New Ford Pickup Line: So Available With a Manuel

"We have to ultimately identify with the guy who has the power in the ad, and it's not the white guy driving the convertible, it's Manuel; he's the real man," Martinez says. "The white boy reacts with a smirk; he's insecure, he's jealous, which is a form of desire. Maybe that's really the heart of the nativist reaction to undocumented people working in this country. They're too manly, they work too hard, they work with their hands, they work overtime hours, they brave the desert and the Border Patrol on these overland journeys. Maybe while the American retiree with the big paunch stands on the border calling himself a Minuteman, it's the guy like Manuel who runs past him across the desert, facing death, all so he can work with his hands in America, who is the real man.

"The white boy, who a few generations ago was the cowboy, is staring into his own past and mourning this partial loss of that symbol of manhood, which Salma is probably going to go back to, because the white boy can't take care of a simple log in the road."

Truck Commercial As Cultural Chill Pill

Relax. Actually, the Ford ad contains meanings that could appeal both to Minutemen and immigrants, says Leo Chavez, an anthropologist at the University of California at Irvine, where he teaches the politics of visual representation.

"I think Ford is trying to align itself with the purchasing power of the Latino population, but at the same time it's reassuring the dominant population, those concerned with immigration, that assimilation is taking place," Chavez says.

"Manuel is not a day laborer, he's not someone who got here six months ago. He's probably a legal immigrant. . . . He has initiative. He solves problems. . . . He comes to the rescue of people in distress. That could be the nation he is rescuing, with its demand for workers.

"The other male" -- Convertible Dude -- "represents social mobility, assimilation and integration. He may be a U.S.-born Latino or Anglo, but his use of English identifies him as not an immigrant Spanish-first-language speaker. His car suggests he does not have to 'work' for a living using his physical strength, truck power, and in this sense he has lost some machismo male virility compared to the Mexican type. While the Latina appears to have 'traded up,' she has clearly given up the macho virility as the price of assimilation."

Truck Commercial as . . . Truck Commercial?

It really is just about selling the F-150, says Ford. "I don't know where Manuel was born, that's not the point," says Ben Poore, truck group marketing manager. The point is that F-150 owners "do really step up. They are the go-to guys and gals and do the right thing. Whether you go to Texas and talk to a group of contractors. Whether they be Hispanic, they all have a similar set of beliefs, a similar set of ways they approach life and the way they use their trucks within that. [Manuel's] making it, you can tell from the confidence on his face."

Truck Commercial as Anti-Mustang Commercial

"When I first saw it, I raised my fist in the air, like, 'Go, Manuel!' " says novelist Nina Marie Martinez, author of "Caramba!" "I went, 'Yeah, the cute cowboy won!' Then I paused and went, 'No, no, no. You're being played. . . . They're taking your culture and selling it back to you!' "

She recognizes the Latino types: Manuel, with his truck, is the agrarian ranch country hero of corridos , or romantic outlaw folk songs. Convertible Dude is the upwardly mobile city boy. Bilingual Babe, whose skin is a shade in between Manuel's and Convertible Dude's, is the ambitious girl on the move between those two worlds.

Martinez happens to be a truck owner herself -- Chevy -- and she knows cars, too. She notices something about the ad that others miss: Convertible Dude is driving . . . a Ford Mustang! Mustangs and F-150s both start at about the same price: just under $20,000.

These revelations reboot the meaning of the drama: Convertible Dude is not necessarily more successful than Manuel!

But: "If my father picked who I would drive off with into the sunset, he would pick the guy in the convertible," says Martinez. "I'd definitely go with Manuel."

The marketers didn't intend to imply a competition between the two men, and they certainly didn't mean to suggest Mustangs are wimpy. "It's not that one or the other won," Poore says. "It's all about Manuel."

Yes, it is all about Manuel. Who he is, how he got here, where he's going -- and whom he passes on the way.