"Hollywood is eager to mine Los Angeles barrios and ghettos for every last lurid image of self-destruction and community holocaust."* That studios are more eager to finance films about gangs (sex-drugs-violence) that about, for instance, the militant folk-hero Tuburcio Vasquez, a Californio who was hanged by whites in the nineteenth century, says a lot about the industry's racism. As we know, the image of Mexicans as "inherently violent" is part of western America's racial imaginery. In this part of the nation, constructing Mexicans (and Indians) as savages is one of the ways white Americans can view themselves as civilized.

* Davis. City of Quartz, 87.

- Fregoso, Rosa Linda. "The Bronze Screen: Chicana and Chicano Film Culture." University of Minessota Press. 1993. 124-125.