Summary: Discrimination Among Pachuca Women

Throughout the whole chapter, one could easily be able to notice the discrimination these pachuca women received. Much like the discrimination that women not only in this country but all over the world still receive to this day. As well as the pachuca women, women today want to be provided with a sense of personal freedom and control. Another comparison is that women can feel like outsiders. The women then used the zoot-style to help them feel like they belong somewhere, to help them escape their feelings of feeling like an outsider in the US. The persona these pachucas created gave them an identity, this identity was nothing like their more traditional mothers, as Escobedo mentioned it sensed a belonging to “distinctly Mexican American subculture.”
The culture that the Mexican parents had is astonishingly much similar to how it still is now. One of the most common one is males having more privileges then females do, males are especially allowed more freedom then females are. The Mexican parents often feared that as they were adapting to these “pachuca” ways, that they would lose tradition and customs as well. In a way they were assimilating to some of the American parenting views. Much like we assimilate to different cultures depending who we are around. The only difference is that the court officials would blame the zoot-suiting behavior on the parents or family of the teen, the court believed it was their fault for not properly adjusting to “American ways” as well as being incapable of properly supervising their daughters.
With the look and rumors made by newspapers about the pachucas, labels of course were a part of this. Surprisingly it’s those same labels we hear today of Mexicans, “Criminals, and gang members”, some newspapers even referred to their style/persona as “stupid”, that they wanted trouble, they went to the extent of saying that they “were asking for whatever they got”, and that they were infected with venereal disease”, calling them names such as “las malinches”. It’s truly sad that still to this day, people do label other people by their style, by how that person seems. The punishment that Amelia Venegas received was something that she should have not received.
Venegas witnessed police officers harassing a group of zoot suiters, she was arrested on disturbing the peace and was charged for carrying a concealed weapon, because she carried brass knuckles for protection. Instead the newspapers labeled her as a “Pachuca” girl, they labeled what she had done as gang affiliation. The protests that were made on behalf of the zoot suiters made Venegas the perfect target to be portrayed wrongly just for the media campaign. Venegas’s case resembles those of the people that have died due to police brutality. The reason why is because, in most cases that police brutality does occur the media usually always portrays the police as “innocent”, they turn the tables and make it seem like the person who is usually African American or Hispanic, they portray these people as these negative stereotypes. The one thing that stuck out to me the most was in Jose Diaz’s sleepy lagoon case, how the police investigated 10 women ages 13-21 because “they resembled the pachuca women.” When the court couldn’t find any of the women guilty, they refused to let the girls go. The girls were charged with the crime of rioting, declaring them ward of the state under investigation. All simply because they resembled the identity of a pachuca women. It’s clear that the Pachuca women were representing a side to embrace themselves that people hadn’t seen before. They were adopting a spirit of adventure that was new to both the Mexican and American
cultures.