Dissertation Information for Galadriel Mehera Gerardo NAME: - Galadriel Mehera Gerardo
DEGREE:
- Ph.D.
DISCIPLINE:
- History
SCHOOL:
- University of California, Los Angeles (USA) (2007)
ADVISORS: - Ellen Carol DuBois
COMMITTEE MEMBERS: - L. Robin Derby - Marissa Katherine Lopez - Henry S.N. Yu
MPACT Status: Fully Complete
Title: Misunderstood masculinities: Competing expressions of manhood, the Zoot Suit Riots, and young Mexican American masculine identity in World WarI Los Angeles
Abstract: The Zoot Suit Riots took place in Los Angeles between June 3 and 13, 1943. They involved the beating and stripping of mostly Mexican American and some African American youths by white servicemen. The riots followed on the heels of the highly publicized Sleepy Lagoon Murder Case of 1942, in which twenty-four young Mexican American men were tried and seventeen of them convicted based on social scientists' assertions that people of Mexican descent possessed an inherent proclivity toward criminality.
Since the birth of the Chicano Movement in the 1960s, the Pachuco zoot suiter has become one of the most important icons in the Chicano community. However, this image privileges the nationalist agenda of the Chicano movement over the actual experiences of the Mexican American men who lived through the Sleepy Lagoon trial and the zoot suit riots in the 1940s. Many scholars have pointed out that the image of the zoot suiter created in the 1960s and 1970s privileges male identity--and a specifically aggressive and dominant male identity--as normative and excludes women from collective Chicano identity. This image has also had ramifications for Mexican American men, who have been depicted as exhibiting a dangerous, even pathological masculinity. This dissertation explores how young Mexican American men understood their masculine identities in wartime Los Angeles as well as the forces that shaped them.
By integrating materials from previously restricted court cases concerning many of the men who servicemen attacked because of their zoot suit image in June of 1943, this dissertation examines the riots both from the point of view of the instigators and the zoot suiters who they attacked. Most of sources used in this dissertation were written by zoot suiters or contain records of their speeches. Examining these sources provides a complex picture of the Mexican American men who endured attacks during the riots, and also suggests that the servicemen who attacked them misunderstood what they actually meant to communicate by participating in zoot suit culture.
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calculated 2008-08-06 13:00:40
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