The Voice for the Voiceless
Women in Mexican horror films represent a growing gender equality movement in the face of government inaction.
Mexico is a country with a vast and immersive culture, steeped in tradition and oriented around ideas of family and community. Mix that into politics, however, and you get a system bent on maintaining the status quo at a great cost to its people.
This was difficult to write. The reality of what women and girls face in Mexico on a daily basis is unlike anything I have ever experienced. It is a privilege that I only have to read about it; for them, it’s a reality they are unable to close a computer tab on and step away from.
Yet despite this, or maybe because of it, Mexican horror movies carry more substance than most of the films North America has to offer.
The films chosen made me profoundly uneasy and left me that way long after they were over. They weren’t “scary” in a traditional horror sense. You won’t find much blood and gore here. Instead, they were difficult, worrisome movies demonstrative of a creative country’s suffering at the hands of those sworn to protect and better it.
Unsurprisingly, women don’t like their labor being valued over their lives.
Look no further than Mexico’s current president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. Elected on promises of gender parity, he gave female gender equality advocates prominent political positions. He then promptly left them to solve the country’s gender violence problem.
He denounced ninety percent of domestic violence calls as “fake”.
Yet an average of ten women are killed in Mexico every day.
And femicides, or the killings of women due to their gender, have increased one hundred thirty-seven percent over the last five years. According to Obrador, they’re getting murdered on purpose to derail his political career.
With no legislative support, gender equality is now a collective grassroots movement in Mexico. Unsurprisingly, women don’t like their labor being valued over their lives. Massive protests over the rising murder rates rocked Mexico City this year. There was even a national sit-out to demonstrate the impact continued femicides will have on the country.
Mexican horror movies are nurtured, not stifled, by these real-life atrocities. They demonstrate a depth believed to be lacking elsewhere in the genre. This depth not only terrifies the viewer, but uses that terror to educate them as well.
Sometimes the scariest thing a film can do is make you think.
Films Chosen:
Hasta El Viento Tiene Miedo (Even the Wind is Afraid) 1968:
Something about this film was hard to pin down from the start. It seemed like your classic ghost story, but out of the three films I watched from Mexico, this one was the most difficult to write about. Turns out it’s the one with the biggest story to tell.
Hasta El Viento Tiene Miedo is in fact a ghost story, albeit one more likely to scare your older relatives. It features tecolotes (owls) as harbingers of evil spirits and ghostly women in white. At the same time, it offers a criticism of Mexico’s educational institutions of the time and the treatment of its youth.
In the 1960s, students and most of Mexico were getting tired of how the government ran things. The country was preparing to host the 1968 Olympics while ignoring an increasingly deadly civil war. Women were fighting for more autonomy and the right to go to university. College students were preparing to rebel against the government.
A similar rebellion was underway in this 1968 film. Whether it was intended or not, the parallels are clear. Trap a bunch of girls in a boarding school and try to conform them to your traditions…and the vengeful spirit of one of them will possess a student and kill you.
Our vengeful spirit, Andrea (Pamela Susan Hall), killed herself out of grief. Turns out the headmistress refused to let her see her dying mother. Now, appealing to new student Claudia (Alicia Bonet), Andrea wants revenge. All of the girls in the film struggle to understand Andrea and chafe under the strictness of their headmistress.
They want to express themselves, but are in an environment where such individuality is, for some reason, discouraged. It’s an issue students have faced then and now: going to college and then being told in a disparaging way that their education has made them “too liberal”.
This inability to bend to change and show kindness is the headmistress’s downfall. Similarly, the Mexican government’s inability to be progressive led to rebellion and the second wave of gender equality. They educated their youth and were surprised when it came back to bite them in the ass.
Hasta’s director and writer, Carlos Enrique Toboada, is regarded as one of Mexico’s greatest filmmakers. His commitment to Gothic horror was one of Guillermo del Toro’s largest influences. His films were even more notable for their inclusion of relatable young protagonists, something ignored in the country after the unsuccessful student rebellions of 1968.
Hasta isn’t scary, but it does leave you profoundly uneasy and hungry for historical context. It’s a good film to have in your lexicon when talking about Mexican horror cinema.
I also recommend checking out one of his other films, Veneno para las Hadas (Poison for the Fairies), even though it’s impossible to find someplace to stream it. It’s available for purchase here.
(But if someone can find me a place to stream it with English subtitles, drop a line in my inbox. Seriously.)
Somos Lo Que Hay (We Are What We Are) 2010:
There’s a saying that my mom whips out when something bad happens: “It is what it is.” I’ve never liked it. It seems defeatist, as if you’re so resigned to your current situation that you see no point in fighting to change it.
That’s the crux of the issue in Somos Lo Que Hay.
When the patriarch of a cannibalistic family dies, the responsibility of carrying out their traditions falls to his oldest son Alfredo (Francisco Barreiro). This includes finding and luring a victim back to the house, where the women carve up and prepare the body to eat. It’s never specified what happens if they don’t do this, but based on his mother’s reaction to the idea, it’s not good.
It’s a seedy look at how the burden of tradition — and machismo culture — affect both Mexican men and women.
For Alfredo, this makes him an unwilling and hesitant leader. To make things more difficult, he’s likely gay, a transgression that that would make him prey instead of predator in any other circumstance. It falls to his sister, Sabina (Paulina Gatian), to poke and prod him in the right direction, influencing their family’s survival from the sidelines.
“I can’t be the leader,” she says.
Yet it’s feminine energy that leads the narrative along. A group of prostitutes, led by a trans woman, and a young gay man aid in the family’s eventual demise. Even more incredible, they all survive the film.
This minor detail is refreshing, but harrowing when you realize that Mexico is the second-deadliest country for trans women. Gender nonconformity is tolerated in a performative way. Try to break that tradition, though, and you get a government that turns a blind eye to everything — including cannibalism.
It’s almost “Hereditary” with a dash of “Parasite.” The cast-offs and outliers of society must and will always eat each other to survive in the face of a country that won’t miss or help them.
Vuelven (Tigers Are Not Afraid) 2017:
A stuffed tiger comes to life and leads a young girl to a terrible secret. A trail of blood follows a group of orphans, bringing death and misfortune with it.
Issa Lopez’s story of orphaned children navigating the cartel wars is an astonishing work of magical realism and a reminder of Mexico’s issues with corruption and femicide.
Magical realism was originally popularized in Latin American literature by Gabriel Jose Garcia Marquez. The genre — often misunderstood by European audiences as “oh, cool, there go the colonized cultures being mystical and exotic” — treats the fantastical parts of its culture as a part of reality.
It’s also often used to critique those in power. In Vuelven’s case, it calls out the corrupt politicians and police force that have created Mexico’s large and ongoing missing persons problem.
Estrella (Poala Lara) is a school girl whose mother has gone missing. When she goes looking for her, she joins a group of orphaned boys led by El Shine (Juan Ramon Lopez) and accidentally stumbles upon some deep-seated government corruption. You know, kid stuff.
Vuelven addresses a real-life, morbid issue through a child’s eyes. In one instance, Estrella makes an innocent wish for her mother to come back. Her mother’s plastic-wrapped corpse then appears throughout the film to guide her.
She’s understandably freaked out.
It is a wish fulfillment that, unfortunately, can only exist in this film as a token of solace for Mexican families whose relatives will likely never be recovered or avenged.
It’s an unfortunate reality. Women in Mexico are treated as objects and are often kidnapped, raped, or murdered to extort or hurt other people. With drug cartels fractioned into smaller groups, the amount of missing people has only increased. Police officers do little to help. In some cases, they commit the crimes themselves.
Vuelven, in title and in story, seems like a wish within itself. All these children want is their family members to come back. In the end, the most devastating scene is indulgent of that wish.
Estrella finds her mother’s body. She also finds the bodies of everyone else that El Chino, a corrupt politician, has killed. Their spirits then kill him. It is a wish fulfillment that, unfortunately, can only exist in this film as a token of solace for Mexican families whose relatives will likely never be recovered or avenged.
Ready for a scare? Find the movies on these streaming services:
Vuelven: Shudder
Hasta El Viento Tiene Miedo: Tubi
Somos Lo Que Hay: Hulu
