Abstract
Pachuco culture started in Latino communities across the United States’ Southwest in the 1920s. By the 1940s it was a nationally recognized subculture with a distinct language variety (“slang”) and oppositional style of dress (pachucos are sometimes referred to as “zoot-suiters”).
Pachucas and Pachucos in Tucson is the product of a five-year qualitative research project in which Laura L. Cummings documented oral histories, recollections, anecdotes, commentary, and linguistic observations of 19 research participants. The primary data is supplemented with surviving literature and documentary sources about the culture. Combining ethnographic, historical, and sociolinguistic analysis, the author contextualizes the appearance and development of pachuco culture in Tucson, Arizona.
Pre- and post-World War II considerations are a recurring analytic for each of the chapters in the body of the text. For example, Chapter One is a rich presentation of the cultural dynamics before 1940, while Chapter Two treats the period after 1940. The next two chapters follow the same analytic for respondents’ family histories.
In the second half of the book, Cummings presents a historical uncovering of the roots of pachuco’s distinct language variety (Chapter Five), her respondents’ discussions about the effect of the public school system’s paradoxical forced segregation and obligatory assimilation policies on the culture (Chapter Six), a brief statement on the connection between pre-war policing of pachucos and post-war policing of Latino gangs (Chapter Seven), and an analysis of internal power relations and the cultural break between the pre- and post-war years (Chapter Eight). All of the chapters stand primarily on discursive analyses that elucidate various aspects of the culture.
As a whole, Cummings offers a much-appreciated counter-narrative to racist and deviance-centered representations, which she generously calls “cultural misunderstandings,” of a complex American subculture. This delightful book demonstrates how pachuco culture was embedded within political, economic, and social contexts that influenced the dynamics within the culture, as well as perceptions about it.