Zoot Suit

While interrogating Henry, Sgt. Smith taunts, “I hear you pachucos wear these monkey suits as a kind of armor. Is that right? How’s it work” (13). Although Smith’s words are mocking, the zoot suit does function as armor. As El Pachuco illuminates, “the ideal of the original chuco was to look like a diamond, to look sharp, hip, bonaroo, finding a style of urban survival in the rural skirts and outskirts of the brown metropolis of Los, cabrón” (67). Even as the craze spreads to other races, the suit functions as the uniform of pachuco street gangs, radiating suaveness and Chicano pride. This is why white society in the play attacks it. When the Press accuses, “You are trying to outdo the white man in exaggerated white man’s clothes,” El Pachuco replies, “Because everybody knows that Mexicans, Filipinos and Blacks belong to the huarache, the straw hat and the dirty overall” (67). As an expression of pride, the zoot suit affronts white superiority. It is expensive, excessive, ornamental, and allows wearers to separate themselves by choice rather than from discrimination.

The removal of the zoot suit also has great significance. Part of the military men’s aggression toward the Mexican-American youths involved stripping them and burning their suits. If the suits are the pachucos’ armor, stealing them means leaving them defenseless. In the case of El Pachuco, who functions as a mythical being, there is only more power beneath the suit. However, Rudy is humiliated when a group of servicemen rob him of his suit. He is left vulnerable in the street, and in the second act he joins the marines and replaces the suit with a different kind of uniform. Before the arrest, Henry plans to retire his suit in favor of “Navy blues” (14), an act that would indoctrinate him into a group that is supposedly unequivocally American, regardless of race or ethnicity. El Pachuco finds this decision offensive, criticizing Henry for offering his life to a country that “has declared all-out war on Chicanos” (10).

Unlike the zoot suits, which symbolize both distinctive personal style and group unification, the military uniforms worn by servicemen represent deindividuation. The majority of the sailors and Marines have no names and function as a single unit. Deindividuation, the process by which separate people become a singular entity, relieves members of personal responsibility and promotes mob mentality. In the military, deindividuation allows soldiers to perform acts of violence that they would not perform on their own. During the zoot suit riots, the servicemen in uniform attack Chicano men. The military uniform also comes with privilege. When the officers arrest Henry and his friends, Sgt. Smith lets Swabbie, a sailor in uniform, go free. For Henry and Rudy, the uniform represents advancement in society. But the uniform also represents death. As Rudy describes after his time at war, “I saw some pachucos go out there that are never coming back” (79).