Zoot suits
Zoot suits are distinctive outfits characterized by long coats with exaggerated shoulder pads, wide lapels, and high-waisted pegged pants, often accessorized with long gold chains and wide-brim felt hats. While they gained immense popularity among Mexican American youths in the 1940s, young African American men in urban areas also adopted the style. The emergence of zoot suits coincided with the onset of World War II, leading to controversy as the U.S. War Production Board criticized them for wasting fabric. The zoot suit became emblematic during the Sleepy Lagoon murder trial, where the clothing type was linked to the arrest of numerous young Latino men, exacerbating anti-Latino sentiment. This tension culminated in the zoot suit riots of 1943, where military personnel violently targeted individuals wearing zoot suits. Despite their association with conflict, cultural figures like Octavio Paz explored the deeper meanings behind the zoot suit, identifying it as a form of expression and rebellion for marginalized groups. Over time, the zoot suit evolved into a symbol of Mexican American identity, celebrated in theater and modern youth culture, often worn at significant social events.
Zoot suits
Flashy and distinctive outfits worn primarily by Mexican American youths, who were ofted called “pachucos”
The highly recognizable zoot suits were sported by members of Mexican American gangs in the Southwest and by some African Americans in big cities. During the 1940’s, Latino gang members wearing zoot suits became easy prey for law-enforcement officials, many of whom regarded the outfits as manifestations of ostentatiously unpatriotic behavior during the midst of World War II.
Zoot suit outfits were built around very long coats with exaggerated shoulder pads and extra-wide lapels worn over high-waisted pegged pants, typically adorned with long gold chains hanging down to the knees. Wide-brim felt hats typically completed the outfits. Although they were most popular by far among Mexican American youths, they were also worn by some young African American men in Harlem and other big cities. When the future Nation of Islam leader Malcolm X was living in Boston and New York during the 1940’s, he wore a zoot suit, whose shoulders, he later said, were “padded like a lunatic’s cell.”
Zoot suits came into vogue as the United States was entering World War II—a coincidence that made trouble for the young men who wore them. Indeed, the U.S. War Production Board declared that the suits wasted material because of the superfluous cloth and tailoring required to produce them.
In 1942, zoot suits figured in the notorious Sleepy Lagoon murder trial. A young Mexican American named José Díaz was slain at southeast Los Angeles’s Sleepy Lagoon reservoir on August 2 of that year. The ensuing investigation led to the arrest, trial, and conviction of more than twenty young Latino men. Their convictions were reversed on appeal in 1944, but the negative press coverage by the Los Angeles Times and the Herald-Express resulted in the arrest of six hundred more Latino youths in connection with the murder. Most of the arrestees were identified by the zoot suits they wore. Among the many procedural errors made during the murder trial was the judge’s insistence that the defendants wear their zoot suits during all their court appearances.
The long Sleepy Lagoon murder trial’s notoriety was an important contributing factor to anti-Latino violence that occurred the following year. In June of 1943, so-called zoot-suit riots took place in Los Angeles and other southwestern cities, where sailors, soldiers, and Marines attacked everyone they spotted on the streets wearing anything resembling a zoot suit. Local law-enforcement officers did little to stop the attacks until the federal government stepped in.
As early as the 1940’s, Octavio Paz, one of Mexico’s greatest philosophers, attempted to explain what motivated zoot-suited pachucos. In El laberinto de la soledad: Vida y pensamiento de México (1950), which he later enlarged and published in English as The Labyrinth of Solitude (1961), Paz attempted to find the essence of Mexican character. Instead, he stumbled on the essence of a “misfit” in North American society. Paz noted that having lost their entire inheritance—their language, religion, customs, and beliefs, pachucos used their clothing as a kind of disguise for protection. At the same time, the outfits both hid and pointed them out. Paz also recognized a potentially dangerous ingredient in the pachuco character. which he called an “impassive and sinister clown whose purpose is to cause terror instead of laughter.” During the 1940’s, pachucos carried impractical clothing to an extreme. The novelty of the outfits lay in their exaggeration, their aesthetic colors, and tattooed crosses the men had between their thumbs and index fingers. It was a sign of rebellion against authority at home, in church, and on the streets.
Impact
During the 1970’s, a zoot suiter became a hero in Luis Valdez’s successful play about the Sleepy Lagoon murder case, Zoot Suit (pr. 1978). In 1981, the play was adapted to the screen, with Edward James Olmos playing the key role of El Pachuco. By the early twenty-first century, zoot suits and the characters who wore them during the 1940’s were viewed as positive images of the Mexican American past, and Latino youths often wore modernized versions of the suits at school proms, weddings, and other social celebrations.
Bibliography
Burt, Kenneth C. The Search for a Civic Voice: California Latino Politics. Claremont, Calif.: Regina Books, 2007.
Gonzales, Raymond J. “The Pachuco Character Searches for Identity and Recognition.” The Sacramento Bee, February 11, 1979.
Pagán, Eduardo Obregón. Murder at the Sleepy Lagoon: Zoot Suits, Race, and Riot in Wartime L.A. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003.
Paz, Octavio. The Labyrinth of Solitude. New York: Grove Press, 1985.
Redl, Fritz. “Zoot Suits: An Interpretation.” Survey Midmonthly 73 (October, 1943): 259-262.