Developing an identity is one of the most challenging parts of life. Individuals develop identities by experimentation and comparison, typically in adolescence, with the outside world. Often these identities mirror the values of both their family and culture. While the effects of adolescent rebellion are usually minimal within Anglo Americans, second generation Mexican Americans found themselves in a unique situation. Their parents were pressed for assimilation in response to oppression and adherence to Mexican values. Anglo America was intolerant of foreign cultures and eagerly wanted to exploit the groups they marginalized. Mi Familia, a film by director Gregory Nava, recounts the story of the Sanchez family through three generations in East Los Angeles. The first generation of children experienced the barrioization, racism, and police brutality that would later lead to the Chicano Movement of the 1970s. By personally experiencing conflicting cultural values and the oppressive climate of Los Angeles, each of the six children assumed a different archetype of first generation Mexican Americans.
The eldest of the Sanchez children, Paco, comes of age within the 1940s, which featured two main Chicano archetypes. In Paco’s case, birth order plays a larger role in the archetype he chosoes, as he is strongly influenced by his parent’s values. As a result of his father’s press for assimilation into American society, Paco enlists in the United States Navy. Although Paco intermittently represents the honorable son, the end of the war brings a subtle but significant rebellion. Instead of seeking employment in a labor intensive and often demeaning job, like that of his father, he decides to become an author, which would later result in his family’s narrative that also functions as the movie plot. By writing on his family’s experiences in East Los Angeles through three generations, Paco evolves into yet another Mexican American archetype: Chicano Movement Author. Chicano Movement authors would later play a large role in reshaping Chicano archetypes as positive. This is eloquently explained by writer Carlos Munoz. As quoted in Intertexuality and Cultural Identity, Carlos Munoz’ says that “ From the ranks of this new breed of youth would come the poets, the writers, and the artists necessary for forging the new Chicano identity” (30 Fregoso) Paco’s family narrative provides a truthful look at the conflicts regarding Mexican Americans, like his brothers Chucho and Jimmy and the dominant Anglo Society. Rather than interpret the Pachuco and Cholo men just as delinquents, Paco incorporates the circumstantial influences to their behavior, just as other Chicano authors would also do in later writings.
While Paco provides the first instance of rebellion within the Sanchez children, Irene, the second born, rebels against the actions of her peers and reserves most of her parent’s traditional Mexican values. Irene’s appearance in Mi Familia is somewhat limited, but her role is quickly defined as the archetypal Mexican housewife. As Gloria Anzaldua explains in Borderlands/La Frontera: “For a woman of my culture there used to be only three directions she could turn: to the Church as a nun, to the streets as a prostitute, or to the home as a mother” (1018 Anzaldua). Throughout the course of the film, Irene marries, opens a restaurant with her husband, and gives birth to multiple children. Rather than take an active stance against the discrimination she and her peers experience, Irene finds solace in her marriage and children, even if she is considered too “Mexican” for an Anglo definition of success. Despite the fact that Irene only plays a minor role in the film, the archetype she portrays is an important part of Chicano history.
Whereas the archetypes of the two eldest siblings are not relatively prominent, Chucho, the third Sanchez child, assumes the most recognized Mexican American archetype: the Pachuco. To the dismay of his parents, Chucho gets involved in the Zoot Suite life style, including marijuana distribution and the occasional scuffle. While Chucho’s parents would probably prefer him to enlist, rather than become a pachuco, Marcos Sanchez-Tranquilino explains the circumstances surrounding Chucho and his peers’ actions:
The ‘sinister clown’ whom Paz refers to as ready to cause terror instead of laughter was the ethnically selected scapegoat of the ‘riots.’ Often, he had been the younger brother of the son who had enlisted to fight for his country. Too young to enlist himself, he, along with the other young men left behind, was renegotiating the social spaced left vacant by the young men of the older generation. Those involved in the incipient development of gangs had been given ample reason by the racial attacks against access to outsiders of the barrio. To whom could they turn when the structures of civic authority had destroyed any form of cross-cultural trust? (34-42)
Chucho does not become a pachuco simply out of laziness; his deviation from the cultural norm is a response to the oppressive forces of barrioization (Sanchez-Tranquilino 30). Young men of this group had no opportunity of gaining success within Anglo America as they were denied work on the home-front and were readily discriminated against within their schools. Chucho’s delinquency is often minor, but a fight at the Saturday night dance quickly escalates to the accidental murder of his rival and Chucho’s subsequent death at the hands of police officers. While Chucho does resort to violence, the brutal response of the officers is the product of prejudicial aggression towards Mexican American adolescents. At the beginning of the search for Chucho, the chief officer reminds others that Chucho is “armed and dangerous” and to use all necessary force “to get that spic son-of-a-bitch.” The officer’s statement is reminiscent of E. Duran Ayer’s testimonial in the Sleepy Lagoon trial, in which he “identified a racially innate desire to use a knife and let blood,” which would justify the derogatory views of Chicano youth held by both the police and press (Villa 68). By participating in the dress and lifestyle associated with the 1940s and 1950s and succumbing to the aggressive police tactics of barrioization, Chucho personifies the revolutionary pachuco archetype that would later become a dominant heroic symbol of the Chicano movement.
Following in the steps of her older brother Paco, the fourth-born child Toni initially assumes a traditional role but later rebels in response to the political injustice Chicanos, Latinos, and other ethnic minorities constantly face. Toni announces her decision to become a nun at her sister’s wedding, but upon falling in love with a priest while on a mission in South America, she decides to leave the convent. Toni’s choice to leave the convent is driven by the desire to pursue a new direction, which Anzaldua elaborates on: “ Today some of us have a fourth choice: entering the world by way of education and career and becoming self-autonomous persons. A very few of us” (1018). By leaving the convent, Toni becomes an activist in stopping deportations and asserts herself into the political domain. While Mexican American males were readily able to venture outside of the home for opportunity, Chicanas faced a much harder time because they would be disobeying the cultural norms of both Mexican and Anglo societies. Instead of remaining in a traditional female role, Toni assumes a fresh Mexican American archetype: the Chicano Feminist.
Jimmy, the fifth Sanchez child, rebels not only in response to oppression but also because he witnesses Chucho’s violent death. As a result of his anger, Jimmy performs multiple armed robberies and assaults the physician he believes responsible for his wife’s death. As described earlier, Jimmy is not “inherently” violent and, like his brother, is a victim of circumstance. Although Jimmy and Chucho both experience the discrimination and “delinquent” lifestyles, Jimmy comes of age long after the Pachuco-era, and therefore assumes the Vato-Loco archetype. This allows his anger and pain to diffuse into the third generation by way of his son. Jimmy also displays a strong rejection of the traditional Mexican family by neglecting to care for his son, although it is relatively short lived. Jimmy’s portrayal of the Vato-Loco archetype is special due to the fact that is shows how the effects of barrioization were able to diffuse through two generations.
The sixth and final Sanchez child, Memo, is a stark contrast to all of his siblings. While the other Sanchez children maintained at least a small portion of their parents’ values, Memo finds himself embarrassed of his family’s antics after he gains success in Anglo society. While the motives for his shame are unclear, it could be contributed to the mistakes of his siblings or lack of exposure to the oppressive climate of East Los Angeles because of his age. Memo’s role is limited like that of Irene, but his presence is large enough to reveal his archetype, the gabacho, which Arturo Madrid describes as the Pocho Mexican, who “sought acceptance through the middle-class conformity, the suppression of their Mexican-ness, and material success” (Madrid 32). Memo enters uncharted territory when he leaves the barrio, and while his journey provides happiness to his parents, the subsequent shame of his culture results Memo’s archetypal depiction of his family’s oppressor.
Although the same parents in the same household raise each of the Sanchez children, each child is exposed to different eras, discrimination, and cultural conflicts. Each child assumes different Chicano archetypes, but all of their roles are mutually influenced by each other’s experiences. There are also two trends within the Sanchez children, the first being the variance in retaining the Mexican values of their parents. While the two eldest siblings, particularly Irene, internalize a large portion of their parent’s values, each consecutive child retain decreasing fractions of Anglo American values, with Memo modeling an almost full rejection his cultural values. The second trend is the effect of Chucho’s actions within all generations. The pain from Chucho’s death affects not only his parents and siblings, butit also transfers to Jimmy’s son. While Mi Familia solely focuses on the experiences of one family, the film portrays significant Mexican American archetypes that formed in response to oppression and discrimination that still plagues Los Angeles. Some of the character depictions of the archetypes received far less attention than others, but each was an equally important figure within the Chicano Movement’s push for civil rights. By representing a diverse selection of Mexican American archetypes, the Sanchez children eloquently display the circumstantial reasoning behind the differing responses to barrioization.
Works Cited
Anzaldua, Gloria. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco:
Spinsters/Aunt Lute, 1987. Print
Fregoso, Rosa Linda. Intertextuality and Cultural Identity in Zoot Suit (1981) and La
Bamba (1987). Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1993: 21-38. Print.
Madrid, Arturo. “In Search of the Authentic Pachuco: An Interpretive Essay” Azaltan 4.1
(1973): 31-60. Print.
Mi Familia. Dir. Gregory Nava. New Line Home Video, 1995. DVD.
Sanchez-Tranquilino, Marcos. “Mano a Mano: An Essay on the Representation of the
Zoot Suit and its Misrepresentation by Octavio Paz.” The Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art 46. (1987): 34-42. Print.
Villa, Raul H. “Founding Anglo Los Angeles on the Ruins of El Pueblo”. Barrios Logos.
Texas: University of Texas Press, 2000: 66-110. Print.
