José Peterson

José Peterson is a minor character in the comic strip Peanuts created by Charles M. Schulz.

He was introduced in 1967 as a friend of Peppermint Patty's whom she recommended to Charlie Brown to be on his baseball team. Peppermint Patty had offered to trade José for Snoopy and Charlie Brown happily accepted. However, racked with grief from his teammates at having traded his own dog, Charlie Brown ripped up the agreement papers. José Peterson was a very good hitter, but Peppermint Patty was disappointed in the quality of the rest of Charlie Brown's team, so she and José Peterson decided to start a team in their own neighborhood.

José Peterson is notable in that his mixed ancestry — a Swedish-American father and Mexican-American mother — made him one of the first Hispanic characters in U.S. comics. His mother apparently combined her and her husband's ethnicities in cooking, serving tortillas with Swedish meatballs. Before moving to Peppermint Patty's neighborhood, José Peterson had lived in New Mexico and North Dakota.

After his initial appearance, he was rarely, if ever, seen again.

In the 1975 book Peanuts Jubilee, Schulz noted that the character's name came to him in a dream, and he found the combination of a Mexican given name and a Swedish family name hilarious.