http://64.41.109.149/school/bandito.html
This a bit wordy, but it tells us of the demise of our little friend.
http://www.sdlatinofilm.com/trends12.html
There May Be a Frito Bandito in Your House
by Chon A. Noriega
Caution: He loves cronchy Frito corn chips so much he'll stop at nothing
to get yours. What's more, he's cunning, clever -- and sneaky!
Advertisement, c. 1970.
In 1967, Frito-Lay Corporation launched a national advertising campaign featuring an "unshaven, unfriendly, and leering" Frito Bandito who stole Anglos' corn chips at gunpoint.1 Initially, Frito Bandito commercials appeared during children's television shows, where they were an "unqualified success," leading Frito-Lay to use the character in all its television and print advertising.2 Despite growing protests from Mexican American groups, the Frito Bandito, developed by Foote, Cone & Belding Communications, sold a lot of corn chips during its four year run. In 1971, under increasing pressure as members of congress, local television stations, and the press joined the cause, Frito-Lay reluctantly dropped the Frito Bandito campaign.
But Frito-Lay was not alone in using the "bandito" in order to sell products. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, several companies used advertisements featuring Mexican revolutionaries, including: Granny Goose (potato chips), Liggett & Myers (cigarettes), Elgin Company (watches), and Bristol-Myers (underarm). Liggett & Myers introduced "Paco" who never "feenishes" anything, not even the revolution, while Bristol-Myers showed a gang of banditos on horseback whose leader stops to spray on Mum underarm deodorant. The voice over notes, "If it works for him, it'll work for you." As Don McComb notes, "Although Frito Bandito was not the only stereotype targeted by the anti-defamation groups, it was a kind of benchmark in discussions of racial representations in advertising."3 One reason is that most other corporations dropped the offending advertisements after the initial protests.4 But Frito-Lay stuck to its guns, engaging in a prolonged struggle with Chicano groups that would define the parameters for the U.S. media reform movement.
Before looking at the response to the Frito Bandito, it is important to consider something that has escaped notice: Why did Mexican revolutionaries make good product spokesmen between 1967 and 1971? Critics offered explanations for the negative social impact of these advertisements, but failed to explain their primary function: to instill the desire to consume. The answer lies in part in the unique role of the Western during this period. As Richard Slotkin argues in Gunfighter Nation:
Through most of the New Frontier/Great Society era, and most markedly between 1965 and 1972, the Western -- and particularly the "Mexico Western" -- was the only one of the standard Hollywood genres whose practitioners regularly used genre symbolism to address the problems of Vietnam and to make the connection between domestic social/racial disorder and the counterinsurgency mission.5
Slotkin's analysis identifies the narrative terrain within which the issue of "domestic social/racial disorder" emerges: Mexico and a Southwest that was once part of Mexico. The Western, then, blurs the boundaries between the domestic and foreign, making this an issue to be resolved, and it does so by recoding social disorder as Mexican. As a national allegory this process goes largely unnoticed, since viewer identification follows those characters whose citizenship remains unquestioned throughout. Perhaps for this reason, scholarship on the Western has failed to take into account the genre's function with regard to contemporary Mexicans and Mexican Americans. In the 1960s, the Western would have resonated with such issues as the demise of the Bracero program (1942-1964) and the concurrent rise of César Chávez and the United Farm Workers Union, which signalled, among other things, the Chicano civil rights movement (1965-1975). Thus, Mexican bandits in the mass media embodied a cluster of concerns that had to do with Mexican laborers, Chicano activists, and the deepening crisis in the legitimizing myths typified by the Western itself -- that is, American exceptionalism.
What is interesting about the Frito Bandito, however, is that we are supposed to identify with him and even to incorporate him into the normative domestic sphere: "There may be a Frito Bandito in your house." Even in the more offensive ads -- such as the one for Mum deodorant -- we are supposed to want what the bandito wants: nonessential consumer items! Our subsequent purchase of these items is recoded as transgressive on a par with the Mexican revolution, Chicano movement, and, even, the Vietnam war. But, rather than connote a radical political sensibility toward racial minorities and the Third World, the Frito Bandito encouraged viewers to coopt these "outside" threats to the American way of life by adopting their revolutionary and militant style through consumption. In short, these threats were domesticated, rendered humourous, and consumed as a sign of surplus capital within the white, middle class home. Consumption was offered as a form of counterinsurgency.
In 1968, two Chicano groups formed in order confront racist stereotypes in advertising: Involvement of Mexican-Americans in Gainful Endeavors (IMAGE), in San Antonio; and the National Mexican-American Anti-Defamation Committee (NMAADC), in Washington, D.C. The most interesting thing about these two groups had to do with the fact that their initial strategy was based almost entirely on a moral appeal to corporate America to do the right thing. While Mexican Americans constituted a recognized minority group, this in no way translated into formal inclusion within the political representation system, let alone as a consumer market to be cultivated.6 Thus, IMAGE and NMAADC argued in moral terms that exchanging "negative" stereotypes for "positive" images would establish national stability and unity.
But to see this argument as only a moral one rooted in misguided notions of verisimilitude misses the rhetorical strategy behind "negative" and "positive" stereotypes. These groups knew that stereotypes were reductive representations, whether negative or positive, and that they were functional within mass media for ideological, political, and economic ends: The Frito Bandito rearticulated the frontier myth as domestic humor, reinforced Mexican American (and racial) subordination, and sold corn chips. But they also knew that Mexican Americans were largely excluded from active participation within the nation, except as advertising stereotypes circulating within mass media. For this reason, NMAADC and IMAGE addressed the industry directly, using the language of stereotypes as a way to achieve a more fundamental change in mass media in which Mexican Americans would be seen as members of its constituent elements: consumers and producers. Through the threat of boycotts, these groups redefined Mexican Americans as a consumer group rather than as a political constituency, since, after all, consumer rights were apparently universal, while the Voting Rights Act did not yet apply to Mexican Americans. The shift from "negative" to "positive" stereotypes became the entry point for Latino employment and creative control within the mass media.
In response to these protests, and in concert with their expansion of the national advertising campaign, Frito-Lay "sanitized" the Frito Bandito. According to Owen J. Burns, who supervised the Frito-Lay account at Foote, Cone & Belding, this meant: "1. Less grimacing. 2. No beard or gold tooth. 3. Change in facial features to guile rather than leer. 4. Friendly face and voice."7 NMAADC's Armando Rodriguez also claimed that, "Frito-Lay modified its commericals after the assassination of Sen. Robert Kennedy by taking the pistols away from the Frito Bandito."8 These changes acknowledged the "negative" stereotype and social impact of the Frito Bandito, while maintaining the basic premise of a Mexican "bandito" who steals corn chips.
But this was merely one part of a coordinated response. In addition to the "sanitized" Frito Bandito, Foote, Cone & Belding conducted a survey of Mexican Americans. The results indicated that 85% of those polled liked the Frito Bandito, while 8% did not, and 7% had no opinion.9 Thus, Frito-Lay countered protests with empirical evidence of quiescent Mexican Americans who were measured as a demographic group, but not as consumers: "Our position is that the facts we have indicate we are not offending a large group. We will continue to survey, and any time we find we're offending a substantial group of Mexican-Americans, we'll be the first to take Frito Bandito off the air."10 But because Frito-Lay's empiricism did not address racial stereotyping per se, their majoritarian ethos drew attention to the underlying profit motive. Even Newsweek quipped that Frito-Lay did not object to "offending a small group" if it made money, ending its article with an unflattering quote from Frito-Lay: "We don't need the flak if the Bandito wasn't selling Fritos -- but he is."11
Since Frito-Lay would not respond to their complaints, NMAADC and IMAGE turned to broadcasters. They did so at a time in which consumer groups were demanding free time to respond to commercials that dealt with controversial issues of public importance. This strategy proved to be somewhat effective between 1968 and 1974 as consumers briefly acquired "absolute rights" relative to those of broadcasters under the Fairness Doctrine. As a consequence, stations were more inclined to negotiate with protesters. By December 1969, KNBC-TV in Los Angeles and KRON-TV and KPIX-TV in San Francisco had agreed to boycott Frito Bandito ads, setting the stage for NMAADC to move into the regulatory process itself. On December 9, 1969, NMAADC announced its intention to file a complaint with the FCC under the Fairness Doctrine.12 The turn to the regulatory process, however, was more strategic than sincere, insofar as NMAADC promised to file the complaint in 90 days, thereby leaving the door open in the interim for an "acceptable settlement" with Frito-Lay and broadcasters.13 On February 14, 1970, the company announced that it would replace the Frito Bandito.
A year later, however, the ads were still running. Rather than return to the FCC, NMAADC announced in January 1971 that it would file a $610 million suit in Federal court "for the malicious defamation of the character of the 6.1 million Mexican Americans in the United States."14 The suit would seek damages of $100 for each Mexican American based on earlier arguments about the psychological damage of negative stereotypes, framing this action in its most extreme rhetoric to date: "Chicanos have thus become the media's new '****.'"15 By this time, Chicanos protesting Frito Bandito had gained broad support within government, industry, and the press, while the protest became a rallying point within emerging Chicano publications: El Grito, La Raza, Regeneration. Even Advertising Age joined the chorus against Frito-Lay, citing it for its lack of corporate "good faith."16
More than anything else, the $610,000,000 suit signalled a significant reorientation of Chicano media activism. NMAADC joined forces with other Chicano media groups that had formed since 1968 -- CARISSMA, IMAGE, Justicia, and the Midwest Chicano Mass Media Committee -- but its agenda no longer worked for a reformist shift from negative to positive stereotypes. Henceforth, media access and control would be the key issue. If the larger goals were the same, the movement's approach was entirely different, shifting its address from a mediated society to a regulated industry. In the process, however, the movement became more dependent upon government, which defined the regulatory arena, while media groups also acquired roles as producers, making them dependent upon the very industry they challenged. As a consequence, their efforts were effective, but shortlived. Today, such groups as NMAADC and IMAGE have been forgotten, even among those who study Chicano cinema, but these groups provided the very basis for a "Chicano cinema" to emerge through local television and film schools in the early 1970s. They banished the Frito Bandito and opened the door for a generation of Chicano filmmakers.
