You’ve probably seen the image known as the “sleepy Mexican”, a man wearing a sombrero, sitting with his knees to his chest, sleeping. It has been used over the years to portray a negative stereotype of Mexicans as lazy.

But it wasn’t always like that, and it doesn’t always look like that now. Maribel Alvarez, a professor at the University of Arizona’s School of Anthropology and Southwestern 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: Origins are three different moments in time, if you will. The first is really up to the travelogues. Americans travel to Mexico in the late 19th century, go to the markets, and begin to see indigenous men and women who, in the heat of the day, will rest and lean against an adobe wall, erect a serape and rest. This becomes a curious observation of travelers and is recorded in publications that reach back to the United States. This is the first reference.

Then we begin to see how the independence of Mexico comes with full board and the indigenista movement, the movement of painters and artists to uplift and uplift the indigenous communities of Mexico. You see Diego Rivera capturing an image of a man wrapped in a blanket crouching in a field. The idea there is one of exaltation and not one of stereotyping, but the opposite, associating the image with hard work.

And then an important occasion happens when a sculptor who was part of this movement of great murals in Mexico, the great revolutionary period, a Colombian sculptor who is actually in residence in Mexico by the name of Romulo Rozo, creates a sculpture which is exactly the image as we know it today, Sleeping Mexico puts it on display in the National Library, and a reporter pokes fun at the image.

And then the next day, the very next day, the image that was the sculpture of this famous artist is plagiarized and turned into the infamous stereotype that we know today.

BRODIE: So there seems to be some sort of rhyme or reason to the evolution of how this is seen, or what you know of what people look at this image and what they think?

ALVAREZ: Mark, context here is everything. Consider that the image arises from an impulse to exalt the peons of the rejected, the indigenous labor force of Mexico, with no intention of reading into it anything other than dedication, dignity, hard work. But the context is one in which the United States is grappling with the “problem” in the unquoted Mexican quote.

So you start to see the image become the subject of ridicule. That’s across the border in Mexico, you have to give the class struggle context. The fact that there were some people who intended to uplift the indigenous populations of Mexico meant that there was a whole class that scoffed at that effort and thought it was a foolish attempt to redeem a history of indigenous Mexico, its history.

So it was immediately fodder for both sides looking for a way to represent the Mexican in a less than dignified way.

BRODIE: It’s so interesting because, as you refer to, the earliest depictions were based on what people actually saw with their own eyes. And then it became kind of a stereotypical representation and not a particularly nice one, as something that wasn’t necessarily seen as a favorable image to people.

ALVAREZ: This is one of the things that has drawn me to study the image for the past 20 years. Some people even on social media say, why would you have the image of a lazy mexican when mexicans are the exact opposite, a workforce in every aspect of society? So this conundrum of our representation, our ideologies sticking to something that actually contradicts it. It is, of course, what led me to pursue his study.

BRODY: Yes. So where are we now in terms of what this image represents, maybe in both the US and Mexico.

ALVAREZ: There has always been a class division. There has always been a Mexican elite and a Chicano intellectual elite that has always been offended in a deep sense by the image as assigned and used in racist representations by corporate America. And this follows, of course, the rebellion of the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s against the Frito Bandito and the hot, hot chili peppers of the senorita, all these imputed stereotypes.

At the same time, working class people have always had in my experience of ethnographic work and in many other sources, even on social media, you can see that, people feel like, why are you offended when obviously it’s not us. So you see the working class, a humor, rasquachismo, if you will, that says it’s hilarious, but it’s absurd.

And in this absurdity, we don’t recognize ourselves and take offense so much as utter bewilderment with what one person told me is the gringo mentality that we see something in which is actually contradicted by our own presence, work, the food they eat every day.

So this class divide is something that is less happy to talk about when it comes to how the image circulates among Mexican-American elites, as well as Central Mexican elites versus working-class or rural Mexican communities.

BRODIE: It’s what allows, for example, a Mexican restaurant to include this image on their sign or on their menu, or, you know, a gift shop with, you know, merchandise from Mexico to include, you know, little sculptures of that.

ALVAREZ: Absolute. And it is this context that also determines many of the reactions you have seen in the protests. A restaurant, there are restaurants right here in Tucson that are very popular Mexican-American family owned restaurants that absolutely have that picture on the door on the logo. And the association there in their minds, there is no contradiction. It is a place of rest. It is a place of care.

You’ve also seen it as a trademark here in the patio industry in the United States when you have the pavers that have had that image produced in the Southwest since the 1950s. And the idea was again in the patio, you relax in the restaurant , you relax.

Where it becomes out of context is when cities do a nice tourism promotion, self-promotion, they can invite a representation and then an artist who has no idea about this history and doesn’t understand the divisions that exist within a community can use the image apparently innocent. but not realizing that who promotes the image that speaks for its humor or derision has a lot to do with whether or not you will cause controversy.

BRODIE: And Maribel, I’m so fascinated by the concept that people are able to look at something that other people use as a stereotype for them and be able to separate themselves from it, whether it’s this image or any other that someone might try. put someone else down and that person can say, yeah, that’s not me. I don’t really know what you’re talking about.

ALVAREZ: Absolute. This is one of the ways in which stereotypes are both intriguing, dangerous, but potentially fruitful, in that they reveal what lies beneath. They reveal a lack of context or relationality. When you look at how stereotypes are used in in-groups versus out-groups, there’s always a thread that connects the meaning to a life story that already feels worthy of being told, and therefore can be laughed at because it does not come from a place of want or lack. deficit.

From the outside, it’s very hard to bridge that and living the space of authenticity of experience, and that’s where we have trouble all the time. Now, having said that, Mark, the levels of outrage that sometimes appear around these social media controversies on Instagram, for example, that takes it to another level.

This is just a deep offense that is of our time is a phenomenon of the outrage of our times. And I’ve found that those conversations tend to be just as flat, even when they protest the stereotype, as flat and as uninspired as some of the most, the real offensive racist remarks.

BRODIE: And I think 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 everyone’s laughing and saying, oh that, it’s clever that they’re trying to say it’s 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 offended by this?

ALVAREZ: Oh, absolutely. There are reactions to the image, but I think the last 25 years have brought a greater depth to the image and visual literacy. And you have artists like Judy Baca, the amazing Chicana artist from LA, who have taken the offense in a different direction. They considered the body of the sculpture as a story canvas of Mexican labor, for example, and use it and reproduce the form. You see the sleepy Mexican with his head down and sombrero and broken back. And using that as a form of telling a narrative of empowering dignity that transcended crime.

EMBROIDERY: You find that’s the kind of image that people have tried to reclaim and take ownership of, as opposed to allowing it to be a negative stereotype of them as it was, but really take ownership and can take, take power from it.

ALVAREZ: Yes, I saw this in a new generation. We encountered this here in Arizona when, in 2010, the bill SB 1070 fought ethnic studies in Mexican American studies. And Tucson High School’s Club Unidos designed a T-shirt with a seated sleeping Mexican with the phrase “think again.” And when you look at the second plane of the artwork, the somewhat crude depiction included that sleeping Mexican lifting his head and reading one of the banned books in the ethnic studies controversy.

BRODIE: What do you see as the relationship, if any, around this image and all the conversations 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 meaningful messages escape us. I mean, how is it possible that anyone can talk about Mexican immigrants and the labor force in this country and the commercial relationship of the products of labor that cross the border in only one dimension of illegality, of criminality?

Where this connection happens is between more information, more literacy, more access, and less knowledge and less wisdom in analyzing these things. And how could that be possible? In asking that question, I ask a question that many people ask, how did we get here? We should know better, and we know better, and young people know better.

A lot of companies are now shying away from this kind of controversial imagery. So on the one hand, in the corporate sense, there have been some lessons learned, some battles won in the rhetorical sense of this political moment. It’s confusing, it’s confusing, and it’s totally frustrating.