Essay Questions

Why is Mrs Jiminez portrayed as a sell-out?

The playwright believes that people like Mrs Jiminez have sold out her own culture because they want to assimilate into the culture and ways of their new nation. Mrs Jiminez works for the government and so has already positioned herself as an antagonist in Valdez's eyes; he feels that Chicanos are "us" and the government is "them", and so having a Mexican American like Mrs Jiminez work for "them" is something that he has very little respect for or understanding of.

Mrs Jiminez also wants to try to lose her accent, and her cultural traditions, which is evident when she tells Sancho that he should pronounce her last name in a more Americanized way, sounding the hard letter J at the beginning, instead of saying it in the Mexican way. She is also buying into the cultural stereotypes of the Chicano man by purchasing one of the robots.

Valdez uses the models to demonstrate society's idea of what the stereotypical Mexican is like. What are these stereotypes?

The first is the farm laborer. In fact, Californians at the time believed that most Mexican Americans were farm workers. The farm worker does not have any education and speaks no English. His counterparts do actually speak English, but the stereotype extends more to their behavior than to their educational level.

There is also a stereotype that suggests Mexican Americans are gang members; the robot demonstrating this is a substance abuser with violent tendencies and is constantly cursing. A slightly more educated version of this stereotype is seen as a revolutionary, always trying to start a revolution, unashamedly communist and rallying the workers to strike and protest.

The final stereotype is the Americanized Mexican, who has a college degree, big ambitions and is polite, mannerly and genteel. He is also bi-lingual.