1 the Indigenismos of Mexican Cinema Before and Through The

Home , Aureliano Urrutia, Columba Dominguez, Silvia Pinal, The Mexican

The Indigenismos of Mexican Cinema before and through the Golden Age: Ethnographic Spectacle, “Whiteness,” and Spiritual Otherness

Dissertation

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University

Mónica del Carmen García Blizzard

Graduate Program in Spanish and Portuguese

The Ohio State University

2016

Dissertation Committee:

Laura Podalsky, Advisor

Ignacio Corona

Guisela LaTorre

Paloma Martínez-Cruz

Copyrighted by

Mónica del Carmen García Blizzard

2016

Abstract

While indigenista films have been overwhelmingly understood as those that have an explicitly political message (tied to the Mexican revolution) about the plight of indigenous peoples, this dissertation contributes to the discussion of the representation of natives in Mexican cinema by adopting a broader definition of term indigenismo. Through an understanding of the term as the way in which the native has been imagined as Other for the purpose of reifying the nonnative national subject, this study analyzes a broader corpus of native-themed films from the 1910’s through the 1960’s, and considers the multiple discourses through which they have been presented on screen. Through social, historical and cultural contextualization, as well as detailed film analysis informed by film theory, the study proposes the saliency of the ethnographic discourse, the ubiquity of “whiteness,” and the centrality of spiritual

Otherness in the representation of natives in Mexican cinema throughout the first half of the 20th century. By pointing to the variety of portrayals of indigeneity in the span of time that is associated with the postrevolutionary cultural and political climate, the study disrupts the idea that the representation of natives in cinema is clearly derivative of postrevolutionary indigensimo. Instead, the study points to the presence of contention and residual elements such as the veneration of “whiteness” and the championing of Catholicism, which suggest a presence of contradictory portrayals,

and a lack of cultural consensus about the place of the native in the nation and the parameters of nonnative national identity. The study therefore has implications for histories of Mexican cinema, but in particular for Anglo-American film studies, which has tended to discuss race and cinema according to U.S. racial constructs and understandings.

iii

I dedicate this dissertation to my parents, who showed me many Mexicos,

and to Alessandro, Lucia, and Tomás, with all my love.

Acknowledgments

The completion of this dissertation would not have been possible without the support and encouragement of many individuals. It is thanks to the efforts of a long line of educators throughout my life that I arrived at the possibility of pursuing graduate study. I am grateful to Professors Maria Rosa Olivera Williams,

Encarnación Juarez Alemendros, Theodore Cachey, and John Welle who as an undergraduate were instrumental in my intellectual development and trajectory. I wish to thank my adviser, Laura Podalsky, who throughout my graduate career has offered me valuable guidance, unwavering support, and inspiration to persist in my endeavors. I will forever be grateful for the dedication and generosity she has shown me. I also wish to express my gratitude to Guisela LaTorre and Paloma Martínez-

Cruz for their continued interest and support of my work, as well as to Ignacio

Corona, who has been a valuable interlocutor throughout the writing process.

The archival research for this dissertation would not have been possible without the financial support from the Tinker Foundation, the Center for Latin

American Studies, the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, The College of Arts and Sciences, and the Office of Diversity and Inclusion at The Ohio State University.

I would also like to thank those who helped facilitate my research in Mexico City in

May of 2013 including Angel Martínez from the Filmoteca at the Universidad

Nacional Autónoma de México and Gabriela Ramírez.

Lastly, I would have been unable to complete this project without the love and encouragement of my family. I would like to thank my mother, Cecilia Blizzard, for the support and wisdom she has offered me throughout the trying moments of this process. Lastly, I am deeply grateful to my husband, Alessandro Menegon, for his dedication, joy and patience.

Vita

2009...... B.A. Romance Languages and Literatures, University of Notre

Dame

2010...... M.A. Italian Studies, University of Notre Dame

2012...... M.A. Latin American Literatures and Cultures, The Ohio State

University

2010 to 2015...... Graduate Teaching Associate, Department of Spanish and

Portuguese, The Ohio State University

Publications

García Blizzard, Mónica. “Whiteness and the Ideal of Modern Mexican Citizenship in Tepeyac (1917),” Vivomatografías. Revista de estudios sobre precine y cine silente en Latinoamérica. Dec. 2015. 72-95.

Fields of Study

Major Field: Spanish and Portuguese

vii

Table of Contents

Abstract...... ii

Dedication...... iv

Acknowledgments...... v

Vita...... vii

Table of Contents...... viii

List of Figures...... x

Introduction...... 1 The Native and the Nation...... 1 The Native On Screen...... 7

Chapter 1: The Ethnographic Spectacle in Mexican Cinema...... 18 Introduction...... 18 Anthropology and Nation building in Mexico...... 20 The Anthropological Discourse in Ethnography and Film...... 25 Peregrinación a Chalma (1922): A Mexican Ethnographic Research Film...... 34 Maclovia (1948) as lyrical ethnography...... 55 Ethnographic Seeping...... 80 Conclusion...... 101

Chapter 2: “White” Indians...... 104 Introduction...... 104 The Persistent Privilege of “Whiteness” in Post Independence Mexico...... Indigenista Visual Production...... 104 Feminist and Race Film Theory...... 120 Colonizing Desire...... 123 Colonizing Subjectivity...... 128 “Whiteness” and Hegemony...... 131 “Whiteness” and Indigenous Womanhood in Mexican Cinema...... 135 Reimagining (and “Whitening”) the Past: The Pristine pre-Columbian...... 135 Taming the Tehuana...... 147 viii

Revolutionary Politics, Reactionary Aesthetics ...... 156 A “White” Indita for a Modern Mexico: María Isabel (1968) ...... 169 The exceptions: Janitzio (1934) and “La potranca” (Raíces 1954)...... 173 What about men? Indios, “whiteness,” and Desire in Mexican Cinema...... 178 Conclusion...... 186

Chapter 3: Spiritual Otherness...... 188 Introduction...... 188 Catholicism and National Hegemony...... 203

Distanced Idealization...... 222 Approximation and Spiritual Mestizaje...... 235 “Progress” and the Secular Critique of Native Beliefs...... 254 Shock and Horror: Reimagining Native Spiritual Beliefs in Genre Films...... 262 Conclusion...... 271

Conclusion...... 274

Bibliography...... 280

Filmography...... 290

List of Figures

Figure 1 Intertitle displaying scientific authority in Peregrinación a Chalma

(1922) ...... 41

Figure 2 Expert introduced in Peregrinación a Chalma (1922)...... 41

Figure 3 Close-up of expert in Peregrinación a Chalma (1922)...... 42

Figure 4 Image of the sanctuary in Peregrinación a Chalma (1922)...... 45

Figure 5 Image of the sanctuary in Peregrinación a Chalma

(1922)...... 45

Figure 6 Extreme long shot of indigenous people in Peregrinación a Chalma

(1922) ...... 47

Figure 7 High angle extreme long shot of indigenous people in Peregrinación a

Chalma (1922)...... 48

Figure 8 High angle long shot of dancers in Peregrinación a Chalma (1922)...... 51

Figure 9 High angle long shot of native dancers in Peregrinación a Chalma

(1922)...... 52

Figure 10 Indigenous dancers in Peregrinación a Chalma (1922)...... 53

Figure 11 Masked indigenous dancers in Peregrinación a Chalma (1922)...... 53

Figure 12 Extreme long shot displaying the fishermen as a group in Maclovia

(1948)...... 65

Figure 13 Extreme still long shot displaying the fishermen waiting as a group in

Maclovia (1948)...... 65

Figure 14 Medium shot of flute player in Maclovia (1948)...... 66

Figure 15 Low angle long shot of noche de los muertos procession in Maclovia

(1948)...... 70

Figure 16 Los angle long shot in which the indigenous appear as silhouettes in

Maclovia (1948)...... 71

Figure 17 Long shot of indigenous crowd lit by candles in Maclovia (1948)...... 73

Figure 18 Close-ups of indigenous women illuminated by candlelight in Maclovia

(1948)...... 74

Figure 19 Medium group shot of indigenous women illuminated by candlelight in

Maclovia (1948)...... 74

Figure 20 The Mexican armed forced protect Maclovia and José María in Maclovia

(1948)...... 79

Figure 21 Zoom in of the dancers at the top of a high pole in Sombra verde

(1954)...... 82

Figure 22 Medium close-up of Federico watching the native dance in Sombra verde

(1954)...... 83

Figure 23 Long shot of the dance of the flyers in Sombra verde (1954)...... 83

Figure 24 Jane watches the Chamula carnival in Raíces (1954)...... 91

Figure 25 High angle long shot of the Chamula carnival from Jane’s perspective in

Raíces (1954)...... 91

Figure 26 High wide angle shot of the Tzotzil community gathering around Jane in

Raíces (1954)...... 93

Figure 27 Jane surrounded by the Tzotzil community in Raíces (1954)...... 93

Figure 28 Jane rips her thesis in half in Raíces (1954)...... 95

Figure 29 Close-up of Jane’s ripped thesis thrown on the floor in Raíces

(1954)...... 95

Figure 30 The cartoon titled “Buen juez” appeared in Excélsor on August 31,

1927...... 116

Figure 31 Medea de Novara as the Empress Carlota in La paloma (Dir. Miguel

Contreras Torres, 1937)...... 143

Figure 32 Medea de Novara as Princess Zítari in Zítari (1931)...... 144

Figure 33 Naya on the verge of being sacrificed by her own people in Chilam Balam

(1955)...... 146

Figure 34 A brightly lit Lupe Vélez as a tehuana in La Zandunga (1938)...... 150

Figure 35 A brightly lit Lupe Vélez as a tehuana in La Zandunga (1938)...... 150

Figure 36 Lupe Vélez’s “white” star image used to advertise Hinds beauty cream...... 152

Figure 37 Margarita Mora as Linda in Tierra de pasiones (1943)...... 154

Figure 38 Margarita Cortés as Camila in Tierra de pasiones (1943)...... 154

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Figure 39 María Candelaria blocked by her indigenous community in María

Candelaria (1943)...... 163

Figure 40 Dolores del Río as María Candelaria in María Candelaria

(1943)...... 163

Figure 41 Shot of María’s indigenous community in Xochimilco in María

Candelaria (1943)...... 164

Figure 42 María Félix as Maclovia and Columba Dominguez as Sara in Maclovia

(1948)...... 166

Figure 43 Consuelo Frank as María in El indio (1939)...... 167

Figure 44 Silvia Pinal as María Isabel in María Isabel (1968)...... 172

Figure 45 Displaying her off screen identity, Silvia Pinal’s stardom is invoked to advertise Nescafé in Mexico...... 172

Figure 46 Eréndrina in Janitzio (1934)...... 175

Figure 47 Promotional poster for Raíces (1954)...... 177

Figure 48 Alicia del Lagos as Xanath in “La potranca” (Raíces, 1954)...... 177

Figure 49 Tizoc (played by Pedro Infante in bown-face) daydreams that María is dancing with a “white” version of himself in Tizoc (1957)...... 181

50. Figure Tizoc (played by Pedro Infante in bown-face) daydreams that María is dancing with a “white” version of himself in Tizoc (1957)...... 181

Figure 51 Promotional poster for Tizoc (1957)...... 182

Figure 52 La gran Tenochtitlán (1945)...... 198

Figure 53 La leyenda de Quetzalcoatl (1929)...... 199

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Figure 54 The Spanish soldier struggling as he is carried by natives to be sacrificed in Tepeyac (1917)...... 208

Figure 55 The Friar stands between the natives and Spanish in order to unite the groups...... 209

Figure 56 The indigenous herbalist inspects Juan Diego’s healed uncle...... 212

Figure 57 The coming of age ceremony in Chilam Balam (1955)...... 220

Figure 58 Grand and dramatic physical gestures in Zítari (1931)...... 224

Figure 59 Zítari raises her hands in complete surrender to the goddess of love...... 227

Figure 60 Leonor offers the cross to Tumitl in the hope that Tumitl will convert to

Catholicism...... 233

Figure 61 Deseada admires Manuel discretely through her mirror...... 243

Figure 62 Deseada is delighted by Manuel’s reflection...... 243

Figure 63 Deseada and Manuel’s kiss...... 246

Figure 64 Deseada’s dream...... 246

Figure 65 Macario (right) with Death (left) in his cave...... 252

Figure 66 A slain sacrificial victim in El signo de la muerte (1939)...... 266

Figure 67 A highly choreographed paranormal Aztec sacrifice scene in La momia azteca (1957)...... 269

Figure 68 Flor’s father subdues the Aztec mummy with a Christian cross...... 271

xiv

Introduction

“Indians” were invented by Europeans when they arrived to the Americas,1 and the construct of the “Indian” has been central to the articulation of political projects and the definition of hegemonic identities in Mexico ever since. The advent of cinema allowed for the visualization of “race” in novel ways and coincided with a cultural and political impulse to homogenize and modernize the Mexican nation, which had begun in the 19th century and continued to evolve through the 20th. This dissertation examines the plural and even contradictory discourses put forth in

Mexican films from the 1910’s through the 1960’s about natives, and how these discourses function to negotiate the parameters of hegemonic mexicanidad.

The Native and the Nation

Since the moment of Mexican independence from Spain in the early 19th century, the articulation of Mexican national identity has required a negotiation of the internal ethnic and racial heterogeneity of its population in order to create a semblance of national cohesion. Within this negotiation of internal difference, the construct of indigeneity and the identification of its proper place and function within the new nation has been a reoccurring concern.

1 Rebecca Earle, The Return of the Native: Indians and Myth-Making in Spanish America, 1810-1930 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007). 1

In its earliest discursive manifestations during the criollo2-organized independence movement, the fledgling expression of Mexican national selfhood took up the Indian in a new way. Criollos based the demand for autonomy on the rights of indigenous peoples whose legitimate claim to the land had been violated through the conquest and the subsequent colonial administration.3 Furthermore, independence era thinkers such as Miguel Hidalgo and José María Morelos articulated the need for a reconfiguration of the colonial model of ethnic separateness by supporting the suppression of ethnic stratification.4 Despite these initial discursive maneuvers, according to François-Xavier Guerra, after independence national elites were faced with a lack of “imaginative attributes of a modern nation,” which included “a history and ancestral territory, common heroes and ancestors, and a national character and destiny.”5 As Rebeca Earle has shown, during this century criollo patriotism largely went about creating a shared discursive national identity through the construction of a distanced and ennobled version of indigeneity that could serve as the basis of a common national culture.6 This proposal was also connected to the development of an

2 In the Mexican context, the term criollo refers to people of Spanish ancestry born in Mexico. 3Luis Villoro, “La Revolución de Independencia,” Historia General De México: Versión 2000, ed. Ignacio Bernal (México, D.F: El Colegio de México, Centro de Estudios Históricos, 2000) p. 511; and David A. Brading, Prophecy and Myth in Mexican History (Cambridge: Centre of Latin American Studies, University of Cambridge, 1990). 4 Luis Villoro, “La Revolución de Independencia,” pp. 505-511. 5 Guerra, François-Xavier, “Forms of communication, political spaces, and cultural identities in the creation of Spanish American nations,” Beyond Imagined Communities: Reading and Writing the Nation in Nineteenth-Century Latin America. ed. Castro-Klarén, Sara, and John Charles Chasteen (Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2003) p. 32. 6 Rebecca Earle, The return of the native: Indians and myth-making in Spanish America, 1810–1930. Duke University Press, 2007. For an analysis of politicians who disagreed with converting elements of indigenous culture into national symbolism see Alicia Castellanos Guerrero. “Para hacer nación: discursos racistas en el México decimonónico,” Los caminos del racismo en México, ed. José Jorge Gómez Izquierdo (México DF.: Plaza y Valdés, S.A., 2005) p. 94. 2

assimilationist impulse among 19th century liberal politicians who believed that cultural and biological homogenization was necessary in order to make Mexico into a modern and cohesive nation.7 The native became a focal point of public discussion because his continued socioeconomic marginalization seemed to indicate the that the nation state was not yet fully consolidated. 8 The so-called “guerras de castas” – indigenous uprisings that took place in northern and southern areas of the country and aimed to regain appropriated lands –heightened the urgency of the debate regarding the native’s place in the nation.9 The liberal strategy for forging a functioning national project would come to be expressed clearly in Vicente Riva Palacio’s 1844 opus

México a través de los siglos, by Justo Sierra in the late 19th century,10 and eventually, in Andrés Molina Enriquez’s Los grandes problemas nacionales in which, on the eve of the revolution of 1910, he insisted that Mexico could only form a true nation through mestizaje,11 - a thorough mixing of the country’s indigenous and

European elements.

Drawing on and transforming the former liberal postion, the new post- revolutionary Mexican government embarked on the project of indigenismo- mestizaje, through which indigeneity maintained its aura of Otherness, but was now

7 Alicia Castellanos Guerrero. “Para hacer nación” pp. 89-115; Alicia Castellanos Guerrero, Jorge Gómez Izquierdo, and Francisco Pineda, “Racist Discourse in Mexico,” Racism and Discourse in Latin America ed. Teun A. Van Dijk (New York: Rowman & Littlefield 2009). 217-258. 8 Luis Villoro, Los grandes momentos del indigenismo en México (Mexico City: El Colegio de México, 1996) pp. 209-264. 9 Alicia Castellanos Guerrero, “Para hacer nación” p. 110 10 Regina Martínez Casas et all. “The Different Faces of Mestizaje: Ethnicity and Race in Mexico, In Pigmentocracies: Ethnicity, Race, and Color in Latin America, ed. Edward Telles, (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2014) p. 42. 11 Luis Villoro, Los grandes momentos del indigenismo en México p. 217. 3

taken on as the basis of the national essence.12 Figures such as Manuel Gamio, the

“father” of Mexican anthropology and José Vasconcelos, the secretary of public education in the early 1920’s,13 were central figures in the structuring of the project.

On the one hand indigenismo-mestizaje sought to modernize the native populations and bring them into the national fold as participatory citizens. On the other, it aimed to “indianize” the rest of the population through the appropriation and dissemination of certain aspects of indigenous cultures.14 As Joshua Lund has observed, this process constitutes Mexico’s attempt to forge a “fictive ethnicity” in the 20th century,15 a term elaborated by Etienne Balibar to explain the process through which the sense of a common ethnicity is constructed in nation states to create the semblance of homogeneity:

I apply the term "fictive ethnicity" to the community instituted by the nation-

state. This is an intentionally complex expression in which the term

fiction…should not be taken in the sense of a pure and simply illusion without

historical effects, but must, on the contrary, be understood by analogy with the

persona ficta of the juridical tradition in the sense of an institutional effect, a

"fabrication." No nation possesses an ethnic base naturally, but as social

12 Luis Villoro, Los grandes momentos del indigenismo en México p. 234-235. 13 Manuel Gamio and Jose Vasconcelos’ views on indigenismo can be gleaned from their texts Forjando Patria and La población del Valle de Teotihuacán (Gamio), and La raza cósmica and Indología (Vasconcelos). 14 Alan Knight, “Racism, Revolution, and Indigenismo; Mexico, 1910-1940,” The idea of race in Latin America, 1870-1940 Ed. Richard Graham (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990) pp. 71-113; Claudio Lomnitz, "Bordering on Anthropology: Dialects of a National Tradition in Mexico," Empires Nations, and Natives: Anthropology and State-Making, ed. Benoit de L'Estoile, Federico Neiburg, and Lygia Sigaud (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005) p. 169; Alexander Scott Dawson, Indian and nation in revolutionary Mexico (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2004) p. xiv. 15 Joshua Lund, The Mestizo State: Reading Race in Modern Mexico (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012). 4

formations are nationalized, the populations included within them, divided up

among them or dominated by them are ethnicized - that is, represented in the

past or in the future as if they formed a natural community, possessing of

itself an identity of origins, culture, and interests which transcends individuals

and social conditions.16

From the Gramscian perspective, the forging of fictive ethnicities is also hegemonic operation17 in that it seeks to convene groups across ethnic and class lines for the purpose of supporting a specific model of the national and power structure. In the construct of the mestizo national subjectivity, indigeneity occupied an important place in the first half of the 20th century. While indigeneity became a symbol of

Mexican particularity, marking its distinction, or alterity with regards to the new mestizo national subject was also necessary in order to affirm and safeguard the new mestizo’s modern identity.18 This is because, as Regina Martínez Casas, Emiko

Saldívar, René D. Flores and Chistina A. Sue all have noted, “Indigenista policy…

16 Etienne Balibar, "The Nation Form: History and Ideology," Race Critical Theories: Text and Context, ed. Philomena Essed Goldberg and David Theo (Maiden Mass.: Blackwell Publishers 2002) pp. 223-224. 17 Gramsci, Antonio. Culture, Ideology, and Social Process: Antonio Gramsci ed. Tony Bennet (Buckinghamshire: Open University Press, 1981). 18 Sarah Radcliffe and Sallie Westwood, Remaking the Nation: Place, Identity and Politics in Latin America, (London and New York: Routledge, 1996.) As Radcliffe and Westwood point out, the dynamic of establishing the defining the self through the discourse of the Other has been explored by postcolonial scholars of the Anglophone world Edward Said, Stuart Hall, and Homi Bhabha. These scholars have observed how European identity was constituted in part, through the Othering of non- Europeans. My discussion of the role of indigeneity in Mexican context in the 20th century follows in a similar vein addressing how definition of the native as a culturally relevant Other, functions to define the national mestizo subject. 5

played a central role in constructing and defining mestizos as being nonindigenous

19 individuals.”

Critical theorists have observed the importance of cultural production for the construction of the nation as an idea, and for the assumption of national subjectivities and identities. Following Benedict Anderson’s well-known study of print capitalism for the creation of the national as an idea,20 and Homi Bhabha’s discussion of narratives as texts that simultaneously perform the nation while casting their contents as national signifiers,21 Radcliffe and Westwood have articulated the relationship between cultural production and nationalism in Latin America in the following way:

“…in order for the nation to become hegemonic in the identities of subjects, elite/official versions of nationalism containing certain histories, images and representations must be shared across class or ethnic lines, in order for an imagined community to be created with ‘shared self awareness.’”22 In light of Nestor García

Canclini’s observation that Mexico’s cultural profile was established more through visual production than through literature,23 it follows that visual cultural production is a privileged locus for the understanding the role of culture in the forging of 20th century Mexican nationalism. For this reason, various scholars have carried out studies, highlighting how different manifestations of Mexican cultural production

19 Regina Martínez Casas, et al, “The Different Faces of Mestizaje” p. 44 (emphasis original). 20 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. (London: Verso, 2006). 21 Homi K Bhabha, "Dissemination: Time, Narrative, and the Margins of the Modern Nation," Nation and Narration ed. Homi K Bhabha (London; New York: Routledge, 1990) pp. 291-322. 22 Radcliffe, and Westwood, Remaking the Nation p. 14. 23 Néstor García Canclini. Hybrid cultures: Strategies for entering and leaving modernity (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005) p. 118. 6

operated within the nationalist project of indigenismo-mestizaje by featuring visual constructs of indigeneity.24

The Native On Screen

Cinematic production is an important space for understanding how the indigenous are placed within the imagined modern mestizo Mexican community, not only because it was a visual (and later also audial) form, but also because it is a medium that was linked with the idea of modernity. This is true not only in the sense that filmmaking requires access to modern technology, but also in the sense that cinema served as a primary medium through which Mexico created and disseminated an image of itself as a distinct and and modern nation for domestic and international audiences in the 20th century.25 It is in this way that, as Carlos Monsiváis and Jesús

Martín Berbero have both argued separately about Mexican cinema from the golden

24 The bibliography on this topic is vast. Here is a sampling of works that address diverse forms of visual cultural production: Anne Doremus, "Indigenism, Mestizaje, and National Identity in Mexico During the 1940s and the 1950s," Mexican Studies/estudios Mexicanos. 17.2 (2001): 375-402; Joanne.Hershfield, “La Moda Mexicana: Exotic Women,” Imagining La Chica Moderna: Women, Nation, and Visual Culture in Mexico, 1917-1936 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008); Rick A López, Crafting Mexico: Intellectuals, Artisans, and the State After the Revolution (Durham NC: Duke University Press, 2010). Ruth Hellier-Tinoco, Embodying Mexico: Tourism, Nationalism & Performance (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); Shelley E Garrigan, Collecting Mexico: Museum, Monuments, and the Creation of National Identity (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 2012); Robin Adèle Greeley, “Muralism and the State in Post-Revolution Mexico,” Mexican Muralism : A Critical History ed. Alejandro Anreus, Leonard Folgarait, and Robin Adèle Greeley (Berkeley: University of California Press 2012) pp. 13-36; Ageeth Sluis, “Camposcape: Naturalizing Nudity,” Deco Body, Deco City: Female Spectacle and Modernity in Mexico City, 1900-1939. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2016) pp. 101-136. 25 From the earliest days of film production in the country, Porfirio Diaz commissioned the filming of the marvels of Mexican modernity such as the arrival and departure of trains and ships. See Inauguración del tráfico internacional de Tehuantepec, El señor presidente abre la reja, Panoramic de tren presidencial,. Dir. Salvador Toscano. 1907. 7

age,26 cinema served a pedagogical function by disseminating sounds and gestures that could be taken up as typically Mexican27 and modern. While films about

Mexico’s Indians have never constituted a large percentage of national cinematic production,28 they constitute a thematic body of work that is a testament to the indigenista-mestizaje impulse of the first half of the 20th century, and they have been central to the canon that has defined Mexican national cinema. Furthermore, these films can tell us something about how modern Mexican national identity struggled to define itself vis-a-vis the construction of a national Other that it nonetheless sought to retain for symbolic purposes.

Mexican films about indigeneity have been addressed by scholars in a variety of ways. Overwhelmingly, the literature on the subject is dominated by the analysis of the Emilio “El Indio” Fernandez’s indigenista films from the 1940’s and those films that are considered to be precursors to his work.29 This genealogy includes Sergei

Eisenstein’s unfinished ¡Qué viva México! (1932), Fred Zinnerman’s Redes (1936),

26 While film scholars define the period different, roughly it spans from the late 1930’s to the late 1950’s. 27 Jesús Martín Barbero, Communication, Culture and Hegemony : From the Media to Mediations (London; Newbury Park: SAGE Publications, 1993) and Carlos Monsiváis, “Se sufre pero se aprende,” Através del espejo : El cine mexicano y su público ed. Carlos Monsivíás and Carlos Bonfil (México: Ediciones el Milagro : Instituto Mexicano de Cinematografía, 1994). 28 Charles Ramírez Berg, Cinema of Solitude: A Critical Study of Mexican Film, 1967-1983 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992) p.57. 29 See Daniel Chavez, "The Eagle and the Serpent on the Screen: The State as Spectacle in Mexican Cinema." Latin American Research Review 45.3 (2010): 115-41; Laura Podalsky, "Patterns of the Primitive: Sergei Eisenstein’s ¡Qué Viva México!" Mediating two worlds: Cinematic encounters in the Americas (1993): 25-39; Joanne Hershfield, "Race and Ethnicity in the Classical Cinema," Mexico's Cinema a Century of Film and Filmmakers ed. Joanne Hershfield and David Maciel (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1999) pp. 81-100. Martin Lienhard, "La Noche De Los Mayas," Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies 13.1 (2004): 35-96; Dolores Tierney, Emilio Fernández: pictures in the Margins (Manchester University Press, 2007); Matthew J. K. Hill, The Indigenismo of Emilio "el Indio" Fernandez: Myth, Mestizaje, and Modern Mexico, MA thesis Brigham Young University, 2009. 8

and Carlos Navarro’s Janitzio (1934),30 and on occasion, the early silent films De raza azteca (1921), Guillermo Calles's El indio yaqui (1926), and Raza de bronce

(1927).31 Scholarship has tended to address these films because Fernandez’s work is often considered to be most emblematic of the post revolutionary government’s aims for incorporating the natives into the national community while exalting them on a symbolic and aesthetic level.32 When films that represent indigenous people have been discussed outside of the post-revolutionary indigenista narrative, they are often mentioned in isolation and discussed in terms of the development of the Mexican film industry,33 thus they are not discussed in terms of the significance or relevance of their specific contents. In other words, the fact that the films deal with indigenous subjects is not particularly relevant or salient in how they are discussed or treated.

Those films made toward the end of the golden age have largely been ignored, in part because they are perceived to be plagued with the same general lack of quality and artistic merit that scholars attribute to Mexican films from the in late 1950s through

30 See Podalsky, “Patterns of the Primitive”; Dolores Tierney, Emilio Fernández; Joanne Hershfield, “Race and Ethnicity”; Carl J Mora, Mexican Cinema: Reflections of a Society, 1896-1980 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982); Aurelio de los Reyes, El Nacimiento De Que Viva México! (México, D.F: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, 2006); Charles Ramírez Berg, Cinema of Solitude: A Critical Study of Mexican Film, 1967-1983 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992); Seth Fein, “From Collaboration to Containment Hollywood and the International Political Economy of Mexican Cinema after the Second World War,” Mexico's Cinema: A Century of Film and Filmmakers ed. Joanne Hershfield and David Maciel (Wilmington Del: Scholarly Resources, 1999). 31 Chavez, “The Eagle and the Serpent on the Screen” p. 117 and Jorge Ayala Blanco, La aventura del cine mexicano en la época de oro y después (Miguel Hidalgo: Grijalbo, 1993) p. 145. 32 See Matthew J. K. Hill, The Indigenismo of Emilio "el Indio" Fernández. See Tierney and Ayala Blanco for arguments that qualify the direct relationship between government-sponsored indigenismo and Fernandez’s films. 33 Carl J. Mora, Mexican Cinema and Aurelio de los Reyes, Cine Y Sociedad En México Vol. 1 & 2. (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1981). 9

the late 1970s.34 Furthermore, the Mexican film studies tradition has not engaged indigenous-themed films through technical readings in order to interpret how the films produce meanings.35

This dissertation aims to contribute to the understanding of the representation of indigeneity in Mexican cinema in several ways. First, my perspective broadens what is understood as an indigenista film to include films beyond those aligned with the political aims of indigenismo-mestizaje in a specific moment, administration, or policy. In a more general vein, inspired by Mexican philosopher Luis Villoro’s definition of indigenismo as, “aquel conjunto de concepciones teóricas y de procesos concienciales que, a lo largo de las épocas, han manifestado lo indígena,”36 I take indigenista films to be those that imagine and/or set out to convey indigeneity from the nonnative perspective, and in so doing, speak to the definition of the mestizo national self. Through this perspective, I analyze a variety of films from different moments in the development of the Mexican film industry that explicitly, either diegetically or extradiegetically, convey the intention of representing indigeneity.37 In broadening the temporal and ideological scope of the films that I analyze, I aim to show the variety of indigenista proposals (indigenismos) and commentary regarding

34 Eduardo de la Vega Alfaro, “The Decline of the Golden Age and the Making of the Crisis. Mexico's Cinema a Century of Film and Filmmakers ed. Joanne Hershfield and David Maciel (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1999) pp. 165-191. Carl J. Mora, Mexican Cinema. 35 Jorge Ayala Blanco, La aventura del cine mexicano; García, Riera E. Historia Documental Del Cine Mexicano. México D.F: Ediciones Era, 1969’ Aurelio.de los Reyes, Cine Y Sociedad En México; , Carlos Monsiváis, “Se sufre pero se aprende.” See also Dolores Tierney, Emilio Fernández p. 17. 36 Luis Villoro, Los grandes momentos del indigenismo en México pp. 13-14. 37 This approach is also influenced by the fact that the definition of the indigenous in Mexico has been the subject of a long- standing debate. For a summary of the variety of positions on the subject see Guillermo Bonfil Batalla, "El concepto del indio en América: categoría de situación colonial," Anales de Antropología, Vol. 9 (1972). 105-125. 10

the place of indigeneity in the modern Mexican national identity that can be gleaned from indigenous-themed cinematic production before and through the golden age. In exposing this plurality of positions, I aim to show how Mexican cinematic production registers a lack of consensus about what the place and relationship to indigeneity should be in the modern national identity, which in turn, suggests an instability of the supposedly hegemonic indigenista-mestizaje project.38 By framing the body of films as indigenista, which by definition implies the nonnative perspective and representation of the native, I establish my objective to be the analysis of the construction of indigeniety in the films, and how those constructions comment on the constitution of the implied nonnative national subject/spectator.

I would like to state clearly what this dissertation does not aim to accomplish and the frameworks within which it situates itself. I am not arguing that these indigenista films effectively influenced the adoption of specific subjective attitudes toward indigeneity. Such a study would require information about the circulation and diffusion of the films, as well as their financial accessibility, and possibly also interviews with human subjects. For the purpose of this study, I am not concerned with researching exactly who the spectators of the films were because I do not claim to address the process through which the films’ perspectives were absorbed, but rather the variety of messages about the relationship between indigenetiy and the

38 Responding to the film scholarship of Carlos Monsiváis and Julia Tuñón who have suggested at golden age cinema was a direct conduit for state ideology, both Tierney and Dever have argued that Mexican films from the golden age can convey “a range of contradictory ideologies.” In this same vein, I suggest my corpus of films transmit vying if not conflicting ideas about the place of indigeneity in the nation. See Tierney, Emilio Fernández p. 13-15 and Susan Dever, Celluloid Nationalism and Other Melodramas: From Post-Revolutionary Mexico to Fin De Siglo Mexamérica (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003) pp. 13-14. 11

national that they put forth. I am also not engaged in a project that seeks to recover native voices, or denounce the films’ inauthentic portrayal of indigeneity.

However, like many approaches that are concerned with subaltern, this study is concerned with the construction and function of racial and ethnic difference. For this reason, I engage the work of critical racial theorists such as Frantz Fanon,

Michael Omi Howard Winant and Ettiene Balibar who approach race and ethnicity as geographically and historically situated constructs.39 Because of my attention to the construction of identity categories in context, this study proceeds from a postcolonial perspective,40 and more specifically, from Latin American and Mexican debates about the legacy of colonialism.41 In particular, this study draws on Anibal Quijano’s notion of the coloniality of power, which foregrounds ethnic difference as an organizing principle of the colonial experience with consequences that have endured long after independence.42 This study’s understanding of indigenismo is influenced by Mexican thinkers Pablo González Casanova and Guillermo Bonfil Batalla’s analyses of the post revolutionary Mexican national project as a form of internal colonialism of

39 See Frantz Fanon, Black Skin White Masks (New York: Grove Press, 1967); Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States : From the 1960s to the 1990s (New York: Routledge, 1994) and Ettiene Balibar, “The Nation Form.” 40 Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978); Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, "Can the Subaltern Speak," Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture ed. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988) and Homi K Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994). 41 See Aníbal Quijano, “Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America.” Nepantla: Views from the South 1, no. 3, 2000. 553-80; Pablo González Casanova, “El colonialismo interno,” Sociología de la explotación. Buenos Aires, Argentina: CLACSO, 2006. 185-234; Guillermo Bonfil Batalla, México Profundo : Una Civilizaciûn Negada. México, D.F.: Secretaría de Educación Pública, 1987. 42 Quijano, “Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America.” 12

indigenous peoples and cultures.43 Lastly, this study is in tune with recent scholarship on racism in the Mexican context, which has begun to point to the role that the ideology of indigenismo-mestizaje has had in concealing and perpetuating racism in

Mexico against people of indigenous ancestry in shifting and even contradictory ways.44

Because any thorough accounting of how film functions in the construction of visual economies must deal with the specificities of film as a medium, my study draws on the theoretical contributions of film studies scholars. Like feminist film scholars who have addressed the way in which patriarchal conventions for representing women suture the spectator into the heteronormative male position,45 film theorists focused on race, ethnicity, and cinema have observed similar dynamics at work which position the spectator in relation to raced Others. Robert Stam and

Luise Spence have shown how film has been used to reproduce and reinscribe asymmetrical power relations rooted in colonialism and ethnic and/or “racial” difference.46 Similarly, Fatimah Rony has shown that ethnographic film has been

43 González Casanova, “El colonialismo interno” and Bonfil, Batalla, México Profundo. See also David A.Brading, "Manuel Gamio and Official Indigenismo in Mexico." Bulletin of Latin American Research. 7.1 (1988): 75-89. 44 René Flores and Edward Telles, "Social Stratification in Mexico: Disentangling Color, Ethnicity, and Class," American Sociological Review. 77.3 (2012): 486-494; Mónica Moreno, "Distributed Intensities: Whiteness, Mestizaje and the Logics of Mexican Racism," Ethnicities. 10.3 (2010): 387- 401; Andrés Villarreal, "Stratification by skin color in contemporary Mexico," American Sociological Review 75.5 (2010): 652-678; Alicia Castellanos Guerrero, Jorge Gómez Izquierdo, and Francisco Pineda. “Racist Discourse in Mexico”; Christina A.Sue, Land of the Cosmic Race: Race Mixture, Racism, and Blackness in Mexico (Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2013) Regina Martínez Casas et all, “The Different Faces of Mestizaje.” 45 Laura.Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," Literary Theory. An Anthology ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan (New York: Blackwell, 1998) pp. 585-96. 46 Robert Stam and Louise Spence, "Colonialism, Racism and Representation," Screen 24.2 (1983): 2- 20. 13

used to constitute the indigenous as Other, and position the spectator as separate from, and often superior to the represented subject.47 I will also engage with the work theorists bell hooks and Jane Gaines who have addressed black spectatorship in gendered ways. These scholars have highlighted the need for understanding historically raced looking relations in order to address local forms of spectatorship.48

Inspired by their approach, I dialog with film theorist Richard Dyer’s proposals for how racial categories acquire their meaning in cinema.49

In order to produce my readings of the films for the purpose of fulfilling the research goal, I take the following questions about film form, content and narrative outlined by Stam and Spence as my point of departure:

To speak of the “image” of a social group, we have to ask precise questions

about images. How much space do they occupy in the shot? Are they seen in

close-ups or only in distant long shots? How often do they appear compared

with the EuroAmerican characters and for how long? Are they active, desiring

characters or decorative props? Do the eyeline matches identify us with one

gaze rather than another? Whose looks are reciprocated, whose ignored? How

do character positionings communicate social distance or differences in

status? Who is front and center? How do body language, posture, and facial

expression communicate social hierarchies, arrogance, servility, resentment,

47 Fatimah Tobing Rony, The Third Eye: Race, Cinema and Ethnographic Spectacle (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006). 48 bell hooks, "The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators," Feminist Film Theory: A Reader (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999) and Jane Gaines, "White Privilege and Looking Relations: Race and Gender in Feminist Film Theory," Feminist Film Theory: A reader. ed. Sue Thornham (Edinborough: Edinborough University Press, 1999). 49 Richard.Dyer, White (London; New York: Routledge, 1997). 14

pride? Which community is sentimentalized? Is there an esthetic segregation

whereby one group is haloed and the other villainized? Are subtle hierarchies

conveyed by temporality and subjectivization? What homologies inform

artistic and ethnic/political representation?50

Because narrative and visual details are the sites through which films convey their individual constructs and messages regarding indigeneity, I will carry out meticulous analyses of the stylistic and narrative conventions used in the films in order to tease out how the films depict the indigenous and position the spectator in relation the ethnic construct. At the same time, following the insights of Dolores Tierney and Ana

López, I admit and explore the possibilities that the films’ narrative and technical aspects can be at odds with the films’ explicit hegemonic messages.51 In this way, my readings of films also emerge from this against-the-grain approach.

In my viewing of dozens of indigenous-themed Mexican films from the first half of the 20th century, I have identified three salient and reoccurring discourses that serve to structure the research project. Chapter 1 addresses the ethnographic as motif in the representation of indigeneity in Mexican film within a contextualization of the importance of anthropology for the 20th century Mexican state. In this chapter, following the work of Fatimah Rony, I discuss the presence of various modes of cinematic ethnography and the conventions through which they establish the native as

Other. Furthermore, I explore how these conventions situate the spectator in a

50 Robert Stam and Louise Spence, "Colonialism, Racism and Representation” p. 208. 51 See Dolores Tierney, Emilio Fernández p. 17 and Lopez, Ana M. "Tears and Desire: Women and Melodrama in the ‘Old’ Mexican Cinema," Mediating Two Worlds : Cinematic Encounters in the Americas. ed. John King, Ana M. López and Manuel Alvarado (London: British Film Institute, 1993) pp. 147-63. 15

subjective space in which she/he is encouraged to engage in a distanced observation and appropriation of indigeneity, without taking on the indigenous identity. Chapter 2 looks at the use of whiteness for the representation of Indians on film from a decolonial perspective of the history of race relations in Mexico. I suggest that these films manifest the tension between the 20th century indigenista discourse and the persistence of a long-standing valorization of a local construct of “whiteness,” which surfaces through the aesthetic exaltation and desire for “white” bodies in the films. In this way, the chapter seeks to contribute to Anglo-American theorizations of race and cinema. Chapter 3 considers native spirituality as a fundamental marker of indigenous

Otherness in Mexican films in light of the anxiety surrounding native religious beliefs beginning in the colonial period and continuing through the 20th century. Through a variety of positions, the films use native spiritual beliefs to mark natives as Other, yet also attempt to underscore the validity of indigenous cultures. In this way, they operate as clear manifestations of the inherent tensions of 20th century indigenismo.

Through the three main discourses highlighted here, the films simultaneously construct the native’s difference and negotiate his pertinence for the nonnative mestizo self. The ethnographic films clearly cast indigeneity as relevant information for Mexican nationals, while ensuring a separate subject position for the spectator.

White indigeneity enacts discursive veneration for natives, while steering desire towards white bodies (what better way to “improve the race”?52). Lastly, the

52 The phrase “improve the race” or “mejorar la raza” is an expression often heard in Mexican society that is used to refer to marrying and having children with someone who is “whiter” than oneself. This expression is plainly compatible with both 19th and 20th century variants of indigenismo that (although with ideological distinctions) sought to neutralize non-“white” elements of the population. See Sue, 16

convention of religious alterity marks natives as distinct, but ultimately assimilable and worthy subjects. As a whole, then, this study seeks to contribute to a more complete and complex picture about how Mexican cinema has been used to represent indigeneity in the first half of the 20th century, and the implications that those representations have had for locating the spectator within the national in raced and ethnicized terms.

Land of the Cosmic Race; Moreno Figueroa "Distributed Intensities” and Castellanos Guerrero, “Para hacer nación.” 17

Chapter 1: The Ethnographic Spectacle in Mexican Cinema

Introduction

Anthropology played a notable role in the post revolutionary government’s project of reimagining the nation through an emphasis on indigenismo-mestizaje in the first half of the 20th century.53 The production and dissemination of anthropologically based information about indigenous cultures of the past and present was part of the government’s project to, “forg[e] Mexican citizenship both by

‘indigenizing’ modernity and by modernizing the Indians, thus uniting all Mexicans in one mestizo community.”54 In light of the weighty institutional and cultural presence of anthropology in Mexico in this period, here I argue that the anthropological discourse has been a significant way through which indigeneity has been represented on film in Mexico throughout the 20th century. I illustrate the ways in which the films selected reproduce the conventions of ethnography, working to propose a familiarity with indigeneity, and at the same time ensure a measured distance from an ethnic reality that was also associated with backwardness. I suggest

53 Alicia Castellanos Guerrero, "Antropología y racismo en México," (Desacatos. 4, 2000) p. 53. 54 Claudio Lomnitz, "Bordering on Anthropology: Dialects of a National Tradition in Mexico," Empires Nations, and Natives: Anthropology and State-Making, ed. Benoit de L'Estoile, Federico Neiburg, and Lygia Sigaud (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005) p. 169. See also Alicia Castellanos, Guerrero. "Antropología y racismo en México," Desacatos 4 2000: pp. 53-79. 18

that the films position the spectator within a subjective space that is in line with the ideology of indigenismo-mestizaje because they locate the viewer as a distanced observer of native “reality,” simultaneously implying the pertinence of the indigenous content displayed, and that the observer is further along in the process of mestizaje than the objectified native. Furthermore, I explore the ways in which Mexican films have reflected upon the limitations ethnographic discourse, suggesting that it does not facilitate a constructive aboriginal peoples, at best alienating them, and at worst serving only to assert the superiority of those who enunciate it.

My approach to analyzing the films’ use of an ethnographic discourse draws on theoretical insights from both Anthropology and Film Studies. I take into account theoretical shifts in Anthropology in the U.S. during the 1980s, which have shed light on the limitations of the discipline’s earlier positivist assumptions, and have addressed the ethnography as a text, highlighting the conventions through which it performs its own authority. In a similar vein, film and media scholars such as Stuart

Hall, Ella Shohat, Robert Stam and Fatimah Rony have discussed how the ethnographic discourse was reproduced on film in order to create distance and hierarchy between the observer, the observed, and their respective communities of origin. The work of these theorists is central to my conception of how the ethnographic as a mode proposes a subject position to the Mexican spectator, which supports a specific model of nationalization via a distanced and piecemeal education about indigeneity. This chapter’s discussion of the ethnographic fits within the dissertation’s broader understanding of Mexican filmic indigenismos because, I

emphasize how the mode both crafts the native as Other and is meant to inform the construction of the mestizo self (an identity that the indigenismo mestizaje ideology wills for the Mexican citizen to take on).

Anthropology and Nation building in Mexico

In his article “Bordering on Anthropology: Dialects of a National Tradition in

Mexico" Claudio Lomnitz uses the term “national anthropologies” “to refer to anthropological traditions that have been fostered by educational and cultural institutions for the development of studies of their own nation.”55 Through the use of this term, his article discusses the unique nature and function of Mexican anthropology within the nation-building project, in contrast to the anthropological practices of the west, which have traditionally produced anthropologists who travel outside of their nations to study communities. Lomnitz has highlighted the role that

Mexico’s archaeological patrimony has played in the country’s nationalism, and the connections between the institutionalization of Mexican anthropology and its prominent role in shaping national development policies.56 Additionally, he suggests that between the late 19th century and mid 20th century, the practice of the discipline in Mexico also served as a way for the country to “imagin[e] the parallels between

[its] development and that of the nations that produce anthropologists who travel,”57

55 Lomnitz, “Bordering on Anthropology” p. 167. 56 Lomnitz, “Bordering on Anthropology” p. 168. 57 Lomnitz, “Bordering on Anthropology” p. 178. 20

and in this way anthropology formed part of the nation’s assertion of itself as a modern nation.

Scholars have proposed different genealogies for Mexican anthropology.

While some have suggested that it was born with the writing of the sixteenth century friars such as Bernardino de Sahagún, others have identified its beginnings with creole patriots and antiquarians who wrote during the 17th and early 18th centuries, or with Manuel Gamio’s founding of Mexico’s first Department of Anthropology in

1917.58 For his part, Lomnitz discusses the evolution of anthropology in Mexico in terms of four stages. I believe Lomnitz’s periodization is useful because his model

(especially in phases 2, 3 and 4) foregrounds the relationship between the discipline and the evolving place of the “Indian” in the Mexican national project (as explained in the introduction). The first period spans from the 1850s to the early 1900s and consists of the accounts produced by foreign scientific travelers.59 The second phase covers from the 1880’s to the 1920’s and is a moment during which local intellectuals developed and applied evolutionary paradigms for the purpose of incorporating a population that was perceived to be backwards into the nation. The third stage (from the 1940s through the 1960s) is the period in which Mexican anthropology consolidated a developmental orthodoxy in order to both reframe and further the endeavors of the previous phase. Lastly, from the 1970’s to the 1990’s Mexican anthropology was characterized by a shift from studying “Indians” to studying social

58 Lomnitz, “Bordering on Anthropology” p. 176. See also David A. Brading, "Manuel Gamio and Official Indigenismo in Mexico," Bulletin of Latin American Research. 7.1 1988: pp. 75-89. Juan Comas, La Antropología Social Aplicada En México: Trayectoria y Antología. (México: Instituto Indigenista Interamericano, 1964. 59 Lomnitz, “Bordering on Anthropology” p. 168. 21

class.60 For the purpose of this chapter, the relevant phases of anthropology in Mexico

(using Lomnitz’s breakdown) are the second and the third because of their clear emphasis on producing information about diverse ethnic populations for the purpose of solidifying internal national cohesion.

As Xavier Guerra has argued, Mexico achieved independence from Spain prior to the formation of a broad bourgeois public sphere.61 The study of the origins and attributes of different indigenous groups though anthropology and archaeology became important in this context because it was a way of making these populations knowable to urban and learned sectors of society, and was a first step in locating them as members of the national community.62 Thus, in light of the 19th century liberal push to both homogenize and modernize the nation,63 one of the primary tasks of anthropology in Mexico as it developed in the 1880s was to create regional hierarchies of race and relate them to a narrative of national evolution. As Lomnitz explains, “By creating a single racial narrative for the whole country, these anthropologists could shape the internal frontiers of modernization while upholding a teleology that made progress and evolution an integral aspect of Mexican

60 Lomnitz, “Bordering on Anthropology” p. 169. 61 Lomnitz, “Bordering on Anthropology” p. 171. François-Xavier Guerra, “Forms of communication, political spaces, and cultural identities in the creation of Spanish American nations,” Beyond Imagined Communities: Reading and Writing the Nation in Nineteenth-Century Latin America, ed. Sara Castro- Klarén and John Charles beautien (Washington D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2003) p. 32. 62 Shelley E Garrigan, “Our Archaeology: Science, Citizenry, Patrimony, and the Museum,” Collecting Mexico: Museums, Monuments, and the Creation of National Identity (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012) pp. 65 – 105. 63 Alicia Castellanos Guerrero, “Para hacer nación: discursos racistas en el México decimonónico,” Los caminos del racismo en México, ed. José Jorge Gómez Izquierdo (México DF.: Plaza y Valdés, S.A., 2005) pp. 89-115; and Rodolfo.Stavenhagen, "La política indigenista del Estado mexicano y los pueblos indígenas en el siglo XX," Educación e Interculturalidad: política y políticas (Cuernavaca: CRIM-UNAM, 2013) p. 24. 22

civilization.”64 It is important to note that anthropology was also a discipline that was instrumentalized in order to provide “evidence” of the supposed predisposition of natives toward vice and crime. This view was in line with assimilationist national project according to which indigeneity needed to be diffused through “whiteness” in order to form a healthy and modern mestizo Mexico.65

While revolutionary anthropologists were similarly interested in the modern image and progress of the nation, they differed from their Porfirian counterparts in that they also had an interventionist approach in the indigenous communities themselves. The most important figure in this kind of Anthropology in Mexico is

Manuel Gamio, who is often considered the “father” of Mexican anthropology.66

After having studied under Franz Boas in the United States, Gamio returned to

Mexico and received the support of Venustiano Carranza’s government to create the

Department of Anthropology of Mexico’s agriculture and development ministry.67

With this government backing he organized the large-scale study of the population of the Valley of Teotihuacán, and continued the archeological digs there for which he is well known. While on the one hand Gamio believed in a direct application of his studies to improve the efficacy of the government,68 he also supported a broader

64 Lomnitz, “Bordering on Anthropology” p. 182. 65 Alicia Castellanos Guerrero, Jorge Gómez Izquierdo, and Francisco Pineda, “Racist Discourse in Mexico” Racism and Discourse in Latin America, ed. Teun A Dijk (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2009) p. 230. For a more detailed explanation of the relationship between degeneration theories and mestizaje see chapter 2 pp. 1-9. 66 Lomnitz, “Bordering on Anthropology” p. 182. 67 Lomnitz, “Bordering on Anthropology” p. 183. 68 Lomnitz, “Bordering on Anthropology” p. 186. 23

adoption of indigenizing aesthetics throughout Mexican society.69 He and others were instrumental in the elaboration of various governmental policies that prioritized spreading education and health services to rural areas.70

Both through the work of anthropologists like Gamio and those who would follow from the 1940s to the 1960s, “[Mexican anthropology] was charged with the task of forging

Mexican citizenship both by “indigenizing” modernity and by modernizing the Indians, thus uniting all Mexicans in one mestizo community.”71 According to Rodolfo Stavenhagen, the institution that most clearly exemplifies this particular government approach is the Instituto

Nacional Indigenista founded in 1940.72 Anthropology continued to become more institutionalized, and dominated by this kind of national orthodoxy.73 Other institutions that house Mexico’s large professional establishment were built around the ame time including the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (1939), the Escuela Nacional de

Antropología e Historia (1939), the National University’s Sección de Antropología (1963), and the Museo Nacional de Antropología (1964).74

By the 1960’s official indigenismo was in crisis, and government developmental policies aimed at the nation’s natives had largely failed to achieve their aims.75 The close association between Mexican anthropology and a teleological notion of national progress eventually led to a generation of anthropologists including Arturo Warman, Margarita

Nolasco Armas, Guillermo Bonfil Batalla, Mercedes Olivera de Vazquez, and Enrique

69 Lomnitz, “Bordering on Anthropology” p. 184. 70 Rodolfo.Stavenhagen, "La política indigenista del Estado mexicano” pp. 24, 28, 30. 71 Lomnitz, “Bordering on Anthropology” p. 169. 72 Rodolfo.Stavenhagen, "La política indigenista del Estado mexicano” p. 32. 73 Lomnitz, “Bordering on Anthropology” p. 187. 74 Lomnitz, “Bordering on Anthropology” p. 187. 75 Rodolfo.Stavenhagen, "La política indigenista del Estado mexicano” p. 45. 24

Valencia, who argued that the discipline had abandoned it scientific and critical potential by participating in the Indian’s incorporation into the nation and its capitalist system of exploitation.76 Their perspective is representative of what Lomnitz has identified as Mexican

Anthropology’s fourth phase. In their now well known critique, De eso que llaman antropología Mexicana (1970), these scholars argued for a more theoretically inclined anthropology and for a shift away from using the discipline as a tool for bringing indigenous people into the national community.77 Lomnitz’s account of Anthropology in Mexico is significant for the aims of this chapter because he illustrates how the discipline functions idiosyncratically in the Mexican context as a central feature of the indigenismo mestizaje project. Taking up his observation that the Anthropological discourse was an important way in which the native was presented as knowable within the national, this chapter explores how other cultural forms, such as film, channeled this approach to apprehending indigeneity.

The Anthropological Discourse in Ethnography and Film

In the mid 1980s U.S. and European anthropologists began questioning the relationship between positivism and ethnography within the tradition of their discipline. This line of exploration led to the examining of ethnographic conventions and its privileging of the ethnographer as an authoritative and legitimate voice. James

Clifford and George Marcus’s volume, Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of

Ethnography (1986) is emblematic of this shift, as is Johannes Fabian’s text Time and

76 Lomnitz, “Bordering on Anthropology” p. 170. De eso que llaman antropología mexicana. (México, D.F: Editorial Nuestro Tiempo, 1970). 77 Lomnitz, “Bordering on Anthropology” p. 192. 25

the Other: How Anthropology makes its object. The critiques that these scholars have made of traditional ethnography is relevant for this discussion because many of their observations about anthropology’s textual discourse are also pertinent for films that in one way or another, have claimed to speak authoritatively about a foreign or exotic group of people.

Cultural Studies scholar Stuart Hall has shed light on how the authoritative positioning present in ethnography was evident in other genres of popular literature, and also has come to inform visual culture:

“Often it is ‘forgotten’ [the degree] to which in the period of slavery and

imperialism popular literature is saturated with these fixed, negative attributes

of the colonized races. We find them in the diaries, observations and accounts,

the notebooks, ethnographic records and commentaries, of visitors, explorers,

missionaries and administrators in Africa, India, the Far East and the

Americas. And also something else: the ‘absent’ but imperializing ‘white

eye’; the unmarked position from which all these ‘observations’ are made and

from which, alone, they make sense. This is the history of slavery and

conquest, written, seen, drawn and photographed by The Winners. They

cannot be read and made sense of from any other position. The ‘white eye’ is

always outside the frame – but seeing and positioning everything within it.”78

Speaking specifically about film Ella Shohat Robert Stam have discussed the multiple ways in which late 19th and early 20th century film functioned in order to create a

78 Stuart Hall, “Racist Ideologies and the Media,” Media Studies: A reader, ed. Paul Marris and Sue Thornham (New York: New York University Press, 2000) p. 275. 26

sense of national communities in the West. On the one hand, drawing on the work of

Benedict Anderson, they suggest that theatrical film inherited the nation building function of the 19th century novel.79 On the other hand, the nation building process was also carried out vis-à-vis film’s visualization of the nations’ imperial Others.

Films about exotic Others were also the heirs of the long tradition of exhibiting people who were considered to be exotic at World’s Fairs and expositions.80 These exhibits were important for defining national identities within a broader sense of belonging to western civilizations.81 The development of the cinema and its increasing ability to reach the masses made it a more popular means of visualizing raced peoples: “The fence of the fair was now the movie screen.”82

As Shohat and Stam have shown, by constructing the otherness of colonized or formerly colonized non-Europeans around the globe, these films participated in supporting an imperial imaginary and “stimulat[ed] inense subject effects:”83

“The ‘spatially mobilized visuality’ of the I/eye of empire spiraled outward

around the globe, creating a visceral, kinetic sense of imperial travel and

conquest, transforming European spectators into armchair conquistadors,

affirming their sense of power while turning the colonies into spectacle for the

metropole’s voyeuristic gaze.”84

79 Ella Shohat and Robert Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media (New York: Routledge, 1994) p. 102. 80 Ella Shohat and Robert Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism p. 107. 81 Fatimah Tobing Rony, The Third Eye: Race, Cinema and Ethnographic Spectacle (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006) p. 37. 82 Fatimah Tobing Rony, The Third Eye p. 38. 83 Fatimah Tobing Rony, The Third Eye p. 103. 84 Ella Shohat and Robert Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism p. 104. 27

Significantly, many films that visualized exotic Others took on a sense of ethnographic authority,85 which they used to “construc[t] a presumably holistic portrait of the colonized” and “ma[p] the globe as a disciplinary space of knowledge.86

For film theorist Bill Nichols, ethnographic film is exemplary of what he has termed “discourses of sobriety.” These discourses are characterized by an unproblematic relationship to the real, and operate as sites at which

“knowledge/power exerts itself.”87 In ethnographic film in particular, “the separation of "here" and "there" is sharply demarcated,” which in turn, affords the act of travel and arrival scenes a notable weight.88 Voice-over commentary is a common tool, not only serving as an accessory to unfamiliar sights and sounds,89 but also performing authoritative knowledge about what is visualized. In a similar vein to that articulated by Stuart Hall above, Nichols has noted how ethnographic film functions under the pretense of the effacement of the observer. By “transform[ing] first-hand, personal experience into third-person, disembodied knowledge,” these films convey information through a point of view that takes on the qualities of “omniscience and omnipotence.”90 In this way, films that appeal to ethnographic authority in either a strict or a loose sense, not only serve to reinforce raced asymmetrical subject positions, but also “suture the spectator into the omniscient cosmic perspective of the

85 Ella Shohat and Robert Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism p. 107. 86 Ella Shohat and Robert Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism p. 106. 87 Bill Nichols, “The Ethnographer’s Tale,”. Visual Anthropology Review. Volume 7 Number 2 Fall 1991: p. 33. 88 Bill Nichols, “The Ethnographer’s Tale” p. 33. 89 Bill Nichols, “The Ethnographer’s Tale” p. 33. 90 Bill Nichols, “The Ethnographer’s Tale” p. 33. 28

European master-subject.”91

Just as feminist film scholars such as Laura Mulvey have suggested that classical Hollywood films are structured around an implied male viewer resulting the fetishized representation of women on screen,92 so Shohat, Stam and Fatima Rony have illustrated that the representation of race and otherness from an implied western perspective situates the spectator in an alienated position with respect to the Others depicted on film.93 Furthermore, Rony’s study sheds light on the ways in which

“standard ethnographic film is linked to popular media entertainments and Hollywood spectacle”, and going beyond Nichol’s more general discussion, has identified three different veins though which ethnographic cinema has manifested itself: 1) the positivist mode of the scientific research film, 2) the taxidermic mode of the lyrical ethnographic film, and 3) the commercially oriented entertainment film.94 In this way she has shown how the authoritative subject position and implied western perspective of ethnographic films is present in the mainstream film production, questioning a discrete understanding of film genres and types. For those who do not occupy the dominant western subject position in real life, films position us in relation to raced

Others against our own lived experiences or personal identifications and sympathies.

This experience has been described by a variety of thinkers, from Frantz Fanon who

91 Ella Shohat and Robert Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism. p.114. 92 Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Literary Theory. An anthology, ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan (New York: Blackwell, 1998) pp. 585-596. 93 Other film theorists such as Bill Nichols have similarly suggested the parallels between Mulvey’s feminist critique and the way in which classical Hollywood films privilege specific raced and classed perspectives. See Bill Nichols. Representing Reality. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 1991. p. 207-208. 94 Fatimah Tobing Rony, The Third Eye pp. 12-15. 29

describes “waiting for himself” to appear on screen in the theatre95 to Mexican and

Latino Film scholar, Charles Ramirez Berg’s confession of his inability to explain why he identified with Indiana Jones, and not with the aboriginal South American in the beginning sequences of Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981).96

In the context of nation building in states that were former colonies, and are made up of the descendants of Europeans, the aboriginal populations, and a population that is a mixture of these various groups, the race-based subject positioning of cultural production has complex implications. Stam and Shohat have gestured toward this problem when they discussed films shown in Africa that supported the project of British imperialism: “African spectators were prodded to identify with Cecil Rhodes and Stanley and Livingstone against Africans themselves, thus engendering a battle of national imaginaries within the fissured colonial spectator.” The forced adoption of the colonizer’s subject position through the experience of spectatorship is akin to Franz Fanon’s description of the role of cultural production in his native Martinique: “The black schoolboy in the Antilles, who in his lessons is forever talking about ‘our ancestors, the Gauls,’ identifies himself with the explorer, the bringer of civilization, the white man who carries truth to savages-an all- white truth.”97 For Fanon this experience resulted in a rude awakening. As a product of mixed European and African ancestry and a culturally colonizing education, it was not until he was in France that he discovered he was a “negro” (like the Senegalese he

95 Frantz Fanon, Black Skin White Masks (New York: Grove Press, 1967) p. 140. 96 Charles Ramírez Berg, Latino Images in Film: Stereotypes, subversion, and resistance (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002). 97 Frantz Fanon, Black Skin White Masks p. 147. 30

had always thought of as barbaric) and not a Frenchman as he had always assumed.

Fanon’s famous text is relevant for understanding cultural production in

Mexico because despite the fact that Mexico was no longer a colony of a European power (as was the case of Martinique) its push toward incorporating the indigenous into the nation was a form of internal colonialism,98 so much so that Manuel Gamio himself referred to his efforts in these terms:

We believe that if the attitude of governments continues to be of disdain and

pressure against the indigenous element, as it has been in the past, their failure

will be absolute and irrevocable. However, if the countries of Central and

South America begin, as Mexico has already begun, a new conquest of

indigenous race, their failure shall turn into a triumphal success.99

The post revolutionary Mexican government’s privileging of the mestizo as the ideal national subject, and its aggressive cultural campaign represented a shift with respect to the more Eurocentric Porfirian ideal. However, this new campaign still required a careful managing of the country’s indigenous past and present, part of which was carried out through cultural production. As José Jorge Goméz Izquierdo has shown in his extensive study of how indigenous people are presented Mexican history school books from the first half of the 20th century, historia patria was instrumentalized to position and educate Mexicans as nonnatives while supposedly teaching them about indigeneity for the very purpose of defining their mexicanness

98 Pablo González Casanova, “El colonialismo interno” Sociología de la explotación (Buenos Aires, Argentina: CLACSO, 2006) pp. 185-234. Guillermo Bonfil Batalla, México Profundo: Una civilización negada. (México, D.F: Secretaría de Educación Pública, 1987). 99 Gamio qtd. in Lomnitz, “Bordering on Anthropology” p. 185. Emphasis mine. 31

(which Gómez Izquierdo understands as the nonnative hegemonic criollo/mestizo culture imposed as universally national).100 In this way cultural products such as history books provided subjects with “una oferta de identificación nacionalista” that was positioned vis-a-vis the native. If historia patria carefully delegitimizes the natives of the past and separates the contemporary Mexican subject from them, I suggest that in 20th century Mexico, Anthropology also functioned as antropología patria, conducting a similar operation regarding contemporary natives. My main postulate in this chapter is that given the centrality of anthropology as a discourse throughout the early and mid 20th century in Mexico, we can identify various appeals to ethnographic authority in Mexican films that claim to represent indigeneity.

Through the use of the ethnographic mode of address, these films engage the dynamic of antropología patria because they perform the double function of exposing citizens to national content (indigenous culture), while ensuring that the spectator is not problematically identified with indigenous “backwardness” in the process. What I am arguing is that the stylistic conventions of the “ethnographic spectacle” in the

Mexican context serve to suture the spectator in a subjective space that was in tune with the modernization and internal colonization of indigenismo-mestizaje because it fostered an approximation to the native without placing the spectator in that subject position. In this way, the viewing experience of these films sets up conditions within

100 José Jorge Gómez Izquierdo, “Racismo y nacionalismo en el discurso de las élites mexicanas: Historia Patria y Antropología Indigenista,” Los caminos del racismo en México. ed. José Jorge Gómez Izquierdo. (México DF.: Plaza y Valdés, S.A., 2005) pp. 117-181.

which the spectator can inhabit mestizaje and take up indigeneity as, “lo extraño y separado a la vez que lo propio”.101

In this chapter I will trace the use of the ethnographic mode through various types of films made in Mexico between the early 1920s and the mid 1960s. I will first analyze Peregrinación a Chalma, a scientific research film from 1922, in order to illustrate the ways in which the ethnographic mode of address102 presents indigeneity as information that is of national interest, but at the same time carefully crafts a subject position for the spectator that encourages the objectification of indigeneity, and his/her identification with Mexico’s Hispanic legacy. I will then move to the discussion of the film Maclovia (1948) by the iconic Mexican director Emilio “El

Indio” Fernández. Here I will illustrate how a combination of the lyrical ethnographic sequences within this film and other forms of patriotic didacticism combine to form the films message about the place of indigeneity within the Mexican nation. My discussion will then shift to examine the segment of Benito Alazraki’s film 1954 film,

Raíces titled, “Nuestra Señora.” While the segment reproduces many of the stylistic conventions of ethnographic films, I argue that it does so in order to put forth a poignant critique of how anthropological discourse has been one more tool used to enforce raced asymmetrical power-relations in Mexican society. In a similar vein I

101 Luis Villoro, Los grandes momentos del indigenismo en México (México City: El Colegio de México, 1996) pp. 234-235. 102 According to Semiotics scholar Daniel Chandler, the term “modes of address” can be understood as, “the ways in which relations between addresser and addressee are constructed in a text. In order to communicate, a producer of any text must make some assumptions about an intended audience…” Daniel Chandler, “Modes of Address” Semiotics for Beginners, 15 Dec. 2015 .

will discuss Luis Alcoriza’s film Tarahumara (cada vez más lejos) (1965), showing how the film explicitly criticizes Mexico’s anthropological institutions, and uses a camera language that only fleetingly evokes some the ethnographic conventions in order to craft a dynamic and shifting visual rendering that forms part of the film’s questioning of the relevance of the anthropological tradition in Mexico.

Peregrinación a Chalma (1922): A Mexican Ethnographic Research Film

Drawing on the work of other scholars, Fatima Tobing Rony has sustained the view that the first anthropological research films were made by the French anthropologist, physician and prehistorian, Felix-Louis Regnault.103 Regnault believed that he had found an objective proof of racial distinction among human groups in their bodily movement.104 Film became an ideal tool for him because it allowed him to capture the physical form in motion, and in this way served as an

“unimpeachable scientific index of race.”105 With the goal of establishing an evolutionary typology of the races and an account of human history through locomotion, Regnault carried out time motion studies or chronophotographie of West

African performers in the Paris Ethnographic Exposition of 1895 and compared their movements to those of Europeans.106 For Rony, Regnault’s work constitutes the origin of a particular type of ethnographic film: the scientific research film, which is characterized by the fact that in these films:

103 Fatimah Tobing Rony, The Third Eye. p. 14. 104 Fatimah Tobing Rony, The Third Eye. pp. 35, 46. 105 Fatimah Tobing Rony, The Third Eye. p. 4. 106 Fatimah Tobing Rony, The Third Eye. p.14. 34

The peoples filmed were perceived as raw data, and the films were meant to

be studied both in themselves and to aid comparative studies of the

physiologies of different races, much the way the microscope was used by

other scientists. As people pictured as "ethnographic," the West African

performers who Regnault filmed were literally written into film as racialized

bodies, transformed into a kind of racially signifying hieroglyph.107

The fact that in these films, “the inscription is to be taken for real,”108 has also been recognized by Nichols, who has similarly noted that in ethnographic films, the bodies of those presented serve and transparent manifestations of truth about a given civilization.109 Another fundamental characteristic of these films is that, “The import of the inscription… is not left to the interpretation of the reader; its significance is described as an accompanying commentary provided by the scientist. This is the second form of representation: the scientist always speaks for what is inscribed.” As

Nichols has also mentioned (above) scientific authority takes the form of verbal commentary.110

In Mexico, early cinema was used for educational purposes as well as for entertainment. According to early Mexican film scholar Aurelio de los Reyes, in

Mexico during the first 14 years that film technology was introduced in the country, the films that were shown included magic tricks, scenes showing cities and places of

107 Fatimah Tobing Rony, The Third Eye. p.14 108 Fatimah Tobing Rony, The Third Eye. p. 45. 109 Bill Nichols, Representing Reality (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991) pp. 201-228. 110 Fatimah Tobing Rony, The Third Eye p. 45. 35

historical interest in distant locals as Egypt, China, and India.111 Scientific documentaries were also shown, such as those made by the French microbiologist,

Jean Comandón.112 We know that the first scientific films made in Mexico were those of doctor Aureliano Urrutia (1909), who used the medium to capture his surgeries for the purpose of teaching his methods to his students more effectively.113 Lastly, the state used film as a pedagogical tool by either producing or acquiring films and projecting them in public spaces such as small plazas, schools, barracks, libraries, and laborers’ meeting centers.114

While at this time I am unable to trace whether scientific anthropological documentary films made in Europe (such as those made by Felix-Louis Regnault) were shown in Mexico, we do know that by the early 1920’s film was being used by anthropologists there. During Manuel Gamio’s excavations of the ruins at

Teotihuacan, and his study of the peoples who live in its surrounding areas, anthropologist used film for multiple purposes.115 The films he had made before, during and after the excavations were meant to assist in his research and that of his team, and in order to teach his students.116 He filmed the pyramids, local dances, customs, and midwifery practices with the intention of preserving folklore and giving visibility to these sites.117 Gamio also created a cinematographic equivalent of his

111 Aurelio de los Reyes. Manuel Gamio y el cine (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1991) pp. 33-34. 112 Aurelio de los Reyes. Manuel Gamio y el cine pp. 33-34. 113 Aurelio de los Reyes. Manuel Gamio y el cine p. 33. 114 Aurelio de los Reyes. Manuel Gamio y el cine p. 34. 115 Aurelio de los Reyes. Manuel Gamio y el cine p. 10 116 Aurelio de los Reyes. Manuel Gamio y el cine pp. 10, 54. 117 Aurelio de los Reyes. Manuel Gamio y el cine pp. 54, 63. 36

book La población de1 valle de Teotihuacan118 in order for his work to be known nationally and internationally by a non-specialized audience.119 Lastly, Gamio not only used film to capture information about Teotihuacan and its surrounding areas, but also in order to share information with the people who lived there. With the support of the ministries of Agriculture, Economy as well as the U.S. government,

Gamio showed films for the purpose of educating people who lived near the valley of

Teotihuacan120 on various subjects including the hygienic and productive domestication of animals, bee keeping, the use of insecticides and more. De los Reyes informs us that the first screening of these educational films took place in February of

1922 before an audience of 600 people near the valley.121 This particular screening took place with the assistance of a speaker who read the intertitles aloud in order to ensure that illiteracy would not be an impediment to the audience’s understanding of

118 Aurelio de los Reyes provides a detailed description of what this film (now lost) contained: “La primera parte mostraba recursos naturales de la región no aprovechados con anterioridad: yacimientos de obsidiana, depósitos de barro, cardos o plantas de chicalote, magueyes, etc. En seguida se mostraba como para la construcción de objetos arqueológicos, los teotihuacanos usaron esos materiales; lo probaban ídolos, pequeñas esculturas de obsidiana, vasijas decoradas y policromadas. La primera parte terminaba al mostrar como la Dirección de Antropología, superando los trescientos anos de dominación española, consiguió revivir tales industrias, mediante una adaptación a las nuevas necesidades: aretes de obsidiana, piedras de anillos, de collares, estuches para reloj fabricados por los niños de la Escuela Regional y por los habitantes de los pueblos de la zona. Mostraba también colecciones de objetos de cerámica esmaltada al estilo de la de talavera de Puebla, pero decorada con dibujos indígenas inspirados en los restos arqueológicos de Teotihuacán. Asimismo la industrialización del chicalote o cardo y del maguey, bases para producir aceite y jabón con el primero, y cuerdas, sacos y otros objetos con las fibras del segundo. La segunda parte mostraba aspectos de la vida local: costumbres domesticas, ideas religiosas, indumentaria de los habitantes, preocupaciones y supersticiones, "todo enlazado en una trama atractiva" actuada por actores indígenas de la región. La tercera y ultima parte mostraba el alto grado de la mortalidad infantil y las medidas mas adecuadas para criar a los niños” (pp. 89 – 91). 119 Aurelio de los Reyes. Manuel Gamio y el cine p. 10. 120 Aurelio de los Reyes. Manuel Gamio y el cine p. 80. 121 Aurelio de los Reyes. Manuel Gamio y el cine p. 80. 37

the films.122 From de los Reyes’ account of Manuel Gamio’s use of film, we can discern that the new technology was an important tool for the execution of his indigenista crusade. On the one hand it allowed him to document information about indigenous culture and communities, which in his view was a necessary step in order to create a government that could effectively govern non-urban communities. On the other, film allowed him to expose rural Mexicans to information that he believed would facilitate their participation in modern Mexican society (and therefore functioned as tool for interventionism).

As far as we know the films that were made at Gamio’s request are now lost; however, he was not the only anthropologist in Mexico who was interested in using the cinematographic medium. Under the direction of archaeologist Ramón Mena, the

National Museum of History, Archaeology and Ethnography’s Department of

Ethnography filmed Peregrinación a Chalma.123 The film was the result of collaboration among the anthropologist Miguel de Mendizabal, the musicologist

Francisco Dominguez, the archaeologist and historian Enrique Juan Palacios, and the ethnologist Canuto Flores, and was shot by Ramón Diaz Ordaz.124 José Vasconcelos himself attended the first screening of Peregrinación a Chalma in the museum’s auditorium in May of 1922.125

The film presents information about the pilgrimage site (located in the southeastern part of the state of Mexico), its history, and the groups who travel to

122 Aurelio de los Reyes. Manuel Gamio y el cine p. 80. 123 Aurelio de los Reyes. Manuel Gamio y el cine. p. 65. 124 Aurelio de los Reyes. Manuel Gamio y el cine. p. 65. 125 Aurelio de los Reyes. Manuel Gamio y el cine p. 70. 38

honor the Señor de Chalma through their different dances. Aurelio de los Reyes has made some observations about the film’s formal aspects, noting that the photographer does not move the camera much, and keeps his distance from the people as an observer.126 He believes that this “cinematographic narrative in third person”127 is clearly inspired by the work of Manuel Gamio in Teotihuacan.128 Building on de los

Reyes’ comments (the only scholar who has analyzed the film to my knowledge) I will carry out a close reading of the film in order to show both how in it ethnographic authority is established. I will also illustrate how through the ethnographic mode the film establishes a particular subject position that permits the Mexican spectator to appropriate knowledge about the indigenous as part of his/her own national identity, but also clearly prevents the spectator from identifying with the indigenous by keeping them firmly in the position of object, instead encouraging identification with

Mexico’s Hispanic legacy.

Within the first few seconds, the film clearly presents its purpose and establishes its authority by associating itself with both science and the Mexican government. The first text displayed reads, “Película cinematográfica de vulgarización científica,” conveying that its purpose is to make specialized information available to a mass audience in Mexico. The different entities that are associated with the creation of the film are also presented on screen, “Secretaría de educación pública/ Departamento de Bellas Artes/ “Museo nacional de arqueología,

126 Aurelio de los Reyes. Manuel Gamio y el cine p. 70. 127 Aurelio de los Reyes. Manuel Gamio y el cine p. 70. 128 Aurelio de los Reyes. Manuel Gamio y el cine p. 70. 39

historia y etnografía.” Before we see the film’s first images, we learn that its contents are part of a larger ethnographic study of the sanctuary at Chalma carried out by the

Department of Aboriginal Ethnography (see Figure 1).129 The film’s aura of scientific and governmental authority is further made explicit by the introduction of representatives of the different organizations responsible for the making of the film and by pointing out that the information presented has been verified as a legitimate academic endeavor (“verificado por el Departamento de Etnografía Aborígen”). First

Don Luis Castillo Ledón, director of the National museum of archeology, history and ethnography is shown on screen through a close-up, and text showing his name and position follow. Similarly, a close-up of the ethnologist Miguel O. De Mendizábal, is shown along with text informing us that he is chief of the Department of Aboriginal

Ethnography (see Figures 2 and 3). Enrique Juan Palacios, archaeologist and historiographer, and Canuto Flores, ethnographer, are also presented with their professional information. These initial shots and text are important for establishing the mode of address and scientific “discourse of sobriety” that will be used to engage the spectator throughout the film. Through this initial information, the film clearly presents itself as a legitimate scientific pronouncement on indigenous peoples.

129 “Película cinematográfica complementaria del estudio etnográfico del santuario de Chalma, verificado por el Departamento de Etnografía Aborigen”

Figure 1. Intertitle displaying scientific authority in Peregrinación a Chalma (1922).

Figure 2. Expert introduced in Peregrinación a Chalma (1922). 41

Figure 3. Close-up of expert in Peregrinación a Chalma (1922).

Although the film is nominally about the Indians, the narrative and stylistic conventions used marginalize them situating modern men and their European ancestors as the protagonists of History. The text that opens the first half of the film quickly explains the subject of the film, and denominates the indigenous as its objects of study, “El santuario de Chalma es la principal fiesta que celebran los aborígenes el primer viernes de cuaresma.” Interestingly, throughout the first half of the film, the focus of the film is not so much on the indigenous themselves, as on the achievements of specific religious figures and the architectural accomplishments they left behind.

For example, in the following intertitle that relays the origin of the pilgrimage to

Chalma, the indigenous are mentioned as a group, and their presence in the story serves to highlight the creation of the first chapel at the site:

La gruta de la barranca de Chalma donde adoraban los ocuiltecos a

“Oztocteotl [DIOS DE LAS CUEVAS] y en la que, según la tradición se

apareció el año de 1539 el crucifijo llamado desde entonces “EL SENOR DE

CHALMA”, fue convertida en capilla en los primeros años del siglo XVII, por

el monje agustino Fray Bartolomé de Jesús María.

Here, the general reference to the indigenous as a group is contrasted by the reference to a specific representative of the Catholic Church, who is cast as a nonnative. The next intertitles and images similarly focus on the accomplishments of the monks in the 16th century: “Dos cuevas próximas a la anterior convertidas en capillas por el monje agustino Fray Juan de San José, y dedicadas a la Concepción de Nuestra

Señora y a la Virgen de / Guadalupe. En ellas hay toscas esculturas en madera que representan a estos dos primeros monjes del Convento de Chalma.” In this way the film continues to foreground representatives of Hispanic culture and order.

From this point, the film focuses on the sanctuary complex, which includes a large church and convent (see Figures 4 and 5). In the examples above information about the years and people involved in the creation of the chapels is provided, and as we will see, the discussion of the sanctuary will include even more detail. For example, although the film is unable to identify the names of the architects who designed different areas of the sanctuary throughout several centuries, it attempts to interpret some of the buildings’ architectural motifs and suggest a possible contributor:

“El Templo del Santuario, el Convento y las enormes hospederías que

podemos admirar en la actualidad, fueron construidos en diferentes épocas y

por arquitectos ignorados de nosotros, pero la tradición oral asegura que a

fines del siglo XVIII, Tolsa trabajó en el embellecimiento del edificio, lo que

puede ser possible dado su peculiar estilo neo-clásico y algunos detalles

decorativos usados frecuentemente por el genial arquitecto.”

By attempting to associate the sanctuary with the Spanish-born sculpture, architect, and director of the first major art academy and museum of Mexico, the Academy of

San Carlos, the film continues to afford value to the contributions of western culture.

The desire to represent the building in terms that would be culturally prestigious within a Eurocentric world view make it so that unsubstantiated rumor is a sufficient basis to link Manuel Tolsá to the design of the sanctuary. In this way, the film continues to affirm the contributions of specific representatives of hispanicity, helping to produce a subject position that aligns more closely with it than with the indigeneity that is studied from a distance.

Figure 4. Image of the sanctuary in Peregrinación a Chalma (1922).

Figure 5. Image of the sanctuary in Peregrinación a Chalma (1922).

The architectural characteristics of the sanctuary are identified in detail. First the atrium is shown. This shot shows groups dancing in the space, but the priority of the film at this point is to display the building. The camera tilts upwards, leaving the dancers entirely out of the shot, in order to comment on the façade, towers, and cupola. The next shot similarly forgoes a focus on the people in the shot in order to focus on specific aspects of the building. Here too the camera tilts upwards to illustrate a new part of the church, “Calle de los Otomíes y mazahua, llamada así porque comunica su tradicional campamento con el Santuario. Al fondo se ve el arco sobre el que descansa la sacristia del templo.”

As we have seen, the intertitles function as an authoritative commentary through which the Western voice dominates the beginning of the film. In this way,

Peregrinación a Chalma operates within Nichols’ discussion of ethnographic conventions, specifically crafting a discourse of sobriety that claims to operate as transparent truth.

The first shots that comment on any way on the indigenous people are shot in the form of panoramic vistas (see Figure 6). As can be gathered from the intertitles, the indigenous peoples are consistently presented in large groups, “Vistas panorámicas tomadas desde la rampa que de Chalmita conduce a Chalma,

Campamento de los otomíes y de los mazahuas. Campamento general de todas las razas aborígenes concurrentes, rodeando al pueblecito de Chalma.” This presentation of the indigenous in large groups and from an extreme long shot contrasts sharply

with the individual presentation of the men of science at the beginning of the film that included their names, professional positions and close-up shots of their faces.

Although the second half of the film will move from using the extreme long shot to the long shot, in formal terms the indigenous will still be presented from a distance and in groups (see Figure 7).

Figure 6. Extreme long shot of indigenous people in Peregrinación a Chalma (1922).

Figure 7. High angle extreme long shot of indigenous people in Peregrinación a Chalma (1922).

In the next portion of the film, different indigenous groups are presented performing dances that are specific to each party. In the introduction to this portion of the film, the intertitle discusses the aboriginal custom in terms of the unique physical resistance it requires, while highlighting the fact that their observation of the ritual persists through time,

“Danzas rituales, que los aborigenes bailan anualmente en el atrio del

Santuario durante varios días, con una tenacidad y una recistencia

sorprendentes. Los mayordomos puestos hereditario de las cofradías que

ejecutan estos bailes, se transmiten unos libros en los que el cura del Santuario

anota año por año su asistencia. Hay algunos que hacen constar la puntualidad

asistencia de una cofradía por más de un siglo.”130

Here, the intertitle’s emphasis on the continuity of the practice creates a sense of cyclical time associated with the indigenous, which is created by mentioning the repetitive nature of the practice at three different points in the brief text, “bailan anualmente,” “el cura del Santuario anota año por año,” and “por más de un siglo.”

This sense of cyclical time is also reinforced at the end of the film when the commentary explains the pilgrim’s custom of walking backwards, away from the holy site, “En esta forma se despiden anualmente los aborigenes del Señor de Chalma de

Santuario y de todas las personas y las cosas que en él le son familiars y queridas

‘hasta el año venidero’.” The cyclical time associated with indigeneity is contrasted by the linear time connecting the figures who intervene in the indigenous communities, first the monks of the 16th and early 17th centuries, and now their illuminated 20th century counterparts who are shown at the beginning of the film, men of science supported by a new government. While the progression of western/ mestizo Mexico is implicitly made evident through the accomplishments of the past and present, the only change that is afforded to the indigenous is their passage from pagans to Christians. With the exception of this shift, they are presented as static, routinely repeating their rituals. This contrast relates clearly to Rony’s discussion of the dichotomy between “ethnographiable” and “historifiable” people that traditional anthropology is based on. Because non-western peoples were considered not to have

130 The grammatical and spelling errors of this text are original to the intertitle cited. 49

histories of their own, they therefore required western observers to document their societies’ lived experience.131 Here, the hispanized Mexican self enunciates (in the form of the intertitles) a sense of its own history, while representing the indigenous in comparably static terms through the ethnographic mode.

In what follows, individual groups are presented performing dances. Before the shots of the dances are shown, intertitles providing information about each group appear including the name of the dance, the place where the group comes from, and the ethnic composition of the group. Accordingly, the first group’s dance is introduced with the following text, “‘Danza de los Apaches’” por la hermandad del

Santuario de Antonilco de San Miguel Ixtlahuaca. Distrito de Ixtlahuaca y por los indigenas de Santiago Tepatlaxco. Distrito de Tlanepantla. Edo. De México. Razas otomí mazahua.” Next we see the group in the form of medium long shots at eye level as the camera pans left to reveal other dancers and a drummer. The following images of the dancers are taken in the form of long shots from high angles. The use of the high angle shot is important because it allows the camera to capture more individuals within the frame, creating the impression of a comprehensive survey of the group’s activity (see Figure 8). While information classifying the dancers has been provided, no other information about the dancers’ garments or movements is communicated, only general statements such as “Diversos momentos de la danza ritual” or “Marcha ritual.”

131 Fatimah Tobing Rony, The Third Eye p. 8. 50

Figure 8. High angle long shot of dancers in Peregrinación a Chalma (1922).

Four other groups are presented on screen performing dances that vary widely in movement and costume. The second group from San Mateo Capoloac Distrito de

Toluca. Edo. de México performs a dance in which women dressed in white, floor- length dresses and veils step in unison to a rhythm, and turn around frequently while continuously beating a large wooden stick to the ground. Next, the “Danza del arco y de las Cintas, from San Juan Acasuchitlán” is shown with many dancers holding on to ribbons as they circle around a maypole (see Figure 9). Both of these dances are shown through high angle shots that aim to present the performance as comprehensively as possible. The second part of this dance is shot at eyelevel as a medium long shot. It shows two rows of dancers facing each other holding large

garlands over theirs heads and dancing with the person in front of them (see Figure

10). Lastly, the “Danza de los gachupines” is shown, which involves several male figures wearing dark clothing that covers their bodies entirely and masks with pale faces, mustaches and goatees (see Figure 11). The men step in rhythm and turn occasionally, stooping downwards. This dance is shot at eye level as a medium long shot.

Figure 9. High angle long shot of native dancers in Peregrinación a Chalma (1922).

Figure 10. Indigenous dancers in Peregrinación a Chalma (1922).

Figure 11. Masked indigenous dancers in Peregrinación a Chalma (1922).

Although there is much variation in types of dances that are visualized on screen, the film limits itself to presenting only the dance’s name, the place of origin of the group, and its ethnic composition. In this way, the film appears to be more preoccupied with classifying what is shown, than with explaining it. Based only on the information presented, the spectator is left with no clue as to why the dances are different from each other or what the variations could mean. This situation is markedly different from the film’s treatment of the erection of the areas’ chapels and main sanctuary. As we have seen, in its treatment of these cultural products, the film specifies important people and periods. Furthermore, the different parts of the church are identified in detail. Indigenous dances are conveyed as curiosities, whose signification is ultimately inaccessible. The dances are not presented as cultural accomplishments worthy of nuanced and detailed understanding. Because the system of signification that renders the dancers’ movements and costumes is remote for the spectator, identification with the indigenous people presented and their cultural practice is not encouraged by the film. Given that the dances are framed in very general ways, it is impossible for the spectator to appreciate the dances as cultural practice, which makes the film a vehicle of exposure, but not comprehension of indigenous cultures. This aspect of Peregrinación a Chalma is an example of a characteristic of ethnographic film according to Bill Nichols, “The Other…rarely functions as a participant in and creator of a system of meanings, including a narrative structure of their own devising.” 132

132 Bill Nichols Representing Reality p. 205. 54

Through the ethnographic mode, the indigenous content can be displayed and consumed as a national curiosity, not in the sense that the film makes the natives into national symbols, but in that it presupposes that native customs are legitimate objects of interest for the Mexican spectator. I propose that this mode was ideal for the post revolutionary state’s position toward indigeneity, which made the ethnic makeup of

Mexico more visible discursively, but clearly saw indigeneity as a threat to modernization.

Maclovia (1948) as lyrical ethnography

Scholars have noted that ethnography itself began to shift in the early 20th century. At this time Sir James G. Fraser for example, noted that the younger

Bronislaw Malinowski rendered the native “in the round and not in the flat.”133

Fatimah Tobing Rony argues that this shift applies equally to the evolution of the ethnographic spectacle, and coincides with the emergence of a variant that she calls

“taxidermy.” For her, Robert Flaherty’s 1922 film, Nanook of the North, which tells the story of an Eskimo man and his family’s experiences in the arctic, typifies,

“romantic, lyrical ethnography, the film of art, which hinges upon nostalgic reconstruction of a more authentic humanity.”134 She explains that taxidermy is an appropriate metaphor because:

the taxidermist uses artifice and reconstruction in order to make the dead look

alive…The “ethnographic” is reconstructed to appear real to the anticipated

133 Fraser qtd. in Fatimah Tobing Rony, The Third Eye. p. 12. 134 Fatimah Tobing Rony, The Third Eye. p. 12. 55

audience, and the fiction sustained is that film does not alter anything. This

ideology undergirds the use of cinema in the salvage ethnography of

‘vanishing races.’135

Rony’s obervations allow us to identify analagous variations within the use of the ethnographic mode in Mexican cinema. In order to discuss a Mexican example of lyrical ethnography, I have selected Emilio “El Indio” Fernández’s 1948 film

Maclovia starring María Félix in the title role, along with Pedro Armendáriz and

Columba Domínguez. This film stands out within Fernández’s indigenista films because though it contains a central melodramatic plot, it also includes sequences which I will argue are examples of the ethnographic mode. The kind of ethnographic cinema that can be seen in Maclovia, is however, very different from the scientific research film, Peregrinación a Chalma, discussed above. While basic truth claims

(according to which image and sounds of the indigenous are intended to be received as indexical) are mobilized by both variants of the mode, their forms are markedly different. Here, what I read as Fernández’s lyrical ethnography is marked by aesthetic fashioning and the embellishment of commentary and image.

Before illustrating how Maclovia operates in an ethnographic vein, it is important to discuss the significance of Emilio Fernandez’s films both because of his monumental status in Mexican film history, and because of the significance of the golden age of Mexican cinema for the country’s social history. Fernández’s films are frequently discussed in terms of their strong correlation to the indigenista ideology of

135 Fatimah Tobing Rony, The Third Eye pp. 13-14. 56

the post-revolutionary government, which sought to incorporate Mexico’s indigenous population into the nation state, and proposed mestizaje as the privileged subject of the nation. The films of Fernández’s indigenista phase dealt with the urgent need to bring Indians into the national community. Their melodramatic plots emphasized the suffering of benevolent indigenous characters, and the inability of disparate parts of the nation to come together often resulted in tragic endings in his films. Through these affective tools, his films implicitly promoted national cohesion, a goal that appeared as an overt and persistent discourse throughout several of his films.

Fernández’s indigenista films were produced during a key moment in the history of Mexican cinema. The Mexican “Golden Age” was not only a period of high levels of production for the national industry, it was also a moment in which cinema had an important impact on its audience. Jesús Martín-Barbero has observed that Mexican cinema of the 1940s, “se convirtió en parte del movimiento para dar a la

‘identidad nacional’ una imagen y una voz. En el proceso de permitir a la gente que se viera, el cine formó el público en un cuerpo nacional; no en el sentido de darles una nacionalidad, pero en la manera en que posibilitó que el público se sintiera parte de una nación”.136 Carlos Monsiváis has also argued that Mexican film from the

Golden Age helped to consolidate a national identity because its films served a pedagogical function through which the audience assimilated values, attitudes, speech patterns, and gestures that would come to be considered, through the diffusion of cinema itself, typically Mexican. More specifically, Monsiváis has suggested that

136 Jesús.Martín Barbero. De los medios a las mediaciones: comunicación, cultura y hegemonía (Mexico City: Ediciones G. Gili, S.A. de C.V., 1993) p. 166. 57

Fernandez’s films in particular had a role in the nationalist formation of Mexican audiences.

It would be difficult to prove irrefutably that Fernandez’s indigenista films are responsible for shaping Mexican’s views and opinions regarding the incorporation of indigenous people into the Mexican nation state. What we can assert through a textual approach to the films is that they convey a clear intention to comment on the indigenous question in relation to national cohesion and identity. Furthermore, his films transmit a pronounced pedagogical intent to educate and/or to expose the spectator to indigeneity.

It is worth mentioning that Fernández is not the first filmmaker to produce romanticized footage of natives in Mexico. In 1931 the Soviet filmmaker Sergei

Eisenstein traveled to the country to film footage that was posthumously reconstructed as ¡Qué viva México!. Eisenstein was influenced by anthropologists such as Sir James Frazer and Lucien Levy-Bruhl who envisioned societal development according to an evolutionary model, and who suggested that by studying

“primitive societies” they could understand ‘our unformed selves, our id forces.’137

As Laura Podalsky has observed, “Eisenstein saw Mexico as a bridge linking the age of biological submission (the primitive) to the triumph of the social collective (the revolution),138 and in ¡Qué viva México!, he sought to present what he perceived as

137 Laura Podalsky, "Patterns of the Primitive: Sergei Eisenstein’s ¡Qué Viva México!." Mediating two worlds: cinematic encounters in the Americas, ed. John King, Ana M. López, and Manuel Alvarado (London: BFI, 1993) p. 26. 138 Laura Podalsky, "Patterns of the Primitive” p. 31. 58

the coexistence of distinct evolutionary stages in Mexican society.139 The representation of the primitive occurs in the segment titled “Sandunga” and is the portion of the film that is most relevant for our discussion. Podalsky has explained how the sequence presents a romantic and idealized representation of the indigenous people of Tehuantepec as living in a tropical paradise, encapsulated in the images of a youthful indigenous woman among flowers.140 Many film historians have noted the impact of ¡Qué Viva México! on films that represent indigeneity and/or mestizaje in

Mexico including Fred Zinnerman and Emilio Gómez Murciel’s Redes (1934) and

Emilio Fernández’s oeuvre.141 In particular, Eisenstein’s manner of rendering the

Mexican landscape through low-angle shots is thought to have endured through time.142 I would also locate Eisenstein’s “Sandunga” within the realm of lyrical ethnography because of its simultaneous claims to truthful representation and its idealization of the indigenous, and in this way, it is possible to perceive a kinship between “Sandunga” and Maclovia. However I also maintain that in the ethnographic sequences in Maclovia Fernández use a very different aesthetic approach to execute their truth claims and lyricism. Additionally, Fernández uses voice-over commentary, which is entirely absent in the “Sandunga” sequence. Thus while denying the impact of Eisentein entirely would be an oversight, here I wish to highlight what I believe

Fernández’s film does differently. In the following analysis of the Maclovia, I will

139 Laura Podalsky, "Patterns of the Primitive” p. 30. 140 Laura Podalsky, "Patterns of the Primitive” pp. 31 – 32. 141 Laura Podalsky, "Patterns of the Primitive” p. 28. 142 Ramírez Berg, Charles. "The cinematic invention of Mexico: The poetics and politics of the Fernández-Figueroa style." In Chon A. Noriega Ed. The Mexican Cinema Project. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994. pp. 13-24. 59

illustrate how the film’s technical and verbal elements work together to craft a lyrical ethnographic mode, and I will later discuss the effect of this mode within the overall film.

From the film’s opening shots, Maclovia establishes the lyrical ethnographic mode by treating the spectator like an outsider with respect to the place and people among which the story will develop, and introducing him/her to the “new” surroundings through a romanticized tone. The film opens with an extreme long shot of the hills, mountains, and several lakes. The camera slowly pans towards the left, showing as much of the natural landscape as possible. After a fade in and fade out, a long shot presents one lake. The camera pans left again until it reaches the end of the body of water. While these images are shown, voice over narration explains information about the landscape and the lake that are visualized. The commentary serves the purpose of instructing the spectator on Mexican geography and about the native people that live there, while romanticizing both:

En el corazón de México hay una región que la suavidad del clima y la belleza

del paisaje han convertido en un rincón de ensueño y de poesía. Varios lagos

apaciblemente dormidos copian el sereno azul de cielo y el más bello de esos

lagos es el de Pátzcuaro, dotado de la naturaleza de todos los privilegios. En

medio de ese lago hay una isla, la de Janitzio, en la que hace cientos de años

una raza pura, la tarasca, conserva sencillas costumbres y legendarias

tradiciones.

This commentary addresses the spectator as though he is instructing the viewer and

introducing unfamiliar information to him/ her. In this way, the voice takes on the role of mediator between the supposedly unfamiliar native reality and the viewer. The language used in the commentary idealizes the landscape. It is described as a privileged, dream-like and poetic place. The personification the lake, described as

“apparently sleeping” attributes to the setting the qualities of quietness and stillness.

The native people among whom the plot will occur are introduced as being a pure race that has more or less remained untouched through time. The choice of the word

“legendary” to describe them adds both a sense of antiquity and mystery. Overall, the commentary serves to present the setting of the plot as a reality that is distinct from that of the viewer. This reality is cast as simpler, distinctly beautiful, and existing in a different temporal realm143. Thus while the commentary in this opening sequence does not cloak itself in scientific authority as in Peregrinación a Chalma, I would argue that it still fulfills the function of authoritative and informed mediation highlighted by Nichols, while attempting to idealize and embellish.

This scene acquires further significance if we take into consideration Bill

Nichols’ understanding of the “arrival scene” in ethnographic film. Following Mary

Louise Pratt, he suggests that the arrival scene is the location in which the passage from “here” to “there” is purposefully marked. While in Maclovia’s opening scene there is no ethnographer “confiding to us his/her travails and hardships” for the purpose of proving to us that s/he was indeed there, I argue that these scenes function to stage the viewer’s arrival, and produce the sense that through the cinematic

experience s/he is indeed there. I believe that the extreme long shots of the landscape and extensive pans are particularly meaningful in producing this effect, and go out of their way to suggest that the film is presenting the authentic landscape, rather than a sound stage.

Beyond the initial scene, in Maclovia there are two primary sequences that anchor my understanding of the film as lyrical ethnography: the fishing sequence and the noche de los muertos sequence. There are several reasons why I propose that they operate in a different manner to the more explicitly narrative portions of film. First, their relationship to the central plot of the film is marginal. Although the setting is presented as the same setting in which the plot takes place, the shots I discuss contain no dialog, and do not privilege the narrative’s characters. Second, the cinematic language in these sequences is markedly different from that used in the melodramatic scenes, in which close ups of characters are essential to conveying their intense emotional states (a hallmark of melodramatic cinema). Here, the camera will function to present indigenous people in groups, providing information about the community as a whole. Third, in line with what Rony and Nichols have identified as the underlying condition for how ethnographic film functions, both sequences operate under the claim that the spectator is receiving accurate information about the indigenous community.

Moreover, the sequences in Maclovia adhere to the thematic organization of classic ethnography. Susan Slyomovics has noted that classic ethnography (in the vein of Malinowski and Lévi-Strauss’ work) attempted to encapsulate the life of an

entire community in one single volume, and would often do so by dividing it into several themes such as “the life cycle,” “social and political organization,” “the economy” etc.144 In general, these studies would not pay particular attention to individual lives.145 Rony has noted that ethnographic film (especially of the

“taxadermic” tendency as illustrated in her analasis of Nanook of the North) has reproduced this aspect of classical ethnography, which also often pretends to offer an overview of an entire culture and adopts thematic organization.146 The sequences in

Maclovia that I will discuss contain this convention of classical ethnography, and are clearly organized around the precise themes of fishing and spirituality.

In the fishing sequence, a series of shots present the way in which the indigenous men catch fish as a community ritual. The sequence relays a brief narrative: the men go out to catch fish together, they cast out their nets, they play the flute to attract the fish, they pull in their nets and return to land. The film does make an attempt to connect the fishing sequences to the main plot of the film by suggesting that Pedro Armendariz’s character, José María, is one of the fishermen through a brief medium shot. However, overall, the information the sequence contains, especially through the repetition of the same kinds of shots is unnecessary and peripheral for the main story.

One aspect of the fishing sequence that helps to associate it with the ethnographic is its presentation of the act of fishing as a community endeavor.

144 Fatimah Tobing Rony, The Third Eye p. 7. 145 Fatimah Tobing Rony, The Third Eye p. 7. 146 Fatimah Tobing Rony, The Third Eye p. 7. 63

Extreme long shots and long shots from a high angle capture several men on canoes rowing out to the lake and carrying out all of the actions described above, maximizing the spectator’s field of vision (see Figures 12 and 13). Another cinematic tool for emphasizing the participation of the community is the use of medium close-ups in quick succession that show the exact same actions being carried out by different individuals. The voice over commentary reinforces the theme of community and unity: “En las claras noches la comunidad se lanza al lago ordenada y unida como una gran familia para arrancar a las aguas el diario sustento.” Through the metaphor of the family and the highlighting of cooperation, the commentary serves to reinforce the cinematic language that also emphasizes the unity of the group. In this way, the sequence can be understood squarely within the documentary tradition, and specifically within Nichol’s expository mode,147 which uses visual information and voice-over commentary to speak authoritatively on a subject and generate truth effects.

147 Bill Nichols Representing Reality pp. 34-38. 64

Figure 12. Extreme long shot displaying the fishermen as a group in Maclovia (1948).

Figure 13. Extreme still long shot displaying the fishermen waiting as a group in Maclovia (1948). 65

Figure 14. Medium shot of flute player in Maclovia (1948).

On the one hand, the voice over explains and mediates between the indigenous people depicted and the spectator (whom the film locates outside of the reality depicted).

However, through the choices in language the narration is also carrying another significant function: it distances, fossilizes, and idealizes the indigenous through phrases such as, “El pueblo de Janitzio vive de la pesca, trabajo al cual se dedica con unción como a un rito…” and “El silencio sólo es herido por el sonido de la flauta indígena, que, como en una ceremonia de encantamiento, convoca a los peces y los atrae hacia las redes.”148 As in the opening shots of the film, here words such as

148 Emphasis mine. 66

“unción,” “rito,” and “encantamiento” add a degree of mystery, poetry, and sacredness to the acts depicted.

The language here is perhaps one of the clearest indications of the evolution of the scientific ethnographic mode seen in Peregrinación a Chalma. As we have seen, in the earlier film the intertitles adopted a matter-of-fact language of classification, while here embellishment is present in the commentary. Indeed, the language of the more lyrical ethnography would appear to point to a contradiction.

While the ethnographic mode in general depends on the indexical power of the images and the supposition that the viewing experience provides direct access to knowledge, the language of this particular commentary seems to suggest that indigenous life is inherently mysterious and therefore somehow beyond the full comprehension of the commentator and the audience.

The idealization and romanticization of the indigenous is further underscored by how movement and time are presented. The movements of the natives are represented as slow (especially while rowing) and the long duration of still shots also associate them with a slower temporal dimension. Their stillness is emphasized as they (and we) wait for the fish. The sound of the lone flute playing in the silence on the placid lake conveys tranquility, and the spectator’s sense of “being there” is further supported by the illusion that one is experiencing the flute playing (the key to the fishing “ritual”) in real time (see Figure 14). The pacing of movement on screen and shot durations that emphasize slowness contribute to how the film places the indigenous within a slower temporal realm. Johannes Fabian has referred to how the

anthropological discourse attributes a different sense of time to the ethnic Other vis-à- vis the observing subject, and has termed this phenomenon “the denial of coevalness.”149 I believe that through cinematic elements and verbal allusions that refer to dreams and rites, the film establishes a different temporal experience for the indigenous and the intended audience of the film, therefore demarcating the distinction between subject and object.

There are additional ways in which the presentation of the indigenous is stylized. In the mise-en-scene of several shots, fishermen are arranged to create diagonal lines, a famous feature of the films in which Emilio Fernández and cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa collaborated. Arranging them in such a way within the mise-en-scene is still in line with the scientific ethnographic variant’s intent to display many Indians together to create the impression of representing a group, but the diagonal arrangement adds in increased attention to the aesthetic impression of how the group is displayed.150 In addition to the diegetic sound of the flute, non- diegetic sound is also significant. When the sequence opens with an extreme long shot of the lake, solemn music adds a sense of gravitas that supports the commentary, which attributes to the act of fishing ceremonial solemnity. When the fishermen pull the fish from the lake the celebratory sound of harps and wind instruments are heard, contributing to the idyllic atmosphere. Later as the men conclude their task, the non-

149 Johannes Fabian, Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1983). 150 For more on the use of diagonal lines in the Fernández-Figueroa films as an intentional form of stylization see Ramírez Berg, Charles. "The cinematic invention of Mexico” pp. 13-24. 68

diegetic music carries with it a triumphant tone, glorifying the men’s labor and success.

Through all of the elements described above including the cinematography, music, commentary and mise-en-scene, the fishing sequence presents the indigenous in a highly stylized way that is distinct from the scientific ethnographic film, yet it still maintains a truth claim that the indigenous are somehow knowable through the images and information presented. In the noche de muertos sequence, voice over commentary is entirely absent, and visual aestheticization will be even more explicit.

In the following analysis, I will point to all of the devices utilized to produce the heavily stylized portrayal of the indigenous people of Janitzio. The sequence begins with a low angle shot of a man ringing the bell that summons the community.

Along with the diegetic sound of the bell, non-digetic music is heard establishing a grave and somber tone. Two shots then show indigenous peoples coming from multiple directions at the same time while carrying large wooden frames ornamented with flowers. After a cut, a striking low-angle long shot captures a multitude of indigenous people ascending a path as if in a procession. Because of the qualities of the path and the low angle of the shot, the people appear to form zigzag lines (see

Figure 15). A cut to a threshold under which the entire community passes to reach their destination finally reveals the occasion the spectator is observing; it reads

“noche de muertos.” Through the threshold a multitude of people and frames are visible far into the distance. After a cut, a low angle shot against the remaining sunlight reveals a few indigenous women who are now passing the bell ringer.

Because of the angle, the figures, bushes, and the bell itself appear as dark silhouettes, and only the sky and its clouds can be seen clearly (see Figure 16). This shot conveys the Fernández-Figueroa team’s unique take on lyrical ethnography. While ethnographic film at its heart endeavors to make the indigenous visible and therefore knowable, here we see how clear visibility is intentionally forgone in order to privilege aesthetic fashioning.

Figure 15. Low angle long shot of noche de los muertos procession in Maclovia (1948).

Figure 16. Los angle long shot in which the indigenous appear as silhouettes in Maclovia (1948).

The shot of the dark silhouettes dissolves into a high angle extreme long shot showing a group of indigenous people among many candles at night. The camera then pans left and tilts up revealing an impressive multitude of people and candles as far at the eye can see. Here the high angle and camera movement operate, as in the fishing sequence, to maximize the spectator’s visibility of the event as a whole. At this point, only the diegetic sounds of the bell and of the men and women’s alternated singing is heard, which contributes to the sequence’s effect of authenticity. The contrast between the light of the innumerable candles and the darkness of the night along with the somber singing produce a solemn aesthetic experience (see Figure 17).

I suggest that there are other ways in which the sequence produces its own authenticity, not only by showing a “real” indigenous custom, but by showing “real”

indigenous people participating fully in it. A series of still close up shots of indigenous women and children at eyelevel are shown, separated by cut. First a young girl is shown, followed by a young boy, an elderly woman, and another young woman. Next there is a high angle shot showing a small group of indigenous people holding candles as they sing. A medium shot, also filmed form a high angle shows three indigenous children singing. Lastly, a mother is shown holding her baby. In these closer shots, the indigenous people are perfectly still. Also, they are not looking towards the camera. Instead, their gazes are cast down or to the side. I believe their lack of movement and the directions of their gazes are meant to help portray them as being fully participant in the ceremony and unaware of the camera. I also suggest that this group of closer shots uses another logic to maximize the spectator’s panoramic view of the community. While the initial shots in the sequence use distance in order to visualize multitudes, the latter group of closer shots show individuals in various stages of their lives: childhood, adulthood, and old age. In this way, these faces function metonymically to present the lifecycle of the indigenous community visually, again creating the impression of access to a breadth of knowledge about them within a synthetic space of representation (see Figures 18 and 19). Thus through various techniques, the fishing and noche de los muertos sequences provide additional information about the indigenous community in which the main plot supposedly takes place. In order to do this, they shift out of the melodramatic mode into a lyrical ethnographic one, in which aesthetic fashioning is prioritized along with the underlying truth claim. The result is an aesthetic that is crafted with the intention of

effacing its own constructedness in order to affirm visually (as the commentary does verbally) that the indigenous really do exist in a realm of dreams, legends and poetry.

Figure 17. Long shot of indigenous crowd lit by candles in Maclovia (1948).

Figure 18. Close-ups of indigenous women illuminated by candlelight in Maclovia (1948).

Figure 19. Medium group shot of indigenous women illuminated by candlelight in Maclovia (1948).

As post-colonial scholars of the Anglophone experience such as Edward

Said151 and Partha Chatterjee152 have suggested, discourses on the Other have been important tools for fashioning a sense of identity in Europe. Like the 18th and 19th century discourses mentioned by those authors, I argue that the ethnographic mode in

Mexico present in both Peregrinación a Chalma and in sequences from Maclovia are important examples of the attempt to consolidate a modern Mexican subject position and identity. On the one hand, the mode establishes a clear distinction between the indigenous on-screen and the spectator’s subject position, which is imagined as more modern and less indigenous than that of the people presented. While the mode does not place the spectator in the position of the indigenous, it is instrumental for the formation of a Mexican identity that is consistent with the values of indigenismo- mestizaje. As has been mentioned above, the post revolutionary ideal of indigenismo- mestizaje recognized Mexico’s indigenous heritage, but ultimately held nonindigenous culture and modernity as the most desirable features for the nation’s future. Through the ethnographic mode, readers, museum-goers and spectators could be addressed as non-natives, and also educated about indigeneity as an exercise in patriotism. With this, I am not saying that the indigenous are positioned as representative of the national, but that they are made out to be part of the mestizo’s national paraphernalia through which he recognizes himself as Mexican. In this way, the mode (as evident in the films discussed here) contributes to the construction of a

151 Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist thought and the colonial world: A derivative discourse (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993) p. 17. 152 Edward Said, “Imaginative Geography and its representations: Orientalizing the Oriental,” Race critical theories: text and context, ed. Philomena Essed and David Theo Goldberg (Maiden Mass. : Blackwell Publishers, 2002). 75

modern Mexican identity that is in part defined by a distanced knowledge about indigenous cultures found within the borders of the Mexican republic. While being fully indigenous culturally and ancestrally will be constructed as being incompatible with being a participatory modern Mexican citizen, knowing about the indigenous will be a marker of mexicanidad. To the extent that the films intend to educate about indigenous life and customs they aim to perform a significant function for nationalizing spectators, allowing viewers to study the indigenous from a distance, and identify themselves as Mexicans because of their knowledge of “their” Indians.

However, in the case of Maclovia, it is crucial to point out that the implicit didacticism of the ethnographic sequences works alongside other forms of patriotic pedagogy that are clearly present in the film. Maclovia makes a clear effort to instruct the spectator on the ideal of an egalitarian national citizenry. The scene in which the indigenous people of Janitzio and Sergeant Genovevo de la Garza are before the local magistrate after a dispute in a local bar provides occasion for the film’s promotion of a sense of equality that is rooted in shared mexicanidad. When Maclovia’s father offers the Sergeant his hand in peace, the Sergeant replies, “‘yo no le doy la mano a ningún indio mendigo,” expressing clearly that he believes the indigenous to be beneath himself. When the Sargent offers to pay a fine instead, the magistrate’s response is the perfect articulation of the film’s didactic impulse regarding the inclusion of the indigenous in the national community: “No Señor Sargento, no se trata de dinero. Se trata del respeto que nos merecemos todos los mexicanos”. The message of the scene is clear: in the ideal modern Mexican nation, no longer will

certain Mexicans be privileged for their racial or ethnic identity, but now all will be respected as members of the same nation.

Beyond advocating for the inclusion of indigenous people in the national collective, the film also proposes that the group possesses an important political potential that can be activated when the indigenous acquire national consciousness. In order to make this point, the film again resorts pedagogical tools, this time in the form of a history lesson. Both the magistrate and especially the schoolteacher laud José

María Morelos, one of the heroes of the Mexican independence movement, emphasizing both his indigenous identity and the services he rendered to the nation in hyperbolic fashion:

Ese indio…no fue solamente glorioso por las batallas que peleó, sino porque

dio a México su primer congreso y su primera constitución. Fue el primer

indígena que se atrevió a desafiar a Europa, y el primero también que sintió el

dolor de México…Ese indio, ese arriero surgido de una recua de mulas, y que

con el andar del tiempo habría de dar su nombre a la ciudad donde nació, y

que constituye uno de los más puros arquetipos de México y de América, se

llamó José María, como tú, José María Morelos.

On the one hand, the schoolteacher’s speech defends the mexicanidad of the indigenous by demonstrating that they played a fundamental role in the founding of the nation. It also points to the great potential of the indigenous to serve the fatherland when they perceive themselves to be part of the national collective. Furthermore, the schoolteacher’s praise for Morelos also functions to indicate that if the indigenous of

the past were capable of participating in the national project, so are those of the present. The clearest way in which the film promotes this idea is through the name of its male protagonist. At the end of the schoolteacher’s speech, he interpellates the character directly, indicating that his name is the same as that of Morelos. The implication is clear: Morelos and José María share an origin, a name, and can also come to share a love for the Mexican nation. In this way, the film uses other pedagogical tools to promote the idea that indigenous peoples (and specifically indigenous men) have an important political potential as citizens of the Mexican nation.

However, ultimately in Maclovia the same natives that were fossilized through the ethnographic mode will be presented as incompatible with the law and order required by the nation through the film’s narrative. The film presents an ethnic and cultural spectrum of types within the nation: 1) pure indigenous people who adhere to local tradition, 2) the indigenous who are becoming mestizos through their exposure to national tradition and rejection of native custom (Maclovia, José María, the magistrate), 3) culturally mestizo whites who value indigenous people and their contribution to the national (the teacher, the good soldiers) and 4) Non mestizo whites

(culturally or ethnically) who reject the indigenous and seek to impose a neo colonial race-based power structure (Sergeant de la Garza). The narrative will suggest that the future of the nation lies with the second and third types. The pure indigenous who were peacefully rowing and mourning their loved ones in the ethnographic sequences are ruled out by the narrative when they attempt to unleash a “barbaric” punishment

upon the innocent protagonists of the film. In this moment, the Mexican armed forces must insert themselves in to protect Maclovia and José Maria’s rights as Mexicans.

This point is illustrated when a soldier steps in front of them to protect them from being lapidated while saying to the indians, “Sus tradiciones, o lo que sea, les ha hecho cometer una injusticia muy grande. Pero las tropas darán protección a estos dos innocentes para que se vayan de Janitzio” (see Figure 20). In the end, José María and

Maclovia can be members of the Mexican nation, but they must forgo living in the indigenous community and some aspects of its tradition in order to do so. In this way, the film as a whole presents indigenous reality (such as that presented in the ethnographic sequences) as something that must eventually be transformed in order for the Mexican nation to be a viable project.

Figure 20. The Mexican armed forced protect Maclovia and José María in Maclovia (1948).

Ethnographic Seeping

My discussion of Maclovia thus far has focused on how it is representative of the lyrical variant of the ethnographic mode. However, the film also serves to illustrate one of the central concerns of this chapter, which is that the ethnographic mode seeps into mainstream films that do not explicitly claim to be ethnographic documentaries, but nonetheless contain scenes or sequences that imply this manner of relating to indigeneity. While it would be impossible to offer a commentary on all films that adopt this mode parenthetically, I wish to briefly comment on two other cases because they show the variety of ways in which the ethnographic is introduced in commercial Mexican films, and point to its reoccurrence.

Roberto Gavaldón’s Sombra verde (1954) uses the ethnographic mode by putting the spectator in the position of the traveler, Federico, who is on an excursion from Mexico City to the tropical jungles of Veracruz. The film begins with Federico in the capital, and his displacement to a nonurban and tropical environment is emphasized by shots that show his plane taking off and his arrival via car to a town that is in the middle of the celebrations of Corpus Christi. His modern expectations are frustrated in this new space. First, he is forced to exit the car before it arrives to its destination because people have filled the streets for the celebrations. Next, the forest ranger whom he expected to meet is away for several days and cannot help him. The woman who tells Federico this information suggests that her husband, Anselmo, may be able to help, but he is temporarily occupied as he is the “capitán de los voladores,”

the head of the group of dancers who are performing the “danza de los voladores”

(dance of the flyers) precisely as Federico and Anselmo’s wife are speaking.

What follows are several shots of the men climbing the pole and performing their dance. The tilt is used to convey the height they ascend. Extreme long shots show the captain on the top of the pole and the four dancers bound by their feet to cords, swinging up side down around the pole. These shots are alternated with long shots showing individual dancers swinging. These two types of shots are repeated multiple times, indicating that the purpose of the sequence is not merely to cite the dance ritual in passing, but also to visualize the practice in detail With these shots, only the sounds of a whistle and beating percussion instrument are heard, contributing to the sense that a local ritual is being represented in an authentic way. I suggest that these long shots and tilts operate within the ethnographic mode because they claim to present an aspect of the region’s reality with which the protagonist must cope in order to accomplish his goal of collecting barbasco root from the local jungles. Although here there is no explicit mediation in the form of text or voice-over commentary, interspersed among the shots of the flyers are eye line matches that cut back and forth to show Federico observing the flyers (see Figures 21, 22, and 23). Because Federico is the protagonist, and the spectator has journeyed with him from the city to this new setting, Federico functions as the urban nonindigenous male mediator with whom the spectator is meant to identify as his/her central point reference and identification. In this way, performance is presented as a spectacle, both for the traveler, and for the spectator of the film. When Federico is finally able to speak to Anselmo, he denies

Federico’s request to accompany him into the jungle because Anselmo has an obligation to dance for several days. Although loosely embedded within the plot, the duration of the flying sequence is ultimately excessive with respect to the narrative, as the captain of the flyers turns out to not be able to assist the protagonist at all. As in the Maclovia this excessive, extra-narrative quality as well as its implicit truth claims about indigenous practices are the factors that locate it within the realm of the ethnographic spectacle.

Figure 21. Zoom in of the dancers at the top of a high pole in Sombra verde (1954).

Figure 22. Medium close-up of Federico watching the native dance in Sombra verde (1954).

Figure 23. Long shot of the dance of the flyers in Sombra verde (1954).

The second example is director Ismael Rodríguez’s 1962 film Animas

Trujano, which opens with a brief documentary-style explanation of the tradition of festival stewardship in the state of Oaxaca that serves as the backdrop for the entire film. As in Maclovia, the initial voice-over commentary adopts a pedagogical tone, assuming the viewer’s lack of familiarity with the region of Oaxaca, and with the custom of mayordomía. The commentary presents the natives as a distant and separate people as it explains mayordomía, and the value that being a festival patron has within their social group. In this way, the commentary homogenizes them, at one point even referring to them as “la masa indígena.”

The visual language of the shots used in the initial sequence of Animas

Trujano also uses ethnographic conventions. Its first image is that of a globe that spins and stops to show where Oaxaca is located on the globe. Also, the sequence repeats the emphasis on groups, using the high-angle log shot and pans to maximize visibility. Here, however, the poetry and idealism of Maclovia are notably absent, which is consistent with the protagonist’s material and moral wretchedness.

Furthermore, in a perfect articulation of the kind of distanced appropriation that the ethnographic mode makes possible, the voice over commentary in the initial ethnographic sequence of Animas Trujano explains the way in which the spectator is meant to relate to the indigenous reality on screen, “…la mayordomía es uno de los escasos motivos por los cuales nuestros indios abandonan su legendaria tristeza y se sienten felices durante los tres días que dura cada fiesta.” In essence, what I am putting forward in this chapter is that the ethnographic mode in Mexican cinema, in

its different variants and even inserted within mainstream fiction films, participates in making the Indians into “nuestros indios” and in so doing, is complicit in the attempt to forge a national subjectivity that defines itself in relation to indigeneity.

Critiquing the Ethnographic discourse: Raíces and Tarahumara (cada vez más lejos)

Benito Alazraki’s 1954 directorial debut, Raíces suggests a self-reflexive capacity within in the ethnographic spectacle in Mexican cinema.153 The film consists of four vignettes about indigenous people that were inspired by short stories from Francisco Rojas González’s 1952 collection, El diosero. Here I will limit my discussion to the second short film within the work titled “Nuestra Señora” in order to suggest that while the film ultimately buys into some of the basic premises of ethnographic cinema, it questions the idea of an ethnic hierarchy within the Mexican nation, and critiques traditional anthropology for its self-aggrandizing mediation and implicitly pejorative commentary on indigenous culture.

The introductory sequence of the film is essential for understanding its overall message. The film opens with several shots that showcase the accomplishments of modern Mexico, displaying examples of mid 20th century architecture in urban settings, people leaving work and university, the bustling streets of the capital, as well

153 Although chronologically speaking, the film was made close to the end of “Golden Age” of Mexican cinema, I do not consider that Raíces can be truly categorized as a “Golden Age” film because it was made entirely outside of the system of production that created the “Golden Age” films. As it was not a studio film, Raíces was made with no star actors, and did not aim for commercial appeal. It did receive critical acclaim in Europe, gaining recognition at the Cannes film festival. 85

as impressive shots of oil refineries. After the opening credits a new sequence of shots appears, exhibiting the ruins at Teotihuacan. While the pyramids, ancient city and statues are shown, voice-over narration articulates a distinct interpretation of indigenismo-mestizaje:

En nuestro México coexisten tradiciones y formas arcaicas con los elementos

más avanzados de la vida moderna que hoy se mezclan sin cesar, formando el

rostro vigoroso del pueblo. Parte vital de esta mezcla son los indios

mexicanos, que hace muchos siglos levantaron este paisaje de piedra. Los

indios son verdaderamente las raíces del México que germina. Veremos ahora

sobre rostros vivos, semejantes a éstos, expresadas las virtudes intrínsecas de

la raza: la abnegación, el sentido de la belleza, el estoicismo, y la dignidad.

While this voice over, and the film in general will align itself with the now familiar position that Mexican national identity emerges from the convergence of indigenous and European cultures, it will also call into question the interpretation of indigenismo that casts the Indian as a problematic national subject, preferably existing only in the past. Unlike films like Maclovia and Maria Candelaria (1943) which suggest that indigeneity in its purest form is somehow unfit for full citizenry in the present, here the film affirms unequivocally that the roots of mexicanness are indigenous, and all of the film’s epidosed deal precisely with their lives and marginalization in relation to mainstream Mexican society at the time the film is made. Raices is not free of tendencies toward aesthetic fashioning, such as those found in Maclovia. Indeed, the voice over commentary points us directly to the qualities that the formal aspects of

the film will attribute to the natives, especially stoicism. However, the film suggests that there is a problem with the cinematic rendering of the Indian, and attempts to represent native people more authentically. In the opening moments of the film, a text appears asserting the measures that have been taken to offer a faithful portrayal, “Los interiores y exteriores de esta película son auténticos. Ninguna escena ha sido filmada en estudios cinematográficos. Los actores no son profesionales, son parte del pueblo mexicano.” This disclaimer, I believe, is an indirect commentary on the Fernández-

Figueroa indigenista films, which used well-known actors who had nonindigenous star texts, and combined location filming with studio sets, relying heavily on the latter. Raíces, then, is in conversation with previous versions of filmic indigenismo, and because of this, it is particularly fitting that it should call into question the discipline that had played a fundamental role in indigenismo’s development: anthropology.

The story in “Nuestra Señora” suggests the fallibility of the social sciences. In the film, the protagonist, Jane is a U.S. anthropologist who travels to Mexico to study the Tzotzil people of Chiapas in order to complete her thesis in Anthropology. After meeting with a local doctor who works for the INI (Instituto Nacional Indigenista)

Jane is able to begin. Her first study consists of taking the measurements of different individuals’ craniums. She also learns about the community by helping out with the birth of a child. Jane’s next experiment involves having the people express their opinions about different examples of European and non-indigenous Mexican painting.

Near the end of her time in Mexico, Jane concludes that the indigenous people of

Mexico are savage, and she confirms this when she attends the annual carnival in

Chamula. Jane leaves Mexico, publishes her thesis, and returns a year later. Although she plans to stay near her godson’s family during her second visit, the community members shun her. When they encircle her and she seemingly has no way out, the local priest leads her into the local chapel, where she is shocked to see the image of the Monna Lisa she had used in her study placed above an altar and decorated with devotion. She learns that the community has turned against her because they believe she will take the image away from them, and she immediately dismisses them as primitive for confusing the Monna Lisa with a sacred image. During a conversation with the priest she comes to see that the western signifiers of civilization are arbitrary, and that he has been wrong to categorize the indigenous as savage.

The film elaborates its critique of anthropology by increasingly alienating the spectator from the perspective articulated by the protagonist and mediator of the short film. Like in Sombra verde, the spectator’s experience of what is cast as an unfamiliar environment is married to the central character’s perspective. For example, here too we have an arrival scene, and Jane’s voice-over narration, two devices that establish

Jane’s role as mediator. However, this film will create a tension between what is visualized on screen and Jane’s conclusions, which creates the central conflict and question of the film that is eventually resolved in the final scene: is Jane correct that the indigenous are savage people?

The film initially complicates the spectator’s relationship with Jane’s perspective when it represents the studies she carries out and her conclusions. Shortly

after her arrival, she begins measuring the craniums of local indigenous people. After taking a few measurements and consulting her graph she concludes with confidence,

“Según la medida de los cráneos, estos indios forman parte de una de las razas más primitivas del mundo.” Later, she produces a similarly overstated conclusion when she asks the locals to express their opinions about prints of famous paintings she has displayed for them to see. When they seem indifferent to the images she pronounces another broad value judgment about the indigenous people of Mexico, “Está claro que los indios no están capacitados para entender las mejores obras de nuestra gran cultura.” In light of the introductory sequence which showcases the accomplishments of indigenous cultures of Mexico, Jane’s conclusions in “Nuestra Señora” come off as heavy-handed. Furthermore, the sweeping nature of her conclusions is disproportionate to the limited amount of time she has spent in the community and to the brevity of her experiments.

The Chamula carnival sequence further highlights Jane’s biased perspective.

Unlike the rest of the film, which uses primarily close-ups and medium close-ups to present the interactions between the characters in the narrative, the carnival sequence uses the cinematographic language of the ethnographic documentary mode. Here we see wide-angle shots, often from high angle to capture as many people as possible.

Shots capture groups of individuals dancing, celebrating, and running on sticks that are on fire. The non-diegetic sounds tied to the indigenous celebration (percussion, a whistle, and festive music) are heard to produce Jane’s (and the spectator’s) experience of “being there.” The carnival sequence includes eye line matches, which

indicate that we are seeing the carnival through Jane’s perspective (see Figures 24 and 25). However, here the film works to alienate the spectator from Jane’s perspective by juxtaposing the visual cinematic language of objectivity (high angle long shots, eye-level long shots with pans and diegetic sounds) with Jane’s clearly biased commentary: “Esta experiencia fue para mí la experiencia decisiva. Carnaval

Chamula, comprobación final: salvajismo máximo. Danza del fuego: demostración completa de barbarie. Raza sin salvación. Título definitivo para mi tesis: la vida salvaje de los indios mexicanos.” What is fascinating about the sequence is that it employs the basic premises of the ethnographic mode that have been discussed throughout the chapter: the idea that what is captured on camera conveys truthful information that makes the indigenous knowable to the spectator. However here the truth-value of the mode is mobilized to complicate the spectator’s relationship to an unreliable mediator. The film’s construction of the tension between what is presented on screen and Jane’s conclusions about the indigenous peoples is also made explicit when the local doctor asks her outright: “¿Está usted segura de que vale la pena llamarlos salvajes”? He pasado mucho tiempo entre ellos, son tan complejos.”

Figure 24. Jane watches the Chamula carnival in Raíces (1954).

Figure 25. High angle long shot of the Chamula carnival from Jane’s perspective in Raíces (1954). 91

The question of the indigenous people’s barbarity culminates when Jane returns to Mexico. Many of the film’s formal aspects present the people as menacing during this sequence. Non-diegetic music creates a threatening atmosphere. A man is seen ringing a bell summoning the community. When Jane and the community members all meet in an empty lot in front of the church, a high angle shot is used to show that she is outnumbered (see Figure 26). Long shots and pans showing multiple community members at a time are displayed, and then cut to shots of Jane on her own, emphasizing that she is alone against the multitude (see Figures 27). This sequence is technically very similar to the lapidation scenes in both María Canderia and Maclovia, which as we have seen, serve to display indigeneity as having a barbaric sense of justice. Indeed, just before the priest interrupts the confrontation, there is a close-up shot of an indigenous person’s hands picking up a large rock, which clearly alludes to the notion of barbaric justice portrayed in the Fernández-

Figueroa films. By using the technical elements that present the indigenous as potentially dangerous, the film builds up the tension around the film’s primary conflict, massaging suspicion that perhaps Jane has been right about them all along.

Figure 26. High wide angle shot of the Tzotzil community gathering around Jane in Raíces (1954).

Figure 27. Jane surrounded by the Tzotzil community in Raíces (1954). 93

The film’s clearest and strongest critique of anthropology comes in its final scenes, and occurs as much through the dialog as it does through the cinematography.

During the conversation with the priest, he refutes every one of Jane’s arguments for why the indigenous are savages, and the movement of the camera and its angles alienate the spectator from Jane’s ideological perspective. When she states that confusing the Monna Lisa with the Virgin is a sign of primitiveness she takes a step toward the camera that is positioned at a low angle, resulting in a very low angle close up of her face. The priest answers that the image is similar to the images of the

Virgin that are venerated. As she responds, “¡pero si son unos salvajes!” the camera tracks toward her from a low angle, producing another intimidating image of her, conveying the arrogance with which she pronounces her prejudice. The priest continues by countering the rest of Jane’s anthropological “evidence”. Although she has seen them dance on fire, that event took place within the context of a carnival.

While their names may sound ridiculous to her, supposedly civilized names such as

“Pedro” and “López” (which mean rock and wolf respectively) could also be considered absurd. Jane has no choice but to accept the priest’s conclusion: all men are equal, and if the indigenous are marginalized it is the collective fault of society.

The film conveys Jane’s conversion visually when the local doctor arrives to the chapel. She takes the copy of her thesis she had given him and rips it in half (see

Figures 28 and 29). The cut to a close up of the ripped thesis thrown on the floor is

the film’s strongest visual critique of the limited use of anthropology for alleviating the lived difficulty of indigenous people in Mexico.

Figure 28. Jane rips her thesis in half in Raíces (1954).

Figure 29. Close-up of Jane’s ripped thesis thrown on the floor in Raíces (1954). 95

How are we to understand the scope of the film’s criticism of anthropological conclusions on indigenous people? Given that the researcher in the film is from the

U.S., can the film be understood only as a commentary on metropolitan anthropology, or does it also denounce the uses of what Claudio Lomnitz has called Mexico’s national anthropology? For various reasons, I argue that the film’s commentary could apply to both traditions, but that ultimately, “Nuestra Señora”, like the film in general, is primarily meant as a reflection on the treatment of indigenous people with

Mexican society and power structures.

In the original short story that inspired the film, it is a Mexico City-based psychoanalyst who leads the team that carries out studies on the indigenous people, and for him, psychoanalysis explains the indigenous people’s supposed mental deficiency.154 Interestingly, the narrator establishes a parallel between how psychoanalysts, ethnologists, and anthropologists have all used their disciplines to place the indigenous in a relative position of inferiority.155 In this way, the text demonstrates its principal themes: 1) the disconnect between Mexican intellectuals and the indigenous populations and 2) how western regimes of knowledge have been used to justify and perpetuate inequality. Given the differences between the short story and the film, it is clear that the makers of Raíces chose specifically to rewrite the narrative in order to focus on the role of anthropology. In light of the prominence and growth of state-sponsored anthropological entities in Mexico from the 1940’s to the 1960’s, it is not surprising the discipline should be at the forefront of the

154 Francisco Rojas González, El diosero (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1952) p. 75. 155 Francisco Rojas González, El diosero p. 73. 96

filmmakers’ minds. Although the fact that the researcher in “Nuestra Señora” is from the U.S. could limit the film’s ability to comment on Mexico’s tradition of national anthropology, Jane’s emphasis on the teleological discourse that attributes

“backwardness” to the indigenous peoples of Mexico is more characteristic of mid

20th century Mexican anthropologists’ work than it is of studies done in the same period by U.S. anthropologists in Mexico. This is what Claudio Lomnitz has referred to as mid 20th century Mexican anthropology’s “internal colonialism” that privileged progress over diversity.156 Perhaps making the anthropologist a U.S. researcher was a way to soften the critique of the government-supported anthropological establishment in Mexico. The presence of the mild-mannered INI-affiliated doctor also forms part of this nuanced critique. Though on the one hand he personifies the helpful and concrete actions that government-sponsored indigenista organizations carry out, he neither agrees with Jane’s conclusions, nor firmly refutes them. Regardless of the reason for the filmmakers’ decision, I argue that Jane’s nationality in the film does not diminish the film’s critical potential regarding local learned discourses about indigenous peoples because her discourse, which privileges the theme of backwardness and the civilization/barbarity dichotomy, have been just as common in

Mexico as they have been in Europe and the U.S., if not more so.

While Raíces can be read as both a commentary on metropolitan and national anthropology through its critique of biased knowledge, Luis Alcoriza’s film

Tarahumara (cada vez más lejos) similarly suggests the disconnect between

156 Lomnitz, “Bordering on Anthropology” p. 189. 97

observers and workers linked to the Instituto Nacional Indigensita and the

Tarahumara Indians of northern Mexico. In the film, Raúl is an INI worker who has been sent to northern Mexico to collect data about the Tarahumara people. He becomes close with an Indian man, Corachi, and becomes the godfather of his child.

While spending time in the community, Raúl realizes that local government and prominent business owners have been conspiring to appropriate more of the indigenous group’s lands. Eventually, Raúl is shot because of this conflict, and flown away hastily.

There are several moments in which the film points to the limitations of

formal anthropological methods for addressing the concrete difficulties of indigenous peoples. One the most explicit instances in which this happens is when Raúl is conversing with his non-native host, Tomás, after Raúl has begun to involve himself in the dispute between the local Indians and powerful members of the community.

When Tomás suggests that Raúl simply stick to the tasks he has been asked to do,

Raúl suggests the ridiculousness of the questionnaires he must distribute, which

Tomás seconds:

RAUL. …la institución que me paga quiere un estudio sesudo y

objetivo. Debo someter a los Tarahumaras a un cuestionario para

juzgarlos por el promedio de sus respuestas.

TOMAS. Esto lo contesta cualquiera. Alimentación: puro pinole o lo que

caiga, sea ardilla o lagartija. Ingreso por persona adulta: nada. Gasto

diario por familia: pues menos. Religión: una chalada de…

RAUL. ¿Pues qué quiere? Vivimos en la época de los test. Pero a mi me atrae

demasiado el mundo de ellos para verlo con la frialdad de un simple

observador.

In some ways, this exchange furthers the critique articulated with regards to anthropology in Raíces and makes it even more specific to Mexico. Just as Raíces illustrates how research methods that appear objective to their practitioners in fact impede them from understanding indigenous peoples, here Raúl suggests that the indigenous are not entirely knowable through Mexican anthropology, its institutions, and its pursuit of objectivity. This point is further reinforced later in the film when

Raúl in conversing with a like-minded anthropologist, who explains that he finds himself doing very different work from what he originally set out to do: “Fíjese, yo soy antropólogo. Vine a hacer una labor cultural y aquí me tiene encargado del cerradero, cuidando chivas y peleando por sus tierras. ¿Y sabe usted por qué? Por que ve uno que eso es lo que verdaderamente importa.” The anthropologist, like Raúl, questions the relevance of anthropological research, and having encountered the day- to-day struggle of the Tarahumara, finds that he can be more effective through other means. Instead of focusing on producing knowledge about the Tarahumara, the film suggests that it is more important to help them assert their agency in concrete ways.

However, because of the implied inadequacy of the anthropological approach, and the failure to help the natives regain their lands (made evident through Raúl’s death) the film suggests that meaningful approximation to the indigenous ultimately escapes the

grasp of the nonnative, resulting in a situation in the 20th century in which the indigenous are cada vez más lejos.

It would appear, then, that given our point of departure for examining the ethnographic mode in Mexican cinema, we have come full circle. While

Peregrinación a Chalma makes a point of establishing its authority as a scientific research film, and itself participates in the process of supposedly making indigenous peoples knowable through film, Tarahumara criticizes institutions that fetishize the

Indian while forgetting to consider their self-articulated interests, as well as the very usefulness of anthropology’s supposed scientific objectivity. Furthermore,

Tarahumara even questions the very notion that anthropology facilitates an approximation to indigeneity.

With respect to the cinematographic language of Tarahumara, I would argue that it cites the ethnographic mode as a referent, but does not engage it. For example, after the baptism of Corachi’s son there is scene that takes place during a group ceremony. The scene opens with a high angle extreme long shot of the ceremony, but lasts just a few seconds. The following shots capture interactions between the indigenous characters of the narrative. Unlike the instances of the ethnographic mode discussed throughout the chapter, here any long or extreme long shots that are reminiscent of the mode are brief and are always closely tied to the narrative, unlike the scenes from Maclovia and Sombra Verde in which they are parenthetical. The function of these shots within the film is not to provide detailed knowledge of a particular ritual, but to open a scene and provide contextual information that informs

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the narrative clearly. Therefore in contrast to Raíces, which uses the very cinematic language of the ethnographic mode to underline the bias of the narrator, Tarahumara does not employ the kind of cinematography associated with ethnographic mode, and remains primarily tied to visualizing the plot throughout the film.157

Conclusion

In this chapter, I have argued that the impact of Mexican anthropology for articulating the position of the Indian within the nation can be appreciated in the way in which Mexican cinema has presented indigenous peoples on screen. In the context of the post revolutionary government’s cultural campaign and discourse of indigenismo- mestizaje, the ethnographic discourse was a convenient one because it allowed for the production and dissemination of knowledge about indigenous populations from a subject position that presupposed a distance with respect to the native communities. This was an attractive nation-building approach because it allowed for the recognition of pre-Columbian roots while emphasizing a disassociation from contemporary indigenous peoples in favor of a subjective national identity that could be nonproblematically associated with modernity.

This analysis of the ethnographic in Mexican cinema has shown an evolution of how the discourse is rendered on film, including its eventual rejection.

Peregrinación a Chalma closely aligns itself with government-supported

157 For comparisons between the cinematographic language of Tarahumara and that of western films about native peoples see Jorge Ayala Blanco, La aventura del cine mexicano en la época de oro y después (Miguel Hidalgo: Grijalbo, 1993). 101

anthropological institutions, and is ensconced within scientific authority. While it presents the indigenous dances as classifiable data, it ultimately displays this form of cultural expression as an alien reality because the differences among the dances, the meanings of the variations in movements, costumes and props remain unintelligible based on the information provided by the film. Furthermore, the indigenous are associated with a cyclical time vis-à-vis the linear progression of time that is implied beyond the community.

The ethnographic sequences in Emilio Fernández’s Maclovia similarly produce indigenous practices as worthy objects of knowledge, and endeavors to make them visible through high angle extreme long shots and long shots. However, in contrast to Peregrinación a Chalma, Fernandez’s ethnographic rendering of the

Indian is markedly embellished through the flowery language of the voice-over narration, and his creative use of different camera angles and types of shots. I argue that Fernandez’s use of the ethnographic spectacle must be read within the context of the overall film, which ultimately proposes that indigeneity in its purest form is unfit for full participation in the Mexican nation.

Raíces and Tarahumara (cada vez más lejos) question the role and usefulness of anthropology in relation to the marginalization of indigenous peoples in mid-20th century Mexico. Raíces twists the trope of the mediator who travels to an unknown place by increasingly drawing attention to the mediator’s bias. The film accomplishes this in part by employing the cinematic language of the ethnographic documentary and juxtaposing it with Jane’s rushed and blunt conclusions. Both “Nuestra Señora”

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and Tarahumara argue for a reexamination of the process that had led to converting indigenous peoples into objects of knowledge through anthropology and its institutions, and propose greater solidarity alongside the indigenous.

What the films have in common, and the reason why they can be understood as indicative of different forms of indigenismo, is that through the ethnographic mode, they seek to apprehend indigenous reality from the nonnative perspective.

Furthermore, the films reflect on the pertinence of the indigenous for the both the nonnative and the nation in which they both exist.

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Chapter 2: “White” Indians

“Ser mestizo es mejor que ser indio, representa un avance hacia la soñada europeización de México.” - José Jorge Gómez Izquierdo158

Introduction

The Persistent Privilege of “Whiteness” in Post Independence Mexico

Through the notion of the “coloniality of power” sociologist and political theorist Aníbal Quijano suggests that the experience of Spanish colonialism established asymmetrical power relations based on racial difference, which had particularly strong implications for the distribution of labor.159 He, along with other scholars have discussed the multiple ways in which this raced hierarchy ascribed value to European peoples and cultures while denigrating the societies and forms of expression of pejoratively raced groups. The term also refers to way in which these raced value judgments have survived in the centuries since independence in Latin

America. Therefore in its broadest sense, “the coloniality of power” can be understood as a term that “encompasses the transhistoric expansion of colonial

158 José Jorge Gómez Izquierdo, “Racismo y nacionalismo en el discurso de las élites mexicanas: Historia Patria y Antropología Indigenista,” Los caminos del racismo en México, ed. José Jorge Gómez Izquierdo (México DF.: Plaza y Valdés, S.A., 2005) p. 181. 159 Aníbal Quijano, “Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America,”. Nepantla: Views from the South 1, no. 3, 2000, pp. 553-80. 104

domination and the perpetuation of its effects in contemporary times.”160 In Mexico, one of the clearest manifestations of the colonialty of power is the continued social and aesthetic valorization of “whiteness” that has persisted long after colonial rule.

However, the relationship between colonial racial understandings and their vestiges in modern Mexico is a complicated one, and in order to approach the subject of

“whiteness”, our analysis benefits from a brief review of the evolution of racial categories and their role in national identity.

National autonomy brought with it a reconfiguration and simplification of the colonial racial hierarchies, which evolved in part, because of the pressing needs of nation building. The term “Indian” was eliminated as a legal category, but new discourses evolved during the 19th century to nonetheless denigrate indigeneity as an undesirable location of biological and cultural origin,161 which is what Alicia

Castellanos Guerrero has referred to as the renewed Mexican racism of the 19th century. This new racist discourse which continued to support “whiteness” and now mestizaje as the most desirable social identities operated on three fronts. It constructed the native as an impediment to national cohesion, health, and progress.

160 Mabel Moraña, Enrique D. Dussel, and Carlos A. Jáuregui. “Introduction,” Coloniality at Large: Latin America and the Postcolonial Debate, ed. Mabel Moraña, Enrique D. Dussel, and Carlos A. Jáuregui (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008) pp. 2,17. 161 Alicia Castellanos Guerrero. “Para hacer nación: discursos racistas en el México decimonónico.” Los caminos del racismo en México. José Jorge Gómez Izquierdo ed. (México DF.: Plaza y Valdés, S.A., 2005) p. 89; Fernanda Núñez Becerra. “La degeneración de la raza a finales del siglo XIX. Un fantasma ‘científico’ recorre el mundo.” Los caminos del racismo en México. José Jorge Gómez Izquierdo ed. (México DF.: Plaza y Valdés, S.A., 2005) pp. 67-88. 105

According to European models, the modern industrialized nation required a substantial degree of homogeneity among fellow co-nationals,162 and achieving this degree of biological and cultural homogeneity became the obsession of 19th century

Mexican intellectuals and politicians.163 Liberals believed that many aspects of indigeneity needed to be overcome if Mexico’s inhabitants were to become true national citizens.164 In this view, the cultural specificity of native peoples made them into an obstacle to the national project in public discourse, giving way to a support for various forms of assimilationism.165 Because by now “indian” connoted a combination of material poverty and backwardness, degrees of social “whitening” were possible through a combination economic improvement and acculturation.166

One of the tools that intellectuals and politicians believed could assimilate the natives was the school, and it is in the 19th century that support for the education of natives in order to nationalize and culturally “whiten” them becomes visible.167 Manuel Orozco y Berra and Francisco Pimentel’s estimation of the impact of education perfectly illustrates the role that Mexican liberals hoped education would play in the nation, and underscores the racist nature of Mexican assimilationism, “…cuantos indios se separan de la azada, frecuentan los colegios y se educan como los blancos,

162 Lomnitz-Adler, Claudio. Exits from the Labyrinth. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992, pp. 263-280; Gómez Izquierdo, “Racismo y nacionalismo en el discurso de las élites mexicanas” p. 121. 163 Castellanos Guerrero, “Para hacer nación” p. 97. 164 Castellanos Guerrero, “Para hacer nación” pp. 89-115; Claudio Lomnitz, “Exits from the Labyrinth” p. 274. 165 Castellanos Guerrero. “Para hacer nación” pp. 89-115. 166 Alan Knight, “Racism, Revolution, and Indigenismo; Mexico, 1910-1940,” The idea of race in Latin America, 1870-1940, ed. Richard Graham (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990) pp. 71-113. 167 Castellanos Guerrero, “Para hacer nación” p. 107; José Jorge Gómez Izquierdo, “Racismo y nacionalismo” p. 120. 106

manifiestan estar dotados de buena comprensión.”168 Furthermore, although cultural whitening was supported through education, 19th thinkers were very much concerned with impelling mestizaje and “whitening” Mexico biologically by advocating for the immigration of “whites” from Europe and the US. It was believed that this migration,

“mejoraría la raza y al mismo tiempo podía contribuir a paliar el atraso cultural y tecnológico,”169 and it was supported by various political figures, including Justo

Sierra.170 By both exposing natives to western education and increasing the presence of Europeans and euroamericans in the Mexican gene pool, Mexican intellectuals preoccupied with nation building hoped to create a more homogenous and “whiter” citizenry.

Beyond casting indigenous people as a threat to national cohesion, in 19th century Mexican thought they also became one of the many social groups categorized as degenerate, alongside prostitutes and the urban poor. As Fernanda Núñez Becerra explains, the second half of the 19th century saw a shift toward a medicalized understanding of crime, because of the influence of positivism. In this view, crime was not the result of social factors, but was predetermined by certain individuals’ biology. Emerging disciplines such as social hygiene, anthropology, sociology, psychiatry, and legal medicine saw “en los sectores pobres de la sociedad un peligro

168 Manuel Orozco y Berra and Francisco Pimentel qtd. in Alicia Castellanos Guerrero, “Para hacer nación” p. 103. 169 Castellanos Guerrero, “Para hacer nación” p. 107. 170 Castellanos Guerrero, Jorge Gómez Izquierdo, and Francisco Pineda, “Racist Discourse in Mexico,” Racism and Discourse in Latin America, ed. Teun A. Van Dijk (New York: Rowman & Littlefield 2009) pp. 218, 229; José Jorge Gómez Izquierdo. “Racismo y nacionalismo” pp. 107, 148. 107

latente e inminente para la civilización, en tanto factor de degeneración nacional.”171

Unsurprisingly, this new approach to defining the sectors of society that were undesirable, served to reinforce previous racial hierarchies:

…intentarán racionalizar “científicamente” la desigualdad social de

acuerdo con criterios higiénicos, morales y raciales, en un orden

jerárquico indiscutible, donde las clases altas de la sociedad,

instruidas, educadas, cultas, e higiénicas eran superiores moralmente, y

al final de la pirámide social, abajo incluso de la famosa raza indígena,

estaban los africanos…172

19th century thought in Mexico also denigrated natives by casting them as incompatable with modernity. The association between “whiteness” and progress, surfaces for example, in the impassioned debates of the Congreso de la Unión

(National Congress) in which elites advocated for a large migration of “whites” from

North America and Europe.173 But the racist discourse of modernization is also evident because it serves to justify the appropriation of indigenous lands. Natives were presented as being unable to use the land productively according to modern standards, therefore retarding the progress of the nation.174 The zeal with which the exploitation of the land as private property was considered crucial to Mexican modernity is clear in the calls to eliminate those indigenous groups (particularly in

Sonora, Chihuahua the Yucatán peninsula, and Chiapas) who rebelled against the

171 Núñez Becerra, “La degeneración de la raza a finales del siglo XIX” pp. 67-88. 172 Núñez Becerra, “La degeneración de la raza a finales del siglo XIX” pp. 74-75. 173 Castellanos Guerrero et all, “Racist Discourse in Mexico” pp. 218, 229. 174 Castellanos Guerrero, “Para hacer nación” p. 100. 108

expropriation of their lands.175 Thus although the former raced colonial hierarchies had indeed evolved, “whitening” in Mexico was heavily promoted in the 19th century through the new nationalist, positivist, and economic beliefs. As Alicia Castellanos

Guerrero summarizes elegantly, “Para hacer nación había que civilizar a los diferentes, compartir la religión católica, hacer prevalecer la propiedad privada, hablar la lengua nacional, ser español, criollo o mestizo y blanquear a los indios.”176

The post revolutionary Mexican government would adopt new policies towards indigenous people, but essentially pursued the same assimilationist approach rooted in racism.177 As a part of the renewal and reinvention of its commitment to progress and modernity after the revolution, the government embarked on a project that sought to extend resources to the indigenous/peasant populations and to incorporate them into the nation state. This project, known as indigenismo, also inaugurated a new national discourse that made the indigenous, and the people of mixed indigenous/European ancestry (mestizos) its protagonists and symbols in an effort to make the new national subject visibly knowable. However, “whiteness” continued to be a Mexican ideal, which is reflected in the official post revolutionary ideology that incorporates aspects of indigeneity symbolically and exalts mestizaje178 as the nation’s common “fictive ethnicity,”179 or as what José Jorge Gómez Izquierdo

175 Castellanos Guerrero, “Para hacer nación” p. 107. 176 Castellanos Guerrero, “Para hacer nación” p. 93. 177 Gómez Izquierdo, “Racismo y nacionalismo” pp. 169, 167, 179. 178 Lomnitz, Exits from the Labyrinth pp. 278-279. 179 See Balibar, Etienne. "The Nation Form: History and Ideology," Race Critical Theories: Text and Context, ed. Philomena Essed Goldberg and David Theo (Maiden Mass.: Blackwell Publishers 2002) pp. 223-224. and Joshua Lund, The Mestizo State: Reading Race in Modern Mexico (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012). 109

has similarly termed “la fábula del mestizaje.”180 20th century mestizaje is in effect more heavily invested in non-indigenous culture, institutions, and traditions, and because it was predicated on the inferiority of the native, was a racist national construct. As Gómez Izquierdo explains, “La ideología indigenista se sustenta en esa visión racista sobre el indio para definir las consecuentes políticas de asimilación o integración a la cultura nacional, promocionando el mestizaje…Ser mestizo es mejor que ser indio, representa un avance hacia la soñada europeización de México.”181

Furthermore, indigenismo-mestizaje was and still is a particularly pernicious racist ideology precisely because it pretends to be raceless.182

This social history results in a paradoxical reality in Mexico in which, “Indian ancestry has been proudly acknowledged…[but] society…clearly values “whiteness” as both a status symbol and as an aesthetic.” 183 Recently, several sociologists have also noted the contradiction between the raceless discourse of Mexican mestizaje idology, and the privileging of “whiteness” that exists in everyday society. Andrés

Villarreal, for example has noted that “A preference for “white” features…coexists

180 Gómez Izquierdo, “Racismo y nacionalismo” p. 130. 181 Gómez Izquierdo, “Racismo y nacionalismo” p. 181. 182 “Racism is historically and logically taboo in societies that have searched for symbols of national identity in the great pre-Hispanic cultures and that find their legitimacy in their supposed biological and cultural mestizaje.” Castellanos Guerrero, “Racist discourse in Mexico” p. 221. See also: Gómez Izquierdo, “Racismo y nacionalismo” 117-181; René Flores and Edward Telles, "Social Stratification in Mexico: Disentangling Color, Ethnicity, and Class," American Sociological Review. 77.3 (2012): 486-494; Mónica Moreno Figueroa, "Distributed Intensities: “whiteness”, Mestizaje and the Logics of Mexican Racism." Ethnicities. 10.3 (2010): 387-401; Regina Martínez Casas et all. “The Different Faces of Mestizaje: Ethnicity and Race in Mexico, In Pigmentocracies: Ethnicity, Race, and Color in Latin America, ed. Edward Telles, (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2014) pp. 36-80. 183 “Moreover, as opposed to racism in the United States, where blackness is marked (negatively) and “whiteness” claims the majority position, in Mexican racism it is “whiteness” that is marked (positively) and brownness claims the unmarked majority position.” Lomnitz, Exits from the Labyrinth p. 280. 110

with a state-sponsored and popular ideology that racial differences are no longer present in Mexico.” Mónica Moreno Figueroa observes that, “‘passing’ towards

‘“whiteness”’ – in its peculiar Mexican version – is still a goal for the inhabitants, a problematic area in terms of identity and a non-spoken rule of social stratification.”184

The remarks of these scholars, and others185 point to “whiteness” as an enduring form of physical capital186 in Mexican society. As Chris Shilling explains, Bourdieu’s analysis of the body,

refers not only to the body’s implication in the buying and selling of

labour power, but to the methods by which the body has become a

more comprehensive form of physical capital; a possessor of power,

status and distinctive symbolic forms which is integral to the

accumulation of various resources. The production of physical capital

refers to the development of bodies in ways which are recognized as

having value in social fields…187

Given the racist nature of the Mexican “social field” outlined here through the history of the 19th and 20th century national paradigm, the “whiteness” of the Mexican body – understood not strictly in chromatic terms, but as a combination of physical features, hair texture, classed speech patterns, dress, body height and build, gait, hygiene, posture and mannerisms – is a source of power that can and does confer

184 Mónica Moreno Figueroa, "Distributed Intensities” p. 391; Regina Martínez Casas, et all, “The Different Faces of Mestizaje” pp. 36-80. 185 Christina A Sue, Land of the Cosmic Race: Race Mixture, Racism, and Blackness in Mexico (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); Gómez Izquierdo, “Racismo y nacionalismo” pp. 117-181. 186 Chris Shilling, The Body and Social Theory, (London: Sage Publications, 1993) p. 14. 187 Shilling, The Body and Social Theory p. 127. 111

social and economic advantage.188 Therefore the term “whiteness” that I use throughout the text I mean to be entirely tied to the Mexican social and historical context. This contextual understanding of “whiteness” is in tune with Michael Omi and Howard Winant’s concept of the “racial formation,” as a historically and socially situated project within which human bodies and social structures are represented and organized.189 Years earlier, sociologist Harry Hoetink began alluding to how the definitions of “whiteness” are contextual, identifying the existence of a “white Iberian somatic norm image” in the Caribbean190 that is distinct and darker from that of northwestern Europe. This same “white” Iberian ideal serves as the baseline definition of “whiteness” in Mexico, according to which criollo and mestizo bodies are read as “white” in the Mexican context. However, I wish to emphasize that all of the other cultural markers listed above also inform the local construct of “whiteness.”

As a result, as Regina Martínez Casas et. al have shown, skin color distinctions in

Mexico are highly ambiguous and do not determine the way Mexicans self-identify ethnically or racially.191 For this reason, the terms “indian” and “indigenous” are also similarly constructed, and signal a combination of physical, cultural, and

188 For labor discrimination of indigenous people in Mexico see Castellanos Guerrero, Jorge Gómez Izquierdo, and Francisco Pineda, “Racist Discourse in Mexico” p. 223; for the preference of “white” Mexicans as marriage partners see Alicia Castellanos Guerrero, Jorge Gómez Izquierdo, and Francisco Pineda. “Racist Discourse in Mexico” p. 233-235 and Sue, Land of the Cosmic Race: Race Mixture, Racism, and Blackness in Mexico. For other forms of social discrimination based on a lack of “whiteness” see Mónica Moreno Figueroa, "Distributed Intensities” pp. 387-401. 189 Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s (New York: Routledge, 1994) p.126. 190 Hoetink defines the term “somatic norm image” as, “the complex of physical (somatic) characteristics which are accepted as a group as its norm and ideal. Norm because it is used to measure aesthetic appreciation; ideal because usually no individual ever in fact embodies the somatic norm image of the group.” Harry.Hoetink, Caribbean race relations. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967) p. 120. 191 Regina Martínez Casas, et all, “The Different Faces of Mestizaje” pp. 36-80. 112

socioeconomic markers.

Indigenista Visual Production

Looking into indigenista visual production in Mexico during the first half of the 20th century allows us to address the tension between the official indigenismo- mestizaje ideology and the persistent valorization of “whiteness.” First, it is important to point out that visual representation became a central concern of the new post- revolutionary nationalist campaign. One of the foremost figures of this impulse, the anthropologist Manuel Gamio, specifically addressed the country’s culturally stratified patterns of artistic production and consumption as a symptom of the nation’s lack of cohesion. In his 1916 treatise, Forjando Patria, Gamio advocates for a fusion in the artistic preferences of Mexicans: “Cuando la clase media y la indígena tengan el mismo criterio en material de arte, estaremos culturalmente redimidos, existirá el arte nacional, que es una de las grandes bases del nacionalismo.”192 In concert with this vision, José Vasconcelos (the Secretary of Public Education in the early 1920’s), commissioned artists to create works that would portray the Mexican people, and aimed to provide the country with an aesthetic that it could call authentically national.

The results of these efforts were the now well-known murals painted by figures such as Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros. Rivera, for example, explicitly engaged indigeneity in paintings such as The Great City of

Tenochtitlan (1945) located in the Palacio Nacional in Mexico City, which “depicts

192 Manuel Gamio, Forjando Patria (Mexico City: Editorial Porrúa, S.A., 1960) p. 39 – 40. 113

an idealized view of the Aztec capital.”193 In other works such as The World of Today and Tomorrow (1929-1935) (also located in the Palacio Nacional) he envisions the nation’s central subjects as the peasant, the soldier and the worker, and conceives of them as the evolved descendants of Mexico’s indigenous peoples.

While works such as these were eager to engage and display indigeneity and brown mestizaje, it is important to keep in mind that indigenista cultural production

(and indigenismo itself) was as much about modernity as it was about indigeneity. As

Adèle Robin Greeley points out, a major motive for the creation of the murals in the first place was president Alvaro Obregón’s (in office from 1920-1924) desire to mitigate the image of Mexico as primitive and barbarous within the international community.194

Although we have seen that starting from the early 1920’s there was a great celebration of indigeneity in the realm of Mexican cultural production, in light of a history of raced Othering, having the indigenous and peasant populations suddenly be the privileged objects of aesthetic expression was not an unproblematic proposal.

Figure 30 is a cartoon that appeared in the newspaper Excélsor on August 31, 1927 titled, “The good judge.” In it, an indigenous woman brings her son to participate in a beauty pageant for children, only to be met with the confusion of one of the pageant’s judges. “Ma’am, how dare you bring such an ugly little boy?” the judge asks the woman. When she responds that “Don Diego” is one of the judges for the pageant,

193 Andrea, Noble, "Latin American Visual Cultures," The Companion to Latin American Studies ed. Philip Swanson (London: Arnold, 2003) pp. 154-71. 194 Robin Adèle Greeley, “Muralism and the State in Post-Revolution Mexico,” Mexican Muralism : A Critical History, ed. Alejandro Anreus, Leonard Folgarait, and Robin Adèle Greeley (Berkeley: University of California Press) pp. 13-36. 114

the judge remains confused, and asks what Diego Rivera’s participation in the pageant has to do with anything. To this the woman responds, “Well, the boy looks just like the ones he painted in the Secretariat of Public Education.” The cartoon suggests that just because Diego Rivera is painting indigenous people in state- sanctioned murals in public buildings for all to see, does not necessarily mean that they are aesthetically venerable according to Mexican public opinion. It hints at the idea that pictorial indigenismo had yet to interpellate lighter skinned elites, but at the same time, allows the reader/viewer interpretative latitude. Most importantly for this chapter, I believe the cartoon points to the fact that there was contention about whether or not the indigenous were fit for celebratory artistic representation, and debate about how they should be rendered.

115

Figure 30. 195 The cartoon titled “Buen juez” appeared in Excélsor on August 31, 1927.

An anxiety around the visualization of indigeneity can also be perceived in relation to other mediums and practices that sought to showcase lo mexicano – understood as a hegemonic criollo/mestizo take on indigeneity and rural Mexico. In the 1920s and ‘30s Mexican intellectuals and business entrepreneurs helped the

Mexican government to develop their own version of a “national” exotic that was shaped by Euro-American visions of Mexico and by national discourses that were

195 I originally accessed the image through its reprint in Becoming modern, becoming tradition: Women, Gender, and Representation in Mexican Art by Adriana Zavala (Penn State University Press, 2011), p. 190.

116

central to post revolutionary national identity,196 This internal form of orientalism idealized and recreated rural Mexico, placing a specific emphasis on images of women because, “it equated the exotic with the feminine.”197 As a result, images of what Hershfield has called the “domestic exotic” and of what Ageeth Sluis has termed the “camposcape” (often in the form of colorfully dressed women) appeared on multiple mediums including high art, advertisements, and postcards.198 While

Hershfield notes that the Indian was an exemplar of this new national aesthetic, her analysis of illustrated magazines of the time provides insight into the racial politics at work in the appropriation of indigenous culture: “la india’s skin color was not something to be emulated, [but] her colorful, non-Western dress habits were a fashion rage among various sectors of elite society.”199 Indeed, “white” Mexican bodies have the luxury of adorning themselves with folkloric paraphernalia because these impermanent additions to the body do not threaten the person’s social privilege, which is safely secured by more permanent physical markers of “whiteness” (the most treasured and permanent asset of “white” Mexican status of course being any eye color that is not brown).

Filmic representations of indigeneity in Mexico were also produced in the midst of a complex racial climate in which some aspects of indigeneity were officially praised while others were unofficially frowned upon. Additionally, these

196 Joanne Hershfield, Imagining la Chica Moderna: Women, Nation, and Visual Culture in Mexico, 1917–1936 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008) p. 130. 197 Ageeth Sluis, Deco Body, Deco City: Female Spectacle and Modernity in Mexico City, 1900-1939. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2016) p. 102. 198 Hershfield. “Imagining la Chica Moderna” pp. 128-153 and Sluis, Deco Body, Deco City” p. 103. 199 Hershfield. “Imagining la Chica Moderna” p. 152. 117

films were also charged with other meanings and missions because of the significance of cinema as a medium. Although the attempt was made to use murals as a tool to defend Mexico’s modernity, cinema was the most important channel through which the country would assert its (aspirational) status as a modern nation-state throughout the 20th century. Through their participation in the modern art form of cinema,

Mexican filmmakers sought to be recognized in international contexts as producers of films that were both exemplary of artistic quality and identifiably Mexican.

International recognition of Mexican films was one way in which the nation sought to proclaim its arrival as a sophisticated and modern world leader.200 Mexican films about indigeneity are therefore rich spaces in which the search for Mexican singularity and external recognition, the raced associations between indigeneity and backwardness (both at home and abroad), and the national aspiration to be modern are carefully negotiated.

While on postcards intended for tourists indigenous women appeared in rich epidemic shades,201 the visualization of indigenous women in Mexican film throughout the first half of the 20th century is overwhelmingly “white,” particularly when the characters are objects of desire within the diegeses. In other words, in

200 This continues to be a reality today, and is evident in President Enrique Peña Nieto’s practice of promptly congratulating Mexican-born Oscar winners via twitter in messages that cast their victory within a nationalist framework. When Alejandro González Iñárritu won the Oscar for best director in February of 2016, Peña Nieto tweeted, “Muchas felicidades Alejandro González Iñárritu, por otro Óscar por Mejor Director. Eres un orgullo para tu país.” The previous year his congratulatory message to the same director read, “Alejandro González Iñárritu, qué merecido reconocimiento a tu trabajo, entrega y talento. ¡Felicidades! México lo celebra junto contigo.” He also went out of his way to note Lupita Nyong’o’s connection to Mexico in congratulating her after her Oscar win for best supporting actress in 2015, “Felicidades a Lupita Nyong’o, mexicana de nacimiento, por la fuerza interpretativa que la ha hecho ganadora del #Oscar.” 201 Hershfield, “Imagining la Chica Moderna” pp. 134-148. 118

Mexican films, it is women who conform to the Mexican construct of “whiteness” – understood in its multifaceted physical and cultural definition outlined above - that are cast in leading roles in indigenous themed films. The purpose of this chapter is to critically engage the function of “whiteness” in the cinematic representation of indigeneity. To my knowledge, commentary on this phenomenon has been limited to critiques of Emilio “El Indio” Fernández’s indigenista films. Within the discussion of this director’s work, Dolores Tierney has argued that the use of “whiteness” for the main characters in María Canderlaria speaks to Mexico’s desire to project itself as a modern nation.202 In a similar way, Ageeth Sluis has suggested that the dressing up of

“deco bodies” (which for her are characterized by their slender shapes, fashionable late 1930’s make-up with very thin eyebrows, full lashes, and a light completion) in indigenous garb across visual mediums was a way for the cultural industry to simultaneously convey its modernity and authenticity.”203 While I do not discount that “whiteness” was used to signify modernity, I wish to situate my reading of the films more firmly in Mexico’s discriminatory racial history. I believe that a critical racial reading of the phenomenon is necessary because while it is true that there was a palpable eagerness to display modernity and a national essence through visual production, it is also true that not just any combination of these elements would do.

Laura Isabel Serna has pointed out that non-”white” Mexican women who attempted the flapper hairstyle and other modern fashion trends were openly ridiculed in local

202 Tierney, Dolores, Emilio Fernández: pictures in the margins, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007) p. 95. 203 Sluis, Deco Body, Deco City p. 105. 119

print culture.204 Quoting a 1924 article by Carlos Serrano in Revista de revistas Serna observes,

Middle-class observers clucked ‘in many of the dark faces that carry

the imperturbable stamp of the race,’ the style ends up being

‘unsympathetic and ridiculous.’ In designating modern styles as the

province of those with fair skin, these sorts of comments reinforced

Mexico’s racial hierarchy…205

Serna’s observation points to how the brown body was held to be incompatible with modernity, making its attempt to participate in modern fashions appear absurd the middle and upper class in Mexican society. Instead, it is the specific combination of

“whiteness” and indigenous and/or folkloric paraphernalia that wins as a hegemonic national symbol, precisely because of the impermanence of the local embellishments, and because the more permanent “whiteness” of the body anchors Mexico’s claim to modernity. Here, I will argue that the use of “whiteness” in the representation of indigeneity can also be understood through the coloniality of power, and more specifically, as an effect of the colonization of both desire and subjectivity.

Feminist and Race Film Theory

Feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey has famously shed light on the

204 Laura Isabel Serna, Making Cinelandia: American Films and Mexican Film Culture Before the Golden Age (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014). pp. 132-134. 205 Serna, Making Cinelandia p. 133. 120

representation of women in classical Hollywood cinema.206 For her, “…mainstream film coded the erotic into the language of the dominant patriarchal order,” 207 and the result has been representations of women that are products of the male gaze and through which the spectator (envisioned as male) is incited to “possess” the woman onscreen. In this way, mainstream film imposes subjective male positionality on the spectator. While Mulvey’s approach is certainly pertinent to the ways in which the indigenous women in the Mexican films from the first half of the 20th century are presented as objects of desire through cinematography and editing, it is also true that as bell hooks and Jaine Gaines have noted, traditional feminist film theory is not helpful for understanding the racial dynamics at work in cinema.208 In her approach to understanding the interconnections between race and cinema, bell hooks has encouraged film scholars to consider the local realities in which films are produced and consumed. Through this emphasis, she has noted that the gaze of U.S. blacks toward cinema cannot be divorced from U.S. racial history in which the black gaze could be considered an act of defiance or sexual aggression.209 By highlighting the contextual racial dynamics, hooks observes that the black male gazers of “white” womanhood on screen not only engaged in an act of possession (as Mulvey suggests), but that in their role as spectators they were situated in a subject position that was

206 Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Literary Theory. An anthology ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan (New York: Blackwell, 1998) pp. 585-596. 207 Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure” p. 585. 208 bell hooks, “The oppositional gaze: black female spectators,” Feminist Film Theory: A reader ed. Sue Thornham (Edinborough: Edinborough University Press, 1999) and Jane Gaines, “’white’” privilege and looking relations,” Feminist Film Theory: A reader ed. Sue Thornham (Edinborough: Edinborough University Press, 1999). 209 hooks, “The oppositional gaze.” 121

vehemently denied to them in lived reality. In this way, hook’s work illustrates that the films can have dramatically different implications depending on the racial contexts in which they are consumed.

Among film theorists who have addressed the relationship between race and cinema, Richard Dyer has approached the issue of “whiteness” specifically. He posits that “whiteness” acquires its power because it attributes to itself a universal quality, an ability to represent anything because “whiteness” claims not to be a particularizing quality.210 Although Mexican film has utilized “whiteness” in a similar way,211 I suspect that in the case of Hollywood, the use of “whiteness” to represent anything and everything is strongly supported and rooted in the demographic reality and national narrative of the U.S., particularly in the era of classical cinema. However in

Mexican society, “whiteness” has always been a particularizing quality because it has been tied to socioeconomic privilege and because it has historically included only a minority of the population. Therefore, the illusion of a “white” homogeneity was never a possibility there, which I argue confers upon Mexican film and media’s privileging of “whiteness” a unique ideological force that requires further inquiry.

That ideological force is the coloniality of power, and more specifically, the colonization of desire. It manifests itself clearly in the ubiquity and veneration of

“white” Mexican actresses onscreen and off. Mexican films that state their intention to represent indigeneity, yet still employ “whiteness” to do so are a testament to the extent to which desire has been colonized, so much so that the empirically unfeasible

210 Richard Dyer, White (London: New York: Routledge, 1997) pp. 3-12. 211 Tierney, Emilio Fernández p. 95. 122

(Euro-Mexican women presented as indigenous women) is preferable to the projection of somatically indigenous Mexican femininity as desirable.

Colonizing Desire

Among the many aspects of racial identity that Franz Fanon addressed in his well-known 1952 text, Black Skin, White Masks, were the implications of colonization for the cross-racial dynamics of desire between heterosexual men and women. Fanon suggests that the prohibition of sexual relations and marriage between black men and white women throughout colonialism in the Antilles causes black men to experience the desire of and towards the white woman as a redress for the black man’s subjugation during slavery and long after.212 Assuming the voice of black male

Antillean subjectivity he writes:

I wish to be acknowledged not as black but as white…who but a white

woman can do this for me? By loving me she proves that I am worthy

of white love. I am loved like a white man…I marry white culture,

white beauty, white whiteness. When my restless hands caress those

white breasts they grasp white civilization and dignity and make them

mine.213

When discussing the black Antillean woman’s desire to secure a white man for herself, Fanon suggests that is the inclination is rooted in a wish to whiten and therefore improve the prospects for future children. He also suggests that marrying a

212 Frantz Fanon, Black Skin White Masks (New York: Grove Press, 1967) pp. 63 – 82. 213 Fanon, Black Skin White Masks p. 63. 123

white man is a way to definitively disassociate oneself with blackness and approach a more consolidated and convincing white identity. It is worth quoting this passage in full because of the close parallels that exist with Mexican social reality:

We who come from the Antilles know one thing only too well: Blue

eyes the people say, frighten the Negro… For, in a word, the race must

be whitened; every woman in Martinique knows this, says it, repeats it.

Whiten the race, save the race, but not in the sense that one might

think: not ‘preserve the uniqueness of that part of the world in which

they grew up,’ but make sure that it will be white…The number of

sayings, proverbs, petty rules of conduct that govern the choice of a

lover in the Antilles is astounding. It is always essential to avoid

falling back into the pit of niggerhood, and every woman in the

Antilles, whether in a casual flirtation or in a serious affair, is

determined to select the least black of the men. Sometimes, in order to

justify a bad investment, she is compelled to resort to such arguments

as this: ‘X is black, but misery is blacker.’ I know a great number of

girls from Martinique, students in France, who admitted to me with

complete candor-completely white candor-that they would find it

impossible to marry black men.214

In this way, Fanon suggests that in post-colonial contexts, sexual attractions and

214 Fanon, Black Skin White Masks. pp. 43-48. 124

desires are far from arbitrary occurrences, but that they can be understood as raced phenomena. He, of course, does not mean that black Antilleans are never considered sexually desirable, but that the overwhelming tendency of black desire towards whites has a basis in colonial subjugation according to which cross racial unions were not condoned because of the presumed inferiority of blacks.

Although the history of interracial marriage in Mexico was different, the experience of colonialism produced a similar result to the one Fanon describes in

Martinique. Early during the conquest, the marriage of Spanish men and indigenous women was looked upon favorably due to the lack of Spanish women in the

Americas, and because these unions were considered vehicles for conversion to

Catholicism by the Spanish crown.215 Indeed, intermarriage was a part of Hernán

Cortés’ initial strategy for supporting the conquest of New Spain.216 The freedom to marry indigenous women was made explicit in laws passed in 1501 and 1514.217

However, as soon as Spanish women became available in New Spain, Spanish men rejected Indian women as marriage partners.218 Subsequent laws continued to protected Spanish unions with Indians and with those of mixed indigenous and

Spanish ancestry (mestizos and castizos),219 while discouraging unions between

Spaniards and people of African ancestry.220 However, the mere fact of legal protection, does not mean that unions between Spaniards and the indigenous were

215 Magnus Morner, Race Mixture in the History of Latin America (Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1967) p. 37. 216 Morner, Race Mixture p. 37. 217 Morner, Race Mixture p. 37. 218 Morner, Race Mixture p. 26 219 Morner, Race Mixture p. 39 220 Morner, Race Mixture p. 38 125

common or socially encouraged. Magnus Morner has illustrated the distinction between the legal statuses and social statuses of different ethnic groups in New

Spain.221 He has shown that although the indigenous had the highest legal status of those who were neither Spanish or criollo, they had the lowest social status,222 which was in turn tied to the raced division of labor according to which they performed primarily physical tasks. Thus, despite the protected legal status of the Indians and the fact that their marriage with Spaniards and criollos was legal, it was less common because of the great socioeconomic distance that evolved between the groups.223

According to Douglas Cope, the significance of marriage for securing wealth and status made unions with non-”whites” undesirable for Spanish and criollo families in

New Spain, and phenotype became a factor that helped determine the worthiness of a potential partner:

Kinship ties, centered on the extended family, were vital to the

creation and transmission of wealth, status, and power in the Hispanic

community. Marital alliances with the "impure" castas offered creoles

few advantages. Indeed, insofar as they lowered the family's prestige,

such marriages could be very damaging. Preserving creole wealth and

limpieza de sangre (purity of blood) required endogamy. Under the

sistema de castas, phenotype acted as a sieve, filtering out unsuitable

221 Morner, Race Mixture p. 60. 222 Morner, Race Mixture p. 60. 223 For exceptions to this general tendency see Morner, Race Mixture p. 65-66. 126

candidates for admission to Spanish families.224

Indeed, during his visit to Mexico, Alexander von Humbolt clearly observed the social superiority that “whiteness” conferred in the Mexican context: “In Spain, it is a kind of title of nobility not to descend from Jews or Moors. In America, the skin, more or less white, is what dictates the class that an individual occupies in society. A white, even if he rides barefoot on horseback, considers himself a member of the nobility of the country.”225

Because of the raced stratification of society, it was difficult for non-”whites” to accumulate the wealth and status that would make them desirable marriage partners, making their unions with elite “whites” unlikely. After independence, acculturation and wealth enabled individuals to shift their ethnic identities to “white” ones (through the processes outlined in the introduction to this chapter), giving way to greater mixture. However, the practice of “whitening” continues through a preference for “whiter” marriage partners,226 especially among the elite.227 I suggest that the historical practice of elite “white” endogamy in Mexico and the negative characteristics attributed to indigeneity through time have helped make “whiteness” the aesthetic ideal in the county, as well an object of desire. This raced desire has been documented throughout Mexican literary history. José Vasconcelos noted that,

“You find almost in every one of our Indian or mestizo poets, dark of skin

224 Douglas R. Cope,The Limits of Racial Domination (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994) p. 25. 225 Alexander von Humbolt qtd. in Mörner, Race Mixture p. 56. 226 Knight, “Racism, Revolution, and Indigenismo” p. 100; Sue, Land of the Cosmic Race; Moreno, Figueroa. "Distributed Intensities” 387-401. 227 Lomnitz, Exits from the Labyrinth pp. 278-279. 127

themselves, the ardent eulogy of the white hands, the pale cheek, of the amada.”228

Mexican cinema, television programs and advertisements reinforce the supposed aesthetic superiority and desirability of “whites” to this day. Drawing on the work of

Star Studies scholars Jackie Stacey and Edgar Morin, Martin Shingler has observed that beautiful bodies and faces are requirements for film stars, especially for women.229 Although I do not exclude the possibility that Mexican films also sought to imitate the conventions of “whiteness” in the Euopean and American films, I suggest that “whiteness” in Mexican film production has also been predominant because of the local process of the colonization of desire, which dictates that beauty is

“white.”

Colonizing Subjectivity

Of course there are other aspects of the discursive and epistemic violence of coloniality that have helped to produce the centrality of “whiteness” in cultural production. Fanon also describes how the colonized subject’s exposure to raced discourses in comic books and history books impacts him, effectively alienating him from himself through a kind of discursive brainwashing230 - the colonization of his subjectivity. He identifies with the “white” protagonist, the victor, and becomes complicit in the Othering of pejoratively raced subjects. He therefore associates the

228 Vasconcelos, qtd in Knight, “Racism, Revolution, and Indigenismo” p. 100. 229 Shingler, The Body and Social Theory pp. 74 -79. 230 Fanon. Black Skin White Masks pp. 146-147. 128

Senegalese with the “wicked Negroes” of his texts and attributes to himself a “white” subjectivity, disavowing his own African ancestry.231 I agree with Fanon that the coercion to identify with “whiteness” is not only a characteristic of the Antilles, but it is a circumstance identifiable across colonies. In the Mexican context, the colonial experience similarly created a cultural symbolic order (through for example, historical and religious narrative) that privileged “whiteness” as a preferred signifier, and preferred social identity. This cultural symbolic order was not entirely replaced or eliminated through independence, revolution, or the revolution’s institutionalized cultural projects. Instead, these movements merely qualified the terms of Hispanic superiority. Although José Jorge Gómez Izquierdo does not refer to Fanon, his own thorough study of how Mexican history book teach indigenous cultures and history brings him to a similar conclusion: that their discourses serve the purposes of “white” supremacy in Mexico, aligning the pupil with the nonnative subject, which results in psychological and emotional damage.232

In light of this history, I suggest that “whiteness” is also dominant in Mexican cultural production (and in Mexican cinema specifically) because in the context of colonized subjectivity, “whiteness” functions as a preferred device for inciting identification between the spectator and the main characters in the diegeses. Indeed,

Charles Ramírez Berg has already alluded to the implications of this phenomenon by observing that in Mexican film “whiteness” functions as a "marker of morality and social standing…light skin confers righteousness and high social station; dark skin

231 Fanon. Black Skin White Masks pp. 146-147. 232 Gómez Izquierdo, . “Racismo y nacionalismo” p. 142. 129

usually signifies a lower-class villain or clown."233 It is through the colonization of desire and subjectivity that we arrive at the situation in Mexico in which the national audiovisual repertoire has painted an overwhelmingly (and unrealistically) “white” picture of Mexico. Although I sustain that the dynamics are different with respect to the U.S. context, I believe in the Mexican case, the ubiquity of “whiteness” on screen has also been a tool of white supremacy.234 Indeed, it is one of the most powerful manifestations of what Guillermo Bonfil Batalla has termed “el México imaginario” which he defines as, “…un país minoritario que se organiza según normas, aspiraciones y propósitos de la civilización occidental que no son compartidos (o lo son desde otra perspectiva) por el resto de la población nacional...ese sector, que encarna e impulsa el proyecto dominante en nuestro país.”235 Clearly, (to paraphrase bell hooks) Mexico is not as “white” as it wants to be.236 This fact becomes obvious when one hears the reaction of many bewildered Europeans and U.S. Americans when they first see Mexican films and telenovelas. They cannot help but ask something to the effect of “Why is everyone so white?” And in asking this question perhaps they do not realize that they are pointing their finger and shouting “Look a negro!” (to draw a parallel with Fanon) making it clear that they still see Mexicans as not them, and are slightly unsettled by the lack of brownness with which they

233 Charles Ramírez Berg. Cinema of solitude: a critical study of Mexican film, 1967-1983 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010) p. 57. For an analysis of similar dynamics in Indian cinema see Martin Shingler, Star studies: a critical guide (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) p.66. 234 hooks, ““The oppositional gaze” p. 514. 235 Guillermo Bonfil Batalla, México Profundo : Una Civilizaciûn Negada. México, D.F.: Secretaría de Educación Pública, 1987. p. 10. 236 hooks, ““The oppositional gaze” p. 514. 130

associate Mexicans.237 I have often heard many Mexicans react indignantly to this kind of question, and have done so myself. “We have white people too” the response goes, beneath which one can read “we have beauty, civilization and modernity too.”

But like children and drunks who unwittingly reveal uncomfortable truths, those who ask the ingenuous (and sometimes even prejudiced) question reveal the fantasy for what it is: an aspirational and unconvincing mask.

“Whiteness” and Hegemony

Speaking specifically about the Golden Age of Mexican cinema (from the late

1930s to the late 1950s), both Jesús Martín Barbero and Carlos Monsiváis have posited that film production from this period fulfilled a hegemonic role, helping to fashion Mexican spectators into national subjects.238 On the one hand the films enforced the viewer’s awareness of their existing within an “imagined community.”239 But as Monsiváis observes, cinema also had a strong pedagogical and socializing function, serving as a school in which spectators could learn models of

237 Here I am referring to the episode in Black Skin white Masks in which Frantz Fanon recalls the experience that led him to assume his blackness. Because of the colonization his subjectivity, while growing up in Martinique he had believed himself to be a Frenchman, and associated blackness with West Africans. When a child in France pointed him out on the street as exclaimed, “Look a negro!” Fanon realized he was perceived as a black person. In making the analogy with Mexican visual production, I am suggesting that Mexico imagines itself to be much “whiter” than it is in an effort to associate itself with the modernity and progress of the U.S. and Europe, and also because of its local colonial legacy which privileges “whiteness”, and that Europeans and Americans are the first to note the discrepancy because this image conflicts with the tradition of the racialization and exoticization of Mexicans. 238 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 2006). 239 Jesús.Martín Barbero, De los medios a las mediaciones: comunicación, cultura y hegemonía (Mexico City: Ediciones G. Gili, S.A. de C.V., 1993) and Carlos Monsiváis, “Se sufre pero se aprende,” A través del espejo: el cine mexicano y su público, ed. Carlos Monsivías and Carlos Bonfil (Mexico City: Instituto Mexicano de Cinematografía, 1994). 131

behavior that would be associated with what is typically Mexican. While scholars have questioned the lessons surrounding gender that these didactic cultural products emitted,240 what has yet to be pointed out is that through the ubiquity of “whiteness,” these films also contained a heavy-handed lesson about race, through which Mexican

“whiteness” was upheld as the aesthetic and cultural goal.

Furthermore, I would argue that the effectiveness of the didacticism of

Mexican Golden Age cinema was possible precisely because it gave a “white” face to multiple groups within Mexican society. As brownness is more permissible in the realm of comedy (see Ramírez Berg above), nowhere is the dominance of

“whiteness” clearer than in the realm of melodrama. Because, as we have seen,

“whiteness” operates as the preferred human type for inciting identification (an essential component of melodrama, which requires identification with the victims’ plight) in the raced Mexican context, the main characters of melodrama are “white” independently of their socio-economic situation or their ethnicity in the diegesis.

“Whiteness” functions as the glue that allows a broad sector of Mexican society to identify with and desire characters that occupy social identities that in Mexican social reality are stigmatized,241 because “whiteness” “interpellates” spectators (to use

240 Ana López, “Tears and desire: women and melodrama in the ‘old’ Mexican cinema,” Latin American Cultural Studies Reader ed. Alicia Ríos, Ana del Sarto and Abril Trigo (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004) pp. 441-459. and Sergio de la Mora, Cinemachismo: Masculinities and Sexuality in Mexican Film. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006). 241 I believe the “whitening” of underprivileged subjects in Mexican cinema is a clear example of what Martín Barbero describes as “a lessening of the presence of those elements most characteristic of the popular” that occurs as the popular is taken up by mass culture. See Martín Barbero, De los medios a las mediaciones p. 113. 132

Althusser’s term)242 on the basis of their shared colonized desire and subjectivity. It is through “whiteness” that a representative of the urban underclass, Pepe “El Toro”

(played by Pedro Infante in Nosotros los pobres) becomes one of the most cherished characters of Mexican cinema history. It is also through “whiteness” that Golden Age melodramatic indigeneity works to endear itself to spectators through the faces of

Dolores del Río and María Félix. It is of course, crucial to keep in mind that the stars who would embody Mexican “whiteness” on screen would be able to do so because they conform to the contextual and ambiguous nature of Mexican “whiteness.” Many of these same actors (such as Lupe Vélez and Dolores del Río) would be cast as ethnic Others within Hollywood’s distinct WASP (“white” Anglo-Saxon protestant) construct.

Mexican “whiteness”-as-indigeneity functions as a “solution” to an aesthetic challenge raised by the shift in the official ideology regarding Mexican national identity. “Whiteness”-as-indigeneity functions as a palimpsest of discourses: beneath, are the raced vestiges of the colonial symbolic order that have not been entirely erased by the revolution, and continue to privilege “whiteness”; above, is the new state-sponsored discourse urging Mexicans to value the indigenous and peasants as worthy national subjects. Or to use the vocabulary of Raymond Williams, we are seeing the relationship between the “residual” and the “emergent.”243 In this way,

242 Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses,” Literary theory: an anthology, ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan (New York: Blackwell, 1998) p. 699. 243 According to Williams, the “residual” can be understood as that which “has been effectively formed in the past, but it is still active in the cultural process, not at all as an element of the past, but as an effective element of the present. Thus certain experiences, meanings, and values which cannot be expressed or substantially verified in terms of the dominant culture, are nevertheless lived and 133

“whiteness” for representing female indigeneity (before, after, and during the Golden

Age) operates as a hegemonic maneuver, to facilitate the national and personal appropriation of indigeneity. Furthermore, this analysis fits into the dissertation’s broader understanding of indigenismo in that these films, while nominally about the indigenous, are actually heavily invested in affirming the nonnative national self through their showcasing of “nuestra bella apariencia estética criolla/mestiza sancionada como la norma hegemónica.”244

In writing about the “white” Indians of Mexican cinema during the first part of the 20th century, I aim to engage in the process of marking “whiteness.”245 My analysis of this group of films as a body of work, spanning from the 1930’s to the late

1960’s, will argue that “whiteness” operates in them in order to promote the inscription of indigeneity into the national narrative in specific and different manners.

The first part of the chapter will discuss films that use “whiteness” to represent indigenous womanhood and is divided into three subsections. The first looks at films that represent pre-Columbian women as idealized symbols of pre-Modern Mexico.

The second looks at a group of films about the tehuana type, who became perhaps the most ubiquitous indigenous national symbol during the 20th century. Third, I will address a set of films that distinguish themselves because of their specifically practiced on the basis of the residue - cultural as well as social - of some previous social and cultural institution or formation. It is crucial to distinguish this aspect of the residual, which may have an alternative or even oppositional relation to the dominant culture…” Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977) p.122. 244 Gómez Izquierdo, “Racismo y nacionalismo” p. 123. 245 Ruth Frankenberg, “Introduction: Local whitenesses, Localizing whitenes,” Displacing “whiteness”: Essays in Social and Cultural Criticism, ed. Ruth Frankenberg (Duke University Press. Durham 1997) p. 6.

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indigenista message, emphasizing that in these contexts the association of

“whiteness” and female beauty undermines the decolonial intent of their explicit revolutionary discourse. In the second part of the chapter I will discuss how the dynamics of “whiteness” and desire have also operated in films that depict male indigeneity and desire for the “white” woman. My readings of the films will consider the ways in which the “whiteness” of the characters is constructed within and beyond the film themselves. Rather than simply classifying the actresses based on my own reading of their phenotype, I will instead use star texts of actors and actresses, their manifestation of the “deco body,” lighting, mise-en-scene, opening credits, camera language, movement, and speech patterns in order illustrate how the films craft their performances as instances of “whiteness”-as-indigeneity. By discussing the ways in which “whiteness” creates meaning in these films, I hope to contribute to its dislodging as the unquestioned, commonsense convention for representing Mexican society.

“Whiteness” and Indigenous Womanhood in Mexican Cinema

Reimagining (and “Whitening”) the Past: The Pristine pre-Columbian

Pre-Columbian Mexico has been an important part of the national imaginary since independence, serving often as the undefiled vision of an authentic Mexican essence, and the local version of classical antiquity. In the Mexican national imagination, the dominating foundational narrative crystalized in both raced and gendered terms, prioritizing the combination of the indigenous woman and Hispanic

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conquistador.246 It is not surprising that among Mexican films about indigeneity, pre-

Columbian Indians should surface and that women should be central to this representation. Here I will discuss three films that evoke pre-Columbian indigenous femininity through “whiteness”: Zitari [el templo de las mil serpientes] (Dir. Miguel

Contreras Torres, 1931), Chilam Balam (Dir. Íñigo de Martino, 1955) and Deseada

(Dir. Roberto Gavaldón, 1951). I will argue these films fashion the central female characters as privileged representatives pre-Columbian culture, while also establishing them as central points of identification and projecting them as desirable.

In light of the colonization of desire and subjectivity, I believe that the use

“whiteness” is central to how these female indigenous characters are positioned to fulfill all of these requirements.

In Zitari one of the earliest extant indigenous-themed fiction films, great emphasis placed on a fictionalized view of indigenous religious beliefs, and the title character is made to be representative of the belief system. One of the opening intertitles highlights that an aspect of indigenous religiosity serves as the inspiration for the film, “La leyenda atribuye a la Diosa del Amor, que veneraban los indios en los altares del Templo de las mil serpientes.” The significance of indigenous worship practices is further emphasized through several shots of indigenous temples, which take up no less than half of the entire film. The second part of the film narrates a tragic romantic story that contextualizes the use of the temples for worship: Zitari, an

246 The foundational narrative of Hernan Cortés and La Malinche, taken up as legitimate national folklore by Octavio Paz in El laberinto de la soledad is just one example. 136

indigenous princess and Mazatal, a warrior for her father, are in love. Zitari’s father wishes to test the young man’s worth by sending him to combat a rebellious tribe.

Before his departure, Zitari gives Mazatal her ring for good luck, but he is tricked into trading it with a demon, which seals his fate. Mazatal is killed on the mission, and

Zitari is left to worship at the temple of the goddess of love in order be reunited with

Mazatal in death. In this way, Zitari is portrayed as the representative of active ritual practice to the goddess of love, and intense engagement in a pre-Columbian belief system, which according to the film, is the most salient aspect of indigenous cultures.

In Chilam Balam (1955), Naya is the daughter of an important leader in an indigenous community, Chilam Balam. She is consistently associated with pre-

Columbian beliefs and worship from the beginning of the film as she is destined to be an important sacrifice to the gods, and in this way, singled out as an indigenous woman that is representative of pre-Columbian culture. Because of his love for his daughter, Chilam Balam saves her from the sacrifice, but the fact that she has not fulfilled her fate according to tribal beliefs is the beginning of a spiritual conflict for her. After the Spaniards arrive, she begins to doubt the fate she has been prescribed because she falls in love with one of the Spanish soldiers. Naya is spared direct confrontation with her people about her beliefs because the Spaniards kill her people.

She is converted to Christianity and eventually marries the Spanish soldier. Although she changes beliefs by the end of the film, she becomes an even more central representative of pre-Columbian Indians. After all of the men of her tribe are killed, she fulfills her father’s prophesy: “Su sangre se mezclará con la nuestra, en el suelo 137

por el odio, en los cuerpos por el amor y nacerá otro pueblo.” In the film’s final scene, voice over narration confirms the significance of the prophesy, “¡Y de la sangre de esas dos razas, nació una nueva, joven y vigorosa!” as a medium shot shows Naya and the Spanish soldier holding hands and standing in front of a small crucifix. The camera moves down slightly to show the film’s concluding image: a close-up of their hands clasping, and the crucifix between them. In a clear allegory of the foundation of the Mexican nation, Naya now represents all of pre-Columbian

Mexico.

Although chronologically Roberto Gavaldon’s Deseada (1951) takes place at the time the film was made, in many respects the protagonist, Deseada, is the living incarnation of centuries of Maya knowledge of culture, and in this way she is consistently projected into the past. At every opportunity she spouts off Maya legends and prophesies, referring to the past glory of her people. She vigilantly ensures that the betrothal of her sister, Nicté follow Maya custom, and is even knowledgeable about her people’s weaving techniques. In a kind of Mexican national allegory gone horribly wrong, Nicté’s betrothal to a Spanish man is hampered when the young man,

Manuel, develops an attraction for Deseada. The title character tries her best to deny that she is attracted to Manuel, but when she realizes that he will no longer marry her sister, Deseada commits suicide by jumping into a cenote in order to safeguard cultural propriety. Both through her thorough knowledge of all things Maya and through her ultimate commitment to custom, Deseada, like Zitari and Naya, is

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portrayed as an incarnation of indigeneity projected into the past.247

Not only are the three female characters mentioned above primary representations of their pre-Conquest cultures, but they are also central figures in the films’ plots, and are constructed in such a way that the spectator is meant to identify with their struggles. This happens, in part because they are constructed as virtuous characters who are victims of circumstance, and do not contribute directly to their own troubles. In view of the preferred position that “whiteness” has come to occupy in Mexican cultural production, I suggest that the use of “whiteness” to represent the women who are embodiments of pre-Columbian Mexico is part of the way in which their centrality, virtue, and worthiness of empathy are established.

Zitari is cast in a positive light through her loving devotion to Mazatal both in life and after his death, even though she has been led to believe that he betrayed her with another woman before dying. Presented as the victim of the antagonist’s misdeeds, the filmic language of Zitari foments compassion with the title character through the frequent use of the close –up. Ineed, Zitari is the character who is captured on camera most often through the close-up, which serves the double function of showcasing her face and emphasizing her anguish. Attention to Zitari’s emotional state is highlighted three times in this manner: the evening before her beloved’s departure, the day of his departure when she gifts him her ring, and when she received news of his death. In this way, the character of the indigenous princess is

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at the center of the film’s melodramatic intensity and she is firmly anchors her as the narrative’s victim who is worthy of compassion.

In Chilam Balam, Naya is also a central point of identification. First, her condemnation to die as a human sacrifice sets her up as the victim of her own unenlightened people. Later on, her position as victim is further emphasized when the leaders of her tribe find her and father in hiding, and almost kill her as a punishment for not having fulfilled the first sacrifice. She also exhibits the qualities of the dutiful daughter in following her father’s will despite her own doubts. Therefore the film does not fault her for her following her people’s beliefs, but instead casts her respect of custom as filial virtue. Lastly, Naya becomes an even more significant point of identification when she is turned into the embodiment of pre-Columbian Mexico.

Similarly, in Deseada, the title character is the victim who is worthy of compassion. Although she develops a desire for her future brother in law, the narrative does not place the fault with her, but instead with a curse put in place at the time of Manuel’s birth. In this way, she is merely caught in an unfortunate circumstance and not inherently flawed. Her victimhood turns into martyrdom when she kills herself to protect her sister’s marriage. Throughout the film, both the camera language (frequent close-ups revealing Deseada’s emotional state) and the narrative focus on her experience, present her as the central character whose plight the spectator is most exposed to. The use of “whiteness” in these films both reinforces the characters as representatives of benevolent female indigeneity and signals them as compassion-worthy anchors in the narrative. 140

Because, as we have seen, “whiteness” and desirability are inextricably linked in the Mexican context, and the requirement of physical beauty is more pressing for women on screen than for men, it is not surprising that these female characters who are thoroughly established as objects of desire both in the narrative and through cinematography should be presented through “whiteness.” Or to put it another way, in these films “whiteness” is used to support the desirability of the characters within and beyond the diegesis.

In the first scene of the film in which Mazatal and Zitari meet in the garden prior to the warrior’s departure, the intertitles identify Zitari both in terms of her royal position and her beauty. The frequent use of the lingering close-up on her, which we have pointed emphasizes her anguish, also serves the function of showcasing her face, creating a sustained opportunities to admire it. The actress who plays the part of the indigenous princess Zitari is Medea de Novara, originally born Hermine Kindle

Flutcher, and wife of the Mexican director Miguel Contreras Torres. At this early date in Mexican film production a star system was not fully in place, making it impossible to talk about the actress’ identity off screen in these terms. However, the film does provide an indication of how the filmmaker conceived her participation in the film.

An opening intertitle highlights the aspects of the film that are meant to reinforce its indigenous authenticity, including on-location filming at historical sites. Regarding those who participate as actors in the film, the intertitle creates a distinction between the two actors who have the main roles and the rest, referring to the former by name, and to the latter as “aborígenes mexicanos.” In this way, the film itself calls attention

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to the fact that the actress who plays the role of Zitari is not among the indigenous participants, allowing us to affirm that although lacking an elaborate star-text, Medea de Novara certainly possessed a “white” off-screen personal identity and that the film presents her as such.

Novara’s acting trajectory confirms Richard Dyer’s observation about the license afforded to “whiteness” in order to represent anything. While in this film

Medea de Novara plays an indigenous princess, in the 1934 film Tribu she plays a

Spanish woman in New Spain in the early colonial period who interacts with Indians

(effectively placing her in a diametrically opposed position to one we see her in here).

She is most known for having played the Empress Carlota of Mexico no less than four times248 (see Figure 31). The fact that the same actress played both European and indigenous royalty highlights the flexibility afforded to “whiteness” while the opposite does not occur (can one fathom a Mexican film in which the Empress

Carlota is played by a brown Mexican actress?). Because of this flexibility, her ethnic persona in Zitari must be layered on through a combination of story, costume and acting style249. In light of her explicit “whiteness”, in the film her visual indigeneity depends largely on overstated “indigenous” garb and jewelry (see Figure 32).

248 Juárez y Maximiliano. Dir. Miguel Contreras Torres, 1934; La paloma, Dir. Miguel Contreras Torres, 1937; The Mad Empress. Dir. Miguel Contreras Torres, 1939; Caballería de imperio, Dir. Miguel Contreras Torres, 1942. 249 Unlike the humble inditas that are typical of the Golden Age of Mexican cinema who speak a pidgin Spanish and walk in short hop-like movements, this pre-Columbian variant is more elegant and stately, conferring a solemnity and gravitas to pre-Columbian indigenous peoples. 142

Figure 31. Medea de Novara as the Empress Carlota in La paloma (Dir. Miguel Contreras Torres, 1937).

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Figure 32. Medea de Novara as Princess Zítari in Zítari (1931).

Both Naya and Deseada are firmly established as objects of desire in their respective films. In fact, the intensity with which men wish to possess them are primary factors of discord in the films’ plots. In Chilam Balam, Naya is first desired by one of her fellow tribesmen who is blocked from perusing her because Naya was initially destined for ceremonial sacrifice. Later, when the Spaniards arrive, on three different occasions different Spanish soldiers attempt to rape her, but they are killed by her former suitor’s bow and arrow. Finally, Naya is desired by the virtuous

Spanish soldier, who has not attempted to rape her, but has instead courted her and wishes to marry her through the church, as the final scene’s mise-en-scene suggests.

Beyond the film’s plot, costuming, mise-en-scene and camera language emphasize

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Naya’s desirability. The close up is often used to display her face. In a key scene of the film, in which she is tied up by her tribesmen in preparation for human sacrifice,

Naya is wearing a laughably skimpy “indigenous” costume. Here her body is also clearly on display with her bare skin helping to produce her to-be-looked-at-ness250

(See Figure 33). In Deseada, the title character’s very name suggests her magnetic appeal. In the story world she is sought after by two men: a longtime suitor and the handsome Manuel. Far from being a minor aspect of the film, the men’s desire for her constitutes a primary tension in the story.

As in Zitari, the women who are chosen to incarnate pre-Columbian female desirability are “white” Mexican actresses Lucy González (Chilam Balam) and

Dolores del Río (Deseada). It is important to note that at this time in the Mexican film industry the star system had developed, and Dolores del Río has a robust, aristocratic star text.251 It is clear from the opening credits that both women are featured as draws for the films as Dolores del Rio’s name is featured prominently, even prior to the title of the film, and Lucy González’s name is listed second, only after that of the actor playing the title role of Chilam Balam. I suggest that in the

Mexican context, in order to convey the desirability of the characters and make the spectator complicit in the dynamics of desire, “whiteness” must be used because somatic female indigeneity is not aesthetically appreciated. I find that in the case of these particular films, the argument that the somatic “whiteness” of actresses playing

250 Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure” pp. 585-596. 251 Joanne Hershfield, The invention of Dolores del Río, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000). 145

indigeneity is meant to defend Mexican modernity252 is not helpful because the films lack any clear indigenista message, and their representation of indigeneity lays no claim to Mexican modernity. On the contrary, the films attempt to convey the aspects of indigenous culture that are most removed from the European experience. Instead, I emphasize the impact of the colonization of desire and subjectivity to explain the need for “whiteness” even in the context of portraying pure pre-Conquest indigeneity because in the Mexican context, narrative centrality and feminine desirability have typically required “whiteness”.

Figure 33. Naya on the verge of being sacrificed by her own people in Chilam Balam (1955).

252 Tierney, Emilio Fernández and Sluis, Deco Body, Deco City. 146

Taming the Tehuana

Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the Zapotec women of the Isthmus of

Tehuantepec (tehuanas) drew attention from both domestic and international visitors to the region. In her discussion of the creation of the “camposcape” through Mexican cultural production, Ageeth Sluis notes that “in travel accounts and visual text from late 19th and early 20th century, [the tehuana] emerged as an ambiguous figure who embodied seduction, unbridled female sexuality, independence, beauty, and strength but also represented the soul of Southern, indígena Mexico.”253 While the 19th century fascination with the figure converted tehuanas into embodiments of their rural landscape, after the armed phase of the revolution, she crystallized into a national symbol.254 Sluis notes that images of performed indigenous femininity (through deco- bodies, which she defines as “white, thin and tall”255) were more visible than those of real indigenous women in Mexico City because they “presented culture industries with a movable camposcape that traveled across imagery yet signified both Mexican authenticity and modernity.”256 The Tehuana image was also deployed in the visual arts, most notably in the work of Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Tina Modotti. The figure also appeared in the “Sandunga” segment of Eisenstein’s ¡Qué viva México!. Here, I will analyze two films that take place in Tehuantepec and feature “tehuanas” through

“whiteness” in order to show how the films participate in the process through which the regional figure is nationalized. I argue that the tehuana’s “whitening” is one of

253 Sluis, Deco Body, Deco City p. 105. 254 Sluis, Deco Body, Deco City p. 105. and Analisa Taylor, "Malinche and matriarchal utopia: gendered visions of indigeneity in Mexico," (Signs 31.3 2006) p. 815. 255 Sluis, Deco Body, Deco City p. 134. 256 Sluis, Deco Body, Deco City p. 123. 147

many aspects through which she is brought into the national hegemony. Other aspects of her identity that are also tamed in these films in order to re-produce her for national consumption are her unapologetic sexuality, nudity and social dominance over males.

The films refashion the tehuana, taming her according to normative racial, sexual, and gender discourses, and in this way, facilitate her safe appropriation by nation culture.257

The films La Zandunga (Dir. Fernando de Fuentes, 1938) and Tierra de pasiones (Dir. José Benávides Jr. 1943), which take place in the Isthmus of

Tehuantepec, can be understood as a regional variation of the comedia ranchera. In displaying and refashioning regional music, dress and practices for mass consumption, these films participated in the process through which local sounds258 and costumes came to be understood as national icons. In both of these films, one of the major ways in which the regional is recast is through the “whitening” of the leading female character, who in the film is supposed to be a typical tehuana.

This process is clearest in La Zandunga, which stars Lupe Vélez, an actress who at the time of her participation in the film already had a strong star text. She is clearly established as the main draw of the film in the opening credit which presents the title of the film in terms of the star’s participation in it: “Lupe Vélez en ‘La

257 The figure of the tehuana is by no means alone in this process. Many scholars have noted in passing that Cantinflas’ films performed a similar operation with the urban figure of “el pelado,” who in the Mexican cultural imaginary transitioned from a potential threat and incarnation of Mexican psychological deficiency to being one of the best loved representatives of lo mexicano thanks to his films. See Samuel Ramos, El perfil del hombre y la cultura en México (Madrid: Espasa Calpe, S.A., 1951 and Jeffrey M. Pilcher, Cantinflas and the Chaos of Mexican Modernity (Wilmington, Del: Scholarly Resources, 2001). 258 D’Lugo, Marvin. "Aural identity, genealogies of sound technologies, and hispanic transnationality on screen," World Cinemas, Transnational Perspectives (London and New York: Routledge, 2010) pp. 160-85. 148

zandunga.’” Furthermore, the film deliberately invites a conflation between the identity of the star and that of the protagonist through the character’s name, “Lupe.”

Tierra de Pasiones also features an actress (Margarita Mora) who in the film conforms to the “white” Mexican identity through her pale skin, dark hair, speech patterns and restrained demeanor.

As in the examples of pre-Columbian women, these films use “whiteness” in the context of indigenous female desirability. In both La zandunga and Tierra de pasiones Lupe and Linda (respectively) are constructed as objects of desire because their appeal for several men are the foundation of the plots. Furthermore, La zandunga produces Lupe’s desirability through the repeated use of the close up, soft focus and three-point lighting, as well as presenting her through her admirers’ gazes

(see Figures 34 and 35). In Tierra de pasiones, Linda’s very name reinforces her appeal. “Whiteness” is used to make the diegetic desirability of the characters universally believable for a cross-class, cross-ethnic Mexican audience.

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Figure 34. A brightly lit Lupe Vélez as a tehuana in La Zandunga (1938).

Figure 35. A brightly lit Lupe Vélez as a tehuana in La Zandunga (1938)

Vélez’s stardom is clearly also a factor that the film relies upon to emphasize the desirability of Lupe, the character. In this specific instance, Vélez’s star text directly 150

contradicts the ethnic persona she represents in the film, because not only does Vélez happen to be a “white” Mexican women, but her “whiteness” is an important factor for her Mexican star text. Once again it is useful to recall the contextual nature of

Mexican “whiteness” to understand the analysis put forth here. While Lupe Vélez was constructed as an ethnic Other against the U.S. WASP notion of “whiteness” in her Hollywood carreer,259 in Mexico she was presented within the construct of

Mexican “whiteness,” not only because of her physical appearance, but perhaps also because of her successful film career. Below is a 1929 Mexican advertisement that illustrates the centrality of Vélez’s “white” identity and her connection to the motion picture industry for the purpose of selling a beauty cream (see Figure 36). The text of the advertisement makes clear that Vélez is a model of beauty because of her skin color, which is supposedly protected by Hinds beauty cream. The advertisement also casts the message within a national framework by mentioning that the cream protects her complexion in the different environments in which she finds herself within the

Mexican republic. The fact that Velez’s “whiteness” is a component of her attractiveness and stardom would seemingly conflict with the parameters of the role she plays in La zandunga. Instead, I suggest that here her “whiteness” functions as a hook to entice spectators to admire and appropriate a regional type.

259 See Rosa Linda Fregoso, Mexicana Encounters: The Making of Social Identities on the Borderlands (University of California Press, 2003) pp. 112-114. 151

Figure 36. Lupe Vélez’s “white” star image used to advertise Hinds beauty cream. 260

260 This image originally appeared in the newspaper Ilustrado on June13, 1929. I have accessed it in the following publication: Hershfield, Joanne. Imagining la Chica Moderna: Women, Nation, and Visual Culture in Mexico, 1917–1936. Duke University Press, 2008. p. 131. 152

While the actress who plays Linda in Tierra de pasiones, Margarita Mora, lacked a robust star-text at the time she made the film, her “whiteness” in the film similarly serves to help make the regional palatable for a national audience, and to designate her as the preferable female character in the narrative. Her light skin is showcased through lighting and frequent close-ups. She is the morally superior counterpart to

Jorge Negrete’s character, Máximo, when compared to her rival for his affections,

Camila. Linda’s female antagonist attempts to separate Máximo and Linda through deception and manipulation, and Máximo explicitly rejects Camila when she offers herself to him sexually on more than one occasion. Furthermore, Camila defies the patriarchal structure: she seemingly has no family, she camps out with Máximo and his men; she is sexually experienced, and she attempts to separate a budding family.

Camila is played an actress (Margarita Cortés) who does not conform to the “white”

Iberian somatic norm because of her darker skin, and she often appears darkly lit in the film, emphasizing that she is a wayward woman (See Figures 37 and 38). Through the difference in the actresses’ appearances, and the way in which lighting associates them with light and dark through the illumination of their faces, “whiteness” functions to designate the tehuanas who are both desirable and who exhibit admirable behavior, and those who do not.261

261 A similar dynamic occurs in María Candelaria (1946), in which Margarita Cortés plays the role of “Lupe,” the indigenous female rival of María Candelaria who plays a key role in bringing about her tragic death. 153

Figure 37. Margarita Mora as Linda in Tierra de pasiones (1943).

Figure 38. Margarita Cortés as Camila in Tierra de pasiones (1943).

Physical appearance is only one part of how these films tame the tehuana in her transformation from a regional to a national type. Other aspects of her 19th century persona delineated by travel writers, such as her unabashed sexuality, nonchalance regarding nudity, and dominance over men are also reconfigured. For example, in

Tierra de pasiones the spectator is introduced to Linda in a scene in which Máximo

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surprises her and her girlfriends bathing in a river. In this way, the scene reproduces the cliché of the indigenous woman as naked Orientalized (but national) Other.262

However, the film tempers the stereotype in that Linda urges Máximo to leave and does not wish to display her nakedness openly. She instead exhibits a sense of modesty, which is more in keeping the traditional western sense of bodily propriety.

Similarly, the tehuana’s reputation for sexual freedom is made to conform to patriarchal norms. Linda and Máximo have sexual relations outside of marriage, however their “transgression” takes place in the context of preparing for marriage and trying to buy a house. Furthermore, the act is ultimately cast in a positive light because Linda’s resulting pregnancy with Máximo’s child serves as the villain’s punishment for impeding the marriage between Linda and Máximo. Although Linda is more sexually liberal than the patriarchal ideal would dictate, in the film her behavior is justified within traditional norms. In La zandunga Lupe is caught in a love triangle, but the subject of her sexuality only surfaces in the form of jokes, not acts.

While her face is consistently showcased, her nudity is not a part of the storyline.

Regarding the tehuana’s reputation of dominance over men, Linda is presented as strong-willed when she stands up to the villain of the story and town authority who has conspired to rape her on her wedding night. She flies in the face of propriety by admitting that she is not a virgin, which leads to her being publically shamed. Linda also runs away from her town to Máximo’s hideout in the mountains, and then leaves when Camila leads her to believe that they are a couple. However, while Linda is

262 Sluis, Deco Body, Deco City pp 125-131. 155

certainly a very strong female character, she is not presented as being dominant over her male counterpart, Máximo, who is clearly constructed as a macho persona and hero. In La zandunga, while Lupe is mischievous in her rejection of an elderly suitor, she does not exercise any agency throughout the story, instead urging men to do things on her behalf. She spends most of the film waiting around for men to make important decisions while trying to camouflage her emotional states.263 Her father and suitors are firmly in charge of her future and even in the end, she confesses her true feeling for the man she loves only because the less loved suitor incites her to do so.

By editing some of the taboo aspects of the tehuana type, the films helps to mold the figure of the tehuana into one that is more suitable for folkloristic appropriation on a national scale.264

Revolutionary Politics, Reactionary Aesthetics

The films mentioned in the previous two sections relate to indigenismo thematically, in the broad sense of featuring indigenous characters in a way that somehow relates to the general celebration of the nation’s native roots and identity.

Those that are discussed in this section are more closely tied to the politics of the revolution: El indio (Dir. Armando Vargas de la Maza, 1939), La india bonita (Dir.

Antonio Helú 1938), María Candelaria and Maclovia (Dir. Emilio Fernández 1944 and 1946 respectively). Here I will discuss how these films participate in indigenismo

263 In this way, the character of Lupe contrasts sharply with her feisty U.S. on screen persona, and the star text that evolved as a result of her career in Hollywood. See Fregoso, Mexicana Encounters pp. 112-114. 264 I have not included the 1954 film Tehuantepec in this discussion because in it Katy Jurado’s character does not occupy a central one as do the female characters discussed here. 156

in the sense that they are committed to conveying the plight of indigenous people within an oppressive social structure, and either implicitly or explicitly defend the necessity of the Mexican revolution of 1910. I will argue that while these films are invested in revolutionary politics, their aesthetics betray an adherence to a racial hierarchy formed through coloniality, which upholds “whiteness” as an ideal.

El indio is an adaptation of Gregorio López y Fuentes 1935 novel by the same title, and from the introductory text that opens the film, its content is situated in relation to the revolution, “la revolución ha logrado la redención del indio…estos hechos se desarrollaron en una época que precedió al periodo revolucionario actual.”

The film tells the story of a group of indigenous people who toil endlessly for a criollo landowner for scarce compensation. In addition to exploiting them in this way, the landowner becomes convinced that their tribe possesses ancient treasures that they have buried for safekeeping. He attempts to access the treasure by taking advantage of the rivalry between two indigenous men, Julian and Felipe, who are in love with the same indigenous woman, María. When the landowner attempts to rape María, and burns the indians’ town to the ground for not turning their treasure over to him, Felipe rallies indigenous peoples from different areas in an uprising that is framed as a part of the Mexican revolution.265

While La india bonita does not explicitly mention the revolution, the plot hints at the existence of injustice along raced and classed lines. On a hacienda in an unidentified rural area of Mexico, a landowner’s son, Joaquín and his friend, Luis, are

265 Alfredo B. Crevenna’s 1954 film, La rebellion de los colgados similarly frames a local uprising of natives against a tyrannical criollo as part of the Mexican revolution of 1910. 157

visiting from the capital. They concoct a plan to seduce two of the “indigenous” girls from the ranch and then dispose of them. In the following dialog, the film suggests that the campo is a purer environment vis-à-vis the degenerate city, but also exposes that men that are advantaged in terms of class and race abuse their position for the sexual exploitation of “indigenous” women:

LUIS. Hombre, supongo que no querrás casarte con ella.

JOAQUIN. Claro que no.

LUIS. Pues ahí tienes. Lo que no puedes hacer aquí, lo podrás hacer en

México…en México podemos hacer con ellas lo que nos dé la gana. Las

muchachas se pierden de todos modos, aquí o en la ciudad, con la diferencia

de que aquí caerán en manos de algún indio y se pasarán toda la vida

encerradas en la hacienda…

By showing that “white” members of the land-owning class consider pretty

“indigenous” girls to be beneath marrying, but too pretty to simply leave to

“indigenous” men, La india bonita, although in a more indirect way, evidences abuse of power on the part of members of the elite.

Emilio Fernández’s 1943 film María Candelaria illustrates tragedy as a consequence of the incongruity of different sectors of the population in prerevolutionary Mexico. In the film, María suffers injustices at the hands of her community because of her mother’s negative reputation. María is a benevolent creature, who desires nothing more than to sell her flowers alongside the members of her community in order to repay a debt, and live happily with her betrothed, Lorenzo 158

Rafael. The community does not allow her to sell her flowers, and later, María becomes ill after an informal town authority, Don Damián, refuses to distribute medicine to the community. In a moment of desperation, Lorenzo Rafael steals medicine for María as well as a dress for her to wear to their wedding, an act that eventually lands him jail. In exchange for helping María negotiate Lorenzo Rafael’s release, a criollo painter wishes to paint María. After he has painted her face, she leaves when he requests to paint her nude body. He completes the painting without

María, but when the indigenous community finds the painting, they stone her to death for what they interpret as a sexual indiscretion.

Given that in the diegesis, the revolution has not yet occurred, it is clear that the film’s tragedies are presented as a result of a faulty governing structure that does not effectively rule or integrate different social sectors. In this prerevolutionary nightmare, the indigenous take justice into their own hands, freely victimizing exceptional, innocent people such as María Candelaria and Lorenzo Rafael, and dubious subjects such as Don Damian are able to exercise authority arbitrarily.

Furthermore, the criollos know so little about their indigenous co-nationals that they unintentionally violate them. The suffering evoked by the melodramatic film points to the necessity of the revolution and justifies the PRI’s rule in Mexico, and encourages spectators, through their investment in the protagonists’ suffering, to align themselves with these messages.

Fernandez’s Maclovia comments on pre-revolutionary injustice in more explicitly raced terms. In the film, as noted in the previous chapter, the villain of the 159

story, Sargento Genovevo de la Garza, is the instigator of these injustices towards indigenous peoples. When he first sees the beautiful Maclovia in a local bar, his zeal results in a physical confrontation with her father. As a result, they all end up before a local commissioner of Páztcuaro, along with most of the indigenous community.

During the hearing, the sergeant claims that the civil authority should side with him because of his rank. Significantly, when the magistrate asks who is responsible for the conflict, the Sergeant also sites his “whiteness” as a factor that should bolster his credibility:

COMISIONER. Por última vez, ¿quienes son los responsables del tumulto?

SARGEANT DE LA GARZA. ¿Quienes han de ser? ¡Pues ellos! ¿O qué?

¿Vale más la palabra de una punta de indios muertos de hambre que la mía

que soy hombre decente? Soy sargento, mire, y de ojos claros, ¿qué no ve?

This scene is significant because in it, the contrast between the “coloniality of power” and the Mexican post-revolutionary national ideology is made clear. In referring to his light colored eyes (the ultimate proof of European heritage) the sergeant invokes the authority of coloniality according to which his Europeanness should entitle him to the favor of the law, a position that (as discussed in Ch. 1) the film clearly rejects.

The messages of this group of films incriminate “white” characters to varying degrees in order to highlight the suffering of indigenous characters within an oppressive, raced social reality. While the discourse of these films lays claim to giving visibility to the injustices done to indigenous peoples, in the films’ aesthetic language, “whiteness” is used to represent the indigenous characters that are

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portrayed as morally superior. In talking about these films we must establish distinctions between “whiteness”-as-”whiteness” (the Sargent), “whiteness”-as- indigeneity (Maclovia and José María), and indigeneity-as-indigeneity (the other members of the native community).

In both El indio and La india bonita “whiteness”-as-indigeneity is used to distinguish the main indigenous characters from the “white” landowning class. The films do not make an effort to make a moral distinction among the indigenous characters based on phenotype. In Emilio Fernández’s films, on the other hand, there are strong moral distinctions among different Indians, and “whiteness” is a tool that is used to underscore the contrast. In both María Candelaria and Maclovia, it is the indigenous protagonists, those who are often the victims of their own savage and backwards communities, who are interpreted by “white” Mexican actors,266 and with whom we are meant to identify. Here somatic difference helps to mark the characteristics of indigeneity that have a place in the post revolutionary Mexican national project, and those that do not. In a specific sequence of María Candelaria, this distinction is made evident. As María rows toward the market place to try to sell flowers, the community gangs up on her, and impedes her from doing so. There are many aspects of these shots that firmly establish María as our primary point of identification. First, the extreme long shot of María being thwarted by the community emphasizes her as defenseless, alone, and victimized by the indigenous masses. The music builds up dramatically at the point of confrontation in which it is clear to María

266 Dolores. Tierney, Emilio Fernández. 161

that she will not pass. After she understands this, the non-diegetic music reflects her sadness, which is registered on her face through the medium close up. The series of short medium close ups which switch from showing María, to showing different members of the community, and then María again, similarly emphasize the indigenous community’s unified opposition to her (see Figure 39). The fact that we keep coming back to María underscores that we are experiencing this through her, and are therefore meant to identify with her. In addition, the medium close ups of

María are taken from a high angle, emphasizing her vulnerability (see Figure 40), while several of those of the indigenous community are taken from a low angle, which may mimic María’s point of view, but also imbue her adversaries with a menacing quality (see Figure 41). What I would like to point out is that Dolores del

Ríos’s “whiteness” within the Mexican racial formation also contributes to the promotion of identification, and the conveying of her character as benevolent, which is visible here given that the juxtaposition of these medium close ups showcase somatic difference vis-à-vis her character. The members of the community, who are presented as more indigenous than her, are precisely those who are vindictive, unreasonable, unjust and predatory, while she incarnates the characteristics that are represented as positive and desirable (she is pious, selfless, virtuous, etc.).267

Therefore, I argue that it is through an understanding of the raced positive and negative connotations created through coloniality that, “audience members in

267 For a detailed reading of how lighting in María Candelaria also emphasizes María Candelaria and José Rafael’s “whiteness” see Tierney. 162

Mexican movie theatres could experience in del Río’s performances the nobility of

María Candelaria’s Indianess.”268

Figure 39. María Candelaria blocked by her indigenous community in María Candelaria (1943).

Figure 40. Dolores del Río as María Candelaria in María Candelaria (1943).

268 Hershfield, Joanne. The Invention of Dolores del Rio. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000. p. 62 163

Figure 41. Shot of María’s indigenous community in Xochimilco in María Candelaria (1943).

Fernandez’s 1948 film Maclovía creates a similar dichotomy between the protagonist and the female antagonist, Sara. In this film, Maclovia, who is played by

María Félix, is the most beautiful woman in her indigenous community, however, because she is so beautiful, her father refuses to allow her to marry her beloved José

María due to his humble status, and even forbids them from seeing one another. Sara, another woman in the community (who is played by Columba Domínguez) takes advantage of the imposed separation to declare her love to José María, but is rejected by him. Later when José María is unfairly imprisoned, Sara offers herself sexually to the officer who has imprisoned him in order to negotiate his release, but is again rejected. Finally, Sara spreads the rumor that Maclovia has slept with the officer in order to incite the community to put her to death, as is their custom. The contrast between Maclovia and Sara is explicit: while Maclovia is beautiful, innocent,

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victimized, and chaste, Sara is undesirable, calculating, deceitful, and uses her sexuality for negotiation. Clearly, the spectator is encouraged to identify and suffer with Maclovia, and hers are the qualities that are represented as having a place in the

Mexico beyond the community itself, a message that is made clear when Maclovia and José María escape in order to save Maclovia from her communities’ “savage” law. Although in the diegesis both characters belong to the same indigenous community, within the Mexican racial formation María Félix would not be interpreted as being somatically indigenous and possessed a “white” star text, while Columba

Domínguez would more closely fit the Mexican spectator’s phenotypical expectations for the indigenous woman (see Figure 42). Here, again, I suggest that one of the ways in which the film promotes identification with the benevolent female protagonist and enforces a disassociation with the antagonist is by using “whiteness” to represent the former, and more indigenous phenotype to represent the latter. A reversal of casting choices in this case would be utterly unfeasible.

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Figure 42. María Félix as Maclovia and Columba Dominguez as Sara in Maclovia (1948).

Where the four films discussed in this section coincide is in the fact that that when faced with the task of representing indigenous feminine beauty visually, all four films choose to do so precisely through an absence of indigenous markers. In all of the films, the main indigenous woman is the object of desire of several men in her respective stories. While El indio and La india bonita both predate an established star system in Mexico, these films present indigenous womanhood through what are very clearly deco-bodies, which according to Sluis consist of slender shapes, fashionable late 1930’s make-up with very thin eyebrows, full lashes, and a light completion (see

Figures 43). The contrast between the diegetic identity of the characters and their appearance in the film is particularly salient in La india bonita in which there is a brief speech that explicitly contrasts the virtues of the rural Mexican woman with the woman from the city. “Allá tendrán muchas catrinas guapas, pero inditas, mexicanas puras como las que aquí tenemos, no las tienen allá.” The irony of this speech, which 166

seemingly seeks to juxtapose two forms of Mexican femininity269 is that Lupe is made up like and embodies urban beauty standards. As in examples mentioned before, the actresses’ bodies compensate for the lack of bodily indigeneity with folkloric garments.

Figure 43. Consuelo Frank as María in El indio (1939).

In Emilio Fernandez’s María Candelaria and Maclovia the stardom of leading ladies Dolores del Río and María Félix are significant extra-diegetic factors that contribute to the desirability of the female protagonists. As in the case of Lupe Vélez,

269 For a discussion of the contrast between urban rural models of femininity in Mexican print culture the first decades of the 20th century see Hershfield, La chica moderna; Sluis, Deco Body, Deco City Rick A. López, "The India Bonita Contest of 1921 and the Ethnicization of Mexican National Culture," Hispanic American Historical Review. 82.2 (2002).

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both actresses had star texts that firmly established their star personas as far removed from the humble inditas they portray in these films. Within the films themselves, camera language fetichizes both female characters as desirable through eye line matches conveying men’s desire for them. In Maclovia this occurs when the Sergeant first sees the protagonist in a tavern, and he first devours her with his eyes before attempting to approach her. Although his intentions are more linked to aesthetic admiration, when the artist in María Candelaria first sees María, an eyeline match from his perspective displays her as an object of wonder. As Mulvey has illustrated, camera language of this kind sutures the spectator into the position of desire for the fetishized woman, inciting the viewer to do the same.

I argue that these films’ inability (or refusal) to represent physical indigenous beauty through somatic features that can be read visually as indigenous in the

Mexican context, betray the films’ investment in coloniality, which measures feminine beauty in terms of its approximation to “whiteness.” In light of Carlos

Monsiváis’ argument that Mexican films of Golden Age were instrumental in educating Mexicans on how to be Mexican, I argue that commercial films about indigeneity (including those which predate and follow the Golden Age) instructed the public to assess the female Mexican body through a colonial lens, even when these same films articulated a break with the political injustices of colonialism and internal colonialism by bolstering the revolutionary discourse. In this way, the cultural production of the post-revolutionary Mexican nation carried with it gendered vestiges of coloniality.

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A “White” Indita for a Modern Mexico: María Isabel (1968)

Although the production of indigenous-themed films was never vast to begin with, fewer of these films were made after the 1940’s. Filmmakers turned their efforts to making movies about life in the city and the moral underbelly of urban existence as a strategy for attracting audiences. María Isabel (Dir. Federico Curiel, 1968) and its sequel El amor de María Isabel (Dir. Federico Curiel, 1970) are peculiar films that illustrate all of the conventions of the wholesome indita from the Mexican Golden

Age while attempting to update the type by injecting humor into her vicissitudes, and exposing her to 1960’s Mexican modernity. By contrasting María Isabel’s moral conviction and compassion with both the obstinate tradition of the landowning class and the moral waywardness of the city, her character serves as a bedrock of virtuous indigenous womanhood for a new, thoroughly modern and transformed Mexican nation. In this way, the María Isabel films tap into well-worn clichés but attempt to insert and adapt them for a new national audience.

A brief summary of the film’s story can help us understand the many meanings that are placed on the indigenous woman in this particular instance. In

María Isabel the title character grows up as the best friend of the wealthy landowner’s daughter, Graciela. When they grow up, Graciela falls in love and becomes pregnant, and is subsequently thrown out of the house by her father.

Graciela and María Isabel travel to the city where Graciela gives birth to a daughter and dies immediately afterward. Having promised to take care of the child, Maria

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Isabel finds work in the house of a wealthy widowed engineer, Ricardo. Because of her honesty and hard work, Ricardo eventually falls in love with Maria Isabel, who shows him that his deceitful and immoral girlfriend was plotting to take his money.

There are many instances throughout this story in which María Isabel serves as a role model of traditional femininity. She does not engage in sexual relations like her more modern childhood friend. She honors her promise to Graciela, taking on the responsibility for her child (which forces her to be separated from her own family) and the shame of being a single mother. María Isabel also looks out for the best interest of her employer with no recompense in sight. This film even includes the requisite scene of prayer in front of an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, (which is characteristic of Golden Age renditions of noble indigenous womanhood) to underscore her piety.270 In this way, María Isabel repeats the cliché’s used decades before, but it also attempts to alter this typical representation by making her a decidedly popular figure. The film seeks to mark María Isabel’s ethnicity through elements that are presented for comedic effect: her dislike of using shoes, the inability to control her temper (leading to physical confrontations), and her inability to drive, to name a few. At the same time, unlike her Golden Age counterparts, María Isabel is very strong willed, and does not succumb to her antagonist. Thus her engagement in physical altercation is not only a class marker, but a clear indication of her agency and determination, which I contend functions as a nod women’s liberation. The film

270 Indeed, because of the incongruence between the melodramic aspects and its physical comedy, María Isabel’s performance of indita virtue is often unintentionally parodical.

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is therefore a peculiar combination of Golden Age moral solemnity, an indigeneity that consists of a general air of the popular, and new modern models of womeanhood.

In hindsight one could say that she is a hybrid between María Candelaria and Maria

Elena Velasco’s comedic character la india María, which would gain popularity in the

1970’s.

Like earlier films, this one uses a “white” Mexican actress, Silvia Pinal, to represent indigenous womanhood. While in the other films, folkloric garb is used throughout the film to mark indigeneity, here racial marking becomes more complicated because of María Isabel’s transition to the city, where she eventually loses her typical clothing. While peasant skirts, bare feet, braids, and the mispronunciation of a handful of Spanish words are used for the purpose of marking her indigeneity for part of the film, María’s ethnicity is largely conveyed through her non-bourgeois behavior. But because she must function as a believable an object of desire in the diegesis, María Isabel is still presented through the “white” Iberian somatic norm image, and through an actress whose star text is unrelated to indigeneity (see Figure 44 and Figure 45). Her “white” Mexican identity is evoked in her Nescafé add campaign in which she appears as a quintessential bourgeois woman with short quaffed light brown hair, earrings, manicured hands, and western top.271

271 It is worth noting that in Mexican films that employ “whiteness”-as-indigeneity, often Mexican “whiteness” is presented as hyper “whiteness” (blonde hair blue eyes) as occurs throughout the María Isabel movies and in others, such as El violetero. 171

Figure 44. Silvia Pinal as María Isabel in María Isabel (1968).

Figure 45. Displaying her off screen identity, Silvia Pinal’s stardom is invoked to advertise Nescafé in Mexico. 172

If Ricardo’s choice to marry María Isabel at the end of the first film upholds traditional characteristics as desirable in Mexican women amidst the crazed modernity of 1960’s Mexico, its sequel, El amor de María Isabel affirms her desirability vis-à-vis Eurocentric cultural and physical capital. In the second film,

Ricardo and María Isabel’s marriage is threatened by the return of an old flame of his, a world-renowned (and hyper-”white” – platinum blonde and blue eyed) pianist,

Mireya. Ricardo and Mireya spend increasingly lengthy amounts of time together as their cultural preferences exclude María Isabel, who is bored by classical music, fine dining, and sophisticated company. Eventually, María Isabel renounces Ricardo so that he can be happy with Mireya, but when she does so the affair spirals into moral decadence and Ricardo returns to reaffirm his love for María Isabel. In this way, the indigenous woman functions as the embodiment of humble Mexican feminine virtue that grounds the modern Mexican man’s identity and moral character. As in prior films and images discussed above, María Isabel’s “whiteness”-as-indigeneity signals authentic Mexican femininity, but now with in a new Mexican society transformed by modernity.

The exceptions: Janitzio (1934) and “La potranca” (Raíces 1954)

My analysis of the use of “whiteness”-as-indigeneity would not be complete if

I did not address two films that do not follow the general trend. I will illustrate how specific aspects of these films help explain why a different strategy for representing indigenous womanhood was used.

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Carlos Navarro’s 1934 film Janitzio is widely recognized as one of the first indigenista films, in the sense of being politically committed to the indigenous communities of Mexico. While Janitzio was clearly the inspiration for both María

Candelaria and Maclovia with all three films following similar stories, the aesthetics and camera language of the films Fernández made in the 1940’s more closely emulate the photography and editing techniques of the Hollywood studio era. Another important difference is Fernandez’s use of stars, and his showcasing of them through consistent close-ups and medium close-ups. Janitzio does not use stardom or glamor as a tool for conveying indigenous womanhood. In fact, unlike Fernandez’s films,

Janitzio does not revolve around the leading female character, Eréndira, Instead, the film prioritizes the leading male character, Zirahuén through screen time and cinematography. Furthermore, the woman who plays the leading female role, María

Teresa Orozco, has no substantial star text, and was not distinguished in any way in the film’s credits. Beyond the question of stardom, unlike the other films from the

1930’s discussed in this chapter, her appearance is not curated as a glamorous “deco body” for the screen (see Figure 46). Therefore, no efforts were made to present her on or off screen as a “white” Mexican woman, and instead, she is simply presented in a matter-of-fact fashion, neither fetishizing her appearance as admirable, or commenting negatively upon it.

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Figure 46. Eréndrina in Janitzio (1934).

Another notable exception is Alicia del Lago’s performance as Xanath in the segment titled “La potranca” in Benito Alazraki’s 1954 film Raíces. In the story,

Xanath’s beauty obsesses a much older European archaeologist and he becomes increasingly desperate to possess the girl. Like Maclovia, this film lays out the

“white” man’s claim to his superiority based on race, and ridicules his stance. Unlike

Dolores del Río and María Félix, Alicia del Lago does not have a robust star text that establishes her as a glamorous “white” Mexican actress. On the contrary, the film

Raíces purposefully calls attention to its attempt to depict indigenous Mexicans in a more realistic way, and casting is an important part of how it sets out to do so. In promotional material for the film, instead of featuring the names of well-known stars as occurred on promotional material for Fernández’s indigenous themed-films, posters for Raíces boast that it is a “drama interpretado por el pueblo Mexicano.” An noted in Chapter 1, the opening text of the film further emphasizes this point, assuring that part of its authenticity relies on the fact that “Los actores no son profesionales, 175

son parte del pueblo mexicano” (see Figure 47). Therefore because Raíces’ strategy for conveying authenticity depended on rejecting the use of stars, it does not presents

Alicia del Lago’s performance in terms of “whiteness”-as-indigeneity.

Furthermore, while “La potranca” clearly shows that Xanath is desired by the

“white” archaeologist, instead of aligning the spectator with the archaeologist’s desire

(as occurs in the other films mentioned throughout the chapter), Raíces casts the archaeologist’s desire as decidedly morbid. Xanath is clearly portrayed as closer to childhood than to womanhood: the archaeologist’s wife brushes her hair, she jumps and climbs up trees nimbly, quick-paced music plays as she repeatedly outpaces the archaeologist, and finally the very name of the segment, “La potranca” clearly associates her with mare under the age of three. Therefore unlike Fernandez’s films which seek to make the spectator complicit in desiring the indigenous woman as beautiful, (through the gazes of both villains and heroes) Raíces seeks to highlight the pure beauty of the indigenous girl and denounce “white” male degenerate tendencies that inappropriately sexualize it. Because of Raíces’ claims to representative authenticity and because of its critique of the eroticization of indigenous girlhood,

“whiteness” is not used to render Xanath desirable (see Figure 48).

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Figure 47. Promotional poster for Raíces (1954).

Figure 48. Alicia del Lagos as Xanath in “La potranca” (Raíces, 1954)

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What about men? Indios, “whiteness,” and Desire in Mexican Cinema

As has been widely noted, in the allegory of the genesis of Mexico, indigenous Mexico is feminine and is united with masculine hispanicity (in the form of the conquistador). The 20th century exaltation of indigenous culture exhibited this tendency by largely showcasing Mexican indigeneity in the form of indigenous women. While I have dedicated most of the chapter to discussing how “whiteness” was used in Mexican film to convey the desirability of “indigenous” women and promote them as relevant for national identity, here I will address how the colonized dynamics of desire similarly affect the representation of the desirability of the

“indigenous” man in Mexican cinema.

While desire for the “indigenous” female is so common in Mexican cinema about indigeneity as to be a trope of the indigenist film genre, the representation of the desirability of the “indigenous” man is much more rare. I believe this is rooted in the cultural script of the national imagination in which the indigenous man had no discernable function other than in the form of an ancient and deceased heroic figure

(Moctezuma, Cuauhtémoc etc.) Furthermore, the depiction of “white” Mexican women desiring indigenous men is a direct contradiction of the nation’s foundational coupling, and I would go as far as to suggest that its rareness in cultural production suggests that is has been somewhat taboo. Furthermore, in the few films in which

“white” women do desire indigenous men, the desire is abruptly truncated by the death of the “indigenous” man, supporting the idea that there is a cultural anxiety surrounding this particular race/gender configuration in the couple. The sudden death

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of the indigenous man scenario occurs in the three following films: the colonial-age drama Tribu (Dir. Miguel Contreras Torres, 1934), in the 19th century foundational romance Lola Casanova272 (Dir. Matilde Landeta, 1949), and in the 20th century interracial love story starring María Félix and Pedro Infante, Tizoc (Dir. Ismael

Rodriguez, 1957). The only film that suggests this kind of coupling that does not end in the death of the man is a film that is a parody of both María Candelaria and La violetera (Dir. Luis César Amadori, 1958), titled El violetero (Dir. Gilberto Martínez

Solares, 1960), starring Tin Tan.

Like films that feature “indigenous” women as objects of desire, desirable indigenous manhood is presented through “whiteness”-as-indigeneity. In Tribu

Miguel Contreras Torres plays the role of Tumitl, the Indian king who becomes close to the Spanish nobleman Leonor. In Lola Casanova, the tribal leader, Coyote Iguana, who conquers the beautiful criolla is played by Armando Silvestre, and in Tizoc the title character is played by an actor with a robust and glamorous star text, Pedro

Infante. Thus even in the few instances that indigenous male attractiveness is contemplated, it is only rendered through “whiteness”-as-indigeneity. The underlying message of this film corpus (alongside the general lack of films that present indigenous men as desirable subjects) is that indigenous manhood represented through somatically indigenous men is not desirable, especially not in the eyes of the

“white” women.

272 For a discussion of the evolution of the legend of Lola Casanova from local oral accounts to cinematic renditions, see Robert McKee Irwin, “Lola Casanova: la Malinche invertida en la cultura nacional Mexicana” Literatura Mexicana. 18.1 (2007) and Anne Doremus, "Indigenism, Mestizaje, and National Identity in Mexico During the 1940s and the 1950s," Mexican Studies/estudios Mexicanos. 17.2 (2001): 375-402. 179

The notion of the unattractiveness of the indigenous man is made explicit in sequences within two separate films, Tizoc and the comedic film, El violetero. In

Tizoc the title character is an indigenous man who falls in love with a “white”

Mexican woman from the city, María. She has recently cut off an engagement and her hardened heart and arrogance are softened through her interactions with Tizoc.

During a sequence of the film that showcases a local indigenous festivity, a “white” man asks María to dance. Tizoc has already fallen in love with María, and as he watches them, he imagines himself in the place of the man (see Figure 49). When he imagines himself dancing with María and María desiring him, he appears not as Pedro

Infante in brown face, but instead in the form of Pedro Infante the “white” Mexican star, dressed in a smart contemporary suit and tie, and showing off his skills as a singer. This is the only moment in the film in which mutual desire between the two characters is expressed and indulged by the film. María (who in the story is a criolla, dressed in indigenous clothes for the festival) and “white” Pedro Infante dance closely, their faces touch and their hands are clasped intimately (see Figure 50).

Furthermore, the camera language presents “white” Pedro Infante as desirable by focusing the frame on him, and using the close-up throughout the sequence. In all of the other scenes, María’s character shows restraint in her treatment of Tizoc, and even by the end of the film she does not come to desire him (as he does her), but rather to respect and admire him. Also, it is only in this daydream that Tizoc appears as the dominant figure in the couple, leading María and taking center stage. In their interactions throughout the story he is submissive and deferential. Finally, a

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promotional poster for the film also shows Tizoc’s unilateral desire and yearning for the “white” woman. He is looking towards her in an afflicted state, while the outline of María’s face is literally above and beyond him, entirely out of reach (see Figure

51). The fact that the film conveys Tizoc’s reciprocated desire only when he imagines himself not as an indigenous man hints at how male appeal is also hierarchized in

Mexico based on the coloniality of desire.

Figure 49. Tizoc (played by Pedro Infante in bown-face) daydreams that María is dancing with a “white” version of himself in Tizoc (1957).

50. Figure. Tizoc (played by Pedro Infante in bown-face) daydreams that María is dancing with a “white” version of himself in Tizoc (1957). 181

Figure 51. Promotional poster for Tizoc (1957).

In the parodic film El violetero, “whiteness” similarly plays a role in legitimizing the desirability of the indigenous man. In the film Tin Tan plays an indito from Xochimilco, Lorenzo Miguel, who sells flowers with his friend María

Candela. While doing some gardening for a wealthy (and hyper “white”) local family, the younger daughter, Teresa, insults Lorenzo using racial slurs. As a lesson, her older sister, Lucía, decides to take Lorenzo on as a project while Teresa is away in the

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U.S., converting him into a respectable gentleman. This transformation involves teaching him to read and write, pronounce Spanish correctly, speak English, change his eating habits, dance, as well as setting him up in a respectable flower shop. When

Teresa returns, she is smitten with the new Lorenzo whom she does not recognize, and after a few interactions they kiss. This moment is the evidence Lucía was waiting for in order to prove the success of her experiment. It is through the desire of the

“white” woman that Lorenzo confirms that he is a bona fide success, and no longer a worthless indito. At the end of the film Lorenzo and Lucía end up together. However this reversal of the dynamics of the coloniality of desire take place within the realm of parody, and even then, Lorenzo has already proven he can pass for a “white”

Mexican, which temper the outcome’s transgressive potential.

Films throughout the 20th and 21st centuries have pointed to the dark Mexican man’s yearning for the “white” woman in ways that echo the dynamic present in

Tizoc and El violetero. In El juicio de Martín Cortés (Dir. Alejandro Galindo’s, 1974) a detective is investigating a theatre group who is performing a play about Hernán

Cortés’ mestizo son with doña Marina, Martín Cortés, because during one performance the actor who plays Martín kills the actor who plays Cortés’ son from a

Spanish mother, don Martín. The theatre group puts on the play just for the detective, and one of its subplots is a love triangle among Martín, don Martín and a Spanish noblewoman, Lucía María. While don Martín is in love with Lucía María, she is in love with Martín. In what the actors refer to as the “bodega scene,” Lucía María declares her love for Martín, but he rejects her because he wants to return to New

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Spain and establish himself as a ruler there. Prior to presenting the scene to the detective, the stage workers (characterized as brown mestizo working class men through their appearance and speech patterns) approach the director to say that they refuse to set up the “bodega scene” and that they plan to complain to the union about it. When the director and author of the play ask them to explain their grievance, they say that they consider it “denigrante para México” and cite the mestizo character’s missed opportunity to have intercourse with a “white” woman at the reason why the scene is insulting to Mexicans:

STAGE WORKER 1. …¡Pues ya parece que el mexicano iba a dejar que se le

fuera viva la güerita! Pues si están solos allí…

STAGE WORKER 2. Seguro. Ella está muy bien y se ve muy dispuesta,

Además, ¡es gachupina! ¡Ya parece que el mexicano iba a dejar pasar la

oportunidad!

The stage workers’ objections foreground the coloniality of desire from the male perspective because they cast intercourse with the “white” woman as a rare achievement that is linked self-respect and personal dignity. The film, through the interventions of the play’s author and director, critiques the stageworkers’ thinking as backwards, but crucially, the workers remain unconvinced.

While in El juicio de Martín Cortés the effects of coloniality erupt in the murder of the figure that personifies “white” male power (don Martín), in Carlos

Reygadas’ 2005 film Batalla en el cielo, the brown mestizo Mexican man purges his pent-up frustration by violently murdering the “white” Mexican woman. In the film,

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Marcos is an overweight, brown mestizo, working-class man in Mexico City, who is a chauffer for Ana, a well-to-do young woman who works as a prostitute just for the thrill of it. Marcos is attracted to Ana, and is servile and deferent, scarcely daring to speak to her, while she is dismissive and apathetic towards him. At one point in the film, Ana decides to have sex with Marcos, not because she is interested in him, but as a part of her pursuit of new experiences. During sexual intercourse, Ana maintains her indifference towards Marcos and her dominance in their dynamic, insisting that he “calm down” when he attempts to engage physically, and that he be entirely still throughout intercourse. This emasculating experience contrasts sharply with Marcos’ fantasy about Ana, which opens and closes the film. In these two scenes Ana is performing oral sex on Marcos. The slow tracking of the camera and the entirely

“white” backdrop establish Marco’s experience of this fantasy as a sublime dream

(not unlike Tizoc’s daydream of dancing with María). In the closing version of this hallucination, Ana looks up at Marcos and says, “Marcos, te quiero” and he responds,

“Yo también te quiero.” This scene reveals that Marcos’ deepest desire is to be reified as a man, and because of the mechanisms of the coloniality of desire, only the desire of the “white” Mexican woman can be the antidote to his social and economic marginality and lack of agency. By murdering Ana, Marcos unleashes centuries of raced emasculation and rejection, which she has perpetuated through her utter indifference towards him.

The racial and gender dynamics of Batalla en el cielo as well as those in

Tizoc, El violetero, and El juicio de Martín Cortés illustrate Fanon’s observation

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about the relationship between being desired by the “white” woman and attaining a legitimate position in post-colonial societies for the man of color, “When my restless hands caress those white breasts they grasp white civilization and dignity and make them mine.”273 Evidencing the vestiges of the coloniality of desire, these films convey the consolidation of masculine dignity and self-respect in relation to the desire of the

“white” woman.

Conclusion

In this chapter, Aníbal Quijano’s notion of the coloniality of power and the racial history of Mexico during the 19th and 20th centuries has been my point of departure for analyzing Mexican films that feature “whiteness,” even when they claim to represent indigeneity. I have suggested that Mexican cinematic production in general, evidences the aesthetic idealization and social veneration of “whiteness”, which I have posited stems from local racial history during and after colonialism.

Mexican films are symptomatic of the colonization of desire and subjectivity, using

“whiteness” to signal bodies that are worthy of admiration and yearning as well as marking the anchors for the spectator’s identification in narratives. Films about

Indians, therefore feature “whiteness” because they play by the rules of the local racial formation and its implications for cultural production. Although the images that result from this dynamic can seem contradictory or incoherent, the device of

“whiteness” is intelligible and consistent when understood in this way.

273 Fanon, Frantz. Ibid. p. 63. 186

Because indigeneity in Mexico has been cast in feminine terms, by and large films about indigeneity have tended to foreground the indigenous woman. In the various kinds of films I have analyzed here, because the indigenous woman has functioned as the central point of identification and is a diegetic (and sometimes extra diegetic) object of desire, she has appeared in the form of the “white” Mexican star and/or the “deco body.” The range of films that have used “whiteness”-as-indigeneity have contributed to the general indigenista cultural impulse by encouraging the contemporary appropriation (from the spectator’s perspective) of the indigenous woman from different historical moments and geographical spaces.

The representation of the desirable indigenous man has similarly been conditioned by the coloniality of desire. The rarity of “white” woman/ indigenous man couplings in Mexican cinematic history (and cultural production) suggests a cultural anxiety around this kind of pairing, and the sudden death of most of the indigenous men in their story worlds underscores it. Although the body of films featuring indigenous male characters is less robust, the weight of “whiteness” as indicator of narrative centrality and desirability also surfaces in these contexts.

Whiteness is a significant and persistent characteristic of Mexican cinematic indigenismo. Functioning as a hegemonic manuevre, the use of whiteness to represent indigeneity allows the films to accomplish both of indigenismo’s goals at once: showcase the “native” and affirm the criollo/mestizo nonnative identity as ideal.

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Chapter 3: Spiritual Otherness

Introduction

When the Spanish arrived in the Americas at the end of the 15th century, the spiritual condition of the inhabitants they encountered in the “new” territories was of utmost importance to them. In light of the fact that through the recently concluded

Reconquista those who practiced the Jewish and Muslim faiths in their country had been expelled or forcibly converted, for the Spanish, religion functioned as a determinant factor for inclusion and exclusion.274 While many texts of the period evidence the multiple cultural differences that the Spanish identified upon arriving to the Americas, the religious difference of the native inhabitants emerges as the most significant marker of alterity at this time.275 Ultimately the religious question served as the justification for Spanish rule in the hemisphere, in part because it was presumed that the indigenous were in a state of spiritual infancy, and required the tutelage of their (supposedly) more religiously mature Iberian conquerors. From this point on, non-western indigenous religious beliefs would never again be endorsed by governing authorities in Mexico, and the spiritual difference of native peoples would endure as an indication of their difference vis-à-vis hegemonic political projects.

274 Paloma Martínez-Cruz, Women and Knowledge in Mesoamerica: From East L.A. to Anahuac (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2011) pp. 53-54 and Silvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch (New York: Autonomedia, 2004) p. 221. 275 Bernard McGrane, “The Other in the Renaissance,” Beyond Anthropology: Society and the Other (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989). 188

In his landmark study, Los grandes momentos del indigenismo en México, originally published in 1949, Mexican philosopher Luis Villoro has analyzed the way in which various writers in Mexico from the colonial period through the 20th century have located the Indian in relation to the political project with which they were implicitly or explicitly affiliated. Broadly speaking, the text divides Mexican indigenista thought into three distinct moments. 276 In the first moment, which corresponds with the colonial era, the indigenous is constructed as something that is temporally close and categorically negative, while in the second instance, which corresponds with late 18th and the first half of the 19th centuries, the Indian is constructed as temporally distant and recuperated as positive. The third and final moment, beginning in the late 19th century and continuing through the mid 20th century, the Indian is again brought into temporal simultaneity with the speaker

(eventually as a part of him), and an attempt is made to reclaim him as positive

(although this requires a selection of the Indian’s characteristics). Throughout

Villoro’s analysis, the religious practices of indigenous peoples are a theme that surfaces continuously as a point of contention. Through the combination of Villoro’s commentary on specific authors as well as other historical background and sources I have gathered, we will see how writers, politicans and cultural figures from the colonial period through the 20th century use native religious practices as a point in

276 For Villoro indigenismo is a term that is not tied to any one historical or cultural moment in Mexico, but instead describes diverse and transhistoric attempts to on the part of mestizos and criollos to articulate the position of the indian in relation to the self, “aquel conjunto de concepciones teoricas y de procesos concienciales que, a lo largo de las epocas, han manifestado lo indigena.” See Luis Villoro, Los grandes momentos del indigenismo en México (Mexico City: El Colegio de México, 1996) pp. 13-14. 189

relation to which they will negotiate the acceptability of indigenous peoples into the projects of empire and nation. I will briefly discuss how the spiritual Otherness of native peoples has been a central aspect of the “indigenous question” from the colonial era through the 20th century in order to illustrate that there is an intellectual and historical trajectory around the issue which cultural production in the 20th century inherits and re-elaborates.

For Villoro, Hernán Cortés is divided in his estimation of native culture. On the one hand he admires many aspects of Aztec civilization through his humanist perspective. On the other, his medieval values cause his religious dogmatism to surface.277 While he does not regard the Indians as inherently inferior, he does insist that they are victims of the “engaño del demonio” (trickery of the devil).278 Cortés viewed the conquest of Mexico as part of the broader project of establishing the universal dominion of Christianity, and the conversion of the Indians was an essential aspect of that project, which ideally, would be carried out by a Catholic church led by peninsulares and criollos in the Americas.279 Fray Bernardino de Sahagún’s view of native religions was similar. For him, the Aztecs were a satanic race, and his expressed goal in writing the Historia general was precisely to uncover the work of the devil in the Americas in order to avoid that other peoples be brought under his power.280 Under the influence of Satan, native peoples worshiped idols and engaged in human sacrifices, and it is because of their wayward religiosity that they have been

277 Luis Villoro, Los grandes momentos del indigenismo en México pp. 30-32. 278 Cortés qtd. in , Luis. Villoro, Los grandes momentos del indigenismo en México p. 32. 279 Luis Villoro, Los grandes momentos del indigenismo en México p. 36. 280 Luis Villoro, Los grandes momentos del indigenismo en México pp. 41-48. 190

punished through the conquest.281 Although Sahagún refers to the indigenous as

“brothers” of the Spanish, indicating the recognition of their shared humanity, the position of the Indians as conquered peoples is ultimately justified because of their spiritual difference vis-à-vis Catholicism.282 In this way, the spirituality of the native population was clearly conceived as a crucial factor in the forging of the project of empire. In order to ensure that they complied with the imposition of the new faith, they were subject to various forms of punishment at the hands of local civil authorities, such as those carried out by the Provincial Diego de Landa in Yucatan in

1562 as a part of his anti-idolatry campaign, which resulted in the slaughter of 4500 people.283 Indigenous religious practices were also monitored by The Holy Office

(until 1571), and later redirected toward Catholic orthodoxy through a more diffuse method of conversion.284

When at the end of the 18th century thinkers in Mexico began to shift their construction of the Indian into one that was positive and distanced, native religious practices were an aspect of the culture that they justified. In other words, in order to recover the Indian, they necessarily had to address the religious question. In Francisco

Javier Clavijero’s Historia antigua de México, he suggests that the indigenous peoples descended from the biblical Adam and Eve, and that they experienced the great flood recounted in the book of Genesis. The proof of this, according to

281 Luis Villoro, Los grandes momentos del indigenismo en México p. 51. 282 Luis Villoro, Los grandes momentos del indigenismo en México pp. 51- 55. 283 Silvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch p. 225. 284 J. Jorge Klor de Alva, "Colonizing Souls: The Failure of the Indian Inquisition and the Rise of Penitential Discipline," Cultural Encounters: The Impact of the Inquisition in Spain and the New World, ed. Mary Elizabeth Perry and Anne J. Cruz (Berkeley: University of California Press, 199) p. 17. 191

Clavijero, can be found in native beliefs, stories, and rituals which recount similar events. Clavijero rejects the earlier idea that the Indians were led by Satan, and instead suggests that their error was the excess of their practices, but not their devotional intent.285 Furthermore, Clavijero put forth the notion that the Indians were comparable to any other pagan society in which similar rituals were common, and were even less barbaric by comparison. Fray Servando Teresa de Mier, a Roman

Catholic priest and politician famous for his support of Mexican independence in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, casts indigenous religions as misled versions of

Christianity. He argues that the Indians had been converted to Christianity by St.

Thomas, who was venerated by the Aztecs in the form of Quetzalcóatl, and that the god Huitzilopochtli was the native name for Christ, while the goddess Coatlicue was the Virgin Mary.286 He also argued that because the name México stems from a

Hebrew root “mesci” which means “messiah”, “México con x suave como lo pronuncian los indios significa donde está o (donde) es adorado Cristo y mexicanos es lo mismo que cristianos.”287 For Mier, early Spanish writers insisted on the demonic presence among indigenous peoples to justify their power.288 Mier’s recuperation of the Indian is crucial for his articulation of support for Mexican independence from Spain. In dispelling the notion of pre-Columbian paganism, Mier casts the entire colonial project as illegitimate. As Villoro has indicated in another

285 Luis Villoro, Los grandes momentos del indigenismo en México p. 149. 286 Luis Villoro, Los grandes momentos del indigenismo en México p. 165. 287 De Mier qtd. in Luis Villoro, Los grandes momentos del indigenismo en México. p. 165. 288 Luis Villoro, Los grandes momentos del indigenismo en México pp. 168-169. 192

important study, “La revolución de Independencia,” this line of argumentation will be the ideological backbone of the criollo led independence moment from Spain:

El rechazo del régimen colonial, considerado como modelo de

opresión, ignoracia y despotismo, con frecuencia lleva a reivindicar las

sociedades precolombinas. Entonces las demandas de los Americanos

no se fundan ya en el “pacto social” que los conquistadores y sus

descendientes establecieron con la Corona, sino en los derechos de los

indios, antiguos y legítimos dueños del país.289

According to this line of argumentation, once the spiritual Otherness of Indians has been disproved, they should no longer be the oppressed population of a colonial project, but are the very subjects on which the legitimacy of the future Mexican national project rests.

Mexican politicians and intellectuals throughout the 19th century would explore the relationship between religion and national unity. The Constitution of 1824 recognizes Catholicism as the only national religion, suggesting that national cohesion was in part envisioned in religious terms.290 By the mid 19th century however, the religious landscape of Mexico contained a combination of Catholicism, magic, and folk-beliefs. The liberalizing reforms headed by Benito Juárez, which sought to both modernize the country and curtail the wealth, power, and influence of the official Catholic Church impacted debates about the relationship between religion

289 Luis Villoro, “La Revolución de Independencia,” Historia General De México: Versión 2000, ed. Ignacio Bernal (México, D.F: El Colegio de México, Centro de Estudios Históricos, 2000) p. 511. 290 Alicia Castellanos Guerrero, “Para hacer nación: discursos racistas en el México decimonónico,” Los caminos del racismo en México, ed. José Jorge Gómez Izquierdo (México DF.: Plaza y Valdés, S.A., 2005) p. 97. 193

and the nation state.291 Reflections about indigenous spiritual practices from this moment on would be embedded within the general anxiety about the lack of Mexican national unity. Although intellectuals privileged the socioeconomic marginality of indigenous peoples, for them religion remained a cultural factor that needed to be addressed. For Francisco Pimentel, Indians remained separate from national life, and among the factors that contributed to their segregation were their continued idolatrous practices.292 For Andrés Molina Enriquez, writing at the turn of the century, religious consensus was a significant factor for achieving national unity.293 In fact, as a part of his defense for why the mestizo was the ideal national subject, Molina Enriquez argued that only mestizos manifested the highest and truest form Catholicism, compared to the semi-paganism of the indigenous and the excessive clericalism of the criollo class.294 In this way, as the national myth of the mestizo begins to be crafted, intellectuals consider the religious practices of indigenous peoples are an aspect of their alterity that must now be addressed, not because they considered them to be inherently demonic, but in order for the Mexican people become a consolidated nation.

The concern regarding native religions during the 19th century was not simply a philosophical exercise. In a time of continued expropriation of the native’s lands, politicians believed that native religiosity posed a real threat to the stability of the nation and to its progress. Alicia Castellanos Guerrero has documented and

291 Paul J. Vanderwood, The Power of God against the Guns of Government: Religious Upheaval in Mexico at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998) pp. 56-60. 292 Luis Villoro, Los grandes momentos del indigenismo en México p. 210. 293 Luis Villoro, Los grandes momentos del indigenismo en México p. 211. 294 Luis Villoro, Los grandes momentos del indigenismo en México p. 213. 194

commented on congressional debates regarding the possibility of legalizing native religious practices. As her analysis highlights, some political figures feared that restoring to the natives the freedom to practice their own religions would lead to demands for the restitution of their lands.295 The association between the demand for land rights and native religiosity was confirmed when in 1869 an uprising in Chiapas was fueled by an indigenous messianic movement that awaited the return of the

Mayan deity Kukulkán.296 In this political climate, native religions were not simply seen to pose a symbolic threat to national unity, but were considered dangerous to the extent that they could be tied to the counter hegemonic political mobilization of aboriginal communities.

20th century indigenista thinkers shared with Molina Enriquez and his contemporaries the notion that mestizaje was an important process for the creation of a more integrated nation; however, they differed in their ideas of the role that indigeneity should play in national mestizaje. While both groups emphasized the modernity and progress of the nation,297 the liberal thinkers of the late 19th century understood themselves to be representative of an already existing bourgeois mestizo class into which the natives should be incorporated through westernization.298 For indigenistas of the 20th century such as Manuel Gamio, Miguel Othón de

295 Alicia Castellanos Guerrero, “Para hacer nación” p. 98. 296 Alicia Castellanos Guerrero, “Para hacer nación” p.113. 297 Alicia Castellanos Guerrero, “Para hacer nación” p. 89-115 and José Jorge Gómez Izquierdo, “Racismo y nacionalismo en el discurso de las élites mexicanas: Historia Patria y Antropología Indigenista,” Los caminos del racismo en México, ed. José Jorge Gómez Izquierdo (México DF.: Plaza y Valdés, S.A., 2005) pp. 117-181. 298 Luis Villoro, Los grandes momentos del indigenismo en México. pp. 219-224. 195

Mendizabal,299 Carlos Echanove Trujillo, and Héctor Pérez Martínez, indigeneity would be the nucleus of Mexican authenticity, “lo extraño y separado a la vez que lo propio”.300 The central tension of this vein of indigenismo resulted from its estimation of indigenous culture as the heart of Mexican particularity, while maintaining the view elaborated in by 19th century liberals that assimilation was necessary to secure national progress.

The positions and attitudes concerning indigenous spiritual beliefs reveal the negotiations that 20th century indigenistas made in their hierarchical estimation of different aspects of indigenous cultures and life-ways. On the one hand, some idealized pre-Columbian religions as a manifestation of the indigenous peoples’ original greatness. In his study La población del valle de Teotihuacán, the way in which Manuel Gamio describes the spiritual state of the Indians corresponds to the general thesis of the work: pre-Columbian peoples lived in a flourishing intellectual and material richness of which they were robbed during colonization, resulting in their current state of decadence.301 For him, colonization simply deprived the Indians of their original mythology, faith, and gods, and the botched attempt at converting them has only left them with a series of ridiculous superstitions.302 Héctor Pérez

Martínez similarly identified the repression of rich pre-Columbian religions as a

299 This indigenista intellectual is one of the experts featured as a contributor in the opening titles of Peregrinación a Chalma. See Chapter, 1 Figure 3. 300 Luis Villoro, Los grandes momentos del indigenismo en México p. 234-235. 301 Manuel Gamio, La Población Del Valle De Teotihuacán: El Medio En Que Se Ha Desarrollado; Su Evolución Étnica Y Social; Iniciativas Para Procurar Su Mejoramiento (México: Dirección de Tall. Gráf., Secretaría de Educación Pública, 1922) p. 19. 302 Manuel Gamio, Forjando Patria (Mexico City: Editorial Porrúa, S.A., 1960) p. 90. 196

traumatic and defining experience that in part explains the condition of indigenous people in mid 20th century Mexico.303

The idealization of pre-Columbian religions is also evident in other forms of cultural production, most notably in Diego Rivera’s paintings of different indigenous communities prior to the conquest in the Palacio Nacional. The murals La leyenda de

Quetzalcoatl (1929), La civilización Zapoteca (1942), La gran Tenochtitlán (1945),

La civilización Tarasca (1950), La civilización Totonaca (1950), and La civilización

Huasteca y el cultivo del maíz (1950) all include representations of indigenous deities and/or spiritual practices as a part of the exaltation of pre-Columbian Indians as productive, orderly, and venerable peoples. For example, in La gran Tenochtitlán, which has been analyzed as a romanticized depiction of the Aztecs prior to the conquest,304 the central figure in the fresco’s composition is Tenoch, the founder of

Tenochtitlán and god of cleanliness (see Figure 52).305 In one of the friezes below La civilización Tarasca, two priestesses decorate the body of a young pregnant woman in order to bring her good luck during childbirth and to repel bad spirits. Lastly, La leyenda de Quetzalcóatl depicts various spiritual beliefs and practices. The god

Queztalcóatl is depicted three times, once in the form of a man with white pale skin and yellow hair slightly above the center of the composition, on the left as a plumed serpent emerging from an erupting volcano, and on the right in the form of the

303 Luis Villoro, Los grandes momentos del indigenismo en México p. 267. 304 Andrea Noble, "Latin American Visual Cultures," The Companion to Latin American Studies, ed. Philip Swanson (London: Arnold, 2003) pp. 154-71. 305 R. S Silva, Mexican History; Diego Rivera's Frescoes in the National Palace and Elsewhere in Mexico City: A Descriptive Guide Book of the National Palace and Its Royal Rooms (Mexico City, Mex., D.F: Sinalomex. Editorial, 1965) p. XIV. 197

morning star, Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli (see Figure 53). On the far right, dancers and musicians participate in a ceremony prior to the corn harvest.306

Figure 52. La gran Tenochtitlán (1945).307

306 Mary Ann Sullivan, “Mural: The Legend of Quetzalcoatl, Palacio Nacional de México,” Murals by Diego Rivera in the Palacio Nacional de Mexico, 2010, 2 May 2016 . 307 Image found in Mary Ann Sullivan, “Mural: The Grand Tenochtitlan, Palacio Nacional de México,” Murals by Diego Rivera in the Palacio Nacional de Mexico, 2010, 2 May 2016 . 198

Figure 53. La leyenda de Quetzalcoatl (1929). 308

However, while some indigenstas cast certain aspects of indigenous religions as expressions of cultural merit, this was not always the case. José Vasconcelos, for example, considered some native beliefs as unfortunate superstitions both in the pre-

Columbian context and in their 20th century syncretized manifestation, clearly demonstrating a preference for the Catholic tradition:

Con la imperfección inherente a creencias que no llegaron a ser

formuladas metódicamente y por escrito, subsiste el vago animismo

que todavía en México retoña esporádicamente en el mito oscuro del

308 Image found in Mary Ann Sullivan, “Mural: The Legend of Quetzalcoatl, Palacio Nacional de México” 199

nahualt, El nahualismo corresponde en el valle de México a la idea del

doble y también a la creencia en el espíritu maligno que ronda por las

noches amenazando con las calamidades y la muerte. Los genios del

mal eran numerosas en la mitología indígena, como corresponde a toda

era sombría de dolor y esclavitud de los hombres; por desgracia, los

encomenderos de España no eran a propósito para disipar las sombras

del nahualismo que todavía pesa sobre la gleba de los campesinos.309

For others, native beliefs in the present were problematic when they conflicted with the aims of progress in the areas of science and technology.310 Manuel Gamio suggested that Indigenous healers and midwives for example, should be respected, but progressively trained in Western medicine and methods.311 Indeed, as Paloma

Martínez-Cruz has noted, by the mid 20th century, traditional medicine rooted in indigenous spiritual beliefs was perceived as a symptom of the nation’s backwardness, and extending health services to rural areas became a major focus of the Instituto Nacional Indigenista in the mid 1940s.312 The conflicting attitudes toward native spiritual beliefs perfectly encapsulate the central contradictions of mid

20th century Mexican indigenismo. While native religions in the past were presented as indicative of the greatness of Mexico’s indigenous civilizations, therefore bolstering the value of the modern mestizo nation, native beliefs in the present were problematic for the nation’s aspirations of modernity and homogeneity.

309 José.Vasconcelos, Indología: una interpretación de la cultura ibero-americana (Barcelona: Agencia mundial de librería, 1920) p. 119. 310 Luis Villoro, Los grandes momentos del indigenismo en México p. 239. 311 Luis Villoro, Los grandes momentos del indigenismo en México p. 240. 312 Martínez-Cruz, Women and Knowledge in Mesoamerica pp. 77-94. 200

History books for school children written throughout the first half of the 20th century provide evidence this tension. On the one hand, the texts illustrate the use of pre-Columbian religions as a marker of Otherness in relation to the mestizo national subject/ pupil. As José Jorge Gómez Izquierdo has noted in his comprehensive analysis of numerous history books used in Mexican schools, “Es totalmente significativo que no hay texto de historia patria que no insista en la pasión indígena por los sacrificios humanos. Con ello se alude a una de las causas que hicieron antipáticos y odiosos a los aztecas ante los otros pueblos antiguos. Se insiste en resaltar la inferioridad moral del llamado fanatismo religioso.”313 At the same time,

Gómez notes that because of the indigenismo-mestizaje national discourse, this same condemnation of Aztec religious practices had to be countered in order to recuperate indigeneity as a worthy component of the national make-up in some way.314

Mexican films about indigenous peoples made in the 20th century registered the legacy of indigenous spirituality as a marker of Otherness315 in various and even contradictory ways. These films convey a range of positions regarding the role of religion in the nation’s newly reimagined cultural mestizaje, and align spectators with

Catholic and/or indigenous spiritual traditions through narrative and technical

313 Gómez Izquierdo, “Racismo y nacionalismo” p. 138. 314 “…la imagen espeluznante sobre los antiguos mexicanos debe conciliarse con la necesidad de fundamentar el orgullo nacional en las tradiciones más antiguas de los primeros habitantes del territorio que ahora ocupa México…Entonces, dentro de esa serie de juicios condenatorios al carácter idolátrico y sanguinario de las razas mexicanas, es deber nacionalista resaltar alguna de aquellas otras virtudes que nos permitan enaltecernos como herederos del espíritu heroico, del amor a la independencia y a la libertad características de la raza azteca…” Gómez Izquierdo, “Racismo y nacionalismo” p. 137. 315 Jorge Ayala Blanco has noted in passing that Mexican films show an interest in portraying native beliefs, “Las cosmogonías y los ritos constituyen lo más relevante de la condición de los indígenas.” See Ayala Blanco, La aventura del cine mexicano p. 148. 201

devices. The positions put forth by the films I explore do not follow a chronological pattern (for example, it is not the case that earlier films clearly demonize native spirituality while later films celebrate them). Therefore, although chronologically all of the films were made in the 20th century (placing them within the historical moment of Villoro’s third phase of indigenismo) the films I analyze do not necessarily adhere to the characteristics he identifies as defining the postrevolutionary indigenismo of

Mexican politicians and cultural figures. In addition to seeing representations of native religiosity that are in line with 20th century indigenismo, we can also see that some films made in the 20th century draw on residual forms of indigenismo that

Villoro identifies with earlier indigenista moments. In analyzing this specific facet of the representation of indigenous peoples in Mexican cinema, I aim to call attention to the fact that spiritual Otherness is not only a salient aspect in the construction of the

Other, but it is one in relation to which cultural production does not exhibit a clear consensus. The diversity of representation occurs not only because, as we have seen, government sponsored indigenismo was selective in the aspects of native spiritualty that it condoned, but also because the government discourse does not manifest itself uniformly in Mexican films about the indigenous. For this reason, I have grouped films from the 1910’s through 1960 according to the similarity in their stance regarding the place of indigenous religions in the identity of the mestizo Mexican nation. As we will see, Mexican films before and through the Golden Age adopt a variety of positions regarding the religious question and its implications for national

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identity ranging from the necessity of catholic unity to celebrating indigenous beliefs as an integral component of authentic Mexican identity.

Catholicism and National Hegemony

The films Tepeyac (Dir. José Ramos, Carlos E. González and Fernando

Sáyago, 1917) and Chilam Balam (Dir. Ismael Rodriguez 1955) may appear to be unlikely candidates for comparison due to the distinct moments of Mexican and cinematic history in which they were produced. Both films represent the role of religion and conversion during the conquest of Mexico and early colonial period.

When analyzing the films from the perspective of their commentary on native spiritual practices, we can discern that both Tepeyac and Chilam Balam, clearly propose Catholicism as an integrative force essential for the forging of the

Mexican nation. With an eye toward the respective historical and cultural contexts in which the films were made, here I will discuss how this message is constructed throughout each film. I suggest that while the films cast indigenous beliefs as problematic vis-à-vis Catholicism, they also suggest that indigenous religiosity is part of what makes natives suitable candidates for conversion, and (by extension) Mexican patriotism. In this way, the films both propose Christianity as a preferable religious basis for national union, and at the same time defend the value of indigeneity as a worthy component of Mexican identity.

The narrative structure and plot in Tepeyac make the film’s link between

Catholicism and the modern Mexican nation blatantly obvious. The film consists of a 203

frame narrative that tells the story of the romantically involved Mexico City dwellers,

Carlos Fernández and Lupita Flores, and a lengthy flashback to the colonial period that presents the story of the Virgin of Guadalupe. The film begins with Carlos and

Lupita enjoying a loving and wholesome courtship until Carlos receives an important mission from the president, which requires him to travel abroad. Before departing,

Carlos pays a visit to Lupita, who gives him a medal of the Virgin of Guadalupe to keep him safe during his journey to war-torn Europe. After his departure, the already inconsolable Lupita is further devastated when the local newspaper announces that a

German submarine has sunk the French ship Carlos was sailing on. Not knowing the fate of her beloved, Lupita turns to her image of the Virgin of Guadalupe and prays for Carlos’ safety. Because she is unable to sleep later that night, Lupita’s mother advises that she read the story of the Virgin of Guadalupe. At this point, the film shifts to a lengthy flashback that narrates the apparition of the Virgin to Juan Diego, beginning with unsettled animosity between the conquistadors and the local indigenous population, and ending with the revelation of the image on Juan Diego’s ayate (garment made of local fibers) and the recognition of the apparition site as holy ground by colonial religious authorities. The film then flashes forward as an exhausted Lupita falls asleep after her long reading. She awakens to the happy news

(via telegram) that Carlos is safe and sound. When he returns to Mexico and visits

Lupita, her mother suggests that they visit the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

While at the religious site, Carlos and Lupita explore the surrounding area. The film ends as they reach the top of the Tepeyac Hill, proclaiming their distinct investments

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in the tradition of the Virgin of Guadalupe, and affirming their mutual love for each other through a kiss that is mentioned in the intertitle, but not visually presented onscreen.316

Virtually every scholar has commented on the importance of religion within the film, although they have addressed it from different angles. Emilio García Riera has observed the film’s combination of religion and patriotism.317 James Ramey has further explored this connection showing that the film is indicative of the negotiations that anticlerical revolutionary leadership was willing to make, given that they were faced with a predominantly Catholic population.318 According to Paranaguá’s reading, the film aims to render the tradition of the Virgin of Guadalupe as both thoroughly national and modern. He specifies that Tepeyac modernizes tradition, not in the sense of modifying the content substantially, but through updating it with contemporary paraphernalia, such as modes of transportation (the train Carlos travels on) and communication (the telegram he sends to Lupita).319 David M. J. Wood posits that Tepeyac presents religious tradition as a refuge from the uncertainty of

316 Part of this analysis was previous published. See Mónica García Blizzard, “Whiteness and the Ideal of Modern Mexican Citizenship in Tepeyac (1917),” Vivomatografías. Revista de estudios sobre precine y cine silente en Latinoamérica. Dec. 2015, pp. 72-95. 317 Emilio García Riera, Historia del cine mexicano (México: Secretaría de Educación Pública, 1986) p. 41. 318 James Ramey, “La resonancia del exilio y la conquista en el cine indigenista mexicano,” México imaginado: Nuevos enfoques sobre el cine (trans)nacional, ed. Claudia Arroyo, James Ramey, Michael Schuessler (México D.F.: CONACULTA and Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, 2011) pp. 124-125. 319 Paulo Antonio Paranaguá, Tradición y Modernidad En El Cine De América Latina, (Madrid: Fondo de Cultura Económica de España, 2003) pp. 44-45. 205

modernity.320 Expanding on the question of modernity, Laura Isabel Serna has read the film as an attempt to produce a more acceptable version of contemporary Mexican femininity through the character of Lupita, who is in the midst of the modern urban environment yet retains her Catholic piety and traditional gender role.321 Inspired by

Paranaguá’s proposal to view Latin American film in relation to US, European, and local processes, Paul Schroeder argues that the film displays a decidedly criollo aesthetic and world view.322 While all of these scholars have identified the centrality of Catholicism for the film’s understanding of the Mexican nation, what I wish to point out is that this emphasis relies on presenting native religious beliefs as both

Other, and suitable for hispanization. Furthermore, the film also presents Catholicism as the uniting force that has made the nation possible, and that has helped to produce a symbol that can be adopted as national, regardless of creed in the present.

In Tepeyac, the Otherness of indigenous peoples is clearly established in terms of their spirituality. At the beginning of the colonial flashback sequence, the first two intertitles locate the action of the plot geographically, and present the natives in connection to the celebration of a ceremony, “En el Cerro del Tepeyac, a una legua de la Gran Tenoxtitlan, había una cueva, último templo destinado a las prácticas de la

Religión Azteca, donde se rendía culto a Tonatzin, ‘la madre de los dioses’. Una noche, los indios de los lugares cercanos, concurrían al templo clandestino a celebrar

320 David M. J Wood, México imaginado: Nuevos enfoques sobre el cine (trans)nacional, ed. Claudia Arroyo, James Ramey, Michael Schuessler (México D.F.: CONACULTA and Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, 2011) pp. 32. 321 Serna, Laura Isabel. Making Cinelandia: American Films and Mexican Film Culture before the Golden Age (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014) pp. 140-143. 322 Paul A. Schroeder, "Latin American Silent Cinema: Triangulation and the Politics of Criollo Aesthetics," Latin American Research Review 43.3 (2008), pp. 35-38. 206

sus ceremonias…” The fact that the natives are first shown while carrying out a religious ceremony suggests the importance of religion for marking the natives as

Other. The film also creates distance between the implied Mexican spectator and the native religious reality through the way language is used in the intertitle. Tonatzin’s identity appears in quotes, and the practices the natives participate in are identified associated only with them.

As the sequence progresses, the native religious tradition shifts from simply being presented as Other, to acquiring a negative undertone when the spectator is shown the indigenous characters capturing a Spanish conquistador, and taking him to a cave to be sacrificed to the goddess Tonatzin. The intertitles that accompany these actions cast the Indians in a negative light by associating their actions with vengeance, “La raza conquistada no desaprovecha la ocasión de vengar en un blanco las humillaciones Sufridas.” Furthermore, the intertitles also establish the conquistador as the victim, “Los indios conservaban la vieja práctica de sacrificar prisioneros enemigos y llevan una víctima para Tonatzin.” Although the film does suggest that the indigenous have suffered injustices,323 implying mutual aggression, it is significant that what is presented on screen for the spectator to witness is violence on the part of indigenous people for the purpose of practicing their religious beliefs.

Three shots show indigenous men grabbing and forcing a Spanish conquistador toward the cave where they hold the ceremony. As the figures move across the frame, the anguish of the conquistador is emphasized as he struggles to free himself from the

323 Ramey, “La resonancia del exilio y la conquista en el cine indigenista mexicano” pp. 128. 207

grip of the Indians. A native leader (presumably a priest) watches the struggle passively suggesting his lack of compassion (see Figure 54). By presenting the native spiritual practices in terms of violence toward a lone conquistador, the film suggests that the native belief system is questionable (at best), if not barbaric.

Figure 54. The Spanish soldier struggling as he is carried by natives to be sacrificed in Tepeyac (1917)

The film further discredits indigenous religion by presenting it as a factor that causes discord, and by establishing Catholicism as the only viable path to peace between the

Indians and the Spanish. When the rest of the Spanish conquistadors find their fellow soldier and begin to retaliate against the Indians, a Friar steps in to halt the violence with Catholic teachings. It is only through his words that the violence between the groups subsides, “Detenida la soldadesca por las frases amorosas del Fraile, en la caverna destinada al sanguinario culto de la diosa, resuenan apacibles las palabras del

Evangelio.” The unifying function that this text affords to Catholicism is reinforced 208

by the mise-en scene in the shot in which the Friar stands in between the two groups focused on him instead of on attacking each other (see Figure 55). Furthermore, the composition of the shot is such that the priest occupies the center of the frame and all other figures are looking at him, therefore encouraging the spectator to follow the gaze of the characters whose backs are facing the viewer. Thus, while the film associates indigenous beliefs with division and social unrest, it aligns Catholicism with peace and unity. If we read this moment in the film in an allegorical manner, we can say that by extension, the film also suggests Catholicism is the hegemonic force that makes the founding of the Mexican nation possible, and that it therefore also implies an incompatibility between the practicing of native beliefs and the Mexican nation.

Figure 55. The Friar stands between the natives and Spanish in order to unite the groups.

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It is important to note, however, that the fact that the film focuses on the indigenous people’s devotion to the goddess Tonantzin also serves to imply that they were particularly predisposed to receive the figure of the Virgin into their spiritual universe. In this way, they emerge as perfect candidates for conversion. In fact, the intertitles suggest that they were amenable to receiving Catholicism, “Los naturales, sin templos y sin idolos se hacían bautizar humildemente, siguiendo los consejos de los frailes, sus protectores.” While I have shown that in general Tepeyac casts pre-

Columbian beliefs in a negative light, when taking into account the film’s overall narrative about native religiosity we can say that their ceremonial sacrifices are cast as misguided and as examples of excessive reverence (not unlike Francisco Javier

Clavijero had argued over a century earlier). At the same time, they are presented as manifestations of devotion that can be easily be redirected under Western influence.

This point is significant because it allows for the estimation of the Indian as a worthy component of Mexican national reality, as opposed to crafting him/her as one that is irredeemably barbaric. In this way, the film defends the admissibility of Indians as a component of the Mexican history and nation by framing their religious practices as ones that were not entirely alien to Catholicism.

The merit of the Indian as a worthy component of Mexican reality is underscored in the scenes that feature the herbalist. When Juan Diego’s uncle becomes ill, he seeks out the herbalist to help cure him. Far from presenting the native healer as a witchdoctor, the film conveys that he is a legitimate practitioner of medicine and clearly presents him in a positive light. First, in the intertitles the film

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itself consistently refers to the healer as a “médico herbolario” or as a “médico indio,” epithets that present the native healer in terms that legitimize his practice in western terms. Second, the film suggests that he has a favorable reputation, and portrays him and his surroundings in a positive light, “Juan Diego en busca de un famoso médico herbolario. La pintoresca morada del herbolario.” Significantly, the healer is not presented as being different (wicked or wayward) from the other indigenous people as will occur in later films. Here he is simply another member of the community who puts his knowledge into practice. His work is explicitly featured both as he prepares the medicine for Juan Diego’s uncle, and as he visits his home, “Para curar el

“tabardillo”, la enfermedad que queja al tío de Juan Diego, el herbolario lleva unas yerbas medicinales”. Ultimately, it is the apparition of the Virgin that cures Juan

Diego’s uncle, and not the healer’s herbs; however this fact does not serve to discount the legitimacy of the herbalist’s knowledge. When the uncle is cured, the healer’s knowledge makes him a legitimate witness of the Virgin’s miracle according to the film itself, “El médico herbolario va a visitar al enfermo y se sorprende mucho de hallarlo sano. El médico indio, maravillado de la curación, testifica la realidad del milagro" (see Figure 56). The film therefore presents indigenous ways of knowing as legitimate, and as an objective yardstick from which to gage the greatness of the

Virgin’s miracle, most likely because here his knowledge is not linked to native spiritual practice. In this way, the healer functions as a figure that supports the importance of the miracle, and is not in competition with it. The presentation of native ways of knowing in this manner serves to support the film’s nuanced depiction

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of the indigenous as a valuable component of Mexicaness.

Figure 56. The indigenous herbalist inspects Juan Diego’s healed uncle.

It is also important to note that in the frame narrative (which takes place in the early 20th century) and when the intertitles address the spectator in the present,

Catholicism is not necessarily bolstered as an imperative for national unity in the present. Rather, the Virgin of Guadalupe is upheld as significant for national unity, in part because she has a religious resonance for many people, but not only for this reason. The film proposes the Virgin’s significance as a symbol of Mexico on multiple grounds, beyond Catholicism itself. This is clear in two moments of the film.

First, the film’s opening quote by Mexican author Ignacio Altamirano proposes that the Virgin has appeal for various kinds of people in Mexico, and that it is Mexico’s most fitting national symbol because of the varied ways through which she is acknowledged:

El día en que no se adore a la virgen del Tepeyac en esta tierra, es 212

seguro que habrá desaparecido, no solamente la nacionalidad

Mexicana, sino hasta el recuerdo de los moradores de la México

actual. Los mexicanos adoran a la Virgen de consuno: los que profesan

ideas católicas, por motivos de religión; los liberales, por recuerdo de

la bandera del año 10; los indios, porque es su única diosa; los

extranjeros por no herir el sentimiento nacional; y todos la consideran

como un SÍMBOLO esencialmente mexicano (emphasis in the film’s

intertitle).

Additionally, as Laura Isabel Serna has observed, Catholic devotion in the modern frame narrative is clearly gendered and associated with the feminine, with Lupita and her mother as the characters that most clearly exhibit religious devotion.324 When

Lupita and Carlos go to the top of Tepeyac hill, the narrator conveys their distinct attachments to the Virgin. While Lupita feels a connection to her because of her faith,

Carlos’ appreciation is not religious in nature, but instead patriotic, “Lupita habla de su devoción religiosa por la imagen. Y Carlos le recuerda una enseña sagrada a cuya sombra se inició el primer movimiento libertario.” In this way, the modern characters exemplify what Altamirano’s opening quote suggests about the Virgin of Guadalupe having transcended her Catholic context and evolving into a national signifier. Hence while the film presents Catholicism as a necessary precondition for the nation because it was an original amalgamating force, in the 20th century the need for strict

Catholicism has been transcended due to the existence of a national essence

324 Serna, Making Cinelandia pp. 140-143. 213

incarnated in the image of the Virgin.

While Tepeyac (1917) was made prior to the establishment of a film industry in Mexico, Chilam Balam (1955) was made in what has been largely identified by scholars as the decline of the golden age. This moment has often been associated with a lack of artistic quality and innovation as film studios tended to focus on making commercially successful products, and new directors were barred from gaining experience in the industry. While Ismael Rodriguez’s Chilam Balam is no artistic masterpiece, leading Mexican film scholar Jorge Ayala Blanco to suggest that the film is not even worthy of analysis,325 I have already pointed to its richness in chapter

2 by citing it as an example of the use of “whiteness”-as-indigeneity. Here I consider the film’s treatment of native spiritual practices, and what it implies regarding

Mexican national identity. Although the two films are separated by over thirty years and were produced in distinct political moments (Tepeyac is made in the immediate aftermath of the revolution while Chilam Balam is made when the Partido

Revolucionario Institucional had been firmly in power for decades) both films put forth a similar stance regarding native religions and role of Catholicism in the nation.

Even more explicitly than Tepeyac, Chilam Balam presents the conquest as a spiritual struggle, and it more firmly establishes Catholicism as a requisite for the Mexican nation. At the same time, the film presents the native religion (which must be eradicated) as proof of the Indian’s nobility and worth: in this way, allows for the valorization of the natives as worthy components of the nation’s mestizaje.

325 Jorge Ayala Blanco, La aventura del cine mexicano en la época de oro y después (Miguel Hidalgo: Grijalbo, 1993) p. 150. 214

Chilam Balam suggests that the religion of the descendants of the Maya is misguided primarily because in the film, it requires human sacrifices. This point is most clearly dramatized when it is revealed that Chilam Balam’s daughter, Naya is destined to be sacrificed against her will. Her fate is the source of emotional anguish, not only for her, but for her father, who has already foreseen the defeat of his people and no longer wishes to sacrifice his daughter’s life to try to appease the gods.

Because Chilam Balam and Naya are the central characters in the narrative, the spectator is distanced from the native belief system, which imposes an outcome that causes them suffering. Furthermore, the film dramatizes two scenes in which Naya is nearly killed by her own people. In both scenes, she is held by two men who force her toward the site where is supposed to die as she struggles. In the scene in which she is meant to die by jumping into a cenote, strong percussion music helps to present the event as one surrounded by tension and aguish. The camera angles do the same. The shot reverse shot of Naya and her father looking at each other convey the emotional distress of the characters. A worm’s eye view shot from the water shows Naya’s hesitation as she jumps in. Overall, the scene presents her forced sacrifice, and therefore the spiritual system that requires her death, in a negative light. This point is repeated later when Naya is again about to be sacrificed after her tribe discovers that she survived the cenote offering. As she is tied to two posts, close-up shots display her suffering, again serving to align the spectator with her will and not the native spiritual beliefs according to which she must die. On this occasion, the Spanish soldiers arrive just before she is killed (not unlike the sacrifice scene in Tepeyac). The

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fact that Naya is spared is in this scene is clearly cast in a positive light when as the

Spanish soldiers approach the natives, triumphant non-diegetic music plays, establishing them as heroic figures for having intervened. As in Gayatri Chakravorty

Spivak’s analysis of sati under British Colonial rule, here the dynamic of “white men…saving brown women from brown men” is an important colonizing mechanism326 that suggests the moral superiority of the Spanish, and justifies their dominance.

The film further discredits the function of human sacrifices in the native religion through the creation of explicit comparisons with Catholicism. As Naya interacts with the Spanish, both the soldier who is courting her and a Friar take turns catechizing her. Speaking specifically about the question of sacrifice, the Friar compares both faith systems, arguing that the presence of sacrifice in the Catholic faith is preferable to native beliefs, “Tus dioses han sido imaginados crueles y temibles. No hay más que un sólo dios Naya. Es todo amor y lejos de exigir sacrificios, él sacrificó su vida por amor a todos y cada uno de sus hombres que son sus hijos.” By associating native sacrifices with deities who are fearsome, and upholding the Christian sacrifice as an example of love, the priest and the film suggest that Christianity is a preferable belief system.

Like in Tepeyac, here the presentation of spiritual conflict during the early colonial era has clear implications for the future Mexican nation. While in Tepeyac

326 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, ed. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Urbana: University of Illinois Press) 1988. pp. 271-314. 216

the opening quote by Altamirano and the frame narrative explicitly link the colonial flashback sequence to the Mexican nation in the 20th century, in Ismael Rodriquez’s film Chilam Balam’s prophesy, which is stated and referred to multiple times throughout the film, refers to the future of Mexico as a product of mestizaje. Even as

Chilam Balam foresees the arrival of the Spanish and the birth of a new people, the incompatability of both people’s faith systems is clear, and the association between the new people (the future Mexican nation) and Catholicism is evident:

He visto en las estrellas que vendrán hombres blancos y barbados por

el mar de oriente, y su sangre se mezclará con la nuestra, primero en el

suelo por el odio, y luego en los cuerpos por el amor. Y nacerá otro

pueblo que ni será el de ellos, ni será el de nosotros, y traerán un

madero cruzado con otro, de gran virtud contra los demonios que

arrojará de los templos a nuestros dioses.

Furthermore, the representatives of this new people are Naya and the Spanish soldier, whom she marries after the defeat of her fellow Indians (including her father). It is only after this defeat, and the complete replacement of their native belief system that the foundational couple can unite, because as long as her tribe was unconquered, they intended to sacrifice her. The fact that Naya and the soldier’s love can only materialize when the native belief system has been eradicated further serves to position the spectator adversely with respect to native beliefs. Furthermore, the film clearly implies that Catholicism is the glue that bonds them together when in a final shot of the film, Naya and the soldier are shown holding hands with a Christian cross

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between them. If taken allegorically, this scene also suggests that Christianity is the bond that holds the Mexican nation together. In this way, although the film’s version of the nation’s creation story embraces indigeneity as a fundamental component, it casts native belief systems as obstacles that must be overcome in order for the future national project to come to fruition.

Despite the overarching message and conclusion that the film comes to regarding native beliefs and the future of the nation, the complexity of indigenous religion and the intricacy of their ceremonies also serve to exemplify their nobility and validity in the film. Significantly, unlike in Tepeyac, their ceremonies are not exclusively cast as savage. Instead, Chilam Balam paints a much more nuanced picture that serves to promote indigeneity as valuable, even as the film suggests that their beliefs have no place in the future.

Chilam Balam opens with voice-over narration that sings the praises of the

Maya people, highlighting their many cultural achievements, “…por más de doce siglos floreció la más brillante civilización del nuevo mundo, la de los pueblos

Mayas. Sus conocimientos matemáticos y astronómicos fueron extraordinarios, pero en lo que mayormente destacaron fue como escultores y arquitectos.” Not unlike the films I have termed “ethnographic,” here this didactic mode of address similarly seeks to educate the spectator while praising aspects of the nation’s pre-Columbian roots. As the voice-over narration shifts to discuss the inhabitants of the Yucatan peninsula in the early 16th century, the narrator specifies that by that time, all that remained of the Maya’s previous greatness were their religious practices, “…Los

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habitantes de Chichen Itzá…sólo conservaban de sus antepasados las costumbres y los ritos.” Through this statement, the narrator ties native religious practices to cultural complexity and sophistication, a link that will be borne out during the film.

Furthermore, while the narrator does suggest that the practice of offering human sacrifices was primitive, he presents it as a custom of many other ancient peoples as well (an argument Francisco Javier Clavijero had also used to defend pre-Columbian natives), “Su limpio cielo azul inspiró el color sagrado de los sacrificios en que, como en todas las civilizaciones primitivas, ofrendaban a la divinidad sus propias vidas…”

In this way, native religiosity is presented as a cultural artifact of merit, and not exclusively as an aspect of their civilization that should be dismissed.

The stance I have outlined is evident in the varied way in which the film presents native religiosity. While in Tepeyac the attempt to sacrifice the Spanish soldier is the only manifestation of indigenous beliefs, Chilam Balam shows a variety of practices, including, but not limited to human sacrifice. For example, the first ceremony that is presented on screen is a coming of age ritual for young men and women. Here, many aspects of the mise-en-scene serve to present the ritual, and by extension the native peoples, as civilized. As the scene opens two single file lines of men and women descend the steps of a pre-Columbian structure with solemnity.

When they have reached their proper places, the four priests officiating the ceremony stand stoically (see figure 57). The head priest speaks to them with gravitas explaining the meaning of the ritual and gesturing soberly. Furthermore, the multiple extreme long shots of all of the ceremony’s participants (see Figure 6) highlight the

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order with which it is carried out, with each person in his or her proper place. Overall the scene depicts the natives’ spirituality and society as orderly and stately.

Figure 57. The coming of age ceremony in Chilam Balam (1955).

The scene also serves to present the natives in a positive light because different aspects of the ceremony are portrayed as having an accessible meaning.

Unlike Peregrinación a Chalma in which the native’s gestures and props went entirely unexplained, here the priest specifies for the participants and the spectator what different actions mean, “Agua sagrada para que estén purificados…humo para que tengan espírtu de hombres. Flores para que tengan espiritu de mujer.” By displaying this native ritual as having a system of signification, and providing access to that system, the film uses the ritual to afford the natives cultural complexity.

Furthermore, that system of signification closely matches ones that the Mexican

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spectator would be familiar with: the ritual employs hetero-normative gender categories and the conventions of Roman Catholic rituals. The coming of age ritual divides its participants based on essentialized gender identities and initiates each group into separate roles as adults. The ritual itself is reminiscent of the Catholic sacrament of confirmation in which young people take on an adult identity in the

Church, and many of the details used in the native ceremony have parallels in in the

Catholic sensorium. These include the way in which the native priest sprinkles water on the participants, and the way in which smoke is used (recalling the use of incense).

By presenting native rituals as having a hermeneutic legitimacy that is different but not alien to religious and gendered signifiers of the Mexican spectator, the film presents the native religion as a cultural expression of merit.

Beyond the native ceremonies, other aspects of the film confer legitimacy onto native’s religious beliefs. Their decisions, including the decision to sacrifice, is rooted in an authentic attempt at spiritual discernment and discussion. Most importantly of course, is that Chilam Balam’s prophecy is actually true from the perspective of the film, which is the ultimate indicator of the Indians’ spiritual validity. While characteristics of their religion help to portray them as worthy, moving beyond the question of religion, the film emphasizes their strong sense of ethics and honor. After Naya and Chilam Balam have been found by the head priest of their tribe, she complains to her father about the fate they will face when they return to Chichen Itzá. Chilam Balam’s response conveys that he is a man of principle with a strong ethical code, “La muerte sí, pero no la deshonra, ni la entrega, ni la

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traición.” Lastly, although ultimately Chilam Balam is presented as fighting on the wrong side (agaist Catholicsm and the men who bring it), he dies fighting and outnumbered by Spanish soldiers, despite having had the opportunity to live. His honorable death cements his status as the film’s noble savage.

Just as the natives’ devotion for Tonantzin underscored their suitability for conversion and (eventually) Mexican patriotism in Tepeyac, so their solemnity, order, devotion, and ritualistic tendencies in Chilam Balam suggest their compatability with

Catholicism and the nation that will be forged under it. While both Naya and Juan

Diego are presented as native participants in the new order that will evolve into the nation, both films make clear that that new order will contain little if any aspect of their pre-Columbian world-view.

Distanced Idealization

Miguel Contreras Torres was both one of Mexico’s earliest filmmakers and one of its most prolific, directing films beginning in 1920 and spanning through 1967.

His films have received limited critical analysis by scholars, and his two indigenous themed films, Zitari (1931) and Tribu (1935) have not been explored in depth.

Scholars in search of a genealogy of Emilio Fernandez’s brand of indigenismo327 have tended to ignore these two films either because of their obscurity and/or because they are not indigenista in the sense of featuring and eliciting commiseration with

327 Dolores Tierney, Emilio Fernández: pictures in the margins (Manchester University Press, 2007) pp. 77-80, and Martin Lienhard, "La Noche De Los Mayas," Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies 13.1 (2004): 35-96. 222

Mexico’s impoverished indigenous populations. In chapter 2 I have already suggested that the films are noteworthy examples of “whiteness”-as-indigeneity. Adopting

Villoro’s wider notion of indigenismo, which encompasses reflections and representations of indigeneity independently of political affiliation and message, here

I will discuss the role that native religions play in the crafting of a distanced idealization of indigenous people in Zitari and Tribu. The films’ more romantic take on indigeneity consists in a temporal removal of several centuries and ennoblement, conventions that are in line with Villoro’s understanding of indigenismo’s second phase. Within this general depiction, native religion emerges as either a characteristic linked to the admirability of the indigenous, or as a circumstantial difference that is secondary to their potential for virtue.

The opening intertitles of Zitari set the tone for the film’s representation of indigeneity, establishing distance by focusing on temporally displaced natives, and shrouding them in mystery, “¿Quiénes fueron y de dónde vinieron las primeras razas que poblaron América?...Nadie lo sabe a ciencia cierta. Todo se pierde en la noche de los tiempos.” Casting the pre-Columbian natives as beyond current knowledge, the film renounces any claim to accuracy and disavows all “pretensión histórica,” but at the same time, hopes to constitute a “modesto esfuerzo tendente a ayudar a los hombres de ciencia a descubrir el misterio insondable de los siglos.“ In this way the film acknowledges the work and importance of anthropological inquiry, but clearly establishes that the film is born out of poetic license.

The film conveys a romantic depiction of indigeneity, not only in the sense

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that the plight of two lovers is at the center of the story, but also in the sense that it reproduces the conventions of romanticism: idealism, chivalry, the glorification of the past, and the privileging of dramatic emotion. The film’s idealization and romanticization is evident in the one-dimensional and exclusively good nature of the protagonists: Mazatal is a noble and honorable warrior while Zitari is a beautiful princess. Their love is presented as pure, and their wish to be together is their utmost priority, leading Mazatal to risk his life in battle and causing Zitari much anguish.

The actor’s movements on screen, which are slow, stoic, and dramatic, also help to construct this fossilized view of the idealized natives (see Figure 58). Furthermore, the dialog in the intertitles uses the antiquated “vosotros” form, which serves to locate the natives in a removed temporal realm and elevate the register of their speech. As we shall see, the film’s treatment of indigenous religiosity closely matches this overall positive and glorified portrayal.

Figure 58. Grand and dramatic physical gestures in Zítari (1931). 224

The film’s point of departure for glorifying indigeneity is obviously archaeology. After the opening text written by the film’s director, another intertitle with a passage by American historian and hispanist William H, Prescott makes the link between the ruins and the yearning for knowledge about pre-Columbian natives explicit, “Es imposible contemplar los misteriosos monumentos de una civilización ya perdida, sin tener viva curiosidad de saber quiénes fueron los arquitectos.” As noted in the previous chapter, the entire first half of the film consists of views and panoramas of different archeological sites within the Mexican Republic (Chi-Chen-

Itzá, Palenque, Uxmal and Teotihuacán). The sequence suggests not only a will to display the achievements of pre-Columbian Indians as grand achievements, but also a didactic impulse as the cites are presented in terms of their geographical location within Mexico and the civilizations to whom the monuments are attributed. The film’s love story emerges as a whimsical extrapolation from the archaeological site of

Chi-Chen-Itzá that focuses on the goddess of love and her temple “La leyenda atribuye una romántica historia a la Diosa del Amor, que veneraban los indios en los altares del Templo de las mil Serpientes.” Because the temple is the raison d’être of the film and it is a structure that had a religious function, it can be said that religiosity is central to the narrative portion of Zítari.

Zitari brings native spiritual beliefs to the fore both visually and through the development of the narrative. Immediately after the text quoted above, which serves as the transition from the archaeological sequence to the pre-Columbian story, a shot

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of the idol of the goddess of love is shown, (see Figure 8). The fact that this same image also closes the film suggests its significance for the overall story. The narrative interweaves what are presented as native spiritual beliefs and practices of the unnamed pre-Columbian civilization throughout. In a midnight meeting between

Mazatal and Zítari, she mentions her faith in the gods to help her overcome the distress of seeing her beloved go off to battle, “Yo rogaré al Dios de la Guerra por vuestra salvación y que podáis regresar a pedir mi mano al Rey…Tengo fé en vuestro triunfo y la Diosa del amor velará por vuestro regreso .” Furthermore, the beliefs and practices are essential information for the development of the plot. For example, the villain who tricks Mazatal into giving him the ring he had received from Zítari is described as being an “espiritu del mal.” Also, Zítari foresees the possibility of the couple’s misfortune as she gives Mazatal the ring, suggesting that her spirituality affords her valid ways of knowing. Lastly, after she has learned of her beloved’s death, she abandon’s herself entirely in an act of worship to the goddess of love at the

“Temple of a Thousand Serpents.” The intensity of her investment in the deity is rendered through an eye-line match showing a close up of her face and a shot of the idol. Zítari lifts her arms and bows her head in complete surrender to the deity after which she collapses dramatically, dying (see Figure 59). Lastly, upon her death another community member alludes to the natives’ belief in an afterlife in which

Zítari can be reunited with her beloved, “¡La muerte os arrebató soñadora princesa, pero el amor es más fuerte que la muerte, y állá en la eternidad juntaréis vuestras almas!” Given that Zítari is the emotional center of the film (see chapter 2) the

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spectator is meant to align compassionately with this belief because it affords the lovers a scenario in which they can be together.

Figure 59. Zítari raises her hands in complete surrender to the goddess of love.

Although the films Tepeyac and Chilam Balam also present native civilizations as having valuable characteristics, in Zítari, their worthiness is not compromised by their spiritual beliefs and practices. Any potentially problematic aspects of native religiosity such as human sacrifices - the taboo par excellence - are elided in this rendition. There is no hint at the necessity of conversion in order to redeem or improve the Indians, as they are noble, grand, and fossilized figures whose beliefs in no way tarnish the image of the nation, which in part, descends from them

(as the ruins showcasing of the ruins suggests). On the contrary, their beliefs are a source of great cultural achievements (the temples displayed at the beginning of the film) and great legends (the way in which the love story is framed). By presenting the

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pre-Columbian past in an entirely ennobling light, in Zítari, this era emerges as a local version of classical antiquity, still remote and Other with respect to the spectator, but without discernable negative connotations. As we have seen, presenting indigeneity as Mexican antiquity was an approach already exercised by thinkers in

Mexico from the late 18th and early 19th century. Furthermore, antiquity was a much- celebrated subject of silent cinema, most notably in the Italian productions of the early 1910’s, which were shown and admired throughout Mexico. 328 It is not inconceivable that Zítari may be a modest Mexican response to the number of Italian films about the classical period, and in which religion surfaces simply as another pagan belief system among many.

Contreras Torres’ colonial-era drama Tribu also marks indigenous alterity largely through religion. While its portrayal is more nuanced, nodding to the conventional negative connotations of human sacrifice, like Zítari it does not impose

Catholicism as a necessity for the redemption of native peoples, as they are presented as already being capable of virtuous behavior. The negative and positive aspects of native religions are not attributed to the entire faith system and those who subscribe to it (as in the previous films discussed so far) but are instead tied to virtuous and unethical characters themselves. In Tribu, indigenous religion is presented as Other

(in keeping with its general presentation of the natives), yet the film does not make blanket statements about the faith system as being inherently flawed, instead showing

328 These films include but are not limited to The Fall of Troy (Luigi Romano Borgnetto and Giovanni Pastrone), The Last Days of Pompeii (Dir. Mario Caserini and Eleuterio Rodolfi), Quo Vadis (Dir. Enrico Guazzoni, 1913 and Dir. Gabrielle D’Annunzio and Georg Jacoby, 1924) , and most famously, Cabiria (Dir. Giovanni Pastrone, 1914), See Leal, Juan F. Cartelera Del Cine En México, 1906 Primera parte (enero-marzo) (México, D.F: Ediciones y gráficos Eón, 2007) pp. 197-202. 228

how it takes on the characteristics of those practice it.

The Otherness of the natives is conveyed through various devices throughout

Tribu. One of the most important ways in which this occurs is through the film’s narrative structure. Tribu dramatizes a territorial dispute between a small settlement of Spaniards and an unconquered tribe of Indians during the early colonial period, and throughout the film, the spectator is located primarily among the Spanish. Initially, for example, the spectator is situated in the Spanish settlement, and when the indigenous first appear on screen as a group, they are displayed through the view of the Spaniards through eye-line matches that suture the spectator into the soldiers’ perspective. Another important way in which the natives are distanced from both the

Spanish characters and the spectator is that in the film, they only speak a fictitious indigenous language, and communicate with the Spanish through a translator (played by Emilio Fernández 329). Because the spectator does not have direct access to their utterances, the native characters’ communication with the spectator occurs through an acting style that relies more heavily on nonverbal cues. As a result, the spectator has much more access to the Spanish characters’ psychological complexity, emotional states, and motivations, while natives appear as opaque, dimwitted, and/or caricaturized.330 Here, the linguistic approach emphasizes separateness, which is

329 I believe that this is worth mentioning because, while his participation in Janitzio (1934) is noted by scholars regularly, his participation in this film, which represents Indians but has not been recognized as an indigenista film, I have yet to come across in scholarship about Mexican cinema. 330 As Robert Stam and Louise Spence have noted, “The absence of the language of the colonised is also symptomatic of colonialist attitudes. The languages spoken by Third World peoples are often reduced to an incomprehensible jumble of background murmurs, while major 'native' characters are consistently obliged to meet the coloniser on the coloniser's linguistic turf…” See Robert Stam and Louise Spence, "Colonialism, Racism and Representation," Screen. 24.2 (1983), p. 7. 229

consistent with the film’s dichotomic vision331

In Tribu, religion functions as the primary marker of difference between the

Spanish settlers and the unconquered natives. Significantly, the initial visualization of the natives occurs in the context of one of their rituals, when two Spanish soldiers go to their settlement to observe them from afar. Because the spectator is aligned with the non-natives, the only information about the ceremony that we have access to are the soldiers’ suppositions. In this way their religious practices are not only established as their defining difference (a theme that will surface repeatedly throughout the film), but they are also presented as unknowable as their beliefs and practices are never explained according to the indigenous people themselves (in contrast to Chilam

Balam).

The two groups’ faith difference surfaces as an irresolvable point of difference and anxiety in Tribu as the two groups attempt to coexist in proximity. For example, after the leader of the Indians, Tumitl, has ensured the safe release and return of

Leonor, Elvira (her mother), and a friar who were all taken prisoner during a small battle between the Spanish and the natives, the prisoners and the natives eat together in a mutual gesture of goodwill. During the meal, Elvira brings up the issue of the native’s religion, which causes the warm atmosphere to suddenly cool. Realizing that discussing religious matters could cause animosity to surface, the friar himself tells the duchess that discussion of such matters should be postponed. The idea that faith

331 As we have seen, the different solutions for rendering native language has also underscored native Otherness, but with different implications. In Zítari an antiquated Castilian register distances and ennobles the natives’ separateness, while in Chilam Balam the elision of linguistic difference allows for identification with the natives through access to their thoughts and feelings. 230

is a difference that cannot be overcome, is repeated later when the Spanish leader and

Tumitl are making a peace agreement. The points of the arrangement include the division of the territory, the presence of Spanish soldiers near the Indian settlement, and the ability of the friars to explain Christian doctrine to the natives. This scene highlights religious difference as the most sensitive marker of difference, when out of all of the aspect of the agreement, Tumitl comments only on the point related to religion, “Jefe Tumitl conforme, sólo pide respetar religion indios.” Visually, the film captures that this moment of the conversation is a tense one, because Tumitl’s response is rendered through a close-up, the only one used in the scene. Noting the potential incompatability between the missionaries’ intention to catechize and

Tumitl’s demand for respect of the native religion, the friar asks the Spanish leader to let him speak to Tumitl about that point later on order to allow the peace agreement to proceed. Here again, the film identifies religious difference as irresolvable in the moment, and in so doing, it signals faith as the most problematic marker of difference between the two groups.

The anxiety surrounding religious difference is also highlighted through

Leonore’s experience among the natives and, in particular, through her romantic attachment to Tumitl. After spending time with Tumitl as a prisoner and during intimate excursions of his domain, she begins to demonstrate sympathy for the natives’ resistance to Spanish civilization. Her budding sentimental attachment to the exotic leader is expressed by her appreciation of native beliefs, which alarms her mother:

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DUQUESA ELVIRA. Hija mía, no hablas como Buena Cristiana, más parece

que adoras al sol y a la luna.

LEONORE. Eso por lo menos es más romántico.

DUQUESA ELVIRA. ¿Te han dado alguna yerba los indios?

LEONORE. No creo en embrujamientos madre.

When Leonor describes the native faith in a positive light, her mother’s demeanor and response suggests that her daughter’s attitude is transgressive, and a cause for concern. Elvira’s suggestion of possible witchcraft also casts native herbal knowledge as unfavorable (in sharp contrast to Tepeyac’s celebration of native herbal knowledge as legitimate medicine). Here, by befriending the native king and questioning the rigid imposition of “civilization,” Leonor reconsiders the blanket delegitmization of their faith, which in turn, makes her suspect, given that in the film alterity is largely determined by faith.

The importance of religion as the marker of difference is rendered most dramatically when the film suggests that it represents a serious obstacle for Leonore and Tumitl’s union. After dining with Leonore’s family, she and Tumitl share a moment alone together. The stylistic conventions of the scene suggest their mutual affection: diegetic romantic music plays in the background and eye-line matches suggest they are gazing at one another through close-ups that highlight their passion for one another. Having shown Tumitl that she still has the rose he gave her during their outing together (the symbol of their affection for each other), Leonore then offers him a bejeweled cross on a chain, but he refuses the gift, instead placing it on

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her (see Figure 60). At this moment the nondiegetic music becomes melancholic, signaling that his refusal carries with it a negative consequence. Both of their facial expressions become serious and sad, prompting Tumitl to leave. The facial expression of the friar who has witnessed the scene is equally grave. By building up the possibility of a romance between Leonor and Tumitl and establishing religion as the obstacle to their union, the film reinforces faith as the node of alterity, not only as a political problem between the two groups, but as one with sentimental repercussions in which the spectator is invested.332

Figure 60. Leonor offers the cross to Tumitl in the hope that Tumitl will convert to Catholicism.

332 The fact that the tragic impossibility of Tumitl and Leonore’s union is at the center of the film is made clear on the film’s promotional poster, which features both characters holding each other with grave facial expressions (see Figure 12). 233

While it is true that the representation of the native religion in Tribu is not entirely neutral, when aspects that are represented as negative do surface, they are attached to antagonistic characters. When Leonor, Elvira and the Friar are taken as prisoners, Zotil, an important native warrior, wishes to sacrifice them to the native gods. In line with the archetype of the noble savage, Tumitl does not agree with this suggestion, and he succeeds in discarding it as a possibility proudly reassuring them,

“Jefe Tumitl defiende blancos.” Later, when Tumitl is in Santa Fe de Otul negotiating the peace agreement, Zotil organizes a faction of Indians against him and captures

Leonor, eventually killing Tumitl. While the threat of human sacrifice is only associated with the villain in the narrative (and not with the entire indigenous society as ocurrs in Tepeyac and Chilam Balam) Tumitl is presented as being a virtuous and ethical person despite his paganism. He keeps his word to the Duke and Duchess by bringing Leonor back to safety when she is captured by Zotil, which is also an indication of his respect for their peace agreement. After completing this honorable task, the friar who is also the voice of religious authority, declares his definitive and positive judgment of Tumitl, “Yo leo en el fondo de los corazones. Ese indio es bueno.” In the film, Tumitl’s virtue is not only highlighted by the bad savage, but also by the behavior of two Spanish captains who are interested in Leonor. Although they are Spanish and Catholic, they are always eager to react forcefully and judge in a negative manner. In this way, this film suggests that while native paganism can be unfavorable, so can self-righteous Catholicism.

The film most clearly disavows Catholicism as a requisite when Tumitl is

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struck by a fatal arrow. While Leonor is holding his agonizing body, the Friar declares, “Ante dios están unidos. Sólo el amor podrá lograr la paz del mundo.”

Although both Chilam Balam and Tribu present the indigenous protagonists and noble savages, in Tribu it is love, and not the Catholic religion per se that is emphasized as the necessary precondition for a peaceful future. While in the film religion is the most significant marker of alterity, unlike in the other films, Tribu suggests that Catholicism is ultimately secondary to personal virtue and ethics.

Through the depiction of an indigenous figure who is displaced in time, noble and exemplary, the film unsettles the deterministic presumption according to which native religiosity necessarily implies inferiority.

Both Zítari and Tribu create distanced and idealized portrayals of indigenous figures in which religion is a marker of difference with respect to the spectator, but it does not necessarily have inherent negative connotations. While in Zítari the native faith is offered a contextualization of great architectural accomplishments and as an honorable version of Mexican antiquity, in Tribu religion (whether indigenous or

Iberian) is merely the vehicle through which both ethical and non-ethical persons act in the world. Taken together, Miguel Contreras Torres’ films offer a competing view of native religiosity rooted the larger gesture of the glorification and recuperation of the native on a symbolic level.

Approximation and Spiritual Mestizaje

While the films in the previous section presented an idealized and ennobled

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depiction of indigeneity, the three films that I will discuss in this portion of the chapter, La noche de los mayas (Dir. Chano Urueta, 1939), Deseada (Dir. Roberto

Gavaldón, 1951), and Macario (Dir. Roberto Gavaldón, 1960), correspond closely with Villoro’s assessment of the late 19th and early 20th century indigenista moment.

Here, there is an approximation to the native subject while his/her otherness is maintained, making the indigenous “lo extraño y separado a la vez que lo propio.”333

In this group of films the approximation is realized not only through a more well- rounded rendition of the native characters’ complete humanity, but also through the way in which their religious beliefs operate as organizing principles of the narrative.

The native spiritual beliefs are presented as principals that explain how and why events unfold without the film suggesting that the beliefs are good or evil, or need to be corrected through orthodox Catholicism. Therefore, in contrast to the first group of films which suggest that native spiritual beliefs are in some way tarnished, and the second group which argues for indigenous virtue within their paganism, this third group obliges the spectator to buy into the natives’ beliefs for the duration of the film in order to be able to make sense of the narrative and the character’s actions and motivations. In other words, the spectator is temporarily placed into a native subject position where religion is concerned. I suggest that in this way, these films are consistent with the 20th century Mexican indigenista view that insisted on a more profound cultural understanding of the natives in order to effectively and definitively address the enduring problem of socio-economic precarity through assimilation. It

333 Luis Villoro, Los grandes momentos del indigenismo en México p. 234-235. 236

was to this end that Manuel Gamio encouraged Mexicans to, “forjarse - ya sea temporalmente - un alma indígena.”334 Lastly, I suggest that by presenting native spirituality from the perspective of native characters, the films abandon an interest is commenting on whether native beliefs are positive of negative, and instead suggest that they make up part of the internally exotic national folklore.

After explaining that the film’s story unfolds among the descendants of the great maya civilization who, by the 19th century had taken refuge in the jungle, the opening text in La noche de los mayas elaborates on the pains that have been taken to preserve Mayan authenticity through the way in which the films’ dialogs are formulated: “Los diálogos de los personajes de esta obra están escritos en lengua maya por el Autor. El mismo autor los ha traducido al castellano de modo literal y estricto, con lo que han conservado integralmente la mentalidad y el estilo de expresión del idioma maya auténtico.” The text conveys an underlying valorization of the indigenous language as a privileged locus of the essence of indigeneity. The result of the film’s approach to alterity results in dialogues that have unusual syntax in

Spanish, producing a lyrical and theatrical effect. The fact that language is a central device through with native alterity is rendered is highlighted by the presence of the white man’s translator, who translates the Mayas’ lyrical Spanish into colloquial

Mexican Spanish. By explicitly discussing its own use of language in these terms, the film suggests an essentializing approach that casts the Maya as Other from the

334 “…no sabemos cómo piensa el indio, ignoramos sus verdaderas aspiraciones, lo prejuzgamos con nuestro criterio, cuando deberíamos compenetrarnos del suyo para comprenderlo y hacer que nos comprenda. Hay que forjarse – ya sea temporalmente – una alma indígena” See Gamio, Forjando patria p. 25. 237

beginning of the film.

Although the Mayas in this film are distanced by ethnic essentialism and temporal displacement, they are not the idealized Indians of Contreras Torres’ films.

The film makes clear that the natives are in a moment of cultural and political demise.

No longer the great empire they once were, they are now cut off from civilization and live out their darkest era.335 Furthermore, the characters in the film are not flat and entirely good or evil as the majority of the native characters mentioned in this chapter so far. Affording the three principal characters full psychological complexity and emotions, the film demonstrates their flaws and desires. Lol has been promised to Uz, who is passionately in love with his betrothed. However Lol is indifferent towards

Uz. He refuses to accept the truth of her feelings, instead clinging to the hope of a union with her. Lol indulges her lust for the white foreigner, Miguel, without regard to the consequences that her actions could have for her community. Lastly, Zev, one of the community’s witches, is desperately in love with Uz, and machinates to drive the couple apart. At the same time, she and her mother are attacked by the community when they are blamed for the prolonged drought and for Lol and Uz’s separation. By producing a complex portrayal of conflicting motivations and desires, and dramatizing the events that take place within the love triangle and its community, the film clearly aims to connect the spectator to the characters’ humanity. In this way,

335 “Hace más de dos mil años…los Mayas habían fundado un poderoso imperio que se extendía desde Centro América hasta la peninsula de Yucatán. Aislados de la civilización y conservando restos de las constumbres y la religion de sus antepasados, ya mezclada con vagas ideas cristianas, viven ‘el tiempo de su noche.’”

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without abandoning essentialisms entirely, the film does demonstrate the will to move beyond ethnographic objectification and archetypal fossilizations. In fact, the film clearly outlines this intention in its introductory text pointing out that the film, “No pretende ser un documento etnográfico. Es una historia humana y viva de amor y de dolor.”336

In what I read as an extension of the film’s human approach to presenting indigeneity, it does not condemn or glorify native spirituality, but merely shows it as a source of beliefs that have a bearing on how events unfold in daily life from the native perspective. Examples in the film abound. After Uz and Lol go together to the

“piedra santa” to leave flowers so that the gods will foretell what the future holds for the couple, we learn that one fell to the north, and one to the south, indicating their future separation. When the natives burn Zev’s home along with her and her mother in retribution for bewitching Uz and helping Lol have sexual relations with the white man, Zev curses the natives, and foretells their socioeconomic misery in Mexico,

“Los hijos de vuestros hijos pedirán limosna entre los amos blancos. Se acabará para siempre vuestro nombre.” Also, the film confirms the community’s belief that Lol’s sexual transgression will be punished by the gods. After she has been with Miguel, lightning strikes without rain, which is indicated as a bad omen. After this point, a long drought begins, and rain only returns when Lol sacrifices herself by jumping into a cenote, finally appeasing the gods. By locating the spectator within the native’s

336 While Martin Lienhard has suggested that La noche de los mayas intends to transmit a sense of ethnographic authenticity, I believe that the film’s explicit disavowal of ethnographic accuracy and its discussion of the importance of language for rending indigeneity suggest the film’s greater investments in a sense of lyrical authenticity. See Lienhard, "La Noche De Los Mayas" p. 41. 239

belief system in order to follow the narrative, the film presents native spiritual convictions as legitimate ways of knowing and understating truth.

Furthermore, it is important to note that unlike in other films discussed, the presence of a non-indigenous person does not serve to highlight a contrast between white Christianity and native religiosity. Here, Miguel’s presence has absolutely no spiritual bearing, and he only brings his own self-interest and lust to the community.

In the scene in which Lol is to be flogged according to the native’s laws and religious beliefs (so that she may be purified after her offense), instead of having a “white man save a brown woman from bown men” (as takes place in Chilam Balam in order to highlight the supposed barbarity of the natives), here Uz steps in, using justifications rooted the natives’ own laws, to spare his beloved the flogging. In this way, the film rejects any possible comparison between the natives’ beliefs and Catholicism, and instead firmly locates the spectator within the indigenous world-view for the purpose of highlighting the emotional turmoil experienced by the characters from their perspective.

In Roberto Gavaldón’s Deseada, the Maya community represented is essentialized through the figures of the Maya woman and protagonist, Deseada, and the Spanish men Miguel and his father/uncle Don Lorenzo. As discussed in chapter 2, the film presents Deseada as a personification of Maya knowledge and customs. In a conversation she has with a painter as he completes an image, the film gives voice to an essentializing view according to which each individual Maya is perfectly in tune with the discrete cultural legacy and identity of the Maya people. When Deseada

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explains that the image that has occurred to him is similar to how ancient Mayas painted the goddess Ixchel, she elaborates on how that knowledge must have reached the painter:

DESEADA. …esas cosas no se aprenden en los libros. Se llevan por dentro,

en la sangre, de manera natural, sin que nadie nos las explique. Por eso tú

hiciste este dibujo.

PAINTER. Lo hice sin darme cuenta.

DESEADA. No hay necesidad de que te des cuenta. Es como si lo hubieras

prendido antes de nacer.

Furthermore, as the Manuel and Don Lorenzo arrive by train to the Yucatán peninsula, their feminization and romanticization of the area establishes the location in which the action of the film takes place as other-worldly:

DON LORENZO. …El poder de esta tierra es avasalladora. Pretendes

conquistarla y resultas tú el conquistado.

MANUEL. Es como una mujer que seduce, que fascina, y que lo arrastra a

uno sin que haya fuerza que ponerle…Aquí hasta los mismos nombres y

palabras parecen tener un embrujo.

Through these dialogues, the film clearly casts both the Maya people and their surroundings as exotic, mysterious, and non-rational. In this way, the spectator is exposed to indigeneity through a framework of alterity.

Like in La noche de los mayas, this alterity is by no means idealized, but has profound psychological and emotional complexity. The film’s protagonist is the most

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elaborate example. On the one hand, the film casts Deseada as a virtuous figure because she has delayed her own marriage for years, caring instead for her younger sister, Nicté. She has also arranged for Nicté to marry Manuel so that both women can move on with their lives. However, this dutiful and responsible characterization of Deseada is complicated by the fact that she falls in love with Manuel, going so far as to meet him in secret. The film centers largely on Deseada’s inner turmoil and conflicting desires. It captures her complexity and humanity by contrasting her composed social behavior with her private pining for Manuel. For example, when she is traveling home from the train station seated next to the local priest while

Manuel rides on horse back behind them, the shots of Deseada admiring Manuel through her compact mirror transmits both the budding of her secret desire and her awareness of its inappropriateness (see Figure 61). In particular, the close-up shot of

Deseada reacting to Manuel’s handsome reflection and holding handkerchief to her chest transmits her restrained delight (see Figure 62).

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Figure 61. Deseada admires Manuel discretely through her mirror.

Figure 62. Deseada is delighted by Manuel’s reflection.

In Deseada, part of the way in which the film suggests that life among the

Mayas in the Yucatan peninsula is exotic is through the presentation of non-logical spiritual forces that are at work, causing the events to unfold in an unfortunate way.

These forces are associated specifically with native beliefs, and with the 243

personification of indigenous spiritual knowledge in the film, the witch, Quiteria.

Although Deseada is attracted to Manuel, she persists in the original plan to have her sister Nicté marry the young man; however Manuel is so passionate about Deseada, that he refuses to follow through with the original arrangement. Furthermore, Manuel and Don Lorenzo become rivals as they are now both in love with the same woman, causing Manuel to shoot his own family member. When Deseada visits Quiteria she learns the root of their misfortunes. Many years before, Don Lorenzo had impregnated an indigenous woman, and she was brought to Quiteria to give birth. A western doctor intervened, delivering the baby by cutting the mother’s belly, causing her to die. Quiteria preserved the mother’s blood, which beckoned her son, Manuel, back to the place of his birth and turned father against son over a woman. Here not following indigenous medical customs has spiritual consequences, which unfold throughout the narrative. By making these beliefs the organizing principles that structure the plot, the film presents them as legitimate ways of knowing with clear and dramatic effects for the spectator to witness.

Beyond the significance of Maya spiritual beliefs for structuring the plot, the film also conveys their power in formal terms, using distinct visual devices to create a surreal effect when Deseda and Manuel encounter each other in the evening and kiss for the first time. When Manuel sees Deseada unexpectedly at a site of Maya ruins, both characters move and communicate as if in a trance. They have a telepathic conversation as dramatic and eerie nondiegetic music plays in the background. In the conversation, they express their intense desire for each other in terms that both

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contradict the narrative,337 “Vine a esperarte…Te esperaba desde hace muchos años.

Mi pensamiento te llamaba desde el fondo de la noche.” In addition to the abandonment of the conventions of realism utilized in the rest of the film, the fact that the scene takes place in the evening, and therefore occurs in darkness, also contributes to the effect of otherworldliness produced in this scene. Furthermore, the

Maya ruins on which the scene takes place function as an icon of native culture. The fact that the covert and surreal encounter occurs here suggests that the event is impelled by occult forces related to indigeneity, a point that is made explicit through the shot of Manuel and Deseada’s shadows approaching each-other and kissing on an ancient Maya ruin (see Figure 63). The connection between the native forces at work and the forbidden romance is also made clear in Deseada’s even more surrealist dream that prefigures the encounter. In it, she stands on a Maya pyramid as Manuel’s large head floats above her in the sky (see Figure 64). This bizarre mise-en-scene similarly links indigeneity and ritual practices with Deseada’s desire for Manuel.

Finally, the relationship between indigenous spirituality and the characters’ attraction is confirmed by Deseada herself. After the taboo kiss takes place, she posits that the event must have been rooted in a witchcraft, “No fui yo la que te dio ese beso. Fueron nuestras sombras las que se besaron. Una cosa como de brujería.”

337 In this scene Deseada acts and speaks out if character, pointing to the idea that the forces that are at work are stronger than her individual agency. 245

Figure 63. Deseada and Manuel’s kiss.

Figure 64. Deseada’s dream.

Another manner in which the film introduced native beliefs in a central way is by creating an explicit parallel between the Mayan myth of Ixchel and Itzam Na, and the fate of Deseada and Manuel. Early in the film Deseada tells her pupils the story about the Ixchel, the moon goddess, who was in love with the sun, and would tell her 246

parents she was weaving her wedding hammock in order stay as long as she could in the evening so that she might see the sun. Because the sun and moon can never meet, they yearn for each other eternally, and Ixchel’s hammock is never finished because she undoes what she has weaved so that she may linger again the following evening.

Realizing that her love for Manuel is also impossible, Deseada compares her own frustration with that of Ixchel. Also, because her infatuation has spoiled the possibility of her marrying Don Lorenzo, like Ixchel, she is destined never to marry.

Like La noche de los mayas, Deseada, does not present native spirituality as being negative per se, but instead suggests that disregarding native customs can unleash powerful forces because all actions have weight and consequence. Although

Catholicism is shown throughout the film through Deseada’s interactions with the local priest and when she goes to the chapel to pray for Manuel and Don Lorenzo, the film does not comment negatively on native spirituality through the juxtaposition. In fact, when the priest accuses Quiteria of being nothing more than a silly superstitious woman, Deseada defends her without antagonizing the priest, “Quiteria siempre dice cosas sabias, y escuchar su consejo es buena costumbre.” The film itself takes this position as Quiteria is the only character who understands and can make sense of the chaos that has erupted, while the local priest remains entirely oblivious. While

Deseada is presented as spiritually mestiza, (she is close with the local priest and there is a scene in which she goes to a chapel to pray) I would argue that in in the film she ultimately gives more weight to the indigenous spiritual tradition. This is suggested not only because Deseada seeks out Quiteria for counsel (and not the

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priest), and because she opts for solving the characters’ dilemma by sacrificing herself, jumping into a cenote, instead of pursuing redemption through her

Catholicism. Although I maintain that Deseada’s portrayal of native spirituality is not derogatory, at the same time, its representation of indigenous beliefs and their effects produce a depiction of the Yucatán as a world apart, where magic and occult forces are at play. Furthermore, the film presents the exoticized natives as national Others when during the opening credits of the film, Deseada is dedicated “entrañablemente a

México.”

While in Deseada native spirituality is presented as a marker of native exoticness, in Gavaldón’s 1960 film Macario, it is construed as an essential and interwoven thread of mexicanidad. The opening text of the film clearly suggests that religion is a privileged site of mestizaje, “El culto a los muertos data entre los indígenas de México, de ocho mil años, pero durante los siglos XVI y XVII sus costumbres y creencias se mezclaron con las del Cristianismo por lo que sus ritos y prácticas son hasta nuestros días una combinación de las dos culturas.”338 This film presents indigenous people in the process of becoming culturally mestizo, the predecessors to the 20th century mestizo national subject, and religion is the principal way in which the film foregrounds the nascent cultural hybridity. The narrative in

Macario is however, more deeply invested in displaying the aspect of spirituality that derives from the native tradition as the entire story revolves around Macario’s encounter and dealings with the personification of death. By seamlessly interweaving

338 This quote is taken from the opening text of the film Macario. 248

this aspect of native spirituality as coexisting coherently with Christianity from the perspective of the indigenous subject in the process of cultural transition, the film takes a novel stance regarding the relationship between native spirituality and national identity. No longer conceived as incompatible with western Christianity, or as an indication of cultural regression, here, spiritual synthesis emerges as a national signifier.

In Macario the indigenous are not so much presented as ethnically Other, as they are depicted as miserably Other. Unlike the films that have been discussed so far, the film does not distinguish their ethnic difference through dress, or language.

Instead, in keeping what Luis Villoro has outlined as the third moment of Mexican indigenismo, Macario and his family’s indigeneity is externalized through their socioeconomic marginality, an approach famously employed by Emilio Fernández in his indigenista films Maria Candelaria, Maclovia La Perla, and Rio Escondido. Macario and his family’s poverty is repeatedly signaled in the films’ initial sequences. For example, Macario’s children stand amazed at the gate of a large house gazing at the abundance of food that has been laid for a rich family’s dead family members. At dinner, there are scarcely enough beans to feed all of the couple’s children, which means that Macario must go hungry. Also, Macario toils tirelessly cutting trees and delivering lumber to the city, while his wife does laundry for wealthy families and does not even have the means to buy the supplies she needs to complete the orders she has. The result of these and other instances that highlight the family’s socioeconomic precarity is the sense that their existence is marked by a pervasive and

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irremediable misery that afflicts them constantly. Aesthetically, their tattered clothing and the register and colloquial quality of their speech underscore their underprivileged situation. In formal terms, their condition is also rendered through the use of dramatic non-diegetic music, a solemn acting style, and Gabriel Figueroa’s aestheticizing cinematography, which together have been identified by Jorge Ayala

Blanco as another example of the Mexican national cinema’s tendency towards preciosity.339

In Macario, the indigenous family’s poverty is also linked to the way in which the film presents the natives as fully human characters, and not the fossilized one- dimensional Indians we have seen in other films. The extreme circumstances they experience cause them to make ethically questionable decisions, and the film dramatizes their conflicting motivations and desires. For example, after having endured hunger repeatedly for the sake of his family, Macario breaks down, and confesses to his wife that he wishes to be selfish, and escape the enduring hunger that had plagued him for his entire life, “Ya no me voy a seguir muriendo de hambre poco a poco… No volveré a probar un bocado hasta que pueda tragarme un guajolote yo sólo, sin darle a nadie, sin aguantarme el hambre pa’ que los otros coman, aunque los otros sean mis hijos. Quiero comer yo sólo. Todo para mí.” Although until this point

Macario has personified the self-sacrificing patriarch, at this moment in the film his desperation causes him to shed this role and prioritize his own well-being over that of his family. The actions of his wife also help to present the natives as fully human

339 Ayala Blanco, La aventura del cine mexicano p. 150. 250

characters. Wanting desperately to please her husband, she steals a turkey from one of her clients and brings it to Macario. By revealing the way in which the native characters wrestle with their sense of duty in face of dire circumstances, the film emphasizes their complexity and humanity, and facilitates an emotional approximation on the part of the spectator.

As in the other two films discussed in this section, in Macario, the spectator is fully drawn into the title character’s subjective spiritual experience, as the spectator is the only witness to his interactions the Devil, God, and most importantly, Death.

After receiving the turkey from his wife, Macario goes off into the forest where he refuses to share the animal with the Devil (whom he suspects wants to trick him) and with God (whom he believes only wants him to perform a gesture of selflessness.)

When he sits down to eat and Death asks him to share the animal, Macario gives him half to postpone the end of his life. To express his gratitude Death gifts Macario water that can heal those who are deathly ill, unless Death signals that the person must die.

Throughout the film, the spectator witnesses all of Death’s apparitions as Macario heals numerous individuals with Death’s water, while the events remain inexplicable to the characters in the diegesis. In this way, an aspect of native spirituality is again fundamental for the structuring and comprehension of the events within the plot, and the spectator must adopt Macario’s subjective spiritual position in order to follow the narrative as it unfolds. In formal terms, Death’s supernatural presence is rendered through his sudden flashing appearance at the head or foot of the sick person’s bed.

Perhaps the most supernatural moment presented in the film is when Macario and the

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spectator are brought fully into Death’s domain: a massive cave with hundreds candles, each one being the life of a mortal that Death can extinguish at will (see

Figure 65). By placing the spectator in this spiritual context rooted in native beliefs, the film presents the indigenous spiritual tradition as a legitimate hermeneutical approach to the human experience, and in particular, to mortality.

Figure 65. Macario (right) with Death (left) in his cave.

As in Deseada, Catholicism does not function in Macario for the purpose of delegitimizing the native spiritual tradition. From the perspective of the protagonist’s subjectivity, both traditions coexist together in harmony, forming a unique world- view. Furthermore, while Deseada suggests the Church’s low estimation of native spiritual beliefs, here, the Church is represented as being entirely intolerant. Unsettled by Macario’s ability to predict who will die and who will live, he is summoned by the

Inquisition, whose interrogators are eager to condemn him for witchcraft. Through

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the film’s gloomy and predatory portrayal of the church, it suggests that the clergy are ignorant and shortsighted, entirely blind to how the native spiritual tradition operates, and paranoid about the possibility of it representing a threat to Christianity. Macario’s spiritual hybridity is incomprehensible and incoherent for the clergy, and having exposed how both traditions are interwoven unproblematically for Macario throughout the film, the Church is ultimately presented as a force that stifles the emerging Mexican subject’s complexity and dual cultural inheritance.340 Thus while in films such as Tepeyac and Chilam Balam Catholicism is a requisite for the foundation of the nation, in Macario it is an impediment to authentic national culture, to the extent that it operates to empty Mexicans of an aspect of the native tradition that is integral to their subjective specificity.

La noche de los mayas, Deseada, and Macario are films that display a greater affinity with the cultural impulse of post-revolutionary indigenismo-mestizaje in that they take up the native as an internal Other whose religious beliefs are the source of fantastical folklore that can be framed as typically Mexican. Because the native beliefs constitute information that renders the unfolding of the narrative intelligible to the spectator, through the viewing experience he/she is temporarily positioned within the native worldview. The fact that the films position the spectator alongside the native beliefs and the protagonists who subscribe to them, and not in opposition to

340 Salvador Carrasco’s 1998 film La otra conquista takes a similar position. For an analysis of how the film foregrounds the combination of Christian and native spiritualty as essential elements of Mexican identity see Miriam Haddu, “The Power of Looking: Politics and the Gaze in Salvador Carrasco’s La otra conquista,” Contemporary Latin American Cinema: Breaking into the Global Market, ed. Deborah Shaw (Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007) pp. 153-172.

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them (as occurs for example, in Tepeyac) suggests that the films do not ultimately cast native religions as repudiable, but instead foreground them in order to participate in the process of internal exoticization within the nation.

“Progress” and the Secular Critique of Native Beliefs

As discussed in the introduction to this chapter, 20th century indigenismo in

Mexico was characterized by a fundamental tension between the impulse to exalt indigenous culture in order define a post-revolutionary Mexican national identity, and the desire to modernize the country. Because of this tension, the aspects of indigeneity that were associated with backwardness, such as native medical knowledge, had to be replaced with western practices. In this section I will discuss scenes from three films, Lola Casanova (Dir. Matilde Landeta 1949), María

Candelaria (Dir. Emilio Fernández 1944), and Raíces (Dir. Benito Alazraki 1954), in order to show how they capture the indigenista discourse of progress. While all three films argue for the importance of indigenous people as a component of the national fabric, they delegitimize native medical knowledge as ineffective superstition in the name of modernization and advancement. In this way, this group of films poses a secular critique to what they present as native beliefs, and (like the religiously- oriented criticisms discussed in other films) also provides a commentary on the beliefs that have a legitimate place in the nation and those that should be excluded.

As discussed in previous chapters, Emilio Fernández’s films María

Candelaria and Maclovia point to the importance of improved national cohesion and

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the integration of indigenous people into the Mexican nation. Throughout his films, however, native spiritual beliefs do not figure prominently. María Candelaria and

Maclovia contain vague allusions to superstitious beliefs on the part of female antagonists. In the first film, Lupe suggests that María is bad luck for Lorenzo Rafael when she says that María “le va a echar la sal.” In the second, Sara is convinced that

Maclovia’s beauty is evil. Maclovia also briefly suggests the relationship between the native fishing customs and their sense of sacredness during the fishing sequence (see chapter 1). Beyond these examples however, the native spiritual tradition is largely omitted from Fernández’s depiction of indigeneity. As scholars have noted, he relies in part on simple but pious Catholicism to produce his idealized portrayals of the victimized Indians. María Candelaria, Lorenzo Rafael and Maclovia, all appear in scenes in which they turn to the Virgin in prayer and appear in scenes seeking the council of priests. Antagonists are not presented explicitly as pagan, but simply as less devout and religiously sincere in their Catholicism than the idealized Indians.

Although native beliefs are not an aspect that María Candelaria dwells on, the film does contain a scene with a traditional indigenous healer, which clearly casts the tradition the woman represents as superstitious and obsolete. When María Candelaria contracts malaria is near death, a doctor trained in western medicine and a native healer both arrive on the scene to cure her. Multiple aspects of this scene operate to discredit the native healer. First, her mispronunciation of words in Spanish and hyperbolic tone make her appear ignorant and incompetent compared to the doctors clear speech, elevated register, and collected comportment. The condescending tone

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with which he asks if she is a doctor, and pronounces his interpretation of her area of expertise, “Ah ya, osteóloga” makes plain the asymmetry of their positions. Also, he is dressed smartly complete with spectacles, hat, overcoat, waistcoat, a pocket watch for taking the patient’s pulse, and a medical kit. His body and face suggests he is of a mature and experienced age. The huesera (as she identifies herself) on the other hand arrives dressed in long fabrics that cover her body and head, carrying a large basket of plants and herbs. Also, the woman is very old, noticeably older than the doctor, which helps to present her and her ideas as obsolete artifacts. The fact that the old woman emerges when the doctor is already beginning his treatment also conveys that she is a nuisance who is only delaying the necessary medical attention that María needs, a point that is reinforced when she insists on treating her before the doctor gives the patient an injection.

Perhaps the most important way in which the film discredits the healer is by presenting her work as related to spiritual beliefs and not on science. When the healer walks in on the doctor treating María, in a superstitious interpretation of the figure of the Virgin of Guadalupe, she suggests that the Virgin will punish Lorenzo Rafael for allowing the doctor to heal María and take her life. Also, when defending her reputation against the doctor’s condescension, she boasts that she has cured all of the town’s sick with the help of God. The healer’s pseudo religious discourse contrasts sharply with the doctor’s exact questions about the patient’s condition and his methods (quinine and injections). By presenting the native healer in this manner, the film suggests that she and her techniques are an irrelevant and ineffective relic of the

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indigenous past. In this way, while the overall film points to a need to incorporate the natives into the nation, I believe it also provides a critical commentary regarding this specific aspect of native culture.

While in María Candelaria the doctor’s decision to allow the native healer to treat the patient ultimately casts the native tradition as useless, but benign, Lola

Casanova’s treatment of the subject is not only more severe, but also has clearer implications for national inclusion. The story of Lola Casanova, as Robert McKee

Irwin has noted, operates as an inverted account of the genesis of the Mexican people found in the Malinche/Cortés narrative.341 It tells the story of a criolla woman from

Guaymas, Sonora who is captured by a Seri Indian, Coyote Iguana, and decides to stay with the native community, eventually giving rise to the first mestizo settlement in the area. The film version of the legend and novels places great emphasis on mestizaje as the embodiment of national cohesion. Opening voice-over commentary suggests that mestizaje is at the center of the narrative, and exalts this hybridity as a privileged human manifestation,

…Hay algo como un soplo, como un aliento de alguien que agazapado

vigila y espera la oportunidad de amalgamarlo todo para plasmar un

hombre nuevo, y con él crear un mundo y un destino. Así se prepara el

advenimiento del mestizo, preciada floración humana del continente.

Los viejos mueren sin dejar de ser Seris. Los adultos envejecen sin

341 Robert M. K. Irwin, "Lola Casanova: La Malinche Invertida En La Cultura Nacional Mexicana." Literatura Mexicana. 18.1 (2007). pp. 59-87. 257

dejar de ser yoris.342 Los niños maduran con atributos de ambos. Se

habla en español y se piensa en indio.

Furthermore, Lola’s speech at the end of the film explicitly connects mestizaje with the birth of the Mexican nation, casting it as a harmonious synthesis, “Terminó el brioso señoría de los Seris. En cambio ahora todos somos México, y México entero es nuestro. La patria de los hijos se hizo inmensa, rica y apacible.” Through these moments of explicit commentary, the film clearly argues that indigeneity is a vital component of the nation, although its ambivalent portrayal of native spirituality will suggest that not all aspects of native culture are fit for the future mestizo nation.

While initially Lola Casanova represents native spirituality as a force of native social cohesion, as the film progresses, it acquires an increasingly negative overtone. When the films begins, the Seris have been violently attacked by white men, which causes them to flee near the ocean and regroup in order to take their revenge. At this point in the narrative, the Seri’s spiritual practices are what bring them together in their moment of distress. Their belief system is personified by the figure of Tórtola Parda, who has the title “madre del concilio” and is the group’s witch. As the narrative evolves, Tórtola Parda becomes the antagonist of the story.

She does everything in her power to impede Coyote Iguana’s marriage to Lola out of jealousy. Using her political and spiritual position, she threatens Coyote Iguana that marrying a white woman brings misfortune and that their children would be plagued by the “mal de los yoris.” After the leader of the white men who led the attack has

342 In the film, this is the Seri word for the non-natives. 258

been killed, Tórtola Parda supports another of the tribe’s warriors to vie for power against Coyote Iguana in order to persist in a crusade of revenge. Finally, when

Coyote Iguana, Lola, and other members of the tribe go to Guaymas to sign a peace treaty, the faction Tórtola Parda has started burns the other group’s homes, starting and internal conflict that ends Coyote Iguana’s death. By making the indigenous spiritual leader into the film’s primary antagonist who is incompatible with the film’s message of mestizaje and peace, the film suggests that she, and the spiritual tradition she represents have no place in the future Mexican nation.

Lola Casanova functions as Tórtola Parda’s opposite in nearly every way.

Lola’s rejection of Tórtola’s magic and superstition through western medical healing and logic is one of the clearest ways in which the film proposes that Lola’s values

(love and unity through mestizaje) are preferable to Tórtola’s insistence on the tribe’s isolation and vengeance. While Lola is being held prisoner by the Seris, Tórtola orders Lobo Taíno to amputate the hand of a boy who has been bitten by shark in order to “alejar el espiritu del tiburón,” Horrified, Lola convinces the boy’s grandmother to let her treat him. Using sterilized water and bandages, Lola is able to heal the boy. This positive result improves her standing in the Seri community and antagonizes Tórtola. Lola has revealed the unnecessary extremeness and limitations of Tórtolas witchcraft. Lola also dismisses Tórtola’s powers later when the young

Seri women warn Lola that giving Coyote Iguana some of her hair would bind her to him and that if Tórtola ever got ahold of some, she would use her magic to make Lola think and sickly. Lola flatly rejects Seri superstitious beliefs and practices by

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dismissing Tórtola’s magic (the basis of her power in the community), “Llevaselos.

No creo en los poderes de la hechicería, como tampoco creo en entregar mi corazón con mi pelo.” By showcasing the contrast between Lola and Tórtola, the film delegitimizes her native spiritual practices, not on the basis of heresy or barbarity, but on secular values of health and logic (personified by Lola). On the one hand, Lola is the introducer of western medicine and reason and an architect of the future mestizo nation forged in love. On the other, Tórtola Parda insists on superstition and political separatism. By exalting the construct of the nation rooted in Lola’s values, the film not only discredits Tórtola’s political position, but also the spiritual tradition she represents. Native spirituality is clearly presented as not having a place in the great new mestizo nation with Tórtola’s demise and exclusion from the new mestizo settlement, Pozo-Coyote.

Unlike Fernández’s films and Lola Casanova, Raíces offers a sharp critique of the nation at the time the film was made by denouncing the continued marginalization of indigenous peoples. In this way, it calls into question the degree to which Mexico is a truly consolidated political and social entity (see chapter 1). Interestingly, even in a film that adopts a less celebratory stance with respect to the state of national cohesion, “Nuestra Señora” similarly presents native medicinal practices in a negative manner. This point is particularly noteworthy because, as discussed in chapter 1, the film explicitly counters common prejudices about indigenous peoples. However, in the film native healing practices do not constitute another legitimate form of culture and knowledge (such as the carnival, naming practices and icons justified by the

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priest in the film’s final scene). Instead, native medicine will represent one of the many dangers that natives are exposed in their current state of marginalization from national life. The representation of native medicinal practices therefore forms part of the film’s exhortation to act in order to improve the natives’ circumstances.

The scene in “Nuestra Señora” in which a native midwife is trying to deliver

Mariano and his wife’s baby clearly presents the indigenous assistant as a menace.

When Mariano returns to his wife after fetching the INI doctor and Jane, he reenters his home begging the midwife to leave, and she refuses with an aggressive tone. In her response, she appears more concerned the prospect of having to giving up her patient than with the patient’s well-being. The combination of the dramatic and tense non-diegetic music and the mother’s repeated laments create a soundtrack that helps to establish the scene’s troublesome atmosphere. A fire that has been set inside the home produces smoke, conferring an ominous quality to the mise-en-scene. Close-ups of Mariano emphasize his emotional distress, caused by the midwife, as he watches his ailing wife being subjected to the woman’s notions. By showing how the native healer causes pain for both Mariano and his wife, the film suggests that the woman’s ignorance is dangerous, if not deadly. Furthermore, the film suggests that her practices are rooted in spiritual beliefs and not science when she is captured lighting candles and leaves in a receptacle. As soon as the INI doctor and Jane arrive, the non- diegetic music becomes sweeter. They reverse everything the native midwife had done (extinguish the fire, open the doors, and place the woman on her back instead of on her hands and knees). They successfully deliver the baby, and the characters’

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happiness is reflected in their smiles and in the celebratory tone of the non-diegetic music. Because of the drastic shift in tone created by sound and the mise-en-scene in this scene, the film clearly casts the native midwife as a danger with which poor natives must content, and suggests there is a need to spread western medicinal practices to indigenous peoples. Given that in Raíces the use of native medical practices is a symptom of indigenous people’s marginalization, an improvement of their condition requires replacing these practices with western medicine.

The films in this section speak to the multifaceted and sometimes contradictory goals of 20th century Mexican indigenismo. While all three films expose the plight of indigenous people and support their integration into the nation, they also suggest that native spiritual beliefs that are expressed through traditional healing and medicinal practices are counterproductive for the improvement of native people’s lives. Because such practices are presented as being incompatible with a specific notion of national progress, in these films, native spirituality is newly delegitimized on secular grounds.

Shock and Horror: Reimagining Native Spiritual Beliefs in Genre Films

A discussion of the representation of native spiritual practices in Mexican film would not be complete without addressing how they operate as a fantastical pre- national backdrop in darker genre films. Focusing on two specific films, El signo de la muerte (1939) and La momia azteca (1957), I will discuss how indigenous religion and spirituality are imagined in these films in order to supplement the background

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information that forms the basis of the films’ genre-specific structure (that of the murder mystery in the case of El signo del la muerte, and that of the horror film in the case of La momia azteca). Furthermore, I will point to how the films’ usage of native spirituality in this particular manner is also compatible with indigenista ambitions as the films imply that mid 20th century Mexico is an evolved and modern country in which indigenous beliefs are distant legends. By using native spirituality in the present as the catalyst for shock and horror, the films attribute a new function to indigenous religious beliefs within the national imaginary from the nonnative perspective, and in this way, constitute genre films that are uniquely Mexican.

Native spiritual beliefs are reimagined in El signo de la muerte in order to form the basis of the film’s murder mystery, and one of the most crucial aspects to reframing human sacrifice in this way is the film’s narrative structure. The film begins with images of pre-Hispanic ruins and idols, and then presents a prophecy which foretells the arrival of the Spanish in Mexico. According to the prophecy, the indigenous will remain conquered until a descendant of Quetzalcoatl sacrifices four predestined young women.343 Next a montage sequence shows that the prophecy comes true as the Spanish arrive, knock down native idols, and depose indigenous rulers. The film then flashes forward, and the story that unfolds revolves around the mysterious murder of multiple young women in Mexico City. Eventually, it is revealed that a professor of archaeology and his servants carry out the murders in

343 “Vendrán del mar hombres blancos y barbados a asolar estos reinos y se derrumbarán los templos y dormirán los dioses inmortales hasta el día en que el último descendiente de Quetzalcóatl logre ofrendar a los dioses el corazón de cuatro doncellas predestinadas. – Ese día de gloria los corazones de los hombres blancos se secarán y el hijo de Quetzalcóatl reinará sobre todos sus súbditos.” 263

order to restore the Aztec empire in Mexico. Here the trope of human sacrifice, which as we have seen has long been the most problematic aspect of native religiosity for thinkers and cultural producers in Mexico, is recast as murder in the contemporary context. By showing the prophecy in the introductory sequence prior to the conquest, the film presents the trope of sacrifice within the native context, as a condition that must be met to appease the gods and restore political autonomy. The film then reframes the notion of human sacrifice as murder in the 20th century, and as the basis for a murder mystery by privileging the quest to uncover the murderer as a goal of the narrative. The film accomplishes this by keeping the identity of the murderer a secret until the end of the film, and by following two young reporters as they vie to get to the bottom of the mystery first. Furthermore, the film presents the professor and his manservant as a highly suspicious characters throughout the film, but denies the spectator absolute proof of their culpability until the end. In this way, all of the scenes involving these two characters focus on whether or not the characters will incriminate themselves. The way in which the 20th century narrative is structured is crucial to making the idea of indigenous human sacrifice into material that forms the basis for a murder mystery film.

Additionally, the film’s stylistic aspects operate to re-present human sacrifice as a shocking murder within the conventions of the murder mystery. In contrast to other types of sacrifice scenes discussed in this chapter in which the act of sacrifice is rendered fully visible as an opportunity for the spectacle of the Other (such as in

Chilam Balam), here the sacrifice scenes simultaneously display the act of sacrifice as

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spectacle, but conceal the crucial piece of information that allows the film to work as a mystery: the identity of the murderer. The long shot is used to display the complexity of the ceremony. Four men hold the victim down against her will. An officiator holds an object with his arms raised in a gesture of offering before an idol that is producing smoke and as lit from below. The scene’s low key lighting and ominous non-diegetic music helps to set the macabre and ominous atmosphere. A close up of the victim’s face as she struggles against the men with her mouth covered and her eyes open wide suggests that the sacrifice is a predatory act. The victim’s scream as she is stabbed is the source of one of the genre’s most recognizable conventions. Lastly, the shot of her lifeless body with blood streaming out of her chest functions as image that confirms the horrific nature of what has taken place (see

Figure 66). Through the use of these stylistic devices, El signo de la muerte presents the acts of sacrifice as shocking and ghastly murders, and in this way, translates an aspect of the indigenous belief system into sensationalized murder-mystery material.

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Figure 66. A slain sacrificial victim in El signo de la muerte (1939).

The way in which El signo de la muerte features native religious beliefs displays the same ambivalence toward indigeneity that can be observed in the thought of 20th century indigenistas and indigenista films discussed in this chapter. On the one hand, the film presents the Aztec beliefs as being legitimate. As the opening sequence of the film suggests, the Indians accurately foretell the arrival of the Spanish and the conquest. Also, the idea that there are four predestined maidens is confirmed as the film shows through the perspective of the professor, the temporary appearance of the sign (in the form of a snake) on the different women’s bodies. Thus, the film does not dismiss the indigenous belief as absurd, but on the contrary, suggests that they are based in truth. However, the film does make plain that the practice of human sacrifice in contemporary Mexico is unacceptable because it lies outside the nation’s current parameters of law and order. This is obvious through the police investigations on the murders, the media’s interest in the story, and the ultimate inculpation of the 266

murdered. Furthermore, the prophecy is presented as being even more taboo when it is revealed that the professor’s daughter is the last of the predestined women.

Following through with the prophecy would require him to violate his paternal responsibility and affection. By presenting native beliefs as based in truth, but taboo in the present, El signo de la muerte simultaneously affords value to the native tradition while emphasizing the existence of an evolved, distinct, ordered, and modern national present. In the process, the film also constitutes a cultural product that conforms to the conventions of a genre film, but that can be consumed as being more closely tied to the national imaginary than Hollywood imports.

In the horror film, La momia azteca, the genesis of the film’s monster is rooted in Aztec religious beliefs and practices. Dr. Almada tries out his hypnosis technique on his girlfriend, Flor, and finds out that in a past life she was an Aztec woman, Xóchitl, who was destined to be sacrificed to the gods. Because she and a warrior were deeply in love, they attempted to escape, but were caught and punished.

Xóchitl was sacrificed, but the warrior was buried alive with a golden breastplate and bracelet indicating the location of the Aztec’s treasure. Dr. Almada leads a team into the temple to retrieve the breastplate in order to demonstrate the validity of his hypnotic theory. However because of the curse of the Aztec gods, in retrieving the breastplate Dr. Almada awakes the mummy and unleashes his wrath. As a result, the mummy kidnaps Flor, but she is later rescued by Dr. Almada. By presenting native religious beliefs as the explanation for how the film’s monster was created and

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presents a threat for the 20th century characters, La momia Azteca appropriates and reimagines native religiosity and converts it into horror movie material.

The stylistic conventions used to present the Aztec sacrifice/ritual scene helps to associate native religiosity with the paranormal. To begin with, the scene is narrated by a hypnotized Flor, who is reliving the sacrifice that took place four centuries earlier. Visually, the sense of otherworldliness is conveyed through the presence of fog near the actors’ feet, their slow, stoic movements, and their silence

(see Figure 67). Xochitl appears in repeated close-ups as if in a trance, staring blankly and never blinking. Furthermore the scene has a long duration, with several sustained shots of the actors’ motions, and with several similar shots shown multiple times. The long shot is used to render every detail of the ceremony visible. I suggest that the film conveys the Aztec sacrifice in great length and detail precisely because it contains the information that explains all of the events that will occur to the 20th century characters. However, its visual and auditory style also helps to associate the indigenous ritual with the abnormal and the mysterious, re-presenting native religiosity within a film genre that relies precisely on unrealistic premises.

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Figure 67. A highly choreographed paranormal Aztec sacrifice scene in La momia azteca (1957)

In La momia Azteca, the function of native spirituality is simultaneously upheld as a legitimate pre-national belief system, and disavowed as incompatible in the Mexican present. The sacrifice scene displays the native’s solemnity, and organization. The killing is not random or violent, but a highly orchestrated and sober event. Also, in the film all of the native beliefs and curses actually come true, which suggests that native beliefs are not absurd, but founded in truth. At the same time, the film also suggests that native spirituality should not be summoned into the present, which is exactly what Dr. Almada does by removing the breastplate from the mummy’s domain. Native beliefs and practices must remain in the historical past,

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literally entombed. Otherwise they erupt in the present in a horrific and abominable manner.

While initially among the 20th century characters, the scientific discourse seems to dominate their interactions and identity, when the mummy appears and exceeds all human, rational or scientific explanation the contemporary figures rely on

Christianity. For example, when Dr. Almada has shared his study and shown other scientists the breastplate, a colleague of his suggests that the only person who can save them in case the Aztec gods’ curse is unleashed is Jesus. The scientist’s suggestion is confirmed when Flor’s father finally subdues the mummy through a religious and not a scientific weapon. Using a cross, he obliges the mummy to cower back into his tomb (see Figure 68). Therefore, while contemporary Mexico is presented as being characterized by science, and by national structures for law and order (the police activity), ultimately, in La momia azteca, mid 20th century Mexico’s the defining characteristic with respect to the native past is Catholicism. In this way, in film that seems like an unlikely place to find reflections on alterity and national identity, here the Mexican self continues to is define itself vis-à-vis indigeneity in terms of religion.

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Figure 68. Flor’s father subdues the Aztec mummy with a Christian cross.

Conclusion

Throughout Mexican indigenista thought, native spirituality has been an important point of reflection because it was the original justification for the conquest and the delegitimization of indigenous cultures and peoples. Those who have sought to recuperate the Indian as a worthy basis and/or component of Mexican national identity have had to contend, in one way or another, with the negative way in which the indigenous spiritual tradition was interpreted as a result of colonialism. Here I have considered how 20th century Mexican films that I term indigenista (in the sense that they are about indigenous people and somehow comment on national identity from the non-native perspective) represent indigenous spirituality. I have argued that

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through their different approaches to native religions, these films transmit distinct interpretations of the role of religion in the forging of national unity and comment on what makes up Mexican national identity in the present. While Tepeyac and Chilam

Balam both suggest that native religiosity has positive aspects, they present human sacrifice as an inadmissible point of alterity that had to be neutralized for indigeneity to eventually become a component of the national. Miguel Contreras Torres’ films

Zítari and Tribu present idealized depictions of pre-Columbian natives in which virtue exists unproblematically within paganism, and no suggestion is made that the natives require religious improvement. La noche de los mayas, Deseada, and Macario oblige the spectator to view indigenous beliefs from the native perspective, and suggest that they also form part of national culture, if only as folklore. María

Candelaria, Lola Casanova, and “Nuestra Señora” suggest that native religious beliefs are objectionable to the extent that they jeopardize the practice of western medicine, and in this way constitute a secular argument against some aspects of native religiosity in the national present. Lastly, genre films such as El signo de la muerte and La moma azteca use religious spiritual alterity in order to elicit shock and horror and in order to define an evolved and modern mid 20th century national self.

In exposing and analyzing the variety of ways in which indigenous religiosity is represented in film from the non-native perspective, I have highlighted the saliency of religion as a recurring discourse of indigenous alterity in Mexican cinema.

Furthermore, the fact that the different approaches outlined here do not follow a chronological pattern suggests a lack of consensus regarding the place of both native

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religiosity and Catholicism in Mexican national identity. What this chapter does put forth is that these films can be taken as vying proposals for how native religiosity can be managed in order to both to both support the idea of Mexico’s indigenous heritage and mark 20th century Mexico as an evolved nation.

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Conclusion

This dissertation has taken the notion of indigenismo – broadly defined – as its point of departure for interrogating the cinematic representation of indigenous people in Mexican film production from the first half of the 20th century. With an understanding of the term not only as related to a revolutionary political discourse that foregrounds the plight of native peoples within a prerevolutionary socioeconomic oppression, but more generally, as the imagining of indigeneity for the purpose of reifying the nonnative sense of self, I have analyzed a wide variety of films. While I have considered canonical indigenista films, I also take into account films that do not usually surface in filmic indigenista genealogies either because of their early production date, obscurity, and/or perceived lack of artistic merit. In so doing, I have put forth a more complete and complex account of how natives have been depicted throughout Mexican film production foregrounding how the films highlight the contours of the nonnative national subject.

Furthermore, I have approached indigenismo as a nationalist cultural phenomenon that is symptomatic of the postcolonial condition in Mexico. In concert with others who understand indigenismo-mestizaje as a racist national construct that weighs Mexico’s cultural and ethnic differences unevenly in order to afford primacy to hispanicity and “whiteness,” this study considers cinema as a tool that has

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functioned to propose and reinforce racial and ethnic hierarchies for Mexican spectators within a nationalizing paradigm and rhetoric. In order to underscore how the films craft natives as Others that are symbolically relevant for the hegemonic

Mexican national identity, but not its ideal subjects or representatives, I have identified three motifs which I believe illustrate how cinema has captured some of the tensions inherent to the indigenista ideological proposal: the ethnographic discourse, the privileging of whiteness, and spiritual Otherness.

Taking into account the significance of anthropology as a discipline in post- revolutionary Mexican indigenismo, chapter 1 argues that indigenous-themed films from the first half of the 20th century registered the ethnographic as a mode of presenting indigeneity. In so doing, I posit that the films engage in the dynamic of antropología patria, “educating” spectators about the indigenous as part of national reality, but clearly marking and enforcing a disassociation between the objectified native and the “true” mestizo national subject/spectator. Rooting my analyses in ethnographic film theory, I identify the presence of several variants of the ethnographic in Mexican cinema of the period: the scientific research film

(Peregrinación a Chalma, 1922); lyrical ethnography (Maclovia, 1948); and the commercial entertainment film (Maclovia, 1948 and Sombra verde, 1954). While on the one hand I emphasize that the ethnographic seeps into several films in a parenthetical manner, I also highlight the presence of meta-critical reflections on the role of anthropology in Mexican society within films such as Raíces (1954) and

Tarahumara (cada vez más lejos) (1965).

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Chapter 2 addresses indigenous-themed Mexican films as privileged spaces for interrogating the contradiction between the rhetorical celebration of indigeneity in post-revolutionary Mexican nationalism, and the persistent preference for

“whiteness” in Mexican society and culture. Acknowledging the ways in which the notion of “white” physical capital evolved in the context of nation building after independence from Spain through the 20th century, I suggest that the presence of

“whiteness” in indigenous-themed films in order to denote desirability, virtue, and protagonism in the narrative are intelligible when understood as effects of the colonization of desire and subjectivity. I submit that within these dynamics,

“whiteness” operates as a “hook” that entices spectators to desire and identify with indigenous characters, when in Mexican social reality indigeneity was (and is) still stigmatized. In this way, “whiteness” serves to facilitate the appropriation of the native in a nationalist vein. I put forth that that “whiteness” has been used to reimagine and reinvent the pre-Columbian inhabitants of Mexico and the regional tehuana type. In addition, films with explicitly revolutionary messages employ a visual language that is predicated on a veneration of “whiteness,” which contradicts their explicitly decolonial political discourse. By the late 60’s when indigenismo had declined in cultural relevance for the nationalist project and in Mexican film production, the Maria Isabel films adopt “whiteness”-as-indigeneity in order to comment on modern Mexican society, and defend traditional values. Lastly, I put forth that “whiteness” has also been used for rendering the appeal of the indigenous

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man, and his yearning for the nonnative woman in several Mexican films underscores the raced and gendered politics of attraction and desire.

The point of departure for the third chapter is the role that the spiritual beliefs of the aboriginal peoples of Mexico have played in their Othering on behalf of defenders of Spanish colonialism, proponents of Mexican independence, 19th century liberal politicians, as well as revolutionary and post-revolutionary nationalists. My exploration of the way in which native religious beliefs have been presented on screen suggests that while all of the films in some way acknowledge the merit of pre-

Columbian cultures, they offer a multiplicity of positions concerning the role that native beliefs should play in the national hegemonic identity, and do not obey a clear chronology. While Tepeyac (1917) and Chilam Balam (1955) suggest the fundamental role of Catholicism for the founding of the Mexican nation and the unfit nature of pre-Columbian paganism for this project, Zitari (1931) and Tribu (1935) do not present pre-Columbian beliefs as impediments to the idealization of archaic natives within the national imaginary. The 20th century cultural indigenista impulse is evident in La noche de los mayas (1939), Deseada (1951), and Macario (1960) which refrain from commenting positively or negatively on native beliefs, instead placing the spectator within the indigenous person’s world view – now a uniquely Mexican source of internally exotic folklore. The 20th century indigenista secular critique of native beliefs surfaces in Lola Casanova (1949), María Candelaria (1944), and

Raíces (1954) during instances in which spiritually affiliated native medicinal practices are cast as dangerous and backwards, which constitute a new criteria for

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dismissing beliefs that are incompatible with the new modern mestizo nation. Finally,

I engage the reimagining of native religious beliefs as a backdrop for Mexican murder mystery and horror films, El signo de la muerte (1939) and La momia azteca (1957) in order to suggest that in these films ancient indigenous beliefs serve to assert the modernity, law, and order of mid 20th Mexico.

The research presented here can be expanded and enriched in several ways.

First, the study would benefit from the inclusion of additional films that I did not have access to because of logistical constraints. Second, in the future I wish to supplement my initial exploration of the three primary discourses addressed here with additional primary sources from Mexican print culture including reviews of the films, promotional material, interviews, advertisements, etc. In this way, I hope to more extensively address topics such as the star texts of specific actors and actresses, the production contexts of different films (which could help explain the ideological variety I have demonstrated among the indigenista films), as well as contemporary cultural and political debates that could shed further meaning on how ethnography, race and religion would have been understood in relation to the so-called “indigenous question.”

My intention in carrying out this research has been to illustrate how the cinematic indigenismos of Mexico engage in a negotiation of meaning in order to define hegemonic national mexicanidad through the representation and construction of the native. I believe the line of inquiry I have pursued here could point to similar

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questions about how film registers and participates in the racial politics of national identity, specifically in relation to blackness in Mexico.

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Filmography

Ahí está el detalle. Dir. Juan Bustillo Oro. Grovas-Oro Films, 1940.

Ánimas Trujano (el hombre importante). Dir. Rodríguez, Ismael. ARS, Películas Rodríguez, UNA, 1962.

Batalla en el cielo. Dir. Carlos Reygadas. No Dream Cinema; Mantarraya Produccions; Tarantula; Arte France Cinéma; Universidad de Guadalajara; ZDF/Arte, 2005.

Cabiria. Dir. Giovanni Pastrone. Itala Film, 1914.

Chilam Balam. Dir. Íñigo de Martino. CLASA Films Mundiales, 1955.

Deseada. Dir. Roberto Gavaldón. Producciones Sanson, 1951.

El amor de María Isabel. Dir. Federico Curiel. Peliculas Rodríguez; Peroducciones Guillermo de la Parra, 1970.

El indio. Dir. Armando Vargas de la Maza. Nuestro México, 1939.

El juicio de Martín Cortés. Dir. Alejandro Galindo. Estudios Churubusco; TUCSA, 1974.

El violetero. Dir. Gilberto Martínez Solares. Producciones Brooks, 1960.

Inauguración del tráfico internacional de Tehuantepec, El señor presidente abre la reja, Panoramic de tren presidencial. Dir. Salvador Toscano. 1907.

Janitzio. Dir. Carlos Navarro. Compañía Cinematográfica Mexicana, 1934.

La india bonita. Dir. Antonio Helú. Aztla Fims, 1938.

La momia azteca. Dir. Rafael Portillo. Cinematográfica Calderón S. A., 1957.

La noche de los mayas. Dir. Chano Urueta. Fama Films, 1939. 290

La otra conquista. Dir. Salvador Carrasco. CONACULTA; FONCA; IMCINE, 1998.

La rebellion de los colgados. Dir. Alfredo B. Crevenna’s. José Kohn, 1954.

La violetera. Dir. Luis César Amadori. Producciones Benito Perojo; Trevi Cinematografica; VIC Film, 1958.

La Zandunga. Dir. Fernando de Fuentes. Films Selectos, 1938.

Lola Casanova. Dir. Matilde Landeta. TACMA, 1949.

Macario. Dir. Roberto Gavaldón, CLASA Films Mundiales, 1960.

Maclovia. Dir. Fernández, Emilio. Cinematográfica Filmex S. A., 1948.

María Candelaria. Dir. Fernández, Emilio. Films Mundiales, 1944.

María Isabel. Dir. Federico Curiel. Peliculas Rodríguez; Peroducciones Guillermo de la Parra, 1968.

Nanook of the North. Flaherty, Robert J. Pathé Exchange, 1922.

Nosotros los pobres. Dir. Ismael Rodríguez. Producciones Rodríguez Hermanos, 1948.

Peregrinación a Chalma. Museo Nacional de Historia, Archaología e Historia, 1922.

Raiders of the Lost Ark. Dir. Spielberg, Steven. Paramount, 1981.

Raíces. Dir. Alazraki, Benito. Teleproducciones, 1954.

Redes. Dir. Fred Zinnemann and Emilio Gómez Muriel. Azteca Films, Secretaría de Educación Pública, 1936.

Sombra verde. Dir. Gavaldón, Roberto. Producciones Calderón S.A., 1954.

¡Qué viva México! Dir. Sergei Eisenstein. The Mexican Picture Trust, 1932.

Tehuantepec. Dir. Miguel Contreras Torres . Hispano Continental Films, 1954.

Tepeyac. Dir. José Ramos, Carlos E. González and Fernando Sáyago. Films Colonial, 1917.

291

Tarahumara (cada vez más lejos). Dir. Alcoriza, Luis. Producciones Matouk, 1965.

Tierra de pasiones. Dir. José Benávides Jr. Estudios CLASA, 1943.

Tizoc. Dir. Ismael Rodriguez. Producciones Matouk, 1957.

Tonta tonta pero no tanto. Dir. Fernando Cortés. América Films, 1972.

Tribu. Dir. Miguel Contreras Torres. 1934

Zítari (el templo de las mil serpientes). Dir. Miguel Contreras. 1931.

292