Zoot Suit

While interrogating Henry, Sgt. Smith taunts, “I hear you pachucos wear these monkey suits as a kind of armor. Is that right? How’s it work” (13). Although Smith’s words are mocking, the zoot suit does function as armor. As El Pachuco illuminates, “the ideal of the original chuco was to look like a diamond, to look sharp, hip, bonaroo, finding a style of urban survival in the rural skirts and outskirts of the brown metropolis of Los, cabrón” (67). Even as the craze spreads to other races, the suit functions as the uniform of pachuco street gangs, radiating suaveness and Chicano pride. This is why white society in the play attacks it. When the Press accuses, “You are trying to outdo the white man in exaggerated white man’s clothes,” El Pachuco replies, “Because everybody knows that Mexicans, Filipinos and Blacks belong to the huarache, the straw hat and the dirty overall” (67). As an expression of pride, the zoot suit affronts white superiority. It is expensive, excessive, ornamental, and allows wearers to separate themselves by choice rather than from discrimination.

The removal of the zoot suit also has great significance. Part of the military men’s aggression toward the Mexican-American youths involved stripping them and burning their suits.