Zoot Suit Quotes

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!

GEORGE: […] The problem seems to be that I look like an Anglo to you. What if I were to tell you that I had Spanish blood in my veins? That my roots go back to Spain, just like yours? What if I’m an Arab? What if I’m a Jew? What difference does it make? The question is, will you let me help you?

ALICE: I’m talking about you, Henry Reyna. And what the regular press has been saying. Are you aware you’re in here just because some bigshot up in San Simeon wants to sell more papers? It’s true.

HENRY: So?

ALICE: So, he’s the man who started this Mexican Crime Wave stuff. Then the police got into the act. Get the picture?

ALICE: Believe it or not, I was born in Los Angeles just like you. But for some strange reason I grew up here, not knowing very much about Mexicans at all. I’m just trying to learn.

PRESS: (Jumping in.) Your Honor, there is testimony we expect to develop that the 38th Street Gang are characterized by their style of haircuts…

GEORGE: Three months, Your Honor.

PRESS: …the thick heavy heads of hair, the ducktail comb, the pachuco pants...

GEORGE: Your Honor, I can only infer that the Prosecution…is trying to make these boys look disreputable, like mobsters.

PRESS: Their appearance is distinctive. Your Honor. Essential to the case.

GEORGE: You are trying to exploit the fact that these boys look foreign in appearance! Yet clothes like these are being worn by kids all over America.

PRESS: Your Honor…

JUDGE: (Bangs the gavel.) I don’t believe we will have any diffi­culty if their clothing becomes dirty.

GEORGE: What about the haircuts. Your Honor?

JUDGE: (Ruling.) The zoot haircuts will be retained throughout the trial for purposes of identification of defendants by witnesses.

PRESS: (Springing to the attack.) You say Henry Reyna hit the man with his fist. (Indicates HENRY standing.) Is this the Henry Reyna?

DELLA: Yes. I mean, no. He’s Henry, but he didn’t ...

PRESS: Please be seated. (HENRY sits.) Now, after Henry Reyna hit the old man with his closed fist, is that when he pulled the knife?

DELLA: The old man had the knife.

PRESS: So Henry pulled one out, too?

GEORGE: (Rises.) Your Honor, I object to counsel leading the witness.

PRESS: I am not leading the witness.

GEORGE: You are.

PRESS: I certainly am not.

GEORGE: Yes, you are.

JUDGE: I would suggest, Mr. Shearer, that you look up during the noon hour just what a leading question is?

PRESS: […] We are deal­ing with a threat and danger to our children, our families, our homes. Set these pachucos free, and you shall unleash the forces of anarchy and destruction in our society. Set these pachucos free and you will turn them into heroes. Others just like them must be watching us at this very moment. What nefarious schemes can they be hatching in their twisted minds? Rape, drugs, assault, more vio­lence? Who shall be their next innocent victim in some dark alley way, on some lonely street? You? You? Your loved ones? No! Henry Reyna and his Latin juvenile co­horts are not heroes. They are criminals, and they must be stopped. The specific details of this murder are irrelevant before the overwhelming danger of the pachuco in our midst. I ask you to find these zoot-suited gangsters guilty of murder and to put them in the gas chamber where they belong.

GEORGE: […] All the prosecution has been able to prove is that these boys wear long hair and zoot suits. And all the rest has been circumstantial evidence, hearsay and war hysteria. The prosecution has tried to lead you to believe that they are some kind of inhuman gangsters. Yet they are Americans. Find them guilty of anything more serious than a juvenile bout of fisticuffs, and you will condemn all American youth. Find them guilty of murder, and you will murder the spirit of racial justice in America.

TOMMY: […] I don’t want to be treated any different than the rest of the batos, see? And don’t expect me to talk to you like some square An­glo [...]. You just better find out what it means to be Chicano, and it better be pretty damn quick.

[…]

I also know that I’m in here just be­ cause I hung around with Mexicans ... or pachucos. Well, just remember this, Alicia ... I grew up right alongside most of these batos, and I’m pachuco too.

HENRY: […] You think you can just move in and defend anybody you feel like? When did I ever ask you to start a defense committee for me? Or a newspaper? Or a fundraising drive and all that other shit? I don’t need defending, esa. I can take care of myself.

ALICE: But what about the trial, the sentence. They gave you life imprisonment?

HENRY: It’s my life!

ALICE: Henry, honestly—are you kidding me?

HENRY: You think so?

ALICE: But you’ve seen me coming and going. Writing to you, speaking for you, traveling up and down the state. You must have known I was doing it for you. Nothing has come before my involvement, my attachment, my passion for this case. My boys have been everything to me.

HENRY: My boys? My boys! What the hell are we—your personal property? Well, let me set you straight, lady, I ain’t your boy.

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.