"Stereotypes of Mexicans Projected in Selected Film": manuscript draft by Roosevelt Fitzgerald

STEREOTYPES OF MEXICANS PROJECTED
IN SELECTED FILMS
ABSTRACT
This paper will critique the treatment of those of Mexican
descent and/or culture in selected fil ms-
produced in Hollywood
dur ing the half century following 1925»
The stereotypes presented
in the overwhelming majority of those fil
ms continue to haunt us
today as they appear daily on television
programming» Those
stereotypes have had negative effects on
both the self-concept of
the subject group and also on the manner-
in which they are
perceived by others. The analysis of tho
se films will offer
opportunity to better understand the promulgation of those
stereotypes and the sociological implications they have on the
racial climate in the United States today -
INTRODUCTION
Owing to the popularity
of
the western genre during
the
f irs
hal"
F—century of film making,
the
need and opportunity of
these depictions might well be traced back to early nineteenth
comment ing
on the Spanish southwest
was
immense«
Mexican
characters
presented in those films
were
general 1
1 y stereotyped
at
best, and,
at worst, caricatured »
Some
portions
of the causes
of
century settlement of Mexican territory, which ultimately became Texas, by Anglo-Protestant culture; the ensuing was for Texas independence particularly as pertaining to events at the Alamo; the subsequent estab 1 ishment of the Texas Rangers and t heiroriginal
brand of justice and law and order as they appl ied to Mexicans whom they did not view as Americans; the on-going violations of the Treaty of Guadeloupe Hidalgo and in the
FITZGERALD
accompanying
the evolution of racism, prejudice and discrimination
can be found
overt attempts to dehumanize those of Mexican
descent ° By
the beginning of the second quarter of the Twentieth
Century, the
success of the movie industry did much to both
nationalize and internationalize those stereotypes.
Early in his administration as President of the United
States, Jimmy
Carter, at a film festival in New York City,
proclaimed, i
in effect, that what the remainder of the world 1 earns
about the United States, it learns through the movies ° That comment could be expanded upon by adding that what many Americans learn about the United States, especially its multi -
cul tural /ethnic
z/racisA populations, is also learned through the
movies.
Previous
studies have examined the depiction of the Mexican
character in
film and we are able to determine that that portion
of the problem, at least, is fairly new. George Roeder's work of
1971 provides
us with one of the earlier, more comprehensive
efforts for the first half century of moviemaking. 1 Three years
1ater, Al 1en
L ° wolf produced two studies of the problem. The one
addressed the status of the Mexican in the United States z and the other highlighted the international ramifications of Hollywood's treatment of Mexicans and its effects on our "good neighbor policy"* ® The following year, Blaine P° Lamb went a step further
in showing how the Mexican was a "Convenient Villain" for
Hollywood producers. In 1980, Arthur G. Pettit helped us better understand the connection between popular 1iterature of the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the movies and how
FITZGERALD
Mexicans were presented in both mediums. ^he transition was important because the fiction of the time provided the basis for movie plots.
In each study, to one degree or another, we have been shown what the stereotypes are and even, in some cases, where and how they might have originated. In looking at Roeder's work, which takes us the farthest back in Hollywood film history, there can be
discerned a consistent trend toward denigrating those of Mexican ancestry. The characters, males and females, may vary but the
images projected have been rarely positive.
The first motion picture to be commercially exhibited in the
United
States
was shown at Koster and
Dial's
Music
Hal 1 of New
Y ork on
April
223, 1896. t. From its e
ar1 i ©st
days
the movies have
been a
major
source of entertainment
for Amer
leans
whose 1 ack of
sufficient had data concerning the history of their country, has been a major part of the reasons why many have accepted that which
is viewed on the "silver screen" as being more factual than it
actually is. Even though the technology and content was fairly simple at the outset, it soon evolved to the position of serving very complex functions. "As do all mass media and to some extent
all art, they mirror the concerns of their age, reflecting conscious and unconscious aspects of the culture that shapes them.
1896 is marked by yet another singular important event which would have far-reaching repercussions and lasting effects. It was during that year that the Pl essy v. Ferguson Supreme Court decision was rendered. That decision gave federal sanctioning to a concept of "separate but equal" which would remain in effect
FITZGERALD
until 1954 when it would be overturned by yet another Supreme Court decision. 8 The 1896 decision reflected the racial mood of America at the time. That fifty-eight year period marked not onb
b deterioration of race relations in the United States, the
arrival of many hundreds of thousands of European immigrants some
of whom, would fall victim to prejudices, a curtailment of Asian immigration accompanied by an increase of discrimination against those al ready here, but also the appearance of a new medium which
would nationalize
and
internationalize
prejudicial
behavior
towarc
all those groups.
At this point in history,- American cinema possessed the artistic sophistication
most of the neither the nor even
early pioneers of minority c on sc iousn ess, the awareness of the
med i um ■' s
power necessary
to create wel1-rounded ethnic
portraits that
They themselves
provide more than may have shared
a burlesque some of the
of minorities.
bigoted
conceptions common1y Jewish seemed little Jews in the movies,
hel d at the
time. Even
concerned with negative putting their pocketbooks
those who were impressions of before their
pride. However, the early days of the industry found Jews more often as theater owners than as film producers. Thought
it may see unfair to condemn early filmmakers for such simplistic portrayals, the fact remains that they care little for the subtleties of minority character development. They never seemed to have even contemplated the potential , and in some cases the very real injury, such distorted caricatures did. !
Those early films had relatively short running times.
Generally they were one-reelers. In such an abbreviated form there was not ample time for any character development. That condition created many problems for minority groups. Those problems were multiplied for racial minorities in those areas
where they either did not reside or were in such small numbers as
FITZGERALD
to be ineffective in neutralizing harsh portrayals which the new medium presented to unsuspecting and unknowledgeable viewing audiences throughout the nation and the world. Readily
identifiable groups are often stereotyped in their media representations. One reason for this is the need of media to simplify reality. The subject group of this paper is indeed victimized by oversimplification in media. The negative results
of this is not offset by textbooks used in the schools of the United States during the period of time under consideration.
The first quart er—c entury of movie—mak ing , which al so encompassed the silent movie era , saw nearly one*~hundred films
released with either Mexican
themes
or significant
Mexlean
characters
The appl icat ion
of Jimmy Carter's
ob servati ons to
Americans is more than justified meaningful in 1ight of historian six years earlier, in 1973, that
twentieth century,
that Americans
at this point. They become more
Russell B. Nye's conclusion of during the first half of the attended to movies much more
often than they read books- 13 Those who read the popular
1 iterature of the times encountered primarily stereotypical descriptions of Mexican Americans. Serious students ot history
from the lower grades, through college and beyond fared little better. On the subject of Mexican Americans either after they
bee ame Amerleans
or while they were yet Mexicans,
there was not
much -to be -found an the subject beyond military*- convicts. As f
as the peopl e
and the cul ture
was concerned,
there was
an al most
absolute void - The absence of meaningful
and relevant data in
FITZGERALD
Wiose ■ more desired areaW enabled the new medium of the movies to
■Fill lin, however erroneous, those gaps.
For most Americans, espec ial 1y those living east of the
Mississippi River, their acquired knowledge of the west was gained from the movies they saw. Bret Hart, Bronco Billy, Tom Mix and even ( Buffalo Bill's! revelations in his "Wild West Show" became the
models for the cowboM the settler and the town builders of the west. Those individuals had ■ to contend not only with an unsettled land and the ravages of nature but also with what was described as "savage Indians,| marauding commancherosM and bandits—most of whom
were Mexican. The movies took great liberties in describing what
the west was all about. The western genre made the west a place
of great adventure. sJony.\ Thomas, who was born Bn England and
f-i rst
learned of the United
States from movies he
Mt here
whil e
st ill
a child, received the
movie version of what
the
west
had
been -
"Of aW the kinds of
American W.fe depicted
on
the screen
it is
the most exciting and
the least accurate.
It b
egan i
n 1903
with
the 'Great Train Robber
M,' and in t he first
years of
its
1 if e
the western was spillover from the real West.
The f inal years of the first quarter century of the mo v i e making industry witnessed astounding technological advances. No film epitomised those advances better than D. W. Griffith's 1915
production of "Birth of a Nation." The -film waf based on Thomas DixonM booW> The Cl ansman , pubBished in 1905, and it glorified the origin and objectives of the Wl KI U)W KI an. After consenting to preview the film before its first public showing, President
FITZ GERALD
Woodrow Wilson who had attended
col 1ege
with Griffithj declared;
"It is like writing
history
with
1ightning°“
16 That recommendation
by a President who held a Ph.D.
in history and had been a
president of Princeton University, validated the outrageously inaccurate representations of the Reconstruction period of American history. More, it validate the medium as a means of
1 earning history -
The silent movie era ended mid-way through the 1920s but not before Douglas Fairbanks immortalized Zorro. Zorro has appeared
M feature length form in almost every generation since it was first rel eased in 1920. There have also been serials, made for
television films and cartoons. The theme of the film is One “W th which movie audiences could readily identify good versus evil . The original was based on Johnston McCulley's The. Curse, of
Capistrano publish in ALL Weekly .
Among the manyWnoteworthy characteristics of the silent film is its capacity to compel audience participation by having them both read the captions and the expressions and actions of the performers. During the "age of innocence," films introduced with length® script, somehow were seen as more historical or at the very least, historically accurate. The 1920 version of Zorro had
such a beginning by offering an interpretation
of oppression and
solution for it. “Oppression—by its very nature creates the
power that crushes it. A champion arises—a champion of the oppressed—whether it be Cromwell or someone unrecorded, he will
be there. He is born." 17 The implied association of the historicalness of Zorro with Cromwell is significant particularly
FITZGERALD
aS the -Film unfolds.
In describing
the setting, it tells us 2 "In
California nearljj a hundred years ago, with its warmth, its
romance, its peaceful beauties, this dread disease, oppression had crept in." IS California, at the time described, was part of Mexico
which had gained
its independence just a few years earl ier from
Spain. The drive toward independence had been started in 1810 by
Miguel Hidalgo >
f Castilla, a creole priest whose world view was
anchored in the
teachings' of French philosophy and was himself
dmuMous of bringing more equality^ to all of the people of the
1 and. Original 1 y
joined by creole noblemen, who themselves had
limitations on their ambitions, that association rapidly came to an end.
Zorro falsely represented the aims of the revolution. In the film, he is described as begin the protector of Indians, peons Mtzd priests and anyone who injured or harmed either in any way received the "mark of Zorro" cut into their flesh by his sword. Zorro took on the attributes of Robin Hood'—robbing the rich, who
had come by their wealth illegally—and giving to the poorW With Zorro, the creole Spaniard doing the robbing, the action received
directly* from Zorro or from the offerings of the poor - The
the blessings of
the church—so long as the church got its share
and the church,
in the movies, always got its share either
described as "greedy, licentious, arrogant." His character is
governor was Mex
ican as were his soldiers and other
representatives.
While Zorro was busy doing his good works, the
governor, the ca
use of the oppression^ was in the north and was
best represented
in the appearance of Sergeant Gonzalez.
FITZGERALD
9
In 1920 audiences admired Zorro because he opposed
oppression. Those same audiences had their perceptions of Mexicans diminished because throughout the film, they were shown
to be cruel , drunkards, arrogant, of low morals, ravishers of
women and otherwise generally reprehensible.
Zorro was remade in 1940 with sound and in color and it starred Tyrone Power. 20 There was much more Hollywood glitz and it
began
with more background on the years Don Diego Vega spent in
Spain
learning all the things a Spanish nobleman needed to Know in
order
to take his rightful place in society. Upon his return to
California and learning of the changes which had occurred in his absence, not the least of which was the removal of his father as
governor by the mestizo "rabble" which had successfully rebelled against Spain, Don Diego, disguised as Zorro, overpowered the
Mexicans,
drove the Mexican governor out of California
and amid
the cheering of
other cabal 1 eros reinstalled
his Spanish nobleman
father as governor of the Mexican province
of California. 21
The process in which these changes occurred is quite remarkable. Zorro continually outwitted sergeant Gonzalez and i a better swordsman than the captain. The entire detachment of
Mexican soldiers proved unable
to capture him and each time he
eluded them, it is clearly the
result of his superior intelligence
and their unmatched ignorance.
The soldiers are depicted as
cowards, inept horsemen, poor s
shots, terrible swordsmen and are
easily detoured from their duty by the nearest cantina or
senorita. The progression of what is thought to be a drama is
FITZGERALD 1C
little more than a comedy and the Mexicans
c&r's ths butt ot every
.joke.
Once again, as had been the case of the earlier 192u version, Zorro presented viewing audiences with strong, negative stereotypes of Mexicans which they were compelled to accept by
their having to accept Zorro as representing all that was right.
During the interim of the two Zorro feature length films were many others which had the subject of Mexico or Mexicans as majorthemes. Paul Muni is Johnny Ramirez in ''Bordertown." 23 His sojourn resembles a rol1ercoaster ride from his humble beginnings
in a Los Angeles barrio where he worked by day and attended law school at night. Throughout the earlier portion of the film, audiences are made aware that Ramirez was once a street hood but
through
the
prayers
of
his
mother, who was short,
fat
and with
rosary
beads
al ways
in
hand
, he somehow turns his
1 if e
s around ° 24
There
is no
mention
of
his
father almost as though
he
WSS 3H
unknown
qual
ity.
Here,
we
have a classic example
of
the creation
of a stereotype simply by not saying anything. Many films iM which there is a Mexican male figure who plays a prominent role, there is either no mention of a father as in the present case 01
a comment to the effect that the father is unknown or the father left, for reasons unknown, when the child was very young. The
worse example
of the missing
or unknown fatl
her has the mother
having worked,
in her youth,
in a house of
ill-repute. The
stereotype of
Mexicans having
1oose morals
and broken homes
projected and becomes part of our perception of the entire group. Further, and also on a subliminal level, we are once again given
FITZGERALD 1
iar
is
presented
espec ial 1 y
are
Maf i
of
member
being
event
through
Ramirez
in court
himself
f ind
First
In
dive
bordertown
into
job
that
to pari ay
an
who
jol 1 y
a fat
position
manager s
Ramirez
good
fast-tal king
person
described
Marie
wif
Roark's
possession.
primary
"Johnny
think
Ram i r
him but
with
affair
her—especial 1y
coul d
that
convinced
man
no
Johnn
for
that
the
conclude?
reason
reluctance
Johnny'
and
to Chariie
In a circuitous
she
desirable
jeopardy
as
even
Johnny
to
around
that
illusion
job
to protect
and
women
The
in the
the
1 oss
Ramirez
matter
the
indirect
she
Ramirez
her
Marie
and
accidental 1
such beha
that the
Roark is described
as a smooth
;he is
is infatuated
a "rol1
that he is
not -Acnow
m a
a Mexican—and
arguing his
in that an
to do with her
eries of
Chariie Roark
seemingly conniving
becomes a bouncer
played by
refusal has
an underhanded compliment
cause of hie
and who 1 ikes
the Catholic
From there
with married
being married
among Mexicans
Church condones
puts her off
responsible enough
whose glibness
grace was rapid
to put his job
doesn't "fool
projected with
disbarred while
have an
stumbled upon
being disbarred
means no
to understand
one any harm
short order, he manages
those who
his tumble from
(this perception of
swel1" and
her 1 ust
where he
the woman who was the
owned by
with another woman-
is determined
Bette Davis
for a woman
way, this
opportunity to kill her husband
is created
with a beautiful blonde
FITZGERALD
remove the
obstacle which she imagined stood between she and
Johnny. When Marie discovers that Johnny still will not have
anything to
i do with her, she confesses to the murder and
impl icated
him but the truth came out at the trial and Johnny is
set free.
He is free to propose marriage to his sweetheart who
has only been toying with him. To her he was an exotic, a smoothie, a Latin lover whom she would playfully cal "Savage." She was not interested in marriage. Her social status was too
high above
his. It was too high for most "Anglo" men. She
thought he
knew that it was all just fun and games. Following his
proposal, she turned him down with the brutal truth: "Marriage
isn't for s
.is. . . You belong to a different trib, Savage." 25
Ramirez is
angered by her refusal and grabbed her. She pulled
away and, in running across a highway, is run over by a speeding car and killed. Ramirez is heartbroken and the movie ends with him going back to the barrios of Los Angeles and in his words, "Where I belong. ,, . with my people." 26
One of the more telling stereotypes in the film is the
suggestion
that Mexicans, however hard working or bright, cannot
succeed in
the white world due to an implied genetic flaw. Johnny
Ramirez was portrayed as being a tough, quick-tempered, pushy,
flamboyant,
cocky and—even with a law degree-uneducated person.
He was devc
■id of class, unsophisticated, boisterous and obnoxious.
His characterization gave credence to the saying: "You can take the boy out of the barrio but you can't take the barrio out of the boy. I
FITZGERALD 13
The year before, in 1934, Hollywood presented its first version of the exploits of Pancho Villa. In a film titled Viva Villa" audiences were introduced to a formula for such docudramas which would continue on through the 1960s. 27 As had been the case with the original Zorro, there was a captioned forward to the film. That introduction suggested authenticity that is greatly
misleading in its wording. "The saga of the Mexican hero, Pancho
Villa, does not come out of the archives of history. It is action woven out of truth, and inspired by a love of the half 1 egendary Pancho Villa. 2&
The movie begins with a notice being posted at the town square of a small Mexican village and the people being summoned. Several hundred women, men and children, who have come in from the
fields and elsewhere, simply stand there
until
a priest,
who is
apparently the only one among them who can read, informed
the
gathering that their farms and homes have
been
seized by
the 1 oca'
padrone. When one man speaks out against
the
action, he
is taken
away and given one hundred lashes by the
1 ocal
enforcers.
At th i
point, we are given a description of Mexico at that time. Mexico in the 80's. ... a land cringing under the long whip of Diaz the
tyrant. Spain, long driven out of the country, had left behind an
arrogant aristocracy. 27 By inference, audiences are made to
believe that conditions were much better in Mexico under the Spanish. Further, by informing us that Spain had been driven out
much earlier by revolutionaries who allegedly were going to make
things better
conditions had in fact become much worse
FITZGERALD 14
When the man who spoke out has received his hundred lashes, he is discovered to be dead. One of the Mexicans involved in the beating only comment was; "a few too many -" The dead man s young
son observed the entire spectacle and, 1ater during the night, stabbed the man who had used the whip in the back and disappeared into the darkness. Once again the screen is filled with a
historical appearing caption. "The hills of Chihuahua swallowed
the little avenger. Beyond the pale of the whipping post he grew
up in the shadows of Mexico. Injustice was his nurse, oppression his tutor. The slowly a new song came out of the desert night. It was "La Cucaracha (The Cockroach ). 'the song of an almost legendary bandit. His name was Pancho Villa!" 30
The remainder of the film offers a lesson in the history of
the Mexican Revolution which was, at best, a parody. Immediately,
now
that
Villa was
a grown man, we
are presented with his
best
side
and
his worse.
Six peons are
hanged by a magistrate
for no
real
reason and Vil
la and his band
of bandits get quick r
evenge-"
"two
for one." Just as the
peons
had
been murdered,
Vil I a siew
their
murderers. When next
we? see
him
, just minutes
later, he
in a
cantina/bordel1o with
al 1 of
the
"girls" and he
is seeking
pick one out for himself for the night. The one he selects,
Rosita, is a strong
willed woman who
demanded
that he marry
her if
he wanted her. Vil 1
a's response was
, "Sure I
marry you. I
marry
anybody. Pedro, I
marry her tonight.
" 31 Zimil
ar dialogue,
on
marriage, wa
s repeated
on
several
other occasions
throughout the
film to the
point that
it
became
humorous. Villa
's right-hand
man, Sierra,
comments
that
, "He '
like get married.
He get married
FITZGERALD 15
the
"That
spon
1 aughter
Additional 1
the
stereotypes
previously
woman
greater
write
bandit
or
wanted
took
prisoners,
murdered
women
in the
T
democracy
perverted
and
ustice
sen
woul d
man
The formula
f i
other
over
social
-pan i sh
the
on
woul d
be
them
numb
said
We cannot
image
Me:
an Anglo
dying,
Villa
about
Villa
newspaperman
position
a
and
words
up
is
Until
difference
no
to
dying
might
saw then
Audience
said
Vil la
that the
breath, he continued
greeted by the
the next thirt
requests that
they're 1ies
as part
be repeated
all the time
name of
introduced b
revolutionary army wa
war and
1ies knowing
W3V I W8.S
he booty
The overwhelming
but knowing
revolutionary leader
and anything else that they
equally inaccurate and
write soemthing befitting the occasion
else, the film showed
impressed with the
closing scenes
that they
part of what became the
Perhaps, more than anything
who could neither read
"tel 1 me
brought up—religious
more than a huge band of
but it also always suggests
actual 1y no
do with
years with movies having to
this film
the twentieth century
and his
22 the exchange always generates
Johnny Sykes, was there
will know the
distorting of the
that whatever good they
disdain which Mexicans
more of what I
matrimony and the
an and the 1 oose
Sykes conjured
have for
did all of
slap at Catholicism is obvious
such scenes validate the
the expulsion
who reads them
upheaval in Mexico from the days
leave “Viva Villa" until a word
fatherless Mexi
heard about Pancho Villa was probably the results of fabrication
FITZGERALD 16
of men
like Sykes. final
1 y, the
last impres
sion of Vi
Ila, the
Cathoiic
, even as he 1 a-
y dying,
is that he'
's a prevari
cator.
19
39 might we11 be
the year
in which a
high water
mark i s
reached
with films having
to do
with Mexico
during the
first half
century
of movie making.
"Juarez
which al
so starred
Paul Muni
in the lead role, was very well researched. 33 The script Follows very closely the actual historical events upon which the film is based. However, it is that very historicalness of events which is the source of its undoing. In 1939, the Nazi war machine was on
the move in Europe. Films of the era described the monstrous nature of the Nazi and the almost angelic- dispositions of their victims. The 1atter is not presented in a way which would detract from their human qualities or their sense of patriotism. The same was not true of the film "Juarez" which, while it clearly spoke of freedom, justice and democracy and even, in one scene, questioned the imperialism of certain European nations, and presented the terrible conditions under which the revolutionaries lived, it
showing their brutal nature and even their
could not resist
predisposition
to mimic the behavior of their oppressors. Part of
the cause of this perception and interpretation of what might
actual 1y have
happened, was the result of how the image of Mexican
revolut i onar i es
had been implanted in the minds of audiences five
years earlier
with "Viva Villa."
Other films which have gotten similar treatment are the following. The Fugitive" (1947) was about a revolutionary priest
who broke his vows and fathered a child. 34 "The Fighter" (1952)
was about a Mexican who crossed the border into the United States
FITZGERALD 1 /
and became a prize fighter and used his winning to buy arms for
the revolutionary cause. 35 "Vera Cruz" (1954) romanticized the efforts to overthrow the Emperor Maximillian. 36 "Bandido" (1956) was about Anglo gun runners during the revolution. 37 "Viva Maria
(1965) is about two beautiful women who are revolutionaries and
also entertainers. 33 “Villa Rides" (1968) present Villa with gun
runners and beautiful women entertainers. 39 "The Wild Bunch"
(1969) was the last film of the 1960s having to do with the Mexican Revolution. It centered around a band of Anglo outlaws
who are hired by a Mexican general to steal arms from the U.S.
Army. 4
Introduced with "Robin Hood of El Dorado" (1936), a new component of the western genre, the Mexican hero, would help dominate cowboy movies through the 1940s. 41 Evenjjthough the genre elevated the Mexican character somewhat, he still did not escape
totally the image of the bandit or of someone who is outside the law. In Robin Hood, the lead character seeks revenge on a "gang
who ruined his life." 42 His efforts to right the wrongs took him
outside the law. For the dozen or so films of this sort which were released over the following twenty years, each would follow the formula of a bandit figure who stole for some higher purpose. "The Gay Cavalier" (1946), explains the lead character's, Chico,
.life of banditry in the very early scenes. 43 Chico is seen standing near a grave and speaking to it: Sleep well my father.
Today, another debt will be paid." 44 On a nearby hillside, his
followers wait for him and there is an exchange between his right
hand man, Pablo, and a new man with the group.
"Why does Chico
FITZGERALD 18
make a notch on the cross?" 45 Pablo explained by sayings "Not so loud. You are new to us, Pedro, so I will tell you» Once a year, Chico come to the grave of his -father. He was the greatest bandit
sleep with clear conscience." 46 Because neither Chico nor his
of all California.
Now Chico make
up his
mind and try to
pay
for
his father's crimes.
So he take f
rom the
rich people who
are
bad
and give to the poor
. That way, h
is poor
■fsthsn c sn hcivs
the
1 ong
■followers have any other means of support, we can all deduce that
some portion of their ill-gotten wealth remained in their own pockets. Just how much the poor ever got, we are not told but we
do know that the poor remained poor and struggled with whatever jobs they might have had and Chico and his followers had no need for work in the usual sense.
Bv inference, we are told that Chico's father, during his career as a bandit, did not restrict his activities to those whom he knew had come by their wealth illegally. Were it so, Chico
could not hope to undo his father's
deeds or at 1 east repay them
by robbing the rich and giving to the poor.
Chico is yet a bandit
but not as ruthless a bandit as his father was. The image of the
bandit, however, remained constant and continued to be a stereotype of the Mexican even when he is an alleged "good guy."
Duncan Renal do's earlier portrayal of the same Chico
character was little better. "Guns and Fury" <1939) had Chico and
Poncho as relatively "good guys." ^7 However, early in the film, it
is established
that his lifestyle did often bring him into
conflict with the law. The crooked mayor of the tow of Del Rio
advised him that "his type" would not be welcome in that peaceful
FITZGERALD 19
town.
The fact of
the matter
is, the
crooked
mayor did not
want
to ri
sk having to
split any of
the spo
il s of
the community
with
Chico
who he knew
to al so be a
bandit.
48
More important than the simple plot of crooks stealing mono
and framing
an honest citizen is the on-going procession of
stereotypes
of Mexicans which the film provides. This was
particularly
the case with Poncho who displayed an absolute
inability to speak correctly. The fact that Spanish is his
primary language is not taken into consideration nor is that of his being bilingual - What is presented, and humorously so, is how
he butchers
English. Throughout the film, he makes such
utterances
as, "we'll be looking you" rather than "we'll be seeing
you." W "I
don't read pretty good" is made all the worse by his
saying it to a small Anglo boy who speaks perfect English. 50
Gilbert Roland who assumed the Chico character with his sidekick Pablo after Duncan Renal do (Reynolds) moved on to become
whole day and a half." 51 jn "King of the Bandits" (1947), during
the Cisco K
Ad with his sidekick Pancho, greatly expanded the image
of the Mex it
-an as Latin lover. In "Robin Hood of Monterey"
(1947), he
complains that he "haven't seen a pretty girl in a
the opening
scenes, Chico and Pablo find themselves being targets
of a firing
squad. When asked if there are any last wishes, Pablo
asked on that the Lieutenant trade places with him while Chico said: "There's a pretty girl in Las Cruces I was going to play
post office
with. Will you say goodbye to her for me?" 52
Another group to be considered are those films in which the
Mexican is not the central figure. There are a few in which
FITZGERALD 20
Mexicans are sidekicks to Anglo heroes. A larger category is that
in which Mexicans do not play any significant roles but whose appearance, however brief, is detrimental to the image of the Mexican. In “Red River" (1948), as John Wayne enters Texas and
prepares to
claim all of the and as far as the eye can see for
himself, he
is met by two vaqueros who informed him that he is
trespassing.
After a very brief discussion on the matter and the
one vaquero
who is determined to protect the interest of his
padron attempts to do so and is killed by Wayne, the second said i "It is not my land sen or" and very cowardly slinks away. 53 In the "Ox Bow Incident" (1943) , the Mexican suspect of the trio of
accused cattle thieves and murderers is portrayed as a lying,
knife carrying con-man. 54 pue jn part to the manner in which is character is developed, audiences, while inclined to believe the
innocence of the other two are rel uctant to do so because of a
real need to believe that the Mexican is guilty. That same year,
"The Outlaw"
opened at theaters around the country. J5 The film was
yet another
gl orif ication of the legend of Billy the Kid. While
this version
centered around the Kid's amorous adventures with a
lustful senorita played by Jane Russell, the effects of the perception and stereotyping of Mexicans is that they—male and
female, young and old—greatly identified with the outlaw and
considered him to be their friend. They provided him food and
trouble with the law occurred in the film "Stagecoach." Chris
shelter and,
seemingly, without their help, he would have been
apprehended
by the law much sooner. Four years earlier, in 1939,
a similar e>
sample of identifying with and helping someone in
FITZGERALD 2
the Mexican relay station operator, is stereotypical 1y portrayed
short
tat, mustachioed
•finishes
every
sentence
with:
theenk." He is married
an
Indian
woman
who is described, even
to him, as a savage—"one of Geronomo's people"—and when he
discovered
that she had run away in the night,
he sounded the
alarm with Curly, the sheriff.
Their exchange
is as fol 1owss
Chris:
Curly:
Chris:
Curl y
Chris:
Curly, my wife Jakima, she ran away« When I looked up she was gone.
You can find another wife.
Sure, I can. find another wife but she take my rifle and my horse. Oh, I never sell her. I love her
too much. I beat it with tired.
Y our wife?
No, my horse. I can find not a horse 1 ike that one
a whip and she never get
another wife easy yes but
57
Even as Chris
plays the part of the buffoon
for the entire
entourage,
he has concerns and a warning
for Ringo,
the outlaw,
intent
of avenging his
who recently escaped from prison
with the
younger brother's
murder.
Kid, I know why you want to go to Lordsburg. I like you.
know your pop. He was good friend of mine. If you know
in Lordsburg you stay away I theenk. Luke, Ike and Hank there together. I saw them. I can tell you the truth,
know. You crazy if you go. I think you stay away Kid.
Three against one is no good. 58
who al 1 I
Andy Devine plays
the role of Buck the stagecoach driver.
usual in such parts, he furnishes comedic relief.
In "Stagecoach"
he does it well—devastating! y
so. At the very beginning of the
film, as the stage leaves for Lordsburg, the sheriff is sitting with him topside and Buck tells the sheriff the story of his life.
I just took, this job ten years ago so I could make enough money to marry my Mexican girl Julietta. I've been working hard at it ever since. My wife's got more relatives that
FITZGERALD
anyone you ever did see. I bet Chihuahua. Yeah, and what do I
Lordsburg? Nothing but frijole beans, beans, beans."
I'm feeding half the state of get to eat when I get home to beans that's all—nothing but
examples of the impact of
One of the more devastating
stereotypes
on Mexicans ma^
f be found in
the walk-on, bit parts
that have
1 ittle or
nothing
to do with t
:he plot of
the film.
In
"Two Rode
Together"
(1961) ,
the film beg
ins with a
church bel 1
ringing, a
sieep ing
Mexican
being roused
from his
position on
the
ground and
the sheri
ff sitting . in a stra
ight backed
chair on t
he
porch of a
saloon.
A Mexi c
an man, with
apron on,
approached t
h p
sheriff with a tray with a drink on it. His manner is very subservient. He informed sheriff Guthrie McCabe, played by Jimmy Stewart, that "the widow Gomez has delivered a son this morning—a
boy." McCabe's
onl y
comment was:
"A
boy
for the widow Gomez."
The waiter pushed on:
"But senor,
it
has
been more than a year
ago since senor
Antoni
o Gomez has
been
buried in the church
house." 59 Once
again,
a child is
born
to
a Mexican woman and there
is no clear accounting as to who the father might be. Similar characterizations may be found in other films released during that
pE?r**iod u
Within the category of walk-on there
is the special ization of
buffoon. In "The Big Country" (1958), in each appearance on screen, the Mexican is shown to be a clown. The most memorable has to do with the scene where Gregory Peck, the ex-sea captain
who has come to marry the rancher's daughter, attempt to ride the wildest horse on the place. Peck drafted a Mexican to assist him and the helper's, who has been drafted to assist him, dialogue and
FITZGERALD 23
mannerisms
are hilarious and especially his obvious cowardice when
he continually warns; "but senor, thees horse is mean. Let is a killer. Eet is crazy to get on such a horse. Why do you weesh to
do eet now.
No one will see you." The Mexican does not
understand
the meaning of courage and that one does not need an
audience to do that which is dangerous. The veiled implication is that if a Mexican cannot "show off,"; he will not take any risks
simply f or
his own need. That same year, in "The Sheepman" with
Glen Ford,
the weakness of the Mexican is highlighted as it is
juxtaposed
with the strength and courage of the Anglo. 61 Once
again, the
Mexican is a very diminutive figure by comparison. He
is in cattl
e country with a herd of sheep which illustrates the
extent of his stupidity. Constitutional rights had not gotten to
that part
of the country and one needed to be brave, strong and
forceful to enjoy any rights at all even under the best of
conditions.
The Mexican could only play the guitar well and
neither he
nor the sheep were considered as being part of an
endangered
species and both were therefore unprotected. Ford,
from the outset, best the biggest and toughest cowboy in town just
so all would know that he was serious about exercising his right to raise sheep, He did not get chased off and once he had
established
that he could raise sheep if he wanted to , he sold
his herd.
The Mexican, meanwhile, was slain while guarding Ford's
-d. "Rio Bravo" (1959), shows John Wayne at his benevolent best
bv his wi 1
1ingness to associate with Mexicans and the Mexican
character
at his worse. Carlos is a comic character who
constant!y
experiences marital problems with his wife Consue1 a.
FITZGERALD
24
sought to placate Consuela by presenting her with a red petticoat
In one scene, following yet another
"friendly" argument, Carlos
exacerbate the perception of him as a weakling in that with that
First, however, he modeled the pett
icoat for John Wayne and the
other man and pirouetted in a quite
feminine manner which was
magnified by the fact that a great
deal of tension was present
surrounding the impending shootout
with the "bad guys." The fact
that he would 1ater participate in
the battle, by firing blindly
and thereby creating a distraction
for Wayne and the other men, i
of no consequence. Actually, that
activity served only to
remark ab1e
he was most inadequate and with the
"unmanly" tasks, he was most
Between 1946 and 1958
films were released which had
several
specific
roles for Mexican females. The epic of the group had the
1 east to
do with Mexicans but is general 1 y thought of as being
otherwise.
"Duel In The Sun" (1946) , had nothing to do with
Mexicans
directly. The protagonist was a "half-breed" daughter of
an Indian
woman and a creole man named Chavez. Unlike the creole
of the Zorro film, this was a Louisiana, French creol e who had
wandered
outside the marriage boundaries his family might have
wished.
His daughter, Pearl Chavez, is seen wearing what is
apparently
Mexican style clothing and because of her name and the
col or of
her skin and the fact that the location of the action is
the old southwest, but in spite of her being referred to as
"papoose"
or "Minehaha,"
she comes across in the film as Mexican
and is
therefore reacted to in kind
Her mother has been
FITZGERALD
described as a “loose
woman" and is ultimately
shot and killed by
man >
Throughout
her husband when he discovers her with another
the film,
audiences
are
assured that
Pearl
wil'
1 f ol 1 ow
in her
mother's
footsteps.
The
more she pr
otests
to
her new s
idopted
mother, Laura Belle, the
second ecus
in to
her
father, t
.hats "I'm
going to
be a good
girl .
I promise
I will
I
want to
be 1 ike
you," the
more we
are convinced that
she
wil 1
meet with
doom. 63
She presents a character wh
She flirts without knowing get any man if she has to. dream of and once attained, bad and did not know it and differentiating between 1 ov
j ■ is at once both brazen and naive.
it and she knows what charms to use to she is the kind of woman that some men causes endless nightmares. She was the film made her incapable of
and 1 ust.
One
of the
al 1 -i
time classic westerns
is "High
Noon"
(1952
and
one
of the
main
characters in the film
is a Hex
i c&n
wornan
Helen Ramirez, played by Kathy Jurado. Only one other Mexican was shown in the film and her appearance occurred during the opening moments; an elderly, portly Mexican woman, with crucifix around neck, is shown making the sign of the cross as Frank Miller's gang enters the town of Hadleyville. Helen Ramirez is just the opposite. She owns a saloon and is the hidden owner of a trading
store. She is also the town tramp. With those two women, we
cover the spectrum as far as the the characterizations of Mexican women in film during that era is concerned—madonna to prostitute.
At one point, Ramirez is the woman of Frank Miller, the outlaw.
After he is arrested and sent off to prison
she became the
sheriff'
woman.
Quaker
she became
woman,
that
woman
needed
to be
•ociated
ot
her
someone
the
the town
A
especial 1
a weak
Angl o
be the
butt
of
joke
man,
everyon
the other
such
without
It
did
someone
was
provi ded
behavior
u
when
she
uttered
"I
To
Me:
in
a town
woman
and
she
and
neither
protected
is
two
simil
do
Cowboy
(1958)
with
women
Anglo
has
an
smal 1
senorita
owned
the
doubts
to whether
Mex ican
a roving,
i11 iterate
piaying
tes
ister
of
the baron
nd
who
his
permission
on
who
subsequent
sought
to
vaqueras
inroads
however
of the hacienda
His hundreds
by any 1 aws
The 1950s
and al 1
After the sheriff
by any of
enough not.
unable to stop
al 1 . 65
trail herd
attacked
on wh
is the
experienced great difficulty
a woman
not seem
was strong
e him
the deputy's
ve al ways hated
men wauld
men in
matter to her
closed with
hate this town
Mexican town
ierra Baron
property without
and who
side of
whose father
ike this
the point
while passing through
fear of his disappro
•Jack Lemmon
large hacienda
At one point
managed to woo the rich
film, she
Br i an Ki eth
(1958) has
Gcifn who
in the
It is apparent
cowbay who
to be
who cauld take
she 1aved the
became engaged to
man after
able to
weak man
from Anglos
gunfighter who
affected or personal
ar films having to
64 She is Mexican
from her intended to
with something
deride her in
who sought gold
reason for her
man's presence
FITZGERALD
back.
He is more erf
vaqueras.
a man than her brother
and al 1
In many of the movies set in the old southwest, Mexican women are portrayed as almost standing in line waiting to get at the blonde "gringo" men who were just passing through. It did not
seem to matter what their occupation or their plans were. Such
men were always, be inference, more desirable to the women of those places than were the Mexican men who were there.
CONCLUSION
influenced by the age of the viewer. For those who are still of
In recent years,
there have been some improvements in the
depiction of Mexican
Americans in Hollywood films. In many ways,
the positive results
of those efforts are restricted to the young
and to future generat
ions. The effects are, in many ways,
an age when their bas
sic values are being imprinted, perhaps the
greatest positive effects will be realized. For each successively older group, the positive results will be less. Those beyond the
If it is true that basic values are in place by adolescence and
mid-forty mark would
be affected the least. Dr. Morris E. Massey
contends that "What >
/Ou are is where you were when"—when one's
val ue system was put
into place. In short, the manner in which a
person see themselves
and, more to the point, how they see others
is greatly influenced
by where and when they were value implanted.
safe to say that the movies produced
th&t n)sd i b doss hsvs
an impact on those values, then it is fairly
and released during the
FITZGERALD 28
period between
1920s and the 1960s did indeed have a detrimental
effect on how Mexicans and Mexican
Americans are perceived by
those whose values were implanted during those years. Moreover, those of the subject groups who viewed those same films, consciously or unconsciously had their seif-concepts negatively affected.The average age of corporate executives in the United
saw the original ,
States is
fifty-plus years old.
the
President
of the United
States is
in his mid-seventies.
F'eop 1
e of his
age grouping might
have? seen
D. W. Griffith's "Birth
of
a Nation"
(1915) , probably
silent
movie
vers i on
of
"Zorro"
(1920) and many
of both groups
such early westerns with
negative
images of
Mexicans as "The Mexican's
Revenge" (1908) , "The Greasers
Gauntlet" (1908), "The Greaser" (1913), "The Girl and The
Greaser"
(1913) ,
"The Greasers Revenge"
(1914), "Arms and the
Gringo" (1914), "The Mexican"
(1914) or "Guns and Greasers" release or during re-issue.
(1914), "A Mexican Spy In Arizona"
(1918), either when they were first
Fortunate! y,
with the exception
of the first two mentioned,
the remainder of these
films are not available
for general public
viewing today.
The fact that there are still
many who viewed
those films when
they were available
and
that
they maintain
whatever perceptions
of Mexicans they derived
from such films is
unfortunate
to say the 1 east.
Those
from the
target period have
done their damage
and they are currently
in the process or redoing
through
their being aired on television.
Whether their effects
are as disastrous
to today's
generations
as
they
have
been
to
FITZGERALD 29
those in the past, will be determined, in part, by newer roles -for Mexicans in films and a more complete description of Mexican history and culture in the textbooks and popular 1 iterature of
today.
FITZGERALD 30
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New
Jew
Longman
York
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the
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Chicago:
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to
New
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FITZGERALD
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Wyler, Will iam, Zinneman, Fred
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Director,
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"The Big Country," (1958) "High Noon," (1952).
1
3
6 7
g
g
10
11
12
14
15
16
17
18
19
20 21
24
26
27
28
29
30
32
33
34
35
36
38
39
TZGERALD
Lamb, Blaine P.,
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the
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Morris, Richard B., Encyclopedia
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Arthur
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Meier, August and Elliott Rudwick, From Plantation
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Friedman, Hiebert,
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, Mass Media
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, p. 176.
(New York: Frederick to Ghetto uNew djork:
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Michael
pp. 130-137.
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Nye, Russell B., The Unembarrassed Muse: The Pooular Arts In American (New York: Dial Press, 1973), p. 2.
Thomas, Tony, Hol 1ywood and the American Image (Westport, Conn.:
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Ingalls, Robert P., Hoods: The Story of the Ku KIux Klan (New York: G.
P. Putnam's Sons, 1979), p. 18.
Ibid .
Niblo, Fred, Director, "The Mark of Zorro 1920, 90 minutes, B H). Ibid .
Ibid .
of Zorro,
(1940
90
minutes,
"Bordertown,
W).
B
(1934,
minutes,
B
W).
132
104
(1936,
(1947,
(195:
B &
B
B &
B
viva
v i i la
"The
W'Rob in
Reuben, Director,
(1954, (1956 119
Viva Villa
KI ine, Kazan, Aldrich Fleishcher,
Malle, Louis Kulik, Buzz, Peckinpah ,8am, Wei 1 man, B L W).
(195, 90 minutes
Cruz,"
Bandito
Maria," (1965
Rides," Ji1968
Wild Bunch," M.1969
Hood of El Dorado," (1936, 86 minutes
"The Mark
W).
& W).
W).
& W).
B | W)
col or). col or).
minutes minutes,
, 78 minute!
113 minutes,
94 minutes,
92 minutes, minutes minutes
134 minutes
Mamou1ian, W). Ibid . Ibid . Mayo, Archie, Director, Ibid . Ibid . Ibid . Conway, Jack, Director, Ibid . Ibid . Ibid . Ibid . Ibid . Dieterle, William, Director, J1 Juarez,"
Ford, John, Director, "The Fugitive,® Herbert, Director, "The Fighter Elia, Director, “Viva Zapata," Robert, D i rec tor, " Vera
Richard, Director, Director, Director, Director,
Wil 1iam,Director,
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
FITZGERALD 33
Mai tin, Leonard, TV Movies (New York: New American Library, 1982) p. 483.
Nigh, William, Director, "The Gay Cavalier," 1946, 84 minutes, B & W). Ibid .
Ibid .
Ibid .
Fox, Wallace, Director, "Guns and Ibid .
Fury,"
(1939, 83
minutes,
B & W).
Ibid .
Ibid .
Cabanne, Christy, B W).
Director, "Robin
Hood
of Monterey,
" (1947,
87 minutes,
Cabanne, Christy,
Director, "King
of the
Bandits,"
(1947, 85
minutes, B
& W).
Hawks, Howard, Director,. "Red River," (1948, 125 minutes, B W).
Wellman, William, Director, “Ox Bow Incident," (1943, 75 minutes, B & W),
Hughes, Howard, Director, "The Outlaw," (1943, 123 minutes, 8 & W).
Ford, John, Director, "Stagecoach," (1939, 99 minutes, B & W).
Ibid .
Ibid .
Ford, John, Director, "Two Rod Together," (1961, 109 minutes, color).
Wyler, William, Director, "The Big Country," (1958, 166 minutes, color).
Marshall, George, Director, "The Sheepman," (1958, 85 minutes, color).
Hawks, Howard, Director, "Rio Bravo," ('1959, 1541 minutes, color).
Vidor, King, Director, "Duel In the Sun," (1946, 138 minutes, color).
Zinneman, Fred, Director, "High Noon," (1952, 85 minutes, B & W).
Daves, Delmer, Director, "Cowboy," (1958, 92 minutes, B L W).
Clark, James B., Director, "Sierra Baron," (1958, 80 minutes, color)
Massey, Morris E., "What You Are Is Where You Were When," Farmington
Hills, Michigan: Magnetic Video Corporation, 1976, 90 minutes, color.
Idaho State University
Pocatello, Idaho
83209-0009
Department of Sociology
Anthropology and Social Work
Nov. 10, 1989
Dear Professor Fitzgerald,
Enclosed is the copy of your"paper^ with some ed i tNWi a 1 suggestions.
You may want to incorporate some of these suggestions whD 1 e doing your*,
revision. Considering all issues, and some delay oni part, I wish to
extend my deadline to Nov. 30th. I hope this eWtentiorf will assist^ you M
put more time into ’’revising your paper. I-n the meantime my ^te 1 phone
conversation and instruction on the format, computer disk and editorial
changes Brema i n intact . Please contact me with any. questions .that may arise
dur i ng the process.
As soon as I receive your completed work, Ijdisk along with a copy of your
fleyised paper) I,5;wiKl take them to the press. Needless to say, a 1D of; these
stages have 'to be compleated before the final approval and publication of
your paper. I know that-you are working under a time strain, but may the
spirit of the forthcoming iTBanksgiving holiday expedite the process. Until
then.
Sincerejry
faffmoores Sarrif
P.O. Box 8376
ISLI telephone BpOS) 238-3938
ISU Is An Equal Opportunity Employer
Ed i tor ,
This was an interesting review of movie history, done more analysis on the extent of negative impact presenting the stereotypes created. Correlation to enhance the author's analysis/presentat ion as would frame to include changes in the 1980's.
I wish the author had rather than simply actual practice would extending the time
ENDNOTES
, 1, Roeder, George H., Jr., Mexicans In The Movies: The Image of Mexicans In Films: 1894-1947 (Unpublished manuscript, University of Wisconsin, 1971).
. 2. Wolf, Allen I_., "Latin Images In American Films," Journal of Mexican Hi story974, Vol j 4, ppM28-41.
3. Wolf, Allen L., "Hollywood's Good Neighbor Policy: The Latin Image In American Film," Journal of Popular Film, 1974, Vol. 3, ppi 278-293.
4I Lamb, Blaine P., "The Convenient Villi an: The Early Cinema View of the Mexican," Journal of The West, 1975, Vol. 14, pp^>75-83.
5. Pettit, Arthur G., Images of The Mexican American In Fiction and Film (College Station, Texas: Texas A & M University Press, 1980).
z 6. Morris, Richard B., Encyclopedia of American History (New York: Harper and Row, 1961), p. 628.
k 7. Friedman, Lester D., Hollywood's Image of the Jew (New YorklFrederick Unger Publishing Co., 1982), p. 77. ,
8. Meier, August and Elliott Rudwick, From Plantation To Ghetto (New York™ Hill and Wang Publishing Co.j 1976), p.« 318.
9> Friedman, pl 166.
fc 10. Hiebert, Ray E., et. al., Mass Media II (New York: Longman Publishing Company, 1979), p. 176.
11! Kane, Michael B., Minorities In Textbooks (Chicago: Quadrangle Press, 1970), pp. 130-137.
12.
Pettit.
13.
Nye, Russell B., The Unembarrassed Muse: The Popular Arts In America (New York: Dial Press, 1973), p. 2.
I 14. Thomas, Tony, Hollywood And The American Image (Westport, Conn.I Arlington House Publishing Company, 1981), p. 131.
15.
Ingalls, Robert P., Hoods: The Story of The Ku Klux Klan (New York; G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1979), p. 18.M,
16. Ibid.
17.
Niblo, Fred, Director, "The Mark of Zorro," (1920, 90 minutes, b & w).
18. Ibid.
- 19. Ibid.
20.
Mamoulian, Rouben, Director, "The Mark of Zorro," (1940, 93 minutes, b & w).
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid.
23.
Mayo, Archie, Director, "Bordertown," (1935, 90 minutes, b & w).
241 Ibid.
25. Ibid.
■ 261 Ibid.
« 271 Conway^Jack, Director, "Viva Villa," (1934, 115 minutes, b & w).
28.
' 29.
Ibid.
Ibid.
-2-
• 301 Ibid. 1
31. Ibid.
[Ibid.
Mlliam, "Jua^Z," (I'yfJ p2 minutesj b
34. F^cr, John, ^•ectorfLilhe Fugit~^§,■ ,(194^B104 minute^ b &
H 35. Kline, Herbe^H Director^ "The (1952, 78 minutes! b & w).
36. Kaz^HElia^^Me^or^BViya Zapata," 1195® 1 & w).
Iruz," 1954,. 94 minutegz coloU .
W 38. Fleishche! ^EhardZ Director^ "Bandido," (.1,956mi^eflgb & w).
^Eb9. MalloSLoujsl M^tB," J196^B19 minuted color).
4oJ Kulik, Buzz, Directos, 'Eilla^Ricfeia," (L968, D 2^Winutes, color).
Pecfinpah, *S [The Wild Buncm," (1 , -
42. MeEliarEB 11 Bam, Oi Hoc^of El DojadtS 11936,1 86 mi flutes,,
b & w).
■^43. Mait^HLeonard, Tv^Mones (New York: .New American Library, 1982Hp. 483^ pjg 44. Nigh, William, Director, Bie Gay Caval ier,"(1946, 84 rynutes, b
pMd.
M 47. Mid.
■ 48. fox,hlal 1 ace, Di minutes, b &Bv).
49.
, EO. Ibid.
5W fl i d.
52. WreMor, LMobin Mod M Monterey I 11947, 87TMnutes«
b w).
^53^^ Cabaflie,^Chrflstz^ Direc^J, of The Bandits," ^94^^85 ^^n;es, b & w).
gl 54. Hawk^flHowar?, Dvreefl^ [Red ^948, 125 minute J b & w).
55^x 11 iam, Director, Bo^Eicider^W1 (?94^ hj minute!
56 J Ouija!" (1943, ■^mnRes! b & w).
B*57j Ford, John, [193^99 «notes! b & wj.
58. _IbidE
159. Md.
60j Ford, Johra DllCectoi^MTwo Rode Together,■ (196EB09 .
61. w3ianft mrector^M’he Big ^untrv^m 195M^66 minutes,
621 Marshall, George, Director, "TheEheepmanW (1958,^85 minuteswcolor).
fl 63-j HawkMHoward!Director "Rio Bno," ^959, 141 minute^ color^E 64. VidoiJ UDuel In ’^^Ein," (194^^38 minute!
65.1 ZlnnemannBffiedTDire^t®, 'IHigh Noom." W952I 85 mwutesj b & » .
-3-
66.
Daves, Delmer, Director, "Cowboy," (1958, 92 minutes, b & w).
67.
Clark, James B., Director, "Sierra Baron," (1958, 80 minutes, color).
68.
Massey, Morris E., "What You Are Is Where You Were When," Farmington Hills, Michigan: Magnetic Video Corporation, 1976, 90 minutes, color.
Roosevelt Fitzgerald
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
IMPACT OF STEREOTYPES OF MEXICAN AMERICANS CREATED BY SELECTED FILM; 1920s-1960s"
This paper will explore and analyze some of the historical and sociological implications of the role a component of electronic media has had in promulgating negative stereotypes of people of Mexican descent. Further, it will consider the impact which those stereotypes have had not only on the manner in which the subject group has been perceived by others but also on how those same stereotypes have affected the self-concept of the subject group.
Previous studies have examined the depiction of the Mexican character in film and we are able to determine that that portion of the problem, at least, is fairly new. George Roeder’s work of 1971 provides us with, one of the earlier, more comprehensive efforts for the first half century of movie making (Roeder, 1971). Three years later, Allen L. Wolf produced two studies of the problem. The one addressed the status of the Mexican in the United States (Nblf, 1974a) and the other highlighted the international ramifications of Hollywood’s treatment of Mexicans and its effects on our "good neighbor policy" (Wolf, 1974b). The following year, Blaine P. Lamb went a step further in showing how the Mexican was a "convenient villain" for Hollywood producers (Lamb, 1975). In 1980, Arthur G. Pettit helped us better understand the connection between popular literature of the late nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries, the movies and how Mexicans were presented in both mediums (Pettit, 1980). The transition was important because the fiction of the time provided the basis for movie plots.
In each study, to one degree or another, we have been shown what the stereotypes are and even, in some cases, where and how they might have originated. In considering Roeder’s work, which takes us the farthest back, in Hollywood film history on this subject, there can be discerned a consistent trend toward denigrating those of Mexican ancestry. The characters, males and females, may vary but the images projected have rarely been positive.
Early in his administration as President of the United States, Jimmy Carter, at a film festival in New York City, proclaimed, in effect., that what the remainder of the world learns about the United States, it learns through the movies. That comment could be expanded upon by adding that what many Americans learn about the United States, especially it multi-cultural/ethnic/racial populations, is also learned through the movies.
The first motion picture to be commercially exhibited in the United States was shown at Koster and Bial’s Music Hall of New York on April 23, 1896 (Morris, 1968:628). From its earliest days, the.movies have been a major source of entertainment for Americans whose lack of sufficient hard data concerning the history of their country, has been a major part of the reasons why many have accepted that which is viewed on the "silver screen" as being more factual than it actually is. Even though the technology and content was fairly simple at the outset, it soon evolved to the position of serving very complex functions, "As do all mass media and to some extent all art, they mirror the concerns of their age, reflecting conscious and unconscious aspects of the culture that shapes them (Friedman, 1982:53).
1896 is marked by yet another singular important event which, would have far-reaching reprecussions and lasting effects. It was during that year that the Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court decision was rendered. That decision gave
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federal sanctioning to a concept of "separate but equal" which would remain in effect until 1954 when it would be overturned by yet another Supreme Court decision (Meier, 1976:318). The 1896 decision reflected the racial mood of America at the time. The fifty-eight year period between its inception and its overturn, is characterized by a deterioration of race relations in the United States, the arrival of many hundreds of thousands of European immigrants some of whom would fall victim to prejudices, a curtailment of Asian immigration accompanied by an increase of discrimination against those already here and, also, by the appearance of a new medium which would nationalize and internationalize prejudicial behavior toward all those groups.
At this point in history, most of the early pioneers of American cinema possessed neither the minority consciousness, the artistic sophistication, nor even the awareness of the medium’s power necessary to create well-rounded ethnic portraits that provide more than a burlesque of minorities. They themselves may have shared some of the bigoted conceptions commonly held at the time. Even those who were Jewish seemed little concerned with negative impressions of Jews in the movies, putting their pockethooks before their pride. However, the early days of the industry found Jews more often as theater owners than as film producers. Though it may seem unfair to condemn early filmmakers for such simplistic portrayals, the fact remains that they cared little for the subtleties of minority character development. They never seemed to have even contemplated the potential, and in some cases the very real injury, such distorted caricatures did (Friedman:166).
Those early films had realitively short running times. Generally they were one-reelers. In such an abbreviated form, there was not ample time for any character development. That condition created many problems for minority groups. Those problems were multiplied for racial minorities in those areas where they either did not reside or were in such small numbers as to be ineffective in neutralizing harsh portrayals which the new medium presented to unsuspecting and unknowledgeable viewing audiences throughout the nation and the world. Readily identifiable groups are often stereotyped in their media representations. One reason for this is the need of media to simplify reality (Hiebert, 1979:166). The subject group of this paper is indeed victimized by oversimplification in media. The negative results of this is not offset by textbooks used in the schools of the United States during the period of time under consideration (Kane, 1970:130-137).
The first quarter-century of movie-making, which also encompassed the silent movie era, saw nearly one-hundred films released with either Mexican themes or significant Mexican characters (Pettit). The application of Jimmy Carter’s observations to Americans is more than justified at this point. They become more meaningful in light of historian Russell B. Hye’s conclusion of six years earlier, in 1973, that during the first half of the twentieth century, Americans attended movies much more often than they read books (Nye, 1973:2). Those who read the popular literature of the times encountered primarily stereotypical descriptions of Mexican Americans. Serious students of history fared little better. On the subject of Mexican Americans either after they became Americans or while they were yet Mexicans, there was not much to be . found on the subject beyond military conflicts. As far as the people and the /Culture were concerned, there was an almost absolute void.X
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culture wereWoncernedthere was an almost absolute void. The absence o9| meaningful and relevant data in those more desired areas of studyl enabled the new medium of the movies to fill! inBhowever erroneous^those gaps.
r For most AmericansBespecially those living east of the Mississippi Fiver their acquired knowledge of the west was gained from the movies they saw. Bret Hartl Bronco BillyTom Mix and even Buffalo Bill’s revelations in his "Wild West Show" became the models for the cowboy,5 the settler and the town builders of the westfc Those individuals had to contend not only with, an unsettled land and the ravages of nature but also with what was described as "savageM Indians," marauding comancheros and bandits—most of whom were MexicanJB The movies Mook great liberties in describing what the west was all aboutW The western genre made the west a place of great adventure. Tony Thomas, who was born in England and first learned of the United States from movies he saw there while stilh a child,kreceived the movie version of what the west had been. KOf all the kinds of American life depicted on the screen it is the most exciting and [the least accurateE It began in 1903 with the ’Great Train Robbery,’ and in the first years ofliits.JLlfe the western was a spillover from the real west" (Thomas 11981:131/■
The final years of the first quarter century of the movie-making industry witnessed astounding technological advances. No film epitomized those advances better than did D.W. Griffith’s 1915 production of "Birth of a Nation." The film wasihbased on Thomas Dixon’s book, The Clansman * published in 1905, and glorified the origin and objectives of the Ku Klux Klan (Ignallsjl 1979:18) After consenting to preview the film before its first public* showingW President Woodrow Wilson who had attended college with Griffith,! declaredM^’Itpls like writing history with lightning"KIbid^19)^ That recommendation b^Ba President who held a Ph.D. in history and had been a president of Princeton University validated the outrageously inaccurate representations of the Reconstruction period of American history! as presented by the filmB More, it validated the medium as a means of learning history.
The silent movie era ended mid-way through the 1920s but not before Douglas .Fairba^A) immortalized Zorro. Zorro has appeared in feature length form in almost every generation since it was first released in 1920W There has also been serialsBmade for television films and cartoons about the character Zorro. The theme of the film is one in which moviefflaudiences could readily identify— good versus evilWl The original was based on Johnston McCulley’s The Curse of Capistrano published in All Story Weekly Magazine.
Among the many noteworthy characteristics of the silent film*Ls its Capacity tofecompel audience participation by having them both read the captions and the expressions and actions of^jthe performers. During the ,"age of innocenceM films introduced with lengthytscriptB somehow were seen as more historicallyB accurate orB at the very leastB more historical. The 1920 version of Zorro had such a beginning by offering an interpretation of oppression and a solution for if. "Oppressioni-by its very nature—creates the power that crushes it. A champion arises——a champion of the oppressed——whether it be a Cromwell or onej unrecorded, he will be there. He is born" U^Niblo, 1920)]. The implied association of the historicalness of Zorro with Cromwell is^significant particularly as the film unfolds. In describing the setting, kt tells us: "InW California nearly a hundred^ears agoMwith its warmth,' its romance, its peaceful beautiesBthis dred disease,! oppression had crept in" |(Ibid.). California, at the time describedBwas part of Mexico which had gained its independence just
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a few years earlier from Spain. . The drive toward independence had been started in 1810"by Miguel Hidalgo y Castilla, a creole priest whose world view was anchored in the teachings of French philosophy and was himself desirous of bringing more equality and humane treatment to all of the people of the land. Orig- .inally joined by creole noblemen, who themselves had limitations on their ambitions, the association between the latter and significant others of mestizo status was short lived.
The film "Zorro” falsely represented the aims of the revolution. In the film, ’ihe is described as being the protector of Indians, peons and priests and anyone who injured or harmed, in any way, either, received the "mark of Zorro" cut into their flesh by his sword. Zorro took on the attributes of Robin Hood—robbing the rich, who had come^hyLtheir wealth illegally—and giving to the poor. With ^XZorro, the creole Sipainard doing the robbing, the activity received the blessings of the church—so long as the church got its share and the church., in the movie, always got its share either directly from Zorro or from the offerings of the poor. The governor was Mexican as were his soldiers and other representatives. While Zorro was busy doing his good works, the governor, the cause of the oppress- ion, was in the north and was described as "greedy, licentious, arrogant" (Ibid.). His character is best represented in the appearance of Sergeant Gonzalez.
In 1920, audiences admired Zorro because he opposed oppression and sided with the underdog. Those same audiences had their perceptions of Mexicans diminished because throughout the film, they were shown to be cruel, drunkards, arrogant, of low morals, cowards, ravishers of womens and otherwise generally reprehensible.
Zorro was remade in 1940 with, sound and in color and it starred Tyrone Power (Mamoulian, 1940). There was much more Hollywood glitz and it began with more background on the years Don Diego Vega spent in Spain learning all the things a Spanish nobleman needed to know in order to take his rightful place in society. Upon his return to California and learning of the changes which had occurred in his absence, not the least of which was the removal of his father as governor by the mestizo "rabble" which had successfully rebelled against Spain, Don Diego, disguised as Zorro, overpowered the Mexicans, drove the evil Mexican governor out of California and amid the cheering of other caballeros reinstalled his Spanish nobleman father as governor of the Mexican province of California (Ibid.).
The process in which these changes occurred is quite remarkable. Zorro continually outwitted sergeant Gonzalez and is a better swordsman than the libidinous captain. The entire detachment of Mexican soldiers proved unable to capture him and each time he eluded them, it is clearly the result of his superior intelligence and athletic prowess and their unmatched stupidity. The soldiers are depicted as cowards, inept horsemen, poor shots, terrible swordsmen and are easily detoured from their duty by the nearest cantina or senorita. The progression of what is thought to be a drama is little more than a comedy and the Mexicans are the butt of every joke (Ibid.).
Once again, as had been the case of the earlier 1920 version, Zorro pre— i/ sented viewing audiences with strong,/Negative stereotypes of Mexicans which they were compelled to accept by their naving to accept Zorro as representing all that was good and clean and decent and right.
During the interim of the two Zorro feature length films were many others which had the subject of Mexico or Mexicans as major themes. Paul Muni is Johnny Ramirez in "Bordertown" (Mayo, 1935). His sojourn resembles a rollercoaster ride from his humble beginnings in a Los Angeles barrio where he worked by day and attended a second-rate law school at night. Throughout the earlier
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portion of the film, audiences are made aware that Ramirez was once a street hood but through the prayers of his mother, who was short, fat and with rosary beads always in hand, he somehow turned his life around (Ibid.). There is no mention of his father almost as though he was an unknown quality. Here, we have a classic example of the creation of a stereotype simply by not saying anything. Many films in which there is a Mexican male figure who plays a prominent role, there is either no mention of a father—as in the present case—or a comment to the effect that the father is unknown or the father left, for reasons unknown, when the child was very young. The worse example of the missing or unknown father has the mother having worked, in her youth, in a house of ill- repute. We can find examples of this phenomena in John Wayne’s "The Cowboys" (1972), "The Wild Bunch" (1969), "The Magnificent Seven" (1960) and many others. The stereotype of Mexicans having loose morals and broken homes is projected often and becomes part of our perception of the entire group. Further, and on a subliminal level, we are once again given to understand that the Catholic Church condones such behavior among Mexicans (This perception of the Catholic Church is also projected with Italians especially those who are presented as being members of the Mafia).
Ramirez, through a series of events, is disbarred while arguing his first ease in court. From there, his tumblg) frome grace is rapid. First he finds himself in Tijuana where he became a bouncer in a bordertown dive owned by an angle named Charlie Roark. In'short order, he managed to parlay that job into an assistant manager’s position. Qtoark is described as a fat, jolly man who means no one any harm and who likes a good joke. Ramirez is described as a smooth, fast-talking, seeminsf/conniving person whose glibness is his primary possession^ Roark’s wife, Mrie, played by Bette Davis, thinks "Johnny is swell" and is determined to have an affair with him but Ramirez puts her off. She is convinced that no man could resist her—especially a Mexican—and concludes that the reason for Johnny’s refusal has to do with her being married to Charlie and Johnny’s reluctance to put his job in jeopardy even for a woman as desirable as she. In a circuituous way, this is an underhanded compliment to Johnny in that an illusion is created that he doesn’t "fool around with married women" and that he is responsible enough to protect his job even at the loss of a "roll in the hay" with a beautiful blonde. The fact of the matter is Ramirez is infatuated with another woman-r-the woman who was the indirect cause of his being disbarred. ■ Marie does not know about her. In her lust to have Ramirez, she accidentally stumbled upon an opportunity to kill her husband, while he was drunk and passed_put on the seat of the cax in their garage, and remove the obstacle which(seh imagined stood between -sHer*and Johnny. When Marie discovered that Johnny still will not have anything to do with her, she confessed to the murder and implicated Ramirez.but the truth came out at the trial and Johnny is set free. He is free to propose marriage to his sweetheart who has only been toying with him. To her, he was an exotic, a smoothie, a Latin lover whom she would playfully call "Savage." She was not interested in marriage to him. Her social status was too high above his. Indeed, it was too high for most "anglo" men. She thought he knew that it was all just fun and games. Following his proposal, she turned him down with the brutal truths "Marriage isn’t for us...You belong to a different tribe, Savage" (Ibid.) [^Ramirez is humiliated and angered by her refusal and her method and roughly grabbed at her. She pulled away and, in running across a highway, is run over by a speeding car and killed. Ramirez is heartbroken and the movie ends with him going back to the barrios of Los Angeles and in his words, "Where I belong...with my people" (Ibid.).
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One of the more telling stereotypes in the film is the suggestion that Mexicans, however hard working or bright, cannot succeed in the white world and this is due, in part, to an implied genetic flaw. Johnny Ramirez was portrayed as being a tough, quick-tempered, pushy, flamboyant, cocky and—even with a law degree—’uneducated person. He was devoid of class, unsophisticated, boisterous and obnoxious. His characterization gave credence to the saying: "You can take the boy out of the barrio but you can’t take the barrio out of the boy."
The year before, in 1934, Hollywood presented its first version of the exploits of Pancho Villa. In a film titled "Viva Villa" audiences were introduced to a formula for such docudramas which would continue on through the 1960s (Conway,1934). As had been the case with the original "Zorro," there was a captioned forward to the film. That introduction suggested authenticity and is greatly misleading in its wording. "The saga of the Mexican hero, Panch Villa, does not come out of the archives of history. It is action woven out of truth, and inspired by a love of the half legendary Pancho Villa" (Ibid.).
The movie begins with a notice being posted at the town square of a small Mexican village and the people being summoned. Several hundred women, men and children, who’ve come in from the fields and elsewhere, simply stand there until a priest, who is apparently the only one among them who can read, informed the gathering that their farms and homes have been seized by the local padrone. When one man spoke out against the action, he was taken away and given one hundred lashes by the local enforcers. At this point, we are given a description of Mexico at that time. "Mexico in the 8O’s....a land cringing under the long whip of Diaz the tyrrant. Spain, long driven out of the country, had left behind an arrogant aristocracy (Ibid.). By inference, audiences are made to believe that conditions were much better in Mexico under the Spanish.. ^Further, by informing us that Spain had been driven out much earlier by revolutionaries who allegedly were going to make things better, conditions had in fact become much worse
When the man who spoke out has received his hundred lashes, he is discovered to be dead. One of the Mexicans involved in the beating only comment was: "a few too many." The dead man’s young son observed the entire episode and, later during the night, stabbed the man who had used the whip on his father^fn the back and disappeared into the darkness. Once again the screen is filled with a historical appearing caption: "The hills of Chihuahua swallowed the little avenger. Beyond the pale of the whipping post he grew up in the shadows of Mexico. Injustice was his nurse, oppression his tutor. Then slowly a new song came out of the desert night. It was "La Cucaracha (The Cockroach). The song of an almost legendary bandit. His name was Pancho Villal" (Ibid.).
The remainder of the film offers a lesson in the history of the Mexican Revolution which was, at best, a parody. Immediately, now that Villa is a grown man, we are presented with his best side and his worse. Six peons are hanged by a magistrate in a small village for no apparent reason and Villa and his band of bandits got quick revenge—"two for one." Just as the peons had been murdered, Villa slew their murderers. When next we see him, just minutes later, he is in a cantina/bordello with all of the "girls" and he is seeking to pick one out for himself for the night. The one he selects, Rosita, is a strong-willed woman who demanded that he marry her if he wanted her. Villa’s response was, "Sure I marry you. I marry anybody. Pedro, I marry her tonight" (Ibid.). Similar dialogue, on marriage, was repeated on several other occasions throughout the film to the point that it became humorous. Villa’s right-hand man, Sierra, comment that: "He like get married. He get married all the time" is greeted by the response from Villa: "That’s the way I was brought up—
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■y »
religious (Ibid.). The exchange always generates laughter but it also always suggests the disdain which Mexicans have for matrimony and the slap at Catholicism is obvious. Additionally, such scenes validate the previously stated stereotype of the fatherless Mexican and the loose woman.
Perhaps, more than anything else, the film showed us that the greater part of what became the revolutionary army was actually no more than a huge band of bandits who could neither read or write, murdered prisoners, took women and anything else that they wanted as part of the booty of war and that they did all this in the name of justice and a perverted sense of democracy.
The formula introduced by this film would be repeated many other times over the next thirty-five years with movies having to do with social upheaval in Mexico from the days of the expulsion of the Spanish on into the twentieth century. The overwhelming number of them would be equally inaccurate and distorting of the Mexican image. We cannot leave "Viva Villa" until a word is said about its closing scenes. As Villa lay dying, an Anglo newspaperman, Johnny Sykes, was there. Villa requests that Sykes write something befitting the occasion and his position as a revolutionary leader. Sykes conjured up Villa’s last words and Villa is impressed with the lies knowing they’re lies but knowing that no one who reads them will know the difference. Until his dying breath, he continued to ask Sykes to "tell me more of what I said" (Ibid.). Audiences saw then, that whatever good they might have heard about Pancho Villa was probably the results of fabrications of men like Sykes. Finally, the last impression of Villa, the Catholic, even as he lay dying, is that he’s a prevaricator.
1939 might well be the year in which a high water mark is reached with films having to do with Mexico and Mexicans during the first half century of moviemaking. "Juarez," which also starred Paul Muni in the lead role, was very well re-searched (Dieterle, 1959). The script follows very closely the actual historical events upon which the film is based. However, it is that very historicalness of events which is the source of its undoing. In 1939, the Nazi war machine was on the move in Europe. Films of the era described the monstrous nature of the Nazi and the almost angelic dispositions of their victims. The latter is not presented in a way which would detract from their human qualities or their sense \of patriotism. The same was not true of the film "Juarez” which, while it clearly /spoke of freedom, justice and democracy and even, in one^scene, questioned the (imperialistic objectives of certain European nations,-A presented the terrible (conditions under which the revolutionaries lived,buC- it AlSo could not resist showing their brutal nature and even their predisposition to mimic the behavior of their oppressors. Part of the cause of this perception and interpretation of what might hayd' actually have happened, was the result of how the image of Mexican revolutionaries had been implanted in the minds of audiences five years earlier with "Viva Villa." <- 5 ,
Other films which have gotten similar treatment Jaav^--been-suGh.---a^: "The Fugitive" (1947) wjy^h was about a priest who broke his vows and
fathered a child (Ford, 1947a). "The Fighter" (1952) was about a Mexican who crossed the border into the United States and became a vrize fighter and used his winnings to buy arms for the revolutionary cause ^k))ine, 1952). "Viva Zapata" (1952) chronicled the life of Emiliano Zapata and his rise from a simple peon to become a leader of the Mexican Revolution. This film was probably the more historically accurate of all (Kazan, 1952). "Vera Cruz" (1954) romanticized the efforts to overthrow the Emperor Maximillian (Aldrich, 1954), "Bandido" (1956) was about anglo gun-runners during the revolution (Fleischer, 1956).
"Viva Maria" (1965) is about two beautiful women who are revolutionaries and also
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entertainers (Malle, 1965) . "Villa Rides" (.1968) presented Villa with- gun runners and beautiful women entertainers (Kulik, 1968). "The Wild Bunch" (1969) was one of the last films of the 1960s having to do with the Mexican Revolution or any of its spinoffs. It centered around a hand of anglo outlaws who are hired by a Mexican general to steal arms from the U.S. Army (Peckinpah, 1969).
Introduced with "Robin Hood of El Dorado" (1936), a new component of the western genre, the Mexican hero, would help dominate cowboy movies through the 1940s (Wellman, 1936). Even though the genre elevated the Mexican character somewhat, he still did not totally excape the image of the bandit or of someone _whe»«4s»-functioning outside the law. In "Robin Hood," the lead character seeks revenge on a "gang who ruined his life" (Maltin, 1974). His efforts to right the wrongs took him outside the law. For the dozen or so films of this sort which were released over the following twenty years, each would follow the formula of a bandit figure who stole for some higher purpose. "The Gay Cavalier" (1946), explains the lead character’s, Chico, life of banditry in the very early scenes (Nigh, 1946). Chico is seen standing near a grave and speaking to it: "Sleep well my father. Today, another debt will be paid" (Ibid.). On a nearby hillside, his followers wait for him and there is an exchange between his right-hand man, Pablo, and a new man with the group. "Why does Chico make a notch, on the Cross?" (Ibid.). Pablo explained by saying: "Not so loud. You are new to us, Pedro, so I will tell you. Once a year, Chico come to the grave of his father. He was the greatest bandit of all California. Now Chico make up his mind and try to pay for his father’s crimes. Se he take from the rich people who are bad and give to the poor. That way, his poor father can have the long sleep with clear conscience" (Ibid.). Because neither Chico nor his followers have any other means of support, we can all deduce that some portion of their ill-gotten wealth remained in their own pockets. Just how much the poor ever got, we are not told but we do know that the poor remained poor and struggled with, whatever jobs they might have had and Chico and his followers had no need for work in the usual sense.
By inference, we are told that Chico’s father, during his career as a bandit, did not restrict his activities to those whom we knew had come by their wealth illegally. Were it so, Chico could not hope to undo his father’s deeds or at least repay them by robbing the rich and giving to the poor. Chico is yet a bandit but not as ruthless a bandit as his father was. The image of the bandit, however, remained constant and continued to be a stereotype of the Mexican even when he is an alleged "good guy."
Duncan Renaldo’s earlier portrayal of the same Chico character was little better. "Guns and Fury" (1939) had Chico and Poncho as relatively "good guys" (Fox, 1939). However, early in the film, it is established that his lifestyle did often bring him into conflict with the law. The crooked mayor of the town of Del Rio advised him that "his type" would not be welcome in that peaceful town. The fact of the matter is, the crooked mayor did not want to risk having to split any of the spoils of the community with Chico whom he knew to also be a bandit (Ibid.).
More important than the simple plot of crooks stealing money and framing an honest citizen is the on-going procession of stereotypes of Mexicans which the film provides. This was particularly the case with Poncho who displayed an absolute inability to speak correctly. The fact that Spanish, is his primary language is not taken into consideration nor is that of his being bilingual. What is presented, and humorously so, is how he butchers English. Throughout the film-, he makes such utterances as: "We’ll be looking you" rather than "We’ll be seeing you" (Ibid.). "I don’t read pretty good" is made all the worse by his saying it to a small anglo boy who spoke perfect English (Ibid.).
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Gilbert Roland, who assumed the Chico character with, his sidekick Pablo following Duncan Renaldo’s (Reynolds) elevation to the role of the Cisco Kid with his sidekick Pancho, greatly expanded the Image of the Mexican as Latin lover. In "Robin Hood of Monterey" (1947), he complains that he "Haven’t seen a pretty girl in a whole day and a half" (Cabanne, 1947a). In "King of The Bandits" (1947), during the opening scenes, Chico and Pablo find themselves the targets of a firing squad. When asked if there were any last wishes, Pablo asked only that the Lieutenant trade places with him while Chico said: "There’s a pretty girl in Las Cruces 1 was going to play post office with. Will you say goodbye to her for me?" (Cabanne, 1947b).
Another group to be considered are those films in which, the Mexican is not the central figure. There are a few in which Mexicans are sidekicks to anglo heroes. A larger category is that in which Mexicans do not play any significant roles and whose appearance, however brief, is detrimental to the image of the Mexican people. In "Red River" (1948), as John Wayne enters Texas and prepares to claim all of the land, as far as the eye can see, for himself, he is met by two vaqueros who informed him that he is trespassing. After a very brief discussion on the matter and Wayne’s refusal to leave, the one vaquero who is determined to protect the interests of his padrone, attempts to do so and is killed by Wayne. The second said: "It is not my land senor" and very cowardly slinks away (Hawks, 1948a). In the Ox Bow Incident" (1943), the Mexican suspect of the trio of accused cattle thieves and murderers is portrayed as a lying, knife carrying con-man (Wellman, 1943a). Due in part to the manner in which his character is.developed, audiences, while inclined to believe the innocence of the other two are reluctant to do so because of a real need to believe that the Mexican is guilty. That same year, "The Outlaw" opened at theaters around the country (Hughes, 1943). The film was yet another glorification of the legend of Billy the Kid. While this version centered around the Kid’s amorous adventures with a lustful senorita played by Jane Russejl, the effects of the perception and stereotyping of Mexicans is that they;/male and female, young and old, greatly identified with the outlaw and considered him to be their friend. They provided him food and shelter and, seemingly, without their help, he would have been apprehended by the law much sooner. Four years earlier, in 1939, a similar example of identifying with and helping someone in trouble with the law occurred in the film "Stagecoach" (Ford 1939). Chris, the Mexican relay station operator, is stereotypically portrayed as short, fat, mustachioed and finishes every sentence with: "I theenk." He is married to an Indian woman who is described, even to him, as a savage——"one of Geronomo’s people"——and when he discovered that she had run away in the night, he sounded the alarm with Curly, the sheriff. Their exchange is as follows:
Chris: Curly, my wife Jakima, she ran away. When I looked up she was gone. Curly: You can find another wife.
Chris: Sure, I can find another wife but she take my rifle and my tore/ Oh, I never sell her. I love her too much. I beat it with, ar whip and she never get tired.
Curly: Your wife?
Chris: No, my horse. I can find another wife easy yes but not a torse like that one (Ibid.).
Even as Chris plays the part of the buffoon for the entire entourage, he has concerns and a warning for Ringo, the outlaw, who recently excaped from
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prison with, the intent of avenging his younger brother’s murder. Those who are responsible were never brought to justice and they are in Lordsburg, Arizona and John Wayne, as the Ringo Kid, is on his way to settle the score.
Kid, I know why you want to go to Lordsburg.* I like you. I know your pop. He was good friend of mine. If you know who in Lordsburg, you stay away I theenk. Luke, Ike and Hank all there together. I saw them. I can tell you the truth. I know. You crazy if you go. I think you stay away Kid, Three against one is no good (Ibid.).
\^' Andyfcevine plays the role of Buck the stagecoach driver. As usual in such/C parts, he'furnishes comedic relief. In "Stagecoach" he does it well—devast at i^--^ gly so. At the very beginning of the film, as the stage leaves for Lordsburg, the sheriff is sitting with him topside and Buck tells the sheriff the story of his life.
I just took this job ten years ago so I could make enough money to marry my Mexican girl Julietta. I've been working hard at it ever since. My wife’s got more relatives than anyone you ever did see. I bet I*m feeding half the state of Chihuahua. Yeah, and what, do I get to eat when I get home to Lordsburg? . Nothing but frijole beans that’s all—nothing but beans, beans, beans" (Ibid.).
One of the more devastating examples of the impact of stereotypes of Mexicans may be found in the walk-on,, bit part that have little or nothing to do with the plot of the film. In "Two Rode Together" (1961), the film begins with a church bell ringing, a sleeping Mexican being roused from his position on the ground by it and the sheriff sitting in a straight-backed chair on the front porch of a saloon. A Mexican man, with apron on, approached the sheriff with a tray with a drink on it. His manner is very subservient. He informed sheriff Guthrie McCabe, played by Jimmy Stewart, that "the widow Gomez has delivered a son this morning—a boy." McCabe’s only comment was; "A boy for the widow Gomez." The waiter pushed on; "But senor, it has been more than a year ago since senor Antonio Gomez has been buried in the church house" (Ford, 1961). Once again, a child is born to a Mexican woman and there is no clear accounting as to who the father might be. Similar characterizations may be found in other films released during that same period.
Within the category of walk-on, there is the specialization of buffoon. In "The Big Country" (1958) , in each appearance on screen, the Mexican is shown to be a clown. The most memorable has to do with the scene where Gregory Peck, the ex-sea captain who has come to marry the rajicher’s daughter, attempts to ride the wildest horse on the place. The Mexican’sj- who has been drafted by Peck to assist him, dialogue and mannerisms are hilarious and especially £ his obvious cowardice when he continually warns; "but senor, thees horse is mean. Eet is a killer. Eet is crazy to get on such a horse. Why do you weesh to do eet now. No one will see you" (Wyler, 1958). The Mexican does not understand the meaning of courage and that one does not need an audience to do that which is dangerous. The veiled implication is that if a Mexican cannot <//"show off." he will not take any risks simply for his own need. That same year, in "The Sheepman" with Glen Ford, the weakness of the Mexican is highlighted as it is justaposed with the strength and courage of the anglo man (Marshall, 1958). Once again, the Mexican is a very diminutive figure by comparison. He is in
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cattle country with, a herd of sheep which, illustrates the extent of his stupidity. Constitutional rights had not gotten to that part of the country and one need)to be brave, strong and forceful to enjoy any rights at all even under the best of conditions. The Mexican could only play the guitar well and neither he nor the sheep were considered as being part of an endangered species and both were therefore unprotected. Ford, from the outset, beat the biggest and toughest cowboy in town just so all would know that he was serious about exercising his right to raise sheep. He did not get chased off and once he had established that he could raise sheep if he wanted to, he sold his herd. The /-Mexican, meanwhile, was slain while guarding Ford’s herd. "Rio Bravo". (1959),
IX shows John Wayne at his b^^v&Jent best by his willingness to associate with Mexicans and it shows the Mexican character at his worse. Carlos is a comic figure who constantly experiences marital problems with his wife, Consuela. In one scene, following yet another "friendly" argument, Carlos sought to placate Consuela by presenting her with a red petticoat. First, however, he modeled the petticoat for John Wayne and the other men and pirouetted in a quite feminine manner which was magnified by the fact that a great deal of tension was present surrounding the impending shootout with the "bad guys." The fact that he would later participate in the battle, by firing blindly and thereby helping create a distraction for Wayne and the other men, is of no consequence. Actually, that activity served only to esacerbate the perception of him as a weakling in that with that he was most inadequate and with, the "unmanly" tasks, he was most remarkable (Hawks, 1959).
Between 1946 and 1958, several films were released which- had specific roles for Mexican females. The epic of the group had the least to do with Mexicans but is generally thought of as being otherwise. "Duel in The Sun" (1946), had nothing to do with Mexicans directly. The protagonist was a "halfbreed" daughter of an Indian woman and a creole man name Chavez. Unlike the creole of the "Zorro" film, this was a Louisiana, FrencH creole who had wandered outside the marriage boundaries his family might have wished. His daughter, Pearl Chavez, is seen wearing what is apparently Mexican style clothing and - because of her name and the color of her skin and the fact that the location of the action is the old southwest, but in spite of her being referred to as a "papoose" or "Minehaha," she come across in the film as Mexican and is therefore reacted to in kind. Her mother is described as a "loose woman" and is ultimately shot and killed by her husband when he discovers her with another man. Throughout the film, audiences are assurred that Pearl will follow in her mother’s footsteps. She is too beautiful and too "Mexican" and too unprotected by law not to. The more she protests to her new adopted mother, Laura Belle, the second cousin to her father, that: "I’m going to be a good girl. I promise I will. I want to be like you," the more we are convinced that she will meet with doom. The comment about wanting to "be like" Laura Belle is made while the two of them are cheek to cheek. Laura Belle’s skin looks like freshly fallen snow and Pearl’s is as copper as a penny (Vidor, 1946). She presents a character who is at once both brazen and naive. She flirts without knowing it and on other occasions she does so knowlingly. She is packaged in such a way that she entices and "bothers" every man who gazes upon her—from the rebel son to the preacher. She is the kind of woman that some men dream of and once attained, causes endless nightmares. She was bad and knew it and dicin’t and the film made her incapable of differentiating between love and~'TasrT“~
One of the all-time classic westerns is "High Noon" (1952) and one of the (j main characters in the film is a Mexican woman, Helen Ramirez, played by Kathy Jurado. Only one other Mexican was shown in the film and her appearance occur-
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red during the opening moments; an elderly, portly Mexican woman, with crucifix around neck, is shown making the sign of the cross as Frank Miller’s gang entered the town of Hadleyville. Helen Ramirez is just the opposite. She own$a saloon and is a hidden owner in the trading store. She is also the town tramps With those two women, we cover the spectrum as far as the characterizations of Mexican women in film during that era is concerned—madonna to prostitute. At one point, Ramirez is the woman of Frank Miller, the outlaw. After he is arrested and sent off to prison, she became the sheriff’s woman. After the sheriff became engaged to a Quaker woman, she became the deputy’s woman. It is apparent that she needed to be associated with someone who could take care of her and who was strong enough not to he affected or personally attacked by any of the other men in the town. A weak man, especially a weak anglo man, would be the butt of everyone’s joke and all the other men would deride her in such a man’s presence without fear of his disapproval. It did not seem to matter to her on which side of the law that someone was. At one point in the film, she provided us with, something of a reason for her behavior shen she said: "I hate this town. I’ve always hated it. To be a Mexican woman in a town like this... (Zinnemann, 1952). She is Mexican and she is a woman and neither is protected by any laws.
The 1950s closed with two very similar films having to do with Mexican women. "Cowboy" (1958) has Jack Lemmon as an anglo cowboy who, while passing through a small Mexican town with a trail herd, managed to woo the rich senorita, whose father owned the large hacienda, away from her intended to the point that she has doubts as to whether she loved the Mexican man after all (Davis, 1958). "Sierra Baron" (1958) has Brian Keith playing a roving, illiterate gunfighter who captivates Rita Gam who is the sister of the Baron of the hacienda and who experienced great difficulty from angles who sought gold on his property without his permission and who subsequently sought to drive him off. His hundreds of vaqueros are unable to stop their inroads. Keith, however, is able to turn them back. He is more of a man than her brother and all of his vaqueros (Clark, 1958).
In many of the movies set in the old southwest, Mexican women are portrayed as almost standing in line waiting to get at the blonde "gringo" men who were just passing through. It did not seem to matter what their occupation or their 2pIan@S\were. Such men were always, by inference, more desirable to the women of those places than were the Mexican men who were there.
In recent years, there has been some improvements in the depiction of Mexican Americans in Hollywood films. In many ways, the positive results of those efforts are restricted to the young and to future generations. The effects are, in many ways, influenced by the age of the viewer. For those who are still of an age when their basic values are being imprinted, perhaps the greatest positive effects will be realized. For each successively older group, the positive results will be less. Those beyond the mid—forty mark would be affected the least. Dr. Morris E. Masses of the Sociology Department of the University of Colorado contends that "What you are is where you were when"— when one’s value system was put into place (Massy, 1976). In short, the manner in which a person see themselves and, more to the point, how they see others, is greatly influenced by where and when they were value imprinted. If it is true that basic values are in place by adolescence and that media does have an impact on those values, then it is fairly safe to say that the movies produced and released during the period between the 1920s and the 1960s did indeed have a detrimental effect on how Mexicans and Mexican Americans are perceived by those whose values were implanted during those years, ^forever), those of the
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subject groups who viewed those same films, consciously or unconsciously had their self-concepts negatively affected.
The average age of corporate executives in the United States is fifty-plus years old. The President of the United States is in his mid-seventies. People of his age grouping might have seen D.W. Griffith’s "Birth of A Nation" (1915) probably saw the original, silent movie version of "Zorro" (1920) and many of both groups such early westerns with negative images of Mexicans as "The Mexican's Revenge (1908), The Greasers Gauntlet" (1908), "The Greaser" (1913), "The Girl The Greaser" (1913), "The Greaser's Revenge" (1914), "Arms and the Gringo" (19U), The Mexican (1914) , "A Mexican Spy in Arizona" (1914) or "Guns and Greasers (1918), either when they were first released or during re-issue.
Fortunately, with the exception of the first two mentioned, the remainder of those films are not availabe for general public viewing today. The fact that there are still many who viewed those films when they were available and that they maintain whatever perceptions of Mexicans the derived from such films is unfortunate to say the least. Those from the target period have done their ^damage and they are currently in the process of redoing it through their being CslreJ> ori television. Whether their effects are as diastrous to today's generations as they have been to those in the past, will be determined, in part, by newer roles for Mexicans in films and a more complete and accurate description Is of (^esiffarr and Mexican American history and culture in the textbooks and popular literature of today.
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REFERENCES
Aldrich, Robert, Director, Vera Cruz, (1954).
Cabanne, Christy, Director, Robin Hood of Monterey, (1947a).
Cabanne, Christy, Director, King of the Bandits, (1947b).
Clark, James B., Director, Sierra Baron, (1958).
Conway, Jack, Director, Viva Villa, (1934).
Daves, Delmer, Director, Cowboy, (1958).
Dieterle, William, Director, Juarez, (1936).
Fleischer, Richard, Director, Bandido, (1956).
Ford, John, Director, The Fugitive, (1947).
Ford, John, Director, Stagecoach, (1939).
Ford, John, Director, Two Rode Together, (1961).
Fox, Wallace, Director, Guns. And Fury, (1939).
Friedman, Lester D. (1982) Hollywood's Image of The Jew. New York: Frederick Unger Publishing Co.
Hawks, Howard, Director, Red River, (1948).
Hawks, Howard, Director, Rio Bravo, (1959).
Hiebert, Ray E. et. al., (1979) Mass Media II. New York: Longman Publishing Co.
Hughes, Howard, Director, The Outlaw, (1943).
Ingalls, Robert P. (1979) Hoods: The Story of The Ku Klux. Klan. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons.
Kane, Michael B. (1970) Minorities In Textbooks. Chicago: Quadrangle.
Kazan, Elia, Director, Viva Zapata, (1952).
Kline, Herbert, Director, The Fighter, (1952).
Kulik, Buzz, Director, Villa Rides, (1968).
Lamb, Blaine P. (1975) The Convenient Villian; The Early Cinema Views of the Mexican-American. Journal of the West. 14, 75-83.
Malle, Louis, Director, Viva Maria, (1965).
Maltin, Leonard (1982) TV Movies. New York; New American Library.
Mamoulian, Rouben, Director, The Mark of Zorro, (1940).
Marshall, George, Director, Sheepman, (1958).
Massey, Morris E. (1976) What You Are Is Where You Were When, Farmington Hills, Michigan: Magnetic Video Corporation.
Mayo, Archie, Director, Bordertown, (1935).
Meier, August (1976) From Plantation To Ghetto. New York; Hill and Wang.
Morris, Richard B. (1961) Encyclopedia of American History, New York: Harper and Row.
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Niblo, Fred, Director, The Mark of Zorro, (1920).
Nigh, William, Director, The Gay Cavalier, (1946).
Peckinpah, Sam, Director, The Wild Bunch (1969).
Pettitt, Arthur G. (1980) Images of The Mexican American In Fiction and Film. College Station, Texas: Texas A&M University Press.
Roeder, George H., Jr. (1971) Mexicans In The Movies: The Image of Mexicans In Films, 1894-1947. Unpublished manuscript, University of Wisconsin.
Thomas, Tony (1981) Hollywood And The American Image. Westport, Conn.: Arlington House Publishing Co.
Vidor, King, Director, Duel In The Sun, (1946).
Wellman, William, Director, Robin Hood of El Dorado, (1936).
Wellman, William, Director, Ox Bow Incident, (1943).
Wolf, Allen L. (1974a) Latin Images In American Films. Journal of Mexican History. 4_, 28-40.
Wolf, Allen L. (1974b) Hollywood’s Good Neighbor Policy: The Latin Image In American Film. Journal of Popular Film. .3, 278-293.
Wyler, William, Director, The Big Country, (1958).
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