Popular Mexican Cinema and Undocumented Immigrants

Maricruz Castro Jose Pablo Villalobos

Discourse, 26.1&2, Winter & Spring 2004, pp. 194-213 (Article)

Published by Wayne State University Press DOI: 10.1353/dis.2005.0012

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http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dis/summary/v026/26.1castro.html

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Popular Mexican Cinema and Undocumented Immigrants

Maricruz Castro Ricalde

This article exposes the articiality of the separation effected in 1980s Mexican journalistic discourse between so-called quality cinema and its implied inverse, popular cinema. In lms by Mar a Elena Velasco, the India Mar a (Mar a the Indian), the term popular extends beyond the nature of the ideal spectator who hails from the lower classes, politely denominated popular in Spanish. Through Velascos popular cinema the term undergoes a series of reworkings. The subject of analysis in the present essay principally concerns Ni de aqu ni de alla [Neither Here nor There] (1987), the third feature-length lm by Velasco as producer and her twelfth lm as protagonist. The axis of Ni de aqu ni de alla turns on the labor conditions experienced by Mexicans who immigrate illegally to the United States, and so the present analysis intends to study the images concerning the undocumented workers that are integral to Ni de aqu ni de alla . Relevant topics include the images relation to past and present referents, and their link with the context as well as the production and consumer. For Mexicans who live in the United States, and for those who inhabit the border or the principal places farther south in Mexico that supply the northern neighbor with undocumented workers, the representations and symbols proffered by popular cinema are anchored in reality. To study them then becomes a necessity for those interested in the exploring the identities of both nations.
Discourse, 26.1 & 26.2 (Winter and Spring 2004), pp. 194213. Copyright 2005 Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan 48201-1309.

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When on January 28 1988 Ni de aqu ni de alla debuted, the subject of the undocumented workers on Mexicos northern border had already been explored by such lms as Murieron a mitad del r Nieto Ram rez, o (They Died in the Middle of the River) (Jose 1986), Mauro el Mojado (Mauro the Wetback) (Alberto Mariscal, 1986), Mojados de corazo n (Wetbacks from the Heart) (Miguel Rico, 1987), La tumba del mojado (The Wetbacks Grave) Matanza en Matamoros (Massacre in Matamoros) and Operacio n Mariguana [Operation Marijuana] (Jose Luis Urquieta, 1985, 1986, 1987). Many of these lms take their title from popular sayings, which reveals the segment of consumers that the lm wishes to address. This same technique reects the titles of other lms about the border, which borrow titles from popular corridos (songs) like La jaula de oro (The golden cage) or La tumba del mojado (The wetbacks grave), sung by the popular music group Los Tigres del Norte, for example. The aforementioned lms understood the publics interest in a topic that barely distinguishes the immigrant from the hired killer, the drug dealer, or the bootlegger. Between 1982 and 1988 some fty titles concerning the theme appeared (Garc a, Coria 63). In fact, estimates indicate that between 1935 and 1995 a total of more than 300 lms have been made about the border and its people (Iglesias 26). During the decade of the 80s, journalistic criticism proposed, usually implicitly, a division between quality cinema and commercial or popular cinema (Barriga B2, Carro 25, Maciel 313, Turrent 9, Vela squez D1, Vin as 28).1 This separation reveals a bias with regard to the word culture and one groups appropriation of the powers of aesthetic arbitration; this dominant group becomes a self-appointed judge determining what is to be accepted and what is to be rejected as culture. The schism automatically associates the terms culture and value. The difference created between quality and commercial/popular cinema is dened by this group of self-appointed arbiters of culture: only that which is judged as good will form part of what is considered culture. Other media manifestations in this case are labeled sub-culture:
En las sociedades occidentales esta muy arraigado el prejuicio de que lo mejor, lo ma s valioso, lo que verdaderamente es cultura, son las creaciones que llamamos artebien entendido, el arte creado de acuerdo con determinados ca nones establecidos por el propio sector dominante de esas sociedades, a saber, la e lite pol tico-econo mico-intelectual. (Reuter 88) (In western societies there is a very deeply rooted prejudice that the best, the most worthy, and what is truly culture, is the creation that we call artbest understood as the art created in agreement with

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determined canons established by the same dominant sector in these societies, that is, the political-economic-intellectual elite.)

Because of these predened categories, reception of lms written by the India Mar a, perhaps the most popular media character in Mexico during the 70s and 80s, barely takes into account the enormous inuence of the social imaginary. Criticism minimizes to the point of ignoring the importance of her personae both in lm and as a director assuming, because of its predetermined cultural category, that it is only a vehicle for family diversion. Mar a Elena Velasco herself has declared on several occasions that her primary intention is to entertain and not to construct social criticism through her lms. Her work debe dar un ejemplo positivo o llamar a la reexio n sobre alguna situacio n. Sin embargoinsistio la funcio n primordial es divertir, de otra manera ese mensaje positivo no llegara a nadie (Pacheco D1) (should give a positive example or encourage further thought about a situation. Howevershe insiststhe primordial function [of cinema] is to amuse, otherwise this positive message will not make it to anyone). Velascos declarations regarding her fundamental interest in entertaining notwithstanding, her appearances on television, the lms that she protagonizes and later, that she also writes and directs, necessarily have an impact beyond mere entertainment on the loyal public that follows her and lled the theatres when Mexican cinema had fallen into disrepute, especially for the learned middle class. Inheriting a vacuum in the wake of great comedians like Cantinas and Tin Tan, Mar a Elena Velascos lms propose images for the spectator that havent been studied until now, because journalistic criticism has overlooked these examples of popular culture. When it does contemplate Velascos lms, criticism proves isolated in its concern with aesthetic achievement and tends to reject Velascos lms. This rejection has produced a rift between public taste and media reception, the latter of which guides itself according to the traditional focus on evaluating what is best through an exclusivist denition of culture. This journalistic judgment loses sight of the consumer, even though said consumer offers a verdict through box-ofce sales, and perhaps, appropriates the social congurations that the India Mar as lms have put into circulation, or at least, have conrmed about the current social imaginary. By shunning considerations about the receptor, journalistic criticism re-elaborates many preconceptions about the lmmaker Velasco as commercial, popular, and simple in addition to

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repeating preconceptions about the formal result of her lmmaking. That is to say, the criticism considers two moments of the communicative circuit: that of the sender and of the message. The criticism neglects another important factor, the receptor, and minimizes or nullies other elements such as the context, the referent, and the channel.

I: Irreconcilable Differences: Popular Cinema and Quality Cinema in Mexico during the 80s Journalistic criticism considers Ni de aqu ni de alla within the range of cinematic consumable products, and in fact the lm was, at the time of its release, the most successful Mexican motion picture at the national box ofce. With a gross take far superior to its closest competitor, Los verduleros II (Gilberto Mart nez Solares, 1987), the enthusiastic audience reception for Velascos lm corresponds to a run in theatres lasting several weeks both in the capital and in Mexican provincia. The video Ni de aqu ni de alla sold nearly 15,000 copies, and television continues broadcasting the lm even years after its debut. Whats more, during its theatre run, Ni de aqu ni de alla took in ve times more earnings than the most successful box-ofce hit the previous year, Que buena esta mi ahijada! (My Goddaughter is So Good/Hot!) (Juan Jose Mungu a, 1987). Critics, on the other hand, received the lm quite negatively. Nelson Carro observes that:
[E]n general, hay coincidencia en que se trata del peor lme de la India Mar a), y las razones de este descomunal e xito no hay que buscarlas en sus valores art sticos o cinematogra cos, sino en sus cualidades como producto de consumo, dirigido a todo el pu blico (en un momento en donde el cine familiar escasea) y apoyado en una impresionante campan a televisiva. (1988: un an o de cine 5) ([I]n general, there is a coincidence in that we are talking about India Mar as worst lm), and the reasons for this extraordinary success are not to be found in its artistic or cinematographic values, but rather in the lms qualities as a consumer product, directed to the general public (during a time when family cinema is scarce) and supported by an impressive television campaign.)

This quote, through its critique of the popular movie supports the point that there is a difference between what is dened as quality and an easily consumed media product. Going along with this, Moise s Vin as afrms that La larga permanencia en cartelera de esta cinta, dispareja como pocas, aberrante en su humor, sin

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direccio n ni actuacio n ni mucho menos guio n, so lo demuestra los estragos que en el gusto popular puede causar la televisio n (28) (The long theatre run for this lm, uneven as few are, aberrant in its humor, without direction nor acting nor much less a script, only demonstrates the damage that television can work on public taste.) Vin as afrmation carries with it diverse implications. On one hand it associates popular humor with diversion, error, and defect all of which are synonyms of aberration. This implies that there should be a correct or normal sense of humor that is not found in India Mar as movies. On the other hand, popular taste is seen as the victim of the theory of the hypodermic needle, where the receptors seen as a mass of people who are totally defenseless to the attacks of the media. Public, or popular, opinion is modeled in a similar way, at least the response of the spectator is very similar. Though this theory was very popular early in the twentieth century it was displaced in the 30s in favor of functionalist perspectives. Journalistic criticism in Mexico, however, insisted during the decades of the 80s in the omnipotence of television and its power over the passive viewer/consumer. Ezequiel Barriga, on the other hand, infers that there are commercial products that are genuine and others that are not. He argues por ningu s elemental manifestacio n por n lado se ve la ma hacer un cine que eventualmente pudiese pasar por un genuino art culo comercial (Ni de aqu ni de alla B2). (nowhere does one see even the most elemental manifestation to make a cinema that eventually could pass for a genuine commercial article.) Critics repeat this perception in one form or another as a result of the rst lm directed by Velasco, El coyote emplumado (The Feathered Coyote) (1983): Mar a Elena Velasco, la India Mar a, nunca como en esta ocasio n demuestra cua les son sus pretensiones cinematogra cas. Esto es, un cine abiertamente comercial en el cual la gura principal es el personaje que le ha dado popularidad (Barriga, El coyote emplumado B1). (Mar a Elena Velasco, Mar a the India, like never before shows her cinematographic pretensions. Those being, an overtly commercial cinema in which the principal gure is the character that made it popular.) The virulence of the opinions registered about this lm appears tempered in a text by Toma s Pe rez Turrent, even when speaking about the malos profesionales (professional lms in an ironic usage), los churreros (B lms), and los ambiciosos (the ambitiously pretentious lms), which imply contrary terms, such as the good professionals, those who make quality cinema, and those who do not follow commercial objectives: El guio n no es ma s malo que los que le escrib an los profesionales (9). (The

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script is not worse that those that the professionals wrote for her). Neither are David Maciels observations particularly insightful, as he asserts that in the Velascos lms:
no so lo fueron un rotundo e xito de taquilla sino la consagraron como una super [sic] estrella con talento para captar el gusto popular. Su personaje La India Mar a retoma la sa tira social y el anhelo de los sectores marginados del poder de triunfar sobre la corrupcio n, la arrogancia y las injusticias de quienes lo detentan. (313) (not only were they a complete box ofce success, but also they consecrated her as a superstar with a talent for capturing popular taste. Her character the India Mar a takes up social satire and the yearning of sectors marginalized from power in order to triumph over corruption, arrogance, and the injustices of those who uphold them.)

Thus, the convenient homogeneity of the journalistic discourse updates the critical tradition that separates a magna culture from a small or gray one. The hierarchy implied in the terms erases the differences between understanding the term popular as Peter Burke proposes it, as something that comes from the people, what is made for them, what is consumed (29). It proposes a denition that does not involve an evaluation but rather a description of the term: lo que pasa de una a otra [de una cultura alta a una baja] se lee desde arriba como malentendido o distorsio n y, desde abajo, como adaptacio n a necesidades espec cas. (what passes from one to another [from high culture to low] is read from above as misunderstood or distortion and from below as adaptation to specic needs.) (Zubieta 35). Against earlier formulations, this conceptualization implies a process of confrontation and generation of mechanisms of resistance that also creates a lack of possible negotiation. It is noteworthy that in reviews from 1988 opinions always appear buttressed with considerations of popular taste, the inuence of television, and the lucrative nature of Velascos lms. It is necessary to clarify that Ni de aqu ni de alla , in contrast to those by other women lmmakers of the decade, was indeed subject to attention by journalistic criticism, even when large-circulation printed media, such as La Jornada, disregarded the lms run in theatres. Neither did the inuential magazine Proceso concern itself in any way with the three lms directed during the 80s by the India Mar a: El coyote emplumado (1983), Ni chana ni Juana (Not one nor the other) (1985) and Ni de aqu ni de alla (1987), even though in the history of Mexican cinema only a pair of Mexican directors, Matilde Landeta and Marcela Ferna ndez Violante, had managed to direct from behind the camera the same number of times. In public

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declarations during that period, the people connected to Mexican cinema would mention repeatedly the importance of certain women within cinematographic circles, such as Mar a Novaro, Busi Corte s, and Marisa Sistach, but the name Mar a Elena Velasco never gured among them (Avile s B8). At least two tendencies begin to emerge with regard to treatments of a type of cinema evaluated as commercial and popular: primarily it is discursively despised or made invisible in reviews and journalistic commentaries. A similar critique is launched in academic discourse regarding lms that employ popular comedy as a narrative strategy. However beyond the apparent issue of aesthetic value these critiques also share an unspoken classism. The comedies that cultural arbiters judge as being of low quality also tend to represent spaces frequented by an impoverished middle class and even more poverty-stricken lower class; these spaces include las pulquer as (inexpensive pulque bars), las torter as (sandwich stands/shops), las taquer as (taco stands/shops), residential projects, and even prison. The characters also belong to the working or lower classes. They exercise various occupations such as mechanic, bricklayer, informal street peddler or more formal vendor (almost always in a market), or the characters work as laborers. The themes revolve around moments which escape the characters daily routine, whether on purpose or involuntarily. Therefore, the sexual currents in the street, from rooftops to patios, the highway adventures, the vacation spots, the brothel, and the organized delinquency on the border are proposed as alternative spaces. In spite of the fact that these stereotypes are ratied in each one of these social segments, in these lms mechanisms of resistance to and negotiation with the dominant cultures abound. This resistance and negotiation is largely overlooked by the Mexican press. Stock elements that some decades back were considered popular cinemathe Cantinas and Tin-Tan lms, the cabareteras (cabaret dancer) and the rumberas (rumba dancer) lms, and the rock and roll adventures by Juan Orol, to mention just a few, nds greater appreciation from the elite sectors today as part of the Golden Age of Mexican cinema to which critics dedicate many pages of study in books and journals, such as the numbers of Cine Condencial and Somos listed in the bibliography. In these scholarly forums, critics have advanced valid points concerning the lms themselves, and they have presented the lms as useful documents for understanding the diverse stratums of Mexican society in the 30s, 40s, and 50s. The same evolution in critical opinion has not come to pass, however, with the lms made during the last few decades.

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Starting in the 70s, as a result of the different actions that the Mexican government undertook to revive the cinematographic industry, there began to circulate with special vigor a strongly hierarchical discourse. That is to say, critics divided cinema into quality lms directed to a literate social class, and commercial cinema destined for popular entertainment. In everyday practice then, criticism revived the old determinist conguration about locating a high culture as a category removed from a low culture. In the following years, certain quantitative indexes seemed to support this increasingly evident separation: the lms that attracted more people to the box ofce, those that earned back their cost and operated with a prot margin were produced with private capital and destined for the lower classes that frequented certain theatres located in precise points in Mexico City and the larger cities in provincia. Regardless of poor returns and the repetitious themes, these lms vision formed part of the weekend entertainment routines for its audience who belongs, mainly, to the working classes. This public did not go see movies because of formal or thematic innovations but rather they went to see vehicles of diversion. This characterization goes back to a cultural practice that polarizes the differences between high and popular culture. It also makes evident that irrespective of the type of cinema being produced; they follow a vertical model of cultural production where the prospective audience for a lm are judged in terms of possible prot (within the sphere of political, economic or social inuence) and not in relation to their own needs or interests necessarily. By contrast, other lms, representing for critics a cinema of quality, was not identied with the words amusement or relaxation, but rather with perspectives more closely linked to the informational content and its spectators. In this way considerations of a high and popular create a uniformity as far as who is going to belong to one segment or another. The historic recreation and the plots based on real-life stories multiplied; for example, Aquellos an os (Those Years) (Felipe Cazals, 1972) took place in the time of Benito Jua rez; Mina, viento de libertad [Mine, Wind of Liberty] (Antonio Eceisa, 1976), was situated in the independence period; Longitud de guerra (Length of War) (Gonzalo Mart nez, 1975) alludes to the Porrian age, Canoa (Cazals, 1975) refers to the atmosphere of 1968, and Antonieta (Carlos Saura, 1982) studies the life of Antonieta Rivas Mercado in the 20s, when she was Jose Vasconceloss lover. This quality cinemas expectations for recovering its investment were nonexistent. Of the aforementioned lms, only Canoa lasted more than three weeks in theatres. The

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rest barely stayed for two and made an average of 10% of their cost. Those lms were aimed at a university and intellectual conglomerate; an important distinction and strikes at the heart of the point being made here. The more afuent social classes did not correspond to this segment, given a growing tendency to prefer United States cinematographic spectacles over any sort of national production. Thus, it becomes clear why quality lmmakers displayed an ever-increasing dependence on governmental and public institutional support.

II: An Undocumented Indigenous Woman The character the India Mar a that Velasco developed so fortuitously in 1972 for live shows quickly found a home on television in sketches included on a variety program with high ratings, Siempre en domingo.2 There, Mar a chased the host Rau l Velasco (no relation) all through the studio, as an Indian in love with the gu erito (a Mexican term that signies a person of light complexion and/or someone who appears to belong to the upper classes). The host, who was also popular with the audience, would run from the India Mar a, in a routine that became the paradigm of the problematic coupling in Mexico for two people of different races and social classes. The India Mar as admiration for this white man in conjunction with his guarded scorn toward her, disguised with the mask of comedy, suggests an underlying nostalgia for a social order reminiscent of the colonial period. Siempre en domingo remained on El Canal de las Estrellas (The Chanel of Stars), Televisas most important station in terms of audience numbers, publicity rates, and investment return, during almost thirty years. The shows maximum ratings occurred during the launching of Mar a Elena Velascos character and the renement of the India Mar a in the popular imaginary. The potential tele-spectators, spread throughout three continents, reached more than 400,000,000 viewers (Betanzo 19). In 1979, Velasco co-directed OK, Mr. Pancho with Gilberto Mart nez Solares, and two years later she repeated the experience for El que no corre, vuela (The One who Doesnt Run Flies). This lm marks the moment during which Velasco began to help develop the ideas, the plots, and the scripts for her lms. Velascos decision to initiate her trajectory as a lmmaker together with Mart nez Solares, one of the head directors of the famed comic Tin Tan, is striking. Years before the screenwriter and later the director for Pedro Infante, Rogelio A. Gonza lez, had directed Velasco, and she

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also collaborated with the veteran Miguel M. Delgado, who lmed thirty-three of Cantinass lms. This relationship with the mentors of the most important comedic actors of the Mexican cinematic Golden Age reafrmed Velascos antecedents as a showgirl, since across several years she labored as a backup actress for other renowned names well loved by the Mexican people such as Adalberto Mart nez Resortes (Springs), Jesu nez Palillo s Mart (Toothpick), Fernando Soto Mantequilla (Butter), Antonio Espino Clavillazo, Manuel Medel y Eulalio Gonza lez Piporro. Whats more, when referring to Ni de aqu ni de alla , the journalist Nelson Carro notes that the India Mar a ya ocupaba el lugar dejado vacante por Cantinas (28) (already occupied the place left empty by Cantinas). Velascos connections with one of the most valued periods in the history of Mexican cinema seemed to be visible for the consumers, but not for critics. Velasco made the transition from protagonist to coordinator of her own projects in part by incorporating her family into show business. Velasco collaborated with her daughter Ivette and directed and produced through her production company Vlady Realizaciones, with her son Iva n Lipkies at the head and her daughter as an executive producer. This transition bears important implications in terms of cultural production and gender issues. On one hand, across the history of Mexican cinema there are very few cases of women who have become involved behind the camera with their lmic products. Granted, Isela Vega has also starred in, written, directed, and produced two lms (Una gallina muy ponedora, (A Hen of Many Eggs) 1982, and Las amantes del sen or de la noche, (The Lovers of the Lord of the Night) 1983). However, Vega has not repeated this endeavor for twenty years. Mar a Novaro, Marisa Sistach, Sabina Berman and Guita Schyfter, to mention just a few examples, have written, edited, directed or otherwise intervened in their lms production, but they have never labored as actresses in their own lms. Like some of these women, Velasco has involved her children in her lms and turns the lm projects into a family enterprise, similar to the way Mexican women participate in labor movements. Thus, they combine their role as mothers, members of an extended family, and workers. On the other hand, Velascos decision to collaborate with the lmmakers and the production team members intimate with the great stars of Mexican Golden Age comedy may also be a way for Velasco to enter into an industry dominated exclusively by men. The India Mar as close relationship with directors Solares, Delgado and Gonza lez endorses Velasco as receiving the legacy of the comics from the Golden Age, and at the same time, permits her

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to familiarize herself with administrative issues, including unions, industry connections, and production teams. Her work with these gures of Mexican cinema will inuence some of the choices she makes when creating her own lms. However, the similarities between her own lms and those of the Golden Age are often left unrevealed by many of the Mexican critical establishment. Her choice, though apparently radical to some for selecting the gure of a mazahua indigenous person is actually coherent with the stock characters employed by the old tent masters and in popular comedy in Mexico and Latin America.3 Thus, the peladito (little tramp) in the tradition of Cantinas, of the pachuco (ashy chicano) inspired by Tin Tan, and of the impulsive Northerner incarnated by Piporro, the candid India Mar a added another stock character to the Mexican social landscape. The critical perspective regarding the political and social situation exhibited by Palillo seemed to trace a line of succession in the commentaries that the India Mar a would drop in her interviews with the Mexican media. With the television corporation Telesistema Mexicano, Velascos social criticism seemed most limited, as a result of the tight relationship between the television conglomerate and the government or the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (Institutional Revolutionary Party). Even in the context of this censorship, the India Mar as clumsiness, added to her role as an ingenuous and even silly character and permitted her a discursive daring unusual for the time. The mention of political corruption and exploited lower classes, along with the allusion to the repeated deceit of the indigenous people and campesinos because they were believed to be less intelligent, make up some of Velascos themes, which she developed with a casualness that oscillated between supposed ingenuity and orneriness. The television spectators from the lower classes responded fervently to the character and demonstrated this fervor by placing Velascos rst two lms in the third and second place in popularity, respectively, within the Mexican box ofce the years they were produced. In this context of critically manufactured concepts of social and artistic taste Ni de aqu ni de alla debuted and the results were those already described: commercial success added to the contempt and the snubbing on the part of the journalistic criticism. To understand the positive public response, one has to take into account that the problem addressed in the lm, undocumented immigration, hit a nerve among the segment of the population that had followed Mar a Elena Velasco since her televised

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skits. Additionally, the previous lms that touched upon the situation of the wetbacks were not apt for family viewing, given the often violent and sexual content. This is not the case with the India Mar as products, which are designed to entertain adults and children alike. Similar to her comedic forebears such as Cantinas, Mar a recreates popular stereotyped gures such as the ingenuous mazahua, clueless and clumsy, but hardworking and with a good heart. This particular character dresses with the traditional clothes of this ethnicity: a blouse and a skirt generally made from brilliantly colored cotton cloth and adorned with ounces. Over the skirt, they wear another one made of satin in bright, happy colors. As a belt for the skirts, the mazahua women use a long strip of wool that reaches several times around the waist. The women nish off their look with colorful ribbons in their braids and guarache sandals (Miranda 55). By donning traditional mazahua garb, the India Mar a immediately brings to mind the multitude of indigenous people who immigrated to Mexico City, in the face of the evident impoverishment of the Mexican countryside in the 70s. In the 80s, Mexico claimed around 120,000 indigenous people belonging to the mazahua ethnicity, which dates back to several centuries before the Spanish Conquest. Today, these people occupy the same geographic area as the rst tribes: part of the Valley of Mexico and the Valley of Toluca. This zone spans three federal entities in the center of the country: the boundaries of the Federal District (Mexico City proper), the State of Mexico, and Michoaca n. Starting in the 70s, Mexico City began to incorporate into its urban landscape the so-called Mar as, indigenous women who sold fruit, especially oranges, on the street. The name came about as a result of the frequency of the name among them, a testimony to the inuence of Catholicism among the rural and indigenous population exemplied in the rst sequence of Ni de aqu ni de alla . Ni de aqu ni de alla demonstrates, then, a double immigration: as much internal (from country to city) as international (from Mexico to the United States). In the face of the certainty that leaving the rural environment for the Mexican national capital will not solve her economic problems, the India Mar a decides to try the United States. In this way, the indigenous woman intuitively tries to escape the painful process to which Juan D ez-Canedo Ruiz alludes, since los migrantes cambian de una situacio n cercana a la subsistencia a otra que mucho se parece, sobre todo al principio, a la que acaban de dejar (the migrants change from a situation near subsistence to another that closely resembles, especially at the beginning, the one they just left) (121). In the second sequence

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of the lm, Mar a explains to her tata that she will go to work at the home of the Watsons in the United States. Mar as objective is to save money in order to buy a tractor, but in Los Angeles, she never receives a cent for her various employments. In effect, the poverty that Mar a suffered in Mexico parallels the poverty that she lives through in the United States. Equally precarious as her economic situation is Mar as intention to stay in the foreign country only long enough to achieve her objective. This migratory status matches the unstable nancial situation that a large percentage of documented Mexican immigrants experienced in the 80s after making a similar decision. The intensity of the migratory waves from the south to the north grow as the difculties mount in Mexico: El nu mero de Mexicanos [sic] censados en los Estados Unidosque era en 1970 de 800.000 se elevo a 2.2 millones en 1980, a 4.3 en 1990 y a 9.2 en 2000, es decir cerca del 9% de la poblacio n censada ese mismo an o en la Repu blica Mexicana. (Guillaume n.p.) (The number of Mexicans accounted for in the census in the United Stateswhich in 1970 was 800,000rose to 2.2 million in 1980, to 4.3 in 1990 and to 9.2 in 2000, that is to say near 9% of the population in the census that same year in the Republic of Mexico.). Interestingly, these waves of migrants lose importance before the public opinion when the indicators of unemployment in the United States lessen; conversely, public awareness of migrants increases when the unemployment rate rises, and thus immigration becomes a topic of great social sensitivity (Bustamante 199). Ni de aqu ni de all suggests that the labor link between both countries is symbiotic, since the Watsons search for cheap labor for their domestic chores and Mar a needs better paying employment than that available in Mexico. Supply and demand complement each other, in spite of the clandestine nature of the celebrated verbal contract. In the lm, this verbal contract emerges when the United States employers give Mar a a 100 peso advance as a way to close the deal. Ni de aqu ni de alla implicitly questions the imaginary concerning the problem of the undocumented workers, exactly in a time when the Simpson-Rodino bill and the stiffening of migratory policy under Ronald Reagans government began to stigmatize the presence of the undocumented workers on US soil. In the lm, the seduction exercised by the Watsons through the promise of a better life and the sight of money as a guarantee of it, as well as the multiple jobs that she can nd in the States contradict the idea that the Mexicans arrive in a country where they dont have anything to do and take jobs away from legal citizens. In spite of the Mar as total lack of knowledge of US customs,

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geography, and the English language, like nearly 90% of the undocumented workers who labor in United States who do not understand that language, no great difculty arises with regard to the protagonists survival (D ez-Canedo 98). Lost in the airport, Mar a witnesses a murder, which prompts her to ee from a delinquent who saw her. The FBIs mistake, upon supposing that Mar a is the leader of a gang of drug dealers, causes her to struggle to escape not only from the murder but also from justice. This double persecution will take her to downtown Los Angeles, where she will nd successive employment as a dishwasher, waitress, worker and even nurse in a private home. The nature of these jobs reconciles the immigrants scant skills and the lm never argues the existence of competition for these jobs between the undocumented workers and the national labor. On the contrary, it would seem that these jobs do not hold any attraction for the natives, although the Mexicans gladly accept the work due to the lack of opportunity for economic growth. Ni de aqu ni de alla argues that the immigrants complete a social and economic function that is useful for the country to which they have arrived. The Mexican undocumented workers, the so-called silent invasion, see in California and Los Angeles specically a natural destiny. In fact, California is the state that receives the most secondary workforce in all of the United States, in part because of the various medium-sized or large cities near the border, the number of Spanish speakers already in California, the possibility that immigrants relatives or acquaintances live in the zone, the availability of employment in diverse elds, such as industry, agriculture, business, or domestic service, and collateral circumstances including the availability of extra shifts to obtain a few dollars more. The lm illustrates these factors by showing how Mar a comes to work in a Mexican restaurant: a friendship with another immigrant like her. Also, the large number of extant business with names in Spanish or with a clear inuence from Mexico culture appear in the scenery. Ni de aqu ni de alla presents several sequences that do not clearly relate to each other, a measure of its poor assembly. The viewer must ll in these holes in order to follow the protagonists adventures: the constant rings for her clumsiness (she provokes a heated battle in the restaurant where she works, she makes mistakes in the factory, she almost burns down the house, and she provokes a heart attack in the sick person whom she takes care of ); her astonishment at seeing a large mall and the escalator there; the tedium of ingesting only coffee and donuts, since Mar a does not know how to pronounce more than these words; the ruins

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she leaves behind, upon trying to ee from the murderer who pursues her. Finally, Mar a returns to Mexico for two reasons: one without remedy (deportation) and the other of a moral nature (Mar a admits that United States employers exploit her as well, since the Watsons hire her for cheaper labor than they could nd in Los Angeles). These two reasons form part of the constellation of real motives for undocumented workers return to Mexico. Ni de aqu ni de alla , therefore, exhibits multiple aspects that coincide with the braceros situation, which helps reinforce the didactic intention and meditation of the aforementioned lms by Velasco.

III: The strengthening of the social imaginary in terms of undocumented immigration Up to this point I have revealed the relationship between the facts characteristic of the 80s with regard to the Mexican braceros, reected in the India Mar as lm: the center of Mexico serves as a fountain of undocumented workers that ow into the United States. Mar a herself hails from an ethnicity that inhabits a zone near the metropolitan area of Mexico City; she establishes herself in California, a destination characteristic of immigration; her objective is to save money for her return and buy a tractor, a recurring behavior in those who wish to work outside of Mexico in order to improve the conditions of their families lives; there exist enough jobs that correspond to the secondary job market in the United States, accepted by the undocumented workers and the less ambitious citizens of this nation, and it is easy to establish ties with the Spanish-speaking community, given the ignorance of English. Mar a Elena Velascos lm was in postproduction exactly during the discussion about Simpson-Rodino bill and constant claims of human rights violations for the undocumented workers. Although her intention apparently was not to deeply analyze from a political and economic angle this bilateral issue, the lm illustrates the wealth of factors that encouraged immigration, as well as the Mexicans situation once established on United States ground, a situation of continual conicts with the U.S. authorities. Thus, Ni de aqu ni de alla reiterates a perception of the immigration problem and by forgoing a documentary aim or even a denunciatory purpose, the lm strengthens a social imaginary around the gure of the indigenous person as an the undocumented worker. Journalist critics did not identify this in their critiques of the lm in spite of the topicality of the subject to both sides of the border.

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In the lm previous to Ni de aqu ni de alla , the director also takes advantage of a popular expression in the title that proposes the same syntactical order; Ni Chana ni Juana is a lm that takes on some problems of identity more overtly. In another of the lms protagonized by the India Mar a and written in collaboration with Velasco, El que no corre, vuela. . . (Gilberto Mart nez Solares, 1981), the title also involves the subjects movement, resistant to remaining singular, to being in one place. Velasco also brings to the screen a segment of the Mexican population that remains on the margins of the public arena as do the indigenous groups with their unstable insertion into the labor market, making visible the problematic of the undocumented workers and some of the problems appear with regard to what it means to be Mexico, when one is neither here nor there. Mexican-ness moves from the discourse of academic criticism and the media reception and anchors itself in the adventures of a character who distances herself from the characteristics of a cinematographic heroine. This distancing from the considerations of the theoretical canon about the topic may be one of the reasons that the lm has been ignored or virulently criticized. Ni de aqu ni de alla takes up the most striking angles of the indigenous person for western viewpoints; the lm oversimplies these angles and adapts them to certain codes for interpreting this cultural diversity. Then, the lm conrms what is already known in relation to the ethnicities in terms of dress, gastronomy, rituals, and customs. Clearly, the lms objective is not to offer a new point of view that would question stereotypes. Velasco takes advantage of the knowledge and the vision that circulate around the diverse themes taken up by the lm, such as the causes of immigration, the routines of the undocumented workers, and the way of being of the indigenous, not to enrich them through questioning, rejection, or modication, but rather through conrmation, the spectator dedicates him/herself to consuming the product. By unlinking the images of a cinema of multiple reality, the receptor is not made uncomfortable in terms of confronting other ways of thinking. The laughter resulting from Velascos comedy is not the vehicle of knowledge, but it does communicate representations that register cultural dis-encounters that are multiple in nature: between suburbs and the city, between the indigenous and mestizos, between Spanish and English speakers. The return to origins is bittersweet at the end of the lm. Mar a does not save enough to buy the longed for tractor. Her experience on the border is a parenthesis in a singular life, one in which the fact of being indigenous, illiterate and of belonging to

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a culturally specic group, the mazahua, is not problematized for the spectator. The lm in this sense uproots the receptors notion of historicity and throws him/her into a limbo of cultural stereotypes. Nevertheless, by returning to ones country possessing different knowledges and a clothing that mixes tradition and modernity (the dress of indigenous people with tennis shoes, the traditional Mexican rhythms heard through a modern radio/tape recorder), Velascos character offers the audience an innovative perspective, one that incarnates the extant negotiation between the realm of cultural identity of those who immigrate without documents from Mexico to the United States. Reading cinematic texts as transmitters of social signs in movement shifts the discussion from one of quality or the lack thereof. In place of a discussion of aesthetic merit, the question becomes what are the symbolic networks that are represented? How is this lm representative of some socio-cultural episteme? By ignoring the India Mar as lms, or by only evaluating them based on formalist, aesthetic concerns, both academic and journalist critics have constructed their own mediating imaginary. In this imaginary, which holds a constructed notion of taste as its standard, discourses which are representative of the lives and struggles of the popular classes are excluded as are distinct avenues of interpretation which, in this case, have to do with the problem of undocumented laborers. Translated by Emily Hind.

Notes
An article in Dicine notes, La falta de est mulos al cine de calidad, la carencia de recursos nancieros, la ca da del mercado del sur de los Estados Unidos, el alto costo del dinero, la abundancia de cintas enlatadas, el poco tiempo de pantalla que se le otorga al cine mexicano provocaron, por un lado, esta ca da cuantitativa y por el otro, que los productores de pel culas mexicanas continuen [sic] realizando lmes con criterios comerciales, con el rme y u sito de recuperar su in nico propo versio n de la forma ma s segura. (Colectivo Alejandro Galindo, 12) (The lack of encouragement for quality cinema, the dearth of nancial resources, the decline of the market in the southern United States, the high cost of money, the abundance of canned lms, [and] the little screen time that Mexican cinema receives provoked, on one hand, this quantitative drop, and on the other, that producers of Mexican lm continue making lms with commercial criteria, with the rm and sole end of recuperating their investment in the safest form posible.)
1

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2 Siempre en Domingo (Always on Sunday) began its transmissions on Dec. 13, 1969, with a segment that remained during many years: Me xico, magia y encuentro (Mexico, Magic, and Encounter). There, the aim is to publicize folklore, traditions, and the most attractive places in the country. Little by little, the show lost importance and length. By contrast, the presentation of singers and musical groups of the then Telesistema Mexicano (that would later become Televisa), the debut of new stars, numerous comics, informative capsules, and over the last years, emphasis on the esoteric gradually gained screen-time. The last broadcast of Siempre en domingo occurred in April 1998. 3 At the hands of the Spanish, the mazahua were reducidos, inmisericordemente, a fuerza de trabajo y congregados en localidades convenientemente situadas para su debido control y manejo (reduced, pitilessly, by virtue of work and congregated in localities conveniently situated to facilitate their proper control and management) (Miranda 44). Although in reality the group has always lived under some domination, rst by the chichimecas, then by the Spanish, and lastly, by the regional mestizos.

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