Zoot Suit (Characters)

Characters

Adella

See Della Barrios

Della Barrios

Henry’s twenty-year-old current girlfriend, who sports a mini-skirt and fingertip-length coat, is prettier than Henry’s last girlfriend. At Sleepy Lagoon, he proposes to marry her after he returns from his Naval duty. Although Della does not write to Henry while he is in prison, she herself serves a jail term for her involvement in the gang fight and would have had time to write. When her parents ask her to choose between home and Henry, she chooses to move into Henry’s place and wait for him. Even so, she does not pressure Henry into the marriage the gang expects but lets him make his own choice.

Alice Bloomfield

A reporter for the Daily People’s World newspaper, Alice heads the campaign for the gang’s release. As a Jew, she insists that she understands their predicament, and that she fights for them because of the oppression of her people. Her temporary passion for Henry emanates as much from the intensity of their shared political goals as it does from the chemistry between them.

Judge F. W. Charles

Judge Charles conducts a biased case, overruling justified objections by the gang’s lawyer and imposing unfair restrictions, such as not allowing the boys to cut their hair or change clothing and seating them apart from their attorney.

Cholo

Cholo, a younger member of the gang, gets left behind after the arrests. He and Rudy get into their own brawls with the Anglos one night, in which Rudy does the fighting while Cholo escorts the women out of harm’s way.

Downey Gang

A rival gang who go to the dance, start fights, and later join Rafas in terrorizing the party at the Williams Ranch.

Lieutenant Edwards

Lt. Edwards is the tough cop who tells the press he refuses to “mollycoddle these youngsters anymore” as he puts the gang under arrest. He tries — and fails — to bribe Henry into squealing on the other gang members. He does so by offering to let Henry off in time to report for Navy service.

Guard

The Guard at San Quentin calls the gang “greaseballs” and puts Henry in solitary confinement for calling him a “bastard.” He pantomimes reading the letters the boys receive while the writers narrate them. He is not so much an individual character as a part of the system that oppresses the pachucos.

Ismael

See Smiley Torres

Newsboy

The newsboy hawks the papers whose headlines move the plot along. He provides the voice of the media.

El Pachuco

El Pachuco (pah-choo-ko) presides over the entire play, acting as Henry’s alter ego. In the plays Brechtian moments, Pachuco interrupts the action or speaks to the audience directly, and he also sings accompaniment to the action. El Pachuco is the consummate Mexican-American pachuco figure, a zoot-suiter who is tough, cool, slick, and defiant. He tells it like it is and is meticulous and vain about his appearance.

In a 1988 interview with David Savran, Valdez explained the role of El Pachuco: “The Pachuco is the Jungian self-image, the superego if you will, the power inside every individual that’s greater than any human institution. . . . I dressed the Pachuco in the colors of Testatipoka, the Aztec god of education, the dean of the school of hard knocks.” El Pachuco achieves mythic proportions when he is stripped of his zoot suit by the Anglo rioters. Dressed only in a loincloth, he adopts a regal majesty as he exits, walking backward, from the stage. When he returns, he is not content to accept the Press’s damning prediction that Henry will return to prison. At his prompting, the other characters recite alternative futures for Henry. He controls the action of the play and embroiders the events of Henry’s life.

Press

The Press plays the role of an antagonist in the play, as it is the headlines that inflame the Anglos to riot and biases the public’s perception of the gang’s innocence. When the sailors taunt Rudy and the gang members left after the arrest, the Press eggs them on, calling the zoot suiters, “gamin’ dandies.” The Press also plays the unprecedented role of prosecutor in the trial, further emphasizing the damaging effect of the media.

Rafas

The leader of the Downey gang, Rafas pushes Rudy down at the dance and gets into a knife fight with Henry. Henry gets the upper hand, but El Pachuco prevents him from killing Rafas. Humiliated, Rafas takes his Downey Gang to the Williams Ranch and terrorizes the people holding a party there.

Dolores Reyna

Henry’s mother is a traditional Mexican mother who lovingly teases Henry about his zoot suit but allows him wear it. She refuses, however, to let her daughter leave the house in a short skirt because it makes her look like a puta (whore). The trial is devastating to her, and she is elated when her two boys return home, one from prison and one from the war. She thinks the solution to Henry’s problems is to marry Della and throw away his zoot suit.

Enrique Reyna

Henry’s father, Enrique is a first-generation Mexican American. He represents traditional values of family, honesty, hard work, infinite patience, and personal integrity. He wants his son to stay home and avoid the inevitable conflict with the police that will get Henry re-arrested, but he wisely knows that he cannot protect his son from the fate that circumstances and his son’s character hold in store.

Henry Reyna

The play’s protagonist, Henry is described as “twenty-one, dark, Indian-looking.” He becomes the primary suspect for the murder of Jose Williams because he is the leader of the 38th-street gang. The arrest spoils Henry’s plan to join the Navy, and he is forced to face the problems of the barrio. His stoical resistance to interrogation only gets him beaten up, and he discovers that, guilty or not, he will pay a tremendous price for his ethnic heritage and pachuco style.

At first standoffish with Alice, he succumbs to a kind of infatuation, then reasserts his vow to Della at the play’s end. The historical Henry was rearrested and imprisoned. According to Valdez, “Henry Renya . . . El Pachuco . . . the man . . . the myth . . . still lives.”

Lupe Reyna

Henry’s younger sister, Lupe, at sixteen, wants to adopt the pachuca style, with a short skirt and fingertip coat, but her parents forbid it.

Rudy Reyna

Rudy is Henry’s nineteen-year-old younger brother. He wants so much to follow in his brother’s footsteps that he fashions a make-shift zoot suit out of his father’s old suit. He drinks too much at the dance and gets into a fight with Rafas. After the mass arrests, he endures attacks by the Anglo sailors, who strip him of his zoot suit. He enlists in the War and returns a hero.

George Shearer

George is a middle-aged public defender assigned to the pachucos by the courts. He is athletic, strong, competent, and dedicated to his clients. He refuses to give up on Henry and the gang and finally his associates wins their release, although he himself is drafted and sent off to war at a critical moment in the trial.

Sergeant Smith

Sgt. Smith is even more brutal than his partner, Lt. Edwards. Smith tells Edwards “you can’t treat these animals like people,” and beats Henry senseless, trying to get details about the Sleepy Lagoon murder out of the young man. Smith represents the oppressive members of the anglo majority who malign the Hispanics.

Swabbie

Swabbie is an Anglo sailor who frequents the dance hall that the pachucos frequent. It is he who strips El Pachuco of his zoot suit.

Smiley Torres

One of the members of the 38th street gang, aged twenty-three. He had started the 38th street gang with Henry, but now he has a wife and child. After getting arrested, he regrets having joined the pachucas: he feels too old for parties and jail.

Bertha Villareal

Henry’s former girlfriend, who sports a tattoo and is not as pretty as Della. Rudy dates her after Henry is imprisoned.

Media Adaptations

• Zoot Suitwas filmed on stage in 1981 by Universal Pictures at the Aquarius Theatre in Hollywood with segments of cinematic material interspersed, lending occasional moments of realism. It is widely available on VHS.