![]() But things that are funny to some are offensive to others.”Īs often the case with ethnic symbols that circulate widely through popular culture, the Sleeping Mexican is caught in a web of conflicting interpretations. “If you ask around, the average American would tell you it’s just a cute figurine, nothing to be alarmed about there’s a widespread disavowal of the negative messages that could be implied. It’s also a racist humor, the kind that is always on the edge of making you uncomfortable,” Alvarez says. “That’s really blatant, right? It’s assumed that he’s drunk. The words “100% Borracho,” float above him. He wears a bright yellow hat and is sprawled out, leaning against a green cactus. The first one Alvarez picks up is printed on a ballcap. Inside the mid-town Tucson storage unit, nearly every inch of the hand-built shelves is covered with Sleeping Mexicans. Maribel Alvarez reads an index card cataloging an item in the collection. So I recently accompanied Alvarez to visit them. I wondered what kind of perspective the Panchos–in all their familiar, stereotypical, and aesthetic forms–might offer present-day debates on immigration in the borderlands and beyond. She’d find them in thrift stores, mostly, Alvarez says, in every form possible: as salt and pepper shakers figurines of plaster, wood, ceramic, tin, onyx, and plastic napkins placemats dish towels dishware ashtrays bookends candy dishes jars planters picture frames and so much more. Maribel Alvarez, a folklorist at the University of Arizona and one of the nation’s leading scholars on the icon.Īlvarez was gifted the bulk of the items from hobby collector, Jill Janis, who started collecting the icon in 1978. And there are over 2,000 other examples of him in a Tucson collection kept and studied by Dr. In Tucson, he leans against a cactus on a bright sign over El Minuto Café, a popular restaurant near downtown, and sleeps in neon to advertise the Siesta Motel. But if you don’t, he’s probably in your town or city, too-as a figurine in a thrift store, on an old t-shirt, or on the sign of your favorite Mexican restaurant. If you live in the borderlands, he’s most certainly close by. ![]() He wears sandals, loose pants, and a sarape, or striped blanket or poncho, and is often depicted leaning against a saguaro cactus, the other famous icon of the Southwest. Pancho sits, bent knees, head lowered, shaded under a broad-brimmed sombrero. Yet others cannot help but cringe when confronted with the image, which seems to multiply ad infinitum all over the Southwestern United States and beyond. Also known as Pancho, Pedro, or Ramón, the Sleeping Mexican may just be the quintessential–if not infamous–icon of the US Southwest and Mexico.įor many, the icon brings up memories of life in the idyllic Mexican countryside–the campesino who rises early and goes to work in the milpas, thus well-deserving of a quick “power nap” mid-afternoon. AKA: Pancho, Pedro, Ramón, the Lazy Mexican, the Sombreroed Dozer, the Dreamer, the Resting Worker, the Siesta MotifįOLKLIFE: Occupational Folklife, knickknack, stereotypes, cultural icon, borderlands, Chicanoculture, indigeneity, MexicoĪs the rhetoric about “dangerous migrants from the southern border” gets increasingly vitriolic, and as we head into the summer-when the desert heat becomes deadly for those traveling across it-I’ve been thinking a lot about the Sleeping Mexican.
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