“The important thing is this stubborn desire to be different, this anguished tension with which the lone Mexican - an orphan lacking both protectors and positive values - displays his differences. The pachuco has lost his whole inheritance: language, religion, customs, beliefs. He is left with only a body and a soul with which to confront the elements, defenseless against the stares of everyone. His disguise is a protection, but it also differentiates and isolates him: it both hides him and points him out. His deliberately aesthetic clothing, whose significance is too obvious to require discussion, should not be mistaken for the outfit of a special group or sect. Pachuquismo is an open society, and this in a country full of cults and tribal costumes, all intended to satisfy the middle-class North American's desire to share in something more vital and solid than the abstract morality of the "American Way of Life." The clothing of the pachuco is not a uniform or a ritual attire. It is simply a fashion, and like all fashions it is based on novelty - the mother of death, as Leopardi said - and imitation.”
—Octavio Paz, “The Pachuco and Other Extremes,” Labyrinth of Solitude (1950)
“¡Ese Loco. cúrate! Dig on what/ on what them dudes are saying, VATO. That you are (ija-ja, que lucas!): a non-goal oriented alienated being, sufriendo un "identity-crisis", rejecting conventional modes & mores. ¡Me La Rayo! Y wacha, dizque you sprang from EL CHUCO, Boogie'd into LOS & found the battleground for US Naval wars; y se acá. Orale, simón que si.”
—raúlrsalinas, “Homenaje al Pachuco,” Un Trip Through the Mind Jail y Otras Excursiones (1980)
“Me gritaban que porque me creía tan grande What was I trying to do, you growled Show you up? Make the teachers like me, pet me, Tell me what a credit to my people I was? I was playing right into their hands, you challenged And you would have none of it. I was to stop. I was to be like you I was to play your game of deadly defiance Arrogance, refusal to submit. The game in which the winner takes nothing Asks for nothing Never lets his weaknesses show.”
—Inés Hernández-Ávila, “Para Teresa,” Con Razón, Corazón (1987)
“Ladies and gentlemen the play you are about to see is a construct of fact and fantasy. The Pachuco Style was an act in Life and his language a new creation. His will to be was an awesome force eluding all documentation… A mythical, quizzical, frightening being precursor of revolution Or a piteous, hideous heroic joke deserving of absolution? I speak as an actor on the stage. The Pachuco was existential for he was an Actor in the streets both profane and reverential. It was the secret fantasy of every bato in or out of the Chicanada to put on a Zoot Suit and play the Myth más chucote que la chingada.”
—Luis Valdez, Zoot Suit (1978)
