Trailer of the Week: The Mask of Zorro (1998)

The original Zorro movies were notoriously unpopular with Chicano intellectuals back in the 1960s because they presented an image of Spanish California that was very inaccurate. This movie aspires to be a bit more politically correct but it still has issues too numerous to number here.

While I hesitate to be too critical of the movie -- after all, for many years, Zorro was one of the few Hispanic action heroes who was popular with white non-Hispanics at a time when many white non-Hispanics had little use for any such character -- it does have moments that are unintentionally humorous to anyone who knows anything about the history of the American Southwest. Then again, it was one of the few Zorro movies I've ever seen that had an Anglo-American villain and when I was a kid, I never thought I'd ever see one of those.

Book of the Week

This was the first book by Michele Serros that I ever read. She wrote one previous to this one called Chicano Falsa: And Other Stories of Death, Identity, and Oxnard that I would read later on but this was the first one that introduced me to Ms. Serros' style. A style that was serious and yet not so serious. A style that did not so much intend to follow in the pen strokes of other Chicano writers as to blaze a path for those readers who are not usually thought of by most literary types.

I wish I had thought to mention this book way earlier but I suspect that I feared my words would not be able to do justice to it. And yet there are times when it is better to risk saying the wrong thing than to say nothing at all.

¡Feliz Cumpleaños, Rubén Salazar!

Born March 3, 1928. Died August 29, 1970.

He was a Mexican-American journalist who became famous covering the Chicano community when he worked as a reporter for the Los Angeles Times.

He was killed by a tear gas round fired by a deputy of the Los Angeles County Sheriffs during the National Chicano Moratorium March against the Vietnam War in East Los Angeles. Of course, he was not the first American journalist killed in the line of duty. Unfortunately, he was not the last.

¡Feliz Cumpleaños, Rubén Salazar!

Born March 3, 1928. Died August 29, 1970.

Mexican-American journalist who died way before his time.

Hey, I Don't Remember This Show: The New Adventures of Zorro (1981)

Apparently Zorro is a very popular TV character -- unless, of course, you are a Chicano militant. But unfortunately Chicano militants don't have a whole lot of clout in the TV industry. Thus, a character whose stories were often described by Chicano writers as unrealistic depictions of the old American Southwest proved to be one of the few Hispanic characters to have more than one animated show made about him. Of course, that doesn't include the various live-action versions made about him as well.

This version is particularly impressive when you consider that the most popular pop culture incarnation of Zorro around this time was that silly George Hamilton movie Zorro the Gay Blade, a comedy which basically made fun of the Zorro movies.

Cinema Indocumentado

I have seen so many bad illegal alien movies over the years that it often seems like a miracle to come across one that is actually good. This is not to say that such films are rare. I could sing the praises of movies like El Norte and My Family all day but unfortunately, not all films dealing with Mexican illegal aliens are up to the standards of those films.

More often, they are up to the standards of the 1980 exploitation flick Border Cop, which starred Telly Savalas as a tough but kind border patrolman and which featured Michael V. Gazzo as a local crime boss named Chico Suarez who just happened to speak with the same accent Gazzo used for his Mafioso character in The Godfather, Part II. It says something about how bad this particular movie was that one of the most likable characters in this movie -- a Mexican female immigrant, natch -- ended up getting raped for seemingly no other reason than to give the Savalas character an excuse to show what a badass he was when he went after the rapist. In all too many such movies, the Mexican characters seemed to have little reason to exist apart from giving the Anglo heroes a chance to show how brave and noble they were and Border Cop was no different.

Granted, the USA does not have a monopoly on such bad movies. The 1985 Mexican exploitation flick La Tumba del Mojado presented such a downbeat view of the United States and the type of life awaiting those Mexicans who make it here that a Mexican acquaintance theorized that it was part of her government's plan to discourage illegal immigration. The only Anglos shown on-screen spoke with thick Texas accents and were depicted as being just a tad more friendly than the Wehrmacht. One of the few friendly faces the illegal immigrant of the title* met in the US belonged to a drug dealer who befriended the immigrant and eventually involved him in his business -- an involvement which, of course, had tragic results.

Ironically, one of the better movies I have seen concerning this issue is the 1949 drama Border Incident, one of the first American movies that dealt with this subject. Of course, this film was made during the heyday of the bracero program (a government program by which Mexican agricultural workers were transported to the US to help out American farmers). Back then, illegal immigration still seemed like a novelty and while the movie's writers expressed their share of sympathy for the Mexicans who choose to illegally enter the US, the movie still emphasized the importance of immigrating the legal way.

Nevertheless, the movie's villains were not the poor devils who crossed the border without government approval but the Latino and Anglo criminals who smuggled them across and then preyed on them. Indeed, the number of young Mexicans who fell victim to these crooks became so great that the Mexican and American governments teamed up to bring the crooks to justice. The Mexican side was represented by Ricardo Montalbán, who played Pablo Rodriguez, a Mexican policeman who went undercover as a Mexican peon. The American side was represented by future Senator George Murphy, who played Jack Bearnes, the federal agent who assisted Montalbán in his mission.

Contrary to American movie tradition, Rodriguez did not die the traditional early death Hollywood usually reserves for minority characters. Instead he ended up becoming the hero of the movie while Bearnes ended up becoming a victim of the bad guys -- quite a daring plot development when you consider that this movie was made at a time when many restaurants, theatres and public pools in the Southwest still discriminated against Mexicans and Latin heroes were far from the norm in American movies.

Could a film like Border Incident be made today? Not likely, given that the bracero program which partially inspired it no longer exists. For that matter, the idea of the Mexican and American government cooperating today to bust an international ring of immigrant smugglers seems highly unlikely as well. But it would be nice to pretend it was possible, if only in dreams.

* Mojado is a not so nice Spanish word for "illegal immigrant" which usually translates as "wetback" in English. It is often used in the titles of Mexican songs and movies and one relative of mine even claimed to have once seen a T-shirt that pitted a vehicle labeled "Mojado Power" against a vehicle labeled "Chicano Power." However, it is not a word that most Spanish-speaking people knowingly use in polite company.

Magazine Cover of the Week

Oh, how quickly we forget.

Why I Am Not a Chicano

I suppose I could call myself a Chicano if I wanted to. After all, I am an American of Mexican descent, and that's what Chicanos essentially are -- Americans of Mexican descent who, like me, were born in this country.

But I never really wanted to call myself a Chicano.

And while I respect the achievements of the Chicano movement and their fight for the rights of people like me, I can't help but sense a sad irony in a movement that fought for the rights of people of Mexican descent -- yet seemed to treat the word “Mexican” itself like a dirty word.

I suppose if I had grown in an environment where the word “Mexican” was constantly being used as a suffix to words like “dirty,” “lazy,” “crooked,” and “evil,” I'd hate the word “Mexican” too.

But I didn't.

I grew up in the company of Mexican immigrants who did not call themselves “Latinos” or “Hispanics” or “Spanish people” but instead called themselves MEXICANS. Why? Because most of them were either born in Mexico or were descended from people born in Mexico.

Most of my Mexican relatives did not necessarily brag about being Mexican but they didn't act like it was anything to be ashamed of, either. Indeed, for many years, the strongest and most positive influence upon my life came from my Mexican relatives, not my non-Mexican relatives.

And in many ways, my Mexican relatives will always influence my life.

I suppose I should call them my Mexican-American relatives. After all, many of them were born in this country like myself and some even served in the US Armed Forces.

But most of my relatives tended to refer to themselves as being Mexican for the same reason many of my mother's Polish-American relatives referred to themselves as being Polish -- it was easier.

Anyway it doesn't really matter what you call yourself as long as you're proud of your ancestors and, more importantly, act in such a way as to make your ancestors proud of you.

As for the sad individual who feels the need to put down somebody else's ancestors in order to make himself or herself feel better... Well, neither Spanish nor English has enough cuss-words for me to say what I think about that type of person...