Zoot Suits Make the Man—and Woman 

On June 11, 1943, in the midst of the Zoot Suit Riots, the Los Angeles Times reported that three “zoot suit gangsterettes” attacked Miss Betty Morgan, a waitress, near the Third Street tunnel in downtown Los Angeles. Morgan recounted that her assailants tackled her, slashed her face and arms with a knife or razor, and then disappeared into the night. All three wore what she described as the long, dark identifying coat of the zooter.

The Zoot Suit Riots, which took place in Los Angeles from roughly June 3 to June 13, 1943, are probably best known for their clashes between white sailors and young, Mexican American men, particularly zoot-suiters. But who were the elusive “gangsterettes” who set upon Betty Morgan and why did they do so? Where were they from and where did they go after they fled the scene of the crime? And why are they absent in most accounts of this very important event? In addressing these questions, my book, The Woman in the Zoot Suit, reinserts women—namely, pachucas or female Mexican American zoot-suiters—into narratives about World War II and the Mexican American zoot subculture. Additionally, it seeks to understand their absence from these narratives.

The pachuca has been invisible in most accounts of American history, whereas her male counterpart, the pachuco, has been the subject of numerous academic treatises, works of visual and popular culture, and a Broadway musical to boot. During World War II, the pachuco became an object of scrutiny and concern for teachers, journalists, law enforcement officers, civic leaders, and academics. Then, during the Chicano movement from the late 1960s through the early 1980s, when political, intellectual, and artistic activity among people of Mexican descent in the United States flourished, this figure came to prominence as an icon of Chicano cultural identity.

The overlooked and maligned pachuca has much to teach us about cultural difference, nationalisms, citizenship, and resistant racial, gender and sexual identities and their contradictions, especially when viewed through the historical lens of World War II and the Chicano movement, moments of collective crisis and struggle.

The Mexican American Zoot Subculture

So what or who were pachucas and pachucos? What was a zoot suit and what happened during the Zoot Suit Riots? Among other labels, Mexican American girls and women who wore zoot suits during World War II were known as pachucas, chukas, zooter girls, zooterinas, and cholitas, while their male counterparts were sometimes called pachucos, chukos, or cholos.

In general, pachucas and pachucos were working-class and second generation Americans whose parents had emigrated from Mexico to cities in California and the Southwest, including Los Angeles, Oakland, Tucson, and El Paso, during the first decades of the twentieth century. Many were bilingual and some spoke a distinct vernacular known as caló or pachuco slang. In addition, many borrowed terms and expressions from their African American counterparts, hep cats. Like many of their urban black peers in the 1930s and 1940s, Mexican American zooters enjoyed jazz and jitterbugging. Some, but not all, were also members of youth gangs.

The most obvious identifying feature of the Mexican American zoot subculture was the zoot suit itself. For young Mexican American women in wartime Los Angeles, the zoot look generally consisted of a cardigan or V-neck sweater and/or a long, broad shouldered coat; a knee length (and, by contemporary standards, relatively short) pleated skirt; fishnet stockings or bobby socks; and platform heels, saddle shoes, or huarache sandals. Many also wore dark lipstick and used foam inserts called “rats” to lift their hair into a high bouffant. For extra panache some lightened their hair with peroxide, sported tattoos, or wore the masculine version of the zoot suit. This was an especially bold act at a time when American women could be and were arrested for the crime of “male impersonation”.

Also known as “drapes” or el tacuche, the masculine version of the zoot suit consisted of the finger-tip coat, which sometimes extended to the knee, and a pair of billowing trousers that tapered at the ankle. Some youths added a long watch chain or hat to the ensemble, but many abandoned the latter in favor of combing their relatively long hair into a pompadour on top and what was known as an “Argentine ducktail” or “duck’s ass” (“D. A.”) in back. Thick soled shoes known as calcos often punctuated the look.

Setting the Context: World War II

The zoot suit emerged at a flashpoint in American history. The instability of race, class, and gender categories; fear of non-normative sexualities, especially unchecked female sexuality and homosexuality; and concern over the widening rift between adults and adolescents came to a head in the figures of the pachuca and pachuco during World War II. All wars demand conformity, uniformity, and loyalty. Yet, as the Second World War brought Americans of different races and ethnicities into close proximity with one another in unprecedented ways—for example, on the street, battlefield, dance floor, and factory floor—citizenship and national identity were reevaluated and recontested.

For the first time some racial and ethnic minorities, such as Mexican Americans, were hailed as Americans as they were called upon to join the war effort. Meanwhile, people of color, fed up with being “half American”, took advantage of the exigencies of war to demand for themselves the rights and privileges of full citizenship. For example, the “Double-V” campaign, mounted by the African American newspaper the Pittsburgh Courier in 1942, called for two simultaneous victories: the defeat of fascism abroad and an end to racial discrimination on the home front. Meanwhile, numerous people of color—for instance, members of the highly decorated 442nd Regimental Combat Team and 100th Infantry Battalion, both of which were comprised of Japanese Americans—demonstrated their loyalty to the United States by joining a still-segregated military and giving life and limb in combat.

In addition to reaffirming racial and ethnic minorities’ claims to U. S. citizenship, the Second World War mandated a shift in gender roles and relations as increasing numbers of women entered the labor force and took on jobs previously held by men. Between 1940 and 1944, roughly five million women, many of whom were wives and mothers, left their homes to work. Those who found work in the defense industry were dubbed “Rosie the Riveter”. Meanwhile, numerous men left their families to join the military or to seek employment in centers of war industry. Migration, housing shortages, and a lack of childcare threatened to tear families apart, while marriage, birth, and divorce rates surged.

World War II also impacted relations between parents and children, and the young and old. More and more youths found themselves unsupervised as their parents went off to work or fight. Teens and young adults enjoyed increasing spending power, while juvenile authorities, law enforcement officers, social scientists, and civic leaders fretted over a spike in juvenile delinquency. In Los Angeles the police and press warned that a juvenile crime wave would sweep over the city. After the Sleepy Lagoon incident, which involved an alleged gang fight and murder in southeast Los Angeles on August 1-2, 1942, the police launched a crackdown on so-called pachuco and pachuca gangs. In effect they and the press colluded in equating Mexican American youths with criminality and upheld the zoot look as the uniform of the gangster.

The Significance of the Zoot Suit

For many of its wearers, the zoot suit symbolized youthful insouciance and nothing more. Yet for many others, it signified delinquency, rebellion, difference, and even un-Americanism—hence the violence to which its wearers were subjected during the Zoot Suit Riots. At a moment when Americans were called upon and even required to sacrifice for the common good, pachucas and pachucos sported a flamboyant look that flew in the face of the War Production Board’s 1942 mandate in the reduction of the use of fabric in clothing. Indeed, the zoot suit celebrated excess and conspicuous consumption. It commanded attention and flaunted its wearer’s disposable income. The fact that some zoot clad youths were Mexican American made it all the more disruptive to the social order. After all, up until the Second World War Mexican Americans were, by and large, a poor and rural population. With the war many moved to cities like Los Angeles, where they encountered both de jure and de facto racial segregation and found that they were unwelcome in most public spaces.

The Zoot Suit Riots

The Zoot Suit Riots erupted after months of clashes between Mexican Americans and white servicemen in various neighborhoods throughout Los Angeles. Although there were few reported serious injuries and property damage was minimal relative to other major twentieth century civil disturbances, they represent an especially violent episode in American history. During the riots white servicemen, some of whom were accompanied by police officers and civilians, attacked youths wearing zoot suits. In particular, they targeted zoot clad Mexican Americans. For at least ten days in June of 1943, servicemen from across Southern California and some from as far away as Las Vegas poured into Los Angeles and roamed the streets of downtown, Chinatown, Chavez Ravine, East L. A., and Watts in search of their prey. In some instances they stopped and boarded streetcars, burst into businesses and private homes, and set upon people of color regardless of their attire. When they apprehended zooters they frequently sheared their hair and stripped them of their distinctive clothing. The police then jailed their victims for disturbing the peace.

What a Difference a Coat Makes

An example of state sanctioned violence, the Zoot Suit Riots were not only racist but misogynist and homophobic too. In addition to signifying racial difference, the zoot look defied gender norms. To some observers, the pachuco spent far too much time primping and preening and too little time studying, working, playing sports, or fighting the Axis enemy. With his long hair, full coat, and ballooning trousers, he appeared to be the antithesis of the clean-cut serviceman, the apotheosis of American masculinity. As sailors and soldiers tore through the streets of Los Angeles during the Zoot Suit Riots in an attempt to destroy those very signs of difference, they exposed the violence underpinning both assimilation and heteronormativity.

Where the pachuco was branded effeminate and queer, the pachuca was simultaneously too feminine and not feminine enough. Her hair was too high, her makeup was too thick, and her skirt was too short for middle-class tastes. Additionally, pachucas had a reputation for being loud and unruly, for smoking and drinking, and for having sex outside of marriage. In short, they embodied a dissident, working-class femininity, one that veered too closely to masculinity. True, other women defied gender norms by taking on jobs traditionally held by men—for example, in the defense industry—but white female workers were upheld as patriotic, as “Rosie the Riveters”. Pachucas’ perceived racial and cultural differences, in particular, their use of Spanish and caló, cast doubt on their Americanness and their loyalty to this country.

Remembering the Pachuca

Beginning in the 1960s, many Chicano writers, artists, intellectuals, and activists lionized the pachuco precisely because they saw him as a rebel and harbinger of the Chicano movement. Yet, as they transformed him into a symbol of Chicano resistance, pride, and style, they also “unqueered” him: The pachuco went from being a “gamin dandy” or “powder puff” to a “folk hero” and “Minuteman of machismo”. The pachuca, in contrast, was ignored because of the threat she posed to traditional gender. With the exception of a handful of feminist writers and artists, such as Judith F. Baca, Carmen Lomas Garza, Inés Hernández, and Cherríe Moraga, few have paid adequate attention to pachucas and examined the ways they challenged nation, patriarchy, and heteronormatity. These writers and artists have not glossed over or celebrated wholesale the pachuca’s dissident femininity. Rather, they have honed in on it and explored its contradictions. Via theater, poetry, and visual art, they have addressed gaps in American and Chicano history and pointed to the ways in which history is recorded or not. Betty Morgan’s attackers may have disappeared into the night during the Zoot Suit Riots, but these daring and innovative feminist writers and artists have refused to allow the pachuca to slip into obscurity once again.

Catherine S. Ramírez is an associate professor of American Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz.  Her research and teaching focus on contemporary Chicana and Latino literature and twentieth century Mexican American history.  Her book, The Woman in the Zoot Suit:  Gender, Nationalism, and the Cultural Politics of Memory (Duke University Press, 2009), excavates the participation of Mexican American women in the zoot subculture of the 1940s and examines the figures of the pachuca and pachuco in Chicano cultural production since the 1960s.  She is now embarking on a study of democracy and difference in Europe and the United States. She holds a Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies from the University of California, Berkeley.