History 346: Women in the American West

1. Revisiting a question from last class: Do you think, to borrow a phrase from Ramírez, that pachucos  and pachucas “articulated a distinct and dissident cultural identity in the face of denigration, assimilation, and erasure” (91)? Or were they just, as Dee Chávez maintains, dressing in the fashions of the time (48)? Or is their identity someplace between these two assertions?  Explain.

2. Ramírez points out that while the pachuca was excluded from the nation, the Latina GI is included in it (148).  What does Ramírez mean by “inclusion” and “exclusion,” and what is the “nation” to which she is referring?

3. Make a mindmap about Latina soldiers during the “war on terror,” drawing on Ramírez’s epilogue and the rest of her book.  If you were to make an argument about the Latina soldier and the war on terror, what would it be?  (Consider: Why might Latinas enlist? How might legislation passed during the war affect how Latinas are perceived by many other Americans? How does socioeconomic class aid or complicate your argument? What, if anything, is problematic about the “model minority” moniker being applied to Latina and Latino soldiers?)

4. What is the relationship between the Chicano movement’s call for “rebels and warriors” (117) and the enlistment of, and enthusiasm for, Latina soldiers?  What expectations, cultural phenomena, etc. have shifted in the intervening decades, and why?

5. In Chapter 4, Ramírez argues that the pachuca challenged the norms of the heteropatriarchal family (110-11). On a metaphoric, symbolic, and/or literal level, what is the relationship of the Latina soldier to “family and home, especially as homeland and home front” (142)?  Ramírez writes that “Paradoxically, in the war on terror, GI Juana has been domesticated by being outsourced. She has won a hard-earned place in the homeland by going to Kabul and beyond” (146).  What does Ramírez mean when she says this, and are you persuaded by her argument?

1. In class on Tuesday, we discussed the difficulty of writing a history that hasn’t been told previously.  In our case, that means writing about Idaho women’s amateur arts and crafts.  In the case of Catherine Ramírez’s book, it means recovering the history of pachucas in the 1930s through 1950s.  What specific challenges did Ramírez face in researching and writing this history?

2. What is Ramírez’s argument in each chapter thus far? What kinds of sources does Ramírez use to make her case?  Do you find particular kinds of sources more or less persuasive than others? Explain.

3. Ramírez uses a lot of cultural studies terminology in her book.  What does she mean by each of these terms?

• spectacle (p. 56)
• signifying practice (p. 56)
• style politics (p. 56)
• code-switch (87)

Why are these terms significant to the history she’s telling? What other cultural studies terms does she use?

4. In the academy, “cultural studies” has an ambiguous and ever-shifting meaning. For our purposes, let’s consider cultural studies to encompass disciplines (and interdisciplines) like ethnic and gender studies.  Practitioners of these disciplines use a broad variety of methods to undertake research and construct arguments.  Would you say Ramírez’s book is more history or cultural studies? Or is it a hybrid? Why would it matter how the work is categorized?

5. Do you think, to borrow a phrase from Ramírez, that pachucos and pachucas “articulated a distinct and dissident cultural identity in the face of denigration, assimilation, and erasure” (91)? Or were they just, as Dee Chávez maintains, dressing in the fashions of the time (48)? Or is their identity someplace between these two assertions?  Explain.

6. By whom were pachucas seen as traitors, and why?  Where do you think pachucas’ loyalties lay?