Christian Garcia, & Dr. José Alamillo
Los Angeles, California in the early 1940s was a hub of immense racial ethnic diversity. While Americans were fighting a war abroad, there was another war taking place in Los Angeles. The U.S. Government was criminalizing Mexican-American youth as “delinquents” and “violent gangsters.” These youth created a Pachuco subculture that rebelled against their parents and mainstream America. Mexican American girls and women also belonged to this subculture, known as “Pachucas”. My research focuses on these Pachucas, who were targeted by law enforcement and government officials and were incarcerated at Ventura School for Girls, a correctional facility located in the city of Ventura. My research question is how and why the government and media framed the Ventura School for Girls for the public and how school authorities attempted to assimilate so-called “delinquent” Mexican American women, both culturally and politically? I will be researching newspaper articles and government documents that focus on Mexican American girls incarcerated at Ventura School for Girls during the 1940s. I expect to find that Mexican American girls were criminalized, discriminated against, and sexually assaulted at the Ventura School for Girls facility. This research builds on previous scholarship on Mexican American female representation in the media and incarcerated Mexican American women in the juvenile and prison system. The Ventura School for Girls provides us with a case study of how Mexican American females are criminalized due to their non-conforming attitudes towards societal norms in the United States.