You’ve probably seen the image known as "the sleepy Mexican," a man wearing a Sombrero, sitting down with his knees in his chest, sleeping. It’s been used over the years to portray a negative stereotype of Mexicans as lazy.
But it wasn’t always that way, and it isn’t always seen that way now. Maribel Alvarez, a professor in the University of Arizona’s School of Anthropology and the Southwest Center, joined The Show to talk more about all of this, starting with where this image actually came from.
Full conversation
MARK BRODIE: And Maribel, let's start with where this image actually came from.
MARIBEL ALVAREZ: The origins are three different moments in time if you will. The first is really as a function of travel logs. Americans travel to Mexico late 19th century, they go to the plazas and they begin to see indigenous men and women who at the time of day when the heat is coming on will take a rest and will lean against an adobe wall, will put up a serape and rest. This becomes a curious observation of the travelers and it gets recorded in publications that make it back to the United States. That's the first reference.
Then we begin to see as Mexico independence comes on full board and the indigenista movement, the movement of painters and artists to elevate and uplift the indigenous communities of Mexico. You see Diego Rivera capture an image of a man wrapped in a blanket crouching in a field. The idea there is one of exaltation and not one of stereotype, just the contrary, affiliating the image with hard work.
And then a momentous occasion happens when one sculptor who was part of this movement of the great murals of Mexico, the great revolutionary period, a Colombian sculptor who's actually in residence in Mexico by the name of Romulo Rozo creates a sculpture that is exactly the image as we know it today of the Sleeping Mexico puts it in an exhibit in the National library, and a reporter mocks the image.
And then the next day, immediately the next day, the image that has been the sculpture of this renowned artist gets plagiarized and turned into the infamous stereotype that we know today.
BRODIE: So does it seem as though there's any rhyme or reason to the evolution for, for how this is seen, or what you know what people look at this image and think about?
ALVAREZ: Mark, the context here is everything. Take in consideration the fact that the image appears from an impulse of exaltation of the peons of the ones who have been rejected, the indigenous laboring force of Mexico with no intentions of reading into it anything else than dedication, dignity, hard labor. But the context is one in which the United States is contending with its Mexican quote unquote “problem.”
So you begin to see the image become the subject of ridicule. That's across the border in Mexico itself, you have to provide the context of class struggle. The fact that there were some people intending on uplifting the indigenous populations of Mexico meant that there was an entire class that was deriding that effort and thinking that that was a foolish attempt to redeem a history of Mexico indigenous, its history.
So it was immediately fodder for both sides that were looking for a way of representing the Mexican in a way that was less than dignifying.
BRODIE: It's so interesting because as you reference, the earliest depictions were based on what people were actually seeing with their own eyes. And then it sort of became this sort of stereotypical and not particularly pleasant representation, like something that was not necessarily seen as a favorable image to people.
ALVAREZ: That's one of the things that attracted me to study the image for the last 20 years. Some people even on social media say like, why would you have the image of a lazy Mexican when Mexicans are exactly the opposite, a labor force in every aspect of society? So this conundrum of our representation, our ideologies plaster onto something that factually contradicts it. It's, of course, what has driven me to pursue its study.
BRODIE: Yeah. So where are we now in terms of what this image represents maybe both in the U.S. and in Mexico.
ALVAREZ: There's always been a class divide. There's always been a Mexican elite and a Chicano intellectual elite that has always felt offended in a deep sense about the image as imputed and used in racist representations by American companies. And this follow, of course, the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s rebellion against the Frito Bandito and the senorita’s hot, fiery chili peppers, all of these imputed stereotypes.
At the same time, working class folks have always had in my experience doing ethnographic work and in many other sources, even on social media, you can see it, people feeling like, why are you offended when that's so obviously not us. So you see the working class, a humor, the rasquachismo, if you will, that says it's hilarious, but it's absurd.
And in that absurdity, we don't recognize ourselves and not going to the offense as much as to the absolute perplexity with what one person told me is the gringo mind set that we see something where it actually is contradicted by our own presence, our labor, the food that they eat every day.
So this class divide is something that is less felicitous to talk about when it comes to the way in which the image circulates among Mexican American as well as Central Mexico elite versus working class or rural Mexican communities.
BRODIE: Is that what allows for example, a Mexican restaurant to include this image on its sign or on its menu or you know, a gift shop of, you know, goods from Mexico to include, you know, little sculptures of this.
ALVAREZ: Absolutely. And that context is what also determines a lot of the reactions that you have seen in protests. A restaurant, there are restaurants right here in Tucson, very popular ones owned by Mexican American families that absolutely have that image on the door on their logos. And the association there in their minds, there's no contradiction. It's a place of rest. It's a place of nurturing.
You also saw it as a trademark here in the United States patio industry when you have pavers that had that image produced in the Southwest beginning in the 1950s. And the idea again was in the patio, you relax in the restaurant, you relax.
Where it becomes out of context is when cities to do cutesy tourism promotion, self-promotion, may invite a representation and then an artist with no clue of this history with no understanding of the divides that exist within a community may use the image apparently innocently but not realizing that who is advancing the image who is speaking for its humor or its derision has a lot to do with whether you will invite controversy or not.
BRODIE: And Maribel, I'm so fascinated by the concept of people being able to look at something that others use as a stereotype for them and be able to separate themselves from it, whether it's this image or any other that someone can try to demean someone else and that per person can say, yeah, that's not me. I don't really know what you're talking about.
ALVAREZ: Absolutely. This is one of the ways in which stereotypes are both intriguing, dangerous but potentially fruitful in the sense that they reveal what is the underneath. They reveal the lack of context or relationality. When you look at how stereotypes are used inside groups, versus outside groups, there's always a thread that connects the meaning to a life story that is already feeling dignified in storytelling and therefore can laugh at it because it's not coming from a place of lack or deficit.
From the outside, it's very difficult to bridge that and live the space of authenticity of the experience and that's where we get into trouble all the time. Now, having said that, Mark, the levels of outrage that sometimes get manifested around these controversies on social media on Instagram, for example, that takes it to another level.
That is just a deep offense that is of our time is a phenomenon of the outrage of our times. And I have found that those conversations tend to be as flat, even when they are protesting the stereotype as flat and as uninspiring as some of the most of the, the real racist offensive remarks.
BRODIE: And I guess we should be clear here, I would imagine, and please correct me if I'm wrong that there are actually people who are offended by this image. It's not, not everybody laughs it off and says, oh, that, that's clever that they're trying to say this is about us, but it's not really about us. We know better. Is it safe to say that there are actually people who are still currently offended by this?
ALVAREZ: Oh, absolutely. There are reactions to the image, but I think that the last 25 years have brought a greater depth of image and visual literacy. And you have artists like Judy Baca, the amazing LA-based Chicana artist, who have taken the offense in a different direction. They have taken the body of the sculpture to be a canvas of telling the story of Mexican labor, for example, and they use it and reproduce the form. You see the sleepy Mexican with the head down and the sombrero and the breaking back. And using that as a form to tell a narrative of empowerment of dignity that's past the offense.
BRODIE: Do you find that this is the kind of image that people have tried to sort of reclaim and, and take ownership of as opposed to allowing it to be a negative stereotype of them as it has been, but really sort of take ownership of and maybe take, take the power out of it.
ALVAREZ: Yes, we have seen that in a new generation. I encountered that here in Arizona when in 2010, the SB 1070 bill was fighting ethnic studies in Mexican American studies. And the Club Unidos at Tucson High School designed a T-shirt with a sleeping Mexican sitting in had the phrase the caption “think again.” And when you look at the second plane of the artwork, somewhat crude representation included that sleeping Mexican lifting up his head and reading one of the forbidden books from the ethnic studies controversy.
BRODIE: What do you see as the relationship if any around this image and all the conversation around it and the current rhetoric about immigration and immigrants in this country.
ALVAREZ: It's one of those moments where you think, how did we become so culturally literate? And at the same time, these resignifying messages get away from us. Meaning how is it possible that someone could still speak about Mexican immigrants and the labor force in this country and the trade relationship of labor products that crosses the border with only in one dimension of illegality, of criminality?
Where this this connect happen between more information, more literacy, more access and less knowledge and less wisdom in parsing those things out. And how could that even be possible? By asking that question, I'm asking a question a lot of people are asking, how did we get here? We should know better, and we know better, and the young people know better.
A lot of companies are now shied away from this type of controversial imagery. So on the one hand in the corporate sense, there's been some lessons learned, some battles won on the rhetorical sense of this political moment. It's baffling, it's confusing and utterly frustrating.
