Jorge Mauricio Espinoza, M.A

Home , Action hero, American Outlaws, Brave New World (Heroes), Deathtrap (plot device), El Gato Negro, El Mariachi

Inventing the Latino/a Hero: ‘Legality’ and the Representation of Latino/a Heroic Figures in U.S. Film, Television, and Comics

Dissertation

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University

Jorge Mauricio Espinoza, M.A.

Graduate Program in Spanish and Portuguese

The Ohio State University

2015

Dissertation Committee:

Ignacio Corona, Advisor

Frederick Aldama

Guisela Latorre

Laura Podalsky

Mauricio Espinoza

2015

Abstract

The heroic narratives appearing in U.S. popular culture have been traditionally dominated by Anglo characters, with limited spaces for the representation of ethnic minorities. When they do appear in these narratives, ethnic minorities typically occupy the roles of subservient sidekicks or stereotyped villains—whose main functions, respectively, are to aid the Anglo hero in his pursuits and to serve as cannon fodder in order to highlight his superiority. While few in number, the presence of ethnic minority heroes in popular culture narratives becomes important for examining and understanding the limitations and possibilities of positive portrayals by and about members of historically marginalized communities in the United States.

Inventing the Latino/a Hero explores the historical representation of U.S. Latino/a heroic figures and heroism discourses in film, television, and comics. This study concentrates on hero narratives that directly explore, interrogate, or wrestled with the issue of legality, which is central to the construction of Latino/a heroes and their narratives’ relationship with ideology and power relations. In this regard, I contend that

Latino/a heroes either challenge the dominant, often oppressive system of U.S. law as they seek justice for their communities outside the legal apparatus; or operate as normative heroes who uphold and defend the U.S. legal establishment, obtaining their heroic status from such nationalist endeavors. The nature of the hero’s relationship with

legality has a profound impact on the way the hero is constructed and the type of ideology supported by the narrative. As a framework for studying these texts, I employ theoretical and analytical tools from narratology and social semiotics that address the way heroic narratives engage with ideology through their plots, character construction, and imagery.

Using these tools, I show that Latino/a heroes tend to be represented along a spectrum from resistance to Anglo domination and oppression to domestication of their most rebellious traits and cooption of their heroic attributes; that their portrayals range from affirmation and celebration of cultural markers of latinidad to the erasure of such signposts of ethnic difference; and that the representation of Latino/a heroes has significantly increased in the past three decades due, among other factors, to the opening of more spaces for minority portrayals in popular culture as a result of the rise of multiculturalism and the successful efforts of Latino/a artists and auteurs to create more nuanced characters (including females heroes) and to tell their own stories. Despite such progress, stereotypical and unidimensional depictions of Latinos/as still exist today, and their heroic representations are still dominated by heterenormative male characters.

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For Jordan and Kathryn

Acknowledgments

This dissertation is the culmination of a long and winding journey marked by my decision to attend graduate school on a part-time basis while working full-time at The

Ohio State University and raising two—not-so-small-now—children. Thanks to my wife,

Randi, for her support along this journey; and to our daughters, Jordan and Kathryn, for sharing insightful research time with me watching superhero cartoons and Zorro films. I would also like to thank my advisor, Ignacio Corona, who recruited me into the

Department of Spanish and Portuguese and has offered his valuable guidance and support all along the way. Along with Ignacio, the rest of my committee—Frederick Aldama,

Guisela Latorre, and Laura Podalsky—aided me tremendously in giving shape to this research project from its convoluted infancy. They are all extraordinary teachers and researchers. Finally, I would like to extend my gratitude to my work supervisors, Randy

Nemitz and Suzanne Steel, who encouraged my graduate school adventure and allowed me to have a flexible schedule for attending classes and conferences.

Portions of this dissertation were presented at several conferences, including the

First International Conference on the Day of the Dead in Miami in 2011 (a paper about El

Muerto), the 2012 Film and History Conference in Milwaukee (superheroes of film and

TV), and the 2014 MELUS Conference in Oklahoma City (family and heroism). Some of the topics explored in this project have also been published as individuals essays in

Hispanet Journal No. 4 (2011); Post Script: Essays in Film and the Humanities Vol. 33,

No. 3 (Summer 2014); Heroines of Comic Books and Literature (Rowman & Littlefield,

2014); and Graphic Borders: Latino Comic Books Past, Present, and Future (University of Texas Press, 2015).

Vita

1998……………………………………………………….B.A. Journalism/English and Electronic

Media Production, Ashland University

2011……………………………………...... M.A. Latin American Studies, The Ohio

State University

2005-present………………………………...... Graduate Student, Department of Spanish

and Portuguese, The Ohio State University

2003-present……………………………………………Editor, College of Food, Agricultural, and

Environmental Sciences, The Ohio State

University

Publications

Espinoza, Mauricio. “The Borderland Construction of Latin American and Latina Heroines in Contemporary Visual Media.” Heroines of Comic Books and Literature: Portrayals in Popular Culture. Eds. Maja Bajac-Carter, Norma Jones and Bob Batchelor. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2014. 81-93.

Espinoza, Mauricio. “Latino Advertising, Spanish-Language Media, and the Creation of a Pan-Ethnic Cultural Identity.” We Are What We Sell: How Advertising Shapes American Life… And Always Has. Vol. 2. Eds. Bob Batchelor and Danielle Sarver Coombs. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2014. 70-83.

Espinoza, Mauricio. “Latino/a Hero-Making in Robert Rodriguez’s Films: Identity and Ideology.” Post Script: Essays in Film and the Humanities 33.3 (Summer 2004): 73-84. vii

Espinoza-Quesada, Mauricio. “From ‘Mother/Land’ to ‘Woman/Nation’: Destabilizing Nation and Gender Structures in the Costa Rican Film El Camino.” Polifonía 1.1 (2012): 93-104.

Espinoza-Quesada, Mauricio. “Dawn of the Latino Zombie: Transnationalism, Spirituality, and Postcolonial Struggle in the Comic Book and Film El Muerto.” Hispanet Journal 4 (2011): 1-29.

Fields of Study

Major Field: Spanish and Portuguese

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Table of Contents

Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..... ii

Dedication…………………………………………………………………………………………………………... iv

Acknowledgments………………………………………………………………………………………………… v

Vita…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… vii

Introduction—The Latino/a Hero as a Sign of Historical and Ideological Struggle…….…. 1

Chapter 1—Guns and Horses: Resistance and Domestication in Latino/a Frontier

Hero Narratives…………………………………………………………………………………………………... 69

Chapter 2— Finding Justice Outside the Law: Modern Outlaws, Vigilantes, and the Politics of the Activist Hero…………………………………………………………………….. 140

Chapter 3—On the Border (of Chaos): Aliens, Monsters, Survival, and the

Precarious Nature of Legality in Supernatural Hero Narratives……………………………. 193

Chapter 4—Truth, Justice, and the (Anglo) American Way: Law-Enforcement

Latino/a Heroes and the Politics of Identity………………………………………………………….. 253

Conclusion—Legality and Latino/a Heroic Representation: Inevitable Linkage?...... 314

References………………………………………………………………………………………………………... 333

Introduction—The Latino/a Hero as a Sign of Historical and Ideological Struggle

In The Hero in America, a classical work on the subject of U.S. heroism and national ideals first published in 1941, social historian Dixon Wecter declared that “the hero is he whom every American should wish to be” (488). Those were the times of

Captain America and the War Word II warrior, of representations that portrayed the

American hero almost exclusively as white and male. Seven decades later, as 37% of the

U.S. population is comprised of minorities1 and spaces for their own cultural representation have increased, has the American hero changed alongside the country’s significant ethnic, racial, and cultural diversification? Do Americans of color see in this image of the hero the ideal of who they are and who they wish to be? If so, who are these minority heroes, what do they look like, and what purpose(s) do they serve? My dissertation project tackles these and other related questions by analyzing the historical construction of Latino/a heroic figures and heroism discourses in U.S. film, television shows, and comics. In doing so, I am interested in learning more about the cultural and ideological motivations involved in their production and the types of representations that they generate. I expect readers of this study to be able to better understand key issues of representation about and by Latinos/as in U.S. popular culture, as well as the processes of identity-formation involved in and aided by those discourses. I believe that studying the heroes of U.S. Latino/a communities as portrayed in popular culture is significant

1 According to U.S. Census population projections based on 2010 Census data, www.census.gov. 1

because the traits of those characters, the values they embody, and the struggles they are engaged in can reflect (as well as project) their respective communities’ cultural traits, shared values, and overall struggles—as well as their evolution over time. Studying these heroic figures can also reveal ways in which they have been coopted by Anglo dominant culture to establish or maintain control over potentially contestatory discourses or to disrupt alternative accounts of race, ethnic, and cultural relations.

Since heroism is a highly valued and pervasive cultural text in the U.S. imaginary, the presence or absence of Latino/a heroes, and the different ways in which they have been portrayed, can also shed light into the larger processes of Latino/a cultural representation in American history. Latino/a scholars have described how, since the nineteenth century, Hispanics (particularly Mexican-Americans) have been represented in

U.S. culture as an ethnic other, enduring a long history of abusive portrayals of them and their lifestyles (Fregoso xiv), being perceived and treated “as foreign peoples squatting within the United States” (Martín Alcoff 94), and being subjected to stereotypical renderings that cast them as ruthless bandits, lazy and backward people, dangerous revolutionaries, sexualized beings, and criminals, among many others (Ramírez Berg,

Latino Images in Film, 13-37; C. Rodríguez 2). In other cases, as Ignacio López-Calvo indicates, “worse than being ‘othered,’ they [Latinos/as] have been completely ignored” from the sphere of representation (14). At the same time, these and other scholars have shown how recent efforts by Latino/a artists and activists are seeking to correct this longstanding misrepresentation, generating cultural products and discourses that paint a more realistic vision of the Latino/a experience and offer oppositional forms of knowledge (Fregoso xv). A survey of Latino/a heroes, as proposed in this study, reveals

the presence and clash of both of these representational forces (stereotyping and resistance to stereotyping), adding to our understanding of Latino/a cultural representation in historical perspective.

My decision to concentrate on heroic figures represented in film, television shows, and comics is not one made at random. First, the selection of these specific popular culture texts will allow my analysis to zero in on the interplay between images and words (spoken or written) that is common to all of three of these genres. While

Latino/a heroes have also been represented in other literary, visual, and media products

(novels, art, murals, songs, news reports, etc.), the texts that I have selected allow for a more focused analysis on the processes of representation particular to visual narratives, from a narratological and semiotic perspective. Additionally, scholars of heroes and U.S. popular culture such as Lisa DeTora and Elizabeth Hirschman have identified film, television, and comics as the media par excellence where the “mythology of modern

American culture” is made and told (Hirschman 3-4). With this consideration as backdrop, it seems logical to scrutinize these three types of visual media to see to what extent they have contributed to the creation of a “Latino/a mythology” within U.S. culture—and what that mythology looks like. As I explain later in this introduction (see the section “Legality and Latino/a Heroes: The Intersection of Law and Cultural

Representation”), I have further refined the corpus of this dissertation by concentrating on heroic narratives in which the issues of legality and illegality is central to the construction of the hero and/or the ideological implications of the story. Additionally, in the context of this study, I define Latino/a heroes as characters of Hispanic/Latin

American descent, either fictional or based on real-life individuals, who are U.S.-born

citizens or who have immigrated to the United States. In other words, this study deals exclusively with U.S. Latinos/as and narratives about U.S. Latinos/as. Popular action films such as Mariachi and Desperado, directed by U.S. Latino auteur Robert Rodríguez and produced largely for circulation in the U.S. market, are excluded from analysis here because their heroes are Mexicans and their stories take place in Mexico. For an explanation of how heroes and heroism are defined in this dissertation and how Latino/a heroes fit within the pantheon of American heroism, see the section “Heroes and

Heroism: Definition and Contextualization” later on in this introduction.

I expect my dissertation to contribute to the debate surrounding Latino/a representation in the United States, at a moment in history when many aspects of Latino/a culture such as music, celebrities, and food are “hot” in this country (Dávila 1), while others, especially in the discourses of “illegal immigration” and “homeland security,” continue to generate heated nationalist rhetoric and even policies of exclusion and hate.

By inscribing Latinos/a in an iconography so prevalent in American culture as that of the hero, or the heroic, my project has as one of its key goals to explore the possibilities and limitations of representation by and about a minority group within and outside the mainstream culture. Do Latino/a heroes only represent “Latinoness” or may they also represent “Americanness,” and if so to what extent? Can a Latino/a hero become an

“American” hero? Why are the representations of Latino/as heroic figures and associated discourses in U.S. popular culture more common in the past two or three decades? What role(s) have they served? By answering these questions, my study will add to our understanding of Latino/a identity-formation and reproduction, and how it fits into the larger context of U.S. culture. In that sense, my study aligns itself with the emerging field

of Latino/a cultural studies, which is very much concerned with issues of representation and identity. Additionally, I expect this project to make important contributions to the field of American studies. Finally, Inventing the Latino/a Hero should become a unique collection of and reference material about U.S. Latino/a heroic figures and heroism discourses, since a comprehensive scholarly work on this topic does not currently exist.

Inventing the Latino Hero/a makes four overall claims:

1. Because of its cultural/ideological pervasiveness and importance in U.S. culture and process of nation-building, the figure of the “hero” can be a useful theoretical and methodological tool to analyze processes of representation about and by Latinos/as in

U.S. culture. In the context of this study, the construction of ethnically and culturally specific heroes is viewed as linked to the larger, collective process of identity formation among Latinos/as. As indicated by Martha Bernal and George Knight, ethnic minority group identities in the United States have managed to persist despite predictions that they would “blend into a melting pot of other ethnic and national origin groups,” while still adopting elements of mainstream (Anglo) American culture (2-3). Hence, I argue that the construction of distinctly Latino/a heroes is inevitable and the result of this hybrid process of identity formation.

2. In the heroic stories analyzed in this study, there is a double process of identity transformation. On the one hand, fictional heroes who were originally conceived as

Anglo have been redrawn and reinvented as Latino/a, such as the cases of Blue Beetle, El

Diablo, and Spider-Man. On the other hand, real-life heroes with a Latino/a background

(such as Guy Gabaldon) and fictional heroes with a Latino identity (Zorro) have had their ethnicity and cultural heritage completely or partially unrepresented in U.S. film and

television via the elimination of key identity markers and historical context and/or the selection of Anglo actors to portray them.

3. The representation of Latino/a heroes in the United States involves a tension between opposing forces: a) domestication versus resistance; b) erasure of ethnic/cultural identity markers versus the affirmation of those markers; and c) stereotyping versus self- determination. The way these tensions operate can be better understood through the following three examples of heroes or groups of heroes that will be analyzed in this study, each of whom represents a different aspect of the Latino/a hero experience in the

United States:

a. Joaquín Murrieta, the nineteenth century California outlaw, has symbolized resistance to U.S. economic and cultural domination in the Southwest and has been consistently represented in this manner. Murrieta also served as inspiration for the fictional character Zorro, who has become the most recognizable U.S. Latino/a hero.

However, in the construction and reproduction of Zorro, the oppositional nature of

Murrieta the outlaw has been tamed, giving way to a romantic, aristocratic figure that, in his many reincarnations, fights colonial Spanish or Mexican authorities vying for control of California. Zorro represents, then, a “safe,” charming hero that does not threaten U.S. domination of the Southwest and even supports it in some narratives.

b. Guy Gabaldon, a Latino World War II hero, is portrayed in the 1960 film Hell to Eternity by an Anglo actor, and the story of his upbringing is altered in a way that ignores his Latino heritage. Meanwhile, the 2006 documentary East L.A. Marine: The

Untold True Story of Guy Gabaldon, sought to rescue Gabaldon’s identity as a Latino-

American hero and the contributions of Latino/a soldiers in the U.S. armed forces.

Gabaldon represents a type of real-life Latino/a hero involved in the defense of national security, alongside Drug Enforcement Administration agents and other normative action heroes and superheroes that I will analyze in this study. These heroic figures are inherently ambivalent: while they are constructed and presented as “positive” characters

(thus making a claim for the legitimacy of Latinos/as as active agents committed to the

American way of life), they could also be seen as contributors to the perpetuation of both

U.S. imperialist and Anglo cultural domination.

c. Historically, Latinos/as have mostly played stereotypical roles in U.S. comics and action films, appearing either as villains (e.g. drug dealers) or, at best, as sidekicks or minor heroes (e.g. DC Comics/Hanna-Barbera’s El Dorado). Conversely, Latino/a comic book artists and film directors have in the past few years created Latino/a superheroes

(Javier Hernandez’s El Muerto) and action heroes (Robert Rodríguez’s Machete) cast as empowered protagonists, who challenge traditional stereotypes and also reaffirm Latino/a identity(ies). These fictional heroes represent interventions by Latino/a artists to fight back against stereotypical treatment of Latinos/as in comics, film, and television, offering alternative, oppositional, and more nuanced portrayals of this ethnic group in U.S. popular culture.

4. The enhanced visibility of heroic representations about and by Latinos/as in the past three decades obeys to several interrelated events and processes: a) the advent of

Latino/a civil and labor rights movements, beginning in the 1960s, that helped to spark processes of self-determination by Latinos/as in the United States through political activism, literature, film, popular culture, and other avenues; b) the opening of more spaces for minority representations in U.S. popular culture and mass media as part of the

politics and sensibilities of multiculturalism; c) the successful marketing by mainstream

U.S. cultural industries (Hollywood studios and the large comic book publishers, among them) of Latino/a actors, directors, characters, and a variety of cultural products; and d) the efforts of independent comic book authors and film/TV producers to create and market their own narratives about Latinos/as, taking advantage of increasingly available and affordable channels such as self-publishing, Internet and social media formats, crowd-funding, etc.

Legality and Latino/a Heroes: The Intersection of Law and Cultural Representation

While my research project concentrates on the Latino/a heroes of U.S. film, television, and comics, the specific heroic figures and texts selected for this study are those in which the question of “legality” (and, by extension, “illegality”) is explored, interrogated, or wrestled with. A survey of Latino/a heroes found in film, television, and comics reveals that the issue of legality (defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as

“attachment to or observance of law”2) is a common narrative thread in these texts and is also central to the characters’ construction, actions, and ultimate heroization. Many of these heroic figures—the historical outlaws Joaquín Murrieta and Gregorio Cortez, the

Robert Rodríguez film character Machete, or Laura Molina’s comic book vigilante superhero The Jaguar, to name a few—carry out their activities outside of the rule of law, or set out on their particular quests as a result of what they perceive as unjust acts perpetrated by law-enforcement officers or politicians. But not all Latino/a heroes behave in ways that contest dominant legal structures. Some—including the Drug and

2 “Legality.” Merriam-Webster Dictionary. 13 Dec. 2012.

Enforcement Agent (DEA) Enrique Camarena, protagonist of the miniseries Drug Wars:

The Camarena Story, and the action heroes of the Robert Rodríguez Spy Kids movie series—actually derive their heroism from upholding and defending the U.S. legal establishment. Regardless of which side of the law these Latino/a heroes find themselves, the interplay between legality and illegality is crucial to their respective heroism discourses.

Several scholars have explored the often-tense relationship between heroes and the law in popular culture, highlighting its importance to the internal logic of the hero story (the confrontation between good and evil, or a search for justice), as well as to the social commentary these texts may be attempting to make. In a study about extralegal forms of law enforcement common in post 9/11 U.S. television dramas, Desmond

Manderson argues that popular culture contributes to our understanding of legality not because it represents formal systems of law, but because it constitutes “a record and memory of subterranean practices [lynching, shunning, vigilantism, the actions of the lone hero, etc.] that have not lost their power to constitute legal actions and ideas,” serving as a “site of resistance” to formal law (25). Revisiting the work of E.P. Thompson on the “moral economy” and modernity in Europe, Manderson indicates that the appeal of alternative forms of law must be understood through the “sense of legal pluralism,” whose defining feature is “its insistence that the state does not have a monopoly on the development and application of legality” and the idea that, contrary to modernity’s myth of the past being primitive and static, there subsists in modernity a dynamic “living law” that is “constantly responsive to social practices and circumstances” (25). Manderson adds that the tradition of legal pluralism is not a phenomenon that ended with popular

culture manifestations of the early modern period. Contemporary popular culture genres and media such as film and television have continued “to preserve and articulate earlier modes of thinking about and engaging with the law,” but in this dialogue some tensions are created “between new forms and traditional contents, or between new genres and the traditional ideologies they spout” (27). Reflecting on the western and science fiction film genres, whose narratives (along with the superhero genre) typically depict the types of alternative legal practices to which Manderson refers, Naomy Mezey points out that these narratives often operate by questioning the legitimacy of the state-sanctioned legal system and by translating “the legal anxiety over the state’s unstable and paradoxical relationship to violence in such a way as to give new and visual life to its persistent instability, an instability that is mostly suppressed in legal discourse” (68). These genres,

Mezey posits, depend on the archetypal hero to be able to article their oppositional discourses, as the hero “is a force of law and justice operating apart from, or before, the established legal order of the state” (68).

Mezey’s observation regarding the relationship between the figure of the hero and the issue of legality in popular culture texts deserves closer attention. What is it about the hero that can be so resistant and oppositional in the context of contemporary legal narratives? What is the role of the hero in these texts? Writing about superhero comics,

Jason Bainbridge argues that the need for the hero in these texts already presupposes perceived deficiencies in society and its legal system that are addressed by the presence of the hero (456). The superhero narrative tackles these deficiencies, Bainbridge posits, by “sidelining the modern legal system of law” while simultaneously advancing “a premodern idea of law” that is based on the pursuit of justice, even if such pursuit

challenges the legal system prevalent in the realm where the hero operates (457).

Bainbridge’s idea of the superhero’s sense of legality being guided by a broader, plural sense of “justice” (doing what is right) instead of by formal, state-sanctioned law (doing what is legal), is echoed by Manderson with regards to the heroes of westerns: “The vigilante tradition of the Wild West romanticizes a very similar figure. The gunslinger, the lawman, or the cowboy impose justice rather than law and they do so through the nobility of their character rather than through any knowledge they may possess or any structure they may embody” (34). As both Bainbridge and Manderson indicate, there is an implicit element of trust placed on the protagonist of superhero comics or vigilante narratives with respect to his or her capabilities and moral authority to achieve and impart justice on his or her own—aside from the established system of law and on behalf of the group or community the hero represents or acts on behalf of. The fact that the hero enforces justice as an individual agent (or at most as part of a small band of vigilantes or superhero team) also makes heroic figures oppositional. Manderson refers to this salient characteristic of prototypical hero narratives that involve the issue of legality:

This dream of a unique and unaccountable decision-maker responding only to the

immediate problem before him, runs directly counter to the rule of law, which

seeks to encode, in other words to remove from the realm of the singular, the

qualities and outcomes of decision making, to expel the quality of vengeance

from it, to regularize its judgments and to disperse its violence institutionally.

[The hero] actively dismisses [the status quo’s futility] and constitutes himself as

an agent of justice against orthodox legality. (34-35)

The role of the hero in popular culture texts dealing with matters of legality is,

therefore, paradoxical. On the one hand, and Manderson elaborates, popular culture favors alternative forms of legality that are based on the concept of legal pluralism, but this type of alternative law based on the idea of justice is actually carried out by an individual agent embodied in the hero. As we will see later when exploring Patrick Colm

Hogan’s narratological approach to heroic narratives, this paradox may be resolved by the fact that many heroes (particularly in narratives of rebellion) are “socially representative,” standing in for a group rather than acting simply as individual agents. It is also important to clarify that while the heroes of popular culture resist formal law by privileging subterranean means of legality to achieve justice, they don’t always necessarily act in ways that oppose dominant culture. In his essay “The Myth of

Superman,” Umberto Eco has criticized the superhero’s relationship with legality and the ideological stance of superhero narratives, arguing that the superhero only responds to specific injustices and so leaves untouched the structural underpinnings of legality, bureaucracy, and capitalism. According to Eco, Superman’s commitment to individual justice bespeaks an institutional passivity, thus becoming an agent of American ideology, interfering only on its periphery, “as a model of absolute fidelity to established values”

(123). While Eco’s criticism is valid and can be observed in some Latino/a heroes studied in this dissertation (particularly those associated with discourses of war), even normative heroes tend to circumvent the due process of law in their individualistic pursuit of justice, issuing, as Manderson puts it, “an implicit […] critique of the established order’s ability to achieve justice at all” (33).

The supremacy of the concept of “justice” over that of formal, state-sanctioned

“law” in hero narratives helps to explain the oppositional nature of Latino/a folk and

vigilante heroes, who operate outside (and many times against) the legal system to confront perceived injustices perpetrated against members of their communities.

Conversely, the reaffirmation of dominant legal structures in other narratives involving

Latino/a heroes (primarily military or pertaining to national security), may point to attempts to regulate or counteract the oppositional power of outlaw/vigilante heroic figures or, alternatively, to efforts to insert Latinos/as into mainstream discourses of law- abiding, normative, “national” heroism. In Border Visions: Mexican Cultures of the

Southwest United States, Carlos Vélez-Ibáñez argues that the idea of pursuing justice as rationalization for breaking the law can be found in the actions and words of Latino/a folk heroes since the mid-nineteenth century. For instance, Tiburcio Vásquez, who was notorious for stealing from Anglos in California shortly after it became a U.S. state following the Mexican-American War, spoke about his exploits to the Los Angeles Star in 1875 in this manner: “I had numerous fights in defense of what I believed to be my rights and those of my countrymen. I believed that we were being unjustly deprived of the social rights that belonged to us” (qtd. in Vélez-Ibáñez 102). Vélez-Ibáñez views

Vásquez, Joaquín Murrieta, Juan Nepomuceno Cortina and others who organized resistance against Anglo occupation of the Southwest not as social bandits, but as

“cultural heroes.” The difference, he states, is that they generate community approval and legitimacy for their actions, creating “an ‘auxiliary authority’ to the Anglo system, which served only Anglos” in an attempt to “set right the political, juridical, economic, and cultural imbalances resulting from American control and hegemony” (104, 105). While

Vélez-Ibáñez celebrates the resistant role these cultural heroes played during a time of profound transformation in the formerly Spanish and Mexican Southwest, Steven Bender

contends that the stereotype of the Mexican outlaw that grew out of this period has been detrimental to the Latino/a community ever since. In Greasers and Gringos: Latinos,

Law, and the American Imagination (2003), Bender argues that negative social constructions attributed to Latinos/as in the U.S. culture since the nineteenth century— ruthless bandidos, thieves, urban gang members, drug dealers, etc.—“have contributed to the maltreatment of Latinos/as under the American law and legal systems and have often spurred “private citizens to enforce [the law’s] dictates through injurious vigilantism” (1).

According to Bender, U.S. media (particularly film and television) has had a significant role in creating and/or perpetuating negative stereotypes about Latinos/as that portray them as law-breakers and dangerous (1-2). Regarding this issue, Ramírez Berg has indicated that the repetition of certain stereotypes leads to their normalization, validating and perpetuating them. Through such repetition, he posits, “narration becomes representation” (Latino Images in Film 19). At the same time, Ramírez Berg believes that media can also help counteract negative portrayals of Latinos/as by constructing representations that are more congruent with the realities and experiences of this community, as well as by developing empowered Latino/a characters that challenge traditional stereotypes. The Latino/a heroes of film, television, and comics have the potential to play this role.

Latino/a stereotyping in U.S. popular media is inextricably linked with discourses of legality and illegality. Of the six basic stereotypes of Latinos/as in U.S cinema that

Ramírez Berg has identified—el bandido, the harlot, the male buffoon, the female clown, the Latin lover, and the dark lady (Latino Images in Film 66)—it is the bandit, a projection of male violence, the one that has more prominently endured over the decades.

In Badmen, Bandits, and Folk Heroes: The Ambivalence of Mexican American Identity in

Literature and Film, Juan Alonzo has explored the dangers of this stereotype on Latino/a representations and the prejudicial treatment of Latino/as in real-life situations. However, he has posited that the stereotypical depictions may also be productively read in terms of their “ambivalent or contingent status” (2), which can lead to a dismantling of the internal logic of the stereotype and the production of counter-discourses that render the stereotype powerless. Alonzo explains that by “emphasizing the ways in which the stereotype’s anxious repetitions reveal the impossibility of a fixed or original identity, we begin to understand that the stereotype is a construct, part of representational apparatus. The stereotype must repeat itself to establish certain ‘truths’ about the ethnic subject, but its repetitions produce a multiplicity of meanings and truths, which cannot all equally stand within the stereotype’s logic” (3). Alonzo cites Homi Bhabha’s position regarding the stereotype in postcolonial theory to make this point, as Bhabha has pointed out that the stereotype enables “a transgression of [its] limits” by the very subjects who are “at once the object[s] of desire and derision” (qtd. in Alonzo 67). Bhabha sees the stereotype as a key instrument of domination utilized by colonial rulers because “[t]he object of colonial discourse is to construe the colonized as a population of degenerate types on the basis of racial origin, in order to justify conquest and to establish systems of administration and instruction,” which makes it possible to read the stereotype in a “contradictory way” because it cannot reliably point to the subject’s identity (qtd. in Alonzo 70). Alonzo concludes that “interpreting the stereotype in a contradictory or resistant fashion permits the subjects of its determinations to escape its often derogatory reasoning” (3).

For Alonzo, contingency—as a way of responding to cultural ambivalence—is expressed primarily via hybridity and cultural exchanges, as writers, filmmakers, and other producers of culture “incorporate American and Mexican popular cultural forms to create mixed and multiple identities” and also “understand the particular meanings and malleability of images, and they rework and recombine them in self-conscious and ironic ways” (2). Contingency and ambivalence have been present in the representation of

Mexican-American identity in U.S. literature and film since at least the beginning of the twentieth century. For example, it surfaces in the way the Mexican becomes a “subject of ambivalent admiration” in several of Stephen Crane’s stories dealing with Mexico and a subject of both derision and desire in D.W. Griffith’s early westerns. One important point

Alonzo makes that informs the analysis of Latino/a heroes is that even though the

Mexican-American male “stands as among the most derided objects of literary and popular cultural representations, we witness latent admiration, desire, and even identification” (4). For instance, Alonzo proposes the idea that “the Mexican is, in a very real sense, the original cowboy—the vaquero— of the West” and also “the original ‘good badman’ whom the Anglo-American hero comes to mimic” in Western-themed narratives

(67). Frontier Latino heroes such as Joaquín Murrieta and Gregorio Cortez embody this

“good badman” role, as their narratives of resistance complicate one-dimensional representations of Hispanics as stereotypical bandits by showing the ambivalence of such categorization. In other words, the construction of these characters in their respective heroic stories embraces the Anglo-imposed stereotype of the bandit, only to dismantle it later as the heroes expose the injustices, unfair laws, and structural racism that have pushed them to employ violence as their only legitimate means of redress. Operating

outside of the scope of legality, these heroes’ actions—as well as those by more contemporary heroic figures—embody the prevalence of pre-modern forms of justice that characterize Latino/a hero stories of resistance.

Heroes and Heroism: Definition and Contextualization

The term “hero” is a difficult one to define in modern discourses. In the United

States in particular, the term is used indiscriminately, especially in the sphere of mass media, to describe anyone from a decorated soldier returning home to a neighbor who risks his or her life to rescue a child from a fire to the latest athlete to score the winning touchdown at a high school or college football game. Because the concept of the hero is so central to this research project, it is important to trace its genealogy, define it in more precise terms, and explore how this concept has been articulated and treated in previous scholarship—including the few works that have dealt in one way or another with Latino/a heroes.

First of all, the hero is a myth—and one of the most basic, enduring, and influential myths of Western culture. The classic definition of myth, from folklore studies, considers myths as origin stories believed as true, usually sacred, set in the distant past or other worlds or parts of the world, and with extra-human, inhuman, or heroic characters (Bascom 3). Other sources (such as the Merriam-Webster dictionary) define myth as “a usually traditional story of ostensibly historical events that serves to unfold part of the world view of a people or explain a practice, belief, or natural phenomenon”; or as “a popular belief or tradition that has grown up around something or someone, especially one embodying the ideals and institutions of a society or segment of

society” (“Myth”). In these definitions, and in many others like it, myth is presented as a

“story” that is associated with a culture’s or society’s beliefs or ideals. The idea of the hero, and the form of the Greek word that gives us “hero” in English or “héroe” in

Spanish, already appears among the earliest surviving works of Western literature. In the opening to The Iliad (usually dated around the eighth century B.C.), Homer refers to the

“strong souls of heroes” that descended into Hades as result of Achilles’s wrath (Book 1, lines 3-4). While it has been typically linked with the name of the goddess Hera, the etymology of the word hērōs is disputed and uncertain. According to Jorge J. Bravo III, some theories regard it as derived from pre-Hellenic, non-Indo-European words signifying “lord/master,” while others see it as related to an Indo-European root meaning youth and vitality (12). As Bravo notes, regardless of the origin of the word, the ancient

Greeks—at least by the Classical period (fifth through fourth centuries B.C.)—applied the label of hero to “a broad spectrum of figures that included not just well-known warriors of Homeric epic and other early legends but also more shadowy figures, about whom, to judge by our ancient sources, the Greeks themselves knew only the slightest details” (11). These heroes either engaged in deeds of great valor or were known only for having been killed under extraordinary circumstances. But what unites the heterogeneous collection of ancient Greek heroes, Bravo indicates, is first the conviction that they were mortals and not deities; and second, a belief that even after death they had power over the living, which gave rise the cult of heroes alongside the gods (11). Beyond ancient Greece, the concept and term “hero” (and its feminine form “heroine”) have been applied almost universally to mythical or real-life figures from a variety of ancient cultures and time periods, even some that predate the Greeks—the Sumerian Gilgamesh, the Scandinavian

Beowulf, and the Mayan twin-heroes Ixbalanque and Hunahpu among them. Not confined to ancient civilizations or the type of epic or mythological heroes that figures such as Hercules and Odysseus embody, the use of the concept of the hero has continued into modern times to describe anyone who accomplishes great feats and inspires admiration and emulation, whether they are flesh-and-blood individuals or characters in fictional works.

Scholars from a variety of disciplines have proposed various definitions of what a hero is. One characteristic that sets the hero apart is the quest he or she must embark on a journey, which is structured as a narrative. In his influential book The Hero With a

Thousand Faces (1949), mythologist Joseph Campbell wrote that the archetypical hero (a form he found to be largely universal in myths from a number of cultures) “is any male or female who leaves the world of his or her everyday life to undergo a journey to a special world where challenges and fears are overcome in order to secure a reward (special knowledge, healing potion, etc.), which is then shared with other members of the hero’s community” (22). In Heroes: What They Do and Why We Need Them, psychologists

Scott T. Allison and George R. Goethals—who surveyed ordinary Americans to find out who their heroes are—explained that, to be perceived as a hero, a person needs to follow a particular path, as “we all have a script in our mind for what must be done to qualify as heroic” (40). Allison and Goethals found that the pattern described by Campbell as taking place in the myths and epic tales of heroes throughout the ages still holds true today. This predictable pattern is divided into three major components: departure, which describes the forces that set the hero’s journey into motion; initiation, which refers to the obstacles the hero must overcome to complete his or her task; and, finally, the hero’s return to the

world in which he or she started with a reward for his or her people. The stories of Rosa

Parks and Che Guevara are good examples of how this framework operates in contemporary societies; so are the narratives of Latino/a cultural heroes such as Gregorio

Cortez and fictional superheroes such as Javier Hernandez’s El Muerto.

This particular journey, however, is not the only characteristic that qualifies somebody as a hero in the eyes of people. Allison and Goethals explain that our perceptions of heroes vary along three dimensions:

First, we view heroes as being either moral or competent or, very often, both at

once. Second, we believe that heroes are either born or made. That is, they either

tend to have stable heroic traits, or they became heroes because they were thrust

into circumstances that gave rise to heroism. Third, heroes inspire or show great

leadership, and they do this either directly, through our interactions with them, or

indirectly, through their deeds and works. (44)

Displaying esteemed qualities such as leadership and courage, possessing great powers or talents, and performing important deeds are also characteristics that help set a hero apart in the eyes of his or her community. In the 2006 edited volume Heroes and Hero Cults in

Latin America, Ben Fallaw and Samuel Brunk define the hero as a “person to whom remarkable courage, talent, and other noble, even godlike traits are attributed by members of a community [tribal, local, regional, national, international, religious, or ethnic] and who thus acquires a lasting place of importance in that community’s culture” serving “as

[its] cultural glue” (“Introduction” 1, 3). Furthermore, heroes achieve this status because they embody key beliefs and values that are important to a community (Campbell 37). As

Harold Lubin explains in Heroes and Anti-heroes, a hero becomes a hero only when

recognized as such for whatever qualities significant groups of people esteem (4). In

American Heroes: Myth and Reality, Marshall Fishwick underscores this idea, indicating that a hero “satisfies emotional and psychological needs of his admirers; and reflects commonly held hopes and beliefs” (6). In “Heroes: A Communication Perspective,”

Lance Strate is even more direct, claiming that heroes are the actual “anchors” and

“personification” of a society’s values and beliefs, serving “as guides to the psyche, role models in the process of socialization, and sources of authority and legitimation” (15).

Both Fishwick and Strate argue that heroes change over time because the societies in which they are constructed (if new heroes) or resemanticized (if older heroes) change, along with their beliefs, values, aspirations, hopes and priorities (Fishwick 6; Strate 15).

Another important topic in the scholarship of the hero is its function. What do heroes do for us? Why do we need them? Why are they such a ubiquitous presence even in our postmodern times? For Campbell, heroes have existed and continue to exist among cultures throughout the world because they remedy “symbolical deficiency” in society, providing a means of both righting wrongs and making social meaning possible (37).

According to Lubin, taking a close look at variations in the qualities certain groups of people admire as heroic can help us learn more about the inner-workings of specific cultures or societies: “If heroes are symbolic embodiments of our values and beliefs, then it is not surprising that a sober scrutiny of our own heroes can be a disturbing business.

The study of heroes is one way to learn about ourselves and our world by getting outside of ourselves and looking quizzically at what we are” (4). As I indicated before, studying the heroes of Latino/a communities in the United States is important because the traits of those individuals and the values they embody can reveal important characteristics of

these communities and their evolution over time. In Heroes of Film, Comics and

American Culture, Lisa DeTora explains that U.S. heroes—because of the multiplicity of personalities, traits, quests, values, genders, and other identity categories that they personify—allow for “varied national and social identities” to be represented and performed, while also permitting “a relative valuation of various personal characteristics, such as intellect, physical prowess, bravery, shrewdness, warfare, or wisdom”

(“Introduction” 7). In other words, the hero (Latino/a or otherwise) is not a static, one- sided, cookie-cutter type of character. The relative flexibility of the hero’s construction and representation process allows for a multifaceted, diverse array of heroic figures and discourses—from the cultural hero who protects his people from political or economic oppression to the vigilante heroine who fights racism to the conflicted superhero who struggles with making the right moral choice. All of the Latino/a heroes included in this study embody one or more of the characteristics outlined above: they have acquired a lasting place of importance in their community’s culture (Joaquín Murrieta, Gregorio

Cortez); embody key beliefs and values that are important to their communities (family cohesion in Spy Kids, celebration of Indo-Hispanic heritage in El Muerto); or strive to right wrongs for their people (Zorro, the heroes of the film Machete, Richard

Dominguez’s El Gato Negro). At the narrative level, all of these heroes engage in a journey that results in some sort of reward or change of status bestowed upon the people they represent.

Another crucial function of the heroic myth is that it can allow us to interrogate the ideological underpinnings of historical narratives, particularly those tied with nationalist discourses of superiority and domination. While it is true, as José Manuel

Valenzuela Arce states, that “myth is not validated in historical truth, but in its social functionality” (qtd. in Irwin 39), historical narratives are not devoid of mythical elements and thus can be subjected to mythic readings. Historian Hayden White sees historical narratives essentially as “verbal fictions,” and history as a “conflation of mythic and historical consciousness” (16). In that sense, White argues that there is no significant opposition between myth and history because historical accounts are a form of narrative and, as such, consist in part of sublimates of archetypal myth-structures that “have been displaced to the interior of verbal artifacts in such way as to serve as their latent meanings” (17), meanings that according to Northrop Frye are found in pre-generic plot structures or mythoi derived mainly from Greek, Roman, and Judeo-Christian tales (qtd. in White 17). For White, histories gain a great deal of their explanatory effect (and thus their influence on societies) through the process of “emplotment,” which is the encoding of “facts contained in the chronicle as components of specific kinds of plot structures in precisely the way [as] is the case with ‘fictions’ in general” (17). White identifies four types of plot structures (Tragedy, Comedy, Romance, and Satire), of which Romance is associated with the heroic tale. Through emplotment, White explains, historians take a set of recorded historical event or facts and organize them into a story by “suppression or subordination of certain of them and the highlighting of others, by characterization, motific repetition, variation of tone and point of view, alternative descriptive techniques, and the like” (18), all of which are characteristic of the emplotment of a novel, a play, or let’s say, a heroic narrative. White posits that historical events are “value-neutral,” but the historian makes choices during the process of emplotment to order those events according to one mythos over another (18). Because that process is purely subjective, a historical

event as significant as the French Revolution has been construed by some historians as a

“drama of Romantic transcendence” and by others as an “ironic Tragedy” (White 19).

The existence (and acceptance by different audiences as plausible) of these mutually exclusive representations of the same set of events, White concludes, is possible because

“the historians shared with their audiences certain preconceptions about how the

Revolution might be emplotted, in response to imperatives that were generally extra- historical, ideological, aesthetic, or mythical” (19).

As we can see from White’s position, history and myth are not diametrically opposite narratives and share more in common than we otherwise assume if we were to innocently approach history exclusively as the repository of “truth” while treating myth as purely fictional. After all, myths have a historical foundation, even if it is a slight one, while historical accounts emplot narratives structures with mythic elements and can have a profound impact on the creation and reproduction of national myths. Let us consider the case of Joaquín Murrieta, a historical individual who is better known for his mythification as a larger-than-life California frontier outlaw. Latinos/as have represented him as a legendary hero who embodies resistance against U.S. expansionism and mistreatment of people of color. However, in the official accounts of U.S. history, westward expansion is celebrated as key to nation-building and as the inevitable triumph of progress over barbarism represented by Indians, Mexicans, and other non-Anglos. These official histories are also emplotted as romantic or heroic narratives and carry within them the myth of Manifest Destiny. Because of this complex ties between history and myth, cultural studies scholars such as Lee Bebout have proposed the use of the term

“mythohistorical” to more accurately analyze discourses involving relations of power.

For Bebout, the creation and deployment of alternative mythohistorical narratives (such as resistant heroes) may hold great potential for aggrieved peoples, since “[a]ctively contesting a dominant group’s imaginary of the past opens the future to new possibilities—if oppression has not being the ‘pre-ordained state,’ then liberation is possible” (2).

Anticolonial writers such as Frantz Fannon and Albert Memmi have argued about the importance of myth in colonial and decolonial processes. For these scholars, Bebout explains, “myths, symbols, images, and histories undergirded colonial power relations,” as they recognized “that the bifurcation and juxtaposition of myth and history was a crucial aspect of colonization” because, precisely, of “the relationship between domination and cultural narratives” (13). This anticolonial myth-symbol school has also suggested that the fashioning and articulation of counterhegemonic cultural narratives could have a liberationist potential for traditionally marginalized groups. The production of these narratives, Bebout posits, requires a “mythic and historical—or more aptly, mythohistorical—agency” (13). Bebout explores how the Latino/a movement of the

1960s, as well as scholars and artists thereafter, claimed mythohistorical agency by turning “to cultural narratives to decolonize the present” (14). Such counterhegemonic narratives—which included the re-contextualization and redeployment of heroic myths such as that of Murrieta—aimed at resisting the mythohistorical impositions of the

Melting Pot, the Manifest Destiny, and the Mexican Problem. “For example, just as the

Manifest Destiny sought to legitimate U.S. expansion and conquest, Aztlán functioned as a counternarrative, asserting historical precedence and cultural citizenship […] Aztlán and other mythohistorical interventions do not simply contest counternarratives [but also

challenge] dominant ways of seeing and knowing the world. Moreover, these narratives provide the commitment mechanism, or on might say ‘ideological glue,’ that structures social action, whether that action be U.S. imperialism of the struggles of el movimiento”

(14). Bebout insists that mythohistorical narratives are not simply stories, but that they have consequences on real events and people; for example, in the case of the Melting Pot, there are “consequences of policy formation and bears an impact upon the lived experiences of peoples who do not homogenize into the imagined (Anglo) American citizenry” (15). However, “[t]he mythohistorical […] may also be used to contest hegemony, as aggrieved social groups contest dominant narratives with their own deployments […] Therefore, the mythohistorical is deployable by both aggressor and oppressed, but it is never an expression without consequences” (16). This counterhegemonic function of the myth will be of significance for the analysis of heroic figures in this dissertation.

While heroism, as indicated by Campbell, is a universal experience, U.S. culture in particular has developed an adoration of heroic figures as diverse as historical leaders such as George Washington and Martin Luther King Jr., soldiers, sports celebrities, and even the fictional superheroes of comics and film. Writing in the 1940s an the 1950s, respectively, Wecter and Fishwick called Americans “hero-worshippers,” underscoring that this national obsession with the heroic reflects urgent cultural needs such as identification with greatness and the refusal to admit limitations and weaknesses, and also plays a vital role in processes of nation-formation and nurturing of patriotism (Wecter 1-

2; Fishwick v). Hero-worship has certainly continued to be a strong force within U.S. culture in the ensuing decades, as evidenced by the popularity of action hero narratives,

the memorialization of military battles and their heroes, and the persistence of superhero stories in comics, films, videogames, and other media. In fact, the hero—tied closely with patriotism and displays of Orientalism—has experienced a noticeable resurgence in the past decade as a result of the 9/11 attacks and increased concerns about and anxiety over national and economic security (Spigel 255-256). During these uncertain times,

Americans have invested strong cultural capital on real-life heroic figures such as the

Ground Zero firefighters and the Iraq and Afghanistan war soldiers, and have gravitated toward TV shows (such as Heroes and 24) that depict ordinary individuals with extraordinary abilities, as well as the myriad filmic remakes and adaptations of comic- book superhero stories that rule the box office even to this day.

Early scholars of the American hero also identified several characteristics that supposedly set U.S. heroes apart. Fishwick pointed out the prevalence of “aggressiveness, domination, and affirmation” over the “meekness, self-denial, renunciation” of eastern and Old-World saintly heroes such as Buddha and St. Francis, explained by the fact that the “strong cult of individualism in America has affected our choice of heroes” (8).

Meanwhile, Wecter sees the American hero as “cast in a different mould,” being self- respecting, honorable, with a sense of fair play and exhibiting the qualities of hard work, tenacity, and firmness; in other words, “a man who has the power and yet does not abuse it” and who can “translate the (American) dream into act” (482-487). While some of these claims coming from early U.S. scholarship on heroism may be suspect, they do reveal that the image of hero in this country has been consistent with larger national discourses of exceptionalism, individualism, Protestant work ethic, and militarism.

Furthermore, these and other classical works on the American hero reaffirm dominant

discourses of patriarchy and exclusion of ethnic/racial minorities, as they focus almost entirely on Anglo male heroic figures—John Smith, Thomas Jefferson, Buffalo Bill, and the cowboy, just to name a few. Wecter even attempts to explain American women’s small share in hero-worship by stating that they do not match men “in symbolic appeal”

(477).

More recent studies about the U.S. hero tend to concentrate on the construction of heroism discourses in popular culture and the media, which Elizabeth Hirschman refers to as the place where the mythology of modern American culture is made and told (3-4).

Some of these works have sought to address the overwhelmingly male/white nature of

U.S. heroic representations indicated above. In his 2006 study of action heroes and masculinity, Mark Gallagher claims that narratives featuring this type of heroes

(predominantly white men) help individuals “negotiate their own positions within systems of power,” serving the role of engaging taboo subjects—such as the fundamentals of race, gender, and social class—in relatively safe spaces of representation

(16). Specifically addressing the representation (and, most often, misrepresentation) of minority heroes in U.S. popular culture, scholars have pointed out the lack of heroic models with which individuals from different ethnic backgrounds can identify, except for

“the nameless criminals and barbarous savages that real heroes defeated” (Brown 3).

Meanwhile, Michael Sheyahshe has posited that—even when minority heroes have been present in mainstream U.S. cultural industries—their powers “seemed to pale in comparison to other mainstream heroes” and their culture “was treated differently” (2). It is in this context and with these considerations in mind that the present study of Latino/a heroes is conducted, paying particular attention to the dominant politics and power

relations that have characterized and continue to characterize the representation of heroes in U.S. culture—exploring, for example, whether heroic representations of Latinos/as serve the purpose of cultural self-determination or are manipulated to place Latinos/as in those “safe spaces of representation” to which Gallagher refers. While race/ethnicity

(and their connections to identity) are the primary factors driving this study, it will be imperative as well to look at issues of gender and class in the configuration of Latino/a heroic figures. Do Latino/a heroes continue the tradition of male dominance that has been typical of U.S. heroic narratives? Do they represent the values, aspirations, and needs of

Latinos/as from various backgrounds and socioeconomic conditions? These are questions

I will also wrestle with in order to paint a more balanced picture of who these Latinos/a heroes are and who/what they actually represent.

As indicated before, no comprehensive or topic-specific study about Latino/a heroes in the United States has been conducted thus far. However, a few scholars have dealt with one or more of the Latino/a heroic figures that I analyze in this study in their scholarly endeavors or have sought to conceptualize Latino/a heroism in a variety of fashions. Most of this scholarship concentrates on folk heroes and outlaws from the U.S.-

Mexico borderlands, which have been heroicized by Latino/a communities there and beyond. They include, most notably, Américo Paredes’s influential With His Pistol in His

Hand: A Border Ballad and Its Hero (1958), about the Texas outlaw Gregorio Cortez. A similar study is Vida y aventuras del más célebre bandido sonorense Joaquín Murrieta:

Sus grandes proezas en California, written by Ireneo Paz in the early twentieth century and published in 1999 with an extensive introduction and analysis by Luis Leal. Pedro

Castillo and Albert Camarillo’s Furia y Muerte: Los Bandidos Chicanos (1973) explores

the Chicano/a bandit tradition, including figures such as Cortez, Murrieta and Tiburcio

Vásquez. Additionally, José Limón’s Chicano Ballads, Latino Poems: History and

Influence in Mexican-American Social Poetry (1992), draws a connection between the traditional corrido genre and the politically motivated Chicano/a poetry of the 1960s and

1970s; the corridos and heroic figures of Cortez and Murrieta are among those explored.

Other studies that focus (partially or entirely) on folk, or cultural, heroes include Rosa

Linda Fregoso’s The Bronze Screen: Chicana and Chicano Film Culture (1993); Carlos

Vélez-Ibánez’s Border Visions: Mexican Cultures of the Southwest (1996); Robert

McKee Irwin’s Bandits, Captives, Heroines, and Saints: Cultural Icons of Mexico’s

Northwest Borderlands (2007); and Juan Alonzo’s Badmen, Bandits, and Folk Heroes:

The Ambivalence of Mexican American Identity in Literature and Film (2009).

Other contributions to the study of Latino/a heroes concentrate on military, civil/labor rights and education heroes, as well as the superheroes of comic books.

Beyond the Latino World War II Hero: The Social and Political Legacy of a Generation

(2009), edited by Maggie Rivas-Rodríguez and Emilio Zamora, is an example of recent scholarship seeking to unearth the contributions of Latino/a soldiers to Latino/a culture and U.S. society in general. While he is not included in this study, there is abundant scholarship about labor organizer and social activist hero César Chávez, including César

Chávez: A Triumph of Spirit, a biography by Richard Griswold del Castillo and Richard

A. Garcia (1995); Frederick John Dalton’s The Moral Vision of César Chávez (2003); and, more recently, Randy Shaw’s Beyond the Fields: César Chávez, the UFW, and the

Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century (2008). A very important contribution to the study of the Chicano Movement’s hero-making dynamics is Lee Bebout’s Mythohistorical

Interventions: The Chicano Movement and Its Legacies (2011), which analyzes figures such as Chávez and Reies López Tijerina. Leah Sadykov’s essay “The Teacher as Hero:

Representations in Late Cold War Film and Culture,” includes an analysis of the film

Stand and Deliver (1988), based on the story of Bolivian-born high-school teacher Jaime

Escalante, who successfully prepared his East Los Angeles inner-city, minority class for the AP calculus exam. Finally, a group of recent works concentrates on the analysis of fictional heroes. Some explore the so-called “Latinization” of Hollywood in the 1990s and 2000s, including Clara Rodríguez’s Heroes, Lovers, and Others: The Story of Latinos in Hollywood (2004), which calls attention to a new wave of heroic representations of

Latinos/as by directors such as Robert Rodríguez and actors such as Antonio Banderas,

Benicio del Toro, and Michelle Rodriguez. Other volumes concentrate on the study of

Latino/a and multicultural comics. Your Brain On Latino Comics (2009) and

Multicultural Comics: From Zap to Blue Beetle (2010), written and edited, respectively, by Frederick Aldama, represent some of the first serious attempts to conduct research about Latino/a superhero characters created both by independent artists and by the publishing giants DC Comics and Marvel.

Representation, Identity, and Power

Just like heroism, the concept of representation is significant in the contextualization of my study, particularly because it is linked to issues of identity and power relations that are at the core of this dissertation. Representation has long been established as a key instance of meaning-making in the scholarship of sociology, semiotics, cultural studies, communication studies, art history, visual studies, and many

other disciplines (Watson and Waterton 1). According to Christopher Prendergast, representation can be defined in one of two ways. The first definition, associated with the

German term Darstellung (making present), “is the sense of represent as re-present, to make present again, in two interrelated ways, spatial and temporal” (4). In this mode, the representation refers to something that is not there, but is assumed to be authentic and potentially present; in other words, it has the capacity to make visible, in the here and now, something that was (or might have been) present in a different here and now.

Darstellung is, to say it in another way, the act of portraying something or someone.

Meanwhile, the second definition, or Vertretung, has to do with the substitution of something for something or someone else, which is commonly seen in language and in politics. In language, a word stands in for a thing or an idea and makes it present in conversation or writing, while in politics, a person is chosen or designated to stand in for, or to represent, somebody else. In analyzing the construction of Latino/a heroes, both definitions of representation are applicable. First, these heroic figures are portrayed through a variety of cultural products and texts, many of them over different time periods and contexts, being constantly re-formulated and re-presented in a variety of ways and for a variety of purposes. Second, these heroes can have the capacity to stand in for a whole group of people (or at least subsets of that group of people), as a “representative” of their cultural markers, values, aspirations, struggles, or other characteristics deemed important by that group.

For this study, I choose to concentrate on cultural representation, which “deals with what most people understand as ‘artistic’ or ‘cultural activities’—the work of artists and novelists and film makers, the function of museums and galleries—and with less

obviously artistic, but still highly cultural, media of representation, such as newspapers and television” (Webb 13). In other words, cultural representation operates within with what Stuart Cunningham and Graeme Turner have called “the cultural industries,” which produce and disseminate commodities that sell “ways of thinking, ways of seeing, ways of talking about the world” (6). Because the instances of representation I analyze in this dissertation are exclusively created, circulated, and consumed in the domain of cultural products—film, television, and comics— it seems pertinent and useful to follow this approach. Additionally, a cultural representation-oriented analysis will readily permit me to delve into issues of power relations, domination, and resistance, which are essential for understanding the ways in which Latino/a heroes have been constructed. This is because, as Webb suggests, the representations generated by and within the cultural industries have the capacity to inform and influence society due to their ubiquity, their enormous reach, and the increased role they play in everyday life, thus attaining “huge signifying power” (108). As a result, the cultural industries become the “domain where meanings are very actively made and widely disseminated […] and where national life is both manufactured and promoted” (109).

Many scholars, including those engaged in postcolonial studies, have argued that there is an important connection between cultural representation and power. Samah Selim has called attention to the relationship between representation of social or ethnic groups and domination, positing that it is a disciplinary act “which encodes a dominant point-of- view and a strategic relationship to social and political power” (59). Others have closely examined various forms of representation, whether visual or textual, to unpack the various ways in which these images are implicated in power inequalities and the

subordination of subaltern groups. In Orientalism, Edward Said calls attention to the limits of representation, underscoring that representations can never be exactly realistic:

In any instance of at least written language, there is no such thing as a delivered

presence, but a re-presence, or a representation. The value, efficacy, strength,

apparent veracity of a written statement about the Orient therefore relies very

little, and cannot instrumentally depend, on the Orient as such. On the contrary,

the written statement is a presence to the reader by virtue of its having excluded,

displaced, made supererogatory any such real thing as “the Orient.” (21)

In other words, representations made from a position of dominance (in this case by

Western interlocutors about the Orient) cannot truly be “natural” depictions of the “other” that is being represented. Rather, they are constructed images (as all representations are), which demand close scrutiny to uncover unequal relations of power operating within.

Because of the privileged position of the subject issuing the representation, cultural critics such as Ella Shohat warn that we should always interrogate representations and the motivations of those behind them: “Each filmic or academic utterance must be analyzed not only in terms of who represents but also in terms of who is being represented for what purpose, at which historical moment, from which location, using which strategies, and in what tone of address” (173). Since marginalized groups do not hold the power over representation, Shohat points out that that the representations made about them by a dominant group are often flawed and negative and few in numbers. These representations, she adds, operate within the “hermeneutics of domination, overcharged with allegorical significance” (170). Mass media in particular tend to take representations of the subaltern as allegorical, meaning that since representations of the marginalized are

scarce and adulterated, the few available are thought to be representative of all marginalized peoples. For example, in U.S. comics and films depicting superheroes,

Latinos/as (when present at all) have historically been cast as villains or obedient sidekicks. These representations long negated the possibility of a Latino/a portraying the leading role of the hero in these mainstream cultural products, therefore placing

Latinos/as outside of the domain of American heroism. Shohat also claims that this type of representations can have an impact on the way actual individuals are perceived, and that representation in the sphere of popular culture can affect other areas of representation, such as politics: “The denial of aesthetic representation to the subaltern has historically formed a corollary to the literal denial of economic, legal, and political representation” (173).

As influential and seemingly omnipresent channels for the production and circulation of meaning in contemporary society, the cultural industries are also connected to representational relations of power and domination in profound ways. Cultural studies theorists have long argued that media representation is always political, marking a major site for the production of cultural knowledge. According to Douglas Kellner, the cultural industries (mass media in particular) “contribute to educating us on how to behave and what to think, feel, believe, fear, and desire—and what not to” (9). In his study of gay male representation, Dustin Bradley Goltz notes that media take an active role in shaping and defining cultural groups and identity. And since large numbers of people turn to popular culture to hear stories, to experience others’ lives, and to see our lives reflected back to us, “these representations [of minorities on television and film] shape discourses and identities” (12). In “The Return of ‘Ideology’: Return of the Repressed in Media

Studies,” Stuart Hall uses the term “naturalistic illusion” to denote the way in which media representations—which “appear to reproduce the actual trace of reality in the images they transmit” (75)—are not pure but the product of human agency and therefore deeply imbedded in power relations, underscoring the position that perception is always mediated through the practices and ideologies that shape social relations. Why is representation via the cultural industries so influential and deeply intertwined with issues of power relations and domination? For Webb, there are two reasons: 1) media products consciously construct meanings, ways of seeing the world, and ways of perceiving certain individuals or groups; and 2) their images, stories, and messages are repeated again and again across many individual shows, products, and various types of media platforms.

These media products become “the place where ideas are rehearsed and reiterated, to the point that they come to seem obvious, true and inevitable” (116).

With so much meaning-making power being exercised by the cultural industries and so few opportunities for self-representation afforded to marginalized groups, are there any possibilities for resistance and agency by these groups in the face of

“representational domination”? In his 2005 study of Chicano/a representations of gender, sexuality, and ethnicity, Frederick Aldama admits that the most widely publicized representations of minority groups (such as gays and lesbians) are typically those that “do the least to engage the public in a serious reflection and understanding of [their] experiences and identity,” with most of them “delving into clichés that continue to reproduce age-old stereotypes” (3). However, he finds through his analysis that

Chicano/a artists in some cases have been able to “complicate” sexuality in literature and movies by “representing a complex… Chicano/a identity and experience” (4). Likewise,

the murals painted by Chicano/a artists since 1960s in Southwestern and Midwestern cities (many of them portraying and exalting heroic figures such as Murrieta, Chávez, and

Dolores Huerta) have been effective at creating what Shifra Goldman calls “the iconography of Chicano self-determination,” as these images were deployed as a form of cultural resistance and affirmation against Anglo domination and influence (407). As

Guisela Latorre has noted, these representations “functioned as an elastic metaphor of political consciousness that allowed for innovative articulations of cultural and gendered identity” among U.S. Chicanos/as and other Latinos/as (2). These examples, along with my exploration of Latino/a heroic figures and heroism discourses here, show us that the opportunities for engaging in representational resistance and self-determination in the sphere of the cultural industries, while limited, are still possible. Moreover, thanks to the informational revolution brought about by digital technologies, social media, and other forms of electronic communication that we have experienced in the twenty-first century, increasingly there are more opportunities and spaces for generating, circulating, and consuming representations by Latinos/as, alternative to those typically found in mainstream media and popular culture.

Heroism and Ideology: Methodology and Critical Framework for Analysis

In this research project, I seek to conduct a cultural analysis of Latino/a hero narratives, focusing on the ways in which their heroic figures and heroism discourses are represented in those narratives. Methodologically speaking, I am approaching this analysis from a cultural studies perspective that concentrates on the textual aspects of the chosen films, television programs, and the ways in which they are put together as specific

cultural and artistic products that incorporate both verbal and visual language. My study deals exclusively with popular culture representations of Latino/heroes, whether they are fictional characters or protagonists based on real-life individuals. However, in some cases, the historical or biographical aspects of real-life heroes are included in my discussion to illustrate issues with their cultural representation and their ideological implications. In other words, following James Phelan’s explanation regarding the authorial audience of fiction, my reading of these texts “operates with the tacit knowledge that the characters and events are synthetic constructs rather than real people and historical happenings” (212). In my analysis of the corpus, I commonly employ two terms: representation and construction. As explained earlier in this introduction,

“representation” is understood in the context of this study as a referential process by which an object (the Latino/a hero) is made present and portrayed in a given cultural product. Meanwhile, I use “construction” to refer to the particular and specific ways in which that hero is represented in those texts, paying special attention to aspects such as cultural hybridity, display of specific Latino/a cultural markers of lack thereof, relationship with dominant culture (resistance or domestication), gender, nature of heroic quest, agency, etc.

While popular culture and media texts are often analyzed from a communications perspective that explores not only their production aspects but also their circulation, audiences, and reception, such approach is beyond the scope of this dissertation. Here, I focus only on the textual aspects of the selected narratives, the ways Latino/a heroes are represented in them, and the cultural and ideological implications of such representations.

For the purposes of this study, I am reading the corpus from the point of view of their

ideal or implied audiences, that is, the idea that the text in some way implies something about the entity responsible for and the entity best suited to read the narrative. As Phelan indicates, the implied audience is “[t]he hypothetical, ideal audience for whom the implied author constructs the text and who understands it perfectly” (212). As a result, it is assumed that the ideal audience of the films, TV programs, and comics included in the corpus of this study would be queued to understand their subtleties in terms of cultural and/or political interventions; identify and reflect on their fissures or incongruences with respect to stereotyping or other strategies of cultural oppression; interact with the particular modes of address employed in the narratives (including bilingualism and code- switching) in a manner that facilitates a richer reading of these texts; and fully engage with the culturally hybrid nature of the characters and the artistic elements and traditions that merge in the texts. Furthermore, approaching these texts from the ideal audience’s perspective negates the possibility that they might be viewed as simple caricatures or parodies, since the implied reader is able to grasp and dialogue with the ideological interventions made in the texts by their authors—particularly in the case of superhero comic books and exploitation films, which tend to be regarded as not being “serious” enough for cultural analysis.

My critical framework is built upon narratological and social semiotics concepts that view the heroic story and the hero, respectively, as a narrative structure and as a sign laden with ideological implications. Because, as previously elaborated, the issues of legality and illegality are always intertwined with relations of power and ideology (either dominant or resistant), the critical concepts I have chosen to guide my analysis are particularly well-suited and useful to study Latino/a heroes in popular visual media, as

they recognize the politics of representation of hero narratives and allow for detailed and methodical analysis of film, television, and comics.

In his narratological approach to studying the basic structures of heroic stories,

Patrick Colm Hogan argues that the plots of these prototypical narratives are usually associated with ideology, either dominant or resistant. Likewise, heroic characters are bound up with ideology. Depending on their goals and their actions, heroes can be classified as socially normative, supporting nation, class, race, religion, or other forms of identity categories; individualistic, running contrary to power structures or identity categories; or socially representative, standing for their entire communities and either normative or non-normative, depending on whether they uphold or oppose society’s rules. In my study, I employ Hogan’s classifications to identify and elucidate the ways in which Latino/a heroic story plots and heroes operate with respect to ideology and social normativity. For example, the storyline in the comic book The Jaguar is purposely articulated as a resistant narrative against the prevailing dominant ideology of racism and discrimination. Meanwhile, its protagonist is a socially representative heroine who embodies the plights of her fellow Latinos/as and is normative in relation to the social and political interests of her ethnic community vis-à-vis Anglo dominance. But, on another level, The Jaguar also rejects her ethnic group’s social normativity by standing as a strong female hero in a cultural tradition marked by patriarchy and mostly male leadership, thus becoming an individualistic hero in terms of gender power relations.

In The Mind and Its Stories: Narrative Universals and Human Emotion (2003) and Affective Narratology: The Emotional Structure of Stories (2011), Hogan identifies three universal narrative prototypes that he posits are predominant across time and

cultures: romantic love, sacrifice, and heroism. By universal, Hogan means that these three genres “appear to govern a majority, or at least a plurality, of stories that achieve widespread and enduring importance in different traditions of verbal art […] ranging from elite paradigms to popular tales” (Affective Narratology 129). While Hogan analyzes mostly stories from the written tradition, the universality of heroic tales is by no means exclusive of other forms of narratives such as film, television shows, or comics.

What defines these stories is their basic structure and the prototypes found in them.

Hogan finds that prototypical heroic narratives, at their most basic level, include a hero, a goal, and a causal sequence that connects the hero’s action with the achievement or non- achievement of that goal. While some variations in plot do occur and all heroic stories do not necessarily look exactly alike, such variations do not significantly affect their overall structure:

A basic structure for stories begins with fragile or temporary aspect normalcy

disrupted by some precipitating event or change in conditions, leading to goal

pursuit. The goal pursuit constitutes the bulk of the story. It is obstructed by

sometimes severe difficulties [in the case of heroic stories, generated by an

antagonist], but often still leads to achievement of the goal and a return to

normalcy, now with the relevant aspect idealized. (Affective Narratology 125)

Westerns, heroic dramas, and action-adventure and superhero narratives widely produced and circulated in the United States in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries are good examples of the universality and continued appeal of prototypical heroic narratives.

Stories featuring Latino/a heroes are certainly located within this rich narrative tradition, and thus can add to our understanding of how these prototypes operate in modern cultural

production and what kind of impact their representations might have on the contemporary landscape of power relations.

Hogan acknowledges that stories are “profoundly related to ideology” and that heroic plots are generally associated with national or patriarchal ideologies (Affective

Narratology 136). Bu why is ideology so important in heroic plots? While Hogan is more concerned with how emotions guide the development and structure of stories and how readers engage with stories and their characters at the affective level, he also indicates that ideology—particularly in heroic narratives—is crucial to their constitution and plot development: “Indeed, when we get to the level of particular stories, perhaps the most important guiding structure that advances beyond emotion and causal attribution is dominant social ideology—national, religious, patriarchal—or alternatively, the resistance to dominant ideology” (Affective Narratology 136). For example, as Hogan notes, heroic narratives are attached to an “ethics of pride,” both at the individual level of the hero and at the collective level of the group this hero represents (Affective

Narratology 140). This element of “pride” is central to advancing the plot of heroic narratives and laying out the confrontation between the in-group (to which the hero belongs) and the out-group, which threatens the power, legitimacy, or wellbeing of the in- group. We can see this in the “usurpation sequence” typical to heroic plots, where an agent (character) from the out-group illegitimately takes over the leadership role of the in-group (a king or a president is deposed), steals something of value from the in-group

(think of Helen of Troy), or otherwise threatens “the legitimate social order of the in- group” (Affective Narratology 130). This event, which sets in motion the in-group hero’s quest to right the wrong committed and restore legitimate order, is heavily motivated by

in-group pride. The resulting confrontation between in-group and out-group and the way the story is resolved are driven by ideology. If the story favors dominant ideology—for

Hogan, “the set of mental contents and processes that foster the continuation of current hierarchies” (Affective Narratology 183)—then the dominant group’s order is restored.

We can see this in the 2005 film The Legend of Zorro, where the protagonist successfully fights to defend the interests of the U.S. federal government (dominant in-group) against the Confederacy (threatening out-group). Other times, the heroic narrative takes the form of a story of social rebellion, in which the hero is from a different nation, ethnicity, religion, or socioeconomic class from that of the ruler or social structure associated with dominant ideology (The Mind and Its Stories 208). In this case, the story fosters resistant ideology—“a set of mental contents and processes that oppose the continuation of those hierarchies” (Affective Narratology 183)—and the plot is resolved when the hero defeats the ruler or power structure to restore something that was usurped from him or her. The film Machete is a perfect example of a story of social rebellion, marked by differences of class, ethnicity, and “legal” status.

Another aspect of Hogan’s critical approach to heroic narratives that relates to ideology is what he calls “categorial identification.” For Hogan, the heroic genre relies on and supports particular sorts of identity categories, whether they are nation, community, ethnic or racial group, religion, or socioeconomic class. Such strong categorial identification and the heroic drive to fight off threats brought upon by an out-group, explain why the hero “is almost always to some degree socially normative” (The Mind and Its Stories 207). Even in stories of social rebellion, the hero is most often normative in relation to the rules, values, and interests inherent to his or her in-group, regardless of

the fact that such group is resisting domination by an out-group. Sometimes, however, the hero exhibits and individualistic streak that challenges one or more elements of his or her in-group’s power structures or identity categories, such as the example of The Jaguar that

I mentioned above. Whichever the case may be, categorial identification is imbued with ideology and power struggles, as the agents or characters intervening in a heroic narrative represent efforts to either reify or contest dominant structures associated with particular identity categories. Heroic plots sustain themselves through categorial identification precisely because the hero is more than a just a character in the story: he or she stands for the entire group he or she represents. As Hogan indicates, in heroic stories the condition of the individual is generalized to the group, so much so that “[t]he triumph of the hero is a triumph of the entire [group],” while “[t]he death or threat of death to the hero is also death of the [group] (The Mind and Its Stories 225, 110). The same type of generalization is true of the hero’s antagonist, who comes to embody the out-group along with its particular ideological motivations and power structures. Prototypical narratives, Hogan argues, “tend to personify and individualize conflicts with nature or with broad social structures” (The Mind and Its Stories 219), so that these impersonal phenomena or structures can be more easily represented in the form of an individual antagonist whom the hero can then combat to achieve his or her ultimate goal. In the film Machete, U.S. society’s anti-immigrant sentiment is personified by a criminal businessman and a corrupt Texas legislator whom the heroes, Machete and Shé, fight in order to protect their in-group (Latino/a undocumented immigrants). While my study is restricted to the production of Latino/a heroic stories and their representations, it is important to note that categorial identification also extends to the relationship between readers and texts. As

Hogan indicates, we as readers identify with and develop empathy for heroes who are

“like us” (The Mind and Its Stories 212), and such empathy is likely to be based on shared identity categories.

Along with Hogan’s narratological approach to studying heroic stories and their heroes, I will utilize a few theoretical and methodological tools from the sphere of social semiotics that are particularly useful for the analysis of visually rich and multimedia texts—and which also acknowledge the saliency of ideological motivations in these texts and the power of their representations. Specifically, I will employ concepts from the work by Roland Barthes on myth and the work by Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen on image and multimodal analysis.

In Mythologies, first published in 1957, Barthes interrogates a variety of cultural materials and texts to reveal how bourgeois society (as embodiment of dominant culture) asserts its values and ideology through them. For Barthes, these materials and texts— magazine images, advertisements, fashion, film icons, etc.—can be read as cultural

“myths” that work to reinforce certain ideologically loaded messages. While traditional structuralist semiotics was not interested in ideology, Barthes’ work moved semiotics in that direction, helping to lay the groundwork for the development of the emerging fields of visual studies, cultural studies, media and communication studies, and critical discourse analysis, among others. A key point of departure for Barthes’ take on the ideology of signs is the belief that signs do not possess fixed or essential meanings (a concept developed from the Saussurian notion of “arbitrariness”), but that their meanings are actually unfixed, since they are historically and culturally constructed. Barthes’ myth must not be confused with his concept of “connotation,” introduced in “The Rhetoric of

the Image,” and which refers to the symbolic or ideological meaning of a sign (in this case visual) beyond its literal or denotative meaning. Myth adds an additional ideological layer to signification: “Whereas connotation is the ideological meaning that is attached to a specific sign, myth relates to ideological concepts that are evoked by a certain sign”

(Aiello 95). Myth can be viewed as a third layer of meaning beyond the denotative and connotative layers.

Barthes’ concept of the myth is best understood through his classic example involving a picture on the cover of the popular French magazine Paris-Match:

On the cover, a young Negro in French uniform is saluting, with his eyes uplifted,

probably fixed on a fold of the tricolor. All this is the meaning of the picture. But,

whether naïvely or not, I see very well what it signifies to me: that France is a

great Empire, that all her sons, without any color discrimination, faithfully serve

under her flag, and that there’s no better answer to the detractors of an alleged

colonialism than the zeal shown by this Negro in serving his so-called oppressors.

I am therefore again faced with a greater semiological system: there is a signifier,

itself already formed within a previous system (a black soldier is giving the

French salute); there is a signified (it is here a purposeful mixture of Frenchness

and militariness); finally, there is the presence of the signified through the

signifier. (225)

This “presence of the signified through the signifier”—the presence of French imperiality through the image of the saluting black soldier, devoid of any information about France’s particular history of colonial ventures in Africa—is the myth. When a sign or a whole narrative is turned into myth, its history (in this case, France’s colonial

history) is drained out of it, so that the concept becomes naturalized. As Barthes indicates, the very principle of myth is that it “transforms history into nature,” that the photo naturally conjures up the concept (signified) of French imperiality and so those who uncritically consume the myth see it “not as a motive but as a reason” (240). As a dominant culture’s ideological strategy to shape or modify complex historical or political realities, myths are effective not because their intentions are hidden, but because they have become so naturalized that they are experienced as “innocent speech” (242). Myth doesn’t hide things: it distorts them. Therefore, myth is experienced as an undisputable fact: “The French Empire? It’s just a fact: look at this good Negro who salutes like one of your own boys” (234). Such naturalization of a myth doesn’t occur overnight in a society.

Just like the prototypical heroic narrative, which humans have told over thousands of years and continue to do with many variations but preserving a basic structure, myth is effective and enduring because it is communicated time and again through a variety of signs across a wide variety of signifiers. The image of the saluting black soldier is just one of the many signifiers used to communicate the signified French imperiality. As

Barthes reiterates, “myth is speech justified in excess” (240). This repetition of the myth reveals a final characteristic of myth that is important to note with respect to ideology: its intentionality. Barthes points out that in language the sign is arbitrary, but the mythical signification is never arbitrary, as “it is always in part motivated” and there can be no myth “without motivated form” (236).

When it comes to applying Barthes’ conceptualization of the modern myth to cultural texts and products, it is useful to understand the basic terminology and methodology developed by the author. Barthes sees myth as a “second-order”

semiological system, which operates alongside with the first-order language system of sign, signifier, and signified. Myth is regarded as a metalanguage because it speaks about the first language of the sign, because it is constructed from a semiological chain that existed before (223). In analyzing myth, the first-order global sign (along with its signified and signifier) becomes the signifier for the second-order system of myth.

Because both semiological systems are simultaneously involved in the construction of the myth, Barthes proposes a new terminology to differentiate it from that of traditional semiotics. The signifier is thus called “meaning” on the plane of language, while on the plane of myth it is called “form.” The signified is referred to as “concept” in both systems. Finally, what is known as sign in the linguistic system becomes “signification” in the mythical system. This is how Barthes’ interpretation of the myth works, again using the example of the black soldier: The meaning (the saluting black soldier) suggests a reading because it belongs to history (that is, the history of the black soldier); in other words, a signification is already built in the meaning. But when the meaning becomes form on the plane of myth, it “leaves its contingency behind; it empties itself, it becomes impoverished, history evaporates, only the letter [in this example, the image] remains”

(227). As form, the mythical signifier erases the history that came from the linguistic signifier, and which pointed to French imperiality via the image of the black soldier. The form needs the historical context attached to the meaning to be able to signify “French imperiality” to the reader and refer back to it, but the form distorts that history by emptying itself of the aspects it chooses to ignore. Next comes the concept (signified), which absorbs the history that was sucked out by the form and implants a new history in the myth: a justification of or alibi for French imperiality (228). The concept operates as

intentional appropriation. The final component of the mythical system, signification, is the association of the form and the concept, the actual myth. When the form empties itself of history, it “calls for a signification to fill it” (227). That signification (the very presence of French imperiality) is the myth, and its function is revealed precisely through two ways of reading the myth: first, identifying the distortion the form imposes on the meaning; and second, focusing on the myth’s ambiguous signification, that is, the constant game of hide-and-seek through which the myth at once points to and hides history. The myth’s double operation of appropriating (certain aspects of history necessary to fulfill its ideological goal) and erasing (those aspects of history that would challenge the myth’s naturalized assumptions) is very relevant for my study of Latino/a heroes. As we will see later on in this dissertation, popular culture representations of these heroes sometimes appropriate aspects of the heroic character or his or her culture to advance a particular ideologically motivated agenda, while other times they erase biographical elements or cultural markers of the hero for that very same reason.

U.S. popular culture provides abundant examples of how the myth works in terms of ethnic, racial, and cultural representations. Let us consider the classic frontier hero The

Lone Ranger, who returned to the silver screen in 2013. In both films and comics about this character, we invariably see the image of the hero (a former Texas Ranger, who is white) and his sidekick, the Native American Tonto, standing side by side. This image seems to be perfectly innocent: it provides information about the crime-fighting duo and their relationship. But it is in this apparent innocence that the myth operates. The image’s meaning (a white, ex-law enforcement agent and his Indian helper working as a team) gives us just enough history about both men and their different cultures. But the signifier-

form of the mythical system eliminates the contentious and bloody history between whites and Native Americans, leaving us with a signified-concept that naturalizes a harmonious relationship that has never, in fact, existed. The same is true of the example from The Legend of Zorro mentioned before. In the film, we see Zorro fighting

Confederate Army interests in favor of California’s bid to join the Union, while at the end of the story he stands next to the governor as official witness to the signing of the bill that makes California a U.S. state. Again, by associating Zorro with the Union and the governor of California, these images work to naturalize a harmonious relationship between the Latinos and the U.S. government, leaving out any trace of the violent history of Anglo takeover of Mexican territories in the West. Zorro, and the Latino community for which he stands, are represented as willing accomplices in the imperialist westward expansion of the United States. The Lone Ranger and the Zorro myths are nothing but signifiers of a larger myth: Manifest Destiny. Now, is there a way to oppose these myths?

Barthes proposes the mythification of myth via the production of an “artificial myth” that challenges its ideological motivation, thus creating a third-order semiological system whose point of departure is the signification (the myth) of the second-order system (247).

What Laura Molina does in The Jaguar is a good example of this. While Latino heroes such as Joaquín Murrieta, Gregorio Cortez, and Machete offer a counter-discourse to traditional Anglo images of the hero, their representations are hypermasculine, further reinforced by the prominent holding of a weapon, all of which naturalizes Latino patriarchal and sexual dominance. At this level of signification, all three of them are signifiers of this same myth. The Jaguar could be seen, then, as a counter-myth that unmasks the patriarchal myth by placing heroism on a female character who uses both

fighting and intellectual skills to protect her community.

While Barthes’ concept of the myth is helpful to access hidden significations operating in language and visual signs, Kress and van Leeuwen provide a series of analytical tools to decipher, in more detail, how meaning is socially negotiated in visual and multimodal texts beyond what a mythical reading does. These tools are found in their books Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design (1996) and Multimodal

Discourse: The Modes and Media of Contemporary Communication (2001). While their analytical approach may be different, there are keen similarities between Barthes’ and

Kress and van Leeuwen’s take on the semiotic sign and the question of ideology. Just like

Barthes, Kress and van Leeuwen view the sign as a “motivated” conjunction of signifier and signified, which should be formulated in relation to the sign-maker and the context in which the sign is produced, and not in isolation from the act of producing analogies and classifications” (Reading Images 8). They also point to the “naturalization” process that occurs when certain image-based signs pass into a society’s semiotic system as conventional and then neutral metaphors and classifications. The process by which this naturalization takes place, they posit, “is governed by social relations of power” (Reading

Images 8), while images are always means “for the articulation of ideological positions”

(Reading Images 14).

Kress and van Leeuwen’s “grammar of visual design” advances the idea that images, whether a photograph or a scene from a film, communicate or express in ways that are different from writing or speech, using a language of their own (color, compositional structure, perspective, framing, etc.). This distinction is important because it means communication is realized differently in visual systems and this affects meaning

(Reading Images 2). For the authors, when it comes to images, sign-making is basically a metaphorical process, with the sign-maker constructing, through a process of analogy, two metaphors. They explain this concept through the example of a small child drawing a car: “First, the signified ‘wheel’ is aptly represented by the signifier ‘circle’ to make the motivated sign ‘wheel’; second, the signified ‘car’ is aptly represented by the signifier

‘many wheels’ to make the motivated sign ‘car’ (Reading Images 8). A visual sign, Kress and van Leeuwen write, is thus the result of a “double metaphoric process” whose constitutive principle is analogy. Meanwhile, they see analogy as a process of classification: x is like y, etc. Therefore, in visual communication, the sign-maker has a variety of signifiers and compositional elements available to make representations of some object o entity, “and in which the interest in the object, at the point of making the representation, is a complex one, arising out of the cultural, social and psychological history of the sign-maker, and focused by the specific context in which the sign-maker produces the sign (Reading Images 7). For Kress and van Leeuwen, what we as readers see in images, what is represented in them, is never the “whole object” but only its

“criterial aspects”: the elements and representation mode deemed most adequate and plausible by the sign-maker during the double-metaphoric process of representation

(Reading Images 7). With these articulations as backbone of their critical approach, Kress and van Leeuwen propose a means of reading images anchored on the theoretical notion of “metafunction” borrowed from the work of Michael Halliday, who first proposed the concept of “social semiotics” in his 1978 volume Language as Social Semiotic. The three metafunctions of language that Halliday posited (reconceptualized for visual communication by Kress and van Leeuwen) are the ideational, the interpersonal, and the

textual. Next, I will provide a summary of what these metafunctions are and how they can be used for analyzing images from an ideological stance.

The ideational metafunction relates to the semiotic mode’s ability to “represent objects and their relations in a world outside the representational system” (Reading

Images 42). In doing so, the semiotic mode offers a variety of choices for the way objects and their relations with other objects can be represented. For example, objects can be represented in an image as having an interaction (visually represented by a vector, a pattern, or structure), which Kress and van Leeuwen call “narrative representation”

(Reading Images 59). In other words, certain images have a directionality that helps to tell and advance the story, and which can have important ideological or power relations implications—for instance, a war-related image that shows one group as actively moving toward its passive enemy not only tells a story but could also signify domination or justification of a particular action. Objects can also be arranged via a classification

(visually represented by a tree structure or organizational chart), which the authors call

“conceptual representation” and which show participants in terms of class, or structure or meaning” (Reading Images 79). In these conceptual representations, typically there is a

“superordinate” (the most relevant participant) and one or more subordinates, organized as belonging to the same overarching category. This organization, of course, can reflect relations of power, as conceptual classification is “represented by the same structure as a social hierarchy; that is, the more general idea is represented as similar to greater power”

(Reading Images 81-82).

Meanwhile, the interpersonal metafunction relates to the semiotic mode’s ability to “project the relations between the producer of a (complex) sign, and the

receiver/reproducer of that sign. That is, any mode has to be able to represent a particular social relation between the producer, the viewer and the object represented” (Reading

Images 42). Here, too, there are many choices available for representing interpersonal relations: distance, a subject addressing viewers or turning away from them, etc. The objects or subjects that appear in an image are called “represented participants,” while those who communicate through images (producers and viewers) are called “interactive participants”; interactions occur between all of them. Social meaning and ideological motivations are produced and reproduced through these relationships as well. An example of this is the image of Uncle Sam in the “I Want You” military recruitment poster. Analyzed from the perspective of Kresss and van Leeuwen, the action of pointing represents a “demand” made by the participant’s (Uncle Sam) “gaze,” which seeks to engage the viewer to enter into some kind of relation, in this case, one of patriotic military service (Reading Images 118). In the case of camera angles typically used in film and television (but also in comics), the authors view a low camera angle as a relationship between the interactive and represented participants in which the represented participant has power over the interactive participant—or over another represented participant upon which he or she might be looking down. A high camera angle, meanwhile, would establish a completely different relation of power (Reading Images 140).

Another concept of importance here is mode of address, or the way(s) in which relationships between addresser and addressee are constructed in a text. For these relationships to take place and for the text to be able to communicate or express something, the producer of the text must make some assumptions about an intended audience. Advertisers, for instance, make assumptions about their target audiences based

on factors that would contribute to the likelihood of increasing sales or boosting a brand’s reputation, addressing them in ways that would hopefully foster a connection between them and the product or service and elicit a favorable response. Modes of address differ in their narrative point of view, directness, and formality or social distance. Narrative point of view can be omniscient, third-person narration, or first-person narration. Films and TV programs tend to have an omniscient point of view in which the camera shows the represented participants and their actions from a single, all-encompassing perspective.

However, point of view sometimes shifts to subjective camerawork that shows viewers a particular character’s perspective; a selective point of view that favors a specific character’s perspective without the use of subjective camerawork; and voiceovers that are used for either first-person or third-person narration. Point of view mode of address also encompasses the language(s) or linguistic code(s) employed in the narrative, as such choices suggest that a particular voice within the text is being given preference—and also that the relationship between the addresser and audiences with access or lack of access to such languages or linguistic codes would vary. Whichever narrative point of view is employed, there are important ideological implications regarding who holds the power in addressing viewers and conveying a particular perspective. Meanwhile, directness refers to how explicitly represented participants address the viewers. Most films and TV fictional shows employ an indirect mode of expression because they depend on “the illusion that the represented participants do not know they are being looked at, and in which the represented participants must pretend that they are not being watched” (Kress and van Leeuwen, Reading Images, 126). Direct mode of address, with the represented participant looking straight into the camera, is often seen in newscasts and commercials,

reflecting the power of the addresser and signifying authority. The last type of mode of address is formality of social distance, which in visual representation is obtained through the shot or drawing sizes utilized: close-ups signify more personal or intimate modes of address, bringing the represented participants and viewers closer together; while medium and long shots are considered more impersonal modes, which increase the distance and thus limit the relationship with viewers (Kress and van Leeuwen, Reading Images, 130-

135).

Finally, the textual metafunction ascertains that any semiotic mode “has to have the capacity to form texts, complexes of signs which cohere both internally with others and externally with the context in and for which they were produced” (Reading Images

43). The choices available in this metafunction relate to a variety of compositional arrangements (layouts) of images, or image/text combinations, that allow the realization of different textual meanings. Composition establishes relationships between the representational and interactive meanings of the image by way of three interrelated systems: information value, salience, and framing. Information value transfers the specific values attached to the various “zones” of the image (top, bottom, left, right, center, and margin) to the elements that are placed on those zones. In the meantime, salience attracts the viewer’s attention to varying degrees and to a particular element or elements, according to compositional factors such as placement in the background or foreground, size, color, focus, sharpness, etc. Finally, the presence or absence of framing devices—materialized through elements that create dividing lines or actual frame lines in the image—“disconnects or connects elements of the image, signifying that they belong or do not belong together” (Reading Images 177). Just like the strategies described by

Kress and van Leeuwen as part of the ideational and interpersonal metafunctions, the compositional concepts of information value, salience, and framing are crucial for identifying and deciphering any ideologically motivated meaning inscribed in popular culture images. For example, the image on the jacket of the DVD format of Drug Wars:

The Camarena Story, arranges the drug boss Rafael Caro Quintero (the story’s main antagonist) on the left, with the hero, DEA agent Enrique Camarena, slightly behind him and to his right. According to Kress and van Leeuwen, objects placed on the left acquire the meaning of “Given,” something that is presented to the viewer “as a familiar and agreed-upon point of departure for the message,” while the right is reserved for the

“New,” something “to which the viewer must pay special attention” (Reading Images

181). In the context of this mainly propagandistic film, Caro Quintero signifies the

“Given” violence and amorality expected of the drug traffickers, accentuated by the prominently placed pistols on his belt: he is the stereotypical Mexican criminal. In contrast, Camarena appears from the right, commanding attention from the viewer as the character in the narrative whose sacrificial story is “New” and should be told and paid attention to; instead of weapons, what’s visible on his belt is his DEA badge, further signifying legitimacy over the illegitimate actions of the antagonist.

In addition to their analysis of images, Kress and van Leeuwen advance the idea of the multimodal text—any text whose meanings are realized through more than one semiotic mode, whether verbal, visual, or aural. In studying multimodal texts, the authors argue that the various modes and elements constituting these texts should be studied in an integrated way, as “integrated text” (Reading Images 177). They propose two

“integration codes” to study these texts: the mode of spatial composition and the mode of

temporal composition (rhythm). Spatial composition operates in texts where all elements are spatially co-present, such as paintings, magazine pages, ads, comics, etc. Meanwhile, rhythm operates in texts that unfold over time, such as speech, music, dance, etc.

Multimodal texts such as films and television programs employ both integration codes, as they involve a variety of semiotic codes: speech, written language, images, music, sound, and gestures, among others. In Multimodal Discourse: The Modes and Media of

Contemporary Communication, Kress and van Leeuwen move toward a view of multimodality in which common semiotic principles operate in and across different modes, instead of each mode having strictly bounded specialist tasks. In this integrated view, “it is therefore quite possible for music to encode action, or images to encode emotion” (Multimodal Discourse 2). The main idea behind this approach is that contemporary semiotic practice—marked by multimedia products, digitization, hyperlinking, and so on, in addition to the “trans-modal” experiences with which many movies, TV shows, and even comics engage viewers by incorporating related elements or alternative narratives to the original product online or through videogames —needs a theory of semiotics appropriate to this new reality, in which “the different modes have technically become the same at some level of representation” (Multimodal Discourse 2).

Multimodal discourse analysis concentrates on the modes employed in the text, as these are the “semiotic resources which allow the simultaneous realization of discourses and types of (inter)action” (Multimodal Discourse 21). The modes are employed in the design stratum or stage of textual production, as producers combine them and select from the options that they make available to conceptualize the text. A similar consideration is given to the medium, with media defined by Kress and van Leeuwen as “the material

resources used in the production of semiotic products and events,” whether they may be cameras, ink, paper, screen, musical instruments, an actor or singer’s vocal apparatus, and so on (Multimodal Discourse 22). The combination of modes and media chosen by the sign-maker is not arbitrary, but motivated, and it can have a significant impact on the meanings produced by the text in question. The third and final phase of multimodal discourse analysis deals with the ways meaning is generated in the production stratum.

Two primary semiotic principles are considered: experiential meaning potential and provenance. Experiential meaning potential “refers to the idea that material signifiers have a meaning potential that derives from what it is we do when we articulate them, and from our ability to extend our practical experience metaphorically and turn action into knowledge” (Multimodal Discourse 23). Examples of this include the way an actor can manipulate his or her voice to signify sensuality, or the way darkness can be used in a film scene to signify death or impending doom. Meanwhile, provenance refers to the idea that signs may be “imported” from one context (another era, social group, culture, etc.) into another, “in order to signify the ideas and values associated with that other context by those who do the importing” (Multimodal Discourse 23). One example of provenance is naming. For instance, in the comic book and film El Muerto, the protagonist is named

“Juan Diego de la Muerte,” a moniker that—coupled with other signs and semiotic systems included in the text—creates an intertextual relationship with the culturally significant appearance of the Virgin of Guadalupe to the Mexican Indian Juan Diego, but also with the Zorro narratives (Diego de la Vega is the name of the man who becomes

Zorro). In this case, naming serves the purposes of underscoring the culturally specific and spiritually defined identity of the character, as well as reinforcing his heroic nature.

Overview of Chapters

This dissertation is divided into four chapters. Chapter 1, “Guns and Horses:

Resistance and Domestication in Frontier Outlaw Hero Narratives,” explores how the representations of bandits, desperados, and other types of outlaw figures from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have resisted the “badman” stereotype traditionally attached to

Latinos/as, reaching heroic status among Latino/a communities and, more broadly, among consumers of U.S. popular culture. This analysis will include the iconic border hero

Gregorio Cortez, a Texas farmer who in 1901 shot a local sheriff in self defense after a language misunderstanding, was pursued by authorities in an epic chase, and was sentenced to prison—only to be exonerated and released in the end. As a symbol of resistance against

Anglo injustice, Cortez has been heroicized in corridos composed during the early twentieth century and in the 1982 film The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez, directed by Robert M. Young and starring Edward James Olmos. Just like Cortez, Joaquín Murrieta, a cultural hero of

California’s Gold Rush period, symbolizes the confrontations between Hispanics and

Anglos in the aftermath of the Mexican-American War of 1856-58. I will concentrate on three films that offer very different representations of this hero and his story: Murieta (1965,

Pro Artis Ibérica/Warner Brothers, starring Jeffrey Hunter), The Desperate Mission (1969,

20th Century Fox Television, starring Ricardo Montalbán), and I Am Joaquín (1969, El

Teatro Campesino). In addition to these two historical figures, I will study in this chapter the fictional and hugely popular character Zorro, created by U.S. pulp fiction writer Johnston

McCulley in 1919 and largely inspired by the exploits of Murrieta. I will concentrate on three films in which the action takes place during the 1840s and 1850s, as California transitioned from Mexican to U.S. control: The Mask of Zorro (1998, TriStar, starring

Anthony Hopkins and Antonio Banderas), which combines the stories of Zorro and of

Murrieta during the Mexican period of California; and The Legend of Zorro (2005,

Columbia, starring Antonio Banderas), a sequel to the 1998 film that deals with California’s annexation by the United States; and El Coyote (1955, Oro Films, starring Abel Salazar), a

Zorro-inspired movie based on Spanish writer José Mallorquí’s character, which features the masked hero as he protects native Californians from abusive U.S. authorities. The representation of these three heroes in U.S. popular culture and beyond reveals a constant tension between resistance and domestication, as their portrayals sometimes contest the U.S. territorial, political, economic, and cultural domination of the Southwest; while on other occasions (most notably in the case of Zorro), the Latino hero’s potentially rebellious nature is tamed and sanitized as well as coopted to support U.S. nationalist ideology.

Building upon some of the key themes explored in the previous chapter, Chapter

2—“Finding Justice Outside the Law: Modern Outlaws, Vigilantes, and the Politics of the

Activist Hero”—concentrates on entirely fictional heroic figures from film and comic books created since the late 1980s. A feature that unites these contemporary hero narratives is the “activist” role that their protagonists undertake to protect their diverse communities (often set along the U.S.-Mexico borderlands), from crime, exploitation, corrupt politicians, and other forces seen as detrimental to these communities’ daily existence. Also common to these characters is that they tend to circumvent established law-enforcement institutions and methods to carry out their heroics, becoming outlaws, vigilantes, or otherwise underground agents of resistance against perceived injustices. It is also important to note that many of these heroes—whose former or current day jobs include police officer, social worker, law student, or politician—resort to this alternative

form of achieving justice after finding themselves or the system in which they operate unable or insufficient to effectively protect vulnerable sectors of the populace, such as poor urban residents, minorities, or undocumented immigrants. Therefore, their activism and political positions are carried over as part of their transformation into vigilante heroes, whether that may be action heroes or superheroes with special powers. This chapter focuses on three superhero characters/teams—Richard Dominguez’s El Gato

Negro, Laura Molina’s The Jaguar, and Marvel’s Eleggua and the Santerians)— as well as various action heroes from the Robert Rodríguez films Machete (2010) and Machete

Kills (2013). Independently produced by Azteca Productions and first appearing in 1993,

El Gato Negro tells the story of how South Texas social worker Francisco Guerrero takes on the feline crime-fighting identity of his grandfather in response to the murder of a friend, disposing of drug traffickers plaguing South Texas communities during the night.

Another superpower-endowed activist developed during the 1990s is The Jaguar, created in response to the passage of California’s Proposition 187 in 1994. The Jaguar is the secret identity of East Los Angeles law student Linda Rivera, who lives in an alternate timeline in which Proposition 187 has turned California into a police state ruled by right- wing fundamentalists, where basic civil rights are consistently denied to people of color.

Helped by local activists, Rivera uses her Aztec-derived superpowers and knowledge of the law to fight racist groups and restore social justice. Moving away from the Southwest,

New York City is the setting for the adventures of Eleggua and the Santerians, a group of

Cuban-American heroes with powers derived from the orishas they represent. Appearing in Marvel’s Daredevil: Father (2005), the vigilante team protects Latino/a communities in New York from an assortment of criminals, including a notorious serial killer. Finally,

this chapter will delve into the action hero characters of Machete films. Machete (a former Mexican federal officer now living in Texas) teams up with Luz/Shé, the leader of an undocumented immigrant aid group known as the Network. Along with other gun- yielding activists, they fight corrupt business owners, politicians, and border vigilantes trying to advance their anti-immigrant agendas.

Chapter 3, “On the Border (of Chaos): Aliens, Monsters, Survival, and the

Precarious Nature of Legality in Supernatural Hero Narratives,” deals with a group of mostly post 9/11 television, comic book, and film characters besieged by supernatural forces and dealing with extreme circumstances in which the delineation between good and evil, moral and immoral, legal and illegal is not always clear. Additionally, these characters possess complex hybrid identities (Latino/American, Indigenous/Christian, human/superhuman, terrestrial/extraterrestrial, natural/supernatural, mortal/immortal, etc.) and are constantly crossing and disrupting borders—whether national, cultural, religious/spiritual, or even intergalactic. Texts studied in this chapter include Javier

Hernandez’s comic book series El Muerto, created in 1998 and turned into a 2007 independent film of the same name. El Muerto tells the story of Diego de la Muerte (a

California native in the comics and an undocumented Mexican immigrant in the film), who is turned into a zombie and given supernatural abilities by Aztec gods planning to use him as their avatar to re-conquer their former kingdom, now occupied by Europeans and Christians. Cursed to look like an undead mariachi (the costume he was wearing forb a Day of the Dead party on the night he was taken to Mictlán), Diego travels back and forth between Mexico and the U.S. looking for a cure to his curse, while struggling between obeying his masters’ demands to kill and staying true to his moral convictions.

A similar dilemma is faced by painter Isaac Méndez and Dominican-born twins Maya and Alejandro Herrera, from the NBC TV series Heroes (2006-2010). Méndez is a struggling New York City artist who gains the power of precognition and can depict the future in his paintings. Meanwhile, Maya is endowed with the power to emit a deadly poison when she is threatened, and which can only be neutralized by her brother. The twins roam Latin America as fugitives and cross illegally into the United States in search of a cure for her affliction. Another character that obtains his powers from a supernatural source is DC Comics’ new Blue Beetle, introduced in 2006 and with appearances on both comics and TV shows. The new Blue Beetle is Jaime Reyes, an El Paso Mexican-

American teenager who is chosen by an extraterrestrial scarab to be the latest incarnation of the mighty superhero, who fights evil forces on Earth as well as in space. While he becomes all-powerful thanks to the scarab, Jaime’s life as a superhero is full of confusion and chaos, as he can’t control his transformation process into Blue Beetle, and the scarab sometimes tries to make Jaime use more violence than the youngster believes to be right.

His dual life also causes Jaime difficulties connecting with his family, and he is often tangled in unwanted confrontations with Border Patrol agents and other law-enforcement officials. The last narrative to be explored in this chapter Robert Rodríguez’s film Planet

Terror (2007). In this apocalyptic horror movie set in Texas, the action-hero protagonists

—El Wray and his Anglo girlfriend Cherry Darling—are not endowed with supernatural abilities, but they must fight a zombie infestation caused by a deadly biochemical agent, as well as local law-enforcement officers and the military officials who originally tried to obtain the substance for illegal purposes. El Wray dies saving Cherry from a zombie, but she (pregnant with El Wray’s daughter) and other survivors travel to the Tulum Mayan

ruins in Mexico to start a new peaceful society amid what has turned into a worldwide zombie epidemic.

Finally, Chapter 4, “Truth, Justice, and the (Anglo) American Way: Law-abiding

Latino/a Heroes and the Problem of Identity,” deals with heroic representations of

Latinos/as in the context of “national security,” whether as soldiers fighting for the

United States in foreign wars, as federal agents engaged in the “drug wars,” or as action heroes at the service of an intelligence agency who try to stop a variety of super villains.

Unlike the heroic figures discussed in previous chapters, the Latino/a heroes analyzed in this final chapter are military, law-enforcement, or other kind of U.S. government- sanctioned crime fighters who enforce and uphold the state’s authority both at home and abroad. Included in this analysis is Guy Gabaldon, a Mexican-American Marine from Los

Angeles who achieved notoriety during War World II’s Battle of Saipan, convincing up to 800 Japanese soldiers to surrender thanks to his basic knowledge of the language— learned from his Japanese-American friends back home. A 1960 film, Hell to Eternity

(directed by Phil Karlson and starring Anglo actor Jeffrey Hunter as Gabaldon) was inspired by his story, yet Gabaldon’s Latino heritage and ethnicity were ignored. The documentary East L.A. Marine: The Untold True Story of Guy Gabaldon, by Steve Rubin

(2006), sought to address Hell to Eternity’s misrepresentations and “obliteration” of the hero’s Latino background and make a case for Gabaldon to be awarded the Medal of

Honor. 3 Meanwhile, DEA agent Enrique ‘Kiki’ Camarena is the Latino hero of another kind of war. Drug Wars: The Camarena Story, a miniseries released in 1990 in DVD format, recreates the story of Mexican-born, Camarena, who was kidnapped and

3 Gonzales, Richard. “Filmmaker: Pacific War Hero Deserved Higher Honor,” NPR, 25 April 2008. 15 Feb. 2013. 65

murdered in 1985 by Mexican drug dealers because of his role in providing information that led to the destruction of a lucrative marihuana operation. Camarena’s murder prompted an unprecedented homicide investigation on the part of DEA, at a time when

“war-on-drugs” operations in Latin America grew increasingly militarized. Finally, I analyze Spy Kids, a science fiction family film saga directed by Robert Rodríguez, which includes four movies released between 2001 and 2011. The first three films of the series revolve around a Latino/a family of action heroes, the Cortezes, employed by the

Organization of Super Spies (a reference to the Office of Strategies Services, predecessor of the CIA). Through their various adventures around the world and even in the virtual realm of a videogame, the Cortezes reinforce the value placed by Latino/a culture on family closeness and extended family ties, although very few cultural Latino/a markers are present in the constitution of their characters. In general, the representations of

Gabaldon, Camarena, and the Cortez family share this characteristic in common: cultural specificities that identify them as Latinos/as are either completely absent or reduced to traits with which a broader U.S. audience could more easily identify, such as patriotism, honor, family values, and—more importantly for this study—respect for and support of normative legality. Overall, the films explored in this chapter represent these characters as “good” and non-threatening Latino/a heroes aligned with dominant discourses of homeland security, law-enforcement, and international policing of crime.

As we can glean from the corpus of this dissertation, most of the hero narratives analyzed here have been produced in two distinct time periods: the 1960s and from the

1980s to the present. The films from the 1960s reflect societal changes and preoccupations that mark a decade of important upheaval and social transformation in

U.S. history. Fifteen years after the end of World War II, Hell to Eternity puts forth discourses that criticize discrimination of Japanese-Americans and their government- sponsored segregation through internment camps. Meanwhile, Murieta, The Desperate

Mission, and I Am Joaquín give representation agency to minorities and also revisit and challenge, in different ways, the nineteenth century history of U.S. expansion and oppression of people of color, at a time when African-Americans, Chicanos/as, and others were fighting for their civil rights. The second group of narratives appeared during after the culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s, when an issue deeply related to race and ethnic relation such as affirmative action joined other social and cultural fronts in a battle fought largely to define who and what constituted “the real America” and who deserved to reap its benefits. This period is also marked by the ascent of multiculturalism in different facets of American life, media, and art. These two time periods are significant because they created the conditions necessary for films, TV shows, and comics featuring

Latino/a heroes to appear—first as the result of civil rights campaigns and openings for alternative artistic expressions and discourses made possible by the counterculture of the period; and later on in response to the creation of a more inclusive (though by no means perfect) social, cultural, and artistic atmosphere that fostered the creation of heroic narratives by Latino/a artists and which also popularized narratives about Latinos/as by mainstream production companies and publishers.

I am fully aware that there are other (although few) Latino/a hero visual narratives involving issues of legality that do not fit within the aforementioned time periods.

However, I have chosen not to include them because they represent outliers in the overall corpus as articulated in this study and because they do not engage in the same cultural,

ethnic, social, and political conversations as the narratives from the selected two time periods do. For example, the 1936 film The Robin Hood of El Dorado, about Joaquín

Murrieta, does address racial injustice but depicts it as being part of a dead past that had supposedly been overcome by then, which is far from historical truth. Additionally, this film constructs Murrieta not so much as a Latino hero but as a hero of the Great

Depression era—an individual besieged by forces beyond his control, as most Americans saw themselves during the 1930s. It is also important to point out that most of the heroes explored here are Mexican-Americans, which responds both to the predominance of people of Mexican descent among U.S. Latinos/as4 and their long history inhabiting territories that were later taken by the United States. However, this study acknowledges the diversity and multinational origins of Latinos/as, including also heroes from other

Latin American backgrounds (such as Cuban and Dominican) and others who are coded generically as Latinos/as without mention of national origin or ancestry. Finally, I must indicate that the heroic figures studied in this dissertation are predominantly male, a limitation that reflects the general lack of female protagonists in Latino/a hero narratives and not any decision on my part. Nonetheless, the few Latina heroines that can be analyzed here do represent significant interventions into the male-centric tradition of

Latino/a heroism.

4 Mexicans account for 63% of all Hispanics in the United States, according to the 2010 U.S. Census. 68

Chapter 1—Guns and Horses: Resistance and Domestication in Latino/a Frontier Hero Narratives

“Let them come to us with guns and horses, gringos’ guns and horses […] We will grow, and very soon we will have an army, and with a thousand horses and a thousand men to ride them we will drive the gringos from California.”

—Joaquín Murrieta, addressing his gang in the film Murieta (1965)

The earliest Latino/a heroes and their narratives appeared in the United States in the mid-nineteenth century, following the U.S. takeover of former Mexican territories in the

Southwest as a result of the annexation of Texas in 1845 and the Mexican-American War of

1846-48. As the United States seized control of societies that had for centuries developed under Spanish influence, the resulting cultural, social, economic, and political clashes led to increasing conflicts between Mexicans/Hispanics and the westward-expanding Anglos.

Heroic figures arose from these conflicts during the second half of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century, typically in the form of rebels or bandits who resisted the imposition of Anglo laws and values, or victims of discrimination and injustice who sought retribution. Joaquín Murrieta, Juan Nepomuceno Cortina, Tiburcio Vásquez, and Gregorio

Cortez are among the best-known figures from this period. The courageous actions of these men inspired novels, poetry, corridos, and other forms of popular culture over the following decades, which contributed to turn these historical individuals into legends and myths among U.S. Latinos/as, Latin Americans, and beyond. Thanks to the popularity of cinema and particularly the western genre in the early twentieth century, stories about Mexican

caballeros and desperados such as the fictional Cisco Kid and Murrieta reached large audiences, further expanding and problematizing the representations of frontier Latino/a hero characters in U.S. popular culture.

Hollywood’s silent era and the beginnings of its sound era also contributed to the popularization of Zorro, another frontier champion and arguably the most popular

Hispanic/Latino fictional hero in the United States, also well-known in other parts of the world thanks to multiple retellings of its story. The character of Zorro was created in 1919 by U.S. pulp fiction author Johnston McCulley, but it owes its popularity to legendary actor

Douglas Fairbanks, who adapted the story for the silver screen in The Mark of Zorro (1920) and Don Q, Son of Zorro (1925)—paving the way for the production of dozens of other films and TV shows about or inspired by this character during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries (Pitts 429). The original story of Zorro takes place during the late Spanish colonial period in California, highlighting a different type of social and cultural struggle from that of the post-U.S. takeover of the Southwest. However, several other films recreate the adventures of the masked avenger during the transition period from Mexican control of

California to U.S. annexation, highlighting the difficult process of adaptation by Hispanics and Mexicans to U.S. control of their former territories as well as their responses during this troubling period. Some of these movies also combine the stories of the historical Murrieta and the fictional Zorro, further complicating the construction of both heroic characters and their legacy as symbols of justice for the disadvantaged and/or agents of political and cultural resistance.

In this chapter, I explore the construction and representation of early frontier

Latino/a heroes who have resisted the “badman” or “bandit” stereotype traditionally attached

to Hispanics, reaching heroic status among Latino/a communities and, in some cases, among larger U.S. audiences. I will concentrate my analysis on filmic and TV narratives about

Gregorio Cortez, Joaquín Murrieta, and Zorro. In the case of Cortez, I will study the 1982 film The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez, directed by Robert M. Young and starring Edward

James Olmos, which is the only significant film made about this heroic figure thus far. For my analysis of Murrieta, I will delve into films that offer very different representations of the folk hero: Murieta (1965, Pro Artis Ibérica/Warner Brothers, starring Jeffrey Hunter), which portrays the hero as a humble Mexican immigrant who attempts to organize an army of outlaws to regain control of California from the United States; The Desperate Mission

(1969, 20th Century Fox Television, starring Ricardo Montalbán), which presents Murrieta as a wealthy California landowner-turned-outlaw who must wrestle with the choice between personal survival and collective justice; and I Am Joaquín (1969, El Teatro Campesino), the short film version of Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales’s eponymous poem about Chicano/a liberation. In the case of Zorro, I will concentrate on three films in which the action takes place during the 1840s and 1850s, as California transitioned from Mexican to U.S. control:

El Coyote (1955, Oro Films, starring Abel Salazar), a Zorro-inspired movie based on

Spanish writer José Mallorquí’s character, which features the masked hero as he protects native Californians from abusive U.S. authorities; The Mask of Zorro (1998, TriStar, starring

Anthony Hopkins and Antonio Banderas), which combines the stories of Zorro and of

Murrieta during the Mexican period of California; and The Legend of Zorro (2005,

Columbia, starring Antonio Banderas), a sequel to the 1998 film that deals with California’s annexation by the United States. Because Murrieta is widely considered a key inspiration for the character of Zorro and the two characters become part of the same storyworlds in

Mallorquí’s tales and in The Mask of Zorro, my analysis of the two heroic figures will often overlap.

Studying the way in which frontier Latino/a heroes are constructed in the narratives listed above reveals a tension between two conflicting representational forces: resistance and domestication. For instance, Murrieta has symbolized resistance to U.S. economic and cultural domination in the Southwest and has been represented in this manner in most written and visual accounts about his life and/or myth, both in the United States and abroad.

The same is true about Cortez, the Tejano who shot an Anglo sheriff in self-defense, eluded numerous Texas Rangers and posses trying to capture him, and successfully fought for his exoneration during the early 1900s. His deeds and the injustices that marked his life made him a folk hero among fellow Mexican-Americans along the border region, becoming the subject of popular corridos and finally being heroicized on the big screen in a film that underscores the discrimination suffered by Mexicans in Texas and Cortez’s indomitable spirit of survival. Murrieta and Cortez have been the subjects of mostly favorable representations in U.S. popular culture that preserve the oppositional nature of these folk heroes and point to the injustices that led them to becoming outlaws. However, in some of the films about them one can also find instances of “taming” of the heroes and/or the hero stories’ resistant origins. For instance, The Desperate Mission downplays the racial confrontations between Hispanics/Mexicans and Anglos, while The Ballad of Gregorio

Cortez has been criticized by Latino/a critics for presenting the folk hero more as a victim rather than as an active, empowered character.

The narratives dealing with Zorro are more complicated when it comes to their ideological implications. While Murrieta and other Mexican-American folk heroes served as

inspiration for the character of Zorro, the oppositional nature of Murrieta the outlaw has been domesticated in the construction and representation of the iconic hero, giving way to a romantic, aristocratic figure who most often fights colonial Spanish or Mexican authorities vying for control of California. In this regard, Zorro represents a “safe,” charming hero invented by an Anglo writer and played almost exclusively by Anglo actors who highlights the evils of previous regimes in California but does not contest U.S. domination of the

Southwest or point out the atrocities committed in its wake. In The Mask of Zorro, the old

Zorro who used to fight the Spanish regime passes the torch and his mask to Alejandro

Murrieta, fictional brother of Joaquín, who becomes the new Zorro later in the film. While this literal transformation of Murrieta into Zorro could potentially give way to a radicalization of the masked hero, the result is actually the domestication of the symbolism carried by the Murrieta name in favor of a hero who pretends to be and later becomes an aristocrat, just like the old Zorro. In the sequel, Alejandro even takes on the name “de la

Vega” instead of Murrieta and fights for California to join the American Union, thwarting a plan by the Confederate Army and a French villain to split and weaken the United States. As a result, Zorro and the California Latino/a community for which he stands in the film end up being represented as willing accomplices in the imperialist westward expansion of the

United States, ignoring the historical abuses committed by Anglos in detriment of that

Latino/a community. The domestication of Zorro in these two films is contested in El

Coyote, where the Californio hero intervenes to save the leaders of an anti-Anglo rebellion and kills the top U.S. law-enforcement officials who have been terrorizing Hispanics in the region. The issue of legality is displayed prominently in all of these texts, as the heroes choose or are forced to challenge law-enforcement authorities and structures in order to

survive, seek justice, and/or rebel against the dominant culture. However, in the case of the

“domesticated” Zorro portrayals, opposition to the law is more nuanced: the hero does challenge the legal authority of his more powerful opponents in The Mask of Zorro, but the

U.S. takeover of California that resulted in countless acts of injustice against the Mexican populace and the rising up of bandit heroes such as Joaquín Murrieta are never acknowledged in The Legend of Zorro, even though the new Zorro is supposed to be the younger brother of Joaquín.

Frontier Struggles and Frontier Heroes: The War Over Representation

The tension between resistance and domestication that exists in the narratives about

Latino/a frontier heroes explored in this chapter could be characterized as a war over representation, as the dominant Anglo culture has attempted to legitimize the Manifest

Destiny and Melting Pot myths by excluding narratives of resistance from minority groups, and/or conjuring up less confrontational or alternative narratives in their stead. Along these lines, Camilla Fojas explains how mainstream U.S. culture has mostly dismissed any legitimacy associated with the actions of Latino/a folk heroes, as “[i]nfamous bandits like

Tiburcio Vásquez, Pio Lunares, Juan Flores, and Joaquin Murieta were relegated to history as ‘desperados’ rather than as ‘social bandits’ or ‘guerrilla chieftains’ engaged in ongoing conflict with Anglo vigilantes and conquistadores” (7). Because “[a]ctively contesting a dominant group’s imaginary of the past opens the future to new possibilities” (Bebout 2), the construction and perpetuation of heroes and stories of heroism that embody resistance against and contestation of the dominant culture are important for establishing an alternative imaginary of the past away from “official” history and mainstream representations. Frontier

heroic figures and their narratives are important for enriching our understanding of this ongoing process of contestation by minorities and push back from the dominant culture, as they have circulated in the U.S. cultural imaginary for a relatively long time (more than 150 years in the case of Murrieta). Along the way, they have experienced many transformations and reformulations that often reflect and inform changing views and attitudes of different time periods in U.S. history.

Heroes are not born in a vacuum. They arise out of difficult circumstances in which their existence is necessary—whether they are real-life figures who defend the homeland or go out to conquer an enemy, or fictional heroes created to symbolize the needs and aspirations of a certain time period or of a particular group of people. Why and how did frontier Latino/a heroes come to be? To answer this question, it is necessary to consider the time period in which these heroes first began to appear or in which their narratives are set, and the circumstances that compelled their actions and later their appearance and construction in popular culture. The nineteenth century marks a period of rapid westward expansion and consolidation of the United States as a strong nation against the backdrop of continued clashes and competition with European imperial powers such as Britain, France, and Spain. Mexican independence from Spain in 1821 made this nascent and struggling country a new target in the imperial wrangling for power in North America, with the United

States having the most to gain in its quest to amass new territories to the south and to the west. Jaime Rodríguez and Kathryn Vincent view the historical conflict between the U.S. and Mexico as fundamentally a colonial one, since “[t]he origin of contention between [the two countries] is rooted in the history of conflict between the two colonial powers that founded them [Britain and Spain]. In one sense, each child-nation inherited a long-standing

family feud” (1). They cite differences such as religion (Protestantism versus Catholicism) and race (a white Anglo society versus the racially mixed Mexican society) as factors that led to the racist treatment of Mexicans as “Americans who came in contact with Mexicans during the early nineteenth century handily transferred Black Legend concepts, such as the superstition, bigotry, and laziness of Spaniards, to their southern neighbors” (9). Americans of the time such as Stephen F. Austin believed that “the difference between Spaniards and

Mexicans was that the latter were even more inferior because of their mixed breeding,” while others wrote in newspapers that Indian and African blood was so blended in Mexicans

“that the worst qualities of each predominate” (qtd. in Rodríguez and Vincent 9). These stereotypes and racist attitudes, Rodríguez and Vincent conclude, meant that “Americans, who justified black slavery on both biblical and racial grounds, had little difficulty in declaring whites superior to Indians and, later, to their darker-skinned Mexican neighbors

[…] Expansionism became an institutionalized U.S. policy supported by the presumption that the vastly superior Anglo-Saxons must prevail over all inferior races. Those who stood in the way of America’s destiny were doomed to lose” (9). Mexico, which experienced great instability after independence, was in no position to defend itself against the Americans’ thirst for new territories.

As Ramón Saldívar explains in Chicano Narrative: The Dialectics of Difference,

American design on Mexican territory was an open ambition even before independence from Spain. As early as 1767, Benjamin Franklin had marked Mexico and Cuba for future

English colonial expansion, but by 1809 ambition was turning almost into national policy, as when Thomas Jefferson predicted that the Spanish border regions “are ours the first moment war is forced upon us” (qtd. in R. Saldívar 15). The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 brought the

United States and Mexico into direct and continuous contact, “setting up the competition for the province of Texas which was to determine Mexican and American political history until at least the mid-nineteenth century” (R. Saldívar 16). That competition was won by the

Americans in 1836, when Texas broke off from Mexico to establish an independent republic. Ten years later, Texas was annexed by the United States, and when “U.S. troops entered the disputed border regions between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande in April

1846, war between the United States and Mexico ensued” (R. Saldívar 16). Just like the myth of Manifest Destiny, which propelled and guided U.S. westward expansion, “another continuing myth is that the U.S. won the [Mexican-American] war in a fair fight—and, therefore, has no culpability” (Acuña 42). A similar situation occurred in California, where the Anglo population had been growing from 1821 through the mid-1840s, changing the power dynamics. The new ruling group of Anglo settlers replaced the original Hispanic land-owning elite and instigated a revolt against Mexican authority as the Mexican-

American War neared. As R. Saldívar points out, “[w]ith the discovery of gold in 1848, the

Anglo population grew substantially in numbers and political power so that by the latter part of the century the Anglos had gained control of the economic and political machinery of the region as the traditional society of native Californios crumbled” (16). When the Treaty of

Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed in 1848, Mexico lost about half of its former territory to the

United States (Vélez-Ibáñez 77).

Although the Mexican-American War is a defining moment in the history of U.S.-

Mexico relations, scholars such as Vélez-Ibáñez consider it to be the end of a long process

“by which the United States took advantage of the unstable Mexican political structure of the Southwest,” which was a result of “American penetration of the region through long-

distance trade and the social and cultural penetration effected by American trappers and entrepreneurs [as well as] the consistent destruction of Mexican communities and their political structure by those Americans who were involved in illegal trade and in fact sponsored and supported raids carried out by Apaches, Comanches, Ute, and other native peoples” (57). Additionally, the Mexican authorities overseeing the Southwest easily gave

Americans a political status equal to that of Mexican citizens. This led to many U.S. citizens migrating to New Mexico, Texas, California, and Sonora and later exerting great influence in this region (Vélez-Ibáñez 59). According to Vélez-Ibáñez, the Texas war of independence, the Mexican-American War, and the subsequent penetration of the region by intensive capitalist enterprises were the culmination of those early forms of American intervention and migration, “which led to the eventual political and cultural subordination of

Hispanos/Mexicanos in stratified-class communities” (58). Once the United States had seized full control of such vast new possessions, Americans employed a combination of juridical and illegal means to acquire land in the region, which resulted in an already hard- pressed (Hispanic/Mexican) population losing its land-holding power and control. During this process of “Americanization” of the Southwest, the wealth and land amassed by Anglos came at the expense of Mexican communities, and from that point forward

“Hispanos/Mexicanos came to be thought of as a commodity to be bought, sold, and periodically expelled, becoming ‘strangers in their own land’” (Vélez-Ibáñez 62). R.

Saldívar has described how the Hispanic/Mexican population of the newly Americanized

Southwest, despite its ethnic diversity, class differences, and geographical separation,

“shared a common language, Spanish, and common identity, as mexicanos,” and now also a

“common fate of racial, political, and economic oppression within the new American civil

framework” (12). This common identity is reflected in the way Latino/a frontier heroes are constructed as standing and fighting for a shared community and culture.

Expansionism and oppression was met with resistance during the second part of nineteenth century and the early 1900s, taking the shape of “periodic revolts, wars, border raids, armed and unarmed confrontations, community upheavals, long-term skirmishes, and coordinated rebellions [that] emerged in response to a variety of forces that were unleashed following the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and the Gadsden Purchase” (Vélez-Ibánez 94).

Early responses to U.S. occupation and mistreatment were embodied by the so-called

“bandits,” who sought to avenge a variety of injustices through armed resistance. Figures such as Joaquín Murrieta, Vélez-Ibánez writes, “rose to occupy this role, becoming bona fide cultural heroes instead of social bandits or primitive rebels” (101). In addition to

Murrieta, “Salomón Pico of Santa Barbara in the 1850s was supported by Mexicans who believed that he had been denied his property and land and generally supported his killing of

Anglos without mercy,” while “Tiburcio Vásquez, cattle rustler, horse thief, and stagecoach robber, was perceived as a hero by Mexicans in California, as he raided, stole property, and killed Anglos for twenty years between the late 1850s and 1875 when he was hanged”

(Vélez-Ibáñez 102). In Texas, Juan Nepomuceno Cortina was a notable Mexican cultural hero who initiated the so-called “Cortina’s War” of 1859 after killing a deputy sheriff who was pistol-whipping a former servant of his family. Vélez-Ibáñez posits that Cortina’s War embodies a true cultural revolt and not simply a process of “social banditry,” since its

“approval arose from the fact that he represented the cultural expectations and needs of the community and border region from which he emerged” and he combated “the arrogance and domination of Anglo law and order, the religious distaste displayed by Protestant bigotry of

local-level Catholicism, and economic exploitation and the domineering political control of all facets of the region’s resources by non-Mexican politicians and their elite Mexicano collaborators” (103). Taking place four decades later, the story of Gregorio Cortez in south

Texas still carries similar themes of violence inflicted by Anglo law enforcement, cultural and language differences, and treatment of Mexican-Americans as second-class citizens.

These early frontier Latino/a heroes soon went through the process of cultural representation, becoming infamous (for Anglos) or legendary (for Mexican-Americans and other Latinos/as) figures whose stories have come to personify the larger historical conflicts that took place during this period. I will now explore how this process of representation has operated in the construction of Gregorio Cortez, Joaquín Murrieta, and Zorro as representative Latino/a frontier heroic figures in popular culture.

With Justice in His Hand: Gregorio Cortez and the Corrido/Film Heroic Divide

The historical Gregorio Cortez was born in Mexico in 1875 and emigrated to the cattle country of south Texas with his family, where he worked as a farmer (Paredes 55). In

1901, he killed Karnes County Sheriff W. T. Morris during an incident in which Morris wounded Gregorio’s brother, Romaldo, while investigating an alleged horse theft. The shooting was the result of a language misunderstanding—the Anglo translator made translation mistakes that led the Sheriff to believe the Cortezes were lying and challenging his authority—as well as what Gregorio viewed as an illegal arrest attempt, as neither of the

Cortez brothers was guilty of rustling. Fearing for his life, Cortez escaped and was furiously pursued by Texas Rangers and supporting posses until he was eventually captured and tried.

Although he was found not guilty of killing Sheriff Morris, he spent 12 years behind bars for

crimes he committed during his escape and died at 41, three years after having finally obtained his pardon (Paredes 97-104). But there is also the mythical Gregorio Cortez, a divisive figure about whom C.F. Eckhardt has stated: “Mexicans lie about his greatness, gringos about his villainy” (154). An accidental outlaw and reluctant hero, Cortez nonetheless joined the annals of U.S. history as the protagonist of the “the biggest manhunt in the history of Texas” (Conway 114) and became ingrained in the Latino/a cultural imaginary as one of its most celebrated symbols of struggle and resistance to oppression and injustice. Cortez epitomizes the story of the frontier Latino/a hero: living on geographical, cultural, and language borderlands; dealing with Anglo-dominated social and legal structures that often discriminated against Mexican-Americans and other minorities; and facing profound changes as the region’s traditional cowboy culture and economy were rapidly being replaced by modernity and the industrialization of cotton production at the turn of the century (Conway 128).

Unlike Joaquín Murrieta and Zorro, whose status as heroic figures was at first popularized by works of literature written by non-Latinos/as, the story of Cortez and his privileged standing among Mexican-Americans was the result of corridos, or popular

Mexican ballads, composed and sung about the man and his exploits as part of border oral tradition during the first part of the twentieth century. The process of constructing Cortez as a folk hero for Mexican-Americans, and later as a more broadly representative hero of the

Latino/a experience of struggle in the United States, began precisely with those corridos.

Chicano scholar Américo Paredes popularized the study of corridos, and of Gregorio Cortez as a border hero in particular, in his 1958 book With His Pistol in His Hand: A Border

Ballad and His Hero. In this study, he wrote that “[f]or more than half a century the Rio

Grande people have remembered Gregorio Cortez, and in that time the figure of a folk hero has been shaped out of historical fact. It has been the vivid, dramatic narrative of the corrido

[…] that has kept the image of Cortez fresh in the minds of Border people” (108). After the corrido itself, Paredes’s book was an important contributor to the prominence of Cortez as a symbol of cultural resistance that was adopted and further transformed during the Chicano

Movement of the 1960s and 1970s (Rosaldo 151). Finally, The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez— while different in significant ways from the story told in the corrido and Paredes’ heroic construction of Cortez—owes much to the folk musical form both in its title and also in the ways that director Young seeks to evoke the rhythm and narrative of the corrido through background music, camera movements, and chase scenes. My analysis of the film will take into consideration its interconnectedness with the corrido and the unavoidable dialogue it establishes with Paredes and the legacy of the Chicano Movement, as the early twentieth century ballad hero is re-interpreted in 1983 through a different medium and historical lens.

As José Limón explains in Mexican Ballads, Chicano Poems, corrido-like songs have been composed in Greater Mexico since the Conquest (17), reflecting a long tradition of oral cultural expression. The specific poetic form of the corrido, however, has been produced on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border since at least the mid-nineteenth century

(Limón 1). The appearance of the corrido during this period of time is no coincidence, since

“the rise of the corrido genre seems to coincide with the increasing contact and the resulting clashes between Anglos and Mexicans in Texas after 1848” (R. Saldívar 27), which is also the period when heroes such as Murrieta and Cortez emerged. Because it is this “increasing contact and the resulting clashes” between two disparate cultures that give rise to the corrido, this form of folk poetry and music is essentially a borderlands phenomenon.

Paredes explains that the “Corrido of Gregorio Cortez” needs to be understood as a border tale, “as a prototype of the corrido of border conflict” (241). According to Paredes, borders, ballads, and heroes “seem to go together,” and the conflicts about which they tell stories typically have to do with rebels fighting their dominators (xii). Dialoguing with Paredes’s study, Lee Bebout has referred to the significance of the corrido as a political and ideological intervention through which an oppressed group resists the dominant group:

“Through engaging cultural forms, the subjugated community may access and use sites that the ruling class cannot. The corrido […] provides such a model. Paredes demonstrates how

Tejanos resisting Anglo-American aggression employed the oral and musical traditions.

Through the corrido, Tejanos produced a counternarrative to the hegemonic imaginary. The fluidity of the tradition allowed for multiple democratic points of access to the production of the narrative, as evidenced by the many variants of ‘El Corrido de Gregorio Cortez’” (36).

The culturally and politically resistant nature of the corrido helps explain why it has persisted and thrived on both sides of the Rio Grande into the twenty-first century as a way of contesting power structures, including the controversial narcocorrido subgenre that celebrates the exploits of drug smugglers as popular heroes clashing with U.S. law enforcement agents and institutions. This contestatory nature also made the corrido a salient intertextual influence on the activist poetry written during the Chicano Movement, including the long poem “I Am Joaquín,” whose filmic version will be explored later on in this chapter. According to Limón, the corrido—its particular poetic form and the stories of resistant heroes like Cortez that it tells and preserves—has served as a “master poem” and

“key symbolic action” that “powerfully dominates and conditions” the poetry of the Chicano

Movement (2). As a link between the earlier forms of the corrido and the Chicano

Movement’s politically motivated poetry stands Paredes, whom Renato Rosaldo has regarded as a sort of “warrior hero” for writing his culturally resistant book during a time when anti-Mexican prejudice in the Southwest and California was strong: “In South Texas, where this prejudice was particularly virulent, it took courage to challenge the dominant ideology of Anglo-Texan superiority” (150). Limón explains that Paredes’s book soon found a very receptive audience in the 1960s among the largely working-class Mexican-American youth attending university in the Southwest, who would soon engage in “movements of political protest and cultural rebellion” that evolved into the Chicano Movement (65). The reason for the book’s appeal and influence resides in the way Paredes articulated in his socially and politically aware scholarship “a new kind of corrido, one whose complex relationship with the past enabled it to speak to the present” (Limón 65)—establishing a historical connection between the struggle of one man who came to represent the dire circumstances of his larger community in the early Anglo-occupation era, and the struggle of Mexican-Americans and other Latinos/as during America’s civil rights awakening period.

In other words, the mythohistorical figure of Gregorio Cortez (through the corridos it inspired and the groundbreaking cultural studies intervention of Paredes) had a profound influence on the social, political, and cultural awakening embodied in the Chicano

Movement, which in turn informs the production of the film about Cortez just a few years later. At the core of all of these instances of Latino/a cultural intervention in the face of hegemonic, oppressive forces is the figure of Cortez the hero, who comes to embody both the effects of structural racism and exploitation and the courageous and defiant response of a group of people that continues to struggle against Anglo domination in its varied and evolving forms.

The actions of Cortez the man were already hailed as heroic—or, depending on the audience, as villainous, which is the opposite side of the same coin—by his contemporaries during his highly publicized manhunt and subsequent legal battles. We see this represented in the film when Cortez is resting from his flight at a diner near the border and a group of

Hispanic men speak in the background, in Spanish, about his deeds—about how he is a great, brave man who has eluded 300, 400 pursuers, and wishing that “ojalá no lo agarren.”

However, Cortez only becomes a full-fledged heroic figure when he is enshrined in corridos, once the man and his actions become the subject matter of narrative—in other words, when his story is told and retold and transformed along the way. Paredes has indicated that the corrido of border conflict serves this function of heroization by incorporating crucial elements of the original story while ignoring or embellishing others.

The ballad, Paredes writes, does not “always correspond to fact, but it carries the real man along with it and transforms him into the hero” (149). This process of transformation continues with each new iteration of the Cortez tale and each new representation about the man-turned-hero, culminating with the 1982 film by acclaimed independent director Robert

M. Young. Made at a cost of $1.3 million, The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez was the first movie largely financed by and aired on the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) that was released for theatrical distribution, mainly as a result of a grassroots effort led by actor

Olmos who took the film on the road across the United States, reaching some 70,000 viewers at various venues (Conway 130). According to movie online database IMDb, the film grossed a little over $900,000 in theaters during his theatrical run in 1983 (“The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez”), a small amount by Hollywood standards. By comparison, the now gagster cult classic film Scarface (about a stereotypical Cuban immigrant-turned-drug

trafficker in Florida), appeared in theaters during the same time period and made $44.7 million (“Scarface”). Nonetheless, The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez has been applauded for its realistic and convincing inclusion of diverse ethnic characters, for featuring perhaps the first lead character in an American film who doesn’t speak English, and for being, according to the vice president and general manager of Embassy Pictures, “the first movie I know of with a Hispanic hero that has the potential to reach an Anglo audience” (qtd. in Conway 130).

As expected, there are important similarities and differences between the corrido and the film. One significant connection between the two forms is the way the performance of the corrido (either vocals and music or just music) is included in the film via provenance “in order to signify the ideas and values” associated with the context in which such intertextual reference was produced (Kress and van Leeuwen, Multimodal Discourse, 23). The corrido is used as non-diegetic music at the beginning of the film to offer background on the story of

Cortez and his cultural context and during the chase scenes as a sort of heroic soundtrack.

The ballad is also employed diegetically later on in the film as a band plays the song in a public space, signaling that the legend of Cortez was already being created by his countrymen as his ordeal was unfolding. Differences and similarities become quite clear when examining the corrido and the film as hero stories following the structure outlined by

Patrick Colm Hogan. For this analysis, I will use the short version of the Gregorio Cortez corrido that Paredes utilizes in his book (3). First, there is the issue of narrative structure. As it turns out, the corrido fits very well Hogan’s prototypical hero story structure and, because of its brevity, advances the plot quite swiftly but without leaving any crucial elements out. In its first four lines, the corrido tells about the death of El Carmen’s Major Sheriff, an event that serves the function of the usurpation sequence—which typically deals with the

kidnapping and/or dethroning of the king or legitimate authority. Similarly, the film employs the death of Sheriff Morris as the event that sparks the narrative and disrupts the initial sense of normalcy, although the movie begins with scenes of posses chasing Cortez before the audience finds out why he is being pursued. Next in the hero story’s structure is the threat/defense sequence, which sets the story in motion and helps advance the plot. In the corrido, the “threat” part of the sequence occurs when the authorities find out that Cortez was the man who killed the sheriff and “in the county of Kiansis / They cornered him after all.” The “defense” takes place immediately after, in the next line, when Cortez “leaped out of their corral,” and continues throughout the rest of the ballad, as the hero constantly outruns “the more than three hundred” chasing him and refuses to surrender: “‘You will never get my weapons / Till you put me in a cell’.” In the film, the threat/defense sequence is more complex and less linear. In the very first scene of the movie Cortez is already being pursued and manages to avoid capture in the middle of the night. Later, we see how a posse looking for Cortez harasses a Mexican man as they seek information, eventually tying him to a horse. The audience doesn’t know if the man is eventually dragged behind the horse and/or lynched, but the incident and the violence of the posse are more than enough to establish a parallel threat sequence: it is not just the hero who is being pursued, but the community that he is part of and represents is also threatened by association. The defense response from Cortez also takes place in different stages throughout the movie, first embodied by his relentless efforts to outrun the law-enforcement agents and later during his trial.

In the corrido, there is no resolution or clear end to the narrative: Cortez defies the officers, pistol in hand, and all we can imply is that the chase will continue. This is not the

case in the film, which attempts to present a more historical and complete account of

Cortez’s story than the corrido does, showing his capture, the trial, and explaining in the end about his acquittal, successive trials, his imprisonment for 12 years, and his eventual pardon, three years before his death. This is not simply a difference in plots, but it bears crucial ideological implications. Cortez’s response to what he considers an unjust action by Sheriff

Morris, his valiant escape, and the assistance he receives from fellow Mexican-Americans who identify with his struggle make both the corrido and the film stories of social rebellion, according to Hogan’s classification. In both narratives, the Anglos are presented as the dominant group that controls the institutions of law and order, while the Mexican-

Americans—oppressed by the dominant group—resist their injustices, with Cortez personifying and putting into action such rebellious spirit. However, by perpetually prolonging the chase and not acknowledging the hero’s arrest, the corrido’s degree of social and cultural resistance as a story of social rebellion is more prominent. In the corrido,

Cortez is highly defiant and mocks the Anglos by boasting his superior skills as a Mexican-

American: “Ah, so many mounted Rangers / Just to take one Mexican.” The narrator of the corrido also highlights Cortez’s exceptionality by stating that trying to catch him “Was like following a star,” contrasting his bravery with the intentions of the morally inferior Anglos who are only concerned with money: “What they wanted was to get / The thousand-dollar reward.” As popular musicians composed this version of the Cortez corrido, the intention was clear: celebrating Cortez’s deeds as a victory for Mexican-Americans and suspending in history his escape as a symbol of resistance. In the film, Cortez’s oppositional nature is more attenuated: he hardly speaks, let alone boast, when confronting his pursuers; the narrative ends with a Cortez that is represented more as a victim of racism than as a hero fighting

injustice; and the final triumph (his acquittal on the killing of the sheriff and his eventual pardon) is obtained by virtue of the legal and political system, not by the defiant bravery of a culturally representative hero. I will come back to and elaborate on these points later on.

The way the heroic story is structured directly impacts the construction of its hero.

When providing a framework for analyzing Gregorio Cortez as a Mexican-American border hero, Paredes compares him to traditional heroes of American folklore such as the herculean lumberjack Paul Bunyan and the African-American titan John Henry: “Unlike John Henry and Paul Bunyan, however, Cortez is not a prodigy. His feats are due to industry rather than to superhuman powers. He is a hero who works rather than a worker hero” (119). This difference is significant because Cortez is represented as an ordinary, simple, hard-working farmer and family man who only becomes extraordinary when forced by exterior circumstances to display the skills he has honed living and working in cowboy country. The film emphasizes Cortez’s “everyday” nature by presenting him, before and after the chase, as a quiet, gentle individual who is more concerned with the wellbeing of his bother, wife, children, and friends than with his own—he is “not a criminal, he is a simple man of the earth,” according to his attorney’s opening statements at his trial. This dedication to protecting his own is at the core of his confrontation with Sheriff Morris. In the flashback sequence that corresponds to Cortez’s version of the story, the film presents the drastic change of circumstances that is about to take place. Cortez’s beautiful wife is shaving him after he had just returned home from work and small children play as we hear bucolic non- diegetic music that makes the scene even more idealized (an example of the multimodal strategy Kress and van Leeuwen call experiential meaning potential). Suddenly the music stops, interrupting the pleasant mood, as the sheriff and a deputy that serves as his translator

show up at Cortez’s front yard. After the confusion created by the language difference, mistranslations, and mutual mistrust, Morris shoots and wounds Romaldo. It is only after the initial threat established earlier in this scene materializes that Gregorio pulls his gun and kills the sheriff—an action the he sees as justified to resist an illegal arrest and to protect his family. According to Paredes, Cortez goes from down-to-earth man to heroic figure as a result of this action: “In the killing of Morris and in his subsequent flight, Cortez becomes the warrior hero. It is in this place of the legend that he resembles most closely the hero of the corridos. He becomes the typical guerrilla, the border raider fighting and fleeing, and using warrior’s tricks to throw the enemy off” (119-120). Cecelia Conway has also indicated that the hero of the corrido is distinctive from other heroes, American or otherwise, in the sense that “he neither becomes a Robin Hood, who robs from the rich to give to the poor, nor repents to provide a moral” (127). In other words, Cortez becomes a border hero as he instinctively reacts to the racially motivated attack that disrupts his life, without a lofty goal in mind other than surviving, and he becomes a culturally representative symbol of resistance precisely because he never wavers in his insistence that he is innocent and that he always did the right things as a free man.

Portrayals of Cortez’s “warrior hero” attributes are abundant in the film, which emphasizes his horse-riding and gun-fighting abilities. In what is perhaps the movie’s most accomplished chase scenes underscoring the hero’s prowess, the train and dozens of men are about to catch Cortez. A wide shot shows the train in the background, dozens of men chasing Cortez in the middle ground, and Cortez in the foreground, in an alignment that emphasizes the proximity of the pursuers and signals that his capture is imminent. However, this view is followed by a high panoramic shot taken from the top of the train that shows the

frenetic pursuit as it continues to evolve. This time, the perspective has completely changed:

Cortez is now in the background, getting farther and farther away from his pursuers and train. The power relationship is altered in this scene—while a high-angle shot such as this one confers representational power to the subject positioned above (as indicated by Kress and van Leeuwen in Reading Images), in this case the use of such angle and the resolution of the scene emphasizes the fact that while the Anglo law-enforcement agents have the advantage in terms of technology, weapons, manpower, and horses, the lone Latino hero is able to overpower them out of sheer skill and determination. Kress and van Leeuwen’s compositional element of salience plays an important role in the way these scenes encode ideology, as the placement of Cortez and his pursuers either on the foreground or the background along with other aspects of movement and distance impact the way power relations are structured visually in the film. Another heroic attribute that the film highlights is Cortez’s high moral ground and non-violent ways. Early in the chase, Cortez uses his skills to ambush one of his pursuers, pointing his gun at him. When it looks like Cortez will kill the man, he simply tells him: “No fue mi culpa.” This scene confirms that Cortez only resorts to violence when necessary for self-defense, countering and discrediting accusations by newspapers that he is “a notorious criminal” and by the prosecutor that he is a diabolical man who killed in the dark while laughing the whole way. By contrast, several Anglo law- enforcement agents are portrayed as villainous, bloodthirsty individuals who several times shoot at and lynch innocent Mexican-Americans on the pretext that they are helping Cortez or are associated with his supposed “gang.”

While the film does a good job of underscoring Cortez’s heroism and his non-violent nature, Cortez’s heroic escape is mostly represented via long shots that show his

horsemanship, elusive skills, knowledge of the land, and antagonistic relationship with the train that is used to help pursue him. The film’s choice of an impersonal mode of address through the use of this type of long shots results in a lack of proximity and hence intimacy between the viewer and the hero. This and the absence of internal dialogue that would allow viewers to know what Cortez is thinking about during the chase are all artistic decisions by the director that make the audience perceive the protagonist as closely associated with nature and with his horse. The viewers can witness his actions, but there is a lack of camera work and other artistic tools that would allow the audience to view the events unfolding from

Cortez’s perspective and thus closely engage with his enterprise. We, as viewers, are mostly kept at a distance from Cortez. Instead, as Rosa Linda Fregoso has pointed out, our identification as viewers rests with Bill Blakely, the Anglo journalist who reports on Cortez, interviews witnesses, follows the chase along with the sheriffs and Rangers, and becomes our “window” into the truth as we find out what really happened. Blakely’s selective narrative point of view gives him an incredible amount of power due to the way viewers are addressed from his privileged perspective in the film. In other words, the audience is asked to engage with Blakely in a fact-finding process that begins to raise doubts about the credibility of Anglo-Texan witnesses and reveals racist sentiments among many of them, as the film ultimately is aimed at “calling attention to the gaps between what witnesses say and the ‘truth’ the film puts forward [and] leading spectators to interrogate critically the process of constructing the ‘truth’” (Fregoso 73-74). For instance, the emphasis on showing Cortez acting alone through long shots is also crucial for the film’s goal of establishing the truth about his ordeal and rendering untrue the accounts told by some of his pursuers and reproduced by newspapers—namely, that he was aided by a large gang of horse-thieving

Mexicans, an image that sought to associate Cortez with previous “bandits” such as Murrieta and Vásquez and further accentuate his perceived status as a criminal. In this sense, I agree with Conway’s observation that The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez is a film about “who controls the telling of the story” (120). Such control in the end rests with the privileged positions of Blakely and Cortez’s lawyer, B. R. Abernathy, who are able to successfully reveal the lies and contradictions and lay out before us viewers the “true” story of Cortez—a story that fits with the protagonist’s version of the events and further contributes to his heroization.

Another element that plays a crucial role in this fact-finding mission around which the film is structured is language. About one-third of the film’s conversations are in untranslated Spanish, which according to Conway makes “viewers become embroiled in the difficulties of translation” and cross-cultural understanding (115), as the issues of mistranslation and co-existence along cultural borderlands that mark the narrative from beginning to end contribute to making viewers’ access to the truth even more difficult.

However, the film’s bilingual mode of address goes beyond the issue of translation and requires a more nuanced reading that what Conway and Fregoso offer in their respective studies about the movie. It is accurate that English-speaking viewers—a majority of the film’s primary target audience—rely on the various language and cultural “translators”

(Blakely, Abernathy, Cortez’s court interpreter) to gain access to the truth of what has been said and what has happened. The film addresses this audience via visual discourse, English- language dialogue and inter-titles, creating an experience and relationship with the text that can only go as far as partial immersion into the codes employed both to represent the

Latino/a characters and tell the story. However, there is another audience that the film

addresses through its use of untranslated Spanish dialogues and what Fregoso has elsewhere referred to as “cultural specificity as a mode of address” (129). Although this bilingual, U.S.

Latino/a audience is a secondary audience as far as The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez is concerned, I argue that it represents the film’s ideal audience because it is the only one that can access the totality of linguistic modes of address employed in the film and also has the cultural background to more intimately relate to the hero’s plight and the history of racial injustice that he embodies. Unlike an English language-only audience, this ideal audience can understand first hand the linguistic misunderstanding that led to the confrontation between Cortez and the sheriff and the nuances of conversations taking place between other

Mexican-American characters. Also, this audience can also identify with Cortez’s frustration with not being understood and/or being purposefully misunderstood because they share a similar history of discrimination and alienation as U.S. Latinos/as.

That being said, the way the film operates in terms of ideology makes the construction of Cortez as a hero a complicated one. While the movie clearly advances a resistant ideology that challenges the dominant group’s claims of superiority and righteousness, it does so at the expense of placing the resistant group and its hero away from the center of representation and agency. Fregoso and Juan Alonzo have criticized The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez for being Anglocentric, subordinating Cortez within narrative discourse; for literally denying Cortez and the Mexican-American community a voice in telling and shaping the narrative while favoring Blakely and other Anglo characters’ voices and perspectives; and for omitting the role of the Mexican-American community in the defense of Cortez, giving the Anglo attorney a prominent role instead (Fregoso 70-77; Alonzo 115).

Consequently, the film is less of a heroic narrative that celebrates the exploits of a pre-

modern hero actively seeking justice in the face of unjust persecution and power unbalance, and more of a story that seeks to examine and criticize the racially biased “old West” society and law-enforcement system of turn-of-the-century Texas, using the story of Cortez as prime example of this society’s and system’s racially motivated biases and deficiencies. That director Young took this brave and uncommon ideological stance in a U.S. film and represented Cortez favorably are accomplishments that ought to be applauded, considering that the representations of Latinos/as in mainstream movies during the early 1980s were more similar to what was presented in Scarface. However, even a favorable film project such as The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez makes evident the limits of minority heroic representation in U.S. cinema. Ultimately, the heroics of the film reside not so much with

Cortez (who is presented as a sort of heroic victim), but with the agents of “progress” and

“modernity,” represented by the judicial system (Abernathy) and objectivity (Blakely). The

Texas Rangers, their racist and old-fashioned ways, and the frontier type of justice that they represent are portrayed as literally vanishing, particularly when Blakely mentions that the

Texas legislature is thinking of disbanding the Rangers because “Texas is getting to the economic mainstream now; we’ve got to have due process of law.” What prevails is a more modern, seemingly “objective” process that seeks to attain the truth, even within a flawed and biased system that while exonerating Cortez of one crime sends him to jail for another committed during the process of struggling for his life. Additionally, as can be deduced from

Blakely’s comment, the need to modernize the legal system has an economic undercurrent.

The South Texas economy was changing at the turn of the century from cattle ranching to industrial cotton production, and the film uses the train—the ultimate instrument and symbol of modernity—as a metaphor to signal the arrival of this transformative period as “the Anglo

culture of technology with the train at its hallmark is once again invading border culture and surrounding Cortez, the horse, and Mexican traditions” (Conway 118). Cortez is able to use his traditional knowledge of horse culture and the landscape to evade the posses, the officers, the train, to try to outrun modernization and change. He puts up a good fight, makes a last stand, but ultimately fails to stop both the real-life and the metaphorical train, just like

John Henry and Paul Bunyan—other symbols of pre-modern society—failed to halt the advance of technology in their respective tall tales. The same way the Texas Rangers are represented in the film as having become obsolete in this brave new world of trains and cotton gins, so is Cortez. It is not only he who vanishes at the end of the movie as he is taken away by the train to prison; with him, the pre-modern form of justice embodied by the lone hero is also gone. Metaphorically speaking, Cortez is the last frontier hero, even though the injustices of the frontier era—now modernized—have continued to affect the lives of people of color in the United States through today. As I indicate in Chapter 2, Latino/a heroes with frontier, pre-modern characteristics continue to appear in contemporary U.S. popular culture precisely because the roots of pre-modern injustice have not been eradicated.

This complicated and contradictory heroic construction of Gregorio Cortez in the film also helps to point out how entrenched myths are in the U.S. national and narrative imaginaries. On the one hand, the film deconstructs and criticizes the myths of Manifest

Destiny and the Melting Pot by highlighting the violence, injustice, and racism that accompanied the process of westward expansion and consolidation of U.S. (Anglo) interests in the Southwest, while also showing the unequal and segregated societies that such process generated along the way. On the other hand, Young’s film also reproduces other myths, particularly the noble idea that the modern American legal system can be color-blind and

ultimately provide justice, making the actions of pre-modern, romanticized, ethnic heroes like Cortez unnecessary. Yes, it is true that Cortez’s claim to self-defense was upheld by the courts, and it is also true that despite years of waiting and prison time, he was ultimately pardoned and set free. But what the film ignores—the myth itself, according to Barthes’s analysis—is that Cortez’s case was not the norm, but an exceptional case within a system in which Mexican-Americans and other people of color were treated as guilty by default and would often fall victims to extrajudicial punishment. Perhaps involuntarily, the film ends up supporting the myth of American justice as equal for all.

Will the Real Joaquín Murrieta Stand Up? Constructing the Myth of a Myth

While Gregorio Cortez is the last frontier hero, Joaquín Murrieta is the first Latino/a to have been constructed as a hero in U.S. narrative, when in 1854 the half white/half Native

American writer John Rollin Ridge (also known as Yellow Bird) published The Life and

Adventures of Joaquín Murieta: The Celebrated California Bandit, only a year after

Murrieta had allegedly died. Murrieta is also one of the first cultural Latino/a heroes reaching prominence after the Mexican-American War and the U.S takeover of the

Southwest, and perhaps the best known of them all among U.S. and Latin American audiences alike. Murrieta is truly a mythic character, whose narrative has been largely embellished and transformed over the decades and who has become the subject of numerous studies and biographies5 that have sought to ascertain what part or parts of his story are

5 See, for instance, Evelyn Wells’ Joaquin Murieta! Story of California’s notorious bandit of the early fifties (1924), Francis Farquhar’s “Notes on Joaquin Murieta” (1932), Joseph Henry Jackson’s Anybody’s Gold (1941), Remi Nadeau’s The Real Joaquin Murieta (1974), Frank Latta’s Joaquin Murrieta and His Horse Gangs (1980), Manuel Rojas’ Joaquín Murrieta, el Patrio (1986), James Varley’s The Legend of Joaquin Murrieta: California’s Gold Rush Bandit, Bruce Thorton’s Searching for Joaquin: Myth, Murieta 97

historically accurate—if any. Luis Leal has indicated that “Si es difícil separar los elementos míticos de los históricos generalmente contenidos en todo relato escrito u oral, cuando se trata de la vida de un personaje como Joaquín Murrieta la tarea es casi imposible” (1). The accuracy of the accounts produced over the decades about Murrieta and even his very own historical existence have always been a matter of dispute, to the point that the scholar Joseph

Henry Jackson concluded in his book Anybody’s Gold that “there wasn’t a Murieta—at any rate not much of a Murieta” (qtd. in Nadeau 15). Regarding Ridge’s tale, which has impacted all successive retellings of the Murrieta story, Jackson even adds: “It is not too much to say that Ridge, in his preposterous little book, actually created both the man,

Murieta, and the Murieta legend as these stand today” (qtd. in Nadeau 19). While Jackson’s position—denying the historical existence of one of the most important Latino/a symbols of resistance and minimizing the role that his fellow Mexican-Americans and other Latinos/as had in creating and perpetuating his legend through corridos and other cultural products—is clearly Anglocentric, it is accurate to say that accessing the historical Murrieta is an elusive enterprise. The story and the character of Murrieta have also been highly contested, judging for the multiple and divergent ways in which they have been represented over time and the attempts to appropriate it by different groups. Vélez-Ibáñez aptly summarizes this point:

Murrieta became a mythic hero in the minds of Mexicans who needed a hero-

myth as much as Anglos needed the mythic villain. The former was composed of

all the social values a suffering population needed: innocently wronged, valorous,

hard-working, […] able to withstand hardships of the chase by rapacious Anglo

sheriffs and rangers, skilled and cunning with the ability to out-strategize superior and History in California (2003), and Lori Lee Wilson’s The Joaquin Band: The History Behind the Myth (2011). 98

numbers, and finally never to be caught nor defeated. For Mexicans, this was the

hero to be cherished regardless of the reality of the man […] His Anglo mythic

counterpart was the opposite: cowardly, bloodthirsty, lazy and murderous, sneaky,

without mercy, and unmanly by striking from well-covered hiding places. (101-

102)

Whether Murrieta was a heroic figure of resistance or the embodiment of racialized criminality, he has become “a cultural icon whose shape-shifting persona performs a diversity of functions in the many contexts in which it has flourished,” enduring “as long as the cultural conflicts it puts into play—conflicts based on differences in the race and national origin in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, or in the Americas in general—remain unsolved” (Irwin 39). Judging by the fact that his story is still told more than 150 years after his death, those conflicts are yet to be settled.

Most accounts of his life state that Murrieta was born in the Mexican state of Sonora, although there are also claims that he was actually a Chilean miner. Famously, Pablo Neruda wrote a play about Murrieta being a fellow Chilean, Fulgor y muerte de Joaquín Murieta, which was first performed in 1967 in Santiago. As a character and subject of study, Murrieta has circulated in an astonishing array of popular culture forms and scholarship throughout the world, including novels, crime narratives serialized in police gazettes, dime novels, twentieth century western fiction, U.S. films and television shows, corridos, plays in both

English and Spanish, a Soviet Union opera, and revisions of his story published in the

United States, Mexico, Chile, Spain, and France (Streeby 254). Just like his myth,

Murrieta’s very name is a battlefield of divergent meanings and contradictions. The many

different spellings of his surname—Murrieta, Murieta, Murietta, Muriati, Muriatta6—that have appeared in the various studies and narratives about the hero point not only to a misrepresentation of the name among English-speaking writers, but also constitute “a sign of larger linguistic and cultural misunderstandings” (Hausman iii) that, as we have seen with

Gregorio Cortez’s story, do have important real-life and ideological implications. Leal also makes an interesting comment about the name Joaquín and the way it became sort of shorthand during the Gold Rush period to refer to the “Mexican bandit” in general in

California:

La primera vez que el nombre “Joaquín” aparece en los periódicos para referirse a

los bandoleros mexicanos, pero sin identicar a ninguno de ellos con un apellido,

es entre 1850 y 1851. Cuando en 1852 los periódicos comenzaron a publicar

quejas sobre los llamados “Mexican bandits”, no tenían ninguna información

concreta acerca de quiénes fueran esos “bandidos”, aunque se rumoraba que uno

de ellos se llamaba Joaquín […] Como resultado de esa cómoda simplificación,

todos los atropellos, asaltos, robos y muertes se los atribuían a Joaquín, quien

pronto se convirtió en personaje mítico, apareciendo en distintos lugares al mismo

tiempo. (2)

The polysemic nature of the hero’s name did not stop during the period of “Mexican banditry,” but has been carried and evolved ever since to the point that it became an important and pervasive symbol of resistance for Mexican-Americans in the United States in a variety of twentieth century forms of cultural production, from barrio murals to Rodolfo

“Corky” Gonzales’s nationalist epic poem “I Am Joaquín”—where “Joaquín” stands for a

6 Throughout this dissertation I utilize the spelling “Murrieta,” which is the one accepted as most accurate by scholars writing about the hero. 100

historical aggregate of Chicano/a faces and voices from the time of the Mesoamerican civilizations to the mid-twentieth century and the interconnected struggle(s) against

European/Anglo oppression that they have embodied throughout the centuries.

Ridge’s 1854 book—the first work of fiction by a Cherokee writer and the first novel written by a Native-American in U.S. history—was crucial in creating the Murrieta legend and also the controversy that ensued regarding the historical accuracy of his narrative. Was the romanticized way in which Yellow Bird wrote about Murrieta a way to make his story more sensational and appealing to readers? Or were there motivations dealing with issues of social justice at the core of the presentation of this tale? Regarding this point, Lori Lee

Wilson states that “[a] hunger for justice permeates the legend as written by John Rollin

Ridge, a hunger which historians have acknowledged was justified. Familiarity with the legend’s storyline is essential to understanding how the author was influenced by what were to him current events and current news. When he wrote the book he romanticized events but he was also influenced by his own life experience as a Cherokee mestizo” (xi). In his 2011 dissertation about Ridge and Murrieta, Blake Michael Hausman sought to rescue the impact that Ridge’s personal identity and political concerns about the treatment of Native-

Americans and Latino-Americans had on the construction of the Murrieta story and myth, reading Murrieta as a character that “embodies cultural conflict and contested space” (v) in the violent history of American expansion and nation-building. For Hausman, Murrieta becomes “a palimpsest of geographical and cultural borderlands” and is “emblematic of the violence between the first and third worlds” (v), embodying anti-imperialist and anti-Yankee symbolism in Latin America and beyond. Ridge’s book establishes the sort of background and life struggles that help elevate Murrieta to the status of “typical borderlands icon,

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representing no one group, signifying in multiple directions to multiple audiences” (Irwin

40). According to Ridge, Murrieta “was a Mexican of good blood,” of “respectable parents,” and who had been educated in the schools of his country (5). Ridge also presents Murrieta as being “mild” and having a “noble nature,” insisting that the drastic change in his personality later in his life was certainly an anomaly and not part of his nature (5). At the insistence of his half-brother who had lived for sometime in California, Joaquín and his mistress, Rosita, migrated to the “region of romantic adventure and golden reward” (6). However, what they found in California were “careless and desperate” Americans about whom Ridge writes: “A feeling was prevalent among this class, of contempt for any and all Mexicans, whom they looked upon as conquered subjects of the United States having no rights which could stand before a haughtier and superior race” (7). Soon after, some Americans rape Rosita, kick

Murrieta out of his gold claim, and in another incident they lynch his half-brother. It is then that Murrieta swears that “he should never know peace until his hands were dyed deep in the blood of his enemies” (10), joining with a few of his countrymen and beginning his life of highway robberies and banditry. What Ridge does in his book is crafting a narrative in which race becomes the crucial element leading to violence, and Murrieta’s response in the form of banditry and murder is motivated not by greed or a violent disposition but by his quest to seek revenge from those who have harmed his loved ones and destroyed his life. By constructing Murrieta as being educated and coming from higher-up in the socioeconomic scale, Ridge de-emphasizes class as a reason for oppression. As we will see in the analysis of the films Murieta and The Desperate Mission, it does not matter how Murrieta is represented in terms of class: whether he is a peasant or a wealthy landowner, he still ends

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up having his life destroyed because of his being Mexican/Hispanic. Therefore, when he rises up against Anglos, he is rising up chiefly against racial oppression and discrimination.

As Murrieta’s story evolved, so did its ideological overtones. The 1859 California

Police Gazette narrative (which was a plagiarized version of Ridge’s story), overrides the

Cherokee writer’s explanation that Murrieta’s criminality was to some degree a legitimate response to Anglo postwar injuries. Instead, the Gazette story presents an explanation “that suggests that this criminality is rooted in the dark recesses of his nature—a ‘savage’ impulse that takes him outside the pale of white civility” (Streeby 271). In this way, Murrieta and all

Spanish-speakers become “an inassimilable body within the [U.S.] nation-state” and are identified with “an innate, savage criminality linked to the U.S.-Mexican War” (Streeby

273). Meanwhile, the Gazette presents Captain Harry Love, the Ranger who captured

Murrieta and who supposedly served in the Mexican-American War, as the representative of

Anglo heroism (Streeby 272). Another early narrative about Murrieta—Joseph E. Badger’s

Joaquin, the Saddle King (1881)—even goes as far as depicting the hero as a blond Spaniard who supported Texan revolutionaries and later fought on the side of the Americans during the Mexican-American War (Leal 41). As we will see shortly, this Anglocentric appropriation of the Murrieta story would be reenacted more than 120 years later in The

Legend of Zorro, where the title character fights to ensure California becomes part of the

United States. Meanwhile, the first Mexican author to write about Murrieta was Ireneo Paz, grandfather of Nobel Laureate Octavio Paz. Published in 1904, Vida y aventuras del más celebre bandido sonorense Joaquín Murrieta: Sus proezas en California, was actually a translation of the Murrieta story that appeared in the California Police Gazette. While lacking originality, this version is significant because it brought the Murrieta story to

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Mexican readers for the first time and “gave Mexico voice to the published retelling of the tale for the first time” (Irwin 64). Murrieta’s story was also immortalized in corridos, with the first-known song having been recorded in Los Angeles in 1934 (Leal 66). Just like the

Gregorio Cortez ballad, this corrido presents a defiant Murrieta who insists that his actions are driven by the desire to avenge his loved ones and to defend “al indio pobre y sencillo” from “orgullosos Americanos” (Leal 66, 67). The Murrieta of the corrido also asserts that he is only considered a bandit because of those “leyes tan injustas” of the Americans and that

California belongs to Mexico (Leal 67, 68), phrases that bring to the forefront the discourses of legality and anti-imperialism that are so prevalent in Latino/a frontier hero narratives.

A new wave of American-produced, Murrieta-related narratives appeared in the late

1920s and 1930s. According to Shelley Streeby, these texts should be understood in relation to the virulent nativism of the period. Novels such as Ernest Klette’s The Crimson Trail of

Joaquin Murieta (1928) and Walter Noble Burns’s The Robin Hood of El Dorado (1932), which inspired the 1936 Hollywood film of the same name,

look back upon an earlier era of immigration and state formation and try to

exorcise the ghosts of race wars past, or rather to suggest that racial injustice and

the violence of conquest are part of the dead past, which has given way to the rule

of law. They also labor to make the post-1848 boundary line between the United

States and Mexico seem natural and right by representing Spanish-speakers and

especially people of Mexican origin as outlaws who threaten the state, in part

because they easily move between nations. (Streeby 276)

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However, the violent history of the Mexican-American War and the subsequent period of colonization of the Southwest can only be repressed to a certain extent when such racially charged confrontations are reenacted, especially as debates over immigration and nativism became more heated during the Depression years, leading among other things to the mass deportations and repatriation drives targeting Mexican immigrants and even

U.S. citizens of Mexican descent during the early 1930s. In The Robin Hood of El

Dorado, “racial justice is deplored, but it is also relegated to the dead past, represented as part of an older age of terror and lawlessness that has been superseded by the era of law and order” (Streeby 277). Burns extends some sympathy to Mexican immigrants mistreated by Anglos, but also justifies state intervention after Murrieta becomes an outlaw. The establishment of Hollywood’s new Production Code in 1934 also had an impact on the way the movie version of The Robin Hood of El Dorado presented issues of racial terror and the law. According to Streeby, the Production Code called for tampering down discourses of racial confrontation in the film, focusing instead on

Murrieta’s wish to bring his persecutors to justice and de-emphasizing his “spirit of revenge” (280). Despite these pressures, Streeby indicates that it is still easy to imagine that many moviegoers would have viewed Murrieta as “a figure of vengeance and heroism” during a period in American history when people felt bitter and under the weight of hardship and unjust circumstances as a result of stock market crash of 1929

(280). In a testament to the evolution of the construction of this heroic figure over the decades, the Murrieta of Burns is no longer the son of a wealthy Mexican family, but a much humbler figure who falls in love with the daughter of a rich landowner. After tragedy befalls him and Murrieta becomes an outlaw, his attacks are not exclusively

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directed at Anglos (racial revenge) but also at upper-class Californio hacendados, bringing class and socioeconomic inequality into the mixture—issues that were likely to be embraced by Depression-era moviegoers.

Interest in making films about Murrieta peaked in the 1960s, a time of social and cultural change and civil rights movements in the United States when the hero’s storyline may have been perceived as a symbol of resistance to Anglo oppression. The films analyzed in this section were all made in that decade, although they are quite different in the way they represent Murrieta and his story. In that regard, they provide the perfect material for exploring the evolution of the hero’s construction and the ideological implications of such representations. The first of them, Murieta (also known as Joaquín

Murrieta in Spain), is a 1965 Spanish-produced western that was nonetheless filmed in

English, directed by American director George Sherman, and distributed in the United

States by Warner Brothers. Just like in The Robin Hood of El Dorado (where the role of the Mexican miner is played by popular Anglo actor Warner Baxter), the man chosen to play the title character in Murieta was blue-eyed actor Jeffrey Hunter—who, as we will see in Chapter 4, had also played the role of Latino war hero Guy Gabaldon in the War

World II film Hell to Eternity just five years before the Murrieta movie premiered. A made-for-TV film, The Desperate Mission (1969) was the first U.S.-produced movie about Murrieta with a Latino—acclaimed Mexican-born actor Ricardo Montalbán— playing the lead role. Montalbán was not, however, the first Latino to play Murrieta in film: Argentine actor Carlos Thompson had portrayed the outlaw in the 1958 Mexican movie El último rebelde. The choice of Montalbán for this film is still significant, as he would become the first Latino or Spanish actor to play a Latino/a heroic character in U.S.

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film—decades before the likes of Olmos, Banderas, Danny Trejo, or Michelle Rodriguez portrayed such roles in late twentieth century and early twenty-first century productions.

In the case of the short film I Am Joaquín, the representation of Murrieta is not impacted by the choice of actor but on the Gonzales poem, the voice of narrator Luis Valdez, and the still images that are used to accompany the poem’s spoken words. While I Am

Joaquín is not about Murrieta per se but about an amalgam of Mexican-American identity constructs all bearing the symbolic name of Joaquín (including Murrieta), the film is nonetheless significant in the sense that it represents the first cinematic depiction of Murrieta the hero that is 100% authored and produced by Latinos/as.

Regarding the representation of Murrieta as a Latino/a hero in these three films, I am first intrigued by the role that facial images (an example of textual metafunction) and voice (experiential meaning potential) play in these narratives and the manner in which these two elements impact the depiction of the hero and connect with the films’ ideological undertones. Leaving aside the issue of Hunter’s quality as an actor, the fact the he portrays a Latino hero in Murieta cannot be ignored. The representation of

Latino/a and other ethnic characters by white actors has been a thorny issue in U.S. film and television history, even today. This generalized practice is particularly problematic when it comes to the representation of heroic or otherwise exemplary characters.

Throughout the history of Hollywood, there is no shortage of Latino/a actors playing stereotypical, typically negative roles: western bandits and “greasers,” dangerous revolutionaries, drug dealers, womanizers, lascivious women, etc. However, there are very few examples of Latino/a actors playing the lead role in films about likeable, powerful protagonists—even when those characters are themselves of Latino/a

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background. Regarding the portrayal of minorities in media and popular culture, Ella

Shohat has written that “[t]he struggle to ‘speak for oneself’ cannot be separated from a history of being spoken for, from the struggle to speak and be heard” (173). The pervasive use of Anglo actors to play heroic Latino/a characters such as Murrieta and

Zorro represents an instance of this act of “being spoken for” to which Shohat brings attention. Having Hunter inhabit and effectively “become the face” of a mythohistorical figure that holds such powerful symbolism and sense of pride to Latinos/as and Latin

Americans has additional consequences. First, it denies Latinos/as the possibility of

“speaking and being heard,” even if it is just through the limited venue of an actor’s artistic portrayal in a film made mostly for an Anglo audience. Second, it prevents

Latinos/as watching the film from “seeing themselves” in a heroic protagonist who, despite his Spanish name and known Latino identity, looks just like the Anglos who terrorize Murrieta in the film and a myriad other white Hollywood heroes. Visually and aurally, the Murrieta played by Hunter appears as an oddball in the film when he is in the presence of his wife Rosita or the members of his gang, played by Spanish actors. Hunter is not bad from a purely histrionic perspective: his depiction of a simple man whose life is wrecked by criminals and who decides to take revenge is fairly compelling. However, when trying to pass as Mexican, Hunter’s portrayal not only falls flat but threatens to turn the otherwise heroic and moral protagonist into a mere caricature. Hunter’s attempts at speaking a few words of Spanish and his Spanish accent are poor, which is only compounded by the fact that in just a few scenes (after only a year has passed by in the movie) the character’s broken English has been transformed into flawless English.

Additionally, in what basically constitutes an example of “black-face,” Hunter is given a

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noticeable tan to look more “Mexican.” This distortion is even more pronounced on one of the posters promoting the film, where a stylized representation of Hunter shows him as a shirtless, sombreroed, very dark brown man holding a rifle.

Face and voice as representational elements operate differently in the other two films. In The Desperate Mission, Montalbán embodies the movie’s version of Murrieta as a wealthy Californio landowner convincingly, both through his physical appearance and through his genuine, light Spanish accent. These markers of Latino/a identity, in addition to the actor’s well-known national origin, allow Montalbán to depict a Murrieta that comes across as substantially more ethnically and culturally authentic than the one played by Hunter. Additionally, the casting of Montalbán makes it possible for Latino/a viewers to see and hear themselves in the film in a role that is not only positive and free of traditional stereotypes, but which also celebrates one of their community’s most enduring and endearing folk heroes. This Murrieta is highly educated and, even after Anglo bandits burn his hacienda, kill his wife, dispossess him of his property, and force him to roam the countryside to subsist, he behaves like a gentleman and displays a moral resolve that overshadows all other characters. Murrieta’s superiority in the film is punctuated precisely by the use of his voice. Shortly after the catastrophic event that changed the course of his life, Joaquín is at a saloon when an Anglo man confronts him because of his ethnicity and assumes he cannot speak English. Calmly, and in perfect English, Murrieta replies: “I speak four languages, including the one you abuse. But I chose to whom I speak.” Such powerfully affirming portrayal of a Latino/a character is an anomaly in mainstream U.S. films or television programs up to that point, and the fact that a Latino actor is the one playing the part makes it even more significant. In I Am Joaquín, the

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voice of Murrieta is—so to speak—provided by another Mexican-American. Valdez’s thundering voice and combatant tone speaks for the collective Chicano/a “I,” the composite Joaquín who represents all Mexican-Americans past and present. At one point in the film, that Joaquín specifically becomes Murrieta, whose struggle is presented as a crucial junction in the history of resistance against European and Anglo oppression.

Visually, Murrieta is represented through the use of traditional images of the outlaw that show a mustachioed, long-haired, wild-eyed man—including the famous poster advertising the exhibition of “the head of the renowned bandit Joaquin!” (Leal 5). The film appropriates these images (all created by Anglos) and gives them a very different meaning. Instead of the bandit and murderer that they were originally intended to depict, these pictures are used by Valdez to present a heroic man who justifiably rides through

California making gringos pay for the crimes they have committed against his kind. I use

“rides” because, by virtue of the poem constantly uttering “I Am Joaquín” in the present tense, Murrieta automatically comes to incarnate not just the confrontations between

Mexican-Americans and Anglos in the 1850s but also, and more importantly, those taking place in the late 1960s during the Chicano Movement—while also having the capacity to speak to today’s struggles of the Latino/a community.

The different ways in which these films are structured as heroic narratives also impact the construction of Murrieta as a hero. In Murieta, Joaquín and Rosita arrive in

California with a sense of amazement and expectation, but the reality of discrimination toward their kind soon rears its ugly head, establishing an atmosphere of hostility that foregrounds the threat sequence that puts the heroic narrative into motion. As they enter a tavern, the owner immediately kicks them out: “Come on you Mex, get out, get out!”

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Something similar happens at the hardware store, where they are told they don’t belong in America. The actual threat sequences takes place later on, when a group of Anglos approach Murrieta at his gold claim as he has finally found some of the precious metal.

Upon discovering that Murrieta has not recorded his claim, they resolve to take it away from him. One of the men tells Murrieta: “You are on the wrong side of the frontier,

Mex,” justifying their actions on the basis of racial exclusion and a sense of rightful ownership of the California territory. Murrieta is beat unconscious; his wife is raped and murdered. This criminal event sets the response sequence, which occupies the rest of the film, as Murrieta becomes a hardened individual who hunts and kills the men responsible for killing Rosita. Murrieta does not, however, become a hero in the act of avenging his wife’s violation and death, which is articulated more as the resolution of a personal vendetta against specific individuals. Rather, he comes to embody his heroic persona when he responds to the underlying racial tension and oppression that led to the crimes committed against him, his wife, and many other “Mex” just like them. Avenging such structural violence, then, would require much more than punishing those individuals responsible for specific crimes—namely, taking on the event that brought such violence to pass: the Americans’ takeover of California. In an impassioned speech to his gang that transforms Joaquín from an outlaw into a heroic leader, he articulates his goal:

This day you are men, this day you are soldiers, fighting the men who have taken

your country, driven you from your farms, robbed you of your claims and your

birthrights. Let the others of our blood whom the gringos have driven into these

hills know of this. Let them come to us with guns and horses, gringos’ guns and

horses. With these we will get more guns and horses, they will come from the

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cities and camps, and we will grow, and very soon we will have an army, and

with a thousand horses and a thousand men to ride them we will drive the gringos

from California. A dream? […] It is no dream if you ride with Murrieta. Ride with

Murrieta and you ride for Mexico!

In this scene, Murrieta is clearly constructed as a resistant hero who has resolved to push back against those who represent the dominant Anglo culture, including law-enforcement agents, miners, and other settlers. Meanwhile, to those Anglos—who refer to him as the

“greasy god” of Mexicans—he is the complete opposite of a hero, a “ruthless killer.”

Murrieta’s shift from a lone outlaw to a revolutionary leader is also represented visually, as Murrieta wears all-black clothing from this point forward (at the beginning of the film he wore white, traditional Mexican peasant clothes). The film is now structured as a story of social rebellion with strong nationalist overtones, as the ultimate goal of his campaign is to return the land of California to Mexico through an armed uprising. Thus, his heroic quest is articulated as a radical form of reconquista, one of the political battle cries of the

Chicano Movement during the time this film was made—but which rather than territorial re-conquest advocated for “local community control and a sense that Chicanos’ shared fates should be in their hands, not in those of the Anglo power structure” (Mize and

Swords 114).

In the case of The Desperate Mission, the structure of its heroic narrative is less conventional and focused than Murieta’s and the typical Murrieta story. The movie does not waste any time to establish its threat sequence: the very first scenes show Murrieta arriving at his burning hacienda at night, his workers running away while the bandits who raided the place shoot in the air and make their escape. Inside, he finds his wife, dead.

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We don’t know for certain who perpetrated these criminal acts. An inter-title appearing right after Murrieta buries his wife explains that this confrontation was between the

“invaders” who sought “land and gold” and the “invaded,” who faced “extinction.”

Considering the historical context (the story is supposed to take place in the late 1840s in

California), one can assume that the Anglos are the invaders and that Hispanics/Mexicans such as Murrieta are the invaded. The problem with this ambiguity is that the narrative does not identify a specific source for the threat, or out-group, clearly identified along racial or national-origin lines, which is a crucial element in the typical Murrieta story and its ideological implications. Because there is no clearly defined villain, the heroic defense response that occurs after the threat sequence becomes diffused, lacking focus.

Additionally, the element of revenge that is at the core of the traditional Murrieta narrative is not present in The Desperate Mission, which is another consequence of the ambiguity of its heroic story structure. Along the way, Murrieta defends a mission from

Anglo bandits trying to illegally seize it, returns a gold statue of the Virgin Mary stolen by a wealthy Californio rancher from a Mexican peasant village, and ultimately protects the village from an attack by Anglo bandits. These actions do serve the role of positioning the former hacendado Joaquín as a hero who protects Indians and peasants from the rich and criminals, but fail to convey the racialized and cultural nature of the

Murrieta story as told in Ridge, the corrido, Murieta, and I Am Joaquín—since his adversaries here include both Anglos and Hispanics, while his actions are not guided by an ethnic or nationalist thrust. In other words, the Murrieta of this film is a hero of the oppressed and enemy of the oppressors, whomever they happen to be along his errant, quixotic path. Conversely, I Am Joaquín presents an unequivocally clear heroic narrative

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structure. The collective Joaquín who stands for all Chicanos/as is, from the very beginning of the poem and the film, threatened by “the whirl of a gringo society” which, along with the scars left by the colonial “Spanish master” and “lustful Europeans,” continues to oppress his community and culture. The Anglos also represent the menacing force that would disrupt the life of Joaquín Murrieta in the film, becoming the villains who “dared to steal my mine, who raped and killed my love, my wife,” and whom the

“feared” hero then proceeds to kill in revenge. The poem and the film’s defense response is a historical, ongoing act of resistance and defiance, both at the individual and at the collective level: “But my spirit is strong […] I will endure.”

Finally, I would like analyze how these narratives operate ideologically—more specifically, where they fit in the resistance-domestication spectrum and how that impacts the type of Latino hero that they construct. Of the three films, I Am Joaquín is the one that most powerfully advances an ideology of resistance against Anglo oppression and cultural assimilation. Bebout has stated that the poem “provides models for revolution and resistance” for Chicanos/as (51) and “contests the demonization and elision of

Mexican Americans [by] placing Joaquín Murrieta at the center of the Chicano nationalist epic” (53). By structuring itself around the heroic story of Murrieta and its racialized overtones, the poem and the film articulate a centuries-long history of Chicano/a resistance and also intone a battle cry for contemporary Chicanos/as (“the masses of my people”) to continue the struggle against Anglo domination as if they were all Joaquíns— robbed and abused, but riding in defiance to seek justice and a “better life.” At the center of this discourse of resistance in the film is the avoidance of assimilation into the Anglo way of life, of falling prey to “sterilization of the soul.” The amalgamated Joaquín’s

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response is to “withdraw to the safety within the circle of life—MY OWN PEOPLE” and to refuse “to be absorbed.” The battle lines are clearly drawn here; as a prototypical heroic story that features and in-group and an out-group, the struggle in I Am Joaquín is between “us” and “them.” And Joaquín is the hero who stands with and for Latinos/as, for “us.”

Murieta also carries enough weight to be considered a story of Latino/a heroic resistance, although (as I will explain later on) it also contains some unfortunate pitfalls that tame its recalcitrance. In addition to the film’s aforementioned articulation of a nationalist, ethnically driven revolt against Anglo control of California, the movie also includes some poignant dialogue that challenges the naturalization of U.S. dominance over the Southwest and the basis of racial exclusion and oppression. For instance,

Joaquín reflects on the historical violence that is ultimately to blame for his wife’s murder and the destruction of their dreams: “California is a beautiful country, Captain

Love. My people have been settled here for over 200 years. I’ve had much love for this land. And then the gringo came. He took away the land by force, destroyed the great ranchos, trampled the crops, polluted the rivers, and California is ravaged.” This speech links the fates of Rosita and of California together, as they have both been “ravaged” by the Anglos’ greed and hate. By metaphorically connecting the woman and the land that

Murrieta has loved, the film also implies that California (like Rosita) is Mexican, and avenging her destruction at the hands of Anglos is justified because it was the result of a despicable crime. Another revisionist statement is offered by Captain Love, Murrieta’s traditional enemy, who in this film is depicted as a tolerant individual deeply concerned with equality under the law—and a good friend of Murrieta until his vigilante and

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revolutionary actions make it impossible for the friendship to continue. Love is speaking with Mr. Briggs, proprietor of the hardware store:

Briggs: What are you doing now? About them? I thought we fought a war to get

rid of them Mex.

Love: There wasn’t a reason, Mr. Briggs.

Briggs: Well, whatever the reason, they are pouring in here like ants around a leak

in a molasses barrel.

Love: Where do you come from, Mr. Briggs?

Briggs: Boston. Why?

Love: Seems to me you got a whiff of that molasses yourself, and traveled a lot

farther.

Briggs: But I’m an American. And this is U.S. territory. They are foreigners.

Love: Some of them may be since we took their territory away from them. But a

lot of them are native Californians. And that, Mr. Briggs, sort of makes you a

foreigner, doesn’t it.

Through this interaction, Love challenges Briggs’ racist and nationalist views, offering a counter-discourse to official U.S. history that celebrates the country’s westward expansion as the inevitable and necessary victory of progress over barbarism. In this way, the film questions the legality of the Mexican-American War, labels the annexation of the

Southwest an act of usurpation, and affirms the status of Mexican Californians as rightful

U.S. citizens who deserve equal rights.

Unlike I Am Joaquín and Murieta, The Desperate Mission offers little in the way of resistance discourses. A notable exception, worth mentioning because of its

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importance in the construction of Murrieta as a heroic character, takes place during

Joaquín’s voyage to deliver the wife of wealthy rancher Don Miguel Ruiz to safety in San

Francisco. Murrieta and the gang of Anglos with whom he is now riding, arrive at a mission. Another gang of Anglos is there, showing the Padre some documents and letting him know that the mission is now “legally” theirs. Reacting to the Padre’s hesitation, the gang’s leader asks him: “You questioning American authority?” Murrieta immediately replies: “I am.” The scene is shot from a high angle, from the perspective of the Anglos sitting on their horses, putting them in a position of power—similar to the scene in which

Cortez is riding away from the train. While Murrieta is visually placed in a position of disadvantage, he quickly asserts his right to question the legitimacy of the men’s claims, asking to see their supposedly “legal” papers, which he ascertains to be forged: “We don’t recognize the commandant from Sacramento,” Murrieta says defiantly as he rips the documents apart, throws a man from his horse, and takes his shotgun away. The gang is ultimately defeated and turned away. This section of the film positions Murrieta as an assertive Latino/a heroic figure who, despite being in a position of structural disadvantage because of his ethnicity in Anglo-controlled California, has the resolve to stand up and invert the prevailing power relationships.

While Murieta and The Desperate Mission contain notable examples of historical revisionism as well as resistant and empowering pro-ethnic discourses embodied in the figure of Murrieta the hero, the films also have plenty of regressive discourses that limit and domesticate the full extent of his recalcitrance as articulated in Ridge’s novel and in the corrido. For example, Murieta plays into the nativist, anti-immigrant “English only” propaganda when Rosita tells Joaquín, as they arrive in California, “In this country

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always speak with English, my husband.” This seemingly innocuous directive contradicts

Murrieta’s statements later in the film in which he asserts that his people

(Spanish/Mexicans) have lived in California for two centuries and have a legitimate reason to take it back. Conversely, promoting the idea that English is the language you must speak in California is the equivalent of acknowledging that the United States is the rightful owner of the former Mexican territories, thus lessening the film’s anti- imperialistic intervention. In this regard, Murieta stands in stark contrast with The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez, in which the hero only speaks Spanish, resisting the impulse of assimilation and upholding the rightful place of Mexican/Hispanic culture as part of broader U.S. culture. Another problematic issue with the film has to do with the resolution of the plot. After being successful in consolidating a small army of Mexican bandits and their gangs under his command in the hills, Murrieta makes the unwise decision to go into town dressed as a peasant, during which he gets tangled in an altercation and seriously injured. While hurt, Love catches up to him and spares his freedom on the promise that Murrieta will abandon his campaign and “go back to

Mexico.” Murrieta falls seriously ill upon returning to his camp, and his deputies decide to continue raiding gringos while disguising themselves as their leader. When Murrieta finally recovers, he feels he has lost his honor for failing to deliver on his promise and decides to surrender to Love. He tells his men: “No, amigos, no man will ever take

California. That too was a fever, but it is gone now with the other.” In the end, Murrieta and his band are ambushed and killed by Love and his men before being able to surrender. This twist in the narrative’s plot negates Murrieta’s earlier recalcitrance and too easily tames the revolutionary nature of his character and his newfound conviction,

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conveying the idea that there are only two possible ends for the Mexican-American hero who raises against Anglo domination: to surrender and self-deport, or to die. In The

Desperate Mission, we encounter a Murrieta who has been almost entirely de-historicized and demythologized, in the sense that the key elements of what is known of his life and his heroic story are ignored by the film—with the exception of the killing of his wife and his riding the California countryside with a band of outlaws. Despite the fact it was the

Anglos who destroyed his and his kind’s way of life, this Murrieta refuses any ethnic identification. He insists that his only motivation is “survival” and, when told by his fellow Californio Ruiz that he trusts him over the gringos because “you are one of us,”

Joaquín bluntly replies: “Us? I belong to nothing.” Murrieta also dismisses any possibility of rebellion against the Anglos when a Padre tells him: “Our people need freedom, and a leader to help us against those who oppress us.” Murrieta’s response is categorical: “It’s too late.” Again, this type of discourse diminishes the contestatory nature of the Murrieta legend, playing squarely into the myth of Manifest Destiny; that is, that the U.S. domination of the Southwest was inevitable and resistance futile. While in the corrido and in I Am Joaquín Murrieta is presented as perpetually riding and never defeated, in these two films the hero either gives up his armed rebellion and surrenders or is indifferent to the possibility of rising up against the Anglos.

While I Am Joaquín takes the resistant nature of the Murrieta heroic myth and turns it into a collective battle cry against centuries-long European and Anglo oppression of people of color in Greater Mexico, Murieta and The Desperate Mission portray

Joaquín as an honorable Latino hero who is forced to seek justice against Anglo domination outside of U.S. law—but whose potential for expressing resistance against

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the dominant group is watered down, domesticated. These two narratives are examples of what Hausman calls the process of “sanitizing” Murrieta for mass consumption in U.S. popular culture (143), a process which I will explore more in depth in the next section about Zorro. As indicated before, Murrieta is a highly divisive figure in U.S. history, a constant reminder of the atrocities committed by the United States against Mexicans in the process of swallowing up the Southwest territories and a symbol of the possibility of a violent uprising to challenge such takeover. Most films about him, with the exception of

I Am Joaquín, tend to take the full extent of his powerful and potentially dangerous symbolism down a notch or two. Murieta acknowledges that there was racism and racially motivated violence against Mexicans in Gold Rush California and even makes a revisionist intervention into U.S. history that would have resonated well in 1965 during the Civil Rights period. However, it dismantles all too easily Murrieta’s revolt and its overtones of reconquista, using the unprecedentedly sympathetic figure of Captain Love to assert the primacy of the law (Anglo law, and by extension U.S. national control) in the film. Love tells Murrieta: “Trust the law, Joaquín. Don’t try to take it into your own hands. Those who do only bring disaster on themselves.” This may be presented as friendly advice by Love, but it is really a warning not to cross the authority and not to challenge the establishment. When Murrieta opts to kill his wife’s killers and revolt against the Anglos because he realizes he has no recourse under Anglo law and violence is the only way he can achieve justice, Love changes his compassionate and politically neutral tone: “[The Mexican-American War] is no reason for committing crimes under the mask of patriotism.” The compounded message is clear: Mexicans like Murrieta who are “on the wrong side of the frontier” and on the wrong side of Anglo law will suffer and

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will be ultimately vanquished. In the case of The Desperate Mission, the Murrieta story is sanitized and domesticated by limiting his heroic intervention to small acts of little consequence that don’t challenge U.S. domination. When Murrieta rescues the Madonna and saves the peasant village, Claudina (a servant to the Ruizes) compares him to a legendary character of old California: “The only thing missing is the silver bells […]

When I was a child, the Padre gave me books to read about a man who loved the peones and believed in justice. He rode a black horse like the wind and wore a hat with silver bells.” The appearance of Zorro via provenance in this scene and the way he is linked with Joaquín is no coincidence: Murrieta has been traditionally considered the main inspiration for the Zorro character and, I will explain in the next few pages, Zorro is the ultimate sanitized and domesticated version of Murrieta.

The Many Masks and Marks of Zorro: Representing Whom? Fighting for Whom?

When U.S. writer Johnston McCulley published his pulp fiction story The Curse of

Capistrano in 1919, it was just “an undistinguished story by an unheralded author”

(Hofstede 241). However, McCulley deserves credit for creating a character that has thrilled generations of moviegoers and television audiences, longer than perhaps any other

Hollywood hero. Señor Zorro, the daring alter ego of taciturn Spanish aristocrat Don Diego

Vega, rode his black horse to fame in colonial California, defeating corrupt government officials and abusive soldiers and developing a reputation as a “friend of the oppressed”

(McCulley 6). Almost 100 years later, Zorro stands as the most popular fictional Hispanic heroic character in U.S. popular culture and perhaps globally. With its secret identity, use of a mask and cape, black costume, extraordinary physical abilities and fighting skills, and

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dexterous use of weapons and gadgets, Zorro is widely acknowledged as a progenitor of the immensely popular comic book, TV, and film superhero Batman (Curtis 22), as well as a key influence after which many other superheroes have been modeled. In the end, however, it was not McCulley’s book but Hollywood which was “responsible for Zorro’s enduring popularity” (Hofstede 241), beginning with the 1920 silent action film The Mark of Zorro starring Douglas Fairbanks and followed by handful more silent and sounds films over the next two decades. Disney’s wildly popular TV series The Adventures of Zorro (1957-1959, starring Guy Williams) made the character even more well-known among U.S. audiences and prompted a revival of Zorro movies in the United States and abroad. Numerous movies, television shows, telenovelas, and animated series about Zorro or characters inspired by

Zorro have been made all over the world since then, including the 1996 Japanese anime series Kaiketsu Zorro (Pitts 446)—proving the enduring popularity and adaptability of the character. The turn of the century saw another revival of the character in Hollywood. The

1998 blockbuster The Mask of Zorro (starring Antonio Banderas) proved to be a huge box office success, earning over $230 million worldwide, while its sequel (The Legend of Zorro,

2005) made $120 million worldwide (Pitts 446-447). The character of Zorro has also been a staple of comic books and graphic novels starting in 1949, when Dell published the first

Zorro comics (Pitts 447).

Hollywood’s formula of casting Anglo actors to play Latino/a heroic characters is more pronounced in the case of Zorro than with other protagonists, including Murrieta. In fact, it was not until 1998 when the Spanish swashbuckler was actually played by a Spaniard

(Banderas) or a Latino in a U.S. production of Zorro. Legendary actors such as Fairbanks,

Tyrone Power, and Williams brought the character to life and contributed to its

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popularization, but their portrayals were inevitably infused with an Anglo perspective and lacked cultural specificity. In a way, Hollywood’s Zorro has been constructed and depicted more as a western hero who happens to be Hispanic and less as a hero who is intrinsically and distinctively Hispanic/Latino. While they are by no means the most significant factor in the “Americanization” and domestication of the Latino/a hero as represented in Zorro, these portrayals do play a part in the larger process of rendering potentially subversive Latino/a heroism harmless and sanitized in U.S. popular culture, as I will explore shortly. While

Hollywood was de-Latinizing Zorro, Mexico and Spain were doing the opposite. Zorro was turned into a Mexican hero who confronts local bandits and corrupt government officials in

El Zorro de Jalisco (1941), starring Pedro Armendáriz as Leonardo Torres, an attorney who becomes a masked justice-doer by night. In 1955 and 1956, Spanish and Mexican filmmakers brought to life the adventures El Coyote, a character that is almost identical to

Zorro. Starring Mexican actor Abel Salazar, El Coyote and La Justicia del Coyote portray the hero resisting U.S. control of California in the 1850s.

The re-invention of Zorro as a Mexican or Mexican-American hero in these movies—as opposed to its original blueprint as a colonial Spanish caballero—operates as an appropriation and reconfiguration of the U.S. pop culture-produced heroic character. This cooption, in turn, may have been just the natural response to the cultural appropriation that

Zorro represents in the first place. It is widely accepted among scholars of popular culture that McCulley likely drew his inspiration for Zorro from Murrieta, particularly the way

Ridge describes the hero. According to S.R. Curtis, “[Ridge’s] Murieta’s romantic prowess and aristocratic background, along with his concern for injustice to individuals, are certainly part of the Zorro legend” (75). However, while McCulley borrowed the most romantic

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elements of Murrieta’s story as a protector of the oppressed and having some sort of

Hispanic identity, he left out the politically charged aspects of the Murrieta legend— condemnation of U.S. violence toward Mexican-Americans and other non-Anglo

Californians and active resistance against U.S. control of the Southwest. Thus, I argue that

Zorro’s popularity among mainstream U.S. audiences has hinged on the domestication of its recalcitrant progenitor and its “dangerous” politics—leaving only the romantic vision of the lone, pre-modern western hero who is a Latin lover to boot. This outlaw hero fights not the

Anglos who have invaded California, but the Spanish who oppressed their own kind—yet another reason to justify the eventual colonization of California by the United States. He is a safe hero, easily digestible in the menu of de-historicized American popular culture. To support and elaborate on these claims, I now turn my attention to two U.S.-produced films that weave together the Murrieta and the Zorro storyworlds, and after that I will contrast them with El Coyote—which serves as a counter-discourse to the domesticated Zorro narrative.

Hausman posits that the existence of Murrieta in American popular culture is marked by a “tension between explicit identification as Joaquín and implicit reference to Joaquín,” and that “acceptability through implication is evident in the long-standing tradition of the

U.S. culture industry to sanitize the Joaquín Murrieta narrative into something less explicitly rebellious toward and condemning of the expansionist American ethos” (144). I have already explored the varying degrees of sanitization of the Murrieta myth found in Murieta and The Desperate Mission. However, the most evident manner in which Murrieta has been sanitized in U.S. popular culture is through its implication in the character and narrative of

Zorro, who, according to Hausman, “is, essentially, Joaquín Murrieta made safe for general

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American consumption” (145). The Mask of Zorro and The Legend of Zorro are full of examples of how this sanitization and domestication have taken place. Let us begin with the configuration of the Zorro character, or rather characters. The Mask of Zorro begins like most previous Zorro movies with an Anglo or European actor (in this case Anthony

Hopkins) playing the part of the Don Diego de la Vega during the Spanish period of

California. In this particular narrative, Mexican independence has just taken place and the

Spaniards are being forced to leave. Zorro fights one last battle against his mortal enemy,

California Governor Rafael Montero, saving some innocent peasants along the way. This is the typical Zorro, the “friend of the oppressed” (McCulley 18), the wealthy and educated

Spaniard who leaves the comfort of his privileged position to fight, in disguise, against oppressive leaders and vengeful soldiers. He is also an ambiguous figure in the pantheon of frontier Latino/a heroes. Unlike Cortez and Murrieta, he is not part of the oppressed community that he has pledged to protect and hence does not represent them in the same way as the folk heroes do. And while he is a highwayman like Murrieta and is often being chased by the authorities like Cortez, the bandit hero aspect of Zorro’s persona is detached from his personal circumstances—de la Vega is not poor, nor a peasant, nor an Indian, nor persecuted himself and resorts to “illegal” means of resistance out of a sense of delivering justice to those who lack protection under the colonial status quo from which his aristocratic class ultimately benefits. This is very different from the circumstances faced by folk heroes such as Murrieta and Cortez, for whom violence and/or banditry are the only available methods of contesting and resisting Anglo occupation and injustice. Although Zorro’s actions are noble, he is a “top-down” hero with a bit of a white-savior complex. More importantly, the heroics of this traditional Zorro emanate from contesting and ridiculing

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everything that is wrong about the Spanish colonial system: despotic rulers, cruel and/or stupid law enforcement officers/soldiers, repressive laws, and other negative attributes that reinforce the Black Legend. This Zorro does not explicitly endorse or embody American superiority in the Southwest territories. However, when his narrative is read from the perspective of twentieth-century American audiences for whom California had already been naturalized as unequivocally American, Zorro emerges as a liberator figure whose bravery paved the way for California’s “inevitable” march toward becoming a “free” state—which in the exceptionalist, Manifest Destiny-soaked American imaginary can only mean becoming part of the United States.

The traditional Zorro, however, marks only the beginning of the narrative in The

Mask of Zorro. Before leaving California, Montero manages to discover the hero’s identity, kidnaps his daughter, kills his wife, and burns his house down—the latter two themes being present in the Murrieta films analyzed in this chapter. Left to rot in jail for 20 years, the old

Zorro manages to escape just as Montero returns to California to try to turn it into and independent republic, free from Mexico’s tenuous grasp. In orchestrating his plan for revenge, de la Vega ends up recruiting a Mexican bandit, a mestizo7 named Alejandro

Murrieta, to become the new Zorro. In a way, this film mirrors the changes taking place in

Hollywood in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when the fortunes of Latino/a actors such as

Banderas and Salma Hayek rose significantly as part of “a more generalized ‘Latinization’ that was sweeping the country” (C. Rodríguez 213). As ironic as it may sound, the most famous Latino/a hero finally became “Latinized” in U.S. film in 1998—78 years after its debut on the big screen—when Hopkins passed the black mask to Banderas half-way

7 Isabel Allende’s novel El Zorro: Comienza la leyenda (2005) also makes Zorro’s alter ego a mestizo, this time the son of a Spanish soldier and a Native American warrior. 126

through the movie. While this event marked an important advancement in the slow and hiccupping process of diversifying Hollywood’s all-too-white heroic universe, it had little impact on making the representation of Latino/a heroic figures more nuanced and progressive. In the film, Alejandro is the younger brother to Joaquín Murrieta, who is only alive for a couple of minutes of screen action before committing suicide as Captain Love is getting ready to kill him. During that brief period of time, Joaquín is shown as leading a small band of highway robbers, but the film does not elaborate on a motif for his and

Alejandro’s actions. All we know about the Murrieta brothers’ past is that they are orphans.

Saved by Joaquín, Alejandro escapes and turns to drinking. De la Vega finds him at a cantina and offers to turn him into a fighter capable of defeating Love, who is working for

Montero. Zorro’s mentoring of Murrieta could be interpreted as the forming of an ethnically and culturally based alliance between the old Spaniard gentleman and the young Mexican mestizo aimed at defeating their common enemies. But such interpretation would ignore the fact that the process of Murrieta becoming Zorro in this movie, just at it occurred in the creation of the character by McCulley, involves a process of domestication and sanitization of the most anti-American aspects of the Murrieta myth.

The domestication process of Murrieta in the film begins with the literal elimination of Joaquín, a secondary character whose main purpose in the film is to die so that Alejandro can have a reason to follow in Zorro’s footsteps by seeking revenge against Love. The storyline takes places sometime in the mid-1840s, before the United States annexed

California, thus historically preventing the Anglo-Mexican confrontation embodied by the heroic Murrieta from occurring in the first place. What is left is the other Murrieta,

Alejandro, who is progressively stripped of any traces of its Murrieta-ness in the process of

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becoming Zorro. At first, Alejandro is a wild, dirty bandit with a bushy beard and long, wavy hair, resembling the way Joaquín Murrieta has been traditionally depicted in drawings.

De la Vega not only teaches Alejandro how to fight like Zorro, but he also alters his physical appearance and the way he behaves. It is a grooming process that involves taking a bath, shaving his wild beard, and cutting his long hair. By the time he dons the Zorro outfit and goes on his first “official” adventure, Alejandro has lost all facial hair and his formerly unruly hair is greased back and contained. De la Vega also trains Alejandro in the ways of a

Spanish gentleman, as the plot requires him to pass as a newly arrived aristocrat to obtain information about Montero’s plans. When Alejandro’s new identity is displayed, wearing fancy clothes and showing high-class mannerisms, he has effectively become a different person. “I look like a butterfly,” he tells de la Vega, an appropriate metaphor as his mentor has made him go through a radical metamorphosis. The transformation of Alejandro from a peasant/bandit into a Spanish gentleman further accentuates his process of domestication and de-radicalization as a symbol of Mexican resistance. The film favors a hero that is more like a Spanish gentleman over a dangerous bandit hero. Before his metamorphosis, de la

Vega had told Alejandro that he would not be able to avenge his brother or protect his people by acting like the man he was in his previous life: impulsive, unkempt, and unskilled in the arts of swordmanship. “You are thief, Alejandro, a pitiful clown,” de la Vega declares.

Such description of the man who carries the name of Murrieta further signifies the pro-

American ideological streak that is implicit in the film. Finally, in The Legend of Zorro, we witness the last step in Alejandro’s domestication process: he has married de la Vega’s daughter, has inherited his hacienda and his fortune, has become a real aristocrat and, more significantly, has changed his surname from Murrieta to de la Vega. The fact that Alejandro

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names his firstborn son Joaquín as an homage to his dead brother carries no symbolic power: the boy is Joaquín de la Vega and not the new Joaquín Murrieta.

While The Mask of Zorro takes place during the late Spanish colonial and the

Mexican periods of California’s history, The Legend of Zorro is set during the transition from Mexican to U.S. control of the Golden State. Diego de la Vega is now dead and the new Zorro, Alejandro, has continued the hero’s tradition of protecting the “poor, desperate” people of California while also getting involved in politics—namely, in the campaign to help California become part of the United States. In fact, the film opens with what is characterized as a “historic” poll that shows Californians in Zorro’s town—fully adorned with red, white, and blue banners—voting overwhelmingly a favor of joining the Union to achieve “the promise of freedom” and be able to call themselves “Americans.” Nonetheless, the public euphoria is soon interrupted by what functions as the narrative’s initial threat/defense sequence: a gringo brigand named McGivens and his gang attempt to steal the ballot box, but Zorro swiftly appears, defeats the gunslinger, and takes the box to the governor’s mansion, where he receives a hero’s welcome. Thus, we can see that from the very beginning the film is structured as a nationalist heroic narrative8 in which the in-group

(Californians, most of them of Mexican/Spanish ancestry, in favor of joining the United

States) confronts an out-group (those opposing the annexation), guided all along by their representative hero. Consequently, the film is constructed as a heroic story that upholds dominant ideology (represented by the expanding United States), with a hero who is socially normative because he supports the ideology of the in-group. This is the exact opposite of the stories of social rebellion embodied by the resistant, non-normative heroes Cortez and

8 See Chapter 4 for an analysis of nationalist heroes and Patrick Colm Hogan’s theoretical approach to nationalist heroic narratives. 129

Murrieta in their corridos and in most of the films about them. Further reinforcing the ideology of American exceptionalism that permeates the film is the fact that the narrative frames Mexico as a threatening, repressive force vis-à-vis the promise of freedom and progress offered by the United States. Alejandro’s wife, Elena, reminds him that “for 10 years you have fought to give California its freedom,” pointing to Mexican rule as the chain from which California needs to break to finally achieve liberty. This is reinforced by

Alejandro’s comment that Zorro will now be able to retire from hero work because there will not be any more wrongs to remedy under U.S. affiliation.

The film’s discourses of freedom and U.S. exceptionalism are deeply troubling. Both history and the stories inspired by the historical Murrieta easily contradict the film’s almost utopian portrayal of oppression ending thanks to California’s statehood, as the U.S. takeover of the Southwest instead led to discrimination and acts of violence committed against people of Spanish, Mexican, and other Latin American descent—the very same people who are so enthusiastically pursuing entrance into the American Union and whom Zorro has pledged to protect. The film also presents the transition of California from Mexican rule to U.S. control as a voluntary and democratic process, ignoring the U.S. military intervention in California in the late 1840s, the revolts from Californio-run towns against this intervention, and the larger context of U.S. imperialist-driven expansion that informs the events leading up to the annexation of California. This sanitization of the United States’ violent westward expansion parallels the sanitization and domestication of the Murrieta story and its character in both

The Mask of Zorro and The Legend of Zorro. Incarnated by Murrieta, the struggle for survival and spirit of resistance in the face of Anglo oppression in the early years of

California’s American period gives way in these films to a hero—Alejandro/Zorro—who

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quickly sheds the rebelliousness and ruggedness elicited by his last name and background and trades it for the comforts of affluent life, somebody else’s name, and allegiance to a country that has historically mistreated his people.

The Legend of Zorro further reinforces its nationalist discourse by shifting violence and confrontation away from the United States and placing blame on other menacing forces.

After all, a hero story requires a villain who threatens the wellbeing of the hero’s in-group.

As mentioned before, the film’s first threatening episode is caused by McGivens, a violent man with a disfigured face who embodies extreme racial hatred and does not think the overwhelmingly Hispanic/Indian California should join the United States: “Well remember,

Babylon was condemned to ashes for extending its empire to inferior races. I’ve come to deliver the Lord’s work against this vote.” Later on, McGivens and his men raid the farm of a Mexican man and his family, killing the man and snatching the deed to their land. It is fair to say, then, that the film does portray racism, mistreatment, and even murder inflicted upon

Mexicans by Anglos. However, such racially motivated violence and discriminatory attitudes are not represented as a generalized sentiment and a structural problem, the way they are shown in many Murrieta narratives. Rather, the film delimits and plays down the extent of the problem by personifying it through McGivens—a lone, racist, ugly, disfigured villain carrying out illegal activities who does not represent the attitudes and actions of all

Americans in the movie’s storyworld and who can, consequently, be dismissed as an unwanted anomaly. Additionally, once racist evil is personified and bound in the figure of

McGivens, it can be easily neutralized by the hero—Zorro thwarts the villain’s attempt to steal the votes and ultimately kills him. With McGivens dead, the threat of Anglo oppression and racism is eliminated in the universe of the film. Additionally, McGivens can be easily

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scapegoated because he does not act as an agent of the United States. Rather, he is a mercenary in the employment of Count Armand, a Frenchman who belongs to an ancient

European secret order that seeks to restore its former power over the world. Armand believes his Order of Aragon is threatened by the rise of the United States, and that the only way to destroy this emerging power is to “turn it against itself”—in other words, to hasten the start of the impending Civil War and make sure the Confederacy prevails. Armand’s plan is to make nitroglycerine from imported French soap and distribute it to his

Confederate comrade, Coronel Beauregard. But just like it happened in the case of

McGivens, Zorro ultimately disrupts Armand’s plot, killing him and Beauregard with their own secret chemical weapon. The hero’s initial intervention into Armand’s plans are motivated by the fact that Elena has left him and is being wooed by the Frenchman.

However, once Zorro discovers Armand’s real designs, his quest becomes a nationalist endeavor—he now must save the republic upon which California’s future of freedom depends. Zorro’s wife and his country come to represent each other, as they both face the threat of being usurped by the same master villain. The film’s nationalist overtones are further reinforced by its inevitable reading as a post-9/11 war narrative, in which Zorro deters a “terrorist” attack with a weapon of mass destruction by a foreign agent that threatens the very existence of the United States as a nation.

When looking at both Zorro films together, one can see how they are structured almost identically in terms of supporting a U.S. nationalist ideology and sidelining the resistant nature of Murrieta’s heroic myth. Interracial conflict—the kind embodied by attacks on Murrieta and his subsequent uprising—is circumscribed to personal feuds between the hero (Alejandro) and secondary Anglo villains, which has the effect of

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downplaying the role of the United States in the systemic discrimination and abuse of

Mexicans and other people of color in the Southwest. Both Captain Love and McGivens are killed by Zorro, masking the historical reality of Anglo violence as the work of a few bad apples who are acting on behalf of the two main villains: Montero and Armand. Ultimately, the films’ heroic struggle is between Zorro (fully identified as siding with the United States) and the representatives of two decadent, repressive, Old World colonial powers (Spain and

France) that refuse to surrender power over their former territories in the Americas and plot to restore a feudalistic world order. These non-American “others” can be easily demonized in the films by depicting them as standing against everything the hero represents: loyalty, courage, freedom, and self-determination, all virtues that are also associated with the United

States in these narratives. The alliance between Armand and the Confederate army in The

Legend of Zorro makes the demonization process even easier, further portraying the hero’s adversaries as enemies of freedom as well as backward and historically obsolete. The inclusion of Beauregard in the villainous mixture also allows the film to establish a distinction between the slavery-supporting Confederacy and a supposedly more inclusive and egalitarian Union—which opposes slavery while sponsoring the extermination and displacement of Native Americans as well as violent treatment of Hispanics/Mexicans in its new territories. As a result of these hero-villain dynamics, the films end up placing responsibility for any injustices committed against the people of California on the old

Spanish colonial system, a distant and dysfunctional Mexican government that Zorro opposes on behalf of his people, the treasonous Confederacy, and a terroristic foreign agent.

Ultimately and inevitably, the construction of Zorro as a hero is conditioned by the ideological articulation of the films. As Diego de la Vega, he begins the narrative as a

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Hispanic hero who helps California gain independence from an oppressive Spanish regime.

Later, as Alejandro Murrieta, he fights to keep his land from being retaken by the former

Spanish Governor Montero. Finally, as Alejandro de la Vega, he has dedicated several years of his life struggling to free California from Mexican control and seeking to achieve membership into the American Union. During this time, Zorro remains a provincial

California hero, doing whatever is in his power to secure the wellbeing of the overwhelmingly Hispanic/Mexican community he represents. Nonetheless, once Zorro becomes entangled in Armand’s plot to destroy the United States with help from the

Confederacy and is able to vanquish these villains, he becomes a bona fide national

American hero. As such, his acts of bravery not only serve the interests of Californians but also, and more significantly, those of an American Union bent on expanding across North

America. In fact, during The Legend of Zorro’s last action scene, the masked cavalier saves

President Lincoln—who had come to California to officiate its statehood ceremony—from a runaway train, symbolically saving the present and future of the United States in the process.

Zorro’s representation as a national Hispanic hero could be viewed as a positive development, insofar as it highlights the contributions that Latinos/as have made throughout

U.S. history. However, Zorro’s ascension to the pantheon of American national heroes operates as a decoy. This Latino hero does not question American violence toward his community and even supports the country’s expansionist push—the complete opposite of what Murrieta represents. In The Mask of Zorro, Joaquín is killed and Alejandro survives, not to follow on his brother’s path of anti-Anglo resistance, but to become the sanitized, domesticated Zorro. In Alejandro/Zorro, the powerful symbolism embodied by Joaquín

Murrieta is not just coopted by the dominant culture to create a hero that preserves all the

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bravery and fighting skills (“appropriating,” to use Barthes’ terminology), but none of its ethnically motivated rebelliousness. More significantly, Murrieta is robbed of all of his historical and symbolic power (the “erasing” function of the myth according to Barthes). In this sense, Zorro represents the Latino and American version of Barthes’ black soldier who signifies French imperialism. As such, Zorro is a myth, a sign that has been emptied of all history of U.S. oppression toward Mexicans and other people of color as well as of its violent, imperialistic westward expansion—a history that was originally present in the films through the Murrieta characters, but which was progressively eliminated until leaving no trace of it whatsoever, not even in name. Additionally, the myth of American heroic imperialism embodied by Zorro supports other quintessential U.S. myths: Manifest Destiny, which is embraced and aided by the hero’s actions; and the Melting Pot/E Pluribus Unum construct, which shows the Hispanics/Mexicans of California joining the nation peacefully and harmoniously blending in.

While the two Zorro films explored here articulate a heroic myth that reaffirms U.S. dominant culture during the era of westward expansion, another film—El Coyote—operates as a type of “artificial myth” or counter-myth that Barthes proposes in Mythologies, and which serves the role of challenging the ideological motivation of the first myth. McCulley and subsequent producers of Zorro narratives domesticated the recalcitrant, anti-Anglo

Latino frontier hero Joaquín Murrieta and turned him into a representative of dominant U.S. culture in the Southwest. Meanwhile, Mallorquí appropriated the storyline, appearance, and heroic modus operandi of Zorro (he “mythified the myth”), but at the same time he gave his hero the rebellious and anti-American spirit of Murrieta. El Coyote is, consequently, the result of a double appropriation, embodying the resistant nature of Murrieta while

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resembling the heroic construction of Zorro. In his novels, Mallorquí often refers to Murrieta as a historical character living in California in the 1850s. In one of them, El Diablo,

Murrieta y El Coyote, the two characters even cross paths as Mallorquí tells yet another version of the Murrieta story. The incorporation of Murrieta into the tales of the Zorro-like

El Coyote help to reinforce the fundamental connection between “los dos personajes que más ha popularizado el nombre de California” (Mallorquí 3). The historical baggage contained in the story of Murrieta permeates the film in important ways. The movie opens with battle scenes in which Hispanic California rebels fight the invading Americans, their leaders eventually becoming fugitives because of the superiority of Anglo forces. This scenario stands in stark contrast with the beginning scenes of The Legend of Zorro, which ignores the historical opposition of many Californios against American control. César de

Echagüe, the son of a prominent Californio, returns from Europe to find his country being seized by the Americans and his best friends, rebel fighters, in hiding. Behaving as a friend of the Yankees, César gathers information about their plans. At night, he puts on a mask and goes out to protect fellow Californians being maltreated and even murdered by the invaders, often having run-ins with law-enforcement agents. After multiple adventures, El Coyote confronts the two representatives of the U.S. government in California—Sheriff Brooks and

Captain Potz—and kills them. Unlike The Legend of Zorro, El Coyote is imbued with a decidedly pro-Hispanic and anti-American ideology. The film is a story of social rebellion, with the hero engaging in activities deemed illegal by the invading American forces in order to deliver justice for his occupied community. Not surprisingly, the hero of this film undergoes a reversed process of domestication. César’s father is disappointed that his son is too cautious and mild-mannered, as he expected that he would come back home as a bold

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liberator. However, César quickly sheds this aspect of his dual personality and becomes a valiant outlaw whose actions begin to inspire his people to once again take up arms against the Americans. Through El Coyote, the resistant and confrontational nature of Murrieta is restored, offering a counter-discourse to the sanitized Zorro narratives.

As examined in this chapter, the representation of frontier Latino/a heroes varies along a continuum from resistance to domestication. In the case of Cortez and Murrieta, their corridos—produced by folk musicians in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands and full of patriotic fervor—score high on the resistance scale, portraying defiant heroes who openly challenge Anglo oppression and never give up. The films about Cortez and Murrieta, meanwhile, offer a diversity of depictions and ideological overtones. Sometimes they ardently question U.S. expansion in the Southwest and the mistreatment of Mexicans; other times they gloss over the history of racial conflict in frontier territories while still depicting positive Latino/a heroes; and on a few occasions they perpetuate the stereotypical treatment of Latinos/as in Hollywood. Finally, in the case of Zorro, we witness how the resistant nature at the core of the Murrieta story and heroic character has been sanitized for safe consumption among U.S. audiences, leaving out all traces of his violent anti-American crusade and the racially motivated atrocities that drove him to banditry. We can conclude from this evidence that analyzing the way Latino/a heroic figures are constructed in popular culture over time is helpful for understanding how the history of race relations in the United

States has been written. At the center of this struggle over who gets to write the history of the nation and how it is written, there is also a resistance-domestication continuum.

Marginalized groups such as Latinos/as create and reproduce narratives that exalt their rebellious heroes while keeping the memory of Anglo oppression alive. At the same time,

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dominant U.S. culture advances narratives that glorify the country’s expansionist history as pre-ordained, ignore the inherent violence of such territorial conquests, and neutralize dissenting voices by appropriating their heroes and recasting them as loyal subjects at the service of a supposedly inclusive nation.

Finally, the study of nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century Latino/as heroes makes evident a serious limitation of heroic representation in media and popular culture from this time period: the absence of Latino/a heroines. To be certain, women on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico engaged in all manner of brave and heroic deeds9 alongside the likes of

Murrieta and Cortez. However, their stories have not made it to the realm of film, television, and comics. While unfortunate, this is not surprising given the male-centered tradition of

Mexican-American and Latino/a heroics. Rosaldo has defined this representative of primordial patriarchal heroism the “warrior hero,” a figure of “masculine heroics” best exemplified by the Gregorio Cortez of corridos and anchored in a “conception of manhood rhetorically endowed with the mythic capacity to combat Anglo-Texan anti-Mexican prejudice” (155, 151). Such a primordial and unequal concept of Latino/a heroism accounts not only for the erasure of female heroic figures in frontier narratives, but also for the way female agency is negated in the films studied in this chapter. For example, Murieta’s Rosita mainly operates as an object of desire on the part of the Anglo prospectors and as the sacrificial victim that must disappear from the narrative to set up her husband’s story of revenge and heroism. The Zorro films give Elena, Alejandro’s wife, at least some agency as she at times does join in the fight against their common enemies. However, Elena

9 See, for example, Robert McKee Irwin’s Bandits, Captives, Heroines, and Saints: Cultural Icons of Mexico’s Northwest Borderlands (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2007) and Emma Pérez’s The Decolonial Imaginary: Writing Chicanas Into History (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1999). 138

principally fulfills the role of the damsel in distress who must be rescued by the male hero, especially in The Legend of Zorro.

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Chapter 2— Finding Justice Outside the Law: Modern Outlaws, Vigilantes, and the Politics of the Activist Hero

“You just fucked with the wrong Mexican.”

—Machete’s text message to Michael Booth, in Machete (2000).

As examined in the previous chapter, early Latino/a cultural heroes such as

Joaquín Murrieta and Gregorio Cortez—who represent different though interconnected facets of the Mexican-American struggle against colonizing American forces in former

Spanish and Mexican territories in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries— have left an indelible impact on the U.S. Latino/a cultural imaginary as well as on the mythohistorical symbolism expressed through the Chicano movement of the 1960s and

1970s. These heroic figures embody a fundamental ambivalence, representing the irresoluble fusion or clash of opposite forces: legality/illegality and ethnic community/national community. Their mythification as ethnic or community heroes was the result of a process of selection of certain qualities that omit negative aspects typically highlighted by the dominant Anglo legal system and mass media, to the point that their magnified “larger than life” image oscillates between idealized heroism or quasi-sanctity and their portrayal as criminal, dangerous “monsters.” Additionally, these outlaw heroes who dared defy Anglo power as they sought justice for themselves and their communities have inspired the creation of new, fictional Latino/a heroes who share similar struggles, existential threats, adversaries, and styles of resistance in the same borderland

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territories—albeit in contemporary settings and now with the added presence of females heroes, who were noticeably absent in representations from the frontier era of Latino/a heroism discourses. I will explain later on how this gender perspective modifies the mythical construction of Latino/a heroism. Created by Latino/a comic book authors and film directors beginning in the 1990s, these heroes and their narratives reflect and comment on the realities that Latino/a communities face in contemporary America, which is still marked by discrimination, racism, socioeconomic inequality, and nativist attitudes particularly toward Latin American immigrants. Without hesitation, these authors and directors (along with their characters) immerse themselves in the controversial politics of ethnic relations, immigration, and cultural citizenship in the United States, focusing on recent circumstances but echoing the historical developments that date back to the U.S. colonial expansion in the aforementioned territories.

This chapter concentrates on the discursive and semiotic construction of these fictional heroic figures that have inherited many of the qualities (and even the names) of early Latino/a heroes, but who reflect the new realities confronting Latinos/as and the changes the United States has experienced since the time of westward expansion. Like their predecessors, these contemporary heroes take on an “activist” role to protect their diverse communities—now living in the country’s large urban centers instead of in the mines and cattle ranches of old—from crime, drug traffickers, exploitation, corrupt politicians, racist laws, and other forces detrimental to these communities’ daily existence. Also common to these characters is that they circumvent established law- enforcement institutions and methods to carry out their heroics, becoming outlaws, vigilantes, or otherwise underground agents of resistance against perceived injustices. It

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is also important to note that these heroes—whose day jobs include social worker, law student, laborer, or entrepreneur—resort to this alternative form of community protection and justice-seeking after finding themselves or the system in which they operate unable or insufficient to effectively protect vulnerable sectors of the populace, such as poor urban residents, minorities, or undocumented immigrants. Therefore, their initial activism and political positions are carried over as part of their transformation into vigilante heroes, whether that may be action heroes or superheroes with special powers.

Ultimately, these heroes become metaphors of Latino/a power and agency, reflecting the ongoing real-life struggles and aspirations of the ethnic and cultural communities that they represent and for whom they deliver a sort of poetic justice.

I will focus my analysis on three comic book superhero characters/teams—

Richard Dominguez’s El Gato Negro, Laura Molina’s The Jaguar, and Marvel’s Eleggua and the Santerians— as well as on several action heroes from the Robert Rodríguez films

Machete (2010) and Machete Kills (2013). The first independent Latino/a comic book superhero created since Margarito Garza’s groundbreaking Relámpago (1977), El Gato

Negro first appeared in 1993, published by Dominguez’s personal imprint Azteca

Productions. The story revolves around a social worker from South Texas, Francisco

Guerrero, who takes on the feline crime-fighting identity of his grandfather in response to the murder of a friend. Coming out at night, the new superhero endeavors to dispose of drug traffickers plaguing the predominantly Latino/a communities of South Texas. El

Gato Negro’s storyworld reproduces the dire conditions experienced by many border communities as a result of the increasing drug trade from Latin America and gang violence that accelerated in the late twentieth century. While admired by members of his

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community who benefit from his vigilantism, El Gato Negro is nonetheless suspected as a criminal and pursued by the Texas Rangers, which places his unilateral heroic activities outside of normative law. Another superpower-endowed activist hero that appeared during the 1990s is The Jaguar, created and also independently published (Insurgent

Comix) by Molina in 1996 in response to the passage of California’s proposition 187 two years earlier. The Jaguar is the secret identity of East Los Angeles law student Linda

Rivera, who lives in an alternate timeline in which proposition 187 has turned California into a police state ruled by right-wing fundamentalists, where basic civil rights are consistently denied to people of color. Rivera derives her powers from ancient Aztec sources by being able to tap into her animal spirit, or nahual. Working in tandem with other underground activists, she uses her superpowers and knowledge of the law to fight racist groups and to try to restore social justice. While these two comic books have had limited circulation and a modest readership compared to mainstream comics, they are important because they represent the first efforts by Latino/a artists to use the comic book medium to create nuanced, non-stereotypical Latino/a characters and/or to express statements of resistance against perceived discrimination or racism.

In a manner similar to the above-mentioned independent Latino/a superhero comics, Rodríguez’s Machete films feature three prominent Mexican-American action heroes operating in former Mexican territories. These movies have been very successful among fans of exploitation-type films, with Machete grossing $26.6 million at the box office (“Machete”) and its sequel earning a more modest $8 million (“Machete Kills”).

Based on the Texas borderlands, the protagonists of the first movie engage in underground resistance as they face politicians and illicit business interests that prey on

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undocumented immigrants, and later orchestrate an all-out armed offensive against a border militia. This narrative establishes interesting intertextual connections with the stories of Murrieta and Cortez—the surname of the main character, played by Danny

Trejo, is Cortez; his wife and kid are killed by a drug lord, just as Murrieta’s wife was purportedly killed by his enemies; and he lives the life of a fugitive just as Murrieta and

Cortez did. In this resemantization of the Mexican-American outlaw hero, Machete, a former Mexican federal officer who crossed into the United States illegally, teams up with Luz/Shé (played by Michelle Rodríguez), who is the leader of an undocumented immigrant aid group known as The Network. They are later joined by Sartana Rivera

(played by Jessica Alba), a tough Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent who has a change of heart about her job. While Machete is clearly an example of representational resistance against action film genre stereotyping (Latinos/as play the hero characters instead of the criminals) and cultural resistance (against the country’s prevailing anti-immigrant sentiment), the film’s reliance on hypermasculinity and violence and the hyper-sexualization of female characters need to be addressed as possible limitations to progressive Latino/a representation. The final narrative I analyze in this chapter is not based in Texas or the Southwest and does not feature Mexican-

American heroes. Instead, New York City is the setting for the adventures of the

Santerians, a group of Cuban-American heroes with powers derived from the orishas, or

Yoruban spirits, that they represent. Appearing in Marvel’s Daredevil: Father (2005), written and illustrated by the highly recognized Cuban-American cartoonist and editor

Joe Quesada, the vigilante team protects New York’s Latino/a communities from an assortment of criminals. As a notorious serial killer stalks the territory they defend, they

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clash with Anglo superhero Daredevil, who refuses to engage in crime-fighting outside of his mostly white neighborhood. Daredevil: Father exemplifies a recent wave of superhero comics that promote discourses of Latino/a empowerment by creating storyworlds in which Latinos/as and other minorities are no longer victims rebelling against dominant Anglocentric forces, but are more or less in control of the spaces they inhabit and protect. Moreover, the traditional Anglo superheroes featured in these stories are presented as either inept or unwilling to fulfill their heroic missions and are displaced by emerging multicultural heroes.

As indicated earlier, the heroic narratives explored in this chapter reveal a continuity of themes from the Latino/a frontier hero stories discussed in Chapter 1, even as historical circumstances and specific concerns for U.S. Latinos/as have changed. Such continuity and strong connection should not be surprising. Latino/a scholars have noted that the historical developments of the mid-1800s have had a profound and permanent impact on future generations of U.S. Latinos/as, especially because of the violence through which large portions of Mexico were incorporated into the expanding U.S. empire and what this meant for their inhabitants’ way of life. Vélez-Ibáñez, for instance, points out that the nineteenth century struggle by Mexican-Americans “over physical, social, linguistic, and cultural survival […] has influenced the varying versions of political action that have partially defined the cultural development of Mexicans since the

American entrada,” including the Chicano movement and other efforts to demand civil rights and express cultural autonomy (92). Likewise, these events have marked twentieth and twenty-first century Latino/a cultural production. Regarding Mexican-Americans,

Ramón Saldívar has posited that “[a]n understanding of the nature of their historical

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genesis as a […] conquered minority in a colonized land […] is vital to an understanding of contemporary Chicano narrative (13). The combination of this history of U.S. oppression toward Mexican-Americans, the legacy of Spanish colonial rule shared by

Latin Americans living in the United States, and more recent nativist sentiment and legislation targeting new immigrants, have reinforced the notion of U.S. Latinos/as as an oppressed minority in a nation that rejects their cultural legacy—whether their ancestors lived in current U.S. territories before they became American or are recent arrivals to this country. At the heart of this history of discrimination is colonial and neocolonial violence, of which ethnic oppression is an important part but not the only factor. As

Slavoj Žižek has posited, this type of entrenched violence can be classified as “systemic” violence—“the often catastrophic consequences of the smooth functioning of our

[Western] economic and political systems” (1) and which “is no longer attributable to concrete individuals and their ‘evil’ intentions […] but anonymous” (11). Such shared legacy and experience of oppression and violence is reflected in contemporary Latino/a cultural production, including hero narratives that reenact ethnic and cultural confrontations between Latinos/as of different backgrounds and agents of Anglo domination. Just like in Mexican-American frontier hero narratives, the contemporary

Latino/s hero texts explored in this chapter recreate the confrontation between two very distinct and seemingly incompatible groups of people, reproducing the clash of cultures and worldviews represented by older heroic narratives pitting Mexicans versus Anglos. In the following pages, I will delve into these contemporary examples of old conflicts fought anew.

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Chicana Power and Civil Rights: The Jaguar Versus The Terminator

Before Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed into law the “Support Our Law

Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act” (known as Arizona SB 1070) in April 2010, making her state home of the broadest and strictest immigration legislation in recent U.S. history and spurring a flurry of copycat laws in other states, there was California

Proposition 187. The anti-immigrant bill, introduced in November 1993 and passed a year later by 59% of California voters, sought, among other things, to deny social services to undocumented immigrants (including public education and nonemergency health services) and require that public social service agencies report any suspected undocumented individuals to immigration authorities. In The New Nativism: Proposition

187 and the Debate Over Immigration, Robin Jacobson calls this law a “landmark in immigration politics and race relations” that sparked fierce debate between supporters and detractors of tougher immigration policing by the states and the curtailing of immigrant rights (xiii). Even though the bill was declared unconstitutional and was never implemented, it has left an important legacy of anti-immigrant activism and political posturing reflected by the passage of laws such as Arizona SB 1070 and the Republican

Party’s hardening stance on immigration, which has led to the defeat and/or stalling of undocumented immigrant legalization bills in the twenty-first century. News of the bill also made ripples in Latin America, especially when famous action film hero and future

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (himself an immigrant to the United States) expressed his support for the legislation.

California immigrants, ethnic minorities, and activists complained that

Proposition 187 was a racist and discriminatory bill disguised as legislation to protect the

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community, as the law’s name suggests. The mobilization of majority Anglo California voters who turned out at the polls to support the measure was seen as an attempt to control the influence of a growing minority population, especially Latinos/as, in the already multicultural state. Jacobson concurs:

Mobilization in support of the initiative was part of a highly contentious,

racialized battle over citizenship. By passing the measure, supporters of

Proposition 187 hoped to render illegal immigrants (read “Hispanic illegal

immigrants”) politically voiceless, with no economic claim on society, outsiders

even within the community […] Even without implementation, the initiative

separated and redefined: the “people” of California—that is, the electorate—

decided that undocumented aliens living in the state did not have a right to

education or health care, that they could not make claims on society. The stakes

are far from symbolic, as the redefinition of community had far-reaching impacts

on people’s lives. How? […] Through the very act of debating and supporting

Proposition 187, proponents developed new racial understandings of citizenship.

(xv)

While Jacobson is right about the racial motivations underpinning the writing and approval of this law, her statement about Proposition 187 creating a “new racial understanding of citizenship” is historically shortsighted. Such attempts at legitimizing white Californians and other Anglo settlers in the Southwest as rightful citizens while denying citizenship and other rights to Latinos/as, was not a novel phenomenon in the mid-1990s, as it is not new today. Instead, what Proposition 187 did was to reignite the power-struggle dynamics that have been taken place in the region for almost 200 years,

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characterized at every turn by attempts on the part of the Anglo elite to control via exclusion: the stripping of land, rights, and more from Mexican-Americans in the aftermath of the Mexican-American War (as detailed in Chapter 1); the mass deportation of Mexicans, including U.S. citizens, in the late 1920s and 1930s; the violent reactions to the “zoot-suiter menace” during World II (Sánchez 267); and various episodes of police repression and “legal violence” experienced during the tumultuous years of the Chicano

Movement (Haney-López 207), just to list a few incidents.

As Los Angeles-born artist Molina has indicated, her comic book

Cihualyaomiquiz: The Jaguar was created in direct response to the controversy generated by Proposition 187: “There were hate crimes and discrimination. The country had taken a hard turn to the right, pushing toward something dark and violent. It was a climate similar to today [late 2000s]. All of a sudden, positive representations of Latinas and issues concerning Latinos generally mattered a lot. You had to take a political stand because of the overt racism that you faced every day” (qtd. in Aldama, Your Brain on Latino

Comics, 211). The cover of the first and only issue of the comic book ever published is quick to express the contestatory nature of this superheroine in the context of the time period in which it appeared. Looking fierce and defiant in her Aztec- and feline-themed outfit, young Chicana Linda Rivera yells “¡Watchate! I resist!”10 (1), three simple words that issue a clear statement of resistance and also identify the heroine’s latinidad via the use of Spanglish. Following the speech bubbles, the reader immediately finds out for whom The Jaguar is uttering these words of warning: “Right-wing fundamentalists, racist

10 A similar ideological maneuver is employed by Corky Gonzales in the last stanza of “I Am Joaquín”: “I SHALL ENDURE! I WILL ENDURE!” (Vázquez, Francisco H. and Rodolfo D. Torres. Latino/a Thought: Culture, Politics, and Society. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003, p. 87). 149

bigots and white supremacists!” (1). Thus, the confrontation that is about to take place within the comic book is immediately established on the cover, with the two camps clearly delineated along ethnic and political lines. If we didn’t know the specific historical context in which the comic’s cover was produced, The Jaguar’s words could easily be referring to a number of Latino/a-Anglo struggles over the past two centuries, reinforcing the fundamental connections that exist between contemporary heroes and their forerunners.

The comic book’s cover also makes explicit the heroine’s mission and the place she calls home: “Out of Aztlán [what Chicanos/as call the U.S. Southwest] into the new age, comes a woman warrior dedicated to the struggle for social justice, human rights, and Mother Earth” (1). The cover’s final element, a bright-yellow caption at the bottom of the page, invites readers to look inside for “more feminist-Chicana anarchy” (1). It may seem odd that in addition to the more obvious goals of standing up for Latinos/as’ human rights and civil liberties in the face of anti-immigrant and anti-minority attacks,

Molina chooses to also give her heroine an environmental mission with feminist undertones. However, the inside pages of the book reveal a character who is not only concerned with the immediate fight to protect her people from oppression and racism, but more broadly with a holistic struggle against a Western, capitalist-centered system that at once undermines people of color, the Indigenous way of life, women, and natural resources. With the economy of words and images that characterizes comic book art,

Molina manages, in just one page, to introduce to readers a protagonist whose identity is highly complex and hybridized in a setting (Los Angeles) that is also multicultural and multifaceted and infused with ethnic and power struggle. On this page, Mexican,

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Chicana, and Mesoamerican cultural influences converge through the interplay of language and visual elements: English, Spanish, Spanglish, and Nahuatl are all employed;

The Jaguar’s outfit combines the skin-tight, full-body spandex suit traditionally worn by

Anglo superheroes with elements from ancient Aztec warriors such as a feather headdress, gold jewelry, and, of course, jaguar prints; and, finally, the superheroine’s actions are presented as a historical, ongoing Mexican-American struggle against oppressive and discriminatory forces, as part of her identity has its origin in the

Mesoamerican-based and ancient “heart of Aztlán” but is lived in “the new age” as a contemporary, college-educated Chicana who knows how to navigate both the Anglo and the Latino/a worlds. Mode of address is crucial in the way Molina constructs her heroine and sets the ideological tone of the comic. On the cover, The Jaguar looks straight at the reader, a direct mode of address that reinforces her power, fierce nature, and authority as deliverer of justice. Additionally, the use of multiple languages, code-switching, and race codes of representation as forms of address help position the comic as a narrative that inscribes Latinos/as (and particularly Latinas) as its ideal audience—asking this audience to identify with the struggles depicted in the story but also to critically engage with the political realities that it mirrors.

First and foremost, The Jaguar is a vigilante heroine who fights who protects her community (East Los Angeles ethnic minorities, particularly Latinos/as) from legislation that has turned California “into a police state” (3) supported by greedy politicians, where

“racist groups fester, proliferate and grow more vocal and violent” (4). The comic’s first panel introduces the narrative’s historical background, showing law student Linda Rivera reading The Los Angeles Times, which on its cover announces that Proposition 187 has

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passed and that Republican Governor Pete Wilson (who supported the bill) had been reelected. Through the inclusion of newspaper reports, Molina effectively plays with multimodality to connect the comic’s fictional storyworld with actual historical events, thus reinforcing the importance of the events portrayed in the narrative and seeking to give them more legitimacy. In the aftermath of the signing and implementation of the comic’s alternate version of Proposition 187, immigrants are persecuted by police, harassed by neo-Nazis, and even U.S.-born citizens are treated as foreigners and denied social services. One panel shows police officers with dogs pursuing and beating up a man; the aerial perspective (high-angle shot) of the image emphasizes the position of power of the officers in relation with the victim, who is lying on the sidewalk—an example of the interpersonal metafunction of images, according to Kresss and van

Leeuwen in Reading Images (140). The panel’s caption, which represents the narrator’s voice, reads: “Violence against la raza and others increases; racism reaches intolerable levels” (4). In response to the rising oppression, “the people of color, the poor, the unempowered” (5) initiate a resistance movement that goes beyond ethnicity to unify all those who have fallen victim to the new state policies. This opposition, the narrator states, comes from “the ancient spirit of struggle and resistance” (5), a statement that confirms the previously stated observation that the conflict enacted in this narrative is historically connected with the centuries-old battle fought by Latinos/as and other disenfranchised individuals for their rights in the United States.

Rivera emerges as a leader in this underground resistance movement, employing her knowledge of the law to do “what is necessary to see that justice is done” for the people of East Los Angeles. But when the legal system—biased against minorities,

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immigrants, and the poor— becomes insufficient to achieve desired results, she engages in vigilante justice at night, leaving her law scholar identity behind and assuming her new identity as a super-powered individual. As a result, the issue of legality is central to the construction of this narrative and of its protagonist: when the prevailing legal system fails those who are most vulnerable and the official law-enforcement apparatus violates their rights, “illegal” forms of vigilante activism emerge as the only ways possible to achieve justice. Those extrajudicial actions are embodied in the heroine. In the comic book’s preface, Molina reflects on the tremendous challenges facing minorities during times of intolerance, stating that “[i]t takes near super-human strength to get through these repressive/oppressive times” (2). If Schwarzenegger, the actor who portrayed The

Terminator—a cyborg whose mission, let us remember, was to quash a resistance movement—came out as a supporter of Proposition 187 in the real world, then The

Jaguar would become the heroic response against those who shared his view in the imagined realm of popular culture. As a superheroine, then, The Jaguar offers a vehicle for dealing with such seemingly insurmountable obstacles within the internal logic of the comic book. The Jaguar’s supernatural powers, however, do not come from a freak accident or some other random or incompatible source, as in many superhero comic book stories. Instead, Rivera is able to tap into the hidden world of her Aztec ancestry after going through an elaborate ceremony, invoking the powers of Huitzilopochtli, Aztec god of war, and her nahual, the jaguar. The jaguar, a spirit of the night, is one of the mightiest symbols of Mesoamerican culture, typically associated with gods, rulers, royal symbols, and elite warriors, as “only a powerful person would identify with a jaguar” (Benson 53-

54). When the process of transformation is complete, Rivera emerges as

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Cihualyaomiquiz, Nahuatl word that translates as “woman ready to die in battle” (7). In one of her missions as The Jaguar, Rivera encounters a pair of skinheads, who accuse her of “destroying white people’s property” (10) and try to attack her. The superheroine easily defeats the neo-Nazis, telling them that they were lucky this time because “my ancestors used to eat their enemies” and uttering a proud “Viva La Raza!” (11) as she leaves the men behind.

The Jaguar’s construction as a resistant Latina heroine is realized in this fight scene, which challenges the historical oppression and discrimination of Mexican-

Americans in the United States by staging the superiority of a woman of color over white, racist men. Stylistically, The Jaguar’s physical and moral predominance is evidenced through the way Molina draws her characters: the heroine has chiseled muscles, is athletic, and her facial expressions are depicted in great detail, while the villains are shown as weak and their faces are generically drawn, signifying anonymity and lack of representational importance. Additionally, the resolution of the fight scene—with the two skinheads on the ground and The Jaguar towering over them, from the perspective of a high-angle shot—appears to be a visual response to the earlier panel in which a Latino man is beaten by police officers, who have representational over him. In other words, the defeat of the “Nazi punks” (11) represents, narratively speaking, the delivery of justice for that and many other individuals whose rights have been violated up to this point. But there is a significant difference: The Jaguar, who stands for the city’s minorities, is able to defeat two adversaries by herself, while the other panels shows four cops attacking one man. Thus, The Jaguar (and, by extension, Latinos/as) is given more representational power, not to mention moral superiority, as she uses force only to defend herself and the

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welfare of her people.

In terms of narrative structure, The Jaguar follows the pattern of the heroic story of social rebellion, with the protagonist representing resistant ideology. The usurpation scene in this case is represented by the announcement of legislation that strips immigrants and other minorities of their rights. This is followed, on the next three pages, by the story’s threat/defense sequence. The narrator ominously announces how this “rightwing backlash brings a new attack upon civil rights, equal employment, and affirmative action”

(3). In the next few panels, the immediate results of that initial threat are confirmed: politicians call for building walls to keep immigrants out and advocate for a “national”

Proposition 187 (3); Confederate flags are shown next to politicians who promise to

“save America” and who “rail against the immigrant and single parent as the cause of middle class ills like crime and high taxes” (4); and groups of armed skinheads with

“white power” flags roam free in the streets, while the police is busy detaining and brutalizing seemingly innocent minorities (4). The defense portion of the threat/defense sequence is established on the next page, where the narrator announces that a “new consciousness” among the disenfranchised has awoken (5). Rivera’s transformation into

The Jaguar serves as the anointing of the story’s heroine, who leaves her apartment into the dangers of the night to fulfill one of her missions (6-7). While the heroine is successful in defeating her neo-Nazi opponents and displaying her physical and moral superiority, the initial, pre-Proposition 187 order is not restored. At the production level, this cliffhanger may simply reveal the fact that additional issues of The Jaguar in which her story would be further developed were planned but never fulfilled. On the other hand, it may signify that the struggle of minorities for equal rights is a long war composed of

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many small battles and that heroic resolution is difficult to achieve. In the case of U.S.

Latinos/as, this is a confrontation that started in the 1800s and continues through today.

While The Jaguar upholds resistant ideology in terms of the confrontation between minorities and racist forces, she is not normative within her own ethnic community when it comes to issues of gender. As previously indicated, the comic’s protagonist inherits and gives continuity to a longstanding tradition of Latino/a cultural heroes who have risen up to defend their communities from Anglo oppression at different times in history. However, this heroine rejects her ethnic group’s social normativity by standing up as a strong female hero in a cultural tradition marked by patriarchy, predominantly male leadership, and a pantheon of sanctioned heroes who are overwhelmingly male—including the ones examined in

Chapter 1. Bebout, among other Latina scholars, has written about the gendered nature of

Latino/a hero-making, noting how “the epic heroic corrido is a form steeped in the masculine: sung by men for men, narrated by men about men of heroic quality” (87), while positions of prominence for women in the Chicano nationalist imaginary have been extremely limited (103). The choice of a female hero to represent the resistance of all

Latinos/as and other minorities against the threat of Proposition 187 was politically motivated. Molina has said that she “wanted to create a strong, nonstereotypical Chicana character who would appeal to girls like myself when I was twelve years old. She wouldn’t be subservient or passive […] She would inspire confidence in young Chicanas” (Personal communication). Before The Jaguar appeared, Latina superheroines had been almost absent from the pages of comic books, independent or mainstream. In 1981, Marvel introduced its first Latina superheroine, Firebird, while in 1994 Vertigo/DC comics included Lord Fanny, a transsexual Brazilian shaman, in its superhero team The Invisibles (Aldama, Your Brain on

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Latino Comics, 57). After The Jaguar, however, many more Latina heroines have been created by both independent authors and mainstream publishers, including the Luna

Brothers’ Ultra (2004), Marvel’s Araña (2004) and Spider-Girl (2010), and Jules Rivera’s

Valkyrie Squadron (2011).

The Jaguar’s construction as a Latina female superheroine does not only encompass the defense of minority rights and the advancement of female agency in traditionally male-dominated spheres (civil rights movements and the comic book world).

It is also concerned with the vindication of the Indigenous heritage that is an important component of Chicano/a identity, as well as the sacredness of nature that Mesoamerican belief systems (in addition to those from other Indigenous cultures) hold dear. In a way,

The Jaguar can be viewed as an embodiment of the ideas presented by Gloria Anzaldúa in her 1987 groundbreaking book Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, where she argues that Latinas can resist the myth of patriarchy and the legacies of colonial domination by developing a subversive “mestiza consciousness” that acknowledges and draws from their mixed cultural heritage and hybrid constitution as women of color, as having a “plural personality” and operating in a “pluralistic mode” (79). Thus, while

Linda Rivera/The Jaguar is spurred to action in response to the violation of civil rights affecting her fellow Latinos/as, Molina’s comic book delves deeper into the politics of social oppression and gender, reminding readers that women of color tend to be doubly- victimized (as ethnic minorities and as females) during times of backlash against the rights of minorities. Likewise, Molina, through her protagonist, makes a point that activism by women of color can help tackle both types of discrimination at once.

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Machete: The Hero as Outlaw, ‘Illegal,’ Displaced, and Country-Less

Just like creation of The Jaguar coincided with the passing of anti-immigrant legislation in California in the mid-1990s, Rodríguez’s 2010 exploitation-style film

Machete appeared during a time when the issue of illegal immigration had once again raised to prominence in the national debate. Efforts during the second George W. Bush administration (2005-2009) to address the situation of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States through comprehensive immigration reform had failed. Instead, the 2000s produced the Border Protection, Anti-

Terrorism and Illegal Immigration Control Act, approved by the U.S. House of

Representatives in 2005, and which sought to make illegal entry into the United States a felony and contained many other provisions that, according to Jorge Castañeda, made the bill “traditional American nativism transformed into law” (120). In response to this bill and the lack of any significant immigration reform, millions of Latinos/as—documented and undocumented alike—took to the streets across the United States in the spring of

2006 to demand action (Castañeda 118-119). In the 2008 presidential election, Latinos/as overwhelmingly supported Barack Obama, hoping his administration would finally deliver on the promise of legislation that would provide a path to legalization for immigrants without papers. Thus far, however, relief for undocumented immigrants has been elusive, as a bill passed by the Democrat-controlled Senate in 2013 has been rejected by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, while roughly 1.8 million people have been deported under Obama’s time in office—following the deportation of little over 2 million immigrants by George W. Bush over his two administrations (Vicens). While the federal government has been unable to enact

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immigrant reform laws, individual states such as Arizona and Alabama have been aggressive at passing anti-immigrant bills similar to or even harsher than Proposition 187, even though some of the their most controversial provisions have been found to be unconstitutional. In addition to these actions on the legislative and enforcement fronts, the previous decade has also witnessed the rise of anti-immigration collectives and vigilante groups that have sought to take the law on their own hands and remedy what they perceive as the government’s inability to secure the country’s southern border. The most notable of these organizations, the Minutemen Project, was founded in 2005 as a type of “border neighborhood watch” and serves as inspiration for the violent vigilante gang that Machete and The Network fight in the first Machete movie.

In Machete, Rodríguez is able to articulate the tensions surrounding and boiling inside the contentious issue of immigration in twenty-first century America. But unlike dominant representational discourses in which immigrants and Latinos/as are portrayed as threats or as comic relief, or resistant discourses that highlight the plights of immigrants and tend to represent them as victims, Machete employs a more forceful and controversial approach to reconfiguring the conversation on immigration: by empowering

Latino/a undocumented immigrants and portraying them as activist heroes and leaders who are unafraid to confront powerful enemies, even if it means employing extreme violence to achieve their goals. The activist heroism created by Rodríguez in Machete can be easily contrasted with the nonviolent form of protest and activism exemplified by

César Chávez and the farmworker movement during the 1960s and 1970s. In fact, it is more akin to the land grant movement led by Reies López Tijerina in New Mexico in the

1960s, which as Ian Haney López indicates “provided a model of violent, armed protest”

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for Chicanos during this time period (220). López Tijerina’s La Alianza Federal de

Mercedes (The Federal Alliance of Land Grants) movement first attempted to employ legal arguments to claim that U.S. federal land had been illegally seized from Mexican-

Americans, but later switched to a variety of more forceful tactics including mass demonstrations, the occupation of national forest land, and taking law-enforcement offices hostage (Haney López 220-221). López Tijerina and armed members of La

Alianza even engaged in a gun battle with police officers in the town of Tierra Amarilla,

New Mexico, where they had stormed the county courthouse “to make a citizen’s arrest of a district attorney they considered abusive” (Haney López 121). According to Haney

López, “after almost one hundred years of quiescence, the actions of López Tijerina and

La Alianza represented a resurgence of armed opposition to Anglo domination, and provided Mexicans across the Southwest with a model of authentically Mexican militancy” (221). In Machete, Rodríguez appears to be drawing on López Tijerina’s style of activism, constructing a strong, violent male leader who leads a militant group—The

Network, whose name has echoes of La Alianza—against forces that threaten the interests of the Latino/a community, including racist politician and border vigilante groups.

The character Machete is the most violent and polarizing of the Latino/a action heroes created by Rodríguez in his ample and well-known filmography. In fact, no one has been more prolific in the creation of contemporary Latino/a hero narratives than this successful Mexican-American auteur, whose films feature a number of action heroes identified as Hispanic. The very genesis of Rodriguez’s filmmaking career is marked by cinematic hero-making, as his first movie (the short Bedhead, 1991) features a young

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Mexican-American girl who acquires supernatural powers after a backyard accident.

Even more important than Rodríguez’s fertile output of action hero films featuring

Latino/a protagonists is the popularity of his body of work among both mainstream and cult audiences, which means that these minority heroes are now well known among millions of media consumers in the United States and abroad. Machete is a particularly interesting Rodríguez character, as the director employs him in different film franchises while at the same time his heroic persona experiences drastic transformations from film to film. In the mainstream Spy Kids trilogy (2001-2003), where the character first appears, Machete is a secondary character. His main contribution to the heroic plot is providing a variety of gadgets that his family, the Cortezes, employ in their world-saving adventures. While in these family-oriented films Machete does not display any of the knife wielding and throwing abilities and extreme violence (for obvious reason) that characterize him in Machete and Machete Kills, he stands out as the only member of the

Cortez family who does not conform to its clean-cut, upper-middleclass look (see

Chapter 4 for a discussion of Spy Kids).

A hardcore version of the Machete character would appear years later in the exploitation-style films analyzed here. In these movies, Machete Cortez is a rugged and rogue ex-Mexican cop, whose wife and daughter were brutally murdered by a drug lord when he was working as a Federal Police agent for the Mexican government. After the incident, Machete finds himself as an undocumented day laborer in Texas. He is a culturally hybrid character who code-switches between English and Spanish and favors the machete (a tool popular in Latin America whose name is derived from Spanish) as his weapon of choice, hence his moniker and nom de guerre. Machete also straddles the

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U.S.-Mexico borderlands in his adventures, asserting a sort of resistant transnational freedom even though he has become virtually country-less—he is wanted by the law in

Mexico, falsely accused of having committed heinous crimes, and is considered an

“illegal” in the United States. In a way, Machete’s fate represents the circumstances that drive many migrants away from Mexico and other Latin American countries: escaping from violence and/or persecution and seeking a new start in life in a purportedly safer place. However, Machete also serves as a larger and more complex metaphor of the

Mexican-American condition since the mid-nineteenth century. As Ramón Saldívar has noted commenting on the work of Américo Paredes, after the Mexican American War

“the United States added a vast territory to its possessions and an entire new people that, as Paredes describes it, were now without land, without a country, and without a voice, but who were put to work to create the Southwest and West” (12). Machete, then, becomes the cinematic heir of this long legacy, embodying a displaced individual who roams two countries but no longer has a homeland; who has lost his sense of purpose, former identity, and power as a law-enforcement agent; and who is now carrying out menial jobs left to poor immigrants who help support the U.S. economy and the lifestyle of its most affluent citizens. Rodríguez points out this dependence of the U.S. economy on Latino/a workers in a comical yet insightful scene, when a security guard at the home of corrupt business owner Michael Booth lets Machete come inside and tells the other guard: “You ever notice how you let a Mexican into your home just because he’s got gardening tools. No questions asked, you just let him right in.” Along the same lines, in

Machete Kills, members of The Network are able to easily infiltrate the villain Voz’s base of operations by posing as cooks and servers, reason for which nobody suspects

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them. While making fun of the way Latinos/as are stereotyped in U.S. popular culture according to certain low-wage service occupations they seem to ubiquitously perform,

Rodríguez utilizes humor and sarcasm to make a powerful commentary on the inequalities and hypocrisy at the heart of the country’s economic and political life.

Machete’s initial stage makes echo of the history of Latino/a oppression, as the hero is portrayed as an anonymous “illegal” in a crowd of fellow immigrants scraping to get by economically and trying to stay away from immigration officials. But such helpless situation is quickly overturned by a series of twists in the plot during which

Machete is forced to put to use his fighting skills, first for mere survival and later to protect the immigrant community that has become his own. As a contemporary Mexican-

American hero, Machete is represented as a post-NAFTA cowboy who can remedy, through sheer physical ability and unapologetic violence, the injustices committed by

Anglos upon fellow Mexicans and other immigrant—and resolve centuries of cultural oppression in one single battle that symbolically turns the power relations of the

Mexican-American War on its head. Intertextuality is important in reinforcing the construction of Machete as a deliverer of poetic justice. His last name, Cortez, immediately connects him with the rich legacy of frontier Mexican-American cultural heroes represented by Gregorio Cortez and Murrieta. According to Vélez-Ibáñez, these heroes, all of them outlaws, sought to create “an ‘auxiliary authority’ to the Anglo system, which served only Anglos” in an attempt to “set right the political, juridical, economic, and cultural imbalances resulting from American control and hegemony” (104,

105). In Machete, the title character’s heroics reenact the type of “auxiliary authority” to which Vélez-Ibánez refers. The day laborer, who becomes an outlaw after being framed

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by corrupt businessman Michael Booth, leads a Latino/a immigrant uprising against the

Anglo border vigilantes who have been shooting border-crossers into Texas and who are supported by immigrant-hating politician John McLaughlin. There are clear nationalist, nativist overtones in the confrontation between the two groups, which are echoed in the words of Vaughn Jackson, the head of the border vigilantes: “Somebody’s gotta keep watch on this great nation of ours. Otherwise, Texas will become Mexico, once again.” In standing up to these foes, Machete and his allies seek to overthrow a system of law that they view as unjust and discriminatory toward their community. Machete is a perfect example of a story of social rebellion that fosters a resistant ideology, driven by an

“ethics of (ethnic) pride” (Hogan, Affective Narratology, 140). Meanwhile, the character

Machete is constructed as a socially representative hero who stands for all of his fellow

Latino/a immigrants. The most striking visual portrayal of this heroic construction is a scene toward the end of the film, when the immigrants have just defeated the border vigilantes. Machete stands on top of a truck and raises his weapon of choice signaling victory; immediately, all the other Latinos/as whom he led into battle also raise their machetes, guns, axes, and other weapons in unison. The scene’s most significant shot is a long shot, filmed from a low-angle perspective that emphasizes Machete’s position

(background) as the main hero, but the fact that all individuals are raising their weapons

(foreground) at the same time provides them with a sense of equality—Machete stands with them and for them, but they also stand with the hero as their revolt was truly a popular, community-led endeavor.

In Machete, Rodríguez challenges and subverts the typical American nationalist narrative in which a white hero defends the homeland from the menace posed by

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“threatening others”—most often foreign nationals and/or people of color. Instead, an undocumented Mexican immigrant with a conflicted past assumes the role of main hero, aided by a supporting cast of co-heroes (both documented and undocumented) who are also Latino/a. Meanwhile, the villains in the story are all Anglo-Americans, most notably

Booth and McLaughlin but also the members of the border vigilante group that commit all sorts of atrocities (including execution-style murder of women and babies) against border crossers. This radical shift in the ethnic/racial configuration of the in-group and out-group and consequently the heroes and adversaries cannot be underestimated, as it seldom takes place in U.S. mainstream film and television. After all, Machete is a

Hollywood film that was widely distributed (close to 2,700 theaters), starring highly recognized actors such as Robert De Niro, Steven Seagal, Don Johnson and Jessica Alba

(“Machete (2010)”). This level of mainstream exposure for an action film in which an

“illegal” Mexican-American humiliates and defeats American-born whites is unprecedented in U.S cinema, especially because there is no gray area in the way the opposing groups are constructed and presented: the Latinos/as hold the moral high ground and claim the heroic victory after they rebel, while the anti-immigrant Anglos are portrayed as murderous, corrupt, selfish, and backwards, with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Machete Kills also features the Mexican-American fighter as the most apt man to accomplish a heroic quest, above all other possible U.S. action heroes. However, the heroic narrative in this sequel loses most of the resistance displayed in the first film.

This has to do mainly with the plot of the story, which is structured as a U.S. nationalist narrative. In Machete Kills, Machete is summoned by the U.S. President to stop a couple of madmen (one of them Mexican) from destroying the United States and possibly the

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rest of the world with nuclear weapons. While the hero preserves his cultural identity and his edginess, his newfound allegiance with the U.S. government turns Machete into a normative hero aligned with the dominant ideology of U.S. national security (see Chapter

4 for an exploration of this types of heroes). On the other hand, the ascension of Machete to the position of national hero has important ideological implications, as it places a

Mexican-American in a role that is seldom occupied by minorities in U.S. film.

While they don’t manage to occupy the central role given to male heroes like

Machete and El Mariachi, Robert Rodríguez’s action films also construct powerful Latina heroines who play crucial roles in these narratives. The Machete saga is no exception.

The films feature two action heroines, Luz/Shé (played by Michelle Rodriguez) and

Sartana Rivera (played by Jessica Alba), whose deeds and leadership functions are just as important as those of Machete’s in confronting and defeating the Latino/a community’s foes. A common criticism of Rodríguez’s films is the overtly sexualized way in which female characters are presented, which is derived from the exploitation film genre aesthetic that the director usually blends into his narratives. Rodríguez’s heroines are often shown in skimpy or body-hugging outfits that highlight the actresses’ sex appeal.

However, a reading that dismisses these characters as just “sexualized beings” put on the screen for the enjoyment of the male gaze would be extremely limited, unproductive, and would miss the point entirely. Instead, I argue that these women—as fully fleshed-out characters who assume a heroic role traditionally denied to females in action and most mainstream films—employ their wits and their empowered bodies (sexuality and physical prowess included) to confront the villainous forces that restrict their full agency as

Latinas and as women in the films, as well as to criticize the forces that do so in society at

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large. In this regard, these two heroines manage to contest the extremely patriarchal conceptualization of the Latino/a hero embodied by Rosaldo’s “warrior hero” concept— while, ironically, coexisting with a character such as Machete who fully represents the tradition of the hypermasculine Latino warrior hero. For that reason, I see the Machete films as culturally significant texts in which competing visions of gendered Latino/a empowerment operate side by side: the traditional male-centered warrior hero and what

Rosaldo terms “the fading of the warrior hero,” represented by the works of contemporary Latino/a authors and artists “who have written against earlier forms of cultural authenticity that idealized patriarchal regimes that appeared autonomous, homogenous, and unchanging” (161).

In Machete, both Luz/Shé and Sartana are constructed as resistant heroines who fight to dethrone two interrelated forces of dominant ideology: right-wing nationalism and machismo. Sartana, a tough immigration-enforcement agent whose character evolves to take on the identity of an immigrant activist, comes to the realization that upholding immigration law is synonymous with committing injustice and betraying her own people.

This change of mind and heart, however, does not occur until she is confronted by the people whom she pursues. First, Luz asks Sartana: “You think what you do is right?

Taking your brothers and sisters in, deporting them to their own personal hells?” Later on, Sartana tries to justify her career choice by telling Machete how she started at ICE taking out the trash in the night shift and worked her way up to special agent. But

Machete quickly points out that the American system is just using her to oppress minorities, so she is basically still “taking out the trash.” Disillusioned by the law- enforcement system that for so long she believed in and faced with the realities

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experiences by other Latinos/as like her, Sartana chooses to do what she believes to be right instead of what she knows to be legal, rallying immigrants to take up arms against the border vigilantes and the corrupt politicians: “If the [laws] don’t offer us justice, then they aren’t laws […] We didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us!” Sartana’s speech not only challenges the moral and ethical standing of current U.S. immigration laws; it also undermines the legal arguments upon which such laws are based, arguing that the category of “illegal alien” is arbitrary and stems from the violent and arguably illegal takeover by the United States of the Southwest territories that once belonged to Mexico.

In other words, it is a battle cry for decolonization.

Luz/Shé is an even more powerful character in terms of her anti-patriarchal and anti-imperialist symbolism. By embodying two different yet interrelated identities, she is perhaps the most hybrid of Rodríguez’s Latino/a heroes. As Luz, the leader and guiding

“light” of The Network, she is the practical activist who feeds the hungry immigrants out of her taco truck and also helps them make the transition to life in the United States. Her approach is to circumvent the dominant legal structure: “The system doesn’t work, it’s broken. So we created our own.” Her alter ego, Shé, on the other hand, is the revolutionary hero who stands ready to take down the entire system. As Luz tells

Machete, “Shé brings hope, she rights the wrongs.” In all its simplicity, Shé’s name marks her as a socially representative hero who stands for all women (the generic “she”), while the accent mark over the “e” points to her ethnicity via language code-switching.

Moreover, her name—together with a poster at the taco truck that portrays her as the silhouette of an armed female revolutionary wearing a beret with a star against a red background—immediately creates a connection via provenance with the legendary Latin

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American guerrilla fighter Ernesto “Che” Guevara, further underscoring her heroic and mythical status among undocumented immigrants. By running The Network and co- leading with Machete the armed uprising against immigrant-haters, Sartana and Luz/Shé also make a powerful statement regarding gender power relations: Latinas are just as capable as men to assume leadership and heroic roles, and they can look both badass- mean and smoking-hot while doing it, too. In this regard, these two heroines embody a resistant ideology that contests traditional Latina gender roles, just like The Jaguar. It is also important to note that while Machete is highly effective at fighting and winning battles, Sartana and Luz/Shé are the brains of the resistance as they lead and strategize the actions that are to be taken to protect their community and confront their adversaries. The female heroes are also the ones who articulate The Network’s ideological stance, which is based on the principle that justice should prevail over laws and legal constructs (such as the border) that discriminate against immigrants and Latinos/as.

The plots of Machete and Machete Kills drastically impact the way in which the character Machete is constructed and the manner in which he operates as a hero within these narratives. Machete is clearly defined as a narrative of social rebellion, with the immigrants confronting an ethnically and politically differentiated out-group as they try to assert their rights. In other words, their heroic quest is a struggle for justice and legitimacy. The story begins by establishing the dire conditions that threaten undocumented immigrants in Texas on a regular basis and the underground work that

The Network is engaged in to try to revert this situation. The threat/defense sequence is established when Machete is hired by Booth to assassinate McLaughlin, under the argument that the state senator’s death would benefit immigrants. However, the entire

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operation was a setup, as Booth was planning to kill Machete right before he had a chance to shoot the senator—and thus stoke fears about the violent nature of Mexican immigrants, with the ultimate objective of helping McLaughlin get reelected and carry out his plan to build an electrified border fence. After the incident, Machete becomes a wanted man in Texas and Luz and The Network come to his aid, meaning that the activist group that before worked quietly behind the scenes is now forced to become more militant to protect its members and push back against the border vigilantes that have become emboldened. In the end, Machete and The Network overcome their enemies and reverse the balance of power, which is perfectly illustrated in the final scene of the movie: McLaughlin, who had dressed up in a stereotypical Mexican outfit (plaid shirt and campesino hat) to save his life during the battle between the immigrants and the Anglos, is found walking along the border by the Anglo border vigilantes, who mistake him for an alien trying to cross illegally into the United States and shoot him dead. His death symbolizes the demise of tough anti-immigrant policies in the storyworld of the film.

Meanwhile, in Machete Kills, there is no differentiation between two distinct groups. In this narrative, Machete is no longer the hero of his Mexican/immigrant community, but is recruited by the U.S. President (played by Charlie Sheen) to protect his

“new country” from certain destruction at the hands of a mad Mexican revolutionary,

Marcos Méndez (played by Mexican actor Demián Bichir). While Rodríguez uses

Méndez to articulate a critique of the United States for its complicity in the escalating drug cartel problem plaguing Mexico, the choice of this character as a villain in unfortunate. On the one hand, Méndez plays into the old stereotype of the dangerous

Mexican bandido. Additionally, he becomes intertextually connected with Zapatista

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leader Comandante Marcos both through his name and actions: Méndez supposedly

“fights for the people and hides in the jungle.” In a way, this reference turns Marcos and the revolutionary Zapatista movement into a caricature, undermining the legitimacy of their claims even as their tactics did not accomplish their desired outcomes. Despite these issues with the film, it is important to point out that Rodríguez infuses the narrative with a culturally resistant edge. Halfway through the movie, we learn that Méndez is not the main nemesis, but that he was actually manipulated by Luther Voz (played by Mel

Gibson), a wealthy Anglo weapons manufacturer who plans to destroy the world and establish a space colony where he can rule the few surviving humans whom he will transport in his spaceship. With the help of Luz/Shé and The Network, Machete is able to thwart Voz’s world-destruction plans, asserting the superiority of Latino/a heroes over all other potential American heroes and their capacity for taking care of yet another Anglo villainous force, as it occurred in the first Machete film. It is true that in Machete Kills,

Machete is operating on orders from the U.S. government, and Méndez even recriminates him for that: “You work for the enemy now. You’re just another Pancho doing their dirty work.” However, Machete takes on this mission not out of a sense of patriotic duty to his new homeland, but rather to avenge the villains who killed Sartana early in the film. He also accomplishes his objectives on his own terms, choosing to use his culturally significant weapon of choice instead of the high-tech gear he is offered. In the end, his personal heroism and that of his Network friends is put on display on the national scene, demonstrating that Latinos/as are not only capable of protecting their own interests but that they can make important contributions to the wellbeing of the general populace.

Taken as a continuous narrative, in the Machete films we see how Rodríguez employs

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action heroes and the confrontations that characterize hero stories to create a story of

Latino/a empowerment: Machete and the other heroes start out as ethnic/community heroes rebelling against the forces of dominant Anglo culture in order to assert their rights, and later on these characters progress to becoming national heroes who demonstrate they have the skills and courage necessary to play a central role in U.S. society, while retaining their cultural specificity.

El Gato Negro, The Santerians, and the Rise of Mainstream Multicultural Superheroes

The narratives analyzed so far in this chapter deal with Latino/a heroes who defend their minority communities from racist threats, spurred to radical action by circumstances that require a valiant and determined response if those communities are to survive the onslaught. And while the heroes in narratives such as The Jaguar and

Machete manage to resist the attacks from their anti-immigrant, anti-minority adversaries, they and the Latino/a communities they represent remain as underground figures and rather marginalized with respect to the prevailing dominant culture and ideology as their struggles and resistance continue. Yet there are other activist, vigilante Latino/a heroes whose narrative universes are very different from those of The Jaguar and Machete. In these hero stories, exemplified by the comics El Gato Negro and Daredevil: Father, the issues of ethnicity or racism are not explored through the clear-cut confrontation between two opposing factions (Anglos vs. Latinos/as, nativists vs. immigrants). Rather, these comics depict storyworlds in which Latinos/as are the principal crime-fighters of their respective cities. In these multicultural urban centers, which are representative of many

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contemporary U.S. communities, the Latino/a superheroes are no longer battling a dominant, Anglo adversary from disadvantaged positions as ethnic underdogs. Instead, they have become “mainstream” heroes in their respective narratives, in the sense that they have come to play the same roles that traditional, white superheroes such as Batman and Spider-Man played protecting the inhabitants of their fictional cities. For that reason, these narratives represent an important advancement regarding the influence of Latino/a and minority heroic figures in U.S. popular culture, as they include characters that have made the leap from purely resistant heroes to heroes who protect their multicultural communities from positions of power. Despite the normative qualities that becoming

“mainstream” inevitably carries, the Latino/a heroes of El Gato Negro and Daredevil:

Father—just like Batman and Spider-Man—are still considered vigilante heroes who operate outside of the normative law-enforcement apparatus, and hence are more interested in achieving justice the way they see fit over complying with the law.

While the comic book series Daredevil: Father includes plenty of criminals and evil-doers, the confrontation that takes places in its pages is primarily between a veteran

Anglo hero and a new Latino/a superhero team over issues of race, class, justice and, ultimately, legitimacy. The son of Cuban immigrants, successful comic book artist Joe

Quesada—who became Marvel’s first Latino/a editor-in-chief in 2000 and is currently chief creative officer for the popular Disney-owned publisher—wrote and drew this new iteration of the fearless Daredevil, a blind superhero who first appeared in 1964. Living in the historically Irish-American Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of New York City,

Daredevil (whose unmasked identity is that of lawyer Matt Murdock) protects the city from all types of criminals and menaces. While the six-chapter series centers around

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Daredevil and his torturous, ambivalent relationship with his dead father, Quesada introduces a new set of characters, the Santerians, who play a key role in the story, beginning with Chapter 2. Drawing on cultural aspects of his Cuban-American heritage,

Quesada assigns his Cuban-American heroes supernatural powers derived from orishas, the Yoruban spirits invoked in Santería rituals. The team is led by Nestor Rodriguez, or

NeRo—a New York City entertainment magnate who, as a young man, had organized a neighborhood watch group known as the Street Angels to protect the city’s Latino/a community from rising crime rates and drug activity. Seeking a more effective way to fight crime, as an adult Nestor discovered Santería and transformed himself into the powerful Eleggua, the orisha who owns “the roads and doors in this world” (“Santerians

Color Notes”). He later recruited former members of the Street Angels to join him is his super-powered vigilante activities: Ogun (“god of iron, war, and labor”), Chango (“ruler of lighting and thunder”), Oya (“ruler of winds and whirlwinds”), and Oshun (who rules over water and “embodies love, beauty, and fertility”) (“Santerians Color Notes”). The team includes both males and females, and their skin colors range from black to white, representing the racial diversity of Cubans and Cuban-Americans.

In the case of Dominguez’s independently published comic book series El Gato

Negro, the setting is South Texas, particularly the border city of McAllen. There,

Francisco Guerrero—a social worker who spends his days helping the city’s poor and underprivileged, including undocumented immigrants seeking to improve their lives— has assumed the secret identity of a vigilante superhero, El Gato Negro, with the primary aim of combating drug traffickers. The grandson of Agustín Guerrero—who was the first

Gato Negro and infused the superhero with the looks of a Mexican luchador—Francisco

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decided to revive the Rio Grande Valley mythic superhero after his best friend, Mario

Bustamante, a Border Patrol agent, was murdered by drug smugglers. Despite the fact that he is able to help a lot of people through his day job, Francisco feels that it is not enough as long as drugs and drug-related crime jeopardize his community, particularly the younger generations: “As long as there is crime, our children will never be safe” (El

Gato Negro No. 3, 29). For that reason, he goes out at night, dressed in his black outfit, and captures all sorts of criminals who are connected with the drug trade.11 Francisco’s objective is clearly spelled out from the very beginning: “I will not rest until all of South

Texas is cleansed from your poisons” (El Gato Negro No. 1, 4). Unlike the Santerians, El

Gato Negro does not posses any supernatural powers. He is more similar to Machete in this regard, exhibiting superior combat skills thanks to his training in martial arts and employing a variety of clever gadgets to boost his performance. In the universe of superheroes, El Gato Negro resembles Batman, as they both share the dark outfit, a mysterious appearance, and self-developed powers, although the character is fundamentally hybrid as it also includes the luchador style inherited from the first Gato

Negro. Just like Machete and the Santerians, El Gato Negro is an activist, vigilante hero—a seemingly ordinary individual who assumes an alternate, extraordinary identity to accomplish what the official law-enforcement apparatus and the prevailing justice system are incapable of doing.

The Santerians have made it their mission to patrol the city’s Latino/a quarters, which makes them a social representative hero team that takes care of its immediate,

11 The look of El Gato Negro resembles that of a panther, which in the Americas is usually a black jaguar. Thus, The Jaguar and El Gato Negro both share the powerful symbolism given to big cats in ancient Mesoamerica. 175

ethnically specific community. This is the same modus operandi employed by Daredevil, who is the self-appointed protector of Hell’s Kitchen, a place that “for too long […] has been a cesspool. A cesspool that sucked my father in and flushed him out” (Chapter 1).12

This arrangement seems to work well for both neighborhoods until Daredevil manages to finally clean up Hell’s Kitchen, pushing criminal activity out to the rest of New York

City—including the Latino/a section defended by the Santerians. Convinced that his mission is complete, Daredevil refuses to move a finger to aid the rest of his town, even from a brutal serial killer that has been sowing panic all over he city—except, strangely, for Hell’s Kitchen. When tempted to run to the scene of a crime in progress at a different neighborhood, Daredevil stops himself: “Let it go, Matt, not your neighborhood. Not your problem” (Chapter 2). As it turns out, the commotion Daredevil heard from afar was caused by the Santerians, as we learn from a police officer: “Couple of these ravers we questioned said a bunch of super-freaks broke up some sort of drug ring that was operating from behind the bar” (Chapter 2). The office’s comment helps relate to the readers that the Santerians are not just another group of vigilantes combating criminal activity in the city, but that they indeed possess supernatural powers and display an appearance that is, at the very least, unusual. Such realization peaks the curiosity of

Murdock, who goes out one night to try to find out who the new heroes are and what their intentions may be. Before he can put on his Daredevil outfit, he falls from a building. As he tries to get up, he is greeted by the Santerians. This is the first time the readers actually see the heroic team in the comic, although clues about their existence had been provided before. Nestor (as Eleggua) tells him: “Levántate, Diablo. Rise and shine, baby” (Chapter

12 Daredevil: Father does not include page numbers, so I use chapter numbers for citations from this book. 176

2). In this brief piece of dialogue and the accompanying image (which shows the heroes in their colorful, variegated outfits that contrast with Daredevil’s somber dark-red costume), Quesada establishes the Latino/a identity of his Cuban-American superheroes through the hybridity of their language and the multiculturalism represented in their attires, as each superhero displays elements that connect him or her with the powers or his or her orisha.13

Dominguez also constructs El Gato Negro as a socially representative superhero, but the relationship between hero and community in the universe of this comic book series is a complicated one when it comes to ethnicity. For example, the Santerians are

Latinos/as and they—at least at the beginning of the narrative—are exclusively dedicated to protecting their Latino/a neighborhood in a New York City that is presented as racially/ethnically segregated even when it comes to superheroism. In the case of El Gato

Negro, the fictional McAllen/Rio Grande Valley is presented as being exclusively

Latino/a. While the real McAllen is overwhelmingly Latino/a—84.6% of its population is

Hispanic according to the 2010 U.S. Census (“McAllen (city), Texas”)—Dominguez goes a step further in its Latinization of the city and the region. Not only are the hero and the community that he protects Latino/a, but in El Gato Negro all the villains are also

Hispanic. In fact, every character that appears in the story, from a humble mechanic who used to be an undocumented immigrant to one of the richest and most influential men in the city, is Latino/a. Even the main law-enforcement agent, Texas Ranger Miguel

Bustamante, is a Latino—a rarity in most U.S. hero narratives, where the top legal

13 The Santerians and The Jaguar are similar in the sense that they summon ancient religious spirits and embody their powers. Cuban artists have traditionally found inspiration in the orishas for their works of art. For example, Wilfredo Lam’s masterpiece, The Jungle, prominently features the Yoruban spirits. 177

authority figure is almost always Anglo. Consequently, when El Gato Negro fights crime in McAllen and surrounding areas, he is inevitably protecting the Latino/a community that he stands for, since the universe of the comic book is occupied by Latinos/as—even though the hero never explicitly states that his mission is ethnically or culturally motivated, as is the case in Machete and with the Santerians. In this comic book series,

Dominguez has created a U.S. region that is completely dominated by Latinos/as, re- appropriating a borderland space that used to be Mexican and rebranding it as Mexican-

American, complete with bilingual characters and culturally hybrid experiences. This reclamation effort is evident from the beginning of the story, as the narrator introduces

Hidalgo County as having been settled by Spaniards and named after Mexican independence leader Father Miguel Hidalgo, long before there was Anglo presence in the region. While more subtle, this re-appropriation has echoes of the reconquista14 discourses articulated in Machete and other heroic narratives explored in this dissertation, such as El Muerto (see Chapter 3).

As secondary characters in a story that is heavily influenced by Daredevil’s family and identity conflicts, the Santerians’ main narrative role in Daredevil: Father is to confront Murdock’s sudden apathy and dumbfounding decision not to pursue criminals outside of his neighborhood. In fact, when they first meet and Daredevil demands to know what the new superhero team is up to, Eleggua tells him: “What this is about is simple, papi. This is what’s called an intervention. Hell’s Kitchen may be crime-free

14 As indicated in Chapter 1, reconquista was a key discourse of the Chicano Movement, and which advocated for “local community control and a sense that Chicanos’ shared fates should be in their hands, not in those of the Anglo power structure” (Mize, Ronald and Alicia Swords, Consuming Mexican Labor: From the Bracero Program to NAFTA. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010, p. 114).

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thanks to you, but all you’re doing is sweeping the crap into someone else’s backyard

[…] One of those backyards happens to be mine! I’m sick of cleaning up your sloppy seconds” (Chapter 2). Eleggua also reminds Daredevil that both superheroes face a common threat: a serial killer whom the media has dubbed Johnny Sockets, because he gouges the eyes of his victims. Despite the Santerians’ insistence and the “intervention” they are trying to carry out, Murdock is not moved and replies: “’s none of my business”

(Chapter 2). Eleggua immediately challenges him: “None of your business? I thought this was your business.” But Daredevil is adamant: “Long as he stays out of the Kitchen, it’s not my business. Let the cops take care of it” (Chapter 2). After a couple of encounters between Daredevil and the Santerians, which inevitably result in physical altercations because of their hot tempers and mutual distrust, Eleggua is ultimately unable to convince

Daredevil to join forces with him and fight in tandem. Again and again, Daredevil’s answer is, “I don’t need your help. Hell’s Kitchen is clean.” Eleggua even tries adulation, acknowledging the fact that Daredevil is an experienced, well-known superhero, while his team of Santerians is new to the city and to the superhuman universe: “While it’s an honor to meet you, it would be a greater honor to fight alongside you” (Chapter 4). The two crime-fighting forces never work together or even reconcile in the comic book, but

Daredevil is forced to rethink his isolationist stance after the serial killer Johnny Sockets turns out to be Maggie, a friend of his from Hell’s Kitchen, who targeted Murdock’s law firm clients in order to seek revenge for questionable acts allegedly committed by the hero’s father.

Daredevil’s inaction, which leads to the Santerians taking on his former crime- fighting duties, is a crucial element in the narrative because it allows for a reading of the

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story centered on issues of race and ethnicity. Viewed from this perspective, Daredevil:

Father is not so much the story of a familiar superhero struggling to get through an existential crisis, but a challenge to the superiority of traditional Anglo superheroes operating in spaces such as New York City, which have become increasingly multicultural and where most residents are now people of color.15 In the comic, the

Santerians become the agents that embody and give voice to such a challenge, as they criticize Daredevil’s refusal to protect “his” city’s racially and ethnically diverse population and highlight his inadequacy to stop crime and fulfill the duties of a superhero. As indicated above, Daredevil repeatedly tells Eleggua that Hell’s Kitchen is his only responsibility and that whatever happens outside of his neighborhood is someone else’s problem, even though the criminal activity affecting other parts of the city is linked, at least in part, to his crime-cleansing crusade in Hell’s Kitchen. What Daredevil didn’t know when making such statements was that the city’s most feared criminal,

Johnny Sockets, was actually a Hell’s Kitchen resident; and that, after killing several people in other neighborhoods, she would pick Murdock’s law-firm partner Foggy

Nelson to be his next victim, attempting to kill him in their Hell’s Kitchen office. Even more infuriating to Eleggua than Daredevil’s unwillingness to help anyone outside of his neighborhood, is the fact that the Irish-American superhero dismisses the importance of the role played by vigilante superhumans in protecting ordinary people from crime. When

Eleggua reminds Daredevil that there are lives at risk because of Johnny Sockets and that they should team up to apprehend the murderer, Daredevil tells him, “Shouldn’t concern

15 According to 2010 U.S. Census data, the white population of New York City (not including white Hispanics) is 33.3%. Hispanics and blacks make up more than 50% of the city’s population. In 1940, non- Hispanic whites made up almost 92% of New York City’s population, declining to 63% in 1970 and 52% in 1980. 180

me or you” (Chapter 4), conceding that crime-fighting should be now left only to the police. For that reason, Eleggua calls Daredevil a “phony,” while he and the other

Santerians constantly refer to him as “diablito” as a way of belittling him and perhaps implying that he may have become the real enemy. Finally, Eleggua also tries to show his moral superiority by stating: “Come, orisha, let’s see if we can make a difference in this city. Someone’s got to do it” (Chapter 3). At this moment in the narrative, the Cuban-

Americans heroes take on the role of protecting the entire city, overshadowing Daredevil and rendering his presence (as well as his long history of crime-fighting) irrelevant and outdated. Despite his stubbornness, Daredevil is ultimately forced to admit that his stance and actions were wrong.

Another element of the storyline that creates tension between the two superheroes is the revelation that, when Nestor was a young boy, Daredevil had failed to save his father Hector’s life. This fateful event took place as Nestor was patrolling as part of his

Street Angels vigilante work, and he stumbled upon a group of drug dealers who were threatening his father. From that encounter, the teenager found out that his dad was somehow involved with the drug dealers, who had “bought” his election as councilman, among other favors. One of the criminals gives Hector a gun and orders him to shoot his own son. Upon his refusal to do so, Hector is shot instead, dying in his son’s arms.

Daredevil showed up to try to help, but as the young Nestor tells him, “You are too late”

(Chapter 4). Nestor has carried resentment toward Daredevil since that fateful moment, which changed the course of his life. As he recalls the incident, Nestor tells Daredevil:

“That’s why I became Eleggua. Because you were late… And there aren’t enough guys like you to go around. That’s why I started the Santerians” (Chapter 4). While

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unintentional, Daredevil’s failure to save Hector Rodriguez’s life led to Nestor’s quest to become a superhero and form a team that would make his justice-seeking work even more effective. Eleggua and the Santerians came into existence to fill a need. As Nestor indicates, regardless of how well-intentioned Daredevil may be, he just isn’t enough to patrol the entire city and defeat all the criminals all the time—not a few years before when Nestor’s dad was killed, and not in the present time when the superhero is refusing to protect neighborhoods others than his own. In both instances, the Anglo Daredevil is either unable or unwilling to protect Latinos/as and other racial/ethnic minorities. Nestor underscores such inability and unwillingness all throughout the comic book series and, ultimately, is able to occupy the central role that Daredevil used to play as New York

City’s resident superhero. The main difference, however, is that Eleggua and the

Santerians are willing to look past differences in neighborhoods, class, race, and ethnicity—and their rise to power challenges not only Daredevil’s heroic status but also more profound ideological and political issues that underpin Daredevil: Father.

The idea of the Santerians overpowering Daredevil both physically and morally that runs throughout the comic’s storyline is also reinforced visually on several occasions. To illustrate the first meeting between the two superheroes (which takes place in Chapter 2), Quesada chose a full spread in which Murdock is shown laying face down on an alley, completely powerless, while the Santerians are on the background, standing and looking down at him. The low angle of the image reinforces the striking superiority in which the Cuban-America superheroes are presented and gives them representational power over Daredevil, as noted by Kresss and van Leeuwen (Reading Images 140).

Additionally, the colors chosen by the artist in this spread immediately create a clear

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contrast between the protagonists: the fallen, defeated Daredevil is shown in dark tones, while the Santerians display bright colors against a red background, surrounded by light, all of which draws the reader’s attention away from Daredevil and toward the Santerians.

Four pages later, as part of the same encounter between the superheroes, Quesada again presents Daredevil on the ground, trying to get up, while the Santerians tower over him.

This time, the Cuban-American superheroes occupy a much larger percentage of the image, which offers a visual cue to the fact that they will progressively grow in importance as the narrative advances. Daredevil’s ultimate defeat is illustrated in the series’ last chapter (Chapter 5), which shows him lost in thought about the identity of the serial killer, how she was fooled by his friend Maggie, and how reporters investigating her story would probably end up digging up his family secrets. Daredevil’s personal concerns and selfishness are shown in contrast with a panel that depicts the Santerians as they continue their crime-fighting activity in the city, now effectively having taken over

Daredevil’s role as New York City superheroes. This series of panels ends with three small images: on the left, Eleggua looks intently and fiercely, while the middle panel to the right shows Daredevil with an almost completely darkened face, visually symbolizing the way in which he has been invisibilized and literally relegated to the darkness of his inner conflicts. In the third and final panel of the tier, Daredevil leaves the scene, which serves as a visual clue to his ultimate surrendering of power.

Unlike in Daredevil: Father, the heroic confrontation that takes place in El Gato

Negro is not motivated by racial or ethnic divides or by the desire of a resistant group to rebel against a dominant one. The comic book’s confrontation is actually driven by the irreconcilable differences between two starkly distinct visions of what the Latino/a

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community ought to be. These differences are embodied by the hero and the narrative’s main villain, El Graduado. Francisco comes from a working, middle-class background, with his family having ties to the region’s agricultural tradition; in fact, his grandfather is the owner of a small produce company, Guerrero’s Produce. Education is important for

Francisco and his family: he is college-educated, having majored in sociology and also having attained a master’s degree in political science (El Gato Negro No. 1, 23). After going to college, Francisco put his higher education to work helping his community through his social welfare and volunteering activities even though, as he confesses, his job pays very little. Opposite Francisco is Armando Ochoa, a powerful drug dealer of

Colombian descent nicknamed El Graduado because he holds a master’s degree in business from Harvard University. El Graduado comes from a wealthy background: his father, who runs the family drug business, is an influential man in South Texas. When

Francisco discovers El Graduado’s identity, he questions his decision to join the drug trade and squander his valuable education: “Why you couldn’t use your college educated knowledge to help your own community in other investments?” (El Gato Negro No. 2,

2), thus underscoring the very different paths these two adversaries’ lives have taken. In issue No. 3, when El Gato Negro fights El Graduado and finally defeats him, the hero is emphatic is indicating who he stands for: “¡Este (sic) es para la gente del valle! The people I care for so dearly! I’ll be damned if I’m going to let you corrupt their minds with your poisons” (15). El Graduado, meanwhile, is only interested in becoming the next drug lord of South Texas and increasing his personal influence. While El Gato Negro resembles Batman in his looks and abilities, he is no rich man with a grudge trying to eradicate bad guys: he is a hard-working middle class professional who protects the

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interests of middle- and low-class individuals in his Latino/a community. The difference is important here: El Gato Negro represents a different type of hero, one that is highly engaged with his community, arises from his community, and is like his community both ethnically and in terms of socioeconomic status. On the contrary, we see how the rich

Latinos/as, such as the Ochoas, are identified with crime, corruption, and selfishness.

There is a clear class differentiation operating here, as the comic book gives preference to a sort of “popular heroism” in which hardworking Latinos/as are affiliated with the side of good and justice, while the villains represent the side of evil not so much because of their ethnicity (the way it occurs in many traditional superhero narratives) but because of their wealth and greed. In other words, the battle between good and evil in El Gato Negro takes the form of class warfare.

While class is the defining factor of division in El Gato Negro, Daredevil: Father deals more with ethnicity/race. After all, Matt Murdock and Nestor Rodriguez are both wealthy individuals, but the neighborhoods they represent and defend are very different in terms of ethnic makeup. Through the confrontation between Daredevil and the

Santerians, Daredevil: Father puts the spotlight on the real-life dangers of ethnic and racial segregation, in this case represented by an Anglo superhero unwilling to help anyone outside of his mostly white neighborhood. In fact, Hell’s Kitchen basically becomes a gated community shielded from crime to the detriment of others, especially minorities—as Daredevil’s effectiveness at riding his community of wrongdoers means other parts of the city, including the Latino/a neighborhoods, end up absorbing all that displaced criminal activity. Such disparity in terms of public safety and racial/ethnic makeup displayed in the comic book reflects a reality present in many modern-day U.S.

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towns, where crime and insecurity tend to be concentrated in inner-city neighborhoods inhabited predominantly by African-Americans, Latinos/as, and other people of color.

Moreover, these neighborhoods are also more likely to have lower socioeconomic levels, higher unemployment, underperforming schools, and other negative indicators that further diminish their residents’ chances of aspiring to lead better lives. In other words,

Quesada reenacts in his imaginary New York City a reality faced by the real Big Apple and countless other American cities, where white privilege has created geographic and socioeconomic divides that go hand in hand. The fact that Daredevil refuses to acknowledge that there is something wrong with the impact of his actions on other, particularly minority-dominated communities, reflects his inability to see the privilege that he enjoys—a privilege based purely on his race and socioeconomic status.

Daredevil’s unwillingness to fight alongside the Santerians also represents the inability to achieve racial/ethnic integration and trust, which is at the heart of this narrative. Quesada highlights the dangers of “superheroic” segregation and refusal “to work together for the common good” by making Daredevil pay dearly for his stubbornness and white privilege.

After Murdock realizes that all of the serial killer’s victims were clients of his law firm, he finally acknowledges that “NeRo was right. I should have been paying more attention.

Johnny Sockets has been trying to get my attention all along. This has been my problem from the very beginning” (Chapter 5). In fact, Maggie, the serial killer, is the one who points out Murdock’s segregationist and isolationist zeal: “You’re so obsessed with your little kingdom that you didn’t even notice when a killer was right under your nose”

(Chapter 6). Through various textual interventions by Nestor, Maggie, and Murdock himself, Quesada makes a powerful commentary about the perils of ethnic/racial division

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and also suggests that the empowerment of minorities (represented by the Santerians’ heroic activism) is a viable solution to building more equitable U.S. communities.

While portraying the demise of a traditional Anglo superhero and highlighting the dangers of racial/ethnic segregation, Daredevil: Father also underscores the growing influence of Latinos/as in the United States—represented by Nestor’s rise to power as affluent and influential celebrity, entrepreneur, and vigilante superhero who takes over

Daredevil’s former duties and defends New Yorkers regardless of their race/ethnicity or socioeconomic level. Through his varied and successful facets as artist, businessman, philanthropist, and superhero, Nestor embodies the sociopolitical vision of a new multicultural reality in which the minority-majority has risen to power. Visually, the markers of this young Latino man’s tremendous accomplishments appear literally all over the city and all over the pages of the comic, often presented in contrast with Daredevil’s figure. For example, in Chapter 2, while Daredevil swings from building to building across the street, we see on the background a glamorous billboard advertising NeRo’s perfume (“America’s #1 fragrance”), which is just one of many of the products that are part of his business empire. While the panel places Daredevil on the foreground and the reader’s eyes initially concentrate on him, the presence of Nestor and one of the symbols of his skyrocketing power loom large on the background—ready to take over the entire page and the entire narrative, as it does later on in the series. Moreover, while Daredevil is typically shown secluded in his bedroom or in his office, we often observe Nestor looking out the large windows of his high-rise apartment, keeping an eye on the city that he has pledged to protect. Nestor is also constantly shown listening to the TV news, following the city’s goings-on as a way to target his superheroic activities.

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Daredevil: Father also highlight’s Nestor’s philanthropic endeavors, as when he is shown at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a youth center that he built for his community, which had “been a dream of mine and my father’s for many years” (Chapter 3). He also mentions how he runs in the New York marathon to raise funds for the policemen’s benevolent association. Finally, the comic presents various aspects of Latino/a culture in a positive light, emphasizing their contributions instead of the stereotypes traditionally attached to them. For instance, Santeria rituals—which, like voodoo, tend to be represented in American popular culture as alien, backwards, morally wrong, dark practices—are portrayed in the comic as a powerful force that confers Eleggua and his team special powers that they later employ for the benefit of the people. Unlike

Daredevil, who obtains his powers accidentally, the Santerians have actively sought their special abilities by tapping into a source of power that is connected with their cultural background and religious beliefs. To a lesser extent, this idea of the successful Latino/a gaining prominence in his or her community is also explored in El Gato Negro. While he is not a rock star or a millionaire such as Nestor, Francisco’s grandfather owns a company and is well respected in the community, not to mention the fact that he has also played the superhero role in the past and helped established the “myth” of El Gato Negro across the Rio Grande Valley and south of the border. Texas Ranger Miguel Bustamante, meanwhile, fulfills the role of the committed Latino/a law-enforcement agent who puts his life on the line to defend his community from the perils of drug and human trafficking. There are also successful Latinas in the story, including Francisco’s love interest, Narci, a Harvard-educated lawyer who decided to return to McAllen to help the disadvantaged in her town. In the narrative we also encounter other Latinos/as from the

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lower socioeconomic classes who nonetheless provide examples of tenacity, hard work, and the desire to improve their lives. There is, for instance, the mechanic who builds a special motorcycle for El Gato Negro as a way of repaying him for his good deeds: “My wife and I came to this country from Chiapas with practically nothing… You helped us get settled… with citizenship and all… helped me get a job which landed me my very own garage… I owe you!” (El Gato Negro No. 2, 15).

Ultimately, El Gato Negro and Eleggua and the Santerians both explore the seemingly contradictory nature of heroic narratives and the appeal of the hero as savior to his or her community. Francisco and Nestor are exceptional individuals who have chosen superheroic vigilantism as their preferred form of action against the maladies that plague their ethnic communities. During the day, they engage in other more mainstream forms of activism that can be expected of community-minded and caring individuals: charitable work, helping the poor, assisting the undocumented, donating money to good causes, etc.

While this type of work is important for procuring the advancement of their communities,

Francisco and Nestor are convinced that it is not sufficient. Change, as it were, cannot happen fast enough for them. Consequently, the crux of their heroic involvement—and perhaps all heroic involvement in general—lies in the belief that individual intervention can accelerate the wheels of change by radically destroying or eroding the most dangerous threats holding a community back. In the case of El Gato Negro and the

Santerians, the threats are criminal activity. Facing an insufficient or inept law- enforcement apparatus and justice system, the heroes singlehandedly face the threats at hand and provide swift resolution. Understandably, the official law enforcers in these narratives are weary of this vigilantism and try to discredit it. The powerful symbolic

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meaning that the lone hero acquires within his or her community is perfectly expressed in a conversation between Francisco and his Catholic priest, who tells them: “I have to speak to you as a member of this community. I’ve been hearing things about you lately, especially from the elderly. I can only tell you that people here value you. So often they feel ignored, defenseless, left to their own devices… You give them something that the law or government can’t. Something I can’t either. Do what you think is best, my son.

We need you to show us what one man can do” (El Gato Negro No. 3, 7-8). As the Father indicates, the hero—in this particular case a Latino/a hero—plays a role for his traditionally marginalized and underrepresented community that neither the law- enforcement apparatus, nor the state, nor religion can fulfill. Minority activist heroes such as Eleggua and El Gato Negro (as well as The Jaguar and Machete) embody their communities’ most wishful and seemingly unattainable desires for empowerment.

However, there is a serious problem with this idealization of “what one man (or woman) can do.” While El Gato Negro and the Santerians stand for their communities as fully representative of their tribulations and hopes, the activism that they carry out is limited to their individual actions. In other words, the community as a whole does not get involved in the hero’s crusade, and no collective activism that could lead to larger and more comprehensive change is engendered in these narratives. Hence the activist hero’s contradiction: he or she arises because of the insufficiency of current law-enforcement or justice structures, yet his or her individualistic approach to solving these issues undermines the possibility of more radical, long-lasting, and community-based transformations. This may be a strategy by which the authors of these comic books question American individualism, promoting instead the value of community activism.

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As we can see from this chapter’s analysis, contemporary Latino/a hero characters appearing in both mainstream and independent forms of American popular culture tend to heavily borrow from the characteristics and themes of frontier Latino/a heroes. Like

Joaquín Murrieta and Gregorio Cortez, the four heroes and hero teams examined here are outlaws, often clashing with the prevailing legal system. Like their predecessors, these modern outlaw heroes are also constructed as vigilante heroes, having to resort to fighting for the causes in which they believe at the margins of the legal system, which typically leaves them at odds with the law-enforcement apparatus. As a result of their precarious relationship with the institutions of legality, these contemporary Latino/a heroic figures can be classified as resistant heroes, struggling against dominant structures embodied by

Anglo political, social, and economic supremacy. In Daredevil: Father and El Gato

Negro, the Latino/a heroes also must struggle against the consequences of white privilege, the ghettoization of urban neighborhoods dominated by ethnic and racial minorities, and the negative consequences of transnational drug-trafficking networks—all of which reflect real-life circumstances experienced by inner-city and border communities in today’s America.

The persistence of the outlaw and vigilante hero themes in the construction of contemporary Latino/a heroes points to the fact that the long history of discrimination and injustice impacting Latinos/as and other people of color in the United States has not been resolved. Latino/a artists have employed the heroic story to make interventions at the narrative level into this harsh and complex reality affecting their communities, both in an effort to shed light into these issues from their unique perspectives as Latinos/as but also to offer resolution through a sense of poetic justice—in a fashion similar to that of

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the old border corridistas who created the legends of brave frontier heroes such as

Murrieta and Cortez, riding fast and undefeated and carrying their people with them.

However, there are important differences regarding issues of gender, race, and national origin in the construction of contemporary vigilante heroes, even though they are in large part inspired by traditional heroic icons. In The Jaguar, Machete, and Daredevil: Father, female heroes have gained representational power in these narratives, acting either as main protagonists or working alongside their male counterparts to fight racism.

Meanwhile, in Daredevil: Father, we see the appearance of non-Mexican and black

Latino/a heroes. Finally, despite the popularity of the outlaw and vigilante tradition in

Latino/a hero-making, it is important to point out one of its limitations in terms of narrative social and political interventions. As we can see in chapters 1 and 2, Latino/a outlaws—as represented in their respective narratives—never manage to effect significant and lasting changes for their communities through their actions. In Murieta, the hero articulates a powerful revolt but ultimately abandons his ambitious quest. In

Machete, the immigrant rebels destabilize Texas’ prevailing racist system but are forced to continue to operate underground. It appears as though the actions of this type of hero are limited to making small—even if significant—interventions, but never managing to dismantle dominant power structures. In other words, they fight guerrilla wars, but never advance revolutions—and therein resides their greatest limitation.

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Chapter 3—On the Border (of Chaos): Aliens, Monsters, Survival, and the Precarious Nature of Legality in Supernatural Hero Narratives

The Latino/a heroes analyzed in chapters 1 and 2 are mostly self-made justice- seekers who rely on their extraordinary fighting and weapon-wielding skills, agility, and ingenuity to overcome their adversaries. Even those heroes who benefit from supernatural powers (The Jaguar and the Santerians) acquire them by purposely seeking them— instead of through some unwanted accident or extraterrestrial force, as is the case of classic superheroes such as the Hulk, Spider-Man, or Green Lantern. In other words, The

Jaguar’s and the Santerians’ powers are very much intrinsic to who they are and make perfect sense given their links to Aztec culture and Yoruban beliefs, respectively.

Conversely, the characters analyzed in this chapter are accidental heroes. Some of them stumble upon superpower-bestowing amulets or receive, against their will, special abilities from external forces beyond the human or even terrestrial realms. Others engage in heroic actions and discover courage and skills they didn’t know they had, propelled by the need to survive as they face apocalyptic threats that make Gregorio Cortez’s struggles pale in comparison. Another characteristic that distinguishes these accidental, hesitant heroes is the nature of the narratives in which they appear. Whether films, TV series, or comic books, these narratives can be classified as fantastical or supernatural stories, combining elements from the science fiction and horror genres. In all cases, these texts include monsters (acting either as heroes or as villains/threats), or characters whose

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powers or mutations have given them a strange or supernatural appearance. Another common characteristic of these heroic narratives is the presence of elements of “alien- ness,” either in relation to characters or storylines. In some instances, the alien is an extraterrestrial force that comes to Earth and alters the lives of characters and their stories. In other cases, the characters themselves are aliens—individuals who come from another country or realm and who constantly cross or disrupt borders, geographical or otherwise, as they engage in their respective world-saving or survival quests. As I will explain later in this chapter, these two characteristics (monster-ness and alien-ness) are crucial for the understanding of these narratives, as they help to construct Latino/a heroes who are decidedly hybrid and borderland in nature, while their stories are marked by the history and politics of immigration and assimilation in the United States.

This chapter includes four heterogeneous hero narratives, some of which mix various media (comics and film or TV and comics). They are rather contemporary texts, with the earliest appearing in 1998, but most of them belong to the post-9/11 era. This periodization is important because these narratives tend to reveal and reflect on the anxiety over national security, ethnic and cultural difference, and immigration that have marked U.S. society during the past decade. The first two narratives feature comic book superheroes. Created and independently published by California artist Javier Hernandez,

El Muerto debuted in 1998 and has appeared in several comic books since then. In 2007, this story was turned into an independent film, El Muerto: The Dead One, directed by

Brian Cox and starring popular Latino actor Wilmer Valderrama. El Muerto tells the story of Juan Diego de la Muerte (a California native in the comics and an undocumented

Mexican immigrant in the film), who is turned into a zombie and given supernatural

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abilities by Aztec gods planning to use him as their avatar to re-conquer their former kingdom, now occupied by Europeans and Christians. Cursed to forever look like an undead mariachi (which was the costume he was wearing for a Day of the Dead party on the night he was taken to the Aztec underworld, or Mictlán), Juan Diego travels back and forth between Mexico and the United States looking for a cure to his condition.

Meanwhile, he attempts to hide his new identity (which came with special powers such as the ability to bring the dead back to life) and struggles between obeying his master’s demands to kill and staying true to his moral convictions. In other adventures, El Muerto battles a Mexican-hating, undead Texas Ranger who wants to snatch his powers to take over the world. The second Latino/a superhero character explored here is Blue Beetle, reintroduced by DC Comics in 2006 as El Paso Mexican-American teenager Jaime

Reyes. Jaime is the third incarnation of this classic superhero, which first appeared in

1939 and was previously represented by white men. Jaime becomes the new Blue Beetle after finding a scarab-shaped object on an empty lot, which gives him his powers after it fuses with his body. It is revealed that the scarab is an extraterrestrial mind-controlling device, used by a race of world conquerors to plant infiltrators in different planets.

Jaime’s life as a superhero is full of confusion and chaos, as he has a hard time controlling his transformation process into Blue Beetle. Also, the scarab commonly tries to make Jaime use more violence than what the youngster believes to be appropriate to defeat adversaries. In his adventures, Jaime often finds himself straddling the borders between outer space and Earth, as well as the U.S.-Mexico border.

Zombies and the U.S. border also play significant roles in Robert Rodríguez’s film Planet Terror (2007). In this apocalyptic horror movie set in Texas, the action-hero

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protagonists—El Wray and his Anglo girlfriend Cherry Darling—are not endowed with supernatural abilities, but they must fight a zombie infestation caused by the military through the use of a powerful biochemical agent. El Wray dies while saving Cherry and trying to lead a small group of survivors to safety. Pregnant with El Wray’s daughter,

Cherry and the other survivors cross the border into Mexico, settling by the Tulum

Mayan ruins to start a new society amid what has turned into a worldwide zombie epidemic. Although Cherry is white, the film “Latinizes” her and she assumes a matriarchal position of leadership toward the end of the narrative, challenging traditional portrayals of gender power relations and ethnic identity. The final narrative explored in the chapter is NBC’s popular TV series Heroes, which ran from 2006 to 2010. Just like

El Muerto and Blue Beetle, this series features several ordinary human beings who find themselves suddenly endowed with special powers. The program included three Latino/a heroes: Isaac Méndez and Dominican-born twins Maya Herrera and Alejandro Herrera.

Méndez is a struggling New York City artist who gains the power of precognition and can depict the future in his paintings. Maya possesses the power to emit a deadly poison from her eyes when she is threatened, and which can only be neutralized by her brother.

The twins roam Latin America as fugitives, after Maya accidentally kills a group of people in the Dominican Republic. They end up crossing illegally into the United States, as Maya wants to reach New York to find an expert on the genetics of super-humans who might be able to help her control her dangerous power.

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Monsters, Aliens, and Latinos/as: The Horror of Representing the Ethnic Other

Narratives that rely on supernatural elements (monsters, horror, science fiction, fantasy, etc.) have been a staple of U.S. film, television, and comics for much of the twentieth century and continue to be extremely popular in the new millennium. Horror films, for instance, are among the earliest genres that appeared in cinema’s history, and have retained their popularity into the present period (Prince 1). A close relative of both horror and action movies, science fiction flicks have also been around since the early years of film (Schelde 2), reaching unprecedented popularity in the 1970s with mega- productions such as Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Star Wars that “were largely responsible for dramatically transforming the American film industry into a blockbuster and high concept mentality” (Berman and Dalvi vii). Television has also taken advantage of and contributed to the popularity of horror and science fiction stories, as evidenced by the success of long-running series such as the X-Files and The Walking Dead. Exploring fantastical tales of magical, extraterrestrial, biological, or science-generated powers, comic books have always relied on supernatural or science fiction motifs. Beginning in the 1960s, comic books also introduced heroes who had monstrous appearances

(Marvel’s The Thing and Hulk among them), moving away from noble types such as

Superman in favor of a reluctant, accidental, alienated hero “who cares nothing for human kind but inevitably fights in its defense when a villain bent on world domination makes the mistake of attacking him” (Wright 209).

Scholars of supernatural narratives have sought to explain the reasons behind their endurance and popularity in contemporary culture. They have also theorized about the ways in which they reflect, reproduce, and sometimes critique political, social,

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psychological, and cultural issues that are problematic or controversial in a particular society at a given time period. A common theme explored in these texts is society’s anxiety over uncertainty and lack of control. As Stephen Prince states, the monsters and frightening “others” of the horror genre “threaten ordinary characters and upset our sense of how life is to be properly categorized and of where the boundaries that define existence are to be reliably located. The experience of horror resides in this confrontation with uncertainty, with the ‘unnatural,’ with a violation of the ontological categories on which being and culture reside” (2). The same is true regarding science fiction.

According to Per Schelde, these narratives tend to “depict a kind of bleak universe where people try to muddle by in a world where they have no control of the most important forces impinging on their lives” (27). That is why the heroes of supernatural narratives are of the reluctant type: they are ordinary people who are just trying to live normal existences, but “he or she is interrupted in the midst of a perfectly average life and activities and thrust into the throes of major crisis. Suddenly, our hero(ine) is up against it” (Schelde 27). One of the sociopolitical structures that is often challenged in supernatural narratives is legality, as alien invasions, monster attacks, and other types of apocalyptic threats create conditions in which the only law that counts is individual self- preservation. Science fiction, writes Naomi Mezey, has specialized in “performing the cultural and legal anxiety over state authority and violence […] generally from the perspective of the demise of state order” (Mezey 66). Such “demise” of state-sanctioned law-enforcement and control structures in supernatural stories is very significant, as it opens up spaces for alternative forms of negotiating legal and moral dilemmas—allowing for resistant discourses to operate in such narratives.

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The fact that the texts explored in this chapter are relatively new seems to be no coincidence. Prince argues that the horror genre endures because “our sense of being under threat seems unrelenting” (3). As a result, the abundance of catastrophe scenarios that mark these narratives reproduce contemporary society’s preoccupation with issues of national security, laws that prey on fear and hostility, discrimination, anxiety over terrorism and insurgency in the post-9/11 world, and worry about shooting massacres in otherwise “safe” spaces. However, as Sue Short indicates, these stories also highlight

“the possibility of people from different backgrounds working together to transcend differences and reclaim humanity” (51). This is particularly true of Planet Terror, where a group of survivors from various ethnicities, socioeconomic classes, genders, and sexual orientations works together to establish a new post-apocalyptic society—advancing a politics of multiculturalism and diversity over that of purely individual achievement, which had been traditionally embodied by the white male superhero or action hero.

Because horror and science fiction stories “push and prod us in directions that are uncomfortable, unacceptable, and sometimes outright abhorrent” (Berman and Dalvi 1), they are ripe for reflecting upon and questioning the current world realities that they reenact. The narratives studied in this chapter tend to raise questions about the politics of immigration, tolerance of difference, the nature of violence, the power of the state and the military, the conceptualization of humanness, and the lingering legacies of colonial and imperial rule, among others.

Contemporary supernatural narratives also feature different heroes, which are more suited to the contradictions and uncertainty of the times. In Tarnished Heroes,

Charming Villains and Modern Monsters, Lynnette Porter refers to twenty-first century

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popular culture heroes as “gray heroes,” that is, protagonists who are morally ambiguous and even controversial, “far removed from the traditional, idealized, highly moral heroes of the past” (2). According to Porter, science fiction heroes and villains appearing during this time period “are not as clearly oppositional as yesteryear’s definition of traditional heroes might indicate,” even though audiences can still distinguish between heroes and adversaries “even if the ‘good guys’ occasionally drift into some morally dangerous territory” (32). As indicated before, these are accidental, hesitant heroes who have their own flaws or dark pasts to deal with or who are trying to undo curses that have befallen them. Despite these issues, these heroes do get involved in trying to help a group of people or all of humankind and persevere, “often because they feel they have no other choice” (Porter 2). The fact that the heroes of contemporary supernatural narratives are sometimes “monsters” or humans with a monstrous or alien appearance only underscores the differences inherent to these types of heroes. While monsters always played the role of villains in traditional supernatural narratives, today they are not necessarily evil and can, of course, become heroic. According to Porter, contemporary science fiction TV series “thrive on making ‘monsters’—those characters decidedly not human who also are uncontrollable forces, unpredictable agents, or even victims of curses beyond their control—the heroes or at least series’ protagonists” (42), and “[t]he more modern-themed the series, the more likely its heroes will sometimes be called or perceived as monsters”

(44). The “gray” and the “monstrous” heroes of these narratives represent an important shift and deconstruction of traditional mythologies associated with the hero. Their appearance in highly popular contemporary narratives points to the possibility of embracing alternative heroic portrayals by both creators and audiences/readers. Whether

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they are morally ambiguous or monstrous or some other kind of nontraditional hero, what these heroes really embody is difference and a desire to move away from stale, one- dimensional representations that no longer apply to postmodern complexities. I would argue that the shift that opened up representational spaces of difference for these types of heroes has also made it possible for other “different” heroes, Latinos/as included, to increasingly appear in contemporary heroic narratives. El Muerto, for instance, is a heroic zombie that refuses to act as a villainous monster despite forces that pull him in that direction, but he is also a Mexican-American hero. In both instances, he challenges the traditional mythology of the American hero.

In Latino Images in Film: Stereotypes, Subversion, and Resistance, Charles

Ramírez Berg identifies a connection between science fiction narratives and immigrants

(particularly Latinos/as), which I find very helpful for analyzing the Latino/a heroes and stories of this chapter. Ramírez Berg claims that the alien monster featured in recent U.S. films embodies “a narrative pattern that identifies foreign intruders as threats to national order and socio-ideological coherence” (155). Commenting on the work of Robin Wood,

Ramírez Berg advances the idea that the “Other” represented by the science fiction and horror film monsters is the projection of something a culture has repressed in order to discredit, disown, or exterminate (155). The respected film scholar sees immigrants—and particularly Latinos/as, since they account for a majority of immigrants to the United

States in recent decades—as part of the “Others” that U.S. dominant culture both oppresses and represses, and which have made their way into science fiction (SF) and horror films personified as dangerous creatures: “Because the alien in SF movies stands for new immigrants in general, it is a polysemic image of the un-American Other, a

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signifier with a number of signifiers. Among them are a number of ethnic, national, and racial groups” (156). Ramírez Berg indicates that this process of signification is even worse than stereotyping, in which Latinos/as are portrayed as one-dimensional characters, because it moves to the realm of “distortion,” in this case their depiction as “nonhuman

Aliens” (156). Whether these movies employ “sympathetic aliens” or “destructive monsters” to represent the immigrant other, the resolution is always exclusion: those creatures must be eliminated “either lovingly, by returning to their native environs […] or violently, by destroying them” (Ramírez Berg 158).

I want to underscore the point Ramírez Berg makes about monster and alien films

“dehumanizing” the immigrant and ethnic “Other.” The loss of basic humanity that

Latino/a immigrants experience as a result of stereotypical and distorted media portrayals has long been a concern for scholars, activists, and media personalities. Speaking about the representational impact of the Latino/a-themed TV drama Resurrection Boulevard

(2000-2002), in which he played East L.A. boxer Roberto Santiago, Cuban-American actor Tony Plana has said that “we took those stereotypes [about Latinos/as] and humanized them in a way that they had never been humanized before on television”

(“Tony Plana”). This concern, of course, is not exclusive to narrative media portrayals. In public life, “illegal” immigrants and even legal residents or American citizens suspected of “not belonging” to the nation because of ethnic, religious, or other differences are often dehumanized by certain sectors of society as a way of justifying their marginalization or even violence toward them. That is why immigrant rights activists, such as Pablo Alvarado of the National Day Laborer Organizing Committee, frequently view their mission as one of reclaiming and asserting the humanity of migrant workers

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and their families: “Our struggle is about being seen as human beings trying to earn our daily bread” (qtd. in Steptoe, “25 Most Influential Hispanics in America: Pablo

Alvarado”).

Ramírez Berg offers several explanations behind this representational distortion in recent U.S. cinema, including “the perceived heightening of political and economic stakes placed upon the system by the new immigrant” (159), which leads to more hostile forms of stereotyping due to the threat represented by newcomers and the contestation of power that this entails. However, he sees the roots of the immigrant distortion in monster and alien films as going beyond a mere competition for finite resources between an in- group and an out-group, indicating that the “new immigrant ‘invasion’ calls into question the very identity of the nation itself, and the rejection of the Alien in SF is projected, mass-mediated nativism” that reaffirms the dominant view that “the status quo can be maintained only by exclusion” (162). In other words, the alien “Other” of science fiction and monster films reenacts a profound contradiction at the heart of American history and national identity: one in which the country’s immigrant roots (Melting Pot metaphor) and diversity (E Pluribus Unum) are celebrated, while simultaneously new immigrants and their cultural differences are rejected: “Today’s SF film provides an arena for the negotiation of the pluralist-nativist tension; in order for this to occur, the immigrant takes the symbolic shape of the Alien” (162). Even the “sympathetic alien” (E.T., for example), whose positive qualities are appreciated and recognized, must leave (is gently

“deported”) because, after all, its qualities are still alien with respect to the dominant culture: “The Sympathetic Alien allows us to have it both ways: We can appreciate the aliens, and even learn from them. But in the end we must return to normality by sending

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them home—for their own good” (162). However, Ramírez Berg notes that some sympathetic aliens, such as Superman, are allowed to stay, but only because their powers and services are of extreme benefit to the United States and only after they have gone through a complete process of acculturation and naturalization that more or less erases their differences (166-68). In the end, Ramírez Berg concludes, the transformation of the

Latino/a immigrant from a stereotype to a monstrous distortion is a reaction by the dominant (Anglo) in-group to the fear and anxiety over losing what it considers authentic

“American” culture and the legitimate U.S. nation: “We distort through fear of losing our national self” (165).

I bring up Ramírez Berg’s analysis of monster and science fiction narratives not to imply that the hero narratives explored in this chapter engage in the same type of oppressive and repressive representational distortion observed in films such as The

Terminator and Blade Runner. While these narratives do make use of the Latino/a as monster or alien “Other” image, I am more interested in exploring how this image is contested. In the stories analyzed here, the Latino/a protagonists (already marked by their ethnic and cultural otherness) are initially represented according to the alien/monster/threat distortion formula. Heroes’ Maya Herrera, for example, enters the

United States illegally after killing a group of border vigilantes with her power, which gives her a monstrous appearance. In El Muerto: The Dead One, young Diego de la

Muerte also crosses the border illegally, in this case with help from an old shaman who consecrates the unsuspecting boy to the Aztec gods at a ritual in the desert, preparing him for his future transformation into an Aztec zombie. Shortly before Jaime Reyes becomes

Blue Beetle, he finds himself on the Mexican side of the border naked, having turned

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back into his human form unexpectedly as he is not yet able to control the transformation process triggered by the scarab. In order to return home to El Paso, he is forced to cross the border in the middle of the night and is confronted by an armed white man who mistakes him for an undocumented immigrant. Additionally, Blue Beetle has a skirmish with Border Patrol guards as he attempts to fight various villains at a border crossing, since the guards see him as an alien threat to law and order. Even in Planet Terror, where the monsters are not immigrants nor Latinos/as, El Wray is introduced as a untrustworthy character with a shady past; he is viewed as a dangerous outsider until his skills become valuable to the survival of the in-group.

However, in these narratives the heroes’ abilities, heroic deeds, and/or moral decisions quickly overwrite this initial, apparent distortion and serve to contest traditional stereotypes about Latinos/as—giving a new, resistant meaning to their portrayals. In other words, what I posit here is that the Latino/a superheroes explored in this chapter appropriate the alien distortion pointed out by Ramírez Berg, nullifying its negative representational effects. They do so by taking the two sources of otherness associated with Latino/a protagonists (ethnic and cultural difference and super-powered alien- ness/monstrosity), and employing them to assert Latino/a cultural specificity as well as to combat threats to their peoples’ full realization as human beings and as valuable members of the nation. Two transgressive acts can be identified in this process of appropriation and resignification: resistance against the forces of cultural assimilation and heroic action aimed at cultural empowerment and self-determination. Even in Heroes, where the characterization of the Latino/a characters suffers from the use of common stereotypes and the alien/monster/threat discourse is employed, these characters are able to gain a

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certain level of empowerment through their contributions to the greater good or through their resilience and resistance to assimilation. By enacting these two transgressive acts within their storyworlds, the hero narratives explored here immerse themselves in the controversial history and politics of immigration and cultural citizenship in the United

States. In the next few pages, I will explore how these narratives deal with Latino/a stereotypical and distorted portrayals through resistance to assimilation, active cultural empowerment, and the struggle for self-determination.

Blue Beetle and El Muerto: The Heroism of Anti-Assimilation and Hybridity

Mirroring dominant U.S. nation-building discourses about immigration and acculturation, the narratives contained in American superhero comics have been traditionally imbued with the cultural assimilation impulse advanced by the myths of the

“Melting Pot” and the “American Dream.” The very first superhero comic, Superman

(1938), has been interpreted as the narrative of both an extraterrestrial and a Jewish immigrant pursuing the American Dream but hiding his alien and ethnic origin under the identity of Clark Kent, driven by a desire to achieve complete cultural assimilation

(Fingeroth 24). Writing about Wonder Woman, Matthew Smith claims that her character has been written “to fulfill expectations associated with the melting pot metaphor,” which works to deny “her strong ethnic and cultural ties to her native people” and erase difference and ambiguity by emphasizing “her devotion to [dominant] American ideals”

(130). Recent Latino/a superhero comics and other hero narratives have defied this assimilation impulse, particularly by emphasizing cultural hybridity as both an essential characteristic of the Latino/a experience in the United States and as a visual and narrative

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tool for affirming and celebrating new Latino/a identities—identities that are fluid, complex, and ambivalent and thus negate any attempts at stereotyping, simplifying, or essentializing. Latino/a literary and cultural studies scholars have written extensively about hybridity as a strategy long used by Mexican-Americans and other Hispanics “for expressing cultural change without losing cultural specificity” (Alonzo 138). Because

Latinos/as are “positioned between cultures, living on borderlines” (R. Saldívar 25), they constantly borrow and learn from Latin American, Indigenous, African, European-

American, and many other traditions. The resulting cross-cultural meldings “are not the sign of an assimilation impulse, but evidence of an acquisitive and adaptive culture, ready to use the tools at its disposal to forge new […] identities” (Alonzo 138). Reflecting on

Latinos/as’ literary and cultural production, José David Saldívar has used the term

“double-voiced writing” to describe how Latino/a writers borrow and learn from both

Latin American and European-American traditions, a diverse range of influences that ultimately creates a “cross-cultural hybridization” (108). While José David Saldívar focuses on the analysis of literary texts, I would argue that his framework can be easily extended to other cultural products such as Blue Beetle and El Muerto. In the comics and the film adaptation of El Muerto, we find a “double-voiced writing/illustrating” that is expressed both in textual and visual terms, as these narratives mix Indigenous, European, and mestizo aspects of Mexican-American culture, but also elements of U.S. and

Japanese popular culture in the style of the drawings, photography, and in the daily existence of the characters. Hybridity is thus inextricably linked to an effort by Latinos/as to resist complete assimilation to U.S. dominant culture in their literary and artistic production, as well as in traditions, celebrations, and other aspects of their everyday lives.

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The comics Blue Beetle and El Muerto are perfect examples of how anti- assimilation efforts and hybridity go hand in hand. In both narratives, the story begins with an ordinary young Latino whose destiny is inadvertently and irremediably altered by forces that are alien to his everyday existence. In Blue Beetle, Jaime Reyes16 —a

Mexican-American high school student from El Paso, Texas—stumbles upon a small object shaped like a scarab, which becomes imbedded in his spine and turns him into a grotesque beetle-looking cyborg with spectacular skills and powers. Seeing himself in the mirror for the first time after the transformation, Jaime acknowledges the nature of his new monstrous appearance: “¡Carajo! I look like a freakin’ bug-monster!” (Bedard,

Guara, Mayer, and Jose, Blue Beetle: Volume 1: Metamorphosis, 53). He also recognizes that if the government were to find out about his powers, he would be swiftly taken away from his family just like the aliens of science fiction films that Ramírez Berg writes about, telling his mother: “Next thing you know, I’m all ‘E.T. in the ice cream cooler’”

(Giffen, Rogers, and Hamner, Blue Beetle: Shellshocked, 78). The scarab is later revealed to belong to The Reach, an extraterrestrial race that sends these artifacts to many planets in order to establish “infiltrators” that will assist them in the conquering of new worlds.

In the various storylines of the new Blue Beetle published by DC Comics since 2006, the scarab is said to have been found in an Egyptian pyramid (Rogers, Giffen, Hamner, and

Albuquerque, Blue Beetle: Road Trip, 38) and in a Mayan temple (Volume 1:

Metamorphosis, 19), further adding to the alien-ness and hybrid origin of the object and its powers. Meanwhile, El Muerto tells the story of Juan Diego de la Muerte, who crashes

16 Reyes is the third individual and the first Latino to incarnate the Blue Beetle, following Dan Garret (1939) and Ted Kord (1967). Blue Beetle is one of several mainstream superheroes who have been “Latinized” in the past 25 years, including El Diablo (1989), Spider-Girl (2010), and Spider-Man (2011). 208

his vehicle on his way to a Day of the Dead party on his twenty-first birthday and wakes up in Mictlán, the Aztec underworld—which immediately creates an aura of alien-ness and fear, as the mythical realm is portrayed in both the comics and the film as a territory of darkness inhabited by skeleton-like creatures. An Aztec god—in the comics

Mictlantecuhtli, Lord of the Death, and in the movie Tezcatlipoca, a deity also associated with destiny and human sacrifice—readies to sacrifice Juan Diego so he can become his avatar or emissary on Earth. The heart-ripping ritual turns the young man into a zombie with incredible god-like powers. Additionally, Juan Diego retains the appearance he had when sacrificed, which is that of the scary undead mariachi outfit he wore to the party, now made even more lugubrious by the zombie-like look of his face.

In addition to initially portraying the young Latinos as alien in nature and monstrous in appearance, both comics and the film adaption of El Muerto present the future superheroes as potential foreign threats to world and U.S. national security.

Because of the origins of the scarab and its mission, Jaime as the Blue Beetle essentially becomes a super-powered illegal immigrant and invader who crosses planetary and national borders (from outer space, from the Middle East, and from Mexico into the

United States) to facilitate violent colonization and impose an alien way of life. To reinforce this image, the comic shows Jaime, after his first transformation and first extraterrestrial outing, naked and stranded along the U.S.-Mexico border in the middle of the night, trying to find his way home. A gas station worker—who at first glance fits the stereotype of the redneck, anti-immigrant, gun-happy American—confronts the boy, assuming he is just another illegal trying to sneak into Texas: “You cross tonight. You habla muy bien” (Shellshocked, 35). The comic quickly reverses this stereotype, as the

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redneck turns out to be a Good Samaritan who helps Jaime reach his house after telling him he once was in the Peace Corps in Guatemala. Notwithstanding this challenge to traditional stereotyping, the scene serves the purpose of reinventing Jaime, an American citizen, as an illegal border-crosser/terrorist who carries in his spine (like a suicide bomber of sorts) the ultimate weapon of mass destruction that could annihilate the United

States. In El Muerto, Juan Diego is also initially portrayed as a menace to his country, particularly to those people descended from the Spaniards who conquered the lands once controlled by the Aztec Empire. Mictlantecuhtli wants to turn the young man into the

“grimmest reaper of all time!” (Hernandez, El Muerto: The Aztec Zombie, 19), using him to destroy the European “plunderers” and carry out his plan for an Aztec reconquista:

“You will place my name once more upon the lips of the world that dared reject me a half-millennium ago!” (El Muerto: The Aztec Zombie, 19). Just like Jaime, Juan Diego returns to his home in the United States as a border-crosser, being magically transported from Mictlán (which is located, at least mythologically speaking, somewhere in Mexico) after his transformation into a would-be agent of destruction. The alien-ness of the protagonist is even more poignant in the film adaptation of the comic, where a young

Diego is shown crossing the border into the United States illegally, helped by an old shaman who has discovered the boy is destined to aid the vengeful Aztec deity in the future.

While the early stages of both narratives point to Jaime/Blue Beetle and Juan

Diego/El Muerto as being foreign threats to the United States, they quickly subvert the alien/monster distortion by having their protagonists resist assimilation in a variety of ways. In Blue Beetle, Jaime engages from the beginning in a furious struggle to keep the

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scarab from controlling his mind and body. As the “organic host” of the alien technology,

Jaime is supposed to follow orders and advance The Reach’s mission of universal domination. However, when he is urged to kill, even meta-humans and monsters that threaten his life, Jaime finds different ways to redirect the scarab or manages to control it and orders it to use non-lethal force instead, because “My mother didn’t raise me like that. It’s wrong” (Road Trip, 48). Jaime’s efforts to avoid assimilation into the violent alien culture of The Reach are so successful, that he becomes the first being to retain the scarab’s powers and control them at will, even after the object is removed from his body.

Instead of being absorbed by and lost to his newfound powers and the oppressive culture where they originated, Jaime employs them to assist other superheroes in a variety of intergalactic battles and also to help people in the border communities where he has family and cultural ties. As a Latino teenager growing up in a working-class family (his father is a mechanic and his mother a nurse), Jaime also faces a variety of more earthly threats, including the influence of street gangs. Driven by his parents to stay in school and avoid bad influences, Jaime also manages to avoid becoming assimilated into the barrio’s gang and crime culture, which has consumed many of the people around him— and even led to his father being shot in the leg because of a gang-related dispute involving his shop’s troubled employee, Luis.

In El Muerto, the protagonist also faces the daunting task of subduing an exotic force that has turned his life upside down and is trying to control his destiny. Instead of taking part in Mictlantecuhtli’s (Tezcatlipoca’s in the film) reconquista and be lost to the realm of death forever, Juan Diego travels back and forth across the border searching for a way to lift what he considers to be a curse. Along the way, he employs his powers

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(which include the ability to bring the dead back to life) to help people in need and fight a variety of adversaries, contesting the traditional portrayal of the zombie as a mindless, ravenous creature. Although he has been forced to spend his days as an undead outsider,

Juan Diego is a highly moral character who is constantly seeking to reclaim his humanity both through his noble actions and through his refusal to admit that (physically speaking) he has morphed into a heartless monster: “I’ll fight to get the God of Death off my back, and rejoin the living once again. When it really is my turn to die, I’ll accept my fate. But until then, I want to walk amongst the living… truly alive” (Hernandez and Todd, Mark of Mictlantecuhtli, 7). El Muerto’s moral, heroic nature is further underscored intertextually through his connections with other hero narratives. For example, the protagonist’s name (Diego de la Muerte) and his black costume immediately refers us via the multimodal strategy of provenance to the archetypal U.S. Latino hero, Zorro, whose unmasked persona bore the name Diego de la Vega. In any of the supernatural narratives analyzed by Ramírez Berg, El Muerto could had been easily portrayed as a demonic, alien Aztec zombie that crosses the border from Mexico to take over the American

Southwest. But that is not the case in Hernandez’s comic and its film adaptation, where

El Muerto’s humanity is stronger than his monstrosity and the thing that makes him different is also the source of his heroism.

By resisting assimilation into the oppressive alien powers of The Reach, street gangs, and a vengeful Aztec deity (all of which are characterized by the use of violence),

Jaime/Blue Beetle and Juan Diego/El Muerto effectively challenge and reverse the stereotypes and distortions associated with Latinos/as in mainstream media and popular culture. They also provide powerful representational counter-discourses that emphasize

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positive attributes of Latinos/as—something that is still seriously lacking in U.S. media and popular culture. Additionally, since Jaime is also a good son and a good student, Blue

Beetle puts forth a role model that urban youth of color can relate to and aspire to emulate.

In these narratives, the protagonists acquire a new hybrid identity as a result of their accidental encounters, which will define the way they see themselves and are regarded by others for the duration of their narratives: the Texas teen is at once Jaime and

Blue Beetle, human and alien, ordinary and extraordinary; while the California young man is both Juan Diego and El Muerto, human and monster, alive and undead. The comics abundantly reflect this complex identity in visual terms. Several panels show

Jaime half as a human accompanied by his family and half as the armor-clad superhero joined by fellow do-gooders or against an outer-space background (Road Trip, 16, 18,

26). Meanwhile, the various aspects of Juan Diego’s new identity are brilliantly shown on a page from El Muerto: Dead and Confused, as he lays in bed pondering his fate—his body shows the chest scar, sunken eyes, shriveled lips, and skull tattoo that mark him as an Aztec zombie; while he also displays a cross on his forehead, a cross necklace, and a crucifix clasped between his fingers that represent his devotion to Catholicism as an important aspect of his former existence among the living (12). Assimilation to the alien forces that tried to absorb Jaime’s and Juan Diego’s identities as humans for their own selfish purposes would have resulted in the complete elimination of those identities, rendering the characters unidimensional and stereotypical. Conversely, resisting such assimilation made the protagonists’ identities even more hybrid and multifaceted, as they

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were able to retain the superpowers that now make them special without losing their former selves in the process.

Finally, it is important to point out that the processes of anti-assimilation and hybridity that resulted in the creation of the superheroes in Blue Beetle and El Muerto do not take away from their Latino-ness. In fact, they actually enhance the protagonists’ construction as fundamentally Latino/a superheroes with visible signs of the type of cultural heterogeneity and capacity for adaptation that Alonzo has referred to. In addition to having complex superhero identities, Jaime/Blue Beetle and Juan Diego/El Muerto are represented in the comics as individuals who possess extremely hybrid identities as contemporary Mexican-Americans—with the storyworlds in which they exist also expressing such variegation. In Blue Beetle, Jaime and his family code-switch between

English and Spanish, as do many of the other Latino/a characters in the comic—with the youngsters often peppering their conversations with Latino/a and Mexican street slang such as “ese,” “pendejo,” “mamón,” “órale,” and “wey.” The series even includes an all-

Spanish issue, #26, in which Jaime goes to visit his extended family, all of whom speak

Spanish among them, thus reflecting the linguistic realities of many Latino/a families in the U.S. Popular Latino/a celebrations and expressions of spirituality are also included in the series, including the quinceañera rite of passage and the presence of crosses and images of the Sacred Heart of Jesus on the Reyeses’ home that point to their Catholic faith. Additionally, Jaime’s Blue Beetle suit includes stylistic elements that mark the superhero as Latino, especially his mask, which resembles that of a Mexican luchador.

As Jonathan Risner has noted, Blue Beetle’s insect-like appearance also brings into dialogue the intertext of the cockroach, which has become a metaphor of Latino/a

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resilience in works such as Oscar Zeta Acosta’s novel The Revolt of the Cockroach

People and Lalo Alcaraz’s comic strip La Cucaracha (49). The superhero’s latinidad is consolidated even further in the storyline that shows the scarab as having come from a

Mayan temple, thus making Mexico an important source of Jaime’s superhero and cultural identities and inextricably conjoining both of those identities.

El Muerto is also constructed as a hybrid creature in a hybrid storyworld. Even before his transformation, Juan Diego is shown as an individual whose identity is marked by a lot of cultural influences. He is obsessed with Aztec culture, while at the same time he is also highly influenced by Catholicism, as previously indicated. Juan Diego also displays a fascination with both Mexican and American popular culture and is deeply connected to the religious and cultural syncretism expressed through the Day of the Dead celebration, which represents both the day of his birth and of his symbolic death.

Visually, this hybridity is best shown on a page from El Muerto: The Aztec Zombie, where Juan Diego is getting ready to go to his Day of the Dead party. There, we see him put on his crucifix while looking at a Los Angeles Museum poster of an Aztec skull drawing (a representation of Mictlantecuhtli), which he has emblazoned on the jacket of his mariachi costume and has also tattooed on his arm; the poster hangs next to a stuffed donkey donning a Mexican sarape. On the same page, we observe a Día de los Muertos party flier laying on the desk next to a copy of The Lord of the Rings and an Austin

Powers videotape (12). As a metaphor of contemporary Latino/a culture, Juan Diego/El

Muerto travels back and forth across borderlands (geographic, ethnic, cultural, spiritual) as he brings the Indigenous, Spanish, and American aspects of his cultural makeup together, refusing to sacrifice one in favor of the other. Despite the fact that

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Mictlantecuhtli has eternally changed Juan Diego’s life and seeks to destroy people with whom he shares ethnic and cultural ties, he validates the deity’s anger and motivation for vengeance, often meditating on the injustices caused by the Spaniards to his Indigenous ancestors and thus acknowledging that aspect of his heritage. In the film, Juan Diego does not reject the vengeful ways of the bloodthirsty Tezcatlipoca because of some essentialist association with evil, but because following the deity’s orders would lead to the destruction of his culturally mixed way of life, the people he cares about, and the world he knows. In other words, participating in this reconquista would require the scission of

Juan Diego’s Spanish and American aspects of his identity in favor of his Indigenous ancestry—which he refuses to do. Ultimately, the protagonist’s heroism is expressed via his commitment to sustaining his hybrid Latino/a identity and protecting his fellow

Latinos/as from a variety of forces (Mictlantecuhtli, Tezcatlipoca, racist zombies) that threaten to harm them.

Perhaps the most salient aspect of El Muerto’s hybridity is the way religion and spirituality are presented in the comics and the film. The concepts of hybridity and transnational/transcultural dialogues are often used to frame the way Latino/a religion and spirituality have developed and operate today. John F. Burke indicates that

Latin American and Latino cultural and spiritual experience has been heavily

characterized by mestizaje. Originally, mestizaje referred to the mixing of

especially European (mostly Spanish) and indigenous peoples in Latin America,

but among U.S. Latinos it has come to mean a dynamic integration of Latino with

African, Asian, and European cultures […] that does not culminate either in

uniformity or divisiveness. Rather than an ‘either-or’ engagement of reality,

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mestizaje stresses ‘and-both.’ […] Latino popular religious practices provide very

concrete, heartfelt examples of this spirituality of ‘crossing borders’.” (157).

At a very basic level, religious intertextuality already plays a role in Hernandez’s choice of names for his characters via provenance. Juan Diego de la Muerte immediately points us to the religious/spiritual syncretism that is such a cornerstone of El Muerto. Juan

Diego was the Mexican Indian to whom Our Lady of Guadalupe first appeared during colonial times, serving an important role in the symbolic melding of Aztec and Christian beliefs (as well as cultural mestizaje) that Guadalupe represents even today. In El Muerto:

The Aztec Zombie, Hernandez shows Juan Diego prostrated before Mictlantecuhtli in an arrangement extremely similar to that in which the Indian Juan Diego is traditionally shown kneeling before Guadalupe, with the obvious difference that the young man is by no means revering the god of death and the setting in the comic is one of darkness and confusion (18). Additionally, in the film, Juan Diego is shown next to an image of

Guadalupe at a neighborhood market. Both images help to create an interesting multimodal dialogue, as the two media complement each other and allow for a richer reading of religious intertextuality and hybridity. Despite the differences between comic book and film, the intertextual relationship established in these images reaffirms Juan

Diego’s role as a mediator between cultures and belief systems. Meanwhile, the last name de la Muerte (literally, “belonging to death”), appears to mark Juan Diego as an individual predestined from birth to serve as the Aztec god of death’s avatar on Earth.

This idea is reinforced by Mictlantecuhtli as he points to Diego’s skull tattoo and tells him, “Look, you have already marked yourself in homage to me” (El Muerto: The Aztec

Zombie, 21). The protagonist also reflects on the possible meaning of his peculiar body

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ink: “I’ve wondered if I chose this tattoo myself, because of my love for ancient myths… or was the thought put in my head for a reason? A sacrificial mark?” (Mark of

Mictlantecuhtli, 6). Finally, it is also significant that the name of Juan Diego’s girlfriend is María, which again brings to the forefront the symbolic connection between him and

Guadalupe.

Spiritual hybridity is also expressed at the narrative and visual levels in El

Muerto. Juan Diego describes himself as a “devoted altar boy,” but acknowledges his fascination with Aztec history, art, and beliefs, as well as the cult of the dead, since a young age. He defines this uneasy combination of seemingly incompatible belief systems and traditions as a “theological tennis match in my head” (El Muerto Mishmash, 8).

Visually, he wears both a cross and the tattoo of an Aztec skull, which are prominently displayed in all of the comic books and in numerous scenes in the film. As disparate as this Indigenous/Christian religious duality may appear in other cultural contexts, Theresa

Delgadillo has found that in contemporary Latino/a films “Catholicism often coexists with indigenous beliefs and practices [addressing] the tensions of a multilayered and hybrid religious life” (172). Notwithstanding this hybrid coexistence, tensions originating in religious and cultural difference are inescapable in El Muerto when the characters face extreme situations. This is true of Juan Diego after he experiences his life-altering ordeal in Mictlán and goes to Mexico looking for a curandero “skilled in the ways of the ancient” (El Muerto: Dead and Confused, 12) or “some forgotten prayer hidden in a church” (El Muerto Mishmash, 12) that would make him be “alive” again. As he lays in bed one sleepless night holding his rosary/crucifix and praying to (the Christian) God, he acknowledges his spiritual conundrum by asking, “How I can look for answers from them

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[a curandero, Aztec gods]… and call on you as well?” (El Muerto: Dead and Confused,

12). Uncertainty and confusion also arise in Juan Diego with regards to his Aztec deity- given power to reanimate the dead. In the comics, when he first discovers he possesses such unbelievable attribute by resuscitating a dead Chihuahua dog named Frida with the touch of his hand, he again juxtaposes the two belief systems in his frightened reply:

“What’s happening with me? How can this be happening? It’s Tezcatlipoca, and…

Mictlantecuhtli. Oh [Christian] God…” (El Muerto: Dead and Confused, 20). In the film,

Diego’s reaction to his newfound power is also ambivalent. Unbeknownst to him, the distraught young man brings back to life the driver of a car who had swerved off the road to avoid hitting him, immediately running away from the scene. Aparicio, the cemetery caretaker of the mission whose priest is María’s uncle, follows him and tells him, “I think you healed him. It is a miracle, no? Un milagro de Dios. You have a gift, amigo, but I also sense the hand of darkness. Are you a believer? Diego replies, “It’s not that simple, sir” (El Muerto: The Dead One). Juan Diego’s mixed reactions to the dual nature of his powers (a curse and a blessing at once) underscore the way the comics and the film represent Latino/a spirituality as a syncretic manifestation that cannot be reduced to the absolutes of good versus evil or Indigenous beliefs versus Christianity.

Finally, hybridity is also explored in Blue Beetle and El Muerto through the issues of transnationalism and immigration, as these narratives seek to connect with current social, political, and economic realities facing U.S. Latinos/as and Mexicans alike. In

Blue Beetle, the escalating militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border is visually punctuated by the heavy presence of armed Border Patrol and Homeland Security agents. The bridge between El Paso and Ciudad Juárez is shown from a long, aerial view, highlighting the

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busy, visually cluttered nature of this crossing point and the large numbers of vehicles and people trying, slowly and painstakingly, to make their way to the other side. Closer views from ground level reveal the difficulty for ordinary people to cross into the United

States, as they are stopped by government agents (Shellshocked, 62-67). The comic also comments on the recent history of violence and criminal activity impacting the Ciudad

Juárez region, which is represented by the mafia-like, transnational enterprise of El Paso- based La Dama—a powerful crime boss who has amassed a fortune smuggling immigrants and getting rid of the competition through her super-powered henchmen.

After a confrontation between Blue Beetle, La Dama’s armed agents, and Homeland

Security guards during which he is treated as a dangerous alien, the news media immediately seeks to insert the superhero in the heated immigration debate, as one TV analysts asks: “So I want to know, this fight on the Mexican border—Does the new Blue

Beetle support stronger immigration laws? (Road Trip, 64). While an answer is never explicitly given, Blue Beetle actually challenges the dominant U.S. discourse of the border as a zone of division and exclusion, portraying it throughout much of the series as a fluid and porous space that Jaime and other characters constantly and freely cross, despite law-enforcement efforts to regulate and restrict movement. In fact, superpowers are used in the comic as a way to mock border security and attempts to sever the flow of people and cultural influences that has characterized the U.S.-Mexico borderlands for over 150 years. Members of the super-powered gang known as The Posse employ their ability to become invisible to cross the border from Ciudad Juárez, where they are based, into El Paso, and vice versa. Jaime also uses his power to fly to move between the two countries depending on where his help is needed. As Jaime’s grandmother states, Blue

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Beetle is perceived not as a national but as a transnational hero: “El Escarabajo protege a la gente de El Paso y Ciudad Juárez. Él protege a la gente como nosotros sin pensarlo dos veces” (Rogers and Albuquerque, End Game, 165). This is a significant departure from most traditional U.S. superheroes, who are predominantly identified as “national” heroes.

Jaime’s hybrid cultural identity and transnational connections are key to this important ideological shift in heroic allegiance.

In El Muerto, transnational identities and the politics of immigration are also essential to character construction and narrative flow. From the opening scene, the film adaptation clearly seeks to insert itself in the current debate regarding “illegal immigration” into the United States from Latin America. Diego is, after all, an undocumented migrant who has settled in the America from a very young age, making the trip across the border alone. Not having any relatives in the United States, the young man has made a home in his adopted country in the company of friends, his girlfriend

María, and her family. This narrative of migration is not present in the construction of

Juan Diego as a character in the comic books, but little changes there with regards to his portrayal as an American of Mexican descent fully incorporated (though not assimilated, as previously pointed out) into U.S. culture. While Diego, in both the comic books and the film, displays an almost obsessive fascination with Aztec mythology and spirituality and is fully engaged in Mexican-American cultural practices such as the Day of the Dead, he has established a transnational identity that may be rooted in Mexico but is fully lived in the United States.

In addition to their influence on character construction, the concept and image of crossing borders (literally and figuratively) and the process of engaging in transnational

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and transcultural dialogues are paramount in the narrative and stylistic configuration of El

Muerto. In the film, the image and symbolism of the river is used to signify both the

U.S.-Mexico border and the body of water that, in Aztec mythology, the deceased must cross as they journey from the land of the living to the underworld. We hear Juan Diego’s voice off camera at the beginning of the film explaining that “the final crossing was a river, and on the other side, the land of the dead… Mictlán” (El Muerto: The Dead One).

Sitting on the U.S. side of the river/border, we see the young Diego who has just crossed from Mexico. Later on in the film, the adult Diego is sitting by the same river, as he hears

Tezcatlipoca’s calling and sees his display of lightning coming from the Mexican side.

Just as in the film Diego crosses national and mythological borders that merge in the image of the river, the comic book medium allows Hernandez to seamlessly flow between written words and illustrations, engaging the reader/viewer in a constant

“migration” between this multimodal medium and the different mechanisms involved in its construction. The configuration of the pages (almost all of them divided into an odd number of frames) and the relative brevity of each story (consisting of no more than a few pages), also allow Hernandez to almost instantaneously transition between the various and often divergent realities and landscapes that constitute the universe of El

Muerto: from Mictlán to the highways of southern California, from the United States to

Mexico and back as the protagonist engages in his relentless pilgrimage, from the outside world to the inner thoughts of the protagonist, from the past to the present, and so on.

While Juan Diego as a character exists “between” cultures, Hernandez’s comic books inhabit a fluid borderland that is always “in-between,” keeping readers/viewers in the same state of constant transition and border-crossing.

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The final level of analysis of Blue Beetle and El Muerto zeroes in on the discourses of power and cultural empowerment contained in these narratives, which are particularly prominent in El Muerto. The main storyline of the comics and the film serve as a commentary on the legacy of the Spanish conquest of Mexico and the southwestern

U.S., and the multiethnic, multicultural, and often unequal societies that it produced. By giving voice and visual recognition to the subaltern Indigenous culture that is part of Juan

Diego’s heritage, El Muerto engages in a type of resistant politics that disputes dominant discourses of race relations and Anglo cultural superiority. At one point, Juan Diego challenges the dominant Western/Judeo-Christian paradigm in which he has been raised:

“Often I wondered what the Aztecs thought when their gods were replaced by what the

Spaniards brought” (El Muerto Mishmash, 8). In the film, it is indicated that he would constantly “argue church doctrine” with the Padre. Juan Diego also expresses doubts about the strength and sincerity of his Christian beliefs. After emphasizing his

“admiration” with pre-Columbian culture, he says, “I don’t know if it was out of a sense of giving ‘equal time,’ or purely out of devotion, but I became an altar boy for years” (El

Muerto Mishmash, 8).

The second power struggle, which takes place in the comic book Weapon Tex-

Mex vs. El Muerto, deals with the rise of U.S. nativism in recent years. In this story, the bounty hunter Weapon Tex-Mex—a hybrid man/longhorn bull creature and another one of Hernandez’s Latino/a heroes—is hired by Mr. Smith, a mysterious Anglo Texan, to kill El Muerto on accusations that he is a flesh-eating zombie. But in reality, Mr. Smith is the zombie of a nineteenth century Texas Ranger, Jedediah Hellinger, who “killed one too many Mexicans in my private time” (11), was hanged, went to hell, and has been

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wandering the Earth since. Hellinger manages to take over Juan Diego’s young, immortal body and his Aztec powers in an attempt to rule over the world. Realizing Hellinger’s lies and recognizing El Muerto as a fellow Latino do-gooder, Weapon Tex-Mex comes to the rescue, obliterating the Ranger zombie but dying in the process. In the end, however, El

Muerto is able to revive himself and his new friend. The way Hernandez pits his two

Latino superheroes against an evil, Mexican-phobic, Anglo force is a good example of postcolonial cultural resistance—as the comic book artist flips the discursive coin of power by giving agency to a historically discriminated ethnic group and assigning the role of alterity and villainy to the traditionally dominant group. McAllister, Sewell, and

Gordon have posited that comics can serve as a form of “oppositional culture” (3), offering alternative worldviews and subverting relations of power within their pages.

Hernandez manages to do just that in Weapon Tex-Mex vs. El Muerto, which operates as a heroic narrative of social rebellion that advances a resistant ideology. The story’s threat-defense sequence is activated when Mr. Smith summons El Muerto to a Texas ghost town with the promise that he knows a way to eliminate his curse. Instead, El

Muerto is ambushed and the hero is temporarily defeated. However, Mr. Smith, who has revealed himself as the usurper that wants to use El Muerto’s body and power for evil, is ultimately destroyed and the initial order is restored. While this first reading seems to imply that Weapon Tex-Mex vs. El Muerto is just another normative heroic story, it is very far from that. In fact, this narrative reformulates a dominant heroic story in which

Texas Rangers such as Hellinger did play the role of nationalist American heroes during the time of U.S. Western imperialist expansion, upholding a dominant system of legality that undermined the rights of Mexicans and other subalterns who were regarded as

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foreigners and subhuman. Hellinger tries to literally “revive” his reign of terror in contemporary Texas by, once again, stealing something that belongs to Mexicans—in this case El Muerto’s Aztec-giving powers and his very own brown body). But then, the narrative flips the script and assigns the role of heroes to two Mexican-Americans while highlighting the despicable evil of the Anglo lawman, whose decaying body and backward racist ways disintegrate into the oblivion of history. This narrative both advances resistant ideology in the form of a rebellious act and prevents a certain type of dominant nationalist ideology from, literally, coming back to life.

Unlike in El Muerto, in Blue Beetle there are no explicit manifestations of

Latino/a superiority or empowerment. This can be explained by the fact that it is a mainstream comic aimed at a general audience and a majority of the artists working on it are not Latinos/as, while El Muerto is independently published—allowing his author to express views that are ethnically and culturally motivated, as Hernandez has indicated

“that the lack of Mexican characters [and their stories] in comics” is something he has tried to address through his work (Personal communication). Nonetheless, a closer scrutiny of Blue Beetle reveals the subtle ways in which the comic does in fact advance the representational empowerment of Latinos/as in U.S. popular culture. The most obvious is the choice of a Latino youth to embody this iconic and traditionally white superhero for a new generation of comic book readers. While this choice can be easily dismissed as a marketing tactic on the part of DC Comics to gain new readers and increase sales within one of the fastest growing consumer markets in the United States, the comic’s impact on Latino/a media portrayals is still significant. Jaime is not a whitewashed Latino: he has dark hair and brown skin, is bilingual, and has strong cultural

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ties with his Latino/a family and community. Also, as stated earlier in this chapter, Jaime is constructed as a smart, responsible young man, challenging the traditional association between brown bodies and dangerous lifestyles. At the same time, the comic does a good job in addressing the nuances of Latino/a identity in the United States. For instance, it counteracts the perception that all Latinos/as share the dark-hair, dark-skin look of the

Reyes family, including Latino/a characters who “do not look Hispanic”: Jaime’s friend

Brenda, a red-hair with fair skin who is at least part Latina; and Joey “the blond Puerto

Rican,” a high-school jock whom Jaime and his friend Paco dislike. The choice of locale for the comic, El Paso, is also significant. Mainstream comics have been typically set in

New York or New York-like cities and have not made strong efforts to reflect the ethnic diversity of those environments. Conversely, El Paso’s population is over 80% Hispanic, according to 2012 data from the U.S. Census Bureau, making it one of the most Latino/a cities in the country (“El Paso County”). The rarity of having a mainstream superhero based on a majority Hispanic, southern border city is underscored by Paco, who says,

“We don’t get a lot of heroes down here” (Road Trip, 108). Blue Beetle does not specifically fight on behalf of Latinos/as, most often engaging in battles against forces that threaten all of humanity. For that reason, the comic is configured as a typical normative hero story that advances the dominant group’s (humans) interests vis-à-vis the invading aliens, sometimes prompting alliances between Blue Beetle and human nemesis such as La Dama. However, the fact that Blue Beetle’s designated geographic area of superheroic influence is comprised of El Paso and also Ciudad Juárez, automatically means most of the people he helps are Latinos/as and/or Mexicans. In that regard, the new Blue Beetle is not only an empowered Latino, but he also empowers his Mexican

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and Latino/a community through his powers and heroic deeds. We can say, then, that there is an element of subversion beneath the surface of an otherwise normative narrative marked by dominant “human/U.S” culture, as the Latino/a nature of the superhero, his close friends and allies, and the region that he protects inevitably open the doors to a resistant reading of the text.

With the previous considerations about ideology in mind, how do the hero narratives of Blue Beetle and El Muerto relate to dominant law-enforcement and structures of legality? In Blue Beetle, the presence of super-powered individuals on both sides of the good-versus-evil spectrum means that the law-enforcement apparatus is basically sidelined and ignored, as the only forces capable of battling The Reach and other monstrous villains that attack El Paso and other parts of the United States where

Jaime travels are Blue Beetle and his super-powered allies. Some of these allies—such as

La Dama and The Posse—engage in illegal activities and consequently are often at odds with the superhero. However, when enemies threaten something or someone that both

Jaime and these criminal groups hold dear, they hesitantly come together and join forces to protect their common interests. This tense and contradictory relationship between a hero such as Blue Beetle, criminal cartels, and gangs underscores the ambiguous nature of legality in the comic book series, where the only rule that is really followed is that of self-preservation against mutual adversaries. Personal allegiances are also stronger than a sense of abiding by state-sanctioned law, as Blue Beetle sometimes challenges immigration officers to get his friends and allies out of trouble. In the film adaptation of

El Muerto, the hero’s special powers also cause frictions with the law. When Diego becomes the main suspect of killing two priests, the local Sheriff confronts him and

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shoots him. Seeing how the Aztec zombie is able to revive himself, the Sheriff suffers a heart attack, but Juan Diego uses his abilities to bring him back to life. After this incident,

Diego in fact acquires a singular status in the narrative as a special being for whom neither the laws of nature nor of men apply, reason for which he is morally free to kill the

Tezcatlipoca-possessed shaman because such act is necessary for the survival of his community. In summary, both Blue Beetle and El Muerto advance a resistant view of legality that subordinates dominant law-enforcement norms and authority. Instead, these narratives give the power to decide what is right or wrong to special individuals whose abilities serve to highlight the inadequacy of the law-enforcement apparatus in an alternate society populated by super-human and extraterrestrial forces. Also, the superheroes, whose personal sense of justice predominates in these texts, focus not on what is legal but rather on doing what is necessary to protect their in-groups and those closest to them, even if that means sidelining the law and taking matters into their own hands.

Post-Apocalyptic Latinidad: Planet Terror and the Question of Difference

While in El Muerto the zombie is a very nuanced and individualized character who plays the role of the hero and overcomes his dark, monstrous fate (thus breaking with the conventions of the zombie narrative), in Robert Rodríguez’s Planet Terror the zombies are what they have been for almost 100 years in pulp fiction, comic books, films, and television in the United States and other parts of the world: mindless, terrifying, ravenous monsters who come back from the dead yet cannot die, and who play the role of scary adversaries by giving in to their flesh-eating instincts. Although it had its origins in

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aspects of Haitian voodoo practices with ancient African roots, the figure of the zombie as we know it today “belongs firmly to modern times” (Kendall 9), making its way into the U.S. imaginary via travel books such as William Seabrooks’s The Magic Island

(1929) at the beginning of the twentieth century. It was the emergent medium of film, however, that cemented the zombie’s iconic status, starting with the 1932 Hollywood production of White Zombie. Since then, a myriad other films, comic books, video games, and additional genres have helped to consolidate the zombie as a favorite among fans of horror stories. Such fascination remains even today: the Marvel Zombies have become one of the comics giant’s most popular franchises since their debut in 2005 (Kendall

179); the television series The Walking Dead (based on a comic book series of the same name and debuting in 2010) is one of the top cable shows in the United States today; and there are numerous zombie fan clubs and websites prowling the virtual world of the

Internet, along with “live” zombie games played at college campuses across the United

States.

In Planet Terror, residents of a small Texas town are turned into zombies by a secret military experiment gone wrong. As they attack other humans in this sleepy community, they transmit the substance that made them zombies in the first place and further spread the epidemic. But what does this premise—all too familiar in recent U.S. zombie movies, which have been interpreted as allegories of contemporary cultural concerns such as “the wrath of the silent majority and America’s predilection for self- destruction […], attacks on mindless consumerism, and military-scientific bungling”

(Newman 7)—have to do with Latinos/as, identity, and heroism? Christopher González has interpreted Planet Terror as “immigration satire,” given the fact that the small group

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of survivors that is able to avoid the widespread zombie infestation opts to leave Texas and cross the border into Mexico in order to survive. For González, “Rodríguez uses the zombie genre to satirically comment on real life-or-death situations and material realities that compel people to cross human-made borders at all” (151), as he “ingeniously subverts the archetypical zombie trope of defending a small space by having his survivor group—a group the audience is cued to identify with—leave their nation and cross a border because their lives depend on it” (157). By radically reverting the traditional U.S.-

Mexico narrative of immigration, Rodríguez also translocates the discourses of fear and invasion associated with Latino/a immigration into the United States and which are paramount to understanding stories featuring border-crossing monsters. In this case, the

“dangerous alien” is coming from the United States in the form of life-destroying zombies and Mexico is fashioned as the place where the survivors can start a new life. In addition to immigration, Planet Terror also comments on the related issue of cultural assimilation. González views the survivors’ battle against zombification not just as an instinctual effort to avoid death, but also as a metaphor for resisting assimilation into the ways of the undead. The film, then, serves as a reversal of the assimilation narrative so popular in U.S. literature and popular culture, as “Rodríguez models a fear of assimilation into the alien culture” (González 159). Reverse immigration and the anti-assimilation drive help to frame the way heroism functions in Planet Terror, as the film’s Latino/a- identified heroes fight both zombies and military villains to preserve the essential human identity and cohesiveness of their multicultural in-group, cross borders to ensure their survival, and establish a new form of cultural identity that is heavily anchored in

Indigenous and Latino/a culture.

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The main Latino/a hero of Planet Terror is El Wray, a tough, no-nonsense young man who shares many of the characteristics of Rodríguez’s other Mexican and Latino/a action heroes, such as El Mariachi and Machete. The owner of a wreckage business, El

Wray (played by Freddy Rodriguez, a Chicago-born actor of Puerto Rican ancestry), is a mysterious character who has had several run-ins with the law, as evidenced by the tense relationship he maintains with the local sheriff. Even though he has settled in this town and lives an otherwise ordinary life, El Wray possesses incredible gun-fighting abilities resulting from his past as some sort of special military agent, which allow him later on in the film to assume a heroic role in the battle against the zombies. But unlike El Mariachi and Machete, not a whole lot is known about El Wray, his past, or his identity. And unlike them, El Wray’s Latino identity is not made explicit in the film. In addition to his physical appearance and director Rodríguez’s choice of a Latino actor for the role, the only other clues viewers are provided with are his name (a phonetic play on El Rey,

Spanish for “The King”) and the one word of Spanish that he utters in the movie, as he calls his ex-girlfriend Cherry Darling palomita (little dove). The reason for this differentiated construction of Latino/a heroes in terms of identity markers can be explained by the conventions of the zombie film genre. As González points out, in zombie movies the only categorial identities that matter are zombies and non-zombies, as

“social groups effectively become a matter of ‘us’ versus ‘them’” (159). Consequently, viewers are less concerned about racial, cultural, gender, socioeconomic, national, linguistic or other differences with specific characters, and “will consistently gravitate to the non-zombie group” (160). In Planet Terror, the survivor group includes whites,

Latinos/as, young, old, heterosexuals, and homosexuals, all of whom must find a way to

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come together and work past their differences in a very short period of time, following the zombie film genre trope of “bringing survivors from disparate social groups together and they must depend on one another” (González 154). While in a Rodríguez film like

Machete the in-group is unmistakably Latino/a and much emphasis is placed on its construction as such vis-à-vis the Anglo out-group, in Planet Terror the conventions of the zombie film genre call for Latino/a characters to be less prominent in terms of cultural identification, since the advancement of the movie’s main storyline is more dependent on the way the multicultural and heterogeneous survivor in-group operates in opposition to the out-group, the zombies. However, this does not mean that Latino/a identity—and particularly Latino/as heroic identity—is not significant overall in terms of plot structure, resolution of the story, and ideological implications.

Despite Planet Terror’s emphasis on the small band of survivors as a heroic in- group, El Wray is by far the character who most prominently embodies the traits of the action hero in the film. In addition to his skills handling weapons, El Wray possesses superb physical abilities, agility, and fearlessness that mirror those of Rodríguez’s other leading Mexican and Latino/a male heroes. These skills, together with the revelation of

El Wray’s past as a special military agent, make him the most suitable individual to lead the group of non-infected survivors on their quest to escape from the ravenous zombies.

But before he emerges as the in-group’s undisputed leader, Rodríguez challenges the audience’s expectations and stereotypes, leading viewers to believe that El Wray is just another Latino criminal. After El Wray takes his former girlfriend, Cherry Darling

(played by Rose McGowan), to the hospital following a zombie attack that claims one of her legs, Sheriff Hague removes him by force from the emergency room as if he were

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wanted by the law and tells him: “C’mon Wray, you know you are not supposed to be doing that stuff anymore [carrying weapons]… Not with your history.” The sheriff then handcuffs El Wray and takes him with him and his deputies. Not long after, however, El

Wray’s true identity as an elite military operative is revealed and the sheriff, in a sort of anointing ceremony, hands him a gun and tells him: “Take this, and do what you do best.” Immediately, El Wray takes control of the situation, telling the other survivors:

“Everyone behind me.” El Wray manages to lead the group past countless zombies and the soldiers responsible for the zombie outbreak, who are themselves zombies looking for a cure. He also helps Cherry become a fighter, fashioning a high-power machine gun that she can wear in place of her amputated leg. Knowing that Sherry is pregnant with their child, El Wray carries out the ultimate heroic deed by sacrificing himself to save them both, just as the group was getting ready to escape to safety. This scene further heroicizes

El Wray, as he is portrayed as a sort of Latino Moses who has fought to liberate his people from the slavery of undead-ness and now watches, dying, as they are about to venture into their Promised Land. Despite his demise, El Wray’s heroics and his Latino cultural identity survive through the child that Cherry is carrying.

Perhaps the most significant contribution of El Wray’s heroic leadership is his insistence that the survivor group leave Texas and cross the border into Mexico, putting

“the ocean at your back” in order to be in a defensible position. This idea not only proves to be lifesaving for the group of survivors, but it also infuses Planet Terror with all sorts of transgressive political discourses. First, it represents a complete reversal of the traditional, America-centric immigration narrative in which the U.S. is the land of opportunity while Mexico is the supplier of desperate people seeking a new life. In the

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film, the United States becomes a desolate deathtrap that the survivors must escape, while

Mexico (and its proud Indigenous heritage represented by the Caribbean Sea-coast

Mayan ruins of Tulum) is resemanticized as the Promised Land where life can start anew.

By staging such traumatic, violent, and forced migration out of the United States,

Rodríguez draws attention to the harsh, real-life circumstances that drive people from

Latin America and other parts of the world to “illegally” immigrate into the United

States. And he does it by putting a group of ordinary U.S. citizens from various walks of life in a situation in which they have to trespass into the neighboring country to the south for the sake of survival: their only choices are migrating and leaving everything behind, or dying. Second, the movie places blame for the accident that is turning humans into zombies on the U.S. military. In doing that, it links state power and its repressive forces with a sense of “homeland insecurity” that forces ordinary citizens both to protect themselves from the state (by confronting the zombified soldiers) and to make their own rules for survival and social organization, independent from any national regime.

As a result, Planet Terror as a heroic narrative advances resistant ideology, as the band of survivors basically becomes a rebel group that must battle the zombie out-group and the military adversaries that are seeking to eliminate it—or at the very least trying to make it assimilate into their undead culture through infestation. Furthermore, this group holds no national allegiance of any kind, as it will go anywhere that offers a safe haven even if it requires the crossing of national borders—which in the end are exposed as meaningless political constructs in a world that is drastically redefined and redrawn by the ever-spreading epidemic and the trail of destruction it leaves behind. The narrative also resists the characterization of Latinos/as as aliens and monsters, following Ramírez

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Berg’s analysis. While the zombies are not associated with any particular race or ethnicity, the military—through the zombified soldiers who spread the disease, led by a white officer played by Bruce Willis—does represent dominant (Anglo) ideology, thus embodying the monsters in the film. Meanwhile, the zombies represent a complete alien culture that has invaded Texas from within, instead of from across the border.

Questions of gender and heroism also arise in Planet Terror, ranging from the performance of male domination over female bodies to the liberation of those bodies and the destabilization of patriarchal structures. Just like it happens with El Mariachi and

Machete, El Wray’s heroic deeds are highly motivated by protecting his love interest,

Cherry. In fact, El Wray operates like the prince of a fairytale, protecting his princess, a damsel in distress—who is also shown at the beginning of the film in an overly sexualized way, performing a seductive dance in a skimpy outfit that only emphasizes her physical attributes. El Wray’s heroic involvement includes several instances of “saving”

Cherry: early in the film after her leg is chewed off by a zombie and he rushes her to the hospital; later on by creating a machine-gun leg she can on walk and defend herself with; and finally by sacrificing his life to spare hers. These actions, while noble, reinforce the dynamic of female dependence on hypermasculine heroes that is common in action films and action-packed science fiction films, not to mention the fact that such narratives tend to keep women from occupying central roles so that “heroism—and effectively, the dispensation of social justice of any sort—becomes the de facto province of men”

(Gallagher 14). Further underscoring the kind of active masculinity typically constructed in these films, a connection is made in Planet Terror between violence and virility through the association between guns and male genitalia. Early in the movie, El Wray

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confidently tells the sheriff that when he shoots, he never misses. Later, right before he dies, El Wray touches Cherry’s abdomen and promises her she won’t be alone: he is absolutely sure she is pregnant, even though they had sex just hours before, because, as he tells Cherry: “I never miss.” While Rodríguez challenges the dominant representation of U.S. action-oriented film heroes, who are typically white, his film is otherwise normative with regards to the representation of the male action hero as hypermasculine and hypersexual.

Despite the validity of the previous criticism, Planet Terror is much more complex when it comes to the representation of ethnic identity and gender power relations. In fact, Rodríguez employs the character of Cherry Darling to challenge viewers’ assumptions about cultural identity, female agency, and motherhood. While El

Wray is the one who gave Cherry her machine-gun leg, helping to transform her from an unsuccessful go-go dancer into a lethal warrior, she immediately embraces the incredible power it gives her and makes it her own. In the absence of El Wray, Cherry assumes leadership of the survivor group. As the group arrives at the Mayan ruins after a long trip, we now see Cherry as a commanding matriarch/mother figure, wearing a long white robe and a white head covering while carrying hers and El Wray’s daughter on her back. On the film’s last shot, Cherry’s clothing and the way she and her daughter are framed resemble an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe holding a small child, while a Mayan temple is shown in the background. This imagery is further punctuated by Cherry’s newfound statement of purpose, which has obvious religious connotations: “I find the lost, the weary, those who have no hope, and I lead them to a land that we have made for ourselves, a land by the sea.” Taken together, the film’s final scene ascribes Cherry a new

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identity as the Mexican/Indigenous mother of a new race. Her child comes to embody a new-new mestiza (to borrow and expand on Gloria Anzaldúa’s terminology), who in addition to the Spanish and Indigenous ancestry of her Latino father, now also has Anglo blood and culture as part of her hybrid identity. Cherry and her daughter also represent the hope for a utopian, matriarchal, post-racial society in which ethnic/cultural differences and traditional concepts of latinidad and Anglocentrism are questioned, and where paradigms of gender domination are subverted. Cherry also becomes the model for a new, transgressive form of maternal heroism, at some point shooting a zombie while carrying her baby on her back. By constructing this character as a super-working-mom- heroine, Rodríguez makes a powerful commentary on patriarchal assumptions about pregnant women and mothers and portrayals of domesticity and docility typically associated with maternity. Metaphorically speaking, the traditional “warrior hero” represented by El Wray fades out in the narrative to give way to a new form of matriarchal, racially ambiguous form of Latino/a heroism.

How do heroes engage with structures of legality in an apocalyptic and post- apocalyptic narrative such as Planet Terror? Initially in the film, the military and the local law enforcement authority (represented by Sheriff Hague) appear to be in control of the respective situations they are dealing with. But very quickly, the escape of the zombie gas from the military base and the resulting infestation among town denizens lead to complete chaos, which ultimately breaks down the rule of law and the conventions of society. The zombies only follow their instincts to consume and infect humans, while the basic rule of self-preservation becomes the driving force for non-infected individuals.

Even Sheriff Hague, realizing he and his surviving deputies can’t possibly deal with the

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worsening situation, lets go of any illusion of control and even abdicates his position of power to El Wray, recognizing he stands a better chance of leading them to safety. As the survivors make their way past the zombies who have surrounded them outside the Bone

Shack barbeque restaurant, they also face the military officials/zombies whose legal authority has been clearly undermined by their role in the infestation and their interest in exterminating the remaining humans. Regarding dystopian science fiction movies, Per

Schelde has indicated that some of their key characteristics include bureaucratic control by hegemonic forces associated with far-right ideologies, white rulers, docile bodies that make such a regime possible, and male supremacy” (187-195). A quick survey of Planet

Terror from a sociopolitical perspective reveals a structure of power and legality that is anchored on the characteristics identified by Schelde. First, the repressive state forces in the film are represented by two white men, Sheriff Hague (played by Michael Biehn) and

Lt. Muldoon (played by Bruce Willis), who leads the military unit. Second, the zombies in the film function as “docile bodies” that come to symbolize thoughtless mass culture and the dominant culture’s drive to make those who resist (the survivors) assimilate. By challenging and dismantling these legal structures and dominant culture forces in the film—Lt. Muldoon and his men are defeated, Sheriff Hague becomes just another survivor with equal power to the rest of the multicultural and diverse group, and the push for massification and assimilation is thwarted—Rodriguez constructs a radically resistant view of society in which the survivors must reinvent the rules and norms or social organization, including how security is to be handled to ensure preservation of the group and its utopian existence.

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Heroes: Back to Latino/a Distortions or Forward to Equal-Opportunity Stereotyping?

So far in this chapter, we have seen how recent science fiction and monster narratives featuring prominent Latino/a heroes are very progressive in their portrayal of

Hispanics, articulating discourses of resistance against the forces of cultural assimilation, anti-immigration nativism, and discrimination. In doing so, they have managed to revert the Hollywood distortion of Latinos/as represented as dangerous aliens and monsters that threaten U.S. national security and dominant culture—constructing instead alternative storyworlds in which heroic Latinos/as and Latino/a culture prevail, even in the face of potentially apocalyptic scenarios. The final and most recent of the narratives of this kind explored here, the TV series Heroes, is however more ambiguous and often contradictory with regards to the portrayal of Latinos/as and their connection with the alien/monster/threat formula investigated in this chapter. While the highly popular NBC show included in its multicultural cast of super-powered individuals three Latinos/as

(New York painter Isaac Méndez and Dominican twins Maya and Alejandro Herrera), their importance to the plot is secondary at best in comparison with the story’s most prominent characters. Two of them swiftly die (Isaac at the end of the first season and

Alejandro only a few episodes after his debut in the second season), while Maya is written off in the third season. More importantly, the show employs easily recognizable and toxic stereotypes in the depiction of these Latino/a characters, which tends to lessen the impact of their construction as heroic individuals and spoil the narrative’s contributions toward more favorable representations of minorities in contemporary U.S. media and popular culture.

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Before dissecting the way in which Heroes constructs its minority, and particularly its Latino/a, characters and the problems with those representations, it is important to preface such analysis with a note on the production conditions of the four- year series and the contributions it has made to contemporary hero-type narratives. Out of all the texts explored in this chapter, Heroes is by far the one with the highest audience.

During its first season, it averaged 15 million viewers, and even as its popularity declined by 2010, the show’s episodes were still watched by an average four million viewers

(Short 138-39). The series was also nominated for the Golden Globe and the Emmy and won multiple awards, including recognitions from the American Film Institute. A revolutionary aspect of Heroes is that it used a range of multimedia formats (wikis, webisodes, podcasts, and online graphic novels) to further engage with interested audiences, as well as to develop the show’s storyworld and characters in a manner that went beyond the traditional, weekly TV episodes. Because of such innovations, popular culture scholars such as Lynnette Porter regard Heroes as “one of the most important televisionary ‘hero’ texts for this generation of audiences” (152). In that regard, the show is a unique example of the power and growing influence of multimodality and interactivity in the brave new world of twenty-first century film and television. For example, the online graphic novel created during the time the show ran on television

(which consists of an astonishing 173 chapters), not just mirrored or reproduced the events taking place in the weekly episodes. In many cases, these chapters supplemented the mainline narrative of the show and even introduced characters to audiences before they were known on TV. In fact, Maya and Alejandro first appeared on chapter 51 of the graphic novel, which provides information about her deadly powers and portrays the

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havoc they wrecked in a small town in Honduras. While not crucial to the plot in the TV series, this background enriches audiences’ knowledge about the two characters and the circumstances in which they find themselves where they first appear on television. The aesthetics and conventions of the superhero comic book genre also have a great impact on the TV series, as a great deal of the overall “look” of the program is inspired by comics.

Additionally, Isaac’s comic book series 9th Wonders and his graphic novel-inspired paintings—both of which depict events in the future— play an essential role in the narrative, as they help other protagonists know what they must do in order to prevent death and destruction or what course of action they must undertake to fulfill their heroic destinies. In turn, the TV show influences the graphic novel, as the latter utilizes the aesthetics of Isaac’s comics and artwork, creating very enjoyable and path-breaking multimodal relationships and experiences.

Another novel characteristic of Heroes—which, just like its multimodality and multi-platform interactivity, is a sign of innovation in contemporary popular culture—is the high level of attention that the program paid to diversity and multiculturalism. While most superhero narratives focus on one or perhaps a small team of exceptional individuals who fight crime and protect the world, Heroes is all about ordinary people from all backgrounds and all corners of the planet who suddenly discover extraordinary and unexplainable powers they never knew they had. As they deal with the consequences of their newfound powers, they come into contact with other “specials” like them and become highly interdependent on each other both to learn about the nature of their mutations and to make sense of what their “heroic” missions are. In that regard, the

“heroes” become a community in which socioeconomic class, race, ethnicity, national

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origin, or gender as identity categories are largely erased and subordinated to the two things they have in common: their superhuman abilities and their struggle to survive in a world that fears that which makes them different. As Bronwen Calvert indicates, the protagonists’ powers allow them to cut across “many of the boundaries that would ordinarily separate them” (20), rendering differences among them useless. In the post-

9/11 era, the characters’ cosmopolitanism and ability to transcend differences— particularly those associated with ethnicity and national origin—seem to suggest that

Heroes is making a political statement in response to “xenophobic racism and globalized violence, conducted in the name of patriotism and nationalism” (Chan 145), emphasizing interconnectivity rather than nationalistic or ethnic divisions. This is a radical departure from other popular post-9/11 era TV dramas such as 24 and Homeland, in which the heightened awareness of difference and the threat to U.S. national security coming from abroad or from “domestic terrorists” are actually accentuated.

Nonetheless, despite its innovation in format and progressive stance regarding multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism, Heroes has serious flaws when it comes to the specific construction of its minority characters and the limits of its attempt to create a true narrative of “global heroism.” While the series empowers a motley crew of every imaginable background—including poor African-Americans, the son of a rich Japanese executive, Latin American outlaws, a brilliant Indian scientist, and a powerful Italian-

American family—by choosing them to be the recipients of special powers, their characterization suffers from tired clichés and stereotypes even as they occupy the role of heroes. For instance, one of Heroes’ main protagonists, Hiro Nakamura, is at first portrayed as a nerdy Asian who speaks broken English. These characteristics, together

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with his short stature and chubby appearance, make Hiro resemble a common type of goofball anime character who serves as comic relief. Later on in the series, as the character evolves, Hiro speaks perfect English and has lost his initial nerdiness, but is again represented through another common Japanese film/TV trope: the samurai fighter.

Other minority or ethnic characters experience the same stereotypical treatment: African-

American D.L. Hawkins is an unemployed ex-convict, while the Petrelli family (Italian-

Americans) is involved in shady businesses and has connections with organized crime.

Kenneth Chan has proposed that Heroes’ celebrated inclusion of international and ethnic characters could be seen just as “multicultural tokenism” (149), as a strategy to capitalize on increasingly diverse audiences in the United States and abroad. However, the representational injury inflicted by the show goes well beyond badly implemented good intentions. Torsten Caeners has indicated that this show “represents a new twist on the notion of the melting pot/multi-ethnicity metaphor, and in doing so asks whether or not

U.S. society would be able “‘to fuse into a new nation’ that incorporates the newness represented by the ‘specials’” (131-132). The answer is no. While there is merit in the fact that the powers and differences of these multicultural and international heroes challenge Anglo-dominated heroic narratives, the U.S. government eventually turns on the “specials,” as Homeland Security persecutes them and regards them as

“undocumented”—thus enacting fear of the alien and ethnic “Others” because of their potentially dangerous differences. Cosmopolitanism also has its limits. While a good number of the heroes are from other parts of the world, New York—the traditional hometown in superhero comics—is by far the focal point of action in the series (and the city that must be saved from villains) as the international characters migrate there for

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several reasons. In other words, the show’s supposed globality is quickly reduced to a traditional U.S.-centric, national heroic narrative that re-articulates the myth of the

Melting Pot, as the immigrant heroes ultimately become assimilated into American culture.

The ambiguous portrayal of minority and foreign-born characters that is common in Heroes also extends to the series’ Latino/a protagonists—and is perhaps even more problematic in their cases. Isaac (played by Venezuelan-born actor Santiago Cabrera) is extremely important to the narrative’s plot, as he can prophesy events in the future and convey them through his paintings. Even after his death, the other heroes employ Isaac’s paintings as a roadmap to try to stop a nuclear explosion that would destroy most of New

York—an obvious reference to the 9/11 bombings. The “specials” also use a variety of clues presented in Isaac’s art to keep the show’s main villain, Sylar, from murdering

Claire the cheerleader and stealing her self-regeneration powers, which would make him virtually invincible. Because of his particular power and role in the narrative, Isaac is represented through a variety of religious intertexts—a characteristic he shares with

Planet Terror’s El Wray. The most obvious is his portrayal as a modern-day prophet, as his painted premonitions are treated as divine revelations that come unexpectedly and seemingly out of nowhere, making the artist go into a trance during which he literally sees the future. Additionally, at the time of his death at the hands of Sylar, Isaac is portrayed as a savior figure: an overhead shot shows him nailed to the floor of his studio with his own paint brushes, in a position that resembles that of the crucified Christ, his long hair and beard featuring prominently. This messianic imagery is reinforced by

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Isaac’s assertion that through his power, “I can save everybody” (Heroes: Season 1,

Episode 4).

Thus far, Isaac’s representation as a minority hero is indeed empowering and transgressive, as he plays a key role in the narrative and is portrayed through religious tropes that are culturally significant. However, such positive representation loses its power and subversive nature because of the stereotype that is brought up in his portrayal: the Latino male as drug addict. Isaac is addicted to heroine, and the only way he can activate his power and paint the future is by using this illicit drug. As a result, Isaac’s power and heroic contributions become dependent on his addiction. In fact, the two actions—the activation of the power and getting high on heroine—are visually shown as inseparable and indistinguishable, as Isaac goes into a trance and his eyes acquire an unnatural light blue hue and extremely bright appearance. His portrayal and the framing of the shots during these heroin-induced trances are very similar to the way Cuban drug dealer Tony Montana (played by Al Pacino) is shown in the film Scarface when he, too, is high on drugs. While the similarities between these two representations of Latinos in

U.S. visual media may be accidental and unintended on the part of the creators of Heroes, the consequences are nonetheless inescapable. As Steven Bender has posited, “the most unifying stereotype among Latina/o groups today [since the 1970s] might be their construction as drug dealers or drug users” (41), while “the association of Latinas/os with drugs may produce a similar conception of Latinas/os as a security and terrorist threat”

(47). Thus, the link between Isaac and drug use helps to reproduce this unfortunate stereotypical treatment of Latinos/as. And because Isaac depends on heroin to make his power work, his condition as a junkie—he is often shown unkempt, disheveled,

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distraught, exasperated, and out of control—takes away from his positive representation as an empowered Latino hero. There is, however, a silver lining to this otherwise problematic portrayal: Isaac’s drug use is treated in the show as a means to a noble end, as a personal sacrifice made for the sake of the greater good. In that regard, Isaac serves a

“tragi-heroic function” (Short 142) in the TV show, living and dying as a talented yet tormented individual.

In the case of Maya (played by Dominican-born actress Dania Ramírez) and

Alejandro (played by Puerto Rican-born actor Shalim Ortiz), their portrayals are also laden with stereotypical treatments related to their condition as fugitives and undocumented immigrants, as well as to Maya’s contradictory gender construction.

While Isaac’s representation emphasizes the indispensability of his ability to the narrative’s plot and the fate of his fellow heroes, in the case of the Dominican twins’ characterization there doesn’t seem to be much of a redeeming or even useful quality.

Maya’s power is the production a black toxic substance from her eyes that can kill the people around her. This power is automatically activated when Maya feels threatened or is upset, although she later learns how to control it and use it at will. Alejandro is the only person not affected by the poison and also the only one who can stop its deadly effects by calming Maya down. Maya first discovered her ability, which she regards more as a curse, during her brother’s wedding in their native county, as she accidentally killed the guests after having found out that the bride had been cheating on Alejandro. The incident forced the siblings to escape and begin a life as fugitives, wandering through Latin

America and later deciding to go to New York to find Chandra Suresh—the expert on

“specials” whose book Maya came across and whom she hoped could cure her. In the

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graphic novel that preceded the twins’ appearance on the TV series, Maya’s power is described as a threat, as one of those “mutations that could harm the positive evolution of a species [and lead to] the extinction of the species” (“Maya y Alejandro,” Heroes:

Chapter 51, 3-4), in stark contrast with other positive traits such as the ability to fly or to self-regenerate possessed by the most prominent characters of the show. Maya’s power never leads to any good outcomes. After meeting Mohinder Suresh, Chandra’s son, in

New York, the geneticist uses chemicals from Maya’s body to obtain powers of his own, which eventually leads the once “good guy” into becoming a monstrous mutated being.

Finally, Maya’s power is stolen by a villain, Arthur Petrelli, and hence used for evil purposes.

Because of the nature of Maya’s power, she can hardly be said to fulfill any real heroic role in Heroes. This means that the main way in which she is represented in the graphic novel and the TV series is as the carrier of a dangerous mutation and a threat.

Despite the fact that she is not portrayed as a heartless killer the way true villains such as

Sylar are and her character elicits sympathy because she can’t control her power and is remorseful about the unintended consequences of her actions, Maya is still narratively constructed as a Latina alien/monster threat such as the ones described by Ramírez Berg.

Carrying this threat, running away from the authorities, Maya and Alejandro’s “illegal” journey (as undocumented and as wanted by the law) is shown in detail as they approach the United States—thus becoming metaphors of the millions of “dangerous” Latino/a immigrants who have made and still make the same voyage north, as construed by the most nativist and extreme anti-migration sectors within U.S. society and politics. We first see them in Honduras, where they leave dead bodies on their trail. In Guatemala, a

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curandera tells Maya that she has a new disease that is “negra […] no tiene cura,” and that Maya herself is “maldita” (Heroes: Season 2, Episode 2), further highlighting the menace she represents. In Mexico, the twins escape from jail and—after having found

Sylar on the road and allowing him to join them—they reach the U.S. border, where

Maya’s power is activated as a band of cowboy-looking vigilantes try to stop them.

Alejandro is ultimately killed by Sylar, who sees him as an obstacle toward wooing Maya and acquiring her power. While in the United States, Maya joins the other “specials” and is given documents to be able to stay in the country legally. Later on, however, when the government begins persecuting individuals with powers, Maya becomes a fugitive once more, seeking help from other “undocumented” ones. But like in Isaac’s case, there is an element of transgression within the otherwise distorted representation of Maya as a dangerous “illegal” Latina immigrant. Like most immigrants, Maya leaves her native country driven by the desire to improve her life, in this case finding a cure for her condition. She is able to endure the difficult voyage to the United States, avoiding arrest, impeding sexual assault by unscrupulous coyotes, and defeating the border vigilantes.

Later on, she survives attempts on her life by both Sylar and Mohinder and manages to not get caught by Homeland Security. Her determination, capacity to withstand adversity, and ability to foil both irregular and state-sanctioned forces that prey on immigrants and those who are different give Maya’s particular storyline a resistant quality that contradicts—at least to some extent—her alternate construction as an “alien threat.”

Ambiguity is also present in the gender construction of Maya and Alejandro.

Maya is the stronger of the twins, the one who possesses an active power that can at least be used for self-protection and to protect those she esteems, and the only one who speaks

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English—which gives her the upper-hand when they reach the United States. Alejandro, on the other hand, is portrayed as over-cautious and passive; he is Maya’s antidote, and as such his power is dependent on hers. In that regard, Heroes represents Latinas as stronger and having more agency than Latinos. On the other hand, Maya’s representation when it comes to her personal life leaves much to be desired, as it feeds on another common stereotype: the overly emotional Latino/a (Ramírez Berg 68). Despite her strength and determination, Maya is also portrayed as an individual who lets her emotions easily get in the way of her judgment, is gullible, passionate, and unstable. She is quickly wooed by Sylar, whom she sees as a guardian angel (his first name is Gabriel) that can lead the siblings to salvation. Even when Alejandro—who is presented as the prudent and careful twin—shows Maya proof that Sylar is a murderer, she refuses to believe him. Sue

Short has pointed out that the fact that Maya’s power is an uncontrollable ability to kill with her tears is particularly disquieting, “given a temperament that provokes tears at the drop of a hat” (159). Short also criticizes the way Maya’s representation shifts during the series, as she goes from wearing a nun’s habit (believing she is cursed) to being shown donning progressively skimpier outfits, a period during which she easily falls in love with men who try to kill her: “A deadly female is thus made into a naïve dupe who barely survives two near-death experiences (at the hands of former lovers) prior to being written out” (Short 159). The case of Maya demonstrates how difficult it seems to be for mainstream heroic narratives to portray strong women without excessively sexualizing them or demeaning them, especially for minority women such as Latinas whose traditional portrayals carry both stereotypes.

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Heroes’ underlying theme is “difference,” and the show explores both its potential and its dangers. The “specials” are clearly configured and presented as the out-group, whose powers challenge the status quo and conformity of the dominant culture and its reticence to embrace newness and change. This makes the heroes of Heroes very different from those of Blue Beetle, El Muerto, and Planet Terror, who are aligned with their narratives’ dominant groups—humans, U.S. Latinos/as, and human survivors, respectively. For that reason, the actions that the “specials” undertake to try to survive, keep from being captured, and avoid assimilation into the dominant culture (through denial of their powers) make them resistant heroes, while the narrative as a whole can be considered a story of rebellion. In the case of the minority and foreign heroes, Latinos/as included, they embody two levels of difference: they are different because of their powers, and they are different because of their ethnicity and/or national origin. Maya, in particular, is represented as a double outsider. On the one hand, she struggles just like the other “specials” to form alliances and figure out ways to control her ability and stay away from governmental authorities and other interests that pursue people with powers. On the other hand, as an immigrant, she also faces the task of adapting to a new country and culture and to negotiate complex issues of identity and guilt. This preponderance of difference in Heroes also dictates the relationships between the in-group and the out- group in terms of legality. Throughout the story, various private companies and government agencies engage in different efforts to control the individuals with powers, which include forced experimentation and legal persecution. Some “specials” choose to work for these entities of social control, thus aligning themselves with the dominant structure of legality; while others rebel and go underground, choosing instead to

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challenge authority figures and the laws that label them as “undocumented” (in other words, illegal) because of their differences and their status as societal outsiders.

As examined in this chapter, recent science fiction and horror stories that feature minority characters playing the role of heroes tend to reflect and also raise questions about important post-9/11 issues such as immigration, the treatment of people who are

“different,” the role of the state and its repressive forces in society, and the precarious nature of the “nation” in the face of increased transnationalism and globality as well as the possibility of catastrophic scenarios that would undermine its power. From the analysis of these stories, we can conclude that for the most part they do engage in resistant representational politics. Blue Beetle, El Muerto, and Planet Terror offer a counter-discourse to the use of aliens and monsters as stand-ins for “dangerous”

Latinos/as in contemporary U.S. visual narratives. More importantly, these narratives articulate a politics of resistance and anti-assimilation, as the heroes display and strengthen their hybrid Latino/a identities as a way to resist attempts by threatening forces to absorb them into their violent ways and thus forsake their cultural specificities.

These narratives also challenge dominant, American-centric, and exclusionary discourses regarding the U.S.-Mexico border and immigration into the United States by portraying the border as a fluid space (both geographically and culturally) that can dramatically change as a result of unexpected, apocalyptic events over which the state has no control—thus rendering political, ethnic, racial, socioeconomic, and cultural divisions meaningless. The most ambiguous and problematic of the texts explored in this chapter is

Heroes, which features Latino/a heroes among its multicultural cast but falls into the trap of using unfortunate stereotypes to portray them: the drug user, the overly emotional

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Latina, and the foreign threat. At the same time, Heroes does address the issues of immigration and race from a more nuanced perspective, warning against the risks of excluding and persecuting those who are considered “different” and “threatening” because of their differences.

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Chapter 4—Truth, Justice, and the (Anglo) American Way: Law-Enforcement Latino/a Heroes and the Politics of Identity

The previous chapters have dealt primarily with Latino/a heroic narratives and characters that seek to challenge and destabilize dominant legal structures as well as

Anglo nationalist ideologies. In this chapter, I explore a different kind of narrative, characterized by heroism discourses in which the Latino/a hero serves the role of protecting the U.S. homeland from foreign threats, acting as soldiers during war or as government agents involved in other types of international conflicts. Instead of questioning and running counter to prevailing laws or sense of military duty, these heroic figures embrace such laws and duties and strive to enforce them, feeling fully identified with their missions and patriotic responsibilities. While the circumstances of these stories and their heroes vary widely, including real-life soldiers and law-enforcement agents as well as fictional action heroes, what unites them is the fact that they are all committed to defending U.S. interests from a slew of dangerous “others” who threaten the nation. In doing so, they can be considered “national heroes,” in the sense that they embody core

American values such as commitment to democracy, the rule of law, and individual freedom; and support American geopolitical interests such as global leadership and access to resources and markets.

The national hero status of these Latino/a characters cannot be underscored enough because of its rarity in U.S. popular culture. As previously indicated in this

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dissertation, negative and stereotypical portrayals of Latino/as grossly outweigh positive representations of and about them in U.S. media and popular culture. And while portrayals of Latinos/as have vastly improved in number and prominence both in independent and mainstream productions in recent years, there is still a long way to go toward more dignified, nuanced, and non-stereotypical representations of this community

(Ramírez Berg, “Stereotyping in Films,” 104; 117-118). Additionally, as Sue J. Kim explains in her analysis of diversity in the films of Robert Rodríguez, we still do not see enough positive representations of ethnic and gender minorities in the film industry at large “despite popular discussions of post-feminism and a ‘post-racial’ society” (201).

However, considering the dreadful history of pervasive negative representations of

Latinos/as in U.S. popular culture and media, finding even if only a few portrayals of

Latinos/as rising beyond the role of ethnic- or community-specific heroes and reaching broad national heroic status is significant, as it signals at least some progress in the battle over more progressive forms of representation in mainstream media. On the other hand, becoming a nationally sanctioned minority hero17 can come at a representational and ideological cost. As the analysis in this chapter will show, specific Latino/a identity markers tend to be obliterated, hidden, or at the very least diluted in the construction of these heroic figures, as nationalist hero narratives tend to emphasize commonality rather than difference. In the few instances where nationalist hero narratives feature minorities or diverse positions, they do so with the goal of signifying universal consensus and support for the national cause. Another constriction of this type of narrative is that it

17 Nationally sanctioned heroes are understood here as those receiving official state recognition such as medals or awards of honor (in the case of historical individuals), or similar official recognition within their narratives in the case of fictional characters. 254

limits self-representation and self-determination, as their heroes are designed to fulfill predetermined roles and functions that fit within the logic and purpose of the narrative. In some extreme cases, the minority hero is reduced to a mere pawn used by the dominant group to justify an ideologically driven enterprise. It comes as no surprise, then, that the

Latino/a national heroes of popular culture are normative with respect to the dominant political and power structures that they embody through their actions. However, as we will see, a few of them sometimes express individualistic features that run counter to other dominant social structures.

This chapter includes three hero narratives represented in films and television series produced between 1960 and 2006, ranging from historical World War II battles in the Pacific Ocean to the defense of a fictional U.S. homeland from cyberworld threats.

Despite their differences, all the heroes featured in these narratives share the common role of being engaged in U.S. government-sanctioned national security enterprises. The first hero, Guy Gabaldon, is a Mexican-American Marine from East Los Angeles who achieved notoriety during War World II’s Battle of Saipan, convincing up to 800

Japanese soldiers to surrender thanks to his basic knowledge of the language, which he had learned from his Japanese-American friends back in the United States. Gabaldon’s remarkable deeds were the subject of the 1960 film Hell to Eternity, directed by Phil

Karlson and starring Anglo actor Jeffrey Hunter as Gabaldon. Critics of the film point to the fact that Gabaldon’s Latino heritage and ethnicity were vastly ignored in this portrayal. One of these critics, Steve Rubin, sought to address Hell to Eternity’s misrepresentations and obliteration of the hero’s Latino background in the documentary

East L.A. Marine: The Untold True Story of Guy Gabaldon (2006). The second heroic

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narrative analyzed here is also based on a real-life story and deals with an international conflict, although it is very different kind of war. Drug Wars: The Camarena Story recounts the life and death of Enrique “Kiki” Camarena, a Mexican-American agent with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, played by Cuban-American actor Steven Bauer.

Produced as a miniseries for television in 1990 and repackaged in a condensed DVD version in 2003 by Artisan Entertainment, this “good guy versus bad guy,” cowboy-style narrative pits the patriotic, family-devoted Camarena against the violent, self-serving

Mexican drug trafficker Rafael Caro Quintero, played by Benicio del Toro. Following the same Hollywood narrative strategy, Drug Wars also brings into confrontation an

American law-enforcement apparatus portrayed as seeking justice against all odds and at any cost versus a Mexican justice and political system shown as utterly inefficient and corrupt. The final hero narrative to be studied in this chapter is Spy Kids, a science fiction family film saga directed by Latino auteur Robert Rodríguez. I will concentrate on the original Spy Kids trilogy (released between 2001 and 2003), which revolves around a

Latino/a family of action heroes, the Cortezes, employed by the Organization of Super

Spies—a reference to the Office of Strategic Services, predecessor of the Central

Intelligence Agency (CIA). Through their various adventures around the world and even in the virtual realm of a videogame, the Cortezes reinforce the value placed by Latino/a culture on family closeness and extended family ties, yet very few other Latino/a cultural markers are present in the constitution of their characters. I have chosen these texts because they represent three distinct time periods and types of trans-border conflict, which allows for studying changes in the historical representation of minorities-as-heroes in U.S. nationalist narratives.

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U.S. Foreign Policy and ‘Nationalist’ Hero Narratives

U.S. foreign policy and nationalism are strongly intertwined in the hero narratives explored in this chapter. As M. Kent Bolton explains, since becoming a republic, the key values represented by the United States—political freedom and liberty versus its opposite, tyranny—have been “often expressed in its foreign policy,” including a history of concern about how foreign powers and foreign influence might weaken American defenses (9-10). This preoccupation with national sovereignty, Bolton adds, was later supplemented by the national myths of “thwarting tyranny” and promoting “peace and prosperity,” even if it meant that those endeavors could become exportable to other nations (13-14). Because of the United States’ extensive interventionist history, Carl

Boggs refers to American foreign policy as “the ideology of global domination” (58), recalling how after the conquest of Indian lands and closure of the Western frontier, U.S. imperial expansion turned outward: “A U.S. penchant for military ventures would build upon the Revolutionary War success, the Monroe Doctrine, conquest of Mexican territory, and protracted warfare against Indian tribes. Brute force was not to be avoided but rather embellished as an instrument of progress and democracy, a refrain heard repeatedly to the present day” and justified by “a civilizing mission to uplift supposedly inferior peoples around the world” (58). In other words, as Christopher Paul Moore succinctly puts it, the national narrative could be summarized as the “ideal of America as a people chosen by God, first to conquer the continent and then to lead the world” (xviii).

It is against this historical backdrop that the Latino/a hero narratives studied in this chapter are set and should be considered, given the longstanding and complicated history of U.S. imperialism and interventionism in former Mexican territories and throughout

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Latin America and the Caribbean. Furthermore, it is important to note the role that national boundaries and borderlands play in the constitution of the conflicts that give rise to rival camps and heroic figures in these narratives. Whether the confrontations take place in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, in the midst of a video game, or just south of the

U.S.-Mexico border, the actions undertaken by the individuals or groups who represent

American interests point toward the same goal: the defense of the homeland in interstitial spaces that, more than physical territories, function as discursive borderlands where such

“heroic” actions are fully justified precisely because the occupation of those spaces is presented as necessary for the preservation of the republic on this side of the border. As

Camilla Fojas posits in her examination of border-themed Hollywood films, “[t]he borderlands are zones of the uncanny, full of buried pasts that threaten irruption across their serene space […] Guarding the border is a loose metaphor for guarding history, keeping secrets, staving off the unresolved stuff of the past, and making it remain at the edges of the national consciousness” (104). Those “buried pasts” are usually connected with U.S. military interventions on the various frontiers of its expanding global presence, where nationalist heroic narratives take place. A similar exploration of the relationship between American foreign policy and borderlands is undertaken by Tony Payan, who claims that the three major wars in which the U.S. is currently engaged—and which to some extent encompass most of the hero narratives of this chapter—are connected to its southern border, are articulated in terms of border security, and are becoming indistinguishable in nature: the war on drugs, the war on immigration, and the war for homeland security. What ties these wars together, Payan states, is “the rhetoric of an enemy and an invasion” (xiii), which as we will see in this analysis, is essential fodder for

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hero narratives in which the nation is at stake.

In Understanding Nationalism: On Narrative, Cognitive Science, and Identity,

Patrick Colm Hogan expands on his previous work regarding heroic stories and ideology by reflecting on what he calls nationalist heroic narratives. Nationalism—for Andreas

Wimmer “the most powerful ideology in the history of modernity” (32)—is linked with storytelling in a crucial sense, as “[t]he development, organization, and specification of nationalist thought and action are bound up with narrative structure, both in its general or schematic form and in its most prototypical specifications […] Indeed, I would go so far as to say that nationalism cannot be understood in separation from narrative”

(Understanding Nationalism 168). Out of the various universal narrative structures he has identified, Hogan sees the heroic plot as the one that is “fundamental for nationalism”

(Understanding Nationalism 193), as “we tend to think of the nation in terms of a heroic narrative” (Understanding Nationalism 216). The prototypical heroic plot, as we have seen, involves the removal of the in-group’s legitimate leader by a usurper, or at the very least a challenge to the authority of the in-group by an out-group. The in-group or home society is then threatened by an enemy, typically an invader who represents the out- group. The exiled leader or his/her representative (the hero) fights back and defeats the enemy, regaining leadership and restoring the initial order. The ideological resolution of the story, Hogan explains, “is the reaffirmation of the authority of the national leadership, the divinely guaranteed power of the nation, the inferiority of the national enemy, and the control of the national land” (Understanding Nationalism 193-194). According to Hogan, the two components of the heroic plot that have the most consequences for nationalism are the usurpation sequence (in which the home society is stripped of leadership or

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otherwise challenged) and the external threat/defense sequence, “commonly a war story”

(Understanding Nationalism 213). The reasons, Hogan claims, are self-evident:

The usurpation sequence fosters an emotional commitment to the internal

hierarchy of the national in-group. It creates an internal or secondary in-

group/out-group division between loyalists and usurpers, with all that this entails

evaluatively, emotionally, and so forth […] The threat/defense sequence no less

obviously contributes to the saliency of the national category (through emphasis

on threat to the group as such), its opposability (through coordinated battle against

the enemy), its affectivity (through the many emotionally charged consequences

of war), as well as our sense of its durability (through the nation’s ultimate

triumph) and our understanding of its functionality (after all, the entire conflict,

with all of its consequences, is a matter of nationality). The increases in our

imagination of opposability, durability, and functionality are also bound up with

the heroic narrative’s strong reinforcement of the demonization of the enemy

(both external and internal) and its concrete development of the divine election of

the nation. (Understanding Nationalism 213-214)

In the analysis of the three nationalist hero narratives included in this chapter, I will concentrate on these two plot sequences underlined by Hogan, seeking to establish their connections with the nationalistic elements of the larger narrative.

In addition to these plot structure elements, I will explore the way heroic figures are constructed in these narratives. Heroes rise to such status in nationalist tales as they engage in battle against the enemy, and thus war—in the variety of shapes it might take— is essential to hero formation. Because of its central role, heroic narratives tend to

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“naturalize” war, making it seem “ordinary and enticing” because “[h]eroic narratives do not treat wars as a muddle of individual actions and reactions, partially coordinated, partially accidental. They treat war, and particularly victory, as the result of deliberate, brave, and celebrated (thus ‘glorious’) actions by exceptional individuals (Understanding

Nationalism 214). Writing about U.S. heroes, Hogan points out two characteristics that are commonly found in their nationalist narratives: ingenuity in battle, which Hogan calls

“particularly American” (Understanding Nationalism 239), and an emotionally powerful connection between the homeland as well as feelings of pride and anger, both of which reinforce “the rightness of the hierarchy of authority in the United States”

(Understanding Nationalism 240). In the same manner that heroism is imagined in nationalist narratives in terms of exceptional individuals who embody the values and features of the larger nation, so are the enemies of the nation in these narratives personified as villains who represent the exact opposite of what the heroes stand for.

Regarding the way nationalist heroic narratives treat heroes and villains, Hogan states:

“We really can blame the villain of a story for anything, and we do. Once we learn that a particular character is the villain, we come to suspect that he or she is behind every terrible event in the story. Our attitude is a presumption of guilt, just as our attitude toward the hero is a presumption of innocence” (Understanding Nationalism 219). As

Hogan points out, such stark distinction between heroes and villains, between right and wrong, is usually not present in real-world confrontations, where “some genuine conflict of rights” and “some cruelty and terror from both camps” typically occurs

(Understanding Nationalism 219). As a strategy to affirm the power and legitimacy of the nation, nationalist heroic narratives tend to make the villain “as disgusting as possible,

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thus foreclosing any possibilities for empathy” (Understanding Nationalism 236).

A third and final element of Hogan’s theoretical apparatus that is particularly helpful for analyzing nationalist narratives featuring minority heroes in what he calls

“unobstrusive nationalist operations,” which include the representation of various ethnic groups and different geographical regions of the nation to provide a sense of national unity that probably does not exist in reality and which “most viewers are unlikely to recognize as serving a particular ideological nationalist purpose” (Understanding

Nationalism 206). In his analysis of the film Independence Day as representative of contemporary U.S. heroic nationalist narratives, Hogan points to the inclusion of many minorities from various parts of the country in the story, including the main hero, played by African American actor Will Smith: “To some, this may seem like a politically correct inclusion of minorities. It may be. But it simultaneously results from a standard development principle that operates as a technique of nationalization. Specifically, the narrative brings a range of characters from subnational identity groups in order to subsume the relevant subnational categories under the national category” (Understanding

Nationalism 232). In doing so, these narratives seek to achieve “common nationalist identification” (Understanding Nationalism 240), also serving “to defuse a potential threat of subnational divisiveness” by “occluding subnational differences”

(Understanding Nationalism 233, 234). Of course, it is important to clarify that Hogan’s observations regarding the presence of minorities in U.S. nationalist narratives is focused on rather recent, postmodern texts marked by the politics and aesthetics of multiculturalism. As we will see with older narratives such as Hell to Eternity, a very different strategy regarding the representation of racial and ethnic plurality can also be

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found operating in this type of narratives: the erasure of difference. Ultimately, both of these strategies, dissimilar as they may appear, serve the same purpose: to legitimize and reproduce a particular view of the nation that is dominant at a given point in history. With these considerations in mind, it is important to pay close attention to the function Latino/a heroic figures play in U.S. nationalist hero narratives and the ideological motivations that underlie their construction or occlusion.

Guy Gabaldon: From Erasure to Counter-Discourse

Latinos/as have served in the U.S. armed forces in every major American conflict at home and abroad. In the case of World War II, it is estimated that between 200,000 and

500,000 Latino/a soldiers participated in the war effort, but the actual numbers are likely to be higher (Alarid 18). According to Maggie Rivas-Rodríguez and Emilio Zamora,

Latinos/as “also served in the U.S. military in proportionally large numbers, participated in the major theaters of war primarily as foot soldiers, outdid other identifiable groups in recognized cases of valor and sacrifice, waged a social movement that helped elevate discrimination to a level of hemispheric importance, and contributed significantly to production demands at the home front” (6-7). Despite the fact that Latino/a participation in U.S. wars has been important in numbers, sacrifice, and military honors, there has been very little recognition of their patriotic service and heroic achievements in films and other forms of narrative or popular culture. José Limón has noted how “the dominant narratives of World War II seem determined to exclude the representation of Latinos and Latinas, as, for example, the 2007 documentary by Ken Burns” (ix). Limón is referring to Burns’

14-hour-long Public Broadcasting Service mini-series The War, which has been harshly

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criticized for ignoring the contributions of Latinos/as and Native Americans in this watershed military conflict (Farhi). The discrimination and unequal treatment toward

World War II Latino/a veterans have been explored in documentaries such as The

Longoria Affair, which tells the story of how the only funeral home in a small Texas town refused to hold a wake for a decorated Mexican-American soldier killed in battle

“because the whites wouldn’t like it” (“The Longoria Affair”). Such treatment and attitudes, however, did not change in the decades following World War II. Soldier- turned-writers such as Raúl Morín have spoken against “glaring omissions of the

Spanish-named soldiers” in the literature coming out after the war, and a sense that they

“were being treated with second-class citizenship” (qtd. in Rivas-Rodríguez and Zamora

5).

One of the few Latino/a soldiers whose heroic deeds have been portrayed in mainstream media is Chicano Guy Gabaldon (1926-2006), an East Los Angeles native who joined the Marine Corps and fought in the bloody Battle of Saipan against the

Japanese in 1944. At age 18, he managed to singlehandedly capture more than 1,500

Japanese soldiers and civilians hiding in the island’s many caves. Even more impressively, in one single mission Gabaldon was able to convince 800 individuals to surrender—a feat no other U.S. soldier has ever accomplished (Farquhar 225-226; East

L.A. Marine). The story of the “Pied Piper of Saipan,” as Gabaldon came to be known, caught the interest of Hollywood. In 1960, Allied Artists Pictures produced a highly successful film, Hell to Eternity, based on his life and war heroics. The movie is considered among the best early War World II films, featuring “some of the most realistic combat scenes shown up until that time” (Gonzales). But there is a critical issue with

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Gabaldon’s representation in the film, as it is never mentioned that he was Mexican-

American or had any other ethnic background. Instead, Gabaldon, who was barely five- foot-four-inches tall, is played by blue-eyed Caucasian actor Jeffrey Hunter, who was over six-feet tall. As Ray Suarez notes regarding the movie’s script and casting decisions,

“producers wanted Gabaldon’s heroism. They just weren’t sure they wanted the Mexican-

American hero” (122). In 2006, an independent documentary, East L.A. Marine: The

Untold True Story of Guy Gabaldon, put forth a competing representation of the hero’s identity, highlighting his Latino/a heritage and arguing that discrimination and

Gabaldon’s harsh and constant criticism of the way the U.S. treated Japanese-Americans during the war led to the government denying him the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Before delving into Gabaldon’s construction and misconstruction as a Latino hero in these two films, it is important to pause for a moment and consider the historical landscape against which his life story as a Mexican-American came to be growing up in

Los Angeles during the 1930s and 1940s. Rivas-Rodríguez and Zamora have written about the contradictions between the state’s rhetoric of equality during wartime, such as

President Franklin Roosevelt’s call for all Americans to build “the arsenal of democracy,” and the realities on the ground for minorities. As they indicate, “The United

States managed to assemble the required arsenal for the war, although it was not as successful in guaranteeing egalitarian values at home […] The lofty wartime rhetoric of justice and equality for workers, women, and national minorities consistently fell short of declared expectations” (1). Consequently, challenges such as segregation, poverty, lack of employment opportunities, limited educational access and attainment, and the sense of being regarded as second-class citizens or even “foreigners” by the dominant Anglo

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society were realities that Chicanos/as such as Gabaldon and other minorities living in

Los Angeles would have encountered. During the war years, George Sánchez writes, there were exaggerated media reports of the “zoot-suiter menace” represented by young

Mexican-Americans who had grown up disenchanted due to the lack of opportunities and the city’s discriminatory status quo: “Accounts of Mexican juvenile delinquency either replaced or were printed alongside stories of supposed disloyalty among interned

Japanese Americans. Chicano youth were increasingly depicted as the ‘enemy within.’

The war catalyzed the growing antagonism of the Anglo American community toward diversity and difference” (267). Along these lines, B. V. Olguín has noted that “although

US wars are always historically situated, they often accentuate and even intensify preexisting conflicts and contradictions in American society rather than resolve them”

(84). To better understand Gabaldon’s divergent representations, it is then crucial to keep in mind these prevailing attitudes toward Mexican-Americans and Japanese-Americans during the time of the war, as Gabaldon’s identity and his life story are inextricably linked to both minority groups.

There is a profound disconnect between the “real” Gabaldon’s representation as a

Latino war hero in documentaries and his portrayal as a white soldier with no identifiable

Chicano ethnic or cultural makers in Hell to Eternity. This disconnect can be explained by the strategies employed in the film to create a nationalist heroic narrative that is normative with regard to dominant U.S. ideology and which seeks to engage its audience through easily identifiable and unambiguous character and plot development. These strategies include the construction of a hero that is socially representative of the in-group

(white Americans), and usurpation and threat/defense sequences that help to

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unequivocally establish U.S. military and moral dominance over an enemy that is depicted as cruel and tyrannical (Japanese soldiers) or as helpless victims who need a savior (Japanese civilians).

First, I will look into the construction of Gabaldon as a heroic figure. As a source material upon which to base an engaging war hero narrative, the real-life Gabaldon was definitely an interesting character—he was tough, he was willing to take on difficult tasks even when the odds were clearly against him, he was independent, and he was ingenuous in battle, as evidenced by his extraordinary accomplishments in Saipan. All of these are qualities that Hogan has identified as being common in the portrayal of American heroes, and are certainly exploited in the film. Additionally, Gabaldon had a rich and complex background: he was proud of his strong Hispanic heritage, all while having developed deep cultural and emotional ties to the Japanese-American friends with whom he hanged out, worked, and even lived during his adolescent years. This complexity, however, is problematic for a prototypical nationalist hero narrative. As Hogan has also noted, these narratives are not fond of ambiguity, particularly when it comes to the construction of heroes and villains, which are most often presented in absolute and essentialist terms along the lines of pure virtue or pure evil. Why, then, did the producers and screenwriters of Hell to Eternity decide to rid the Gabaldon character of something as basic as his

Latino ethnic and cultural background while preserving his (secondary) Japanese-

American cultural connections? Joe Flores, a friend of Gabaldon interviewed in East L.A.

Marine, offers this blunt opinion: “You know yourself that the reason for it is that they wouldn’t have made any money. I don’t think the movie would have ever been made if he was going to be depicted as a Mexican-American. Nobody would have invested any

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money because it wouldn’t have been received. That’s the way the world was in those days.” Flores’ point is valid. Around the time this film was made, most portrayals of

Latinos/as in U.S. film and television were based on stereotypes, as scholars such as

Ramírez Berg have indicated. In that context, it would have been extremely unlikely for

Hollywood to represent a national war hero as an ethnic minority and for a mainstream

(Anglo) audience to favorably receive it. The occlusion of Gabaldon’s ethnicity, therefore, points to a historical reality in which people of color did not fit the accepted heroic imagery of the nation, even if their actions were just as remarkable, or even more exceptional, than those of white heroes.

At the narrative level, there is another reason for preserving Gabaldon’s Japanese-

American identity while also portraying him as a more “acceptable” Caucasian soldier.

First, Gabaldon’s knowledge of Japanese language and customs were central to the accomplishment of his heroic deeds, as he needed to not only communicate with the

Japanese but also to figure out a way to convince them that it was in their best interest to surrender to the U.S. military—a difficult task considering they have been indoctrinated to commit suicide “rather than give themselves over to the American ‘barbarians’”

(Farquhar 225). Second, Gabaldon’s appreciation for and deep emotional attachment to his Japanese-American friends and “family” was a very powerful narrative element for telling this particular World War II story, since the Japanese happened to be the very enemy against which Gabaldon enlisted to fight. Gabaldon’s allegiance to his Japanese-

American friends and his hesitation to kill those who looked just like them, provided the screenwriters and director with the perfect material to design a process of character development in which the unwilling hero progressively shifts allegiance over to his

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fellow (all white) American fighters and comes to embody the dominant discourses of

U.S. military and moral superiority that are in display at the end of the film.

As indicated before, Hell to Eternity overemphasizes Gabaldon’s Japanese-

American cultural and emotional links. It does so by ignoring and even hiding all other aspects of his identity. As an 11 or 12 year old, Gabaldon is introduced in the film as having a troubled life, getting into fights at school, and stealing food from the market. We soon learn that he is practically living on his own, as his mother (who is never shown) is sick and his father is absent. His friend George’s father, Kaz Une, discovers young Guy’s unfortunate condition and invites him to move in with his family. However, Gabaldon’s mother soon dies, at which point the Unes become his adopted family. Gabaldon begins learning Japanese from George’s grandmother, whom he affectionately calls Mama San and who becomes a mother figure for him throughout the narrative. Mama San calls

Gabaldon “my all-America boy,” further negating any possibility that he may be Latino or may come another ethnic group. Living with the Unes and among the larger Japanese-

American community in his neighborhood, Gabaldon finds stability and a sense of belonging for the first time in his life. As he grows up, the qualities that would later contribute to his heroic achievements are highlighted: he learns Japanese fluently and is unrestrained when it comes to defending “his people,” getting into a few fights with white boys and later with white men who speak ill of his “Jap friends.”

It is during one of these confrontations that the film’s usurpation and threat/defense sequences are established, both at the global narrative level and at

Gabaldon’s personal level. Guy is now an older teenager waiting for service at a local drive-in in the company of a Japanese girl, Ester, with whom his “brother” George is in

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love. Unbeknownst to Gabaldon, news of the Pearl Harbor attack has just broken and are being heard on the diner’s radio. He complains that the waitresses refuse to serve them.

Then, a Caucasian man sitting in the car next to Gabaldon’s yells: “Hey, Jap lover. How does it feel being out with the enemy?” to which Gabaldon replies in his typical rash fashion by beating up the guy. Later, at the Unes, the family listens on the radio to

Roosevelt’s declaration of war against the Japanese Empire. The use of historical recordings of Roosevelt’s actual speech is an effective use of the multimodal strategy of provenance, which in this instance seeks to increase the dramatic nature of the filmic scene by reenacting and having the viewers relive a painful event of American history. In just a few minutes, we witness how Japan challenges the United States by usurping the lives of American soldiers and displaying its military power. Thus, the threat to the in- group is established, while the defense response immediately follows, first in the form of a declaration of war and, later, through the internment of Japanese-Americans, who are perceived as a potential “internal” threat. As a way of underscoring the unified response of the nation to this foreign and exotic enemy, the film shows how the Unes and other young Nisei immediately and without any hesitation announce their plans to join the military. Although they are initially turned down—Kaz relates how “I tried to enlist and they laughed at me. You’d think we were spies or something. They don’t want any of us”—he and George eventually join the military and fight in Italy. The Japanese-

Americans also draw sharp distinctions between them and the Japanese Empire, strengthening the narrative’s nationalist view that the out-group represents an ever- expanding threat that needs to be dealt with. While Gabaldon is unsure of his adopted family’s patriotic impulse to join the military by stating that “We’d be fighting our own

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kind of people,” George quickly and categorically replies: “They are not our kind of people. Who knows, they might come right to L.A., sneaking up on us just like they did in Pearl Harbor.” While Gabaldon also protests the rounding up of his Japanese-

American family and friends by insisting that the government is taking them not to

“relocation” but “concentration” camps, Kaz defends the actions of the country he is willing to defend on the war front, even employing a baseball metaphor to signify his

“Americanness”: “Right of wrong, our government is doing what they think is right. No one bats a thousand.” What we see here is the crafting of a myth of national unity, very similar to the one about the black French soldier that Barthes explores. The scenes of patriotic Japanese-Americans willing to defend the nation signify the willing incorporation and welcoming of subnational groups into the war and homeland security efforts. Meanwhile, the history of discrimination and maltreatment toward those same subnational groups is erased and even justified by the Nisei in the film, who are willing to fight and perhaps die for the country that is forcefully relocating them and their relatives just because of their ancestry. In this example, the myth’s signifier or “form” (the images of the patriotic Japanese-Americans) empties itself of the history and contingency that originally came from the signifier (people of Japanese descent living in the United

States), ignoring the historical aspects of racism toward minorities. Finally, the signified or “concept” fills the myth with a new history, in this case, a justification of the U.S.

Japanese internment program as crucial to national defense (Barthes 227-228).

As a story within a story, Gabaldon’s personal journey is also marked by usurpation and threat/defense sequences. As a result of the Pearl Harbor attack and subsequent response by the United States, Gabaldon experiences the loss of the only

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family he has ever known as well as his sense of home, security, and stability. As I previously indicated, his defense response is to lash out at the government’s discriminatory actions and to refuse to answer the call of duty: “Well, they don’t want my brothers, then to hell with them.” At this point in the narrative, Gabaldon exhibits strong individualistic qualities that make him a resistant character with respect to the narrative’s overall nationalist aims. However, for him to be able to become a hero within this particular narrative, his attitudes would need to change. The transformation occurs gradually, as a result of key events in the plot of the story. During a visit to his

“grandparents” at the Manzanar internment camp, Mama San, who has the most influence over Gabaldon, tells him that it is okay to go fight the Japanese and even kill them, because “sons… must build home again, must build world again, must end mess.” By articulating the prevailing nationalist rhetoric of the U.S. as a world leader combating a global threat (Hogan, Understanding Nationalism, 231), Mama San prompts Gabaldon to engage in the national defense response against the common enemy in order to restore the sense of normalcy that was disrupted during usurpation—in other words, a heroic quest.

Upon arrival in Saipan, Gabaldon is still conflicted about killing the Japanese, having a panic attack the first time he sees dead soldiers. He tries to apologize to one of his fellow

Marines, who tells him: “You had a problem to solve, that’s all.” Gabaldon responds:

“Yeah, but I’m not sure it’s solved yet. My folks were… Well, it’s kill or be killed, I guess.” After Gabaldon begins his famous exploits, capturing alive as many soldiers as possible and “rescuing” civilians, another event brings out his latent anger and generates a powerful defense response: a close Marine friend, Hazen, is surrounded by Japanese fighters, who mercilessly execute him, while Gabaldon watches in despair and is unable

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to come to his rescue. After this incident, he stops trying to capture soldiers alive, shooting every one of them (even on the back) as they emerge from their hideouts. The main purpose of this twist in the plot is to establish and solidify the hero’s allegiance to the in-group (represented by his fellow Marines), while distancing him from the Japanese soldiers he was so emotionally attached to at the beginning. The film even draws a connection between the Marines and the Japanese civilians as being targets of the same enemy to more emphatically clarify Gabaldon’s allegiance. In one particularly poignant scene, Japanese civilians are hurling themselves and their children to their death from

Banzai Cliff, as the Americans approach. An older woman and a young boy who approach the cliff immediately remind Gabaldon of Mama San and George. In a dreamlike scene, Gabaldon sees the faces of his beloved relatives instead of those of the anonymous Japanese civilians. He tries to talk them out of jumping but fails, just as he failed to save his friend Hazen.

While the narrative has now managed to turn the initially rebellious Gabaldon into a more normative hero, he still retains two individualistic qualities that do not interfere with but, according to Hogan, actually enhance a U.S. nationalist hero narrative such as

Hell to Eternity. He possesses the uncompromised conviction to act on his own and do things “his way,” which reenacts the lone cowboy hero narrative of westerns. And he has compassion for Japanese civilians, who are represented as victims of a power-hungry and oppressive regime. The latter attribute helps to establish Gabaldon (and, by extension, the

Americans) as having the higher moral ground from which to look down on the Japanese military and imperial policies. Gabaldon comes to view the Japanese military and

Japanese civilians as two separate entities: one deserving to die, the other deserving to be

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saved. The film employs various techniques to draw sharp distinctions between the two.

The Japanese soldiers are consistently shown as faceless, thus dehumanized masses.

When closer shots are used to portray them, what we see are military leaders giving orders, appearing emotionless and menacing. Conversely, the Japanese civilians, particularly children, are commonly represented through more intimate shots, including close-ups that reveal either the suffering from their precarious situation or their jubilation as they playfully interact with their American rescuers. Gabaldon’s final battle is against

General Matsui, who embodies the enemy and who is determined to have the rest of his troops fight to death even though Saipan is now practically in the hands of the

Americans. “Soldier, surely you know of our code of war,” Matsui tells Gabaldon, who is holding him captive at gun point and trying to convince him to surrender and thus spare the lives of the survivors. Gabaldon’s answer codifies the ideology of U.S. moral and military superiority: “That’s not a war, General, that’s slaughter. Slaughter of people who can’t help themselves […] Civilians, women and children throwing themselves into the sea. Is that your code of honor? It’s that what you mean by honor? Is that what you want to do? Do you want to destroy them? […] Saipan is secured. You know what that means?

You lost.” As he talks to the General, an over the shoulder shot emphasizes Gabaldon’s pronounced height difference in comparison with Matsui, establishing superiority through visual language. To remind viewers of the usurpation act that caused the war to begin in the first place, the film includes a final interaction between the hero and the villain. As he surveys his defeated army, Matsui says: “This is not a pretty sight for me to see.”

Gabaldon responds: “Neither was Pearl Harbor.” The movie’s final scene shows the return of the triumphant and rightful hero, as Gabaldon leads a large group of Japanese

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down from the hills. The scene reenacts both the Pied Piper story and the biblical narrative of Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt as a liberator—both elements of provenance that help to confirm Gabaldon’s heroic status and the superiority of the in- group he represents.

While it does not have the same clout as a Hollywood film like Hell to Eternity, the documentary East L.A. Marine has managed to present a significant counter-discourse to the obliteration of Gabaldon’s Latino/a heritage, the misrepresentation and

“brownfacing” of a truly unique Mexican-American war hero, and the dominant Anglo nationalist views expressed in the 1960 movie. In the documentary, Daniel Martinez, chief historian of the USS Arizona Memorial, sets the tone for this critique by stating that when he met Gabaldon, whom he considered his hero and a huge role model for

Mexican-Americans, he realized that “Guy didn’t fit that Hollywood stereotype. It wasn’t the actor I saw. It was the real person.” The documentary, narrated by Latino actor

Freddie Prinze Jr., wastes no time insisting that “to know the story of Gay Gabaldon, you must first know where he came from.” Hence, since Hell to Eternity ignores Gabaldon’s background, what is implied here is that the truth about the hero cannot be ascertained through that film. In talking about his background, the documentary constructs Gabaldon as a natural-born hero whose attributes come from both his Hispanic and his military heritage, which can be traced back to a Spanish lieutenant who “arrived in the New

World in the mid-sixteenth century and helped colonize what we now call New Mexico.”

The documentary also debunks the movie’s portrayal of Gabaldon as an orphan, having the real Gabaldon talk extensively about his father and his struggles during the

Depression: “I don’t know how he did it. It was seven of us, but we went to private

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school. He took care of us well. There was always food on the table.” Next, the documentary challenges the assumption that Gabaldon lived exclusively with his adopted

Japanese family and that he was fluent in Japanese. In a clip from a June 1957 episode of the TV show This Is Your Life, Gabaldon’s Japanese-American childhood friends from the Boyle Heights neighborhood, Lyle and Lane Nakano, recall how “beginning from the time that Guy was about 11, he divided his time spending his life between his family and ours.” Gabaldon and his sons also insist that he didn’t speak “proper Japanese” and only really “street language,” enough to string together a few phrases.

Additionally, the documentary attempts to disconnect Gabaldon’s supposed mastery of Japanese with the true attributes that allowed him to reach heroic status: “I’ve been asked many times if my ability to speak Japanese was the reason I took them

(prisoners). And I’ve said ‘no, it was cojones.’ I went there to kill or take prisoners, and maybe it sounds conceited to say cojones, but that’s what it was. If you didn’t have the cojones to do that, you’d never be able to do it.” More importantly, Gabaldon later links his toughness and heroics with his upbringing as a minority in East Los Angeles: “I’ve been asked why I did what I did. I think being raised in the barrio, every day is a fight, you are fighting to survive in the barrio. And I think that might have had something to do with my personality, with my makeup. I knew it was something that had never been done before in World War II. And when I got them to surrender, I said, hey, ‘I proved you wrong’.” Gabaldon’s testimony is a good example of what Richard Griswold del Castillo calls “the paradox of war,” that is, the idea that because Mexican-Americans struggled against poverty and discrimination during the Great Depression and World War II even though they were patriotic Americans, they “developed a life philosophy that enabled

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them to cope with harsh realities,” which “led to the formation of a tough and resilient worldview, one that would make Mexican Americans a backbone of what came to be called middle America” (11). The documentary insists on linking discrimination toward

Chicanos with the fact that it took the Marine Corps decades (and the publicity generated by Hell to Eternity) to finally give Gabaldon its highest honor, the Navy Cross, and also the fact that he was never awarded the country’s highest military accolade, the

Congressional Medal of Honor. According to Gabaldon, “the Marine Corps prior to

World War II was composed mostly of Southerners, good, tough Marines, good fighters, and when the war started, the battles of the Civil War were refought.” Pete Limon, a

Pearl Harbor survivor, adds: “During the war the Marines wouldn’t give any Mexican

American kid the Medal. The Navy and the Army would. But the Marine Corps was very, very, well, they just didn’t believe in it. And when a guy like Guy did so much, they weren’t about to give him that honor.”

Through these testimonials, East L.A. Marine attempts to debunk the myth of the

United States as a unified and egalitarian country in which actions, not skin color or ancestry, determine a person’s worth. Finally, the documentary counters Hell to

Eternity’s nationalist war narrative that portrays the United States, through Gabaldon’s deeds, as a beacon of democracy and moral superiority. Gabaldon expresses an opinion that got him in trouble throughout his life and, perhaps, was the real reason he didn’t get the Medal of Honor: “Maybe I wanted to prove a point there also. My foster family, the

Japanese, these were Americans, good Americans, patriotic Americans. When they sent my family to a concentration camp, I felt if I give my life maybe I’ll make my country, my President and all the authorities regret what they did to other American citizens.”

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Unlike in Hell to Eternity, Gabaldon is represented in East L.A. Marine as an individualistic, non-normative, resistant hero whose heroism stemmed from his heritage and life experiences as a Chicano in the multicultural and gritty streets of the East Los

Angeles barrio, and who performed unprecedented deeds not out of a sense of dominant

American patriotism, but out of determination to protect and honor the lives of those he felt were the target of unjust government policies of exclusion and hate.

Drug Wars: Enrique Camarena as the ‘Good’ Latino Hero

Of all the international narcotics trafficking and war-on-drug films and TV series produced in the U.S. since about 1980 (when the genre became popular) and featuring

Latino/a characters in any prominent role, Drug Wars: The Camarena Story is perhaps the most neglected in scholarly works. Other movies such as Scarface (1983) and Traffic

(2000), which portray the ruthless Cuban drug dealer and the dedicated Mexican cop, respectively, have been the subject of quite a few books and essays. However, when it comes to the portrayal of Latinos/as, no other drug-trafficking movie represents the problematic and ideologically charged construction of the Latino/a hero as well as Drug

Wars does. Also, this movie is very well suited for analysis using Hogan’s critical framework because it follows the prototypical nationalist heroic narrative structure described above, and constructs heroes and villains along hugely polarizing and essentialist lines that respond to its dominant ideological purpose. For this analysis, I am using the 130-minute, DVD version of the original Drug Wars miniseries, as it is the only format commercially available. Because it has been edited and marketed as a feature film,

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I will refer to this production as a film or movie in my study, rather than as a television series.

As it is unequivocally stated by its title, Drug Wars is a narrative about the so- called “war on drugs,” which was declared in 1969 by U.S. President Richard Nixon in an effort to disrupt the production and trafficking of illegal drugs, particularly from Latin

America. Promising an “all out war on the drug menace” (qtd. in Fojas 112), Nixon launched a series of initiatives aimed at reducing drug trade by cutting off supply, most notably the 1969 short-lived “Operation Intercept” that mandated searches of all people and vehicles entering the United States from Mexico (Fojas 112). Such campaigns were followed in 1972 with the creation of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), which provided full governmental support to the drug war effort. As Fojas notes, the war on drugs has from the very beginning been based on a dynamic of U.S. coercion and

Latin American compliance, with an “emphasis on producer nations over consumer nations, implementing policies that threaten and undermine the sovereignty of nations in the southern hemisphere in the name of U.S. national security” (112). This dynamic ignores the role that the United States plays in the illegal narcotics trade as a consumer of large amounts of drugs, a love affair that began in the counterculture of the 1960s with marihuana and has escalated over the decades to “heroin, cocaine, and hardcore chemical drugs consumed in nightclubs around the country” (Payan 25-26). Also ignored are the dire socioeconomic conditions in producer nations that force people to grow the drug crops and get involved in the dangerous world of trafficking. As Curtis Marez explains, the United States has compounded the problem by supporting “drug traffic to finance imperial wars,” beginning during the Vietnam War with the promotion of the heroin trade

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in support of anticommunist Hmong forces in Laos, and later with the infamous its infamous participation in the cocaine trade to fund right-wing military proxies in Central

America during the 1980s (249). Finally, the United States has “used the ‘drug problem’ as an excuse for the criminalization and suppression of domestic dissent,” including the suppression of civil rights groups during the 1960s and 1970s, while indirectly promoting drug consumption “as a method for controlling people of color and other dissident subjects,” including returning Vietnam veterans (Marez 250). The criminalization of even small amounts of illegal drugs has disproportionately impacted ethnic and racial minorities living in impoverished urban areas, to the point that African-Americans are arrested for drug possession more than three times as often as whites, even though 20% of whites use drugs such as cocaine compared to only 10% of blacks and Latinos/as, perpetuating a “chronic underclass of citizens” (Knafo).

As Payan has indicated, the war on drugs is not a rhetorical but an actual war that over the years “has been elevated to a war of national security,” utilizing all the elements of “regular” war: guns, helicopters, planes, high-tech devices, fences, trenches, exorbitant budgets, and thousands of personnel (xiii). The increased militarization of the war on drugs has also permeated the visual language used by drug-trafficking films. According to Curtis Marez, the violence-saturated Scarface gave birth to an “automatic-weapon aesthetic,” characterized by the use of military-style weapons, vehicles, and aircraft, as well as elaborate gunfight scenes. For Marez, this aesthetic has created an alliance between filmmaking and military power as it aligns itself with “official perspectives on drug traffic” (14). Drug Wars employs a variety of visual elements that point to the militaristic nature of the narcotics conflict and reproduce the automatic-weapon aesthetic.

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Military helicopters, planes, and trucks are shown every time there is a raid or any other operation coordinated between the DEA and the Mexican government, and those scenes typically include large numbers of heavily armed Mexican police or soldiers. DEA agents utilize nigh-vision goggles to drive in the dark without their lights on as they try to bring a suspect in the death of Camarena to justice, at a time when such devices were only associated with military or law-enforcement use. DEA agent Harley Steinmetz, a colleague of Camarena in Guadalajara, justifies the U.S. involvement south of the border because, as he sees it, narcotráfico is “a chemical war waged against our people, the alienated and the dispossessed.”18 Additionally, the DEA agents operating in Mexico are consistently referred to in the movie as “soldiers,” which is complemented by a prominent scene in which Camarena (a former Marine) is given a military funeral.

Camarena is also compared to a Missing in Action soldier from the Vietnam War, when a

DEA official tells a Mexican government official: “If Camarena were found tomorrow, if we knew what happened, we will celebrate his homecoming, we will mourn his loss, and then we’ll go on with our lives.” Linkages between the war on drugs, homeland security, and terrorism are also established in the film, particularly through a news report that shows a California border crossing point having come to a virtual standstill as authorities

18 Criticism of the U.S. drug war policy in Latin America, including its focus on militarized intervention, is offered in the 2003 documentary Plan Colombia: Cashing In on the Drug War Failure. In the film, scholars such as Noam Chomsky and William Hartung (World Policy Institute) argue that instead of implementing domestic prevention and rehabilitation programs, which have proven to be much more effective in reducing the impact of drug use, the United States spends millions of dollars targeting small coca growers—including through the aerial fumigation of coca plants with potent herbicides made by the influential corporation Monsanto, which also destroys legal subsistence crops and endangers human health in Colombia. They also claim that much of the money earmarked for Plan Colombia ends up supporting the U.S. military industrial complex through contracts for helicopter manufacturers and private military contractors. The documentary also posits that the real U.S. interest is not fighting drugs but establishing friendly, pro-capitalist regimes to expand its free-grade agreement and economic interests in Latin America. 281

“were looking for terrorists who had threatened the lives of officials and for drug agent

Enrique Camarena.”

Moreover, there are two scenes in particular that help to frame the movie in terms of an armed conflict. One takes place as DEA agents and Mexican military converge on the Guadalajara Cartel’s massive 1,000-hectare marihuana plantation (known as Rancho

Búfalo) growing in Mexico’s northern desert, and which Camarena had managed to discover. The soldiers storm the plantation and proceed to burn marihuana plants and bundles of drugs in a manner that resembles a military attack. Later, an impressive aerial shot shows the burning plantation, communicating not only the magnificence of this victory over the drug lords but also staging the scene to look like the bombing of a military target. The high camera angle used in this shot also serves the purpose of vicariously placing the interactive participants (the viewers) in a position of power over the implied represented participants associated with the plantation (drug lords), thus aligning the audience with the film’s nationalist position (Kress and van Leeuwen,

Reading Images, 140). The second scene takes place shortly after Camarena’s kidnapping, when the remaining Guadalajara-based DEA agents confront Comandante

Pavón Reyes of the Federal Judicial Police and his officers in a courtyard. A verbal altercation leads to both sides drawing their guns. A wide shot shows the two sides with their weapons drawn: the Mexicans are on the left in brown military uniforms holding assault rifles, while the Americans (clearly outnumbered) are on the right wearing mostly blue, street clothes and brandishing small handguns. The arrangement of the image coincides with that of a traditional battlefield scene. The two sides are separated by a space in the middle, which acts as a framing device that visually establishes their

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differences (Kress and van Leeuwen, Reading Images, 177). Each “army” is easily identifiable not only by the colors of their “uniforms” but also by the way in which they are closely grouped and thus identified as opposite “classes,” following Kress and van

Leeuwen’s principle of “conceptual representation” (Reading Images 79). The two sides, however, are not equal. There is a big disproportion in terms of the size of each group and their weaponry. By showing Pavón Reyes (who is later revealed to be corrupt and murderous) and his officers as yielding the most representational power, the image conveys the hopelessness and powerlessness of the Americans’ efforts to bring to justice those responsible for Camarena’s kidnapping and assassination. In doing so, it draws attention away from American interventionism and imperialism in Mexico by positioning the U.S. as a victim of corruption and banditry—and as a heroic underdog that will ultimately overcome the odds to avenge its brave fallen soldier. This image, consequently, functions as a myth, presenting Mexico as the violent aggressor by emptying itself of all history of U.S. aggression toward its southern neighbor.

In addition to its military imagery, Drug Wars presents itself as a nationalist narrative aligned with dominant ideology through its use of multimodal strategies. One such strategy is the use of actual broadcast news snippets from the time the real-life story of Enrique Camarena took place, commingling almost seamlessly with a fictionalized story that was first produced using the code of a television series and later repackaged as a feature film. Because the semiotic code of news reporting implies an assumption of truth or at least actuality, the inclusion of such broadcasts in the film serves the ideological purpose of giving “veracity” to the narrative and grounding it in current events and national issues. The film successfully employs the direct mode of address

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typical of newscasts to also give its dominant perspective a higher degree of authority, as most of the news snippets dispersed throughout the movie feature prominent and respected NBC anchor Tom Brokaw looking straight at the audience as he delivers the

“truth” about the current drug war situation. The film even constructs its own fake news footage. First, we are shown an actual broadcast in which Brokaw announces Camarena’s death, immediately cutting to fabricated footage that reenacts the homecoming of

Camarena’s body to the United States, his coffin draped in an American flag and being carried off an airplane by Marines. The footage is purposely made to look grainy so it can match the inferior quality of the taped broadcast shown before it. We only know it is fake footage because we see the movie’s actors in the crowd at the airport. This homecoming scene is very important in the film to connect Camarena (and, by extension, the DEA) with narratives of military honor and the hero’s return to his homeland after his sacrificial quest. Assuming that real footage of the event was not available, not permitted for use in the movie, or not dramatic enough to make the point the director wanted to make, it became necessary to fabricate it and present it as “real” to achieve the same level of veracity afforded by the semiotic code of news reporting. The use of broadcast news is further reinforced by the fact that the narrative is presented as a real-life story, based on

Elaine Shannon’s research book Desperadoes: Latin Drug Lords, U.S. Lawmen, and the

War America Can’t Win, upon which the film is based. All of these aspects combined seek to validate the official view on the war on drugs presented in the film, making it more difficult for viewers to question it. Finally, as mentioned before, Drug Wars employs the “re-coding” aspect of distribution associated with multimodal texts. The

DVD version was distributed at a time in history when the nature of the drug wars had

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significantly shifted and the post-9/11 politics of heightened sensibility to foreign threats were at their highest, allowing for a new reading and decoding in which Latin American traffickers and terrorists become associated. Also, the original version of the movie was heavily edited, leading to the loss of important scenes and contextual clues. For example, the connection between the Guadalajara drug lords and Costa Rica (where Caro Quintero is captured) is deleted in the DVD version, therefore ridding the narrative of any possible questioning of the shady dealings between the CIA and the drug cartels (including the

Guadalajara Cartel) that funneled drug money to support the Contras fighting the

Sandinista regime in Nicaragua during the 1980s.19

The process of heroization in Drug Wars is activated by two threat/defense sequences (one of which is also accompanied by an usurpation sequence), and which are intrinsically connected to the Camarena versus Caro Quintero hero-villain equation. The first sequence is presented at the very beginning of the movie as Mexico is shown as the party responsible for the drugs entering the U.S., endangering its population, and threatening to take away control of the country’s own borders and the legitimacy of its national security apparatus. It begins with a news report in which Brokaw says that U.S. officials believe “Mexico isn’t doing enough to stop the flow of drugs into this country,” as footage of large amounts of confiscated drugs is shown. Of course, Mexico and other

Latin American countries directly or indirectly involved in narco-trafficking have consistently denied this claim, contesting that the United States is the one not doing enough to reduce its appetite for illicit drugs even as it perpetuates policies that

19 For more on the connections between the Guadalajara Cartel and the illicit financing of the Contra rebels, see Shannon’s Desperadoes and Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair’s Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press (New York: Verso, 1998). 285

“contribute to violence and instability in drug-producing nations” (Boyd 137). The news report is immediately followed by threatening music and a slow-motion sequence of Caro

Quintero, who is shot from a low angle as he rises, mean-faced, the angle and lighting casting dark shadows under his eyes. The music, framing, and lighting help to portray him as an undeniably menacing figure, while the low angle gives him representational power over the viewers. The ominous appearance of the drug lord establishes the threat portion of the threat/defense sequence. Caro Quintero is seen in a living room with fellow traffickers and thugs, who are using drugs and making out with women while a man in a suit talks about his plans to “invest” (launder) the drug lords’ profits in U.S.-based businesses. This scene further emphasizes the criminality of the unsympathetic characters, underlining the deep reach of their operations into the United States and the menace they represent through their illegal activities (the scene takes place at night). The traffickers then leave the house, arrive at a dance club, and begin to shoot in the air. After

Caro Quintero grabs a woman to be his partner for the night, the traffickers leave the club, grab handfuls of bills from their cars, and throw them up in the air in the plaza for passersby to fight over them. They eventually leave, shooting their guns in the air. The scene resembles an Old West gang of bandits riding out of town, which reinforces this traditional Latino/a stereotype. In summary, the usurpers (the out-group) are presented as violent, brute, mindless traffickers, with their actions constituting a threat to U.S. interests. Mexican government officials complicit in the drug trade would later be shown as also being part of the out-group.

The defense portion of the threat/defense sequence is established right after the traffickers exit, as the camera pans left and fixes on a man standing by a fountain in the

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plaza. He is the only person who is not picking up the “dirty” money, and he is shown standing stoically as bullet sounds are heard in the background. The camera angle is at eye level, meaning “the point of view is one of equality and there is no power difference involved” (Kress and van Leeuwen, Reading Images, 140) between Camarena as the represented participant and the ideal U.S. audience as the interactive participants. As a result, the identity of the story’s hero is clearly established in stark contrast to that of the trafficker-villain, and the film calls for the viewers to identify with him and his quest.

Camarena is the “good” Latino fighting the usurpers on behalf of U.S. interests. Caro

Quintero is the “bad” Latino, himself the usurper and the main threat, associated with

Mexico. From that point on, Camarena works hard to find a way to disrupt Caro

Quintero’s profitable operations and diminish the threat he represents. He tells fellow

DEA agent Steinmetz: “I’m going to hit Caro and the others where it hurts them the most.

I’m going to take all their dope and all their money.” Eventually, he is able to find the drug lord’s high-tech marihuana plantation in the desert, which is destroyed. As the drugs burn, we see a placid smile on Camarena’s face. He has defeated the villain, at least temporarily, fulfilling his heroic quest and restoring balance to the power relations between the in-group and the out-group, which all along had favored the Mexican side.

An usurpation sequence (in this case centered around the heralded hero) appears later in the film, as Camarena is kidnapped and killed as an act of vengeance following the plantation’s destruction. The corresponding threat/defense sequence is similar to the first one, except that now Camarena no longer plays the role of the hero but rather that of martyr or sacrificial victim. The threat represented by the traffickers as well as corrupt

Mexican police, military, and government officials becomes magnified and more intense

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throughout the rest of the film, as evidence is slowly presented or hinted at that points to a cover-up of the Camarena murder by high-ranking Mexican officials profiting from the drug trade. The defense sequence that follows involves a series of actions by the surviving Guadalajara-based DEA agents, DEA administrators, and investigators who arrive in Mexico to work the Camarena case—an unprecedented investigation dubbed

“Operation Leyenda.” They are led by the feisty Steinmetz, who fulfills the role of the new hero. Even more so than Camarena, Steinmetz embodies the cowboy hero prototype both in his appearance (cowboy hat and boots, bolo tie, etc.) and in the explosive, often violent way he deals with Mexican officers and others he perceives as obstructing his investigation. While Camarena is depicted as more even-tempered than Steinmetz, both characters are constructed as hypermasculine heroes who display their macho traits in order to succeed in their extremely dangerous profession. Their characterization is no different from that of Gabaldon, who as we have seen attributed his success to “cojones” and the toughness he developed by growing in the gritty barrio of East L.A. The emphasis on normative hypermasculine traits in these films is not surprising, since action and adventure narratives have been traditionally dominated by male characters (Gallagher

14), as explained in Chapter 3. The Spy Kids films offer a more inclusive approach to gender and heroism by featuring male and female heroes, young and old, and even disabled.

Steinmetz’s quest is to find those responsible for Camarena’s death and bring them to justice, a goal that is now compounded and exalted by a national war cry for revenge as pride and anger become the prevailing emotions and motivations. A key instance in this sequence is the examination by DEA Administrator Jack Lawn of tape

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recordings of Camarena’s interrogation and torture. Filmed in a dark, gloomy room and incorporating the agent’s painful moans and groans, this scene is crucial for establishing a sense of suffering in the story and morally justifying the Americans’ retaliation. One victory in this battle is the capture of Caro Quintero and his prosecution in Mexico.

However, this emotionally driven quest reaches its climax later in the film when DEA agents kidnap Ramón Varona, a go-between traffickers and politicians who was involved in Camarena’s torture and death, at his house in Mexicali. Feeling justified by the

Mexican authorities’ cover-ups and refusal to fully assist in their investigation, the

Americans decide to take the law into their own hands, pulling off a rogue operation during which they evade Mexican police and drag Varona across the border, where he is apprehended by the Border Patrol and charged with crossing into the United States illegally. As Susan Boyd has posited, drug-war films tend to normalize violence and punishment of drug traffickers, as “the rule of law is ignored by U.S. DEA agents in the pursuit of Western justice” (137). Varona is found guilty at a trial in Los Angeles, as the narrative reaffirms the resilience and dedication of the U.S. heroes, as well as the supremacy of the American legal system over the corruption of the Mexican legal apparatus. Back in Mexico, high-ranking officials involved in the Camarena murder watch on television the results of the trial, visibly fearful that they too may soon find themselves in Varona’s shoes.

Understanding how Drug Wars is advanced as a nationalist heroic narrative by the sequences identified above is essential for analyzing the story’s heroes and antagonists.

Before delving into this analysis, it is important to point out that the movie is structured as a cowboy narrative in which heroes and villains are clearly identified and

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unequivocally contrasted, and in which the preeminence of law-enforcement as the only way to achieve victory over the disruptive forces representing evil is made thoroughly evident. The nature of this cowboy narrative framing is established early in the movie, when Camarena drives new Guadalajara DEA agent Tony Riva (played by Miguel

Ferrer) around the city, showing him the ins and outs of the Guadalajara drug trade. After a Jalisco State police officer throws a glass bottle at Camarena’s truck (the cops, he says,

“are bought and paid for. The only thing they don’t do for the traffickers is windows”),

Camarena tells Riva: “Welcome to Dodge City.” This, of course, is meant as a reference to the 1939 Western flick starring Errol Flynn, in which a Texas cattle agent takes the job of sheriff to rid a lawless town of the bandits who terrorize it. This intertextual association—an example of provenance, or the importation of signs from one context into another, common in multimodal texts (Kress and van Leeuwen, Multimodal Discourse,

23)—suggests that Camarena and the other U.S. agents play the same role of saviors and lawmen in Guadalajara, inscribing Drug Wars in the western aesthetic of good versus evil, the use of force as justifiable to defeat bandits and bring order to a chaotic world, and the central role of the lone hero in protecting innocent people. Thus, Guadalajara— and, by extension, Mexico—becomes the uncivilized frontier, with the U.S. playing the role of civilizer and liberator, except that the people it seeks to protect are not the

Mexicans (such as in the paternalistic 1960 western The Magnificent Seven) but the

Americans back home, across the border. This variation in the narrative structure of the typical cowboy story makes Drug Wars what I would call a “nationalist western,” in which the good-versus-evil confrontation extends beyond borders and becomes transnational in nature.

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In western narratives (which are examples of hero stories as articulated by

Hogan), the rivalry between the hero and the villain is crucial for plot development. The same is true of Drug Wars. In fact, the heroes of the film are constructed by highlighting values and features that stand in obvious contrast with those of their antagonists. In the first threat/defense sequence, Camarena is the main hero. We often see him alone (thus fulfilling the solitary cowboy prototype), gaining trust from informants, digging up information, and trying to figure out a way to find and bust the marihuana plantation operated by Caro Quintero, who is the lead villain in these sequences. Born in Mexicali,

Mexico, and raised in California—“a curious blend of Latin machismo and Yankee work ethic” who had “the blood of a Mexican, the deep eyes of an Indian, and the heart of a gringo (Shannon 1)— Camarena is portrayed in the movie as a Latino-American who embodies the virtues of the nationalist U.S. “narc” hero, who, according to Fojas, “is characterized by his or her deeply ‘American’ values of righteousness, enterprise, autonomy, and initiative” (111). The movie provides just enough clues to establish

Camarena’s identity as a Latino by emphasizing a couple of key cultural markers associated with many, though not all, U.S. Hispanics. First, Camarena speaks a few words of Spanish in the film, first to an old man who tells him about Caro Quintero’s marihuana plantation, and then when talking to his wife, Mika (played by Elizabeth

Peña), whom he affectionate refers to as “mi chaparrita.” We also learn that the

Camarenas are Catholic and, more importantly, that they wed at “Our Lady of Guadalupe in Calexico,” the same church where Kiki’s funeral service is held. Camarena is also linked with Mexican and Mexican-American religious beliefs through a Virgin of

Guadalupe altar on a street of Guadalajara, by which Steinmetz walks near the end of the

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movie. The altar is plastered with pictures of the departed, including a newspaper clipping about the Camarena murder that shows his portrait, upon which the camera fixes after having surveyed the face of the Madonna, the burning candles, and the nameless faces of the dead. Finally, Camarena’s connections with his country of birth and death are emphasized in a scene in which Mika scatters his ashes from an airplane flying over the desert along the U.S.-Mexico border, so that they would land on both sides. This flight scene closely resembles the scene where Camarena flew over the desert in search of the marihuana plantation, thus tying his heroic deed with his death in an inextricable manner.

While the film does acknowledge Camarena’s Mexican roots and his

“Latinoness,” those characteristics are not the ones that are exalted as being heroic or contributing to heroism in the film. The American values represented by Camarena as a

U.S. “narc” hero are the ones that are brought to the forefront, as a strategy to differentiate the law-abiding and law-enforcing Camarena (and the nation he embodies as a socially representative hero), from Caro Quintero and the web of criminality and corruption that the film unapologetically associates with Mexico. For instance, in the sequence that follows the film’s opening sequence dominated by Caro Quintero’s criminal exploits in the dark of night, Camarena is shown in a sunny day at a birthday party for his son, surrounded by his family as well as his fellow DEA agents and their families. Camarena dances with his wife as they listen to country Western music. As the party goes on, Mika tells the audience (as voiceover) about the challenges facing DEA agents who fight “billionaire drug lords” abroad at the service of their country, including that “they have no police power,” “often they must go unarmed,” and “some have been injured, others killed.” This sequence serves two purposes. First, it presents Camarena as

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a committed and loving family man in brotherhood with his fellow agents, clearly contrasting him with the treacherous, self-serving Caro Quintero and his usual posse of thugs and easy women. The choice of music also helps to establish the “Americanness” of this cohort in contrast with the tropical tunes heard at Caro Quintero’s house and at the

Guadalajara club in the previous scenes. Second, the party scene shows a multicultural group of men and families (Camarena and Riva are Latinos, Steinmetz’s wife is Asian-

American), framing the DEA agents’ efforts and sacrifices as an inclusive endeavor undertaken by a unified nation. In other parts of the movie, Camarena is shown in his house, which is simple and a world apart from Caro Quintero’s luxurious abodes. We see him expressing love and affection toward his wife and children, or worrying over the fact that his two kids are growing up with him being gone for long periods of time. Again, these scenes help to establish Camarena as a role model who sacrifices so much in detriment of his personal safety and family life for the benefit of his country. By contrast, the only “generous” act done by Caro Quintero is throwing drug money at strangers on the street. And even though we learn about the trafficker’s rough upbringing when he talks to a reporter in prison and tells him that “it pleases me from the bottom of my heart to help the poor, because I was so poor as a kid,” any possibility of empathy with this character is dismissed by the fact that there is a party going on in his cell during the interview and that he is, just as before, surrounded by sultry women. The film makes a point of highlighting the very different paths these two unprivileged Mexican-born men have taken. Mika tells Steinmetz in a letter: “Growing up poor in Calexico he (Camarena) knew the odds were stacked against him. He had seen the misery that led people to take drugs and the desperation that caused them to smuggle. He knew about cops who took

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bribes, politicians who made promises, and judges who jailed poor kids and only scolded rich ones. But Kiki believed that one man could make a difference. And one man has.”

Thus, the heroic nature of Camarena does not rely on his socioeconomic or ethnic origin

(after all, Caro Quintero was also born poor and Mexican), but on his ability to embrace certain values and undertake certain actions that support U.S. dominant ideological goals in the context of the war on drugs and foreign policy toward Latin America.

Interestingly, the representations of Camarena and Caro Quintero in Drug Wars both reproduce and challenge contemporary stereotypes of Latinos/as in U.S. media and popular culture. As Steven Bender has posited, “the most unifying stereotype among

Latina/o groups today [since the 1970s] might be their construction as drug dealers or drug users” (41), while “the association of Latinas/os with drugs may produce a similar conception of Latinas/os as a security and terrorist threat” (47). As I have indicated before, Drug Wars certainly employs this stereotype, portraying Caro Quintero and other traffickers as violent, heavily armed, unscrupulous, and amoral. They are consistently filmed them in low-lit rooms—a multimodal strategy Kress and van Leeuwen call

“experiential meaning potential” (Multimodal Discourse 23)—to signify their dark intentions, and offering no possible redeeming quality to these characters. This is a common representational strategy in drug-related films and other discourses. As Jurg

Gerber and Eric Jensen indicate, to American audiences, the “drug kingpin represents the pinnacle of the ideal enemy. He is dangerous and brings danger and death. He is a seducer, he brings misfortune, induces people to use drugs before they know what is happening, and thus creates addiction. He is without scruples, thinks only of his own benefits and will use any means” (9). But unlike other films in which Latinos/as only play

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stereotypical roles, it must be said that Drug Wars, at least to a certain extent, counteracts the negativity of these portrayals by including Latinos/as who uphold the law, are moral, and rise above the violence and corruption that surrounds them: Camarena, Riva, and a

Mexican law-enforcement officer who leaks the transcripts of Camarena’s interrogation to the Americans after feeling remorseful because “we let [the traffickers] get too big.”

Of course, it also must be noted that all the Latinos/as portrayed as noble in the film are those who, in one way or another, contribute to the accomplishment of U.S. objectives in the war on drugs. The inclusion of the “good” Latino narc who supports and thus justifies

U.S. official policy overseas is not uncommon in drug-war narratives. In Traffic, Javier, a poorly paid Tijuana cop also played by del Toro, transcends the web of corruption on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border to become “the new cowboy on the frontier […] who stands for what he believes is right” by selling out his compatriots to the U.S. government (Fojas 135). Marez also points out how the 1994 film Clear and Present

Danger (in which Latino actors Benjamin Bratt and Raymond Cruz play special forces troops Captain Ramirez and Domingo Chavez), “recruits U.S. Latinos—themselves potential subalterns—to U.S. nationalism by violently distinguishing them from the anonymous Colombians” that they kill as they conduct a covert operation against a drug cartel in Colombia (21). In other words, drug-war narratives open up spaces for

“positive” representations of Latinos that run contrary to traditional stereotypes, but such representations are only allowed if they help to advance an image of the United States as morally and militarily superior, and justified in its interventionist actions.

The way in which Camarena and Caro Quintero are represented using an absolute hero-villain binary also negates any alternative reading of the drug-trafficking

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phenomenon, or any other possible construction of the Latino/a hero beyond the normative DEA agent. One interesting example is the film’s appropriation and reformulation of the corrido narrative and its contestatory nature. As Shannon writes in

Desperadoes, Caro Quintero “captured the imagination of the Mexican peasantry. To them, he was David, Robin Hood, Pancho Villa. Corridos, heroic ballads laced with popular fervor, were written about him. The richer he became, the more he demeaned the establishment, the more he frustrated the gringo lawmen, the more of a legend he became” (4). In the film, however, Caro Quintero’s “folk hero” status among Mexicans is not represented. The reason is simple: in a nationalist heroic narrative, as Hogan has highlighted, there is no room for ambiguity, and thus the villain (as representative of the nation’s enemy) must be morally inferior and “as disgusting as possible, thus foreclosing any possibilities for empathy” (Hogan, Understanding Nationalism, 236). But Drug Wars goes beyond denying any sort of heroic identity to Caro Quintero. The film actually borrows the cocorrido narrative and attempts to confer folk hero status to Camarena. In the film’s final sequence, after Steinmetz walks by the Virgin of Guadalupe altar in

Guadalajara, he enters a bar. As he drinks and thinks about his dead partner, mariachi players begin singing a corrido about Camarena in a mix of Spanish and English: “Adiós,

Kiki Camarena. They called him el gallo prieto, campeón derecho.” The sequence has a strange feel to it, and the film’s use of a corrido to attempt to heroicize Camarena is contradictory. As Hermann Herlinghaus points out, corridos in general and narcocorridos (ballads celebrating the exploits of drug dealers) in particular feature “non- modern heroes,” individuals from the periphery, from a “subaltern opposition” (34), who stand in stark contrast with the modern heroes represented by those who uphold

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normative law. Caro Quintero and many other Mexican drug traffickers have achieved and continue to achieve folk hero status in narcocorridos and narcotraficante films, as these alternative texts celebrate pre-modern outlaws as agents of resistance against state power and as a source of “insurgent ideas about the role of the United States in the global political economy” (Marez 9). Thus, in Drug Wars, the corrido narrative is coopted by a dominant drug-war narrative to try to turn Camarena into a “Mexican” or

“Mexican-American” hero, but the experiment fails miserably. As stated before,

Camarena is certainly represented in the film as a Latino hero, but his deeds are entirely performed at the service of dominant U.S. foreign policy initiatives in Latin America, while the values he embodies are those of dominant American culture. The film attempts to skew and soften such blunt, ideologically charged representation by constructing

Camarena as a sort of hybrid, transnational hero who is both enshrined as a martyr in the

United States while (forcefully) immortalized in Mexican folk music and popular culture.

As a nationalist hero narrative that advances dominant ideology, Drug Wars helps to reproduce the official U.S. position regarding narcotics conflicts that, according to Marez, has justified imperial expansion, global capitalism, and state violence even as the United States claims that the war on drugs is merely an action undertaken to defend its citizens from drug use and related criminal activities within its borders: “[T]he antidrug rhetoric used to justify militarization and a disregard for legal protections ultimately conceals the fact that the U.S. war on drugs has been waged not simply or only to end drug traffic but also to annex it to state power” (249). For that reason, the film endeavors to place blame on more than a band of gangsters running the drug trade, linking narcotics trafficking with Mexican government involvement, which immediately

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elevates the war on drugs to a conflict between states. Likewise, Drug Wars neglects to explore how U.S. policy contributes to violence and instability in drug-producing nations, perpetuating, as Boyd posits, a representation of the U.S. border and the nation as “under threat from foreign Others” (137). While it is notable that Enrique Camarena, as a

Mexican-American, achieves the status of “national hero” in this film, it would be naïve not to realize that, in the larger context of the U.S.-led war on drugs reenacted in the movie, he is little more but a pawn used to justify and advance militarized interventionist and imperialist policies in Latin America. In this regard, Camarena appears as a normative hero who “endorses a unilateral drug control policy lead by Washington”

(Fojas 111) and whose Mexican roots help to fulfill an important need of U.S. nationalist heroic stories: the incorporation of subnational ethnic groups, or subalterns, into the national category in order to erase differences and represent the nation as a unified front, even as those same subalterns are oftentimes marginalized by the state.

Spy Kids: Family as a Heroic Adventure

While the Guy Gabaldon and Enrique Camarena texts exalt the commitment and resilience of individual heroes whose attributes and actions are shown as being representative of the nation they defend, other nationalist hero narratives in which

Latinos act on behalf of U.S. interests underscore the value of teamwork and cooperation as crucial heroic traits. Robert Rodríguez’s film trilogy Spy Kids is a good example of this differentiated construction of heroism—in which the hypermasculine, lone cowboy has lost its preeminence in favor of mixed-gender hero teams and in which individual achievement is displaced by collective outcomes as the most laudable form of

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accomplishment and recognition. A family action saga, Spy Kids was a huge commercial success, grossing a combined $310 million at the box office (“Spy Kids,” “Spy Kids 2:

Island of Lost Dreams,” “Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over”), catapulting Rodríguez to mainstream cinema stardom, and exposing large numbers of moviegoers to a group of

Hispanic action heroes for the first time in U.S. film history. The trilogy revolves around a Latino/a family of spies, which includes both a nuclear family and other relatives such as uncles and grandparents. Their success in completing their missions is attributed precisely to family cohesiveness, but also to the contributions provided by an extended network of colleagues and friends (Latinos/as and non-Latinos/as among them) who ultimately come under the larger umbrella of family articulated in the films.

The multi-ethnic and multicultural composition of Spy Kids’ extended hero family is worth noting for what it tells us about constantly evolving views on race and ethnic relations in American society and heroic representations in U.S. popular culture. The trilogy appeared in the early 2000s, a time by which the discourses of “diversity” and

“multiculturalism” had gained significant ground in various facets of U.S. life, with businesses and other organizations (including media companies) realizing that it made

“good business sense to accurately reflect and cover communities of color and other diversity dimensions, such as age, gender, political beliefs, and religion” (C. Rodríguez,

“What We Can Do,” 262). Spy Kids is part of an ongoing process of representational change with regard to the images of Latinos/as in U.S. films that began in the late 1980s

“stemming both from Hispanics working within the industry and from a demonstrable market for films treating Hispanic themes (Ramírez Berg, “Stereotyping in Films,” 117).

Since superheroes and action heroes are extremely appealing in U.S. popular culture, the

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increase in Latino-themed comics and films in the past couple of decades has inevitably led to the appearance of Latino heroic characters within these genres, as indicated in preceding chapters. What distinguishes the heroes of Spy Kids from other turn-of-the- millennium and twenty-first century heroes analyzed in this dissertation is their normativity with respect to dominant discourses of U.S. national security. The confluence of family/team dynamics, multiculturalism, and nationalism in the heroism discourses of these narratives is, however, not accidental. Following Hogan’s assessment of contemporary U.S. nationalist heroic narratives and the role of minorities in them

(discussed earlier in this chapter), it could be argued that multi-ethnic hero teams would be more effective at representing a sense of national unity and common purpose in an era of increased multiculturalism than individual heroes or teams of heroes whose members are from the same ethnic or cultural background. Rodríguez’s construction of a new type of national heroism that is defined by its ethnic and multicultural diversity and the values of inclusion serves as a way of contesting Anglo-exclusivist narratives articulated by authors such as Samuel P. Huntington in the early 2000s. In Who We Are: The

Challenges to America’s National Identity, Huntington sees the wave of immigration from Latin America and Asia in the late twentieth-century, the “Hispanization” of

American society, the rise of Spanish as the country’s second most important language, and the popularity of the “doctrines of multiculturalism and diversity” as existential threats to “the salience and substance” of U.S. culture—which for him has been rooted in

“Anglo-Protestant culture, traditions, and values that for three and a half centuries have been embraced by Americans of all races, ethnicities, and religions” (xvi). The preeminent presence of a Latino/a family that displays, even in subtle ways, distinctive

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cultural markers (Catholicism, Spanish language, Mexican heritage), and which successfully leads Anglos and individuals from other backgrounds in the defense of the

United States, makes Spy Kids a narrative that should be read as offering a different concept of the U.S. nation that undermines Huntington’s call for continuation and strengthening of America’s Anglo-Protestant culture as its core value system.

As a storytelling strategy, the emphasis placed on extended family ties in Spy Kids is not at all surprising. Close family relationships and a strong emotional commitment to family life are commonly cited as defining features that distinguish Latinos/as in the

United States, even though other ethnic groups are also family oriented (Vega 7). This familismo is characterized by “a preference for maintaining a close connection to family” that stresses “interdependence, cohesiveness, and cooperation among family members” as well as “a willingness to sacrifice for the welfare of the group,” which goes beyond “the nuclear family and extends to such relatives as aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents, as well as close friends” (Santiago-Rivera, Arredondo, and Gallardo-Cooper 42). Despite the heterogeneity of Latinos/as in the United States and profound changes experienced by this community in the past few decades, “there is evidence to support the notion that perceived family closeness has not declined as a result of acculturation or as a result of living in urban-industrial settings” (Santiago-Rivera, Arredondo and Gallardo-Cooper

43). Latinos/as have also been found to be more likely to use family as a resource for solving problems and to interact in multigenerational social networks of both friends and family (Vega 7-8). The idea of family being a vital element of Latino/a culture has also been articulated by Hispanic filmmakers such as Gregory Nava, who has complained that

U.S. television shows and movies typically “depict Latinos as mostly dysfunctional and

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family-less” (qtd. in Nieves and Algarin 222). According to Nava, his film My Family/Mi

Familia (1995) sought to remedy such misrepresentation: “For the first time in a film,

‘Mi Familia’ puts family in the center, as it is in our culture” (qtd. in Nieves and Algarin

221). Just a few years later, Rodríguez would address to same concern with Spy Kids.

Spies have been commonly portrayed as heroic characters in U.S. action films and comics. They have a long history in Western culture and have been a fixture of U.S. military endeavors and foreign policy. Spies have played an important role in U.S. history since before independence, as George Washington himself engaged in espionage when he was a young British officer and later emphasized using secret agents during the American

Revolution (Britton 4). Espionage would become institutionalized in the United States during War World II, when the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was created. The OSS was the predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the main spy agency of the

U.S. government. Spy stories have appeared in U.S. literature since 1821, when James

Fenimore Cooper’s The Spy: A Tale of the Neutral Ground was published. That early work also introduced the idea of the “nationalist” or “patriotic” secret agent that would be common in later fiction and film narratives that helped to develop a distinctive espionage genre (Britton 5). The Spy Kids movies follow this tradition with their portrayal of morally and ideologically impeccable secret agents committed to the government and country they have pledged to protect.

There are several elements that make the Spy Kids films nationalist narratives.

The Cortez family—father Gregorio, mother Ingrid, and children Carmen and Juni— belongs to a spy agency known as the OSS (Organization of Super Spies), which is a direct reference to the CIA’s predecessor. Even without any other clue given in the first

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film as to where the spies’ allegiances lie, the actions of these secret agents are already coded as U.S. nationalist through this use of provenance in the naming of the spy agency.

More clues are offered in the other two films. In Spy Kids 2, Juni and Carmen come to the rescue of the U.S. President’s daughter, while in Spy Kids 3-D the President himself (who used to be director of the OSS, just as George H. W. Bush was director of the CIA before becoming U.S. President), asks Juni to return to the spy agency to rescue Carmen and save the world from a mind-controlling video game. The characters in the films are also representative of the prototypical nationalist American hero, which Hogan has described as displaying both ingenuity in battle and national pride. The Cortezes are endowed with a combination of physical and intellectual abilities that allows them to outfight and outsmart their opponents. Carmen, for instance, is not intimidated by the size or strength of the villains she faces as she engages in physical combat; and when not busy “kicking butt,” she can hack into any computer or speak fluent Chinese to help complete a mission. The spy family also benefits from the technological know-how of Gregorio’s brother, Isidor (better known as Machete), who has the ability to manufacture all types of unusual spy gadgets and weapons that Carmen and Juni employ in their missions.

The plots of the Spy Kids trilogy are also imbued with nationalist and ideologically charged motifs. As it is often the case with military and other national security narratives involving the United States, all the threats present in the films originate beyond U.S. borders or beyond the realm of the physical world—which emphasizes their foreignness and their potential for launching an attack on American soil,

American-secured areas overseas, or other American interests. In other words, these perceived enemies help to activate the threat/defense sequence that is common in

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nationalist heroic narratives. Additionally, the defense actions undertaken by the U.S. spies also occur on foreign soil or some alternate space, just as it does in Drug Wars and

Hell to Eternity: a south-of-the-border town called San Diablo in Spy Kids 1, whose name immediately places this foreign territory on the side of evil, meaning the U.S. side must represent good; a remote island in Spy Kids 2, where the villains plan to activate a so- called Transmooker device that is supposed to be powerful enough to destroy the planet; and the virtual world of a dangerous videogame in Spy Kids 3-D, which would allow its creator, the Toymaker, to control the minds of all children and consequently the future of humanity. The spies engage their enemies in spaces that are far away from the homeland, keeping the potential violence and destruction resulting from their battles out of the national borders and effectively exporting them to those extra-national spaces—where the legitimacy of their actions is never questioned precisely because those spaces are inhabited by the “others.” In other words, these narratives outsource violence to borderland spaces, territories that, as indicated before, are always threatening to bring up secrets and unresolved, buried pasts that have remained “at the edges of the national consciousness” (Fojas 104).

How are the Latino/a heroes of Spy Kids constructed and represented as such in these nationalist texts? First, they are model citizens, are experts at what they do

(Gregorio is even appointed director of the OSS), and are firmly established in the upper middleclass—characteristics that contribute to their construction as normative heroes.

However, as Phillip Serrato has pointed out in an article about the depiction of Juni in the trilogy, the Cortez family is very generically coded as Latino/a and Rodríguez does not

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foreground ethnicity or culture as an important feature in the development of the characters, especially Juni’s:

In effect, rather than present Juni as a Latino boy whose maturation is inflected in

distinctive and meaningful ways by particular cultural conventions and pressures,

Rodriguez ultimately presents him as just another boy dealing with the same

issues with which other boys (presumably) must deal. The casting of Sabara, who

is not Latino, in the role of Juni further neutralizes the potential for the character

to assume any racial or cultural specificity. To be sure, the fair complexion of

Sabara offers to explode expectations that all Latino bodies are dark. But in the

final analysis, the physiognomy of Sabara seems to aid in diffusing or sublimating

the difference his character might otherwise embody. In all likelihood, Rodriguez

departicularizes Juni to offer a text that can speak to a broader audience of boys.

This causes a few problems, however [including] an indifference to race, class,

sexuality, and other social and individual variables [that play] into the

universalizing and essentializing tendencies [of many recent children narratives]

(93-94).

The criticism expressed by Serrato about Juni can be extended to the ethnic and cultural representation of some of the other Latino/a characters in Spy Kids. Ingrid, whose maiden name is Avellán, is at the very least half Latina—his father, Valentín, is played by Latino actor Ricardo Montalbán, while the ethnic identity of her mother Helga, played by Anglo actress Holland Taylor, is never mentioned or hinted at. However, Ingrid is played by

Carla Gugino, who is of Italian ancestry, leading to the same cultural departicularization as that of Juni. The Cortezes speak a few words of Spanish here and there, and Juni is

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shown enjoying “Mexican chocolate,” but their representation as Latinos/as is cosmetic at best.

The construction of Gregorio’s character is much more interesting, but equally disappointing in terms of cultural affirmation. First, he is played by Antonio Banderas, a

Spaniard who has been cast in several roles as a Mexican or as a Latino in Hollywood. As the actor who had portrayed Zorro just a few years before the Spy Kids movies were made, Banderas also brings an inevitable heroic presence to the trilogy. But the most interesting aspect of his character is his name, through which Rodríguez seeks to establish, via provenance, an intertextual connection with the Mexican-American cultural hero Gregorio Cortez (see Chapter 1). While the naming of this character could be significant as an attempt to infuse the film with a little bit of resistant politics (which works well in the film Machete, as indicated in Chapter 2), any such possibility falls apart because of the way Banderas portrays the character. The Gregorio Cortez of Spy Kids is heroic enough, even putting his life in danger to protect his family in the second film. But for the most part, he is presented as a goofy guy and an utterly bourgeois government agent—the caricature of a hero who mocks rather than pays tribute to the historical

Gregorio Cortez. The only member of the Cortez family who does not conform to the clean-cut, upper-middleclass, mainstream characterization of the other Latino/a heroes is

Uncle Machete. Played by the rugged Danny Trejo, he wears a mechanic’s uniform, prefers to be alone and do his own thing, speaks with a street Chicano accent, and is considered the black sheep of the family for having sold his weapons to the “bad guys.”

However, even Uncle Machete is brought into the normative fold of the family after he shows up to protect his kin toward the end of the first film. Reconciliation between the

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two brothers takes place, and while Machete cries as he and Gregorio embrace, Gregorio quips: “It’s OK. Let it go. He’s fine. He’s gonna be fine. Emotion. Latinos” (Spy Kids).

This is the only instance in the trilogy in which there is an explicit mention of the characters’ ethnicity, but it only serves as a humorous moment that plays on the stereotype of Latinos/as being overly emotional and touchy-feely. One positive aspect of

Gregorio’s construction as a character is that he is depicted as a gentler type of male hero without the macho traits observed in the films about Gabaldon and Camarena—the type of patriarchal “warrior hero” traits that can be traced back to the frontier heroes analyzed in Chapter 1. In fact, the Spy Kids trilogy should be commended for featuring male heroes who are not reliant on the hypermasculine values that dominate most action and adventure narratives and for including female heroes who play important roles in the narrative. Nevertheless, the films should also be criticized for the way they favor Juni’s heroic development in detriment of Carmen’s. At the beginning of the trilogy, Carmen is the confident sibling who takes control of uncertain situations, while Juni retreats in insecurity. As the story unfolds, however, Juni becomes increasingly confident to the point that in the third film he becomes “The Guy”—the savior who must shut down the videogame to save his sister and the world. Largely absent from action scenes in the third movie, Carmen becomes the stereotypical “damsel in distress” who must be rescued by a superior male hero. For Serrato, “Juni’s progression toward masculine integrity and distinction occurs alongside the disempowerment and subordination of his sister” (86).

While Rodríguez can be criticized for generalizing and departicularizing the portrayal of the Latino/a characters in the Spy Kids saga in order to appeal to a broader, mainstream U.S. audience, one must also me fair and acknowledge that by including a

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heroic and empowered family that is recognizable enough as Latino/a in three hugely popular action films, he has done much to advance positive representation of Latinos/as in U.S. popular culture. Upon closer scrutiny of the films, one can also discover the many subtle ways in which Rodríguez managed to insert cultural markers of latinidad in the trilogy through a variety of modes of address that speak directly to Latino/a audiences, while still keeping the narratives as ethnically and culturally neutral as possible. First,

Rodríguez chooses a location for the family’s abode that is highly multicultural, most likely in Texas given the contextual clues, and where the Latino/a presence is significant, as evidenced by the fact that the crossing guard at Carmen and Juni’s school yells “Pare!” when Gregorio inadvertently almost runs her over. The Cortezes’ house is filled with

Latin American décor and Catholic symbols, including a pre-Columbian effigy on

Gregorio’s desk and a large cross on one of the living room’s walls. Other examples abound, particularly in the first movie. At her wedding, Ingrid is shown wearing a large cross necklace, again making reference to the religion most commonly practiced by

Latinos/as. When the children meet Uncle Machete, he feeds them what appears to be a traditional Mexican dinner, including pig intestines. As Carmen and Juni try to escape the villain Floop’s creepy Thumb Thumbs through the town of San Diablo, we briefly see a sign at a clothing store that reads ¡Sale!, which might be just a humorous element but could also be regarded as a subversive way of incorporating Spanish-language conventions in a linguistic space dominated by English. A similar subversive use of language takes place at the beginning of the first movie, when Juni is putting anti-wart medication on his finger. A brief, close-up shot reveals that the product is called

“Mezqui-No,” a play on the Spanish word for wart (mezquino). Spanish-language

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interventions such as these also show up in Spy Kids 2; for example, text on the screen identifies Juni’s OSS office as the “Oficina de Juni.” Mesoamerican motifs, which

Rodríguez employs in many of his films, also make an appearance in the trilogy: in the second movie, the children find themselves in a pyramid full of Indigenous art and treasure; while in the third film, the stadium where Juni races other players inside the videogame contains Mesoamerican architectural elements. Finally, during the credits at the end of Spy Kids 2, Uncle Machete uses his gadgets to help Carmen and Juni impersonate musicians at a concert: Carmen becomes a Jennifer López-like star who can sing in both English and Spanish, while Juni plays the guitar like Carlos Santana. Most of these insertions of Latino/a cultural markers are subtle, inconsequential to the main storylines, and would only be noticed and decoded by viewers with the appropriate language and cultural knowledge, but they still represent an important ideological intervention on the part of Rodríguez given the mainstream nature of the films.

As indicated at the beginning of this analysis, the Spy Kids films favor a family- centered view of heroism. This view impacts the storylines as well as the construction of the characters and their ideas about what it means to be a hero. All throughout the Spy

Kids trilogy, there is a steady stream of dialogues in which the characters make it clear that, regardless of who the villain they are fighting against is, their most important struggle is keeping the family together. In the first film, Gregorio and Ingrid are kidnapped, and rescuing them is what motivates their children’s heroic deeds. After a series of adventures during which the Cortez children and their parents are torn apart and must fight against the evil surrogates of Floop and Minion separately, they are finally reunited as they confront hundreds of robot spy kids. While the odds are clearly stacked

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up against them, Gregorio is convinced about the power of family togetherness as he warns Minion: “I’m going to show you what happens when you cross the line and involve family” (Spy Kids). The nuclear family, however, is not sufficient to defeat the robot spy kids, and ultimately requires additional assistance. First comes Uncle Machete, who crashes through a window to join his relatives, even though he had sworn he would never make amends with Gregorio and had dismissed the value placed on family by insisting that “Machete is not responsible for nobody but Machete” (Spy Kids). The second helper is Floop, who has abandoned his villainous ways and reprograms the robots to be good instead of evil. Through their selfish actions, both Uncle Machete and

Floop join the extended family circle and acquire heroic status in the narrative. At the end of the film, the OSS director, Devlin, wants Carmen and Juni to go on a new mission, but

Juni quickly places family cohesion over individual recognition: “Devlin, if you want the

Cortezes, you take all the Cortezes, even Mom and Dad” (Spy Kids). Carmen follows by uttering the last words of the film, which summarize the story’s moral: “From now on, whatever we do, we do it together. Spy work? That’s easy. Keeping a family together?

That’s difficult. And that’s a mission worth fighting for” (Spy Kids). Family ties are clearly celebrated as heroic in the third film, where Grandpa Avellán, who is wheelchair- bound, is able to walk again and fight villains after he is summoned to the videogame that

Juni and Carmen are tying to dismantle. Grandpa asks: “How can I go back, Juni? In here

I can walk, I can run, you look at me like I’m some kind of superhero.” And Juni replies:

“You are, out there, in the real world, to me. You are” (Spy Kids 3-D).

Spy Kids 3-D promotes the idea of a much larger, extended family that incorporates additional friends, OSS rivals, and even villains. At the beginning of the

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film, Juni discusses family allegiance with Gerti Giggles, a fellow spy kid and former antagonist of the Cortez children. According to Juni, “the only tribe worth belonging to is the one that you are born into.” Gerti replies: “Yeah, your family. It’s good to take care of your family. But remember one thing, everyone is your family.” Such inclusionary view of family is enacted later on in the film, when the Toymaker is released from the virtual reality where he has been imprisoned and unleashes an army of robots. Carmen knows how to defeat the Toymaker: “There’s only one thing to do in a situation like this. Call in the family.” The call for help is answered, literally, by everyone they have met during the trilogy, including former antagonists like Floop, Minion, and Donnagon Giggles. After

Valentín forgives the Toymaker for having left him paralyzed 30 years before, even the last remaining villain ends up joining the family. The film ends with all the characters— heroes, villains, and secondary characters—joining in a paean to extended family.”

Clearly, the trilogy privileges familismo over individualism, as the solitary characters who only seem to be concerned with satisfying their personal needs and wants cannot achieve success or satisfaction. It is only when they join the extended family that they find any meaning in their lives and can even become heroic. While reaffirming the

Latino/a cultural value of family, these films could also be read as challenging the value placed by America’s dominant Anglo-Protestant culture (going back to Huntington’s critique) on individualism and fierce competition to achieve success.

In summary, the films explored in this chapter provide two different ways of conceptualizing the representation of national security-affirming Latino/a heroes. On the one hand, these heroic figures have managed to become national heroes while preserving and displaying (with the exception of Gabaldon in Hell to Eternity) at least some aspects

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of their “Latinoness” and ethnic difference. In this manner, such characters have claimed a role that has traditionally been reserved for Anglo real-life heroes, or fictional heroes who (as in the cases of Superman and Wonder Woman) have undergone a process of near-complete cultural assimilation that negates their ethnic background or extra-

American origins. They have reached, in a way, the Heroic American Dream. However, achieving this power and stature comes with a price. Becoming “national heroes” means giving up the resistant or transgressive power that cultural, counterhegemonic heroes such as Joaquín Murrieta, Gregorio Cortez, and Machete have managed to achieve. A national hero, after all, becomes so by embracing the dominant values and interests of the nation for which he or she stands, even if it means becoming a martyr in the process, such as the case of Camarena. Achieving national hero status also means sacrificing more explicit displays of latinidad in the construction of the characters, from the complete stripping down of Gabaldon’s Mexican-American identity in Hell to Eternity to the whitewashed, departicularized representation of the Cortez family in Spy Kids. The heroization of the brave soldier, the loyal law-enforcement agent, and the Latino/a family must be praised as great steps toward more inclusive representations in U.S. popular culture. But at the same time, we have seen how the protagonists of these stories only achieve heroic status because they are engaged in activities that are sanctioned by the state and contribute to the advancement of hegemonic, normative U.S. foreign policy and homeland defense objectives. Finally, it is opportune to note that the process of attaining

“national hero” status by these Latino/a heroic figures does not take place without its share of contradictions. For example, Hell to Eternity represents Gabaldon as a “true”

American hero whose exemplary attributes include an appreciation and respect and racial

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and cultural difference. However, such representation contradicts and even ridicules historical truth, as Gabaldon’s ethnic and cultural realities were completely erased from his depiction in the film. The case of Gabaldon perfectly illustrates and arbitrariness of national hero-making and its inevitable connections with discourses of hegemonic power.

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Conclusion—Legality and Latino/a Heroic Representation: Inevitable Linkage?

In this dissertation, I have explored the historical construction of Latino/a heroes dating back to the mid-1850s when vast territories that formerly belonged to Spain and

Mexico became part of the United States as a result of its forceful westward expansion campaign. Their stories have been told and retold in a diverse corpus of literary and popular culture texts over more than 150 years—including comic books, films, and television programs, which are the focus of this research project. Even by narrowing down the corpus to comics, film, and TV narratives, there would be too many heroic figures and texts to include in a monograph and still be able to carry out a focused analysis. For that reason, I have selected for this dissertation narratives that directly explore, interrogate, or wrestled with the issues of legality and illegality. As explained in the Introduction, legality is a common narrative thread in the narratives about U.S. Latino/a heroes and is also central to the characters’ construction, actions, and ultimate heroization. Some of these heroes challenge the dominant, often oppressive system of law as they seek justice for their communities. Others, on the other hand, operate as normative heroes who uphold and defend the U.S. legal establishment, obtaining their heroic status from such nationalist endeavors.

Legality, however, is not just a filter to let some hero narratives in and exclude other ones in this dissertation. As can be gleaned from the analysis conducted here, the concept of legality is crucial for understanding the construction of Latino/a heroic figures and the way their narratives operate in terms of representation and ideology. In fact, resistant Latino/a

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heroes such as Joaquín Murrieta have come into existence precisely because they have faced acts of injustice or oppression—motivated by ethnicity, citizenship status, socioeconomic conditions, structural violence, or a combination of these factors—and have risen to defend their people and contest such oppression. As a result, the narratives in which their adventures have been heroicized inherently carry such discourses of legality in their plots and character construction, as they constitute a theme that is central to the operation of the hero and his or her goals as representative of a larger community. As Desmond Manderson indicates, these heroes have engaged in vigilantism, banditry, trickery, and other forms of pre-modern justice practices that serve as a “site of resistance” to formal law (25)—and they have done because formal law was insufficient to obtain justice or was so biased that it favored those committing the injustice. In addition to enacting the plights of specific heroes and their immediate communities, these narratives also raise questions about larger issues of structural violence and domination of subaltern groups in the United States by questioning the legitimacy of the state-sanctioned legal system and by translating, as Mezey has pointed out, “the legal anxiety over the state’s unstable and paradoxical relationship to violence in such a way as to give new and visual life to its persistent instability” (68). For instance, we can see this type of intervention in the film Machete, which constructs Latino/a heroes responding to attacks on immigrants by racist vigilantes and politicians through a grassroots armed uprising that bypasses all recourses of normative legality. Additionally, director

Robert Rodríguez takes advantage of the exploitative film genre’s graphic nature to criticize the racism and violence that permeate the enforcement of anti-immigrant laws and their connection with larger structures of exclusion and oppression of minorities.

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In the next few pages, I offer a summary of the analysis conducted in each of the chapters of this dissertation and the main conclusions stemming from them. My goal is to provide a more comprehensive picture of the issues raised in each chapter and how they dialogue with the overarching themes guiding this research project, including legality and the complex representation of Latinos/as in U.S. media and popular culture. In Chicano

Narrative: The Dialectics of Difference, Ramón Saldívar refers to Mexican-American art and narrative as “one of the most independent cultural and literary ‘forms of opposition and struggle’ that the dominant culture of the United States has attempted to control, neutralize, and integrate” (11). This statement by Saldívar perfectly sums up the battle waged over control of the Latino/a frontier hero’s representation in U.S. popular culture, as examined in

Chapter 1. The depictions of well-known heroic figures such as Gregorio Cortez, Joaquín

Murrieta, and Zorro can be classified along a continuum from resistance to domestication, with various representations acquiring different shades of these opposite variables. In the case of Cortez and Murrieta, their corridos—produced by folk musicians in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands and full of patriotic fervor—score high on the resistance scale, portraying defiant heroes who openly challenge Anglo oppression and never give up. The films about

Cortez and Murrieta, meanwhile, are a mixed bag. Sometimes they ardently question U.S. expansion in the Southwest and the mistreatment of Mexicans; other times they gloss over the history of racial conflict in frontier territories while still depicting positive Latino/a heroes; and on a few occasions they perpetuate the stereotypical treatment of Latinos/as in

Hollywood. Finally, in the case of Zorro, we witness how the resistant nature at the core of the Murrieta story and heroic character has been sanitized for safe consumption among U.S. audiences, leaving out all traces of his violent anti-American crusade and the racially

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motivated atrocities that drove him to banditry. We can conclude from this evidence that analyzing the way Latino/a heroic figures are constructed in popular culture over time is helpful for understanding how the history of race relations in the United States has been written.

At the center of this struggle over who gets to write the history of the nation and how it is written, there is also a resistance-domestication continuum. Marginalized groups such as

Latinos/as create and reproduce narratives that exalt their rebellious heroes while keeping the memory of Anglo oppression alive. At the same time, dominant U.S. culture advances narratives that glorify the country’s expansionist history as pre-ordained, ignore the inherent violence of such territorial conquests, and neutralize dissenting voices by appropriating their heroes and recasting them as loyal subjects at the service of a supposedly inclusive nation.

The issue is legality is also at the core of the representation of frontier Latino/a heroes.

Resistant heroes challenge prevailing Anglo legal structures and institutions (represented by the Texas Rangers, Captain Love, and other U.S. law-enforcement agents), resorting to violence and “illegal” activities as their only viable options for achieving justice. On the side of the spectrum, domesticated heroes such as Zorro embrace and defend dominant U.S. legal structures by defending the hegemonic interests of this country. Additionally, The Ballad of

Gregorio Cortez and Murieta include discourses that favor adherence to the normative rule of law, putting emphasis on the modern legal system over pre-modern heroism and presenting death or banishment as the inevitable results of challenging U.S. authority, respectively.

Whether Latino/a frontier heroes are represented as resistant or domesticated also helps determine the reach that they can have in U.S. popular culture. Regarding Murrieta,

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Kent Steckmesser has stated that “he has always been well behind Jesse James and Billy the

Kid [among Robin Hood-like, western heroes], who are nationally recognized. Perhaps the theme of revenge, important as it is in outlaw narrative, cannot by itself carry a legend.

Perhaps a minority figure, no matter how sympathetically portrayed, cannot really achieve broad appeal” (41). I disagree with Steckmesser’s assessment that the ethnicity of heroes like Murrieta is the main reason for them not reaching broad, national appeal. Murrieta and

Cortez are Latino/a heroes and not “national” heroes because their struggle is very ethnically specific and their heroic narratives emphasize their struggles against Anglo domination and oppression. Dominant Anglo culture could not possibly construct a national hero that fundamentally contradicts the nation’s foundational myths of providential expansion

(Manifest Destiny) and plural inclusiveness (Melting Pot/E Pluribus Unum). For this to happen, the dominant concept of what the U.S. nation is would have to be redefined. Zorro, on the other hand, has the ability of reaching the status of national hero and becoming extremely popular among U.S. audiences because his recalcitrant, rebellious qualities (the traces of Murrieta) have been tamed, neutralized. His actions, not his ethnicity, determine the outcome of his heroization. The hero of The Legend of Zorro embraces and fights for the values of the dominant culture, which allows him to become a national hero. On the contrary, the hero of El Coyote actively opposes U.S. expansion and exposes its intrinsic violence. In other words, the struggle over heroic representation is much more significant than the confrontation between a hero and a villain in a particular narrative: it is a struggle over who has the power of representation and, ultimately, the power to write history and benefit from the control of historical discourse.

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In Chapter 2, we see how many of the issues confronted by frontier heroes in their stories are carried over into contemporary narratives, signaling the continuity of ethnic, political, and socioeconomic struggles still impacting Latinos/as in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Likewise, the heroic narratives produced during this period are also articulated as “forms of opposition and struggle,” linking with R. Saldívar’s observation a couple of pages earlier. It is no surprise, then, that contemporary Latino/a hero characters appearing in both mainstream and independent forms of U.S. popular culture tend to heavily borrow from the characteristics and themes of early folk and popular culture heroes. Like Joaquín Murrieta and Gregorio Cortez, the four heroes and hero teams analyzed in Chapter 2 are outlaws, often clashing with the prevailing legal system. Machete, for instance, is an “illegal” immigrant who is pursued by law enforcement both because of his irregular immigration status and as a result of being framed for a crime he did not commit; while The Jaguar’s Linda Rivera, as an ethnic minority, has her civil rights seriously restricted as a result of discriminatory laws enacted by right-wing politicians. Like their predecessors, these modern outlaw heroes are also constructed as vigilante heroes, having to resort to fighting for the causes in which they believe at the margins of the legal system, which typically leaves them at odds with the law-enforcement apparatus. As a result of their precarious relationship with the institutions of legality, these contemporary Latino/a heroic figures can be classified as resistant heroes, struggling against dominant structures embodied by Anglo political, social, and economic supremacy.

The resistant nature of these heroes and their respective narratives is very obvious in Machete and The Jaguar, which are fundamentally stories of social rebellion by ethnic

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minorities facing existential threats inspired by real-life circumstances of discrimination that have taken place in the past two decades in the United States. Other narratives, such as Daredevil: Father, advance a different type of heroic discourse. The Latino/a heroes in this comic engage in extrajudicial, vigilante community policing, but they come from a position of power: their leader, Nestor/Eleggua, is a successful, respected, wealthy

Cuban-American entrepreneur. While the Latino/a residents of the comic’s fictional New

York City still face discrimination in the form of racial and geographical segregation, the

Santerians manage to overshadow an old-guard superhero—Daredevil—who refuses to protect fellow New Yorkers outside of his predominantly white neighborhood and become the main crime-fighting force in the city. Finally, in El Gato Negro, we encounter a heroic storyworld populated and dominated by Latinos/as in which the adversary is not Anglo, but Latino/a drug traffickers and criminals who threaten to poison the rest of the community. The rebellion that takes place in this comic book series is not against a superior, dominant racial group—but rather against a diametrically opposite moral direction from that of the socially representative hero, El Gato Negro, who advocates the values of service, hard work, selflessness, humility, family, and communitarianism. Because the drug traffickers are so powerful even for the Texas

Rangers and the Border Patrol, a vigilante hero with a different set of crime-fighting skills becomes necessary to guarantee the survival of the community.

Now, the important question is, why has the outlaw and the vigilante hero endured for more than a hundred years as the basic prototype of the U.S. Latino/a hero?

And why do the narrative of social rebellion against forces that threaten to destroy or destabilize Latino/a communities continue to have such broad appeal among Latino/a

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storytellers even today? A summary examination of the history of Latinos/as in the

United States since the Anglo expansion into former Spanish and Mexican territories in the nineteenth century (sketched in Chapter 1) shows repeated instances of violence, discriminatory laws, segregation, forceful exclusion from the U.S. territory, ill treatment of workers, and contempt toward immigrants. While they have varied in their degree of blatancy over the decades, these actions rooted in racism and nativism have persisted and continue to impact Latinos/as, both U.S.-born and immigrants. Because discrimination and socioeconomic disparity are still unresolved for Latinos/as as well as for other ethnic and racial minorities, they necessitate interventions from the U.S. Latino/a community.

On the ground, this response has led to actions such as the Latino/a civil rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s, the labor rights movement led by César Chávez and Dolores

Huerta during the same period of time, and more recently the protests and community organizing by undocumented youth demanding passage of the DREAM Act or other laws that would allow them to stay in the country and secure a path toward legalization. This long history of oppression and resistance has also translated into popular culture, as auteurs and artists such as the ones included in this chapter have found in the heroic narrative a perfect genre to explore this harsh and complex reality. What we find in these and similar contemporary narratives is a clear sense that Latinos/as are persistently the victims of injustice or criminal activity, which requires narrative intervention not only to offer a sense of poetic justice but to imagine that different and more favorable outcomes are possible in a changing, increasingly multicultural U.S. society. Because the U.S. legal and political systems are perceived as principal reasons for propagating conditions that put Latinos/as and other minorities at a disadvantage, the fictional heroes that emerge

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with the mission to right these wrongs are forced to circumvent those systems to achieve justice. Even an influential Cuban-American like Nestor Rodriguez, who could feasibly follow in his father’s footsteps and run for office in an effort to effect change for his fellow Latinos/as, chooses instead to become a vigilante superhero to protect his community from crime and from the white hero’s indifference. In the world of heroes and retribution, Gregorio Cortez’s guns and Machete Cortez’s knives are much more swift and effective than campaign speeches and the slow churning of the legislative process.

Another important takeaway from the analysis of contemporary outlaw Latino/a heroes included in Chapter 2 is the fact that their authors (all of them Latinos/as) have managed to make significant cultural and political interventions through their texts, taking full advantage of the symbolically charged figure of the hero in U.S. culture and the popularity of the hero story among a large and diverse audience. These interventions include the contestation of negative stereotypes traditionally levied on Latinos/as. As indicated in the Introduction, Latino/a studies scholars such as Juan Alonzo have interpreted the stereotype as an ambivalent construct that, when viewed “in a contradictory or resistant fashion,” allows “the subjects of its determinations to escape its often derogatory reasoning” (3). At the heart of Alonzo’s analysis is the idea of

“contingency,” which is expressed primarily via hybridity and cultural exchanges as writers, filmmakers and other producers of culture “incorporate American and Mexican popular cultural forms to create mixed and multiple identities” and also “understand the particular meanings and malleability of images, and they rework and recombine them in self-conscious and ironic ways” (2). The creation of Latino/a heroes by storytellers such as Robert Rodríguez, Joe Quesada, Laura Molina, and Richard Dominguez is already a

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way of contesting stereotypes by making the subject of derision occupy a role traditionally reserved for the dominant group—whites become villains or at least get in the way of justice (such as the case of Daredevil), while Latinos/as are presented as heroes instead of criminals. For example, Machete, El Gato Negro, and the Santerians fight narco-traffickers at one point or another in their respective narratives, challenging one of the most common stereotypes about Latinos/as in late twentieth and twenty-first centuries U.S. media and popular cultures: that of the ruthless drug dealer (Bender 41).

These Latino/a heroes, however, are not exact copies of the Anglo hero. They are constructed as hybrid characters who blend luchador styles, machetes, Mesoamerican motifs, Afro-Caribbean powers, bilingualism, and other cultural ingredients, complicating and redefining our understanding of the “American” action hero and the superhero.

Additionally, these heroic narratives toy with the audience’s assumptions about

Latinos/as rooted in stereotypes. For instance, Quesada shows the Santerians riding motorcycles in the city at night, resembling a street gang; but the stereotype is quickly turned upside down as the would-be thugs spend the night freeing the neighborhood from real criminals. Rodríguez is a master of “contingency” when it comes to playing with traditional character creation and stereotypes. His action heroes in Machete possess superb physical abilities and skillful in the uses of weapons but also have elements of the

Latin American revolutionary mixed with the American community organizer, making a character like Luz/Shé very familiar to the audiences of action films but richly imbued with particular Latino/a cultural markings that resist the imposition of the normative

Anglo, male, nationalist heroic figure. Additionally, the character of Machete is as ambiguous and contradictory as can be—he is unapologetically violent and sports a tough

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and mean appearance that immediately reproduces the stereotype of the Mexican bandit, yet he is the most justice-driven character in the film and ends up occupying the unequivocal role of hero. Another clever reworking of culturally charged images is the way Machete and his undocumented homie helpers turn low-riders into war vehicles equipped with machine guns and missile launchers in order to fight the border vigilantes.

In this case, an urban subculture practice associated with Chicanos/as and commonly used in U.S. popular culture as a stereotype literally becomes an instrument of empowerment, as Machete and the other immigrants outmuscle their racist adversaries thanks in part to their juiced up rides. Among the homies, cholos, and armored low-riders marching into battle, we also see a paletero carrying his ice-cream pushcart, as the motley crew carries weapons and also work tools to the fight. Taken together, this scene could be interpreted as a revolutionary uprising of the sub-social class of undocumented and documented working-class Latinos/as against a common enemy. The cooption of the figures of the action hero and the superhero by Latino/a artists and the way they consciously contest stereotypes by reworking their derogatory meanings, reflect continued efforts by the Latino/a community to challenge oppression and discrimination

(ethnic, labor, economic, political, cultural) through popular culture—just as previous generations reproduced the stories of cultural heroes as symbolic ways to resist colonial and neocolonial domination.

In Chapter 3, I examined a series of heroic narratives that feature contemporary

Latino/a heroes that can also be classified as vigilantes or outlaws, in the sense that they are forced to carry out their heroism outside of the sphere of normative law enforcement because of the nature of their superpowers. What distinguishes these narratives is the fact

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that their heroes are constructed within the conventions of the science fiction and horror genres and have all appeared in the post-9/11 years, thus raising unique ideological issues. Science fiction and horror narratives are often regarded as fantastical, escapist entertainment that offers little to serious discussions about politics or societal issues.

However, as the analysis in this chapter has demonstrated, recent science fiction and horror stories that feature minority characters playing the role of heroes tend to reflect and also raise questions about important post-9/11 issues such as immigration, the treatment of people who are “different,” the role of the state and its repressive forces in society, and the precarious nature of the “nation” in the face of increased transnationalism and globality and the possibility of catastrophic scenarios that would undermine its power. U.S. alien and monster narratives are very effective at portraying contemporary

American society’s anxiety over uncertainty and lack of control and its fear of the unknown, personifying such anxiety and fear through monsters, aliens, and “abnormal” individuals that disrupt normalcy. As indicated by Ramírez Berg, these supernatural threats have also been associated with immigrants (particularly Latinos/as) who invade the country and bring chaos with them, thus playing on fears by the nation’s Anglo majority that immigration endangers U.S. national security and authentic American culture. In this chapter, I attempted to determine whether alien and monster narratives featuring Latino/a heroic characters engage in the same type of representational distortion criticized by Ramírez Berg, or if the presence of such minority heroes fundamentally alters the politics of these narratives and their equations of power.

The analysis of these stories—which include comics and films created by Latino/a artists as well as mainstream comics and TV shows produced by powerful media

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companies—indicates that for the most part they do engage in resistant representational politics. Blue Beetle, El Muerto, and Planet Terror offer a counter-discourse to the use of aliens and monsters as stand-ins for “dangerous” Latinos/as in contemporary U.S. visual narratives. In the case of Blue Beetle and El Muerto, they resist the distortion described by Ramírez Berg by featuring empowered Latino heroes who—despite accidentally acquiring extraterrestrial and supernatural powers that seek to use them for conquering

Earth or the southwestern U.S., respectively—are able to resist assimilation into the alien cultures that radically altered their lives and which threaten to turn them into evil monsters. Instead, these heroes coopt the powers with which they have been bestowed and use them for a variety of good deeds, ranging from helping family and friends, to protecting their multicultural communities, to saving the world. The heroes of these narratives are also hybrid individuals who fully embrace a modern Latino/a culture with a variety of cultural influences and practices. In the case of Planet Terror, the threatening monsters are zombies who do not come from abroad, but from within the United States.

The film’s main Latino/a hero, El Wray, leads the diverse group of non-infected survivors out of Texas and into Mexico, where they find refuge and a place to start a new utopian society—thus completely reversing the typical immigration narrative that presents Mexico as the sender of potentially dangerous and economy-draining migrants and the United States and the land of opportunity. The most ambiguous and problematic narrative is Heroes, which features three Latino/a heroes among its multicultural cast but falls into the trap of using unfortunate stereotypes to portray them: the drug user, the overly emotional Latina, and the foreign threat. Despite these issues, the Latino/a heroes of the hit TV show still display some positive attributes: Isaac Méndez’s prophetic art

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work is crucial for the fulfillment of his fellow heroes’ good deeds and he is portrayed as a savior figure; while Maya Herrera is represented as a strong and determined immigrant who defeats border vigilantes and resist attempts by Homeland Security to capture her, thus articulating a resistant discourse against dominant structures of legality.

Finally, it is important to note that the narratives studied in Chapter 3 not only

“include” Latinos/as as part of increasingly multicultural representations of U.S. heroism, but some of them actually “Latinize” heroic figures who were initially represented as white. That is the case of Jaime Reyes, who embodies a new version of Blue Beetle that is more powerful than its Anglo predecessors and which breaks with many of the conventions associated with U.S. comic book superheroes, such as being identified as the hometown hero of a predominantly Latino/a U.S. city as well as its sister Mexican city across the border. Robert Rodríguez employs a similar strategy with Cherry Darling in

Planet Terror, turning her into a culturally Mexican and Indigenous matriarch who defies gender, ethnic, and racial labels. This highly subversive appropriation of dominant Anglo culture expressed through the construction of strong Latino/a heroic figures who occupy positions of power in their respective narratives, can be seen as the last step in a very interesting representational process exemplified in the four texts explored in this chapter.

First, stereotypes are matched by giving certain agency and important narrative roles to the Latino/a heroic characters (Heroes). Second, the alien/monster/threat distortion is eliminated, as the Latinos/as initially identified an alien or exotic menaces become heroes

(Blue Beetle and El Muerto). And third, the Latino/a hero becomes empowered, leading the heroic narrative and determining its outcome while preserving and celebrating a

Latino/a identity that is hybrid and transnational (Blue Beetle, El Muerto, Planet Terror).

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Finally, in Chapter 4, I conducted an in-depth analysis of a topic raised in Chapter

1 through the examination of the character Zorro: the domestication and sanitization of the Latino/a hero in American nationalist narratives. In this chapter, I posited that U.S. nationalist narratives that incorporate Latino/a heroic figures can be read as borderland stories, to the extent that they transfer violence to and situate the defense of U.S. national interests in territories and spaces outside of the homeland, where the otherness of those places and their inhabitants is easily demonized and targeted as hostile and dangerous.

According to Camilla Fojas, in recent Hollywood narratives that rely on borderland imagery and themes, such as the film Traffic, “the United States is again heroic, and though Latinos are represented with greater nuance, this is not achieved without the sacrifice of reactivating a Hollywood history of the dark mythology of the borderlands that intensifies phobias about external threats to national health and ‘homeland security’”

(108). Fojas’ concern about the representation of Hispanics in borderland narratives is echoed in my analysis of Latino/a hero stories that emphasize national defense and patriotism. The films explored in this chapter provide two different ways of conceptualizing the representation of national security-affirming Latino/a heroes. On the one hand, these heroic figures have managed to become national heroes while preserving and displaying (with the exception of Gabaldon in Hell to Eternity) at least some aspects of their “Latinoness” and ethnic difference. In this manner, such characters have claimed a role that has traditionally been reserved for Anglo real-life heroes, or fictional heroes who (as in the cases of Superman and Wonder Woman) have undergone a process of near-complete cultural assimilation that negates their ethnic background or extra-

American origins. They have reached, in a way, the Heroic American Dream.

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However, achieving this power and stature comes with some representational and ideological pitfalls. Becoming “national heroes” means giving up the resistant or transgressive power that cultural, counterhegemonic heroes such as Joaquín Murrieta,

Gregorio Cortez, and Machete have managed to exercise. A national hero, after all, becomes so by embracing the dominant values and interests of the nation for which he or she stands, even if it means becoming a martyr in the process, such as the case of

Camarena. On the other hand, fighting for undocumented immigrants is not part of today’s dominant U.S. national agenda, which is the reason a heroic figure such as

Machete (refer to Chapter 2) cannot be regarded as a “true,” mainstream American hero.

Achieving national hero status also means sacrificing more explicit displays of latinidad in the construction of the characters, from the complete stripping down of Gabaldon’s

Mexican-American identity in Hell to Eternity to the whitewashed, departicularized representation of the Cortez family in Spy Kids. The Cortezes do challenge traditional

Latino/a stereotypes via their representation as well-educated, upper-middleclass, good- looking, clean, and law-abiding—in other words, a portrayal that is often reserved for

Anglo families. However, such positive, bourgeois representation also reveals

Hollywood’s and white America’s limited tolerance for difference and complexity, which often leads to safe, non-threatening portrayals of the ethnic or racial family. In that sense, the Cortezes could be regarded as the “Latino/a Huxtables” in the mythology of U.S. film and television. The most transgressive member of the family, Uncle Machete, is given little screen time and influence in the storyline—his main function being the provision of weapons and gadgets to the spies. The character Machete did find that niche in future

Rodríguez films that shed the mainstream, family appeal of Spy Kids, where he is

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liberated from the upper-middle class, proper family expectations and unleashed as a popular, rebel, violent character (see Chapter 2).

The heroization of the brave soldier, the loyal law-enforcement agent, and the

Latino/a family must be praised as great steps toward more inclusive representations in

U.S. popular culture. But at the same time, we have seen how the protagonists of these stories only achieve heroic status because they are engaged in activities that are sanctioned by the state and contribute to the advancement of hegemonic, normative U.S. foreign policy and homeland defense objectives. These heroes protect the U.S. from external threats by seeking to control and subdue ethnic, national, nonconformist, or otherwise non-normative “others” who threaten state security—the dehumanized

Japanese soldiers, the ruthless Mexican drug traffickers and their corrupt government allies, the effeminate Floop, the Cold War Soviet-looking villain Minion, and the mad

Toymaker. The ethnic differences of these heroes are tolerated as long as they contribute to the preservation of hegemonic power and state-sanctioned legal structures. As surrogates of the heroic state, they are in a way no more than its “glorified sidekicks”— new acceptable heroes for a new multicultural era.

In the Introduction, I stated that studying the heroes of U.S. Latino/a communities as portrayed in popular culture is significant because the traits of those characters, the values they embody, and the struggles they are engaged in can reflect and project their communities’ cultural traits, shared values, and overall struggles—as well as their evolution over time. I also posited that examining these heroic figures have been represented can reveal ways in which they have been coopted by Anglo dominant culture to establish or maintain control over potentially contestatory discourses or to disrupt

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alternative accounts of race, ethnic, and cultural relations. As we can discern from the analysis conducted in this dissertation and the summary presented above, Latino/a heroes have been constructed—through a variety of media and in different periods of U.S. history—as cultural representatives of the struggles Latino/a communities have historical faced since the 1850s, serving the role of delivering poetic justice and resisting domination and assimilation. These heroes also embody positive traits and values of their communities, including hard work, resilience, family cohesion, cultural preservation, adaptability, and a sense of communitarianism that stresses protecting and helping community members. Even in the cases of Latino/a heroes who are normative with respect to U.S. dominant culture and legality such as the Cortez family of Spy Kids and

Enrique Camarena, their narratives tend to emphasize positive cultural traits such as commitment and loyalty and highlight the contributions Latinos/as have made to U.S. society—contributions that are more often than not ignored in official history and popular culture, overshadowed by the emphasis on harmful stereotypes.

Finally, examining the development of Latino/a heroes over time in popular culture also helps paints a valuable picture of how cultural representation of Latinos/as has changed in American society—along with transformations in that society. As we have seen, early representations of Latino/a heroes tended to reproduce the traditional stereotype of the bandit (certain depictions of Murrieta); negate the representational power of heroic portrayals by erasing cultural markers of latinidad and/or choosing

Anglo actors to play Latinos/as (such as the case of Gabaldon); or appropriate resistant

Latino/a heroes and sanitize their most counterhegemonic traits for safe consumption

(Zorro). Little by little, portrayals of Latino/a heroes became more complex, culturally

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affirming, and contentious, beginning with the film I Am Joaquín during the Chicano

Movement. This evolution would continue during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, as more Latino/a actors, directors, and comic book artists pushed for and found opportunities to create nuanced heroic characters and narratives that explore the complexity of contemporary Latino/a culture and identity—at a time when Latinos/as and other communities of color are making important gains in population and influence in

U.S. society, while still struggling against the yet-to-be-defeated historical nemesis of discrimination, segregation, structural violence, nativist sentiment and legislation, and inequality. The heroic representation of Latinos/as has also changed in terms of gender, race, and national origin. While narratives about frontier heroes did not include any women, strong Latina female heroes have appeared in recent films, television shows, and comics, beginning in the 1990s. More recent narratives have also challenged the predominance of Mexican-American heroic figures, giving rise to heroes of Cuban and other Latin American national origins and also incorporating black Latinos/as into the growing pantheon of U.S. Latino/a heroism. Additional work regarding gender, race, ethnicity, and heroism will be necessary to examine how these factors are making further interventions into the process of Latino/a cultural representation in the United States.

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