Synopses & Reviews
Badmen, Bandits, and Folk Heroes is a comparative study of the literary and cinematic representation of Mexican American masculine identity from early twentieth-century adventure stories and movie Westerns through contemporary self-representations by Chicano/a writers and filmmakers. In this deeply compelling book, Juan J. Alonzo proposes a reconsideration of the early stereotypical depictions of Mexicans in fiction and film: rather than viewing stereotypes as unrelentingly negative, Alonzo presents them as part of a complex apparatus of identification and disavowal. Furthermore, Alonzo reassesses Chicano/a self-representation in literature and film, and argues that the Chicano/a expression of identity is characterized less by essentialism than by an acknowldgement of the contingent status of present-day identity formations.
Alonzo opens his provocative study with a fresh look at the adventure stories of Stephen Crane and the silent Western movies of D. W. Griffith. He also investigates the conflation of the greaser, the bandit, and the Mexican revolutionary into one villainous figure in early Western movies and, more broadly, traces the development of the badman in Westerns. He newly interrogates the writings of Américo Paredes regarding the makeup of Mexican masculinity, and productively trains his analytic eye on the recent films of Jim Mendiola and the contemporary poetry of Evangelina Vigil.
Throughout Badmen, Bandits, and Folk Heroes, Alonzo convincingly demonstrates how fiction and films that formerly appeared one-dimensional in their treatment of Mexicans and Mexican Americans actually offer surprisingly multifarious and ambivalent representations. At the same time, his valuation of indeterminacy, contingency, and hybridity in contemporary cultural production creates new possibilities for understanding identity formation.
Review
“Alonzos conceptualization of ‘stereotypes as a fluid category of identity formation is simply brilliant.” —María Herrera-Sobek, co-editor of Culture across Borders: Mexican Immigration and Popular Culture
Review
"Provides a thought-provoking political stance on the ethics of reading stereotypes in historical and contemporary written and visual texts, and in everyday life."—Bulletin of Latin American Research
Review
"Curious Unions is a pioneering work. It should be recognized for its detailed research, including its extensive use of community-based oral histories and its proposed new theories regarding how Mexican workers strengthened their own community and survived the economic transformations of the region."and#8212;Margo McBane, American Historical Review
Synopsis
Cand#233;sar E. Chand#225;vez came to Oxnard, California, in 1958, twenty years after he lived briefly in the city as a child with his migrant farmworker family during the Great Depression. This time Chand#225;vez returned as the organizer of the Community Service Organization to support the unionization campaign of the United Packinghouse Workers of America. Together the two groups challenged the agricultural industryand#8217;s use of braceros (imported contract laborers) who displaced resident farmworkers.
The Mexican and Mexican American populations in Oxnard were involved in cultural struggles and negotiations long before Chand#225;vez led them in marches and active protests. Curious Unions explores the ways in which the Mexican community forged intriguing partnerships with other ethnic groups within Oxnard in the first half of the twentieth century and the resulting economic exchanges, cultural practices, and labor and community activism. Frank P. Barajas examines how the Oxnard ethnic Mexican population exercised its agency in alliance with other groups and organizations to meet their needs before large-scale protests and labor unions were engaged. Curious Unions charts how the cultural negotiations that took place in the Oxnard ethnic Mexican community helped shape and empower farm labor organizing.
About the Author
Frank P. Barajas is an associate professor of history at California State University Channel Islands.