Swarthy Enemies at Home and Abroad

Just a quick link to a Palooka comic from 1956--is the proto-waterboarding "terrorist" Latino? Arab? Both!? An allegory of the U.S. at the height of the Cold War.

Ham Fisher's Palooka and Lupe Vélez

The Lupe Vélez chapter of Tex[t]-Mex features a brief, close-reading of Palooka, a movie starring James Cagney's brother (perhaps one of its only claims to fame), Jimmy "The Schnoz" Durante, and the one and only Mexican Spitfire! The movies were based on a popular comic strip by Ham Fisher--this became a comic book in the 1950s. All this as preface to the posting of a striking cover from an issue of Palooka--one that features the ham-faced gabacho in a wild-west fight with a swarthy-looking desperado (aka "Mexican"):

OK, maybe he is not "Mexican" but he sure is "dark," roguish, acne-scarred, etc. More on this soon.

And, lastly, a brief Lupe-dedicated film-short novelty: