Granger Babcock

In Zoot Suit: An American Play ( 1978), Luis Valdez emphatically reasserts
the figure of the pachuco, which, as Jorge Huerta, Marcos Sanchez-
Tranquilino, John Tagg, and Angie Chabram-Dernersesian have all theorized,
marks the limit of the first stage, or wave, of Chicano cultural nationalism. As
an outgrowth of Valdez's work with El Teatro Campesino ( The Farmworker's
Theater), Zoot Suit also represents the culmination of what is generally
recognized as the first stage of his work ( 1965- 1978), which, not
coincidentally, parallels the initial period of the Chicano Civil Rights
Movement in the Southwest.

Valdez began his "professional" writing and directing career in 1965
when he founded the Teatro Campesino during the Delano Grape Strike as a
way to gain support for the United Farm Workers of California (UFWOC),
then under the leadership of Caesar Chavez. At this time, Valdez's writing and
directing focused on what he called actos; collectively created, actos were
highly improvised skits that focused on the multiple oppressions experienced
by the Chicano huelguistas (strikers) at the hands of the growers and
esquiroles (scabs). According to Valdez, "The actos were born quite matter
of factly in Delano. Nacieron hambrientos de la realidad [They were born of
the hunger for reality. Everything and anything that pertained to the daily life,
la vida cotidiana, of the huelguistas, became food for thought, material for
actos" ( Early Works11; italics added).

In 1967, in an effort to form a permanent theater company and thereby
expand its political base, Valdez and the Teatro Campesino left the
sponsorship of the United Farm Workers. According to Jorge Huerta, "It was
not an ideological difference that motivated the separation, but the need to
become a full-time theater, unencumbered by the daily demands of a struggling
labor union. Valdez had to ask himself if he could really accomplish his goals
with a sometime troupe, or if the Teatro Campesino could become a major
force in the wider spectrum of the burgeoning Chicano Movement" ( 61 ).
Valdez located the theater permanently in San Juan Bautista, California.
Writing in 1970, Valdez explained the decision to leave the union: "El Teatro
Campesino was born in the huelga [strike], but the very huelga would have
killed it. . . . A struggle like the huelga needs every person it can get to serve

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