Urban Space Project: Zoot Suit and La Bamba
By: Michael McSweeny
The urban environment has a strong impact upon all people who live in it.
Nowhere is this clearer than when the criminal justice system becomes involved in a
person’s life, as it did with the character of Henry Reyna in the film version of Luis
Valdez’s Zoot Suit. In World War Two era Los Angeles, Reyna is one member of a
group of youths accused of the murder of a man at Sleepy Lagoon that they did not
commit. They face trial, only to be found guilty because they are “zoot suiters (sic).” In
their case, the pervasive racism in the city is what causes their sentence to be handed
down.
Los Angeles of the early 1940’s was a city in turmoil. The Japanese had recently
been sent to internment camps due to the combination of the attack upon Pearl Harbor
and the paranoia of the citizenry. The two major newspapers in Los Angeles, the Los
Angeles Times and the Los Angeles Herald- Examiner, had seen increased circulation
due to fears of the Japanese expressed by the citizenry. In order to maintain sales, the
newspapers had to create a new problem for the citizenry to fret over. They turned to the
Mexican American community that lived in East Los Angeles, which suffered from the
various petty criminal activities that occurred in a working class neighborhood that did
not have the same privileges as the white neighborhoods. This became the “Mexican
American Crime Wave.” In particular, the wearing of a zoot suit became identified with
the youths in East Los Angeles, as stated by El Pachuco in the movie, “All [the zoot suit]
is for [the press] is another way to say Mexican.”
This attempt to sell papers helped to create a moral panic amongst the population.
This panic, fueled by the racism that forced Mexicans to live outside of the city of Los
Angeles itself, found a focal point with the murder at Sleepy Lagoon. Sleepy Lagoon was
a reservoir popular amongst the Mexican youth as a swim area because they were not
allowed to utilize the city’s public pool system. Its very popularity with the Mexican
youth led to a round up of over 600 youths in connection with the murder. Thirty- six
youths were found guilty of various crimes related to the murder in a trial where they
were unable to prove their innocence. The movie’s fictionalized account of this travesty
shows the protagonists being forced to stay in their street clothes and to stand up when
their names are called because “the jury cannot tell them apart,” and they are essentially
forced through the trial with no chance to mount even a token defense. The judge
becomes an enemy to the protagonists, refusing to allow their lawyer to defend them
while overruling all of the lawyer’s objections to the blatantly racist tactics of the
prosecutor. The judge goes so far as to force Lupe into a juvenile offender school simply
because she would not answer the prosecutor’s leading question concerning what weapon
Henry used to kill the murder victim.
The most significant showing of the racism that was swirling within Los Angeles
occurred after the trial. Again showing a fictionalized account of a real life event, the
movie shows the El Pachuco character being attacked by a group of white Navy seamen
as a stylized account of the Zoot Suit Riots that occurred in Los Angeles in 1943. In the
scene, the El Pachuco, a symbol of the zoot suit culture in East Los Angeles, is beaten
and stripped of his clothes. This serves as a symbolic emasculation of both El Pachuco
and the Mexican community itself. The sailors take a sadistic glee in reducing the
previously confident and suave Pachuco to a sniveling wreck, unable to hide his shame at
being stripped and incapable of defending himself from the attacks against him. The
reporters in the film take great delight in the fact that the Mexican community was
attacked and make no attempts to hide their racist ideas, even when confronted by El
Pachuco.
By contrast, the movie La Bamba has a completely opposite take on the concept
of urban space. It is the tale of the life of singer Ritchie Valens, starting with his life prior
to being discovered and ending with his death aboard a chartered flight on his way to
begin a tour. Instead of facing the overarching racial prejudice that alienates everything
the protagonist does, Ritchie’s life on the outskirts of Los Angeles is relatively peaceful.
The urban scene serves to broaden Ritchie’s horizons, exposing him to various forms of
music. This exposure develops into a desire to write his own music. Racism is not
ignored in this movie, though. Ritchie’s budding romance with Donna Ludwig produces
tension, as her parents did not want her to date a Mexican youth. Race also plays a part in
Ritchie’s onstage persona, as he is billed as Ritchie Valens, rather than by his real name
Ritchie Valenzuela, in order to make his music more accessible to the general public.
Even the music that he plays, in particular his hit song La Bamba, play off the fact that he
is not the same as white people. The fact that whites purchase his music, as well as the
many concerts that they fill, symbolize the desire for the exotic that exists within the
white population. However, Ritchie is never truly able to exist alongside the white
population as an equal, a fact that is clearly evident because his family is never able to
leave the place where Ritchie was raised, despite Ritchie’s devotion to them.
The key difference in the urban environments of the two films lies in how the
protagonists act in relation to where they live. Henry lives in World War Two Los
Angeles, where the pressures of wartime heighten the already strained relations between
the white and Latino communities. The result is that Henry has to take a role as a warrior
to fight for his right to exist as a person. Ritchie lives in the post-war era during a period
of jubilation over defeating the Axis powers and of economic prosperity. The Los
Angeles he lives in is one of sunlight and creativity, rather than the dark cityscape that
Henry is forced to slog through. As such, Ritchie can take the role of the artist, generating
new ideas and being, though tentatively, accepted by the outside. His Los Angeles is one
that provides a stage to propel him into the world, while Henry’s Los Angeles is a
suffocating litany of clubs and prisons, capable of providing pleasure, but focused upon
trapping all who enter it.
In the end of Zoot Suit, Henry is able to get free of the clutches of the racist
landscape due to an appeal by his lawyer to the Superior Court. This appeal does not
temper the racism inherent in the Los Angeles cityscape, but rather serves to further
highlight the racial tensions within the city, since the Superior Court is not located in Los
Angeles. Instead, the lawyer has to go outside the confines of the urban setting shown in
the movie in order to get justice for his clients. The city ultimately is unable to provide an
impartial judgment, and this is reflected in the end of the movie, where the potential
future fates of Henry are observed. The reporter for the newspapers gives his take, stating
that Henry would go on to commit more crimes until he eventually dies in prison, a noted
departure from the futures given by the other characters which have Henry end up as a
successful family man or as a soldier who dies serving the United States in Korea.
(Adapted from a group paper submitted in Fall 2009 for Dr. Zimmerman’s “World
Cinema” course.)