From Coveralls to Zoot Suits by Elizabeth R. Escobedo

Author:Elizabeth R. Escobedo [Escobedo, Elizabeth R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, United States, State & Local, West (AK; CA; CO; HI; ID; MT; NV; UT; WY), Social Science, Ethnic Studies, American, Hispanic American Studies
ISBN: 9781469602059
Google: vAaBuXL71aQC
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Published: 2013-01-15T04:01:27+00:00

Members of the Señoritas USO at a 1943 Christmas dinner. Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection.

Yet in their cultural work for the war, the Señoritas USO also made a concerted effort to present their nonwhite womanhood in a manner palatable to the larger American public. These young women of color did advocate for equal treatment in U.S. society, but ever mindful of the importance of reputation, they also strategically utilized the patriotic, all-American USO to secure their position as “good girls.”95 As Señoritas USO vice president Aida Almanzán wrote to CCLAY secretary Manuel Ruiz in a letter asking for his support, “We have had great success with obtaining Señoritas that are representative of the most elite type of young Mexican woman. The distinguished place they hold in our society, and their excellent character and behavior with the men of the military service, is a guarantee of their cultural and patriotic objective.”96 Efforts of the Señoritas USO thus challenged presumptions of all-American womanhood as white, but they did so in a manner that presented a virtuous and respectable vision of Mexican ladyhood.97

In many ways, this was not a battle easily won. No matter how meticulous their attention to virtue, or how emphatically wartime officials touted their inclusion, Mexican American women still faced resistance to their newly urban public presence. Particularly unnerving was their ability to be considered white one minute and nonwhite the next, as they permeated long-standing societal boundaries meant to keep intimate relations from crossing ethnic and racial lines. Sex lay at the heart of the matter. What might the future hold if Mexican women fit in just well enough to marry whites? Marriages between Spanish/Mexicans and whites in the Southwest had long existed since the early nineteenth century, but such unions were by no means routine.98 Thus the new, more frequent opportunities for cross-cultural relationships—made possible by the wartime environment—did not go unnoticed. Nowhere did these anxieties become more readily apparent than in the gendered conflicts that arose during the Zoot Suit Riots in June of 1943, when Euro-American sailors and Mexican American youths took to the streets.

Prior to the ten days of violence that characterized the riots, several racial and sexual confrontations between Euro-Americans and Mexican Americans had occurred. As documented by scholars Eduardo Pagán and Catherine Ramírez, the presence of hypermasculine servicemen in historically Mexican communities like Chávez Ravine—home to a U.S. Naval Reserve Training School—created a situation where Mexican American men felt a need to protect both their neighborhoods and their women from intrusion.99 Military personnel shipped in nationwide from homogeneous small towns, or areas of the country accustomed to a black/white racial divide, many bringing with them racialized notions of sexuality that viewed women of color as readily available and easily possessed. As they navigated Los Angeles streets, women of Mexican descent encountered behavior ranging from cat calls to outright harassment from white servicemen, a phenomenon detailed by African American writer Chester Himes in 1943. According to Himes, in one instance, a blond sailor jumped at the opportunity to taunt a young Mexican couple as they rode the local street car.

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