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This paper analyzes a parody of the tango “A media luz” that was performed by Rodolfo Garcia, a Mexican American comedian who worked in his family’s tent show, the Carpa Garcia, in the early 1940s. I argue that by juxtaposing the generic conventions of the tango with those of the canción ranchera and by introducing carnivalesque humor, Mr. Garcia’s parody articulated a distinctly local Mexican American identity which was strongly linked to a sense of working-class masculinity. In this way, the parody highlights the class- and gender-based contradictions that were inherent in ongoing processes of Mexican American identity fonnation at mid-century.

This article analyzes the dialogic play of temporalities and voices in a series of solo autobiographical cassettes recorded by Rodolfo Garcia, a former tent show comedian from San Antonio, Texas, on his home stereo between 1990 and 2000. Made while I was interviewing Mr. Garcia about his World War II-era career in show business, these recordings represent a rare intervention by a research ‘consultant’ in the ethnographic process. On the tapes, Mr. Garcia alternates between telling stories from his life and career, performing material from his repertoire as a comedian, and singing karaoke-like over a recording of the music of the Mexican singer and composer Agustin Lara. During instrumental breaks, he performs a conversation among three characters distinguished by different vocal timbres whose creative deixis reframes the mechanically reproduced music as a ‘live’ performance in a fictitious nightclub. In the relajo , Mr. Garcia moves almost entirely away from a denotationally explicit mode of representing the past and nearly abandons the idea of producing a self-contained, fully intelligible statement in favor of a somewhat opaque reenactment. Ostensibly a demonstration of his comic act, the relajo also incorporates material from his more recent past, bringing personal traumas and disappointments that he could not narrate explicitly into the autobiographical statement.

During the 1930s and 1940s, female performers in Mexican American tent shows in San Antonio modified the costumes associated with Mexican "folkloric" dances, incorporating elements derived from vaudeville, to form a hybrid style called fantasía. This style asserted Mexican American identity while subverting the purist nationalism of folklórico dances and marking the performers’ entry into newly public female roles. At the same time, it also involved the performers in reified masculinist discourses of female beauty and fashion.