There is no mold - The 'Mexican Fighter' trope is racist
ESPN chooses to reduce Mexican athletes from different sports and eras to a popular racial stereotype
(Juan Manuel Marquez (R) fights Manny Pacquiao)
Well into the 21st century the world of combat sports is yet a safe haven for lazy racial stereotypes. This often gets overlooked because much of the racial essentialism in the fight world are so-called “positive” stereotypes.
“The Mexican Fighter” is one such racist trope that has not been excised from common discourse in the world of boxing and mixed martial arts (MMA). The “worldwide leader in sports,” ESPN, went out of their way to remind us all of this, today, when they released a slick video package on the occasion of Mexican Independence Day that did nothing more than advance this one-dimensional stereotype of Mexican fighters.
As the segment below says over and over, “The Mexican Fighter” is aggressive, uninterested in self-preservation or defensive strategy. He or she is an admirable, simple heap of flesh, blood, and outsized heart too primal to fight intelligently.
For that demonstrated animalistic bloodlust, we praise “The Mexican Fighter.” In this ESPN segment we get analyst after analyst, and fighter after fighter admiring this mythical, simple beast of an athlete.
Reducing Mexican athletes into brave, unthinking warriors is no celebration of Mexicans in general, or of Mexico throwing off its imperial shackles in particular, which is the true meaning of Mexican Independence Day. Instead of celebrating Mexico beating back with both brawn and intelligence racist European colonialism and instituting an Afro-indigenous led government that prioritized land redistribution through one of the most progressive constitutions in human history, the boxing and MMA world, led by Disney-owned ESPN thought the best way to honor Mexicans is to reduce the varied and deep sport fighting tradition of the huge nation into a blood and guts cartoon character.
Some of the ESPN pundits’ mere presence on the segment are offensive. For example, retired UFC title-contender Chael Sonnen.
Sonnen has a long history of racist hate speech, including such talk specifically directed at Latin American people and nations. Sonnen has said Latin American children grow up playing with sticks in the mud as opposed to learning like North American children, and once blamed an offensive comment about cancer that he made on a radio program on a man with “an Hispanic accent.”
The segment otherwise included a great deal of Mexican athletes, though that does nothing to inoculate it. Having a bunch of well-meaning Mexicans who have internalized the racial reasoning of “The Mexican Fighter”, and who get paid by the powerful institutions asking them to carry on this narrative, can not save this segment from criticism of its racial essentialism.
Were we to even bother to deconstruct the gushing blather put forth by the commentators in the video the whole notion of a uniform style, approach, and identity for “The Mexican Fighter” would fall apart immediately. For example, three of the legendary Mexican fighters who we are told in the video fit “The Mexican Fighter” mold - Julio Cesar Chavez, Juan Manuel Marquez, and Cain Velasquez - couldn’t be more different than one another in style.
Any of the Mexican fighters carrying this racist idea’s water in the video could tell you that, if they were being analytical instead of painting in broad strokes in order to racialize Mexican fighters. Chavez was indeed one of the more aggressive fighters of his generation, while Juan Manuel Marquez was a defensive master, and Cain Velasquez certainly kept an amazing pace but was smart and risk-averse enough to make huge adjustments in his fight strategies (like when he went from slugging it out with Junior Dos Santos and getting knocked-out in their first fight, to avoiding striking altogether early in a subsequent fight by shooting from far away for takedowns in order to misdirect and tire out his opponent).
Of course, we don’t need to prove the ways that broad, racial generalizations do not actually stand up to scrutiny. That’s insulting.
We should, however, realize that supposedly positive stereotypes that use racial logic are actually quite pernicious both on individuals’ psyches as well as for society at large. It’s never good when a group of people are summed up in an essentialist, one-dimensional way because of their supposed race or blood.
With some examples, it can appear on the surface to be positive or complimentary. On a deeper level, however, it is still a fundamentally dehumanizing approach.