Are Pachucos Subalterns?: Crime, Liminality, and the Uncanny in Early Chicano Literature

Abstract

This article studies the novels of Daniel Venegas, Jovita González, and Américo Paredes that they wrote between 1928-1938. Indigeneity, marriage, liminality, and volition are major themes in the works of each author, all of which analyze the state of Chicanos in the Southwest during the first decades after the Mexican Revolution. While their plots and characters differ, they are all rooted in the conflict between First Nations and colonial settlers and had to grapple with the existence of pachucos. Because it was necessary for pachucos and pachucas to mediate between their Mexican-born relatives and Euro-Americans, they best represented the state of Mexican America during that era.

Keywords

• Indigeneity
• la chicanada
• crime and punishment
• liminality
• settler-colonialism