This might seem a silly question...but it's something that kept crossing my mind as I read the book...Roger Mexico's name. Pynchon isn't the kind to just slap a name on a character with considering it. Roger Mexico is not exactly the most common sort of name...why mexico?
There might be no reason....but it seems to me that more often than not there's a reason for most everything in this book. Any ideas? It totally stumps me.
I don't know if this will really help, but I wondering why so many characters wear zoot suits. Following that thought, I looked up the definition of a zoot suit (I always imagine those purple velour/velvet suits that pimps wear).
"A zoot suit was a style of clothing first popularized by young Mexican Americans, African Americans, Filipino Americans, and Italian Americans in the late 1930s and 1940s." (From Wikipedia) Additionally, "The Zoot Suit Riots were a series of riots that erupted in Los Angeles, California during World War II, between sailors and soldiers stationed in the city and Mexican American youths, recognized because of the zoot suits they favored."
Since Pynchon's novel is influenced by race relations and racism, maybe that's why he gave Roger his name and why male characters wear zoot suits (other than the fact that such suits were popular at the time, I mean).
Slothrop and Bodine wear zoot suits and we really have no idea about their respective races, but they are both American. I think this use of the zoot suit might be to emphasize the embracing of other cultural identities by America, the proverbial melting pot. I don't really know what this has to do with Roger's name. The only thing I could think of at all was that the Manhattan project (to build the atom bombs) was in New Mexico. Go figure.