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Los Vendidos

Luis Valdez's play "Los Vendidos" examines the misrepresentation of Latinos in America. The play revolves around the sale of the perfect Mexican-American model between Honest Sancho and Miss Jiménez to help Ronald Reagan's administration. Sancho presents Miss Jiménez with four exaggerated Mexican stereotypes - a farm worker, revolutionary, gangster, and assimilated Mexican American. The play reveals how Anglo-Americans perceive Latinos and how little social acceptance and value they have in America unless they abandon their culture and heritage.

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900 views1 page

Los Vendidos

Luis Valdez's play "Los Vendidos" examines the misrepresentation of Latinos in America. The play revolves around the sale of the perfect Mexican-American model between Honest Sancho and Miss Jiménez to help Ronald Reagan's administration. Sancho presents Miss Jiménez with four exaggerated Mexican stereotypes - a farm worker, revolutionary, gangster, and assimilated Mexican American. The play reveals how Anglo-Americans perceive Latinos and how little social acceptance and value they have in America unless they abandon their culture and heritage.

Uploaded by

Bianca Ladera
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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An Analysis of Luis Valdez’s “Los Vendidos”

The title Los Vendidos roughly translates to “the sellouts.” The play revolves around the
sale between Honest Sancho and Miss Jiménez (JIM-énez) of the perfect Mexican-American
model who will give the impression of diversity and draw more votes for the Reagan
administration from the minority. The “sellouts” referred to in the play is both Sancho and Miss
Jiménez. The former represents a cynical opportunist who will sell out his own people and
culture for quick money, while the latter symbolizes the exemplary white-washed assimilated
Mexican-American who traded her own heritage and looked down at her people to live the
American dream.

Luis Valdez makes use of exaggerated Mexican stereotypes to show the impact of
misrepresentation to their people. Sancho presents Miss Jiménez with four stereotypical Mexican
models: a farm worker, a revolutionary, a gangster, and an assimilated Mexican-American. The
Mexican stereotypes presented in Los Vendidos reveal the Anglo perception of Latinos in
America and how they are treated by the local and federal governments. It further examines the
objectification of Latinos by the dehumanized “product description” of Sancho to each model.

The prejudice against Latinos by Americans and fellow Mexicans who are trying to
assimilate into Anglo culture is evident in the way Miss Jiménez’s specifications. She asks for a
model that is “dark, but not too dark,” suave, and a hard worker. The first three stereotypes were
deemed “too Mexican” by Miss Jiménez and thus rejected, implying that the only way for a
Latino to survive in America and gain social acceptance is to be an assimilated “sellout.” And no
matter how much a Chicano becomes acculturated, he is still worth less than an American due to
the Latino blood flowing in his veins. This was shown when Miss Jiménez, no matter how good
the specifications of Mexican-American model Eric Garcia were, was still hesitant to pay $15,
000 because she felt it was too much to pay for a Mexican. This misrepresentation of Mexicans
leads to an internal confusion on cultural identity and self-worth, as exhibited by the
“malfunction” that the Mexican-American model encountered after the purchase.

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