University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

LatinX excess: from the Baroque to rasquachismo, tracing a culture of extravagance

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LatinX excess: from the Baroque to rasquachismo, tracing a culture of extravagance

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Content Copyright 2022 Leah Perez

LATINX EXCESS:
FROM THE BAROQUE TO RASCQUACHISMO, TRACING A CULTURE OF
EXTRAVAGANCE

By

Leah Perez

A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE ROSKI SCHOOL OF ART AND DESIGN
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
(CURATORIAL PRACTICES AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE)

May 2022

ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................................... iii
LIST OF FIGURES ....................................................................................................................... iv
ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................................... v
I. INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................. 1
II. DIOSAS – GODDESSES OF THE AMERICAS .............................................................. 6
III. BROWN BODIES IN TECHNICOLOR .......................................................................... 14
IV. EATING THE OTHER ..................................................................................................... 18
V. SURREALIST EXCESS: ................................................................................................. 20
VI. RASQUACHISMO ........................................................................................................... 25
VII. ¡QUE ASCO! .................................................................................................................... 28
VIII. LATINA EXCESS IN PERFORMANCE ........................................................................ 32
IX. CONTEMPORARY RASQUACHISMO ........................................................................ 37
X. CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................. 41
BIBLIOGRAPHY ......................................................................................................................... 44

iii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
A special thanks to my friends and family for their support and encouragement throughout my
education.

Thank you to my wonderful Thesis Committee:

Andy Campbell
Julián Gutiérrez-Albilla
Karen Moss

A special thanks to the following individuals, of whom I would not have pursued this degree
without:

Natalie Belisle
Ana Briz
Marcela Guerrero
Lauren Guilford
noé olivas
Emily Ramirez-Uribe
William J. Simmons

Abrazos,
Leah Perez

iv
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure. #1: Image of Coatlicue at Museo Nacional de Antropología.
Figure. #2: Tapestry of La Virgen de Guadalupe housed at the Basilica of Our Lady of
Guadalupe, Tepeyac Hill, Mexico City, Mexico.
Figure. #3 Gian Lorenzo Bernini, The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa 1645-52
Figure. #4 A chameleon from Jodorowsky’s The Holy Mountain (1973).
Figure. #5: Stefan Ruiz, From the “Cholombianos Series”, 2012.
Figure. #6: Girl in chip dress. Unknown photographer.
Figure. #7 Harry Gamboa Jr. Spray Paint LACMA (1972)
Figure. #8: Asco, First Supper (After a Riot), 1974
Figure. #9 Scene of Coco Fusco in Stuff (1998).
Figure. #10. Nao Bustamante, Indigurrito, 1992.
Figure. #11. Artist noé olivas and musical artist La Sancha in their De La Calle outfits.
Figure. #12 Installation shot of Let’s Pray (2022). Photo Elon Scoenholz. Courtesy of the artist.

v
ABSTRACT
Using Alejo Carpentier’s The Baroque and the Marvelous Real as a foundation for justifying
the Baroque as an Indigenous American invention, this thesis will explore how the Baroque was
formed through the appropriative interventions of the Spanish empire. Baroque, coming from the
Spanish word for a misshapen pearl, holds a broad connotation of an aesthetic that is simply too
much and has origins in the abject.
Using a number of examples in art history, film, pop culture, performance art, and queer
theory, this thesis creates a case for how the Baroque never left the Americas and in fact
migrated across the U.S. Mexico border with the Chicanx descendants of the Mechica. In this
thesis I argue that Surrealism, realismo mágico, and rasquachismo are in direct lineage with the
Baroque. Considering the works of artists such as Asco, Nao Bustamante, Coco Fusco, rafa
esparza and noé olivas, as well as films such as West Side Story (1961), Como agua para
chocolate (1992), and The Exterminating Angel (1962) I will showcase how the Baroque is
present in both Latinx and non-Latinx representations of Latinx emotions, the Latinx body, and
what José Esteban Muñoz would come to call Brown disidentifications; this thesis focuses on
how Baroque attitudes live on in a number of mediums. As I trace the development of the
Baroque in the Americas, from Tonantzin to Asco I am interested in pursuing how it lives in the
cultural lexicon of Latinidad; an ethos built on excess, religion, and paradoxes.

1
I. INTRODUCTION
There is no human tongue that can explain its grandeurs and peculiarities.

––Hernán Cortés, commenting on his first impressions of Tenochtitlan
1

The etymology of the word baroque dates back to French 18
th
century origin, the term
“Baroque” at the time was used to describe a misshapen or irregular shaped pearl pulled from the
sea. Though the term would go on to become capitalized as “Baroque” an art historical term to
describe what may be considered gaudy (or more appropriately, Gaudí), a lowercase-b baroque
usually refers to an excessive sense of I, over-the top-adornments, and invokes images of the
regality of the Vatican. The Baroque art style came to be in 16
th
century Italy, where after the
Renaissance the style progressed to express dramatic human encounters through grandiose uses
of color, figures, and scenery. Pivoting away from the emphasis on human achievement led by
the Renaissance, the Baroque focused on the achievements of God and the church. Like many of
the European achievements to come out of this era, many scholars speculate that creation of the
Baroque would not have been a possible achievement without the meeting of the Old World and
the New World. So much of Europe’s cultural identifiers are tied directly to the conquest, though
we often hold an understanding that this only worked one way and that Latinx culture is tied to
Europe, however had the conquest not happened Italy would not have tomatoes, Belgium would
not have chocolate, and the vivid red used in the paintings of Caravaggio would have never
existed. The Baroque alike was an architectural style perfected by the Mechica, stolen by the
Spanish, and taken back to Europe, then imitated all over again in the Americas through a

1
The Baroque and The Marvelous Real by Alejo Carpentier.

2
number of Churrigueresque-style churches, holy sites, and government buildings throughout the
capitals of the Spanish empire in the Americas.
2
Though thought to be an achievement of
European architecture, the Baroque would not have been possible without the contributions of
Pre-Columbian societies.
In his 1949 essay “The Baroque and the Marvelous Real”, Cuban author Alejo Carpentier
posits that the Spanish impression of the grandeur, excess, and intricacies of Tenochtitlan
influenced the development of a baroque aesthetic in Europe and the Americas by Spanish
colonization. Specifically citing the viewing of the Aztec figure Coatlicue [Fig. # 1] as one of the
objects that most directly inspired the Baroque.
Fig. #1 Image of Coatlicue at Museo Nacional de Antropología.

2
American here refers to the collective Americas and does not mean the United States.

3
The figurative sculpture of Coatlicue depicts the Aztec goddess, who was said to have a face of
two serpents, while depicting Coatlicue to her imagined likeness and proportions, the non-
traditional kaleidoscope-like depiction of this figure is argued to have motivated an entire
stylistic revolution on behalf of Europe. The longtime alleged Western narrative taught in
schools within the U.S. and Latin America goes that when the Aztecs saw the Conquistadors––
blonde men wearing armor and riding on horseback ––they assumed that the Spanish must be
gods and concluded that they were then witnessing the prophesized return of the Aztec god,
Quetzalcoatl in the form of Hernán Cortés.
3
However, there are a number of plot holes within
this narrative, the first being that though the Conquistadors were likely coming from Spain and
what is now known as present-day Italy, these two regions of Europe do not and did not typically
produce phenotypically blonde people as described in this folktale. Additionally, while the
Americas did not have horses prior to the conquest, there are a number of other beasts of burden
and the site of a horse would not have been as uncanny as this fallacy would make it out to be.
Rather, the quotations from Conquistadors taken from Carpentier in “The Baroque and the
Marvelous Real” not only challenge this narrative but show that this encounter at Tenochtitlan
was arguably more jarring for the Spanish than it was for the Aztecs. To paint a picture of the
impression the Americas would have had on the Spanish in the fifteenth century, we need to
consider where Europe was at this time both aesthetically and technologically. At the time,
Córdoba and Seville would have been the two largest metropolis sites of Spain, yet neither could
house the nearly 200,000 people who lived in Tenochtitlan. At the time in the Old World, jade
was a material most typically used for creating utilitarian objects in Asia and had no monetary

3
I use Aztec here to reiterate a mainstream narrative of those tales, though I am aware that Mechica is the correct
term for this Indigenous community.

4
value, and yet the Aztecs wore jewelry with the material and had the stones implanted in their
mouths, noses, and lips.
4
While the edifices Cordoba were topped with tall sky-reaching minarets
Tenochtitlan had multiple pyramids similar in height but immeasurably larger in mass than most
buildings in Spain.
5
The capital city of the Aztec empire was built upon a series of man-made
bodies of land that floated above sea-level known as chiampas and the city would have defied all
understandings of urban planning in Europe. Overwhelmed by its beauty in magnitude, Bernal
Diaz del Castillo referred to it as something out of a fairytale commenting that, “We were all
amazed and we said that these lands, temples, and lakes were like enchantments in the book of
Amadis”.
6

Using Alejo Carpentier’s “The Baroque and the Marvelous Real” as a foundation for this
thesis I am interested in positing how many iterations of Latinx aesthetics of excess directly
relate and emerge from the origins of the Baroque aesthetic in the New World. As I trace the
development of the Baroque in the Americas and Europe, into a number of other styles, genres,
and cultural affinities I am interested in pursuing how it lives in the cultural lexicon of
Latinidad–– an ethos built on excess–– and contradicts with the humility of European Catholic
principles of which the Baroque was contradictorily founded upon. Through this lens I will
explore how the Baroque has influenced the aesthetics of art, culture, and religion in the
Americas and what that looks like in a more contemporary estadounidense context. Through the
use of art history, film, pop culture, performance art, and theory I will explore how Baroqueness

4
Rodríguez-Rellán, Carlos, Ben A Nelson, and Ramón Fábregas Valcarce. A Taste for Green: A Global Perspective
on Ancient Jade, Turquoise and Variscite Exchange. Havertown: Oxbow Books, Limited, 2020.
5
Cordoba was the capital of Spain during its occupation by the Moors and for this reason was largely influenced by
Arab and Islamic architecture.
6
See Amadís de Gaula a 14th c. collection of fairy tales popular in Spain and Portugal. This is notably the fairy tale
Don Quixote is fascinated with in Cervantes’ Don Quixote.

5
is an expansive ethos that lives on within many aspects of Latinidad nearly five hundred years
post the Old World/New World encounter.

6
II. Diosas – Goddesses of the Americas
Created through the act of colonialism, the Baroque genre has an inherent relationship
with both Colonialism and Catholicism. While the conquest of the Americas was famously
carried out by Spain’s Queen Isabel and King Ferdinand, conquistadors and clergymen became
the actors of the conquest within the Americas. As the Old World had consisted of Europe, Asia,
and Africa, race prior to the 15
th
c. was based upon a hierarchy of whiteness versus blackness
with Asia being somewhere in the middle.
7
While the Roman Catholic church at the time of the
Conquest had found that Black Africans were incapable of salvation, as they were considered to
in fact not be human at all, or humans marred by the sins of Cain in Genesis, instead Indigenous
people in the Americas were seen as being in between a state of white and Black, and eligible for
salvation.
8
The perception of Africans as subhuman and Indigenous people’s as salvageable
would largely play into the Catholic Church’s justification for chattel slavery in the Transatlantic
Slave trade. Under direct command of Queen Isabella de Castile, priests and monks were
directed to save the Indigenous Americans, called gente sin razon and turn them into gente con
razon through salvation.
9
Had the Indigenous Americans opted to not convert or retain their pre-
colonial traditions, they would be met with violence at the hands of the Conquistadors. Faced
with the choice of violence or assimilation many reluctantly converted, concealing, and
maintaining their traditions through certain traditions of Catholicism such as the celebration of

7
Note that the effects of this hierarchy in Asia created a caste symptom of skin color rather than racial difference,
meaning that the measure of status was in someone’s proximity to whiteness.
8
The son of Adam and Eve in The Bible, Cain was said to be marred with a black spot on his body, a punishment
given to him by God for the murder of Cain’s brother, Abel.
9
In this context of race and religion, people who were Christians could not have violence enacted on them, while
those of other religious backgrounds such as Islam, Judaism, or pagan religions were considered enemies who had
chosen a life of antagonism again Christianity, this logic would be used to both justify the Spanish Inquisition and
chattel slavery.

7
Carnival, saint worship, and reimaging stories in The Bible.
10
Carnival being the most stand out
example of this cultural syncretism, has become a tradition synonymous with places like Brazil,
Haiti, and Cuba, though it’s more religious origin can be traced back to Europe. Spanish priests
in the Americas were equally aware of the similarities between the religions of the Americas and
Catholicism, and often played up certain aspects of Christianity that were more familiar to
Indigenous Americas, La Virgen de Guadalupe is notably though to be modeled off the Mechica
goddess Tonanztin, who was a female deity of motherhood. Through both cultural syncretism
and Indigenous/Afro resistance, Catholicism would merge with Indigenous and Yoruba practices
to become other religions like brujeria, santeria, and voodoo; these religions resulted from the
intracultural reactions of the conquest.
11

Though notably different from places like the Dominican Republic, Brazil, or Puerto
Rico, much due to its geographical location in the Trans-Atlantic Slave route, Mexico had a
much smaller Afro-Latinx population than other areas of Latin America. While much less
influenced by African religions, Mexico would mostly be a cultural merging of the Indigenous
and the European; because of this more direct one to one exchange Mexico would come to be
considered a largely mestizo nation.
12
The myth of La Virgen de Guadalupe, who was based on
the Mechica goddess Tonantzin, was formed through this colonial history of religious
assimilation and cultural syncretism. With understanding to the importance of Tonantzin in

10
Carnival was formed as a Spring Solstice celebration in Egypt, then brought to the Roman Empire through
Alexander the Great to be celebrated near the same time as lent, the tradition would then be reappropriated by the
African diaspora in Latin America and the Caribbean.
11
Yoruba is a religion practiced in West Africa brought to the Americas through the Transatlantic Slave Trade.
12
The term mestizo is racist and is a vestige of the Spanish caste system that describes someone of equal Spanish
and Indigenous blood, I will further problematize this term throughout this paper.

8
Mechica tradition, the Spanish clergy figured that the best way to convert more of the Indigenous
population to Catholicism would be through the usage of familiar figures in the Mechica
pantheon. The story of La Virgen de Guadalupe goes that La Virgen appeared to Juan Diego, an
Indigenous peasant several times throughout the month of December.
13
During one of her visits
to Juan Diego, La Virgen de Guadalupe left an impression of her figure on a cloth, as proof of
her existence for Juan Diego to show to his doubters, due to his social status many people both
did not believe Juan Diego.
14
In the image of La Virgen de Guadalupe that was left with Juan
Diego, the Virgin is depicted in a head covering adorned with stars, surrounded by a glowing
light, and being supported by what is arguably a cherub or the baby Jesus himself. Unlike
European depictions of the Virgin Mary, La Virgen de Guadalupe wears bright and saturated
colors and has the Brown colored skin of an Indigenous Mexican.
15

13
December 12th is La Día del Virgen in Mexico.
14
The tapestry has since been on display at the Santuario de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe on display to visitors and
religious zealots.
15
It is important to note that the use of color in art and decor also has colonial implications, the shade of red used in
pigments today comes from the Cochineal, a bug native to the Americas. Prior to the Conquest, red was a very
difficult color to achieve in Europe.

9

Fig. #2 Tapestry of La Virgen de Guadalupe housed at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Tepeyac
Hill, Mexico City, Mexico.
Depictions of the Virgin Mary within Spanish and Latin American culture would only grow to be
more and more excessive in the years to come, with depictions of the Virgin like in Spain and
Cuba being adorned, platted, and crowned with gold and jewels, such as Nuestra Señora de la
Caridad del Cobre. The origin of the Virgen de Guadalupe the paradoxical experience of the
Latinx Baroque, rooted in both Indigenous resistance and colonial indoctrination. The Virgen de
Gualupe represents another cultural conundrum within Latina gender roles; depictions of a
flashy, excess Virgin such as Nuestra Señora de la Caridad del Cobre, contradict her symbolism
as a figure of purity, she is adorned in a fashion that is neither humble nor particularly modest.
Interestingly, a notable difference in Catholic and Christian theology is the belief as to whether

10
or not the Virgin Mary had children other than Jesus, while Christian’s do not adopt this
thinking, the Christian Virgin Mary is a perpetually virginal woman who only mothered Christ,
whereas in Catholicism Mary had several other children and is accepted as a figure of
motherhood of both the divine and the secular, though both imaginings put certain sexual
expectations on the Virgin Mary.
When I see la Virgen de Guadalupe I want to lift her dress as I did my dolls, and look to
see if she comes with chones and does her panocha look like mine, and does she have dark
nipples too? Yes, I am certain she does. She is not neuter like Barbie. She gave birth. She has a
womb. Blessed art thou and blessed is the fruit of thy womb…. Blessed art thou, Lupe, and,
therefore, blessed am I.
16

During the 1980s and 1990s the likeness of La Virgen de Guadalupe was being reclaimed
in Latinx art by queer, feminist, and Indigenous artists alike. Following this trend, Chicana
author, Sandra Cisneros, would publish her essay Guadalupe The Sex Goddess reimagining the
Virgen not in her neutered past imaginings but as a human women with sexual desires, pushing
back against the patriarchal narratives of purity and asexuality expected of Latina women.
Though the Virgin is accepted in Catholicism as the mother of all of God’s children her sexuality
is stripped from her through biblical understandings of virginity.
17
While Latinas are imagined in
Western belief too be hyper-sexual, spicy, sassy; Latinas are socialized to model the behaviors of
the Virgin Mary remaining virgins until marriage and having as many children as possible, as
stated in Cisneros’ essay Guadalupe The Sex Goddess.
18
As Cisneros states in her essay, while

16
Guadalupe The Sex Goddess by Sandra Cisneros.
17
Some theologians argue that the use of “virgin” in The Bible may have been due to Mary’s young age and not a
commentary on whether she was sexually intact.

11
Latinas are expected to emulate the divine, men are rarely ever expected to emulate Jesus Christ,
as this would be considered impossible. Cisneros names the double standard and paradox of
being a neutered mother to all and argues instead that she sees her own sexuality in the Virgen de
Guadalupe as a Brown woman. While this trend of reimagining the Virgin Mary would take off
in the 1990’s with other scholars like Alma Lopez, Alexis Donis, and Laura E. Pérez, would be
accused of blasphemy, the use of religious figures within sexual setting is not a phenomenon
born of the 1990s or something that originated solely with Cisneros, rather it dates to the biblical
ages.
One of the earliest uses of sexuality as a means of spiritual expression is that of the Song
of Songs, a section of the Bible which describes a longing and lustful between a man and
woman, while also serving as a metaphor for the longing an individual should have for the
divine. Baroque sculptor, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, would visualize the hypersexuality of the
Baroque in his sculpted depiction of The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa. [Fig #3] The patron saint of
Castile, Spain, throughout her life Saint Teresa documented several miraculous visions she had
in which she was visited by both angels and Christ himself.
I saw in his hand a long spear of gold, and at the iron’s point there seemed to be a little
fire. He appeared to me to be thrusting it at times into my heart, [15] and to pierce my
very entrails; when he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out also, and to leave me all
on fire with a great love of God. The pain was so great, that it made me moan; and yet so
surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it.
The soul is satisfied now with nothing less than God. The pain is not bodily, but spiritual;
though the body has its share in it, even a large one. It is a caressing of love so sweet

18
Due to the Catholic church’s outspokenness against the use of contraception many Latina women do end up
having many children, which leads to an Anglo stereotype of Latinas as hypersexual. In 1950’s Puerto Rico the
white field of obstetrics would test the first versions of the birth control pill, which left many women infertile
without their knowledge or consent. Up until the 1970’s and the popularity of the birth control pill, there was no
choice of motherhood, but rather family planning was left up to solely a woman’s doctor and her husband, Renee
Tajima Peña’s film No Más Bebes covers the eugenicist history of reproductive rights in Latinx communities.

12
which now takes place between the soul and God, that I pray God of His goodness to
make him experience it who may think that I am lying.
19

Fig. #3 Gian Lorenzo Bernini, The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa 1645-52
In the above passage, Saint Teresa describes an experience in which an angel proceeded to stab
her multiple times in the heart with a flamed spear, the events of which would be captured in
Bernini’s sculpture. Though Saint Teresa specifies that the experience for her was not a
corporeal one, it would seem that she was at a loss to describe the intensity of this encounter in
platonic terms, as this text as well as other documentation of this event point to St. Teresa using
erotic language and imagery to describe her moment of spiritual ecstasy. Bernini’s marble

19
From The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus.

13
sculpture housed at Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome sits in front of several golden rays that
beam upon the statue. To the left of Saint Teresa is an angel preparing to lunge his spear of gold
into the heart of Saint Teresa who sits with mouth agape overcome by the sensation of this
spiritual moment. Though masked by the fact that this work depicts a religious experience, there
is an overt sexual element to the way Saint Teresa describes her relationship with God. This
element of sexual and lustful expression lives within many other Baroque works of art as well as
successors within the Latinx canon of aesthetic that I am calling excessive.

14
III. BROWN BODIES IN TECHNICOLOR
The exotification of otherness particularly in cinema dates to the Golden Age of
Hollywood cinema, when thick mustached men and golden skinned women who were usually
played by white actors were coined “the Latin lover.” As a popular genre of old Hollywood was
that of the Western, there was a need for actors who could play the role of being villains,
Casanovas, and quote “Indians.” Though the roles were written for people of Latin American
descent, the actors who would end up playing these roles were typically white Latinos,
Spaniards, or Italians, people who by Hollywood’s standards were not phenotypically accepted
as being white.
20
In fact, Rita Hayworth aka Margarita Cansino who is commonly referred to as
the first Latinx movie star, was of Spanish origin.
21
This trope of non-Latinxs playing Latinxs
would remain until nearly the 2000s, with Filipinx actor Lou Diamond Phillips and Spanish born
actor Antonio Banderas often taking lead roles written for Latinos, though maybe to less harmful
degrees than that of Old Hollywood stereotypes however, it is interesting to see who gets to look
Latinx on film.
22

Puerto Rico, You ugly island, Island of tropic diseases.
–Original lyrics from Leonard Bernstein’s “America” of West Side Story

20
Whiteness is not a fixed identity, at the time these actors may have also not been considered white, however in the
present context, this miscasting of people of other ethnicities is viewed as being culturally insensitive.
21
McLean, Adrienne L. “‘I’M A CANSINO’: TRANSFORMATION, ETHNICITY, AND AUTHENTICITY IN
THE CONSTRUCTION OF RITA HAYWORTH, AMERICAN LOVE GODDESS.” Journal of film and video 44,
no. 3/4 (1992): 8–26.
22
Of this phenomenon, Banderas was quoted in a 2019 interview as saying, “I thought it was very successful, but
the thing is that when I got to America, at the beginning, they said to me on the set of The Mambo Kings, "Oh,
you're going to stay in America, get ready to play the villain."[...] Yeah. "The villains here are black and Hispanics.
Those are the villains." And then like three, four, five years later, I got a mask and a hat and my horse. I was a hero
in a movie, and the bad guy was blond, he got blue eyes, and he spoke perfect English. And I thought, Hmmm, that's
interesting.”

15
One of the earliest and most critically acclaimed representations of Latinidad in
Hollywood was that of West Side Story (1961). The film made Rita Moreno the first Latina to
ever win an Oscar, which put her on track as the only Latinx actor distinguished with having all
four awards–– Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony (EGOT). Though merely in a supporting role,
Moreno would steal the show as Bernardo’s (George Chakiris) girlfriend, Anita. Anita who
famously “likes to be in America,” steals the show with her powerful solos in Tonight and A Boy
Like That, a number of high kicks in her tulle-lined dress and breaks the audience’s hearts as she
breaks down after the murder of Bernardo.
Though a much more talented singer and dancer, Moreno played the second female lead,
across Natalie Wood’s very white-washed Maria. Based on Romeo and Juliet, Maria is a I
teenager in love for the very first time. Though portraying a Puerto Rican woman, Wood is
notably the only actor portraying the Puerto Rican “Sharks,” not donning Brown face, something
Moreno also had to do as her fair complexion did not fit into Hollywood’s notions of Latinidad.
While Maria wears white and pale colors consistently throughout the film, Anita wears a loud
purple dress with a red petticoat. Not until her meeting of Tony and her implied sexual
awakening does Maria’s wardrobe become more colorful. In fact, her introduction into the film is
based around a whole scene takes place in which Maria pushes to have her dress dyed red, but
compromises with a red belt
23
, much to Bernardo’s dismay. Though Bernardo is incredibly
protective of his sister and more implicitly her virginity, he does not seemingly expect the same
purity of his girlfriend Anita, who in Tonight sings the line, “Anita’s gonna get her kicks

23
Note that there is a Latinx tradition in which deflowered brides display their blood-stained sheets after their
wedding night to prove to their community that they were not only sexually intact prior to their marriage but have
consummated their union.

16
tonight.” During a montage where she is very clearly getting ready to be intimate with Bernardo.
During the school dance, while Maria’s dress is white, Anita wears a purple dress with a red
petticoat that is revealed as she kicks and dances her way through the musical. As color
throughout the film points at racial otherness, it also showcases the stages of life and romance
that Anita and Maria are each in. Wood, who is supposed to be pure and has an angel like quality
wears white and more pointedly is white, while the already Latina Moreno skin color was
darkened through the use of makeup, represents a Latina woman who is too sexy for her own
good.
24
Though her actions are not any different than the other woman of the film, Anita is
adorned and exotified in a way that is different from Maria, as well as her white counterparts.
Much like the Virgen de Guadalupe herself, Maria and Anita are not given a humanly duality,
but rather exists in a virgin vs. whore binary that is especially inherent to both Cathlocism and
Latinidad.
25

In the essay, “Could We Not Dye It Red at Least?: Color and Race in West Side Story,”
Lauren Davine focuses on the use of color as a lens for viewing race within the musical. Most
obviously the color of characters' skin showcases their racial differences, though the Puerto
Rican Sharks were played by Arab, Greek, and Filipinx actors, the actors were covered in thick
brown skin paint to emphasize their melanin. Moreno herself described the makeup as being like
mud. Though both the Sharks and Jets wear colorful outfits, the Jets wear muted cool tones

24
In the 1961 film adaptation of the musical there is a scene in which the Jets get very close to attempting to rape
Anita, while in the Broadway version it is implied that she is raped, though it is unclear if the film did this in order
to further censor the script. However, either way this adds to another layer of Anita being demonized for her
sexuality as well as white entitlement to the Latinx body.
25
La Malinche also exists in this vacuum, considered a traitor of her race by many men while being reclaimed by
many feminists for being the mother of la raza, though neither narrative accepts her as a figure capable of both good
and bad actions.

17
whereas the Sharks wear bright warm tones that reflect their exotic nature. The Jets too are a
bright site in the bleak New York background, and it is explained in the film that many of them
are of Polish descent, othered in a white society but not as socially different as the Puerto Rican
Jets. Though both Maria and Anita represent a sexual duality as Anita is experienced and Maria
is being sexually awakened, the two are ultimately punished for their unchaste acts through the
deaths of their loved ones. Though likely an unintentional parable of the film, West Side Story
showcases that within the Latina sexually binary of santas o putas, neither route is correct in
American culture, no matter what actions you take, you are too exotic for white America.

18
IV. EATING THE OTHER
While I have used the term “spicy” throughout this paper to describe the ways that
Western media views the Latinx body, I am well aware of the fact that the term spicy should
only be used to describe food, yet this for some reason has been used time and time again to
describe the sass of Latina women. The term likely originated from a misconception that Latin
American cuisine is spicy, due to the first interactions of American settlers being with largely
Latinxs of Mexican descent. Though it is true that Mexicans love chile the vast majority of Latin
America does not have the dry climate necessary to grow chile peppers. Whether intentional or
not, the use of food descriptors for the Latina body, reduces Latina women to being objects of
physical consumption, an anthropophagic personhood. Laura Esquivel’s Spanish language novel
Como agua para chocolate (Like Water for Chocolate) (1989) would be adapted into a film in
1992. Of the realismo mágico genre, the novel focuses on Josefita (Tita) who possesses a knack
for cooking, a duty she proudly holds for her entire household. Born in the kitchen and raised by
her family’s indigenous maid, Tita possesses powers that allow for her emotions to travel
through her cooking. In the novel, each pivotal moment in Tita’s life is accompanied by a recipe
and a story for how Tita’s cooking affects her audience of eaters. Tita’s lover, Pedro, is forced to
marry her sister as she is older than Tita. As part of her duties in the kitchen, Tita is obligated to
cook her sister and Pedro’s wedding cake, though she is heartbroken. Her emotions travel into
the cake and everyone who eats it ends up sobbing at the wedding reception.
While seemingly ridiculous in subject matter, Como agua para chocolate (1989) exists
within the Latin American literary genre of realismo mágico or magical realism, in which magic
and the supernatural are not the subject of their works but rather a peripheral element of the story

19
telling, popularized globally by Gabriel García Márquez. Not unlike Surrealism, the novel mixes
elements of a para-reality with the mundane, not like fairy tales of ghost stories where the magic
is the plot of the story, the magic is realismo mágico is accepted by the characters with little
regard to how it functions. Much due to the religious cultural syncretism of the Americas, many
Latin Americans in fact do practice various sorts of beliefs in mysticism and spirituality. In the
climax of both the novel and film, when Pedro and Tita are finally permitted to be together and
finally consummate their relationship, Pedro orgasms and dies, his body overcome by their love.
Tita who is shocked and heartbroken eats a box of candles turning herself into a flame, burning
both herself to death and Pedro’s body, the two finally are together in the afterlife. The ending of
the book is erotic and dramatic but translates oddly to the screen in the film adaptation, when
removed from its magical realism context, the film could have likely furthered this Western
understanding of Latinas as being both intensely emotional and having a kindred bond with
food.
26

26
In the essay, Sumptuous Texts: Consuming “Otherness” in the Food Film Genre, author Helene A. Shugart
compares the consumption of ethnic otherness to an understanding of the other as being spicy or exotic, while
whiteness is read as bland, particularly in films featuring Latina protagonists such as Como agua para chocolate
(1989) This idea dates back to puritanical viewing of food as sustenance over pleasure.

20
V. SURREALIST EXCESS:
In the late 1930s, fleeing the chaos of World War II in Europe, Andre Breton, the father
of Surrealism, would find refuge in Mexico, to which he would quickly call it the “the Surrealist
place par excellence.”, like something out of a dream Mexico City transcended time with its
remains of the Pre-Columbian alongside the infrastructure of any European metropolitan city of
the time. Home to many artists working in the surrealist genre, such as Frida Kahlo, Diego
Rivera, and Remedios Varo, the country would welcome in many European Surrealists
throughout the next decade, such as Andre Breton himself. The dreamscape Baroque mixture of
cultures, religions, and realms of time within Mexico would make for the perfect landscape for
Surrealist imaginations and would become a great source of inspiration for many Surrealist
artists.
27
Frida Kahlo, who is arguably the most famous Mexican artist, largely made her work
through the appropriation of Indigenous aesthetics, spirituality, and the native flora and fauna of
Mexico, birthed her artistic style from the mixing of both Western and Indigenous cultural
elements. Much like the ethos of the Baroque, Surrealism was born out of a new understanding
of what being global meant up to that point in time, due to the events of World War I. The
Baroque, as Carpentier claims, came from the cultural syncretism and the violent meeting of the
New World and the Old World. Born in the aftermath of the war, Surrealism came from the
realization that war had the capacity to destroy lives, bodies, and nation states. With the
destruction of Europe by many men who had fought had come to the realization of their own
corporeality and were making art that would often feature what was called “the exquisite

27
Note that Mexico City is built on top of the same man-made island of Tenochtitlan.

21
corpse,” mixing aesthetics of beauty with disfigurement and decay.
28
Coming from a realization
that World War I had been fought for a bourgeoisie class that could care less about the men who
had fought the war, Surrealism was utilized as a coping mechanism for the quote, lost generation.
Due to its references to the subconscious, film became one of the most popular art forms of
expressing Surrealism visually. In Alejo Carpentier’s “The Baroque and The Marvelous Real”,
Carpentier likens Surrealism to the Baroque, stating that they both share an inability to be
defined by specific parameters, yet in many ways one could make the argument that the two
genres share a number of other similarities. Both Surrealism and the Baroque were born in
pivotal moments of global interactions, the two genres embrace an aesthetic of excess and an
acceptance of the fantastical, and finally, Mexico would play a large role in the establishing of
both genres, in fact the work of Mexican Surrealists is considered to have contributed to the
creation of the magical realism genre.
In 1949, after the rise of Franco’s fascist regime in Spain, Luis Buñuel would be yet
another European artist seeking political refuge in Mexico. Thought to be the father of Surrealist
cinema in collaboration with Salvador Dalí, with their 1929 film, Un Chien Andalou, Buñuel’s
films often criticized the Church the state, and the arbitrary practices of the bourgeoisie - which
he would come to satirize during both his time in Mexico and during his time in Spain, during
which he produced The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972) and The Obscure Object of
Desire (1977). Though a native of Spain, contributions to Mexican cinema are greatly celebrated
films within the Mexican cinematic canon. His films, created during his Mexico period, would

28
Note that a hugely referential piece of Surrealism is “The Interpretation of Dreams” and “The Uncanny” writings
of Sigmund Freud.

22
perfectly capture the cultural nuances of Mexico’s class conflict, religious state, and its political
structure. Though much more narratively driven than many of his films created in Europe,
Buñuel’s film, The Experimenting Angel (1962) uses Surreal tactics to explore the primal nature
of the bourgeoisie.
In The Exterminating Angel, a group of wealthy friends find themselves inexplicably
stuck in the living room of their hosts after a dinner party. Trapped for days in the room, the
situation becomes dire, and the friends quickly begin to turn on one another. As the arbitrary
structures of society begin to crumble in the living room prison, the rich resort to their animal,
predatory nature. There is also the threat of a bear in the home ––a surprise originally planned by
the hostess for her guests.
29
Out of desperation and with no sense of privacy, the group begins to
use a closeted space in the living room as the designated bathroom notably, this closet is adorned
with neo-Baroque paintings of various saints, as well as depictions of Christ and the Virgin
Mary. At some point in the film one of the elder members of the friend group dies and his corpse
is also stuffed in the closet. When an engaged couple seeks some privacy to be able to have sex
secretly, they do so in this bathroom alongside the filth of human waste and a decaying body,
through this scene Buñuel quite literally defecates on the legacy of the Catholic Church. The
mixing in this scene of desire with the abject lends itself to both the aesthetic of Surrealism and
the dramaticism of the Baroque.
In their final attempt to escape the house the groups of friends decide to pray, promising
to God that if they ever get out, they will devote their lives to the Church, though having

29
Buñuel, like many other surrealist filmmakers, often uses comparisons of animals to humans challenging a
Hegelian archetype of how men should behave.

23
committed a variety of sins during their stay in the living room. Miraculously, God lets the group
leave and they are finally free! Granted their divine escape, the film concludes with the group at
mass in a Baroque church. When the mass is complete and the group makes their way to the door
to leave, they once again find themselves stuck, implying that their commitment to faith is all an
act. While the friends are trapped in the church again, so is the priest who led the mass as he is
just as complicit in their hoarding of wealth and a member of Mexico’s theocracy. A huge critic
of almost all powers that be, Buñuel depicts how both the Mexican bourgeoisie and the Catholic
Church operate as the ruling class in Mexico, especially during the 1960s. Through The
Exterminating Angel (1962), Buñuel successfully pinpoints the cultural conundrum of Latinidad.
While pre-Columbian elements of the Americas survived despite Colonization, they were also
consumed and masked with European hegemony, like the Baroque Latinxs of mixed-race
identity can never be either just decolonized or just white, both identities are at constant odds
with one another. Though the Catholic Church was once one of the largest motivators of the
conquest of the Americas, and many individuals hold certain resentments to their religious
upbringing it is the system of which upholds the culture within Latin America.
One of the most important descendants to come from Buñuel’s ancestry of Surrealist
cinema is that of Chilean filmmaker, Alejandro Jodorowsky, who would also seek political
refuge in Mexico during the 1970s after the rise of Pinochet in Chile. Like many artists from
Chile, Jodorowsky was critical of the fascist regime and lived in exile until the end of Pinochet’s
regime. The two most notable films of Jodorowsky’s time in Mexico would be that of El Topo
(1970) and The Holy Mountain (1973) both of which use surrealist metaphors to explore
Mexico’s relationship to religion, the conquest, and reimagine Christ’s life as a caballero. In The

24
Holy Mountain (1973), Jodorowsky re-enacts the Spanish conquest of the Americas through
reptilian actors. [Fig. #4]
Fig. #4 A chameleon from Jodorowsky’s The Holy Mountain (1973).
A series of chameleons dressed in feathers depict the Aztec empire, who while living their lives
in the peaceful pyramid homes are bombarded by toads wearing costumes of armor and clergy
wear. The toads, who are much larger than the chameleons, naturally attack them and
Jodorowsky further dramatizes the scene through a river of fake blood and the exploding of the
pyramid set. Though not the most subtle of metaphors, Jodorowsky is once again reminding
Latin American audiences of the Catholic Church's role in colonization and critiques the
religious institution many times throughout the film. The barbaric scene uses a microcosm of
reptiles to satirize the role of religion within the Americas.

25
VI. RASQUACHISMO
In 1989 Tomas Ybarra-Frausto reappropriated the term rasquache, taken from a pre-
Columbian term used to describe something that is lower class, impoverished, or in bad taste to
describe the emerging Chicanx aesthetics within Los Angeles during the 1970s. With groups like
Asco, Robert Leggoreta, and Judy Baca emerging in the Los Angeles scene, Ybarra-Frausto saw
a visual language that was being captured by his peers. Originally, used by the Spanish to
reference Indigenous and peasant practices, the term adapted to describe something of lower
economic status of the barrio, or to mean the repurposing of the mundane.
30
Ybarra-Frausto
described the phenomenon of rasquachismo not as being an aesthetic or a genre but a spirit or
ethos that lives within the spaces of Chicanx communities. In his initial text, Ybarra-Frausto cites
the following as being rasquache: the comedian Cantinflas, the Cheech Marin film, Born in East
L.A. (1987), chanclas, shopping at Kmart, and having an accent in two languages. These
examples may not generate a particular image of Mexican American culture to the outsider,
Ybarra-Frausto speaks to his peers about the politics of being in between a multitude of
experiences. Cantinflas, who can be best described as the Mexican Charlie Chaplin was one of
the first crossover Latinx actors into Hollywood, made his fortune portraying a caricature of a
Mexican peasant. Born in East L.A. (1987) is a classic to those of us pochos who got an ‘F’ in
Spanish focuses on the deportation of American citizen, Cheech Marin, in 1987 when the border
was a much less violent space.
31
And of course, Ybarra-Frausto references the stereotypical East
LA experience of sounding too Mexican in English and too white in Spanish.
32
Rasquachismo

30
See chunti.
31
Being whitewashed.

26
describes not only a visual language of aesthetics, but a particular cultural tact for sustainability
and survival. (Think freshly made salsa stored in a previously used yogurt container or an
emptied can of El Pato salsa being used as a planter.) Most particularly, associated with border
communities and transnational interactions between the U.S. and Latin America, rasquachismo is
a visual language that exists in the pockets of communities that are both equal parts Latinx and
American. It is the visual expression of being a transnationally displaced person, with the
resourcefulness of the homeland and a “hood rich” sensibility of being roped into the American
dream.
To create art that is rasquache, one does not need to have a lot of money, a classical
training in art, nor making art for the consumption of others. Rasquache is the act of creating for
the sake of creation. Some contemporary examples of rasquachismo include but are not limited
to a quinceañera dress made of chip bags, botas picudas, and the hairstyles of Mexico’s
cholombianos. Rasquachismo does not recognize nor care about the bounds of taste or present
trends. Embracing the ethos of the Baroque, rasquachismo is born of a lavishness that comes
from a nepantla experience of being somewhere in the middle of two countries, cultures, and
identities.

32
As many Chicanxs in East Los Angeles are born to Spanish speaking parents, but learn English in school, these
Chicanxs end up having an accent in both languages. There has been a long-time assumption that people who
experience this are poorly spoken in both languages however it has become clear through more recent studies that
prove otherwise.
Martínez, Ramón Antonio. “‘Spanglish’ as Literacy Tool: Toward an Understanding of the Potential Role of
Spanish-English Code-Switching in the Development of Academic Literacy.” Research in the Teaching of English
45, no. 2 (2010): 124–49. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40997087.

27
Fig. #5: Stefan Ruiz, From the “Cholombianos Series”, 2012.
Fig. #6: Girl in chip dress. Unknown photographer.

28
VII. ¡QUE ASCO!
As stated previously, the word Baroque is thought to come from a Spanish word used to
describe a pearl taken from the ocean that does fit into the appropriate aesthetic form for jewelry
or other adorning purposes and serves a capitalist function other than being the waste product of
an oyster. Pearls are formed out of a biological reaction that occurs within oysters that happens
when a foreign particle enters the oyster, as a defense mechanism the oyster creates a shell
around these particulars trapping them inside what forms into a pearl, meaning that even the
most beautiful of pearls form out of the grotesque and have a spirit of ugliness that is inherent to
the Baroque.
“¡Que asco!” is an expression commonly used by Spanish speakers to express disgust
and translates directly to “Gross!” or “That’s gross!” It would also become the name of the
1970s art collective formed by Henry Gamboa Jr., Gronk, Willie Herrón and Pattsi Valdez.
Asco, would embrace the disgust that they caused people as Chicanos, queer people, and
performance artists taking up space in the predominantly white art world.
Although each artist within Asco worked within their own respective mediums
individually, Asco as a collective worked predominantly in performance. Throughout the 1970s
and 1980s Asco, worked on a series of public performances, many of which took up public space
in both white and Latinx communities alike and forced unassuming audiences to confront their
own biases about race, gender, and homosexuality. Born and raised in East LA, Asco, was not
welcome in the traditional white and wealthy art world of Los Angeles during the 1970s.
Famously during a visit to LACMA as a high school student, Gamboa Jr. asked a LACMA

29
curator why there were no Mexican artists present in the museum’s collection, to which the
curator responded that Chicanos made graffiti, not art. Years later, in retaliation towards the
museum's blatant racism, Asco would famously tag their name on one of the outside walls of
LACMA and immortalize it through one of Gamboa Jr. photos, Spray Paint LACMA (1972) [Fig.
#7] , showing that they were capable of both the conceptualism of museum quality art and in
touch with their “graffiti” culture as Chicanos.
Another of Asco’s shocking performance done in collaboration with Robert Legorreto
aka La Cyclona, and Mundo Meza involved putting on a gay wedding at a public park, to which
many Latinx families who happened to be in the park were horrified at the site of. Asco would
come to call these performances “No Movies” as the performances were done outside of
Hollywood, without actors, and with little to no movement these “No Movies” would live on
through photos. Though Asco was close to Hollywood in regional proximity, there were also a
number of obstacles that kept Chicanos out of Hollywood, meaning that any stories about
Latinxs were made primarily by white people, largely contributing to the harmful stereotypes I
named prior. With poor representation in Hollywood and representation in news media as
Chicanxs being criminals, “No Movies” was a way of taking back the narrative.

30
Fig. #7 Harry Gamboa Jr. Spray Paint LACMA (1972)
The most Baroque of Asco’s performances would be that of Stations of the Cross (1971)
and First Supper (After a Riot) (1974), which likened the plight of Chicanos fighting in Vietnam
to that of Christ himself. In Stations of the Cross (1971) the male members of Asco carried a
cross down Whittier Boulevard calling attention to the disproportionate number of Chicanos in
numbers of men drafted into the Vietnam War. Just a year earlier, the Chicano Moratorium had
been held in East Los Angeles, in which protestors demanded an end to the war, naming that too
many Chicano men had died serving a country that held no loyalties to them, though no violence
had been led by the protestors the Los Angeles Police Department got word of the protest and
made a plan to ambush and attack the attendees, the protest turned into a riot and Ruben Salazar,
a Chicano reporter for the Los Angeles Times was murdered by the police. In First Supper (After
a Riot) (1974) [Fig. #8] all of the members of Asco sit in front of Whittier Blvd. sign in East LA,
at the same spot where the Chicano Moratorium took place, each wearing jester-like costumes

31
the foursome sits at the table having dinner in a sort of re-enactment of Da Vinci’s The Last
Supper (1498) and holding up a sign that looks uncanny to Orozco’s América Tropical:
Oprimida y Destrozada por los Imperialismos. Asco would come to be the definitive artists of
the rasqauche generation, their mix of multimedia art with performance would inspire many
other Latinx performance artists and rasquache artists to come.

Fig. #8: Asco, First Supper (After a Riot), 1974

32
VIII. LATINA EXCESS IN PERFORMANCE
In the later 1990s, Coco Fusco, a Cuban American artist/writer and queer Chicana
performance artist, Nao Bustamante, collaborated on Stuff, a project exploring their sexualized
identities as Latinas and as artists. [Fig #8]. Stuff (1998) was a touring hour-long performance
piece of various actos in which Fusco and Bustamante take their turns performing various Latina
stereotypes; the indigenous goddesses, overworked neutered mothers, and a hypersexual dildo
expert.
33
Throughout the performance foods and cooking are used as a metaphor for
Fig. #9 Scene of Coco Fusco in Stuff (1998).

33
While actos translates to acts in English, I am using this here to refer to actos as used and created by Luis Valdez
of El Teatro Campesino.

33
sexuality. Through various acts various fruits and vegetables function as stand ins for dildos and
penises. Within Bustamante and Fusco’s performance of Stuff (1996) there is clearly an ongoing
mockery of these tropes, every single phallic food is accompanied by some low-brow phallic
joke. Fusco described Stuff as follows:
Stuff is our look at the cultural myths that link Latin women and food to the erotic in the
Western popular imagination. [...] Our spoof, however, is not without a serious side.
Latin American literature is full of references to cannibalism - as the European fear of the
indigenous “other” as a cannibal, as a trope for Europe and America’s ravaging of Latin
America’s resources, and finally, as the symbolic revenge of the colonized who feed off
the colonial. If food here serves as a metaphor or sex, then eating represents
consumption in its crudest form. Cultural consumption involves the trafficking of that
which is most dear to us all ––our identities, our myths and our bodies. Stuff is our
commentary on how globalization and “cultural tourism” leave Latin women little choice
other than to satisfy consumer desires for “a bit of the other.
34

In in one of the short monologues it is likely that Fusco is specifically referencing Oswald de
Andrade’s Manifesto Antropófago (1928), a mestiƈagem manifesto that utilizes cannibalism as a
metaphor for the ways in which Iberic and Indigenous practices not only merge with but also
consume one another. Playing into the preconceived notion of Latin Americans as savages,
Oswald de Andrade reclaims the cannibal, urging that mestizos should metaphorically consume
Europe to assert their superiority over Europe, stating that so much of Europe’s notable moments
of philosophical revolutions would not have been possible without the discovery of the
Americas, the Haitian revolution, and the independence movements in Latin America. A writer
around the same time as Carpentier, one can see the similarities in their reclamations of the
subaltern.

34
Fusco, Coco, and Nao Bustamante. "Stuff." In Feminist Locations: Global and Local, Theory and Practice, edited
by Marianne DeKoven, 257-281. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2001.

34
In 1992 Fusco had collaborated with artist Guillermo Gomez-Peña on the performance
piece Two Undiscovered Amerindians Visit the West (1992) as a commemorative piece of the
500 years since the conquest of the Americas. Performing as the white man’s visualization of
two first nation peoples, Fusco and Gomez-Peña performed various rituals and odd acts all for
the entertainment and mockery of white museum goers. One of the most memorable and
disturbing of their rituals was a part of the performance where the Amerindians are hand fed
bananas by their handler. In her Roski Talk lecture about the work in 2020, Fusco recalled a rich
white donor at one of the institutions the performance requested that he be able to hand feed
Fusco the banana. Odd as this request was, the handler obviously said no, to which the man
began offering to pay several hundreds of dollars to fulfill his request. While disturbing, the
request was not all that surprising to those of us who are so often objectified by the art world. To
act like this was not some sexual fantasy of the man would be misleading; feeding a scantily clad
woman of color a phallic shape food while she was trapped in a cage invokes not only images of
bad BDSM pornography but a colonial fetishism of Black and Brown women by white men. One
cannot help but think of the exploitative and voyeuristic display of Sara Baartman at Worlds’
Fairs, of which Fusco would liken her experience to in The Other History of Intercultural
Performance, like a body on display.
35
No stranger to being exoticized by the art world, Fusco’s
experiences with the public during Two Undiscovered Amerindians Visit the West would no
doubt shape much of her work in Stuff (1998).

35
FUSCO, C. “The Other History of Intercultural Performance.” TDR : Drama review 38, no. 1 (1994): 143–167.

35
For artist Nao Bustamante, Latina sexuality was a frequently visited subject of her art as
both a Latina and a queer woman, Bustamante’s performance works such Indigurrito (1992),
Fig. #10. Nao Bustamante, Indigurrito (1992).
also put on during the five-hundred-year anniversary of the discovery of the Americas. In
Indigurrito (1992) Bustamante dressed like a sexy Aztec goddess [Fig. #9] donning underwear
and a feathered headdress, not unlike Salma Hayek’s character in Quentin Tarantino’s From
Dusk Till Dawn (1996). Bustamante would wear a strap on harness but in place of the typical
dildo one would usually encounter on this contraption there was a burrito. Bustamante would
then invite audience members - usually white and male ones - to come take a bite out of her

36
pseudo phallus. Obviously both a mix of erotic and humorous, the performance subverted not
only typical gender roles of Latinas, who are often assumed to be passive lovers, but also
asserting sexual dominance over the literal and figurative white man. A muse and friend of writer
José Esteban Muñoz would write about Bustamante’s performance Neapolitan (2003) in his
article “Feeling Brown, Feeling Down: Latina Affect, the Performativity of Race, and the
Depressive Position” in which Muñoz details Brownness as being alienated as the “other” while
being hyper aware of the cultural differences one has from white individuals. This experience of
Brownness appears throughout the art of Bustamante.
In Stuff (1998) food works as a device for exploring the way in which Latinx and Brown
bodies alike are imagined as being too much, hot, and above all “spicy”. In fact, one of the most
separating aspects of Anglo-Protestantism to Catholicism is their relationship to food. Early
Protestant believers within the U.S. practiced a diet of simplicity, abstaining from the corporeal
sensations food may cause them, while Roman Catholicism allows for its believers to partake in
their traditional foods, even celebrating a festival of feasting during Carnival. Through art and
popular culture alike, for better or worse food serves as a metaphor for how the Latinx is othered
and exotified.

37
IX. CONTEMPORARY RASQUACHISMO
Since the birth of Asco in the 1970s to the present day, the world has seen a shift in the
acceptance and mainstreaming of subcultures. While on the periphery of East LA during the
1970s, street culture has become an aesthetic rather than a lifestyle. White people wear Nike
Cortez sneakers, fine line tattoos are in style, and even Japan has a subculture obsessed with the
aesthetics of lowrider and cholo street culture.
36
Unlike fashion punks or fashion goths, there are
now fashion cholos. Whether through acceptance of appropriation, Los Angeles is seeing a
renaissance in embracing the aspects of the hood that were once looked down upon, the very
essence of rasquachismo.
In June of 2018, under the leadership of artist rafa esparza, a number of Chicanx and
Latinx artists would lead a parade of performances, costuming, and art through Los Angeles’
callejones, known by most English speakers as the Santee Alley. Part swap meet, part cultural
meeting ground, the Santee Alley is a number of streets in LA’s fashion district where consumers
can walk by and purchase just about anything for an incredibly affordable price; goldfish, turtles,
agua frescas, micheladas, counterfeit Louis Vuitton’s, quinceañera gowns, shoes, bags, tacos,
toys, jewelry, makeup. For a small price, the world is yours at the Santee Alley. The performance
led by esparza was titled de la Calle (2018) and like Asco’s earlier work, utilized the public
space to have a surprise performance in front of unsuspecting shoppers. Mixing drag,
performance art, and fashion performers dressed in a variety of outfits and costumes paraded
through the streets of the callejones, making some non-consenting audience members

36
Fine line tattooing originated in prisons, as gang members would use pens and other accessible objects to adorn
their bodies.

38
uncomfortable at the spectacle of many readably queer bodies. esparza wore a jacket adorned
with toy puppy dogs that make obnoxious barking noises and oftentimes do flips ––a fixture of
the callejones that has not changed in the last twenty years. Artist noé olivas dressed as an
extravagant maid wearing a work shirt, yellow cleaning gloves, and a ball gown made of mop
heads. Musical artist La Sancha wore a red ball gown with a Virgen de Guadalupe on the front.
[Fig. #11] The DIY element and extravagant costuming of this performance is a direct line to
Asco’s legacy of affronting the public with a feeling of disgust.
Fig. #11. Artist noé olivas and musical artist La Sancha in their De La Calle outfits.
Utilizing the Santee Alley, traditionally a space for low-income groups of mostly Latinx
identity, esparza brings in the art world into his own world and at the same time causes
discomfort for the conservative machista shoppers who are not used to seeing so many queer
bodies take up space. While be the next lineage of Asco’s sentimentality, esparza revitalizes the
aesthetics of Asco by bringing in an explicit sense of queerness and mixing more hood/cholo

39
elements of East LA culture, one that was less visible during Asco’s era. Using street culture,
fashion, and rasquachismo in his work, esparza often works with items and materials with a
significant connection to the Americas or Chicano culture. Making big works of paint on adobe
canvases, creating flightless birds, or creating his own brick pyramids esparza ties the
contemporary back to tradition. Unlike others who see Chicanismo as a trend, the street culture
of East Los Angeles is a language esparza is fluent in and has grown up around as a lifetime
Angelino.
While taking a less stylistic approach to modernizing rasquachismo one of esparza’s
contemporaries is noé olivas, a multi-disciplinary artist who frequently works with mundane
objects of labor. While esparza uses excess to carry on the spirit of the Baroque, olivas finds
beauty in simplicity and in objects often associated with the working class. Mixing high art
constructions with objects periphery to the Southern California Chicanx landscape. Throughout
his work, olivas often uses a motif of the sleeping Mexican, a racist pop culture image that dates
back to the Hollywood perception of Mexicans as the other of the Western. Depicted in these
films as drunks, villains, or simple peasants, the sleeping Mexican implies that Mexicans are
lazy, drunk, or can’t finish a job. Harmfully racist and incredibly untrue as Mexicans provide one
of the largest sources of underpaid labor in the U.S. particularly in industries like agriculture and
service, olivas looks at this image not as a commentary on the work ethic of Mexicans but the
culture of capitalism that demands Mexican laborers to work themselves into exhaustion.
Throughout his latest installation Let’s Pray (2022) olivas places small cement figurines
of sleeping Mexicans throughout the installation. Let’s Pray (2022) is overall an ode and altar to
laborers, ancestors, and the orishas - taking rasquache back to its indigenous roots and

40
acknowledging Africa’s huge contributions to Latinidad. Even the soil within this installation has
a personal connection to olivas and was collected at his home and then carted to the museum
while his apartment was under construction [Fig. #12]. The repurposing of dirt in Let’s Pray
Fig. #12 Installation shot of Let’s Pray (2022). Photo Elon Scoenholz. Courtesy of the artist.
(2022) calls back to the very essence of the Baroque, using old life or the Old World to make
something new. After the Spanish had overtaken the Mechica empire they were well aware of the
architectural feats of Tenochtitlan and on many occasions did not destroy the Pre-Columbian
edifices but built right on top of them. Right next to Mexico City’s Zócalo is a Pre-Columbian
temple called El Templo Mayor, in fact, as recently as 2017, archaeologists were still unearthing
Mechica ruins in Mexico City. The Pre-Columbian lives perpetually in the Americas whether
that be under the wraps of Catholic traditions, in the architecture of El Templo de San Francisco
Javier or in the ground of the land formerly known as Tenochitilan. With an appreciation and
celebration of the work of the unseen, olivas redirects the nature of rasquachismo to not just
appreciate the over the top but the more mundane elements of Latinidad to create art.

41
X. CONCLUSION
In the last decade, Latinx has come to be the term to describe those of Latin American
descent and origin. Born out of queer and trans activist spaces in Latin America, the term Latinx
came about as a means of combatting the gender binary that is ever present in Spanish, as a
gendered language, while also taking a gender-neutral approach for those of non-binary genders.
Though Chicano scholars, historians, and academics will sometimes use “Brown'' and Latinx
interchangeably, I want to specify that Latinx is not a race, it is merely a descriptor of one's
origin from a colonial country once populated by Spain and/or Portugal…or also the British,
French, and Dutch.
37
Latinidad is an arbitrary definition of experiences given to a largely
different and geographically sprawled region of the world. Not unlike the Baroque itself, there is
no way to police where Brownness stops and where it begins. While some white scholars and
homophobic Latinxs have argued that the “X” in Latinx is dysfunctional to the Spanish language
and Spanish pronunciations of the letter equis, I think there could be no more fitting more
Baroque use of a letter in the Spanish language. For one, the “X” hold with it a history of
Indigenous resistance, in Spanish documentation of the conquest, the “X” was used as a
placeholder for the “sh” sound that does not exist in the Spanish language but was necessary for
the spelling of Indigenous terms like Mechica, then spelled Mexica, Mexica through time would
become Mexico then taking on the Spanish pronunciation of the “X” as the “J” would be
pronounced in Spanish “Mejico”. Not unlike Malcolm X’s use of the “X” as a placeholder for

37
France was the colonial power in Haiti from 1659-1804. The United Kingdom was the colonial power in Belize
from 1783-1964.The Netherlands was the colonial power in Suriname from 1667-1795.

42
the African surname that was stolen from him, the “X” in Latinx carries with it a history
convoluted by Colonialism. To take on the “X” is to be Baroque.
In his essay “Feeling Brown, Feeling Down: Latina Affect, the Performativity of Race,
and the Depressive Position”, Jose Esteban Muñoz uses Brown not as a descriptor of a racial
identity but an identity built on an experience. First citing his essay in the art of Nao Bustamante,
Muñoz references to Bustamante’s performance piece, Neapolitan (2003) in which the artist
cries while watching Fresa y chocolate (2003) a film about the friendship between a gay man
and a straight man in Cuba some years after the rise of Fidel Castro. In Muñoz’s definition,
Brownness is not a racial identifier but a state of being, particularly defined by a certain state of
feelings and experiences different to that of the mainstream. While Muñoz deals with affect, this
experience of the Brown can be defined by a number of experiences; being exotified, being too
loud, being too dark, being too colorful, being too different, being too foreign. In the case of
Brownness I refer to here in this thesis, it can also mean existing in a paradoxical state of being -
living within two cultures one can neither decolonize from or properly assimilate into. Just like
the Baroque, Latinidad cannot be separated from the Americas or Europe, it is both at the same
time and in a constant internal battle. While of course there are white Latinos, the experience of
Brownness by the Latinx other is not an indicator of race; Rita Hayworth is Brown, George
Chakkiris with a tan is Brown, Rita Moreno is Brown, Ted Cruz is Brown. Even the most
whitewashed of Latinos at times slip up and reveal themselves to be Brown. By all accounts the
rules of Brownness are definitive of an experience of Spanish colonialism, a culture of
machismo, affect, excess, and cultural conundrums - all of which also makes Filipinxs Brown. In
his earlier text, Dissidentifications, Muñoz would also push back a definitive understanding of

43
Brownness saying that no particular identity is fixed. Oneself identification or in this case
dissidentification is tied to a feeling of disjunction from the status quo. In the case of many
Latinx Americans this feeling comes from the feeling of being a displaced immigrant in a new
nation state, and for many if not all mixed race Latinxs this feeling can also stem from being of
mixed Colonial, Indigenous, and African identity. As multiple minoritarian identities interact
with one another, the feelings of disidenitifications have an infinite number of possibilities for
being other. The Baroque came from the Americas, mixed with elements of Europe, and exists
transnationally in both Europe and the Americas. Surrealism would like elements of the Baroque
and bring them into a modern Freudian and Hegelian understanding of the body and the mind.
Built upon the cultural and religious spiritualism of the Baroque, realismo mágico mixes
elements of reality and para-reality not unlike Surrealism. In the U.S., the displacement and
nepantla status of many Chicanxs would cause them to create their own attitudes and style
antithetical to a Western understanding as simplicity being synonymous with wealth. The
Baroque wears many faces, the Baroque, like this paper and like Brownness is expansive with a
cultural reach that has no true end or beginning.

44
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Asset Metadata

Creator Perez, Leah (author)

Core Title LatinX excess: from the Baroque to rasquachismo, tracing a culture of extravagance

School Roski School of Art and Design

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Curatorial Practices and the Public Sphere

Degree Conferral Date 2022-05

Publication Date 04/15/2022

Defense Date 04/15/2022

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Baroque,Latin America,Latinx,Latinx art,Mesoamerica,OAI-PMH Harvest,performance art,Pre Columbian,Queer,rasquache,rasquachismo

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Moss, Karen (committee chair), Campbell, Andy (committee member), Gutierrez-Albilla, Julian (committee member)

Creator Email leahashleyperez@gmail.com,leahpere@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-oUC110964815

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