On September 16, 1994, Mexican Independence Day, a curious press release began circulating around California. "The National Pochismo Institute, a Southern California political think tank, joined the Pete Wilson re-election campaign in announcing the creation of Hispanics For Wilson," went the missive, anouncing that the chairman of Hispanics For Wilson "is landscaper and personal groomer Jonathan Tapadoñez. 'Illegal immigrants are living the good life by hogging all the low-paying jobs that Americans have the God-given right to refuse,' said Tapadoñez. 'That's why we're down on Brown.'"
In sympathy with California's anti-immigrant Proposition 187, the missive also called for the "creation of 'Self-Deportation Centers' which will encourage all Hispanics . . . to return to their countries of origin." Faxed from a Powerbook modem and posted on the Internet, the release was angrily received by many sectors of the Chicano community, and it also prompted a phone call from Channel 48 in Salinas, a Telemundo station, about a possible on-air interview with an HFW representative. Two days later, Hispanics For Wilson was asked to send representatives to a taping of Sevcec, a nationwide Telemundo talk show that Hispanicizes Donahue. All of this much to the amusement of the source of the press release, East Los Angeles' most infernal merry Chicano pranksters, Lalo López and Esteban Zul.
The publishers of the Chicano political satire 'zine POCHO Magazine ('pocho' is a pejorative given to "assimilated" latter-generation Mexican Americans), López and Zul find themselves in a perpetual state of ambivalent rage. On the one hand, they're angry about California's long history of discrimination against Mexicans, and on the other, they're pretty fed up with the preachy piety of Chicano political activism. So their mission is to lighten things up a little while still exposing the emperor's nakedness.
The Hispanics For Wilson idea started innocently enough. López and Zul were gloating over getting a fake "State of the Pocho" summit listed in Hispanic Magazine's calendar of events--the summit offered a workshop on 'Transcendental Low-Riding.' "We listed the requisite celebrities like [Edward James] Olmos as participants," said López from Pocho headquarters. "They actually printed it because they're humorless Hispanics." Pocho received about 25 phone calls about the summit, and those who left addresses were sent a jokey quiz on pochismo. "Seven people filled those out, about three of those took it seriously, but nobody sent in the $1 processing fee," deadpanned Zul.
Then López noticed a newspaper item announcing a right-wing group called Latinos for Wilson. "I was sick of hearing about how so many Latinos are for 187," said Lopez. "We thought, let's spoof it by creating this rabid self-deportationist movement of people so fervently for Wilson that they were willing to repatriate to Mexico."
In response to Channel 48's queries, López--a founder of the comedy-theater troupe Chicano Secret Service--developed a fictional character as the HFW representative. "I became Daniel D. Portado, a real-time character, that began to interact with people. Then we got two calls from Miami in one day, from the Sevcec show. They said, 'Your name was forwarded to us as proponents of 187, and we're setting up this live debate.' We were like, 'Woooo, we're going to Miami,'" chortled López.
But the crew's visions of swinging South Beach were dashed when they were instructed to report to a Glendale, California, studio for a taping that would be simultaneously hooked up to the Sevcec studio in Miami. As they entered the studio, López and Zul, accompanied by Lalo Medina, an associate who spoke better Spanish, started to feel queasy about first being discovered, and then fed to the lions. "It became apparent when we got there that the reason they chose us is because they couldn't get anyone who was brave enough to appear in favor of 187. We had on these rimless sunglasses tinted on the top, like the ones Erik Estrada used to wear on CHiPs, and people were screaming 'Take off your sunglasses! Why are you hiding?'" said López.
Even worse, Juan José Gutiérrez, an organizer in the Los Angeles Latino community, and someone for whom the pochistas have great respect, was on the panel. Undaunted, López launched into a critique of undocumented aliens, calling them "crimigrantes," because they break the law by coming north. This caused Guti&eacuite;rrez to explode, ignoring the obvious pun in 'D. Portado,' shouting "You are a joke! You are imposters!" (An exchange that was apparently cut by the time the show aired.) "I looked at Esteban and arched my eyebrows, and I'm sure this guy was catching on, but he wasn't!" said López. "I could even see the high school kids in Miami on the monitor screaming at us. It was the longest hour of my life."
The taping came to a close with López insisting that there was too much unhealthy Mexican food in California and calling for the deportation of Linda Ronstadt for "attracting Mexicans to this country with her garbled Spanish yodeling." As they frantically exited to the parking lot, a producer came running after them. Surely this time they would be discovered. "They just forgot to have us sign release forms," López cracked.
The show aired on November 4 nationwide, quite bizarre to watch despite López's advance description. The pro-187 panelists in the Miami studio, in particular Jorge de Quesada and Kevin Forbes, were such buffoons that they attracted most of the venom from the anti-187 side both in Miami and L.A. The Pocho contingent was stonefaced: López as classic narc, Medina a curious species of young Republican nerd, and Zul, looking like a stray Los Lobos roadie, unable to compete with de Quesada, whose revelation of the great Canadian immigration menace was a pathetic attempt to squash accusations of being anti-Mexican. When López warned against the spread of banda music, Gutiérrez breathlessly exclaimed, "This is fascist hysteria!"
While rapid information transfer, from tabloid TV to the Internet, has seen its share of hoaxes and pranks, this latest act of pochismo is intriguing because it effectively moves political activism into a new frontier, with a full dose of mediated irony. Dangerously close to mocking the folks they consider ideological comrades, López and Zul want to make it clear that their guerrilla tactics are aimed at making the movement stronger. "We want people to think critically, and there's not a lot of critical thinking going on," said López. "We also made the other side look like buffoons, like Sergeant Schultz in Hogan's Heroes. You make your enemy appear cartoonish, and it gives you a sense of empowerment. We made all those people feel good because they got to kick us around," concluded Zul. "We were their piñata for the day."