ZOOT SUIT OF LIFE1
Each individual, in his place, is securely confined to a cell from which he is seen
from the front by the supervisor; but the side walls prevent him from coming into
contact with his companions. He is seen, but he does not see…
And this invisibility is a guarantee of order.
—Michel Foucault2
By refusing to be invisible, Mexican American zoot-suiters committed a political act that
challenged the “invisibility [that] is a guarantee of order”. Unlike earlier generations of
Mexicans, these youth3 resisted assimilation and demanded attention by becoming part of a
larger recognized African American and youth culture. In response, for ten days in 1943, mostly
white servicemen in Los Angeles participated in widespread assaults on these youth, called the
Zoot Suit Riots. Many historians have decided not to view the Zoot Suit Riots within the context
of the large number of race riots that occurred throughout the United States the summer of 1943
because “no comparable fear of the attacked minority entered into the Zoot Suit Riots of Los
Angeles.”4 However based on the popular understanding of what zoot-suit culture represented at
that time, the actions of the police and servicemen during the riots, and the media coverage of the
riots, it is clear that the Mexican American zoot-suiters were viewed as a threat.
There are few well-known moments in American5 history when Latinos so clearly
distinguished themselves from other Americans, while recognizing a similarity with African
Americans, and used their subjectivity to give themselves and their communities a voice. In
1943 Ralph Ellison6 stated that, “Much in Negro life remains a mystery; perhaps the zoot-suit
conceals profound political meaning; perhaps the symmetrical frenzy of the Lindy Hop conceals
clues to great potential power—if only Negro leaders would solve the riddle.” Many
intellectuals have attempted to “solve the riddle” of power in African American popular culture.
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Few have shifted that lens to explore early moments of resistance in the Latino community, like
the decision by hundreds of Mexican American youth to wear zoot-suits during WWII.
THE SUITS
Zoot-suits were worn throughout the 1930s and considered a part of African American
jazz culture. The slang word “zoot” meant exaggerated and the suits reflected this exaggeration,
utilizing excess material to create a drape-shape, pleats, and padded shoulders. The War
Production Board’s first rationing act of 1942, mandating a 26% decrease in use of fabric, made
zoot-suits illegal. Most legitimate manufacturers stopped producing them. Wearing a zoot-suit
in 1943 required access to a bootlegger and was perceived as an unpatriotic, blatant disrespect of
authority. Purchasing a zoot-suit often required significant sacrifice and determination. In the
forties, a zoot-suit would cost between $18 and $75 dollars. Many of the most prominent
activists and intellectuals from this period, such as Cesar Chavez, Malcolm X, Ralph Ellison,
Richard Wright, and Octavio Paz were fascinated by the zoot-suits because they understood that
the suits had profound cultural and political significance.
THE RIOTS
In 1943, after weeks of violence between the military and civilians, on June 4th, 200
hundred sailors in Los Angeles hired a fleet of taxi cabs and cruised through the Mexican district
looking for zoot-suiters. They stopped to assault men of color, regardless of attire, and if victims
were wearing zoot-suits, they were stripped of their clothes and forcibly given military haircuts.
The police followed along, arresting the mostly Mexican American victims. With servicemen
joining in from across the State, the violence was repeated on the 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th. The press,
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supporting the police, stated that the police “were called out to help maintain order”7, and
referred to the victims as gang members, pachucos, and hoodlums. On June 8th, County
Supervisor Roger Jessup said, “All that is needed to end the lawlessness is more of the same
action as is being exercised by the servicemen.” Contradicting the media portrayal of the
“victimized servicemen”, following is a description of the riots from the head of the defense for
the “Sleepy Lagoon Youth”8, Carey McWilliams:
Marching through the streets of downtown Los Angeles, a mob of several thousand soldiers, sailors, and
civilians proceeded to beat up every zoot-suiter they could find…. Street cars were halted while Mexicans,
and some Filipinos and Negroes, were jerked out of their seats, pushed into the streets, and beaten with
sadistic frenzy. If the victims were zoot-suits, they were stripped of their clothing and left naked, or half
naked on the streets, bleeding and bruised… From affidavits that I helped prepare at the time, I should say
that no more than half of the victims were actually wearing zoot suits. A Negro defense worker, wearing a
defense plant identification badge on his work-clothes, was taken from a street car and one of his eyes was
gouged out with a knife. Huge half-page photographs showing Mexican boys stripped of their clothes,
cowering on the pavement, often bleeding profusely, surrounded by jeering mobs of men and women
appeared in all the Los Angeles papers.9
Most of the publications that explored the reasons for the riots or depicted the real victims after
they were beaten were liberal publications, including many African American newspapers.
Before the riots can be analyzed, the cultural context needs further exploration.
CULTURAL CONTEXT
Americans were paranoid after Pearl Harbor and the State was weakened by the
Depression and the war. Despite President Roosevelt’s attempts to pacify Americans and get
them to support the war effort, many people were tired of rations and a continued state of
militarization. There were protests throughout the country and various popular media sources
reflected the anxiety of a nation plunged into chaos.
The xenophobia that resulted in the internment of Japanese Americans during this period
was part of a history of racist practices against non-Anglo immigrants that was exacerbated by
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the Depression. During the Depression, “the bigotry exercised against these people [Mexican
Americans] rivaled that endured by African Americans, and when the weight of the depression
began to fall upon cities with large Chicano populations, unabashed racism was buttressed by the
theory that unemployment among Anglo workers could be blamed on the presence of a labor
force willing to work cheap and under conditions that the “real” American workers could not
tolerate—the Mexican Americans.”10
As a result, the government developed a “repatriation” program, sending thousands of
Mexican Americans to Mexico, regardless of their American citizenship. By 1940 the majority
of Mexicans in the United States possessed U.S. citizenship. Despite citizenship and occupying
a significant amount of territory on the North American continent before the United States coopted all of the land, Mexican Americans were not recognized as Americans until WWII.
The war years were significant for many marginalized groups in the United States
because there were new opportunities for employment, housing, and involvement in American
culture and politics. When the Selective Service Act of 1940, reinstated the draft, a
disproportionate number of Mexican Americans volunteered for the military because they were
enthusiastic about this opportunity to prove that they were able men and good citizens. While
some Mexican Americans argued against the unfair way in which a large number of agricultural
workers, mainly immigrants, were drafted, many Mexican Americans were eager to assert
themselves into American politics through military service.
On the home front, a growing Mexican American middle class developed social service
organizations for their communities, while also promoting a “positive” image of Mexican
Americans. To do this, the most influential of these new organizations in Los Angeles, the
Coordinating Council for Latin-American youth, “drew a distinction between Mexican
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Americans and Afro Americans as a way of trying to avoid the stigma of racial inferiority
imposed on blacks.”11 Since middle class Mexican American adults wanted to be treated like
European immigrant groups, they did not acknowledge race as an issue for the Mexican
American community. By wearing zoot-suits, long associated with jazz and African American
culture, the Mexican American youth created a connection between the two communities,
because “dress produces constant connections between the past and the present…”12 In
intimating that there was a connection between Mexican American and African American
history, the zoot-suiters were defying the message that race was not an issue for the Mexican
American community. This resulted in rejection from many Mexican Americans adults, who
considered them pecadores13 and violence from Anglo servicemen and police officers.
At the same time, youth culture was being recognized by mainstream American culture.
In 1941 the term teenager was used for the first time in print, in Popular Science magazine, and
1200 articles about juvenile delinquency were published in the first 6 months of the year. 14
Delinquency was defined by “questionable behavior” such as interracial relationships, wearing
zoot-suits, petty theft, and gang affiliation. The “production of delinquency” 15 in Los Angeles
clearly served the police department by uniting the community against the villains on the home
front and made the Mexican American youth villains in public opinion. If the Mexican
Americans were not already viewed as delinquents before June 1943, the riots could not have
occurred. The riots required collaboration between the police, the military, the press, and
civilians.
This collaboration was highly unlikely considering that “between 1 May 1943 and 6 June
1943 there had been eighteen major incidents involving servicemen, seven of which resulted in
death. None of these instances involved zoot-suiters.”16 Proof that the servicemen were violent
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towards other civilians prior to the riots demonstrates the fragmentation of American society
during the war and the hostility between the military and the American public. Despite this
fragmentation, an enemy was identified and targeted. According to Foucault, “power produces;
it produces reality; it produces domains of objects and rituals of truth.”17 Comics, the press, and
the police produced the “truth” about zoot-suiting Mexican American youth.
“ZOOT-SUIT YOKUM”
During the war, comic strips were immensely popular and had an estimated audience of
50 millions readers or more everyday. Al Capp’s popular satirical comic strip series, Li’l Abner,
included an episode about zoot-suiters that was printed before the riots. This series places zootsuiters in the center of a dialogue about the construction of heroes and villains as a tool used by
capitalists to trick the consumer, and in the end, vilifies the zoot-suiter, equating them with
stupidity, criminality, and finally describing mob action against them.
In the end of the series, conservative clothing manufacturers conspire to reduce the zootsuits popularity by making the hero, Zoot Suit Yokum, a villain. The racism in the series is not
as blatant as the criticism of class and intellectualism but it can be traced throughout the series
from the first man with the “lowest IQ in America”, who was found “Dangling from a tree in
Yellowstone National Park”, does not speak proper English, and “Aint got no name”, to the
comment from the affluently dressed couple when seeing two shorter people in zoot-suits,
“Fanny, Dear, Are you sure this is our old neighborhood? We’ve been away only a month but
the neighbors look different”. Each of the aforementioned quotations could be interpreted as a
commentary on race. The “neighbors” who “look different” may refer to the thousands of
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The comic strip that appears in this
paper was reproduced from
Li’l Abner: A Study in American
Satire by Arthur Asa Berger.
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-8-
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Mexican Americans in the United States at this time, especially since they are depicted so much
shorter than the two people making the comment and Mexicans were stereotyped as being short.
It is interesting that despite the mention of politics in the series, neither the war nor the
military are explicitly addressed. However the discussion regarding the creation of a hero would
have resonated with Americans at the time, because of President Roosevelt’s publicity campaign
to heroicize the military. “Zoot Suit Yokum” represents how both heroes and villains were
produced. However at the end of the strip, the zoot-suiter is clearly a villain, and his clothes are
destroyed. By destroying the zoot-suits, the mob rejects and destroys “clothing [as] a vital
aspect of the erection and maintenance of boundaries.”18
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Capp, through “Zoot Suit Yokum”, underscores the paranoia present in American culture
at this time through the conspiratorial element of this series. The two capitalists groups are
conspiring against each other and the people become a pawn in a quest for more money. The
zoot-suiter, for selfish reasons, agrees to help trick the public, thereby aligning zoot-suiters with
greedy companies and intellectuals. Greed during this time was one of the worst moral offenses
because of rationing, and zoot-suiters were perceived as greedy and immoral. Comic strips, like
Zoot-Suit Yokum, clearly contributed to the anger against all zoot-suiters. It is interesting to
consider that comic books, “were so effective as a propaganda medium that even the U.S. office
of War Information printed its own version”19 for soldiers.
THE POLICE AND THE PRESS
The press and the police played an even greater role in the construction of the Mexican
American zoot-suit villain. A comparison of local news in 1943 found a disproportionate
number of stories involving Mexican American youth.20 While the press was trying the Mexican
community, the police were busy trying to “control the Mexican gang problem”. They reported
that
The LA police department in conjunction with the Sheriff, California Highway Patrol, the
Monterey, Montebello, and Alhambra Police Depts., conducted a drive on Mexican gangs
throughout Los Angeles county on the nights of August 10 and 11 of 1942. All people suspected
of gang activity were stopped. Approximately 600 people were brought in. There were
approximately 175 arrests for having knives, guns, chains, dirks, daggers, and any other
implement that might have been used in assault cases… Present plans call for drastic action…”21
Between summer 1942 and the summer of 1943, the press played up “midnight battles” between
two east L.A. gangs – they were supposedly responsible for the death of Jose Diaz, a young
Mexican American, who was found dead by the Sleepy Lagoon swimming hole on August 1st,
1942. Police rounded up 24 alleged gang members, the grand jury returned indictments against
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19 of them (two requested separate trials). On January 13th, 17 of the youth were convicted on
various charges ranging from manslaughter to assault. The trial was sloppy and prejudiced – they
never established that the youth were in the area of the crime and the murder weapon was never
found. The grand jury for the case provided a forum for racists to argue that the crime was a
matter of race – the police made statements, that were printed by the media, like the “Mexican
propensity for violence was an inherited trait”22 Liberals, outraged by the racism in the trial,
mounted an appeal and in 1944 the convictions were reversed, charges were dismissed, and the
trial judge was reprimanded for his conduct during court proceedings. However in 1943, the
damage to the perception of Mexican American youth was complete; an enemy was created and
it was only a matter of time before violence would erupt.
“HIDDEN TRANSCRIPT”
[Zoot-suits were] … a symbol of love and joy or of horror and loathing, an
embodiment of liberty, of disorder, of the forbidden.”
—Octavio Paz, The Labyrinth of Solitude 23
… it was as though by dressing and walking a certain way I had enlisted in a
fraternity in which I was recognized at a glance—not by features but by clothes,
by uniform, by gait.
—Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man 24
In Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class, Robin D.G. Kelly cites
anthropologist James C. Scott’s assertion that oppressed groups challenge those in power by
creating a “hidden transcript”, a cultural world of everyday resistance. Kelly uses this theory to
prove that African American popular culture is filled with resistance. For example, “in a world
where they were referred to as ‘boy’, zoots referred to each other as ‘man’.”25 Mexican
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American youth understood the zoot-suit as a symbol of power through resistance. The zoot-suit
functioned as a mask, “a garment that advertises that it has something to hide”.26 Los Angeles
zoot-suiter, Tony Chavez, stated, “I was scared all the time, but I had to keep up a front. I could
not let down. When I faced myself alone at night I felt horrible. But I liked the power I had. I
could not let go.”27
It is not clear whether the Mexican American zoot-suiters understood that for African
Americans, “the body [is] a contested terrain in which racial struggles are played out”.28
Regardless of their understanding of the body, by wearing the zoot-suits, they defied middle
class Mexican Americans’ attempt to identify racially as white. Furthermore, many of the youth
did express frustration with racism and viewed their barrios as a space in which they had the
potential for power. Zoot-suiter, Gabe Villasenor, stated, “We were kids, anxious to be wanted
but we couldn’t make the grade. We were openly discriminated against in public swimming
pools. There were no recreational facilities to speak of. We could only raise hell in the
streets.”29 Villasenor’s statement also points to the class-based criticism inherent in wearing a
zoot-suit.
In Love and Theft, Eric Lott argues, “In these societies [capitalist] the body is a
potentially subversive site because to recognize it fully is to recognize the exploitative
organization of labor that structures their economy.” The zoot-suiters stood in contrast to the
uniformed soldiers who shared urban areas with them. The zoot-suit was obviously not
functional for work, they were too big and the material was too expensive. When depicted in
films, zoot-suiters walk slowly and deliberately—in stark contrast to the frenzy of war. To
complicate matters, many zoot-suiters, like Malcolm X, were accused of dodging the draft. This
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refusal to defend the nation was an insult to many Americans but especially to the men who felt
like they had sacrificed their freedom to become soldiers.
The soldiers who attacked the zoot-suiters were engaging in a discourse about
masculinity, the nation, the racialized body, class, and power. In The Zoot Suit Riots: The
Psychology of Symbolic Annihilation, Mauricio Mazon, states, “through the stripping rituals of
basic training these recruits had lost their identities as civilians and individuals.”30 In a mob
environment, the soldiers stripped the zoot-suiters, shaved their heads, beat them, and often
urinated on the zoot-suits. This humiliation echoed the dehumanization soldiers endured through
basic training and allowed the soldiers to experience a role reversal that felt empowering.
During the war, women were hired in fields formerly closed to them, assuming the lead
role in family matters, financially supporting their children, making great strides in education,
and questioning the traditional roles imposed on them. Books like Modern Woman: The Lost Sex
represented the sense that women’s lives were changing and there was a great deal of anxiety
over what would happen when the men returned from war. Undoubtedly, the soldier’s overall
sense of insecurity affected their decision to participate in the violence of the riots. However
gender played another obvious role in the riots, as Chief of Police, C.B. Horrall, noted:
The latest disturbance started in the north end up here around the 1700 block on North
Main Street, as apparently the result of some sailors making advances to some Mexican
girls, or talking to them. I don’t know whether it went any farther than that… reached a
point where it got some publicity in the papers, and that was what caused the gang to
congregate downtown that night and brought all the crowd out.31
Lott states that, “white men were routinely encouraged to indulge in fantasies about black
women.”32 In the same vein, white soldiers routinely flirted with the idea of possessing the
Mexican American zoot-suiters girlfriends, referred to as the pachuquitas, “The Mexican
pachuquitas were very appealing to American servicemen, and jealously guarded by the Mexican
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American boys. They scandalized the adults of the Anglo and Mexican communities alike, with
their short, tight skirts, sheer blouses, and built-up hairdos”.33 Interracial relationships were at
the fore of people’s minds during this time. Members of the defense of the Sleepy Lagoon trial
were called communists and interrogated by the joint fact-finding committee of un-American
activities because they did not condemn interracial dating – the communist party was seen as
trying to “discard its more barbarous and loose libertinism for the attempted appearance of
respectability. But within the party’s ranks there existed a situation where white women openly
consorted with Negro men, white, Japanese, Mexican and Filipino members had set up their own
little alliances… ‘Communist marriages’, not blessed by the benefit of the clergy, founded upon
this color-and-race combination basis, abounded…” 34 It is not surprising to learn that sex would
be at the heart of this conflict—the riots were a contest for power and at the root of that contest
was the soldiers’ assumption that they needed to posses everything that the Mexican American
youth possessed in order to assert their masculinity and maintain their power.
There is a long history of white men using black male bodies to “empower” themselves.
For example, the “bloody 1863 draft riots, when Irish draftees, angry at a conscription law that
allowed men of means to buy their way out of military service, unleashed their frustration on
New York City’s blacks.”35 It is interesting to note that many of the soldiers who participated in
the zoot-suit riots were Southerners stationed in California. At this time, families from
Arkansas, Oklahoma and the Deep South were still arriving in Los Angeles looking for jobs 36.
In contrast, the Los Angeles Mexican middle class had grown significantly, and the zoot-suits, an
expensive, albeit illegal symbol, must have represented to Southerners their own failure to
achieve economic stability. In each of the aforementioned riots, disempowered white men
displaced their anger on bodies racialized as black.
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This may explain why the Los Angeles police department allowed the riots to continue
for ten days. The police, acting on behalf of the State, called “on the crowd to manifest its
power, the sovereign tolerated for a moment acts of violence, which he accepted as a sign of
allegiance…”37 Instead of punishing the perpetrators of the violence (i.e. the soldiers), the police
jailed the Mexican American youth, “for their own protection”. Avoiding a confrontation with
the soldiers was beneficial to the police department for a number of reasons: First, they also held
racist attitudes and resented the zoot-suiters; second, they were afraid of the potential for more
violence against other civilians if they did not allow the soldiers to “vent” against the zootsuiters; and finally, the riots were a unifying event for Anglos. Crowds gathered and cheered for
the soldiers while they beat the zoot-suiters; this was a rare moment of solidarity during the
social fragmentation of war. Clearly, this type of controlled chaos served the State because if it
did not, the police would have been forced to arrest the perpetrators, the thousands of servicemen
who routinely participated in violence against civilians. The Zoot-Suit Riots were just the
beginning. Similar disturbances were reported in San Diego on June 9th, in Philadelphia on June
19th, in Chicago on June 15th, in Detroit on June 20th, in Evansville on June 27th, and in Harlem
on August 1st.
Despite the violence of the riots, they can be viewed as politically and socially
empowering for the victims because of the unity in suffering – a moment when power so
vehemently struck against all groups that were perceived as a threat, that for the first time, the
groups could see the bruises on their allies. It was only through this experience, that middle
class Mexican Americans were forced to acknowledge race in the discussion about Mexican
Americans in the United States. In defense of the youth whom they felt betrayed them, a number
of Mexican American organizations called for investigations of the racism in the military and
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against their youth. African American journalists began to write more about the plight of
Mexican Americans. Filipinos, Chinese, and many other immigrant groups saw themselves in
what had happened to the Mexicans. The potential for alliances across oppressed communities
was great during this time because they all suffered at the hands of the representatives of the
State. Unlike the way that oppression manifests in contemporary society, the threat to their
survival was obvious. The momentum from this period continued to grow until the Civil Rights
Movement when each group played a part in the battle for human rights. Perhaps in the end the
unity did not achieve all that it promised; Mexican American youth are still imprisoned and
stereotyped as gang-bangers, disunity still exists between communities of color, and the State
still chooses to violently suppress people who threaten the system. But for a few moments in
1943, amidst all of the chaos, there was promise for change.
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“FANATICAL WILL-TO-BE”
What distinguishes them [Mexican American youth], I think, is their furtive, restless
air: they act like persons who are wearing disguises, who are afraid of a stranger’s
look because it could strip them and leave them stark naked…
They are instinctive rebels and North American racism has vented its wrath on them
more than once…
Their attitude reveals an obstinate, almost fanatical will-to-be…
— Octavio Paz, The Labyrinth of Solitude 38
My father has asked me to play the Frank Sinatra’s song, “I Did It My Way” at his
funeral. Sinatra, former zoot-suiter and immigrant, like the Mexican American zoot-suiters, had
a “fanatical will-to-be”. As you know, this sentiment is very strong in communities where
people have suffered numerous humiliations in order to survive. The Zoot Suit Riots have
fascinated me for a long time because they remind me of my father’s pride in his former gang
lifestyle, prison time, hard work, and his love and sacrifice for family. I was not born in 1943
but the swooshing sounds of fabric, the music the clothes represented, the violence, anger, and
sense of alienation within your own land have all resonated with me. I see a connection between
the zoot-suits and the baggy pants of contemporary hip hop fashion, the soundlessness of
sneakers, the clanging of oversized jewelry, the redness of nail polish and lipstick – the decision
to be visible and invisible at the same time. For me, writing this paper is a political act. As
Malcolm X said, “Education is the passport to the future”. It is only through reclaiming these
moments of resistance in our past that we can imagine a different future.
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ENDNOTES
The mural “Zoot Suit Riots” by Noemi Garcia depicts a “Mexican-American boy crouch[ing] on the sidewalk,
stripped of his clothing. A policeman towers over the youth: he makes no attempt to stop the sailor, who rips the
boy's shirt. Meanwhile other servicemen run out of taxis to join the riot. One of the servicemen steps on the June 7,
1943, edition of the Los Angeles Times, which reports the event favorably for the servicemen.” The description and
the mural are from http://members.tripod.com/~noemigarcia/twozoot.jpg.
1
Neal, 9.
2
Foucault, 200.
3
Many of the authors used the terms pachucos and Mexican American youth interchangeably. I decided not to use
the term pachucos because many of the officers and sociologists during the forties used pachuco and hoodlum
interchangeably.
4
Adler, 154 .
5
Since the focus of this paper is the United States, when I use the term “American”, I am referring to the United
States, not all of the Americas.
6
Ellison, Negro Digest, 301.
7
Adler, 156. Quoted from the Los Angeles Examiner, June 8th, 1943.
8
This case, involving the death of Jose Diaz and the racist arrests of 22 Mexican American youth, is described later
in this paper.
9
Adler, 153.
10
Watkins, 69
11
Gonzales and Gonzales, 198
12
Warwick and Cavallaro, 99
13
Pecadores is the Spanish word for sinners. Adler, 157. From the June 6 th, 1943 edition of La Opinion, a popular
Spanish newspaper.
14
Handout from Professor Scott Saul, for the University of Virginia course, “The Short American Century: 19411961”, fall 2001.
15
Foucault, 285
16
Mazon, 68
17
Foucault 194
18
Warwick and Cavallaro pg 78
19
Mazon 32
20
Adler, 159
21
Adler, 159
22
Adler, 149
23
Cosgrove, 3. From Octavio Paz’s Labyrinth of Solitude, 9.
24
Ellison, Invisible Man, 390.
25
Kelly, 166
26
Warwick and Cavallaro, 130
27
Adler, 156.
28
White, 7
29
Adler, 156.
30
Mazon, 87.
31
Adler, 152
32
Lott, 119.
33
Adler, 152.
34
Adler, 172.
35
Lott, 94.
36
Adler, 158.
37
Foucault, 58-59.
38
Cosgrove, 2. From Octavio Paz’s Labyrinth of Solitude, 8.
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