picket line when the men were prohibited from doing so by a court injunction. Ramon and his coworkers, now banned from the picket lines, took on the responsibilities of their wives as caretakers in the home, but could not handle the work. Ramon had an epiphany when Esperanza stood up for herself and said she deserved to have her dignity, just as he deserved his. In the end, the miners and their wives won the strike and Ramon acknowledged the contributions of the women in accomplishing this.70

Salt of the Earth explored issues of gender and the double oppression of Mexican-

American women, but it also explored, as was evident from a comment Ramon’s boss made, the issue of racism and citizenship. The film opened with the following statement: “Our scene is

New Mexico, Land of the free Americans who inspired this film, Home of the Brave Americans who played most of its roles.” The creators of this film, namely screenwriter Michael Wilson and director Herbert Biberman, wanted to reinforce that these individuals were in fact Americans.

70 Salt of the Earth, DVD, directed by Herbert Biberman, 1954 (Narberth, PA: Alpha Video Distributors, Inc., 2004).

115 This was purposely juxtaposed with the scene in which the foreman told Ramon he would find an American to replace him. He was a disposable foreigner. The same foreman discussed the strike with the company president and both agreed the miners’ tactics (picketing) were childish.

The foreman stated they were like children in many ways and “sometimes you have to spank them.” They had to be put in their place, if they acted out. And this was the case for Ramon when police apprehended him and beat him before jailing him. They had to be reminded of the social hierarchy. That was why this film was so powerful, because at the end the powerful men were forced to negotiate with the miners and improve their working and living conditions.

Challenging the system was successful in this case, which could be a contributing factor as to why this film was suspected of having Communist influence and banned in the United States.

Salt of the Earth was not a blockbuster like Giant and High Noon, but it was widely reviewed in mainstream magazines and newspapers, and discussion of the film even made it into the Congressional record. Variety stated that it was “a propaganda picture which belongs in union halls rather than movie picture theaters where audiences come for entertainment and not lectures couched in dramatics.” In the wrong hands it could “to vilify the United States.”

“Because it treats a somewhat isolated situation from a distinctly biased point of view, ‘Salt’ will do only harm to the U.S. outside the U.S.” This reviewer told readers the film lacked objectivity because of its ties to the International Union of Mine, Mill & Smelter Workers (which was kicked out of the CIO because of Communist associations) and the director, Hebert Biberman

(one of the “unfriendly ten” who served time in jail for contempt of Congress). Interestingly, the reviewer also praised the film’s performance and artistry.71 Bosley Crowther of The New York

Times stated that it was an honest film, which “implies that the mine operators have taken advantage of the Mexican-born or descended laborers.” It also “slaps at brutal police tactics in

71 Hift., Review of “Salt of the Earth,” Variety, March 17, 1954.

116 dealing with strikers…” But, he argued the “crux” of the film was the role of women within the community and the union. He concluded that Salt of the Earth was “a clearly intended special interest film.”72 William Murray of The Nation disagreed and felt it was about much more. He pointed out the realism of this film, that the faces of these people revealed their true worries and problems. He argued that the film was “a pro-union film and does not pretend to objectivity.”

Like many of the other reviewers, Murray mentioned that blacklisted exiles and union leaders made this film, which was true since director Herbert J. Biberman was part of the Hollywood

Ten and Paul Jarrico, the screenwriter, had also been blacklisted.73 He also mentioned Congress tried to prevent its filming and distribution; and that one of the main characters, Rosaura

Revueltas, was deported, or left “voluntarily.”74 Unlike many reviewers, Murray was critical of this behavior and asked: “Is pro-union propaganda so dangerous to the American way of life?

Why deny that we underpay our workers if they do not fight for their rights, that we discriminate against minorities, that cops too often beat up civilians when Biberman’s revealing camera is on hand to prove it?” 75 Murray pointed out that the problem here was not a possible Communist conspiracy, but the question of workers’ rights and civil rights for minorities. This was an argument that, unfortunately, did not gain traction until the era of McCarthyistic fear had passed.

The film was highly controversial even before it debuted in limited theaters in 1954.

Stories appeared in the press about how the people of Silver City were angry that they were filming the movie there. Local residents interfered with filming by getting in the middle of

72 Bosley Crowther, “‘Salt of the Earth’ Opens at the Grande—Filming Marked by Violence,” New York Times, March 15, 1954, 20. 73 Biberman referred to Jarrico as one of those “declared creative outlaws” under the film industry’s new standards. Herbert Biberman, Salt of the Earth: The Story of a Film (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1965), 31. 74 She was arrested for illegally entering the U.S. because her passport did not have a stamp on it. She explained that she entered through El Paso in a car operated by LAMSA Airlines and that the border official waved her through. She was interrogated and intimated for her alleged involvement in communist activities. Ellen R. Baker, On Strike and on Film: Mexican American Families and Blacklisted Filmmakers in Cold War America (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 225. 75 William Murray, “Films-Salt of the Earth,” The Nation, April 10, 1954, 134.

117 shoots and even physically attacking people involved with the film. State troopers came to quell the violence.76 A woman from Silver City wrote a letter to Walter Pidgeon, President of the

Screen Actors Guild, and warned him about the “red” film being filmed in town. She also asked how to rescue Mexican Americans “from seduction into the Communists’ filmic toils.”77

Journalists started to take notice and even claimed the producers and director “imported two carloads of Negroes.” Biberman said they were three African-American crewmembers that worked for them, which was controversial enough, but the implication that the reds had gotten to the vulnerable minorities of Mexicans and blacks was enough to order a further investigation in the ordeal.78 In Congress, California representative Donald L. Jackson spoke out against the film.

He stated the House on Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) identified the people involved in making this film as communists or uncooperative witnesses and that the making of this film posed not only a security risk, because it was being filmed so close to Los Alamos, but also a societal and diplomatic risk. “This picture is deliberately designed to inflame racial hatreds and to depict the United States of America as the enemy of all colored peoples.” If people all over the world saw this film, it would cause harm to the U.S. Jackson even referred to the film as

Russia’s new weapon and part of a larger communist conspiracy to take over the world.79

Scriptwriter Michael Wilson, who according to Biberman’s autobiography was “freshly blacklisted” and Paul Jarrico’s brother in law, responded to some of the issues concerning the movie.80 “This picture is pro-American in the deepest sense,” he said. It “depicts honest working

76 “Reds in the Desert,” Newsweek, March 2, 1953, 27-28. “Silver City Troubles,” Newsweek, March 16, 1953, 43- 44. 77 Biberman, 84. 78 Ibid., 84. 79 “Red Movie in Making,” Congressional Record, 83rd Cong., First Session, 1371-1372 (1953). 80 Biberman, 38.

118 men & women of our country in a light most Hollywood films have ignored…the film does not…inflame racial hatreds. On the contrary, it stressed brotherhood and unity…”81

While banned in the U.S., this film received international acclaim. Critics praised the film throughout the world, and it even garnered awards. In Mexico, director Biberman stated, “it had been embraced as a deed of North American friendship.”82 In the U.S. the impact would not fully be realized until much later. Scholar Chon Noriega argues that Salt of the Earth was intended for

Anglo audiences, not necessarily Latinos, because it spoke more to the blacklisting efforts than the Hispano community in New Mexico.83 Although that may be true to an extent, Hebert

Biberman wrote in his autobiography that Mexican Americans had an active voice in the making of this film from Esperanza as the narrator to a suggestion from actor Joe T. Morales. Morales asked Biberman to remove the word ‘greaser’ from the movie “because somewhere, if somebody saw the film, they might get the idea that people could come here and call us names like that.

And that would be too bad because somebody might get killed. We have no ill-will for anyone but we’ve passed the point where we stand still for insult.”84 Biberman accommodated his wishes. Despite the desire to portray Mexican-American miners and their families in an authentic and human way, prejudices still influenced the film’s creators. This is particularly true of the romanticism they projected on the characters. Both writer Michael Wilson and director Herbert

Biberman referred to them as “the people” and Biberman mentioned his subjects photographed well. Although, both of these men made great efforts to portray their integrity, know their history, and empathize with their struggle, the difference was still there. 85 However, Salt of the

81 “Cinema—Salt of the Earth,” Time, March 16, 1953, 108. 82 Biberman, 202. 83 Chon Noriega, “Citizen Chicano: The Trials and Titillations of Ethnicity in the American Cinema, 1935-1962,” in Social Research 58, no. 2 (Summer 1991): 434. 84 Biberman, 65. 85 Baker, 208-209.

119 Earth created a divergent narrative from the “wetback” one. Mexican Americans fought for their rights through this film as workers and as Americans. The Chicano movement of the 1960s and

1970s would later use Salt of the Earth as a pillar of the Mexican American experience.

Mexican Americans and the “Wetback” Discourse

Most Mexican Americans in the postwar period, rather than side with undocumented

Mexican immigrants, chose to condemn these foreigners and position themselves in contradistinction as law-abiding American citizens. Historian David Gutiérrez argues that the issue of immigration was contentious for the Mexican-American community starting in the early twentieth century and discussions over citizenship and ethnicity were ongoing.86 The League of

United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), one of the earliest and most powerful Mexican-

American organizations, required members to be citizens and for a long time identified as “Latin

American” or “Texan Mexican” to prove their ties to the U.S. and separate themselves from

Mexican immigrants.87 Many Mexican-American intellectuals and community leaders weighed in on the discussion of “wetbacks” and made legal, social, and political efforts to affirm their inclusion as Americans.

LULAC actively participated in demonizing “wetbacks” because this group, LULAC argued, depressed wages and interfered with education of their children.88 According to LULAC,

“wetbacks” were not loyal to the U.S. This came at a time when there was much pressure to conform and express loyalty to the United States. LULAC national president Raoul Cortéz wrote

86 David G. Guitérrez, Walls and Mirrors: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and the Politics of Ethnicity (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1995), 56. 87 Richard A. García, “The Mexican American Mind: A Product of the 1930s,” in History, Culture, and Society: Chicano Studies in the 1980s, ed. National Association for Chicano Studies (Ypsilanti, MI: Bilingual Press, 1983), 89. 88 Craig A. Kaplowitz, LULAC, Mexican Americans and National Policy (College Station, TX: Texas A & M University Press, 2005), 43.

120 a letter to President Truman in 1948 demanding the deportation of “illegals.”89 The next year,

Cortéz, along with a San Antonio lawyer Gus García and University of Texas professor George

Sánchez, presented a statement to Truman on the “‘Wetback’ problem of the southwest.”90 The larger issue was not about having a common ethnicity, but about commitment to becoming

“American.” LULAC’s allegiance was to those who committed to stay in the U.S. and sought

U.S. citizenship.91

The division between aliens and citizens became more rigid in the context of 1950s

America. Congress passed the Internal Security Act of 1950 and the Immigration and Nationally

Act of 1952 (known as the McCarran-Walter Act) to prohibit or limit the perceived Communist threat. These two laws made it more difficult to stay in the U.S. or become citizens if authorities accused one of socialist or communist leanings.92 This increase in immigration restriction evidently led to more people becoming “illegal” aliens, who had no rights and no access to citizenship. Although Mexican Americans were born in the U.S., this discourse of the “alien citizen,” “persons who are American citizens by virtue of their birth in the United States but who are presumed to be foreign by the mainstream of American culture and, at times, by the state,” pushed them to reexamine their position within American society and reassert their devotion to

89 Ibid., 47. 90 Ibid., 49-50. 91 Ibid., 53. In 1938, like-minded Anglo and Latino peoples formed El Congreso de Pueblos de Habla Española (Congress of Spanish Speaking Peoples). They were a left leaning, mostly working class organization, which provided counseling on immigration and naturalization process for free. They believed all Spanish-speaking people, aliens and citizens, should be working together since they were essentially in the same fundamental situation of oppression and discrimination. They also opposed the bracero program because they saw it as detrimental to the Mexican population. They blamed the situation on American society by arguing that hardworking Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants had earned their equal place in society by representing American values and contributing to American economic, cultural, and political society. The organization ended during World War II as the war effort took precedent over activism. After the war another group took a similar stance as El Congreso. The Community Service Organization (CSO), founded in 1947, had no requirement for citizenship for members, but did encourage members to become citizens in order to gain some protection under the law. Mario T. García, Mexican Americans: Leadership, Ideology, and Identity, 1930-1960 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989), 160, 167, 170-171. Guitérrez, 112-114. 92 Guitérrez, 161.

121 their American identity.93 They were caught in the middle of “alien” and “citizen.” Leaders of

Mexican-American organizations proclaimed their Americanness and exploited the hysteria of

Communism. In 1954, Elias Olivarez of the G.I. Forum in McAllen, Texas wrote to the U.S.

Attorney General Herbert Brownell and to President Eisenhower about his concern that subversives and saboteurs were using the “wetback” ordeal to infiltrate the U.S.94 The mainstream press used this tactic throughout the decade, but Mexican Americans also used fear of communism, disease, and overall havoc to defend their positions as Americans.

Mexican-American intellectuals and organizers circulated several pieces of propaganda in the press and in Mexican-American communities to incite action against the “wetbacks.” A

New York Times article titled, “Peons in West Lowering Culture,” discussed how these “peons” brought down standards in education, health, and even democracy. Dr. Sánchez, the University of Texas professor, said this large influx of people was “culturally indigestible.” In other words, they were unassimilable. Dr. Lyle Saunders of the University of New Mexico stated in the article that the “wetback” reinforced all of the stereotypes associated with Spanish-speaking peoples including “poor, uneducated, unskilled, underfed, and frequently unclean.”95 These two men, along with sociologist Olin Leonard, collaborated on a pamphlet titled the “Wetback in the Rio

Grande Valley, which further espoused the idea that Mexican immigrants were unable to assimilate. This pamphlet created a stir. An article in the McAllen Evening Monitor criticized the report. Harry B. Crozier, chairman and executive director of the Texas Employment

Commission, deemed the pamphlet, “an appalling disservice to the work of forging stronger bonds of friendship between English and Spanish-Speaking poeples [sic].” He also made efforts to discredit the report by calling it a “sloppy bit of research and even sloppier reporting.” In the

93 Ngai, 2. 94 García, Operation Wetback, 87. 95 Gladwin Hill, “Peons in the West Lowering Culture,” New York Times, March 27, 1951, 31.

122 same article, County Judge Milton D. Richardson blamed the “Communist tendencies at the

University of Texas” where Sánchez was a professor, but Sánchez defended the work.96 The connection to communism could have been a way to try to discredit Sánchez because he went against the Cold War ideology of inclusion and diversity prominent during this period. Sánchez’s involvement in such a controversial publication was not unusual. Many Mexican-American organizations were anti-immigrant.

The American G.I. Forum published a report in 1953 entitled What Price Wetbacks?, which was overtly anti-immigrant and drew much criticism from the Mexican-American community. It discussed the problems undocumented workers posed to domestic labor and insinuated that “wetbacks” posed a threat to American health, property, and culture. This report portrayed the Border Patrol as heroes who were constantly overwhelmed by the number of people trying to enter the country illegally.97 Some of the readers agreed and blamed the workers for causing such misery, but many more blamed the system, which included the law and the employers. There was such a backlash in the Mexican-American community, especially on the praise of the Border Patrol, that founder of the American G.I. Forum, Hector P. García, disappeared from the debate.98 Later, when the San Antonio District Director of the INS, J.W.

Holland, personally wrote to the American G.I. Forum for their support in driving out undocumented persons during Operation Wetback, Ed Idar, executive secretary of the G.I.

Forum and long-time critic of the “wetback,” publicized the event to fellow officers and told members through radio and press released (in both English and Spanish) to cooperate with the

96 Copy of McAllen Evening Monitor newspaper article, “T.E.C. Offical Calls Wetback Book Disservice,” November 20, 1951, George I. Sánchez Papers, Benson Latin American Collection, General Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin. 97 Ignacio M. García, White but not Equal: Mexican Americans, Jury Discrimination, and the Supreme Court (Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 2009), 163. 98 Ibid.,166-167.

123 Border Patrol.99 LULAC also openly supported the deportation of millions of Mexicans saying that they were responsible for the “serious health, economic and social conditions.”100 After

Operation Wetback, LULAC’s stance softened a bit, because the sweeps personally affected

Mexican Americans who were U.S. citizens. The laws and restrictions they had worked in favor of now could apply to them, their family members who were Mexican nationals, and even their children despite legal status.101 Mexican Americans’ perspective on immigration would continue to evolve into the 1970s as a younger and more militant generation openly challenged the status quo and defended the rights of immigrants as the “wetback” discourse also continued in the media.

Conclusion

In the 1960s, the nation’s attention shifted away from immigration. Historian David

Gutiérrez states, “By the mid-1960s the intensifying Civil Rights Movement, urban unrest, and the escalation of the war in Vietnam all served to push the immigration issue out of the political spotlight.”102 When it came to dealing with the issue of Mexican nationals in the place of

American society, Mexican-American activists continued to focus their activities on education, citizenship, and the abolition of the Bracero program through 1964 when Congress ended the program.103 By the late 1960s, ethnic minorities started growing in their militancy and awareness as a younger generation of Mexican Americans started to use the word Chicano in an expression of defiance and self-assertion.104 The economic downturn of the 1970s placed attention once

99 García, Operation Wetback, 210. 100 Kaplowitz, 56. 101 Guitérrez, 164. 102 Ibid., 182. 103 Ibid., 181. 104 Ibid., 183.

124 again on “illegal” immigration as a scapegoat to the nation’s woes. The narrative became very reminiscent of the post-World War II era. The media used many of the same analogies and scare tactics. The INS scoured Mexican-American neighborhoods for “illegals.” They stopped anyone who “looked Mexican” and interrogated them on their place of birth and legal status.105 This paralleled how Mexican Americans became “alien citizens” in the postwar era. By the 1970s,

Mexican-American organizations, even LULAC, became more sensitive to the predicament of the undocumented person.

The news media gave readers, through headlines and photographs, the impression that undocumented immigrants were criminals and taking jobs away from Americans in the 1970s.

Sociologist Celestino Fernández examined 949 articles featured in four newspapers and concluded that the most common photographic image of undocumented immigrants was of the

Border Patrol apprehending them or of them behind a fence at a detention center. Rarely did the photographs include individuals’ names. Few photographs engendered empathy or compassion for the immigrants’ plight.106 Many of the headlines of these articles also invited readers to learn more about how Mexican immigrants were taking their jobs and collecting unemployment at the same time. Social science research from the time debunked that assumption, but according to a

Gallup Poll in 1976, fifty-one percent of the participants said that immigrants took jobs from residents and seventy-seven percent felt immigrants were a drain on the taxpayer by collecting welfare and unemployment. This image of the Mexican immigration was contradictory, since they were both taking all the jobs and the unemployment benefits, but people believed it as way

105 Ibid., 188-189. 106 Celestino Fernández, “Newspaper Coverage of Undocumented Mexican Immigration during the 1970s: A Qualitative Analysis of Pictures and Headings,” in History, Culture, and Society: Chicano Studies in the 1980s, ed. the National Association for Chicano Studies (Ypsilanti, MI: Bilingual Press, 1983), 185-187.

125 to explain their troubles.107 As Fernández argued, this type of reporting indirectly affected immigration policy during the 1970s and 1980s.108

The Mexican-American community of the 1970s, unlike the postwar era, tried to bring to light the human side of the immigrant often lost in news coverage. One way they pursued this was through filmmaking. The documentary, Unwanted, appeared on Los Angeles public television in 1975 and detailed the conditions of poor farmers in Mexico, those who came to the

U.S. for a better life, and the limitations they faced. It also included interviews of those Mexicans the INS and Border Patrol apprehended including asking them why they crossed the border illegally. This approach personalized and humanized the “wetback.” The narrator emphasized that undocumented persons mostly kept the money they earned within the U.S. economy and paid their taxes. They wanted their children to be well educated and they wanted to learn

English. In the film’s perspective, society had classified “decent hardworking people” as criminals. The argument of the film’s producers was that the system did not work and both immigrants and immigration agents were victims of the system.109 The documentary also showed how the INS harassed American-born individuals, who “looked like” immigrants. There was footage of immigration officers literally jumping out of their cars to interrogate people on the streets and checking them for weapons if they “looked Mexican.” They asked these people their place of birth and many times were embarrassed when they responded in perfect English and named U.S. cities.110 Authorities did not acknowledge citizenship in many of these circumstances. No matter how many generations had previously pledged their Americanness, their children found that citizenship meant little if you “looked Mexican.”

107 Ibid., 194. 108 Ibid., 196. 109 Unwanted, 1975. Inventory Number: VA12807 T, UCLA Film and Television Archive, University of California, Los Angeles, California. 110 Ibid.

126 Restrictionist organizations, such as LULAC and MAPA (Mexican American Political

Association), spoke out about immigration reform because it affected Mexican-American citizens.111 Citizenship was no longer their main concern, which represented a momentous shift.

In 1977, over two thousand people attended the First National Chicano/Latino Conference on

Immigration and Public Policy to contest President Carter’s immigration reform as discriminatory towards undocumented aliens and Mexican-American citizens.112 Mexican

Americans actually sought to include immigrant interests instead of excluding them. The Civil

Rights Movement and the search for authenticity made the Mexican-American identity more inclusive. For example, the idea of Aztlán, a shared homeland both physical and mental, was another contributor to this collective identity.113

The depiction of “wetbacks” remained largely unchanged from the 1950s through the

1970s. While writers in the 1950s emphasized the uncleanliness of these individuals more than later eras, both eras connected the undocumented immigrant to economic peril. Immigrants were also eternal foreigners, unworthy of the country’s resources. This discourse not only affected immigrants, but their families and communities who were American citizens. During the 1950s,

Mexican-American organizations typically distanced themselves from immigrants and conformed to American cultural values, but in the 1970s, they increasingly took a stand against the ill treatment of the so-called “wetbacks.” As in the 1950s, news coverage in the 1970s was generally more negative in its attitude toward Mexican immigrants than films or documentaries.

In the 1950s, Mexicans and Mexican Americans appeared in blockbuster films, but by the 1970s

111 David G. Gutiérrez, “Sin Fronteras?: Chicanos, Mexican Americans, and the Emergence of the Contemporary Mexican Immigration Debate, 1968-1978,” in Between Two Worlds: Mexican Immigrants in the United States, ed. David G. Gutiérrez (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, Inc., 1996), 175, 192. 112 Ibid., 175-176. 113 Ibid.,184.

127 more had become writers, directors, and producers. This progression resulted from the vibrant

Civil Rights Movement and the celebration of identity politics.

128 Chapter 4: Puerto Ricans in Postwar American Popular Culture

Introduction

Anita Palacio and Bernardo Nuñez, recent arrivals from Puerto Rico, were enjoying the evening breeze on the rooftop of a New York City apartment building when they began to debate their experiences in the United States. Anita spoke of the wonderful things the country offered and all the struggles they left behind in Puerto Rico such as hurricanes, heat, overpopulation, and debt. Bernardo retorted that all was not well as their community faced constant discrimination and inequality in the land of opportunity. “Everything free in America,” said Anita. Bernardo clarified “for a small fee in America.” Anita and her female friends explained the fruits of consumerism and industry in America such as skyscrapers and Cadillacs, but Bernardo and his male friends responded that they could not partake in that American dream because “one look at us and they charge twice” and there were “lots of doors slamming in our face.” To make it in

America, you had to be white and “get rid of your accent.” The women said, “Here you are free and you have pride,” but the men said as “long as you stay on your own side.” You cannot be anything you wanted to be. All you were free to do was to “wait tables and shine shoes.”

America was not all it was cracked to be: “Everywhere grime in America, Organized crime in

America, Terrible time in America.” At this point, Bernardo said he wanted to go back to Puerto

Rico and Anita said, “everyone there will have moved here.”1

This scene from the 1961 film, previously a Broadway musical, West Side Story, revealed the contradictions Puerto Ricans faced when they came to the United States in the 1950s. They had high hopes for their new lives in the States as American citizens and as workers in postwar

American industry, but were met with much resistance from their non-Puerto Rican neighbors.

1 West Side Story, directed by Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins (1961; Beverly Hills, CA: Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, 2006), DVD.

129 News stories and films associated Puerto Ricans with urban problems such as gangs, poverty, and teenage delinquency. Although Puerto Ricans had been U.S. citizens since 1917, American society treated them like foreigners. Skin color mattered as did language and Puerto Ricans fell outside of these requirements. Puerto Ricans came to New York City for employment in the

1950s as a result of Operation Bootstrap, an economic initiative supported by the U.S. government and businesses to revitalize and industrialize the Puerto Rican economy. While the initiative industrialized the island, it also decreased the number of jobs available to Puerto

Ricans. Because of the stigma ascribed to them in the United States, Puerto Ricans were easy targets for disaffected New Yorkers. For national movie audiences, West Side Story appeared to be the story of what happened when the U.S. and Puerto Rico collided.2

This chapter builds on American scholars’ current reanalysis of the cultural dynamics of empire, which includes the exploration of how popular culture assisted in the process of U.S. imperialism.3 It focuses on the impact of colonialism on Puerto Rican identity on the mainland.

According to an array of mid-twentieth century popular culture and media, the American state

(through the avenue of law enforcement) and American society needed to control the behaviors of both Puerto Rican men and women. These men were characterized as criminals and these women were stereotyped as sexual deviants. Both posed a risk to the U.S. This narrative emphasized foreignness and disregarded Puerto Ricans’ status as American citizens. Scholar

Alberto Sandoval-Sánchez argues that Puerto Ricans occupied a position between “Latin foreign other” and “Latin domestic ethnic and racial other,” while historian Mae Ngai compares Puerto

2 Camilla Fojas, Islands of Empire: Pop Culture and U.S. Power (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2014), 132. 3 Examples include: Kristin Hoganson, Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender Politics Provoked the Spanish- American and Philippine American Wars (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), Christina Klein, Cold War Orientalism: Asia in the Middlebrow Imagination, 1945-1961 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003), Mary A. Renda, Taking Haiti: Military Occupation and the Culture of U.S. Imperialism, 1915–1940 (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2001).

130 Ricans to the Filipinos, their colonial brethren. Both were part of the American empire, but

Filipinos did not become citizens because officials saw them as less likely than the Puerto Rican to assimilate or fit into the established racial hierarchy.4 The colonial past affected the identity and lived experience of Puerto Ricans in the mainland.

This chapter examines the portrayals of Puerto Ricans in American newspapers, magazines, films, and television and how these images changed, or in many cases did not, from the 1950s to the 1970s. It also discusses the public and often militant response to those images from the Puerto Rican community. It explores how the relationship between the U.S. and Puerto

Rico played out in the media during the mid-twentieth century and how the cloud of imperialism/colonialism affected that relationship. Like the “wetbacks” in the southwest, the media portrayed Puerto Ricans as criminals, but in this case, they were gang members, murderers, and sexually uncontrollable. Puerto Ricans were also eternal foreigners, despite their

American citizenship, or what Ngai called “alien citizens.”5 Their brownness and colonial status disqualified them from full legal and social citizenship. The Cold War Latin, exemplified through Ricky Ricardo, was the acceptable way to be Latin in postwar America, not as a

“wetback” in the southwest or a Puerto Rican in New York City. Although the U.S. government attempted to live up to its Cold War democratic ideal through pamphlets and documentation of coexistence with and acceptance of the Puerto Rican people, the reality was very different. While

Ricky lived the proper middle class life in Manhattan, the Sharks rumbled in the streets across town. American audiences saw images of model and villainous Latinos in postwar society. The

Cold War did not offer opportunities for Puerto Ricans; in fact, once they made their journey to

4Alberto Sandoval-Sánchez, José, Can You See? Latinos On and Off Broadway (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1999), 63. Mae Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and The Making of Modern America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004). 5 Ngai, 2.

131 the mainland they became nuisances to municipalities like New York City and to the nation through films and newspaper articles. Like Bernardo insisted, America was not the land of great opportunity.

Puerto Rico and the U.S. state

The American state and society had a contentious relationship with Puerto Rico since it became a territory of the United States following the Spanish American War in 1898. By the mid-twentieth century, the U.S. government, through the United States Information Agency

(USIA), and the popular press hoped to shed the label of a racist empire, and even praised Puerto

Rico as a model of modernization and democracy for the rest of Latin America to emulate. The

Cold War context of capitalism and democracy winning over communism solidified the public perception of Puerto Rico as a country that succeeded under U.S.-friendly leadership. Puerto

Ricans who came to the U.S. mainland, however, experienced a different U.S. than the self- described global leader of democracy. U.S. racial politics, including the white/black paradigm, influenced policy on the island and attitudes toward Puerto Ricans. Also, Puerto Ricans struggled with their identity as American citizens and as colonial subjects.

The United States wrestled with the futures of its newly gained territories after the

Spanish American War. The federal government eventually concluded that some of the countries, like Cuba, were fit for self-government while others, including the Philippines and

Puerto Rico, were not based on notions of civilization and race.6 Government documents as well as informative popular books describing the territory often characterized Puerto Ricans as mixed

6 As historian Louis Pérez notes: “Cubans early mastered the skills to negotiate their encounter with the North, which mean that they had developed an extraordinary—but not unlimited—capacity to accommodate North American cultural norms in their midst.” Louis A. Pérez, Jr., On Becoming Cuban: Identity, Nationality, and Culture (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 10.

132 race (white, mulatto, and black). This population could be whitened, but still needed U.S. influence, these works insisted, whereas the people of the Philippines were “tribal” and unable to assimilate into American life.7 U.S. Representative Thomas Spight argued in 1900 that Puerto

Rico was “part of the American continent” because “its people are, in the main, Caucasian blood, knowing and appreciating the benefits of civilization, and are desirous of casting their lot with us.” The Philippines were another matter, its people were “of different races of people from us” and “centuries can not assimilate them.”8 Other government officials argued governing Puerto

Rico should align with the racial politics of the Reconstruction South. General George W. Davis, military governor of Puerto Rico (1899-1900), stated, “It is well known that many of the

Southern States…are proceeding to disenfranchise the illiterate colored population…If the disenfranchisement of the Negro illiterates of the Union can be justified, the same in Porto [sic]

Rico can be defended on equally good grounds.”9 This connection between Puerto Ricans and blackness continued into the twentieth century when Dr. George Clements, the head of the Los

Angeles Chamber of Commerce’s Agricultural Department in the 1920s, wrote that if Mexican laborers were not available, they would be “forced to employ Porto [sic] Rican Negroes who would without question complicate and threaten the biological problem…”10 Mae Ngai explains the anxiety Americans felt about Filipino nationals and their potential racial contamination in the mainland, in this case through white women. The same was true for Puerto Ricans.11 Puerto

7 Lanny Thompson, Imperial Archipelago: Representation and Rule in the Insular Territories under U.S. Dominion after 1898 (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press, 2010), 132-133. 8 As quoted in Thompson, 200. 9 Quoted in César J. Ayala and Rafael Bernabe, Puerto Rico in the American Century: A History Since 1898 (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 31. 10 Quoted in Natalia Molina, How Race is Made in America: Immigration, Citizenship, and the Historical Power of Racial Scripts (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2014), 35. 11 Ngai, 110.

133 Ricans were more dangerous because they were citizens and they were black, or at least partly.12

This blackness prohibited them from exercising their civil rights. However, the official stance of the U.S. government in the mid-twentieth century was to show unity and cooperation with Puerto

Rico and fend off accusations of imperialism.

The USIA, a governmental agency created during the Cold War to change the U.S.’s image throughout the world and create positive feelings toward the country, tried to break away from the image of an empire through various informational materials on U.S. territories. One

1953 USIA information packet stated, “The history of the United States and the sentiment of its peoples are congenitally anti-imperialist…The United States,” it continued, “could not, therefore, become an imperial power holding colonies in the subordinate status from which it was itself freed by the Revolutionary War of 1776.” Finally, “the United States at no period of its history has ever been an empire.”13 The United States fought against an imperial power and gained their freedom, why would they want to do the same to anyone else? This implied that the U.S. did not hold Puerto Ricans against their will and instead treated them on equal footing.

The USIA, in fact, praised the Puerto Rican people and culture as a beneficial addition to the American quilt. In a 1953 packet entitled “Puerto Rico: The Land and People,” the government agency gave a complimentary view of the Puerto Rican population. They were not that different from Americans because “they have been strongly influenced by American customs and methods.” Further, “The culture of the United States has been greatly enriched by the contributions made by Puerto Ricans through music, dancing and literature. The island has produced many fine actors and writers, and its athletes have won wide recognition in the world

12 Filipinos were “U.S. Nationals” until 1934 under the Philippines Independence Act or the Tydings-McDuffie Act, which made them “aliens.” Ngai, 119. 13 Kit No. 22, Puerto Rico, “The United States and Territorial Government,” Records of the U.S. Information Agency (hereafter USIA), RG 306, Box 3, A1-1002, Press and Publication Service, Feature Packets with Nonrecurring Subjects, 1950-1958, National Archives at College Park, MD (hereafter NARA).

134 of sports.”14 In terms of the racial stock of the people, the fact that they were ethnically mixed was a positive attribute: “This intermixture of many diverse blood strains has resulted in a people that are gentle, courteous and industrious.”15 This last statement was puzzling since in the U.S. blacks, Asians, and Mexicans were often separated from whites, or Anglos, in everyday life.

Society did not condone racial mixing and when Puerto Ricans came to the mainland they were ostracized for their skin color and their language even though they were American citizens. The media lauded Puerto Rico as an idea and as a far away place where the U.S. had successfully influenced the modernization or industrialization of a Latin American country.

Puerto Rico’s Governor Luis Muñoz Marín became the face of this newly modern place.

Muñoz Marín’s face appeared on the cover of Time in June 1958 with the caption “Democracy’s

Laboratory in Latin America.” The article accompanying the cover feature praised Puerto Rico as an example for the “underdeveloped” world. Under Muñoz Marín’s watch, Puerto Ricans had the second highest per capita income in Latin America. It practically governed itself as a

“Commonwealth” of the U.S., and was “a shining example of an experimental colonial policy that turned out well.” Unlike in Venezuela, where the people booed and attacked Vice President

Richard Nixon, Puerto Ricans cheered “Arriba, Nixon!” Muñoz Marín gave him a state dinner in an ancient fort and told him “está en su casa.”16 Muñoz Marín had not always been so hospitable toward the U.S., as the article mentioned: “Luis Muñoz Marin turned for a while into a fiery supporter of independence for Puerto Rico. He stormed at the U.S. as an ‘opulent kleptomaniac’ that ‘filched life-giving pennies from the pockets of a pauper.’” But, “he changed his mind.”17 It was under Muñoz Marín in 1952 that Puerto Rico’s position changed to Estado Libre Asociado

14 Kit No. 22, Puerto Rico, “Puerto Rico: The Land and the People,” Records of the USIA, RG 306, Box 3, A1- 1002, Press and Publication Service, Feature Packets with Nonrecurring Subjects, 1950-1958, NARA. 15 Ibid. 16 “The Hemisphere: Puerto Rico, The Bard of Bootstrap,” Time, June 23, 1958, 30. 17 Ibid., 32.

135 (free associated state). Muñoz Marín, his staff, and the U.S. Congress put together a bill that invented the idea of a “free associated state,” which gave Puerto Rico increased self-governance.

It also allowed the U.S. to further distance itself from accusations of imperialism.18

While the Muñoz Marín administration and U.S. economists revitalized the nation by promoting industrial development on the island, many Puerto Ricans lost their agricultural jobs and left for the U.S. mainland. This new industrialization plan, part of Operation Bootstrap, drew many U.S. companies to manufacture their products in Puerto Rico and transport them cheaply.19

The shift from an agriculturally based economy to an export oriented one caused unemployment for many, but it was only one of the reasons for a mass migration to the mainland. Airplane travel became cheaper and easier by the 1950s and many Puerto Ricans, after years of migration from the island, had relatives who were well established in the U.S.20 Less than 70,000 Puerto

Ricans lived in the U.S. mainland in 1940. By 1950, that number rose to 300,000 and 887,000 by

1960. In 1975, there were approximately 1.7 million. Most of these migrants went to New York

City, changing the ethnic composition of the city. In 1950, Puerto Ricans made up three percent of the population; by 1970, ten percent of New Yorkers were Puerto Rican.21

Many people also left the island during this time because they perceived it as overpopulated. Because theories of overpopulation often helped to explain Puerto Rican poverty, women’s bodies and sexuality became the topic of discussion among intellectual and governmental circles as well as in popular culture.22 Controlling reproduction and sexuality

18 Frances Negrón-Muntaner, Boricua Pop: Puerto Ricans and the Latinization of American Culture (New York, NY: New York University Press, 2004), 6. 19 “The Hemisphere: Puerto Rico, The Bard of Bootstrap,” 35. Ayala and Bernabe, 180-181. 20 Ayala and Bernabe, 194. 21 United States Commission on Civil Rights, “Puerto Ricans in the Continental United States: An Uncertain Future,” A Report of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, (Washington, D.C., 1976), 19. 22 As Laura Briggs argues, U.S. colonialism was not a politically popular answer to explain the island’s economic woes in the Cold War context, but “overpopulation” was. Laura Briggs, Reproducing Empire: Race, Sex, Science, and U.S. Imperialism in Puerto Rico (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002), 9.

136 became part of the solution to alleviating poverty.23 Women participated in this discourse by trying to control their own reproduction, as Laura Briggs argues, but Puerto Rican women were also guinea pigs for U.S. pharmaceutical companies and other methods of birth control such as sterilization.24 In the 1950s, American contraceptive researchers chose Puerto Rico as the site for testing the birth control pill. These researchers used the theory that overpopulation and poverty would lead to a public health crisis on the island to justify their involvement. Since it was a U.S. territory, it was also easier to control and gain the support of the local government.25 In New

York City, Puerto Rican women in the Young Lords Party fought against these long established imperialist practices in the 1960s and 1970s and drew attention to the reproductive freedom and protection of women of color.26 The uncontrollable sexuality of Latin Americans was a common trope in U.S. popular culture, which made its way into the films of the time including West Side

Story, in which Puerto Ricans supposedly multiplied like cockroaches, according to one of the white characters.

West Side Story

The musical West Side Story, and subsequent film adaptation, captured a particular moment in American history: the United States was in the middle of the Cold War defending

American democracy and life to the world, while New Yorkers worried about the negative influence of a wave of newcomers. Xenophobia ran high, though the American state officially preached diversity. As the media captured the “wetback invasion” in the southwest, those on the

23 The popular discourse often portrayed Puerto Ricans and Filipinos as oversexualized beings. See more on the Filipino case in Mae Ngai’s Impossible Subjects, 110-111. 24 Jennifer Nelson argues Puerto Rican women often chose sterilization when they had the choice because it was the most publicized and “moral” method. Jennifer Nelson, Women of Color and the Reproductive Rights Movement (New York, NY: New York University Press, 2003), 123. 25 Ibid., 124. 26 The Young Lords Party, like the Black Panther Party, saw these measures as genocidal. Nelson, 121-122.

137 east coast worried about Puerto Rican “spics” overrunning their communities with violence and immorality. West Side Story, told through the eyes of four Jewish men, confirmed many of the existing stereotypes, but also served as an unlikely way to humanize the Puerto Rican community. Anita, one of the main characters, was eager to assimilate into American society, but at the end she became disillusioned and urged her friend María to “stick to your own kind.” Rita

Moreno, proud of her portrayal of the character of Anita, also faced much discrimination as a

Puerto Rican woman. West Side Story encapsulated the stereotypes of violence and sexuality associated with Latinos, but especially with Puerto Ricans.

The story of a Puerto Rican street gang at odds with a white-ethnic gang was originally a story about the tense relationship between Catholics and Jews, but since the gang violence between Anglos and Latinos often dominated the news, composer Leonard Bernstein and writer

Arthur Laurents moved the story from the East Side of Manhattan to the West Side. Laurents suggested, “It would have Latin passion, immigrant anger, [and] shared resentment.”27 Here he used “Latin” culture as a novelty that people would be interested in seeing as well as the explosive nature of “immigrant anger” and “shared resentment.” Viewers likely connected violence to Latinness. Although they wanted to develop a musical based on the Puerto Rican experience, Bernstein, Laurents, and lyricist Stephen Sondheim knew little about Puerto Rican culture. Sondheim was unsure about taking the job, because he argued he had never been poor nor had ever even known a Puerto Rican.28 Laurents had little experience with Latino culture and people other than Bernstein’s domestic worker, Rosalie. Bernstein perhaps knew the most of the four contributors since he was married to a Latin American woman (born in Costa Rica, raised in

27 Quoted in Elizabeth A. Wells, West Side Story: Cultural Perspectives on an American Musical (Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 2011), 32. 28 Ibid., 33.

138 Chile) and often vacationed in Latin America.29 They were eager to learn more about the subject matter, however. In the research and development phase of the project, Jerome Robbins, co- creator and choreographer, a white Jewish man in his late 30s, went to the streets of Spanish

Harlem, spoke to gang members and immersed himself in their lives by attending their events such as dances.30 Despite their limited knowledge of the Puerto Rican experience, these four men came together with the intentions to create a story they felt the world needed to know. Arthur

Laurents once said the one sensibility they all shared that informed their work was that they were

Jews: “West Side can be said to be informed by our political and sociological viewpoint; our

Jewishness as the source of our passion against prejudice…”31 They had empathy for other persecuted people and wanted to bring their plight to life, but at the same time were very influenced by, and may have exploited, the hotly discussed topics of their time: teenage delinquency and foreigners.

Audiences today view West Side Story as a modern, urban twist on William

Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet because it has become divorced from its original 1957 context of xenophobia and teenage delinquency. During the 1950s, news reports and sociological studies on the Puerto Rican presence in New York City inundated the psyche of New Yorkers. The U.S. government encouraged the mass migration of Puerto Ricans to the city to ease the overpopulation on the island and attract employees for factory work. Wages in the U.S. were twice as high as in Puerto Rico in the 1940s.32 Although this story sounds comparable to the stories of all immigrants who had been coming to the U.S. for decades for better opportunities,

29 Ibid., 101. Misha Berson, Something’s Coming, Something Good: West Side Story and the American Imagination (Milwaukee, WI: Applause Theatre and Cinema Books, 2011), 98. 30 Berson, 146. 31 As quoted by Charles Kaiser, The Gay Metropolis, 1940-1996 (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1997), 93. He was denying that their shared homosexuality had a significant impact on their work, but it was their Jewishness. 32 Wells, 101.

139 there was one marked difference: Puerto Ricans were American citizens. The popular discourse stamped them with an “immigrant” status connected to immigrant culture despite citizenship.33

In fact, they were migrants, who New Yorkers saw as competitors for resources and major contributors to crime in the city.

This xenophobia combined with the growing threat of teenage delinquency. Teenage delinquency was a major source of anxiety for Americans across the country during the 1950s and the mainstream media reflected that unease. Films, such as The Wild One (1953),

Blackboard Jungle (1955), Rebel without a Cause (1955), Crime in the Streets (1956), and High

School Confidential (1958), captured this fear. In New York City, the press racialized this anxiety by portraying young Puerto Rican (and often African-American) men as criminals and savages.34 Headlines of Puerto Rican gang members who murdered white boys, including

Salvador “Dracula” or “Cape Man” Agron and Frank Santana, flooded newspapers.35 During the original run of West Side Story on Broadway, Jerome Robbins posted such news stories on a bulletin board so cast members were constantly immersed in gang culture and violence. Chita

Rivera, who played Anita on the Broadway version, remembered that Robbins posted “a full page [news] photo of this handsome young man with a black cape. I believe it was a knife in his hand and a body under his foot.” Robbins had written: “This is your life” on the image and

Rivera said she was shocked: “Me being Puerto Rican –I mean, we were all aware of gangs and things, but we didn’t live those lives. It smacked us between the eyes.”36 Although the intention was to encourage the actors to become those gang members for the musical, it also signified that

33 Fojas, 145. 34 Harrison E. Salisbury alone wrote several articles on gang life and poverty in 1958 for the New York Times. One story he wrote about was the murder of Michael Ramos, 17, by Ramon Serra, 20. Harrison E. Salisbury, “Youth is Indicted in Gang Slaying: Serra Facing First-Degree Murder Trial in Bronx Candy-Store Shooting,” New York Times, April 30, 1958, 26. 35 Juan Gonzalez, Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2000), 90, 290. 36 Berson, 69-70.

140 Puerto Ricans were one-dimensional, as Rivera felt. This coaching method caused hostility among the cast members. The play opened on Broadway in 1957 amid these societal tensions and they remained firmly in place when West Side Story became a feature film in 1961.

This musical was revolutionary because it featured Puerto Rican culture and even some

Puerto Rican people in leading roles, both on Broadway and in the film, but with this achievement came tension and debate about issues of gender, race, and identity.37 From the cast choices, to the portrayals, to the language and mannerisms, Latinos, academics, and cultural commentators have been very critical of the film and its effect on Puerto Rican identity. Lin-

Manuel Miranda, the Tony Award winning creator and star of “In the Heights” and “Hamilton,” said in 2009, “‘West Side Story’ for the Latino community has been our greatest blessing and our greatest curse.”38

During the 1950s, film investors and producers chose popular stars to fill screen roles, regardless of ethnicity, because they were less concerned about authenticity and more concerned about earning back their investments.39 The mindset was that cosmetics could make anyone

Puerto Rican. For this reason, they chose Russian-American starlet Natalie Wood to play the leading Puerto Rican female, María. Make up artists darkened her light complexion, and did the same for Greek-American George Chakiris, who played María’s brother, Bernardo. Rita Moreno was the only authentic Puerto Rican in a significant supporting role, although she had to put on a fake accent to appear genuinely foreign. As Moreno recalled in her memoir, she also had to wear

37 The original Broadway production lasted from September 1957 to June 1959 (a total of 732 performances). When the film version of West Side Story came out in 1961 it attracted larger audiences because of its accessibility to more people through the movie screen. The Broadway show catered to cultured, theatergoing adults, while the film appealed to younger people of all classes and ethnicities. The movie did very well at the box office, grossing $43 million (over $300 million now) in the U.S. alone. Berson, 247, 149, 155. 38 David Montgomery, “‘West Side Story’: A Bilingual Return to the National Theatre Stage,” Washington Post, January 3, 2009, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2009/01/02/AR2009010202107.html. 39 Berson, 162, 170.

141 the “homogenous brown” or the “uniform tobacco brown color” to make her appear darker.40

Years later in an interview, Moreno expressed her uneasiness with how the film depicted Latinos and the way she had to play Anita. She protested to a makeup man that the actors did not have

“to be the same extremely dark color.” After she inquired why the make up could not match their skin tones, “he really immediately assumed that, one, I did not want to be Latina and, two, that I was racist.” She was also bothered by the accent: “not every Puerto Rican in the world, in New

York, has a Hispanic accent. And I wasn't thrilled about that, but that was Jerry’s [Jerome

Robbins’s] choice. He wanted the big contrast between the Jets and the Sharks…” Jerome

Robbins wanted such a sharp contrast between the Jets and the Sharks “he actually had some of the boys in the Jets dye — bleach — their hair for the contrast. And they had exceedingly pale makeup.” 41 The entertainment industry had effectively racialized Puerto Ricans in this discourse. Puerto Ricans could not be various shades of white, black, brown, and olive, they all had to be the same muddy brown. This racialization continued well into the century including the

1980 revival of West Side Story. In this production, Jossie de Guzman played María. Even though de Guzman was Puerto Rican, they darkened her hair and her skin. She was outraged at first, “Oh, my God, I am Puerto Rican.” But, a New York Times article reported, “after a bit she liked that, wanting literally to ‘get into the skin of María.’” She was becoming the Puerto Rican audiences expected to see. This gave the impression that “Puerto Rican” was something one could slip on and off whenever they pleased. It was a voluntary condition. Meanwhile, Debbie

Allen, an African-American woman, played Anita.42

40 Rita Moreno, Rita Moreno: A Memoir (New York, NY: Celebra, 2013), 187. 41 “‘West Side Story’ Film Still Pretty, And Witty, At 50,” Talk of the Nation, October 17, 2011, Neal Conan with Rita Moreno, George Chakiris, and Misha Berson, National Public Radio. http://www.npr.org/2011/10/17/141427333/west-side-story-still-pretty-and-witty-at-50. 42 Nan Robertson, “Maria and Anita in ‘West Side Story,’” New York Times, February 22, 1980, C4.

142 The juxtaposition of a lighter skinned woman and a darker skinned woman or the contrast of a pure woman/virgin and a feisty/sexually available woman was not a new construct and reviews of the film, perhaps inadvertently, played to that dichotomy. The reviews of the film examined issues of gender and race setting María apart as the virginal, good woman opposed to the exotic and fiery Anita. One reviewer stated that Natalie Wood gave an “entrancing performance,” while Rita Moreno “presents a fiery characterization.”43 Another review noted,

“Natalie Wood is full of luster and charm” while Rita Moreno was a “spitfire.” This review also featured a black and white photo of the two women with Wood in the front with a white dress and a shining smile while Moreno stood behind her with her head bowed as she buttoned Wood’s

(María’s) dress.44 A review in Time said, “Natalie Wood has the right dark glow as the Latin heroine” while “George Chakiris and Rita Moreno are strikingly slummy.” This review also featured a photo of Moreno twirling her skirt as the Puerto Rican men looked on.45 María was the white heroine, while they defined Anita by her sexuality and her brownness.

The reviews often cast Anita as the “bad girl” in this scenario, but Rita Moreno felt quite differently about Anita. When she was offered the role, she was ecstatic: “Anita was real! She was Puerto Rican, and she was fighting for her rights. She had plenty to say about what was wrong with America—and in the world.” The character was personal for Moreno: “I had fled down those mean streets in fear of the gangs, chased and hunted by that awful hiss: ‘Spic!’”46

She had lived the role. In fact, she told the story of when she was filming what became known as the “rape scene” and how that scene “opened up some wounds.” During the scene, the Jets actors incessantly called her a “spic” and “garlic mouth” and physically grabbed her and lifted up her

43 Whit., “Film Review of West Side Story,” Variety, September 27, 1961. 44 Bosley Crowther, “Screen: ‘West Side Story’ Arrives,” New York Times, October 19, 1961, 39. 45 “Cinema: Sweetness & Blight,” Time, October 20, 1961, 94. 46 Moreno, 183.

143 skirt. All those years of assault had weighed her down and she yelled at them “don’t you touch me,” with genuine anger. When the scene was over, she sobbed uncontrollably and no one was able to console her.47 This scene again emphasized the place of Latina women in American popular culture; their sexuality defined them and their sexual assault was justified. Rita Moreno’s early career was limited to roles as sexy, ethnic women.

Puerto Rican born, New York raised Rita Moreno started her career in the 1940s, often typecast as a sexpot. She played Indian maidens, and even a Siamese wife in the 1956 film The

King and I. “I must have been filed under the category of ‘general ethnic,’” recalled Moreno.48

At an early age, Moreno learned that she was the wrong skin color: “I learned that I was the wrong race, that light skin was better than dark skin…My ‘light’ skin was not light enough.”49

Although Puerto Ricans considered her light-skinned, she was not white enough to be

“American.” Articles about the actress constantly questioned her status as an American citizen.

In a Los Angeles Daily News article on October 9, 1952, Howard McClay was surprised when

Moreno spoke: “[I]t's rather surprising to hear this pretty, black-haired beauty rattle off dialog like some doll who had been raised in Manhattan all her life.”50 He was disappointed that she did not speak with a thick accent. Despite lacking the accent, Moreno fulfilled the expectations of exoticism in her dark striking features. She became the sexy señorita and spicy firecracker that

American audiences and the entertainment industry expected. In a 1954 publicity shot, Rita

Moreno was photographed literally inside a firecracker.51 Moreno remembers: “For publicity

47 “Actress Rita Moreno and Vocalist Marni Nixon,” Fresh Air, October 25, 2001, Terry Gross with Rita Moreno and Marni Nixon. National Public Radio. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1236303. 48 Moreno, 109. 49 Ibid., 37. 50 Mary C. Beltrán, Latino/a Stars in U.S. Eyes: The Making and Meanings of Film and TV Stardom (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2009), 74. 51 Ibid., 62.

144 purposes, I was stereotyped as a hot Latina with smoldering eyes and hips that wouldn't quit.” 52

At the time she was thrilled with the publicity. She even appeared on the cover of Life in March

1954.53

Moreno grew tired of being typecast by the early 1960s and began questioning the limited roles available for Latinas, most of them exploiting their sexuality. She asked, “why oh why do

Latin girls on the screen have to be tempestuous sexpots?” She could not comprehend why scriptwriters had them “flashing our eyes, flaring our nostrils, gnashing our teeth, wiggling our ears as well as our derrieres.”54 The article stated that Moreno was once cast in those spitfire roles and “she may have contributed to it through a somewhat gay social life,” but now things had changed for Moreno. “Perhaps it was friendship with Marlon Brando” or “two years of intensive dramatic training” that had changed her. This implied that Moreno had no active role in her image, but others influenced her to change and become less fiery. In 1962, she wrote a letter to the editor of Daily Variety about Bette Davis’s critique of activism for more minority representation in film. Moreno argued, “so long as any American citizen or group of citizens is deprived of dignity and freedom, then my own freedom and sense of personal dignity are also inevitability threatened.”55 Moreno continued to struggle with the sexism and racism in

Hollywood for decades. Even winning an Academy Award for her role in West Side Story, the first Latina to do so, did not pivot her career to a new level; offers rolled in only to play “the same demeaning character parts” she had always played.56 “My fury would simmer for years, as

52 Moreno, 117. 53 Ibid., 152. 54 Bob Thomas, “Rita Morene [sic] Protests Stereotype Latin Girl,” Kentucky New Era (Hopkinsville, KY), November 15, 1960, 9. 55 Quoted in Beltrán, 80. My university library, through local sources and through World Cat, was unable to find the original document. 56 Moreno, 202. The response from Latinos on her Oscar win was not immediate, Moreno said: “One day many years later, Liz Torres, that wonderful comedienne, told me this story: She was living in Harlem at the time, Spanish Harlem, and it was a very hot night, Oscar night [Oscar night is now in February, but in 1962 it was on April 9th],

145 I was offered degrading roles right through my sixties,” Moreno said.57 She accomplished a feat few have earned: an Oscar, a Tony, a Grammy, and an Emmy (accolades in film, theater, music, and television).58 Moreno’s early career was a common path for many young Latina women, exploiting their sexuality for pay and promotion in the industry. Rita Moreno exemplifies how difficult it was for Latinos to speak out against their limited opportunities in the film industry.

Puerto Ricans also had limited power as exploited workers and targets of urban renewal, but they had long been organizing on the mainland. Puerto Ricans on the mainland had been politically active in New York City and the surrounding area since at least the 1920s with the community’s objectives changing depending on the political environment.59 They started labor and civic organizations such as the Porto [sic] Rican League established in 1923 in New Jersey

“to develop a cultural program so that those members who so desire may increase their knowledge of the English language and of the political organization of American democracy.”60

This organization also encouraged members to enjoy their rights as U.S. citizens, not unlike

Mexican-American organizations developing in the Southwest. Labor issues were a high priority in those early years. Another group, the Liga Puertorriqueña e Hispana (Puerto Rican and

Hispanic League) in 1926, sought to unite all Hispanics collectively to celebrate a shared

and all the windows were open…when Rock Hudson began to announce the names of the nominees for best [supporting] actress, she said the place went dead quiet. And she said when my name was announced the place went up in smoke. There was screaming and yelling and hugging and jumping up and down and people yelling out the windows, ‘She did it! She did it!’ in Spanish and in English.” “A friend of mine said to me…‘You know what they were really saying? We did it. We did it.’ And I tell you what, she told me that story the first time and I just started to cry. Because it really put me back in touch with my people, and I had a people. I had a people who knew all about me, I just didn't know about them.” “Rita Moreno reflects on Anita, Awards and Accents,” NPR Weekend Edition Sunday, March 7, 2013, Rachel Martin, National Public Radio. http://www.npr.org/2013/03/10/173726066/rita- moreno-reflects-on-anita-awards-and-accents 57 Moreno, 113. 58 Beltrán, 63. 59 They were also active in other cities like Chicago as Lilia Fernández examines in her book, Brown in the Windy City, but the emphasis of this chapter is on New York City. Jorge Duany, The Puerto Rican Nation on the Move: Identities on the Island and in the United States (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 187. 60 Duany, 187-188.

146 culture.61 This was an early attempt at Latino unification. By the 1950s, Puerto Rican organizations focused more on education and public service, and concentrated their political efforts locally focusing on pushing city and state governments for improvement.62 Cultural pride and identity were threads that ran through these organizations, but the Cold War American political environment prompted a reexamination of that identity and of Puerto Ricans’ place in

American society.

With the Cold War descending and status of Puerto Rico changing, the U.S. Puerto Rican community searched for a sense of identity and belonging. They were not black or white, nor were they immigrants. Anthropologist Jorge Duany argues Puerto Rico was, and always has been, a nation on the move. He defines this nation “not as a well-bounded sovereign state, but as a translocal community based on a collective consciousness of a shared history, language, and culture.” They have been people with a strong national identity without a nation-state.63 This nationalist bent sometimes erupted in violence as Puerto Rican nationalist groups were involved in the 1950 failed assassination attempt on President Harry Truman and the 1954 Capitol building shooting of members of Congress.64 Despite the negative press aimed at all Puerto

Ricans, the community found ways to express their identity and cultural pride such as through the Puerto Rican Day Parade and in Jesús Colón’s writings.

By the 1950s, Puerto Ricans openly celebrated their culture on the streets of New York

City with the Puerto Rican Day Parade. The first parade in 1958 had 30,000 participants from the

U.S. and from the island and 200,000 spectators.65 In 1959, there were over 160,000 participants

61 Ibid., 188. 62 G. Cristina Mora, Making Hispanics: How Activists, Bureaucrats, and Media Constructed a New American (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2014), 22-23. 63 Duany, 4. 64 Fojas, 134. 65 Duany, 195.

147 and more than thirty floats celebrating Puerto Rican culture and contributions to U.S. society.66

This outward expression of pride was one way to combat the negative images Americans saw on the film screens and in the press. Writers and cultural commenters, like Jesús Colón, also pushed the conversation to explore the richness of Puerto Rican culture and their struggle for inclusion.

Colón documented Puerto Rican communities throughout the U.S. including the ways they were organizing to combat discrimination and gain political power. He noted, “[A]ll these minor victories are nothing ‘revolutionary,’ nothing to change the world tomorrow morning. All that we are saying is that the conditions are being planted in which the Puerto Rican communities will be able, some time in the future, to move into really progressive action if we learn how to work with people who do not necessarily agree with us in all points in the political map.” The

Puerto Rican population was growing, here to stay, and not going to be silent.67 Although most of Colón’s readership, particularly in The Worker, probably agreed with his stance, it still opened up the discussion about the place of Puerto Ricans in the U.S. But, despite Colón’s powerful statement and the public display of the Puerto Rican Day Parade along with a long-standing community engagement, few Puerto Ricans protested the images they saw in West Side Story.

The environment of the Cold War suppressed any resistance, whereas by the early 1970s, the political environment had changed so that it allowed a space for dissidence.

When the play debuted in 1957, there were few public complaints about the content or the depictions. Stephen Sondheim and Leonard Bernstein said the only complaints they received were about the lyrics in the song “America” saying that Puerto Rico was filled with tropical diseases. Doctors and medical experts publicly criticized this particular lyric because they had

66 John Alicea and Carlos Velasquez, 50 Years of The Puerto Rican Day Parade (New York, NY: Galos Publishing, 2007), 9. 67 Jesús Colón, “A Growing Minority,” The Worker, March 30, 1958, 10.

148 made great efforts to abolish many diseases from the island.68 Dr. Howard Rusk (founder of the

Rusk Institute) even penned an op-ed piece in the New York Times to reassure Americans these diseases were no longer a problem on the island.69 Sondheim and Bernstein did not change the lyrics and no one protested further. They did change the lyrics for the 1961 movie, though. Both

Rita Moreno and George Chakiris said in a 2011 interview they never heard Puerto Rican backlash or negative comments about the film nor the play, in fact many people have thanked them for being among the first to portray Puerto Ricans as sympathetic characters.70 Puerto

Ricans on the island also commended the musical. In 1960, a Puerto Rican newspaper praised it for being a positive representation of Puerto Ricans in New York City. Puerto Rican Resident

Commissioner in Congress, Dr. Antonio Fernós Isern declared “there was nothing in it that could be harmful or injurious to the Puerto Rican people.”71 Years later after much reflection and debate, scholars and cultural commentators denounced the film as demeaning toward the Puerto

Rican population.

The fact that no Puerto Ricans or Latinos of any kind were involved in the creation and production of the musical or film poses a problem. Scholar Alberto Sandoval-Sánchez recounts his own experience with the images Laurents, Sondheim, Bernstein, and Robbins created: “After my immigration to Wisconsin in 1973 to attend college, the musical film West Side Story was frequently imposed upon me as a model of/for my Puerto Rican ethnic identity.”72 He resisted these impositions, but it made him question, “[t]hen, what are the Puerto Ricans in West Side

Story? Are they simply literary products, ideological signs, and cultural discursive stereotypes of the Anglo-American socio-political system of power?” Sandoval-Sánchez concludes that they

68 Sandoval-Sánchez, 75-76. 69 Berson, 98. 70 “‘West Side Story’ Film Still Pretty, And Witty, At 50.” 71 As quoted in Sandoval-Sánchez, 77. 72 Sandoval-Sánchez, 62.

149 are more significant than that, especially when “Puerto Ricans themselves identify with this pseudoethnic film image produced by the cultural-imperial power.”73 As colonial subjects, they have appropriated that image of themselves and accepted it as truth.74 Have Puerto Ricans accepted a version of their history and culture created by a group of white men? This answer is complicated and artists and scholars alike continue to debate it.

Laurents revived the musical in 2009 because he wanted to focus more on the story, rather than the aesthetics of the movie, and in this version he wanted the Sharks to speak and sing in Spanish. In the pre-Broadway run, Washington Post writer Peter Marks said the bilingual scripts gave “a truer sense of the cultural misunderstandings at the head of ‘West Side Story’ expressed in the characters’ disparate languages.” Spanish “gives the Sharks infinitely more weight than they’ve ever had,” said Laurents. He also insisted the actors be Latinos. Lin-Manuel

Miranda, a son of Puerto Rican parents, had the task of translating Stephen Sondheim’s words into Spanish. Producer Kevin McCollum stated in a New York Times article that the new script gave the play more relevance, and Patricia Cohen, the author of the article, agreed pointing to how much had changed since María and Tony’s New York in terms of multiculturalism and advances in bilingual education.75

What is the lasting impact of West Side Story? In a 1961 review for The New Republic,

Stanley Kauffmann stated that West Side Story had “been over-burdened with discussion about its comment on our society.” He argued, “it offered no such comment.” “As a sociological study, it is of no use: in fact, it is somewhat facile.”76 The last line of his commentary was a bit

73 Alberto Sandoval-Sánchez, “West Side Story: A Puerto Rican Reading of ‘America,’” in Latin Looks: Images of Latinas and Latinos in the U.S. Media, ed. Clara E. Rodríguez (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998), 177. 74 Sandoval-Sánchez, José, Can you See?, 77. 75 Patricia Cohen, “Same City, New Story,” The New York Times, March 15, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/learning/teachers/featured_articles/20090319thursday.html. 76 Stanley Kauffmann, “The Asphalt Romeo and Juliet,” The New Republic, October 23, 1961, 28.

150 contradictory: “If a time-capsule is about to be buried anywhere, this film ought to be included, so that possible future generations can know how an artist of ours made our most congenial theatrical form respond to some of the beauty in our time and to the humanity in some of its ugliness.”77 Kauffmann felt the film was overburdened with representation, but also concluded it would show future generations how humanity could be both beautiful and repulsive. This tension continues to surround the musical and film as Latinos think about how West Side Story represented them. It was a positive step due to its inclusion of Latinos in mainstream culture, some Latinos then, and many more now, felt it was derogatory toward Latinos and reinforced many of the stereotypes already surrounding people of color.

Cry Tough, Young Savages, and NBC’s The Alcoa Hour

West Side Story was the most popular depiction of Puerto Ricans in the postwar era, but there were others, both in film and on television, that offered viewers more sex and violence that confirmed many of the established stereotypes. The films Cry Tough (1959) and Young Savages

(1961) focused on the lives of young Puerto Ricans in New York City consumed with sex, drugs, and gang violence. Neither of these two films were blockbusters, but they were the few that actually featured the lives, or at least the imagined lives, of the Puerto Rican population. The

Latino actors in these films faced a double-edged sword: they had paying jobs as actors in the discriminatory film industry, but they portrayed stereotypical characters. The sexuality of both

Puerto Rican men and women was a common topic for cultural producers as the women were characterized as sexually available and the men were cast as sexual predators. Drawing on imperialist discourse, Puerto Ricans were unable to control their sexual desires and Cry Tough and Young Savages both demonstrated that. The television episode of The Alcoa Hour, “Tragedy

77 Ibid., 29.

151 in a Temporary Town,” complicated this discourse by entrenching an incident of sexual assault in a transient town with Cold War values such as the acceptance of others and resisting mob mentality. “Tragedy in a Temporary Town” and Young Savages also featured white men who wanted to find justice in a crime committed by or against Puerto Rican men. Both of those examples connected the idea that white men were able to right a wrong in a situation where

Puerto Rican men were concerned. All three of these examples revolved around crimes, violence, and scandal, which demonstrated that the few depictions of Puerto Ricans in the postwar era reinforced the long established stereotypes of Latinos as criminals, murderers, and sexual deviants.

Historian Khalil Gibran Muhammad explores the connection of race and crime in urban

America and argues blacks were condemned because of their blackness. Their blackness, a sign of inferiority and savagery, marked them as criminals and it was often difficult for them to escape the label.78 This ideology, Muhammad argues, also became a convenient way to justify ill treatment against African Americans: “African American criminality became one of the most widely accepted bases for justifying prejudicial thinking, discriminatory treatment, and/or acceptance of racial violence as an instrument of public safety.”79 This discourse also applied to

Puerto Ricans, whom social scientists, government officials, business owners, and cultural producers often associated with blackness. Puerto Ricans became linked to inherent criminality in much the same way in film and television.

Cry Tough, a 1959 crime film, focused on Puerto Ricans in New York City struggling to obtain the American Dream. The film appeared at first to offer a sympathetic portrayal of the down trodden. The opening lines read: “In the heart of New York City there is a steaming jungle

78 Khalil Gibran Muhammad, The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 3. 79 Ibid., 4.

152 of tenements inhabited by America's newest wave of immigrants...The Puerto Ricans.

Surrounded by the great city, they are isolated within it. They call their little world the

Barrio....The Spanish word for ‘district.’ This is the story of one of its sons.” The movie revolved around a young man, Miguel Estrada (John Saxon), who recently served a one-year sentence in prison. He was determined to change his life and obtain legitimate work, but fell quickly into his old lifestyle of hustling. There was no tale of redemption and hope. The introduction implied these “immigrants” had chosen this way of life.80 The main characters were not relatable to white

Americans. In fact, the only thing that drew the few moviegoers to this film was the nudity.

Scholar Frank Javier Garcia Berumen noted, “Some torrid...nude scenes for the foreign markets gave the film significant publicity.”81 The subject of most of that nudity was Estrada’s love interest Sarita (Argentine-born Linda Cristal), whose sexuality was a large part of the storyline as was the focus on the bodies of Latina women.

The film exploited Latina women’s sexuality in almost every shot. In the opening scenes, the film transported the viewer to a loud nightclub following a woman’s wiggling derriere. Next, the camera focused on an image of a naked woman someone had drawn on a napkin. Sarita made her appearance shortly after as the woman every man wanted to bed. One man commented Sarita was “just up from Puerto Rico packed with sugar cane.” This comment insinuated she was ripe for the picking and emphasized her physical attributes. It also connected to the idea of women as objects of conquest. Women were commodities for men to buy, share, and use. This man asked

Sarita to have sex with Miguel who needed to be with a woman after his lengthy prison time.

80 Many social scientists during this era discussed the idea of poverty as something that was inherited, this became known as the “culture of poverty.” There were studies on African Americans, Mexican Americans, and Puerto Ricans. Anthropologist Oscar Lewis wrote both about Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans living in poverty, which included Five Families; Mexican Case Studies in the Culture of Poverty (1959) and La Vida; A Puerto Rican Family in the Culture of Poverty—San Juan and New York (1966). 81 Frank Javier Garcia Berumen, Brown Celluloid: Latino/a Film Icons and Images in the Hollywood Film Industry, vol. I: 1894–1959 (New York, N.Y.: Vantage Press, Inc., 2003), 321.

153 Latina women were objects of gratification to these men. They were supposed to comply, or suffer the consequences.

Different men throughout the film physically and sexually abused Sarita, which reinforced the place of Latinas in American society. Her “lover,” Miguel, slapped her across the face when he accused her of betraying him. Then, some of Miguel’s cronies slapped her across the face calling her a “tramp” and a “barracuda.” In the next scene they woke up in bed together and she said, “You fixed me good. The best medicine I ever got.” Her fix was sex. She was out of line and this was the only thing that helped her. This demonstrated that men did not need consent from Latina women because they naturally craved sex. This film was not only controversial because of the sex scenes, but because of the amount of nudity it contained. In one scene, viewers saw Sarita’s naked body facing the camera as she laid in bed with a lacy undergarment and Miguel kissed her breasts. This was quite risqué for films of the 1950s. In the end, Miguel claimed his prize in Sarita. She left him, but he brought her back by force telling her if he cannot have her, no other man would either.82 Puerto Rican women were mere possessions and had little value beyond their physical traits and Puerto Rican men were ill tempered, controlling, sexual predators.

Cry Tough offered audiences a lurid tale of delinquency, sex, and violence, but it did not feature any big names to attract audiences; in contrast, The Young Savages (1961) featured Burt

Lancaster, a long-time leading man in Hollywood. The Young Savages offered mainstream appeal with Lancaster as assistant district attorney, Hank Bell, who prosecuted three Italian-

American gang members, part of the Thunderbirds, for murdering a blind Puerto Rican youth, who turned out to be a leader of the rival gang, the Horsemen, and a pimp for his sister. Although

82 Cry Tough, directed by Paul Stanley (1959; location and date of distribution unknown), DVD.

154 the storyline seems a bit outrageous, it offered audiences a sense of the reality of teenage delinquency and dealt with issues of identity concerning race and poverty in the inner city.

In terms of criminality, the film was in fact too close to reality; the studio had employed local gang members to play thugs in the film and in 1965 one of the minor Puerto Rican characters was accused of murder. United Artists, the film’s distributor had even paid a few of the actors to go on a publicity tour for the film in several U.S. cities as “gang members.”83 Also, one of the Italian-American gang members in the film wore a cape (which viewers would have connected to the infamous “Cape Man” killing in the fall of 1959).

This film made the association between Puerto Ricans and gang violence clear, but it also touched on the pressure for white ethnics to conform into WASP society. Hank Bell had changed his name from Bellini in an effort to distance himself from his own childhood in the slums where these youths resided. The Thunderbirds claimed whiteness as theirs, even though they mocked

Bell for changing his name. They maintained they were better than the “spics” and deserved to have the community pool only for people like themselves, for example. This tension persisted through to the very end of the movie.

The Young Savages attempted to serve as a colorblind commentary on poverty and the social problems that came with it including violence and delinquency, but it failed to openly address the specific issues that made Puerto Ricans less likely to end that cycle than Italian

Americans. It treated Puerto Ricans like other immigrants and often contrasted the overcrowded living quarters of Puerto Rican families with living arrangements of Italian Americans like

Danny di Pace, one of the accused boys who lived only with his mother living in a small apartment. Also, there were few young women associated with the gangs, one was Danny’s

83 “Gang-Film Actor is held in killing: Player in ‘Young Savages’ Is Seized in Harlem Death,” New York Times, August 3, 1965, 32.

155 girlfriend, who worked in the family food business, and the other was Roberto’s prostitute sister.

Even in this film, seemingly intending to remove racial dynamics from the experiences of underprivileged youths, living conditions, mannerisms, and sexual behaviors still made Puerto

Ricans inferior to their Italian American neighbors.84 American audiences were not only exposed to the criminal exploits of Puerto Ricans in films, but they also made their way into people’s homes through their television sets. One of the most popular episodes of NBC’s The Alcoa Hour explored such a topic.

The 1956 episode “Tragedy in a Temporary Town” diverged from the portrayals in Cry

Tough and Young Savages because, in this case, whites accused an innocent Puerto Rican youth of a crime and a white man stood up and defended him against an angry mob. A manhunt ensued in a transient town as someone sexually assaulted teenager Dottie Fisher (Betty Lou Keim).85

The men of the town wanted to take justice into their own hands except Alec Beggs (Lloyd

Bridges), who wanted the perpetrator to properly face the law if he did indeed commit the crime.

The men menacingly barged into everyone’s homes looking for the culprit. When they reached the Latino family’s home, they called the father, Julio Infante (Will Kuluva), “Mr. Porto Rico” and commented he was “a long way from home, little brown brother.” The son, Rafael (Raphael

Campos), became irate at this insult, but Julio calmed him down. Dolores, the mother, said the family should have stayed with their own people. Julio said they were with their “own” because they were “100 percent American.” The community did not see them as “American,” however, and treated them with suspicion. They called Rafael “Valentino” because of his hairstyle and made references to Rafael’s temper (“he’s a ball of fire”) and commented on his sexuality as a

Latin lover (“They’re all alike”). When Dottie, after a tiring evening of questioning, pointed to

84 Young Savages, directed by John Frankenheimer, (1961; New York, NY: Kino Lorber Films, 2014), DVD. 85 Alcoa Hour, Tragedy in a Temporary Town, 1956-02-19. Inventory Number: VA10560T, UCLA Film and Television Archive, University of California, Los Angeles, CA.

156 Rafael as the perpetrator, the situation went beyond name-calling and turned to violence.86 After this accusation, the town dragged the “Dirty little Spic” onto the streets and tied him with a rope.

They hanged him from his wrists and beat him with clubs. Alec could not take any more of this injustice and stood between Rafael and the mob, saving Rafael’s life.

“Tragedy in a Temporary Town” explored the tensions of race and belonging in Cold

War America. To this community, the Infantes did not belong because they were Puerto Ricans or foreigners. As Julio told his family, they did belong and were “100 percent American.” The older generation of Latinos, as seen through the perspective of the parents, Julio and Dolores, claimed their Americanness, but avoided conflict. The younger generation, through Rafael, grew tired of the accusations and the name-calling. This anger and resentment intensified. Rafael’s reactions became part of the larger shift to resistance and confrontation of the Civil Rights

Movement for Latinos. This particular episode also brought to light the problems of conformity, or in this case, mob mentality. The worst of McCarthyism was over at this episode’s filming, but its shadow would loom over the entertainment industry for decades. The blacklist had an influence on the creative work during this time and subtle critiques came in the form of film or television storylines such as this one. This episode showed a group of men, with no evidence, accusing and attacking an innocent man. Alec Beggs was the only one who stood up for this man’s rights. Although he acted nobly, it showed whites needed to save brown people as they could not save themselves. A similar situation happened in the film Giant where the Anglos were the ones saving the poor Mexicans. This not only fits into the idea of paternalism, of taking care,

86 It was actually Alec’s son who assaulted Dottie.

157 as a parent would, of those who can not take care of themselves, but coincided with the Cold

War mentality of diversity and acceptance by correcting injustices towards people of color.87

Puerto Ricans and Police Violence

In many films, television shows, and newspaper reports, Puerto Ricans were the perpetrators of criminal activity. Audiences often saw them on trial for committing crimes, or watched law enforcement chasing or arresting them after they had committed a crime. In these storylines, Puerto Ricans served jail sentences. The New York Times covered the gory details of their crimes for readers.88 Their criminal activity was normalized in films like Cry Tough and

The Young Savages. In West Side Story, Lieutenant Schrank continually harassed the Sharks, the

Puerto Rican gang, and even tried to ally with the Jets, their rivals, in order to rid the streets of the “PRs” as he called them. Twelve years later, the police violence toward Puerto Ricans on film had increased in intensity. Badge 373 (1973) contained many stereotypes of Puerto Ricans, and more generally Latinos. The police force treated Puerto Ricans like vermin, calling them names and using excessive force to apprehend them and make them cooperate with law enforcement. The difference between West Side Story and Badge 373 is that people publicly protested the latter. Puerto Ricans protested the film and even demanded Paramount withdraw the film. By the early 1970s, the political environment had changed. The cloud of Cold War conformity had dissipated and Americans became more willing to protest.

The policemen in West Side Story showed an obvious bias against the Sharks. In several instances, the lieutenant patrolling the area told only the Sharks to leave the premises, and

87 Christina Klein discusses the idea of paternalism and Cold War rhetoric in Asia in her book Cold War Orientalism. 88 Jack Roth, “Slaying Witness Derides Suspects, ‘Ashamed’ Boy Held in Case Calls Them ‘Yellow Punks’—New Violence Erupts,” The New York Times, September 5, 1959, 36.

158 always tried to reason with the Jets. On one occasion, he even offered his police force to help the

Jets in a rumble (fight) against the Sharks in an effort to clean up the streets. In a scene where the

Sharks and Jets tried to lay out the ground rules for a rumble at the candy story, Lieutenant

Schrank entered and then bullied the Shark leader Bernardo, forcing him to leave. Schrank was aware that what he was doing was wrong, but he mocked them by saying, “it’s a free country and

I ain’t got the right, but I got a badge. What do you got?” He implied that the badge gave him the power to do whatever he wished and no one would question his authority. In a subtle protest, the

Sharks whistled the patriotic “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” as they left the store in a sense reaffirming their Americanness despite their powerless position. They might not have the badge, but they had citizenship. They could not fight back, but they would not back down. The only time Schrank insulted the Jets was when they did not allow him to participate in taking down the

Sharks. At this point, he insulted their families and the “immigrant scum” they came from. The relationship with the police in West Side Story was racialized, but it was also somewhat predictable because it was about a group of gang members and their contentious relationship with the police.

In Badge 373, every Puerto Rican was a criminal. Robert Duvall was the racist Detective

Eddie Ryan, who in the search for his partner’s killer comes across all the stereotypes of Latinos, particularly Puerto Ricans—criminals, drug addicts, radicals, and prostitutes. In the beginning of the movie, Detective Ryan attempted to arrest a man by the name of Chico. Ryan called Chico a

“spic” numerous times and told him of the great things America has given “them,” referring to all Puerto Ricans, which included welfare, shoes, and the English language. He told Chico that

Puerto Ricans were unappreciative because they repaid the U.S. by becoming criminals anyway.

Chico replied that American society had denied Puerto Ricans their pride. At this time the two

159 men tousled and Chico fell off a roof to his death. While on suspension for that incident, Ryan learned his partner, Gigi Caputo, had been killed. In the search for Caputo’s killer, Ryan discovered Caputo’s mistress, Rita García, who was a prostitute and drug addict. She told him about a drug kingpin Sweet Willie (Henry Darrow) and his plan to send guns to Puerto Rico for a nationalist group. Ryan eventually found Sweet Willie and stopped the shipment.89 Reviewers panned the film for its lackluster quality, but also for its racist implications. The portrayals of

Puerto Ricans in the film pushed Puerto Rican organizations to act.

The film came out on July 25, 1973 and by August 7th there were public protests against the film. Between seventy-five and one hundred protestors, according to The New York Times, marched around the Gulf & Western building, home of the Paramount offices. The delegation charged the film as racist and demeaning toward the Puerto Rican community and that Badge

373 “vividly expresses the lack of respect and dignity and welfare” of the community. They also made some demands: withdrawal of the film and review of future films dealing with Puerto

Ricans. They scheduled a meeting with the Paramount president Frank Yablans.90 The meeting did not go as planned for the Puerto Rican Action Coalition. Paramount did not withdraw the film, nor fulfilled any of their demands. Yablans stated, “it was made clear that such discussion could not go forward in an atmosphere of duress and pressure.” He added he would meet in the future with the group if they could meet “in a spirit of mutual respect and harmony.”91 In

September, two unexploded bombs were found in a theater showing the film. Although there were not accusations of who may have planted them there, a news article stated that

89 Badge 373, directed by Howard W. Koch, (1973; Los Angeles, CA, Paramount Home Entertainment, 2012), DVD. 90 “Briefs on the Arts: Puerto Ricans Picket on Film, Ballet Theater Gains...” August 7, 1973, The New York Times, 28. 91 Sanka Knox, “Paramount Tells Puerto Ricans It Won't Withdraw ‘Badge 373,’” The New York Times, August 11, 1973, 25.

160 demonstrators had protested the showing of Badge 373 at the theater a few weeks prior. This insinuated they might have been responsible.92 The reaction to Badge 373 was part of a larger resistance and growing anger against the media and its portrayals of people of color. This shift to public protest would continue into the 1970s and 1980s as many questioned the authenticity of

Latino characters on screen and organized across racial and ethnic lines to force the entertainment industry to make a change.

Conclusion

In the film Popi (1969), Puerto Rican widower Abraham Rodriguez (Alan Arkin) concocted a plan to turn his children into Cuban refugees so they could have a chance to live a good life in the United States. Abraham held down three jobs while trying to keep his family afloat. He lived in a crumbling apartment building with his two young sons, aged 9 and 11, in

New York City. His sons were getting into more and more trouble in the neighborhood, stealing, lying, and engaging in inappropriate behavior with girls, and Abraham was desperate to remove his children from this environment. To Abraham, Puerto Ricans had limited opportunities, but

Cuban refugees were hailed as heroes. He was on a mission to turn his sons into Cubans by having them study the geography of Cuba, speak only in Spanish, and then setting them in a small motorboat off the coast of Florida. “Better to drown in the ocean, not the sewer,” he told them. When he told his girlfriend, Lupe (Rita Moreno), his plan, she questioned his motives and even proclaimed she did not understand because she was proud to be Puerto Rican. When a fishing boat rescued the children, they were plied with gifts and media attention. A wealthy man in Colorado even wanted to adopt them, until the children protested they wanted to stay with

Popi and the plan unraveled. The family then was forced to return to their lives in New York

92 “2 Unexploded Bombs Found In Theater 8 Hours Apart,” The New York Times, September 9, 1973, 51.

161 City.93 One reviewer states “the moral apparently is: if you’re Puerto Rican, no matter how clever and desperate you are, there’s no way out.”94

Even though Puerto Ricans were American citizens, this did not give them access to the

American dream of middle class living and acceptance as citizens. They experienced racism and exclusion. In Popi, Abraham even risked his children’s lives and changed their ethnicity in order to allow them a better chance at achieving the American dream. Puerto Rico was part of

America, so in some sense the U.S. was more inclined to help those seeking refugee from political upheaval, particularly in the case of Cubans, who became the model immigrants during the early Cold War period, rather than to help their own. The tale in Popi is a little extreme, but there were actual cases of Puerto Ricans trying to escape the stigma that went along with being

Puerto Rican in postwar America. In an article in the New York Times, reporter Dan Wakefield wrote about how the Puerto Rican community responded to the constant images of Puerto Rican delinquency. The article discussed what Wakefield called “the Other Puerto Ricans,” meaning the vast population, which was not involved in criminal behavior. The “Puerto Ricans you don’t read about” were improving their communities through open forums, addiction counseling, and mentoring youths away from gang life. Many Puerto Ricans made it out of the slums and became part of the middle class. Leaders of the Puerto Rican community, particularly the sponsor Puerto

Rican Community Self-Help Program, had taken out a full-page ad in New York papers with the heading “We too fight delinquency” that listed the efforts undertaken by the community to fight delinquency, how most of the population was “self-supporting (meaning not on government assistance),” how much they had paid yearly in taxes, and how they were responsible for only eight percent of the city’s crime. Even despite cultivating this image of typical Americans

93 Popi, directed by Arthur Hiller (1969; Los Angeles, CA, MGM Home Video, 2003), DVD. 94 Raymond A. Sokolov, “Go West Side, Young Man,” Newsweek, June 9, 1969, 108.

162 striving to achieve self-sufficiency and middle class standing, many Puerto Ricans did not want to identify as “Puerto Ricans,” but as “Hispanos” instead. They rejected “Puerto Rican” because the media and popular culture had given the term a negative connotation. Wakefield quelled readers xenophobic concerns by stating that stopping the migration from Puerto Rico would not end the city’s problems. Issues of slum housing, juvenile delinquency, narcotics, low wages, and racial tensions were already present before Puerto Ricans arrived; they were New York City problems, not Puerto Rican ones.95 Despite the effort on behalf of journalists like Wakefield in the late 1950s and of protestors in the 1970s, Puerto Ricans continued to walk a tight rope between citizen and foreigner.

95 Dan Wakefield, “The Other Puerto Ricans: Headlines have obscured the fight that most must make against slum living and intolerance,” The New York Times, October 11, 1959, SM24.

163 Chapter 5: The Chicano Struggle for Mainstream Representation, 1960s-1970s

Introduction Ai, yi, yi, yi, I am the Frito Bandito, I like Fritos corn chips, I love them, I do! I want Fritos corn chips, I’ll get them from you! Ai, yi, yi, yi, Oh, I am the Frito Bandito, Give me Fritos corn chips and I’ll be your friend, The Frito Bandito you must not offend!

--Fritos corn chips commercial jingle from the late 1960s set to the tune of a Mexican song from the 1880s, “Cielito Lindo”1

The Frito Bandito was an immensely popular print and television advertising campaign in the late 1960s to sell Fritos corn chips. It featured a stereotypical caricature of a Mexican bandit.

This catchy song was just one way Americans consumed Latinos in popular culture during the twentieth century. Images of Latinos were often novelty items used to sell an idea, a place, or, as evident by this jingle, a product. Latinos, particularly Mexican-Americans, saw this commercial as just one of the many infractions that the mainstream media had committed against their community. By the late 1960s, the time had come to take action and Latino groups shifted their focus beyond the educational, employment, and legal obstacles that had comprised most of their targets since the mid-1950s to include the media. They argued the media encouraged and helped to maintain these obstacles. It was at this point, in the context of the broader Civil Rights

Movement, that advocacy groups organized to change the images of Latinos in the media, including stereotypes like the Frito Bandito.

1 “The Frito Bandito Corn Chips Song,” YouTube video, 0:54, posted by Danny Davis, June 28, 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbYj7ZyqjYY.

164 Minority groups have a long history of dissent when pertaining to popular culture. M.

Alison Kibler, a scholar of American Studies, has recently explored the methods Irish, Jewish, and African Americans employed, such as boycotts, riots, disruptions of performances, and censorship, at the beginning of the twentieth century to protest negative images of their communities.2 Historians are now also more thoroughly examining the impact of visual culture and its influence on American society, but that work has focused mostly on African Americans.3

This chapter expands the historical discourse beyond the white/black binary by examining the efforts of the Latino community, their sense of identity, belonging, and demand for inclusion into

American society as characters not caricatures.

This chapter captures the history of Mexican-American protest against the media, which historians have often overlooked in favor of more seemingly important institutions such as education or employment. I argue that the media and popular culture were just as important because they not only all worked together to subordinate Mexican Americans, but they also offered avenues through which to register protest and demand inclusion. Advertisements, television shows, and films portrayed them as lazy, criminal peons incapable of success simply by their nature. These images denied them citizenship and constantly portrayed them as foreigners. This chapter examines those images and argues that by 1968 several Latino media advocacy groups gathered nationally to protest the depiction of Mexican Americans in the media.

They challenged the system (which included the entertainment industry and the state) from the outside and within using various methods that ranged from militant opposition to negotiation.

2 M. Alison Kibler, Censoring Racial Ridicule: Irish, Jewish, and African American Struggles over Race and Representation, 1890-1930 (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2015). 3 Noted works include: Gail Bederman, Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1995), W. Fitzhugh Brundage, ed. Beyond Blackface: African Americans and the Creation of American Popular Culture, 1890-1930 (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2011), Erin Chapman, Prove It On Me: New Negroes, Sex, and Popular Culture in the 1920s (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2012), and Allison Graham, Framing the South: Hollywood, Television, and Race during the Civil Rights Struggle (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University, 2001).

165 Frustration and anger brought several groups, including Involvement of Mexican-Americans in

Gainful Endeavors (IMAGE), the National Mexican-American Anti-Defamation Committee

(NMAADC), Nosotros, Justicia, Mexican Americans for Political Action (MAPA),4 together to kill the stereotypes, such as the Frito Bandito and the television caricature José Jiménez played by comedian Bill Dana. These groups also demanded inclusion into American life.

There is another side of this story, which remains less documented, however—those who accepted, or at least did not publicly protest, the portrayals of bandits or simpletons. Although cultural producers, such as authors, filmmakers, comedians, and corporations, claimed they had the support of the majority of the Latino community in these instances, it is impossible to document with certainty how many people supported their claims. There were presumably many individuals who were not offended by the portrayals or did not speak out against them because of various possible reasons. These reasons included indifference, accepting these images as the avenue to citizenship, genuinely finding these images humorous, or seeing these images as employment opportunities for Latinos. Often in the case of any movement, it is difficult to imagine that individuals from organizations like IMAGE or NMAADC were the only ones affected by these portrayals. These organizations were merely representative of a larger shift toward open dissent.

A space for dissent had opened up during the 1950s with the acceleration of the Civil

Rights Movement and by the late 1960s established individuals in politics and in the entertainment industry were willing to engage in the conversation. Through this process of contestation and negotiation, the Chicano movement, composed of a younger and more militant

4 There were two organizations at this time: the Mexican American Political Association founded in California in 1959 and Mexican Americans for Political Action founded in Texas in 1961. The Texas MAPA was short lived. This chapter discusses the California MAPA. Marc Simon Rodríguez, Rethinking the Chicano Movement (New York, NY: Routledge, 2015), 33-34. Matt S. Meier and Feliciano Ribera, Mexican Americans-American Mexicans: From Conquistadors to Chicanos (New York, NY: Hill and Wang, 1993), 207.

166 group of Mexican-American activists, diversified. The issue of ethnic authenticity became a point of division as activists debated the proper representation of Mexican Americans. This process of creation and recreation of Latino identities was part of a larger current of identity politics that came to the surface in the pivotal years of the 1960s and 1970s.

Latino Organizational Efforts, 1920s-1950s

Latinos had a long history of organizing before the 1960s. Many of the early groups

Mexican Americans formed were mutual benefit, or community aid groups. They functioned as economic and social entities for established and incoming immigrants and gained substantial political power in Mexican-American communities.5 These early organizations focused on

American citizenship as the most important aspect of their lives and insisted on assimilating in custom and in language. This process continued after the Second World War, but organizations, like the American G.I. Forum, also demanded inclusion into American society based on their sacrifice during wartime. By the 1950s, there was a shift in the ideologies of Mexican-American organizations. They set the path for the more radical and militant organizations that would surface in the 1960s openly defying the expectations of assimilation. They would also broaden their scope beyond obtaining resources for educational and occupational advancement and challenge depictions of Latinos in the media.

Early organizational efforts, like The League of United Latin American Citizens

(LULAC) founded in 1928 in Harlingen, Texas, focused on assimilation or accommodation as an avenue to acceptance as rightful citizens.6 They preferred the categorization of “Latin-American”

5 Miguel David Tirado, “Mexican Americans Community Political Organization: ‘The Key to Chicano Political Power,’” Aztlán 1, no. 1 (1970): 55-56. 6 Francisco J. Lewels, Jr., The Uses of the Media by the Chicano Movement (New York, NY: Praeger Publishers, 1974), 12.

167 rather than “Mexican” because of the negative connotations associated with the latter. Its membership consisted of “native born or naturalized citizens eighteen years of age or older, of

Latin extraction.” They aimed “to develop within the members of our race the best, purest, and most perfect type of a true and loyal citizen of the United States of America.” They spoke

English within the organization and to their children. They wanted to remain a small group, reserved to the middle class and elites, because they felt this group could most influence

Anglos.7 Similar groups developed during the 1930s and 1940s, but with more of an emphasis on building better relations with Latin America.8

After World War II, the emphasis shifted to veterans and to obtaining the promised

American dream. The American G.I. Forum initially formed in 1948 to assist Mexican-American veterans, in gaining and securing resources within the community, eliminating discrimination, and influencing local and national government through leadership. The Forum malleably navigated through the political landmines of the 1950s. At a time when any resistance or push for reform could become associated with “un-American” behavior, the Forum used patriotic symbols and rhetoric to defend civil rights for Mexican Americans.9 They reminded society of the valiant contributions Mexican Americans had made during the war, both with their hands in the war industry and with their lives on the battlefield. This rhetoric would continue as activists reminded the media of the sacrifices this population made during Vietnam. There were pockets of resistance and outward cultural pride in the 1950s, but these expressions were localized and isolated. For example in 1953, John F. Mendez wrote in the Eastside Sun, a local Los Angeles

7 Tirado, 57-59. 8 See Chapter 1 of this dissertation to learn more about the 1930s and 1940s. 9 Juan Gómez-Quiñones, Chicano Politics: Reality and Promise, 1940-1990 (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1990), 60-61.

168 publication: “We will never be able to advance ourselves socially and economically if a large number of non-Latinos believe that we are ashamed of our background.”10

The Mexican American Political Association (MAPA) would help define a new age of organization by the 1950s that promoted political, social, and economic involvement of working class Mexican Americans. Instead of promoting assimilation, as some earlier groups did, MAPA focused on “intensifying the organization’s ethnic identification and facilitating the poor’s access to MAPA functions.”11 MAPA’s approach would foretell a different communal approach to inclusion. By the late 1960s, MAPA along with other groups became concerned with not just politics, education, and employment, but also the media. This transition coincided with the larger issues of civil rights and identity politics in the United States. Mexican-American, or Chicano, media advocacy groups argued that the media, in the form of television, film, and advertising, influenced and affected their inclusion into mainstream society and their rights as citizens. The images used in the media colored Anglo Americans’ perceptions of Mexican Americans’ abilities, or lack thereof, and constantly reinforced their foreignness. It was not until the late

1960s, that groups formed specifically to combat the stereotypes in the media.12

10 Ernesto Chávez, ¡Mi Raza Primero!: Nationalism, Identity, and Insurgency in the Chicano Movement in Los Angeles, 1966-1978 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002), 31. 11 Tirado, 67-68. 12 There were some circumstances in which individuals or small groups protested images before this point, but they were relatively short-lived. In 1918, Francisco Chapa, publisher of El Imparcial de Texas in San Antonio, led an editorial campaign against derogatory films depicting people of Latin American origin. The next year, other Spanish-speaking newspapers in Los Angeles and Tucson had similar campaigns. Another short-lived organization was the Asociación Nacional México-Americana (ANMA), founded in the late 1940s and early 1950s. In 1952, they organized to stop demeaning portrayals of Mexican culture in the press, literature, radio, and television. One of their targets was the stupid and lazy character Pedro on The Judy Canova Radio Show. ANMA, with the support of allied labor unions, boycotted the Colgate Palmolive Peet Company, a sponsor of the show. Two months later, Colgate dropped sponsorship and NBC cancelled the show. Ratings had a role in the cancellation, but this showed how minorities were able to organize. ANMA also called out Weber’s Bread Company for using stereotypical Mexicans in its advertising. According to the organization’s newspaper, actor Leo Carillo said in the ad: “I am a leetle hungry por Weber’s Bread.” ANMA, unfortunately due to its left leaning stance and its connections with labor unions, became a target during the Cold War, which effectively ended the organization. Michael B. Salwen and Gonzalo R. Soruco, “The Hispanic Americans,” in U.S. News Coverage of Racial Minorities: A Sourcebook, 1934-1996, eds. Beverly Ann Deepe Keever, Carolyn Martindale, and Mary Ann Weston (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1997),

169

“My Name, José Jiménez”

José Jiménez became a household name for television viewers because of his appearances in numerous skits throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s. Jiménez was a heavily accented

“Latin” man who was eternally incompetent in various occupations despite his confidence.

Television audiences found his performances humorous, but slowly a controversy began brewing. Bill Dana, the comedian behind the José persona, claimed he never intended to play

José Jiménez as a stereotype and that he and his significant Latino fan base saw nothing offensive about the character. Many activists disagreed, however, and he became one of the first targets of Latino media advocacy groups.

Comedian Bill Dana (real name William Szathmary) created the character José Jiménez for The Steve Allen Show in 1959. Dana, of Jewish Hungarian extraction, worked as a writer for

Allen in the late 1950s.13 José Jiménez became so immensely popular that he appeared often on

Allen’s show as well as a number of other television shows in the 1960s and even had his own spin off, The Bill Dana Show. José Jiménez’s debut came during a skit in the Christmas season of 1959. In this skit, he was the instructor of a school for Santa Claus and then introduced himself, “My name, José Jiménez.” “And there was a big laugh,” recalled Dana. Through thickly accented English, Jiménez said “I teach Santa Claus to espeak.” A reporter, played by actor Pat

Harrington, Jr., then asked what he taught Santa Claus to say. To which, Jiménez pointed to a blackboard and said, “JO, JO, JO.” Dana created this character for this skit specifically for the

Spanish pronunciation of the letter “j,” which sounds like the English “h.” To Dana, José was an

151. Mario T. García, Mexican Americans: Leadership, Ideology, and Identity, 1930-1960 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989), 199, 215-216. 13 Steve Allen, Hi-Ho, Steverino! My Adventures in the Wonderful Wacky World of TV (Fort Lee, NJ: Barricade Books, Inc., 1992), 187.

170 innocent struggling with the language, not a malicious stereotype.14

The running joke was that Dana would play this character in various occupations that required intelligence and skills apparently beyond a “Latin’s” capacity. Audiences laughed at the mishaps that would ensue as Jiménez struggled to articulate the complexities of astronaut life, for example. The astronaut character would become so popular that the Smithsonian Air and Space

Museum made Dana the honorary eighth Mercury astronaut.15 Also, the first words spoken from

Earth to an astronaut in outer space on May 5, 1961 were “OK, Jose, you’re on your way!”16

Although the astronaut bit was a joke, it was also relevant. The U.S. was involved in a space race with the Soviets. Each tried to outdo the other in an attempt to gain superiority in the Cold War.

An astronaut, the ultimate cold warrior, was the personification of this global battle. Although

Dana played it as a joke, it also inferred that putting a Latin in a space suit was not so strange.

Whether intentional or not, this image gave Americans, and possibly the international community, the idea that anyone in the U.S. was capable of donning this prestigious suit. This character supported the idea of inclusion, but also used humor to show the absurdity of the situation. This mocked the limited opportunities for Latinos at the time. Dana did not exactly see it in this light. He saw Jiménez was a “flesh and blood character” especially since he was based on a real person Dana had met in Puerto Rico in 1947. Dana was irked when people called José a stereotype. He enjoyed and performed ethnic humor, but he felt the jokes people told him were

“anti-ethnic” and “promulgating hate for an ethnic group.”17 He claimed he told ethnic jokes with the best of intentions.

14 Interview with Bill Dana, The Bill Dana Oral History Collection at the American Comedy Archives, Emerson College, Boston, MA. 15 Ben Alba, Inventing the Late Night: Steve Allen and the Original Tonight Show (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2005), 261. 16 Jack Encarnacao, Legendary Locals of Quincy, Massachusetts (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2014), 111. 17 Interview with Bill Dana.

171 Reporters became interested in how Dana was able to sell this character to the masses and especially to the Latino community. One newspaper article explained that José Jiménez was the country’s favorite “Latin comedian [quotation marks in original].” Erskine Johnson, the author of this article, stated Dana was a “whiz at the accent” and had “the warm approval…from people of

Latin-American origin all over the United States,” though there is no evidence to substantiate that claim. Dana even said he received only one letter arguing José was in bad taste.18 He felt he had this population’s support:

I have my biggest audience response and following from the Latin-speaking [sic] people. There are substantial reasons for this. Jose is not a busboy but an astronaut, not a janitor but a submarine commander. I try to make him as real as he can be. He has a problem with the language, but he uses polysyllabic words, I speak Spanish, and I’m aware of the Puerto Rican experience. I don’t think there’s anything that offends Latins or anyone else.19

In The Bill Dana Show (1963-1965), Jiménez was no longer a glamorous astronaut; he was a bellhop. According to Dana, The Bill Dana Show was cancelled because it did not meet the expected rating numbers, not because of outside pressure, which advocacy groups would later contend.20

The Frito Bandito

The other character that drew criticism from the Latino community during this time came in the form of a cartoon character. The Frito-Lay Corporation launched its Frito Bandito print and television campaign in 1967. The Frito Bandito was a cartoon character that embodied many of the stereotypes white Americans held about Mexicans. He was a short, stocky, unshaven,

18 Erskine Johnson, “Hollywood: Bill Dana Acquires A Mexican Accent,” Park City Daily (Bowling Green, KY), January 26, 1962, 4. 19 Associated Press, “Writer Turns Actor to Portray Jose Jimenez,” St. Joseph News-Press (St. Joseph, MO), August 20, 1961, 6c. While Dana argued that the Latino community supported him and José, I was unable to find any evidence that they did. 20 Archive of American Television, http://www.emmytvlegends.org/interviews/people/bill-dana# Bill Dana interviewed by Jeff Abraham, February 10, 2007, Part 4, 21:01-22:35.

172 sombrero-clad, gun-toting criminal with a gold tooth. This image of Mexicans was already in the national discourse as many early silent films featured this swarthy character, the greaser. This particular bandit stole Frito Corn Chips.

Television viewers experienced his criminal exploits on their television screens through commercials for Fritos. In one commercial, the Frito Bandito stated that the Frito Bureau of

Investigation was looking for him because he stole Fritos and ate them all himself. “I hurts me to hear these things,” he said as he removed his giant sombrero where there appeared a bag of

Fritos sitting on his head. “I never touch a Frito that does not belong to me.” He then turned to the audience and asked them to raise their hands if they had Fritos with them. At this point he grabbed his revolvers and ‘robbed’ the audience with a glisten from his golden front tooth.21 In another commercial, the Bandito ran a tollbooth where he made cars pay the toll with Fritos.22

Despite the criminal aspect, this campaign targeted children.23 Renowned voice actor Mel

Blanc gave life to this cartoon character and the snack company even created toys that kids received after mailing so many labels of Fritos. The commercials featured children, particularly white, blonde-haired children. But, when the children consumed the product, they grew dark, exaggerated moustaches. “There may be a Frito Bandito in your house,” the narrator said.24 In some strange way the commercial encouraged the consumer to partake in the exotic, the

“Mexican.” Eat some and become a bandit, it suggested. This message indicated Mexicanness

21 Kid’s Commercials from the Golden Age of Television, volume 4. (Seattle, WA: Something Weird Video, Inc., 2004), DVD. 22 The Mod Squad, Commercials, 1969-1970. Inventory Number: VA9836T, UCLA Film and Television Archive, Los Angeles, CA. 23 This outlaw, or criminal, character was not an entirely new trope for children’s entertainment. The Western genre was popular during the 1950s through the 1970s with shows like Zorro, Hopalong Cassidy, and the Lone Ranger. Also, a similar character, Yosemite Sam, appeared in Bugs Bunny cartoons. However, none were racialized like the Frito Bandito. The Bandito was also doubly menacing since many of the commercials had the character looking into the camera and speaking directly to the viewers. For a general overview of children’s television shows from the postwar period, see Jeffery Davis’s Children’s Television, 1947-1990: Over 200 Series, Game and Variety Shows, Cartoons, Educational Programs and Specials (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995). 24 The Smothers Brothers Summer Show, 1970-07-15. Inventory Number: VA22295T, UCLA Film and Television Archive, Los Angeles, CA.

173 could be a temporary and playful condition, but at the same time ‘real’ Mexican Americans struggled to resist the bandit image. Mexican American children, in particular, suffered as a result of this campaign. After studying the effects of ads on youths, Thomas M. Martinez, a sociologist from Stanford University, concluded that peers now called Mexican-American children Frito Banditos.25

IMAGE and NMAADC react to José Jiménez and the Frito Bandito

Latino media advocacy groups, such as NMAADC and IMAGE, worked independently and collaboratively to draw attention to and destroy the images of José Jiménez and the Frito

Bandito. They called for boycotts of corporations, attended conferences on the conditions of

Latinos in the U.S., confronted government officials, and spoke at Congressional hearings, to list a few of their methods. These organizations wanted to change the depictions of Latinos from the outside, but also used government agencies, such as the Federal Communications Commission

(FCC), to challenge television networks. Along the way they had to confront what it meant to be

Latino in the U.S. and whether their efforts hindered or helped their conditions and opportunities for advancement in American society.

In 1965, a group of civic leaders in San Antonio, Texas formed the Integration of the

Mexican-American in Advertising and Germane Enterprises (IMAGE), with Tony Calderon as president, to change the images of Mexican Americans in the media and popular culture. They found the representations of Mexican Americans in advertising problematic because it undermined their opportunities in employment and education and believed there was a direct correlation between the media and the lack of education and motivation among Mexican-

25 Juan González and Joseph Torres, News for All the People: The Epic Story of Race and the American Media (New York, NY: Verso, 2011), 310.

174 American youth. These youths began to see themselves through the eyes of the mainstream media, IMAGE argued.26

At its onset, IMAGE saw the avenue for Mexican-American progress as encouraging and supporting advertising that portrayed “the Mexican-American as a typical American consumer with no Spanish language association.”27 They believed assimilation was “the only conceivable manner in which the Mexican-American will emerge from the lowest levels of education and economy, and truly progress in this country of ours.”28 By 1968, IMAGE had restructured itself, reflecting the national push for civil rights and the interest in identity politics. IMAGE had changed its name to the Involvement of Mexican-Americans in Gainful Endeavors. Its mission remained to “improve the social, economical and educational status of the Mexican-American.”29

The goal of assimilation was no longer part of the new IMAGE’s rhetoric; in fact, Calderon emphasized that Mexican Americans are American and should not discard their heritage because their ancestors formed part of the nation’s history.

In an effort to improve the public’s perception of Mexican Americans, Tony Calderon presented “The True Image of the Mexican-American” at a conference on Mass Media and

Mexican Americans in San Antonio in January 1969. In this presentation, he recounted the heroics of Mexicans in American history. He discussed how Anglo cowboys copied the original vaqueros, how Texans of Mexican descent also fought in the Alamo, the roles immigrants had in building the southwest, how Mexican-American soldiers fought in America’s wars, and how

Mexican Americans served in law enforcement. He called on more Mexican Americans to

26 Office of Youth Development (U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare), “IMAGE: Involvement of Mexican-Americans in Gainful Endeavors” (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1973), 9-10. 27 Informational booklet on IMAGE, Albert A. Peña, Jr. Papers, MS 37, University of Texas at San Antonio Libraries Special Collections. 28 Antonio Calderon, “Acculturation Through Advertising,” August 19, 1965, Albert A. Peña, Jr. Papers, MS 37, University of Texas at San Antonio Libraries Special Collections. 29 Office of Youth Development (U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare), “IMAGE,” iii.

175 become journalists to report on these often-ignored communities. He stated that IMAGE met with Programming Vice Presidents of three major networks and said: “We want to see our image as doctors, detectives, lawyers, nurses, secretaries, and as persons from other walks of life.” He claimed that their “discussions were very fruitful” and was “very optimistic that the image of

Mexican Americans will soon be represented in the dignified manner that Black Americans are being seen on television.”30 That however, did not change overnight and the image of the Frito

Bandito, for example, would continue to taunt the movement until 1971. Nonetheless, it was a start.

IMAGE’s first national target was José Jiménez. In the late 1960s, Bill Dana decided to use his character to advertise for Southwestern Bell, a telephone company. In this advertising campaign, Jiménez changed the company’s motto of “Let your fingers do the walking to the yellow pages,” to “Let your fingers to the walking to the jellow pages.” These ads appeared on billboards throughout the southwest, which, of course, was home to a large percentage of the nation’s Latinos.31 The reaction from IMAGE and other Latino groups was immediate, as the protests appeared daily in newspapers. Some reporters were perplexed by the protests, claiming that only a few radicals were involved. Reporter Vernon Scott said there were only “isolated individuals” who were “picking on little Jose Jimenez.” Scott added, “It takes some kind of nut to be insulted” by the campaign.32 A Bell Company executive agreed that this protest was absurd because the “ad has never been offensive to any one and is a very amusing and highly popular commercial.” Besides, they checked with “large number” of Mexican Americans and they

30 The True Image of the Mexican-American presented at the Southwest Conference on Mass Media and Mexican- Americans by Tony Calderon, January 18, 1969, Albert A. Peña, Jr. Papers, MS 37, University of Texas at San Antonio Libraries Special Collections. 31 Interview with Bill Dana, The Bill Dana Oral History Collection at the American Comedy Archives, Emerson College, Boston, MA. 32 Vernon Scott, “My Name, Jose Jimenez and I Got My Troubles,” St. Petersburg Times (St. Petersburg, FL), August 27, 1968, 5D.

176 reaffirmed his position.33 Bill Dana continued defending the “jellow pages” insisting that they did not harm the image of Latin Americans. He even started an organization, Latin Americans in

United Direction (LAUD), with Mexican Americans to produce radio programming about

Mexican Americans and the problems they faced.34 Dana argued that it was all poor timing because “the desire for the Latinos to get some kind of representation in the media, in society in general” caused José to get “caught in a firestorm.”35

According to Domingo Nick Reyes of NMAADC, the IMAGE leadership was too soft on

Dana. In a 1968 letter to Albert A. Peña, a fellow activist, Reyes expressed that he was skeptical of Tony Calderon’s approach. Reyes said he did not understand Calderon’s stance on José

Jiménez: “[I] am confused as to whether he believes the stereo-type of Jose Jimenez should continued to be peddled on the TV or die a slow death.” Reyes argued Jiménez should die, but his only reservation was if and how Dana could contribute monetarily to the cause.36 By 1970, though, the cause had no use for Dana or his money. The movement had developed such that not even money would stop the protests against José Jiménez.

Bill Dana declared José Jiménez dead on April 4, 1970 at an event in a Los Angeles sports arena for Latin American unity. He read an obituary for Jiménez at the Congress of

Mexican-American Unity’s mock funeral.37 Dana was very adamant that Jiménez committed suicide; he was not murdered. He stated that the pressures from the Latino community were not what killed him, but it sounded like they had an impact: “Too many people were telling me they loved that dumb Mexican I was doing. I picked up the dialect in Puerto Rico and I never played

33 “Bill Dana Defends ‘Jellow Pages’ Spots,” Advertising Age, September 30, 1968, 94. 34 Scott. 35 Interview with Bill Dana. 36 Letter to Albert Peña from Nick Domingo Reyes, September 25, 1968, Albert A. Peña, Jr. Papers, MS 37, University of Texas at San Antonio Libraries Special Collections. 37 Kathryn C. Montgomery, Target: Prime Time, Advocacy Groups and the Struggle over Entertainment Television (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1989), 56.

177 him dumb.”38 José Jiménez’s legacy has not been positive. Jiménez appeared on a 2007 documentary about Latinos in the mainstream media as an example of a stereotypical representation. Sociologist Raúl Pérez argued in 2014 that Dana continued using racial minstrelsy at a time when blackface had become increasingly unpopular due the reaction of the

Civil Rights Movement.39 Yet, Dana continued to defend his character and that killing off José

Jiménez was a “big mistake.”40 Dana insisted that Latinos supported this character and that he was involved in several advocacy groups for Mexican Americans, but there is no evidence of the former claim and very little of the latter.41 The efforts of IMAGE were instrumental in bringing

José Jiménez down, but the NMAADC also participated in this campaign; although, they exerted more of their efforts to ending the Frito Bandito.

Before the Frito Bandito was even an idea in the creative minds of Frito-Lay, the head of the NMAADC, Domingo Nick Reyes, was a successful disc jockey in the Texas panhandle during the 1950s. In this era of conformity, Reyes fit the bill. He had even dropped the

“Domingo” and simply went by “Nick Reyes.” He was so immersed with 1950s American culture that he led a letter writing campaign to the Secretary of Defense in an effort to save Elvis

Presley’s sideburns when he was drafted into the military. Reyes drew a large audience, mostly consisting of teenagers, to his radio show and then to his television show. The daily show featured local high schools and musical talent. A search for better employment opportunities led

Reyes to Washington, D.C. There he eventually became part of the federal government by

38 United Press International (UPI), “Jose Jimenez Dies Happy Death,” Sarasota Journal (Sarasota, FL), July 9, 1970, 12C. 39 Raúl Pérez, “Brownface Minstrelsy: ‘José Jiménez,’ the Civil Rights Movement, and the legacy of racist comedy,” Ethnicities (2014): 1. 40 Interview with Bill Dana. 41 UPI, “Jose Jimenez Dies Happy Death.”

178 serving as a Special Assistant to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission.42 It is in this role that he became politically involved in the issue of mass media and the portrayal of Mexican Americans.

Reyes’s transition was not surprising given the political and social climate of the time. The rise of social consciousness in the form of the Civil Rights Movement pushed Reyes to challenge the very system that employed him and gave him minor fame. He saw the industry behind the scenes and now in a position of relative power he wanted to make a change in the treatment of Mexican

Americans.

In 1967, Domingo Nick Reyes and others formed an ad hoc committee to combat the increase in Mexican-American stereotypes in newspapers and television. In September of 1968, this group, which included Albert A. Peña, Jr., Commissioner of Bexar County, Texas, and

Armando Rodriguez, Chief of the Mexican American Affairs Unit in the U.S. Office of Health,

Education, and Welfare, became the National Mexican-American Anti-Defamation Committee.

It sought “to contact advertisers and agencies, organize a Washington lobby, create a ‘talent bank,’ and organize product boycotts,” if necessary. In 1969, they incorporated with the goal to

“mount an effective campaign among the Mexican American community to resist defamatory advertising,” but claimed its goal was hindered by ignorance of Anglo community and the powerlessness of the Mexican-American community. They argued both of these things could be overcome through education.43 They wanted to educate corporations, advertising agencies, and television shows on how to properly depict Mexican Americans. The Committee wrote letters to different agencies and corporations concerning the advertising of cigarettes, corn chips, potato chips, and public utilities. They even sent a letter to NBC’s Johnny Carson complaining about

42 He was in this position from 1967-1968. 43 Films and Broadcasts Demeaning Ethnic, Racial, or Religious Groups-1971: Hearing on H.R. H. Con. Res. 9 and H. Con. Res. 182, Before the Subcommittee on Communications and Power of the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, 92nd Cong. 53 (1971).

179 the appearance of José Jiménez on his show. In these letters, the Committee urged for a better representation of Mexican Americans and their contributions to American democracy. Armando

Rodríguez, one of the founders, used his office stationary from his position in the federal government to write to those different parties. He also used his position to reaffirm that the educational system tried to improve the Mexican-American image, while advertisers reversed progress through the spread of stereotypes.44 Rodríguez was not the only Latino in political power that spoke out against stereotyping. Vicente T. Ximenes, commissioner of the Equal

Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), took issue with the Frito Bandito.

The appointment of Vicente T. Ximenes was part of a larger shift to recognize Latinos as a significant voting bloc. In the late 1950s and into the early 1960s, many Latino organizations saw John F. Kennedy as a viable candidate and potential ally. They aligned with his campaign and formed “Viva Kennedy” clubs, which answered directly to Robert Kennedy. The

Republicans, trying to emulate the success of the clubs, formed “Arriba Nixon” groups. Despite the involvement of Latinos in JFK’s successful campaign, the benefits were minor. The administration elevated few Latinos to positions of power.45 When Lyndon B. Johnson became president, his administration tried to rectify the condition of Mexican Americans. According to historian Julie Leininger Pycior, he was the first president to really take the Mexican-American community seriously as a constituency.46 In his comments about civil rights in speeches and in most conversations about Mexican Americans, Johnson reminded his audience of his past as a schoolteacher in Cotulla, Texas at a segregated Mexican-American school. He also spoke highly of their persistence: “A lesser people might have despaired and given up a long time ago. But

44 “Anti-Defamation Group Fights Ads Using Spanish-Name Stereotypes,” Advertising Age, September 30, 1968, 94. 45 Chávez, 35-36. 46 Julie Leininger Pycior, “From Hope to Frustration: Mexican Americans and Lyndon Johnson in 1967,” The Western History Association 24, no. 4, (November 1993): 469.

180 your people didn’t; they believed they were full-fledged citizens of the greatest nation on earth, even if others didn’t always treat them as such.” 47 The relationship between the Mexican-

American community and Johnson was not always peachy, however.48 The administration increased federal funds for programs focusing on education and employment, but community representatives felt that the administration’s efforts were not enough. Mexican-American groups openly protested and even walked out of an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission conference in 1966 because they felt the Commission lacked concern for and discriminated against the community.49 In 1967, Johnson appointed Ximenes to the EEOC in an effort to satisfy Mexican Americans and offer representation on the Commission. Ximenes used his voice and position to speak out against the images of Mexican Americans in the media: They were not

“lazy, shiftless, gun-toting, guitarplaying [sic] and barefooted sombreroed men and women as depicted on television commercials.”50 Johnson agreed with the importance of Mexican-

American contributions, but sometimes he needed a little convincing. Earlier that year he had responded to a memo about the topic telling his aides to “Keep this trash out of the White

House” despite their pleas to have a satisfactory conference. Without a conference, they “will be bitterly disappointed” and “their bitterness would have serious political consequences,” read a memo to the president in February of 1967.51 By the fall, Johnson had changed his tune and even made some remarks at the conference in question. In 1968, Johnson made the Proclamation

47 Remarks the President at the Mexican American Conference on October 28, 1967, Office files of Harry McPherson, Box 11, Folder- Mexican Americans, LBJ Library. 48 Leininger Pycior argues that this relationship started to deteriorate in 1967 when Johnson was reassessing his reelection campaign and the Chicano movement was rising. Julie Leininger Pycior, “From Hope to Frustration: Mexican Americans and Lyndon Johnson in 1967,” 469. 49 Memo, Carlos A. Rivera to Marvin Watson, “Mexican American Walkout at EEOC Albuquerque, N. Mex. Conference, 3/30/1966, Ex FG 655 (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission), White House Central Files (WHCF), Box 380, LBJ Library. 50 Newspaper article “Images of Mexicans on TV Ads Assailed,” September 20, 1968, Box 10, Folder 7, Domingo Nick Reyes Papers, Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas Libraries, the University of Texas at Austin. 51 Memo, Harry McPherson to Joe Califano, 2/17/67, “For the President,” Office files of Harry McPherson, Box 11, Folder-Mexican Americans, LBJ Library.

181 3869, which recognized the inclusion of National Hispanic Week to honor the contributions of

Latinos in culture, business, science, and in the military.52

Not only were people in local and federal government positions having this conversation through the media, but now it became important enough that Congress took notice. A congressional subcommittee met in 1970 and in 1971 to discuss the impact of ethnic and racial slurs on television and in film. Several congressmen voiced their concerns over the portrayal of ethnic groups. Frank Brasco, a congressman from New York, was outraged at how the entertainment industry used ethnic slurs and stereotypes “in the sheer name of profit” and with

“government permission.” He talked about how “appalling” the portrayals of Spanish-speaking

Americans were: “He is lazy. He makes revolutions. He sleeps much and drinks too much tequila. He is dirty and smelly and lacks ambition.” Yet, not everyone in this session agreed with

Brasco’s point.

Torbert H. MacDonald, chairman of the subcommittee and a congressman from

Massachusetts, saw nothing wrong with the depictions of Mexican Americans. He did not see the

Frito Bandito as a racial slur, but as a piece of fantasy and a good commercial. He insisted the similarities between this character and Mexicans were coincidental and “You would have to be terribly hypersensitive to think that the commercial is depicting a real Mexican any more than

Mickey Mouse represents mice.”53 Although the Committee was there to voice their concerns over the Frito Bandito, the chairman kept dismissing the seriousness of this topic.

Little changed in the next year’s congressional hearing. The Frito Bandito came up for discussion once again and Brasco was again outraged that the thieving character was still getting

52 U.S. Government Publishing Office, “Proclamation 3869, National Hispanic Heritage Week, 1968,” http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/STATUTE-82/pdf/STATUTE-82-Pg1649.pdf. 53Films and Broadcasts Demeaning Ethnic, Racial, or Religious Groups: Hearing on H.R. H. Con. Res. 262 and H. Con. Res. 304, Before the Subcommittee on Communications and Power of the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, 91st Cong. 41 (1970).

182 airtime. Charles J. Carney, a representative from Ohio, added that the Frito Bandito damaged

Mexican Americans because they that had to deal with the realities of these depictions, such as people calling them a Frito Bandito. MacDonald still could not comprehend why the cartoon offended people. He stated, “I am not Mexican, but I wouldn’t get mad if someone called me

Frito Bandito.”54 Despite support from several congressmen, the protests fell on deaf ears.

These episodes in Congress show a glimpse of the ongoing battle that the Committee and others waged against the Frito Bandito. In 1968, the Committee had joined forces with IMAGE and sent a letter to Frito-Lay demanding to take the ads down. Frito-Lay replied that they needed to study the situation further, but decided to eliminate the gun firing scenes because of the present violence in America. An executive at Frito-Lay claimed the Frito Bandito was “a cute lovable cartoon character, with no disrespect to anyone or any nationality.” It was highly profitable and even received the OK from their Mexican American salesmen.55 In 1969, they revamped the character by making him less violent and dangerous. They made him “less grimacing” by taking away the beard and gold tooth and changing the facial features to “guile rather than leer.” He would then “gently con Anglos out of their Fritos.” The Committee was still not satisfied. These ads still carried the “‘racist message’ that Mexicans are ‘sneaky thieves.’”

The character’s voice, Mel Blanc, who proudly acknowledged that he had been the voice of

Mexicans in cartoons and on radio for 35 years, was surprised that that this character offended

Mexican Americans and he estimated “99 per cent [of Mexicans] would say they liked it.”56

Frito-Lay agreed with Blanc’s assessment. When students in a racial and cultural minorities course wrote to Frito-Lay, the response they received was that Frito-Lay “did not and never have had any racist intentions in presenting the Frito Bandito cartoon character. It was meant to

54 Ibid., 14, 16, 58. 55 “Frito-Lay Cuts Gun Scenes from TV Commercials,” Advertising Age, August 12, 1968, 3, 44. 56 I found no evidence to support that claim.

183 be a simple character which is intended to make you laugh, in turn we hope that this laughter will leave our trademark implanted in your memory.”57 Frito-Lay insisted that they surveyed the

Mexican-American community.58 A university student newspaper found this hard to believe: “If their so-called survey ever actually took place, Frito-Lay must have interviewed Mexican-

Americans who were in fact assimilationists and hated every drop of their Mexican blood.”59 A letter to the editor of Advertising Age revealed another side of this controversy. Reprinted in the

Los Angeles Chicano publication Regeneración, J. Philipps from Bunn Winter Associates in St.

Louis, Missouri could not believe that Mexican Americans were not celebrating this character that so represented their culture and history. “I definitely oppose the action that these people are taking to deliberately conceal the facts of their colorful ancestry, as well as the truths of history,”

Philipps argued. They should be proud of their heritage, not ashamed.60 Although Frito-Lay did not go as far as saying this campaign should have been as source of cultural pride, they did not remove the ads because the campaign was still making money.61

When Frito-Lay refused to stop airing the ads in 1969, the Committee and several others threatened to file a complaint with the FCC against any stations that aired them. Groups pressured Los Angeles and San Francisco stations to drop the ads. In 1970, Frito-Lay announced the commercials would no longer air, but only in California, Oregon, and Washington. The next year, Domingo Nick Reyes and others threatened a defamation lawsuit against Frito-Lay.62 In

57 Thomas M. Martinez, “How Advertisers Promote Racism,” Civil Rights Digest, U.S. Civil Rights Commission (1969): 8-9. 58 I attempted to contact Frito-Lay about this information, but never received a response. Therefore, I cannot conclude that they did or did not perform this survey. 59 Alphonso Villanueva, “Frito Lay’s an Egg” in Chicanismo, vol. 1, no. 3, March 9, 1970 in Box 3, Folder 4, The Carlos Vasquez Papers, 44, Chicano Studies Research Center, University of California, Los Angeles. 60 “Frito Bandito is Still Around,” Regeneración, vol. I, no.9, Los Angeles, 1970 in Printed materials, Collected Journals/Serials, Gilberto Cárdenas Papers, Julian Samora Library at the Institute for Latino Studies, University of Notre Dame. 61 “Advertising: Ban the Bandito?,” Newsweek, December 22, 1969, 82, 86. 62 González and Torres, 310-311.

184 this lawsuit, the Committee would sue Frito-Lay, its advertising agency, ABC, and CBS for $610 million on the behalf of all the Mexican Americans they had demeaned. It was at this point that

Frito-Lay decided to drop the campaign, well, at least partially. Frito-Lay discontinued the campaign in 1971, but they continued to run ads until at least 1974.63

Activists disagreed over who deserved the credit for this success. Reyes attributed the accomplishment to the work of media groups such as the Committee in Washington, D.C.,

IMAGE in San Antonio, the Council to Advance and Restore the Image of the Spanish-Speaking

Mexican American (CARISSMA) in Los Angeles, and the Midwest Chicano Mass Media

Committee in Chicago. Reyes also said he was pushed back and forth between the advertising agency and Frito-Lay both insisting that the other controlled the media output. Then, he contacted the networks directly and claimed Hermino Treviesas, Vice President of Broadcast

Standards at NBC, was very supportive and influenced NBC to remove the ad immediately.64

Actor Ricardo Montalbán told a different story. He insisted that he single-handedly eliminated the Frito Bandito. He called the president of Frito-Lay and told him he was the voice of reason and if he did not listen to him, he was going to have to “listen to voices that are rather militant and angry and fed up.” Montalbán told the president that this image was insulting and even offered him a suggestion: how about the Frito Amigo who loves the chips that he wants to share it with his friends. The president, according to Montalbán, promised within a couple of weeks it

63 Lewels, 58. In the early 1980s, Frito-Lay launched another campaign using imagery of Latinos and Latin America. This time the character was distinguished and sophisticated. He spoke with an accent, but pronounced words correctly. He discussed how Tositos reminded him of his childhood when he came home to freshly made chips. There were no protests or boycotts this time. Clint C. Wilson II and Félix Gutiérrez, Minorities and Media: The Diversity and the End of Mass Communication (Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1985), 110. 64 Films and Broadcasts Demeaning Ethnic, Racial, or Religious Groups-1971: Hearing on H.R. H. Con. Res. 9 and H. Con. Res. 182, Before the Subcommittee on Communications and Power of the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, 92nd Cong. 56 (1971).

185 would disappear. Montalbán proudly proclaimed, “I destroyed the Frito Bandito.”65 Whatever the real story, the character eventually disappeared from the media.

The Frito Bandito and José Jiménez were not the only targets of the Committee; they had many, but one that was more willing to cooperate was Granny Goose Foods, Inc. Granny Goose had used a Mexican bandit in their advertisements for potato chips. This corporation, unlike

Frito-Lay, immediately responded to the advocacy groups’ requests to change their images of

Mexican Americans. In an October 28, 1968 letter to Granny Goose president M.E.

Wangenheim, Jr., Armando Rodríguez thanked the company for removing the commercial featuring Mexican bandits.66 Another activist Ricardo A. Callejo, Counsel of the Spanish

Speaking/Surnamed Political Association, Inc., had threatened legal action against Granny

Goose and called for government regulation of such derogatory ads. Wangenheim responded to

Callejo’s perceived rudeness and animosity with a rhetorical slapping of the hand and pointed to

Rodriguez’s successful method instead. Although Wangenheim dismissed Callejo’s letter, its content is significant. This letter reiterated something common in the rhetoric of the movement for inclusion. He stated that Mexican Americans were “dying in Vietnam at twice the rate justified by our population to secure the rights we have been guaranteed by which have been defaulted upon by so many people who call themselves ‘Americans’ but who turn out to be

65 The Bronze Screen: Ricardo Montalbán, Tapes 4, 5 M120466, VA70002, UCLA Film and Television Archive, University of California, Los Angeles, California. In his autobiography in 1980, Montalbán said that Nosotros and other groups with “combination of their militancy” and Nosotros’ “own gentle persuasion” together got rid of the Frito Bandito. In the conversation with the Frito-Lay president he said: “I don’t know what influence I had, but Frito Bandito did disappear from television.” Ricardo Montalbán, Reflections: A Life in Two Worlds (Garden City, NJ: Doubleday, 1980), 152-153. 66 Letter to M.E. Wangenheim, Jr. from Armando Rodriguez, October 28, 1968, Albert A. Peña, Jr. Papers, MS 37, University of Texas at San Antonio Libraries Special Collections.

186 unworthy of the name or the benefits.”67 Callejo’s letter implied that the media should have worked even harder to change those images because of the sacrifices Latinos had made.

Not everyone at Granny Goose was a cooperative as its president with dropping this particular campaign. Since his income depended on those commercials, Mike de Anda, the actor who played the bandit character in their commercials, was not pleased with the direction Granny

Goose had gone. This revealed another issue in this movement: what are acceptable roles for

Mexican Americans to play? The tension between making a living and depicting a character that defamed one’s ethnicity and community was something many actors faced. To de Anda, media activists had compromised his career and livelihood while he had done nothing wrong. In fact, he saw himself as a pioneer in a way since he was a Mexican American on television screens and was having success in the industry. He responded to Rodríguez and other envidosos (envious people) arguing that advocacy groups wanted more parts for Mexican Americans, but then they were trying to take them away from people like him. He became so angry in a letter to Rodríguez that he questioned Rodríguez’s loyalties: “if someday we should have another war with Mexico, what side would you take? If you are a[s] proud as you pretend to be, you better start getting ready to give up your citizenship, if not, jump in the so called melting pot and come out a true

American.”68 De Anda positioned himself as a true American making money the American way by not challenging the system. He also positioned Rodríguez as a possible foreigner.

To groups like Justicia, de Anda would be considered a Tio Taco, an Uncle Tom. Now, it was not enough for Latinos to get parts in ads, television, and movies, but there was a particular expectation on how to best represent the community. Ethnic pride and dignity was now

67 Letter to Armando Rodríguez from Ricardo A. Callejo, November 1, 1968, Albert A. Peña, Jr. Papers, MS 37, University of Texas at San Antonio Libraries Special Collections. 68 Letter to Armando Rodriguez from Mike de Anda, October 25, 1968, Albert A. Peña, Jr. Papers, MS 37, University of Texas at San Antonio Libraries Special Collections.

187 encouraged and expected. Ray Martell of MAPA argued in 1970 that nothing would change

“until Chicano actors stop prostituting themselves to achieve industry ends.”69 The tension between de Anda’s perspective and those of people like Rodríguez, Callejo, and Martel revealed that the Chicano movement was contentious and not necessarily unifying. There were different degrees of advocacy and compromise and diverse opinions of what constituted proper Latino portrayals. This particular confrontation showed the process of creating and recreating Mexican-

American, or Chicano, identities.

Latino Media Advocacy Groups Diversify, 1960s-1970s

The NMAADC and IMAGE targeted derogatory advertisements and images of Mexican

Americans on television and film. Their primary focus was to change and complicate the representations that circulated in mainstream media in order to remedy the condition of Mexican

Americans in the United States. Of course, NMAADC and IMAGE were not the only groups involved in this national effort. Many groups developed at this juncture in time with a similar mission, but with different approaches to achieve that mission. These groups included the

American G.I. Forum, MAPA, Justicia, and Nosotros.

Of the older organizations the most involved in media advocacy were the American G.I.

Forum and MAPA. The Forum joined in protesting Mexican-American stereotypes, especially the Frito Bandito.70 Its tactics were similar to IMAGE and NMAADC. MAPA, however was the

“‘hell-raising’ arm of the Mexican community.”71 Ray Martell, Chairman of the Motion Picture and TV Committee of MAPA, protested against the FCC: “We have been the unwilling victims

69 Mary B. Murphy, “A Voice for Chicano Silent Minority,” Los Angeles Times, October 11, 1970, Q1, ProQuest Historical Newspapers. 70 Newspaper article “Group Joins in Protesting Latin Image,” Sept. 19, 1968, Box 10, Folder 7, Domingo Nick Reyes Papers, Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas Libraries, the University of Texas at Austin. 71 Lewels, 13.

188 of this systematic, sustained racist abuse and will have no more of it.” By continuing this abuse, the media had denied Mexican Americans “first class citizenship, the full achievement of civil rights and equal opportunity.” MAPA approached the federal government, specifically the Equal

Employment Opportunity Commission, to investigate the Motion Picture and Television Industry for violations of the civil rights of Mexican Americans according to the 1964 Civil Rights Act.72

MAPA was concerned about the roles Latinos obtained in the industry and whether the business was discriminating against Latino actors. According to Martell, blacks were playing Latinos while Latinos were cast aside. He specifically referred to the casting choices for 1969 movie

Che! in which Egyptian-born Omar Sharif was ultimately chosen as the Argentine-born revolutionary. “If we can’t get Latin roles, where do we go from here?” questioned Martell.73

While MAPA focused its efforts mostly on films, Justicia, also known as Justice for

Chicanos in the Motion Picture and Television Industry, decided to split from MAPA in 1969 and focused on both films and primetime television in their protests.74 Located in East Los

Angeles, Justicia was close to where the action happened in nearby studios. They wanted “a more realistic and correct portrayal of their culture, history and contributions to this pluralistic nation of immigrants” but they were growing tired of the same stories and limitations.75 Its president, twenty-five year old, Ray Andrade was a former Green Beret, boxer, actor and host of

72 Protest to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on the Cavalier and Abusive Treatment of Mexican And Spanish Ancestry by the Mass Media,” circa 1969, Box 10, Folder 7, Domingo Nick Reyes Papers, Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas Libraries, the University of Texas at Austin. 73 Newspaper article, “Mexican-American Assn. Demands Equality of Opportunity—or Else,” circa 1968/1969, Albert A. Peña, Jr. Papers, MS 37, University of Texas at San Antonio Libraries Special Collections. 74 Montgomery, 56. 75 Pablo Macias and Alicia Sandoval, “The Bandido and Me” in La Gente de Aztlan IV, no. VI, May-June 1974 in Box 1, Folder 6, The Carlos Vasquez Papers, 44, Chicano Studies Research Center, UCLA, University of California, Los Angeles.

189 a radio show in Los Angeles called “Chicano Jam Session.”76 The group wanted the movement to progress faster and was willing to go to more drastic measures to make it happen.

The group’s first major protest was in April 1970 at the Academy Awards. They were specifically targeting the western genre and the movies Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

(1969), The Wild Bunch (1969), and True Grit (1969) that all, in one way or another, depicted

Mexicans/Mexican Americans in a negative light.77 According to the Los Angeles Times, about

80 protesters lined the sidewalk carrying signs and shouting “Chicano power.” The crowd momentarily moved into the street shouting “Hell no, we won’t go,” but police moved them back into the sidewalk where they carried on their protest.78 This protest made national news and even got the attention of the Screen Actors’ Guild (SAG). Justicia met in August of 1970 with SAG president, Charlton Heston, and other members of the Guild, including actor Ricardo Montalbán.

The industry validated Justicia’s efforts when the SAG supported their mission of change for

Latino characters on screen. Justicia claimed that the Guild told them that they would review films and join in picketing if Mexican Americans were demeaned in the films. Ray Andrade and

Sal Castro, former teacher and leader of the blowout movement79 and now NBC producer, represented Justicia arguing that the portrayal of Latinos was stereotypical and offensive as many of the characters were dirty, perverted, or deceptive. Andrade also insinuated that movies like One Hundred Rifles, which featured a black lawman seducing Mexican women and fighting

Mexican men, would lead to animosity and hatred between minority groups. Heston responded

76 Don Page, “Kudos to Stations for Serving Ethnic Groups,” Los Angeles Times, September 7, 1969, Q71. 77 Chon A. Noriega, Shot in America: Television, The State, and the Rise of Chicano Cinema (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), 68. 78 “100 Blacks, Chicanos Picket Oscar Ceremony,” The Los Angeles Times, April 8, 1970, 24, ProQuest Historical Newspapers. 79 Blowouts were walkouts that Mexican American students participated in during the late 1960s to protest the inferior condition of schools and quality of education in Los Angeles segregated schools. See Mario T. García and Sal Castro, Blowout!: Sal Castro and the Chicano Struggle for Educational Justice (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2011) for more information.

190 to the press after this meeting: “The Screen Actors Guild is now committed to unite the other creative guilds—the writers’ and producers’ and directors’—to find what steps can be taken to improve the image of La Raza.”80 This seemed like a massive step in the movement, but change was slow and Justicia grew impatient.

Justicia called a press conference in January of 1971 to demand the media “cease demeaning our character before the world.” Justicia was particularly angry about Newsweek magazine’s January 11, 1971 issue that featured an ad depicting a representation of a Mexican slumbering against a cactus next to a bear and duck as shooting targets. Media Radio Sales was advertising to “pick off the lazy spots on your TV schedule.” Justicia threatened that Metro

Radio Sales and Newsweek should expect legal action from the Chicano community such as the

Frito-Lay Company was experiencing because of the Frito Bandito. The press release claimed

President of Justicia Ray Andrade said the following:

The media, printed, televised, filmed and radio, are provoking the Chicano community to react in the same vein and virtue what is often termed violence. Wow! They really must hate us to treat us with such disrespect and no regard for our human dignety [sic]. What have we done to deserve such treatment?...It is time that all media become responsible to the American people and picture Chicanos and being people with human dignity and part of a respected constituency in this society. (Media, let my people go).”81

Such statements suggested that frustration and anger had boiled over. Although they would gain attention from network executives, they also positioned themselves as militant and unbending.

In 1971, Justicia threatened to challenge the license renewals of Los Angeles based television stations if they did not meet their demands of dropping shows that demeaned

Mexicans, setting aside money for shows which would feature Chicanos in prominent roles, and forcing networks to consult with Justicia on future project depicting the Mexican-American

80 Richard Vasquez, “Chicano Protest on Movie Image Backed by Guild,” The Los Angeles Times, August 27, 1970, B1. 81 Justicia Press Release on January 13, 1971, Box 10, Folder 7, Domingo Nick Reyes Papers, Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas Libraries, the University of Texas at Austin.

191 community.82 This act drew the attention of ABC’s president and other high-level executives. In the end, Paul Macias and Ray Andrade of Justicia were made consultants for ABC, NBC, and

CBS in matters dealing with Mexican-American broadcasting.83 But all did not go smoothly for network executives working with this militant group. ABC brought them in to seek their opinion on a television show and Andrade threatened to shut down the studio.84 That same year Justicia became aggravated when they found out Nichols, a turn of the century NBC series set in the southwest, would not feature a Latino in a leading role after the organization had made the request. The group waited until the show aired to boycott the sponsors. One of the sponsors was

Chevrolet. Ray Andrade noticed that many Mexicans drove Chevys and decided to boycott dealerships in the area. The dealers called their headquarters, which then called the network. The network met with Justicia, but no changes were made to the series. However, the network was more cautious as they proceeded with Mexican-American portrayals in later years.85 Although

Justicia did not make significant changes in the industry, they did create waves and pushed networks to reevaluate their portrayal of Mexican Americans. Scholar Kathryn Montgomery argues that if it were not for the “explosive, unpredictable behavior of the group’s leaders”

Justicia might have been more effective. Nosotros tried to take that calmer approach and worked within the industry to make changes. They also replaced Justicia as the industry’s “go to” group for input on Latino images.86

Nosotros, like Justicia, was based out of southern California. They wanted to empower

Latino actors through workshops and open up more opportunities for the Latino population by

82 Montgomery, 51. 83 Ibid., 59-60. 84 Ibid., 60-61. No further details were given on the show or its content. 85 Monroe Friedman, Consumer Boycotts: Effecting Change through the Marketplace and the Media (New York, NY: Routledge, 1999), 144-145. 86 Montgomery, 62, 65.

192 also serving as a casting agency for the industry. According to a Los Angeles Times article in

1970, Nosotros was a group that worked “most closely within the upper echelons of the industry” and came under “the most criticism from fellow Mexican Americans.”87 In 1970, several

Mexican-American activists approached actor Ricardo Montalbán and encouraged him to add his name to an organization, which became Nosotros, to stop the negative images of Mexican

Americans in the industry.88 Montalbán helped found this group in 1970, which had over 300 members by 1971.89 He claimed that Hollywood almost blacklisted him as a result of this seemingly militant act, but other groups were unconvinced by his story. What caused some of the criticism was that Nosotros was working within the system. It was also seemingly continuing to cater to and appease the white-dominated industry. Montalbán seemed to be betraying La Raza.

For example, in August of 1970, Nosotros hosted an event to raise money for the organization that included people like Dionne Warwick, Frank Sinatra (Montalbán’s neighbor at the time), and Charlton Heston. In fact, sixty percent of the audience was “non-Latin.” Though they had some authentic “Latin performances,” an LA Times reporter suggested, “something was being wasted” because the audience was mostly Anglo and were “unable to respond to such numbers.”90 Montalbán recruited A-list celebrities, mostly non-Latinos, to this event that was supposed to bring attention to the plight of Latinos in the industry.

To groups like Justicia, Nosotros was not serious or confrontational enough about the cause. This gave Justicia an excuse to accuse them of inauthenticity. In a 2002 interview,

Ricardo Montalbán recalled a strange encounter he had in 1970 with Justicia. Members of

87 Murphy, “A Voice for Chicano Silent Minority.” 88 Montalbán, 148. 89 Films and Broadcasts Demeaning Ethnic, Racial, or Religious Groups-1971: Hearing on H.R. H. Con. Res. 9 and H. Con. Res. 182, Before the Subcommittee on Communications and Power of the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, 92nd Cong. 32 (1971). 90 Richard Vasquez, “Latin-American Benefit Show Held at Bowl,” Los Angeles Times, August 18, 1970, F8.

193 Justicia warned him of snipers at publicity events and even called his home threatening his children. Montalbán confronted the group in their East L.A. headquarters. He knocked on the door and was surprisingly invited in. He told them that he simply wanted to know why they wanted to kill him. He recalled one man’s response: “Well, man, because you’re a Tio Taco, an

Uncle Tom. You are not a Chicano.” Montalbán responded that he was Mexican and he never claimed to be a Chicano. He wanted to contribute to the cause, but he would gladly step away if his involvement created problems for them. As the Justicia leaders conversed among themselves, they determined Montalbán was sincere. Once that was decided, one of them declared “Listen, I want you to meet my mother.”91

The particular encounter between Montalbán and Justicia not only illustrated how multifaceted the Chicano movement was, but also how the question of political loyalty and by extension, ethnic authenticity was contentious in the movement. The Latino community disagreed over how their community should be represented in popular culture and by whom.

Who was entitled to speak for this group? Montalbán identified himself as Mexican, not as

Mexican American or Chicano. He was also a Mexican citizen and never became a citizen of the

United States. He did not have the barrio experience or the experiences of blatant discrimination and segregation.92 The sense of belonging and obtaining rights as an American were presumably different for him as opposed to Mexican Americans. He was from an older generation of Latinos who took less of an issue with assimilation than the generations that followed. He was also part of the system in some ways as he had power in the industry and had participated in official

91 Archive of American Television, http://www.emmytvlegends.org/interviews/people/ricardo-montalban#, Ricardo Montalbán interviewed by Karen Herman, August 13, 2002. Part 5. 12:30-20:00. Andrade claimed he was not making the threats against Montalbán, but someone else in the organization. He later came to respect Montalbán and his efforts to change the industry from the inside. See Agustin Gurza, “No World of Fantasy for Him; Ricardo Montalbán denies that the Hollywood theater that bears his name has been neglected, saying it just needs time to grow,” Los Angeles Times, August 28, 2005, E29. 92 Montalbán, 149.

194 federal programs such as advertising the President’s Cabinet Committee on Mexican American

Affairs to publicize the progress that the Johnson administration had made for the Latino community.93 Montalbán recognized that his position in the industry was quite privileged. He had had a successful career. He admitted, “I realize that I am a privileged actor but I am trying to do what I can for the less privileged.”94 At the same time, this attitude created resentment and distrust as evident by his Justicia encounter.

Montalbán took a different approach to change the image of Mexican Americans in the media. He claimed he was a proponent of love and positivism instead of militancy. However, in his autobiography, he also stated that someone had to be militant, but that it was not going to be him: “I understand the militancy, the anger, the violence that minority people have evidenced in response to injustice. I understand, but I can’t join it.”95 There needed to a balance of militancy and diplomacy and he chose the latter approach. In October of 1970, the Associated Press reported that Nosotros, Justicia, and another media advocacy group Charisma (actually

CARISSMA) were working toward the same goal. In fact, Montalbán said that “the three organizations differ in the degrees of militancy,” but that now “we have established lines of communication” and “will function well together, because we are agreed that something needs to be done.”96 In the end, they worked out their differences, for the most part, and continued to work for justice in the media.97

93 Letter, L.C. Fitzgerald to Loyd Hackler, Associate Press Secretary, 6/16/67, Ex FG 687 (Interagency Committee on Mexican American Affairs), WHCF, Box 386, LBJ Library. 94 Arlene Van Breems, “Mexican-American Stars Unite to Help their Own,” Los Angeles Times, April 2, 1970, D1. 95 Montalbán, 52. 96 Associated Press, “Latins Strive for Better Image in Show Business,” Sarasota Journal (Sarasota, FL), October 21, 1970, 7B. 97 Unfortunately, things took a turn for the worst in 1972 for Justicia as Andrade faced three felony charges including two bomb threats (one to Pacific Telephone Company, and one to U.S. Immigration Naturalization Service) and one bomb explosion at the Justicia headquarters. See William Farr, “Militant Chicano Faces Three Felony Charges in Bomb Cases,” Los Angeles Times, July 12, 1972, C3. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

195 Conclusion

In a 1970 interview on NBC’s Huntley-Brinkley Report, W.W. McAllister, mayor of San

Antonio, described his views on Mexican Americans to a national television audience:

“[T]here is a special temperament…a difference of temperament between the Anglos and our Americans of Mexican descent. Our citizens of Mexican descent are very fine people…they’re home loving…they love beauty…they love flowers…they love music…they love dancing…perhaps they’re not quite as let’s say ambitiously motivated as Anglos are to get ahead financially, but they manage to get a lot out of life.”98

A person in a position of power, who had influence over the political and social decisions that affected this community, said that a portion of his city, Mexican Americans, was unlike the rest, Anglos. Mexican Americans appreciated aesthetics and leisure, but were not particularly hardworking or interested in financial success like their Anglo counterparts. This interview reaffirmed many of the ideas circulating about Latinos, their place in the racial hierarchy, and biological determinism. As the images discussed in this chapter and McAllister’s statement suggested, popular culture influenced the role of Mexican Americans in American society. These visualizations and conversations degraded a community long attempting to claim their promised citizenship and equality. These views justified discrimination and limited the access to power and opportunities for Latinos. Chicano groups worked to reshape the images of themselves in hopes of inclusion. The Frito Bandito and José Jiménez were embodiments of stereotypical depictions that advocacy groups wanted removed from the air. These groups worked both on the outside and within the industry to change to image of Mexican Americans. Although they often had the same ideas, they often varied in methods to accomplish those ideas ranging from force to negotiation. Through these interactions, authenticity and legitimacy became debated and challenged. Many of the groups were relatively short-lived, but they pushed the reevaluation of ethnicity and race in advertisements, television, and film. These groups also had allies in high

98 Lewels, 50.

196 places that reaffirmed their position such as commissioner Vicente Ximenes. Their combined efforts killed the Frito Bandito and José Jiménez, but there was much work ahead. At least for the moment, Mexican Americans were no longer complacent “just ‘si senor’ citizens,” as Tony

Calderon from IMAGE once said.99

99 Peggy Simpson, “Mexican-Americans Demand Comics, Ad Men Drop Siesta Image,” The Southeast Missourian (Cape Girardeau, MO), September 16, 1968, 2.

197 Chapter 6: The Politics of Authenticity and Interethnic Coalitions, 1960s-1980s

Introduction

Freddie Prinze, star of the 1970s television show, Chico and the Man, faced much criticism as a Latino actor. He was born to a Puerto Rican mother and Hungarian father in New

York City and proudly proclaimed himself a “Hungarican.” According to some angry viewers, he was not Chicano enough culturally or linguistically to play the character of Chico. Prinze often responded publicly to this controversy. In one interview, he said he was aggravated and did not understand why the Latino community could not work together and support each other since they all endured the same oppression: “black people made it ‘cause they stuck together. The 70s is the time for the Latins to make it, but we don’t know how to stick together. The only way is for a Puerto Ricans to play a Chicano and be applauded. The sound doesn’t matter. The feelings are the same. Spick means the same thing in New York as it does in Los Angeles. The pain is the same.”1 Prinze’s comments about “Latins sticking together” revealed a broader tension visible from the late 1960s through the early 1980s: how to portray and maintain an authentic, distinct group identity on one hand, and on the other, the importance of collaboration among marginalized groups. These two matters played out through the media as Latinos and other groups tried to reconcile their own identities and political power.

As activism increased in militancy, radicalism, and in volume during this time, the actions of these newly formed groups of marginalized peoples influenced others to act against their own injustices. Activists planted the seed for this transformative moment during the Civil

Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s when racial and ethnic minorities saw themselves excluded from the opportunities the American Dream offered and demanded inclusion and

1 Jerry Buck, “Freddie Prinze: A Puerto Rican Chicano,” Observer-Reporter (Washington, PA), December 4, 1974, A12.

198 equality particularly through the law. When, by the 1970s, this method proved to be too slow for many Latino activists and the government, despite its liberal and progressive initiatives, appeared ingrained with racism, many long marginalized groups began to distance themselves from assimilation and accommodation and reaffirmed their identities as distinct from mainstream white society.2 This focus on racial, ethnic, or other social distinctiveness is what scholars have termed as “identity politics” or multiculturalism.3 This idea came from the political left, according to historian Gary Gerstle, and “sought to reestablish a sense of community on a basis of ethnicity, race, or gender.” It emerged from the agenda of black nationalists and spread to other groups and institutions in the 1970s.4 Historian Doug Rossinow concurs and adds, “In identity politics, individuals define their politics along lines of race, gender, ethnicity, and sexual identity, in part to make themselves feel rooted, real, solid.” He continues, “This political trend thus expresses a quest for authenticity.”5

The development of identity politics gave these groups a claim to authenticity and legitimacy, but also gave them an effective way to organize and protest their position in

American society. Authenticity, according to Rossinow, was a way to find a place in the

2 Ignacio M. García, Chicanismo: The Forging of a Militant Ethos among Mexican Americans (Tucson, AZ: The University of Arizona Press, 1997), 28. 3 Identity politics has its roots in the “cultural pluralism” of the 1910s, when philosopher Horace Kallen argued society should not rob immigrants of their ethnic and cultural attributes, but celebrate them for their distinctiveness and contribution. Mae Ngai argues a combination of liberal pluralism and nationalism is what influenced immigration policy in the decades after World War II, what she terms Cold War Liberalism. This Cold War Liberalism diminished the inclusivity of “cultural pluralism.” In other words, making diversity less desirable. Ellen Wu argues that the postwar liberalism set the stage for the concept of the model minority. “Cultural pluralism” became “multiculturalism” during the rights revolution of the 1970s and, as Carl Bon Tempo argues, American identity became much more fluid. Mae Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and The Making of Modern America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), 230-231, 234. Carl. Bon Tempo, Americans at the Gate: The United States and Refugees during the Cold War (Princeton: NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008), 135. Ellen D. Wu, The Color of Success: Asian Americans and the Origins of the Model Minority (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014), 4, 51-53. 4 Gary Gerstle, American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 347-48. 5 Doug Rossinow, The Politics of Authenticity: Liberalism, Christianity, and the New Left in America (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1998), 343.

199 changing world and identify with a particular group.6 Authenticity became increasingly important even though what authenticity meant was unclear and often changed. For a younger generation of Mexican Americans in the late 1960s, authenticity meant using the word Chicano as an expression of defiance and self-assertion.7 Authenticity also included the recognition as a culturally distinctive group. For example, in 1969, Mexican Americans asked for a direct count in the 1970 U.S. Census. The census counted other ethnic groups such as “Negroes, Indians,

Japanese, Chinese, and Filipinos” as distinct groups while Mexican Americans had been counted as “white.” Supporters argued the new grouping would not only reflect an increase in cultural and ethnic pride, but also make it possible to allot federal funds and programs for this group.8

Authenticity also included the scrutiny of representations of marginalized groups in popular culture. Many viewers felt that only Mexican-Americans actors could play Mexican Americans on screen, as was evident from the responses Freddie Prinze received. Although identity politics separated people into racially or ethnically distinct groups, it also brought these groups together for common causes including addressing the lack of opportunities in education, employment, housing, and the challenging demeaning representations in the media. This chapter focuses on how that relationship of these distinct groups worked and developed in several different cases in popular culture through coalitions and cooperation.

This chapter joins the efforts of historians who have recently started analyzing the relationships of non-white groups with and to each other. Natalia Molina’s Fit to be Citizens?

(2006) examines Asian and Mexican peoples in Los Angeles comparatively and how the state viewed them in similar ways, especially when it came to public health. Scott Kurashige’s The

6 Ibid., 7. 7 David G. Gutiérrez, Walls and Mirrors: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and the Politics of Ethnicity, (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1995), 183. 8 Newspaper clipping “Mexican American Census Requested,” May 12, 1969, Box 23, Folder 10, Julian Samora Papers, Benson Latin American Collection, University Libraries, the University of Texas at Austin.

200 Shifting Grounds of Race (2008) explores how blacks and Japanese Americans navigated, sometimes together, through the racial hierarchy of Los Angeles. Lilia Fernández’s Brown in the

Windy City (2012) comparatively analyzes Puerto Ricans and Mexican Americans in Chicago.

Lastly, Sonia Song-Ha Lee investigates the relationship of blacks and Puerto Ricans in New

York City in Building a Latino Civil Rights Movement (2014).9 These works focus on issues of race, belonging, labor, employment, housing, space, and health. This chapter contributes to this body of scholarship by broadening the conversation on identity to the national scale and specifically analyzing how popular culture became the causing site where different Latino groups joined forces.

This chapter explores the tensions of identity politics and argue marginalized groups united to lobby together in broad-based coalitions, but also sought to express an authenticity of their own group. Latinos protested the representations of their culture on television, in film, and advertising as represented by others and attempted to include themselves into the narrative. This was a shift from how Latinos had responded in previous decades. Because of the pressure to conform during the Cold War, Desi Arnaz did not have the opportunity to speak out and organize, whereas by the 1970s oppressed people had created a space for protest. People like

Freddie Prinze could have joined an organization or protested because it had become an accessible reality for minorities. This chapter also argues that unification under a collective identity, as Latino or Hispanic, was a useful political tool to wield power as a large group,

9 These books are: Natalia Molina, Fit to be Citizens?: Public Health and Race in Los Angeles, 1879-1939 (Berkley, CA: University of California Press, 2006), Scott Kurashige, The Shifting Grounds of Race: Black and Japanese Americans in the Making of Multiethnic Los Angeles (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008), Lilia Fernández, Brown in the Windy City: Mexicans and Puerto Ricans in Postwar Chicago (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2012), and Sonia Song-Ha Lee, Building a Latino Civil Rights Movement: Puerto Ricans, African Americans, and the Pursuit of Racial Justice in New York City (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2014).

201 though at the same time many resented being grouped together despite cultural differences.10 In some cases, marginalized groups set aside their differences and worked together such as in the protests of the Frito Bandito and the film Fort Apache, the Bronx, but, in the end, too much bitterness and suspicion strained this relationship. There was never an effective, long-lasting coalition against the media and these groups continued fighting for their own.

Chico and the Man

Although civil rights for Latinos took different forms, such as labor rights and educational opportunities, by the late 1960s, groups began organizing specifically to combat demeaning or inaccurate images in popular culture, particularly on television. Television had been about more than entertainment or providing news; it placed value and importance on the people it depicted and Latinos were often absent on television. According to a 1977 report published by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights: “Those who are made visible through television become worthy of attention and concern; those whom television ignores remain invisible.” In this report, the Screen Actors Guild reported that Native Americans, Asian

Americans, and Latinos combined “constituted less than 3 percent of all characters in television dramas and comedies broadcast in 1974.”11 Marginalized groups, including women, African

Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, and members of the gay community called for the elimination of stereotypes and insisted on wider representation.12 Television networks knew that complying with those demands would appeal to a larger, younger, more cosmopolitan audience,

10 Since the sources from the 1960s-1970s often used the terms “Latino” and “Hispanic” interchangeably, I do the same in this chapter. 11 United States Commission on Civil Rights, Window Dressing on the Set: Women and Minorities in Television (Washington, DC: United States Commission on Civil Rights, 1977), 1-2. 12 In the documents from the time period, individuals from the LGBTQ community were collectively referred to as “gay.”

202 which meant more advertising dollars, but taking the risk and possibly portraying the group inaccurately could also cost money and bring bad press, which made this process slow.13

Independent writers and filmmakers took up the challenge of authentic representation and created films and documentaries depicting the lives of Mexican Americans, the largest Latino group, for public television during the 1970s. Many of these creations expressed pride and aimed to educate the public at large on who Mexican Americans, or Chicanos, were and their contributions to the country. One documentary “Yo Soy Chicano” explored current movements for equality and justice and began with an illuminating introduction: “In this land that our ancestors settled, we are often the victims of bad education, brutal legal systems, governmental and political exploitation. We have endured.” It traced the rich and vibrant history of Mexicans and featured footage of huelgas, or strikes, of farmworkers, non-violent demonstrations, walkouts at schools, and how La Raza Unida Political Party won control of several city councils and school boards.14 Another documentary entitled “Cinco Vidas” depicted different sides of

Mexican Americans. It looked at how five people navigated through issues of discrimination and how they kept their culture prominent in their lives. This included a lively great grandmother concerned about the discrimination her grandchildren faced, a school principal dealing with bilingual education, an attorney who was the director of the Mexican-American Legal Defense

Fund, a single mother involved in community activism, and a gardener by day and charro, traditional Mexican horseman, by night.15 The main argument of these programs was that

Mexican Americans had been oppressed for a long time, but they had endured. They had found

13 Kathryn C. Montgomery, Target: Prime Time; Advocacy Groups and the Struggle over Entertainment Television (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1989), 52. 14 Yo Soy Chicano, 1972-08-14, DVD9262/T02909, UCLA Film and Television Archive, University of California, Los Angeles. 15 Cinco Vidas, 1973-01-01, Study Copy: VA12816T, UCLA Film and Television Archive, University of California, Los Angeles.

203 ways to cope and survive. They were a resilient people. The filmmakers behind these programs were also attempting to differentiate themselves as Chicanos. They described the foods they ate, traditional clothing they wore on special events, and how they celebrated specific holidays. This need for authenticity also spread to network television. Chicanos became more vocal on what was and was not acceptable representation of their culture during the 1970s and the television series Chico and the Man was at the center of that controversy.

Chico and the Man came at a time when television viewers, after witnessing the turmoil and violence of 1968, wanted shows that were realistic and did not involve the frivolous nonsense of prior family sitcoms. Historian Erik Barnouw has argued there was a turn to more socially conscious programming, or “relevance,” in 1969.16 There were more diverse faces and nontraditional families on television by the early 1970s. All in the Family was part of that trend.

Its comedic approach and permissiveness in language was a way to address and face taboo issues. Norman Lear, All in the Family’s creator, insisted the show brought people together, but others like Benjamin Epstein of the Anti-Defamation League, saw the show as “making bigotry enjoyable, even lovable.”17 Many of these “relevant” shows brought the serious issues of abortion, race, and divorce to the forefront. As a nation, Americans watched how these characters navigated through those issues with comedic flair.

Like All in the Family, Chico and the Man featured a crotchety, old white man dealing unsuccessfully with the changes in society. In fact, the reason All in the Family’s Archie Bunker and Chico and the Man’s Ed Brown seemed so similar was because creator James Komack and three of the writers from All in the Family (Michael Ross, Don Nicholl, and Bernard West) wrote

16 Erik Barnouw, Tube of Plenty: The Evolution of American Television, 2nd edition (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1990), 430. 17 Ibid., 434.

204 the pilot for the show.18 Archie Bunker’s foils were his daughter and son-in-law, while Ed

Brown’s was Chico Rodríguez. Chico and the Man aired on NBC from 1974 to 1978. It came in number one in the ratings its second week and then settled at number five.19 Chico was the happy-go-lucky optimist to Ed’s belligerent, stubborn demeanor. Ed drove away business with his attitude while Chico brought people in. The combination of the two opposing personalities attracted viewers and praise for the show.20 This show created much discussion in the press about the relationship between Chico and Ed and the development of the two characters. Like All in the

Family, Chico and the Man pushed back against the bigotry of white America and Chico defended himself and his culture. Critics argued Ed was making it acceptable to be a bigot and

Chico was playing to the stereotypes. This latter argument brought demonstrative action against the show.

In the 1970s, television networks became cautious about the racial and ethnic content of their shows because of earlier scuffles with organizations like Justicia, a group that splintered from the Mexican American Political Association (MAPA) in 1969 because they wanted to focus their efforts on ending negative depictions of Latinos on television.21 In 1971, Justicia threatened to challenge the licenses of Los Angeles television stations if they did not stop airing programs that demeaned Mexican Americans. Paul Macias, the vice-president of the organization, said these shows “portray Mexicans as overly meek, consider us recent transplants from

Mexico…give us mascot roles and generally find us the target of the white hero.” That same year, Justicia protested the short-lived series Nichols before it even aired because of the lack of

Mexican Americans on a show based in the early twentieth century Southwest. Justicia

18 Joyce Haber, “From Prince of Ethnic Era to Complete Entertainer,” Los Angeles Times, July 27, 1975, R31. 19 Ibid. 20 Mary C. Beltrán, Latino/a Stars in U.S. Eyes: The Making and Meanings of Film and TV Stardom (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2009), 96. 21 Montgomery, 56.

205 demanded a regular actor and a writer or producer who were Mexican American. When their demands were not met, the organization boycotted Chevrolet, one of the show’s sponsors, and picketed three of its dealerships in the Los Angeles area. General Motor executives met with

Justicia, but nothing happened. Justicia’s meetings with television network executives were livelier. There were several accounts of Ray Andrade, the organization’s president, losing his temper.22 Justicia dissolved by 1972 because of organizational issues, but Andrade resurfaced in

1974 as a part of the new television series, Chico and the Man.

Producer and creator of Chico and the Man, James Komack sensed that his show would be met with resistance since he was an American Jew born raised in New York City discussing the problems of Chicanos in the barrio. He hired Ray Andrade as consultant to prevent complaints from Chicanos.23 Andrade said initially the writers had asked him for suggestions, but they were all ignored. In fact, he spoke out against the show’s lack of authenticity while still employed by the series and left “voluntarily” shortly after.24

Andrade was concerned about the representation of an authentic Chicano character and vocalized his displeasure that Freddie Prinze was not fulfilling his expectations. In one article,

Andrade said he was “about 75 per cent happy with the image” of Chico on Chico and the Man.

He felt Prinze did not try enough to understand his character. Prinze, according to Andrade, had the wrong accent and when he invited Prinze to accompany him to the barrio of East Los

Angeles, he refused.25 Prinze refuted this claim and argued he grew up in the barrio and he “hung around the L.A. Chicano ghettos to…add to the character.”26 In another article, Andrade

22 Ibid., 62. 23 Ibid., 56, 63. 24 Ibid., 64. 25 Buck, A12. 26 Tom Burke, “The Undiluted South Bronx Truth about Freddie Prinze,” Rolling Stone, January 30, 1975, Accessed January 6, 2017, https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/the-undiluted-south-bronx-truth-about-freddie- prinze-19750130.

206 criticized Prinze’s portrayal as “part Jewish and part Italian.” Overall, Andrade did not like the character: “Chico is cheap and demeaning.”27

Komack fought back against Andrade’s jabs and claims of inauthenticity and told reporters they had “auditioned every Chicano available” and they chose Prinze because of the chemistry he and Jack Albertson, who played Ed Brown, shared.28 Komack claimed his show was authentic because it was based on Mexican Americans he knew such as Andrade and comedian Cheech Marin.29 Other articles discussed how Komack was “deeply involved with the

Hispanic culture and lifestyle” and had “talked to hundreds of Chicanos” to gain perspective for the series.30 After a viewer complained to Komack and his creative team about the portrayals of

Mexican Americans on the show, Komack’s representative responded: “Mr. Komack has addressed himself to the problem of portraying Mexican/Americans accurately and has enlisted the aid of several local Chicano groups to accomplish this end.”31 The Chicano Coalition, the

Model Cities Center for Law and Justice, and the Hispanics Urban Center also protested

Komack’s disregard of the cultural differences between Latinos.32

Freddie Prinze voiced his views on authenticity and representation and even had a hand in creating the character. Freddie Prinze, or Frederick Karl Pruetzel, grew up in Washington

Heights, a multiethnic working to middle class neighborhood in New York City.33 Prinze confessed that growing up he “fitted in nowhere: I wasn't a true spic, true Jew, true anything.”34

At 20, Prinze became an overnight sensation on television, but it did not come without

27 Gary Deeb, “Ethnic dispute brews over Prinze’s ‘Chico,’” Chicago Tribune, October 4, 1974, 11. 28 Beltrán, 92. 29 Ibid., 93. 30 Ibid., 94. 31 Letter from Vincent Tobias to John McMahon and reply, January 21, 1977, Box 39, Folder 9, Series level: Correspondence, 1976, May 12-1977, March 17; undated, Hal Kanter Papers, The Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, Madison, Wisconsin. 32 United States Commission on Civil Rights, Window Dressing on the Set, 24. 33 Beltrán, 96. 34 Burke.

207 controversy. Prinze disputed he was a fake Chicano: “I have the language, [and] the mannerisms.” He had even attended several functions in the Mexican-American community where he had been “quite a success.”35 He felt it was only a few radicals who were causing problems for the rest, which helped to discredit any opposition to the show.36 In response to the criticism about Chico’s authenticity, though, the writers changed Chico’s background to reflect

Prinze’s. Later in the first season, Chico revealed he was half Puerto Rican, was raised in New

York City, and had a Hungarian-speaking grandmother.37

Television viewers started discussing the show and its implications before it even aired.

NBC showed the pilot to test groups around the country. Latino audiences were not specifically brought in, but James Komack supposedly informally showed former Justicia members the episode. The audience in Burbank, California “seemed a bit sensitive about racial remarks.” In another showing, this time of the second episode, viewers who had not seen the first episode responded that Ed Brown was demeaning and hostile toward Chico and they did not understand why Chico still lived with this man under such conditions. The network invested money promoting the first episode to prevent this reaction.38 A day before the show aired on national television, a group of Chicano actors called So Califas Tenaz marched in front of the studio complaining about the authenticity of the show. They argued that Puerto Rican singer José

Feliciano composed and sang the theme song and Prinze had a New York City accent.39 These public negative reactions intensified as viewers began writing to local newspapers to express their discontent over the portrayal of Chico.

35 Buck. 36 Ibid. 37 Beltrán, 101. 38 Ibid., 93-94. 39 Alicia Sandoval and Paul Macias, “‘Chico and the Man:’ Some Chicanos Are Not Amused,” Los Angeles Times, October 27, 1974, 3.

208 The first episode of Chico and the Man aired on September 13, 1974 and letters arrived at the Los Angeles Times shortly after about the show’s virtues and flaws. One of the first letters the

Times published was from Caesar C. Cantu, the president and chairman of the Mexican Heritage

Cultural Board. He stated this show undid his organization’s efforts to “remove the stereotype versions [of Mexican Americans] in the press, radio, motion pictures and television.” Cantu added that the characters were not even played by Mexicans and he questioned whether the director or writers knew anything about Mexican-American culture.40 Carol W. Fetty from San

Dimas responded to Cantu’s letter arguing that he was calling for censorship of ethnic humor.

She also thought it was absurd that a Puerto Rican could not play a Mexican American. It seemed to “negate the Hurculean [sic] efforts of Ricardo Montalban [sic] and his organization

[Nosotros] which has attempted to give the Mexican-American the opportunity to play a variety of roles,” she insisted. To Fetty, Cantu expressed a reverse bigotry. Fetty also claimed with authority, she lived in a neighborhood that was eighty percent Mexican-American, that most

Mexican Americans see nothing wrong with the show and have a sense of humor.41 A week later,

Margaret Castillero called Fetty out saying that Mexican Americans did not need someone to speak for the community: “we are sick and tired of these individuals who want to dictate what we should like and who consider themselves judges of what is best for us.”42 Another writer, Ana

Maria Lopez, said people like Fetty missed the point. Prinze was a talented young man, but she wanted him “to use all of his ingenuity to portray his own Puerto Rican compatriots instead of trying to be and act out as a Chicano.” She continued: “I’m afraid the Anglo world will never see our side, will never understand our pride and our feelings.”43 This discussion extended beyond

40 Caesar C. Cantu, “Letters: Chico and the Manacle,” Los Angeles Times, September 29, 1974, O17. 41 Carol W. Fetty, “Chico and the Flap,” Los Angeles Times, October 13, 1974, P25. 42 Margaret Castillero, “Letters: Chico and the Mail,” Los Angeles Times, October 20, 1974, Q21. 43 Ana Maria Lopez, “Letters to The Times: ‘Chico and the Man,” Los Angeles Times, October 14, 1974, C6.

209 the Los Angeles area. In Texas, Hilario García wrote his local representative in Congress of the deplorable conditions of Mexican Americans in the media. Freddie Prinze was one of the actors who “insinuated, demoralized, and utterly shattered the true image of the Mexican American of today’s society.” García stated Prinze had “overly debauched my race time and time again.” He thought “it is really despicable for a supposedly alleged Chicano speaking Puerto Rican Spanish, as their dialects and enunciations are well unlike our own.” He concluded, “Only a Mexican

American can duly portray a Mexican American role.” 44 Prinze responded to this controversy by asking: “Don’t these people know Wallace Beery played Pancho Villa? Or that Brando was

Zapata?”45 This interchange revealed how complex the issues of representation and authenticity were in the mid-1970s, and in some ways the conversation continues today in the representation of minorities.

Latinos fought for more diverse roles as actors, but at the same time many believed

Latinos, often oppressed and mocked in popular culture, should have a right to play themselves with dignity instead of having whites or other groups represent them. Prinze also brought up an interesting point about not being Chicano enough and how some expected him to behave a certain way. “They [protestors] say Chicanos talk a certain way, walk a certain way. I know lots of Chicanos. All different. They don’t want an actor. They want a stereotype: a wind-up

Chicano.”46

To some Chico symbolized more than just an accurate ethnic representation; he embodied other issues that were at stake in the Latino community. The Times published a letter by Vahac

Mardirosian, director of the Los Angeles Hispanic Urban Center, to Robert Howard, the

44 Letter to Congressmen Abraham Kazen from Hilario M. García, August 7, 1978, Box 35, Folder 9 on Media, Ruben Bonilla Collection, LULAC Archives, Benson Latin American Collection, the University of Texas at Austin. 45 Cecil Smith, “Chico and the Man: A Hit in Spite of the Controversy,” Los Angeles Times, November 10, 1974, O2. 46 Ibid.

210 president of NBC, about the detrimental effects the show would have on Chicano youth.

Mardirosian argued that his organization tried to make teachers more sensitive to the needs of an urban Chicano youth population and the show undermined their work. He argued the show was

“a continuation of the racist history of the media that has made us almost totally invisible” and it did “a great disservice to the Mexican American community.” One of the issues Mardirosian had with the show was the title. “Chico and the Man” literally meant “the boy and the man.” It expressed the superiority of Anglo Americans over Chicanos, by explicitly emasculating the

Latino character.47 This discourse of paternalism was not new in the depictions of Latinos, or

African Americans for that matter, as they were often shown as incapable of doing anything on their own. This paternalism was wrapped up with the legacy of colonization and slave culture, respectively.48 The paternalism was illustrated in what became the last season when a boy, unintentionally smuggled in from Mexico, replaced Prinze in the title role.

It had been Komack’s intent to show Chicanos with integrity facing the bigotry of an aging generation and according to Prinze, he was the one who created the Chico audiences saw.49

He tried to avoid the label of “sell out” by trying to balance ethnic humor without portraying the stereotypes. In fact, he was critical of fellow comedian and friend Jimmie Walker, star on the television show Good Times: “I do think Jimmie Walker, while I love the guy, he takes that bit too far, a total barrage of it. When we're together, I fall into the trap. And what Jimmie does – it is Uncle Tom humor. I know black people who told me that if they ever met him, they'd strangle him! The lengths he takes it to, it’s not good or healthy for the ethnic minorities. It's oppressing.”

47 Vahac Mardirosian, “Under Fire: Chico and the Man,” Los Angeles Times, September 30, 1974, B5. 48 For more on the idea of paternalism and masculinity in slavery and colonialism, see Eugene D. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York, NY: Vintage, 1976), Kristin L. Hoganson, Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender Politics Provoked the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), Walter Johnson, Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), and Mary Renda, Taking Haiti: Military Occupation and the Culture of U.S. Imperialism, 1915-1940 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2001). 49 “[T]he concept of that character, which is the show is mine.” Burke.

211 He did not want to be another Tio Taco, the Latino equivalent of Uncle Tom, but sometimes he did not have control of the plotlines and even stated publicly that he understood some of the opposition to the show, but at the same time he had to make a living.50 Prinze later became a writer on the show for at least an episode in the 1976-1977 and had a little more creative control over the storylines.51

Prinze mentioned the problem of ethnic minorities struggling to make a living in the entertainment industry without trying to play the fool for Anglo audiences, but most of the people who were watching were white according to an op-ed written by Alicia Sandoval, host and co-producer of a local L.A. talk show “Let’s Rap,” and Paul Macias former Vice-President of Justicia. Sandoval and Macias argued the show was intended for Anglo audiences because

Chicanos were not represented in any of the rating systems and “Negroes were included in the

Nielsen sample only three years ago.” “It is commercially irrelevant whether this group likes the program.” Sandoval and Macias expressed that the door had just begun opening for African

Americans and that Latinos were nowhere near having any power in what aired on television.

They were not going to sit still and wait, though. If things did not change, Chicanos would boycott advertisers and the network.52

Most of the negative reactions to the show stemmed from the first episode. The pilot of

Chico and the Man introduced the main characters and the premise of the series. It began with a montage of images from the heavily Mexican-American area of East Los Angeles. It showed families enjoying gatherings in a park, murals painted on walls within the neighborhood, and people hurriedly running errands or getting to work. Since Mexican Americans had not been on primetime before, this introduction may have been an effort to normalize the demographic and

50 “I understand why they protested. I agreed with ’em. But I just work there, y’know?” Burke. 51 “Prinze writes Chico episode,” The Los Angeles Times, July 5, 1976, E18. 52 Sandoval and Macias, 3.

212 show them partaking in ordinary activities. After the music ends, viewers went into Ed Brown’s

(Jack Albertson) automotive repair garage. Brown complains about the area and how it used to be a “nice” place, one without taco stands, where Mexicans knew their place: Mexico. He blames his lack of business on the idea that Mexicans were thieves who did not need the services of his garage because if they ran out of gas they siphoned it from another car or if their car stopped working they stole another. At the end of this contemplation, Chico Rodríguez (Freddie Prinze) appears at the garage looking for a job. Ed tells him that Mexicans are all lazy and always taking siestas. Chico refutes this claim by mentioning that he served in the Vietnam War and earned a silver star, which he shows to Ed. This attempt to reclaim Mexican Americans’ dignity and contributions to society was not new. Since the 1940s, Mexican-American organizations had used military service as a way to defend their citizenship and sense of belonging. Military service was supposed to prove their commitment to the U.S.

Shortly after Chico defended himself to Brown, policemen arrived at the garage looking for a man fitting Chico’s description who burglarized some appliance stores. This narrative was also not new. Latinos had been associated with criminal activity in popular culture since before the bandits in silent films, but appeared most recently in the circulating stories of “illegal wetbacks” and Puerto Rican gang members in the postwar era. As they interrogated Chico, they belittled him by calling him Pancho, a generic name for a Latino man. Chico played on their ignorance by responding with “How did you know my name?” and “Well, we all look alike don’t we, maybe it was my mother.” He uses humor to diffuse a tense situation. Next, they tell him they were going to arrest him and take him in for questioning. Chico protests that they have not read him his Miranda rights. The officers are perplexed that he knows the protocol and question him on where he learned about them. He defiantly responds that he learned about them in school

213 since he was born here, meaning the U.S. “Do you have papers to prove that?” one of the officers asked. He rebuts him with phrases like, “I’m a Chicano!,” “We were here first!,” and “Viva La

Raza!” This outward expression of resistance and proclamation of identity against authority was new in primetime television. This younger generation was no longer willing to be humiliated by the police. In this situation, however, it was Brown who defended Chico’s innocence to the police by confirming his whereabouts not because he believed in Chico’s ideology, but because he did not want trouble. After the police left, Brown goes back to his grouchy condensing rant and tells Chico not to think because he did not have the “equipment” to do so.53 This was the first experience television viewers had with the characters and the themes of Chico and the Man.

Something important to note is that Ed Brown was the racial minority on the show, and he still tried to exercise his white supremacy over the other cast members by demeaning them and mocking their heritage. An episode in the third season (1976), entitled “Minority of One,” went through several revisions and tried to illustrate how ignorant Ed was about the community he lived in, which was mostly Latino and African-American. Della (played by Della Reese),

Brown’s landlady and an African-American woman, organized a meeting to address some of the issues affecting local businesses. Brown did not want to be involved, but in one version of the script, he decides to attend after Chico convinced him, and in another version, Della threatened him. Ed showed up to the meeting, but was annoyed that alcohol was not available. He said to

Chico: “Is this an A.A. meeting? I thought it was Wetbacks Anonymous.” Chico responded that he better “watch what you’re saying, minority—before you become extinct!”54 When the meeting starts, the committee members speak in Spanish about some of the issues. In one version

53 “Pilot,” Chico and the Man, DVD, directed by Peter Baldwin, September 13, 1974 (Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video, 2005). 54 Table Draft of “Minority of One,” 1976, September 2, Box 42, Folder 2, Hal Kanter Papers, The Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, Madison, Wisconsin.

214 of the script, they excitingly brainstormed different solutions and Ed storms out and yells, “Why the hell don’t they speak American?”55 In the final version, the committee argues and Ed tries to remind them why they were there: “Quiet! You came here to agree on a solution to a problem, but all you do is argue. And not even in the right language.” In this version, when Ed stands to leave, Chico asks him where he is going and he responds, “I’m going home! And speaking as a minority, I wish the rest of you would do the same—even if you have to swim the Rio

Grande!”56 The first version showed an ignorant, intolerant Ed pointing to their foreignness as not speaking “American.” In the second version, Ed was also combative, telling them to go home to Mexico. After that display, the committee elected him as the president to represent their interests to the city council. Ed did not understand why and Chico explained: “My people like a leader who yells. That means he’s a fighter! We Latinos are spirited, hotblooded…”57 Ed, honored, took his new role to the next level. In one script the writers commented: “He has Chico teaching him Spanish, proudly sports a sombrero, replaces his bottle of bourbon with a bottle of

Tequilla [sic], and in general fancies himself the Pancho Villa of the barrio…He calls himself

“Presidente” and his Chicano neighbors, his people.” The committee praised Ed for learning

Spanish and adopting some Latin American customs. “He has inspired in them the idea of advancing their minority status by doing what Ed did in reverse,” read the script notes. Local restaurants and stores started carrying “American” menus and fashions and bilingual citizens taught their neighbors English. In response, Ed became angry because he had no use for the

Spanish he learned. The “whole Latin image he was enjoying so much is being phased out.”58

55 ‘Minority of One’ Story Outline by: Bob O’Brien, Box 41, Folder 19, Series level: Production File, 1976, July 22- October 28; undated, Hal Kanter Papers, The Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, Madison, Wisconsin. 56 Table Draft of “Minority of One.” 57 Ibid. 58 ‘Minority of One’ Story Outline.

215 This process of Americanization did not happen in the final draft; in fact, what happened was quite the opposite. Ed strutted into the meeting with the city councilman late carrying picket signs and demanding that the committee protest. The councilman explained the problem had been resolved and suggested the committee impeach him as president. Ed said impeachment was the American way; “our” way, meaning the Mexican way, was the firing squad. Mr. López, one of the committee members, said he was embarrassed they elected such a fool. Mr. García agreed:

“We elected Ed, the garageman, not some patronizing caricature of a Latin loudmouth.” Ed proclaimed he meant no offense; he just tried to be like them. At this point, he publicly resigned as president and as Chicano (in an earlier version it was Mexican). In the end, Ed threatened to leave the community and Della pled for him to stay because he was their “token Anglo-Saxon.”

Chico concurred: “every community has to have at least one minority to keep it typically

American!” Ed excitingly concluded, “Maybe you’re right. You people need somebody to steal hubcaps from!”59 Although Ed had the last line in this situation and left the viewers with the image of Latinos as thieves, writers made an effort to portray him as a buffoon. In the final version, the committee members spoke out against the mockery and the stereotypes, whereas in an earlier version they emulated Ed by becoming more “American.” Both Della and Chico at the end said that he was a minority, but that it was ok to be a minority. Ed continued attempting to dominate his neighbors through the rest of the series even though in this particular episode they poked fun at the system of white male rule.

After Freddie Prinze died in 1977 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, writers and producers scrambled to replace the character of Chico and they did so with the character Raoul, an undocumented immigrant. This first episode introducing Raoul, “Who’s Been Sleeping in My

Car?,” brought up the issue of undocumented immigration, but also confirmed not only that

59 Table Draft of “Minority of One.”

216 Latinos were sneaky, but that there was no difference replacing a grown Mexican-American man with a little Mexican boy. In this episode, Louie, the garbage man, and Ed returned from a fishing trip in Mexico to discover a boy had snuck into their trunk illegally entering the U.S.

Since it was early in the morning, they decided to deal with the situation when the sun came up, but Ed worried about going to bed because this kid was possibly a thief. “How many honest people come across the border in the trunk of a car?,” he demanded. Louie answered, “about two thousand a week,” which subtly decriminalized the image of the “wetback” circulating in the newspapers at the time. At the end of the episode, Ed tells Raoul, “Goodnight, Chico.” To which he replied: “My name’s Raoul.” Ed responds, “By me, all you kids are named Chico,” stated Ed as the screen goes dark.60 This last line signified the very stereotype that Latinos at this time were fighting: that they were all the same. This also confirmed one of the problems viewers initially saw with the show’s paternalistic title. Now it was literally Chico “the boy” and the

Man. The relationship was unequal and the boy would always be a foreigner in Ed’s eyes.

Chico and the Man came at a time when Americans became increasingly interested in rectifying the negative and inaccurate portrayals of marginalized groups. Writers, actors, and television networks were trying to understand, navigate, and represent the changing world of the

1970s. Unlike decades before, Latinos verbalized their disappointment and rage over how popular culture portrayed them, specifically Mexican Americans. The character of Chico was at the center of the debate over authenticity and intricacies of representation, while the character of

Ed Brown represented the anxiety over immigration, changing demographics, and societal norms. Although Chico caused division among Latinos groups, collaborating across ethnic lines,

60 Final Draft of “Who’s Been Sleeping in My Car?”, 1977, March 24, Box 42, Folder 14, Hal Kanter Papers, The Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, Madison, Wisconsin.

217 as a cohesive group, proved beneficial in gaining more representation in the federal government and combating derogatory images.

Interethnic Coalitions and Tensions

Panethnicity/“Pan-Latinismo”

The idea of different ethnicities from Latin America joining forces was not a new concept in the 1960s and 1970s. By the 1920s, the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) became the largest organization celebrating a Latin American identity, but most of its membership was Mexican-American. For decades many of these “Latin American” organizations remained separated by ethnicity. It was not until the 1960s and 1970s that a panethnic Latino identity started to emerge. This was a political move by Latinos themselves, but the state and the media also facilitated it. As in the case of Chico and the Man authenticity was important, but so was coming together as a unified group to fight for a common cause.

Latinos came together on their own terms. Several scholars argue that it was more beneficial for Puerto Ricans and Mexicans to unite as a collective unit to fight the battles of discrimination in employment, housing, education, and demand political representation. These two groups remained separate until the late 1960s and into the 1970s when it became clear that joining forces would be more powerful. Historian Lilia Fernández examines space and place and conflict and cooperation among Puerto Ricans and Mexicans in postwar Chicago. She specifically focuses on how they navigated the black-white racial dichotomy and how they reacted, separately and together, to the issues of housing and employment.61 Sociologist Felix

Padilla argues the main factor causing this shift was the creation of the Spanish Coalition for

61 Fernández.

218 Jobs to push the enforcement of Affirmative Action in education and employment.62 The Spanish

Coalition for Jobs was comprised of twenty-three Puerto Rican and Mexican-American organizations to specifically address issues of labor.63 Padilla argues the collective identity, as

“Latino,” became a political tactic. A Mexican-American individual who worked in the Puerto

Rican community stated that the use of “Latino” was “the only way for us to crack the political barrier; to elect our own candidates, to get better schooling for our children, and more and better jobs.”64 This cooperation not only included Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans, but also

Cubans, and Central and South Americans, although in smaller numbers. The Spanish language served as a point of unification, but Latinos would even contest this, as many involved in the

Chicano Movement did not speak Spanish.65 Despite this idea of unification, one Mexican

American leader, according to Padilla, insisted individuals had to accept their ethnic group as part of their identity first before accepting “Latino” or “Hispanic”: “We accepted ourselves first

[as a specific ethnicity] and Latino second.”66 They did not want to “water down” their own culture with the encompassing identity of “Latino.” Also, although these groups technically accepted Cubans, many expressed some apprehension over their involvement. One person

Padilla interviewed felt that Cubans were “not disadvantaged, they are not discriminated against.

The Hispanic is low income and severely disadvantaged,” implying Cubans were not.67

Congress and the Executive Branch started to think of ways to gain the support of the

Hispanic population at the same time that media outlets like Univision tried to speak to Hispanic

62 Felix M. Padilla, Latino Ethnic Consciousness: The Case of Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans in Chicago (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1985), 85. 63 Ibid., 89. 64 Ibid., 64. 65 Ibid., 69. 66 Ibid., 76. 67 Ibid., 77.

219 audiences across the nation.68 The grouping was a practical move to appease everyone,

Hispanics/Latinos, the state, and the media, but also a maneuver to tap into another voting bloc and consumer market. This shift in the federal government’s thinking began with the Johnson administration, which created the Inter-Agency Committee on Mexican American Affairs

(IMAA) to make sure federally funded programs were reaching this population.69 By 1969,

Puerto Ricans and their supporters in the Senate demanded they be equally represented as part of the “Spanish speaking population.”70 They attempted to change the focus of the IMAA from

“Mexican” to “Hispanic.” Vicente Ximenes, the head of the Committee, suggested that Mexican

American could be used as an umbrella term for all Spanish-speaking groups. Of course, Puerto

Ricans disagreed.71 The Senate passed the bill that changed the name to the Cabinet Committee on Opportunities for Spanish Speaking Peoples (CCOSSP), which became problematic later because more and more Latinos did not speak Spanish.72 Officials and participants in this committee, like the interviewees in Padilla’s study, also questioned the involvement of Cubans, who they believed did not need help obtaining opportunities.

The Cuban Exception

Cubans were largely absent from this story of authenticity, interethnic coalition, and organization because the U.S. media and the government portrayed them differently than other

Latinos in terms of class and race. The media portrayed most Cubans during the Cold War period, particularly after the Cuban Revolution in 1959, as white and middle class. The U.S.

68 G. Cristina Mora, Making Hispanics: How Activists, Bureaucrats, and Media Constructed a New American (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2014), 3-4. 69 Ibid., 26. 70 Ibid., 31. 71 Ibid., 33. 72 Ibid., 35.

220 government also gave them special privileges because of their status as political refugees fleeing a communist country. This caused much resentment among Latinos who had for decades had been struggling to gain civil rights and equality in society. Their increasing presence in southern

Florida also caused a rift between the new arrivals and African Americans.73

Many Cubans, as political refugees, had a very different life in the U.S. than other

Latinos. The Cuban Readjustment Act of 1966, for example, made it easier for Cubans to secure

U.S. visas and shortened waiting time for citizenship.74 Although, most thought their stay in the

U.S. would be brief. They saw themselves as exiles and many of the organizations they formed reflected that such as Omega 7, Alpha 66, Comando Zero, and Acción Cubana.75 Cuban organizations had more of an emphasis on social events and connections to life in Cuba than to fitting into American life.76 Cubans, unlike Mexican and Puerto Ricans, tended to form nationalist groups with right-leaning ideologies and did not usually build relationships with the black community.77 It comes as little surprise then that when Cuban Americans tried to engage the Cabinet Committee on Opportunities for Spanish Speaking Peoples (CCOSSP) in the late

1960s and early 1970s, many groups believed they did not belong because they did not share the poverty and limited education that Mexican Americans or Puerto Ricans faced. They were a

“different breed,” said one IMAA official, “who were governed by special legislation.” This

73 Mauricio Fernando Castro, “Casablanca of the Caribbean: Cuban Refugees, Local Power, and Cold War Policy in Miami, 1959-1995” (PhD diss., Purdue University, 2015). Castro has written further about this relationship, but his dissertation is currently not available to the public. 74 Juan Gonzalez, Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2000), 175. For more on the refugee status on Cubans see Carl Bon Tempo, Americans at the Gate and Stephen R. Porter, Benevolent Empire: U.S. Power, Humanitarianism, and the World’s Dispossessed (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017). 75 Gonzalez, 175. 76 Christina D. Abreu, Rhythms of Race: Cuban Musicians and the Making of Latino New York City and Miami, 1940-1960 (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2015), 96. 77 Gonzalez, 175, 181.

221 referred to their refugee status and the perception that they were mostly professionals and middle class.78

Cubans did not protest their depictions in popular culture often. The only instance was when the 1983 film Scarface was in production. Miami City Commissioner Demetrio Pérez, Jr. wanted to ban the filming of the movie within city limits unless the script was changed to improve the image of Cubans in the film. Producer Martin Bregman initially said no. Manny

Díaz of the Spanish American League Against Discrimination met with the film’s producers and stated that as a whole the Cuban community supported the film being filmed in Miami. Bregman then compromised and told Díaz a disclaimer would run at the beginning indicating that the content did not portray all Cubans, but one man and his experiences.79 Additionally, Tony

Montana, the main character in the film, was part of the later waves of immigrants from Cuba

(also known as the Mariel boatlift or the Marielitos) that Florida Cubans saw as inferior because of their lower economic and racial status.80 These Marielitos were younger, represented the mixed race population of Cuba, and came of age in Socialist Cuba with less business and professional experiences than their predecessors. Scholar Miguel Gonzalez-Pando argues, “[T]he

Mariel boatlift cast a dark shadow over the image of the established exile community.”81

Cubans faced resentment from other Latinos because of their perceived arrogance and from African Americans because of their perceived economic threat. In the 1960s, when an exodus of Cubans fled the Castro regime to the U.S., many were worried about the consequences of this massive influx of people within a relatively short time span. The governor of Florida, W.

78 Mora, 39. 79 Associated Press, “‘Scarface’: Producer says he will film movie despite protest in Miami,” August 25, 1982, Boca Raton News, 10a. 80 Michael B. Salwen and Gonzalo R. Soruco, “The Hispanic Americans,” in U.S. News Coverage of Racial Minorities: A Sourcebook, 1934-1996, eds. Beverly Ann Deepe Keever, Carolyn Martindale, and Mary Ann Weston (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1997), 171. 81 Miguel Gonzalez-Pando, The Cuban Americans (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998), 66.

222 Haydon Burns, wrote to President Johnson indicating that he supported welcoming people who fled a dictatorship, but worried about the negative impact on the state’s economy and on other minority groups. “Their presence [of Cubans in Miami] has created tremendous economic problems especially among our Negro citizens who are filling positions with service establishment such as hotels, restaurants, and other non-skilled areas of employment,” wrote

Burns.82 Donald Wheeler Jones, NAACP Miami Branch President, was also concerned and wrote to Miami mayor, Robert King High. “[T]he Cuban has displaced the Negro [in unskilled employment],” Jones wrote. “We are confident that the Cuban people and the Negroes of this community can live and work together as brothers,” but “the Federal Government must exercise its responsibilities toward the economically oppressed of this community as well as toward the politically oppressed of Cuba.” Freedom for one group cannot mean oppression for another, he argued.83

A Newsweek article from 1965 argued that those fears of negative economic impact were unfounded; Cubans actually helped Miami’s economy. According to the article, Cuban immigrants contributed $350 million a year to the economy and, with the large percentage of skilled workers, added to the area’s development. They were hard workers and entrepreneurial owning or managing thirty-one percent of Miami businesses. The article also described one

Cuban family struggling to stay afloat, unlike the common perception of middle class comfort often associated with Cubans. Oswaldo Fernandez, an accountant in Cuba, now worked as a condominium maintenance worker and his family lived in a cramped apartment with their only

82 Letter to President Lyndon B. Johnson from Florida Governor W. Haydon Burns, 10/5/65, Country File, Latin American-Cuba, National Security Files (NSF), Box 30, Folder Cuba, Refugees 10/63-1/65, LBJ Library. 83 Letter to the Mayor Robert King High of Miami from NAACP Miami Branch President, Donald Wheeler Jones, 10/13/65, Country File, Latin American-Cuba, NSF, Box 30, Folder Cuba, Refugees 10/63-1/65, LBJ Library. For more on the national African American discontent on the prioritized use of taxpayers’ dollars to Cuban refugees see Porter, Benevolent Empire, 198.

223 luxuries a television set and an aquarium with one fish. He did not complain, however, “by

Cuban standards our life is very easy. Besides, we waited eight years to come here. We can wait some more.” The message of the article was that Cubans were sturdy people who did not wait for handouts and their culture was a valuable addition to the area. According to one resident, Cubans brought culture to the area that had been mostly transient: “Now the Cubans, with their language and musicality and special foods, are giving Miami what the Creoles gave to New Orleans—a special sense of identity.” Miami was better culturally and economically because of the Cuban addition. The article did, however, mention the tension between Cubans and African Americans.

It stated that although black residents were unhappy that businesses preferred white skinned

Cubans for service jobs, there had not been any racial conflict between the groups. Overall,

Cubans have “proved hard-shelled enough to carve out a niche in American society despite the trauma of emigration, a language gap, and dismal poverty.”84 This indicated that Cubans were the ideal group to emulate, harkening back to the idea of Ricky Ricardo as the Cold War Latin.

They were a model minority.85

Nine years later, the situation had not changed for Cubans and the media still spoke highly of their presence in the U.S. An article in Time in October 1978 praised Cubans and

Cubans concurred with this image. Writer José Sánchez-Boudy humbly stated, “We [Cubans] have been the most successful immigrants this country has received since it was founded.” The story of loss and gain through hard work prevailed in this narrative. The editor of the Spanish- language edition of The Miami Herald, Frank Soler, recounted how his family worked hard to

84 “The Cities: Havana, Fla.,” Newsweek, September 1, 1969, 59. 85 Ellen Wu defined the model minority as “Asiatic who was at once a model citizen and definitively not-black.” Japanese and Chinese Americans “actively participated in the revamping of their racial difference” by selling the idea that citizenship and inclusion made diplomatic sense and in some cases used self-stereotyping to achieve such means. They emphasized values that corresponded with white middle class life such as rigid gender roles and standards of masculinity and femininity, and anti-communism. I argue that this label also applied to Cubans. Wu, 5- 6.

224 gain middle class status: “Suddenly we lost everything and were confronted with the potential poverty and hunger. Fear spurred us to work our tails off to regain what we had once had.” This article reiterated that the black community was “particularly resentful” because of the competition over jobs and housing. It also raised the issue of language: “[T]here is friction between Hispanics and non-Hispanics…Many English-speaking residents, particularly older ones, resent the pervasiveness of the new language [Spanish].” Many Miami residents also believed that Cubans were arrogant and clannish (only five percent of Cubans intermarried).86

Cubans provide a point of departure from the discourse in how and why Latinos participated in the discussions of authenticity and engaged in interethnic coalitions. For Cubans, it was more about the tensions they experienced with other groups than about working together for a common cause. They were generally not interested in forming coalitions with other marginalized groups, because they did not consider themselves, nor did the federal government consider them, as a racially/ethnically marginalized group. As the influx of Cuban refugees began to settle into their new lives, other, more established, Latino groups (Puerto Ricans and

Chicanos) attempted to form unions with African-American groups.

Brown and Black Tensions and Coalitions

The relationship between Latinos and African Americans in the twentieth century was both contentious and amicable, often simultaneously. These two groups united in the 1950s on issues of education and employment. In the case of Romero v. Weakley (1955) in El Centro,

California, the NAACP and La Alianza Hispano-Americana joined forces because both groups

86 Time magazine cover from October 1978 with the title “Hispanic Americans, Soon: The Biggest Minority,” Box 6, Folder 12, Domingo Nick Reyes Papers, Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas Libraries, the University of Texas at Austin.

225 wanted to dismantle the system that excluded them from a proper education.87 Often though, one group would position itself as superior to the other depending on skin color, citizenship, or perceived struggle. Although neither group fully dismissed feelings of prejudice or mistrust of the other, the overall idea of a mutual oppression, specifically in popular culture, unified these two groups in support of each other in two specific instances: the protests against Frito-Lay’s

Frito Bandito advertising campaign and the film Fort Apache, the Bronx.

By the late 1960s, the cry of shared oppression rang through these communities and many local, often militant, publications urged an alliance for all black and brown peoples. The

Chicano Student, a local Los Angeles circular, reinforced the importance of brown and black unity. It argued that African Americans from different organizations came to support the brown cause in matters of police brutality and civil rights and encouraged Latinos to do the same.

“Black and Brown Together! The oppression is the same! The cause is the same!” the paper emphasized.88 An underground newspaper also in Los Angeles, Open City, covered Stokely

Carmichael, Rap Brown, and Reies Tijerina, “the three most militant spokesmen” publicizing the unification of the Black Power Movement and the “Mexican-American uprising” at a rally that drew 5,000 people into the Los Angeles Sports Arena on February 18, 1968.89 These three men, the paper claimed, “will work together, fight together, and if it comes to that, die together in a street revolution.” “It was the kind of union which the establishment has feared for years,”

87 Letter to George I. Sánchez from Ralph Estrada and A.L. Wirin, October 14, 1955, Box 2, Folder 11, George I. Sánchez Papers, Benson Latin American Collection, General Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin. 88 “Unity for Defense, Militancy for Justice” in Chicano Student, Vol. 1, No. 4, June 12, 1968 in Box 3, Folder 5, The Carlos Vasquez Papers, Chicano Studies Research Center, University of California, Los Angeles. 89 George Mariscal spends a considerable amount of time discussing Tijerina and his connections to the black community in Chapter 5 of his book. George Mariscal, Brown-Eyed Children of the Sun: Lessons from the Chicano Movement, 1965-1975 (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2005).

226 concluded the article.90 It may have been true that the union of these two groups would have threatened the establishment, but there were still fissures to mend.

Even in the “mainstream” (meaning state recognized) Civil Rights Movement, Latinos were often excluded from the discussion. In 1963, for example, an older generation of African

Americans refused to accept Mexican Americans into the United Civil Rights Committee of Los

Angeles. The 1965 White House Conference on Civil Rights focused on the black Civil Rights

Movement, which forced the U.S. Civil Rights Commission to have a separate meeting in 1966 for Mexican Americans. Mexican Americans felt this meeting was set up to save face and not even the chair of the Commission, Franklin Roosevelt, Jr., bothered to attend. This charade was seen as a slap in the face to the Chicano movement and most of the attendees walked out in disgust.91

There was a lack of trust and understanding between Latinos and African Americans, which led to resentment and antagonism from the 1960s into the 1980s as academics, activists, and artists alike engaged in this discussion. In 1970, George I. Sánchez, university professor and leader of the early Mexican-American movement, sent a letter to a colleague revealing he was insulted that the Mexican-American Studies program had been “placed under a black director of ethnic studies (equating Mexicanos with Negroes).” He insisted, “The Negro issue is not related to ours. We were the original settlers. They came as slaves.”92 While Sánchez expressed a sense of superiority, Armando Rendon and Domingo Nick Reyes from the National Mexican-

American Anti-Defamation Committee argued that black uplift was degrading the Latino

90 John Bryan, “Will Blacks, Chicanos Unite?” in Open City, Issue no. 43, Feb.23-29, 1968 in Box 4, Folder 7, The Carlos Vasquez Papers, Chicano Studies Research Center, University of California, Los Angeles. 91 Juan Gómez-Quiñones, Chicano Politics: Reality and Promise, 1940-1990 (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1990), 95. 92 Letter to Bob (R.P.) Sánchez from George I. Sánchez, April 7, 1970, Box 6, Folder 3, R.P. (Bob) Sánchez Papers, Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin.

227 position. Latinos were, to them, “The White Man’s New ‘Nigger.’” They argued the openness of the media to the black community meant inaccessibility to Chicanos.93 Reyes submitted a position paper for the Congressional Record that was also circulated in advocacy groups that argued the media no longer used black stereotypes, but Mexican/Latino ones were fair game.94

Incidentally, Reyes resigned from the Civil Rights Commission because of the remarks he made about the Commission and its supposed black-dominated agenda. Latino activists continued to feel this indifference from the black movement into the 1980s. In an article in Perspectives: The

Civil Rights Quarterly, a publication produced by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, two voices, one African American, one Latino, wrote about their views on the black/brown coalition.

Both authors agreed blacks had more political influence than Hispanics did. They discussed the issues facing both groups such as employment disparities, disparaging media treatment, police brutality, poor healthcare, and inadequate education. Ron Arias was even more critical about the relationship between the two groups. He said there was still distrust between them and Hispanics were baffled that blacks did not understand the differences among Latino groups. They were unaware of the diversity and assumed all were rural Mexicans. Arias claimed some Hispanics felt blacks were using them as pawns by publicly saying they were working together, but they never intended to put their words into action.95

Despite the visible hostility between the two groups, some tried to help these groups refocus attention on their intended goals of equality and inclusion. Los Angeles Times reporter

Ruben Salazar called for an end to the tensions in a 1970 column. “Despite the loud mouthings

93 Armando Rendon and Domingo Nick Reyes, Chicanos in the Mass Media, Brown Position Paper No.1, National Mexican American Anti-Defamation Committee, Inc., (1971), 3. 94 Films and Broadcasts Demeaning Ethnic, Racial, or Religious Groups: Hearing on H.R. H. Con. Res. 262 and H. Con. Res. 304, Before the Subcommittee on Communications and Power of the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, 91st Cong. 67 (1970). 95 Lillian Calhoun and Ron Arias, “The Coming Black/Hispanic Coalition,” in the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights’ Perspectives: The Civil Rights Quarterly 12, no. 1 (Spring 1980): 12-18.

228 of radicals,” Salazar argued, “most blacks and Chicanos want the same thing: a fair chance to enter the mainstream of American society without abandoning their culture or uniqueness.”96 In other words, both Chicanos and African Americans sought recognition as separate groups, but they had the same mission. They should value their commonalities and use their combined strength to change the system.

Some African Americans became allies and openly spoke out against stereotyping of

Latinos, and in the case of the Frito Bandito specifically of Mexican Americans. William

Raspberry, an African-American journalist and later Pulitzer Prize winner, wrote an editorial in

The Washington Post on the Frito Bandito. He concluded that the people who are targeted in stereotypes were victims of racism in American society. He said, “You don’t have to be a supermilitant Brown Power advocate to be offended by the mustachioed little cartoon character.

It’s offensive, or should be, to anyone with the slightest degree of sensitivity to the feelings of minorities.” The media had become more cautious in the depictions of blacks. If there were stereotypes, he stated, there were also blacks as “ordinary housewives, fathers, lovers, and children.” He said, “Mexicans, apparently haven’t progressed that far, at least so far as Madison

Avenue is concerned,” because they were still depicted as thieving, smelly, and lazy.97 Less than a week later, Raspberry responded to a letter he received from a reader. The letter read: “you left-wing radicals will go to any ‘nitpicking’ length to try to aggravate situations.” The writer of the letter insisted that few people who had viewed this commercial felt that Mexicans were being persecuted. Another reader wrote that this country had lost its sense of humor. Raspberry skillfully compared this situation to that of “nigger” jokes and the relationship of power. The servant always laughs at the master’s jokes. To close, he argued that it was not just about the

96 Juan González and Joseph Torres, News for All the People: The Epic Story of Race and the American Media (New York, NY: Verso, 2011), 311. 97 William Raspberry, “How About Frito Amigo?,” The Washington Post, June 2, 1971, A19.

229 joke: “when you show that you believe the stereotypes to the degree that you make it tough for a man to get a decent job or home or education, don’t expect him to laugh at jokes based on the stereotype.”98 To reiterate Raspberry’s point, the power of the media determined the position of

Mexican Americans in the racial, social, political, and economic hierarchy. This ad justified the exploitation and oppression of a particular group of people. According to the Frito Bandito, they were foreigners, sombrero-clad criminals stealing from Americans.

Latinos and African Americans joined forces in protests not only through words, but also on the streets. At the 1970 Academy Awards in Hollywood, Daily Variety claimed “Some 50

Mexican-derived [sic] and blacks picketed the ceremony…”99 The Los Angeles Times estimated a higher number of “approximately 100 Negro musicians and Mexican-Americans.” 100Although it remains unknown whether they had planned a joint protest, both groups were represented. The press covered how Ray Andrade and others stood across street from the concourse “shouting

‘Chicano Power!’ and ‘Viva la raza!’” while distributing fliers and calling for a boycott of the awards show to “Stop racism against la raza.”101 They were specifically targeting two nominated films, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Wild Bunch, because as Tomás Martínez, sociology professor at Stanford University, noted, these films “depicted people of Latin

American descent as ‘inferior, incompetent, worthless and ignorant.’”102 The “negro” musicians were picketing because there were only three black musicians performing in the orchestra for the show.103 Both of these articles diminished the actions of these individuals by stating that as the arrivals of celebrities became more frequent “pickets faded into the background” or that the

98 William Raspberry, “Who’s the Real Bandito?,” The Washington Post, June 7, 1971, A23. 99 Bill Edwards, “Chicanos Picket Academy Awards,” Daily Variety, April 8, 1970, 8. 100 “100 Blacks, Chicanos Picket Oscar Ceremony,” Los Angeles Times, April 8, 1970, 24. 101 Edwards, 8. 102 “100 Blacks, Chicanos Picket Oscar Ceremony,” 24. He was referred to as Thomas Martinez in other articles and publications. 103 Ibid.

230 extent of the rowdiness came when the crowd got into the street and police officers had to move them back to the sidewalk.104

Although the demonstration at the Academy Awards publicized the collaboration, whether intentional or not, of African Americans and Latinos, a much more powerful interethnic coalition emerged in New York City in the winter of 1980 when residents of South Bronx came together to oppose the film Fort Apache, the Bronx. This movement, which lasted over a year, was interethnic and composed of many different people from the community including concerned citizens, educators, neighborhood improvement groups, church-affiliated groups, and even professionals in the social sciences.105 One of the leaders, in what became the Committee

Against Fort Apache (CAFA), was Richie Pérez.

Richie Pérez became active in the Civil Rights Movement when he was a high school teacher working with Puerto Rican and African-American youths and saw how the administration treated them and the limited opportunities they had. The Black Panther Party and its message of community influenced Pérez to get involved. He joined the Young Lords

Organization (YLO) in 1969. The YLO originated in Chicago and included Mexican Americans and other Latinos/as while advocating independence for Puerto Rico and solidary with Latin

Americans.106 According to historian Lilia Fernández, members of the YLO “began asserting a political identity that embraced their ascribed racial difference and demanded rights as economically oppressed and colonized people within a capitalist, imperialist society.”107 The

YLO often emulated the rhetoric and ideology of the Black Panther Party. The New York

104 Edwards, 24. 105 Bohique, Inc., an organization of Puerto Ricans in the Behavoiral Sciences, even wrote to CAFA in support of their mission. Letter from Bohique, Inc. to the Committee Against Fort Apache, May 1, 1980, Records of United Bronx Parents, Inc., 1966-1989, Center for Puerto Rican Studies Library & Archives, Hunter College, CUNY, https://centropr.hunter.cuny.edu/digitalarchive/index.php/Detail/objects/272. 106 Fernández, 174-175. 107 Ibid., 176.

231 chapter, which split from the YLO and became the Young Lords Party (YLP) in 1970, wanted self-determination for all Latinos and all third world people. They also wanted community control of institutions and believed in armed self-defense.108 Pérez stated in an interview that people remembered the YLP for its armed struggle and self-defense, but not the part about eliminating racism and male chauvinism.109

When rumors started circulating in early 1980 about a new movie centered on the Bronx starring Paul Newman, residents formed the Committee Against Fort Apache (CAFA). Pérez noted that in the winter of 1980 both the Black Panther Party and the Young Lords Party had active branches in the area and there was a history of police violence against Puerto Ricans and blacks.110 The Committee immediately sought to obtain a copy of the film script, educate the community on the effects of media stereotyping, organize community resistance, build more commitment between the Puerto Rican and black communities, and use the media effectively.111

Many of the CAFA members had also organized against the film Badge 373 in 1973 for its stereotypical portrayals of Puerto Ricans.112

When the CAFA obtained a copy of the script they discovered Puerto Ricans and blacks were portrayed as “caricatures of evil.” The characters sold heroin to their children and pimped out their sisters. Women were either “a prostitute, a junkie, a homicidal maniac, or some combination of all these.” Labeling the police station, Fort Apache, indicated that it was in

108 Ibid., 186-187. Darrel Enck-Wanzer, ed. The Young Lords: A Reader (New York, NY: New York University Press, 2010), 4. 109 Iris Morales, “¡Palante, Siempre Palante!, Interview with Richie Pérez,” Centro Journal 21, no. 2 (Fall 2009): 145. 110 Richie Pérez, “Committee Against Fort Apache: The Bronx Mobilizes Against a Multinational Media,” in Cultures in Contention, eds. Douglas Kahn and Diane Neumaier (Seattle, WA: The Real Comet Press, 1985), 180, 182. 111 Ibid., 185. 112 Ibid., 183.

232 hostile territory and gave police the license to act accordingly. “It excuses their brutality while at the same time denying our humanity,” CAFA stated in its analysis.113

Pérez recounted that the film production team very superficially attempted to quell

CAFA’s concerns even after repeated public protests. In one meeting with associate producer,

Tom Fiorello, Pérez said Fiorello told them not to worry, that he empathized with their position and loved rice and beans more than he loved spaghetti. After this meeting, Pérez said Fiorello never called again.114 CAFA continued to protest. The production team decided to keep their schedule secret after CAFA disrupted their filming several times, but the community found out when the filming would commence. In one encounter, CAFA members surrounded Paul

Newman’s car in protest of the film. The police came in “swinging their clubs” to escort

Newman out of the car.115 It even came to light that Time-Life, the company funding the film, had paid protestors to support the film, but once CAFA spoke to these mostly high school students about the message of the film, they switched sides.116 Despite all this, Time-Life continued to claim that the film faced “no real opposition.”117 Pérez argued that CAFA’s efforts were successful. After protests or threats of protests, the Gemini Theater in New York City cancelled showings of the movie and the openings in Philadelphia and Jersey City were postponed. Protests also took place in Boston, Miami, Albuquerque, and Hollywood among

Chicano allies.118 The reaction to this film made others think twice before they depicted minority communities in demeaning ways. Richard Brick, the location manager for the 1981 film

113 Ibid., 185. 114 Ibid., 186. 115 Ibid., 186. 116 Ibid., 186-187. 117 Ibid., 189. 118 Ibid., 184-185. The Committee Against Fort Apache threatened to demonstrate at every showing, which pushed Robert Meyer, the manager of the Gemini Theater at Second Avenue and 64th Street, to cancel the film’s opening. Meyer had met with the committee and after hearing Mayor Koch’s concerns about the film being racist decided to not show the film in his establishment. “‘Apache’ Film’s Debut Protested,” The New York Times, February 7, 1981, 9.

233 Ragtime, told The New York Times he consulted community groups because he “didn’t want another ‘Fort Apache.’”119 After a vote in March 1981, CAFA decided to dissolve since they had completed their work.120

Fort Apache, the Bronx, as evident from the title, was written from a policeman’s perspective. It was the police who named the South Bronx “Fort Apache” because they “felt surrounded by hostile residents.”121 The film was based on the experiences of two police officers,

Thomas Mulhearn and Peter Tessitore.122 Mulhearn and Tessitore defended the film and told the protestors to stop “complaining” and find ways to help the community instead. They insisted there was “no prejudice in our hearts” as they were married to Puerto Ricans.123 But, not all law enforcement agreed. Some police officers complained that Fort Apache depicted them as

“inhuman.”124

Public officials and state agencies spoke out against the movie and local governments deliberated on how they could prevent the screenings of the movie. New York City mayor,

Edward Koch, described the film as racist because “There was not one Puerto Rican personality that was without some major character defect.”125 The New York Advisory Committee to the

U.S. Commission on Civil Rights argued that the images onscreen reinforced “the stereotypes that nurture the growth of racial prejudice and bigotry” because it portrayed South Bronx residents as “pimps, prostitutes, thieves, transvestites, and junkies.”126 Although the New York

City Council rejected the call to boycott Fort Apache 26 to 15, “It was the first time that any

119 Pérez, 196. 120 Ibid. 121Associated Press, “‘Fort Apache’ protests scheduled,” Daily News (Bowling Green, KY), February 4, 1981, 5B. 122 Selwyn Raab, “South Bronx residents protest ‘Fort Apache,’” Star-News (Wilmington, NC) February 16, 1981, 3C. 123 Ibid. 124 Ibid. 125 Ibid. 126Associated Press, “‘Fort Apache’ protests scheduled,” 5B.

234 member could recall the full Council debating a resolution that condemned a screenplay or any work of writing.” Reverend Wendell Foster was one of the speakers in favor of the resolution arguing that not all Bronx residents were criminals: “I live in the South Bronx. I do not peddle dope. My wife…is not a prostitute. My two daughters are not prostitutes. This is a sick movie…how can we support this type of sickness in the name of free speech.”127

Those involved in making the film worked tirelessly to deflect the negative press. Dan

Petrie, the director of the film, said he had the cooperation of local residents and the atmosphere of filming was “good natured, almost carnival.”128 Paul Newman defended himself against any allegations of racism by holding a press conference in the South Bronx to deny that the film was against Puerto Ricans, blacks, or even residents of the Bronx.129 Newman hoped the film would

“be the positive catalyst needed to start a nationwide effort to rebuild the inner cities and better the lives of their inhabitants.”130

The protests against Fort Apache did not happen in isolation. At the same time the

Committee Against Fort Apache protested against the film and demanded script changes, in San

Francisco the Chinese-American community protested Charlie Chan and the Curse of the

Dragon Queen for its derogatory depiction of Asians, and the gay community fought against the movie Cruising, which depicted homosexuals as deviants and criminals. How much of an effect was this activism having on the film industry? Christian Williams of The Washington Post argued that it was expensive to challenge the industry and these groups did not have the funds or the influence to make significant changes. Sumi Haru, national chairperson of the ethnic minorities committee of the Screen Actors Guild, stated that change had to come from within the

127 Molly Ivins, “Council rejects Call for Boycott of ‘Fort Apache,’” The New York Times, February 27, 1981, B3. 128Associated Press, “‘Fort Apache’ protests scheduled.” 129 Ibid. 130 Raab.

235 industry. Minorities would not have “any real success in affecting stories and the way they’re told until we, minorities, get into a decision-making, producing capacity.” Jesse Jackson of

Chicago’s Operation PUSH encouraged protests, and recommended that they had to be frequent and focused. Ira Gissens of the Jewish Anti-Defamation League said they were relying on

“education rather than intimidation” to fight stereotypes of Jews on television and in films.

“[W]e would shun the notion of a boycott. Information works better than force,” Gissens stated.

Although the protests of these groups did not make major changes in the movie industry, and sometimes even brought more publicity to the objectionable films, one thing that resulted from boycotts or protests was that the community became visible and organizations spread throughout the country to condemn such treatment. Special assistant to the executive director of the National

Gay Task Force, Tom Burrows remarked: “The movie (Cruising) brought us together…”131 The films in question gave people a purpose and a sense of community.

Conclusion

The Civil Rights Movement of the mid-twentieth century caused a transformation in how marginalized groups, in this case Latinos, saw themselves in the late 1960s through the early

1980s. After realizing they were not included as Americans, they began separating themselves from mainstream white America, took pride in their differences, and searched for an authentic national identity. Chicanos responded accordingly when they felt the television show Chico and the Man did not authentically portray their culture. Although the actor Freddie Prinze was

Latino, he was Puerto Rican, not Chicano. Many thought he was incapable of playing the role of

Chico because of that. Ironically, in the 1980s, these distinct subgroups officially were lumped

131 Christian Williams, “Stop the Movie—We Want to Get off; Minorities Are Rising Up Against Their Stereotypes on the Silver Screen,” The Washington Post, May 4, 1980, H1.

236 together as “Hispanic” by the U.S. Census.132 The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued a directive to all federal agencies declaring that “a person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto

Rican, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin regardless of race” was now

“Hispanic.”133 All of the different cultures of Latin America and the various forms those cultures developed and changed through American assimilation were lumped together as one. Latinos had pushed for a more accurate count of this demographic and expressed a desire to be included in the census as part of American society, but they had not anticipated that the state would consider them a mass. Some groups, like Chicanos, openly rejected this label because it neglected their indigenous ancestry, while others accepted this label as a marker of assimilation into American society.134 As recently as 2012, about fifty-one percent of “Hispanics” polled said they identify themselves by their country of origin, not in a panethnic term like “Hispanic” or “Latino.”135

Twenty-one percent identified simply as “American.” Only twenty-nine percent of participants said “Hispanics” shared a common culture. Latinos seem to be pushing for the recognition of the diversity of Latin American cultures that the media, popular culture, the state, and other aspects of American society have neglected. They are concerned about identifying as a specific group of people, not necessarily a collective and demand that their specific culture is represented authentically.

Latinos tried to maintain a distinct group identity, but also frequently attempted to connect with other non-white groups to form alliances over issues affecting all people of color.

Sometimes these alliances were superficial and unstable, but sometimes they succeeded

132 Neil Foley, Mexicans in the Making of America (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014), 179. 133 Ibid., 180. 134 Ibid., 180-181. 135 Twenty-four percent identified as “Hispanic” or “Latino.” Paul Taylor, Mark Hugo Lopez, Jessica Martínez, and Gabriel Velasco, “When Labels Don’t Fit: Hispanics and Their Views of Identity,” Pew Research Center, April 4, 2012, accessed on March 30, 2017, http://www.pewhispanic.org/2012/04/04/when-labels-dont-fit-hispanics-and- their-views-of-identity/.

237 especially if they were concentrated on a specific issue. One of these issues was the representation of people of color in the media, advertising, television, and film. Two specific instances where Latinos and specifically African Americans united for a common cause were the protests of the Frito Bandito advertising campaign and the film Fort Apache, the Bronx. In the case of the Frito Bandito, many individuals of both groups protested through the press and through congress. In the Fort Apache case, they united physically in the streets of New York

City. The relationship between Latinos and African Americans changed drastically after the 1964

Civil Rights Act, when many Latinos began to claim a brown identity since it no longer made sense to identify as white as their parents and grandparents had in the Jim Crow era.136 It has been only in the last decades that older established groups such as LULAC and the National

Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) have made attempts to work together.137 The idea that Latinos can be “both culturally brown and racially white” has led to some suspicion among African Americans.138 As we have seen, the idea that Latinos occupy a space between white and black has often excluded them from the narrative of race relations. No matter how they try to claim their citizenship and sense of belonging, American society has viewed them with distrust and excluded them based on their inability to fit into the ascribed categories.

136 Neil Foley, Quest for Equality: The Failed Promise of Black-Brown Solidarity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 144. 137 Ibid., 145. 138 Ibid., 146.

238 Conclusion

Actor, performer, and Grammy-award winning singer Marc Anthony sang “God Bless

America” at the Major League Baseball (MLB) All-Star Game on a summer day in 2013. During his performance, many angry viewers went to social media, specifically Twitter, to voice their disgust that Anthony, born and raised in New York City of Puerto Rican descent, was singing a sacred national song. Several even deemed the performance “un-American.” “Shouldnt [sic] an

AMERICAN be signing [sic] God Bless America?” commented one Twitter user followed with the hashtag #getoutofmycountry. Many called Anthony a “spic” or a “Mexican” (as a derogatory term) and one even asked “Was [Fidel] Castro unavailable?”1 Anthony’s performance and controversy came a month after an 11-year-old San Antonio boy, Sebastien de la Cruz, sang the

U.S. national anthem at the National Basketball Association (NBA) Finals dressed in a traditional Mexican charro outfit, another event which also caused a fracas from furious viewers on social media. One Twitter user wrote: “This kid is Mexican why is he singing the national anthem” and followed his comment with the hashtag #yournotamerican #gohome. Some posts referred to him as a “wetback” and a “beaner.” The issue of legal status came up over and over in these belittling tweets. One post read: “9 out of 10 chance that kid singing national anthem is illegal.” Another Twitter user was “Highly upset that THIS kid is singing the United States

National Anthem. [He is] Clearly from Mexico…”2

Social media in the past decade has changed how Americans respond to the depictions of

Latinos in popular culture. On one hand, as evident from the comments above, it has created an environment where hateful remarks are posted and spread throughout the globe in a matter of

1 Public Shaming, “Baseball Fans SUPER ANGRY Hispanic American Superstar Sang ‘God Bless America’ at All- Star Game,” Tumblr post, July 17, 2013, http://publicshaming.tumblr.com/day/2013/07/17. 2 Public Shaming, “Racist Basketball Fans PISSED a Mexican-American Boy Dared to Sing Their National Anthem,” Tumblr post, June 11, 2017, http://publicshaming.tumblr.com/post/52763976629/racist-basketball-fans- pissed-a-mexican-american.

239 seconds. Racists now have a medium to openly express themselves and demean marginalized groups. On the other hand, it allows people to intervene instantaneously through the same methods when there is an offensive or demeaning portrayal and it gives knowledgeable people an avenue to attempt to educate these individuals, although usually unsuccessfully, on their inaccuracies. Today marginalized groups have more access and power to intervene than they had in the past decades as shown by this dissertation. Technology has brought more tools of protest than activists of the past could have imagined, but many of the stereotypes and caricatures remain despite this progressive step.

Both Anthony and de la Cruz defended themselves in the press to these unfounded allegations of illegality or unpatriotic behavior. Anthony spoke out: “to set the record straight, I was born and raised in New York, you can’t get more New York than me.”3 De la Cruz defended his choice of attire saying that the outfit represented his identity: “[I wear the charro outfit] because it shows my culture, it’s a part of my life. It’s a part of me, actually.”4 He also defended his right to sing the anthem, “They don’t know my life. My father was actually in the Navy for a really long time… People don’t know, they just assume that I’m just Mexican. But I’m not from

Mexico, I’m from San Antonio born and raised…”5 Viewers accused these two individuals of not being American enough, even though they both received this criticism because they sang patriotic American songs. These episodes demonstrated that American national symbols, and effectively social citizenship and acceptance, were only available to a limited portion of the population and Latinos were not given that access, not even in 2013.

3 Carolina Moreno, “Marc Anthony Addresses ‘God Bless America’ Performances’ Racist Remarks After MLB All- Star Game,” The Huffington Post, July 18, 2013, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/18/marc-anthony-god- bless-america_n_3618420.html. 4 Carolina Moreno, “Sebastien De La Cruz: Racism on Twitter Helped Me Showcase Mexican Culture,” The Huffington Post, June 18, 2013, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/18/sebastien-de-la-cruz- racism_n_3462075.html. 5 Roque Planas, “Watch Sebastien De La Cruz Sing The National Anthem Way Better Than the Haters on Twitter,” June 12, 2013, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/12/sebastien-de-la-cruz-national-anthem_n_3429385.html.

240 The controversies surrounding Anthony’s and de la Cruz’s performances reveal many of the issues present throughout the course of this dissertation. Latinos are still defending their cultural identities and their place in American society. Their appearances and names marked them as non-white, and hence not American. De la Cruz and Anthony experienced this rejection in public ways and had to defend their right to belong to the nation of their birth. Although “born and raised in San Antonio,” as Sebastien de la Cruz said in an interview to disarm critics, viewers did not see him as American because he had brown skin and wore an “ethnic” outfit. In

Anthony’s case, one Twitter user, Josh Turnock, was outraged an American did not sing “God

Bless America.” Another user corrected him; Anthony was in fact from New York. Josh perplexed, said he didn’t look like it and wondered, “what is the world coming to now-a- days…”6 To people like Josh, Americans were supposed to look a certain way, namely not brown. Anthony’s “Americaness” again taps into a long history of mainstream popular culture depicting Puerto Ricans particularly as foreigners even though they had American legal citizenship since 1917. The irony is also that Latinos were even excluded from the stage of an event in which the majority of players have been Latinos or Latin Americans since the sport began in the nineteenth century.7 These two situations also help to illuminate Mae Ngai’s argument in contemporary society that certain groups of people, no matter what they do, will always be “alien citizens.” In both cases the singers had to defend their “Americanness,” their right to be here, their right to participate in American mainstream culture. De la Cruz even invoked the age-old justification for inclusion, military service, by mentioning it right away in his response to the media that his father was in the Navy.

6 Public Shaming, “Baseball Fans SUPER ANGRY…” 7 Adrian Burgos, Playing America’s Game: Baseball, Latinos, and the Color Line (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2007).

241 The cases of Anthony and de la Cruz serve as contemporary examples of how popular culture intersects with ideas of belonging, national identity, and representation. From the 1930s to the 1980s, popular culture provided a significant opportunity for Latinos to examine these matters. Popular culture carries authority and legitimacy, has the ability to entrench stereotypes into the national discourse, and can serve as an avenue for change. People form their prejudices from the images and discussions they experience in popular culture. Although there are laws in place to combat open discrimination and racism, popular culture gives individuals justifications for their misfortunes or their country’s woes. Popular culture affects and influences policy. The spread of ideas that Mexicans, for example, are all rapists and criminals makes it easier to justify mass deportation of a particular group. Popular culture remains a relevant barometer of the political and social historical moment and also determines who does and does not belong in a given nation at a given time.

This dissertation showed representations of Latinos in film, television, advertising, and in the press and demonstrated how they have changed over time. From images of the Good

Neighbor, to the Cold War Latin, to the “wetback,” to the gang member, to the radical and beyond, Latinos navigated through these images and responded in myriad ways from subtle challenges through humor to public protests. The historical context affected how they responded through the course of the twentieth century. While it was difficult for Desi Arnaz to take a stand during the Cold War, if he had wanted to, Freddie Prinze was able to engage in a more public contestation of his position as a Latino man two decades later. Marc Anthony and Sebastien de la

Cruz demonstrated how Latinos could now respond quickly to the ignorance and inaccuracies surrounding Latino people. This dissertation also contributed to a new national narrative of

American history that brings Latinos into the narrative and illuminates their struggle to define

242 who they are and where they belong. Latinos defended, and continue to defend, their claim to

American social citizenship.

243 Bibliography

PRIMARY SOURCES

Archives American Comedy Archives, Emerson College, Boston, Massachusetts The Bill Dana Oral History Collection

Archive of American Television, http://www.emmytvlegends.org

Center for Puerto Rican Studies Library and Archives, Hunter College, New York, New York Records of United Bronx Parents, Inc., 1966-1989

Chicano Studies Research Center, University of California, Los Angeles The Carlos Vasquez Papers

Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library and Museum National Security Files Office files of Harry McPherson White House Central Files Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Interagency Committee on Mexican American Affairs

John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston, Massachusetts White House Central Subject Files, Country Files: Cuba

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Manuscript Division Edward L. Bernays Papers Prints and Photographs Division

National Archives, College Park, Maryland Records of the U.S. Information Agency (USIA)

Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, Yorba Linda, California White House Central Files: Subject Files, HU (Human Rights)

Franklin D. Roosevelt Library and Museum Website President's Secretary's File (PSF) Diplomatic Correspondence State Department

University of California, Los Angeles, California Chicano Studies Research Center The Carlos Vasquez Papers UCLA Film and Television Archive

University of Notre Dame, North Bend, Indiana

244 Institute for Latino Studies Julian Samora Library Gilberto Cárdenas Papers

University of Texas, Austin, Texas Benson Latin American Collection Domingo Nick Reyes Papers Julian Samora Papers George I. Sánchez Papers R.P. (Bob) Sánchez Papers LULAC Archives Ruben Bonilla Collection Refugio Lozano Collection

University of Texas, San Antonio, Texas Libraries Special Collections Albert A. Peña, Jr. Papers

The Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, Madison, Wisconsin. Hal Kanter Papers

Newspapers, Periodicals, and Other News Sources Advertising Age The American Magazine Boca Raton News Chicago Tribune Cosmopolitan Daily News (Bowling Green, Kentucky) Daily Variety Holiday The Huffington Post Kentucky New Era (Hopkinsville, Kentucky) Life Look The Los Angeles Times The Nation The New Republic The New York Times Newsweek Observer-Reporter (Washington, Pennsylvania) Park City Daily (Bowling Green, Kentucky) Rolling Stone Sarasota Journal (Sarasota, Florida) The Southeast Missourian (Cape Girardeau, Missouri) Star-News (Wilmington, North Carolina) St. Joseph News-Press (St. Joseph, Missouri)

245 St. Petersburg Times (St. Petersburg, Florida) Time T.V. Guide Variety The Washington Post The Worker

Films and Other Visual Media Bordertown (1935) The Girl from Mexico (1939) Mexican Spitfire (1940) Week End in Havana (1941) Saludos Amigos (1942) Three Caballeros (1944) Border Incident (1949) Neptune’s Daughter (1949) Latin Lovers (1953) Wetbacks or Espaldas Mojadas (1953) Salt of the Earth (1954) Giant (1956) Cry Tough (1959) Young Savages (1961) West Side Story (1961) Popi (1969) Badge 373 (1973) Unwanted (1975) Fort Apache, the Bronx (1981) “The Frito Bandito Corn Chips Song.” YouTube video. Posted by Danny Davis. June 28, 2011. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbYj7ZyqjYY.

Television Series Alcoa Hour Chico and the Man I Love Lucy Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color

Government and Corporate Publications Calhoun, Lillian and Ron Arias. “The Coming Black/Hispanic Coalition.” In the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights’ Perspectives: The Civil Rights Quarterly 12, no. 1 (Spring 1980): 12-18.

Films and Broadcasts Demeaning Ethnic, Racial, or Religious Groups: Hearing on H.R. H. Con. Res. 262 and H. Con. Res. 304, Before the Subcommittee on Communications and Power of the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, 91st Cong. (1970).

246 Films and Broadcasts Demeaning Ethnic, Racial, or Religious Groups-1971: Hearing on H.R. H. Con. Res. 9 and H. Con. Res. 182, Before the Subcommittee on Communications and Power of the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, 92nd Cong. (1971).

Martinez, Thomas M. “How Advertisers Promote Racism.” Civil Rights Digest. United States Civil Rights Commission (1969): 5-11.

The Middle America Information Bureau. Activities Program for Women’s Organizations. New York, NY: United Fruit Company, 1948. ______. Every American has a Personal Stake in Our Relations with Middle America. New York, NY: United Fruit Company, 1945. _____. Middle America and the United States: Their Interdependence. New York, NY: United Fruit Company, 1943.

Office of Youth Development (U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare). “IMAGE: Involvement of Mexican-Americans in Gainful Endeavors.” Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1973.

“Red Movie in Making.” Congressional Record, 83rd Cong., First Session: 1371-1372 (1953).

Taylor, Paul, Mark Hugo Lopez, Jessica Martínez, and Gabriel Velasco. “When Labels Don’t Fit: Hispanics and Their Views of Identity.” Pew Research Center. April 4, 2012. http://www.pewhispanic.org/2012/04/04/when-labels-dont-fit-hispanics-and-their-views- of-identity/.

United States Commission on Civil Rights. “Puerto Ricans in the Continental United States: An Uncertain Future.” A Report of the United States Commission on Civil Rights. Washington, D.C., 1976.

United States Commission on Civil Rights. Window Dressing on the Set: Women and Minorities in Television. Washington, DC: United States Commission on Civil Rights, 1977.

U.S. Government Publishing Office. “Proclamation 3869, National Hispanic Heritage Week, 1968.” http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/STATUTE-82/pdf/STATUTE-82-Pg1649.pdf.

Memoirs and Miscellaneous Allen, Steve. Hi-Ho, Steverino! My Adventures in the Wonderful Wacky World of TV. Fort Lee, NJ: Barricade Books, Inc., 1992.

Arnaz, Desi. A Book. New York: Warner Books, Inc., 1976.

Ball, Lucille. Love, Lucy. New York, NY: Berkley Boulevard Books, 1997.

Biberman, Herbert. Salt of the Earth: The Story of a Film. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1965.

Ferber, Edna. Giant. New York, NY: Double Day, 1952.

247

Guerrant, Edward O. Roosevelt’s Good Neighbors. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1950.

Kid’s Commercials from the Golden Age of Television, volume 4. Seattle, WA: Something Weird Video, Inc., 2004. DVD.

Lewels, Jr., Francisco J. The Uses of the Media by the Chicano Movement. New York, NY: Praeger Publishers, 1974.

Montalbán, Ricardo. Reflections: A Life in Two Worlds. Garden City, NJ: Doubleday, 1980.

Morales, Iris. “¡Palante, Siempre Palante!, Interview with Richie Pérez.” Centro Journal 21, no. 2 (Fall 2009): 142-157.

Moreno, Rita. Rita Moreno: A Memoir. New York, NY: Celebra, 2013.

Moreno, Rita. “Rita Moreno reflects on Anita, Awards and Accents.” By Rachel Martin. NPR Weekend Edition Sunday on National Public Radio. March 7, 2013. http://www.npr.org/2013/03/10/173726066/rita-moreno-reflects-on-anita-awards-and- accents

Moreno, Rita and Marni Nixon. “Actress Rita Moreno and Vocalist Marni Nixon.” By Terry Gross. Fresh Air on National Public Radio. October 25, 2001. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1236303.

Moreno, Rita, George Chakiris, and Misha Berson. “‘West Side Story’ Film Still Pretty, And Witty, At 50.” By Neal Conan. Talk of the Nation on National Public Radio. October 17, 2011. http://www.npr.org/2011/10/17/141427333/west-side-story-still-pretty-and-witty- at-50.

Paz, Octavio. The Labyrinth of Solitude: Life and Thought in Mexico. Translated by Lysander Kemp. New York, NY: Grove Press, Inc., 1961.

Public Shaming. “Racist Basketball Fans PISSED a Mexican-American Boy Dared to Sing Their National Anthem.” Tumblr post. June 11, 2017. http://publicshaming.tumblr.com/post/52763976629/racist-basketball-fans-pissed-a- mexican-american. _____. “Baseball Fans SUPER ANGRY Hispanic American Superstar Sang ‘God Bless America’ at All-Star Game.” Tumblr post. July 17, 2013. http://publicshaming.tumblr.com/day/2013/07/17.

Quinn, Anthony. The Original Sin: A Self-Portrait. Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company, 1972.

248 Rendon, Armando and Domingo Nick Reyes. Chicanos in the Mass Media, Brown Position Paper No.1, National Mexican American Anti-Defamation Committee, Inc., (1971).

Stegner, Wallace and the editors of Look. One Nation. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1945.

Wylie, Phillip. Generation of Vipers, rev. ed. 1942; repr., New York: Rinehart & Company, Inc., 1955.

SECONDARY SOURCES

Dissertations and Theses Bender, Pennee. “Film as an Instrument of the Good Neighbor Policy, 1930s-1950s.” PhD diss., New York University, 2002.

Castro, Mauricio Fernando. “Casablanca of the Caribbean: Cuban Refugees, Local Power, and Cold War Policy in Miami, 1959-1995.” PhD diss., Purdue University, 2015.

Peterson, Gigi. “Grassroots Good Neighbors: Connections between Mexican and U.S. Labor and Civil Rights Activists, 1936-1945.” Ph.D. diss., University of Washington, 1998.

Books, Articles, and Chapters Abreu, Christina D. Rhythms of Race: Cuban Musicians and the Making of Latino New York City and Miami, 1940-1960. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2015.

Alba, Ben. Inventing the Late Night: Steve Allen and the Original Tonight Show. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2005.

Alicea, John and Carlos Velasquez. 50 Years of The Puerto Rican Day Parade. New York, NY: Galos Publishing, 2007.

Anderson, Carol. Eyes off the Prize: The United Nations and the African American Struggle for Human Rights, 1944-55. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Andrews, Bart. The “I Love Lucy” Book. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1985.

Ayala, César J. and Rafael Bernabe. Puerto Rico in the American Century: A History Since 1898. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2007.

Baker, Ellen R. On Strike and on Film: Mexican American Families and Blacklisted Filmmakers in Cold War America. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2007.

Balderrama, Francisco E. and Raymond Rodríguez. Decade of Betrayal: Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2006.

249 Balogh, Brian. The Associational State: American Governance in the Twentieth Century. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015.

Barnouw, Erik. Tube of Plenty: The Evolution of American Television, 2nd ed. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1990.

Barrett, James R. The Irish Way: Becoming American in the Multiethnic City. New York, NY: Penguin Press, 2012.

Baughman, James L. Same Time, Same Station: Creating American Television, 1948-1961. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007.

Baxter, Monique James. “Giant Helps America Recognize the Cost of Discrimination: A Lesson of World War II.” In Hollywood’s West: The American Frontier in Film, Television, & History edited by Peter C. Rollins and John E. O’Connor. Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 2005.

Bederman, Gail. Manliness & Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1995.

Belmonte, Laura A. Selling the American Way: U.S. Propaganda and the Cold War. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008.

Beltrán, Mary C. Latino/a Stars in U.S. Eyes: The Making and Meanings of Film and TV Stardom. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2009.

Benshoff, Harry M. and Sean Griffin. America on Film: Representing Race, Class, Gender and Sexuality at the Movies. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2004.

Berson, Misha. Something’s Coming, Something Good: West Side Story and the American Imagination. Milwaukee, WI: Applause Theatre and Cinema Books, 2011.

Berumen, Frank Javier Garcia. Brown Celluloid: Latino/a Film Icons and Images in the Hollywood Film Industry, vol. I: 1894–1959. New York, NY: Vantage Press, Inc., 2003.

Bon Tempo, Carl. Americans at the Gate: The United States and Refugees during the Cold War. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008.

Borstlemann, Thomas. The Cold War and the Color Line: American Race Relations in the Global Arena. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003.

Brewer, Stewart. Borders and Bridges: A History of U.S.-Latin American Relations. Westport, CT: Praeger Security International, 2006.

Briggs, Laura. Reproducing Empire: Race, Sex, Science, and U.S. Imperialism in Puerto Rico. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002.

250

Brundage, W. Fitzhugh, ed. Beyond Blackface: African Americans and the Creation of American Popular Culture, 1890-1930. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2011.

Burgos, Adrian. Playing America’s Game: Baseball, Latinos, and the Color Line. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2007.

Burton, Julianne. “Don (Juanito) Duck and the Imperial-Patriarchal Unconscious: Disney Studios, the Good Neighbor Policy, and the Packaging of Latin America.” In Nationalisms and Sexualities edited by Andrew Parker, Mary Russo, Doris Sommer, and Patricia Yaeger. New York, NY: Routledge, 1992.

Butler, Judith. “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory.” Theatre Journal 3, no.1 (December 1988): 519-531.

Calderón-Zaks, Michael. “Debated Whiteness amid World Events: Mexican and Mexican- American Subjectivity and the U.S.’ Relations with the Americas, 1924-1936.” Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos 27, no. 2 (Summer 2011): 325-259.

Chapman, Erin. Prove It On Me: New Negroes, Sex, and Popular Culture in the 1920s. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2012.

Chávez, Ernesto. ¡Mi Raza Primero!: Nationalism, Identity, and Insurgency in the Chicano Movement in Los Angeles, 1966-1978. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002.

Ciarlo, David. Advertising Empire: Race and Visual Culture in Imperial Germany. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011.

Colby, Jason M. The Business of Empire: United Fruit, Race, and U.S. Expansion in Central America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011.

Cortés, Carlos E. “Chicanas in Film: History of an Image.” In Latin Looks: Images of Latinas and Latinos in the U.S. Media edited by Clara E. Rodríguez. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998.

Cull, Nicholas J. and Davíd Carrasco, eds. Alambrista and the U.S.-Mexico Border: Film, Music, and Stories of Undocumented Immigrants. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2004.

Davis, Jeffery. Children’s Television, 1947-1990: Over 200 Series, Game and Variety Shows, Cartoons, Educational Programs and Specials. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995.

251 Davis, Madelyn Pugh. Laughing with Lucy: My Life with America’s Leading Lady of Comedy. Cincinnati, OH: Emmis Books, 2005.

Delgado, Humberto and Lorna Veraldi. “¿Qué Pasa, USA?” Television Quarterly 37, no.2 (Winter 2007): 47-52.

Desjardins, Mary. “Lucy and Desi: Sexuality, Ethnicity, and TV’s First Family.” In Television, History, and American Culture: Feminist Critical Essays edited by Mary Beth Haralovich and Lauren Rabinovitz. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999.

Dittmer, John. Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1994.

Doherty, Thomas. Cold War, Cool Medium: Television, McCarthyism, and American Culture. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2003.

Drummond, Phillip. High Noon. London: BFI Publishing, 1997.

Duany, Jorge. The Puerto Rican Nation on the Move: Identities on the Island and in the United States. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2002.

Dudizak, Mary. Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000.

Encarnacao, Jack. Legendary Locals of Quincy, Massachusetts. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2014.

Enck-Wanzer, Darrel ed. The Young Lords: A Reader. New York, NY: New York University Press, 2010.

Endy, Christopher. Cold War Holidays: American Tourism in France. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2004.

Fernández, Celestino. “Newspaper Coverage of Undocumented Mexican Immigration during the 1970s: A Qualitative Analysis of Pictures and Headings.” In History, Culture, and Society: Chicano Studies in the 1980s edited by the National Association for Chicano Studies. Ypsilanti, MI: Bilingual Press, 1983.

Fernández, Lilia. Brown in the Windy City: Mexicans and Puerto Ricans in Postwar Chicago. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2012.

Fojas, Camilla. Islands of Empire: Pop Culture and U.S. Power. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2014.

Foley, Neil. Mexicans in the Making of America. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014.

252 _____. Quest for Equality: The Failed Promise of Black-Brown Solidarity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010.

Friedman, Monroe. Consumer Boycotts: Effecting Change through the Marketplace and the Media. New York, NY: Routledge, 1999.

García, Ignacio M. White but not Equal: Mexican Americans, Jury Discrimination, and the Supreme Court. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 2009. _____. Chicanismo: The Forging of a Militant Ethos among Mexican Americans. Tucson, AZ: The University of Arizona Press, 1997.

García, Juan Ramon. Operation Wetback: The Mass Deportation of Mexican Undocumented Workers in 1954. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1980.

García, Mario T. Mexican Americans: Leadership, Ideology, and Identity, 1930-1960. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991.

García, Mario T. and Sal Castro, Blowout!: Sal Castro and the Chicano Struggle for Educational Justice. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2011.

García, Richard A. “The Mexican American Mind: A Product of the 1930s.” In History, Culture, and Society: Chicano Studies in the 1980s edited by the National Association for Chicano Studies, 67-93.Ypsilanti, MI: Bilingual Press, 1983.

Genovese, Eugene D. Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made. New York, NY: Vintage, 1976.

Gerstle, Gary. American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001.

Gilbert, James. Men in the Middle: Searching for Masculinity in the 1950s. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2005.

Goeser, Caroline. Picturing the New Negro: Harlem Renaissance Print Culture and Modern Black Identity. Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas, 2007.

Gómez-Quiñones, Juan. Chicano Politics: Reality and Promise, 1940-1990. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1990.

González, Juan. Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America. New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2001.

González, Juan and Joseph Torres. News for All the People: The Epic Story of Race and the American Media. New York, NY: Verso, 2011.

González-Pando, Miguel. The Cuban Americans. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998.

253

Graham, Allison. Framing the South: Hollywood, Television, and Race during the Civil Rights Struggle. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University, 2001.

Grandin, Greg. Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism. New York, NY: Henry Holt and Company, 2006. _____.“Can the Subaltern Be Seen? Photography and the Affects of Nationalism.” The Hispanic American Historical Review 84, no. 1 (February 2004): 83-111.

Gratton, Brian and Emily Merchant. “Immigration, Repatriation, and Deportation: The Mexican- Origin Population in the United States, 1920-1950.” International Migration Review 47, no. 4 (December 2013): 944-975.

Griswold del Castillo, Richard. “Civil Rights on the Home Front: Leaders and Organizations.” In World War II and Mexican American Civil Rights edited by Richard Griswold del Castillo. Austin, TX: University of Texas, 2008.

Gutiérrez, David G. “Sin Fronteras?: Chicanos, Mexican Americans, and the Emergence of the Contemporary Mexican Immigration Debate, 1968-1978,” In Between Two Worlds: Mexican Immigrants in the United States edited by David G. Gutiérrez. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, Inc., 1996. _____. Walls and Mirrors: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and the Politics of Ethnicity. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1995.

Guglielmo, Thomas A. “Fighting for Caucasian Rights: Mexicans, Mexican Americans, and the Transnational Struggle for Civil Rights in World War II Texas.” The Journal of American History 92 no.4 (March 2006): 1212-38.

Habell-Pallan, Michelle and Mary Romero. Latino/a Popular Culture. New York, NY: New York University Press, 2002.

Halberstam, David. The Fifties. New York, NY: Fawcett Columbine Books, 1993.

Hale, Grace Elizabeth. Making Whiteness: The Culture of Segregation in the South, 1890-1940. New York, NY: Pantheon Books, 1998.

Harris, Warren G. Lucy & Desi: The Legendary Love Story of Television’s Most Famous Couple. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 1991.

Helford, Elyce Rae. “What is the significance of Helen Ramirez in ‘High Noon’?.” January 11, 2016. http://screenprism.com/insights/article/what-is-the-significance-of-helen-ramirez- in-high-noon.

Hendler, Jane. Best-Sellers and Their Film Adaptations in Postwar America: From Here to Eternity, Sayonara, Giant, Auntie Mame, Peyton Place. New York, NY: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., 2001.

254

Hershfield, Joanne. “Race and Ethnicity in Classical Cinema.” In Mexico’s Cinema: A Century of Film and Filmmakers edited by Joanne Hershfield and David R. Maciel. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, Inc., 1999.

Hoganson, Kristin. Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender Politics Provoked the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000.

Jacobson, Matthew Frye. Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998.

Johnson, Walter. Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.

Jones, Gerard. Honey, I’m Home! Sitcoms: Selling the American Dream. New York, NY: Grove Weidenfield, 1992.

Joseph, Gilbert M., Catherine C. LeGrand, and Ricardo D. Salvatore, eds. Close Encounters of Empire: Writing the Cultural History of U.S.-Latin American Relations. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998.

Kaiser, Charles. The Gay Metropolis, 1940-1996. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company.

Kaplowitz, Craig A. LULAC, Mexican Americans and National Policy. College Station, TX: Texas A & M University Press, 2005.

Kelley, Robin G. Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012.

Kibler, M. Alison. Censoring Racial Ridicule: Irish, Jewish, and African American Struggles over Race and Representation, 1890-1930. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2015.

Kiser, George C. and Martha Woody Kiser, eds. Mexican Workers in the United States: Historical and Political Perspectives. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1979.

Klein, Christina. Cold War Orientalism: Asia in the Middlebrow Imagination, 1945-1961. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003.

Kurashige, Scott. The Shifting Grounds of Race: Black and Japanese Americans in the Making of Multiethnic Los Angeles. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008.

255 Lee, Sonia Song-Ha. Building a Latino Civil Rights Movement: Puerto Ricans, African Americans, and the Pursuit of Racial Justice in New York City. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2014.

Leibman, Nina C. Living Room Lectures: The Fifties Family in Film and Television. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1995.

Leininger Pycior, Julie. “From Hope to Frustration: Mexican Americans and Lyndon Johnson in 1967.” The Western History Association 24, no. 4, (November 1993): 469-494.

Lentz, Richard and Karla K. Gower. The Opinions of Mankind: Racial Issues, Press, and Propaganda in the Cold War. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2010.

Lewthwaite, Stephanie. Race, Place and Reform in Mexican Los Angeles: A Transnational Perspective, 1890-1940. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 2009.

Linder, Laura R. “From Ozzie to Ozzy: The Reassuring Nonevolution of the Sitcom Family,” in The Sitcom Reader: America Viewed and Skewed edited by Mary M. Dalton and Laura R. Linder. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2005.

Mariscal, George. Brown-Eyed Children of the Sun: Lessons from the Chicano Movement, 1965- 1975. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2005.

May, Elaine Tyler. Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era. New York, NY: Basic Books, 1988.

Mazon, Mauricio. The Zoot-Suit Riots: The Psychology of Symbolic Annihilation. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1984.

McAlister, Melani. Epic Encounters: Culture, Media, and U.S. Interests in the Middle East, 1945-2000. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001.

McCann, Bryan. Hello, Hello Brazil: Popular Music in the Making of Modern Brazil. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004.

Meier, Matt S. and Feliciano Ribera. Mexican Americans-American Mexicans: From Conquistadors to Chicanos. New York, NY: Hill and Wang, 1993.

Merrill, Dennis. Negotiating Paradise: U.S. Tourism and Empire in Twentieth-Century Latin America. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2009.

Mintz, Steven and Susan Kellogg. Domestic Revolutions: A Social History of American Family Life. New York, NY: The Free Press, 1988.

Mize, Ronald L. and Alicia C.S. Swords. Consuming Mexican Labor: From the Bracero Program to NAFTA. North York, Ontario: University of Toronto Press, 2011.

256

Molina, Natalia. How Race is Made in America: Immigration, Citizenship, and the Historical Power of Racial Scripts. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2014.

Monsiváis, Carlos. “Cantinflas and Tin Tan: Mexico’s Greatest Comedians.” In Mexico’s Cinema: A Century of Film and Filmmakers edited by Joanne Hershfield and David R. Maciel. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, Inc., 1999.

Montgomery, Kathryn C. Target: Prime Time, Advocacy Groups and the Struggle over Entertainment Television. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1989.

Mora, Carl J. Mexican Cinema: Reflections of a Society, 1896-2004, 3rd ed. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2005.

Mora, G. Cristina. Making Hispanics: How Activists, Bureaucrats, and Media Constructed a New American. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2014.

Morella, Joe and Edward Z. Epstein. Forever Lucy: The Life of Lucille Ball. New York, NY: Berkley Books, 1986.

Mraz, John. Looking for Mexico: Modern Visual Culture and National Identity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009.

Muhammad, Khalil Gibran. The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010.

Negrón-Muntaner, Frances. Boricua Pop: Puerto Ricans and the Latinization of American Culture. New York, NY: New York University Press, 2004.

Nelson, Jennifer. Women of Color and the Reproductive Rights Movement. New York, NY: New York University Press, 2003.

Ngai, Mae. Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and The Making of Modern America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004.

Noriega, Chon A. Shot in America: Television, The State, and the Rise of Chicano Cinema. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2000. _____. “Citizen Chicano: The Trials and Titillations of Ethnicity in the American Cinema, 1935- 1962.” Social Research 58, no. 2 (Summer 1991): 413-438.

O’Neil, Brian. “The Demands of Authenticity: Addison Durland and Hollywood’s Latin Images during World War II.” In Classic Hollywood, Classic Whiteness edited by Daniel Bernardi. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2001.

Oppenheimer, Jess and Gregg Oppenheimer. Laughs, Luck…and Lucy: How I Came to Create the Most Popular Sitcom of All Time. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1996.

257

Ovalle, Priscilla Peña. Dance and the Hollywood Latina: Race, Sex, and Stardom. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2011.

Overmyer-Velázquez, Mark. Visions of the Emerald City: Modernity, Tradition, and the Formation of Porfirian Oaxaca, Mexico. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006.

Padilla, Felix M. Latino Ethnic Consciousness: The Case of Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans in Chicago. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1985.

Pérez, Jr., Louis A. Cuba in the American Imagination: Metaphor and the Imperial Ethos. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2008. _____. Cuba: Between Reform and Revolution. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2006. _____. On Becoming Cuban: Identity, Nationality, and Culture. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1999.

Pérez, Raúl. “Brownface Minstrelsy: ‘José Jiménez,’ the Civil Rights Movement, and the legacy of racist comedy.” Ethnicities (2014): 1-28.

Pérez, Richie. “Committee Against Fort Apache: The Bronx Mobilizes Against a Multinational Media.” In Cultures in Contention edited by Douglas Kahn and Diane Neumaier. Seattle, WA: The Real Comet Press, 1985.

Pérez Firmat, Gustavo. Life on the Hyphen: The Cuban-American Way. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1994.

Peters, Gerhard and John T. Woolley. “Franklin D. Roosevelt: Inaugural Address, March 4, 1933.” The American Presidency Project. Accessed March 10, 2017. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=14473.

Pettit, Arthur G. Images of the Mexican American in Fiction and Film. College Station, TX: Texas A & M University Press, 1980.

Pike, Frederick B. FDR’s Good Neighbor Policy: Sixty Years of Generally Gentle Chaos. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1995.

Porter, Stephen R. Benevolent Empire: U.S. Power, Humanitarianism, and the World’s Dispossessed. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017.

Ramírez Berg, Charles. Latino Images in Film: Stereotypes, Subversion, & Resistance. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2002.

Renda, Mary A. Taking Haiti: Military Occupation and the Culture of U.S. Imperialism, 1915– 1940. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2001.

258 Rivero, Yeidy M. “¿Qué Pasa, U.S.A.?” In Encyclopedia of Latinos and Latinas in the United States, vol. 3 edited by Suzanne Oboler and Deena J. González. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Roediger, David R. The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class. Brooklyn, NY: Verso, 2007.

Rodríguez, Clara E. Heroes, Lovers, and Others: The Story of Latinos in Hollywood. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Books, 2004.

Rodríguez, Marc Simon. Rethinking the Chicano Movement. New York, NY: Routledge, 2015.

Rossinow, Doug. The Politics of Authenticity: Liberalism, Christianity, and the New Left in America. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1998.

Ruiz, Jason. Americans in the Treasure House: Travel to Porfirian Mexico and Cultural Politics of Empire. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2014.

Sadlier, Darlene J. Americans All: Good Neighbor Cultural Diplomacy in World War II. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2012.

Salwen, Michael B. and Gonzalo R. Soruco. “The Hispanic Americans.” In U.S. News Coverage of Racial Minorities: A Sourcebook, 1934-1996 edited by Beverly Ann Deepe Keever, Carolyn Martindale, and Mary Ann Weston. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1997.

Sánchez, George J. Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900-1945. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.

Sanders, Coyne Steven and Tom Gilbert. Desilu: The Story of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. Chicago, IL: Chicago Review Press, 2001.

Sandoval-Sánchez, Alberto. José, Can You See? Latinos On and Off Broadway. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1999. _____. “West Side Story: A Puerto Rican Reading of ‘America.’” In Latin Looks: Images of Latinas and Latinos in the U.S. Media edited by Clara E. Rodríguez. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998.

Schwartz, Rosalie. Pleasure Island: Tourism and Temptation in Cuba. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1997.

Self, Robert O. All in the Family: The Realignment of American Democracy Since the 1960s. New York, NY: Hill and Wang, 2012.

Selig, Diana. Americans All: The Cultural Gifts Movement. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008.

259 Spigel, Lynn. Make Room for TV: Television and the Family Ideal in Postwar America. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1992.

Sokol, Jason. There Goes My Everything: White Southerners in the Age of Civil Rights, 1945- 1975. New York, NY: Knopf, 2006.

Stavans, Ilan and Frederick L. Aldama. Muy Pop! Conversations on Latino Popular Culture. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2013.

Steele, Richard. “The Federal Government Discovers Mexican Americans.” In World War II and Mexican American Civil Rights edited by Richard Griswold del Castillo. Austin, TX: University of Texas, 2008. _____. “Violence in Los Angeles: Sleepy Lagoon, the Zoot-Suit Riots, and the Liberal Response.” In World War II and Mexican American Civil Rights edited by Richard Griswold del Castillo. Austin, TX: University of Texas, 2008.

Stern, Alexandra Minna. Eugenic Nation: Faults and Frontiers of Better Breeding in Modern America. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005.

Stuckey, Mary E. The Good Neighbor: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Rhetoric of American Power. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2013.

Sublette, Ned. Cuba and its Music. Chicago, IL: Chicago Review Press, 2004.

Thompson, Lanny. Imperial Archipelago: Representation and Rule in the Insular Territories under U.S. Dominion after 1898. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press, 2010.

Tirado, Miguel David. “Mexican Americans Community Political Organization: ‘The Key to Chicano Political Power.’” Aztlán 1, no. 1 (1970): 53-78.

Tye, Larry. The Father of the Spin: Edward L. Bernays and the Father of Public Relations. New York, NY: Henry Holt and Company, 1998.

Tyrrell, Ian. Reforming the World: The Creation of America’s Moral Empire. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010.

Von Eschen, Penny. Satchmo Blows Up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004. _____. Race Against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism, 1937-57. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997.

Wells, Elizabeth A. West Side Story: Cultural Perspectives on an American Musical. Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 2011.

Wilson II, Clint C. and Félix Gutiérrez. Minorities and Media: The Diversity and the End of Mass Communication. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1985.

260

Woll, Allen. The Latin Image in American Film. Los Angeles, CA: UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 1980.

Wu, Ellen D. The Color of Success: Asian Americans and the Origins of the Model Minority. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014.

261