More accurately, these “portraits” are pachuco or bato characters.
My chosen format suggests portraiture, although that is not entirely the case.
VATO O BATO EN MEXICO SERIES
In this series of work, pachucos and batos are treated as both particular individuals and as a social phenomenon with its own style. The idea emerged when my friend Memo and I would sit around doodling, a staple of which was a sort of Dick Tracy-type head in profile, wearing a snap-brim hat, sporting a scar on the cheek and smoking a cigarette. My first drawings of chucos were idle doodles done when I was in grade school. Not all pachucos were hoods and indeed, many of these young men merely went along with that manner of dress and lifestyle of the times because it was the social orientation available to them and a special kind of hipsterism figured in that choice. No se….Īctually, pachucos were generally seen as nothing more than hoodlums during their time, but that was a generalized, distorted generational view. I don’t know if that has anything to do with it….I simply don’t know. It is unclear where the term “ pachuco” originated though we refer to El Paso as “El Chuco”. This interest, not always informed, has succeeded in mythologizing the pachuco and elevating him to cultural, even political, hero status and has inevitably ushered in glorification and stereotyping. In Contemporary Chicano culture, the pachuco is an endless source of curiosity and fascination. For emphasis, I prefer to spell “ bato” with a “b” as in “ barrio” though vato might be correct. Pachucos, Chucos (zoot-suiter types), batos (guys, “dudes”) were part of my everyday life in my home town of Laredo, Texas. I was a teenager during the 1950s and 60s.
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