Dave Malcolm, SDSU Prof Extraordinaire, RIP

My essay, "Autopsy of a Rat," the Camera Obscura (37) Speedy Gonzales exposé that went on to become the central chapter of Tex[t]-Mex would not be what it is without an unforseen assist from an SDSU College of Education giant--a professor and a friend by the name of Dr. Dave Malcolm. Professor Malcolm was directly responsible for revealing the research that led to my unearthing and "carbon-dating" of the untoward and salacious birth of the name "Speedy Gonzales" in Hollywood and California. RIP my friend, RIP.

World War II Propaganda: Links to Yet Another Chapter of the History of American Stereotypes: Japanese Flavor

Boingboing.net is up with a link to a site where an avid visuoarcheologist is uploading scans of WWII-era filmstrips; the second one on the Japanese enemy is bracing; too bad the original LPs backing the filmstrip are missing.

Toying With a New Blog Logo...

MIT rocks!

First It Was Cavemen Replacing Mexicans on Network Television and Now...

First it was Cavemen, yes Cavemen!, replacing The George Lopez Show on ABC--"Mexicans" replaced by Cro-Magnons with the flourish of a network programmer's pen in the flash of an eye. Now Girls, yes GIRLS! find themselves in the same boat as our Mexican friends: here the problem is less that of mispresentation than ANY representation at all. Another chapter in the long, gnarly history of stereotypes:


click the headline for the scoop!

MCASD, Touch of Evil, and literature.sdsu.edu

Just a link to a nice local piece on Neil Kendricks's and my collaboration in hosting local area indy film screenings. More soon.

Chicanidad, XicanOsmosis, and the Sexually-laced Psyche

One of the ways we can interrupt the logic of stereotypes is to complicate our representation of essential categories like "sexuality" or "identity."

For Chicana/o writing then, the narratives of an Arturo Islas (The Rain God) or John Rechy (City of Night) are heady indeed; especially with regard to the way they cause certain "Latino" heterosexist or heteronormative (gracias to Michael Borgstrom [scroll down]) tendencies to wobble or destabilize--Mexican "bandits" aren't always straight and aren't always bandits, and so on and so on.

All this as a preface to a review of Rechy's new memoir, About My Life and the Kept Woman, in the SFGate by Ilan Stavans.

I am working on a revision of a chapter on the work of Rechy in an old manuscript I never published entitled Portraits and Signatures: An Analecta of Chicana/o Literature; the original manuscript was greenlighted and contracted by the great Alexander (Sandy) Taylor of Willimantic, Connecticut-based Curbstone Press, who sadly passed last November. For various reasons, I never finished that book and am now driven to do so to pay my debt to Taylor and Curbstone (and to Martín Espada as well, who was one of Portraits and Signature's first readers), to whom I owe the debt of tenure and more.

Scarface, Narcos, The Border, and Hollywood

update: more images from South Texas here, courtesy of La Sanbe.


I have been dying (metaphor!) to write about the explosion of Scarface movie paraphernalia along the US/Mexico border; much has and will be written about it. A Laredo, Texas blogger and photographer has generously elected to help me visually chronicle it.

More on this soon! I promise...

Stereotypes!

Our LA street-beat reporter Michael Wyatt Harper has checked in with a website that prowls the post-xicanosmotic dimensions of the universe! Click the image to try this cool site:

Gorgeous New Publicity Shot of the Mexican Spitfire, Lupe Vélez on Flickr

Here at Stereotypes Central, The Stuff Comes Over the Transom Faster Than I Can Handle!

The link is all I can add at the moment--comments to come.

Malverde and Trope Metamorphosis: Saintly Mexican Bandits in American Mass Culture!

Tex[t]-Mex: Seductive Hallucination of the "Mexican" in America tries to plumb the depths of Mexican figuration in the Americas--the job is endless! Witness today's New York Times with its feature on the origins and rise of Malverde, the patron saint of narcotraficantes. More on this, scarface, hollywood, and more, to come.

A Xicanosmotic riff on Malverde can be visited by hitting the image below:

The Frito Bandito, Pencil Erasers, Memory

Is it possible for the bandit trope of the Mexican to be innocuous? Perhaps, but always already* simultaneous with this notion of innocence lurks the spectre of a 'darker' past, a swarthier potentiality. That said, I will pass on my Ethnic Studies instincts and share this YouTube video of a Frito-Lay corporation Frito Bandito television ad from the 60s out of sheer nostalgia--me and my sister Josie used to fight over the prizes in cereal boxes and here, tortilla chip 6-packs. The only thing sinister in this commercial is the memory of hermanita getting to the box first!




*Gracias Derrida!

If You've Been on the Bandwagon, Let it Show, Let it Be

Update to a January 2, 2007 Posting on 'Skin-coloured' Band-Aids

In an evolutionary supplement to my Mexi-band-aid post from over a year ago, word comes of progress with regard to and understanding of the evolution of skin-color variation among humans walking the planet.

Gus Arriola, 90, Creator of Gordo, Dies | Rest in Peace

Along with Los Bros. Hernandez, Gus Arriola was the best-known Mexican American cartoonist/writer in the United States--distirubuted by United Features Syndicate alongside of 'Peanuts: Featuring Good Ol' Charlie Brown,' Arriola's Gordo was a feature of American newspapers for decades--including The Laredo Times where I read the strip every day growing up back in the day.

A long, detailed interview with Arriola is available here; RC Harvey's review of a recent compilation of Arriola's strips is here.



Arriola died yesterday at the age of 90; I ran across a nice obit on him, his life and the strip at The Herald of Monterrey Bay.

RIP.