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The Cinematic Cholo In Havoc, Richard Mora

Richard Mora

For over a century now, ‘the motion-picture industry [...] has functioned as the primary transmitter of racist Latino/a images’ (Castro 2006: 89). The cholo, or Chicano gang member, is a prevalent archetypal figure used to depict Mexican and Mexican American men and youth on the screen.1 The ‘inarticulate, violent, and pathologically dangerous “bandidos”’ of the silent film era have been transformed into the cholo (Berg 2002: 69). As the reel descendent of the Mexican bandido, the cholo is of questionable character, with few redeeming qualities. Like his predecessor, the cinematic cholo is an abject being (Mora 2011). In this text, …