Memo Nericcio

Stereotyped Mexican bandido says ‘Prepare to die, amigo’ (toon)

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Sometimes you think your job is done — after all, having written a book that attempted to chronicle the history of “Mexicans” in American popular culture, you think you’d get a break.

But, of course, that’s naive.

If anything, in the age of our Dumpster Fire POTUS, Mexican stereotypes are the rage! This MAMMOTH WESTERN “Mexican” is Exhibit #1 — if you ever wonder why you can’t turn on the TV (or your streaming, throbbing thingie in your pocket, your phone!) without seeing a narco, well, meet his grandpappy, the inspiration for Trump’s BAD HOMBRE racist,xenophobic slur.

You can buy this 1949 comic for under $100!

The Barrio Nostalgia of ‘Veteranas and Rucas’ on Instagram

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The internet is so much about what to look at.

For me, that’s weird. You see the bulk of the first part of my life was bound up with reading—which is all about looking at things, reading words, but has little to do with seeing, with reading pictures.

It is true that as a kid, I was all about reading while seeing, with Richie Rich, Mad Magazine, Vampirella, Batman, Eerie, and Plop! infecting the technicolor corridors of my imagination.

But after that came college and graduate school with a major in literature—so novels took over (that and critical theory), so words came to dominate the scene of my life.

Mas…The Barrio Nostalgia of ‘Veteranas and Rucas’ on Instagram

Savage Wild West Adventures of the Border Patrol (1951 toons)

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borderpatrolcover“Heroic” Border Patrol Agents of Lore: Or “That’s Not the Migra I Know!” More Tales of Greedy “Mexicans,” “Savage” Native Americans, and “Heroic” Uber Gringos!

Pappy’s Golden Age of Comics Blog is at it again — posting delectable artifacts from American comic book history that are also revelatory chronicles unraveling the collusion of race, ethnicity, violence, and more in popular “entertainments.”

Mas…Savage Wild West Adventures of the Border Patrol (1951 toons)

San Diego: This carnitas/torta/waffle is ‘available to everyone’ (photo)

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@gustavo_arellano #tortaonawaffle ack!

A photo posted by william anthony nericcio (@william.nericcio) on

This Bruxie chicken and waffles restaurant — near the college home of the Aztecs, the campus of San Diego State University — wants you to know their Aztec Meal Deal Carnitas “Torta” is “Available to Everyone!”

Also, you can double down on the waffle thang with waffle fries.

Hollywood Casting History: The ‘Latina Bombshell’ (toons)

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disgustmeTime and again I have tipped my sombrero to the remarkable treasures to be found at Pappy’s Golden Age Comics Blogzine, but now he has outdone himself with a post that gibes/gels/fuses with my #textmex and #mextasy researches/art/presentations and more.

One of his latest entries is a comic book from 1951 that fictionalizes the life and times of Lupe Velez — the “Mexican Spitfire” at the heart of my research in Myra Mendible’s From Bananas to Buttocks and in my own Tex[t]-Mex: Seductive Hallucinations of the “Mexican” in America {(Quality Comics’ Love Secrets #41 (1941), reprinted from Love Confessions #9 (1951)}

Mas…Hollywood Casting History: The ‘Latina Bombshell’ (toons)

Hire this animated Mexican ‘bandito’ for only $45 (toons, video)

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Yesterday’s Most Pathetic Stereotypes Reimagined for the Digital Age of All our Cyber Tomorrows or Need a Sexy Latina or Bandit for your Animated Video

Next generation digitally-borne stereotypes for millennials and their kids!

Bandits, sexy Latinas, y mucho mas more…ACK!

Does your next CGI animation project need an ugly racist stereotyped Mexican gangster but you’re short on dinero? El Penumbra (The Darkness), a “Mexican Bandito,” can be yours for just $45!

Mas…Hire this animated Mexican ‘bandito’ for only $45 (toons, video)

1950s Forbidden Love: White woman ❤️ Native American man (toons)

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forbiddenlovecoverForbidden to Love Him (1953), features a handsome Native American guy who can “pass” as white and his sweetie, a hot blonde. No biggie, eh? In 1950s America, interracial marriages were maligned by racists and actually forbidden by some states’ anti-miscegenation laws.

Check out these highlights via Pappy’s Golden Age Comics Blogzine:

Mas…1950s Forbidden Love: White woman ❤️ Native American man (toons)

That time when Sylvester Stallone was a Mexican cover boy (toons)

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argosythrillfWith all the press he is getting, you would think that Pendejo-of-the-Century Donald Trump had invented all the twisted tales of Mexicans floating on the interwebs.

But our pasty-faced, combover fatboy is not the first and not the last of the foolios who will get rich (and famous) for spouting hate-laced bon mots on the hygiene, sexual practices, and criminality of Mexicans or any other Latina/o for that matter.

Here, in some graphics from the 30s, we see some early 20th Century meditations on Latina/o/Hispanic subjectivities from the pages of Argosy Weekly.

As you can see, pulp magazine editors and illustrators were not ethnographers and whether the subjects depicted are Spanish, Argentine, or Mexican (or Italian — Sylvester Stallone?) is impossible to determine — though I am pretty sure the Buzzard Bait issue features some prehistoric Califas bandidos, and Señor Flatfoot’s “pampas” rogues look like they stepped out of the Mexico conjured in John Huston’s The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (which had not been made yet! Time travelers?)

Mas…That time when Sylvester Stallone was a Mexican cover boy (toons)

R. Crumb ‘Zap Comics’ 1975: Mexican kid just lookin’ to make a dime

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zapcomicstopOne of the peculiarities of my tendencies when it comes to semiotic hoardings, as you well know, are cameos by Latinas/os in mainstream American media artifacts.

Now Zap Comics were anything but the mainstream back in the day, but they have, over time, entered the effluvial, miasmic flow of pop culture leavings that typify a certain moment, a certain groovy time in American cultural history.

So it is that I chanced upon this cover at the REMARKABLE site, The Golden Age Site.

Mas…R. Crumb ‘Zap Comics’ 1975: Mexican kid just lookin’ to make a dime

Wassup with San Diego college guys in ‘cholo pantalones?’

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pantalonesheaderOzzie Monge unearthed this little tidbit of San Diego State University history — a bizarre attack on Mexican attire that ran in the student newspaper in 1922.

Foreshadowing Donald Trump, the students are quite sure about Mexico. “There,” they explain, “poverty is a profession.”

In Monge’s words:

Racism and Anti-Mexicanism at San Diego State College in the 20’s? Say it isn’t so….Anglos hating on Mexicans, hating on Indians, yet they proudly declare that their school is Del Sudoeste (a product of the imagined, romanticized Spanish past – and Eurocentrism) and will later take on the moniker Aztec from the imagined, romanticized version of the conquest they developed.

Mas…Wassup with San Diego college guys in ‘cholo pantalones?’

Wonder Woman and Marya la Giant fight Mexibandidos (1945 toon)

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escapezeefire

wondairfulI love it when my vocation and avocation converge as they do in this wonderful comic installment of Wonder Woman from the one and only Pappy’s Golden Age Comic Blogzine. Pappy explains:

This delightfully oddball tale is set in Mexico with a beautiful eight-foot-tall señorita, bandits with bandoleros, Wonder Woman’s invisible plane, chains, bondage, and even Wonder Woman in bare feet walking over hot coals. Wow.

This Mexican melange is drawn by H.G. Peter, and is scanned from Sensation Comics #45 (1945).

An illustrator and lover of classic comics and a curator of artifacts focused on constructions of “Mexicans” in U.S. mass culture, rarely do I chance upon an artifact that blends these worlds (not to mention my not-so-secret fetish for fantastically strong women!)

Here’s a page from the issue featuring bandit “Mexicans,” Wonder Woman, freakish “Marya the Amazon maid” y mucho mas more [click to enlarge.]

Mas…Wonder Woman and Marya la Giant fight Mexibandidos (1945 toon)

She’s a ‘young adult’ now! ‘Dora and Friends: Into the City’

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doraandfriendsbannerNew Young Adult/YA Dora the Explorer on the Horizon: Dora and Friends: Into the City to Debut! What’s Next? Dora, the Sad College Years?

Never one to say no to a good thing, Nickelodeon has opted to cash-in on their Latina golden goose! The morning mail finds our old friend Dora the Explorer all grown up, ten years old, hangin’ with her posse in the City, and, get this, now she has eyebrows.

I am actually all for the saturation of the vidiot network with pint-sized facsimiles of smart, bilingual, Latina animated stars, so I will hold the snark and just point you to some coming attractions!

Mas…She’s a ‘young adult’ now! ‘Dora and Friends: Into the City’

Elvis Presley, undocumented worker: ‘Fun in Acapulco’ (photos,video)

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The year is 1963 and Elvis is on a roll. As his star rises on the American music scene, Hollywood lifts its head and takes notice: he gets signed for a fun Mexican adventure romp entitled Fun in Acapulco.

While gorgeous exterior shots are completed on location in Mexico, Elvis shoots his scenes in “Mexico,” a Hollywood backlot commissioned by Hal Wallis Productions and through the magic of less-than-spectacular editing and rear-projection shots seems to dance and sing his sad way (he’s mourning the accidental death of his brother he may have caused) through this somewhat harmless farce.

Of course (as I’ve written many times before), you’ve got to be a fool to turn to Hollywood for accurate portrayals of “foreign spaces”–still, Fun in Acapulco is not half bad.

The kid in the clip below gives new meaning to the word irony, as Elvis, “American,” conspires to work as an “illegal alien” in Mexico.

Mas…Elvis Presley, undocumented worker: ‘Fun in Acapulco’ (photos,video)