



Zoot Suit
A style of suit worn by African Americans, Filipino Americans, and Mexican Americans during the 1930s and 1940s. In Chicano culture this style of dress is primarily associated with the pachucos of the 1940s. The fashion at that time was to wear very baggy pants with pegged legs, long jackets with high and sharp shoulder pads, thick-soled shoes, and long watch chains dangling from the belt. An addition to the whole style common to Chicanos was a particular haircut, long with a ducktail and a wide-brimmed hat.
The word zoot was known within the urban jazz culture of Harlem, and it meant something either exaggerated in performance or in style. Many African Americans wore an extravagant style of clothing, the baggy pegged pants and jackets with padded shoulders, that later became known as the zoot suit. In the novel Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, he describes the zoot--suiters’ style, “walking slowly, their shoulders swaying, their legs swinging from their hips in trousers that ballooned upward from cuffs fitting snug about their ankles; their coats long and hip-tight with shoulders far too broad to be those of natural western men” (1947, 380). In the late-night jazz scenes of Harlem this style was “a killer-diller coat with a drape-shape, reat-pleats and shoulders padded like a lunatic’s cell” (380). Tyler makes the point that the zoot suit was an extremely symbolic costume, which gave the wearer the look of a child in adult clothing. The broad square shoulders gave a macho look to the youth, and the finger-tipped coat was made for fun and leisure. The long baggy pants were made for dancing, especially the jitterbug, and the wide Panama hats were another sign of adulthood. “The business of fun, dancing and dating were the key characteristics displayed by Zoot-Suiters. It was an escape from drudgery and futile labor to the bliss of free-wheeling movement in the city among youths in the new youth culture” (Tyler, 23). Prominent black entertainers wore the zoot suit, such as Cab Calloway, Sammy Davis Jr., and Duke Ellington. Ellington performed at the Orpheum in Los Angeles in 1941 and 1942 with a musical called Jump for Joy in which the performers wore zoot suits, also known as Gone with the Wind suits, after the style worn by Clark Gable in the movie by the same name.
Even though the zoot suit was worn by the young men of several different races and ethnicities, it is primarily identified with the pachucos of Los Angeles. Pachucos were mostly second-generation Mexicans, the sons of migrant laborers and working-class immigrants. Pachucos created their own subculture, an arrogant style of dressing, a bilingual secret argot, and for some individuals membership in petty criminal gangs. The zoot suit became a symbolic disguise that identified the zoot-suiter as neither a Mexican nor an American. It was not a bicultural or binational position, but rather a position between cultures, a “hanging in space” position. The overly confident, slow swagger of the pachuco, today exemplified by the cholo, made it appear in fact as if the zoot-suiter were walking on air.
During the summer of 1943 the attention of the whole country was on Los Angeles when gangs of sailors and zoot-suiters battled with each other in the streets of the city. It is unclear if this was a race riot or a riot of patriotic sailors who attacked, beat, and stripped young Mexican Americans whom they perceived to be unpatriotic zoot-suiters. Between the third and thirteenth of June zoot-suiters were open targets. Much has been written about these riots from both literary and historical perspectives.
During the late 1970s the zoot suit received wide recognition and popularity with the production of a successful play by Luis Valdez. In 1981 a film by the same name, Zoot Suit, was produced and directed by Luis Valdez, with performances by actors Daniel Valdez and Edward James Olmos.
See also Cholos; Pachucos
References Barker 1950; Cosgrove 1989; Ellison, 1947; Mazon 1984; Orona-Cordova 1992; Sanchez 1978; Stone 1990; Tyler 1994; Valdez 1992; Zoot Suit 1981
Zozobra
A giant, forty-foot effigy in the form of a puppet, which is burned during the annual Santa Fe Fiesta held in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The word Zozobra translates to “gloom” or “worry” or “anguished.” The Zozobra is ritualistically burned at the beginning of the fiesta, which symbolizes the end of destructiveness, gloom, and worry, setting the tone for a successful fiesta. The creation of Zozobra was introduced into the fiesta in 1926 by Will Shuster, who felt that the fiesta had become “dull and commercialized.” Throughout the years the image of Zozobra changed from a simple twenty-foot puppet to the elaborate forty-foot figure with animated eyes, arms, and mouth that he is today. In 1969 Shuster turned over the responsibility and copyright of Zozobra to the Kiwanis Club of Santa Fe. He is hung on a tall pole on a hill, outside the city, where the burning can be seen by the thousands of people who come to watch. The death of gloom is supposed to resurrect happiness.
In response to the tradition of the burning of Zozobra, a group of New Mexico Chicanos started a tradition of burning El Kookoóee, a figure known by many Chicanos as the bogeyman, during the Festival de Otoño.
See also El Kookoóee; Santa Fe Fiesta
References Cohen 1985; Grimes 1976; Weigle and White 1988




