The Secret of Speedy Gonzales: Hispanic Race Consciousness

Given a choice between having

public schools named after George Washington and
having Speedy Gonzales cartoons on television,

I`d probably take the former, but then no one has
bothered to ask me about either one. Indeed, no one at
the Atlanta-based and Ted Turner-owned Cartoon Network
seemed to have asked much of anyone about removing the
world`s fastest Spanish-accented mouse from the airways,
but now, after thousands of fans have demanded his
return, the mouse is back.

Washington, meanwhile, is still having his name
stripped off the schools.

The episode is almost a caricature, a cartoon if you
will, of

Political Correctness. Speedy Gonzales, in the event
your parents kept you locked in the bathroom throughout
your childhood, is a

cartoon character who is depicted as a Mexican
mouse, complete with

sombrero, white pajamas and a Mexican accent, and
the ability to run really, really fast. He was created
more than 50 years ago in the Warner Brothers cartoon
series, won an Academy Award in

1955, and has generally been a popular feature with
young and old. Hooray.

But not everyone agreed, and last spring some fans
began to complain that the character was vanishing from
the network`s channel. There were rumors that Mr. Turner
himself had decided that the character—and a companion,
Speedy`s opposite,

Slowpoke Rodriguez, who`s as slow as Speedy is
quick—was offensive to Hispanics. The network`s
spokesmen denied that was the reason, claiming that the
cartoon`s ratings had dropped. Nevertheless, it was not
an unreasonable rumor because both characters stereotype
Hispanics as much as Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent
stereotyped WASPs. You might expect Hispanics with a
tortilla on their shoulders to get a little bent because
of Speedy.

But now it turns out that the very people leading the
protest of the mouse`s disappearance from the airways
were Hispanics themselves. As the Washington Times

reported last week,

LULAC, the League of United Latin American Citizens,
"the nation`s oldest Hispanic-American rights
organization," called Speedy "a `cultural icon` who
displayed plenty of admirable pluck."

"It`s been silly not to have Speedy on the air
because people watch him in Latin America, and they love
him,"

Virginia Cueto, an editor at a Hispanic
English-language website told the Times.
"Thousands of Hispanics and others have logged onto
HispanicOnline`s

message board to voice their support for Speedy`s
return." How sweet.

So the return of Speedy Gonzales would seem to be a
kick in the enchiladas to the P.C. legions who wanted
him off the air and a rebirth of common sense about a
show and a character that people like and enjoy. But
there`s a bit more under the sombrero than that, it
seems.

One fan on HispanicOnline wrote that "Speedy is more
of a positive symbol. He always brings down that Daffy
Duck to the point that the latter finally started
respecting Speedy. People like Speedy." Indeed, last
April Miss Cueto

told the New York Times` Tom Kuntz that "many
Hispanics view Speedy as a positive ethnic reflection
because he always outsmarts the `greengo` cat
Sylvester."

What this tells us is that the reason Hispanics like
Speedy Gonzales is not that they dislike the Political
Correctness that probably took him off the air but they
very opposite, that he has become a symbol of ethnic
power—over whites. There`s no particular reason to infer
that Sylvester and Daffy Duck and other characters are
necessarily white, but apparently that`s how Hispanics
themselves normally perceive the natural enemies of the
mouse with whom they identify.

Like a good many other Warner Brothers cartoon
characters, Bugs Bunny, being the chief, Speedy Gonzales
is descended from what in folklore are known as

"Trickster figures." Tricksters (Br`er
Rabbit in the

Uncle Remus stories is typical) win through cunning
and cleverness against physically powerful but rather
dumb and clumsy enemies. Both individuals and whole
peoples who consider themselves downtrodden and
persecuted tend to identify with Trickster figures—which
is the main reason so many children like them in
cartoons.

Of course, real folklore also has real heroes who win
through valor and virtue rather than trickery. You won`t
find too many of those in American cartoons today.

Having Speedy Gonzales back on television is harmless
enough, regardless of which races his opponents are, but
there should be no misunderstanding as to why he
returned. It wasn`t because so many Hispanics (let alone
non-Hispanics) got sick of the

PC primness that tried to rub him out but because he
has become a popular and powerful symbol of

anti-white racial consciousness for the emerging
Hispanic majority.

For those white Americans whose minds have not been
rotted out by their own country`s television, it might
make them think about how they`ll fare when they cease
to be the majority.

COPYRIGHT CREATORS
SYNDICATE, INC.

July 04, 2002