Soleados en Soledad
Representations created by the media influence consumers’ perceptions of groups seen as non-normative. As such, the media should strive to portray these underrepresented groups accurately. Still, such groups are often presented in a negative light– further marginalizing them in the eyes of those with normative identities. In the media’s representation of Latin America in the United States, narratives that dominate often present the region in a fragile, antagonistic, and overall negative light. These narratives are dangerous and can encourage colonial outlooks among audiences– exoticizing the culture and creating a sense of asymmetry between the two regions. Rather than continue to plead for a broader amount and more authentic representation within the United States media, we must admit the work must be done in Latin America and by Latin American creators themselves. Through the cultivation of authentic representations in Latin America, especially through film, Latin American creators have the potential to take hold of the world’s perception of it– taking the spotlight from the American media to flip the script and shed light on the critical context of the region.
The power of U.S. media is extremely vast and beyond compare as its content is created and distributed worldwide– especially lately, as popular American streaming services have become more available across the globe. With Hollywood being the largest film industry in the world, our unique position of mass influence is only furthered. Thus, one must recognize that when met with its burning nationalism, the root of all evil in the United States, its media often portrays it and other nations in a manner that is best suitable for its interests, and through the success of such limited portrayals, time and again, encourages others to follow their path of ignorance and unconscious biases.
American identities and narratives are constantly centered– both in the stories told and in the general international conversation that follows– obscuring foreign perspectives and further pushing them toward the periphery. In the 2015 film Sicario directed by Denis Villeneuve, for example, which follows a U.S. Government agency task force in the Mexican city of Juarez, Latin America is presented as lawless and unethical through portrayals of police involvement with the cartel, the normalization of hitmen, and a sense of never-ending violence. Although the ethics of The United States are also called into question throughout the film, as the CIA was secretly working with the Colombian cartel to destabilize the Mexican one, star Emily Blunt’s character FBI Agent Kate Macer, serves to counter that. Contrasting the film’s painting of Latin America as lawless and one-dimensional, Macer represents self-awareness, non-violence, and reason in the United States, the latter two particularly noticeable in the film’s ending, presenting a stark difference between the last two scenes. While Macer, in the United States, is shown aiming a gun toward someone but eventually deciding to lower it– the film nonetheless ends with gunshots, meant to be perceived as “normal”, in Mexico. In her hesitation to pull the trigger, Macer’s character serves to redeem the United States’ involvement with the Colombian cartel– showing her nobility and symbolizing hope for a classic “change of the system from within” in America. This representation comes in as a direct contrast to the state of plain helpless violence and instability in which Latin America is presented to be in– both with the scene that follows in Mexico with which the film ends, as well as in how the film inferred such violence to be spread across different parts of the region throughout.
While Sicario was met with an abundance of positive reviews in the United States, receiving three Academy Award nominations and garnering an overall rating of 92 on Rotten Tomatoes, many individuals from Juarez– including the mayor– have publicly protested the film due to its poor and one-dimensional depiction of their home. In his TIME article, “Mexicans Say the Film Sicario Hurts Country’s Image”, Mexico-City-based journalist Ioan Grillo acknowledges a fear held by those who opposed the film that, through the film’s ongoing portrayal of Juarez as violent, it would ultimately hurt its reputation. Furthermore, this article made it clear that although violence was not nonexistent in the region, the extent to which violence was portrayed in the movie was not reflective of Juarez at the time.
With my critique on Sicario, I am neither denying nor underplaying the dangers that accompany drug trafficking operations in some regions of Latin America. Neither am I invalidating the fact that media representations addressing the issue may shed light on the social contexts of the region. However, the way one approaches a story matters, as it may influence the overall narrative. In framing the creation film as an attempt to bring public awareness, Villeneuve stated, at a Cannes press conference, “We all know in this room how much violence is [in Mexico]… As a North American, I know that I share part of a responsibility for that… As a filmmaker, I feel a responsibility…to embrace that reality.” However, despite Villeneuve’s best efforts to describe his film nobly, regarding its representations of Latin America as an embrace of reality which he felt a “responsibility” to shed light on, his biased view of the country as violent going in is reflected in the image he creates of it for the film’s audiences and shows an insensitivity to the region. Through the region’s portrayal as corrupt and with seemingly no sign of redemption, Sicario normalizes the narrative that Latin America is dangerous. It presents both Latin American governments and societies as unstable, immoral, and underdeveloped beyond salvation in the eyes of audiences unfamiliar with the region.
The Latin American creatives’ unique ability to portray the region while shedding light on colonial legacies was prominent during the Latin American Boom. Following the Cuban Revolution, the Boom was a literary movement that brought about unprecedented influence and recognition of Latin American literature. With their stories, Boom authors drew upon creative concepts such as magical realism to portray nonlinear time in the region as it relates to the colonial legacies embedded in society. For a moment, these writers shifted perspectives. They shed light on how they felt the region should be portrayed in the media, moving them from the periphery of the international conversation and into the center. Although such a success may seem difficult for Latin American creators to reach again today, they must strive to emulate such an impact. In today’s world, however, rather than through literature, the revolution could come about in the cinema, advancing positive representations and perceptions of the region in times when foreign perspectives, which fail to encompass the root of its instability and solitude, dominate.
The Latin American creatives’ unique ability to portray the region while shedding light on colonial legacies was prominent during the Latin American Boom. Following the Cuban Revolution, the Boom was a literary movement that brought about unprecedented influence and recognition of Latin American literature. With their stories, Boom authors drew upon creative concepts such as magical realism to portray nonlinear time in the region as it relates to the colonial legacies embedded in society. For a moment, these writers shifted perspectives. They shed light on how they felt the region should be portrayed in the media and pushed themselves off the periphery of the international conversation and into the center. Although such a success may seem difficult for Latin American creators to reach again today, they must strive to emulate such an impact. In today’s world, however, rather than through literature, the revolution could come about in the cinema, advancing positive representations and perceptions of the region in times when foreign perspectives, which fail to encompass the root of its instability and solitude, dominate.
Given the complexity of portraying Latin America in the media authentically, it is often that films based on the region fail to encapsulate its societal implications fully. Representations of Latin America’s state of “underdevelopment” should simultaneously highlight its social complexities, unlike those which present it through a one-dimensional lens. In his paper, “The Tricks of Time: Colonial Legacies and Historical Sensibilities”, Professor. Steve J. Stern, who specializes in Latin American history at the University of Wisconsin- Madison, presents six theses to understand how colonization remains embedded in Latin American society, like an unclosed chapter. Through his theories, Stern addresses issues of regional conflicts, including instances of colonial-like racial geographies, the role of religion, traditional gender relations, and how these colonial legacies are repeatedly restructured throughout time(391). He also shares pieces of media in which he found these understandings presented along with the theses. Specifically, with each factor, Stern presents a framework of colonial legacies through which one can analyze the concept of nonlinearity in time within Latin America through their variety in scale of development from region to region. Through the media he presents, Stern highlights Latin American literature, and particularly works published as part of the literary Boom, for their ability to address these issues, highlighting works by Colombian Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Argentine Julio Cortazar, and Cuban Alejo Carpentier, all of which embraced nonlinearity (378). To authentically present Latin America and emulate the representations and success of these authors, creatives must approach their representations in a nuanced manner– one which aims to unpack its colonial legacies and addresses the critical issues in society that have gotten the region to where it is today.
Addressing Latin American authors’ particular ability to represent the region’s complexities throughout the Boom during his 1982 Nobel Lecture, “The Solitude of Latin America”, Gabriel Garcia Marquez acknowledged the struggle of developing such representations and claimed not to blame foreigners for their inability to do so correctly. Still, when explaining the delicacy with which one must portray Latin America, the Colombian author makes it clear such perspectives should address colonial legacies and embrace the region’s position of “underdevelopment”, uninfluenced by a skewed first-world view on development. Rather than continuing to allow foreign, and particularly American, narratives to dominate in media representations of Latin America, Garcia Marquez underscored the importance of native creators’ contribution to the conversation and called for a Latin American embrace of solitude as its creatives make their representations of the region. Until then, he said, “The interpretation of our reality through patterns not our own, serves only to make us ever more unknown, ever less free, ever more solitary.” Through this, urging Latin American creators to create narratives free of foreign influence– in the ways only they could. Faced with funding issues for projects, however, despite their attempts, Latin American filmmakers have been unable to reach any form of Latin American film movement– much less one that would emulate the impact of The Boom in today’s world.
Still, since the Boom, there have been glimmers of hope for such creative potential in particular works of Latin American cinema. Influenced by the all-encompassing storytelling methods made famous throughout the movement, Latin American filmmakers have been able to draw upon concepts of colonial legacies as they impact society’s ability to progress on a unilinear timeline. Alfonso Cuarón’s 2001 Y Tu Mama Tambien, for example, addresses dynamics such as gender relations and colonial-like economic relationships using both its main guiding story and omniscient narrator– drawing upon concepts of magical realism and nonlinear time to address critical issues in Mexican society. Specifically, addressing homophobic tensions and the major social class divisions, compared to other popular films representing Latin America as inherently violent, such as the American film Sicario, this film goes beyond that– delving into complexities of Mexican society as they affect its development. Alejandro Iñarritu’s 2001 Amores Perros also follows themes of socioeconomic differences focusing on the lives of three people who collide in a car accident on the busy streets of Mexico City. In connecting the stories of these people, whose social position differences led them to the different circumstances by which they met, the film highlights subjective instances of struggle and desperation among people. The nonlinearity of its narrative structure adds complexity to its storytelling, strengthens its ability to portray experiences within this bustling environment accurately, and provides its audience with various perspectives throughout.
More recently, in 2018, Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma for Netflix, set in Mexico City during the 1970s, focused on the story of a housekeeper who works for an affluent family in the Roma neighborhood in Mexico City. The film delves into the complexities of Mexican society’s social hierarchies and dynamics rooted in colorism. Its depiction of the relationship between Cleo, the Indigenous maid, and the white Mexican family she worked for, as well as their direct contrast, explores Mexico’s power dynamics and subtle prejudices based on race and class. Additionally, in capturing political demonstrations, student protests, and the infamous Corpus Christi massacre in Mexico City in 1971, whose culprit paramilitary group, “Los Halcones”, has since been traced back to the CIA, Roma gives its audience a deeper understanding of the social context of the time. Like the other films, Roma captures the intimate stories of its characters while at the same time commenting on broader social issues and cultural dynamics as well as the historical context of Mexico City. Through the films’ powerful storytelling, they shed light on the complexities of Mexican society.
For Latin American cinema to reach a level of influence similar to that of its literature during the literary Boom, its representations of the region, like in Y Tu Mama Tambien, Amores Perros, and Roma, must address its state of development through a multidimensional lens to combat the one-dimensional lens that tends to take the lead when addressing the region in foreign content. Through this, creators may embrace their abilities and bring their perspectives into the spotlight. Although funding may present itself as an issue in allowing this to come to fruition, Latin American filmmakers should undoubtedly make an effort to have their voices heard, even if it means working with American studios, such as in Cuaron’s case with Netflix for Roma. They must continue to work to diminish the role that foreign representations, especially those created by non-Latin Americans in the United States, play in overshadowing and underplaying issues rooted in colonial legacies to the point of erasing them from the conversation. Only then will we see the rise in the creation and authenticity of Latin American representations in the media that showcase the region’s diversity and fully encompass its societal implications.
Works Cited
Bunker, Robert J., and José de Arimatéia da Cruz. “Cinematic Representations of the Mexican Narco War.” Taylor & Francis, 14 Apr. 2015, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09592318.2015.1050821.
Cuarón, Alfonso. Y tu mamá también. Producciones Anhelo, 2001.
Cuarón, Alfonso. Roma. Netflix, 2018.
García Márquez, Gabriel. “La Soledad de América Latina.” Cuadernos Americanos: Nueva Época, vol. 2, no. 148, 2014.
Grillo, Ioan. “Mexicans Say the Film Sicario Hurts Country’s Image.” Time, Time, 9 Oct. 2015, https://time.com/4068456/sicario-mexico-image/.
Iñarritu, Alejandro. Amores Perros. Artcam, 2001.
Stern, Steve J. “The Tricks of Time: Colonial Legacies and Historical Sensibilities in Latin America.” The Princeton University Library Chronicle, vol. 57, no. 3, Princeton University Library, 1996, pp. 371–92, http://www.jstor.org/stable/26509366.
Villeneuve, Denis. Sicario. Lionsgate, 2015.
