¡La Bamba Cósmica en las Américas!

IRINA
CONTRER AS
¡La Bamba Cósmica
en las Américas!:
The Changing
History and Story
of Ritchie Valens
and La Bamba in
the Americas
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1
Beverly Mendheim, Ritchie Valens: The
World’s First Latino Rocker (Tempe, Arizona:
Bilingual Review Press, 1987).
2
Chon Noriega, “The Aesthetic Discourse:
Reading Chicano Cinema Since La Bamba,”
Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños 3
(1990–1991): 58.
On July 24, 1987, the film La Bamba was released
in U.S. theaters. Directed by Luis Valdez, a respected Chicano
playwright, La Bamba tells the story of seventeen-year-old singer
Ritchie Valens, who died in a plane crash along with fellow
musicians Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper in 1959. The film is a
fictional account of the last year in the life of Valens, played by
actor Lou Diamond Phillips, in which he moves from the Central
Valley to Pacoima, California. Once he is in high school, the film
focuses on his pursuit of a musical career, which is unequivocally
connected to Phillips’s ability to pass as white. In this essay, I
focus on the ways that Phillips passing for white is seen as a good
thing, a step toward a better life and opportunities. I look to the
ways that Phillips’s passing is symptomatic of mestizaje, or the
ability to be mixed indigenous and Spaniard. This racial mixture,
mestizaje, is what is seen as Mexican.
Phillips’s ability to pass is most frequently seen in
comparison to his half-brother, Bob Morales, played by actor
Esai Morales, who does not pass and has just gotten out of prison
when the film begins. While La Bamba does not speak specifically
about racial mixing, it does give social cues as well as visually
presents us with information about the racial misrecognition
of Phillips as Italian. Ritchie Valens’s only biographer, Beverly
Mendheim, notes that Ritchie’s racial background remained
unclear to the American public until his funeral.1 The film
operates from this point without ever verbalizing it or dealing
with it deeply. Within the canon of Chicano cinema, La Bamba
is seen as one of the first Chicano films to break through to
mainstream American audiences. My project looks at the ways
this film, like many biopics, are fictionalizations. Such films draw
attention to the drama of someone’s life, often creating fantasylike portrayals to obtain viewership for television and theatrical
release. These fictionalizations are viewed as representative of
real-life events, whether or not they are intended to be truthful.
Based on a true story, La Bamba feeds into a stereotype of
Chicanos, particularly around notions of masculinity, migrant
farming labor, and intimate and interpersonal relationships,
affecting how the public views Chicano bodies in the world. In
his article “The Aesthetic Discourse: Reading Chicano Cinema
Since La Bamba,” media theorist Chon Noriega points out that the
Chicano is looked at as Indian, white-passing, and then mestizo,
all the while ignoring Afro and Indigenous backgrounds.2
Noriega asks that when we look to the horizon of expectations
3
Attesting to their lasting popularity in the
cultural imagination, La Bamba characters,
including Bob, feature in a variety of social
media memes that are frequently sent
through Instagram, Facebook, and Tumblr.
for Chicano cinema, we should ask, “Whose expectations and
whose barrio?” The closeness depicted among family members
in La Bamba is looked at as a place of cultural difference and
tension. This closeness is partly caused by necessity, either from
their working on the farm together or living in close quarters
because of poverty. Because so much of the film concentrates
on interpersonal forms of violence and tension, I look at this
violence within the film, perpetuated both by the state and the
individual, as a place of intimacy.
Over the last twenty-eight years, the film has
consistently been thought of by critics, scholars, and fans alike
as being the (re)birth of Chicano Cinema. Prior to La Bamba,
approximately ten films had been directed by Chicanos since the
turn of the century. In 2012, the film cast and crew celebrated
the film’s twenty-fifth anniversary at Columbia College, in
Chicago.3
For Chicanos who want to see themselves
represented in American mainstream media, Morales’s character
has had particular resonance as a popular black sheep of the
family. Additionally, his race and class presentation registers
as a connection to the indigenous body and to those of mixed
ancestry (mestizo and mulatto). Besides being darker skinned
than Phillips, he alludes to regularly seeing a curandero, or
traditional Native American healer, a figure who is unfamiliar
to Phillips’s life. Within Chicano and Latino identity, ideas of
skin color and being able to pass as white are of considerable
importance. Although we are first introduced to Morales when he
rides into the farming community alone (fig. 1) and momentarily
rescues his family from an isolated existence of hard labor and
rest, he cannot actually take care of his family. Instead, it is
Phillips who, through his earnings as the first Chicano rock-androll singer in a culturally appropriative U.S. music industry in Los
Angeles, will provide the family with a house to live in and a new
car. Morales is resistant to labor and work, while it is made clear
early on that his family has not seen him for some time because
he has just recently gotten out of prison. In contrast, Phillips’s
ability to pass for white enables him to take on the identity of
“Ritchie Valens” and become the first Chicano rock star.
Racial recognition has historically been used in
both Mexico and the United States to aid in racial categorization.
However, attempts to uphold categorization to support
colonialism have been utilized in differing ways in these two
countries. In Mexico, the word casta is used to denote racial
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FIGURE 1.
Esai Morales as Bob Morales, La Bamba (1987).
lineage and breed, which gave way to the creation of caste. This
system was given visual form through paintings of different
racial combinations, also called castas, that could be created via
reproduction post–Spanish conquest. These paintings, made
in New Spain—or Mexico, as it would come to be called—were
to be shipped back to family in Europe and were meant to
show progression and prosperity in the New World. They were
typically created as single panels that depicted all sixteen racial
combinations or as one large canvas with at least sixteen panels.
By 1821, over one hundred painted racial combinations would
exist.
Besides depicting racial lineage, casta paintings
also commonly contained displays of violence, showcasing the
struggles of coupling and often showing children standing in the
middle of two adults. Francisco Clapera’s painting De Mulato y
Espanol, Morisco (From Mulatto and Spaniard, Morisco) (1785)
depicts a light-skinned woman reaching toward a mulatto male
(fig. 2). The man, dressed in the attire of the day, leans against a
countertop with one hand resting on the tabletop and the other
reaching toward her chest, as if to push her away completely.
Meanwhile, her small child, who is meant to embody and
demonstrate their racial mixing, fiercely pulls at her dress.
A plate of food has been strewn on the floor beside the child,
perhaps thrown in the middle of an argument. Viewers are forced
to deduct that their coupling is complicated by their racialized
subjecthoods. An interracial union is illustrated as unable to
achieve a peaceful union.
Castas are currently discussed within academic
circles, having been brought to the forefront largely by scholar
Ilona Katzew, who has been building up the Los Angeles County
Museum of Art’s (LACMA) Latin American collection since
2006. Outside of this, especially amongst Chicano communities,
castas are often considered kitsch and have sometimes even
been printed on calendars handed out by taquerias and
bakeries, despite their portrayals of tension or violence. Its
mass reproduction reflects how this racialized, violent, and
misogynist imagery has become synonymous with Chicano
culture. Chicanos often understand this culture as something not
to be taken seriously, though I would argue its presence is still
situated within colonialist imagery. Yet this imagery still must
be understood outside the framework of westernized imagery
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FIGURE 2.
FIGURE 3.
Francisco Clapera, De Mulato y Española,
Morisco (From Mulatto and Spaniard, Morisco),
1785; Oil on canvas, 54 x 40.5 in.; Denver Art
Museum, Collection of Jan and Frederick Mayer
Miguel de Cabrera, De Español y Negra, Mulata
(From Spaniard and Black,
Mulatta), 1763; Oil on canvas, 54 x 41 in.;
Private collection.
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4
Miguel de Cabrera was one of the more
well-known casta painters of his time period.
A mixed mulatto and mestizo person himself,
he was born in Oaxaca and eventually
travelled to Mexico City to pursue life as a
painter.
FIGURE 4.
Miguel de Cabrera. De Español y India, Mestiza
(From Spaniard and Indian, Mestiza), 1763; Oil
on canvas, 54 x 41 in.; Private collection.
and within the context of Mexican people living outside of their
homeland.
Similar to the casta’s depictions of familial violence,
La Bamba utilizes camera angles that feature the family in
intimate forms of conflict and problem solving. Valdez carefully
chose the frames with which to show audiences how the family
related to one another. Morales often throws things or acts in
ways that are volatile while yelling in close proximity to Rosie,
played by Elizabeth Peña, who is visibly frightened but does
not back down from him. While the film does not always show
younger children in the frame, viewers can understand the
main characters (Morales and Phillips) as the children. Steven,
Phillips’s dad and Morales’s stepdad, has passed away, and they
deeply yearn for a masculine figure. Imagery gleaned from the
film has been distributed and memorialized in a way that echoes
castas and their reprinting as kitsch. It is not only the images that
are similar but also the ways that they have been reproduced and
consumed.
Miguel de Cabrera’s 1763 paintings De Espanol
y Negra (From Spaniard and Black, Mulatta) (fig. 3) and De
Espanol y India, Mestiza (From Spaniard and Indian, Mestiza)
(fig. 4) both depict a nuanced social interaction, though one
no less violent or uncomfortable than other castas that clearly
demonstrate domestic violence .4 In De Espanol y India, Mestiza,
the subjects’ gestures draw in the viewer’s attention. Much like
Clapera’s painting of the volatile couple, the union in this portrait
is portrayed as impossible and lacking in trust. The fabric and
intricate designs of the subjects’ clothing are meant to convey
wealth and prosperity. Both paintings are filled by the shape and
size of the subjects’ bodies. The painting frames their interaction
by showing us their torsos and heads tightly enclosed in a public
location. The man grabs at the woman, as if trying to convince
or coerce her, while the child looks on, startled. These paintings
capture and sustain the moment before crisis and conflict.
Similarly, throughout La Bamba we see interracial
and intercultural relationships only in a state of near crisis.
As in the paintings, the characters in the movie display a
proximity to different objects that become significant in their
self-identification. For Phillips, his guitar is key to his identity,
while Morales guards himself from the outer world with his
motorcycle, shades, and leather jacket. Likewise, Donna is
represented by her car, house, and clothing. When Phillips is
walking home from school, approaching his dilapidated house
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situated on an unpaved dirt road, Donna drives up behind him
in a shiny red convertible (figs. 5-6). In what could be read as
an expression of dismay and disgust, she gestures toward the
home and asks, “Is…this…your house?” Phillips stutters and
says no, though Valdez has already indicated to the viewer that
it is indeed his house, via the last name “Valenzuela” scrawled in
marker on the mailbox. Through this experience and others, we
become familiarized with how Phillips lies and hides in order to
pass. Passing does not always happen to him coincidentally—he
is sometimes complicit in it. As does a moving casta painting,
the film invites the audience to witness a series of racialized and
class-based dramas.
La Bamba aids in characterizing how being a
Chicano or Mexican living in the United States is to hope to
be able to pass as white, to be connected as closely as possible
to European culture while maintaining a sense of indigenous
culture. The image as a means to display race, ethnicity, and
nationhood is a practice far older than the casta paintings and
continues to exist today, as in the case of La Bamba. Discussions
of racial mixing have historically stirred feelings of both fear
and fetish. Such images within casta paintings can stir a sense of
the erotic while also maintaining a close proximity to violence.
Within media theorist Noriega’s article, he includes the African
presence, but only within the footnotes. The African presence
within Mexican culture has largely been kept between the lines
while also flattening the hundreds of indigenous groups that exist
into simply the category of “Indian.” The creation of a majority
mestizo class is unrecognized as having Afro-mestizo and Afroindigenous roots. African presence is only acknowledged when
it is blatantly obvious and readable as black. And yet, blackness
and indigeneity are visibly fetishized in Mexico as they are in
many other cultures. This mindset has simultaneously made
it impossible for some to access “mixed-ness” and left others
“trapped” within that category. It is important to distinguish the
differences in conversation around mixing in the United States
and Mexico. While the conversation in the United States focuses
on miscegenation and the legalities of the civil rights era, mixing
in Mexico has historically been an element of nation building.
The construction of a Mexican identity is the construction of
a mixed-race identity. It is considered to be its most Mexican
when the other races have become unreadable. The combinations
themselves have become archetypes, with indigenous and
black persons, in particular, treated as blank or void space. In
FIGURE 5. Lou Diamond Phillips as Ritchie Valens, La
Bamba (1987).
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other words, blackness and indigeneity are used in Mexico to
refer to their existence as cultures, rather than acknowledging
that individual people. The people are not visible, though their
identities are highlighted.
As a film, La Bamba is invested in showing us a
U.S. social norm that will become acceptable to audiences over
time. The subject of passing or not passing creates an element of
safety and protection for colonial and governmental structures.
Individually, passing gives one the ability to be able to earn more
money, acquire land, or even secure a companion of choice.
This was historically the case and can even be understood as
persisting in more contemporary times. Colonialist structures
were in part upheld by individuals who would pay for a certificate
of whiteness in order to further pass. The casta paintings of
that time became visual tools that aided in the reinforcement
of racial code. Indigenous peoples were led to aspire to the
possibility of pure bloodedness and whiteness, even if it took
at least three generations for them to be removed enough from
an india or indigena identity to achieve it. However, the system
produced an impossibility of whiteness for mulattas and zambos
or lobos (people of mixed African and Indian ancestry). A person
possessing any combination of African was considered unable to
ascend to whiteness. However, according to historical documents
in Mexico and the United States, many were able to subvert or
dodge legalities that insisted upon one’s whiteness for attending
school, getting married, or living in certain neighborhoods. What
was important was that one could pass for white.
The abilities or inabilities to cross borders and move
among races and ethnicities are noted in the inscriptions of the
paintings themselves. For example, some paintings are titled
after racial combinations, such as salta atras. This combination
would be considered a step away from whiteness, referring to
someone who may have one Spaniard parent and one parent
who is one-eighth African or one-eighth Arabic. In the 1700s,
mestizo and mulatto people living in Mexico and throughout
the Americas could purchase certificates of whiteness from
the king of Spain. A set of rules mandated by the state allowed
people with money to eventually obtain whiteness, or in some
cases, it allowed their children to eventually claim whiteness.
For Mexicans, this certificate symbolized a step toward a mixed
society. Various series of casta also depict this movement or, in
some cases, lack of movement toward whiteness. Each series
is divided into three parts: One is devoted to the Spaniard and
5
Noriega, “The Aesthetic Discourse: Reading
Chicano Cinema Since La Bamba.”
6
Robert Stam and Louise Spence, “Colonialism, Racism and Representation,” Screen 24,
no. 2 (March–April, 1983): 6.
Indian union and depicts a third generation that is able to pass
or presented as whiteness embodied. The second (Spaniard and
Black) and third (Black and Indian) parts simply depict the union
and the combination but do not depict the next generation.
People often refer to La Bamba as yet another simpleminded biopic. Twenty-eight years after its release, it is necessary
to take a critical look at the things La Bamba did and did not
achieve as an iconic Chicano film. To return to Chon Noriega’s
essay, “The Aesthetic Discourse: Reading Chicano Cinema Since
La Bamba,” the author notes that the focus on Chicano cinema or,
rather, Chicanos in cinema, threatens to draw attention to social
problems rather than culture. Noriega identifies the slum as a
location at which Chicano culture is formulated.5 The slum or
barrio is established as the place where Chicanos must begin and
the conditions they must endure in order to thrive, as well as the
place they must then leave. Economic inequality is exacerbated
by racism, gang and intimate partner violence, and lack of
educational opportunities. The trope of Mexicans and Chicanos
performing migrant labor or living in the barrio is evidence of
the enduring prevalence of stereotypes similar to those promoted
within casta paintings. The tattered clothing and near-violence
visible in the castas have been replaced by the Hollywood
stereotypes of the vatos, gangbangers, and barrios.
As a director, Valdez perpetuates the interpretation
of Phillips’s colonial subjecthood as a social problem rather than
the lived reality of many Mexicans living in the United States.
The image of Phillips living in his family’s basement suggests
that he has not yet arrived at his destiny and that he will be
unfulfilled until he becomes a rock star. Separated from the
outside world and even his family, he is alone in a world of his
dreams and fantasies. In Valdez’s presentation of the storyline,
Ritchie is aware via his dreams that he will not be able to enjoy
his success due to his plane crash. This image perpetuates that of
poor black and brown musicians aspiring to the American dream.
Historically, the realms of arts and sports have been social
spaces in which the American public is entertained by black and
brown bodies. However, rarely is their ability to pass or perform
whiteness considered.
In their essay “Colonialism, Racism and
Representation,” Robert Stam and Louise Spence suggest that a
consideration of Chicano or black film must not only take into
account the content of the images, but also the work’s narrative
structure, genre, and cinematic style.6 The current popularity
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7
Each film is based on a real event.
8
Hal Hinson, “La Bamba,” Washington Post,
July 24, 1987, http://www.washingtonpost.
com/wp-srv/style/longterm/movies/videos/
labambapg13hinson_a0c945.htm.
of La Bamba far exceeds the popularity it celebrated upon its
release. Since then, the political climate and aggression toward
poor black Americans and immigrants has only grown, making
one ask why this film has increased in cult and actual popularity.
What is the context experienced by the Mexicans, Mexican
Americans, and Americans connected to the Mexican experience
as they approach the film? When the film was released in July
1987, it was one of several titles aimed at a “Latino” audience.
Others included Cheech Marin’s Born in East L.A. and Ramon
Mendez’s Stand and Deliver.
Born in East L.A. is a comedy about a Chicano who
finds himself captured by la Migra and deported “back” to
Mexico. Stand and Deliver is a drama based on the true story
of teacher Jaime Escalante in East Los Angeles. The latter also
stars Lou Diamond Phillips, who again plays a Mexican but
this time a 1980s-era vato banger. Along with other previously
mentioned real-life events,7 this film forms a conversation with
the culture of the Americas in 1987. I look to Stuart Hall’s ideas
of encoding and decoding while considering the Chicano’s three
states of being— Indian, white, and mestizo. We might consider
how viewers of La Bamba have shifted in the last twenty-eight
years and their status as oppositional, dominant, or negotiated
viewers. At the time the film was released, many critics who
labeled it as simple or who saw its benefits only in terms of its
business potential for a Hispanicized market could be identified
as oppositional. One reviewer from the Washington Post stated:
Cinematographer Adam Greenberg captures the
look of laborers working in the idyllic, sun-drenched
California weather, and the light ennobles them and
softens their hardship. Though clearly they’re living
in poverty and slaving away in the heat for almost
no money, as you look at the life as Valdez depicts it
here, it almost doesn’t seem so bad.8
The audiences that have continued to enjoy La
Bamba and pass the film on to their children and younger
generations have perpetuated a negotiated reading of the film.
A negotiated reading entails that, rather than simply agreeing
with the media, audiences will accept some aspects but not all.
Younger generations who have enjoyed La Bamba have altered
their perception of it to fit their own personal life experiences.
Without the attention of these younger generations, the film
9
Aura Bogado. “‘A Matter of Death and
Death’: Confronting anti-black racism among
Latinos,” Salon, May 20, 2014, http://www.
salon.com/2014/05/20/a_matter_of_death_
and_death_confronting_anti_black_racism_
among_latinos/.
would most likely not enjoy the popularity it currently does.
Those looking at the myth of Ritchie Valens as played by Phillips
are likely to see mestizaje and indigenous cultures as existing
only in the mystical past. Instead the film centers on Ritchie’s
journey toward becoming an American rock star.
In the past year, there have been conversations
online as well as in other public realms looking at anti-black
racism among Latinos. Writing in the Nation and Salon, writer
and journalist Aura Bogado has noted that when Latinos begin to
date, they are often told to think about dating to mejorar la raza,
which literally translates to “bettering the race.”9 Such practices
directly refer to the realities presented in casta paintings and
the tradition of mixing that has continued since the Spanish
conquest. While the concept of mejorar la raza may not be
common to every Mexican American or Mexican family, it is a
widely known idea. Within La Bamba, we see that both Phillips
and Morales are romantically interested in women, Donna and
Rosa, respectively, who are lighter or white skinned. In the
film, their mother, Connie, is also lighter skinned than either
of them, which suggests that they are looking to reproduce a
familial structure similar to what they know from growing up.
In Ritchie’s case, Donna clearly represents the success of the
American dream. As an image maker, Valdez has helped uphold
these social norms and perpetuated them among Latinos and
Mexicans living in the United States.
Valdez is a respected playwright and director who
has dedicated his career to capturing the Chicano experience.
His numerous plays and scripts include Zoot Suit, whose subject
was the Sleepy Lagoon murder, a case in which the death
of José Gallardo Diaz led to the arrest and imprisonment of
seventeen young Mexican men. Valdez belongs to a canon he
helped to create and has contributed to the development of
a Mexican-centric art form. However, a Mexican-centric art
form can still reinforce hegemonic structures of race, colorism,
and misogyny even as it seeks to construct a new non-white
identity. Writer and thinker Rosa Linda Fregoso states that
Valdez’s depiction of characters in Zoot Suit, which debuted in
1979, visualizes the myth of the pachuco and thus, the Mexican
and mestizo masculine figure. Both Zoot Suit and La Bamba are
deeply embedded in origin and origin stories. The visual is used
symbolically to anchor viewers in new mythmaking. La Bamba,
much like Zoot Suit, functions by creating a Chicano cultural
aesthetic that is as much a promotion of machismo, colonialism,
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and nationalism as it is against it. The opening lines of Zoot
Suit tell the audience that “the secret fantasy of every vato is to
put on the zoot suit and play the myth.” Bob’s entrance to the
encampment in the opening scenes of La Bamba restages the
myth of the pachuco. He is apart from them as much as he is a
part of them. As viewers, we are meant to idolize his character as
much as disdain him, as we are able to recognize that he is not an
ideal father or brother but still a community member.
Valdez presents a number of Ritchie’s personal
relationships with people in purposefully positive, conflicted, or
competitive lights as a way to highlight his personal narrative.
For example, Valdez presents the Silhouettes, the band Ritchie
plays with, as multicultural and comprising a Mexican, Black,
Afro-Mexican, Italian, and Japanese-American youth. Although
we meet these characters, we do not become closely acquainted
with any of them, even though they were close friends of Phillips.
Mendheim, Valens’s biographer, and others have stated that the
band members who Valdez portrays as abandoning Ritchie when
he signs his record deal in fact stayed friends with him and were
proud of him. They were present during his going-away party
and were the first to visit his family when news traveled of the
plane crash. This is another instance in which Valdez repackages
casta for modern audiences. We are made to think that this was
an unhappy and conflicted band of multicultural people, when
the reality could not be further from this. Instead, they enjoyed
a sense of interdependence and considered one another family.
A similar misrepresentation occurs in Valdez’s portrayal of the
San Benito County encampment, from which Morales rescues
his family. Ritchie never actually worked in the encampment.
Rather, Valdez has stated that because his own family did work
in San Joaquin Valley, he felt that it was important enough to
use the laboring to symbolize the labor that so many Chicanos,
Mexican, and Filipino immigrants endured during this time
period (fig. 6). What happens when we understand that Valdez
himself sought to convey the visual symbolism of migrant labor
as a cinematic practice? The practices that Valdez adopted to tell
his version of Ritchie Valens’s story have had dire consequences
on how the song’s history and, later, Chicano life have been
envisioned and historicized.
Film and media are powerful tools, and Valdez’s
positioning of Phillips and Morales as masculine archetypes and
their relationships to their mother, Connie, and Bob’s girlfriend,
Rosie, are strategic. Phillips’s fight for success, as portrayed in
FIGURE 6. The encampment, La Bamba (1987).
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FIGURE 7. Lou Diamond Phillips as Ritchie Valens and
Danielle von Zerneck as Donna, La Bamba
(1987).
the film, can be seen as a representation of normative American
values and assimilation. When Ritchie has money, he wants to
buy his mom a house, and he wants a nice car so that he can
impress Donna. He wants to be a rock star like Elvis or Chuck
Berry. Though Chicanos can now claim Ritchie Valens and La
Bamba as their own, a “pure” representation of Los Angeles or
Chicano culture, they cannot know what Valens’s true needs
or desires were. In place of such realities, viewers look to Lou
Diamond Phillips’s and Luis Valdez’s version of Ritchie Valens.