Article published in:
Art and the expression of complex identities: Imagining and contesting ethnicity in performance
Edited by Valentina Pagliai and Marcia Farr
[Pragmatics 10:1] 2000
► pp. 99–123

Sol, sombra, y media luz

History, parody, and identity formation in the Mexican American carpa

This paper analyzes a parody of the tango “A media luz” that was performed by Rodolfo Garcia, a Mexican American comedian who worked in his family’s tent show, the Carpa Garcia, in the early 1940s. I argue that by juxtaposing the generic conventions of the tango with those of the canción ranchera and by introducing carnivalesque humor, Mr. Garcia’s parody articulated a distinctly local Mexican American identity which was strongly linked to a sense of working-class masculinity. In this way, the parody highlights the class- and gender-based contradictions that were inherent in ongoing processes of Mexican American identity fonnation at mid-century.
Keywords: popular theater, genre, greater Mexico
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.
Published online: 01 March 2000
https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.10.1.06han
References
Bakhtin, Mikhail M.
(1981) “From the prehistory of novelistic discourse.” In Michael Holquist (ed.), The dialogic imagination: Four essays by M.M. Bakhtin. Translated by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
(1984) Rabelais and his world. Translated by Helene Iswolsky. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Bauman, Richard
(1978) Verbal art as performance. Rowley, Massachusetts: Newbury House Publishers.Google Scholar
Briggs, Charles and Richard Bauman
(1992) Genre, intertextuality, and social power. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 2.2: 131–172. Crossref  BoPGoogle Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre
(1984) Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste. Translated by Richard Nice. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Buck-Morss, Susan
(1989) The dialectics of seeing. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Garcia, Richard A.
(1991) The rise of ‘the Mexican-American middle class: San Antonio, 1929–1941. College Station: Texas A&M University Press.Google Scholar
(1978) Class consciousness and ideology: The Mexican community of San Antonio, Texas: 1930–1940. Aztlân 91: 23–70.Google Scholar
Haggard, Merle
(1966) Someone told my story. B-side of Capitol 5803.
Hall, Stuart
(1986) Gramsci’s relevance to the study of race and ethnicity. Journal of Communication Inquiry 10.2:5-27. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Haney, Peter C.
(1990) The carpa in Texas. Unpublished fieldwork report. San Antonio, Texas: University of Texas Institute of Texan Cultures at San Antonio.
(1996) Me hago la… ilusión: Genre play and status consciousness in the Mexican American Carpa. In Proceedings of the First Annual Conference on the Emerging Literature of the Southwest Culture. El Paso, Texas: University of Texas at El Paso.Google Scholar
(1997) Carpa y teatro, sol y sombra: The carpa in Mexican American society and history. Unpublished Master’s Report. Austin, Texas: University of Texas at Austin, Department of Anthropology
(1999) Singing to the machine: Rodolfo Garcia’s autobiographical report. In Michal Brody, Grit Liebscher, and Hari Kanta Ogren (eds.), SALSA VI: Proceedings of the Sixth Annual Symposium About Language and Society—Austin. TLF 42. Austin, Texas: University of Texas at Austin, Department of LinguisticsGoogle Scholar
Huerta, Jorge
(1982) Chicano theater: Themes and forms. Ypsilanti, Michigan: Bilingual Press.Google Scholar
Hymes, Dell
(1975) Breakthrough into performance. In Dan Ben-Amos and Kenneth S. Goldstein (eds.), Folklore: Performance and communication. The Hague: Mouton, pp. 11–74. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kanellos, Nicolas
(1990) A history of Hispanic theater in the United States: Origins to 1940. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Limón, José E.
(1994) Dancing with the Devil: Society and cultural poetics in Mexican American South Texas. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
(1998) American encounters: Greater Mexico, the United States, and the erotics of Culture. Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Montejano, David
(1987) Anglos and Mexicans in the making of Texas 18S6-1986. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Monsivâis, Carlos
(1984) La agonia interminable de la canción romantica. Comunicacióny cultura 121: 2–39.Google Scholar
(1988) Escenas depudory liviandad. México, D.F.: Editorial Grijalbo.Google Scholar
Paz, Octavio
(1985) The labyrinth of solitude. Translated by Lysander Kemp, Yara Milos and Rachel Phillips Belash. New York, NY: Grove.Google Scholar
Pena, Manuel
(1985) The Texas Mexican Conjunto. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
(1992) Class, gender, and machismo: The ‘treacherous-woman’ folklore of Mexican male workers. Gender & Society, 5.1:30-46. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Ramos, Samuel
(1962[1934]) Profile of man and culture in Mexico. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Romano, Eduardo
(ed.) (1989) Las letras del tango: Antologia cronológica 1900–1980. Buenos Aires: Editorial Fundación Ross.Google Scholar
Sandoval, Jorge
(1987) Unpublished interview with Rodolfo Garcia for the Public Television show Heritage . San Antonio, Texas: KLRU-TV
Sareli, Jorge
(1977) El tango en México. México, D.F. : Editorial Diana.Google Scholar
Savigliano, Mart
(1995) Tango and the political economy of passion. Boulder: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Ybarra-Frausto, Tomas
(1983) “La ChataNoloesca: Figura del donaire.” In Nicolas Kanellos (ed.), Mexican American theatre: Then and now. Houston: Arte Publico Press, pp. 41–51.Google Scholar
(1984) I can still hear the applause. La farândula Chicana: Carpas y tandas de variedad. In Nicolas Kanellos (ed.), Hispanic theater in the United States. Houston: Arte Publico Press, pp. 45–60.Google Scholar

Full-text

Sol, sombra, y media luz
Cited by

Cited by 1 other publications

Hall, Kira
2005. Intertextual Sexuality. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 15:1 ► pp. 125 ff. Crossref logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 17 april 2022. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.