1940年代初期ロサンゼルスにおけるメキシコ系米国人若者集団の状況

Abstract

This paper examines the social conditions of Mexican American youths of the 1940s, particularly of a group known as the pachucos. Pachuco is a term that refers to working-class Mexican American male youths who wore zoot suits in southwestern cities during the 1940s. Often seen as gangsters by mainstream Los Angeles the pahucos became increasingly marginalized in the city.//Thirty years later during the 1970s many ethnic groups began to undergo a phenomenon known as ethnic revival or an awakening of their own ethnicity. Under this influence, some Mexican American intellectuals and artists such as Luis Valdez and Ruben Salazar recognized the pachuco as the origin of Mexican American consciousness.//Why did some Mexican Americans of the 1970s equate the pachucos with their ethnic origin in spite that they were terribly feared and despised a generation ago? There were several Mexican heroes such as Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata who could be used as the origin of ethnic consciousness. But why did the pachucos feature as the roots of this ethnic awakening?//This paper deals with this question by looking at the relationship between pachucos and other ethnic groups in Los Angeles during the 1940s. It does so, by analyzing two historical incidents that involved pachucos: the Sleepy Lagoon murder in 1942 and the Zoot Suit Riots of 1943.