Chicanonautica: Gold, Greasers, Yaquis, and Zane Grey

by Ernest Hogan

Recently, I ran across an old western on Tubi that had me smiling and shaking my head. It was called Desert Gold, from 1936. Buster Crabbe, who also played Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, Tarzan, Billy the Kid and other heroes was listed as the star. Here he was cast as an Indian, with a wig and full body makeup (after all, it took a dye job to make him Flash Gordon). 

As I watched it, the surprises just kept coming.

It was based on a novel by Zane Grey, who laid the foundations of the Wild West genre. Old white men still buy his books, and when they die, their families donate their collections to libraries. This is a case of a writer having an influence on society. 

Turns out Crabbe is not the star of the movie. There’s the usual white cowboy with a white silly sidekick who wisecrack through foiling bad guys (also white) who are plotting to steal land and gold from the Indians. It’s not clear if the line, “You know how these things are—it belongs to the first white man who finds it” is intended to be ironic.

 

Crabbe plays Moya, “Chief of an Indian Tribe” that is never named. They look kind of Navajo or Apache depending on how friendly or hostile the script required. And despite his heroic looks, he plays the victim. He’s stoic, noble, gets beat up, tied to a post and whipped, and is grateful when the hero saves him.

There’s also a mention of how the Indians are mysteriously dying out due something more like a natural blight rather than government policies.

In the end, Moya and his nameless tribe ride in and save the day like the cavalry. He even gets to shoot the villain, while the white hero gets the girl and the gold.

I got curious about the novel, so downloaded it from Gutenberg, and well, it was mind blowing. Turns out, the movie is like a toned-down, liberal makeover of the book.

Zane Grey’s original Desert Gold was published in 1913, and like many westerns of the period was set in “modern times.” The West was a place, rather than a historical period. The Mexican revolution is going on. The dashing young hero takes a job as a “border ranger” who’s job is mostly to keep “Chinese and Japs” from crossing over and trying to take over. (This was a thing back then: In the 1932 movie Border Devils, also on Tubi, and co-written by science fiction writer Murray Leinster, the villain is a Fu Manchu clone called The General.) 

 

The story begins in Casita, a “Greaser town” –yes, Greaser is capitalized, like Chicano–where lots of bad hombre “rebels” are causing trouble. It's explained that the reason Greasers are a problem is because their Spanish blood makes them sadistic killers. No mention is made of Native blood, or any ill effects.

We are also told that Casita has some nice Mexicans who make great food . . .

 

The hero falls in love with the beautiful Mercedes Castaneda, a “Spanish” girl. She is never referred to as Mexican, or Greaser. More than once, she’s described as having lovely white skin. She also shows no sign of the tendencies toward cruelty and murder said to be carried in her Spanish blood.

A Greaser gang leader also falls for Mercedes, and kidnaps her, and takes her to Moya’s village, where he’s taken over. 

Moya is identified as a Yaqui, but this time he isn’t given a name. They call him Yaqui, even after he learns a few words of English. The bandits torture him, but he doesn’t reveal the location of the gold mine. 

The hero and his sidekick rescue Mercedes and Yaqui, but in trying to escape the Greasers—who are said  to be worse than Indians—they get lost among the lava and cactus where Yaqui’s knowledge of wild herbs comes in handy, and there’s even some desert mysticism that foreshadows Edward Abbey. “Color, race, blood, breeding–what are these in the wilderness?” slips into the narrative, but then they have to go back to so-called civilization.

And Yaqui’s skill with “Aztec knifework” comes in handy.

In the end, even though he worships Mercedes as if she were a goddess,  he rides off without saying goodbye, being an inscrutable Indian.

The book is a primer for border racism. It is also the sort of thing generations of white patriarchs read for comfort and relaxation. And the attitudes and beliefs in it are alive and well in the 21st century.

Happy trails, amigos!

Ernest Hogan’s mother’s stepfather was Yaqui. She called him Daddy. He called him Grandpa.