Tex-Mex punk: Rasquache sublimation in the films of Jim Mendiola

Abstract

This article documents the collision of the Chican@ sensibility known as rasquachismo and the punk anti-aesthetics and ethics in independent San Antonio filmmaker Jim Mendiola’s punk films pretty vaCANt (1996) and Speeder Kills (2003). Both mockumentary films use punk dissent to further a Chican@ resistance politics. Through a close examination of both the style and the content of Mendiola’s punk films, the article argues that their strength lies in their aesthetic ability to forge an affinity between rasquache and punk, fully consummated through a bi-cultural consciousness. Focalizing his punk narratives through third-generation Chicana punks from the west side of San Antonio, Mendiola utilizes the local while dramatizing the hybridity between sub-cultural and bi-cultural identities. The rasquache method of ‘making due with what’s at hand’ and Mendiola’s intentional ethical attempt to remain outside the demarcations of approved taste and decorum are perfectly aligned with the punk bricolage do-it-yourself (DIY) style as revolt. Through the use of the mockumentary mode, re-purposed found footage, documentary jamming tactics, cut-and-paste editing and sped-up motion distortion both films deploy the DIY ethic and aesthetics of punk while retrofitting the rasquache raw materials of the original Chicano cinema for the next generation.