Joyful Defiance in Performance

This article argues that the figure of the joyful girl in fiesta served as an important site of contest over race, place, and memory in South Texas during the 1950s. The joyful girl has played a significant, if overlooked, role in fiesta traditions in South Texas: as a cultural symbol onto whom joy has been projected and as a historical actor who has experienced and shared joy with her community by participating in fiesta. This article first examines girlhood in the Texas Citrus Fiesta in Mission, Texas, an Anglo-run festival founded by citrus industry leaders that functioned as a formal place-marketing pageant. The fiesta’s promotional images often featured joyful Anglo American girls who served as symbols of white reproductive futurity in the region. Mexican American girls seldom appeared, but when they did, they appeared as figures in a timeless romanticized past that minimized the role of Mexican American girls in contemporary politics. Second, this article turns to the informal fiestas crafted by a Mexican American girl in her daily life growing up in Mission during the 1950s. Drawing on oral history, it shows how she actively used joyful song to affirm her ethnic Mexican cultural heritage while also drawing together communities across a racial divide. She challenged the racial politics asserted by the Texas Citrus Fiesta, her hometown’s official fiesta.