Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Zoot Suit, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Racism, Nationalism, and Scapegoating
Self-Presentation and Cultural Identity
Public Perception and the Press
Advocates vs. Saviors
Summary
Analysis
At a dance hall in Los Angeles, El Pachuco and Henry stand off to one side, watching sailors and pachucos jitterbug to the music. Rudy enters wearing Henry’s zoot suit, striding in with Bertha, Lupe, and their friend Cholo. When several sailors hit on Lupe and Bertha, Cholo pushes them away. The sailors then fetch another Naval serviceman, who shoves Cholo out the door. When Cholo reenters, he and Rudy start fighting the servicemen, who quickly grow in number. As this tension develops, members of the press arrive and announce that riots have broken out all over the city, as Marines and other soldiers help the Navy “in a new assault on zooter-infested districts.”
In this scene, Valdez depicts the Zoot Suit Riots of 1943, in which Navy officers and other white servicemen entered Los Angeles and violently targeted minorities wearing zoot suits. When a member of the press announces that these white men have devoted themselves to helping the Navy “in a new assault on zooter-infested districts,” audience members will perhaps note a veiled admission that the servicemen are “assault[ing]” people in zoot suits, implying that they’re the ones who started the conflict. However, the language that this headline uses obscures this admission with the words “zooter-infested districts,” a phrase that refers to people who wear zoot suits as if they are pests who must be stomped out. Once again, then, the press presents a biased narrative, one that purposefully tries to turn society against Chicanos and other minority groups.
Themes
As the servicemen berate El Pachuco (who is also present at the Zoot Suit Riots), a member of the press joins them, cursing people who wear zoot suits. Hearing this, El Pachuco criticizes the journalist’s roundabout way of expressing his disdain for Chicanos. In response, the journalist says that the press is “complying” with the country’s war effort by refraining from using decidedly racist words. Hearing this, El Pachuco points out that the press has been using “pachuco” and “zoot suiter” in the same way that they would use more blatantly offensive words, but the journalist says there’s nothing wrong with using these terms. To justify himself, the journalist claims that “The Zoot Suit Crime Wave” has started to bump the news of the war off the frontpage—something he finds unacceptable and holds against the Chicano community.
In this exchange, El Pachuco spotlights the fact that the press has managed to use terms like “pachuco” and “zoot suiter” against the Chicano community, weaponizing them by using them to signal their contempt for Mexican Americans. The journalist, however, is unbothered by this accusation, claiming that there is good reason to have contempt for the Chicano community. In order to make this argument, he uses wartime rhetoric to make it seem as if Chicanos are a threat to the country’s war effort. In reality, though, “The Zoot Suit Crime Wave” is something the media invented in the first place, so it is actually the press that has distracted the public from the U.S.’s involvement in World War II.
Themes
El Pachuco tells the journalist that the pachuco style was originally related to the Chicano community’s effort to feel confident as brown people living in Los Angeles, but the journalist only blames him for trying to “outdo the white man in exaggerated white man’s clothes.” Chiming in, a marine says that his parents have been forced to give up shirt collars and cuffs because of the zoot suit craze. Enraged, he asks El Pachuco if he’s aware that there’s a war going on. He also says he and other servicemen are fighting to eliminate all enemies of “the American way of life.” At this point, a large group of servicemen jump on El Pachuco and strip off his zoot suit. When they leave, El Pachuco is in nothing but a loincloth. When he stands, an “Aztec conch blows” as he walks off into darkness.
In this moment, El Pachuco tries to explain that the zoot suit is—above all—something that the Chicano community has developed in order to bolster their collective cultural identity as Mexican Americans. Indeed, it is a style that developed out of a desire to celebrate their heritage, which is why El Pachuco later walks offstage to the sound of an Aztec conch, which symbolizes his engagement with his own cultural heritage. Unable to see this (or perhaps unwilling to acknowledge it), the white servicemen and journalists focus only on their own ideas about what it means to wear a zoot suit—ideas that fail to recognize the cultural significance of the style, instead demonizing it simply because of American society’s racist intolerance toward minority groups.
Themes
