You’ve probably seen a man known as the “sleepy Mexican” wearing a Sombrero, sitting with his knees pulled up to his chest, and sleeping. It has been used over the years to portray the negative stereotype that Mexicans are lazy.

But this wasn’t always the case, and it doesn’t always seem that way anymore. Maribel Alvarez, a professor at the University of Arizona School of Anthropology and Southwest Center, joined The Show to talk more about all of this, starting with where this image actually came from.

full speech

MARK BRODIE: And Maribel, let’s start with where this image actually comes from.

Maribel Alvarez: Origins, if you will, are three different moments in time. The first is really a function of travelogues. Americans went to Mexico in the late 19th century, went to the plazas, and began to see local men and women resting and leaning against an adobe wall during the hot hours. Mirage and rest. This becomes an interesting observation from travelers and appears in publications returning to the United States. This is the first reference.

Then, we begin to see the full arrival of Mexican independence and the indigenous movement, a movement of painters and artists to uplift and elevate Mexico’s indigenous communities. You see Diego Rivera taking a photo of a man wrapped in a blanket crouching in a field. The idea here is not stereotype but sublimation; On the contrary, it associates the image with hard work.

And then it becomes a momentous event when a sculptor who is part of Mexico’s great mural movement, the great revolutionary period, actually a Colombian sculptor named Romulo Rozo, who lives in Mexico, creates a sculpture literally named Romulo Rozo, who lives in Mexico. Sleeping Mexico as we know it today puts it on display at the National Library, and a reporter makes fun of the image.

And the next day, the very next day, the painting, which is a sculpture by this famous artist, is stolen and turns into the infamous cliché we know today.

BRODIE: So is there a logic or reason to evolution for how this is seen or what people think when they look at this image?

– Alvarez: Mark, context here is everything. Consider the fact that the image emerges from an exuberant drive by those who have been rejected, Mexico’s indigenous labor force, who have no intention of giving it any meaning other than devotion, honor, and hard work. But the context is one in which the United States is struggling with Mexico’s quote-unquote “problem.”

So you start to see the mockery of the image. This has to provide the context of class struggle across the border in Mexico itself. The fact that there were some people who sought to uplift the indigenous peoples of Mexico meant that there was a whole class of people who scoffed at the effort and thought it was a foolish attempt to save the history, the history, of the indigenous people of Mexico.

This immediately became fodder for both sides, who were looking for a way to represent the Mexican in a less-than-dignifying way.

BRODIE: That’s very interesting because, as you noted, the early depictions were based on what people actually saw with their own eyes. And then it became sort of a stereotypical and particularly unpleasant representation, like it was something that wasn’t necessarily seen as a positive image for people.

– Alvarez: This is one of the things that has drawn me to working on painting for the last 20 years. Even on social media, some people say: Why have the image of a lazy Mexican when Mexicans are the exact opposite, a workhorse in every aspect of society? So this impasse about our representation and our ideologies actually clings to something that contradicts it. Of course, this is what drives me to continue this work.

BRODIE: Yes. So where are we now in terms of what this image perhaps represents in both the United States and Mexico?

– Alvarez: Class distinctions have always existed. There has always been a Mexican elite and a Chicano intellectual elite who were deeply offended by the image used and ascribed to racist representations by American corporations. And this, of course, came in the wake of the rebellion in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s against the Frito Bandito and senorita’s hot, fiery peppers and all those ascribed stereotypes.

At the same time, in my experience doing ethnographic work, there have always been working-class people, and you can see that in many other sources, even on social media, people feel: Why are you offended when it’s so obvious that this is not us? So you see the working class, a sense of humour, rasquachismo, so to speak, saying it’s funny but it’s ridiculous.

And in this nonsense, we fail to recognize ourselves and become complicit to the point of absolute confusion with what a person is telling me, the gringo mentality that says we actually see something that contradicts our own being, our being. labor, food they eat every day.

So this class divide is a less appropriate thing to talk about when it comes to the way the image circulates between Mexican American and Central Mexican elites and working-class or rural Mexican communities.

BRODIE: Does that allow, for example, a Mexican restaurant to have this image on their sign or menu or, you know, a Mexican souvenir shop to have little sculptures of it?

– Alvarez: Definitely. This context determines much of the reaction you see at the protests. A restaurant, there are restaurants right here in Tucson, very popular restaurants owned by Mexican American families, they definitely have this image on their logo in their logo. And there is no contradiction in the association in their minds. This is the resting place. This is the breeding ground.

When you had pavers with this image produced in the Southwest in the early 1950s, you also saw it as a trademark in the United States patio industry. And the idea was again on the veranda, in the restaurant you relax, you relax.

Where it goes out of context is in the cute tourism promotion of cities, self-promotion, inviting a representation, and then the seemingly innocent use of the image by an artist who has no idea of ​​this history and does not understand the divisions that exist within a community. but not realizing that who features the image, who speaks for its humor or sarcasm, has a lot to do with whether you invite controversy.

BRODIE: And Maribel, I’m so fascinated by the concept of people being able to look at something that others have used as a stereotype for them and be able to separate themselves from it, whether it’s this image or another image that someone else might try to humiliate someone else and say per person, “yeah that’s me.” “I’m not,” he might say. I really don’t know what you’re talking about.

– Alvarez: Definitely. This is one of the ways in which stereotypes are both intriguing and dangerous, as well as potentially productive in that they reveal what lies beneath. They reveal a lack of context or relationality. When you look at how stereotypes are used within groups versus out groups, there is always a connection that connects the meaning to a life story that already feels dignified in the storytelling and so you can laugh at it because it doesn’t come from a place of deficiency or deficiency. open.

When viewed from the outside, it is very difficult to build this bridge and experience the authenticity of the experience, and this is where we always get into trouble. Now having said that, Mark, the levels of outrage that sometimes arise around these discussions on social media, for example on Instagram, take it to another level.

This is simply a profound affront to our time and a phenomenon of our age’s anger. And I discovered that these conversations, even when protesting the stereotype, were just as flat and uninspiring as most actual racially offensive statements.

BRODIE: And I think we need to be clear here, I think, please correct me if I’m wrong, there are people who are actually offended by this image. It’s not like that, not everyone laughs at it and says “oh, that’s very clever of them trying to say it’s about us, but it’s not really about us.” We know better. Is it safe to say that there are still people upset about this?

– Alvarez: Definitely. There are reactions about the image, but I think the last 25 years have brought more image depth and visual literacy. And you have artists like Judy Baca, the wonderful Chicana artist based in Los Angeles, who are taking the offense in a different direction. For example, they used the body of the statue as a canvas telling the story of Mexican labor and reproduced the form using it. You see the sleepy Mexican with his head bowed, his sombrero, and his back bent. And using that as a form to tell a narrative about the empowerment of dignity that transcends crime.

BRODIE: Do you think that’s the kind of image that people are trying to kind of reclaim and own, but actually kind of try to own, rather than letting it become a negative stereotype for them? and maybe we get the power from it.

– Alvarez: Yes, we saw this in the new generation. I encountered this here in Arizona in 2010, when the bill SB 1070 was challenging ethnic studies in Mexican American studies. And Club Unidos at Tucson High School designed a T-shirt with a sleeping Mexican on it and the caption “think again.” When you look at the second plane of the artwork, a somewhat crude representation involved the sleeping Mexican raising his head and reading one of the forbidden books in the ethnic studies discussion.

BRODIE: What kind of relationship do you see around this image and all the conversations around it and the current rhetoric about immigration and immigrants in this country?

– Alvarez: This is one of those moments when you think about how we became so culturally literate. And at the same time, these re-signifying messages are moving away from us. So how is it possible that someone can still talk about only one aspect of illegality, of criminality, about Mexican immigrants and the labor force in this country and the commercial relationship of labor products across the border?

Where this connection occurs between more information, more literacy, more access, and less information and less wisdom in parsing them. So how is this possible? By asking this question, I’m asking the question many people ask: How did we get here? We must know better, we know better, young people know better.

Many companies now stay away from such controversial images. So, on the one hand, in the institutional sense, in the rhetorical sense of this political moment, there are some lessons learned, some battles won. It’s surprising, confusing and extremely frustrating.