Murder at the Sleepy Lagoon: Zoot Suits, Race, and Riot in Wartime Latin America by Eduardo Obregón Pagán (review)

136 The Latin Americanist Spring 2005 development of judicial institutions and the evolution of core areas of private law in Latin America will find this book very informative. Herbert M. Kritzer Universiho f Wisconsin-Madison Murder at the Sleepy Lagoon: Zoot Suits, Race, and Riot in Wartime Latin America. By Eduardo Obreg6n Pagan. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2003, p. 313, $19.95. In this masterful volume, Eduardo Obregon PagBn accomplishes three significant tasks. First, he presents one of the most comprehensive and authoritative accounts of both the Sleepy Lagoon murder and subsequent trials and of the Zoot Suit riots of the early 1940s. Second, throughout this narration, Pagan expertly weaves in the threads of a historiography of the creation of the “Pachuco” as both distinctive dress and a cultural icon. And, finally, PagBn offers his own analysis and conclusions about the dynamics and meaning of these intertwined images and events. Drawing upon an impressive array of archival material, primary documents, and oral histories, as well as an exhaustive secondary bibliography, PagBn recreates in narrative detail the events surrounding the August 1942 murder of JosC Diaz, the trial of the 3gthStreet “gang” and the subsequent appeal and reversal of the sentences two years later. In equal fashion he reviews the events of the L.A. Zoot Suit riots over late May and early June of 1943, when mobs of military and civilians assaulted young Mexican-Americans, stripping many of them of their infamous “Pachuco” style clothing. The author effectively incorporates the use of maps, drawings, and photos to highlight his account. With both the trials and the riots associated with the infamous “Pachuco”, Pagan dedicates two significant chapters of analysis to the “Dangerous Fashion” and “The Significance of the Pachuco as a General Category and Conception.” The author tracks the origins of the terminology from the marginalized criminal element known as the “Tirilis,” who formed the initial connection between the African Americanjazz experience of Harlem and the Mexican-American youth of the Southwest. PagBn also details the evolution of the “drape” style of expressive clothing from the east to west coast. EmphasiLing that the distinctive dress Book Reviews 137 was a cross-cultural element, shared by a variety of working-class groups, from African Americans to Irish American youth, in addition to Mexican Americans, Pagan defines the cloths as an element of cultural creativity and identity that held a serious purpose. “To dismiss the zoot suit phenomenon as little more than a fad, as many did at the time, is to ignore the powerful implications of the fashion among teenagers. It was part of a symbolic lexicon that facilitated interaction between teens on terms of their choosing and their identification with a larger world outside the barrios” (p. 120).It within this context of identity creation that Pagan presents his own general analysis of the murder trials and the riots. The initial interpretations of these events emphasized the theme of “white irrationality” overreacting to both the perception of emerging youth gangs and a lack of patriotism in a time of war. Exaggerated newspaper accounts and a police culture determined to see “gangs” in ethnic communities produced a backlash by white citizens against the Mexican American community. Pagan rejects this interpretation as a passive theme of “victimology,” which misses what he considers the essential element that ties all of these events together. Using the analytical tool of “agency,” Pagan argues the Mexican American youth and zoot suiters where active players in the events, defending neighborhood space, supporting working class identities, and rejecting the dynamics of segregation while remaining patriotic and loyal to the United States. As with the Anglo community, many Mexican American leaders, voices of the middle class, also perceived the young as endangered and prey to harmful influences, and were equally disdainful of the style and attitude of the zoot suiters and teenagers. Ultimately however, Pagan concludes that, “the hipster and the Pachuco, were the embodiment of something profoundly American . They were underdogs who, through savvy and determination, had risen up from obscurity and attained a visible degree of success in living life on their own terms” (p.125). To his credit, P a g h...