The Cinematic Cholo in Havoc

For over a century now, ‘the motion-picture industry […] has functioned as the primary transmitter of racist Latino/a images ’ (Castro 2006: 89). The cholo, or Chicano gang member, is a prevalent archetypal figure used to depict Mexican and Mexican American men and youth on the screen.1 The ‘inarticulate, violent, and pathologically dangerous “bandidos” ’ of the silent film era have been transformed into the cholo (Berg 2002: 69). As the reel descendent of the Mexican bandido, the cholo is of questionable character, with few redeeming qualities. Like his predecessor, the cinematic cholo is an abject being (Mora 2011). In this text, I would like to comment on the role of the cinematic cholo as an abject being within the film Havoc (Kopple 2005). In the film, a group of White high school students from the Pacific Palisades, a beach front district of Los Angeles cross paths with the stereotypical cholo in a barrio approximately 25 miles away. In an earlier work (Mora 2011), I identified the cholo characters in Havoc as stereotypes. I documented how cholo characters were being depicted by considering their position within the overall film narratives; how they interacted amongst themselves; how they interacted with non-chol