Bilingualism, Biculturalism, and the Cisco Kid Cycle

• Published in: The Bilingual review 2004-09, Vol.28 (3), p.195-231
• Main Author: Keller, Gary D.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Achievements and awards; Biculturalism; Bilingualism; Cowboys; Encyclopedias; Ethnicity; Film criticism; Film music; Henry, O; Hispanic Americans; Hispanics; Historical Interpretation; Imagination; Journalism; Latin American culture; Literary characters; Mexican Americans; Motion picture industry; Motion pictures; Movies; Novels; Periodical publishing; Personality; Popular culture; Racial Identification; Research and Criticism / Investigaciones y Crítica; Robbery; Smits, Jimmy; Television; Theater; Valdez, Luis
• ISSN: 0094-5366; 2327-624X

[...]as interpreted by Jimmy Smits in the Luis Valdez film, he is cast as a proto-Chicano, pretty good but not totally so, and especially confused with respect to his social identity as a sort of American in Benito Juárez's troubled Mexico during the French Intervention of the 1860s. [...]in 1994, Cisco became nuestro, a Mexican and Mexican American hero, even though his character roamed the land some eighty years before what Luis Leal has termed "the Chicano period," which began with the Zoot Suit riots of World War II. Through the artistry of Luis Valdez, el Cisco Kid nuestro was captured in the lens on that river, call it Rio Bravo or Rio Grande as you will, that separates and bridges Mexico and the United States and that is the via crucis of lo chicana. [...]as we shall see, the relationship of Don Quixote and Sancho to Cisco and Pancho is more than merely heuristic. [...]Cisco, like Don Quixote, is a moving target.