Swashathon 2 -- A Blogathon of Swashbuckling Adventure -- July 14, 2017

Motion Picture News, 15-January-1921

This post is part of  Swashathon 2 -- A Blogathon of Swashbuckling Adventure, hosted by Fritzi at Movies Silently.  I agree with Fritzi that the first Swashathon may have been my favorite blogathon yet.  For the first Swashathon, I wrote about the Robin Hood of the West, the Cisco Kid:
Cisco Kid Was a Friend of Mine
http://bigvriotsquad.blogspot.com/2015/11/cisco-kid-was-friend-of-mine-november-7.html 

This time, I am writing about Johnston McCulley's Zorro.  I'm going to concentrate on English-language movies and other media.

Like the Cisco Kid, Zorro was unusual because he was a Hispanic hero in American movies, on American television and in American pulp magazines and comic books.  Don Diego de la Vega was a Californio aristocrat.  Californios were people of Spanish or mixed Spanish-native descent in  California during the period after Mexican independence in 1821 and before the US took over in 1846.  Diego takes the secret identity of Zorro (The Fox) to fight against corrupt officials and other villains who oppress the common people.  Zorro made his mark, a letter "Z" formed with three slashes of his sword, as a warning to evildoers and a sign of hope to the oppressed...

Read the rest on my other blog:
https://bigvriotsquad.blogspot.com/2017/07/zorro-from-douglas-fairbanks-to-antonio.html