The Unmaking of Indigeneity
Indigenous Representations in the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.12797/Poliarchia.05.2017.09.04Keywords:
Mexican revolution, Mexican Golden Age, Mexican cinematography, indigenous representation, national identityAbstract
This paper contributes to the debate on racialized and deracialized representations of the category of indigeneity in Mexican cinematography during the Golden Age (1935–1959) as a response to the post‑revolutionary nation‑building project. Based on the analysis of representative movies of that period, I argue that the cinematography reflected indigenista public policies, aimed at homogenizing the society by incorporating indigenous people to the society as Mexicans. Insofar as the state narrative displaced the notion of indigeneity towards the “past” – as a foundation of the national cultural heritage – movie industry romanticized and exoticized the indigenous, but at the same time, it portrayed indigenous characters as submissive and even obsolete, thus perpetrating the colonial archetype of oppression. Images situated in the present, however, rejected any ethnic differentiation, and instead replaced it with a class‑based model of social interactions, but in reality the “raceless” ideal of national identity would continue to ascribe indigeneity to lower social strata.
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