Idealized Pre-Columbian Womanhood in Mexican Cinema

Idealized Pre-Columbian Womanhood

Pre-Columbian Mexico as a National Imaginary

Pre-Columbian Mexico has been a significant component of the national identity, particularly after the early nineteenth century, following independence. Archeological artifacts and local depictions from that time have reinforced the idea of an authentic Mexican essence, viewed as a regional interpretation of classical antiquity.

Foundational Narrative

The foundational narrative in Mexico, deeply rooted in racial and gender dynamics, emphasizes the relationship between the Indigenous woman and the Hispanic conquistador as the nation's original couple. A key example is the narrative of Hernan Cortés and La Malinche, which Octavio Paz recognizes as important national folklore in El laberinto de la soledad. "La Malinche" refers to Malintzin, an Indigenous woman who aided Hernán Cortés as a translator. She is viewed ambivalently as both the Indigenous "mother" of Mexican mesitzaje and as a traitor for aiding the Spanish conquest.

Representations of Indigeneity in Mexican Cinema

Mexican films of the twentieth century often featured pre-Columbian and conquest-era Indigenous people, particularly Indigenous women. This chapter examines two films, Zítari (dir. Miguel Contreras Torres, 1931) and Chilam Balam (dir. Íñigo de Martino, 1957), that use melodramatic elements to highlight idealized Indigenous womanhood as part of exalting pre-Columbian Indigeneity.

National film histories tend to highlight commercial and critical successes. Zítari's limited distribution and Chilam Balam's artistic shortcomings explain their lack of scholarly attention.

A comparative analysis of Zítari and Chilam Balam offers a more complex view of Indigeneity in Mexican cinema:

1. By including Indigenous-themed films that may not adhere to social realism, it allows for a broader perspective of Mexican cinematic Indigeneity.

2. It shows how both melodramatic films use similar strategies to elevate pre-Columbian natives to a legendary status within a national framework, revealing continuity in the filmic construct of the Indian across different periods.

This approach allows for the identification and analysis of recurring racial tropes that are not confined to a particular moment of cultural history.

Glorifying Indigeneity

Both Zítari and Chilam Balam elevate Indigenous protagonists to the level of legendary dramas, positioning the twentieth-century Mexican nation as the inheritor of Indigenous lore. This approach is similar to what Luis Villoro identifies as the second moment of indigenismo, where thinkers began to see the Indian as a temporally distant and positive cultural referent. Figures like Francisco Javier Clavijero and Fray Servando Teresa de Mier aimed to redeem pre-Columbian natives by framing their beliefs as misunderstood parts of the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Indigenismo-Mestizaje

Zítari and Chilam Balam echo tropes from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, specifically the presentation of ancient Indigenous religiosity as having value and the equivalency of Mesoamericans to other pagan peoples.

These films also align with the official twentieth-century indigenismo-mestizaje discourse, which underscored Indigenous peoples’ contribution to the mixed makeup of modern Mexican society. José Vasconcelos emphasized Indigenous people’s “countless number of properly spiritual capacities.”

Historical Parallels

Zítari and Chilam Balam share similarities with mid-nineteenth-century Mexican history paintings that celebrate pre-Columbian Indigenous peoples as civilized and authentic precursors of the Mexican nation. These paintings often drew comparisons between conquest-era natives and classical antiquity to suggest the cultural and political sophistication of the pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican world.

Centrality of the White-as-Indigenous Woman

A key element in both films is the central role of the white-as-Indigenous pre-Columbian woman: Zítari in Zítari and Naya in Chilam Balam. These films present the Indigenous woman as a legendary character through:

1. Her privileged positioning in relation to spiritual practices.

2. Her function as the primary point of emotive display and identification for the spectator.

3. Her presentation as desirable in both narrative and technical terms.

In the melodramatic context of these films, Zítari and Naya’s Whiteness functions as a racialized semiotic device for underscoring the pathos and desirability of the characters. This supports the films’ portrayal of the women as glorious contributors to Mexicanness.

Zítari (1931)

Miguel Contreras Torres’s Zítari (1931) is one of the earliest extant Indigenous-themed Mexican productions, exemplifying characteristics of silent Latin American narrative cinema, which was “made by an emerging criollo bourgeoisie using a small-scale, artisanal approach to production, distribution and exhibition, and espousing a Eurocentric worldview with correspondingly Europeanized aesthetics.”

The film consists of two parts:

1. Views and panoramas of different archaeological sites within Mexico.

2. A fictional narrative about the love between an Indigenous princess (Zítari) and a warrior who dies in battle (Mazatal).

National Identity

Zítari crafts the greatness of Mexico by highlighting the merit of pre-Hispanic peoples who lived on what eventually became the national territory. The film's opening text, written by William H. Prescott, emphasizes the mystery and wonder of pre-Hispanic cultures: “Es imposible contemplar los misteriosos monumentos de una civilización ya perdida, sin tener viva curiosidad de saber quiénes fueron los arquitectos” (It is impossible to contemplate the mysterious monuments of a now lost civilization without becoming intensely curious to know who the architects were).

The film also implies that the survival of Indigenous engineering feats is a testament to Mesoamerican greatness. The sound version asks, “¿Podremos decir lo mismo de los rascacielos neoyorkinos dentro de mil años?” (Will we be able to say the same of New York skyscrapers in a thousand years?).

Mythification of Indigeneity

The film repurposes the aura of the archaeological sites by using one as the setting for its tragic love story. The film's full title casts one of the Mesoamerican structures as “el templo de las mil serpientes” (the temple of the thousand serpents), the place where ancient Indians worship “the goddess of love.”

By staging diegetic acts of religious worship at the archaeological site, the film works to reinfuse the artifact with the sacred dimension to which it originally owes its aura.

Zítari's mythification of chronologically remote Indigeneity frames the love story as being rooted in “legend,” suggesting that it has been handed down through time yet possesses a romantic quality. The film elevates its pre-Columbian protagonists by suggesting that their belief system is a source of cultural value.

Melodramatic Conventions

Zítari adheres to the conventions of melodrama in characterization and narrative. The protagonists are one-dimensional, innocent victims, and the film mobilizes the hallmarks of the melodramatic mode. By linking its version of a pre-Columbian worldview with the emotionalism that is characteristic of melodrama, the film affirms it as a valid worldview within its cultural and temporal context.

Elegance and Stateliness

In contrast to the humble inditos of the mid to late Golden Age of Mexican cinema, Zítari aims for elegance and stateliness. The characters’ movements are slow, stoic, and dramatic. The dialogue in the intertitles uses the “vosotros” form, which elevates the register of their speech.

Similar to visual references in paintings, Zítari crafts a version of ancient Indigeneity through aestheticization, attributing gravitas and aplomb to pre-Columbian Mesoamericans.

Filmed Bodies and Indigeneity

Zítari distinguishes between the two actors who play main roles and the rest of the cast, referring to the former by name (Medea de Novara and Matías Santoro) and to the latter as “aborígenes mexicanos” (aboriginal Mexicans). The film deploys Whiteness as one of its visual strategies for conveying the greatness of the pre-Columbian lovers.

Hugo Nutini’s outline of the physical projection of White femininity in Mexico:

• Tall and slender body

• Large eyes

• Light eye color

• Fine facial features

• Thin manicured eyebrows

• Graceful movements

• Eloquent and elevated register of Spanish

The acting trajectory of Medea de Novara confirms that the actress’ body was read as White in Mexico. She played both European and Mesoamerican royalty, highlighting the flexibility and privilege afforded to her because her body and persona were read as White there. This points to the colonially inflected tolerance for the disavowal of indexicality in the representation of Indigeneity in Mexico and the intransigence regarding the representation of diegetic Whiteness as anything other than indexically White.

In a manner parallel to María Candelaria, Zítari's deployment of Whiteness to transmit legendary pre-Columbian womanhood creates the need to layer Indigeneity onto the White body through other visual markers. This is a recurring characteristic.