Behold the Sleeping Mexican

 

(Photo from http://pocho.com/sleeping-mexican-garden-statues-whats-racist-about-that/)

           It’s the figure of a seated man in serape and huaraches, half hidden by an oversized sombrero, presumably sleeping. The iconic statue, (also known as Poncho) is found all over the world, but mostly in the southwest US, spurring both rage and affection among its viewers. 

        The now familiar image actually first appeared popularly in the early 1900's when Mexican President Porfirio Diaz privatized the land and forced hundreds of thousands of rural residents to migrate to cities and live in poverty.  After travelling all day and night, many of them dropped into the nearest spot to sleep.

          For a while the image was seen as an indictment of an oppressive regime. John Kenneth Turner wrote about the refugees in his book, Barbarous Mexico: An Indictment of a Cruel and Corrupt System in 1912.  In it, he captioned a photo of a Mexican sleeping against the wall as "A Study in Despair."

          After World War II, though, when the tourists came to town, it morphed. Trinket sellers made thousands of them as for vacation souvenirs. They were immensely popular as lawn ornaments, salt and pepper shakers, and other variations on the theme.

          In the 1960's, though, minorities began to find their voices, and “Poncho” joined the ranks of lawn jockeys and cigar store Indians as offensive stereotypes. In 1970, the Chicano magazine La Raza called it, "a lazy ne'er-do-well, a Stepin Fetchit with a Spanish accent."

         Originally, Taco Bell used the image as its symbol in 1962, but when Pepsico bought the chain in 1978, it switched the image to the current Mission Bell.

        Today, battles about the appropriate use of the image rage, though one researcher found that the degree of offense that a person takes is generally directly related to their social status.  In an interview with the Tucson Weekly, Professor Maribel Alvarez of the U of A in Tucson said that  highly educated, upper income Hispanics often rail against seeing the lawn ornaments, but working class folks in the barrio often see it as a symbol of home and safety.

         "They'd tell me, 'You see a stereotype in that? What sick mind would see that? How perverted is the gringo mind to think anything bad of it?'"

          In 2009, the ASU Future Arts Research Program raised hackles when it commissioned a piece called "Solo" to be placed on the Tohono O'odham reservation. The 12 foot high “Sleeping Mexican” statue was made of sand, dirt, water and straw and was mean to erode with time, which could, of course, symbolize the erosion of stereotypes. They then placed it in the desert in the middle of what turned out to be a well-known drug-smuggling corridor.

         But- alas- the gradual disintegration of the images was not to happen. The moment they popped it from the mold, it collapsed into a pile of mud.
         The piece raised the predictable rage, but, in the midst of the controversy a spokesman from the ASU Film and media studies dept. decided that "Solo" is "quite beautiful and poetic." In Mexico today, he wrote that "it might come to mean the solace of hard work in the sun - requiring rest and contemplation."
        In San Antonio last year, the city arts commission wanted to recreate a mural that had been on a 1947 drive-in. One of the images on the mural was that of the Sleeping Mexican. Activists were livid. It became a clear issue of historical artifact vs. modern sensibilities.
         Gabriel Velasquez, a former member of the city's arts advisory board pointed out that "Latinos are not asleep, we're on the march."  He was removed from the board shortly thereafter.
         But students in Pueblo High School in Tucson created a tee shirt with a fascinating change of view on the image. Poncho was printed twice on the shirt- first as the traditional head down sombrero covered sleeper, and then with his head raised and a book in his hands- indicating that he'd actually been reading, not sleeping.

         So today’s question is whether revisionist explanation for a work changes the work itself.          

         Thoughts?