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Pachucos are male members of a counterculture that emerged in El Paso, Texas, in the late 1930s. Pachucos are associated with zoot suit fashion, jump blues, jazz and swing music, a distinct dialect known as caló, and self-empowerment in rejecting assimilation into Anglo-American society.[1] The pachuco counterculture flourished among Chicano boys and men in the 1940s as a symbol of rebellion, especially in Los Angeles. It spread to women who became known as pachucas and were perceived as unruly, masculine, and un-American.[2]
Some pachucos adopted strong attitudes of social defiance, engaging in behavior seen as deviant by white/Anglo-American society, such as marijuana smoking, gang activity, and a turbulent night life.[1] Although concentrated among a relatively small group of Mexican Americans, the pachuco counterculture became iconic among Chicanos[3][4] and a predecessor for the cholo subculture which emerged among Chicano youth in the 1980s.[5]
Pachucos emerged in Los Angeles, California, among a group of it may have roots in Pachuca, Hidalgo, Mexico, where loose-fitting clothing was popular among men.[6] It later spread throughout the Southwest into Los Angeles, where it developed further. In the border areas of California and Texas, a distinct youth culture known as pachuquismo developed in the 1940s and has been credited as an influence to Chicanismo.[7][8] In LA, Chicano zoot suiters developed their own cultural identity, "with their hair done in big pompadours, and 'draped' in tailor-made suits ... They spoke caló, their own language, a cool jive of half-English, half-Spanish rhythms ... Out of the zoot-suiter experience came lowrider cars and culture, clothes, music, tag names, and, again, its own graffiti language."[7]
Pachucos were perceived as alien to both Mexican and Anglo-American culture–a distinctly Chicano figure. In Mexico, the pachuco was understood "as a caricature of the American", while in the United States he was perceived as so-called "proof of Mexican degeneracy."[9] Mexican critics such as Octavio Paz denounced the pachuco as a man who had "lost his whole inheritance: language, religion, customs, belief." In response, Chicanos heavily criticized Paz and embraced the oppositional position of the pachuco as an embodied representation of resistance to Anglo-American cultural hegemony.[10] To Chicanos, the pachuco had acquired and emanated self-empowerment and agency through a "stylized power" of rebellious resistance and spectacular excess.[11][12]
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