Why the Pachuco Lifestyle is Here to Stay

Pachucos were recently highlighted in Penny Dreadful’s spin-off series, City of Angels. Set in the Golden Age of Hollywood, also an era of high racial tension in LA, the series has helped to bring the cultural significance of the pachuco gangs and individuals into the spotlight. But what is a pachuco really and what happened to them?

What are Pachucos?

Pachucos culture emerged in 1930s El Paso, Texas. Taking influence from Black jazz culture from the East Coast and mixing with their own Latino background, pachucos were a counter-culture of resistance against the Mexican-American assimilation into White-American culture. During an era when US-born citizens with Mexican ancestry were being repatriated back to Mexico and yet Mexican laborers were being welcomed in the US, but only as cheap labor–racial tensions were rising. The pachucos style was the independent identification of a group that didn’t fit the colonist mold, but also wasn’t quite natively Mexican either.

Pachucos stood out in a crowd. They spoke a blended language of English, Spanish, and indigenous languages, termed Caló. Low-riding cars, jazz, swing, and smoking weed–long before the ‘60s hippies made it their thing–typified the culture. But the most identifying aspect, and also the one that would get them into significant trouble eventually, was their adaptation of the Zoot Suit from jazz culture (or possibly from Pachuca, Mexico, according to some sources) complete with a matching fedora and feather.

A note here: Pachucos were men, but the cultural identification spread to women as well who gave it their own twist as pachucas. Short pleated skirts, fishnet stockings, dark make-up, and “rats” (foam pieces) for more extreme hair-dos marked their style.

Zoot Suit Riots

As tensions broiled, a nighttime confrontation between two pachuco gangs resulted in an apparent murder in August of 1942. 17 Mexican-American youth were arrested the next day, held without due process, and required to appear in court in the clothing they were arrested in–which was used to draw a pointed corollary between the Zoot suits and “hoodlums”. It would take over two years to overturn the convictions, based on negligible evidence and the likelihood that the death was due to intoxicated blunder.

Also in 1942, the US War Production Board issued requirements for simplified wartime clothing. The Zoot Suit, with its long jacket and baggy pants, fell far outside the requirements. The only way for pachucos to achieve their signature look was through bootleg tailors, an action viewed as unpatriotic by White-American culture. 

In 1944, the tension broke out into what became known as the Zoot Suit Riots–and no, although inspired-by, it wasn’t as catchy as the song from 1997. US servicemen and other white residents roamed LA, stripping and beating Latino & Mexican-American youth wearing Zoot suits for five days in July. Police were ordered to not arrest the rioters, although nearly 500 Mexican-Americans were arrested over the five days. The riots were defused when the Army and Navy ordered all soldiers back to barracks and placed LA off-limits to personnel. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, among others, expressed concern about the blatant racism of the riots, although they were in turn accused of communist leanings.

Pachuco Spirit Today

After the riots, the Zoot suits themselves became an even stronger point of cultural pride to the pachuco subculture. The pachucos would hold strong into the 1960s before morphing into the Chicano movement. The Chicano culture–derived from a reclaimed classist and racist slur–retained the same anti-assimiliation energy but moved away from any prior association of dandyism, including the Zoot suit, and towards more politically-focused actions.

Today, the ideals of pride in retained heritage over assimilation is still a strong cultural movement but it goes by some different names. Chicano is still a familiar term; another one (with mixed opinions), is “Xicanx,” ostensibly a gender-neutral term to define Latino & Mexican-American heritage. Meanwhile, the Zoot suit itself has retained a place of honor as a favored formal style in Latino culture. Pachucos themselves remain a strong symbol of Latino identity as an ongoing motif favorite of contemporary Latino artists. As artist Jerry Vigil noted in 2018, “The pachuco spirit lives on in the people and the stories of the Chicano community.”