Question

Is the sleeping Mexican cultural icon of folk history or is it disparaging cliche?

Answer 1

Answer.

As is often the case with popular images in capitalist and commercialised societies, people of other ethnicities, races are portrayed using common stereotypes held by mainstream groups and perpetuated by media? The image of a Mexican wrapped in a poncho, leaning against a wall or cactus and taking a nap which have proliferated in Mexican restaurants across the United States can be argued to partake in ostensibly of theses similar racial stereotyping. This is because the icon reperesents the idea that Mexicans are lazy and poor. However, the defenders claim that “Sleeping Mexican” has a history in folk art going back to Diego Rivera and Mardonio Magaña. Howeve, what is pertinent in this debate is How this image has been reappropriated in the present by commercial sector and is being recirculated to create certain cultural effects. It wasn’t until the 1940s when the tourism industry kicked off, that merchants began mass producing the sleeping Mexican. Therefore, symbols like the sleeping Mexican become more alarming in the present context of increasingly vulnerable state of cultural acceptance and diversity and we run the risk of cultural insensitivity in portraying members of the ethnic minorities in such generalised, fixed, and unchanging traits.