El Pachuco Character Analysis

HE adjusts his clothing, meticulously fussing with his collar, suspenders, cuffs. HE tends to his hair, combing back every strand into a long luxurious ducktail, with infinite loving pains. Then HE reaches into the slit [of the newspaper backdrop] and pulls out his coat and hat. HE dons them. His fantastic costume is complete. It is a zoot suit. HE is transformed into the very image of the pachuco myth, from his pork-pie hat to the tip of his four-foot watch chain.

PACHUCO: […] Ladies and gentlemen
the play you are about to see
is a construct of fact and fantasy.
The Pachuco Style was an act in Life
and his language a new creation.
[…]
I speak as an actor on the stage.
The Pachuco was existential
for he was an Actor in the streets
both profane and reverential.

PACHUCO: The city’s cracking down on pachucos, carnal. Don’t

you read the newspapers? They’re screaming for blood.

HENRY: All I know is they got nothing on me. I didn’t do any­thing.

PACHUCO: You’re Henry Reyna, ese—Hank Reyna! The snarling juvenile delinquent. The zootsuiter. The bitter young pachuco gang leader of 38th Street. That’s what they got on you.

PACHUCO: Off to fight for your country.

HENRY: Why not?

PACHUCO: Because this ain’t your country. Look what’s happen­ing all around you. The Japs have sewed up the Pacific. Rommel is kicking ass in Egypt but the Mayor of L.A. has declared all-out war on Chicanos. On you!

PRESS: […] The Zoot Suit Crime Wave is even beginning to push the war news off the front page.

PACHUCO: The Press distorted the very meaning of the word “zoot suit.”
All it is for you guys is another way to say Mexican.
But 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, cabron.

PRESS: Henry Reyna went back to prison in 1947 for robbery and assault with a deadly weapon. While incarcerated, he killed another inmate and he wasn’t released until 1955, when he got into hard drugs. He died of the trauma of his life in 1972.

PACHUCO: That’s the way you see it, ese. But there’s other way[s] to end this story.

RUDY: Henry Reyna went to Korea in 1950. He was shipped across in a destroyer and defended the 38th Parallel until he was killed at Inchon in 1952, being posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.

ALICE: Henry Reyna married Della in 1948 and they have five kids, three of them now going to the University, speaking calo and calling themselves Chicanos.

HE adjusts his clothing, meticulously fussing with his collar, suspenders, cuffs. HE tends to his hair, combing back every strand into a long luxurious ducktail, with infinite loving pains. Then HE reaches into the slit [of the newspaper backdrop] and pulls out his coat and hat. HE dons them. His fantastic costume is complete. It is a zoot suit. HE is transformed into the very image of the pachuco myth, from his pork-pie hat to the tip of his four-foot watch chain.

PACHUCO: […] Ladies and gentlemen
the play you are about to see
is a construct of fact and fantasy.
The Pachuco Style was an act in Life
and his language a new creation.
[…]
I speak as an actor on the stage.
The Pachuco was existential
for he was an Actor in the streets
both profane and reverential.

PACHUCO: The city’s cracking down on pachucos, carnal. Don’t

you read the newspapers? They’re screaming for blood.

HENRY: All I know is they got nothing on me. I didn’t do any­thing.

PACHUCO: You’re Henry Reyna, ese—Hank Reyna! The snarling juvenile delinquent. The zootsuiter. The bitter young pachuco gang leader of 38th Street. That’s what they got on you.

PACHUCO: Off to fight for your country.

HENRY: Why not?

PACHUCO: Because this ain’t your country. Look what’s happen­ing all around you. The Japs have sewed up the Pacific. Rommel is kicking ass in Egypt but the Mayor of L.A. has declared all-out war on Chicanos. On you!

PRESS: […] The Zoot Suit Crime Wave is even beginning to push the war news off the front page.

PACHUCO: The Press distorted the very meaning of the word “zoot suit.”
All it is for you guys is another way to say Mexican.
But 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, cabron.

PRESS: Henry Reyna went back to prison in 1947 for robbery and assault with a deadly weapon. While incarcerated, he killed another inmate and he wasn’t released until 1955, when he got into hard drugs. He died of the trauma of his life in 1972.

PACHUCO: That’s the way you see it, ese. But there’s other way[s] to end this story.

RUDY: Henry Reyna went to Korea in 1950. He was shipped across in a destroyer and defended the 38th Parallel until he was killed at Inchon in 1952, being posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.

ALICE: Henry Reyna married Della in 1948 and they have five kids, three of them now going to the University, speaking calo and calling themselves Chicanos.