Yoshie writes of _Touch of Evil_:
> Vargas, though cast as an honest Mexican cop who fights against
> Quinlan's police state tactics and investigates his frame-ups, later
> himself violently assaults young Mexicans whom he (correctly)
> suspects to have kidnapped and drugged his wife.
Vargas does become a younger, meaner version of Quinlan by the end of
the movie, but the self-perceived ethnic identity of the Grandi gang
-- while they certainly appear Mexican to the audience -- isn't so
clear; remember the bit of dialog:
Uncle Joe: Grandi's Rancho Grande. It's a joke. The name ain't
Mexican.
So Uncle Joe Grandi speaks Spanish, listens to a Spanish language
radio station, has relatives in Mexico and a Spanish speaking gang --
but his "name ain't Mexican." Weird. Or maybe not, since Grandi is
an international businessman (Susan: "Must be good for business";
Uncle Joe: "Yeah? What business?" Susan: "The Grandi family
business!") plying his trade in a racist zone.
Yoshie again on Mike Vargas:
> Though as a cop he is 'honest,' he becomes violent and disregards
> legal limits of police power (not unlike his antagonist Quinlan)
> when he is acting as husband & 'protector' of his wife and her
> 'reputation.'
I think both Vargas and Quinlan are in this bizarre, extra-moral,
extra-legal space at the end of the movie, and the crazy shifts in the
camera's point of view reflect this. Quinlan has gone beyond framing
the guilty to becoming a murderer himself, while Vargas puts Menzies
in harm's way by having him wear what has to be an unauthorized bug to
catch Quinlan incriminating himself. And, just as the murderer
Quinlan protests that he never framed anyone who wasn't "Guilty --
GUILTY", Vargas uses his official power in a personal vendetta to
insure that his wife's name is "Clean -- CLEAN!"
And irony accumulates, as if it were compound interest.
--
Curtiss