Epic WTF

Right, I can reply properly now, at least in part. I’m going out of my way to explain my view, and I’m assuming good faith on your behalf to have a real dialogue, because like I said it’s complex. I’d appreciate the same courtesy, although I’d prefer to keep it somewhat brief, for many reasons.

Why are the image and joke racist?

It’s not any one element that makes it racist, but the image seen as a whole, is. The elements are:

1) The Aztec female name Citlali being chosen for the speaker. Indigenous names aren’t very common in Mexico, particularly outside of the indigenous peoples and Central Mexico; Citlali isn’t uncommon among the ones used. A far more common name in Mexico is Maria, or Ana, but the author specifically chose an indigenous name. In a country where most people are mixed race (mestizo), the groups who have kept more direct cultural and familial ties to their indigenous past are known as the indigenas. It’s relatively safe to say that the majority of Mexican indigenas today are brown-skinned, average or short height (generational nutrition issues), low-income workers or subsistence farmers. They face rampant overt, systemic and unconscious discrimination in every sphere of life: e.g., a common school ground saying in north and central Mexico when someone was being daft or stupid was ‘No seas indio’, don’t be an Amerindian (or indígena). Their men and women have historically been depicted as ugly, uneducated and, insultingly for the women, moustachioed. After independence from Spain in 1821, this social group become broadly known as the indigenado.

2) The large hat colloquially known as a Mexican sombrero (sombrero literally means hat) is part of a stereotypical iconography rooted in the late 19th century, when rural workers would wear large hats as specific equipment to protect themselves from the sun. People who weren’t field workers wouldn’t normally wear those hats, and the high-income strata wouldn’t be caught dead in one (exceptions apply). A large number of these rural workers were the indigenado. At the time of the Mexican Revolution (civil war) in 1917, socialist revolutionary leaders like Emiliano Zapata, themselves indigenas, re-branded this low-income social group as the campesinado (derived from campesino which means subsistence farmer or peasant), to focus attention away from their shared but fragmented cultural and genetic background (indigenas) and towards their cohesive socioeconomic background (generationally exploited labourers, as the vast majority were indentured labourers at rich people’s haciendas, although it was against the law). It’s at this time that the depiction of the moustachioed, sombrero-wearing, bandolier carrying, brown-skinned Mexican starts becoming iconic, with Diego Rivera et al helping popularise the image for mass education via public murals.

The other source of the sombrero icon is The Sleeping Mexican, aka Pancho in the SW USA. This icon appeared around the same time as the revolutionary above, but is depicted as lying against a cactus, sombrero over his face, often wearing a poncho. The Sleeping Mexican started as a symbol in hotels and public resting places, with the Mexican sleeping in his field work clothes against a cactus because he had been doing hard labour for hours and was taking a deserved rest.

Both these symbols were co-opted initially in the US around the 1940’s and 50’s, with ever more grotesque depictions and figurines entering the zeitgeist. The Sleeping Mexican in particular was perverted to represent a notion of a lazy, dirty, uneducated, assumed to be drunk or high Mexican. This happened for a variety of reasons, but specifically because of racist sociopolitical pressure in the US against hard-working and oft-exploited Mexican field hands, as well as Mexican-Americans whose families have been living in, e.g., Texas since before there was a USA.

3) The thick moustache. Common style for men at turn of the 19th century, but racists in the US commonly depict Latino and LatinX women with moustaches. In Mexico, indígena women are often insultingly imagined as having hairy lips / moustaches. See other points above, I don’t think I need to spell it out further.

4) The tacos. Seen by racists and the ignorant in the US as an unsophisticated, dirty, cheap, finger food. Along with economical food such as rice and beans, it’s been the favoured dish of exploited Mexican ex-pat labourers in the US since the Braseros Program allowed hundreds of thousands of field hands to work in the US in the mid 20th C. I find it interesting that no one in the US seems to question why such cheap foods were so prevalent with Mexicans in the US when other options were presumably available. In Europe it’s basically just associated with Mexico, but consider the wider context.

The fact that a Mexican authored the image and joke, or that Mexicans sell ridiculous versions of the icons to mass tourists, or that many Mexicans laugh at it themselves, doesn’t make it not racist. The fact that Mexicans laugh at this sort of joke is evidence of a lack of understanding of the historical background, a coping mechanism for dealing with foreign aggression (US and European racism), a way of distancing themselves from the specific social groups from whom the icons originated, and proof of deeply entrenched racism and classism in Mexico.

I have to get to work and will probably amend and clarify this later, but probably not until Monday.