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2002 |
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 Alfonso Bedoya The quintessential Mexican bandit |
Let's see some real Latinos
on screen, not just bandits
By ELIAS CASTILLO
of TheColumnists.com
Don't think the Hollywood image of Latinos healed itself overnight just because Benicio Del Toro won an Oscar last year playing a heroic undercover drug agent. Del Toro may have a little statue on his mantel, but otherwise it's the same old same old.
For decades we've been
brainwashed about our concept of Latin America. Conjure up a
Hollywood vision of anything south of the border and it will
be peopled by either musical, corrupt, greasy, fat, unshaven,
incompetent, happy-go-lucky or vicious characters--usually with
one shiny gold tooth and, naturally, Indian features because
Latin Americans with European features never were bad guys until
very recently.
Way back in the 1940s, Walt Disney snowed us with those images
of a wise-cracking, umbrella carrying parrot from Brazil named
Joe Carioca and pictures of tropical beaches, Mexican mariachis
and happiness everywhere.
The rest of Hollywood did likewise. In films like "Road
to Rio," Bing Crosby and Bob Hope teamed up to frolic in
lavish hotels and white, pristine beaches along Brazil's Rio
de Janeiro coastline.
And, in virtually every film of that genre, Carmen Miranda sashayed
onto the screen, jiggling her two big maracas beneath a tall
turban topped with bananas, mangos and papaya, mile-long eyelashes
and an equally mile-wide toothy grin. Everyone loved everyone
in Latin land.
The other extreme was, well, extreme.
Latin America, in particular Mexico, through Hollywood's eye,
was a country teeming, nay, swarming with greasy, fat,
dirty, cruel bandits––very naughty and violent toward
women and fast with knives--so fast, that in a nanosecond they
could cut out a victim's heart with a quick flick of a big blade.
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gets violent in his first Oscar-winning role in 1952 'Viva Zapata!' |
The most famous portrayer of bandits was Mexican actor Alfonso Bedoya. Who can forget his classic line: "Ayyy don't got to show you no stinkin' badge!" which Bedoya snarls at Humphrey Bogart in the classic "Treasure of the Sierra Madre," one of the few films that accurately depicted rural Mexico of the 1930s.
There never was any in-between images, portraying the struggle by good Latinos to unseat dictators and establish democratic governments. Unlike films about life in European countries or Europeans in America, Hollywood's version of Latin America and Latin Americans was either frolicsome or violent. There never were any screenplays about middle-class Latin America families, either in the United States or in their home country, hurdling or suffering personal obstacles or, for that matter, presenting a true and accurate vision of Latin America--the positive along with the warts.
For films of families, such as "I Remember Mama," Hollywood focused its efforts on European nationalities. You name it, and U.S. filmdom made it. Movies depicted positive images of Italians, Irish, Jews, English, French and others. Mexicans or Mexican-Americans? Forget it. Despite the fact that America's population has consisted of millions of Hispanics since the Southwest became part of the United States in 1848 and Puerto Rico became a U.S. territory, Hollywood's moguls, just as they had done to African-Americans, used Hispanic actors only for insulting stereotyped ethnic roles. Not until the late 80's did that begin to change--but just ever so slightly with a handful of films like "The Milagro Beanfield War," "La Bamba," and "Stand and Deliver."
For decades, talented veteran hispanic actors like Anthony Quinn, Ricardo Montalban and Gilbert Roland were relegated to the "typical" Latin slots––hot blooded Latin types. Not until the late 50's did the studios discover that those actors, especially Quinn, who was born in Mexico, had real acting talent. Still, those roles were few and far between. Quinn managed to win an Oscar for best supporting actor in "Viva Zapata" in which he portrayed the drunken brother of Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata, played by non-Latino Marlon Brando.
Quinn's Oscar was a breakthrough, all right--for him. He won a second Oscar in 1956, playing artist Paul Gauguin, and went on to play many characters of different nationalities, many of them very positive images. Few of those, though, were Latino.
All that stereotyping later handicapped efforts by the U.S. government
in the 1990s to convey the importance of Latin America to this
country. How could anyone raised on Hollywood's version of Latin
America possibly believe that Latin America had anything of true
value? In the general public's eye it was a region that bubbled
over with lines of conga dancers, ferocious bandits and squealing
beach girls. If Hollywood and the past administrations in Washington,
D.C., were to be believed, Latins were worthy of buying only
U.S. cars, but not of purchasing U.S. irons, refrigerators or
replacing dirt-floors with concrete. It was difficult to consider,
heavens-to-Betsy, the region as truly critical to the economic
well-being of the United States.
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Thankfully that's all over. The North America Free Trade Agreement, signed by President Bill Clinton in 1995, took care of that attitude. That monumental agreement allowed the United States to hawk any U.S.-made product in Mexico without paying duty and vice versa. The treaty spawned hundreds of factories called maquiladoras that now use cheap Mexican labor to assemble U.S.-produced parts, then ship them back into this country duty free. (The move was necessary if this country was to compete with the even cheaper labor from Asia). American manufacturers had realized that if Mexico was economically and politically healthy the United States would thrive if Mexican consumers were stampeding to buy American hi-tech products, appliances and autos.
Now, if a newly spawned democratic process continues thriving in Latin America, the United States will only have to depend on European and Asian consumers for a small part of its trade. Eager Latin American buyers will make up the bulk of our foreign consumption. And they are eager: Computer shops in Mexico City are packed day and night with Mexican computer geekazoids, drooling over chips, RAMs and megabytes.
Latin America is in the process of shedding its socially and economically disastrous I-wanna-be-a-dictator past (Castro being the only remnant). Democratic governments are all the rage South of the Border, and it appears they're there to stay.
Those who work for any firm that exports produce have realized that it's most likely the company is looking southward and hoping that economies in Latin America will improve to the point that thousands of barefooted peasants will buy shoes, socks and clothes made with U.S patented machinery, watch TV on American brand sets, buy U.S. cars, replace straw huts with brick and plywood produced by U.S. machinery, etc., etc.--the list goes on.
And don't think for a second that European and Asian firms don't realize the vastness of that consumer market. Since NAFTA was signed, those foreign entities have been tripping over themselves to sell French crepe-makers to Brazilians and Japanese saki barrels plus Sony TV sets to Mexicans. Germany's Volkswagen auto maker has a factory in Puebla, Mexico. It's so big it not only supplies all of Mexico's VKW's, but produces every single VKW sold in the U.S. Because of NAFTA, every important international corporation now has a branch in Mexico. Tijuana, for example, since passage of the trade agreement, has become the world's biggest producer of television sets (nearly nine million annually), all of them bound for the U.S. market.
It's time to consider Latin America realistically, cheer its fledgling democracies, egg on labor movements (poor workers can't buy American refrigerators), and relegate
Hollywood's stereotyped, silly and racist version of that region to the trash bin, with maybe a few exceptions like "Viva Zapata" and "Treasure of the Sierra Madre."
© 2002 by Elias Castillo.
The Elias Castillo caricature is © 2001 by Jim Hummel. The
"bandito" cartoons are from IMSI's Master Clips Collection,
1895 Francisco Blvd. E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA.
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