Mediating Hispanidad: screening the Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary

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Content MEDIATING HISPANIDAD: SCREENING THE HISPANIC-ATLANTIC IMAGINARY by Noelia Vicenta Saenz A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (CINEMA-TELEVISION (CRITICAL STUDIES)) August 2012 Copyright 2012 Noelia Vicenta Saenz ii Dedication This dissertation is dedicated to my parents, Ramiro and Janie Saenz, whose love and support have made this project possible. iii Acknowledgements This dissertation would not have been possible without the guidance of my dissertation chair, Marsha Kinder, whose invaluable feedback has helped shape this project. I am ever so grateful for her encouragement and support throughout my time at USC. I would also like to thank my committee members, Curtis Marez and Julián Daniel Gutiérrez-Albilla for their detailed comments and insightful questions during the various stages of writing. I would also like to thank screenwriter, Alicia Luna, for taking the time to speak with me about her creative projects and gender anti-violence activism in Spain and Mexico. My dissertation has been influenced by a number of faculty throughout my time in graduate school. Thank you to Rosa Linda Fregoso, whose brief tenure at USC proved inspiring and instrumental to my engagement with Latin America. Roberto Lint Sagarena and Aniko Imré, provided insightful feedback in the early stages of my project. I would also like to thank Laura Isabel Serna, whose work in Chicano studies and Mexican cinema have helped shape my understanding of cross-cultural overlap between the U.S. and Mexico. A special thanks to George Sanchez, who has provided guidance and moral support throughout my graduate career, as well as the Department of American Studies and Ethnicity, which has served as my “unofficial” home during my time at USC. This project would not have been possible without the assistance of the librarians and staff at the University of New Mexico, Center for Southwest Research in Albuquerque, NM; the Biblioteca Hispánica at the AECID, the Filmoteca Española, and iv the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid; the Margaret B. Herrick Library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; and the USC Cinematic Arts Library. I began graduate school at USC as an Irvine Foundation Fellow, which provided fellowships and research assistantships during the early stages of my graduate career. I am especially fortunate to have been awarded an Irvine Foundation-USC Provost dissertation fellowship, which proved instrumental in the completion of my project. Portions of this dissertation would not have been possible without a research grant from the Center for Feminist Research New Directions Seminar. As a New Directions fellow, I met an interdisciplinary cohort of faculty and graduate students working on gender violence and anti-violence, whose research proved inspirational to my own work. I would especially like to thank Michael A. Messner and the Gender Studies Program, for the opportunity to expand my knowledge of interdisciplinary perspectives on gender issues. I am fortunate to have an interdisciplinary cohort of colleagues and friends, such as Cristiani Bilhalva, Jennifer Black and Gretel Vera Rosas, who have encouraged my research, patiently listened while I brainstormed ideas, and read early drafts. I am forever indebted to you, ladies. Most of all, I would like to thank my parents and family for their emotional and occasionally, financial, support while I pursued my doctoral degree. I am most appreciative to Teresa Gomez, for giving me a place to stay while I conducted research in Albuquerque. She was kind enough to open up her home to a second cousin that she has never met. Erick Fife and my cat, Natsuo, provided 24-hour emotional support throughout the many stages of my writing process. Thank you for keeping me sane! v Table of Contents Dedication ii Acknowledgements iii Abstract vi Introduction: Mediating Hispanidad: Screening the Hispanic- Atlantic Imaginary 1 Theorizing the Hispanic Atlantic 7 Mediating Hispanidad Onscreen 12 Mapping the Hispanic-Atlantic Imaginary 24 Chapter One: Re-framing Empire: Mediating Encounters and Resistance in the Hispanic-Atlantic Imaginary 35 Empire, Encounters and Resistance in the Quincentenary Era 37 Mediating Transatlantic Encounters Post-1992 65 Empire and Neoimperial Encounters in También la lluvia 83 Conclusion 94 Chapter Two: Transnational Domesticity: Expanding the Boundaries of the Spanish Home and Nation 103 Gender, Immigration and Film 107 Screening the Spanish (Trans)National Family 113 Spain as a European Borderland 134 Domesticity, Migration and the Hispanic-Atlantic Imaginary 157 Conclusion 162 Chapter Three: Domesticating Violations: Mediating Gender, Sex and Violence Across the Hispanic Atlantic 170 Spectacles of Violence Within the Hispanic-Atlantic 173 Mediating Violence Across the Hispanic Atlantic 187 Imagining (Transatlantic) Anti-Violence Activism 205 Conclusion 228 Conclusion: Global Hispanidad? Programming the Hispanic- Atlantic Imaginary 238 Programming the Hispanic-Atlantic Imaginary 240 The Global Negotiation of Hispanidad 246 Final Thoughts and Future Research 247 Comprehensive Bibliography 251 vi Abstract This dissertation examines the Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary as a critical site for the negotiation and promotion of a broader transatlantic identity, increasingly mediated through film and media production, distribution and consumption from Spain, Latin America and the United States. Since the 1990s, Spanish-language cinema has extended its national and linguistic boundaries through a number of Spanish-Latin American coproductions and films that either thematically or industrially engage with both regions as a common cultural and linguistic market. Similarly, the 1990s have seen the growth of U.S.-Latino and Spanish-language media that connect the U.S. with Latin America and, increasingly, Spain. This transatlantic and transhemispheric mapping recalls the Hispanic Atlantic and the period of colonization that created a commonality of language, religion and culture across these geographic spaces. Because the Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary encompasses a wide range of national film and media industries, with their own industrial history, this dissertation largely focuses on Spain’s role in mediating a transatlantic imaginary and thus, relies on case studies that focus on the changing face of Spanish national cinema and its role in fostering cinematic productions across the Atlantic. Yet, it also occasionally explores other national and/or local film contexts — Cuba, Mexico, Colombia, Bolivia and the United States — in order to demonstrate the dialogic nature of these exchanges. Although the Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary is mobilized as a form of resistance against the global dominance of the Hollywood industry, these imaginings are fraught with internal tensions given their colonial history and the national, gendered, sexual and vii racial legacies that continue to structure identities both within and across the Hispanic Atlantic. These legacies shape the industrial structure of these collaborations, but are also evident within the narratives themselves. While attempts to cultivate a Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary across the Spanish-speaking world is not a recent phenomenon and can be traced to the Spanish colonial project as a whole, this dissertation uses the Hispanic Atlantic as a framework that explores the power relations inherent within singular conceptions of Hispanic identity, culture and politics. With this in mind, the films and media texts discussed in this dissertation focus on gender, race and national identity as instrumental to reconfiguring transatlantic and transhemispheric bonds. Rather than viewing these overlapping film and media structures and practices as the result of a top- down and univocal articulation, the Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary demonstrates that these efforts are more dialogic in nature, thus, incorporating different national and multicultural voices that comprise the Spanish-speaking world. 1 Introduction: Mediating Hispanidad: Screening the Hispanic-Atlantic Imaginary In 2009, two important events occurred that demonstrate an active cultivation of a transatlantic imaginary across the Spanish-language film and media industries. Benicio del Toro accepted the award for Best Actor for his portrayal of the title character in the French-American-Spanish film, Che: El Argentino, at the 2009 Goya Awards ceremony sponsored by the Academia de las Artes y las Ciencias Cinematográficas de España. Later that year, Spanish director, Pedro Almodóvar was honored with the 2009 “Gabi” Lifetime Achievement Award at the 13 th Annual Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival (LALIFF) in Los Angeles. These two moments call attention to the interrelationship of the U.S.-Latino and Spanish-language film and media industries as seen within these awards ceremonies, which have moved away from their initial conceptions as national and/or local filmic institutions. While there have been other attempts at transatlantic collaborations, the global and industrial re-structuring of film industries since the 1990s has made it evident that a new label is necessary to describe the production, distribution and reception of these films. Building on the work of scholars, such as Joseba Gabilondo, Marvin D’Lugo, and Walter Mignolo, who have theorized transatlantic geocultural production through the lens of Hispanic Atlantic Studies, this dissertation argues that film and media are the most visible enunciation of this transnational, transhemispheric, and interdisciplinary framework. As a result, it is not longer sufficient to discuss Spanish national cinema, Mexican national (or any other 2 Latin American nation’s) cinema and the U.S.-Latino film and media industry as distinct categories since new patterns of production, distribution and exhibition point towards a new construct, which I call the Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary. Since the 1990s, Spanish cinema has extended its boundaries through a number of Spanish-Latin American coproductions and films that either thematically or industrially engage with both regions as a common cultural and linguistic market. Similarly, the 1990s have seen the growth of U.S.-Latino and Spanish-language media that connect the U.S. with Latin America and, increasingly, Spain. This transatlantic and transhemispheric mapping recalls the Hispanic Atlantic and the period of colonization that created a commonality of language, religion and culture that often serves as the impetus for this imagining. However, within its new conception, the Hispanic Atlantic is theorized as a geopolitical framework and mode of resistance that “reverse[s] the traditional and unidirectional flow of theoretical production from the Anglo-American to the Hispanic world” (Gabilondo 93). In the same vein, the Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary functions as a strategic mode of resistance that aims towards a global Spanish-language film and media market that competes against the encroachment of English-language film dominated by Hollywood. Although the Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary is mobilized as a form of resistance, these imaginings are fraught with internal tensions given their colonial history and the national, gendered, sexual and racial legacies that continue to structure identities both within and across the Hispanic Atlantic. These legacies shape the industrial structure of these collaborations, but are also evident within the narratives themselves. Because the 3 Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary encompasses a wide range of national film and media industries, with their own industrial history, this dissertation largely focuses on Spain’s role in mediating a transatlantic imaginary and thus, relies on case studies that focus on the changing face of Spanish national cinema and its role in fostering cinematic production across the Atlantic. Yet, it also occasionally explores other national and/or local film contexts — Cuba, Mexico, Colombia, Bolivia and the United States — in order to demonstrate the dialogic nature of these exchanges. Rather than view this as an overt perpetuation of a neocolonial and hierarchical stratification in which Spain envisions itself as center and mediator, I view the emergence of these tensions as the ghostly traces of a colonial history that cannot be repressed both for the colonized, who are the victims of colonization, but also for the colonizers, who are left imagining the glory of a colonial past after emerging as modernity’s losers. 1 In his acceptance speech, Del Toro, an established Puerto Rican actor in Hollywood, wished to share the honors with the other nominees, but admitted that he had not seen any of the films nominated, an admission met with some chuckles in the audience and a few awkward looks by the other nominees (Del Toro). This moment 1 Viewing Spain from the perspective of European modernity, Jo Labanyi has theorized modern Spanish culture as ghostly using Derrida’s discussion of ghosts as “the traces of those who were not allowed to leave a trace; that is, the victims of history and in particular subaltern groups, whose stories—those of the losers—are excluded from the dominant narratives of the victors” (1- 2). Thus, Spain inhabits a hierarchical position in relation to Latin America via its colonial history, but is itself historically marginalized with dominant European narratives of modernity. In a similar fashion, Joseba Gabilondo discusses the Black Atlantic as possessing the “uncanny effect of haunting in a ghostly manner (Freud) first-world historiography and theory, so that its familiarity and familiality come back to the fore, although in a yet repressed way” (94). According to Gabilondo, “the uncanny is always related to cultural hegemonic formations where no-longer-hegemonic or subaltern subjects have been repressed…” (94). This shifting positionality provides the context for my reading of Benicio del Toro’s acceptance speech at the 2009 Goya Awards. 4 signifies what sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild describes as a “magnified moment” within the conception of the Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary, which she defines as “episodes of heightened importance, either epiphanies, moments of intense glee or unusual insight, or moments in which things go intensely, but meaningfully wrong” (16). Hochschild adds, “by interrogating the moment… we ferret out the cultural premises that underlie it” (16). In this regard, Del Toro’s speech reveals the limitations of Spanish national cinema in hailing U.S.-Latino audiences—in spite of the Spanish Film Academy’s active attempt to expand its reach. This exchange ultimately reinforces a hierarchy that exists across national film industries, whereby Hollywood [and its stars] remains globally adored but unaware of other national industries. While Spanish cinema may remain invisible to dominant strands of Hollywood cinema, there is one auteur whose career transcends the specificity of the Spanish film industry—Pedro Almodóvar. In this regard, Almodóvar’s recognition by a Latino film festival, such as LALIFF, demonstrates the desire for a Latino cinema that is transatlantic as well as transhemispheric. Originally conceived in 1996 as a cultural event that catered to the growing Latino population in Los Angeles, LALIFF’s new mission is consistent with that of other film festivals, awards ceremonies and industries whose interest in preserving and/or promoting local identities has been transplanted by a desire to form a geocultural alliance across the Hispanic Atlantic as a strategy to broaden the market for Spanish-language film, as well as film that thematically addresses issues pertinent to the Hispanic Atlantic community. LALIFF’s recognition of the internationally celebrated director thus foregrounds the organization’s attempt to expand its target audience towards 5 multilingual films, including all films in the Spanish-language, thus opening up the market to films from Spain and the Lusophone world. Internationally celebrated, Almodóvar thus is a perfect example of a filmmaker who can work within the confines of a specific national industry and still achieve recognition and distribution abroad. While you can see a transnational cultural affinity with Latin American popular culture as evident in his choice of actors and musical scores, Almodóvar’s films remain rooted in the geographical boundaries of Spain. His selection for a lifetime achievement award by LALIFF, thus, draws attention to the active attempt to expand the definition and target for what was once Latino cinema—as well as the fluidity of labels such as Latino, Latin American, Hispanic and Spanish that shape its production. LALIFF, thus, expands its appeal without abandoning its local identity. Like LALIFF, the Goya Awards have become the site for the examination of a larger transatlantic identity and the manner in which it functions within national (and local) institutions. The presence of Mexican actor, Diego Luna, who was also nominated in the category of Best Actor for the film, Sólo quiero caminar by Agustín Díaz Yanes, demonstrates an interest in expanding the definition of Spanish cinema. Perhaps an even stronger example of the trend towards Hispanic-Atlantic films, Sólo quiero caminar stands as a sequel to Díaz Yanes’ 1995 film, Nadie hablará de nosotras cuando hayamos muerto that begins in Mexico and then traces a lower-class woman’s return to Spain determined to acquire laundered drug money and start a new life for herself. In Sólo quiero caminar, Victoria Abril reprises her role of Gloria, the protagonist of Nadie, who is now a mother and the head of a quartet of women embedded in a life of crime. 6 Literally, up against a patriarchal underworld of organized crime, these women avenge the victimization of a member of their group destabilizing notions of Spanish femininity and genres in the process. Through their narrative and physical mobility across national contexts, these films exemplify a world in which language and cultural affinity bridge national differences and create an imaginary defined not by the boundaries of the nation, but by the historical legacies of the Spanish colonial empire--- the Hispanic Atlantic. The fact that the story focuses on gendered violence draws attention to culturally inscribed gender roles across the Hispanic Atlantic and the centrality of gendered bodies to the definition of a transatlantic imaginary. These two moments highlight the central preoccupations of my dissertation: the growing interrelationship between the Spanish-language film and media industries in Spain, Latin America and the U.S. and how issues of gender are embedded within this transatlantic imaginary. My interest in this project began with an early investigation into the rise of female filmmakers within the Spanish film industry in the 1990s. As I watched films created by women, I became interested and invested in the work of one director in particular, Icíar Bollaín. Bollaín’s work challenged the boundaries of Spanish cinema and gendered representation by focusing on topics such as the rise of immigrant women in Spain, the mobilization of gendered anti-violence discourse in film and the potential of gendered alliances for political and social activism. In looking at her filmography, I was then introduced to other women and men working on similar issues in the contemporary period, which together formed a body of work I found compelling. At the same time, I noticed a discernible trend in filmmaking between Spain and Latin America which 7 challenged the “national” boundaries of Spanish cinema through financial coproduction agreements that enabled transatlantic exchanges of funding, producers, writers, directors and talent, but also within nationally-produced films that shared similar thematic preoccupations. Bollaín’s works, as well as those of filmmakers discussed in this project, are reflective of this trend. Theorizing the Hispanic Atlantic My discussion of these overlapping film industries as a Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary draws attention to the configuration of a shared cultural identity that accompanies these collaborations, which often exceed the logic of financial reasoning that structures film as purely a commercial enterprise. 2 This reliance on a shared cultural identity overtly recalls discourse on Hispanismo that emerged at the end of the 19 th century when Spain could no longer boast of itself as an economic and imperial power as 2 In his analysis of Spanish coproductions from 2000 to 2004, Alejandro Pardo notes that coproductions fall into four categories that reflect the financial considerations and cultural interests of the film industry: “(inter)national co-productions, foreign financial co-productions, multicultural co-productions and internationally-oriented co-productions” (99). The “multicultural co-production” is of particular interest as Pardo defines them as “not merely a product strictly based on financial contribution but also on a real cultural exchange” (104). While partnerships with Latin American countries also fall under the category of foreign financial co- productions, which are primarily non-Spanish in geographic location and/or theme and have minimal Spanish funding, 15.3% of these multicultural co-productions are among the most successful in terms of domestic box-office, after (inter)national co-productions (29.4%) (Pardo 108). Of these films, 9 were Latin American co-productions and only 5 were European co- productions, which Pardo interprets as the result of a preference for “multicultural Spanish-Latin American co-productions…because of their cultural identification” (108). Although these films are among the more well-received domestically, Pardo argues that financial considerations should take precedence over cultural commonalities and hints at Spain’s need to act as “a more active bridge between Europe and Latin America” in order to increase the number of co-productions with Latin American, due to a shared cultural history, and European countries that provide the financial backing necessary for film productions (110-111). 8 it had during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. 3 Using Hispanismo as a model, the concept of Hispanidad was both an ideology and a policy of the Francoist regime and a foreign policy towards Latin America (Escudero 171). While conscious of this history, my hope is to explore the desire for a filmic unity in a more dialogic manner than the top- down perspective of shared culture that discourses of Hispanismo and Hispanidad promoted. Consequently, I use the term Hispanic-Atlantic rather than the Hispanic world to convey this sense of decenteredness that characterizes this formation. In his essay, “Across the Hispanic Atlantic: cinema and its symbolic relocations,” Marvin D’Lugo argues that a body of work that engages with efforts to bridge Hispanic cinemas and audiovisual cultures are “rooted in the recognition that there is no single fixed ‘place’ occupied by Spanish-language cinema, thus the allusion to an imprecise geographic term, the Hispanic Atlantic” (5). Shifting the focus away from discourse on national cinema and its limitations, the Hispanic Atlantic functions as a critique of the national project, but also as “a metaphor for ‘movement across’ and an opaque allusion to the multiple levels of migration, those of people, of cultural artifacts, and finally of audiovisual 3 For the Spanish, Hispanismo was a project of cultural promotion to maintain a link with its former colonies by emphasizing a standard language, culture and religion as part of “the new imperialistic currents of thought in late-nineteenth century Europe” (Escudero 170). Other scholars, such as Joan Ramon Resina argue that Hispanismo is “an emanation of empire… [and] the earliest instance of a postcolonial ideology engaged in promoting hegemonic ambitions by cultural means” (161). According to Del Valle and Stheeman, Hispanismo refers to cultural diplomacy that promotes “a unique Spanish culture, lifestyle, characteristics, traditions and values, all of them embodied in its language” (6). According to Escudero, Hispanidad used the “the foundations of conservative Hispanism such as the defense of Catholicism, race, and the Spanish language, as well as the idea of the Madre Patria, and defended the need to develop closer ties with Latin American republics in order to create an ideal Hispanic Community” (171). However, in order to fully embrace the idea of a Hispanic Community, Francoist ideology had to come to terms with a history based on conquest and colonization. Despite attempts to establish a Hispanic Community of Nations, “the constant reference to the idea of empire was the least acceptable principle to the majority of public opinion in Latin America” (Escudero 171). 9 technologies like cinema that have transformed the spatial, political and cultural consciousness of their audiences” (5). This movement or migration across thus becomes a structuring motif within the Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary, which is evident both in the production and circulation of these films, as well as a narrative trope. 4 For D’Lugo, the concept of the Hispanic Atlantic is further understood through the work of Néstor Garcia Canclini, whose concepts of “deterritorialization” and “reterritorialization” help explain the processes of cultural destabilization and reformulation, but also the manner in which “these relocations potentially afford one the opportunity to rethink the hierarchies of the spatial and ideological relations of center to periphery” (qtd. in D’Lugo 5-6). While much of the literature on the Hispanic Atlantic is produced within the millennial period, the term has been used historically to refer to the Spanish empire that stretched across the Atlantic as opposed to the British Atlantic, which has a distinct imperial and geocultural history. However, the commemoration of 1992 as a moment of celebration and condemnation across the world sparked a critical reformulation in the period that followed. In the anthology, Bridging the Atlantic: Towards a Reassessment of Iberian and Latin American Cultural Ties, Marina Pérez de Mendiola presents a series of scholarly views on Spain and Latin America’s cultural ties in order to demonstrate that “the bridging over an ocean of history and history of ideas is a complex and intricate process that elicits a plurality of viewpoints” (Introduction 2). For Pérez de Mendiola, 4 D’Lugo’s consideration of migration across the Atlantic as a central motif of the Hispanic Atlantic draws on Paul Gilroy’s discussion of the ship in his book, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. For Gilroy, the image of the ship is a foundational point of origins that recalls the Middle Passage in order to theorize a Black subject that is a “transcultural, international formation” produced by the historical condition of modernity and shaped by a positionality that is antithetical to its national project (Gilroy 4). 10 discussions of the interactions across and between Spain, Latin America and the United States encourages a diversity of perspectives that raises questions about “the multiple figurations of [Hispanidad] and…some of its cultural and philosophical implications on both sides of the Atlantic” (Introduction 2-3). In this regard, this anthology sets the stage for reevaluating a Spanish and Latin American postcolonial condition that takes into account the cultural and historic ties that bind the region in a manner that is more diverse and dialogic rather than top-down and one-dimensional. Building upon the work of Paul Gilroy as well as Walter Mignolo, theorists foresee the Hispanic Atlantic as an intervention within the field of Atlantic studies that emphasizes the role of the Hispanic experience within history and modernity. Thus, the Hispanic Atlantic emerges as an interdisciplinary discourse that interrogates the phenomenon of transatlantic exchanges that are not easily contained within the individual disciplines of Hispanic studies, Latin American studies and U.S.-Latino studies and enable a critical “rethink[ing of] the Latin American, Latino, and Spanish world beyond Latinamericanism and Hispanism” (Gabilondo 91). In his Introduction to a special issue of the Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies, Gabilondo points to the Hispanic Atlantic as a response to the “two-way flow of capital and bodies across the Atlantic [that] brings to the fore a host of problems that have not been fully addressed by neither Latin Americanists nor Hispanists” (92). Accordingly, Gabilondo explores the Atlantic as “the original space of Spanish imperialist expansion into the Americas…[but] because of globalization, it is making a new appearance with a (post) historical—and theoretical— synergy” (93). Building on Paul Gilroy’s book, The Black Atlantic, Gabilondo shifts its 11 locus of enunciation to the Hispanic world where the Hispanic Atlantic “remains particular and yet has universal effects, without falling in the trap of becoming hegemonic by claiming a negatively universal position” (98). The significance of this discursive shift draws on both Gilroy and Mignolo’s desire for an expansion of the locus of enunciation to include the subaltern and move beyond a geopolitics of knowledge rooted in hegemonic conceptions of Western modernity. Like Gilroy, Mignolo’s writings expand the field of knowledge to include the voices of those subjects that have been marginalized or silenced through the process of global expansion and the restructuring of geopolitical power. Thus, while this dissertation is influenced by scholarship across the disciplines of Spanish cultural studies, Latin American studies and Latino studies, my conception of the Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary is rooted in Mignolo’s understanding of the term, “imaginary,” as referring to “all the ways a culture has of perceiving and conceiving the world” (23). In the context of the Hispanic Atlantic, this imaginary is rooted in shifting structures of power both within the individual nations and across these geographic spaces. With these dynamics in mind, this project examines the Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary as a critical site for the negotiation and promotion of a broader transatlantic identity, increasingly mediated through film and media production, distribution and consumption. While attempts to cultivate a Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary across the Spanish-speaking world is not a recent phenomenon and can be traced to the Spanish colonial project as a whole, this dissertation uses the Hispanic Atlantic as a framework that explores the power relations inherent within singular conceptions of Hispanic 12 identity, culture and politics. With this in mind, the films and media texts discussed in this dissertation focus on gender, race and national identity as instrumental to reconfiguring transatlantic and transhemispheric bonds. Rather than viewing these overlapping film and media structures and practices as the result of a top-down and univocal articulation, the Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary demonstrates that these efforts are more dialogic in nature, thus, incorporating the different national and multicultural voices that comprise the Spanish-speaking world. Mediating Hispanidad Onscreen Like Gilroy, who theorizes the Black Atlantic through the lens of cultural production, this dissertation examines the Hispanic Atlantic through the interrelationship of film and media industries as the most visible articulation of a transatlantic consciousness. While attempts to cultivate a broader transatlantic identity across the Spanish-speaking world is not a recent phenomenon, my project begins with a discussion of the Quincentenary celebrations in 1992 as the most recent and global attempt to re- configure Hispanidad through the dissemination of film and media produced during this period. Using the lens of the encounter between Spain and the Americas as reimagined during this period, my project focuses on the colonial legacies of gendered, sexual, racial and national hierarchies that persist in the production, distribution and reception of the Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary. While these texts demonstrate a negotiation of gender and Hispanidad within the Hispanic Atlantic, I argue that these transnational imaginations ultimately reaffirm these hierarchies even as they promote a form of resistance, thus 13 demonstrating the continued tensions that exist when attempting to move beyond the specificity of the nation and the local. Central to this Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary is the structure of contemporary film and media industries within Spain and Latin America and their designs and appropriation by U.S.-based Spanish-language and U.S.-Latino media markets. The growth and financial potential of the U.S.-Latino media market makes the U.S.-Latino audience desirable based on their potential to consume Spanish-language films. In this regard, the rise of Latino film festivals in the United States and their transhemispheric and transatlantic shift provides ample ground for discussing the programming of a broader Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary that draws on Hispanic “traditions,” but acknowledges the diversity of identities within it. Nonetheless, the role of language in defining Spanish national cinema is central to the fostering of filmic coproduction agreements with Latin America, but is also an important strategy for accessing the U.S. market. 5 Although Spanish cinema has begun to venture into filmmaking in other languages with some success, as seen with Alejandro Amenábar’s 2001 film, The Others and in Isabel Coixet’s cinematic oeuvre, the Spanish language remains central to its national character. Spanish 5 Beeckmans and Giner point to a study by the Instituto Cervantes that documents the rise of Spanish-speakers in the United States and the idea that it will become “the most widely spoken language in the United States” by 2050 (8). As an umbrella organization that oversees the dissemination of the Spanish language through language classes, teacher training and cultural activities, Instituto Cervantes is the most visible proponent of a linguistic nationalism unifying the Spanish-speaking world. In her analysis of Instituto Cervantes’ mission, Clare Mar-Molinero examines the unidirectional flow of a particular vision of Hispanidad set by the Spanish government that embraces the diversity of the Spanish-speaking world, while mediating it from a central base in Madrid (169). Although on the surface, Instituto Cervantes embraces diversity “as with all those who seek to create an empire, they aim to do this from a position of leadership and, moreover, from a position of economic gain, as Spain recognizes the profitability of the linguistic product that is the Spanish language today” (Mar-Molinero 170). 14 cinema, like other national cinemas, is protected by the state as a source of cultural patrimony and is regarded as “ a powerful driving force behind Spain’s influence abroad” (Beeckmans and Giner 6). In an issue of Miradas al exterior, a publication by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, Beatriz Beeckmans and Carmen Giner focus on Spanish cinema’s mediation of Spanish identity as well as its ambitions towards encapsulating a transnational imaginary. In defining what constitutes Spanish national cinema, Beeckmans and Giner argue that “Spanish nationality” is understood to mean that at least 75% of a film’s creators—directors, screenwriters and crew—are either Spanish or citizens of a European Union member state. Or it can mean that a work has been filmed in Spanish [my emphasis]. And the fact is that the Spanish language is, precisely, one of Spanish cinema’s trump cards (8). This interest in extending the boundaries of Spanish cinema through its affiliation with the Spanish language emphasizes the fluidity of a national cinema, whose own history is rooted in the promotion of a singular linguistic model. What is particularly interesting about this essay, and the special issue as a whole, is the manner in which it positions Spain as a central figure in the promotion of a Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary, whose cinema transcends the geographic boundary of the nation. The privatization and growth of film and media industries in Latin America and the United States challenges this unidirectional flow. While the “idea” of a national cinema to begin with is fraught with tensions around its definition, conception and purpose, they remain the primary means by which “foreign” cinema is received and circulates globally. According to Andrew Higson, national cinemas are defined according to two central patterns—by “comparing and 15 contrasting one cinema to another, thereby establishing varying degrees of otherness… [and by] exploring the cinemas of a nation in relation to other already existing economies and cultures of the nation-state” (38). Thus, national cinemas should be “be understood as histories of crisis and conflict, of resistance and negotiation” (Higson 37). Within this context, the desire of Spanish cinema, the Spanish State and Spanish private industry for a broader transatlantic identity can be viewed as a strategy of resistance and negotiation, but ultimately, beneficial to promoting Spanish culture and “the international presence of Spanish cinema” (Nicolau 9). As Antonio Nicolau notes, the activities of the Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional para el Desarollo (AECID) aim “to boost the dissemination abroad of [cinema as]…a key piece in the construction of the contemporary Spanish and Ibero-American collective imaginations; a piece that, furthermore, is today a cultural industry of undeniable significance” (9). Nicolau’s statement reaffirms the importance of cinema as an imaginary bridge uniting Spain and the Ibero-American world, what I discuss as the contemporary Hispanic Atlantic. The need to nurture a Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary, therefore, presents a situation in which culture, specifically film and media, has a direct link with State interests regarding transnational designs, while also subjecting national film industries to the demands of external voices. While there have been earlier attempts at creating a transatlantic imaginary through Spanish-Latin American coproductions, which I discuss in more depth in the first chapter, the Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary begins in the 1980s as a result of various State & cultural initiatives, the changing industrial structure for film and media worldwide, and 16 the increased presence of Latino immigrants in the United States that translates to a more visible economic and political power. As a result of these factors, the Spanish film industry increased its number of filmic co-productions within Latin America since the 1990s, in order to maximize resources, share talent and labor, and capitalize on a larger transatlantic media market for its films, while simultaneously strengthening its ties with the European film market. For example, between 1992 and 2002, there were 297 Spanish coproductions produced with European and Latin American countries out of a grand total of 870 films produced, of which 779 were actually released (ICAA 6). This period is also characterized by an overall growth in the industry as the number of Spanish films produced increased from 52 films in 1992 to 137 in 2002 (ICAA 6). The rise in the number of films produced with Spanish participation is attributed to the growth of digital television since the mid-90s as the “appearance of new channels led to the proliferation of contents with which to fill broadcasting time, which led most broadcasters to take part in large numbers of projects in exchange for broadcasting rights in their territories, as also in compliance with their legal obligation to invest” (ICAA 6). This changing structure of the film and media industry in Spain has similar parallels worldwide, even in places where media industries are not legally required to invest in film production. While the growth of private media industries enabled the production of more films, the role of the state in fostering and protecting its local film industry cannot be overlooked. For example, AECID has a central role in fostering a Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary through the funding of Ibermedia, the Ibero-American co-production film fund based in Madrid that began in 1997. According to Nicolau, 17 Ibermedia’s objectives are to encourage the making of co-productions, the staging, distribution and promotion of films in regional markets, as well as the training of human resources for the audiovisual industry. Since its inception, the program—which receives approximately 40% of its funding from the AECID— has supported 379 audiovisual projects, awarded 348 financial grants to cinematic co-productions, 209 grants for the distribution and promotion of Ibero-American film, 168 scholarships to students and professionals and 62 direct grants to academic institutions (9). Although Ibermedia’s objectives have enabled the growth and development of the Spanish film industry as well as those in Latin America, the increase in filmic coproductions brings up questions of local, regional and global identity, especially in regards to the desire for films to reflect cultural specificity. In the Spanish case, there is an active attempt to cultivate the Latin American market by referencing Hispanist discourse in the attempt to capture and maintain the Latin American audience, which ensures an additional media market for Spanish national cinema, in addition to existing co-production agreements with other EU countries. Although Teresa Hoefert de Turegano argues that Latin American film industries benefit from co-production arrangements, she also points out how the structure of Spanish [and European] co-production policy ensures that “Spanish and Western European culture remain positioned in a normative manner against which a certain degree of Latin American exoticism is played out” (21). In addition, as Tamara L. Falicov points out in her analysis of Ibermedia, co-production arrangements often reflect economic differences that impinge on film narratives, so that, for example, Spain as the largest donor to Ibermedia, often results in an “over-representation of Spanish actors in Latin American co-productions” (24). Chapter two of this dissertation responds to this over-representation by focusing on the representation of Latin Americans in Spanish cinema as one group of 18 many in a wave of immigrant social problem films that are produced in Spain since the 1990s. According to Hoefert de Turégano, “in many instances of coproduction between European and developing countries, the funding institutions and foundations hinge their financing and support of a film on its essence as a vehicle promoting cultural identities” (16). While she argues that these funding arrangements are ultimately beneficial in promoting film production in countries that cannot sustain their own industries, she notes that “the link to cultural identity has a slightly negative side that creates invisible limitations of what can be said and the extent to which the films can participate in a radical discourse of equality” (16). In her analysis of the effects of co-production agreements on film narratives, Falicov notes four common tropes within Spanish-Latin American films funded through Ibermedia or alternative sources that deal with the portrayal of the Spaniard in Latin American cinema. According to Falicov, these common tropes are “the sympathetic Spaniard, the Spanish anarchist, the evil or racist Spaniard and the Spanish tourist” (24). In the case of the evil or racist Spaniard, Falicov points to films that allegorize the Spanish colonizer, such as Maribel Verdu’s character in Y tu mamá también, but also points to contemporary Mexican cinema’s tendency to showcase “a subtle but symbolic form of “Moctezuma’s Revenge” to the (former) colonizer” through the portrayal of the “doomed Spaniard” as discussed by Emily Hind (25). Falicov also notes the tendency to showcase Spanish tourists as buffoons in Cuban cinema, which “signals a resentment of the economic and social power that tourists such as Spaniards might hold over their Cuban brethren’s heads” (26). 19 Similarly, in her analysis of Spanish-Latin American coproductions, Libia Villazana points to the limitations of coproductions in nurturing a Latin American home market through the mandatory incorporation of Spanish actors in films, who, often times, appear in the narrative without justification and whose “Spanish accents make visible the mechanisms of coproduction within a film” (73). Given this tendency, Villazana pinpoints three different formulas within Spanish-Latin American coproductions. In the first formula, the script justifies the presence of Spanish actors (and their accents) as characters “born in a Latin American country… although they were brought up in Spain. They finally decide to go back to their roots or to stay in Spain” (73). In the second formula, the Spanish actor “imitates the local accent of the Latin American country where the film is based” (76) and in the third formula, the presence of Spanish actors is either “unclear or… self-evident in a script” (76). According to Villazana, these formulas and the legislations that mandate the inclusion of Spanish actors within Latin American films result in coproductions that “suffer from social de-contextualization” and ignore “the cultural and economic differences between Latin American countries and Spain” (70). In addition to the impact on film narratives, Villazana notes the economic advantage that Spain and Spanish actors hold over their Latin American counterparts, since it is cheaper for Spanish producers to make films in Latin America but also because of a wage differential since Spanish actors and technicians are paid according to the standards within Spain and vice versa for Latin American actors and technicians (78). In spite of these limitations, Latin American countries are more than willing to participate in the promotion of a Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary as the benefits potentially 20 outweigh its deficiencies. Co-productions with Spain provided much needed financial resources and as Pardo notes, give access to other European funding opportunities. In addition, while the overrepresentation of the Spanish in Latin American cinema has been criticized, Latin American films that are not the product of co-production agreements with Spain have also portrayed Spanish characters as a way of guaranteeing an entry point into the Spanish market. One such example is Alfonso Cuarón’s film, Y tu mamá también. In this 2001 film, the Spanish character, a woman named Luisa, visits Mexico and takes a road trip with two teenage boys from Mexico City to the southern coast. Her perspective, while sympathetic, functions within hegemonic terms as she romanticizes the landscape, indigenous expressions and people they encounter, not to mention the fact the she sexually “conquers” the two teenage boys, re-enacting the conquest within sexual terms though re-inscribing it along gendered lines. In “Transatlantic Traffic in Recent Mexican Films,” Paul Julian Smith suggests that Luisa’s portrayal in the film as “spectacularly visible on screen and covertly undercut in the narrative” can be read as a “fetish of Europeanness [that]… stands in for a globalization of the audiovisual industries which cannot be directly represented in films whose claim to authenticity is based on national specificity” (398). Instead, I wish to situate this film, not as a tension between the local and the global, but as a product of a geocultural imaginary that is increasingly visible on the global stage because of the transatlantic and transhemispheric structure of the global Spanish-language mediascape, which aims to unify across these seemingly disparate 21 spaces. Arjun Appadurai, in his book, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization, defines the term “mediascape” as: The distribution of the electronic capabilities to produce and disseminate information (newspapers, magazines, television stations, and film-production studios), which are now available to a growing number of private and public interests throughout the world, and to the images of the world created by these media (35). Appadurai uses the suffix “–scape” to describe how these “are not objectively given relations…[but] deeply perspectival constructs, inflected by historical, linguistic, and political situatedness of different sorts of actors: nation-states, multinationals, diasporic communities, as well as subnational groupings and movements” and individual actors (33). The concept of mediscape is best suited to describe the production, distribution and reception of Spanish-language media produced since the 1990s. For Smith, this transatlantic imaginary is the result of an increasingly conglomerated, vertically integrated and privatized film and media industry for Spanish-language film that operates across the Hispanic Atlantic and which surpasses the efforts of State initiatives in achieving it (400). 6 Instead of viewing the commercial interests of the private sector as contentious with the state’s cultural mission, this dissertation suggests that both work together to promote a Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary that works within and beyond specific 6 Smith discusses the 2000 film Amores perros as a key example of the ways in which a national film’s success is a product of an increasingly transatlantic mediascape. While stylistically appealing, Amores perros benefitted from the vertically-integrated nature of its producer, Altavista, which is owned by CIE (Companía Iberoamericana de Entretenimiento), “the biggest live entertainment company in Mexico,” which distributed the film and released and promoted its soundtrack within its holdings (396). CIE also “operates in Argentina, Brazil, Columbia, Chile and Spain”… with offshoots of subsidiaries in the U.S (Smith 396). 22 national interests. In the case of Spain, its national interests are embedded in the transnational. In spite of the attempt to focus on a broader geocultural imaginary as an alternative theoretical discourse, gender remains central to the Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary, provoking Gabilondo to inquire about the resurgence of “a new, global, yet anachronistically conservative… patriarchal Hispanicity” (92) within the Hispanic Atlantic. This patriarchal Hispanicity is a product of the history of conquest, exploitation and colonization that occurred in the Americas at the hands of the Spanish after the ‘encounter’ with the Americas in 1492. While Latin American countries achieved independence during the course of the 19 th century, the colonial hierarchies of race, class, and gender established during the 400-year Spanish rule were firmly rooted in the identities of the new nations. According to Elizabeth Dore, “patriarchy was not simply some discursive invention, but was the law of the land throughout Latin America in the nineteenth century. Patriarchal authority was a central tenet of the Spanish colonial legal system and of the civil codes enacted by the newly independent countries” (Dore 108). The “centerpiece of patriarchal law was patria potestad—the power of the father. With extensive authority over his wife, children, and dependents, the patriarch was the state’s representative within the household” (Dore 108). For Spain, the colonial project was also a religious mission, which set the stage for the indoctrination of the New World under the Catholic faith. This interweaving between the politics of the state and the role of the Church also functioned as an instrument for the regulation of gender and sexuality, which viewed sexuality as a means 23 of social reproduction. Gender roles followed examples from religious teachings, where the Virgin Mary, a self-sacrificing, subservient virginal mother, is the ideal symbol of femininity. The worship of the Virgin Mary, also known as the cult of marianismo, as both a spiritual and national icon, continues to be a strong link between Latin American countries and Spain, however, contested this representation of femininity and sexuality may be. According to Craske, “many factors influence the development of gender relations [in Latin America]…, but the dominant form was set by the colonizers and reinforced by the Catholic Church” (10). Thus, even as social changes have modified gender roles across the Hispanic Atlantic, gender relations will always be rooted in the historical legacy of colonization and the indoctrination of the Church. While patriarchal Hispanicity can be read as a prominent discourse across the Hispanic Atlantic, Gabilondo argues for a need to theorize the complex reality of how gender and sexuality operates within and across the Atlantic given the manner in which these gendered bodies reify and transcend the boundaries of the nation (110). These movements, a product of an increasingly globalized world, however do not eradicate the hierarchies that exist both within and across nations. Instead, they become reaffirmed so that those subjects marked by their subalternity within the nation are even more marked by a discourse that does not relegate it to the foreground (Gabilondo 109). Ultimately, Gabilondo concedes that “the Atlantic is a geopolitical category rather than a subject position [that] points to the fact that ultimately, the Hispanic Atlantic is an imperialistic reorganization of power and bodies, which further emphasizes the subalternity of these [gendered, sexual and racialized] subject positions” (111). Although Gabilondo’s essay 24 laments the lack of a theoretical discourse for gender and sexuality that is central to the Hispanic Atlantic, he does point to the growth of feminist and women’s groups that rely on their shared history to form transatlantic and transhemispheric alliances (110). Chapter 3 explores the transatlantic and transhemispheric mobilization against gendered violence as an example of one way in which issues of gender and sexuality are pushed to the foreground of the Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary. Mapping the Hispanic-Atlantic Imaginary Given the expansiveness of the Hispanic Atlantic, this dissertation is divided into three chapters that emphasize three motifs central to the Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary, which are evident in a number of films produced since the 1990s. I begin this project with a discussion of representations of empire and encounters produced during and after the Quincentenary in 1992. Since the Hispanic Atlantic emerges as a result of the history of colonization and conquest, these mediations of colonial and contemporary transatlantic contact are central to the collective imaginings of the Hispanic world. Next, I focus on the issue of immigration and the manner in which gendered bodies reframe domestic issues of the home, the family and the nation. My last chapter engages with representations of gender, sex and violence across the Hispanic Atlantic. By looking at films that exploit cinematic violence as well as those that resist its representation, this chapter focuses on how these representations dialog with the history of cultural stereotyping, in which Spaniards and their descendants become associated with violence. While these three chapters largely focus on thematic concerns that bridge the Hispanic 25 Atlantic, I discuss examples of how the Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary is programmed through the film festival circuit and the changing landscape of media distribution practices in my conclusion. In programming Hispanidad, these institutions and industries set the framework — and ensure the mobility of — the Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary across geographic spaces. Chapter 1, “Re-framing Empire: Mediating the Hispanic-Atlantic Imaginary,” begins with a discussion of the Quincentenary celebrations of 1992, a pivotal moment in re-defining the Hispanic Atlantic as a transatlantic and transhemispheric bridge connecting Spain with its former colonies in Latin America, as well as, the Spanish- speaking peoples of the United States through discourse on Hispanidad. An analysis of the politics, production and circulation of state-funded film and television produced during and after the Quincentenary era highlights the role that film and media play in reconstructing the Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary. The first section of this chapter examines the limits and tensions of a Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary inherent within the number of films about the discovery and conquest of the Americas, even as films presented revisionary accounts that incorporated the perspectives of the indigenous. The second and third sections of this chapter focus largely on Spanish-Latin American coproductions produced after 1992. The second section analyzes representations of transatlantic encounters, which highlight the colonial legacies and continued presence of national, gendered, sexual and racial hierarchies. In spite of their transnational aims, the interrelationship between gender, sexuality and citizenship within these films serves to reify a dominant order within and beyond the national context. In the 26 last section, I analyze the film, También la lluvia, as a recent retelling of the Columbus story that examines the legacies of domination and exploitation that persist in Latin America through a fictionalized re-creation of the Cochabamba Water Wars in 2000. In addition to overtly linking the history of colonialization with contemporary neoimperial struggles in Latin America, the film functions as a discursive critique of the role of film and film industries as both a vehicle for continued exploitation and a potential site of resistance. In chapter 2, “Transnational Domesticity: Expanding the Boundaries of the Spanish Home and Nation,” I explore cinematic representations of immigrant[s] and women in Spain through the lens of transnational domesticity, a concept explored by Stacey Weber-Fève, whose book on the topic focuses on women’s contemporary filmmaking and literature in France, Tunisia and Algeria. In her analysis, Weber- Fève explores the “home” within these texts as “a receiver of public languages and values, a location in which national, global, and/or hegemonic discourses speak and reproduce themselves through magazines, newspapers, television, radio, books, how-to manuals, the Internet, and so on” (xxi). My discussion of transnational domesticity within Spanish film focuses on the representations of a feminized immigrant Other either through the overt portrayal of an immigrant as female or the cross-cultural alliance between a Spanish woman and the immigrant subject. While this pairing of Spanish women and the immigrant seeks to create an alliance based on the mutual experience of oppression against Western forms of patriarchy, these films ultimately reify a hierarchy in which 27 citizenship trumps gender, which limits the creation of a universalizing discourse of oppression. In chapter 3, “Domesticating Violations: Mediating Gender, Sex and Violence Across the Hispanic Atlantic,” I examine the interplay between violence, gender and sexuality in cinematic representations across the Hispanic Atlantic using Luz Calvo’s theorization of the “primal scene of colonialism” (74). In her essay on borderlands cinema, Luz Calvo discusses this “primal scene of colonialism” as specific to Mexican identity, however, I argue that its relevance can be extended to the entire Hispanic Atlantic world as evident in the preoccupation with sexual encounters discussed in Chapter 1 of this dissertation, but also in the widespread [mis]representation of the Spanish and its resulting progeny as inherently violent and sexually deviant and/or oversexualized in film and popular culture. This violent point of origins and its subsequent use as a strategy of subjugation for both the colonized and colonizers becomes a central preoccupation within the Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary and its treatment of violence. 7 Given the broad spectrum of cinematic representations of violence within the Hispanic Atlantic, this chapter is divided into three sections that consider how national/regional differences influence the way that violence has been represented and 7 For Calvo, this “primal scene of colonialism” is repeated throughout cultural productions and becomes “an important site for analysis because race & sexuality are so thoroughly embedded… that it becomes necessary to theorize race and sexuality together—as intersected, mutually constitutive categories” (74) within Mexican and Chicano identity formation. Extending this argument across the Hispanic Atlantic, Calvo situates the primal scene as a source of trauma that “provoke[s] profound anxiety for all colonial subjects, both colonized and colonizer” (78-9). Given the different national histories of the members of the Hispanic Atlantic, this colonizer/colonized is seen through various dichotomies, depending on the site of enunciation: Spain/Latin America, Northern Europe/Spain, U.S./Spain, U.S./Latin America, and U.S./Mexico. 28 functions onscreen. The first section focuses on two films, Tesis by Alejandro Amenábar and Rosario Tijeras, directed by Emilio Maillés, which explore themes of gender, sex and violence within their respective national contexts. In the second section of this chapter, I revisit the theme of sexual encounters through my analysis of the film, Sólo quiero caminar, directed by Agustín Díaz Yanes. While the film critiques domestic violence and challenges stereotypes of Spanish femininity, the film promotes an image of Mexico as a site where various forms of violence emerge out of an outmoded cultural machismo. Similarly, films produced in the U.S. dealing with the murdered women in Juárez further perpetuate this depiction of Mexico as a site of violence. The last section addresses modes of resistance towards representations of violence as well as the mediation of transatlantic anti-violence activism in films such as Amores que matan and Te doy mis ojos by Icíar Bollaín. While both films maintain their cultural specificity, they also demonstrate the possibility of transatlantic solidarity outside of traditional discourses of Hispanidad. In my conclusion, I focus on the programming of the Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary through the rise of Hispanic and Latino film festivals, which promote and perpetuate discourse on Hispanidad through the marketing, distribution and reception of films from the Iberoamerican world. Given the expansive network of international and domestic film festivals catering to Latino, Latin American and Spanish film, my case studies are limited to a brief survey of the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival, the Festival de Cine Iberoamericano de Huelva in Spain and the Festival Internacional de Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano de La Habana in Cuba. In addition, a discussion of programming the 29 Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary would not be complete without acknowledging the manner in which television and the Internet have enabled films to circulate and find a market within and outside of more normative distribution channels. These seemingly disparate institutions, when analyzed together highlight the diversity of the Hispanic Atlantic and demonstrate the complex relations, identities and tensions that underlie their desire for a shared imaginary that is increasingly linked through the consumption of film and media practices. Since the 1980s, there has been a growing desire to capitalize on the global Spanish-language media market by overlapping the structure of its constitutive respective film and media industries. In recent decades, global media industries have commodified this Hispanic/Latino identity, as imagined by both Spain and the United States, in an attempt to cultivate a Spanish-language film and media market, evident in the “Latin boom” of the 1990s, the rise of international coproductions between Spain and Latin America and the Hispanic presence within Hollywood. While the desire for a unified Spanish-language media market is beneficial for both Spain and Latin America and crucial in the attempt to maintain national and independent film industries outside of the Hollywood film industry, its targeting of and claims to represent the Hispanic Atlantic audience is based on assumptions about commonalities of language, religion and culture that are rooted in discourses of Hispanidad and its legacy of colonial empire that resulted in gendered, racial, sexual and classed hierarchies. These “commonalities” thus cannot be accepted uncritically as they are embedded within a discursive framework that maintains internal hierarchies that continue to structure the contemporary Hispanic Atlantic. 30 Relying solely on Hispanidad, as the source of a shared identity has historically been premised on the promotion of sameness over difference, which obliterates national, regional and internal differences in language and culture. Therefore, in order to create a successful transatlantic and transhemispheric bridge, the Spanish-language film and media industry must acknowledge and foreground the multiple identities that define the experience of Latin Americans, Spaniards and U.S.-Latinos, especially since each group in and of itself does not constitute a singular identity. 31 Chapter Bibliography Amores perros. Dir. Alejandro González Iñárritu. Perf. Emilio Echevarría, Gael García Bernal, Goya Toledo, and Álvaro Guerrero. 2000. Lionsgate, 2001. DVD. Amores que matan. Dir. Icíar Bollaín. Perf. Luis Tosar, Félix Cubero, and Elisabet Gelabert. 2000. 10 años en corto: Semana del Cortometraje de la Comunidad de Madrid, Selección 1999-2007. Consejería de Cultura y Turismo de la Comunidad de Madrid, 2008. DVD. Appadurai, Arjun. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1996. Print. 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Ana Torrent, Fele Martínez, and Eduardo Noriega. 1996. Vanguard/ Tanelorn Films, 1999. DVD. 34 The Others. Dir. Alejandro Amenábar. Perf. Nicole Kidman, Christopher Eccleston, and Fionnula Flanagan. Cruise/Wagner Productions, 2001. Film. Trigo, Abril. “Global Realignments and the Geopolitics of Transatlantic Studies: An Inquiry.” Proceedings of the Title VI 50 th Anniversary Conference: Celebrating 50 Years, March 19-21 2009. Washington, D.C. Web. 22 January 2010. <https//titlevi50th.msu.edu/agenda/OnlineProceedings/.../H/Trigo.doc>. Villazana, Libia. “Hegemony Conditions in the Coproduction Cinema of Latin America: The Role of Spain.” Framework 49.2 (Fall 2008): 65-85. Print. Weber-Fève, Stacey. Re-hybridizing Transnational Domesticity and Femininity: Women’s Contemporary Filmmaking and Lifewriting in France, Algeria, and Tunisia. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2010. Print. Y tu mamá también. Dir. Alfonso Cuarón. Perf. Maribel Verdú, Gael García Bernal, and Diego Luna. 2001. MGM, 2002. DVD. 35 Chapter 1: Re-framing Empire: Mediating Encounters and Resistance in the Hispanic-Atlantic Imaginary The Quincentenary celebrations of 1992, which marked the 500-year anniversary of the “encounter” with the Americas, was a pivotal moment in re-defining Spain’s postcolonial relationship with Latin America. 8 In light of its colonial history and marginal position for much of the twentieth century, Spain viewed this event as a key lens for the negotiation of its national identity through its transnational imaginings, especially as the newly democratic nation attempted to present itself as a global power across Europe and the Americas. Most importantly, this negotiation of Spanish identity re-imagines the Hispanic Atlantic as a transatlantic and transhemispheric bridge connecting Spain with its former colonies in Latin America as well as with the Spanish-speaking peoples of the United States through a discourse on Hispanidad that repositions the Iberoamerican world as global power player. Thus, the commemoration of 1992, interpreted this discourse for the contemporary moment through cultural events across the globe, 8 Postcoloniality within the Hispanic Atlantic context differs from the Anglophone use of the term in that Latin America gained independence from Spain during the course of the 19 th century, whereas much of postcolonial theory evolves much later in the twentieth century after the independence of colonized nations in the post-World War II period. The literal meaning of the term “postcolonial” referring to the period after colonization for the newly independent Latin American countries does not take into account Spain’s decline as a global power in relation to European modernity, but also fails to consider the impact of American imperial interests in the region throughout the 20 th century. 36 beginning in the mid-1980s through the early 1990s. 9 The nature of these celebrations as largely state-funded and state-sponsored, ensured the link between culture, the politics of the time and the mission of the Spanish state and other sponsoring nations and organizations, who viewed 1992 not only within nationalist terms but also in light of its global ramifications. 10 Given that the commemoration of 1992 was most widely visible on film and television, 11 an analysis of the politics, production and circulation of state-funded film and television produced during and after the Quincentenary era highlights the role that 9 I discuss the commemoration of 1992 as the Quincentenary era, which incorporates the bulk of the 1980s and lasts through the early 1990s, since planning for these cultural events began well before the actual 500 th anniversary and their manifestation often spilled over into the years following 1992. For example, the Spanish government established the Comisión Nacional del Quinto Centenario in 1981, which was nonpartisan and based in Madrid (Block 104). The Comisión Nacional del Quinto Centenario served as an umbrella organization that supported quincentennial celebrations, commemorations, and cultural and educational ventures worldwide. While I largely focus on the role of the state in organizing these cultural celebrations, private and commercial enterprise — Spanish corporations and banks — also worked in conjunction with the state to fund cultural events. 10 While the “discovery” of America proved instrumental to Spain’s political and economic power during its Golden Age, its ramifications were also felt globally, shaping European modernity as well as structures of knowledge and power, including race. In his book, Local Histories/Global Designs, Walter D. Mignolo argues, “the connection of the Mediterranean with the Atlantic through a new commercial circuit, in the sixteenth century, lays the foundation for both modernity and coloniality” (51). 11 In his analysis of the quincentennial literature, Block argues that the “fifth centennial of Columbus’s voyage has been marked most significantly by the rolling of the presses” (101), given the substantial increase in publications on topics related to Columbus between January 1991 and June 1992. Of these publications, 75% of the items were published in English (45%) and Spanish (30%) (Block 103). While there are numerous publications related to the Quincentenary, these publications do not have the same broad mass appeal as the films and television programs produced in this era, which screened on television, in movie theaters and film festivals worldwide. A promotional booklet for the series, “Columbus and the Age of Discovery,” notes the “multitude of public celebrations [that] are scheduled for the 1992 anniversary. For most people around the world, those celebrations will take place on television” (WBGH Educational Foundation). 37 film and media play in reconstructing the Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary. In film, the various attempts by different social actors to portray and celebrate this anniversary set the stage for exploring the construction of a Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary through the intertwining of Spanish and Latin American mediascapes characterized by international coproduction agreements, the exchange of talent and geographical locations for film shooting as well as themes emphasizing this connective bridge. Since the Hispanic Atlantic encompasses a wide range of nationalities and national film and media industries, this chapter focuses largely on selections of film and media produced by Spain, Mexico and the United States. Given the critical reframing of the “discovery” of the Americas as an “encounter” during the commemoration of 1992, these texts demonstrate the tensions that result from unequal encounters and the possibilities of resistance that the Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary entails. Empire, Encounters and Resistance in the Quincentenary Era As discussed in my introduction, the contemporary Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary best illustrates the intertwining of the Spanish-language film and media market that has broadened the production and distribution of the Spanish and Latin American film industries beyond its national borders. The emphasis on the re-emergence of a Hispanic- Atlantic imaginary around the Quincentenary in this chapter sets the framework for contemporary understandings of a broader Hispanic-Atlantic identity and the desire for a global Spanish-language film and media market, characterized by international film co- productions and the intertwining and interdependence of these national film and 38 television industries. Scholars, such as Latin Americanist Juan Poblete, used the term “Latin(o) American world regional imaginary and space” (ix), 12 to describe the global Spanish-language film and media market that moves beyond Hispanic essentialism and challenges the monocultural dominance of Hollywood. While Poblete’s view alludes to the possibilities of constructing this market outside of Hispanist essentialism, the privileging of the Spanish language as the primary means of soliciting a commonality is already exclusive, considering that as a language of empire, it marginalized indigenous languages in the colonies and regional languages within Spain. In spite of its status as a colonial language, however, Spanish is also subaltern in relation to the English language and North Atlantic modernity (Mignolo 268). In his book, Local Histories/ Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking, Mignolo discusses how the Spanish language is “three times subaltern” within the history of geopolitical reconfigurations: Spanish was first displaced toward a subaltern within the European community itself during the seventeenth century when Seville was replaced by Amsterdam as the center of global transaction, and when French, German, and English became the languages of reason and science….Second, after World War II and the division of the world into three ranked areas, Spanish became the language of a significant portion of the Third World, Hispanic America. Spanish was devalued a third time when it became the language of Latino communities in the United States (268). 12 Given the wide net cast for audiences of Spanish-language media and the desire to avoid the problematics of previous assertions of singular Hispanic and Latino identities, Poblete’s discussion of a “Latino American world-regional imaginary and space” suggests a narrative that avoids Hispanic essentialisms and functions more as an “interruption of monolingual and monocultural global imaginaries” (xxi-xxii). Poblete sees a “Latino American world-regional imaginary and space” as “attempts to circumscribe not ahistorical essences but grounded sociocultural processes and circuits well illustrated in their complexity by the development, for instance, of Latin(o) American television” (xxii). 39 Consequently, the status of the Spanish language so central to understanding of the common Hispanic-Atlantic identity, as both a hegemonic and subaltern language, underlies its possibilities as both a mode of domination and resistance. While the emphasis for this project lay in the reimagining of the Hispanic Atlantic as it arose during the Quincentenary era, it is important to note that the attempt to cultivate a cultural market between Spain and Latin America existed long before as an extension of postcolonial Spain’s colonial imaginary. Therefore, in order to examine the contemporary Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary between Spain, Latin America and, to some extent, the United States, one needs to address the ghosts of empire and its traces in Hispanist discourse, since it is virtually impossible to discuss a Hispanic Atlantic world, while ignoring the conditions that produced it. In spite of attempts to think beyond coloniality in order to position a transatlantic and transhemispheric film and media market as a means to contest the predominately monolingual Hollywood industry, the very existence of this media market results from the historical conquest and colonization of the Americas and a neoimperial ascendency of Spain within the Latin American economy during the 1990s. Along with the increased presence of Spanish finances within that region, as Teresa Hoefert de Turégano points out, there was also “a shift toward a more concerted cinematographic policy in Latin America” (15). While Hoefert de Turégano’s situates this renewed interest in Latin America as a product of Spain’s renewal after the death of Franco, these cinematographic policies also emerged as a product of the Quincentenary in 1992, which sought to stimulate interest in Spanish cinema as a valuable form of cultural patrimony. 40 After the death of Franco in 1975, Spain underwent a process of transition to democracy. As a result, 1992 became a date for the commemoration of not only the “discovery” of the Americas, but also Spain’s renewed presence on the world stage. As a promotional pamphlet for the Quintcentenary proclaims, “It will be the year of a new discovery: Spain” (SEQC, Discovery). While the Spanish State approached the Fifth Centennial as a means to claim a space for itself in the last quarter of the 20 th century, there was also the attempt to make amends with its former colonies in order to strengthen the economic power of both regions and in particular, Spain’s own within Europe. While Spain’s admission into the European Community in 1986 fulfilled its own desire for acceptance within Europe, the link with Latin America could once again position Spain as the center of two larger regional entities. In order to align itself with Latin America, therefore, Spain once again solicited discourse on Hispanidad to promote a Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary. This attempt to bridge the Hispanic Atlantic world has origins within Hispanist discourse, which emerged within Spain during the 19 th century, but is also traced back to the reign of the Catholic Monarchs and the original discovery of the Americas. Hispanist discourse, in particular, Hispanismo or Hispanidad, is a top-down state-sponsored project that incorporates formerly colonized subjects into a master narrative that naturalizes the relationship between Spain and Latin America by stressing commonalities of language, religion and culture. Through Hispanist discourse, Spain sought to ally itself with its former colonies as its global power declined during the 19 th and the first half of the 20 th centuries. For example, during the Franco era, Hispanist discourse was an ideology of the 41 Francoist regime during the Spanish Civil War and later promoted as a foreign policy towards Latin America when Franco came to power (Escudero 171). Franco imagined an alliance between Spain and Latin America by stressing an ideal Hispanic Community, which positioned Spain as the madre patria ‘motherland’ (Escudero 171). Spain’s foreign policy also included an attempt to cultivate cultural bridges linking the nation with its former colonies. According to Hoefert de Turegano, Spain “long dreamt of creating a large Spanish-speaking cinema market” and in October 1931 organized the Primer Congreso Hispanoamericano de Cinematografia, which focused on the interchange between Spanish-speaking countries and paved the way for more meetings under Franco (17). For example, in 1940, the Council of the Hispanic World was established, followed by the establishment of the Hispano-American Cinematographic Union in 1948, created “with the aim of encouraging the exchange of films and cinematic imports” (Beeckmans and Giner 8). This union resulted in coproductions between Spain and Latin America, beginning with the first Spanish-Mexican coproduction, Jalisco canta en Sevilla. Directed by Fernando de Fuentes in 1948, Jalisco canta en Sevilla blended the genres of the españolada and the Mexican comedia ranchera. The history of Spanish and Latin American coproductions has been documented by Alberto Elena, a film historian based in Madrid. Elena notes that between 1948 and 2002, over 440 Spanish and Latin American coproductions were produced (286). Of these, 183 films were produced in conjunction with Mexico, 121 were produced with Argentina, and the remaining 139 films were made with other Latin American countries (Elena 295). In spite of the significant number of 42 filmic collaborations, Elena notes that few films were actually distributed and received exhibition on both sides of the Atlantic. For example, between the early 1970s and the mid-1980s, the largest number of Spanish-Mexican films was produced, often in collaboration with other countries (289). 13 Largely characterized by an explosion of genre and subgenre films — adventure, horror, exploitation, erotica — the proliferation of cinema during this period resulted in neither box-office success nor critical acclaim. 14 Unlike the previous decade, the production of Spanish and Latin American coproductions changed significantly between 1985 and 1995, as a result of political, economic and industrial shifts that altered the audiovisual landscape across the Hispanic Atlantic. According to Elena, these shifts included: La creciente intensificación de las relaciones con Latinoamérica durante la Transición Democrática—símbolicamente selladas por el reestablecimiento oficial de los vínculos diplomáticos con México en 1977—y, por otro, en los fastos de la celebración del Quinto Centenario del descubrimiento de América, esta vasta operación cultural garantizaria al cine y al audiovisual un apoyo sin precedentes en toda la historia de las relaciones entre España y América Latina. ‘The growing intensification of relations with Latin America during [Spain’s] democratic transition—symbolically sealed by the official restoration of diplomatic ties with Mexico in 1977—and, on the other side, in the splendor of 13 Between 1971 and 1980, Spanish-Mexican coproductions reached an all time high at 49 films (Elena 295). 14 In terms of box-office ticket sales, Elena cites two coproductions as the most seen of this period: Entre dos amores/ La usurpadora, directed by Luis Lucia in 1972; and Eva ¿qué hace este hombre en tu cama?/ Qué bravas son las solteras, directed by Tulio Demicheli in 1975 (290). Although these two films demonstrated popular appeal, Elena notes that only two films, Los restos del naufragio, directed by Ricardo Franco in 1978, and Carlos Saura’s 1982 film, Antonieta, “ensaya[n]—con independencia de sus posibles logros—un tipo de cine minimamente ambicioso tanto al nivel de la estética como del discurso” ‘rehearse—independent of their success—a type of cinema minimally ambitious at the level of aesthetics and discourse’ (Elena 290). In contrast, Maciel argues that Mexican critics and audiences “mocked” Antonieta for its “confusing, flat, and static” characters and dialogue that “lacked an understanding of the nation’s historical events and key personalities” (209). This difference in critical reception emphasizes the problems that transatlantic productions face when trying to bridge national identities. 43 the Fifth Centenary celebration of the discovery of America, this vast cultural operation guaranteed that film and the audiovisual [sectors] received support that was unprecedented in the entire history of relations between Spain and Latin America’ (290). Consequently, two institutions — Television Española (TVE)and the Sociedad Estatal Quinto Centenario (SEQC) — proved vital to transatlantic collaborations during this period. Between 1986 and 1992, Televisión Española invested more than 20 million dollars in coproductions with Latin America, although of the 50+ films financed, only 5 or 6 had commercial screenings in Spain (Elena 291). This program was short-lived when TVE underwent structural changes as a result of financial struggles (Elena 291). Established by the Spanish government, the Sociedad Estatal para la Ejecucíon de Programas del Quinto Centenario, or Sociedad Estatal Quinto Centenario (SEQC), the State Society for the Fifth Centennial was as an umbrella organization designed “to promote the exchange of scientific and cultural knowledge; to foster commercial and industrial flows with other countries (…), spreading the image of the Hispanic throughout the entire world” (SEQC, Discovery). Overall, the Sociedad Estatal assisted in the financing of “fourteen feature films, eighteen documentaries, twelve television series, and an opera” (Summerhill and Williams 142) in honor of the Quincentenary. Since cinema was regarded as a critical cultural product, the Sociedad Estatal also supported the exportation of Spanish cinema abroad by funding opening night receptions and publicity campaigns, including the premiere reception for ¡Ay, Carmela!, Spain’s official selection for the Oscars for Best Foreign Language Film (Collins). The decision to support all Spanish cinema abroad came at a moment characterized by the influx of foreign films in the early post-Franco period, which resulted in a declining interest in 44 domestically-produced films as now Spaniards were free to watch films that had previously been censored and/or restricted. Other scholars have attributed the declining domestic market for Spanish films to changes in domestic film policy. For example, Peter Besas cites the passage of the Miro Law in 1983 as the reason for the dramatic decrease in the number of Spanish films produced a year (248). According to Besas, the Miro Law sought to improve the “quality” of Spanish film production by providing subsidies for works by “serious” filmmakers who could produce films that would garner critical acclaim both nationally and internationally at the expense of more popular commercial fare (247). For Besas, the high art pretensions of the films released after the passage of the law thus alienated local Spanish audience from domestic films (248). 15 While Spanish cinema struggled to attract local audiences, it had little hope of attracting larger audiences internationally. Foreign films during this period suffered from declining international audiences due to industrial shifts in Hollywood, such as the centralization of theatre ownership in the mid-1980s and the closing of classics divisions within Hollywood studios that promoted and distributed international films, thus limiting the number released in the United States (Rohter C15, C18). In this regard, the attempts to solicit a Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary during this period function to broaden the market for Spanish cinema beyond Spain’s borders, emblematic of a shift in conceiving Spanish national cinema as a transnational and transatlantic product. 15 Citing industrial statistics from the ICAA, Besas shows how “the share culled by local pictures in their own market dropped to 10.80 percent in 1991, 9.32% in 1992, and 8.52 percent in 1993” (248). 45 Spain’s struggles to maintain its domestic film industry were similarly matched in Mexico during this period. Between 1976 and 1988, the Mexican national film industry suffered as a result of “the dismantl[ing] of the state’s lending institution for film production, the Banco Cinematográfico….[and the withdrawal of] support for the two official production companies, CONACITE I and CONACITE II, thus eliminating almost all state-sponsored film production” (Maciel 210). Additionally, rising production costs linked to inflation and the economic crisis in Mexico between 1982 and 1986 significantly reduced the production of State-sponsored films, although films were still produced by the private sector (Maciel 213). Later, the Ley Cinematográfica was revised in accordance with the NAFTA agreement, which “facilitated the expansion of U.S. investments and monopolies throughout the Mexican economy” at the expense of national cinema and culture (Maciel 216). Since Mexico had long been a cinematographic partner with Spain, Elena notes that the decline of the film industry during this period caused anxieties over the fate of the rest of Latin American cinema (290). As a result, a resurgence of interest in recreating a broader Hispanic Atlantic alliance proved beneficial to both national/regional film industries. However, by emphasizing a commonality of those cultural institutions that were central to the colonial project — language and the Catholic Church — discussions of a Hispanic Community during the Francoist era and the Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary as envisioned in preparation for the Quincentenary remained a one-sided monologue. This rhetoric of Hispanidad central to the Francoist regime continued during Spain’s transition to democracy after Franco’s death in the 1970s, which reveals the underlying desire for 46 dominance that continues to shape Spain’s relationship with Latin America. In her essay comparing Hispanist Democratic thought to that of the Franco era, María Escudero points out how “the democratic regime…inherited the internal contradictions of Hispanist thought of the Francoist regime… by pretending to give the appearance of equality while maintaining a rhetoric based on the notion of Spain’s superiority” (181-2). However, as Feros points out, Franco’s vision of Hispanidad was met with resistance from Spain’s former colonies in the form of “anti-imperial doctrines and movements, and the increasing influence of ‘indigenism’,” which emphasized how “everything that was currently wrong in Latin America was the result of Spanish colonialism” (121). Ironically, while indigenism was used as a political ideology to counter Hispanidad, this ideology functioned as a top-down process that privileged the identity of the conquered, without granting equitable treatment and participation of the indigenous within the nationalist project. 16 16 In “Nationalism and Literary Production: The Hispanic and Chicano Experiences,” Ramón A. Gutiérrez attempts to reconcile discourses on Hispanidad with Chicano nationalism by examining the similarities between the two periods of literary and cultural production that characterize each discourse, 1898-1945 and 1967-1991. By emphasizing the similarities of these projects rather than their differences, Gutiérrez aims to “bridge the gulf” that characterizes the Hispanic literary tradition in the United States (243). According to Gutiérrez, the literatures from these periods were both nationalist projects in their attempts to create an “imagined community”; “were bred in political climates shaped by colonialism and neo-colonialism, … and were profoundly implicated in the generation of racial consciousness” (243). While both discourses shared common traits, Gutiérrez pinpoints how Hispanidad and Hispanic nostalgic literature was a top-down nationalist project sponsored by the Spanish government to re-live its former glory after the loss of its empire. In contrast, the Chicano movement and Ethnic nationalist literature was “a nationalism from below that imagined a community based on kinship, religion, language and terrain” (Gutiérrez 243). While the Chicano nationalist project helped establish a space for a previously marginalized identity within dominant American culture, like all nationalist projects, it created an identity that excluded those that did not fit into its ideological mission: queer Chicanos/Chicanas, Chicana voices, those who opposed a monolithic Chicano “community” and those who sought assimilation into dominant Anglo culture (Gutiérrez 247). 47 The envisioning of Spain’s superiority re-emerged during the events of 1992, in its celebration of the 500-year anniversary of the beginning of Spain’s empire. These events set the stage for a re-envisioning of Spain’s former glory and its ascendance into the present moment by emphasizing the country’s successful transition to democracy, admission into the European Community, designation of Madrid as a cultural capital of Europe, Expo ‘92 in Seville and the selection of Barcelona for the 1992 Olympics. Masked as an opportunity for Spain to re-think its relationship with Latin America, the events of 1992, instead, became a moment in which Spain once again asserted itself as a crucial link between Europe and Latin America in order to display itself as a new and modern global power. The negative consequences of empire did not fit into the image Spain wanted to convey. Additionally, the link between the idea of empire and Francoist ideology, which manipulated history for political propaganda and promulgated the concept of Hispanidad, further complicated discussions of its colonial legacy since the death of Franco. In the new vision of Spain promoted in 1992, any negative criticisms of the legacy of its colonial past remained distanced from officially-sanctioned and Spanish- funded cultural activities by ensuring that the works it funded stayed away from controversial and negative depictions of Spain, while maintaining the illusion of open- ness to alternative indigenous and Latin American perspectives. In addition, the World Expo in Seville emphasized Spain’s multicultural history of three cultures — Christian, Islamic and Jewish — downplaying the nation’s history of internal repression and expulsion since the latter groups were ultimately forced to convert or expelled from the country. For example, the SEQC published a pamphlet of the 48 proceedings for the Seventh Meeting of the Latin American Conference of the National Commissions for the Commemoration of the Discovery of America, which focused on the history and presence of native peoples (The Presence and Heritage). Set in Guatemala in 1989, the conference brought together delegations from various Latin American countries as well as Spain and Portugal. 17 The pamphlet also highlighted the needs and demands of the indigenous populations as discussed in the conference, and argued that “the presence and the voice of the Indian peoples should have the possibility of playing the main role they deserve which has been denied them persistently” in the commemoration of the Quincentenary (SEQC, The Presence and Heritage 2). While the conference sought to extend the rights and inclusion of indigenous peoples within the nationalist project, it, along with the SEQC, failed to note indigenous resistance to the very idea of commemorating the Quincentenary, an event that resulted in the conquest, invasion and destruction of indigenous peoples and their land. In this regard, the First Continental Gathering: 500 Years of Resistance in July 1990 in Quito, Ecuador functioned as a critical response to the Quincentenary from representatives of 120 Indian Nations, international and fraternal organizations (Cumbre Continental de Pueblos y Organizaciones Indigenas). 17 The following countries sent delegations to the conference: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Columbia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Chile, Ecuador, El Salvador, Spain, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Portugal, The Dominican Republic, Uruguay and Venezuela. Observers for the conference included: the United States, Israel, Italy, Japan and the Organization of American States (OAS) (SEQC, The Presence and Heritage 1). Special guests included representatives from Canada, the Phillipines, UNESCO, the InterAmerican Bank of Development (BID), and the World Council of Indigenous Peoples (WCIP) (SEQC, The Presence and Heritage 1). 49 Although the Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary aligns with Hispanist discourse in its attempt to envision a larger Hispanic identity between Spain and its former colonies, what can be considered Hispanic identity emerged as a product of conquest and colonization and therefore maintains a hierarchy of power based on cultural politics and the politics of neoliberal economics, not to mention a contested label for indigenous groups that survived the colonial period and call Latin America their home. As Trigo argues: Contemporary Hispanic revivalism, which reached its operatic climax during the neo-imperial nostalgia staged during the festivities for the quincentenary of the so-called ‘Encounter’ in 1992… cannot be disconnected from the extraordinary expansion of Spanish corporations… and their managerial strategy to portray themselves as brokers between Latin America and the European Community, at a time when Latin American economies were forcefully converted to a neoliberal model (22). Given the economic hierarchy that Spain maintained within Latin America, the construction of a Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary as it re-emerged during the Quincentenary festivities is hardly a product of equal input. An analysis of Nicolás Echeverría’s 1991 film, Cabeza de Vaca, and the television miniseries, The Buried Mirror demonstrates how national and cultural interests take precedence over dissonant voices, in spite of the illusion of community and dialogue promoted within the Quincentenary’s official re-writing of the “discovery” of the Americas as an “encounter” between two worlds. In film, this encounter was largely mediated through the perspective of the discoverer or conquistador as seen through films such as Ridley Scott’s film, 1492: Conquest of Paradise; Christopher Columbus: The Discovery, directed by John Glenn in 1992; Carlos Saura’s 1988 film, El Dorado; and 50 Cabeza de Vaca. The positioning of the discoverer/conquerer as mediator structures the narrative and, as Shohat argues, the spectator “who accompanies, quite literally, the explorer’s perspective” (25). In telling the story of the “encounter” between the Old and New Worlds solely from the perspective of the discoverer/conqueror, the films maintain a one-sided view of the “encounter,” even if this perspective changes to include a more sympathetic portrayal of the indigenous. While many of these films presented a revisionist account of the “encounter,” the framing of the narrative from the perspective of the colonizer minimizes its ability to present alternative views and voices. According to Shohat, “the rescue of the past… suppresses the voice of the present and thus legitimates by default the availability of the space of the Orient for the geopolitical maneuvers of the Western powers” (24). In the same vein, the emphasis on revisiting the discovery and conquest of the Americas on film says little about the relationship between Spain and its former colonies, which keeps the problems of Latin America and Spain’s neoimperial ambitions in the era of the Quincentenary distanced from its colonial legacy. For example, rather than viewing the renewed Spanish interest in Latin America as neoimperial, the Spanish state reframes its presence as developmental in order to assist Latin America in becoming more like Spain. A pamphlet produced by the Comisión Nacional del Quinto Centenario during this time period describes Spain as a guide and engine for Latin America’s peaceful transition to 51 democracy and development (1). 18 As the “engine” behind the commemoration of 1992, Spain emphasized its role as a key mediator between Europe and the Americas, exemplified in the state support of the numerous films re-telling the “discovery” of the Americas. In these films, the Spanish conquistador functions as a cinematic mediator between the New World and its inhabitants and contemporary audiences, who assume the gaze of the protagonists. In this regard, Nicolás Echeverria’s film Cabeza de Vaca presents a complicated lens for this mediation. As a Mexican coproduction with Spain, the United States, and the United Kingdom, the film represents a blurring of the colonialist gaze with the beginnings of a Latin American consciousness through the character of Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, a 16 th century Spanish explorer. Based on the book Naufragios, written by Cabeza de Vaca and published after his return to Spain, the film focuses on his experiences on the failed Narvaez expedition that began in Florida. As one of the few survivors of the expedition in the film, Alvar, played by Spanish actor, Juan Diego, lands on the coast, is captured by the local natives, gains his freedom, and then travels through the South and Southwest regions, encountering the various tribes and eventually acculturating to the ways of the Natives before being rescued by a group of Spanish conquistadores at the end of the film. The beginning of the film is told through the 18 According to the pamphlet, the Quincentenary commemoration’s mission: Es preciso seguir apoyando los procesos democratizadores y de paz en America Latina. El modelo de España se ha constituido en una guía y en ejemplo a seguir en lo referente a la transición democrática y el desarrollo. Ante la conmemoración de 1992, España además de modelo debe ser un motor. ‘It is necessary to continue to support the democratic and peacful processes in Latin America. The model of Spain has been a guide and an example to follow in regard to its democratic transition and development. Before the 1992 commemoration, Spain in addition to [serving as] model, must be an engine’ (Comisión Nacional del Quinto Centenario 1). 52 conqueror’s point of view and fails to incorporate the subjectivity of those natives portrayed onscreen, particularly because the film does not translate the natives’ language. Since Alvar does not understand the language either, this lack of translation places the audience in the same position of misunderstanding that characterizes his first encounter with the natives and therefore positions all within a Eurocentric framework that reads the native culture as foreign and in the opening scene, as savage. After landing, Alvar and a few survivors stumble upon a mysterious hanging object, covered in feathers and blood. Frightened by this object, the Spaniards cautiously continue on their journey. The camerawork in this scene further reinforces the Spaniards’ perspective of this environment as both frightening and foreign. After initially discovering the hanging object, the Spaniards continue wandering through the woods. The camera briefly tracks in front of each Spaniard as they walk, capturing their reactions of puzzlement and fear to the unknown, but without showing what they are actually looking it. They soon wander into a clearing decorated with more hanging ornamentation, where they find several trunks that they recognize as belonging on their Captain’s ship. On orders, Esteban, the lone black crewmember, opens one of the trunks to find a bloody corpse. The men react in horror and some become nauseous. At the same moment, an injured man, who was being carried on a stretcher awakens screaming upon the realization that he is covered in blood, which is dripping from above. He immediately dies. The friar declares that his death was the product of hechicería ‘witchcraft’ and suggests that they burn the body and everything to rid the area of this witchcraft. Just as the friar finishes his prayer over the burning stake, arrows emerge from behind him and 53 strike him in the back. The rest of the scene depicts a surprise attack that kills many of the Spaniards; the remaining survivors, including Alvar, are captured and taken away. These first impressions portray the native world as foreign and therefore incomprehensible, antithetical to Western religious worldviews, and violent. The violence of this opening sequence, however, stands in juxtaposition with the following scene that depicts a group of natives dressed in elaborate feathered outfits as they cook and eat fish along a riverbank. The film then cuts to a tracking shot along the river that shows a native village, comprised of grass huts built over the sides of the river. It is not until you see the Spaniards in a cage that you realize the perspective that you were just watching belongs to two native men on a canoe, who arrive in the village. The contrast in these scenes, evidenced by the different in camerawork and musical scores, highlights the difference in perspectives. For the Spanish explorers who have never encountered this world, it is foreign and frightening. For the natives, who inhabit this region, the scenery, dwellings and elements of native life are a familiar everyday experience. As the film progresses and Alvar learns to understand the various indigenous groups he encounters, the film shifts its gaze, conveying a perspective that moves beyond Eurocentrism towards a clearer representation of the roots of Latin American identity, 19 particularly as Alvar later becomes a Native healer and forms alliances with other indigenous men. By the end of the film, the lack of translation has become a strategy of 19 John Kraniauskas points to Echevarría’s claim that Cabeza de Vaca was the “1 st Latin American ethnographer, and most importantly, the first Latin American man” (116). Similarly, Cabeza de Vaca’s Naufragios has been read as a foundational text within Chicano Studies, given its textual hybridity (Juan-Navarro 68). 54 resistance for Alvar against the Spanish conquistadors, who are approaching. For example, in order to save his companion, Cascabel, Alvar communicates with him in his native language, so that neither the Spaniards nor the audiences can understand. 20 This moment of re-encounter with the Spanish conquistadors at the end of the film highlights Alvar’s paradoxical status as a Spanish national and native insider. Having lived among the native peoples, Alvar understands the threat that the Spanish colonizers will have to the native inhabitants, and who ultimately prove to be more brutal. However, as a Spanish national, he must adhere to the dictates of the colonial project and return to “civilization” in order to preserve his safety. Through this process, he rejects the experiences and friends that he has made during his journey since any sympathies and support of indigenous culture would be treated as heresy. His actions, thus, re-affirm a hierarchy that privileges Spanish nationality and its point-of-view. In this regard, the film portrays the limitations of Cabeza de Vaca as a mediator between the Spanish and the native Other, since his knowledge of the indigenous tribes will subsequently be used to enslave these population. In his insightful analysis of the film, John Kraniauskas discusses Cabeza de Vaca’s tale as a product of “failed conquest” as seen at the beginning of the film when the Spanish crew is shipwrecked and Alvar is enslaved (116). However, even if the narrative begins in failure, “at the end of the film, conquest re- emerges as the politics of the Crown, Indians are enslaved, and Alvar and his companions regain nation, church and clothing” (Kraniauskas 117). Therefore, the film [and history] 20 In an interview, Echevarría discusses his decision against subtitles “para que la gente efectivamente no entendiera y se confundiera” ‘so that people would not understand and get confused’ (García Tsao 9-10). 55 ultimately point to the success of Spanish colonization, given the shared legacies of language, religion and culture that permeate across the Hispanic Atlantic world and are promoted at the expense of those peoples and histories that were lost in the process. In spite of its revisionist account, Kraniauskas discusses the film in the context of official State-sponsored agendas of “re-membering” within the Quincentenary whose “dominant tone has been celebratory…not, however, because critical voices have been entirely drowned, but rather because the administrative apparatus of the culture industry and the Spanish and Mexican states have successfully set the agenda for its re-membering” (115). The top-down nature of these celebrations, which first and foremost, promote a shared history as the source of contemporary relations, limits the voices of dissent that were so prevalent during this era. Given the number of films that focus on the discovery and conquest during the Quincentenary era, The Buried Mirror stands as a unique project in its coverage of over 500 years of history, creating transatlantic and transhemispheric bridges uniting the past and the present. However, this mini-series relies almost unquestionably on what Krasniauskas calls a “happy reconciliation” to create this bridge (114). For Kraniauskas, Fuentes’ narrative attempts to bridge the past and the present draw attention to what remains forgotten: “the history of colonial and post-colonial destruction of Indian societies – and… the resistance of these societies to such destruction” (114). The absence of these stories link Fuentes’ work with Spanish discourse on Hispanidad as both emphasize a commonality of language, religion and culture linking Spain, Latin America 56 and the United States. 21 In spite of its limited critical scope, this miniseries represents a vision of the Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary during the Quincentenary era in its portrayal of a Spanish and Latin American mediascape that include the growing population of Spanish-speakers in the United States, a desirable market given their Latin American and Spanish origins and the country’s own regional history as a former Spanish territory. Hispanidad within U.S. cultural politics, however, is a contested notion that brings together the tensions surrounding Spanish marginality and exoticism and the dominant conceptions of an imperial identity over formerly colonized subjects. In this regard, Spain’s attempt to showcase itself globally during the Quincentenary also presented a key moment in which the United States could reconcile its own Spanish past with its growing Hispanic population. 22 Cultural celebrations in the United States, consequently emerged as both the celebration of its discovery and a form of 21 According to Clare Mar-Molinero, one of the greatest cultural exports of Spain is its language, which continues to be “overtly promoted by the Spanish government as part of its aim to strengthen and enhance a pan-Hispanic community across the world” (164). Given that there are “twenty-one countries [that] recognize Spanish as their official or national language…[not to mention the growth and] growing influence of Spanish speakers in the U.S” (Mar-Molinero160), Spain’s investment in the global dissemination of Spanish is reflective of the economic potential of this market, which “shares media and cultural production, in particular those available through fast technological forms of communication such as television, film, recorded music, and the Internet” (Mar-Molinero 161). 22 Early writings by Carey McWilliams and work by historians such as William Deverell and Phoebe S. Kropp focus on the construction of a Spanish “fantasy past” in the settling and envisioning of Southern California in addition to works by other scholars about the Spanish colonial period in the American Southwest. While these scholars point to the appropriation of a Spanish history in the attempt to hail Anglo audiences to the regions and overlook a racialized Mexican presence, academic work in this area has also been supported by the Spanish State, as illustrated by the case of Charles Fletcher Lummis. Fletcher Lummis published The Spanish Pioneers in 1893, a book that depicted the Spanish and Indian cultures of the Southwest. Upon the Spanish translation of his book in Madrid, “Spain’s Alfonso XIII knighted Lummis in the Order of Isabella the Catholic” (Nieto-Phillips 194). 57 reconciliation with its conquered indigenous peoples and its Spanish-speaking populations, which in conjunction with Spain’s desire for a stronger relationship with the United States, led to a partnership between the SEQC and the Smithsonian Institution who produced the TV miniseries, The Buried Mirror, written by and starring Mexican novelist, Carlos Fuentes. The Buried Mirror, according to Dr. Robert McC. Adams, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, was “designed to serve as a foundation for a permanent Latin American presence at the Smithsonian Institution” (Maxfield 3), since the institution had not “demonstrated a great deal of activity in areas of Ibero-American cultural and intellectual and historic concerns” (Adams 4). Alongside the Smithsonian, other U.S. governmental organizations worked to cultivate a Latino presence in the era of the Quincentenary, such as the National Endowment of the Arts, which provided funds for Lourdes Portillo’s 1992 film, Columbus on Trial, a critical and multicultural perspective of the effects of Columbus’ discovery of the Americas. Conceived as an educational and cultural venture and designed to air on PBS, but ultimately airing to a niche audience on cable in 1992, The Buried Mirror is a five-part miniseries that examines the historical and cultural legacy between Spain and the Americas. The case of the TV miniseries, The Buried Mirror demonstrates the attempt by two neoimperial powers, Spain and the United States, to capitalize on the Latino presence in the United States. While the miniseries constructs a thorough depiction of Spanish and Latin American history including legacies of colonial structures, the series falls into Hispanist rhetoric, particularly in its final episode, by reinforcing a shared cultural heritage through “language,” “religion” and “family” as the ties that bind Spain and Latin 58 America as well as the growing Latino population in the United States. As a project funded by Spain and the United States via the Smithsonian Institute and written by a leading Mexican author, this ultimate re-affirmation of the tenets of Hispanist discourse ultimately contradicts the multicultural spirit that The Buried Mirror initially proposes and thus limits its version of the Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary. While the series is limited by its Hispanist orientation, it does present an instance of the postcolonial gaze on Spain’s history and national identity in the first episode of the series entitled, “The Virgin and the Bull,” in which Fuentes looks back to Spain as the originating element of the contemporary Hispanic Atlantic. It is no coincidence that the title of this episode echoes the famous essay, “The Dynamo and the Virgin” by Henry Adams, 23 which was written after Adams’ visit to the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, a moment characterized by the rise of European modernity, technological advances and colonial expansion. Fuentes’ reference to this essay similarly reflects on the historical moment of the 500-year anniversary of the “discovery” of the Americas, except his account focuses on those voices that were marginalized in 1893 by drawing special attention to Spain and the cultural antecedents that established the Hispanic Atlantic. In contrast, Adams’ essay discusses the cult of the Virgin Mary as the driving force behind the creation of medieval cathedrals and the dynamo as the modern symbol of how technology has displaced religion in fueling human creation and developmental progress. A product of the Enlightenment, Adams’ essay examines the discursive shift from religion to science, echoed by the changing 23 Many thanks to Marsha Kinder for pointing out this connection. 59 global configurations of power from Spain to England. This reference to the 400-year anniversary of the ‘discovery’ of the Americas, thus, points to changing perceptions of Spain in the global arena. Since by 1892, Spain had lost the bulk of its Latin American colonies and was therefore on the losing end of modernity. Fuentes, however, does not view the Virgin and the Bull as cultural antecedents trapped in a medieval past, but as pertinent symbols for the contemporary Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary. In this episode, Carlos Fuentes explores the complex history of Spain from the perspective of a formerly colonized subject as he travels throughout the country and experiences its emblems of national culture, such as bullfighting and the religious celebrations during Holy Week and patron saint festivals. These examples reinforce the spectacle of violence and religious fervor as central to Spanish national identity, and ultimately, reenacted in the conquest of the Americas. 24 In spite of the fact that Fuentes pinpoints the need to critique historical legacies in his introduction, he does not reflect on how the intertwining of violence and religion were central to the conquest of the Americas. Instead, his reference to bullfighting and religious celebrations serve as a thematic bridge in line with the series’ aims to showcase the diversity of the Spanish- speaking world. Consequently, his observations and travels throughout the country highlight Spain’s diverse history of internal colonizations and struggle, which he argues 24 Noted film scholar, Marsha Kinder, discusses the cultural specificity of violence within the Spanish context in her book, Blood Cinema: The Reconstruction of National Identity in Spain. Using Todorov’s The Conquest of America, Kinder discusses the persistence of both sacrificial violence (seen within the Inquisition and the Catholic baroque) and modern State violence (such as in the conquest of the Americas) as centrally defining aspects of the representation of violence within Spanish culture (Blood Cinema 144). For Kinder, the dual nature of violence within the Spanish context and its “functioning as a signifier of both primitivism and modernism…helped make Spain so powerful in that particular historic moment…” (Blood Cinema 144). 60 set the stage for various dichotomies that shape Spain’s national identity and its legacies in the Americas. Much has been written about the idea of “two Spains,” which reflect different ideological and political positions that emerged within Spain since the 19 th century and largely revolved around desires for European modernity and democratic ideals, industrialization, and regional/local autonomy over a model of centralized government, feudalism and a singularized national identity, closed off from the advances of the rest of Europe. 25 As a result of these dichotomies, Spain’s history and identity is “perpetually in conflict” (Kinder, Blood Cinema 144). In “The Virgin and the Bull,” Fuentes transfers these various tensions within Spain to Spanish America, whose history and identity is also shaped by dichotomies such as tolerance versus intolerance [of diversity], the right to criticize and inquire versus the Inquisition, ethnic mixture versus racial purity, central versus local authority, and tradition versus change. 26 While these dichotomies can easily apply to the social structure of the Americas, Fuentes fails to acknowledge how the enunciation of these dichotomies reflects the Spanish/colonizer’s perspective, which was imposed on the so-called New World rather than a dialogue among equals. The episode ends with Fuentes’ claim that “all discoveries are mutual” emphasizing the official re-writing of the conquest as an “encounter,” which occurred during the Quincentenary. This shift in semantics emphasized equality and a dialogue, which functioned to absolve Spain’s image within the celebrations, while also appeasing American anxieties, as embodied through the Smithsonian, regarding its own 25 For a discussion of Spanish national identity in relationship to Europe, see Ringrose. 26 Author’s transcription from episode of miniseries. 61 internal colonialism and marginalization of Spanish/Hispanic/Latino peoples. While offering a reflection of the Americas in light of the upcoming Quincentenary, The Buried Mirror, as a product of State-sponsored designations of culture, presents a limited postcolonial perspective that challenges hegemonic ideas of Hispanic culture and empire. In contrast, Columbus on Trial by Lourdes Portillo, is a short experimental work that questions the legacy of Columbus and, in particular, critiques State –sanctioned visions of the discovery as envisioned during the Quincentenary. Made in conjunction with the Latino/Chicano improv comedy troupe, Culture Clash, Columbus on Trial is a satire that presents a fictional set-up in which Christopher Columbus is placed on trial for the crimes perpetrated after his “discovery” of the Americas. Within its courtroom setting, the character of Storm Cloud, a native (Chicano), challenges the heroic image of the “discoverer,” bringing up charges against Columbus as a rapist, whose arrival in the Americas was economically-motivated and ultimately led to the destruction of the indigenous populations. Because of these charges, Storm Cloud urges the judge to banish Columbus from the history books. In his defense, Columbus cites the exact rhetoric used by officials of the Quincentenary, which emphasizes the benefits of his discovery in shaping contemporary society, as “a meeting between the Old and New Worlds.” Through this exchange, both the prosecutor and defender present the commemoration of the Quincentenary as a moment of debate, highlighting the need to examine history through a critical lens. In its critique of Columbus, the film also interrogates Hispanidad as a contested discourse over commonalities of language, religion, culture, as well as the Spanish legacy 62 for Latinos in the United States. For example, Columbus’ defense lawyer, Bob Oso, whose name is a verbal play of the Spanish word “baboso” ‘slimy’, compliments the judge by claiming that she is Spanish by way of Mexico and she in turn, chastises Storm Cloud for burning sage and performing a cleansing ritual at the opening of the proceedings in an attempt to distance herself from any insinuation of Native origins. This scene draws attention to the internal politics of race that structure U.S.-Latino and Latin American society, where Spanish or European blood ties signal a higher social position. While the film draws attention to issues of race within the Latino experience, Columbus on Trial mediates the Quincentenary as an instance of multicultural allegiances against multiple forms of oppression: racial, colonial, and gendered. In the film, an African American man, Mr. X, urges Storm Cloud to think not only of the indigenous struggle, but that of African Americans whose history is also a product of colonial violence via the slave trade and whose oppression continues in the modern-day. Throughout Mr. X’s speech, footage of the Rodney King beatings and the L.A. riots are depicted in the background, emphasizing that these colonial legacies continue to structure contemporary race relations. In addition to issues of race, Columbus’ legacies are also described within gendered terms. The film opens with news of Christopher Columbus being charged with crimes of sexual violence (rape) in the Americas and his upcoming trial. In spite of the arguments presented within the film, Columbus is acquitted in spite of the “evidence” presented against him. His acquittal references the infamous William Kennedy Smith rape trial, a high-profile case in 1991 involving a member of the well-connected Kennedy 63 family who was accused and ultimately acquitted of rape. This connection to the Kennedy trial is made all the more evident through the film’s ending when Columbus is gunned down by a young Chicana, Jack Ruby-style, invoking the assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald. Dissatisfied with the failure of the legal system to enact justice, her actions, thus, condemn Columbus and the historical legacies of race, sexuality and gender that minimize her agency as a Chicana woman. In addition, her actions, let alone her visibility onscreen, contest the male-centered narratives produced as a part of the Quincentenary celebrations. Although the body of films and media texts, as well as the commemoration of 1992 as a whole, failed to garner wide popular appeal, this moment foregrounds the Hispanic world at the same time that film and media industries start to promote a shared identity that is both transhemispheric and transatlantic. While Spain heavily promoted the commemorations worldwide, the nation struggled with high debts and increasing unemployment rates after 1992, 27 demonstrating that its role as mediator and model for Latin America functioned more as national posturing than a reflection of its economic power. In addition, the “Columbus” films produced in conjunction with Hollywood met with poor critical reception and protests by many who resisted the imperial legacies promoted in the celebrations. For example, John Glen’s film, Christopher Columbus: The 27 Robinson notes that in spite of its progress, “Spain remains substantially poorer than its neighbors. Per capita income is just 80 percent of the European Community average, and unemployment is nearly 18 percent” (A44). As a result, the Spanish government planned to promote stricter controls on spending in order to compete with its northern neighbors. For Cayetano López, rector of the Autonomous University of Madrid, “Spain is still a country in the process of inventing itself” (Robinson A44). Vitzthum similarly points to Spain’s economic woes in response to its high levels of spending for the Olympics and the Expo, which have “slowed economic growth and eroded Spain’s international competitiveness” (A5). 64 Discovery met with many protests and negative criticism stemming from its uncritical positioning of Columbus as the discoverer of the Americas. Anxieties over the film’s reception is evident in a letter from Pilar Tena of the Spain ’92 Foundation, addressed to José Díaz de Espada, the Director of the SEQC, in which she discusses Warner Bros. desire not to hold a press screening before the film’s premiere because “temen que la pelicula sea destrozado por la crítica” ‘they worry that the film will be destroyed by the press’ (Tena). These anxieties proved true as one film reviewer blasted the miscasting of “Rachel Ward and Tom Selleck as royals [and] Marlon Brando as Torquemada” as well as the film’s narrative blandness stemming from political correctness (Bernard). In contrast, another reviewer believed that the film failed to engage with the historical consequences of Columbus’ findings (Kempley D1, D4). An article in USA Today discusses how Marlon Brando “publicly condemned the film for making heroic a man the activist actor felt was responsible for European genocidal policies against Native Americans” (Schaefer). Similarly, the American Indian Movement and the International Indian Treaty Council organized a protest at the premiere of Christopher Columbus: The Discovery in San Francisco on August 21, 1992 (American Indian Movement). In spite of the “failures” of these international coproductions, this moment of collaboration becomes a point of origins for the rethinking of a broader Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary that attempts to hail audiences across Spain, Latin America and increasingly the United States. D’Lugo notes, “while not many of the films sponsored through this arrangement found receptive audiences or box-office success, they did provide some filmmakers with training in ways to use the expressive language of cinema to underscore 65 cultural commonalities across national borders” (4). Given the controversies around historical memory, transatlantic films in the 1990s move away from 16 th -century historical narrations towards imagining encounters for the 20 th century. Moving away from an emphasis on historical origins, later productions focus on transatlantic encounters through the lens of gender and sexuality. By shifting the focus to the realm of sexual desire, these films both naturalize the presence of Spanish and Latin Americans in each others’ worlds, but also repeat the stories of the conquest, which continue to haunt these international collaborations. Mediating Transatlantic Encounters Post-1992 After the events of 1992, the theme of encounters continued as a cinematic trope in films bridging the Hispanic Atlantic world. Beyond simply a meeting of two worlds, these transatlantic encounters, largely, but not exclusively the result of transnational coproductions between Spain and specific Latin American countries, highlighted the colonial legacies and continued presence of national, gendered, sexual and racial hierarchies. More specifically, Spanish and Latin American films dealing with Spanish- Latin American relations often focus on a gendered and sexual “encounter” in order to naturalize a transnational presence. For example, the Spanish film, Cosas que dejé en La Habana ‘Things I Left in Havana’ by Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón critiques Spain’s exotic fascination with Cuba and sexualized stereotyping of Cubans, largely through the character of Igor, the Cuban gigolo/Latin lover who sleeps with Spanish women for security. Although this scenario arguably shows contemporary Spanish women’s sexual 66 agency, these liaisons maintain a hierarchy that privileges Spanish citizenship. As an undocumented Cuban living in Spain, Igor is at the bottom of a sexual hierarchy, whereas Spanish women maintain a higher status due to their economic power and citizenship. In spite of their transnational aims, the interrelationship between gender, sexuality and citizenship within these films serves to reify a dominant order within and beyond the national context. Within the Hispanic Atlantic, the relationship between gender, sexuality and the nationalist project is particularly salient since the discovery and conquest of the Americas resulted in unions between Spaniards and native women that serve as instrumental points of origin within Latin American nationalist mythologies, although the link between gender and the nation has been explored across various national contexts. For Anne McClintock, “nationalism becomes… constitutive of people’s identities through social contests that are frequently violent and always gendered” (89). However, the conflation of violence and gender dynamics existed in Latin America prior to the rise of nationalist movements because of its colonial experience, in which colonized peoples, as well as the land, were marked as feminine. Shohat pinpoints this link between traditional discourse on nature, which was gendered as feminine, and the Western masculinist desire for expansion and penetration into unknown lands (25-6). The idea of the conquerer, thus, invokes a sexualized metaphor that presumes a gendered (and racialized) hierarchy, whereby all the conquered are feminized and conquered women, in particular, are doubly marginalized. The link between gender, sexuality and conquest within the Quincentenary era was just as salient. In an LA Times editorial entitled, “Odd Couple: Marriage of 67 Hemispheres” published on October 12, 1991, the celebrations of the discovery and conquest were described metaphorically as a 10 th golden anniversary. A section of the article reads: It hasn’t been a happy union; better, maybe, in recent years, but she bears the scars of abuse, and it isn’t as if she has forgotten. “I wish I had never met him,” she has said more than once; “It may not have been paradise, what I had before he showed up, but whatever it was, it was mine. Since he came, nothing is mine. I myself am not mine.” For his part, he used to be proud of making something of her, teaching her to read and write, breaking her of her bad habits, smartening her up, taking her to church. Now, when he thinks of her at all, he is ashamed, and he hides his shame in sentimentality about her pristine beauty, her profound simplicity before they met. She was lovely back then, it’s true, and she knew things—may still know things—that he will never learn. Fragile as she was, defenseless as she was, she has changed the course of his life. “I can no longer even imagine myself without her,” he rightly says. She can imagine herself even less without him (Editorial Writers Desk B5). The metaphor of marriage to describe the encounter between hemispheres is interesting in that it depicts a situation of domestic violence within a heterosexual union. Whereby the woman or colonized “bears the scars of abuse” and describes a sense of loss of her autonomy through a marital union where she owns nothing, not even herself (Editorial Writers Desk B5). Although the male perspective asserts a sense of pride over her cultivation according to his dominant worldview, he expresses a sense of shame and resorts to nostalgic fetishization of her “pristine beauty” and “profound simplicity” (Editorial Writers Desk B5). While the article gives the man agency in vocalizing his inability to “imagine myself without her,” the female perspective is left to supposition (Editorial Writers Desk B5). Lacking female agency, she is not allowed to directly 68 articulate her voice and response to their union and instead, the editorial assumes that since the male narrator cannot “imagine” himself without her, she must also reciprocate. Given the dynamics of Spain and Latin America’s colonial history and its impact on contemporary co-production arrangements, the 2002 film, La virgen de la lujuria ‘The Virgin of Lust’, directed by Arturo Ripstein, exemplifies the trope of sexualized encounters within the Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary and the complex terrain of contemporary Ibero-American relations. Set in Veracruz, Mexico in the early 1940s, the film allegorizes a moment of encounter between Spaniards and Mexicans in the post- Civil War period through the presence of Spanish exiles in Mexico. Far from the peaceful harmony envisioned by Franco’s Hispanic Community of Nations, the film highlights the national, racial and sexual tensions between Spain and Mexico. Confined to claustrophic indoor spaces, Ripstein’s film concentrates on the interpersonal relationships between the characters as they descend towards self-destruction fueled by their obsessive desires of lust and longing for a return of their national homeland. The film tells the story of a Mexican waiter named Ignacio “Nacho” Jarado, played by Luis Felipe Tovar, who becomes obsessed with a sadistic, opium-addicted exiled Spanish woman named Lola, played by Ariadna Gil. She, in turn, obsesses over a Mexican wrestler and the death of Franco. Like many of Ripstein’s other characters, Nacho is introduced as a stunted man through a montage that depicts his performance of daily rituals, including religious worship and his method of sexual gratification— masturbating while categorizing his nude photo collection. Once he meets Lola, he easily transfers his religious worship to an obsession with her, who, as the Virgin of Lust, 69 embodies the film’s title. In portraying these daily rituals, the film functions as a Buñuelian homage, with several surrealist episodes that blur the line between reality and fiction, the portrayal of desire and obsessive love, and references to Buñuel’s infamous foot fetish portrayed by Nacho, whose fetish ranges from kissing the feet of a statue of the Virgin to licking the soles of Lola’s feet, which he performs with ritualistic admiration in lieu of physical sexual gratification. The Buñuelian references at once evoke the famous filmmaker, whom Ripstein apprenticed with at the beginning of his film career, while also foregrounding the complex and often tense presence of Spanish exiles in Mexico. As perhaps Spain’s most famous exile, Buñuel often criticized his adopted home for its lack of adequate film facilities and acting talent, revealing a bias towards his work in Europe and ideas of a European hierarchy of culture. 28 In this regard, The Virgin of Lust is more than just a surrealist fantasy, but also functions as a postcolonial critique of the presence of Spanish exiles as representatives of the former colonizer in Mexico, as well as the colonial legacy of pureza de sangre ‘purity of blood’, a discourse that alluded to blood purity in order to establish a hierarchical system of social classification that placed Europeans above all other racial groups. 29 For example, throughout the film, Don Lázaro, Nacho’s boss, continually abuses his employee by referring to his indigenous roots. Although it is never quite clear if Nacho is 28 Acevedo-Muñoz points to the role of French film critics, specifically André Bazin, in promoting Buñuel’s Mexican films over the cinematography of Gabriel Figeuroa, the most well- known cinematographer of Mexican Golden Age Cinema (75). Bazin’s distaste for the formalism of Classical Mexican cinema thus perpetuated a “crisis” in Mexican cinema and Buñuel as its future (75-6). Despite his biases, Buñuel made a total of 20 films within the Mexican national film industry. For a complete filmography, see Acevedo-Muñoz. 29 For a more thorough discussion of pureza de sangre, see Mignolo 15-16. 70 actually indigenous or simply a mestizo, his associations with indigeneity are a sore point for his own identity. Don Lázaro’s comments refer to his lack of intelligence and culture, while positioning himself as a person of Spanish ancestry, born in Mexico. While Nacho never directly confronts his boss, he responds to these denigrations by muttering to himself that Don Lázaro has indigenous roots as well. Their relationship reveals how phenotype and alleged purity of race continues to structure Mexican society, whereby the whiter you are, the higher the social position you maintain—long after the Spanish colonial period. While the relationship between Nacho and Don Lázaro is strained, the tensions between them are somewhat mitigated when a group of Spanish exiles move into the building and begin to frequent the café. Although Nacho and Don Lázaro never resolve their differences, they begin to ally with each other in the presence of the exiles. In one key scene, Don Lázaro attempts to show camaraderie to the new group of Spanish exiles, who have moved into the building by offering them free drinks in his cafe. As he toasts to the madre patria, the Republican exiles criticize and reject Don Lázaro’s self- identification as a fellow countryman because he speaks like a Mexican. In this exchange, Gimeno, one of the exiles, chastises Don Lázaro as a direct heir to the conquistadors, while exonerating the new arrivals, who as exiles are untainted by the sins of the conquest. By distancing themselves from the “sins” of the Conquest, the exiles overlook the legacy of the colonial system in Mexico, which structured the social structure of race, gender and class long after the colonies gained independence. Additionally, while not the direct heirs of the conquistadores, they are representatives of a former colonial power in a former colony, a fact highlighted by the musical outburst 71 that immediately follows this exchange. In this musical number, the Spaniards lament over a wounded Spain and express their desire to return home when Franco dies. As the camera pans across the café, Nacho, who is standing behind the bar counter, bursts into a counter-song, representing the postcolonial voice that resents the presence of the new arrivals. His counter-song vocalizes his inability to sympathize with the plight of the exiles and his resentment of the destruction of Mexico through the conquest. Through this song, Nacho points out how the tables have turned for the former colonizers, who must now beg for asylum by their former colonies. The ending of his song, “se los llevó La Chingada” is a play on words. Whereas the English subtitles for the film translate “la chingada” literally to mean that the Spanish exiles are ‘screwed’, La Chingada also refers to La Malinche, the indigenous woman who, as Cortés’ lover and translator, is largely blamed for aiding in the conquest of Mexico. Nacho’s song, consequently, tells the story of La Malinche’s revenge. In addition, Nacho expresses his contempt for the Republican exiles for their unwillingness to adapt to their new home throughout the film. For Nacho, the fact that the exiles are unwilling to try Mexican cuisine is an insult that far outweighs the belittlement he experiences by Don Lázaro’s racist remarks. In examining cultural production by Spanish exiles living in Mexico, Sebastián Faber points how the Spanish remained distanced from Mexico because they viewed their presence as temporary and had conflicting views as members of the left and representatives of the former colonizer. According to Faber, the Mexican Revolutionary party as indigenistas generally distrusted all Spaniards, in spite of their political orientation (221). Additionally, because they were 72 Spanish, the exiles shared more in common with the conservative Hispanista sectors of Mexican society, whose political views differed radically from their own (Faber 221). After befriending Nacho and seeing his contempt for those exiles unwilling to adapt, Gimeno, the exile who initially refutes any participation in the colonial system, finally understands how his Hispanist orientation is problematic, which compels him to eat one of Nacho’s tortillas. In doing so, Gimeno reconciles his national identity with his new home, therefore, demonstrating the possibility of an alliance between Spain and Latin America that recognizes the complexities that shape the Hispanic Atlantic world and moves beyond the one-sided monologue of identity and culture that is central to the Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary, and Hispanist discourse. While Gimeno and Nacho manage to reconcile their differences and become close friends, Lola and Nacho’s relationship suffers from the sexual and racial politics of desire. In contrast to Gimeno, who eventually adapts to his new home, Lola’s opium addiction worsens by the end of the film and she becomes further removed from reality. Her obsession with a Mexican wrestler named Gardenia Wilson fuels her drug addiction, since she is unable to secure his affections beyond a one-night stand. As a wrestler, Gardenia represents an idealized form of Mexican masculinity that stands in stark contrast to Nacho, whose own insecurity stems from his racialized identity, which is reinforced by Don Lázaro’s constant denigrations. Although Nacho has allowed Lola to stay with him and helped secure her a job as a waitress at the café where he works, Lola does not return his affection and insists on maintaining her freedom. Nacho interprets Lola’s disinterest and cruelty as a dislike for his brown skin, since she is quite cordial to 73 her fellow Spanish exiles. When Nacho confronts Lola, she defends her actions by equating sexual potency with revolutionary zeal. Determined to attain Lola’s love, Nacho vows to kill Franco as an ofrenda ‘offering’ to his Virgin of Lust, in order to assert his masculinity and win her love. Later, he attempts to lighten his skin by applying quicklime, a white chemical powder, which burns Nacho’s face. Gimeno treats Nacho’s skin and ponders the last photograph to take in his series of retablo-like reenactments. The surrealist sequence at the end of the film is, thus, a staging of the death of Franco in which Nacho assassinates Franco, if only in fantasy. The black and white sequence opens with Nacho, in white face, described through the intertitles as a waiter, a hero and the Mikado, in reference to the character in the popular 19 th century musical satire by Gilbert & Sullivan. 30 In addition, Nacho is introduced as a Mexican wrestler who plans to kill Franco as an offering of love. The blurring between reality and fiction occurs when the Mikado/Nacho fires a gun at a statue of Franco seated in a car. The “chaos” at the assassination described in the intertitles results from the firing of an actual loaded gun, which is the real reason why the characters in the re-enactment scatter. This is signaled by the repetition of the gunshot in color as opposed to black and white. In addition, Raquel’s partner chastises Gimeno for giving Nacho a loaded gun, although Nacho believes that he has truly succeeded. Although the scene turns to color, the film continues to blur the line between fiction and filmic reality. For example, Lola is scene with Gardenia walking into the opium den and happily embracing him as they walk up the stairs. This scene is followed by an image of Nacho sitting alone in his apartment, 30 The Mikado serves as an intertext in the film, since Nacho continually bursts into songs from the musical at different points in the film. 74 destroying the pornographic photographs that he masturbates to which he replaces with a medal, a symbol of his accomplishment. In a black and white sequence, Nacho stands alone mopping the floors of the café when Lola emerges from a bright light, dressed in the sequins dress made for her by Raquel. The intertitles read, “ella es su esclavo” ‘she is his slave’. Lola enters the café and bows down to Nacho, kissing the floor and then proceeds to kiss his shoes and remove them to kiss his feet. The intertitles read, “su amor será eterno” ‘their love will be eternal’. Both emerge out of the café, Nacho in the foreground, dressed debonairly in his uniform and Lola standing next to him, draped over his shoulder. Superimposed over them both, the intertitle reads, “próximamente” ‘coming soon’. In the end, if only in fantasy, Nacho emerges the masculine and virile hero and manages to subjugate his female object of desire, thus reversing the colonial narrative of Cortés and La Malinche, but further propagating female subjection on a transatlantic and transnational scale. This trend of reversing the colonial narrative through female subjection is not unique to films made in Latin America, but is also evident in films originating in Spain, such as Nadie hablará de nosotras cuando hayamos muerto ‘Nobody Will Speak of Us When We’re Dead’ directed by Agustín Díaz Yanes in 1995. A key voice in the contemporary Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary since the 1990s, Díaz Yanes has directed four films, three of which engage with gender and the Hispanic Atlantic through transnational casts and themes. His first film, Nadie hablará de nosotras cuando hayamos muerto, is a thriller that focuses on the underworld of organized crime that bridges Spain, Latin America and the United States. The film centers on a journey of self-renewal for a 75 Spanish woman named Gloria, played by Victoria Abril, who returns to Spain to live with her comatose husband and her stern mother-in-law, after being deported from Mexico. Struggling to overcome her alcoholism and descent into poverty after her husband was gored in a bullfight, Gloria returns to Madrid and attempts to steal laundered drug money in order to start a better life, while being pursued by Mexican mafiosos. Ultimately, Gloria survives this attack and receives redemption when her mother-in-law, Doña Julia, played by Pilar Bardem, kills her son/Gloria’s husband and then commits suicide, leaving Gloria with enough money to provide a new future. Although the film was made in Spain, the film deals with a transatlantic connection during the scene at the beginning of the film, which introduces Gloria as a sex worker in Mexico. This opening sequence focuses on the intersection of gender, history and national identity in the evaluation of contemporary Spanish, Latin America (i.e. Mexican) and U.S., as well as Mexican-American, relations. Although this sequence argues that the hierarchical colonial relationship between Spain and Mexico is reversed, Mexico’s power over Spain lies in the sexual exchange with Spanish women. For example, Gloria is first introduced during a scene in which she performs fellatio on a group of men during a drug trade. After satisfying one of the younger men, she gets up to get a glass of water. The older man, Evaristo, introduces her as a gachupina, a slang term for a Spanish woman. Mexican actor, Bruno Bichir, portrays the recipient, Mani Robina, who self-identifies as a Mexican-American. Mani wonders what this gachupina is doing in Mexico and Evaristo reveals that her husband is sick and that she has moved to Mexico to make a fortune. He adds, “Antes nuestras mujeres se las chupaban a los gachupines y ahora es al revés” 76 ‘before our women would give blowjobs to Spaniards and now it’s the reverse’. 31 Although this opening sequence affirms Gloria’s marginal status as both a foreigner and a sex worker, the film later problematizes this hierarchical gendered positioning as exclusively the result of Mexican patriarchy. An additional subplot of the film focuses on Eduardo, played by Federico Luppi, a Mexican mafiosos, who is undergoing an existential crisis. Asked to travel to Madrid and dispose of Gloria by his female crime boss, Eduardo begins to believe that his daughter’s health is linked to his continual murders. As Kinder notes: Both plots are dominated by women: the strong matriarchs of the past (whether good or evil) and the young survivors who embody hope for the future of their respective nations, Mexico and Spain, which share not only a cultural legacy of Catholicism, bullfighting, and political struggle, but also widespread social and political corruption (“Refiguring Socialist Spain” 20). In their analyses, both Tabea Alexa Linhard and Kinder (“Refiguring Socialist Spain”) point to the possibilities of subverting gendered hierarchies within the narrative of Nadie hablará de nosotras cuando hayamos muerto. For Linhard, “a gendered representation of memory reveals that the ties that bind gender and nation do not vanish once films take place in a transnational context” (44). Although Linhard points to a shared history of gendered hierarchies both within and across the Hispanic Atlantic, she argues that the potential for resistance exists through the revelation of “narratives that remain excluded from the cultural memory that expands across the transatlantic space” (44). In showcasing an older generation of strong females through the character of Doña Julia, a leftist activist who was the victim of torture, Linhard argues that this “marginalized 31 Author’s transcription from the film. Translation courtesy the English-language subtitles of the VHS tape. 77 history” assists in temporarily subverting “national, patriarchal and religious symbols…[through] links of solidarity among women – yet, nobody will speak of them after they have died” (53-4). The film’s title comes from a line in the film that highlights a common bond between Mani and Gloria. When Mani and his friend, Omar, are revealed to be DEA agents, violence erupts and both agents are shot. Eduardo escapes, leaving Gloria with Mani, who is dying. She tends to his wounds and in return, he gives her a book with all of the places where money is laundered, emphasizing that the list includes locations in Spain. Before he dies, he asks her not to forget about him. The cops arrive at the scene and Gloria identifies Mani as a DEA agent and herself as just a whore. Taken into custody, she is deported back to Spain. In this scene, which sets the plot into motion, both the DEA agents as Mexican Americans and Gloria as a Spanish woman are demeaned based on their nationality. Gloria, as both a sex worker and representative of the former colonial power, is traded around the room as a mere object of exchange. Although Mani and his partner are affiliated with state power, the DEA and consequently the United States government, they are verbally chastised due to their hyphenated identities, a marginal identity within the United States, and ultimately killed by the cartel, revealing a scene in which Mexican masculinity overpowers its former colonial and its contemporary neoimperial masters. The ultimate allegiance that Mani and Gloria form in their brief exchange and his desire to not be forgotten after he dies creates a transatlantic bridge linking marginal identities and histories, both resistant to dominant narratives of the nation. 78 Like La virgen de la lujuria, Nadie hablará de nosotras cuando hayamos muerto’s portrayal of a Spanish woman in Mexico comments on the sexualized nature of contact between Spain and Latin America and in particular, illustrates a role reversal of colonial relations and power. However, when looking at this role reversal through gendered terms, these representations emphasize a “patriarchal Hispanicity” across the Hispanic Atlantic, in which men ultimately hold power over women. 32 Both Spanish women are represented as objects of male desire and sexual exchange and/or are subjected to various forms of gendered and state violence within the Spanish and Mexican context. As a working-class Spaniard, Gloria has little options for upward mobility and is treated as a sexual object when she goes to apply for a job. Their marginalization within both national contexts undermines the role reversal that these women hold over the Mexican male characters they encounter and therefore are unable to inhabit the same hierarchical power as that of the former male colonizer. In spite of this, they do exert an alternate form of agency within the narrative of the films as emblems of unruly women, who cannot be easily contained by male sexual desires or demeaned by their actions. Although Gloria is beaten and ultimately fails in her criminal endeavors, she is “redeemed by the legacy of courage that she draws from both her husband’s experience in the ring and from Julia’s [her mother-in-law] resistance against the police” (Kinder, (“Refiguring Socialist Spain” 20). 32 Gabilondo discusses the Hispanic Atlantic as “a global and imperialist geopolitical and economic reorganization” that brings up questions about how to think about gender and sexuality and wonders whether it points to “a new, global, yet anachronistically conservative resurgence of a patriarchal Hispanicity” (92). 79 In contrast to these representations, Sin dejar huella by Mexican filmmaker, María Novaro, imagines a feminine alliance on a transatlantic scale that challenges gendered and patriarchal visions of femininity and culturally-inscribed behavior. Sin dejar huella tells the story of two women who hit the road on a journey to southern Mexico, escaping from narco boyfriends and obsessive federal agents. The film stars the Spanish actress, Aitana Sánchez-Gijón as Marilú, an international smuggler of fake Mayan art, and Tiaré Scanda as Aurelia, a young Mexican woman who lives in Ciudad Juárez. Like many Spanish-Mexican coproductions, the film justifies Marilú’s Castillian accent, narratively, by explaining that she was born in Mexico, but raised in Spain. This justification mitigates any potential critique of the colonial role in pillaging pre- Columbian artifacts, but also emphasizes Marilú’s fetishization of Mayan culture and people. Unlike Aurelia, who is unfamiliar with the indigenous populations of southern Mexico because she grew up along the northern border, Marilú studied pre-Columbian art and specialized in Mayan culture. In addition, she speaks Mayan, which allows her to communicate with the indigenous communities and artists who provide the fake art that she then sells abroad. This alliance with the indigenous communities that are the subject of State-sanctioned violence in the film grants Marilú with a sense of an “authentic” claim to Mexican-ness and compensates for having an accent that marks her as a foreigner and her trangressions as a resistance against the state and the colonial/imperial legacy of expropriation of indigenous lands and culture. Sin dejar huella begins at the U.S.-Mexico border, a region that Novaro explored in her previous film, El jardín del Edén, released in 1994. Whereas that film presented a 80 utopic vision of the border by centering on the lives of three women and civil society, this film treats the region as hostile and oppressive to women. The oppression felt by various patriarchal systems on the U.S.-Mexico border initiates the journey southward that structures the narrative of the film. Only this oppression is not only specific to the geographic space of the border, but characterizes the oppression felt by the growing militarization of the entire country. Because the film starts at the U.S.-Mexico border, it can be classified under the genre of “border cinema,” which I define as a transnational film genre that glorifies violence, drug-dealing, and corruption, thereby asserting patriarchal authority and a masculine perspective that marginalizes female agency and voice. The lack of female protagonists and a feminist perspective within Mexican border cinema makes Sin dejar huella and her previous film, El jardín del Edén stand as anomalies within the genre. Sin dejar huella opens with Marilú effortlessly crossing the border from the U.S. into Mexico, through a hole in the fence that separates the Arizona desert from its southern counterpart, the Sonoran desert. Although she crosses the border with ease, Mendizábal, a corrupt federal agent, soon captures her and arrests her for potential crimes against the state. Mendizábal’s interest in Marilú goes beyond her role as an international smuggler of counterfeit Mayan art, but is also sexual in nature as he is obsessed by her beauty and exoticism. Because Marilú destroys the fake Mayan sculpture she was carrying, Mendizábal cannot charge her with stealing cultural patrimony and instead offers to charge her with carrying counterfeit passports. He decides not to arrest her, but sends his men to follow Marilú, in the hopes of capturing her lover, a Mayan artist named 81 Heraclio. The film then shifts to the bordertown of Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, where Aurelia is preparing to return to work at a maquiladora after her maternity leave. After seeing a report on the evening news of another female maquiladora worker found murdered, she decides to leave the city. The threat of feminicide, in conjunction with her unease over the fact that her boyfriend, Saul, works for a narcotraficante, sends Aurelia packing with her two children and their belongings in an old truck, destined for a better life in Cancún. On the way, she meets up with Marilú, who is on the lamb and cannot use her credit cards and agrees to give her a ride. Marilú’s manner of dress and Spanish accent give away her class status and cause tension between the two women, who mistrust each other’s motives. Eventually, the two women develop a bond over their desire to escape oppressive systems that threaten their lives: the economic and sexual exploitation of the maquiladoras, the threat of feminicide and harassment by an increasingly militarized State. While dodging a police checkpoint, Marilú asks “¿En cuál momento se llenó nuestro país de judiciales y soldados?” ‘In what moment did our country become full of federal agents and soldiers?’ to which Aurelia chimes in “y narcos” ‘and drug dealers’. In critiquing the patriarchal ideology of the state, Sin dejar huella presents a view of Mexican and Spanish women as resourceful and capable of shedding the one-dimensional archetypal image of femininity that has historically plagued Mexican and Spanish national cinema. Rashkin notes, “women-centered stories, to the extent that they displace a masculinist national narrative, raise doubts about conventional versions of mexicanidad” (168). Similarly, Marilú’s transnational mobility challenges the 82 geographical rootedness of women within both Mexican nationalist and Francoist ideology. Although centered on the transatlantic alliance between these two women, Novaro makes sure to link the film to Mexican geography and thus, Mexican national identity, by using cinema verité techniques to set the tone of her film. In the film, the camera lingers on the diverse landscapes that characterize, and perhaps exoticize, the geography of Mexico. Additionally, she shows the diversity of languages and cultures within the country, paralleling the social conditions of the indigenous southerners with the women in the film. As a film about gendered and sexual encounters, the film demonstrates a resistance to a patriarchy by emphasizing a transatlantic solidarity among women. However, this solidarity is undermined by the duplicitous nature of Marilú, the Spanish- raised Mexican con artist, whose true identity (and motives) remain suspect throughout the film. Unsure if she should trust Marilú, Ana asks “¿Eres mi amiga?” ‘Are you my friend?’ For Soliño, who has discussed the film in terms of its portrayal of neocolonial and neoimperial relations, the answer is “no” as evident in the fact that Marilú eventually steals Ana’s money and abandons her. In her argument, Soliño views the characters as metaphors for contemporary Spanish and Mexican relations characterized by Spain’s neocolonial ascendance in the region and the rise of Spanish resorts that have privatized the beaches in Mexico, displacing local industry and laborers. The realities of Spain’s neoimperial interest in Mexico, thus, undermines the fairytale ending of the film that portrays solidarity between the two women and ignores the hierarchies that continue to structure Spanish and Mexican relations. Although the film shifts the trope of the 83 “encounter” away from heterosexual contact by showing a meeting between two women, which in some ways tries to equalize this meeting, the film nonetheless reinforces the idea of Spain as a privileged social position that is both mobile and potentially predatory. Even as Sin dejar huella, La virgen de la lujuria and Nadie hablará de nosotras cuando hayamos muerto create a Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary, these alliances and encounters represented in the films do not elide the historical and hierarchical legacies of their shared history. Empire and Neoimperial Encounters in También la lluvia A recent retelling of the Columbus story, También la lluvia, examines the legacies of domination and exploitation that persist in Latin America through a fictionalized re- creation of the Cochabamba Water Wars in 2000. In addition to overtly linking the history of colonialization with contemporary neoimperial struggles in Latin America, the film functions as a discursive critique of the role of film and film industries as both a vehicle for continued exploitation and a potential site of resistance through the narrative device of a film-within-a-film. Through the act of shooting a fictionalized film, the actual film draws attention to the politics that underlie international film productions and in the case of Spanish-language film, points to its marginalization in regards to English- language film. In witnessing these tensions within the fictionalized film production that leads to the film’s setting in Bolivia, the film self-reflexively draws attention to its own production process and status as an international collaboration. In doing so, the film illustrates the complicated terrain of the Hispanic Atlantic imaginary, in which national 84 film industries must form alliances in order to compete against a global English-language film market that are often unequal and parasitic. Directed by Icíar Bollaín and written by Paul Laverty, También la lluvia tells the story of a Spanish film crew led by Costa, a Spanish producer, played by Luis Tosar, and Sebastián, a Mexican director, played by Gael García Bernal, who travel to Bolivia to shoot a revisionary film about Christopher Columbus and the conquest of the Americas during the Water Wars in 2000. Despite trying to make a realistic portrayal of the first encounter, the film crew shoots their production in Bolivia due to financial constraints fueled by Sebastián’s desire to film in Spanish as opposed to English, which would have guaranteed a larger budget. As a result, the fictional film guarantees an authentic Spanish protagonist at the expense of the indigenous voice, whereby the Andean indigenous easily replaces the now virtually extinct Caribbean Taino. During the film shoot, growing discontentment over the privatization of water in Bolivia begins to disrupt the production. Juan Carlos Aduviri portrays the character of Daniel, a native Bolivian cast as the rebel, Hatuey, in the fictional film. Daniel, along with the other extras, soon mobilize and protest as a result of the increase in their water bill and measures that restrict their access to water, even the rain. The resulting social unrest in Cochabamba forces the film crew to abandon the film shoot and flee the country. In revisiting the Columbus story, the film discursively attempts to revise the conquest of the Americas in a manner consistent with the revisionary debates of the Quincentenary era, particularly through the discussion of the writings of Bartolomé de las Casas and Antonio Montesinos, priests who argued in favor of the rights of the 85 indigenous. In a key scene in the film, the actors playing Columbus, Las Casas and Montesinos debate the political dimension of these historical figures and the overall intention of the film they are making. Anton, the actor playing Christopher Columbus, challenges Alberto, who is playing Las Casas, for his “interest” in the native culture. For Anton, Alberto’s attempts to learn some native words are just an attempt to get into the character of a missionary. When Alberto responds with a derogatory gesture, the two actors get into a heated debate about Las Casas’ early writings that called for the use of African slaves over the indigenous: ALBERTO: He declared Indians had been sacrificed, quote, “to private appetites and private profit’! Five hundred years ago! On his deathbed at ninety-two he lit a candle and swore before Christ that what he had written was all true… And cynics like you want to reduce his entire life to one mistake! ANTON: Like football [soccer]… history is cruel to losers. JUAN/MONTESINOS: Cut the poisoned old fucker out… [laughter]… make the film about me! ANTON/COLUMBUS: [Holding Bartolomé’s eyes] You never questioned Spanish authority over the New World… nor the authority of the King… in other words… you were a conservative! ALBERTO/BARTOLOME: A radical! He demanded ‘equal’ treatment with the Spanish for Christ’s sake… ANTON/COLUMBUS: Under the Crown! ALBERTO/BARTOLOME: Only with Indian consent! Still hundreds of years ahead of my time! COSTA: How the fuck did Disney pass on this? (Laverty 68). This scene brings up three points of contention within the film that are evident in this exchange: the desire to draw attention to early Spanish writings and thought that give a foundation for indigenous and more broadly speaking, human rights; the silencing of history’s losers as represented by the marginalization of Spanish-language thought [as well as Spanish-language film and the Spanish-speaking world]; and the ways in which 86 the global film industry dominated by Hollywood and in this instance, represented by Disney, functions to silence films that present alternate voices and debates. Through the inclusion of the characters of Las Casas and Montesinos, the film- within-a-film draws attention to the Hispanic Atlantic in the 16 th century as a period that is a fundamental foundation for human rights discourse and therefore, not easily written off as exploitative and backward. However, as Anton points out, Las Casas [and Montesinos] were both working within the Catholic Church and therefore never argued against the right for the Spanish Crown to rule over the Americas over the need to convert the native population, illustrating how their revolutionary ideas were bound within the hegemonic structure of the colonial project. The second point of contention illustrated within this scene brings up the idea that “history is cruel to losers.” Within the context of the Hispanic Atlantic, there are several losers, whose voices have been silenced from dominant narratives of history: the indigenous, who lost their lands, language, culture and lives; revolutionary thinkers, such as Las Casas and Montesinos whose position within the Catholic Church led to their marginalization with the advent of the Enlightenment; and the Spanish, whose “national history [was] marginalized from Post-Enlightenment Europe” (Mignolo 50). Spain’s subsequent marginalization from European modernity, ultimately led to the marginalization of its language and culture, which was also transferred onto its former colonies. The last point of contention brings up the politics of representation within the global film industry as dictated by Hollywood, in this case, Disney and the constraints of producing a Spanish-language film, which Costa refers to throughout the film and consequently, becomes a key point of contention. 87 Interviewed for a “behind-the-scenes” documentary, Costa criticizes Sebastián’s decision to make the film in the Spanish language, “If we’d filmed in English, we’d have double[d] the money and double[d] the audience…” 33 However, Sebastián wanted to make a story of the conquest of the Americas with Spaniards “speaking Spanish,” even if the smaller budget then necessitated an inaccurate representation of the indigenous Caribbean Taino, who would be represented by the Andean Quechua. For Costa, the Bolivian extras are “natives”, who will work for low wages. Because of the low rates of pay and the ability to negotiate prices in Bolivia, the film-within-a-film will have thousands of extras rather than rely on digital editing to create the illusion of a larger cast. This discussion within the fictional world of the film draws attention to the politics of film funding and production that dictate the representational choices of international films in non-English languages. In this case, despite being marginalized on a global scale, the Spanish language still maintains a position of privilege over the indigenous voice in the film-within-a-film since Columbus encounters Tainos who “speak Quechua”. This inaccurate representation results from the budgetary constraints that bind the film-within- a-film. In spite of the film crews’ personal politics and desire for depicting the indigenous struggle, they are guilty of similarly exploiting the native Bolivian population as evident in the following interaction between Costa and Daniel. In this key scene, Daniel and his daughter Belen have entered the production warehouse to look at the reproduction of one of Columbus’s ships. Costa approaches Daniel and once again asks him to stay out of trouble until the film shoot is over. He 33 Author’s transcription from film’s English-language subtitles. 88 breaks away from this discussion in order to answer his cell phone. Daniel overhears Costa speaking in English to one of his overseas financiers. With joy, Costa discusses the success of the film shoot and the two-dollar per day wages he is able to pay the Bolivian extras. Costa ends the conversation and returns to Daniel, excited about the potential success of the film. DANIEL (responding in English): Fucking great, man. COSTA: (dumbfounded) ¿Como? DANIEL: Fucking great, man. (In Spanish) Two fucking dollars, right? And they’re happy. I worked in the States for two years in construction. I know this story. (Costa remains silent as Daniel turns and walks toward the ship, which has been looming in the background during this exchange.) 34 This exchange draws attention not only to the economic differentials that often dictate where film productions are made, but also makes a parallel between the exploitative conditions experienced by migrant workers in the Unites States to those experienced by nonunion labor within the film industry, particularly in instances where film crews from developed nations travel to the Third World. For Daniel, this moment highlights the limits of the filmmakers’ revolutionary intent and he starts to see the creation of the film- within-a-film as another means by which neoimperial forces exploit Bolivia’s poor. This is further illustrated later in the film when Sebastain is unwilling to jeopardize his safety to help rescue Belen, when she is injured during the protests. The issue of funding and the film’s discussion of Bolivia as a cheap location for the production shoot was also relevant to the reception of También la lluvia. In his introduction to the published screenplay, Laverty defends the film production against 34 Author’s transcription from the film’s English-language subtitles. 89 U.S. reviewers who assumed that the producers similarly exploited Bolivia as a cheap filming location and source for local labor. 35 Laverty, known for his socially-conscious screenplays, began working on this project as “a homage to the resistance of ordinary people fighting those who have tried to subjugate them in different ways throughout history” (9). 36 In an attempt to practice the ideological beliefs of the film, Laverty and the actual producers of the film worked with grassroots organizations in Bolivia in order to ensure an equitable pay rate. Laverty writes: The production team in negotiations with the [grass-roots] organizations, agreed what was considered to be a fair wage for a day’s work for each extra, and in addition, so that the community benefitted beyond those fortunate enough to work, an extra payment was made to the corresponding community (18). This effort to create an equitable working relationship between the local cast and the foreign film crew, however, does not eliminate the hierarchies that exist both between and within nations, especially as it relates to national film industries. As mentioned previously, the film self-reflexively argues that producing a film in the Spanish language limits the film’s global audience and therefore makes it difficult to raise money and create larger budget films that can compete with Hollywood. Within this premise, there are internal hierarchies that exist between different national film industries within the Spanish-speaking world. As a South American country with a small film industry, Bolivian cinema and the Bolivian film industry are often overshadowed by the more 35 A NY Times review ends with the reviewer asking, “You can’t help but wonder to what degree its makers exploited the extras recruited to play 16 th -century Indians” (Holden). 36 Paul Laverty is a British screenwriter, who is most known for his work with director, Ken Loach. His body of work engages with social issues across the globe and has been recognized by several international film festivals, including Cannes, Venice Film Festival and Berlin Film Festival. 90 robust film industries of Latin America — Mexico, Brazil, Argentina — and therefore are in a lesser position of articulating a sense of national and local identities. 37 For example, Juan Carlos Aduviri, the actor playing Daniel is an indigenous Aymara, studied screenwriting and teaches at the film school in El Alto, outside of La Paz. His recognition by the film industry is not through screenwriting, a site of articulation, but as an actor in a film that is a Spanish, Mexican and French coproduction, directed by a Spanish woman and written by a British screenwriter. Within this framework, the indigenous voice is silenced, a process also reflected in the slight difference in tone between the published script and the final film. In the published script, Laverty uses moments of contact between the largely indigenous Bolivians in the cast and the fictional Spanish film crew to highlight moments of indigenous resistance. For example, during a scene reading in which Columbus first lands in the Americas, Anton begins to enact the first encounter between Columbus and the indigenous with the staff, standing by the lunch buffet tables. In the published version of the script, the waitstaff are described as being “like kids in a church, [who] have trouble controlling their giggles as the prayer continues” (Laverty 47). Overlooking the notion of the indigenous as “kids,” who are therefore in need of paternal guidance, the act of “giggling” in Church can be read as subversive in its refutation of religious and imperial authority as enacted by the Spanish actors’ serious portrayal. This momentary 37 While the Bolivian film industry has historically been marginal in comparison to these larger industries, Kanema points to a new generation of filmmakers, such as Juan Carlos Valdivia and Rodrigo Bellott, who have produced films in recent years that have garnered international acclaim and thus, drawn attention to Bolivian cinema. In addition, También la lluvia was promoted as the biggest film ever produced in the country thanks to its cast of over 3,000 Bolivians (“Ya se proyecta”). 91 subversion is later overturned when Anton/Columbus approaches the waitress and begins to forcefully inquire about her gold earrings. Not knowing how to respond, the waitress looks at her coworker, uncertain as to how to respond. In the film, however, the waiters remain silent during the entire scene, which makes Anton’s encounter with the waitress all the more exploitative. Marked by both her race and class position, she has no real voice or agency within the actual film, beyond her visibly marked status. Although certain ancillary characters are granted little voice in the narrative of the film, Daniel and his family become the voices of resistance and reconciliation, although like other films in the Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary, these solidarities prove unstable and, in fact, reify a hierarchy based on citizenship. As the character with the central emotional arc, Costa, the Spanish producer, is the protagonist of the film whose character is most affected by the encounter with Daniel and the Bolivian struggle against the privatization of water. At the beginning of the film, he is indifferent to the local specificities of the Bolivians he encounters. He becomes aware of himself through the process of getting to know Daniel as a person, and not simply Other. When the riots in Cochabamba jeopardize the production, the film decides to move to another location outside of the city to ensure their safety and the completion of their film. However, as they are leaving, Teresa, Daniel’s wife, approaches Costa and pleads for his assistance in helping her locate and rescue Belen, who has been injured in the protests and requires medical assistance. For the film crew, however, their political allegiances are limited to the realm of the imaginary. Sebastián justifies his inaction by claiming, “long after this dispute is done 92 and forgotten, our film will last… We can’t fight with rocks… we fight with this (tapping his head]… our ideas… our imagination” (Laverty 140). Although Sebastián aims to broaden the history of the conquest by depicting moments of resistance against the colonial power, his political sympathies are relegated to the ideological potential of cinema rather than in the lived experience of resistance to neoimperial struggles. In this regard, Sebastián’s belief in the need to revise official history ignores the history that he is witnessing unfold in Cochabamba. Sebastián’s ideological positioning is also symbolic in the film given that a Mexican actor, Gael García Bernal, portrays him. Like Bolivia, Mexico has been similarly shaped by neoimperial struggles and its national identity, characterized by indigenismo, a movement in which native culture and history is appropriated by the state as foundational to the nation, has not translated into the actual practice of improving the lives and treatment of its indigenous inhabitants. Ultimately, Teresa persuades Costa to help her by calling him her friend, in a moment of solidarity that recalls a similar scene in the film, Sin dejar huella. Like Ana, Teresa defines her relationship with Costa as friendship, but understands full well that their friendship is not on equal terms since Costa’s Spanish citizenship and economic mobility grant them access through the blockaded city that she does not have on her own. Costa’s privileged position stems not only from his citizenship, but also from his ability to raise capital, which highlights the power of money to negotiate and cross national, sexual, and legal boundaries. The power of money, although not evident in this scene, occurs earlier in the film when Costa and Sebastián pay off the chief of police to free Daniel long enough to shoot the final scene in which Hatuey is captured and burned alive 93 by the Spanish. In this scene, Costa has no problems agreeing to imprison Daniel once again after the scene wraps since he failed to keep his promise to avoid the water protests. This exchange of money for human life recalls the history of slavery and exploitation that shaped Spanish and Latin American relations and which remains in an era characterized by the commodification of certain bodies. The film, however, subverts this hierarchical relationship during Belen’s rescue by not depicting Costa’s privileged mobility. Instead, the film emphasizes Teresa’s local knowledge of the language and the city to locate her daughter. For example, as they approach a blockade, Teresa speaks to a member of the crowd in her native tongue, which allows them to pass through the barricade. In emphasizing local knowledge over Costa’s economic and privileged citizenship, the film resists the narrative constraints of the usually White or European hero who “saves” a wounded/weak/innocent brown child or woman from the savagery of the Third World. Even as Costa falls victim to this symbolic paternalism, the film is clear to point out that his change of heart stems from a mixture of guilt and selfishness rather than his inherent goodness. He agrees to help “save” Belen because he would feel guilty otherwise. Even at the end of the film, after the riots are over and Costa and Daniel have made peace, their transatlantic alliance is precarious. Costa promises Daniel that he will help Belen, who has suffered injuries leaving her permanently disabled, but when asked if he will return to Bolivia, he responds, “I don’t think so.” The ambiguity of this ending brings up questions about the possibilities of these transatlantic encounters in forming long-term alliances. While alliances may be made that result in economic and cultural exchange, the stability of Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary, like Daniel and Costa’s 94 friendship, remains questionable since neither parties have overcome the shared hierarchical legacies that structure their relationship. Conclusion This chapter examines the limits and tensions of a Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary when attempting to map out a global Spanish-speaking film and media market that creates alliances based on commonalities of language, culture and the mutual desire to sustain national and local media industries that are threatened by American (i.e. Hollywood’s) global dominance. Since the 1980s, there has been a growing desire to capitalize on the Hispanic-Atlantic media market by overlapping the structures of the Spanish-speaking film and media industries, a project I have criticized as a product of Spain’s neoimperial ambitions since its transition to democracy. In spite of this, the desire for a Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary is beneficial for both Spain and Latin America and crucial in the attempt to maintain their respective national film industries. The sample of films discussed in this chapter, thus, illustrate the manner in which the Hispanic- Atlantic imaginary persists as a production strategy that redefines ideas of national cinema, while simultaneously reifying the specificity of national identities and their hierarchical placement on a global scale. During the Quincentenary era, Spain extolled Hispanidad as largely a top-down discourse, considering its origins are rooted within the colonial era, and its promotion reinforced Spain’s economic and cultural power as a member of the EU. Consequently, films from this period mediated the hierarchical legacies of racial, gendered, sexual and 95 national identities that continued to structure relations between Spain and Latin America. In spite of the attempts to naturalize a commonality of culture across the Hispanic Atlantic, films since the 1990s demonstrate a shift away from an uncritical celebration of Hispanidad towards a clearer focus on the ties that bind these regions. Some twenty years after the Quincentenary, the Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary can be seen at play within films, such as También la lluvia, whose narrative demonstrates that these transatlantic alliances do not dissolve the internal hierarchies within and between nations. 96 Chapter Bibliography 1492: Conquest of Paradise. Dir. Ridley Scott. Perf. Gérard Depardieu, Armand Assante, Juan Diego Botto, and Sigourney Weaver. Gaumont, 1992. Film. Acevedo-Muñoz, Ernesto R. Buñuel and Mexico: The Crisis of National Cinema. Berkeley: Univ of California P, 2003. Print. Adams, Dr. Robert McC. Buried Mirror Dinner Speech Transcript. 14 July 1989. 1-16. TS. MSS-582/2/2. Columbian Quincentenary Collection. 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DVD. “Ya se proyecta la producción más grande hecha en Bolivia.” PáginaSiete.bo 15 March 2011. Web. 15 January 2012. <http://www.paginasiete.bo/2011-03-16/Cultura/ NoticiaPrincipal/2600000216001.aspx#>. 103 Chapter 2: Transnational Domesticity: Expanding the Boundaries of the Spanish Home and Nation In this chapter, I use the concept of “transnational domesticity” to explore cinematic representations of immigrants in Spain. My focus on transnational domesticity builds upon the work of Stacey Weber-Fève, whose book on the topic discusses women’s contemporary filmmaking and literature in France, Tunisia and Algeria. In her analysis, Weber- Fève explores the “home” within these texts as “a receiver of public languages and values, a location in which national, global, and/or hegemonic discourses speak and reproduce themselves through magazines, newspapers, television, radio, books, how-to manuals, the Internet, and so on” (xxi). Like Weber- Fève’s work, this chapter uses the lens of the transnational to discuss three levels of domesticity, which include the portrayal of the nation as a domestic space (or the homeland), the domestic space of the home and its gendered implications, and the role of the racialized immigrant domestic worker. While much has been written about the race, immigration and domestic work in the United States within the fields of Latin American, Chicano and American ethnic studies, 38 this chapter focuses on domesticity within a different national context, Spain, in order to demonstrate how the theme of migration functions as a structuring motif unifying the Hispanic Atlantic. By comparing these cross-cultural similarities, I rely on 38 For examples of scholarship on race, immigration and domestic work, see Hondagneu-Sotelo; Ehrenreich and Hochschild; and Palmer. Domestic workers have also been represented in American films, such as Spanglish, directed by James L. Brooks; the documentary, Maid in America, and Babel by Alejandro González Iñárritu. Recent Latin American films focusing on domestic workers include Cama adentro by Jorge Gaggero and La nana, directed by Sebastián Silva. 104 the work of Weber-Fève, who points out that “housework and its associated representation of the housewife, proffers many cross-cultural and transnational optics for examining gender performances, constructions of culture and society, and processes of female identity formation in a wide variety of media and texts that foreground the home” (xix). The cross-cultural similarities noted in these films extend the discussion of the domestic space of the home, the homeland and both private and public domestic labor beyond the United States and position Spain, once the center of the Hispanic world, as a site where visions of the Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary as both a site of tension and unification continue to emerge. Although Weber- Fève’s book primarily focuses on “women’s representations of first-person domestic experience,” this chapter explores how contemporary Spanish filmmakers have represented immigrant women onscreen as examples of transnational domesticity. 39 As transnational figures, the incorporation of these immigrant women into 39 In focusing on transnational domesticity, television would seem to be a more appropriate choice as an object of study given its prominent place within the domestic space of the home. However, cinema circulates across the three geographical spaces of the Hispanic Atlantic, which consists of Spain, Latin America and the U.S. much more fluidly and is a critical site for envisioning geographic and geopolitical imaginaries. While Latin American telenovelas are perhaps a stronger audiovisual export to the world globally, especially within the United States, telenovelas are not a significant presence within the Spanish television landscape, which is largely characterized by television formats such as talk and tabloid shows, prime time dramas, and sitcoms. In Spain, television is much more rooted within the national and micro- / macro- regional landscapes of its autonomous communities and the EU. In contrast to the national and European specificity of Spanish television, the Spanish government has ensured the intersection between cinema and television within the audiovisual landscape through protectionist laws such as the Royal Decree 1652/2004 which “transposes the European Directive 89/552 that obliges broadcasters (not thematic channels) to invest at least 5% of their annual net income in the co- production of European feature films, series or TV-movies and/or the acquisition of TV rights in advance. At least 3% must be invested in Spanish language projects” (Talavera Milla). This interrelationship between cinema and television in Spain positions cinema within the Hispanic 105 the national homeland and the domestic space of the home challenges historical notions of singular Spanish national, gendered and sexual identities. Given Spain’s historical conceptions of Spanish femininity reified under the Franco regime, Spanish womanhood was defined as “wife and mother, the moral centre of the home, where Catholic values were to be inculcated young” (Kenyon 52). As Susan Martín-Marquez points out in her book, Feminist Discourse and Spanish Cinema: Sight Unseen, laws and regulations that restricted women’s work outside of the home and provided stipends for those bearing large families relegated women to the domestic sphere, consequently reversing any feminist achievements made during the Republican period, such as the divorce law (91). In addition to these legal and social regulations, this model of Spanish femininity was further reified through cinema of the fascist period, in particular those films within the family melodrama subgenre, which portrayed the family unit as an allegory of the nation. Consequently, the onscreen representation of how immigrant women play a crucial role in constructing contemporary Spanish society as new guardians of the home and family, also responds to the historical representation of Spanish women on film. More importantly, these representations of immigrants allude to the possibility of a transatlantic and/or transnational identity that extends beyond the borders of the Spanish nation and is more dialogic in nature than previous conceptions of the nation and Hispanidad. Outside of Hollywood, cinema has been implicated in the national project as a means of reinforcing ideas of national identity and, even more so, in Spain where ideas of a national cinema invokes the cultural specificity of their production and are treated as Atlantic world as a key imaginary bridge based on production, distribution and reception channels. 106 national patrimony. 40 Much of the scholarship on Spanish cinema and culture focuses on inculcation of the nation in different movements of cinema and through different eras, with a particular emphasis on the portrayal of the family, women and motherhood. 41 Since the death of Franco and the subsequent transition to democracy in the mid- 70s, Spain has emphasized its transnational ties through its membership in the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1986 and its role in celebrating the Quincentenary of 1992. As part of this newly sought after transnational identity, Spain became a nation of immigrants, in contrast to its prior history of exiles and emigration out of the country. This new influx of immigrants from Latin America, northern and equatorial Africa, Eastern Europe and Asia challenge the historical notions of the singularity of Spanish identity and as noted by contemporary scholars, such as Daniela Flesler, force the nation to reflect on its own multicultural and multiracial history. In The Return of the Moor: Spanish Responses to Contemporary Moroccan Immigration, Flesler examines the tensions surrounding the presence of Muslims in Spain as a result of anxieties over the 40 The Spanish film industry, for example, is governed by the Instituto de la Cinematografia y de las Artes Audiovisuales, the ICAA, which is part of the Spanish Ministry of Culture. 41 There have been several key works on gender and the family in Spanish cinema. Among these, Marsha Kinder’s book, Blood Cinema: The Reconstruction of National Identity in Spain, explores the interplay between gender, the family and national identity within Spanish cinema since the 1940s. This canonical work expands on the themes of an earlier film series held at the USC School of Cinema-Television, which was organized by Marsha Kinder and Katherine Singer Kovacs in 1989. In the printed catalogue for the film series, which was called, “Spanish Cinema: The Politics of Family and Gender,” a number of Spanish films are discussed for their thematic displacement of political issues “onto the domestic realm of the family, where they are played out in conflicts of sexuality and gender” (Kinder “Spanish Cinema” 5). Later works on gender, the family and Spanish cinema include Feminist Discourse and Spanish Cinema: Sight Unseen by Susan Martín-Márquez; Gender and Spanish Cinema, edited by Steven Marsh and Pavarti Nair; and Cinematergrafía: La madre en el cine y la literatura de la democracia by María José Gámez Fuentes. 107 historical presence of Arab and Berber peoples within the peninsula (3) This historical presence links Spain to Africa and therefore contributes to its Othering within Europe, but also awakens “a series of historical ghosts related to their invading and threatening character” that position contemporary Moroccan migrants as Moors, the “traditional enemies of Christian Spain” (Flesler 3). The presence of Moroccan immigrants thus draws on both national and transnational anxieties about difference that reflect how Moroccans are treated in Spain. This difference in reception across immigrant groups in Spain is equally visible in their representation onscreen, although as I point out in my analysis, reception varies depending on the immigrant’s gendered and racial identity. Gender, Immigration and Film In looking at the statistical profile of immigrants to Spain in recent decades one notices gendered patterns of migration, indicative of worldwide trends of migration by women, which represent a literal “feminization” of migration. Largely the result of the restructuring of capital and labor markets that have occurred globally since the 1970s, this feminization of migration stems from the opening up of the workforce to women as a flexible and primarily low-wage labor source in manufacturing, the service industry and within the domestic realm as domestic help, not to mention the dangers of international sex trafficking and sex work. Ironically, while neoliberal economic policies open up national borders in the name of “free” trade, these physical borders are highly policed in order to restrict the movement of individuals due to a revitalized nationalism against the 108 threat of the Other. 42 The revitalization of nationalism within the host country, and in this case study, Spain, often creates tensions between the racialized immigrant and the dispossessed Spanish laborer. While who is considered an immigrant is complicated by the presence of citizens from other EU countries, who are entitled to the same rights as Spanish locals, certain groups, such as Moroccans and sub-Saharan Africans, have historically bared the brunt of discrimination. As documented by Spanish and international newspapers, these tensions have resulted in physical acts of violence and destruction as well as government attempts to curb the numbers of illegal immigration into the country. 43 The racialized, and often gendered, dimension of these attacks makes the issue of immigration particularly salient for those interested in gender issues within Spain. Since the 1990s, the feminization of migration in Spain is concurrent with the increase of female directors in the country, whose films explore gendered themes through 42 Harvey notes that these increased restrictions on immigration paves the way for illegal immigration as a way to evade these barriers and / or a system of short-term labor contracts, both of which rely on the migrant’s lack of resources and legal protection to produce a large disposable and exploitable labor force (169). Within this pool of disposable workers, Harvey argues that women and children bear the brunt of neoliberal policies as they are made vulnerable by decreasing social services in their home countries and the uncertainties and dangers of the flexible labor market that renders them disposable (170). 43 In 1999, anti-immigrant violence between Spaniards and Moroccans lasted for three nights in the town of Tarrasa, near Barcelona sparked by confrontations between Moroccan and Spanish youths (“Anti-immigrant violence flares in Spain”). In recent years, anti-immigrant sentiments have increased due to Spain’s economic crisis, sparking the government to “offer to pay for return tickets, with the option to return in three years” (Cala). In Málaga, the mayor expressed concern “‘por la proliferación de organizaciones neonazis que operan en la ciudad desde hace años’… y que lanzan ‘mensajes que incitan al odio y a la violencia contra inmigrantes y otros colectivos vulnerables’” ‘for the proliferation of neo-Nazi organizations that operate in the city for years’ and which spread ‘messages that incite hate and violence against immigrants and other vulnerable groups’’ (“El alcalde muestra su preocupación”). 109 the use of female protagonists or at least complex female characters that engage with issues affecting women in Spain, whether they are Spanish or migrant women. Given the transnational component of some of these films as products of international coproduction agreements or within the content of the films themselves, I see these bodies of work as key to exploring transnational domesticity in Spain. Thus, my discussion of transnational domesticity within Spanish film focuses on the representations of a feminized immigrant Other either through the overt portrayal of an immigrant as female or the cross-cultural alliance between a Spanish woman and the immigrant subject. While this pairing of Spanish women and the immigrant seeks to create an alliance based on the mutual experience of oppression against Western forms of patriarchy, these films ultimately reify a hierarchy, in which citizenship trumps gender, thereby limiting the creation of a universalizing discourse of oppression. This focus on gendered migration has been examined cinematically through the genre that Isolina Ballesteros has called the “immigration film.” According to Ballesteros, the “immigration film” is a transnational film genre within European cinema that “share[s] a number of common patterns in terms of authorship, ideology, cinematography and spectatorship” in spite of “existing differences among national cinematographic industries” (4). Given the diversity within the genre, Ballesteros defines the immigration film through its thematic concerns and “a sense of (ins)urgency…often achieved…through the coincidence of various marginal (or ‘undesirable’ positions in society that reinforce the category of otherness” (4). In doing so, Ballesteros argues “the multiple marginal positions that the characters assume in fiction, reinforce, rather than 110 reduce, the political agenda of these films” (4). The films discussed in this chapter emphasize the notion of marginality to larger Spanish society, although opportunities for cross-cultural community and alliances also exist, not only within the diverse immigrant groups themselves, but between Spanish women and Spanish exiles as well, whose understanding of displacement within the patriarchal national project serves as a point of identification. Stephen Tropiano, in his essay, “Out of the Cinematic Closet: Homosexuality in the Films of Eloy de la Iglesia,” discusses this notion of community or alliances based on a universal understanding of oppression within the gay rights movement in Spain, which enabled an alliance of multiple identities and social issues based on the understanding that one cannot create a hierarchy of oppression. 44 A similar strategy of unity in the fight against oppression exists in several of the films discussed in this chapter, but is limited by debates around citizenship. In Spain, the immigration film in the 1990s emerged with films, such as Montxo Armendáriz’s 1990 film, Las cartas de Alou; Bwana, directed by Imanol Uribe; Cosas que dejé en La Habana, directed by Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón; En la puta calle by Enrique Gabriel; Salvajes, directed by Carlos Molinero; Fernando Merinero’s film, La novia de Lázaro; A mi madre le gustan las mujeres, directed by Daniela Féjerman and Inés París; Flores de otro mundo by Icíar Bollaín; Helena Taberna’s 2003 documentary, 44 In his essay, “Out of the Cinematic Closet: The Films of Eloy de la Iglesia” Tropiano cites that “the Common Platform of the La Coordinadora de Homosexual Frentes de Liberación del Estado Español (COFLHEE, The Coordinated Homosexual Liberation Fronts of the Spanish State), aimed to eradicate ideological categories that perpetuated a system of discrimination and proposed social reforms “designed to eliminate all forms of discrimination based on gender, sexual orientation, and public morality” (159). In order to fight for social reform, gay activists formed alliances with other marginalized political and social groups, such as Communists, labor unions and feminists (Tropiano 160). 111 Extranjeras; Poniente and Retorno a Hansala, directed by Chus Gutiérrez; and Fernando Leon de Aranoa’s film, Princesas. This list does not include those films in which there are secondary or ancillary foreign characters whose immigrant experience or presence does not propel the narrative, such as Icíar Bollaín’s first feature, Hola, ¿estás sola? and Pedro Almodóvar’s film, Volver. This chapter explores the concept of transnational domesticity through an examination of several of these contemporary Spanish films that illustrate the feminization of immigration in Spain: Cosas que dejé en la Habana, Flores de otro mundo, Poniente, Retorno a Hansala, Extranjeras as well as the Mexican film, Al otro lado, directed by Gustavo Loza, which depicts the story of a young Moroccan girl’s journey to Spain. While women directed a significant percentage of these films, even those films directed by men rely on gendered themes in their narratives, which emphasize the link between gender, immigration and national identity. In spite of the feminization of migration, Reher and Requena show that gendered immigration patterns vary across national contexts as evident in Spain’s National Immigrant Survey, published in 2008. Based on the results of the survey, “immigrants from Africa and the rest of Europe are predominately male populations, while Latin American migration is predominately female (Reher and Requena 265). In addition, these female immigrants tend to have higher education levels than male immigrants, excluding the African populations, who have the lowest level of education of the immigrant groups surveyed (Reher and Requena 265). It is not a coincidence then that many of these immigrant films display various degrees of assimilation, which depend on the national origins of the immigrants represented and their respective genders. As fictional films that 112 tell the story of Latin Caribbean female immigrants in Spain, both Cosas que dejé en la Habana and Flores de otro mundo are indicative of films representing the literal feminization of migration and stress their incorporation into the Spanish national family. On the other hand, Poniente is a fictional film set in southern Spain and depicts the return of a Spanish woman to her village to run an agricultural estate, which is populated by North and Sub-Saharan African immigrants, thus linking the plight of Spanish women, the Spanish diaspora and the immigrant condition. Through the feminization of the Other, the film creates an alliance that bridges the boundaries of the nation by contesting a gendered and racialized oppression by European male patriarchy. In many ways, the film, Retorno a Hansala works as a sequel to Poniente, in that it depicts a reverse migration to Morocco as a Moroccan woman named Leila and a Spanish mortician, return the body of her deceased brother, who died in the attempt to illegally cross the Strait of Gibraltar. The fifth film, Extranjeras is a documentary that features interviews with different groups of female immigrants living in Spain. As a documentary film, the text possesses what Bill Nichols describes as “an indexical relation to the historical world” (27), 45 and consequently, serves as a visual testament to the experience of those immigrant subjects within the film who live in Spain and the subjectivity of the Spanish filmmaker, who has made the film. My discussion of Extranjeras as a documentary film in no way dismisses the extent to which the fictional films discussed in 45 The notion of film’s indexicality to the world originates with Charles Sanders Peirce who worked within the field of semiotics. Peirce classifies signs within three categories: the icon, the indexical and the symbol, whereby the indexical bears a close connection to its referent. According to Nichols, “the primary importance of this indexical quality to the photographic image (and magnetic sound recording) is less in the unassailable authenticity of the bond between image and referent than in the impression of authenticity it conveys to a viewer” (150). 113 this chapter also allude to and represent the contemporary historical moment, as Nichols points out “at one level…filmed fictions take advantage of the same indexical bond as do documentaries” (150). Al otro lado, the last film discussed in this section, tells three immigration stories from the perspective of the children left behind in three different geographical spaces— the U.S. and Mexico, the U.S. and Cuba and Spain and Morocco. I include this film as an example of a postcolonial returning of the cinematic “gaze” in its focus on Spain, but also because it serves as an example of transnational imaginings within the Hispanic Atlantic world and the expansion of Hispanic cinemas beyond national specificity. In particular, this film’s tri-partite structure seeks to unify the story of migration across geographic spaces, which conveys the act of border-crossing as a common theme across the Hispanic Atlantic world, beginning with the initial “discovery” of the Americas, then turning later to the emigration out of Spain by exiles, and culminating with the influx of immigration into Spain in the post-Franco period. The fact that the only successful border-crossing was achieved by a young Moroccan girl supports the overall trend of female migration. Screening the Spanish (Trans)National Family The use of the allegorical family as a symbol of the nation is a common trope in Spanish cinema, where how the family is defined and what gendered social roles are implied through this definition become the primary source of conflict within the narrative of the film. For example, Kinder discusses the Spanish films, La aldea maldita and Surcos, for the manner in which they exhibit tensions between rural traditions, 114 specifically, the patriarchal family, and modernity, seen as morally corrupting, evident through the representation of families who migrated into urban settings (42-44). Both films also focus on the “moral restoration of the patriarchal family (rather than the political solution of urban problems in the barrio)” (Blood Cinema 42). Thus, by relying on the melodramatic convention of morality, Kinder notes how “political issues [become displaced] onto the family,” therefore, linking the preservation of traditional values with the survival of the state (Blood Cinema 42). In addition, Kinder’s discussion of the cultural reinscription of the Oedipal narrative within Spanish cinema stresses the importance of the metaphorical family to representations of the nation, noting how “the Oedipal conflicts within the family were used to speak about political issues and historical events that were repressed from filmic representations during the Francoist era… and in the post-Franco period” (Blood Cinema 197-98). Given the relationship between representations of the Spanish family and the politics of the state, the rise in immigration since the 1990s and their representation within Spanish cinema calls for a reconsideration of the traditional Spanish family. While immigration films showcase the tensions that exist when racialized immigrants move into Spain, of particular interest is the manner in which female immigrants are represented as gaining access and acceptance into the Spanish nation. The “ease” by which female immigrants enter into Spain within these films position women from Latin America as idealized border crossers, who are able to gain access into the Spanish nation because they are marked as sexual objects of desire and can therefore enter into a heterosexual union with Spanish men who initiate a marriage proposal. This 115 process of incorporation is more restrictive for immigrant men, who are perceived as more threatening to patriarchal and sexual claims on Spanish femininity. 46 In this regard, the immigrant films of the 1990s reaffirm the Manichaen gender divide that Kinder discusses in Surcos and La aldea maldita, which emphasized “phallic rigidity and female malleability” (Blood Cinema 45). While immigrant men struggle with the loss of power, female immigrant characters are not subject to similar threats of moral decay as evident in these early films. Instead, their malleability allows them to become incorporated into the patriarchal Spanish family, which reaffirms the traditional values promoted in cinema of the Francoist period. Consequently, although these romantic unions between Spanish men and immigrant women appear seamless on the surface as the end-result of the two 46 A key example of this dichotomy is evident in the film, La novia de Lázaro, a pelicula viva ‘live film’ that relies on a neorealist aesthetic to tell the story of Lázaro and Dolores, two Cuban immigrants living in Spain. The film opens with of various immigrants on the streets. Lázaro, a Cuban immigrant, is in the square passing out flyers for salsa lessons and attempting to woo the females who walk by. His failed attempts at conquering the Spanish women he meets on the street only make him long for his beloved girlfriend, Dolores, who is still in Cuba at the beginning of the film, but will soon arrive. When Dolores finally arrives in Madrid to join Lázaro, she discovers that he has been imprisoned for attempting to rape a woman. Now stranded in a foreign country with little resources, Dolores must find a way to survive until Lázaro finished serving his time. In contrast to her lover, Dolores is gentle and metaphorically linked to nature through several shots that show her lying on the grass in the park, embracing nature. As a result of her beauty, seeming innocence and zest for life, Dolores becomes the object of desire for the Spanish men and women in the film. As a result, her agency exists as a product of their sexualizing gaze, as well as through the framing of the camera that focuses on her body, delicate skin and sensuality. Dolores’s position as object of the gaze marks her desirability as opposed to Lázaro’s own active gaze, which is presented as threatening within the narrative of the film. At the end of the film, Dolores marries a Spanish man, who has employed her to help him create fabric samples. It is through this union that she gives birth to a daughter and achieves her dreams of a family and citizenship, which guarantees both emotional and economic stability. Unlike Dolores, Lázaro lacks the financial stability to make him a suitable prospect for marriage. In addition, he is portrayed as having an unrestrained libidinous sexuality, further fueled by drug use, which makes him sexually aggressive and violent. His failed attempts at sexual conquests in Madrid leave him continually emasculated, which further propels his destructive behavior. By the end of the film, Lázaro is further distanced from any sense of stability, having lost his girlfriend, Dolores, the one reminder of home. 116 characters falling in love, the films rarely position love and sexual desire outside of social, historical, imperial and neocolonial contexts that maintain power over immigrant subjects. Consequently, these new transnational families function as symbols of Spain’s transnational identity, but also as reminders that this transnationality does not exist outside of discussions of power within the home and throughout the larger nation. Although Spain characteristically was considered peripheral to European modernity since the loss of its colonies in the 19 th century, within the context of these transnational families, the Spanish once again resume a hierarchical position as representatives of Europe and the receivers of external immigration. Within the context of unions between Spanish men and Latin American women, several factors highlight the differences that call into question commonalities of language and culture that were once central to discourses of Hispanidad. Given the primacy of the Spanish language, there are national and regional differences in dialects that function to delineate these immigrant women as Other and recall the history of Spanish colonization and the continued legacy of privilege whereby White men have access to brown women. In addition to language, as racialized subjects from the global south, these women are marked by the color of their skin and the economic disparity that propels migration. As a result, these differences position the transnational family as a key site in which to examine how citizenship is privileged and national identity re-affirmed despite the loosening of economic restrictions that characterizes globalization. Both films discussed in this section focus on the transnational family and the ways in which immigrants perform gender and national identity in order to become incorporated into the nation. 117 Made in 1997, the film, Cosas que dejé en La Habana by Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón focuses on the arrival of three sisters in Spain, who have left Cuba to ensure that the youngest sister, Nena, can find work as an actress. Their trip has been funded by an aunt who resides in Madrid after emigrating some years before. When they arrive, the sisters find that they must abide by their aunt’s strict rules of conduct and cultural assimilation, including various plans to ensure that their stay in Spain is permanent. For example, the aunt hires Ludmila to work at her fur shop based on her experience as a seamstress in Cuba and hopes to train Nena as a sales assistant, in spite of her desire to become an actress. In exchange for the cost of airfare and accommodation, the oldest sister, Rosa, agreed to marry Javier, the homosexual son of her aunt’s Spanish fur supplier. Unfortunately, Javier prefers Nena instead, who refuses to marry him solely to ensure her stay in Spain, whereas Ludmila, the middle sister, does not disapprove of this arrangement and ultimately succeeds in seducing Javier. The film ends at Ludmila and Javier’s wedding with the entrance of a large multi-tiered wedding cake topped with both a Spanish and a Cuban flag, thus linking national identity and transnational relationships to the hetero-patriarchal union. The successful integration of certain immigrants represented in the film maintains a gendered component whereby female immigrants successfully integrate into Spanish society and male immigrants do not. While the three sisters more or less achieve their dreams of staying in Spain or at least secure a manner in which they can attain citizenship, this prospect does not hold true for Igor, the immigrant man in the film. Igor is a Cuban who emigrated to Spain some time before, but has not had much success in 118 achieving stability or a path to citizenship. This gendered component becomes a key lens to examine the film’s portrayal of immigrants in Spain and the relationship between Spain and Cuba. Similarly, through Nena’s work as an actress, the film overtly interrogates the notion of performativity both within the Cuban play performed in the film and the manner in which the characters in the film “perform” gender, national identity and acculturation. My use of the term, “performativity”, derives from the work of Judith Butler, who defines the term as the “reiteration of a norm or set of norms…[that] acquires an act-like status in the present, [as] it conceals or dissimulates the conventions of which it is a repetition” (12). 47 The process by which the characters in the film perform Cubanidad and Spanishness are key to understanding how national identities and citizenship are privileged. Cosas que dejé en La Habana begins with a montage of scenes from street life in Havana. The camera then pans across a row of parked 1950’s-era cars and cuts to an image of a cameraman taking a photograph of three young women standing in the street. This image becomes a still photograph, which is then followed by the image of the same three women as young girls standing in front of a row of parked 1950’s era cars. This image is followed by other images and a countershot of a woman, the subject of this picture-viewing, nostalgically gazing at the pictures. Later, we learn that the woman is in Spain and has arranged for her three nieces—the young women seen in the photos—to come to Madrid. This opening sequence reaffirms the film’s theme of nostalgia despite 47 While Butler uses the term to discuss gender and sexuality, other scholars have used the term to describe patriotism and national identity, fueled by the idea of the nation as an invented or imagined construct that is enacted in order to reify its existence, see Anderson and Hobsbawm. 119 the character’s repeated denials throughout the film. These images also situate Havana’s existence in the past as a memory, but also as a nation whose geographic features have remained unchanged. For example, while the aunt privately becomes sentimental when viewing photographs of her family and life in Cuba, she insists on projecting the image of the assimilated Cuban immigrant. Having now established herself in Spain, the aunt is intent on ensuring that her nieces acculturate into dominant Spanish culture and receive their legal documents so that they may remain in Spain. As soon as her nieces arrive, the aunt begins lessons on differences in idiomatic expressions “almorzar se dice comer,” gastronomic distinctions that prohibit the cooking of Cuban foods and differences in how food is served, multiple courses in Spain versus placing everything on one plate. While the aunt seems intent on presenting herself as the assimilated Cuban immigrant, she secretly pines for the Cuba of her memories as seen in the opening sequence of the film and in a comic moment, even gorges herself on ajiaco, a Cuban stew, in the middle of night despite rebuking Cuban food in front of her nieces. While the aunt performs the role of the assimilated Cuban, Nena struggles to perform in a play by a fellow Cuban playwright when economically-driven changes to the script have altered what Nena considered to be a serious questioning of contemporary life in Cuba. The changes made to transform the play into a musical with “salsa en la balsa” panders to Spanish audiences and their conception of Cuba as a tropical island characterized by salsa music, elaborate dance sequences and balseros, fleeing from Communism. The rehearsal of the play-within-the-film, suggests the performative nature of Cubanidad in the Spanish imaginary that renders the realities of island life and the 120 experience of Cubans as a stereotype not only within the play, but for the characters within the film. In a self-reflexive gesture, these moments of performing Cubanidad are also highlighted during the film’s own sequences within a Cuban nightclub in Madrid, in which the film acknowledges its own complicity in perpetuating these stereotypes to Spanish audiences. The nightclub represents a small piece of Cuba within Madrid, a space in which Cuban immigrants congregate, socialize and dance salsa, but is also a space in which “sympathetic” Spaniards can meet and fraternize with Cubans living in Madrid. The changes made to the play, along with the pressure that Nena feels to marry for citizenship, lead to Nena’s breakdown during a key rehearsal scene. In the scene, Nena becomes increasingly agitated as she runs through the dancing milieu of a market scene, trying to barter goods for a dress, eventually crying out in desperation, “Comrades, I want a dress! A night for a dress! My body for a dress!” Echoing Richard III, Nena’s breakdown becomes a moment of self-criticism in which the film examines the growth of sexual tourism in Cuba as a product of economic need that exploits female bodies. In a scene that Nena believes assumes that all Cuban women are willing to sell themselves in exchange for goods, her outcry implicates a larger structure of global power relations that naturalizes a hierarchical system that forces Cuban women into a position where their bodies become a valuable commodity to be exchanged to secure their livelihood. Nena’s own refusal to marry Javier to secure citizenship demonstrates a resistance to this global structure, even if it makes her vulnerable to deportation by the state. Nena’s resistance to 121 the commodification of her body stands in contrast to the other characters in the film that do compromise their values in order to survive in Spain. This struggle is best encapsulated through the character of Igor, a street hustler who undertakes a series of odd jobs in Spain in order to survive. In Igor’s case, he earns money by helping Cuban immigrants attain false passports and occasionally seduces Spanish women who are “sympathetic” to the Cuban plight in exchange for food and shelter. At the beginning of the film, Igor awaits the arrival of his friend, Barbaro and his family, who have traveled to Spain, la madre patria, in the hopes of obtaining illegal documents to travel to the United States. Through a miscommunication, Barbaro cannot locate his contact in the airport and Igor suggests that they leave in order to avoid arising suspicion from the police patrolling the area. As Barbaro frantically searches for his contact, his wife, Nati, chastises him for endangering his family “en un pais extranjero” ‘in a foreign country’. To which Barbaro replies, “Este no es un pais extranjero, esto es la madre patria” ‘This is not a foreign country, this is the mother country’. As Igor hurriedly tries to get the family and their belongings out of the airport, he impatiently retorts, “¡Esta es la puta madre que nos parío!” ‘This is the whore mother who bore us!’ 48 This comic scene highlights the contradictory experience of Cubans in Spain. Whereas newly arrived Barbaro views his visit to Spain not as an illegal intrusion, but as a natural extension of his homeland thanks to the Spanish’s successful dispersion of Hispanidad, Igor’s responses highlights the limits by which Hispanidad functions to create a universal commonality. Spain may be the mother country, but it is a “mother” 48 Author’s transcription from film. Translation courtesy the English-language subtitles from the film’s DVD. 122 with a questionable moral and maternal character. In Igor’s case, his experience in Spain demonstrates how little regard the mother country has for the “blood ties” with her former children, choosing instead to pursue sexual liaisons over maternal instincts. Igor’s regard for the mother country as a whore highlights the sexual nature of contemporary relationships between Spain and Cuba, given the rise of sexual tourism referenced previously and Igor’s own subsistence as a Latin gigolo. Temporarily displaced from his home by Barbaro’s arrival, Igor visits his employer, a Spanish counterfeiter, in order to get an advance to help his friend secure passports. In this scene, his employer asks Igor cut his toenails in a moment that emphasizes the hierarchical relationship between the two men. Rather than offer an advance, the counterfeiter, suggests that Igor “screw a Spanish woman for room and board.” Although Igor would rather have cash, he has no choice but to search for a Spanish woman who will help him out. At the Cuban nightclub one night, he meets and instantly clicks with Nena. As a Cuban woman in Spain illegally, however, Nena cannot help Igor and tells him to find a Spanish woman. Igor then meets up with Azucena, a Spanish woman who lives upstairs from Nena and her aunt, and successfully seduces her. Like his other conquests with Spanish women, Igor performs the role of the “Cuban lover” through his sexual prowess, childhood stories of life in Cuba, and pictures of Cuban revolutionaries, which thrill Azucena, but leave him feeling hollow inside. Like Nena, Igor also struggles with catering to the Spanish view of Cubans as “always happy…dancing salsa and always [sexually] available for them.” Even as Nena complains about the changes in the script and how her director has lost his artistic 123 integrity, Igor notes, “When people emigrate, they do things they don’t like.” Having lived in Spain for some time, Igor is aware of the economic and personal exploitation that Cuban immigrants face in the “mother country” and often expresses frustration over his lack of agency due to his lack of Spanish citizenship. Through the course of the film, Igor reluctantly falls in love with Nena, which ultimately jeopardizes his relationship with Azucena and leaves him homeless once again. Forced to return to his crowded one-room apartment, Igor breaks into the counterfeiter’s place and forges passports for Barbaro and his family so that they may travel to the United States. As a result, he is subsequently arrested and forced to leave Spain for Cuba. While the film emphasizes the performative nature of Cubanidad, it also questions the impact of external power structures from Spanish colonialism to the Soviet Union and the U.S. embargo of Cuba that have shaped Cuban life. In her essay on the film, Gabrielle Carty points to this shifting global configuration of power and its implied context, which “means that since responsibility for the poverty of Cuba now rests with the United States, viewing [the film] in the madre patria is guilt-free and evokes sympathy, despite the violent history of genocide, economic exploitation and slavery between 1492 and 1898” (69). In this regard, according to Carty, the film eliminates any residual guilt for the conquest or ‘encounter with the Americas’ through the film’s “various references to the past association of Cuba with the former Soviet Union (food aid, power stations, study in Moscow)” (69) that shaped Cuba. Given that this film is a Spanish production that received some funding from the state, this reading of the film seems justified in its claim that Spain remains guilt-free. However, my reading of the film 124 and the contradictory ways in which the characters experience Spain demonstrates a much more critical view of Spanish-Cuban relations and in particular, the attempt to convey the unity of Hispanidad evoked in the film’s ending. Determined not to return to Cuba at whatever costs and unlike her sister, Ludmila views marriage as a positive transaction that would guarantee her Spanish citizenship and therefore uses her sexuality to successfully seduce Javier, intent on serving as his companion in whatever capacity. While Ludmila’s actions and potential for social reproduction become the key to gaining entrance into a literal Spanish family and the metaphoric family of the Spanish nation, can arguably be seen as exerting female sexual agency, especially since she finds Javier attractive, Nena’s own resistance to this set-up and the practice of sexual tourism in Cuba, marks this use of Cuban sexuality as exploitative. Although the film focused heavily on the romance between Nena and Igor, the film’s ending privileges the transatlantic union between Ludmila and Javier as a union between Spain and Cuba that is both hetero-patriarchal and neocolonial as represented by the tiny Spanish and Cuban flags that sit atop the gigantic wedding cake during the reception. Despite Nena’s resistance and the film’s critique of Spanish stereotypical fantasies about Cubans, in the end, what counts is Ludmila’s marriage to Javier and the reward she reaps for accepting this gendered and neocolonial status quo, while the fate of the other immigrants in the film remains precarious. 49 It is in this regard that the film privileges Spanish citizenship despite the attempt to explore transnational, and more specifically, transatlantic imaginaries. 49 The success of Nena’s performance in the play has led to an audition for a TV show and the possibility that she can stay in Spain, while Rosa will continue to work for her aunt. 125 Like Cosas que dejé en La Habana, Icíar Bollaín’s film, Flores de otro mundo, depicts the presence of Latin American, particularly Afro-Caribbean, women in Spain. While Cosas que dejé en La Habana ignores how the politics of race influence the relationship between Spain and Latin America by casting non-Afro-Cuban actors in the main roles, Flores de otro mundo explicitly implicates race within the postcolonial relationship between the ex-colonizer and the colonized. The film revolves around three different couples, two of whom meet during an annual singles’ festival that the village government sponsors in order to help maintain the village population, which has suffered due to increased migration into urban centers. The first couple is comprised of Damian, a local farmer, and Patricia, an émigré from the Dominican Republic. The second couple consists of Alfredo, the local greenhouse owner and Marirrosi, a nurse from Bilbao. The third couple consists of Carmelo and Milady, a young, attractive Cuban woman, who Carmelo met during his visits to Cuba. Given my emphasis on external immigration into Spain, I will focus on the dynamic that the two Afro-Caribbean women bring to the village as both gendered and racialized immigrants. While these women share a common language and religion with the madre patria, they are not fully embraced as fellow ‘Hispanics’ by the villagers. The film opens with a shot of the barren Spanish plain and the sounds of flamenco music as a score. This opening shot situates the film within the tropes of Spanish cinema that highlight the Spanish plains and rural village life as the heart of Spanish traditions and national identity. The emphasis of the Spanish plains in Spanish cinema has been discussed by scholars such as Katherine Singer Kovács, who discusses how landscape 126 and setting within Spanish film “occupy a central position… because Spain’s terrain and geography played a decisive role in shaping its history and in forging a sense of national identity” (17). Within her discussion, Kovács notes how Spanish history has been characterized by “cycles of expansion and expulsion, domination and withdrawal” that reflect a tension between an open-ness to the outside world and a “cultural and ideological closure” from it (18). Given Castile’s geographic position in the center of Spain, this region is most closely associated with tradition and Spanish national unity as opposed to the coastal periphery that was exposed to the outside world. According to Kovács, within Spanish films of the Franco period, the plains in Spain are “claustrophobic enclosures… [where] the ideological hegemony exercised by Castile not only kept out unwanted ideas but also imprisoned Spaniards within the narrow confines of outmoded concepts,” which needed to be dismantled after Franco’s death so that “different voices and views could be incorporated into the Castillian terrain” (32). It is in this context that Flores de otro mundo begins. The passing of a bus disrupts the barrenness of the opening shot. The scene cuts to a shot of the interior of the bus, which reveals its multicultural and multiethnic female passengers. The Castilian plains within this film no longer signify a closed Spain, but a Spain willing to embrace the openness of change and a transnational identity, even if all of the historical tensions with the outside world have yet to be fully resolved. As the camera pans down the center aisle of the bus, one notices how the bus in itself is informally segregated so that the viewers first see a group of Spanish women, sitting near the front, who are perturbed by the presence of a group of loud and jovial immigrant 127 women sitting in the back of the bus. Among themselves, the Spanish women discuss the prevalence of these immigrant women “que están en todas partes” ‘who are in all places’ in their native cities. Oblivious to this discussion, the immigrant women in the back of the bus tell jokes and share their own stories. One woman, Patricia, shows pictures of her children back in the Dominican Republic. Her friend teasingly warns her to hide those photos and not mention her two children, “¿Qué hombre conoces tú que quiera cargar con dos negritos?” ‘What man wants to care for two black children?’ 50 At this statement, the immigrant women all laugh. This brief scene highlights the tensions around gender and race that permeate the film by commenting on the increased presence of immigrant women in Spain, differences in public decorum between Spanish women and immigrant women and their perceived competition for Spanish men. These comments as well as the informal segregation in the bus reinforce an Us/Them binary that continues even as two immigrant women begin to integrate themselves into the village later in the film. While the immigrant women laugh and joke amongst themselves, the comment about having two Black children is particularly salient in understanding how race plays into their acceptance into larger Spanish society. It is not just that Patricia has two children that she needs to support, but the fact that they are two Black children that will make courtship difficult in Spain. Patricia’s race also makes her the target of unwanted sexual advances during the party scene in the town, where she grows increasingly agitated at the harassment by the local men, who interpret her vibrant form-fitting orange dress as a suggestion of sexual promiscuity. Similarly, Milady, the young Afro-Cuban 50 Author’s transcription from the film. Translation courtesy the English-language subtitles from the film’s DVD. 128 woman who later arrives in the village as Carmelo’s girlfriend, is also subject to a sexualizing gaze because of her penchant for body-hugging lycra spandex, the response from the villagers has more to due with the two women’s race than just their clothing choice. For example, both women are sexualized because of their shapely bottoms. Patricia must fight off men who try to grab her ass during the party scene and the village men comment on Milady’s lips and ass when she first arrives in the village. Through the emphasis on specific body parts, these women are subject to racial stereotyping that attributes their physical bodies to an implied hypersexuality that stands in contrast to traditional views of Spanish female chastity, particularly because of their Afro-Caribbean origins. While both women share a common bond in the film, they are treated differently not only because of their social status, but because of their skin tone. Patricia is a mulata and has a lighter complexion than Milady and even her own children. Although the film minimizes overt references to racial tension in the village and instead focuses on their immigrant and, hence, outsider status, the screenplay for the film addresses this issue much more candidly. For example, the script highlights the villagers’ tendency to stare at Patricia, Milady and her children because of their skin color, such as when the two women go to the school to pick up the children. In this scene, which is cut from the final film, Orlandito becomes aware of two women, staring at them. Orlandito: Mamá, ¿por qué me miran? Patricia cambia una mirada con Milady. Orlandito: ¿Eh, mamá? ¿Por qué me miran tanto? Patricia: (con mucha dulzura, alegre) Porque eres muy lindo, mi amor… Orlandito: Mom, why are they looking at me? Patricia exchanges a look with Milady. 129 Orlandito: Hey, mom? Why do they keep staring? Patricia: (with tenderness, cheerfully) Because you are so handsome, my love… (Bollaín and Llamares 108) This exchange points to the uneasy assimilation of the immigrant subjects in the film, who are subjected to unwelcoming stares that indicate the importance of race, not just nationality, in contemporary Spanish and Latin American relations. In her essay, “Ethnic and Racial Configurations in Contemporary Spanish Cinema” Isabel Santaolalla points out how “Hispanic Americans deserve special mention, in the sense that, through historical, cultural, linguistic, and even literal family connections, their Otherness is of a relative rather than an absolute nature” (65). Given Santaolalla’s assessment, the women in the film, as fellow Hispanic Americans, should be welcomed into the community given the commonality of language and religion, but because of their race and other cultural differences, they are treated as Other, which differs dramatically from the reception of the Cuban women in Cosas que dejé en La Habana. Thus, in order to gain acceptance into the Spanish village—a symbol of the Spanish nation—these women have to alter their choice of clothing, moving away from outfits that show their curvaceous figures to clothing that is more modest and “appropriate” to the local climate in order to try and de- emphasize their racial and cultural difference. After Patricia marries Damian, her style of dress and demeanor changes in order to show her transformation and assimilation into Spanish village life. When Damian first meets Patricia, she is wearing a bright orange and form-fitted party dress, which shows off her curves and makes her the subject of unwelcome groping during the party scene. In a later scene that occurs after their marriage, Patricia is shown in the Spanish plains, 130 wearing darker and loose fitting sweaters, long pants and boots and keeps her hair covered with a hat. Her decision to change clothing illustrates an attempt to shed her sexualized exoticism in order to blend in with her new surroundings. This difference in her appearance is more suitable to farm work, but also functions to de-sexualize and mark her as a proper and modest “Spanish” wife, who helps on the farm and tends to her home. The seamlessness of her assimilation into Spanish domesticity in this scene is questioned by her inexperience in rounding up the cattle, suggesting that while she may look the part, she is only performing rural Spanish femininity and is not genuinely at ease with village life. In contrast, Milady, arrives in the village with Carmelo as a symbol of his escapades in Cuba and is therefore treated as a souvenir that one brings home from a vacation. Because of her youth and exotic beauty, she is ostracized by the community and treated primarily as a sexual object of desire by Carmelo and various men in the village, particularly due to her choice of bright and tight clothing that highlight her voluptuous figure and dark skin. Milady’s hypersexualization also results from the link between Cuba and sexual tourism in the Spanish mindset that reaffirms unequal power relations its through sexual alliances. 51 51 Milady’s portrayal also recalls an earlier film by Fernando Colomo, Cuarteto de La Habana, which is largely set in Cuba and deals with Spanish tourism in the country and the theme of romantic relationships between the two countries. Although the film is a comedy and the main characters are all guilty of deceit, these sexual exchanges are far from innocuous and instead highlight the power that European currency holds over a population with limited financial resources and therefore renders these alliances unequal. At the beginning of the film, the main news in Madrid highlights the prince’s marriage to a mulata woman, suggesting a blending of cultures and racial mixing at all levels of Spanish society that is invoked through the Spanish- Cuban alliances later in the film. The main plot focuses on Walter Martínez, a struggling musician in Madrid, who flies to Cuba to meet his mother, a Cuban woman he has never known. During the flight to Havana, he meets Segis, a male flight attendant, who informs him that he is on the “Bordello Express”, insinuating the large number of travelers who treat Cuba as a site of 131 Unlike Patricia, who marries Damian, Milady has only just arrived and does not have the security of a family and/or a network of friends to support her. For example, Patricia has lived in Spain for some time and is familiar with Spanish culture and their views of immigrant women and has also established a group of friends and family. Patricia sees her stay in the village as essential to her survival and enables her to provide a better future for her children. In contrast, Milady is less willing to assimilate into domestic village life, which she views as too cold and rural. Additionally, her inability to blend into the community through her flirtatious behavior and manner of dress ultimately marks her as an outsider in the village, especially given her questionable status as Carmelo’s live-in girlfriend and not a more respectable wife. It is significant then that her wardrobe changes after an incident of domestic violence, in which Carmelo beats her for having traveled to Valencia to visit the beach and go clubbing unannounced. After this beating, Milady begins wearing looser and darker clothing, a sign of her imposed domesticity. Ultimately unhappy in her new home, Milady leaves Carmelo and the village at the end of the film, although in the published script, she is followed by Carmelo, who runs her over—a last act of violence for Milady’s stepping outside of the sexual tourism, in part sparked by a Cuban coffee commercial that airs in Spain and conveys a romanticized view of a colonial Cuba and the hypersexuality of Cubans in the Spanish imaginary. In this TV commercial, which is intercut into the scene as Segis recounts its premise, a man sits on the porch of a colonial mansion during a rainstorm. A beautiful woman walks out and cools herself in the rain, turns around and asks the man if he wants a cup of coffee. He declines and says that he wants her. The camera then cuts to a close-up of a table and pans to a shot of the couple’s legs intertwined on the bed, having passionate sex with the tagline that says, “Café de Cuba, caliente, caliente.” Segis enthusiastic description suggests that the commercial’s equation of hot Cuban coffee with hot sex is successful. The stereotype of the hypersexual Cuban is not unique to Spain, but also transplanted onto Europe as a whole later in the film when Walter seduces an Italian woman, who mistakes him for a Cuban local, in exchange for money. Having essentially prostituted himself for cash, Walter experiences this sexualization in reverse. 132 gendered role that Carmelo imagined for her. Although the film does not show this scene of her demise, Milady’s refusal or inability to assimilate into the Spanish village and domestic life leaves her literally outside of acceptable Spanish femininity and the Spanish nation. As a black Cuban woman without the legal means to support herself and the protection of a family support structure, Milady’s future in Spain is uncertain. While the film portrays marriage as the key to guaranteeing a secure and stable life for these immigrant women, it is by no means an equal partnership or a guarantee that they will be well received in Spain. These transnational families, thus, are not idealized union as evident in Patricia’s contentious relationship with her mother-in-law and in the scene when Damian asks Patricia to leave after discovering that she forged her divorce papers. Although Patricia takes on her duties as a farmer’s wife without much complaint, she does express frustration over Damian’s over-controlling mother, who refuses to cede control of the domestic sphere to her new daughter-in-law. While Gregoria, Damian’s mother did not oppose his marital union to Patricia, she is less than happy with his choice of a mate. Consequently, she treats Patricia as a guest who has outstayed her welcome. Like in Cosas que dejé en La Habana, the film highlights cultural tensions around food. Damian’s mother criticizes Patricia’s way of cooking habichuelas ‘beans’, since she cooks alubias with more soup. Patricia insists on preparing the dish the way that she knows how, only to find that her new husband prefers his mother’s style of cooking. In another scene, Patricia invites her Caribbean family to the village. As the women festively dance and prepare the evening meal, the mother-in-law stops by the doorway and conveys her disapproval, reminding Patricia that she should have informed her of any 133 guests. Irritated, Patricia reminds her mother-in-law that she informed her weeks before. After her guests leave, Patricia confronts Gregoria after she tells her that she can no longer invite her guests over. Although Patricia does everything in her power to please her mother-in-law, the woman stubbornly refuses to accept his son’s choice for a wife and informs her that she must obey the rules of her house or leave. Damian intervenes and suggests that he and his family will move to another house. Shocked at the possibility of being left alone, Gregoria begins to soften her treatment of Patricia. However, the two women do not make peace until later in the film when Patricia and Gregoria visit her husband’s grave, where she finally succeeds in getting the approval of her mother-in-law by identifying their commonality as wives and mothers who need good husbands. This alliance, which seemingly bridges the cultural and racial differences between the two women, however, does not guarantee equality within the family. Patricia’s security within the family (and the nation) is still precarious and based on Damian’s willingness to keep her as his wife. For example, when Damian finds out that Patricia forged her divorce from her deadbeat husband and their marriage is a fraud, he asks her to leave. Acknowledging that her initial interest in their marriage stemmed from her desire to legalize her residency in Spain, Patricia justifies her deceit by discussing her experience as an undocumented immigrant in Spain. Fueled by the lack of opportunities in her home country, Patricia migrated to Spain and was then subjected to long work hours, irregular pay and continual harassment. However, it is her body as sexually desirable and reproductive that enables her to overcome the adversities she faces in Spain and gain access to the nation. In a scene at the end of the published script, Patricia is 134 expecting a child, while Gregoria shows her a baby outfit, excited to welcome a new child into her home who will carry on her family traditions. Through their interaction in this scene, it is clear that they have made amends. The filmic ending differs slightly in its portrayal of the unified family at the celebration of Janay’s first communion, which re- envisions the contemporary Spanish family within the broader context of Hispanidad. Flesler describes this final scene as a confirmation of the “desired immigrant subject: female, Catholic, Latin American who wants to marry a rural Spanish man and thus saves a disappearing way of life for Spain” (146). That is, unlike other immigrant groups, Latin American women because of their shared language, religion and culture become the ideal mate for Spanish men, thus, replaying colonial histories of racial and cultural mixing on domestic rather than foreign soil. By invoking Spanish male fantasies of the racialized Other, their ultimate marriage grants them entrance, if not acceptance, into the metaphorical national family. Spain as a European Borderland As mentioned previously, immigration films in Spain are not limited to representations of Latin American subjects, but also incorporate a plurality of subjects from Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe, which highlight the tensions both within the nation and within the larger macroregion of the European Union (EU) around issues of race, national and cultural identity. 52 As a southern borderland of the EU and therefore, 52 Kinder uses the terms “microregionalism” and “macroregionalism” to describe the link between regionalism and nationalism within national cinema, whereby regionalism “may refer to geographic areas that are both smaller and larger than a nation” (388-9). For Kinder, both terms 135 on the periphery of Europe, Spain’s policing of its borders not only reflects pressures by the EU, but also can be seen as a product of the country’s own anxieties about its Europeanness given its historical marginalization and its economic instability. While my emphasis on the Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary focuses on the geographical spaces of Spain, Latin America and the United States, the depiction and presence of foreign, and particularly, Moroccan immigrants in Spain brings up interesting questions and parallels with the U.S-Mexico border, which shares a similar history of cross-cultural contact, but also with national borders around the world as illustrated in my analysis of the film, Al otro lado, which will be discussed in the final section . In this section, I examine three films, Extranjeras, Poniente and Retorno a Hansala to establish a pattern of representing immigrants in Spain that highlights the mobility of gendered and racialized or ethnic bodies across borders in order to reinforce hierarchical relationships based on citizenship rather than gender. Within the context of the broader Hispanic Atlantic, Spain historically positioned itself as mediator between Europe and its colonies in the Americas, Africa, and Southeast Asia, not only within the colonial period, but also throughout the twentieth century from Francoist discourse on the “Hispanic Community of Nations” through the democratic are useful in thinking about Spanish film and media in terms of the internal politics within the nation, but also within the larger macro-regions of Europe and the Hispanic world (399). According to Kinder, “because micro- and macroregionalism… shift meaning according to context, they serve as an effective means both of asserting the subversive force of any marginal position and of destabilizing (or at least redefining) the hegemonic power of any center” (389). In the case of Spain, micro- and macro-regionalism come into play both within the regional politics of film production in Spain as well the Spanish film and media industry’s participation in European and Latin American mediascapes. 136 period, which views Spain as “transeuropean” (169). 53 This discourse ultimately, establishes a pattern of colonial nostalgia that continues through the contemporary period as Spain once again attempts to regain its former glory. Spain’s renewed interest in the Hispanic Atlantic during the quincentenary era and its commeration in 1992 was more than just about celebrating the discovery of the New World. It was also a period characterized by Spain’s entrance into Europe and the unification of Europe after the collapse of Communism in the Eastern bloc. This unification of Europe encouraged a resurgance of continentalism and xenophobia against non-Europeans, resulting from the influx of immigrants from peripheral nations. Ella Shohat notes how “the 1992 unification of Europe, for example, strengthen[ed] cooperation among ex-colonizing countries such as Britain, France, Germany, and Italy against illegal immigration, practicing stricter border patrol against infiltration by diverse Third World peoples…” (240). As the southern tip of the European continent, Spain’s close proximity to Africa resulted in its historical racialization by the northern and more industrialized European nations that resulted in its marginalization. In Carmen: A Cultural History on Film, the authors point to the geopolitical power shift that occured in the 19 th century within Europe, whereby France’s power rose globally through its colonial expansion while Spain lost its importance on the world stage due to the weakening of its colonial power 53 In her essay, “Hispanist Democratic Thought versus Hispanist Thought of the Franco Era: A Comparative Analysis,” María A. Escudero points to the similarities between Hispanist discourse of these two politically and ideologically different eras which emphasize Spain’s position as a mediator between Europe and Latin America that, ultimately establishes itself as a leader and model for Latin American nations that re-affirms a hierarchical position of superiority (179-80, 182). 137 (22). As a product of these shifting relations, the image of Carmen embodied “French Romantic attitudes toward Spain that envisaged the country as an exotic Other…[by] conflate[ing] Spanishness with the culture of Andalusia, the most southern region of Spain, close to Africa and the Near East and still bearing the marks of Arab culture” (22). Spain’s proximity to Africa and its historical blending of cultures consequently marks Spain as Other in relation to northern and more industrialized European countries that emerged as the winner’s of modernity. Flesler complicates this notion by pointing to the differences in reception of immigrants between regions of Spain that have historically contested notions of a unified national identity and/or Europeanness, such as Catalonia. For example, she notes how “current immigration is seen as the contemporary staging of an old struggle by which Catalonia has had to defend its identity from the influence of Spain, an influence that has taken multiple historical forms (African, Muslim, Castilian, anti-modern, anti-democratic) but has always been a quintessentially non-European one” (Flesler 37). These internal Others consequently display “defensive nationalist “anti- Spanish” as well as “anti-foreign” reactions” (Flesler 38) in order to preserve their distinctive identities. Spain’s membership in the EU, thus, reaffirmed its European identity and forced the nation to alienate its southern neighbors and historical legacy of cultural and racial intermixing. Consequently, by policing its southern boundaries, Spain assuages other EU members that its loyalty to Europe remains intact. According to Ryan Prout, “200 million euros [have been] spent on border protection in Andalusia since 2000,” primarily on surveillance technologies that increasingly militarize the region (724). This militarization 138 of southern Spanish borders mimics the militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border, where restrictions on what bodies are allowed access to the nation are increasingly patrolled. Within a number of Spanish films that deal with the issue of immigration, this emphasis on the body as racialized, ethnicized, gendered, sexualized and Othered proves a fruitful site for the exploration of contemporary Spanish national identity. While these films attempt to bridge national differences through gendered alliances, these films ultimately reaffirm the privileges of citizenship and Spanish national identity by maintaining a hierarchical relationship in which citizenship equals power. The first film, Extranjeras, by Helena Taberna, is a documentary that features interviews with several different groups of immigrant women living in Spain. As a result, the film broadens the discussion of the Spanish borderland beyond the geographical borders of Spain and North Africa to consider Spain as the EU’s southern border point and therefore a site of various national migrations into and within Europe. By emphasizing Spain as a site of migration, this depiction of a multicultural Spain further reifies the nation and its capital as European. In the supplemental teaching guide for the film, Taberna positively views the fact that canonical sites in Madrid are now multicultural by relating multiculturalism to cosmopolitanism as a key desirable characteristic of major European cities: Ya no simbolizan el Madrid castizo, genuino y profundo, sino que representan ahora un conglomerado de culturas internacionales y un cosmopolitismo proprio de una gran capital europea. Podemos decir que Lavapies o Atocha simbolizan en Extranjeras un “Madrid castizo globalizado. These [Madrid sites] no longer symbolize a traditional and backward Madrid, but now represent a conglomeration of international cultures and a cosmopolitanism that is 139 appropriate for a great European capital. We can say that Lavapies or Atocha in Extranjeras symbolize a “purely globalized Madrid”. 54 (Taberna 27) Although the film actively attempts to cultivate a commonality between the different women in the film and the, primarily Spanish, viewer, these women are Othered through the titling of the film itself, which labels them as extranjeras or foreigners. By marking the women as Other through the film’s titling, Extranjeras maintains a system of racial/ ethnic and cultural difference even when questions of citizenship are not at stake. In her study on migrant women, Mirjana Morkovasic argues that the experience of migrant women in their new nation-state are marked by colonialist ideology through “the colonial past in some countries or economic supremacy in others” that perpetuate a stigmatized identity both before and after emigration (74). Throughout the interviews, their country of origin rather than their name identifies the women interviewed. Only a few of them manage to introduce themselves beyond their nationality, including a young girl of Chinese descent, who has grown up in Spain and a Polish attorney named Joanna Lassota. By marking these women as foreign and rarely giving them an identity or name beyond this, the film maintains their foreignness as a stigmatized identity, despite the fact that many have lived in Spain for decades. In spite of this stigma, Morokvasic ends her study by writing, rather hopefully, that “the presence of migrants and minorities is both a chance and a challenge for European societies to develop new forms of solidarity and new forms of citizenship in multicultural Europe…” (82). These new forms of solidarity, however, are contingent on the ability to view foreignness as more than just difference. For the women in the film, their foreign identity supplants their individual identity, 54 This is not a literal translation. 140 marking their foreignness as distinctive from what is typically Spanish and knowable. In a film designed to hail female subjects by addressing a common gendered experience, this is a great flaw that sets the limits of a shared commonality. Like Morokvasic, Taberna’s documentary is ultimately hopeful through its emphasis on communities that depict both inter- and intra-ethnic solidarity and sees the presence of immigrant women in Spain as a fruitful re-shaping of the nation. Immigrant women are presented as strong and resourceful, who have overcome adversity both within their home countries and in Spain. Their presence, thus, inspires a sense of multiculturalism that is also pro-feminine, marking contemporary Spain not only as European, but also as progressive in terms of the opportunities available to women. For example, Fátima, a Moroccan woman, owns a Middle Eastern grocery store with a diversity of clientele, although most are either Middle Eastern or Muslim, as is the case for one Romanian woman interviewed. This unity amongst the different groups is also shown at the end of the film, where the women interviewed attend a performance by the musical group, Afrika Lisanga. In doing so, the film suggests a community between the various groups based on their foreign-ness and ignores the factors that influenced their emigration from their homelands as well as, racial diversity and hierarchies that lead to marked differences in their reception within Spain. 55 Consequently, the utopian multiculturalism represented onscreen is not without its ruptures, specifically around the 55 Morokvasic points to the hierarchy of exclusion that exists within European immigration policy that varies by nation-state and determines who is allowed into and excluded from immigration (73). These differences in immigration policy, such as national quotas, as well as economic/political and social upheaval in their home countries, race and/or ethnic backgrounds and access to education all contribute to who is allowed to migrate and who is not. 141 issue of race. Throughout the film, different subjects discuss racism in Spain, although most are quick to dismiss the gravity of their encounters. In contrast to Fátima’s pride over the diversity of her clientele, Fanta, an affable women from Sudan, owns a beauty shop frequented by clients that all foreigners, mainly South American. In regards to the absence of Spanish women, she states that it is “hard to believe because the salon is in an enormous building… They seem to be frightened.” 56 The discussion of racism among the women varies from a humorous dismissal by the women from the Dominican Republic to resignation among the African women interviewed at the end of the film, who point out that racism exists everywhere, even in their home countries. The experience of racism is most discernible, however, among the generation of young women who are growing up in Spain and hence negotiating their cultural backgrounds with Spanish identity. For these young women, their acceptance among their Spanish peers varies according to their ability to blend into dominant society. For example, a young Chinese girl mentions how people sometimes laugh at her in the streets, which she attributes to their lack of contact with different foreign groups. Although she dismisses these encounters as due to a lack of familiarity, she ends this story by admitting, “The truth is that, even if they [Spaniards] like me, they always end up saying: ‘Yeah, but you’re Chinese’.” 57 Similarly, a young Algerian Muslim woman, who studies media and has many Spanish friends, states that these relationships would be different, perhaps even nonexistent “if I wore a veil or if my 56 Author’s transcription from English-language subtitles of film’s DVD. 57 Author’s transcription from English-language subtitles of film’s DVD. 142 skin was darker, it wouldn’t be the same.” 58 Although the Algerian woman’s features allow her to physically blend in with Spanish society unlike the young Chinese girl, her social mobility is still contingent on an ability to “pass” or perform contemporary Spanishness. In spite of her success, she is still aware of how cultural differences determine interaction, even amongst her friends. Like the issues of racism that permeate the foreign womens’ experiences, the film is also interesting in its depiction of space, which it does not verbally address, but visually shows. While Taberna points to the changing demographics of certain iconographic Spanish neighborhoods and public spaces as the inspiration for the film, she actively attempts to cultivate gender as a shared universal experience between the different women interviewed and the native audience within domestic and private spaces. Many of the interviews are conducted in the domestic space of the home, not only those belonging to the immigrant women themselves, but also those of the Spaniards who employ them as domestic workers as well as typically feminine spaces such as the beauty salon, educational institutions, and the grocery store. The spaces that they inhabit are, historically, gendered spaces that convey unequal power relations reflected in the public- private dichotomy that arose with industrialization, whereby men’s work in the public sphere was highly valued and women’s work in the private sphere of the home was rendered invisible. By inhabiting these spaces, the immigrant women in the film perform pink collar labor that is stereotypically feminine, such as cooking, childcare, teaching and 58 Author’s transcription from English-language subtitles of film’s DVD. 143 hairdressing that positions them at the bottom of an economic hierarchy as these jobs are typically lower-wage jobs. For example, in one interview, Lala, a nanny and housekeeper from the Dominican Republic is shown in her home space getting her hair done. This scene is intercut with images of Lala in uniform at her place of employment. In these interviews, she discusses her duties in the home, while she feeds a young infant named Carlos. As she performs her domestic duties and entertains Carlos, she discusses a telephone conversation with her grandchild who wants her to visit. Unfortunately, her economic situation in Spain prevents her from making the journey to see her family until next year. This then cuts back to the scene with Lala out of uniform, in which she discusses her economic situation and desire to save money to return to her home country. Lala’s joyous demeanor masks the hardships she faces in Spain, especially the distance that it creates with her family in the Dominican Republic. Her position as a caretaker for Carlos, thus, serves as a stand-in for the grandchild that she sees infrequently. While other moments in the film depict transnational domesticity as a beneficial exchange for the immigrant women interviewed and their adopted country, this sequence reveals inequities based on geographic disparities, whereby First World children receive care by Third World women, who must leave their children behind. These inequalities are also evident in the film’s formal structure, in which the camera stumbles upon conversations in medias res, therefore framing these interviews as open-ended. Little is known of the women beyond the snippets that they share and little is known about the spaces they inhabit beyond what you see onscreen. The fact that these 144 women inhabit domestic and gendered spaces reifies a division between feminine and masculine space that becomes further stratified when foreign women begin to occupy them. As foreigners, these women are situated at the bottom of a societal hierarchy, influenced by the intersection of their foreign status and racial or ethnic backgrounds. Although Taberna positively views their presence as a testament to Spain’s Europeanness, the distinctions between who is foreign and who is not only serves to perpetuate a hierarchy based on nativeness that challenges any attempt to argue for a gendered alliance between Spanish viewers of the film and the foreign women. Whereas Extranjeras attempts to promote solidarity within a new multicultural Spain, Poniente, directed by Chus Gutiérrez looks at contemporary immigration into Spain through the history of Spanish migration both within and outside of Spain. In doing so, the film creates a gendered alliance between the immigrant Other, a Spanish female and a Spaniard raised in exile. Set in the coastal region of southern Spain, the film focuses on the story of a woman named Lucia, who returns to her village after the death of her estranged father, Mariano, who owns an agricultural business. Lucia has not been home in seven years since the accidental death of her daughter. Upon arriving in the village, Lucia decides to stay and run her father’s business, which sets off a battle with her cousin, Miguel, over disputed land. In addition, Lucia is now confronted with the threat of labor strikes from the largely immigrant labor force that enable the agricultural industry to flourish. As a woman who is returning to the village and entering into a field dominated by men, Lucia sympathizes with the marginalized immigrant workers. Curro, a Spaniard who grew up in Switzerland, also shares her sympathies and has befriended 145 Adbenbi, a North African immigrant. Through these three characters, the film interrogates contemporary Spanish identity and attempts to create an alliance based on commonalities of marginalization as women, as foreigners and through the Spanish exile, which reflects Spain’s historical marginalization within Europe. While the tension around immigrant rights is a central theme of the film, these tensions are paralleled with the struggle for gender equality. As a woman and a single mother, Lucia confronts many obstacles upon her return home. For example, Paquito, the foreman, continually undermines Lucia’s actions, reminding her that she must conduct business as her father once did. Her struggles to succeed in the masculine space of the agricultural business parallel the experience of the racialized immigrants whose labor allows the farmers to maintain their lands and earn a profit. When Lucia befriends an African laborer, Paquito warns her against interacting with her workers. These actions coincide with Flesler’s description of contemporary immigration films that focus on ill- fated “intercultural romance” (133). Although Lucia’s behavior is far from being romantic in nature, Paquito “intervene[s] as protector of a hegemonic sexual order in which Spanish women should not attempt to choose any other but a Spanish male as a sexual or romantic partner” (Flesler 134). Flesler argues that this intervention functions as a stand-in or compliment to policing by the state, which ultimately renders these relationships as impossible (134). Opposed to Paquito’s patriarchal and nationalist ideology, Lucia chooses to ignore Paquito’s advice and render the immigrant workers’ invisible. After a confrontation with Paquito over his suggestion of her sexual interest in one of her workers, Lucia fires Paquito. Her alliance with the immigrant workers, thus, 146 genders them in the process. As racialized men, they are also victimized by the Spanish patriarchal state embodied in Paquito. However, in keeping with the trope of ill-fated intercultural romance that Flesler describes, Lucia develops a romance with Curro, a more suitable and Spanish mate. As a Spaniard who grew up as part of the exilic community in Switzerland, Curro maintains an ambivalent relationship to Spain, Switzerland where he grew up and deductively the idea of nation-states as a whole. In this sense, he is antithetical to Paquito, who is rooted in Spain, the land through employment, and both patriarchal and nationalist ideology. In contrast, Curro grew up in Switzerland as a product of Spanish emigration due to economic hardship, and therefore serves as a reminder of Spain’s perpetual Otherness within dominant European narratives. Early in the film, Curro visits Pepe, an older man who worked with his father in Switzerland, and like Curro, has returned to southern Spain. Curro finds a home movie projector and home movie reels in a box and asks Pepe if he can keep it. The home movie projector and the movies it contains serve as a reminder of a past that Spaniards are no longer interested in—the fact that many Spaniards left Spain and struggled as foreigners in another country. As the scene continues, Pepe tells Curro of the harsh circumstances that fueled his emigration and the even harsher circumstances in which they found themselves abroad. Curro admits to never feeling like he belonged in Switzerland while growing up, but feeling similarly displaced upon returning to Spain: “Nunca he conseguido saber de dónde soy” ‘I never felt right anywhere.’ Pepe responds, “Eso ya peor, Curro” ‘That’s the worst of it.’ In this scene, Pepe reaffirms the value of national belonging since being from some place is 147 better than never feeling like you quite belong. While the character of Curro questions the anti-immigrant sentiments of the film by referencing the Spanish exilic past, this scene ultimately stresses nationalism as vital to identity formation. In her book, The Return of the Moor, Flesler points to the connections that the film makes between the history of Spanish emigration and the current wave of immigration into Spain through the characters of Curro and Adbendi, a Moroccan immigrant (34). While the film envisions a solidarity between these experiences through the characters’ friendship, such as for example, when Curro is shown watching “real-life [documentary] footage of Spaniards in Switzerland in the sixties, in which the audience can see the emigrants’ bodies and faces marked by hunger and impoverishment” (34), Flesler points to a newspaper article published in El Pais in 1998, in which the author, Juan Goytisolo argues that “the memory of past poverty and forces emigration, instead of creating some kind of compassion or sympathy towards the migrants who are now living in similar situations, has had the opposite effect,” in which former émigrés now play out their experiences as a form of revenge (34). Rather than evoking sympathy, Flesler points to different cases in which Spaniards have boycotted or protested the integration of Muslim immigrants within their communities (34-5). Similarly, within the film, Paquito informs Lucia that her father relied on foreign labor, primarily Sub-Saharan, but never hired Moors. With the labor strikes, the farmers argue over agricultural pricing, which makes it difficult to turn a profit. The Spanish farmers argue over the low rates for Spanish tomatoes set by Europe, which necessitates low wage labor. In their debate, they argue for the need to lower wages even more despite the fact that the workers are striking 148 in order to be paid a higher wage. One farmer brings up the idea of importing workers from other countries, like Ecuador and Peru, who are “docile and speak Spanish.” 59 This reliance on cheap labor stems from Spain’s position as an agricultural supplier for Europe and highlights Spain’s lack of agency within the broader context of the EU, which demands goods at a rate that restricts the economic mobility of Spanish farmers and the foreign labors they import. This scene is also interesting in its construction of Moroccans as a threat to the status quo. This tension runs against the film’s attempts to reaffirm a cultural affinity between Spaniards and North Africans, exemplified through Curro’s friendship with Adbenbi. Adbenbi and Curro’s friendship stems from their outsider status in Spain and mutual dream of opening up a café-bar on the beach, which they plan on calling “Poniente,” which translates as west or western. The café-bar’s name, along with its location on the beach, indicates to new arrivals that they have landed in the West, which re-affirms Spain’s identity within Europe and the West rather than creating allegiances to its colonial ties and multicultural history as continually stressed by Adbenbi. While pejoratively referred to as a Moro throughout the film, Adbenbi is a Berber belonging to a culture and history that is thousands of years old and once included Spain. For Adbenbi, his claim to Spain stems from this history and, therefore, his affinity with Curro is a result of the fact that they share similar roots: “Mis raices son tus raices” ‘My roots are your roots’. While Curro admits to feeling like an outsider within Spain, Adbenbi reminds him and the viewers watching the film that the Spanish also have cultural ties to northern 59 Author’s transcription from English-language subtitles on film’s DVD. 149 Africa due to the Islamic conquest and reign over much of Spain for more than 700 years. Spanish culture and history is shaped by the presence of Christians, Muslim and Sephardic Jews, which lasted until the expulsion of the latter two groups in 1492. Spain’s attempts to claim Europeanness, thus, result in the country turning its back on its own multicultural history. While the film attempts to show solidarity between new immigrants and Spanish exiles, it also exposes its limitations. After Miguel sets fire to Lucia’s greenhouses, he blames the immigrant workers, which inspires outrage amongst the men in the town. Curro attempts to quell the mob of local Spaniards, but instead is attacked as an Arab- lover and therefore a traitor to Spain. Injured, he is carried off by the angry mob and is later dumped on the beach near the bar he hoped to buy. Unable to prevent the anti- immigrant riots, Curro remains an outsider whose own experience having grown up in another country distances him from the nativist concerns of the villagers. Although Curro feels sympathy for Adbenbi’s situation and those of his fellow immigrants, he is still a Spaniard and therefore able to benefit from its privileges, which the end of the film reveals to be the possibility of a heterosexual union with a Spanish woman. After the riots, Lucia finds Curro on the beach, embraces him and declares her love. With this declaration, Curro is recuperated into a heteronormative family and subsequently the Spanish nation. Initially rootless, Curro’s union with Lucia gives him a sense of place. As they look out to the sea, a group of immigrants carrying their belongings enter into the frame. It is unclear whether the immigrants are new arrivals until Adbendi walks into the frame. These are not new arrivals, but the immigrants who are fleeing after being run out 150 of the town. In the final shot of the film, Adbendi looks longingly offscreen [towards the town] before grabbing his backpack and following the rest of the group. This ending makes it clear that Curro’s cooptation into Spanish domesticity comes at the price of eliminating his ties with Adbendi, who is literally uprooted from his home in the town. While Poniente inevitably re-affirms a separation between the Spanish citizens and the immigrants in the film, Retorno a Hansala, directed by Chus Gutiérrez in 2008, shares similar thematic concerns in regards to the tensions over immigrant bodies, specifically, those from Morocco, while also engaging with a gendered perspective that emphasizes mobility. The film focuses on a reverse migration from Spain to Africa, when Martín, a Spanish undertaker played by José Luis García Pérez, travels to Morocco to return the dead body of a would-be migrant. His journey becomes a firsthand experience of Moroccan culture and the conditions that fuel migration for so many through a process that makes the invisible and unknown, visible. While the film depicts the dangerous hurdles for would-be migrants, the film positions the female migrant as the ideal border crosser, who is able to navigate international borders and the two cultures of Spain and Morocco. Although Poniente affirms the prohibitions surrounding a romantic alliance between Spanish women and foreign men, the female immigrant, much like those dealing with films about immigrant women from Latin America, is depicted as an idealized border-crosser because she is the object of desire for Spanish men. The process of making the invisible visible begins with the opening sequence of the film, which starts with images of the water and the shoreline at a distance. Through this POV shot, viewers are shown the perspective of someone who is looking at the 151 shoreline and struggling in the water as indicated by the camera movement, which mimics the act of bobbing in the water. In the sound design for this scene, gurgling sound effects and heavy breathing combined with the sounds of the water and an ominous score, furthering the visually immersive experience of the camera. Although the viewer never sees the reverse shot to identify the subject of this POV, the sequence in relation to the soundtrack conveys a sensation of drowning. As the camera then goes underwater, the opening credits of the film begin. After the opening credit sequence, the film fades to black and then opens on an image of the beach in the morning. The camera follows a man jogging along the beach, who encounters a number of dead bodies washed upon the shore. The film then cuts to an image of a man sleeping on the sofa in his office, who is awoken by a ringing telephone. The film then cuts to images of an attractive woman, played by Farah Hamed, in a supermarket, who approaches the cashier in order to send her monthly stipend. The woman asks to fill out the form and the male cashier compliments her lovely penmanship and asks her out. She responds by saying someday to which he laments that the someday never happens, which causes her to smile. It is obvious through this exchange that the cashier asks her out every month. The film then cuts to her walking through a field near a working-class housing complex. Back on the beach, the man who had been sleeping on the couch, now identified as Martín, an undertaker, arrives to oversee the removal of the dead bodies. Throughout this sequence, the dead bodies are treated clinically, as the technicians go about their business photographing the scene and removing the bodies. The lack of a close-up on any of the bodies reinforces the detachment of this process, avoiding fetishization of the dead. 152 In keeping the camera at a distance, the film also prevents spectators from identifying with the dead, who at this point in the film, remain invisible or Othered. This depiction of the dead contrasts with the image of the woman, who remains unnamed throughout her interactions, but nonetheless is a visible agent within her surroundings. When Martín decides to try and identify the bodies, the unknown woman becomes visible. Up until this point in the film, the woman has not been explicitly identified as foreign. It is only when we enter into her domestic space that we recognize that she is also an immigrant. In a later sequence, the woman is seen in her apartment that she shares with a foreign family. She overhears a newscast, which announces that 17 bodies have been found on Getares beach in Algecires. The woman slowly approaches the television in the next room. Sounds of her heart beating faster underscore this tense scene, as we witness her own subjectivity as her facial expression conveys both fear and sadness, shared by an image of another young man in the apartment who shakes his head in disappointment and speaks. Because we are now in the woman’s head, we do not hear what he says but only see his mouth move. The woman’s cell phone rings and she drops her tray to the ground. She picks up the phone. On the other end, Martín, informs her that her phone number was located on one of the bodies. Speaking in castellano, or Spanish, the woman denies knowing anything or anyone arriving on a boat. After she hangs up, she snaps at the two children in the room in Arabic. Later at her job, as she cries and talks to herself in Arabic, a Spanish coworker identifies the woman as Leila. During their exchange, Lola, the Spanish woman, asks her what is wrong, if she is having problems with her father or her papers. Leila confesses to 153 having sent her brother money to make the trip to Spain and therefore blames herself for his death. Lola comforts Leila and encourages her to go to the morgue and identify his body. This introductory sequence in Spain is interesting in its attempt to show Leila’s life, while delaying her identification to audiences until a fellow Spaniard acknowledges her. This sets off the narrative chain of events for the film. Once Leila is identified within the world of the film, she is then able to identify one of the anonymous bodies. Having made a life for herself in Spain, Leila can navigate both worlds and becomes a translator, both literally and metaphorically, for both Martín and the Spanish viewer. Like the Algerian woman interviewed in Extranjeras, who emphasized her acceptance into Spanish society because of her appearance, Leila’s desirability is linked not only to her attractiveness, but also attributed to her light skin and absence of a veil. Her experience would be different if she had darker skin and wore a veil, since these mark her as Other within dominant Spanish culture and limit her ability to move between both cultures. However, without these markers of difference, Leila passes and becomes sexually desirable. While Leila’s ability to pass is linked to her attractiveness, unlike the Latin American immigrants in the films discussed earlier, she is unable to form a romantic relationship because of religious differences. In this regard, Leila is shown to exhibit a sense of ease with her own border-crossing, benefitting from both her experience in Spain and the security of her own cultural boundaries. The ease with which Leila navigates the different worlds is shown later in the film, when she puts on the hijab as she approaches her village in Morocco. 154 As a film about border-crossing, Retorna a Hansala focuses on reversing the gaze of the experience of migration, consequently opening up the genre of immigration films to show the experience of immigrant life in Spain, the dangerous route that undocumented immigrants risk in order to get to Spain, and the reverse migration of a Spaniard into Morocco in order to understand the poverty that fuels a desire for a “better life.” Through the narrative of the film and Martín’s journey to Morocco, Martín experiences rural village life and Moroccan customs, thus allowing Spanish viewers to “know” the Other as well. In addition, Martín’s subjectivity is intertwined with the experience of the invisible Moroccan migrants, who become visible as Martín and Leila begin searching for their families. This interconnection is clear when Martín wakes up in the middle of the night from a nightmare in which he drowning in the ocean and surrounded by the clothes of the dead migrants. The real-life drowning of these individuals connected with Martín’s nightmare connects the two perspectives. Like the unknown migrants who have drowned and are subsequently unidentified and lost, Martín is a man who is metaphorically drowning, given the demise of his marriage, strained relationship with his daughter and the potential loss of his business. His search for the families of these bodies, thus, can be read as a process of self-awareness, in which he gains a sense of his own identity and the potential for financial security by expanding his business to Morocco. Martín’s self-realization thus presents the film’s depiction of illegal immigration and the relationship between Spain and Morocco with ambivalence. While Martín begins to empathize with the Moroccans he encounters, he refuses to help Saïd, a young man, 155 make the journey illegally to Spain because of the danger it poses for both. When Saïd leaves for Spain anyway, Martín becomes upset at the idea of having to return his dead body to the village. Martín’s paternalistic perspective mimics that of the Spanish state, which attempts to deter illegal immigrants by emphasizing the potentially lethal journey across the Strait of Gibraltar. In 2007, a public service TV campaign produced by the Spanish Ministry in collaboration with the European Union, the International Organization of Migration and local West African governments and artists, focused on the dangers of illegally immigrating to Spain by emphasizing the number of casualties and the family members who are left behind to mourn the loss of life (“Spain Begins”; “Spanish Campaign”). 60 Because many attempt to cross the Strait of Gibraltar illegally, increased surveillance of the area has pushed migrants to attempt the journey across the Atlantic Ocean to the Canary Islands, some 50 miles west of continental Africa (“Spain Begins”; Prout 725). 61 The use of sympathy within anti-immigration discourse attempts to alter the discourse away from nationalistic loyalties to a paternalistic humanism over the plight of the immigrant. This campaign, however, positions the the Spanish state — 60 According to an article in BBC News, “Spain Begins Anti-migration Ads,” the media campaign cost 1.4 million dollars and ran for six weeks, beginning in Senegal and then shown across West Africa. While the campaigns are largely attributed to Spain, given the need to curb immigration to the country, its geographic position as Europe’s southernmost border, however, has subjected Spain to increased pressure from other EU nations to police its borders (Prout 724). 61 Paradoxically, the EU reflects the weakening of Europe’s internal borders, but also results in “fortress Europe” because of the active attempts to strengthen its external borders in order to keep foreign, non-Europeans out. For Spain, anxieties over its own Europeanness often result in a certain level of xenophobia to outsiders reminiscent of Francoist ideology and the early isolationist stance of the Franco regime that emphasized one homogenous nation. Although Spain aims to eliminate illegal immigration, it has also granted several initiatives over the last decade that have encouraged legal immigration, granted amnesties to illegal immigrants and passed laws to ensure the rights of illegal immigrants. Between 1985 and 2008, Spain has carried out six legalization programs that granted citizenship and legal work visas to immigrants (DeParle). 156 and Europe — as knowing what is best for Africans, which is to remain in their home country in spite of the economic disparity that fuels the desire to immigrate. In this regard, both Martín and the Spanish state maintain a hierarchical positioning that treats illegal immigrants as children who act unknowingly and are therefore in need of protection and reproof. When Martín returns to Spain, he learns that more bodies have washed up on shore, however, in a fairy tale ending, Saïd is not one of them and has managed to make the journey unharmed. In contrast, Leila presents a counterargument that defends the act of illegal immigration by arguing that Moroccans want to leave their homes because of the extreme poverty that they live in. Whether Spaniards are complicit in their migration or not, Moroccans will choose to make the journey in whatever manner possible, regardless of the danger they may face. Leila’s own mobility stresses the agency that migrants have in determining their own fate. At the end of the film, Leila returns to Spain. Martín meets her at the ferry and asks for her help in setting up a business of exporting dead bodies back to Morocco. While Martín is hopeful, and ultimately, reliant on Leila’s skills as a translator, Leila gives a similar response that she gave to the cashier, promising to think about it. As both sit, overlooking the Strait of Gibraltar, Leila looks out and proclaims, “¡Se ve Africa!” ‘You can see Africa!’ This declaration stands in juxtaposition to the opening of the film, in which the Spanish coastline is seen as unreachable and therefore, unknowable, from an anonymous point of view that ultimately drowns. For Leila, however, who has made the journey to Morocco and then back, this statement affirms the proximity between these two continents and her ability to easily cross them. Similarly, 157 after Martín’s journey to Morocco, what was once invisible and unknown has now become visible. While the film’s ending is left open-ended as to the future of these characters, a news report by Bertrand Aguirre on France24.com in 2010 tells of a real-life Spanish undertaker named Martín Zamora who has spent ten years of his life working to identify and return the bodies to Morocco, with the help of his Arabic-speaking female assistant. The film’s lack of closure, thus, reinforces the notion of making the unknown Other visible rather than presenting a solution to Martin’s financial struggle. By ending with a view of Africa across the Strait of Gibraltar, the film also draws attention to the construction of national — and continental — borders, which draws parallels with similar national constructions across the Hispanic Atlantic. Domesticity, Migration and the Hispanic-Atlantic Imaginary Throughout this chapter, I have explored representations of gender and immigration in Spanish cinema as examples of transnational domesticity through their examination of the impact of migration within the structures of the home as a site of domesticity, the domestic space of the nation, familial ties and discourses of gender and labor. Moving beyond Spain’s claims as mediator between Latin America and Europe, I have also investigated how its own attempts to claim Europeanness has resulted in a stricter policing of its southern borders, causing the nation to marginalize its historical ties to North Africa. Thus, as a borderland between the transnational spaces of Latin America and Europe, but also between Europe, Africa, and those countries that remain on and within the periphery of the EU, Spain is a key site for the examination of how 158 transnational flows mediate the nation. The number of films produced in Spain that engage with the issue of immigration since the 1990s reflects this concern. However, as discussed throughout this chapter, these representations often result in hierarchical constructions of identity that privilege Spanish citizenship over alternate identities. This last section examines the Mexican film, Al otro lado ‘The Other Side’ by Gustavo Loza, as an alternate perspective of immigration by focusing on a young Moroccan girl, who travels to Spain in search of her father, who has left her family and their home in order to work in Málaga. The film interweaves this migration story with similar efforts by children in Mexico and Cuba whose fathers have left their home countries for the United States. The depiction of immigration within this broader context explores similarities across the Hispanic Atlantic without homogenizing the local/national/regional specificities that structure these migrations. This ability to focus on the local, while remaining in dialogue with the transnational and the transatlantic, also helps to re-contextualize the immigration films produced in Spain since the 1990s as part of the Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary and the motif of migration as a defining characteristic. For Spain, Europe’s southern border is demarcated by the Strait of Gibraltar, which separates the country and Morocco by a distance of approximately 14 kilometers or 8.9 miles at its narrowest point. 62 This proximity to Africa, as seen in the film, Retorno a Hansala, as well as the historical ties to the continent as discussed in Poniente, mark this space as a natural, but complicated site of border-crossing. Because Al otro lado focuses on the perspective of the children who are left behind, the historical and 62 Although the Strait of Gibraltar physically demarcates the border between Europe and Africa, Spain maintains two colonial enclaves in Morocco—Ceuta and Melilla. 159 economic ties that bind these spaces are left unsaid and the broader significance of their attempts to go “al otro lado” are overlooked. For example, Prisciliano, whose father leaves Michoacán for al otro lado does not understand the geographical distance of this journey and understands the expression to mean the other side of the lake that borders his home, which he then attempts to cross to locate his father. Angel, a young boy living in Havana, attempts to cross the Atlantic Ocean to the U.S. to find his father, whom he has never met and enlists the help of his friend, Walter, to accompany him. In another part of the world, yet in a borderland, nonetheless, Fátima, a young Moroccan girl, laments her father’s extended stay al otro lado in Málaga, Spain and sets out to find him in order to bring him back home. In all three stories, borders, both real and imagined, are marked by bodies of water, which as fluid entities, reflect an absent presence whose political significance is not quite understood by the three protagonists. While all three children attempt to follow their father’s path, only Fátima manages to cross the Strait of Gibraltar to Spain successfully. Prisciliano almost drowns while trying to cross the lake in search of his father and Angel’s friend Walter drowns after their raft overturns in the Atlantic Ocean. However, as a young girl, she is targeted by an international (sex) trafficking ring and is smuggled across the border to be sold as a sex slave in Spain. However, because she is just a child and is unable to speak Spanish, she is never aware of her vulnerability as a young girl in the act of border-crossing. She manages to win the sympathy of Esperanza (Carmen Maura), who refuses to participate in child slavery, in spite of the fact that she has just arranged for the trafficking of seven young women. Esperanza takes Fátima to 160 Málaga in search of Abdul, her father, who has been working in construction and living with Eva, a Spanish woman, for two years. Puzzled by Fátima’s arrival, Abdul must leave Spain in order to take her back to Morocco. This transnational romance between Eva and Abdul is strained by the realization that Abdul has a family in Morocco and subsequently ends with his departure. Happy to have achieved her goals of reuniting her family, the film ends with Fátima and her father’s return home. Through its narrative focus and production in different countries along, as well as its distribution throughout the Spanish-speaking world, Al otro lado reinforces the theme of migration within the Hispanic Atlantic. Although the film positions migration as a reality for families within specific national contexts, by paralleling their journeys, the film emphasizes the similarities of their experiences within the broader Hispanic Atlantic, illustrating a structuring motif of migration and reception that unifies these geographic locations. Within the United States, Mexican immigration and the perils of crossing the U.S.-Mexico border are regularly documented, but often times ignore the fact that Mexican immigration to the U.S. is only one instance of migration within larger global patterns of movement. Similarly, while other films discussed in this chapter depict Spain as a destination for Moroccan immigrants, the film’s positioning of Spain as a borderland has particular resonances with Mexicans in relation to the United States. Both Mexico and Morocco have a historical presence within their host countries and have a history of tense relations, which resulted in the expulsion of the Moors from Spain starting in 1492 and anti-Mexican discrimination after the Mexican American War, leading up to 161 repatriation efforts during the Great Depression. Both groups also continue to be the target of anti-immigrant sentiment within their host countries because of the belief that they cannot assimilate into dominant society and, thus, have been regarded as enemies of the state at different moments in history. As noted earlier, Flesler discusses the use of the term, “Moor” as a denigrating term that links Moroccan immigrants with the historical “enemies of Christian Spain” (3). According to Marsha Kinder, Moroccans also had a key role in Franco’s takeover of Spain during the Spanish Civil War as participants on the Nationalist side, inciting leftist Republican groups to perceive them as barbarous (Interview). Similarly, the negative portrayal of Mexicans within the U.S. imaginary is rooted in 19 th century anti-Catholic, anti-Spanish and imperialist racial discourse that regarded Mexicans as culturally inferior and inherently violent. These negative attributes have been further amplified by stereotyping within the American film and television industries that continue to promote these images within the U.S. and global imaginary. In an article in the Arizona Daily Star, Geraldo L. Cadava discusses Arizona’s history of anti-Mexican sentiment that position illegal Mexican migrants as enemies of the state in order to justify discrimination, enactments of state violence and often, repatriation. Throughout the 20 th century, Mexicans were suspected of threatening American jobs, having socialist sympathies and/or were suspected subversives and therefore subject to deportation (Cadava). Thus, in drawing these comparisons between Moroccans in Spain and Mexicans in the United States, Al otro lado positions Spain and the immigration films produced in 162 the country as key points of investigation within the Hispanic Atlantic and thus re- inscribes Spanish cinema as part of the Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary by stressing a commonality of experience outside of Hispanidad. In looking beyond the historical colonial relationship between Spain and Latin America and the imperial relationship between the United States and Latin America, the film also expands the definition of the Hispanic Atlantic to include Africa and the Muslim world. As a film directed by a Mexican filmmaker and distributed throughout the U.S. as a straight-to-DVD project by Unicine, the home video branch of Univision Communications Group and Ventura’s Studio Latino, Al otro lado is a product of overlapping film and media industries across the Hispanic Atlantic and the increased attempts to promote a Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary across these geographical spaces. The film’s circulation throughout the U.S. to a primarily Latino audience demands a critical re-framing of the ties that bind these spaces and peoples as various powers—both State and corporate— struggle for dominance over the contemporary Hispanic Atlantic mediascape, which increasingly blurs the boundaries between national, regional and transnational interests. In this regard, the film presents the Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary as a borderland subjectivity based on multiple identities, languages and subject positions. Conclusion As discussed at the beginning of this chapter, the concept of transnational domesticity allows for the interrogation of representations of gendered immigrants within Spanish immigration films and the manner in which they challenge and re-affirm the 163 domestic politics of the home and the nation. Given the number of films about immigration produced in Spain since the 1990s, this chapter explores these representations as belonging to three thematic categories, whereby immigrants are shown as vehicles that imagine the (trans)national Spanish family, as markers of a European borderland subjectivity, and as products of a globally-conscious Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary. By placing these films in dialogue, I explore the complex representation of the immigrant within Spain as a racialized, gendered and Othered body that references the colonial ghostly past and the modern (European) future. Through my discussion of transnational domesticity, I examine how cinematic representations of gender within these immigration films challenge the national and historical ideal of Spanish womanhood and their domesticity. Given the interrelationship between gender, the home and the nation in Spanish cinema, the rise in immigration with their metaphorical border- crossing and in particular the incorporation of feminized immigrants as transnational subjects within Spanish cinema are crucial to understanding contemporary Spanish national identity and, thus, central to understanding the internal politics of a Hispanic- Atlantic imaginary. 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Print. 170 Chapter 3: Domesticating Violations: Mediating Gender, Sex and Violence Across the Hispanic Atlantic In her essay on borderlands cinema, Luz Calvo uses Freud’s theorization of the “primal scene,” in which the child imagines or actually confronts parental sexuality and “interprets the act as violence inflicted on the mother,” as a foundation for Mexican identity, where the primal scene is defined by “the historical memory of the often violent sexual relations between the Spanish colonizer and the Native woman” (74). While Calvo discusses this “primal scene of colonialism” as specific to Mexican identity, I argue that its relevance can be extended to the entire Hispanic Atlantic world as evident in the preoccupation with sexual encounters discussed in Chapter 1, and also in the widespread [mis]representation of the Spanish and its resulting progeny as inherently violent and sexually deviant and/or oversexualized in film and popular culture. Whereas Calvo uses this primal scene to discuss the intersection of race and sexuality, I address the interplay between violence, gender and sexuality as a central preoccupation within the Hispanic- Atlantic imaginary. Due to its shared colonial history, this interplay becomes a legacy of violence that structures both local and global perceptions of identity. 63 From myths of the Black Legend to representations of the bandido and the Latin 63 For Calvo, this “primal scene of colonialism” is repeated throughout cultural productions and becomes “an important site for analysis because race & sexuality are so thoroughly embedded… that it becomes necessary to theorize race and sexuality together—as intersected, mutually constitutive categories” (74) within Mexican and Chicano identity formation. Extending this argument across the Hispanic Atlantic, Calvo situates the primal scene as a source of trauma that “provoke[s] profound anxiety for all colonial subjects, both colonized and colonizer” (78-9). Given the different national histories of the members of the Hispanic Atlantic, this colonizer/colonized is seen through various dichotomies, depending on the site of enunciation: Spain/Latin America, Northern Europe/Spain, U.S./Spain, U.S./Latin America, and U.S./Mexico. 171 lover, 64 the association between gender, sex, violence and the Spanish-speaking world is irrefutable, if somewhat misgiven. The Black Legend, as defined by Peter Besas, emphasized “the idea that Spaniards are backwards, cruel, humorless, and violent, the Spain of the Inquisition, of poverty and ignorance” (9). The proliferation of this legend, which stemmed from the actions of “Protestants in northern Europe to counteract the religious, military, and political power of Spain under the Catholic Monarchs and Phillip II in the sixteenth century,” resulted in the historical characterization of Spain and Spanish culture as inherently violent (Besas 9). This violent characterization thus served to discredit Spain’s global power and was used as a method of subjugation across the Hispanic Atlantic. As descendants of Spanish conquistadores and “barbaric” native populations, inhabitants of Latin America and their diaspora in the United States are similarly subjected to this characterization. As noted earlier, popular culture produced by Hollywood and American media as well as that produced in the context of Europe’s Orientalization of Spain in the 19 th century and as mediated by the Hispanic Atlantic itself, perpetuate these images of sex and violence. Over the course of the last twenty years, and with a particular emphasis on 64 The bandido and the “Latin lover” are two archetypal images of U.S. Latinos, Latin Americans [and the Spanish] within Hollywood cinema, which depicted these groups “as people with identical characteristics…[who] could all be uniformly depicted stereotypically as bandits, harlots, Latin lovers, and so forth” (Ramírez Berg 6). The bandido, or bandit, is a symbol of violence, social unrest and rebellion whose presence in cinema, particularly the Western, stands in opposition to the Anglo protagonist as a symbol of morality and social order. Oversexed and therefore immoral, the Latin lover within cinema functions as both an object of desire and a sexual threat. In his book, Latino Images in Film: Stereotypes, Subversion and Resistance, Charles Ramírez Berg discusses the history of these representations as media stereotypes that promote a hierarchical view in which Anglos are dominant and therefore superior to Latinos. For Ramírez Berg, “movie stereotyping of Latinos…has been and continues to be part of an American imperialist discourse about who should rule the hemisphere—a sort of “Monroe Doctrine and Manifest Destiny Illustrated” (4-5). 172 the decade of the 2000s, the Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary has produced films that continue to perpetuate this preoccupation with sex and violence—both as a strategy to guarantee transnational mobility and success (albeit through the cooption of these stereotypes of cultural violence) and as a form of activism against gendered violence across the Hispanic Atlantic. This exploration of mediated violence in film and media analyzes these two competing positions on spectacles of violence across the Hispanic Atlantic in order to demonstrate that the potential for resistance against hierarchical legacies functions both within and against thematic concerns with violence. Given the broad spectrum of cinematic representations of violence within the Hispanic Atlantic, this chapter is divided into three sections that consider how national/regional differences influence the way that violence functions onscreen. The first section focuses on three films from the 1990s onward that explore themes of gender, sex and violence within specific national contexts, even if their mediation of violence is a product and/or response to transnational flows. In my discussion of the Spanish film, Tesis by Alejandro Amenábar and the Colombian-Mexican-Spanish-Brazilian-French coproduction, Rosario Tijeras, directed by Emilio Maillés, I argue that the thematic concern with gender, sex and violence in these films is a commercial strategy that draws in local and global audiences by playing out expectations of violence within Hispanic cultures. While these texts exploit these global expectations of violence, they offer a counter-narrative in their representational strategies that questions this propensity towards violence by exploring the social and gendered conditions that perpetuate it and its repercussions across different identities. 173 In the second section of this chapter, I revisit the theme of sexual encounters in order to explore the interplay between gender, sex and violence in these representations. The repetition and exploitation of violence within these films draws on the traumatic history of the first encounter as a form of repetition compulsion in which a broader Hispanic-Atlantic is continually re-imagined. The last section addresses cinematic modes of resistance towards representations of violence within mediated domestic and transatlantic anti-violence activism. Influenced by the anti-violence work of Michael Kaufman, who argues that all violence is a product of social constraints in the definition and practice of gender, I argue that cultural production dealing with violence is a fruitful lens for engaging with issues of gender and sexuality across the Hispanic Atlantic at- large. 65 Spectacles of Violence Within the Hispanic-Atlantic Cinematic spectacles of violence that exploit violent imagery and themes in order to garner box-office appeal seemingly reify violent stereotypes across the Hispanic Atlantic, but also demonstrate possibilities for social critique and resistance. Representations of violence within Spanish cinema, for example, have been discussed by 65 In his essay, “The Construction of Masculinity and the Triad of Men’s Violence”, Michael Kaufman argues, “violence by men against women is only one corner of a triad of men’s violence. The other two corners are violence against other men and violence against oneself” (2). In situating violence against women as one facet of the ways in which violence manifests itself, Kaufman’s activist and theoretical work explores the social construction of gender, and in particular, masculinity as central to the proliferation of violence. This focus on individual acts of violence as gender-based, however, does not invalidate how structural and institutional violence—racism, poverty, etc.—works to produce and permit this violence. Instead, Kaufman examines individual acts of violence as “a ritualized acting out of our social relations of power: the dominant and the weaker, the power and the powerless, the active and the passive…the masculine and the feminine” (1). 174 scholars such as Marsha Kinder, who analyzes the use of excessive violence within the anti-Franco opposition cinema of the dictablanda in the 1970s as political critique (Blood Cinema). According to Kinder, the Francoist government’s censorship of depictions of violence, sex, sacrilege, and politics helps us understand why “the eroticized violence could be used so effectively…to speak a political discourse…to expose the legacy of brutality and torture that lay hidden behind the surface beauty of the Fascist and neo- Catholic aesthetics” (Blood Cinema 138). While violence in the opposition cinema of the 1970s responded to the cultural and social repression of the Franco era, the 1980s reflected a moment of hope and celebration given Spain’s peaceful transition to democracy and “a collective desire to integrate Spain and its people into Europe” through economic growth and explicit consumption (Moreiras Menor 134-5). While violence continued to be represented in cinema of this period, it was not symptomatic of this broader cultural moment. In contrast, Cristina Moreiras Menor argues that Spanish cultural production during the 1990s points to a renewed fascination with violence by urban authors who portray acts of excessive violence within urban settings that reflect the apathy, discontentment and instability of the post-Olympic period (139). After the vast expenditures of the 1992 commemoration, Spain underwent an economic crisis due to overspending, inflation, and corruption that resulted in widespread unemployment and rendered its positioning in the pre-1992 era as precarious. As a result, Spanish society of the 1990s is a “traumatized and defenseless society…. illustrated by contemporary culture’s fascination with violence, pain, the tortured body, and a history in shock” 175 (Moreiras Menor 141). According to Dolores Tierney, “Spanish cinema’s recourse to violence in the 1990s is less a political critique than an explicit commercial strategy for combatting decreased box office and challenging Hollywood product” (47). This tension between film as symptomatic of cultural sensibilities and its deployment as a commercial product is strikingly evident in Alejandro Amenábar’s film, Tesis, which thematically engages with Moreiras Menor’s description of the “fascination” with the spectacle of violent imagery in the 1990s, but, also like Tierney, uses this thematic concern with violence for broader commercial appeal. As a thriller that has garnered critical acclaim as well as box-office success 66 , Tesis bridges the art versus commerce debates within Spanish cinema, although Christine A. Buckley, stresses the film’s importance for “its inconsistencies in representing them” (15). For example, Buckley points to the character of Castro, the professor whose lecture in the film, emphasizes the industrial realities of the cinema industry and the need to resist the encroachment of the American film industry by “giving the public what it wants”, yet who is later revealed to participate in the snuff ring (17). As Buckley notes, his death “by his own bullet… questions Hollywood’s [market-driven] cinematic philosophy and renders those who imitate it not only uncreative but innately evil and eventually unsuccessful or ill-fated” (17). This critique of American cinema and its market-driven philosophy marks Tesis as a key form of cinematic resistance against the encroachment of Hollywood-type films in Spain by adopting and adapting a popular 66 The film won seven Goyas, including prizes for best picture, best new director and best original screenplay, and was the eleventh highest grossing film in Spain in 1996 and the eighth highest in 1997 (Buckley 15-16). 176 Hollywood genre—the thriller, but also works as social commentary against a public that relishes the spectacle of violent imagery. 67 As a film about the serial torture, murder and disappearance of young women, the film is striking in its lack of violent imagery. While the film thematically engages with violence and especially the relationship between mediated violence and spectatorial pleasure/displeasure, violence in the film largely plays offscreen. Instead, Tesis examines the spectatorial fascination with violence that works in tension with the “moral” disavowal of violence. Although Angela verbally declares that she does not want to see the images that accompany the screams on the television screen, she cannot help but turn and look at the video that has resulted in the death of her thesis advisor. 68 Similarly, the film’s final sequence depicts a news report on the snuff ring in Madrid, which is intercut with a tracking shot of a hospital hallway. Angela and Chema walk down the hall as the news report preps its audience for the violent images that it is about to show. As they walk past the open hospital room doors, the patients inside are seen fixated to the screen, 67 Tesis’ critical and commercial success boosted its young director, Alejandro Amenábar to the forefront of contemporary Spanish cinema. His subsequent film, Abre los ojos received international critical acclaim, winning prizes at several different film festivals, as well as box office success in Spain upon its release (Buckley 16). More importantly, this success has crossed over the Atlantic with an American remake of the film, starring Tom Cruise and Penélope Cruz, as well as the English-language production of The Others, which was a huge hit in the United States upon its release as well as in Spain (Buckley 16). These transatlantic dealings reverse the unidirectional flow of American film to Spain. 68 Throughout his work, Almodóvar has explored cinema’s power to influence spectators. As noted by Kinder in her reading of La ley del deseo, the filmmaker’s ability to impact audiences is seen through the character of Antonio (Antonio Banderas), whose “heterosexuality is instantly destabilized and whose homoerotic imagination is inflamed” after viewing the opening film- within-a-film (All About… 284). This power to influence individuals through film as both a reflection and mediation of culture makes the absence of physical representations of gender violence in Almodóvar’s more recent films particularly noteworthy and will be discussed in the third section on anti-violence activism and resistance. 177 waiting in anticipation for the goriness that this real-life violence promises. As Angela and Chema enter the elevator and the doors close, the film then cuts back to the news anchor, followed by a black screen that warns about the graphic violence about to be shown. Rather than show the images, however, the ending credit sequence begins. Part of the film’s success stems from its attempts to tease viewers, who also want to “see” what Angela sees but are shown just enough to understand what is happening onscreen. If Tesis admonishes Spanish viewers because of their desire for cinematic violence, the relationship to snuff films that the film references and its alleged origins within Latin America 69 points to a fascination that is rooted within the hierarchical imaginings of Spanish imperial glory. Within the Spanish (and American) imaginary, Latin America exists as the source of rampant and illogical violence. Latin America’s history of colonial conquest, violent insurrections and revolutions, documented human rights violations by its dictatorial regimes and rampant poverty perpetuates a vision of Latin America as a site of vast structural and systemic violence for the global imaginary. This legacy of violence becomes even more ingrained with the drug wars of the 1980s and 1990s that produced a number of films and cultural texts that depict Latin Americans (in the broadest sense) as an embodied threat of violence, crime and corruption. 70 In his 69 Tierney notes that snuff films are “rumored to have originated in Latin America, “where life is cheap,” as declared publicity for the feature film Snuff (which did much to stoke the fires of the myths of snuff)” (46). 70 Within the subgenre of drug-war films, Brian de Palma’s film, Scarface is a key text in the dissemination of Latin Americans as an embodied threat. This loose re-make of the popular 1930s gangster film depicts the rise and fall of Tony Montana, played by Al Pacino, a petty criminal newly arrived from Cuba, who becomes immersed in the world of international drug trafficking. Ruthless and violent, Tony’s desire for the American Dream also coincides with his desire for his boss’ Anglo mistress, Elvira. After Tony murders his boss and succeeds in becoming the next 178 book, Drug Wars: The Political Economy of Narcotics, Curtis Marez provides an alternative reading of drug-related cultural production that stresses its potential for subaltern agency, whereby these texts are re-appropriated in ways that challenge the dominant reading and, thus, offer “competing representations of state power, transnational capitalism, the mass of the world’s poor, and the role of the mass media itself in the war on drugs” (8-9). In these fantasies of resistance, subaltern subjects confront state power and its paternal discourse that renders them voiceless and in need of state protection (23). While Marez notes that many of these texts reproduce patriarchal ideology, he points to instances in which female performers challenge this reading by showing how their fantasies demonstrate a world in which gender and class are inverted, “contradict[ing] dominant representations of poor women as passive victims in need of patriarchal protection” (23-4). His analysis of these texts as operating in the realm of fantasy—or what I refer to as the imaginary—demonstrates how cultural production becomes the site for the inscription and inversion of various structures of power, which are rooted within racial, classed and gendered hierarchies. In this regard, Rosario Tijeras stands as an example of a film that explores the intersectional nature of systemic violence within the world of sicarios ‘hired assassins’. kingpin, he finds Elvira sleeping in her bedroom. As Curtis Marez has pointed out, the image of Tony’s bloody hand creeping into the frame as he reaches over to wake her signals him as an animalistic sexual threat and recalls an entire history of cinematic representations in which men of color are a threat to American white femininity. Although Tony, as the main protagonist, serves as a point of identification for audiences, the film nonetheless reifies the image of Latin American drug traffickers as violent criminals, who are ruthless in their pursuit of money and power. The final scene, in which Tony tries to stave off the onslaught of Sosa’s men who invade his mansion is memorable, not just for his famous line, “Say hello to my little friend”, but also for the depiction of a massive shootout between a hoard of anonymous brown men, who remain emotionless and voiceless in the violent exchange. 179 Based on a novel of the same title, Rosario Tijeras is an example of the sicaresca genre within Colombian literature and films, which largely focuses on the hired guns who emerged within Medellín during the drug war of the 1980s. In both the film and the novel, Rosario Tijeras is a sicaria, who is the object of desire, fascination and fear due to her profession, her great beauty and her intangibility. In the novel, Antonio narrates the story of Rosario Tijeras, whom he is in love with, in spite of the fact that she is a professional killer and involved with his best friend, Emilio. While the novel largely depicts Rosario through Antonio’s gaze and memory, the film’s non-linear structure portrays a much more lateral sense of vision. In the film, Antonio, played by Spanish/Basque actor Unax Ugalde, remembers the events leading up to his presence in the emergency room after Rosario, played by Flora Martínez, has been shot, but the film itself is not the result of a singular perspective. Instead, it moves between time periods— both present and past—presenting a story that reflects Rosario’s perspective as much as it reflects his. This looser structure implicitly critiques the perspective of the novel that positions Rosario solely as a marker of both sex and violence. As a member of the elite social class of Medellín who is invited into the world of the sicarios, Antonio is an outsider whose gaze reflects an ambivalence and fascination with Rosario and her milieu. 71 In his analysis of the novel, Nicholas T. Goodbody notes that Antonio is conflicted over “el deseo de separarse o alejarse de la ciudad violenta y el sentirse a la 71 These outsider perspectives are reflected in the film’s transatlantic production. The director, Emilio Maillé, is of Mexican descent and has lived for decades in France. Although Antonio is Emilio’s childhood friend in the film, he is played by a Spanish/Basque actor, which Maillé thought worked well for the film as commented in the special “Q&A” of the film’s DVD. This casting choice thus reaffirms Antonio’s outsider status. 180 vez fascinado por la misma” ‘the desire to leave the violent city and the sense of fascination with it’ (443). In this manner, both the novel and the film reflect a similar fascination and critique of violence that Tesis proposes within its narrative, as Angela too finds herself sexually attracted to a killer and fascinated with violence. In this regard, Rosario Tijeras similarly implicates viewers and their fascination with violence through the desire to know more about Rosario. Although the object of this fascination and the male gaze in the Mulveyian sense, Rosario maintains agency by meeting this gaze and in turn, using it and her sexuality as weapons. For example, we are first introduced to Rosario in the first nightclub sequence of the film. Emilio, played by Manolo Cardona, has just left the bathroom after taking a few hits of cocaine and sees this beautiful young woman dressed in red, seductively dancing. With her eyes closed, she appears to be having a good time by herself. On the other side of the dance floor, Antonio catches a glimpse at Rosario and longingly stares at her, until he catches Emilio also watching Rosario. While Emilio stands mesmerized, Rosario opens her eyes and meets his gaze. She continues dancing seductively and then turns and walks off the dance floor as Emilio follows. As she climbs up the stairs towards the VIP section, she stops, turns around and once again meets Emilio’s gaze. She smiles, turns and then walks up the stairs. The camera lingers on her hips as she walks away and then cuts to Emilio’s lustful gaze. This sequence demonstrates Rosario’s sexual desirability for the male characters’ in the film, but also shows how Rosario accesses power from this gaze, pointing to the film’s broader critique of gender relations in Medellín. 181 As a character, Rosario’s violent demeanor and position as an assassin critiques patriarchy and sexual violence within Medellín society. Rosario’s stories of her life and the flashbacks in the film point to the manner in which sex and violence are intertwined and often the product of masculine agency. As a child, Rosario was abused by her stepfather and was later raped at the age of 11 by a stranger. Rosario, later, earns her nickname because of an incident in which she encountered her attacker years later. After drawing him in for a night of seduction, Rosario takes a pair of scissors and castrates him. Her name, thus invokes a tool that is feminized through its link to her mother’s profession as a seamstress, but is then appropriated as a symbol of female agency against a patriarchal system that privileges the phallus. After this incident, according to Rosario, her mother kicked her out of the house, and literally the confines of a gendered domestic space. She then went to live with her older brother, Jonhefe, who worked as a sicario, where she begins living as an assassin, who prides herself on her ability to use her sexuality to gain access to her targets. While Rosario’s power stems from her profession and the fear that it inspires, she is not always in control of her sexuality, which reflects the limits of Rosario’s power inversion. For example, after spending the night with Emilio, Rosario awakens next to an older and more robust man. A flashback [to the evening before] shows Rosario walking through the club with Jonhefe, who introduces her to his boss, the man in the bed. As Rosario is escorted upstairs, she turns to look at her brother who nods his head. The film then flashes forward to the morning after and the same room that she has awoken in. Rosario stands in the bathroom half dressed and visibly upset. Although this scene is 182 never explained, it can be inferred that Rosario’s entrance into the world of narcotraficantes ‘narcotraffickers’ begins with her brother’s offering of her as a sexual favor to his boss. While Rosario willingly follows the boss upstairs, this exchange is coded as unequal given her reluctant gaze at her brother. In another scene, Rosario is asked to provide companionship for an American named Donovan, who has expressed interest in her. Rosario looks at him from across the room and smiles, thinking about when he’ll be the target of a hit. However, one of her superiors informs her that this is not a hit and it is in everyone’s interest that she pleases him. Upon finding out this information, Rosario’s expression changes from pleasure to sadness. The film then flashes back to a scene of her mother in the kitchen, while her stepfather and a younger Rosario sit eating dinner at the kitchen table. When her mother leaves the room, her stepfather casts a leering gaze at the young Rosario as she eats her dinner and begins to caress the yolk of the egg on his plate. This gesture, intercut with the close-ups of her stepfather’s face reveal his sexual desires towards the young Rosario. The film then cuts back to a close-up of Rosario’s face, revealing the previous scenes to be a memory of trauma that parallels her exchange of sexual favors in the interest of the business. For Rosario, both are unwelcome. Later in the film, Rosario confides to Antonio that every man fucks her, implying both literal “screwing,” but also metaphorically, i.e “screwing over,” as her brother, Jonhefe has. 72 In contrast to these men, Rosario confides and takes comfort in Antonio, who has an innocent face and because he “doesn’t fuck anyone,” a reference to his lack of a girlfriend but also his nonthreatening demeanor. Unlike Emilio, 72 While Rosario does not go into detail about this metaphorical “screwing,” the early sequence in which Jonhefe is shown introducing her to his bosses serves as a visual marker of this. 183 Antonio is too shy to approach a woman like her, although he desires Rosario in much the same manner. Even as she strives for her own autonomy, the various men in her life continually strive to contain her as their “girlfriend.” At one point in the film, Emilio, who comes from a wealthy family, invites Rosario to have dinner with his family. During the dinner, his mother informs her that Emilio is a womanizer, therefore implying that their relationship is fleeting, while Emilio’s father inquires about her personal life since Emilio has told them that she is a student and her father is a lawyer. His parents’ disapproving glances remind viewers of the strict class divide that exists within Medellín society and the manner in which the bourgeoisie police sexual and social relations. Inspite of their cold behavior, Rosario, defiantly, resists their insinuations by proclaiming that she and Emilio are not a couple, since she is still testing him. The mother suggests that she think about it before they make any mistakes. Later in the meal, Rosario excuses herself and asks for the bathroom. Upon returning, she informs the mother that she gave her the wrong directions and led her into a closet. The mother apologizes, since there are so many things in the house. Rosario, just as passive aggressively, responds that she did her business anyway and apologizes for the “squirt” before she leaves the house. Emilio follows her and finds her struggling to open the gate, a physical symbol of Emilio’s attempt to confine her to domesticity through his attempt to present her as a socially- acceptable “bourgeois” girlfriend. Angrily, she rejects his pleas and “bourgeois” domesticity. 184 Throughout the film, Rosario’s actions convey her desire for autonomy outside of the gendered and class-based world of Medellín. An earlier scene in the film explicitly demonstrates this desire and her use of violence in order to maintain it. In this scene, Patuco, a friend of Ferney’s, visits her in the bathroom of the nightclub in order to discuss her relationship with Emilio, which is making Ferney suffer. As she checks herself out in the mirror, Rosario reminds him that Ferney is better off without her. Patuco warns her against dating men who are not her kind, that is, of her social class. When Rosario questions the camaraderie of her “kind,” Patuco derisively refers to her and all women as “perras” ‘bitches’. Rosario then turns around and offers him some cocaine to snort as a peace offering, which Patuco shoves in her face. Covered in cocaine, Rosario asks him to lick it off of her face and give her a kiss, which Patuco willingly does. As they kiss, she pulls out a gun and shoots him in the stomach, angrily proclaiming, “No soy de nadie, ni de mi mamá soy. Lo digo y lo digo pero no me escuchan. ¿Lo quieres por escrito? Res- pe-to. Respeto.” ‘I don’t belong to anyone, not even to my mom. I say it and say it but you don’t listen. Do you want me to write it for you? Res-pe-ct. Respect’. 73 Rosario fires three gunshots to punctuate each syllable for the word, “respect,” then she turns and wipes her face before exiting the bathroom and then the nightclub. As this scene demonstrates, Rosario uses violence as a means to emphasize her individual agency within the world of the sicarios and across the gendered and class divide that attempts to define her social identity and restrict her freedom of movement. In the end, however, Ferney shoots Rosario as they kiss on the dance floor, ultimately, re-establishing the male 73 Author’s transcription from film. Translation courtesy the English-language subtitles of DVD. 185 hierarchy within the world of the sicarios. While the sicaresca genre has been criticized for promoting an uncritical view of the complexity of violence within Colombia during this period, my analysis of the film points to the manner in which Rosario employs violence as a way to counteract the violence enacted on her. As a poor woman who has experienced both intrapersonal and systemic violence, the agency that she exhibits as an assassin inverts the patriarchal and classist ideology of both Colombian society and the narco world that she is associated with, even if the limits of her agency are clearly delineated at the end of the film by her death. Rosario Tijeras was a box-office hit in Colombia and won the best film award at the 46 th Cartagena Film Festival as well as nominations for the XLVIII 2006 Ariel for best adapted screenplay in Mexico and the best Spanish language foreign film at the Goyas in Spain. The film’s success at home as well as its positive international critical reception is reflective of a “boom” in the Colombian film industry, which is increasingly producing films destined for the international film festival circuit and the international film market. The international interest in films that range from social realist depictions to more stylized spectacles of violence serve as a testament to a public fascination with the systemic violence of Colombia and the willingness for filmmakers and film industries to capitalize on it, since films that portray Colombia as violent and drug-infested continue to receive critical acclaim and box-office success. While Colombia struggled with escalating violence as a result of internal political struggles and the drug war, the manner in which cultural production treats this topic with its emphasis on the glamorous lifestyle of its antiheroes diminishes the actual threat of 186 violence on civilian society. 74 As one of many films and novels within the sicaresca genre that engage with the drug war in Colombia, Rosario Tijeras perpetuates the image of 1980s-era Medellín and Colombia as a city and country plagued by violence. This image persists within cultural production, in spite of state and U.S. antidrug efforts that have altered the landscape of this violence. 75 Another example is Medellín: Sumas y restas/ Addictions and Subtractions directed by Victor Manuel Gaviria, which also focuses on the world of drug trafficking in Colombia during the 1980s. 76 The repetition of this time period in cultural production can be read as an active attempt to understand the actual history of violence that has shaped Colombian society, but also the manner in which violence and drug-related culture is used to enact fantasies of subversion against a society dominated by racist, classist, sexual and gendered hierarchies. The interplay between gender, sex and violence within these films resonates across the Hispanic Atlantic, especially as the drug war has shifted its center of power to Mexico, where 74 The gravity of violence in Colombia has resulted in the establishment of “violentology” as a sociological discipline for the study of violence (Goodbody 442). 75 While violence and drug trafficking have not been fully eliminated, Colombia “has made significant strides in fighting drug traffickers, guerillas and paramilitaries: since Mr. Uribe’s election in 2002, coca production has decreased by a third, kidnappings have dropped by 90 percent and murders have fallen significantly,” especially since the fall of the Medellín and Cali cartels in Colombia in the mid-1990s as a product of “internal warfare and law enforcement crackdowns” (Flores-Macías). 76 Gaviria received international attention when his film, Rodrigo D.: No futuro, was nominated for a Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1990. 187 violence has escalated in recent decades as various cartels compete for control of the drug trade. 77 Mediating Violence Across the Hispanic Atlantic In 2008, Agustín Díaz Yanes released Sólo quiero caminar, a Spanish-Mexican coproduction starring Diego Luna and a quartet of Spanish actresses—Victoria Abril, Ariadna Gil, Elena Anaya and Pilar López de Ayala. The film focuses on two main plotlines that intertwine after a transatlantic marital union goes awry. Diego Luna portrays the role of Gabriel, a Mexican assassin who lives by a code of honor, inspired by his mother. At the beginning of the film, Gabriel mourns the 20 th anniversary of his mother’s premature death and undergoes an existential crisis as a result. The film also focuses on four thieves based in Algeciras, Spain. Aurora, played by Gil, is a hardened career criminal. Elena Anaya plays her sister, Ana, an alcoholic and sex worker. Victoria Abril, reprising her role as Gloria from Díaz Yanes’ earlier film, Nadie hablará de nosotras cuando hayamos muerto, is now a criminal mastermind and single mother. Paloma, played by López de Ayala, moonlights in a courthouse during the day. At the beginning of the film, Aurora is captured and sent to prison during an attempted burglary at a jewelry store. Later, Ana meets and agrees to marry Félix, Gabriel’s boss and friend, 77 In May 2012, The New York Times reported that “47,515 people have been killed in drug- related violence since President Felipe Calderón began a military assault on criminal cartels soon after taking office in late 2006” (“Mexican Drug Trafficking…”). Most recently, The Toronto Sun reported on the capture of the alleged perpetrator of “the massacre of 49 people whose corpses where decapitated, dismembered and dumped on a highway” (Grillo). The article also points to other incidents of extreme violence, including “18 people [who] were decapitated near the city of Guadalajara and nine victims [who] were hanged from a bridge in the city of Nuevo Leon, across the border from Laredo, Texas” (Grillo). 188 who promises her a Pretty Woman fairytale ending. In spite of his promises, however, their relationship is marked by domestic abuse. After Félix batters Ana and leaves her in a coma, the three women plot one last heist in order to take revenge. As a crime thriller, the film explores the relationship between gender, violence and homosociality within the genre and in doing so, de-stabilizes cinematic representations of Spanish femininity in the process. Additionally, the film challenges patriarchal masculinity across the Hispanic Atlantic through the issue of gendered violence, demonstrating the potential for transatlantic solidarity. With settings in both Spain and Mexico, the film sets up a gendered and national divide that persists both narratively and structurally from the film’s opening sequence. A voice-over opens the film followed by a scene of a man dressed in a black suit shooting another offscreen in Mexico City as indicated by the title identifying the location. As spectators, we are unaware of that the voice-over belongs to Gabriel, the assassin in this scene. Instead, the identification of the location of this killing stresses the importance of space to the film. The next scene depicts four women walking along a sidewalk in Algeciras, Spain. Since the camera is positioned behind the women, as they walk diagonally across the screen, they remain unknown to the viewer. As they move across the screen, a flamenco musical score slowly fades in, beginning with the rhythmical palmas and then followed by the toque of the Spanish guitar. The film cuts to an image of a dance class where rows of women in flamenco skirts are clapping to the rhythm in perfect sync. Their expressions are somber, illustrating the intensity of the beat, but also connotating Spanish femininity as sexually powerful and, consequently, threatening. The 189 dance sequence is intercut with a scene of two women trying to crack a safe. This sequence juxtaposes the film’s female protagonists, who are skilled and resourceful thieves, with traditional icons of Spanish femininity—the Andalusian flamenco dancer— in order to subvert the history of female Spanish archetypes. The juxtaposition of national places reinforces the gendered territories that these women cross as they immerse themselves in a patriarchal underworld of transnational crime. While Spain is identified by the presence of these strong women, Mexico City is introduced as a masculine space marked by violence and crime. In spite of the overt gendering of national spaces, the film avoids presenting Spain as a site free from violence, crime and patriarchy. These Spanish women are active agents in their homeland, but are still at odds with Spanish/European patriarchy. 78 This is visually presented through the contrasting scenes of a group of men watching a game in another room, while the women are in another room cracking the safe. These men later burst into the room and capture and beat up Aurora, when they receive a tip that they are being robbed. Similarly, men are shown to be in positions of authority within the scenes in Spain as police officers and judges. As symbols of legal authority, Spanish men are both a threat to the women, but are also easily exploitable as evident in two later scenes when 78 Since the 1980s, filmmakers have engaged with women’s roles within Spanish society and in particular, have critiqued patriarchal structures such as the medical field, the state, and alternate social structures that attempt to regulate the female body and female agency. For example, Pilar Miró’s film, Gary Cooper, que estás en los cielos, focuses on the life of a television director named Andrea Soriana who is about to transition into the world of feature filmmaking when she learns that she has a terminal illness. Similarly, Helena Taberna’s film, Yoyes, is a fictional re- telling of the life of Dolores González Catarain, a former member of the Basque separatist group, ETA who returns to Spain after the transition to democracy and is killed by ETA. Yoyes’ death is attributed to the failure of the state to protect her and its attempt to exploit her return for its own political gain. Similarly, Yoyes’ break from ETA is viewed as a response to the patriarchal structure of the organization. 190 Gloria and Paloma exchange sexual favors to a male judge in order to commute Aurora’s sentence. While this exchange arguably can be viewed as an example of women’s continued subordination to men, the women’s demeanor in these scenes do not portray victimization. As a whole, the women in the film treat their sexuality and sex as a bartering tool or a source of economic exchange rather than a product of romantic attachment and in this sense, does not mark their explicit sexuality with any sense religious morality. In playing against the archetypes of Spanish women in cinema, the film also critiques the generic conventions of cinema that dictate adherence to particular gender roles, specifically, the Oedipal narrative that results in a heterosexual coupling and the symbolic killing of the father/rival and the need to punish those who reject social conformity. 79 This is most evident in the character of Aurora, a career criminal who is stoic, violent and resourceful. As spectators, we know little of her psychological motivation or familial background, other than the fact that she has a sister named Ana. Outside of her sisterly bonds (both with her sister and fellow comrades), paternal ties do not define Aurora nor is she driven by the need for romantic ties to a man in the narrative. This absence in the film makes it clear that she is a character not defined by emotional 79 These ideological conventions were most prominent in cinema of the Classical Hollywood period, but continue to structure most filmic genres, particularly the Western. The Western is particularly relevant to the analysis of Sólo quiero caminar, since the film intertextually references Sam Peckinpah’s canonical film, The Wild Bunch through the overt use of the film within the film, but also in its depiction of a gang of women trying to pull off one last heist. The performance of gender and violence within this genre is particularly salient and one of the ways that Sólo quiero caminar subverts representations of women in film. Although not overtly referenced in the film, Carmen also serves as an intertext for Spanish femininity. Carmen’s death at the end of the novella can be read as a punishment for rejecting social conformity, represented by her refusal to marry. 191 ties to men, in spite of her sexual agency in the film. In two key scenes of the film, Aurora nonchalantly requests male escorts to satisfy her sexual needs. Although the film does hint towards a romantic coupling between Aurora and Gabriel, the film’s ending makes this resolution implausible. After Gabriel comes to her rescue, an anonymous assassin stabs him as he walks down the street. Aurora later finds him sitting at a café and asks his name. In spite of their sexual intimacy, they have not been formally introduced. After his introduction, Aurora tells him that he must treat her well. Gabriel responds, “No va estar facil” ‘That won’t be easy’, and shows her his wound. Rather than becoming distraught, Aurora’s response is matter-of-fact. Her subjectivity and identity are not linked to any man, even if she has a romantic interest in him. Gabriel proceeds to discuss how he imagined an ending with her and then returns a photo that he took from Ana of her parents. Aurora confesses that these are not her parents, but a souvenir from the first wallet she ever stole. While the photo is an object of sentimental value, it does not represent the memory and link to a nuclear family, but instead, commemorates her first successful criminal exploit and serves as an indication of her agency outside of a gendered familial structure and the confines of legality. While the film begins with Gabriel’s voice-over, it ends with a long tracking shot of Aurora walking away from the café when Gabriel asks to see her walk one last time before he dies. This final shot of Aurora walking illustrates the film’s title, Sólo quiero caminar, as someone who wants to walk alone and is therefore not a tragic ending, but an affirmation of her independence. Instead of recovering the lone female renegade within a 192 heteropatriarchal coupling at the end of the film, Aurora becomes the Western anti-hero who successfully pulls off the heist and remains outside of social conformity. While the film’s gender politics demonstrate an interesting role reversal of Spanish femininity, when seen in the context of a transatlantic imaginary, its privileging of citizenship makes its gender politics less radical. Although the film is largely set in Mexico City, the city itself is virtually absent of Mexican women, reinforcing a gender divide that pits Spanish women against Mexican men. This rivalry is defined by retaliation against domestic abuse rather than national tensions although the women’s exceptionalism is largely attributed to their Spanish citizenship. In a key scene that highlights this privileging of citizenship, Gabriel sits with his comrade, Cayuco, during a stakeout. Gabriel: (showing him a picture of Aurora, Paloma and Gloria): ¿Como las vez? Cayuco: Pues, se ven interesantes. (Both men laugh.) Gabriel: Se ven de miedo, ¿no? Cayuco: Yo no me preocuparía, mi niño. Al fin acabo, son mujeres. Gabriel: No. Estas son españolas… A mi se me hace que si las cosas se ponen cabronas, estas son peores que hombres de acción. Gabriel: (showing him a picture of Aurora, Paloma and Gloria): How do you see them? Cayuco: Well, they look interesting. (Both men laugh.) Gabriel: They look scary. Cayuco: I wouldn’t worry, my son. They’re just women. Gabriel: No, these are Spanish women. I think that if things get difficult, they are worse than action heroes. 80 After this discussion, the camera then cuts to a shot of Aurora from behind, as she walks towards a nightclub, wearing a red, form-fitting flamenco dress. Flamenco music underscores her movements. Gabriel, as the more intuitive of the Mexican mafiosos, is 80 Author’s transcription from the film. Translation courtesy of the English-language subtitles provided in the film’s DVD. 193 accurate in his apprehension towards the women, since they are about to pull off a heist. However, the fact that Gabriel attributes their threatening presence to citizenship stems from anxieties surrounding their demonstration of a homosocial loyality that has historically been reserved for men—in this case, Mexican men. Although Cayuco is quick to dismiss them as women, Gabriel points to their citizenship as a key marker of their difference and exceptionalism. The image of Aurora in her red flamenco dress designates her as specifically Spanish, thus allying her with icons of a resistant Spanish femininity—that is Carmen, who embodies fantasies and anxieties about Andalusian and gypsy women as strong, sexual and therefore threatening to the patriarchal order. It is Aurora’s connotation of this Spanishness that is somehow different from the largely absent and therefore voiceless Mexican women in the film. In addition to their Spanishness, these women are perceived as a threat for their homosocial comradeship—celebrated throughout Mexican cinematic history and within Hollywood classics, such as The Wild Bunch and exemplified in the film through the friendship between Félix and Gabriel. Félix and Gabriel’s close friendship epitomizes the homosocial space granted to men within Mexican society, who as friends, confidantes and “blood” brothers share a mutual respect and love for each other. For example, Félix offers his condolences to Gabriel, when he remembers that it is the anniversary of his mother’s death. His sympathy stems from the hurt that his friend feels over the loss of his mother, not such because of the circumstances that caused her death as Félix is also an abusive husband, whose violent actions attempt to police the gendered boundaries of his wife. After proposing to Ana, Félix is equally as excited to have Gabriel serve as his best 194 man. Although Gabriel does not fully condone Félix’s decision to marry, he happily shares in the celebration during the wedding scene. As best man, Gabriel sits on the left- hand side of the groom. Both men emphatically sing along with the Mexican performer, Mijares, “Soldado de amor,” while Ana sits to the side, outside of their overt display of male bonding and its declaration of love as a battle between sexes, where men are wounded by their lovers’ agency. The lyrics to the song transpose the gender politics of the film through its positioning of a man as a soldier who must endure the wounds inflicted by his female lover’s gaze and rejection. Since we later learn that Felíx repeatedly beats Ana in order to “make a woman out of her,” in reality, it is Ana who receives the wounds of “love” and who secretly documents her husband’s dealings in order to pull off a heist. Although Ana exists outside of this homosocial pairing, she is a part of a quartet of women whose friendship jeopardizes the male homosocial relationship in the film. After the women successfully steal Félix’s hard drive, Gabriel tries to explain the women’s need for vengeance for hurting one of their own by describing them as “hermanas de sangre” ‘blood sisters’. Félix dismisses this as a joke, since women are incapable of this type of loyalty and need for vengeance. For Félix, vengeance is clearly an activity that belongs to men, who as defenders of the social unit — the family and the nation — are the only gender capable of such expressions of loyalty and honor. In this regard, the film makes an intervention into a broader cultural celebration of masculinity. The fact that female agency is limited to Spanish women, however, conveys the 195 underlying nationalist leanings of the film that position Mexico as a space of outmoded machismo that threatens female agency and solidarity. In the film, Mexico is regarded as a site where Mexican male violence against women persists, with little hope for change. Part of Gabriel’s code of honor results from the memory of his mother’s murder by his father, who suspected her of being unfaithful, twenty years prior to the film’s setting. Her last words to Gabriel plant the seeds for his intolerance of violence against women and children: “El hombre que le pega a un niño o a una mujer está condenado, condenado para siempre” ‘A man who hits a child or a woman is damned, forever damned’. This history of gendered violence continues in the present as evident in Félix’s abuse of his wife, Ana. Although Gabriel will not actively participate in the killing of women or children, however, he is embedded in a world in which all forms of violence are permitted. Although Spain is implicated in this underworld of violent crime in this film, as well as in Nadie hablará de nosotras cuando hayamos muerto, much of the violence takes place in Mexico and/or is displaced onto Mexican men. In an early interview, Díaz Yanes states that the decision to film in Mexico is due to “el clima de violencia que se vive aquí [en Mexico] es más agudo que en España” ‘the climate of violence that is lived here [in Mexico] is more intensely experienced than in Spain’ (Díaz). While it is true that the growth of drug cartels within Mexico since the 1990s has led to a proliferation of violence at all levels of society, the displacement of violence onto Mexico in the film ignores the transnational flows that fuel the demand for illicit drugs. That is, while drug-related violence in Mexico is prolific, one must take into account the manner in which the drug trade as a transnational circuit 196 of exchange serves the interests of the state as well as corporate and private sectors both domestically and internationally. Similarly, the film’s exclusive positioning of Mexican men as perpetrators of domestic abuse overlooks the rates of gender-based violence as well as the number of deaths related to domestic abuse that occur in Spain. Díaz Yanes’s comments are not unique to Spain as Mexico has long been regarded as the site of both real and imagined violence, corruption and moral decay in American (and global) media and popular culture, specifically within border cinema and Westerns situated along the U.S.-Mexico border. Although the rampant drug-related crime and violence plaguing the country as well as the large number of feminicides 81 in Juárez is a cause of concern, representations that focus on these issues often exaggerate violence by promoting derogatory cultural stereotypes rather than seriously engaging with the structural causes of this violence. In 2006, two U.S. films were made about the murdered women of Juárez that perpetuate the image of Mexico as a place of lawlessness, violence, sexism, crime and corruption: The Virgin of Juárez, directed by Kevin James Dobson, and Gregory Nava’s film, Bordertown. Both films center on an American reporter who travels to Juárez to investigate the unsolved cases of murdered and missing women and discover a young girl who has survived an attack. Whereas Bordertown focuses on the multiple theories that have circulated regarding the 81 Rosa-Linda Fregoso and Cynthia Bejarano use the term feminicide rather than femicide to describe “gender-based violence that is both public and private, implicating both the state (directly or indirectly) and individual perpetrators (private or state actors); it thus encompasses systematic, widespread, and everyday interpersonal violence…rooted in social, political, economic, and cultural inequalities” (5). My use of the term stems from Fregoso and Bejarano’s emphasis on the intersection of gender, class, race, nationality and ultimately power dynamics in understanding gender-based violence across the Hispanic Atlantic. 197 perpetrators, The Virgin of Juárez relates the space of the city to a predilection for violence. In The Virgin of Juárez, Minnie Driver’s character, Karina Danes, is an American reporter from Los Angeles, who arrives in the city to investigate the cases of the murdered and missing women at the same time that a young woman, played by Ana Claudia Talancón, arrives looking for work. Shortly after Karina begins her investigation, the young woman, now identified as Mariela, is found wandering in the desert, having survived a sexual attack and attempted murder. Unable to recall the circumstances leading up to her abduction and assault, Mariela attributes her survival to the appearance of the Virgin Mary. Her survival and stigmata-like wounds are perceived as a miracle and she is quickly embraced as the Virgin of Juárez, a symbol of the disappeared women and a crusader against the pervasive—structural and interpersonal—violence of the city. Although the film is meant to draw attention to the issue of the murdered women, the film is both sensationalistic and exploitative in its portrayal. Within the world of the film, violence is portrayed as pathological, where Mexican men are potential rapists/murderers and/or prone to vengeful violence. For example, at the beginning of the film, Mariela arrives in Juárez in search of employment. Within a few blocks of her bus stop, a young man starts to harass her, eventually succeeding in pulling her into an alley in spite of the fact that she is in downtown Juárez, in broad daylight and surrounded by other people who are unresponsive to her screams. As Mariela struggles, a young guy passing by in a truck pulls over and prevents the attack. He introduces himself as Felíx and assures her that he knows of a safe place to stay and a job. In spite of his seemingly innocuous appearance, Felíx helps secure young women for sexual predators and 198 murderers, and eventually facilitates Mariela’s sexual attack. After the rape and murder of his wife, Isidro begins killing the men suspected of these women’s deaths, as a way to cleanse the city of its corruption and heed Mariela’s anti-violence crusade. In addition to promoting the image of Juárez as inherently violent, the film also promotes the view of a Mexican religiosity that is primitive, superstitious and outside of rational thought and behavior. As an American and outsider, Karina is the film’s protagonist who interprets the violence and religious fervor in Juárez and serves as a point of identification for spectators of the film. It is through her eyes that we, as spectators, witness the pervasive threat and enactment of gendered violence as well as the superstitious and ritualistic worship of the Virgin and her stigmata-like wounds, whose logic and fetishization defies Karina’s rational wisdom. This pairing of Catholic religiosity with feminicides is problematic in its allusion to a broader cultural tolerance and acceptance of wounded and suffering feminine bodies. In Virgin worship, the female body’s capacity to endure pain is a testament of her piety. As the representative of objective reasoning in the film, Karina manages to secure Mariela’s exodus out of Juárez to the U.S to ensure her safety. Once in Los Angeles, Mariela, now known as the “Virgin of Juárez”, conducts a radio broadcast from Los Angeles, where she condemns the systemic violence against women, the oppressive conditions that exacerbate this climate and calls for people to mobilize against their oppressors and identify those suspected of the violence. 82 Although 82 The film’s portrayal of Chicano males, however, differs from that of Mexican men in the film. The L.A. gang members who protect Mariela, do so as a product of their religious beliefs more so 199 Mariela’s speeches are meant to condemn the structural and systemic violence, the filmmakers juxtapose her broadcast with a montage sequence that shows the inhabitants of the city rising up against the gendered violence that plagues the city: a small mob in Juárez attacking suspected rapists, a woman then stabs her attacker and Isidro enacts his vengeance against the bus driver who killed his wife. The fact that violence is portrayed as a means to end the feminicides in Juárez does little to counter the image of the city as plagued by violence. Instead, this sequence reaffirms the notion that everyone, especially men, are capable of violence and will use violent measures as a means of enacting vengeance. Mariela’s exodus out of the city of Juárez, which occurs offscreen then shifts the focus of the narrative away from a serious engagement with the issue of the feminicides to the effects of Mariela’s illict crusade. Now under the protection of an L.A.-based gang, Mariela’s radio broadcast and underground appearances are treated as insurrectionary and therefore mark her as a social and criminal threat. While the gang members are portrayed as violent criminals to Karina, they do not pose a sexual or physical threat to Mariela, who as the “Virgin of Juárez” now commands a certain level of respect amongst this group. In the final sequence of the film, Mariela remembers the circumstances of her attack when she comes face to face with her assailant, who then begs for her forgiveness. This flashback representing the actual events of Mariela’s sexual attack counteracts the earlier images in the film that sensationalize her experience as a product of ritualistic torture. As the Virgin of Juárez, Mariela forgives the repentant rapist and attempted than as a result of their progressive gendered stance. Karina still views them as potentially violent and threatening, even if they are not a sexual threat to Mariela. 200 murderer for his actions. However, he is quickly killed by one the gang members who protect Mariela. Upon hearing the gunshots, the police start shooting into the building where they are hiding, since Mariela and her comrades are regarded as public enemies. During the shootout, the gang members are killed. Upon seeing the massacre of her comrades, Mariela commits suicide. This ending dismisses the gravity and systemic nature of the feminicides in Juárez by showing how these acts of violence against women can be easily forgiven if the perpetrators are repentant. While dominant representations of the feminicides in Juárez draw transnational attention to the ongoing issue of violence against women, the manner in which these stories are told leaves more to be desired since many fall prey to sensationalistic portrayals that eroticize the violence that they are trying to denounce. For example, Bordertown depicts the violent attack and attempted murder of Maya Zapata’s character, Eva Jimenez, in graphic detail. Having boarded a bus to go home, Eva finds that she is now the last passenger. The bus driver asks if it is okay for him to stop and buy gas, but instead, drives her to a remote location in the desert, where he stops the bus and then attempts to assault her. Eva struggles, but frees herself from this attack and then runs out of the bus where she encounters another man yet-to-be identified, played by Aris Rodriguez. This other man proceeds to rape and simultaneously strangle her. The attacker climaxes and then presumes that the motionless Eva is now dead. He gently touches her lips and then delivers one final blow before biting into her exposed breast. The scene ends with a close-up of Eva’s vacant stare. While it is true that many of the women found 201 murdered in Juárez showed signs of sexual assault, strangulation and biting, 83 the musical score of this scene undermines the gravity of the issue of sexual violence through its sensationalized and melodramatic depiction. Later in the film, Jennifer López’ character, Lauren Adrian, an American reporter, goes undercover as a maquiladora worker in order to find a link between the attacks on women and their experience in the maquiladoras. After her shift, Lauren finds herself alone on the bus as it drives out into the desert. Given the earlier scene of Eva’s attack, Lauren begins to get nervous about what is about to occur. After driving her to an isolated industrial site, the bus driver proceeds to strangle her. Lauren frees herself by gauging one of his eyes and then beats him with her purse. After escaping from the bus, she runs out into the night. In the darkness, she stumbles upon a massive grave of decaying corpses before she escapes and calls for help. Like the earlier scene of Eva’s attack, the musical score is once again sensationalist and fantastical as Lauren runs and tries to hide from the unknown menace. Through this score, the threat of violence becomes supernatural as neither Lauren nor the film’s spectators see the unknown perpetrator(s) responsible for the killings. While the initial attacker is presented as embodied wickedness, this latter sequence presents the threat of violence as an ominous presence that divorces the onscreen violence from the actual murders in Juárez, whose perpetrators, even if unknown, exist within the everyday world. 83 Fregoso notes that “many of the murdered women had been gagged, raped, strangled, and mutilated, with nipples and breasts cut off and buttocks lacerated like cattle, or they had been penetrated with objects” (172). 202 In addition, the film’s overall reliance on sensationalist portrayals of sexual violence and violated and dead bodies operates in tension with the film’s social aims of raising awareness about the feminicides in Juárez. More specifically, this representation ignores how grassroots organizations have sought to raise awareness without further perpetuating an eroticized spectacle of violence. For example, Voces sin Eco ‘Voices Without Echo’, a grassroots group in Juárez, consisting of families of the murdered women, painted black crosses on pink backgrounds on electrical poles in lieu of images of the murdered victims as a form of protest against violent images (Fregoso 20). Although these images are shown in the film, little is mentioned of their symbolic meaning and their existence as a visual protest against sensationalized portrayals of the murdered women. In her work on transborder activism surrounding the murder of women in Juárez, Fregoso argues that this strategy critiques the “violence of representation…[in which] the hypervisibility of the feminine body in audiovisual media, as in the commodification of gruesome photographs depicting tortured and dismembered bodies, heightens the invisibility of the disposable body…” (22). Although Bordertown narratively raises questions about women’s vulnerability to feminicide, it oversimplifies the complexity of the issue and promotes an image of Juárez as a site of excessive violence and deviant sexuality. In this regard, the film shares many parallels with The Virgin of Juárez, which portrayed the border through the racializing gaze of an American reporter. While The Virgin of Juárez views violence through the lens of Mexican religiosity, Bordertown focuses on the image of Juárez as a site where violence defies the logic of the North 203 American gaze by positioning the threat of violence as supernatural rather than as a product of local and global structural and systemic conditions that enable the feminicides to occur. Although Bordertown features a multinational and multiethnic cast including Puerto Rican-American Jennifer López, Spanish-born Antonio Banderas, Argentinean actor, Juan Diego Botto, Latino actor, Martin Sheen and a cameo appearance by Columbian singer, Juanes and was directed by Gregory Nava, a veteran and well- respected Chicano filmmaker, it plays into this history of the border as an abject place. Given the history of depictions of the U.S.-Mexico border, these films fall into the trap of cultural stereotyping in order to explain the actual violence that is occurring in Mexico. Thus, instead of focusing on the social issue of feminicides, these representations demonstrate how national identities are inscribed with meanings that reaffirm a hierarchical and racializing discourse rooted in the history of U.S.-Mexico relations. In spite of the actual violence that plagues Mexico, the feminicides of Juárez are one localized and extreme example of gendered violence, but not the only instance within the Américas or across the Hispanic Atlantic. Since the 1990s, the issue of domestic violence and violence against women in Spain has become an issue of public concern and legislation, largely because of the number of women who die as a result of these acts. 84 During this time, various groups have formed alliances and bridged solidarities across and within the Hispanic Atlantic in order to draw attention to the issue of gendered violence and challenge the representational strategies of film and media as a form of 84 In an article published in The New York Times, Raphael Minder notes how 73 women died in 2010 as a result of intimate partner violence—“roughly, one every five days…an increase over 2009, when 55 women were killed in similar circumstances.” 204 activism. While the Spanish government in conjunction with local Latin American governments has produced media campaigns that rely on the Internet to raise awareness and disseminate its anti-violence message, the Internet has also become a site in which activism around the issue of gender violence is mobilized from a more grassroots level. For example, Feminicidio.net, a website that works towards eliminating the legacies of gendered violence across the Hispanic Atlantic, was founded by Graciela Atencio, a journalist who became invested in gender violence through her work in Ciudad Juárez. Since beginning in 2010, the website provides statistics and information about gender violence in twenty-one different countries, 85 as well as State and activist efforts towards the elimination of gendered violence in its multiple manifestations including: domestic violence, feminicides, rape, and sex trafficking. In focusing on gender violence in this broad sense, Feminicidio.net moves away from sensationalizing feminicide in the Américas as a product of the region’s deficiency, showing that it also occurs in Spain as a result of domestic abuse. While the website provides updates on government statistics, laws and policy, it also offers counternarratives that reveal the contradictions or misrepresentations of the realities of these forms of violence. A transatlantic text for anti- violence activism, Feminicidio.net allows local activists to contribute updates on the website, thus becoming a space for a mutual dialogue about the issue of gender violence across the Hispanic Atlantic. 85 Feminicidio.net tracks statistics for the following countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Spain, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Uruguay, and Venezuela. 205 Given the complexity of the issue of gendered violence, this next section focuses on the mobilization of anti-violence activism in Spain and its mediation across the Hispanic Atlantic through an engagement with film and media as an intervention tool. Because different forms of activism around gendered violence were mobilized at different time periods, it is important to understand the local contexts that sparked different movements as well as how transatlantic and transhemispheric efforts attempt to bridge anti-violence activism across the Hispanic Atlantic. As Fregoso and Bejarano note “the last decade of the twentieth century…[bore] witness to unspeakable forms of degradation and violation of women’s bodies and their being: disappearances, murders, mangled, burned and tortured bodies, raped girls and women…” (3). These acts, perpetrated in wartime and peacetime occurred across the Américas, but also throughout the world. While the Américas have been shaped by certain patterns of systemic violence — social inequality, racism, crime, drug trafficking, globalization — that have led to the image of the region as violent, unstable and/or a site of vast gender oppression, gender violence occurs across the Hispanic Atlantic, as evident in the rise of public discourse and activism around domestic violence in Spain. Imagining (Transatlantic) Anti-Violence Activism Although some scholars, such as Cristiana Moreiras Menor have seen a renewed 206 fascination with violence in Spanish cultural production during the 1990s, 86 this period also spawned the development of movements against gendered violence. Several activists and scholars situate the contemporary mobilization of gender anti-violence activism as beginning in 1997 with the public outcry over the death of a woman named Ana Orantes, who appeared on television to discuss her abusive husband. 87 Thirteen days later, her husband beat her, tied her to a chair and burned her alive in retaliation. News of her gruesome death circulated heavily in the media and invoked public outcry, which led the Spanish government to initiate a national plan to protect women from their abusers by criminalizing various forms of domestic abuse and enhancing the network of support and protection for battered women (Medina Ariza, et al. 303-4). 88 While Ana Orantes’ death 86 Through an analysis of novels and films of the period, Moreiras Menor notes a tendency of urban authors to portray acts of excessive violence, which she attributes to the cultural experience of a Spain that suddenly emerged within postmodernity (139). This Spain, according to Moreiras Menor, is a “traumatized and defenseless society…. illustrated by contemporary culture’s fascination with violence, pain, the tortured body, and a history in shock” (141). 87 News of Ana Orante’s death appeared in media outlets in Spain and globally, such as El País, Christian Science Monitor and The New York Times, see Daly; San Cristobal Orea; and Rincón and Martín-Arroyo. Her death is cited as instrumental to mobilization efforts against domestic violence in studies on domestic violence and activist organizations, see Medina-Ariza, et al. and Socolovsky. For example, Victoria Iglesias, a spokesperson for gender anti-violence activism in Galicia states, Aquella aparición televisiva de Ana Orantes animó a muchas víctimas a dar un paso decisivo y movió muchas conciencias, pero reclamamos un tratamiento digno en los medios de este tipo de violencia que profundice en sus causas y ponga el foco en el maltratador, en lugar de rebuscar morbosamente en el entorno de la víctima. The appearance of Ana Orantes inspired many victims to take a decisive step and moved many consciences, but we demand humane treatment in the media [in dealing with]… this type of violence that deepens its causes and places the focus on the perpetrator, instead of focusing morbidly on the environment of the victim (Cuiñas and Obelleiro). 88 A study by Medina Ariza et al. discusses the effects of Ana Orantes death, which inspired the Spanish government to reform the criminal code and proceedings to “introduce systematic psychological abuse as a felony, … the possibility of obtaining restraining orders, … [and to] improve the network of shelters for battered women as well as different forms of social resources 207 resulted in national legislation, it also establishes a key contradiction in discourse surrounding gendered violence in Spain as well as its depiction in Spanish cinema: the need to publicize and disclose instances of gendered violence and the tendency to take pleasure in the spectacle of violent imagery, as noted by the media’s recounting of the incident and the excessive visceral “pleasures” of genre films — horror, slasher pics, etc. — that relish the visualization of mutilated bodies. The spectacle of violence within film and media becomes problematic when filmmakers try to use cinema to engage with the gravity of gendered violence as it occurs in daily life. Yet one should avoid the simplistic assumption that violence in the media causes violence in society, as a clear cause and effect process. Nevertheless, human rights and anti-gender violence activists in Spain and around the world continue to believe that images of violence within cinema and the media serve to perpetuate a visual culture of violence that should be overturned, particularly in light of the increase in rates of gender violence in the country since 1997. 89 A popular anti-violence strategy revolves around the for the victims of abuse” (Medina Ariza et al. 303-4). In addition, in 2003, the Spanish parliament unanimously passed the “Order for the Protection of Victims of Domestic Violence” which gave “battered women the option of getting a fast-track restraining order on a violent partner within a maximum of 72 hours” (Socolovsky). Within the first few months of the law’s enforcement, 1390 women sought protection under the order and some 20 women a day applied for the order in Madrid (Socolovsky). 89 Statistics from the late 1990s and early 2000s inarguably demonstrate an increase of fatalities attributed to intimate partner violence. This has led to the labeling of domestic abuse and intimate partner violence as terrorismo familiar, familiar (or familial) terrorism, which emphasizes how domestic abuse is more than just a violent act, but a violent act whose goal is to intimidate its victim along ideological and psychological lines. Based on figures from the Instituto de la Mujer, Elmundo.es reports that between 1999 and 2008, 635 women in Spain died resulting from violent acts caused by husbands, boyfriends or ex-partners (Arroyo). The high rate of gender violence during the late 1990s points to both the increase in reporting cases of violence and the possibility of a backlash from Spanish men, in an attempt to re-assert a gendered status quo. Despite the 208 substitution of images of mutilated and dead bodies with more neutral images or symbols as a reaction against the hyper-visibility of victimhood that serves to perpetuate a visual culture that eroticizes gendered violence. 90 With the rise of anti-gendered violence activism in the late 1990s, mainstream Spanish cinema has responded with films such as Benito Zambrano’s film, Solas; Te doy mis ojos, directed by Icíar Bollaín 2003; Sólo mía, directed by Javier Balaquer; Fernando León de Aranoa’s 2005 film, Princesas; and El bola, directed by Achero Mañas. 91 Of the many films that engage with the issue of domestic violence, the film, Te doy mis ojos is increased legislation, gender violence remains a key issue that affects women in contemporary Spain. 90 See my earlier discussion of Voces sin Eco, for the manner in which the spectacle of violence is critiqued by activist groups in Juárez. Similarly, in Spain, this attempt to move beyond visualized victims of violence was invoked during the Marcha Mundial das Mulleres in Vigo, Galicia, in honor of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women on November 25, 2007. As part of this protest, 69 white silhouettes, placed alongside the street, memorialized each woman who lost her life in 2007 due to gendered violence in Spain, six of which were from Galicia (Cuiñas and Obelleiro). In depicting a silhouette as opposed to the victim’s face or mutilated image, these efforts refrain from perpetuating a visual culture of gendered victimhood, a strategy used by anti-gender violence activists worldwide. 91 El bola focuses on father-son child abuse, stressing how violence emerges as a result of intergenerational conflicts surrounding conceptions of masculinity, in which patriarchal maschismo literally erupts when pitted against alternate familial structures and masculinities. With the exception of El bola, these films, as well as larger public discourse in Spain, interpret gender violence as an issue affecting heterosexual couples, in which the male is the abuser and the woman is the abused. This largely heterosexual conception of gender violence within film, media and legal policy ignores the existence of domestic abuse within gay male coupling, who are excluded from legal protection by the Ley de Medidas de Protección Integral contra la Violencia de Género because it defines gender violence as a product of unequal gender relations, where the victim is inevitably female (42166). The law states: “La violencia de género...se trata de una violencia que se dirige sobre las mujeres por el hecho mismo de serlo, por ser consideradas, por sus agresores, carentes de los derechos mínimos de libertad, respeto y capacidad de decisión./ Gender violence is violence directed at women because they are women, who are considered by their aggressors as lacking the minimum rights to liberty, respect and a capacity for decision-making” (42166). Passed in December 2004, the Ley de Medidas de Protección Integral contra la Violencia de Género was praised for establishing a legal protocol for protecting and assisting victims of domestic abuse, while also outlining what constitutes abuse. 209 perhaps the most well-known outside of Spain. Based on extensive work within a social service organization, Icíar Bollaín’s film focuses on a woman’s struggle to break away from her abusive husband and his attempts to receive counseling to prevent the abuse. The film is of particular interest for two reasons; it explicitly aligns itself with gender anti-violence activism in its refusal to eroticize acts of physical violence, and examines the issue from the perpetrator’s perspective. Shot in a social-realist tradition, the feature- length film emerged out of an earlier short, Amores que matan, which was made in 2000. Yet the topic is not limited to the social realist genre; other films engage with the topic of domestic violence tangentially, such as Ramón Salazar’s film, Piedras, which depicts the struggles of a minor character, a daytime talk show host, who spends her days giving women advice on domestic abuse, while she is secretly abused as well. This engagement with the issue of gender violence is also prevalent in the films of Pedro Almodóvar, perhaps the most famous Spanish filmmaker of the last thirty years. Since the late 1990s, his films demonstrate an active attempt to avoid visualizing gender violence by emphasizing words, the act of telling or disclosure, and/or a metaphorical replacement in films such as Todo sobre mi madre, Hable con ella, Volver and Abrazos rotos. This emphasis on telling and an avoidance of visualizing violence becomes a strategy of resistance within a visual medium that parallels similar gender anti-violence activist strategies throughout Spain and Latin America. While the issue of gender violence in Spain focuses on domestic and interpersonal violence, the state views gender violence and discrimination as a broader concern within its developmental policy in Latin America, and thus, one can see a desire for solidarity 210 across the Hispanic Atlantic. 92 The Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional para el Desarollo (AECID), discussed in the introduction as instrumental in the dissemination of a Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary through its promotion of film, is also similarly engaged with the issue of gender violence and discrimination in the Américas. Both AECID and the now defunct Ministerio de Igualidad ‘Ministry of Equality’ 93 have pursued media campaigns in their efforts to educate and inform the public about gender violence in Spain and throughout Latin America. One such example is the “Saca Tarjeta Rojo al Maltratador” campaign, sponsored by the Ministry of Equality. “Saca Tarjeta Rojo” is a print and media campaign in Spain that promotes awareness of the complexities of domestic abuse and, in particular, strategies for reforming “masculine” norms that lead to cycles of abuse. As part of the “Saca Tarjeta Roja” campaign, a series of public service announcements have been screened on television and are available through the Internet on the campaign’s website and YouTube (“Saca Tarjeta Roja”; “Spot 8”). Similarly, “Maltratozero,” a campaign from 2009, was produced after the XVIII Iberoamerican Summit of Heads of State and Government, in which Spain, Portugal and Andorra as well as 19 countries in Latin America elected to pursue a campaign against gender violence in the region (Yáñez and Ravinet). The manner in which gender anti-violence activism is 92 Although AECID donates and supports gender equality efforts in Africa and Asia, Latin America received the most funding—190 million euros—between 2005 and 2008 (AECID). 93 In October 2010, Zapatero decided to shutdown the Ministerio de Igualdad as an independent department of the government (“Adios al Ministerio de Igualdad”). However, the Spanish government still operates a division for issues of equality within the renamed, Ministerio de Sanidad, Servicios Sociales e Igualdad. 211 mobilized across the Hispanic Atlantic can be seen through these efforts that operate on the state and cultural level. There is a strong connection between the production of films engaging with gender violence and these government-sponsored media campaigns in Spain given the overlap of creative talent. Alicia Luna, the co-writer of Te doy mis ojos also co-wrote the TV scripts for the “Sacar Tarjeta Roja” campaign. Her participation, along with those of other filmmakers engaged with women’s issues, positions the media campaigns as an extension of Spanish-language film and opens up the field of inquiry to broader issues of representation and activism. Both campaigns engage with men and women as potential activists, emphasize celebrities over victims and rely on testimony and disclosure through words over images. 94 Additionally, both utilize the Internet and social media to spread the word and encourage involvement at the grassroots level. As a cultural practice and form that circulates with relative ease, the role of film and media as activism against domestic violence cannot be underestimated nor can one overlook the contentious role that media plays in representations of violence and violated bodies. Within Spain, the increase in political activism surrounding domestic violence goes hand in hand with the rise of female filmmakers in the 1990s, such as Icíar Bollaín. Their increased participation in the construction of their media image functions as both an extension of their political activism and a method to increase awareness on the multiple ways in which violence 94 In a personal interview, Alicia Luna discussed the process of working with women’s advocacy groups in preparation for her film projects, where women often met in secret to ensure their safety. Thus, while it seems like disclosure, where the victim denounces her abuser, is a good solution to ending the cycle of abuse, the realities of these abusive relationships point to the need for an institutional framework that protects women once they seek help. 212 affects the lives of women and children through an appeal to human rights discourse and the global human rights movement against gendered violence. It is through the universal claim of human rights that Spain also actively pursues gender anti-violence activism within Latin America. While media campaigns are initiated at the state level in Spain and supported across Latin America through developmental aide projects, film similarly creates a dialogue across gendered anti-violence movements in the Hispanic Atlantic. For example, Amores que matan, the precursor to Te doy mis ojos, explicitly draws a connection between Spanish and Latin American machismo through the intertextual reference to Lucinda Broadbent’s short, Macho, which documents the efforts of Men Against Violence, a men’s anti-violence group that works towards eradicating gender violence in Nicaragua. In making this short, Bollaín and co-screenwriter, Alicia Luna, worked with the Asociación de Mujeres María de Padilla de Toledo, a women’s rights organization in Toledo, Spain that works with women who have been abused, providing resources and counseling services. Both women gathered testimonies from women who suffered from domestic abuse and used this material as research to make Amores que matan, a fictional documentary. Like Te doy mis ojos, which was made a few years later, Amores que matan focuses on a case of domestic violence in which a husband, Antonio, attends a men’s anti-violence reeducation facility. In making the film, Bollaín and Alicia Luna, her co- screenwriter, reversed a narrative tendency to focus on the victims of domestic violence 213 and instead, sought to portray the issue from the perspective of the abuser. 95 This shift away from women as victims instead draws attention to the broader social context of violence and the causes of violent behavior in men. Consequently, Amores que matan focuses on Antonio’s perspective, as well as the reaction of neighbors who are shocked to learn that he engages in violent behavior. In the opening sequence, a van with the logo, “Centro de Reeducación de Agresores” ‘Center for the Reeducation of Abusers’, arrives at an apartment building. Two men exit and ring the buzzer to enter. A middle-aged woman exits the building and is shocked to learn that Antonio is a domestic abuser, noting in an interview that he is nice, a good neighbor, and a hard-worker who seems to have a good marriage with two kids. This interview reveals how abusers do not fit into this image of a deviant monster, but are men who function normally in everyday society, thus making what occurs in the privacy of their domestic life even more invisible. As a result, this film functions discursively as a questioning of Spanish masculinity, perceptions of violence and what constitutes domestic abuse as well as publicizing an issue that has historically been relegated to the private sphere of the home. In questioning traditional perspectives of masculinity, the film opens up a dialogue with Macho over the persistence of machismo across the Hispanic Atlantic, drawing attention to socially ingrained perceptions of masculinity that leads to violence against women. During one key scene in Amores que matan, Antonio watches an interview from Macho with Xavier Muñoz, the founder of Men Against Violence, in 95 In a personal interview conducted in Madrid, Ms. Luna discussed the script as a response to the “énfasis sobre las mujeres como víctimas en representaciones de la violencia de género” ‘emphasis on women as victims within representations of gender violence’ (Luna). 214 which Mr. Muñoz, discusses the need to prevent domestic violence. This scene forces Antonio to rethink how he treats his own wife, Pilar. Up to this point, Antonio has been reluctant to acknowledge that his conduct with Pilar constitutes abuse, proclaiming at the beginning of the film that his wife “no entiende si no le grito” ‘doesn’t understand unless I yell’ and “no le pego, le doy un empujón” ‘I don’t hit her, I just give her a push’. The film’s intertextual reference to Macho demonstrates the possibility of expanding the definition of masculinity and points to a real-life example of a men’s support group that did not exist in Spain at the time that Amores que matan was made. In this sense, the film reverses the locus of enunciation in which Spain maintains a role as mediator [of a progressive gender discourse] and demonstrates the potential for a dialogue across the Hispanic Atlantic over the shared legacies of machismo. Throughout the film, Macho points to a culturally-ingrained and socially- constructed conception of masculinity that leads to gendered violence, but that is in itself not reflective of an innate predisposition towards violent behavior. The film opens with a series of images that are coded as masculine activities—bullfighting and cockfights. A voice-over declares “Nosotros somos los fuertes, los dominadores, los machos, los que podemos no solamente dominar a la mujer sino también a los animales” ‘We are the strong, the dominators, machos, who can not only dominate a woman but also animals’. 96 The combination of images and text stress a singular definition of masculinity with roots in the Spanish colonial past—through the image of the bullfighter. While the film explores the gendered legacies that make machismo a transatlantic construct, it later 96 Author’s transcription from the film. Translation courtesy the English-language subtitles from the film’s DVD. 215 points to Nicaragua’s own history of civil war, which enabled men to grow up in a culture that permitted violence. In a similar manner, Amores que matan explores culturally-permissive attitudes towards violence by referencing popular music—the children’s song, “Don Federico mató a su mujer,” and the 1940s song, “Te lo juro yo” covered by Rocio Jurado. In “Don Federico,” the protagonist kills his wife, makes her into picadillo, that is, he chops her up, and then puts her into a frying pan. Similarly, the song, “Te lo juro yo” focuses on a jilted lover who tells her sweetheart she’d endure various forms of mistreatment as long as he continues to love her and then later declares her ability to kill for him. Originally performed by a man, Rocio Jurado’s interpretation of “Te lo juro yo” thus reverses the gender dynamics of the song lyrics, emphasizing how the lyrics conflate love with violence. Regardless of the gender of the performer, the later verse in which the singer declares that he/she could kill as a sign of love draws attention the film’s title, Amores que matan and the manner in which violence can be misinterpreted as an outward expression of love/passion/desire. In this sense, the film outwardly critiques this conflation of “love” and violence in popular culture, given the very “real” issue of domestic violence and spousal murder in Spain. The film’s reference to Macho subsequently expands this critique across the Hispanic Atlantic. Although Amores que matan explicitly draws a connection between gender violence across the Hispanic Atlantic, this transatlantic appeal is much more subdued in Te doy mis ojos, the feature film that expanded the story of Antonio and Pilar. This longer version depicts Pilar’s struggle to break away from Antonio’s abuse, while also portraying Antonio’s attempts at recuperation in a men’s support group. In presenting 216 both accounts of an abusive marriage, the film explores the complexity of domestic violence and its relationship to gender, the family and Spanish culture, in particular the role of the Catholic Church in perpetuating traditional gender roles and domestic violence by discouraging victims from speaking out against the family. For example, both of the film’s protagonists, Antonio and Pilar, feel pressured by their families to play the role of the dutiful son and daughter. This makes Antonio feel inadequate and Pilar feel obligated to make her marriage work. Additionally, throughout the film, Pilar’s mother insists that she return to Antonio for the sake of her family, ignoring the abuse Pilar has endured and the abuse that she, herself, faced while married, which emphasizes the generational cycle of gender violence that exists across familial histories. In exploring discourse on masculinity, the film engages with anti-violence strategies that focus on men, as the primary abusers. In order to resolve his issues, Antonio agrees to attend individual and group therapy classes for anger management, in the hopes that he will learn how to modify his violent tendencies by learning what thoughts and feelings propel his violent acts. While the film does not justify Antonio’s behavior, this exploration of his subjectivity and the conditions and emotions that result in his violent outbreaks moves away from clichéd characterizations of the “evil” male perpetrator and the passive female “victim” and instead, examines the issue of domestic violence as a product of socially- construed expectations. In addition, the film critiques spectacles of violence within Spanish visual culture, but also views it as a means of self-realization and ultimately, a vehicle for anti-violence activism. It is no coincidence that Pilar identifies with the image of La Dolorosa at the 217 beginning of the film. As Pilar stares quietly, her sister, Ana approaches from behind and whispers in her ear, “She just realized she left her home in her slippers.” 97 Pilar turns to look at her as Ana laughs out loud. Pilar joins in and shakes her head in disbelief. This image of the Virgin Mary as suffering mother parallels Pilar’s own role within her marriage, which Ana pinpoints by referencing Pilar’s arrival at her home in the middle of the night and subsequent tearful breakdown at the discovery that she left the house in her slippers. Ana’s sacrilegious banter also demonstrates her own refusal to play the role of “suffering mother”. Although Ana works as an art preservationist in the Cathedral of Toledo, she does not buy into the gendered roles prescribed by its iconography. Ana also helps Pilar find a job in the Church of Santo Tomé, home of El Greco’s El Entierro del Señor Orgaz. Her job as a ticket seller enables Pilar to develop economic autonomy, but more importantly, sparks her interest in art history. This interest enables her to begin giving docent tours to visitors and increasingly sets up her mobility out of Toledo, as she is later invited by her co-workers to begin giving talks in Madrid. Pilar’s increasing autonomy fuels Antonio’s anxieties about losing her and ultimately result in his violent outbreak near the end of the film. The link between visual art, seeing and the need for self-realization is clear throughout the film. While at her new job, Pilar overhears the docent explaining the history of the painting as well as the life of El Greco, whose artistic style is a product of his travels across the Mediterranean. Her work at the Church eventually inspires her to take an art history course in order to volunteer at the museum as a docent. As she begins 97 Author’s transcription. Translation courtesy the English-language subtitles from the film’s DVD. 218 learning about art history, the stories behind the images allow her to “see” the world in a new light, and lay the foundation for her eventual self-realization. Throughout the film, Pilar’s timid demeanor serves as the visual foil for her husband’s domineering presence and personality. This changes, however, when Pilar begins to lecture on the paintings that she’s been studying. For example, while discussing the painting, Danaë Receiving the Shower of Gold by Titian, her expressions come alive as she engages with the audience and shares her enthusiasm for the mythological story and its visual interpretation in the painting, which shows a woman surrendering herself, “body and soul” to sexual passion. In spite of the abuse that she has endured, Pilar loves Antonio and has literally given her body and soul to him. The film’s title, Te doy mis ojos ‘Take My Eyes’ is taken from a game that the two lovers play in which Pilar declares that she gives different body parts to Antonio as a sign of her love. However, Antonio misinterprets her willingness to surrender herself to him in the act of lovemaking through his abuse, which has literally taken her eyes, leaving her with a loss of vision in one eye, but also her sense of self. At the end of the film, Pilar decides to leave Antonio once and for all, declaring, “I need to see myself…I don’t know who I am. I haven’t seen myself for so long.” 98 This final declaration stresses the importance of “seeing” oneself for victims of abuse rather than seeing themselves through domestic violence. Given the film’s emphasis on vision and seeing, it is noteworthy for its formal avoidance of eroticized visual violence. Instead, the film expands the definition of 98 Author’s transcription. Translation courtesy the English-language subtitles from the film’s DVD. 219 domestic abuse as including intimidation and psychological manipulation. As mentioned earlier, the only instance of physical violence occurs when Pilar attempts to leave for a job interview in Madrid. In this scene, Antonio confronts Pilar, as she is about to leave her home for the day, rips her clothes off and pushes her out onto the balcony, almost completely naked. After she screams and pounds on the door, he allows her back inside and grabs her by the throat, only releasing his grip after she urinates on the floor out of fear. This instance of humiliation and intimidation forces Pilar to go to the police to report her abuse. However, given the fact that she was not physically injured, she realizes that she lacks the evidence necessary to press charges against her husband. While this act of brutality does not leave any physical marks on Pilar’s body, it does not make the act any less sinister and highlights the extent to which any form of abuse damages its victim. In her defense, Pilar tells the police officer, “nothing is broken on the outside, it’s all on the inside.” 99 Her statement illustrates the need to think beyond physical violence in cases of domestic abuse in order to understand the complexity of domestic violence. This statement, much like the film as a whole, also re-affirms the need for film genres to think beyond representations of battered bodies in mediated representations of gendered violence and develop a politics of representation that serves as a testament to the severity of abuse, without relying on physical violence that privileges victimization. Although situating domestic abuse as a social problem within Spain, the film’s reliance on the family, the home and the Catholic tradition also demonstrates its potential as a transatlantic text given the shared commonality of language, culture and patriarchy 99 Author’s transcription. Translation courtesy the English-language subtitles from the film’s DVD. 220 across the Hispanic Atlantic. In this regard, it is no coincidence that Pilar’s namesake is Nuestra Virgen del Pilar, the patron saint of Spain and also the “reina de la Hispanidad” ‘queen of Hispanidad’, whose saint day is on October 12 th , el Día de la Raza ‘the Day of the Race’. Rather than reading the film as an allegorical representation of a Spanish male abuser and a transatlantic abused female, however, I want to focus on the ways in which the film’s emphasis on familial, religious and artistic emblems of Hispanidad instead permit a transnational reading of the film. The legacies of violence that Pilar must break out of are also legacies that were promoted as part of the colonial project across the Américas. While Latin American countries achieved independence during the course of the 19 th century, the colonial hierarchies of race, class, and gender established during the 400-year Spanish rule were firmly rooted in the identities of the new nations. According to Elizabeth Dore, “patriarchy was not simply some discursive invention, but was the law of the land throughout Latin America in the nineteenth century. Patriarchal authority was a central tenet of the Spanish colonial legal system and of the civil codes enacted by the newly independent countries” (108). The “centerpiece of patriarchal law was patria potestad—the power of the father. With extensive authority over his wife, children, and dependents, the patriarch was the state’s representative within the household” (Dore 108). In this regard, the film’s emphasis on female agency within a transatlantic history of patriarchal oppression serves as a point of identification beyond the domestic space of the Spanish nation. For Spain, the colonial project was also a religious mission, which set the stage for the indoctrination of the New World under the Catholic faith. This interweaving 221 between the politics of the state and the role of the Church also functioned as an instrument for the regulation of gender and sexuality, which viewed sexuality as a means of social reproduction. Gender roles followed examples from religious teachings, where the Virgin Mary, a self-sacrificing, subservient virginal mother, is the ideal symbol of femininity across the Hispanic Atlantic. The worship of the Virgin Mary, also known as the cult of marianismo, as a spiritual, national and transnational icon, continues to be a strong link between Latin American countries and Spain, however, contested this representation of femininity may be. Similarly, the film’s use of visual culture references a shared Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary and a history of mobility that makes this imaginary possible, as seen in the artistic careers of painters such as El Greco, whose style presented a cultural mixing of his travels across the Mediterranean. As someone who appreciates art, Pilar’s agency is linked to Spanish visual culture and the history of and desire for mobility. As mentioned earlier, the discussion of domestic violence and its representation onscreen became the subject of much discourse in Spain since the late 1990s. Pedro Almodóvar is one such filmmaker, whose work from the period contributes to this discourse. Although on the surface, discussing Almodóvar’s films in the context of activism around gender violence in s Spain seems out of place for a filmmaker whose oeuvre initially relished in the sexual and social freedoms of La Movida, Almodóvar’s recent work challenges the prevalence of domestic violence in Spain and its link to traditional understandings of the family, religion and Spanish culture by refusing to participate in the visualization of gendered violence. Starting in the mid-1990s, his films 222 treat such cases of rape, sexual abuse and pedophilia as acts that have severe psychological and mental ramifications for their victims. The serious treatment of domestic violence in his latter films coincides with a societal shift towards the criminalization of gendered violence in Spain and its politicization as a human rights violation across the globe in the mid- to late 90s. From the start of his commercial career, Almodóvar has dealt with the themes of domestic violence and sexual abuse, albeit with a significant difference in tone as his early works are characterized by dark humor reflective of the Spanish esperpento tradition rooted in the “grotesque, the ridiculous and the absurd” (Hopewell 59). Linked to the writings of Ramón del Valle-Inclán, the cinematic tradition of esperpento is evident within the works of Luis García Berlanga, Fernando Fernán Gómez, and later Pedro Almodóvar (Hopewell 59-60, 239). His later works, however, demonstrate a change in the representation of violence, indicating a refusal to participate in the eroticization of visual violence. Similarly, these films demonstrate a decisive shift in portraying gender violence as a problem affecting Spanish society often through intergenerational differences and allusion to his earlier films as well as Hollywood cinema. Kinder (All About…), in her essays on Almodóvar’s most recent texts, examines this intertextual referencing as a form of retroseriality, in which the filmmaker “leads us to choose two earlier works from his canon to illuminate what a later film is doing and to redefine them as a trilogy through this act of retroserial rereading” (269). According to Kinder, the term “retroseriality” describes “both an aspect of Almodóvar’s films and a method of reading them” (All About… 269). Given the retroseriality between his later 223 works and earlier films, one can view his serious consideration of gender violence in the mid-1990s not as a strict rupture from his previous works, but as the explicit manifestation of thematic concerns already central to his earlier films. In doing so, one begins to understand Almodóvar’s films not as a celebration or exploitation of gender violence, but as a body of work that critically engages with gender violence in all of its manifestations. Upon the release of Volver in 2006, Jonathan Holland of Variety proclaimed that the film “signal[ed] a new, low-frills departure for a helmer whose recent work has been as much about style as substance”. The film’s “low-frills” quality stems from its more restrained sense of humor given its subject matter, but is also due to the absence of onscreen violence, which other critics noticed as well. In an interview for Time Out London, Walters points out how in Volver, “the two major crises that propel the plot— one in the past, one in the present—are not seen but reported in extended accounts that bind us, the audience, to the emotional consequences of violence, rather than offering it up as spectacle.” This comment prompted Almodóvar to respond, “I have far more trust in the power of actresses and the power of words than in an act of violence…” (Walters 2006). However noticeable the absence of visual violence appears in Volver, it is a filmic strategy traceable through a number of his films. This last section will explore the dynamics of this significant shift in the portrayal of gendered violence onscreen. In four of his films released in the 2000s, Hable con ella, La mala educación, Volver and Abrazos rotos, one sees a noticeable shift to a more serious consideration of the psychological and legal ramifications of gendered violence for both victims and 224 perpetrators, although his latest film, La piel que habito, breaks from this pattern. Through the retroserial re-reading of his earlier films, however, one can also reevaluate his oeuvre as being more conscientious of the complexities and gravity of gender violence as a social and psychological issue than previously considered. For instance, in his canonical work on the early films of Pedro Almodóvar, Paul Julian Smith notes that Almodóvar “has been frequently accused of misogyny [and] of humiliating and fetishizing…women” (2-3). Smith ultimately defends the director, however, against these criticisms, citing the need for foreign critics to avoid imposing British and North American models of resistance, which ignore the Spanish context in understanding issues of gender and sexuality, specifically the Spanish libertarian belief in “the absolute freedom of the artist as an inevitable consequence of democracy” (Smith 5). Arguing for an analysis based on cultural specificity risks dismissing the problematic representations of gendered violence in Almodóvar’s films as nothing more than an Anglophone preoccupation with gender and sexual politics that does not resonate within the Spanish national context. Similarly, Peter Evans, in his essay, “Acts of Violence in Almodóvar,” contends, “Almodóvar’s treatment of violence is not confined to a reflection of social patterns of abuse involving real-life violators and victims” (116). Evans argues that Almodóvar uses violence in these films as a means to explore the subversion of gender roles, desire and “the changing roles of domination and submission” that characterize the spectrum of sexual pleasure (116). Along the same line, O’Connor analyzes the violence in Almodóvar’s films as “the comic manifestation of desire and love” (222), ignoring the fact that gender violence in his films is not always humorous or 225 easily dismissed. While most scholars tend to split along two contrasting lines of argument surrounding the issue of violent representation in these films as either negative and misogynist or as a tool for understanding desire and sexual pleasure, I wish to re-visit Smith’s call to understand and situate Almodóvar’s films within the Spanish cultural context. In light of the mobilization of gender anti-violence activism within Spain since the late 90s, which is concerned with eradicating larger social patterns of domestic and sexual abuse, the shift in the portrayal of violence in Almodóvar’s films necessitate a re- reading that calls for a re-grounding of representations of gendered violence in Almodóvar’s canon. Like Te doy mis ojos, Abrazos rotos portrays domestic violence as a product of gendered social constraints. In this regard, the film is one of Almóvar’s most overtly serious portrayals of domestic violence in all of its manifestations. The film portrays gender violence as both physical, as when Martel pushes Penélope Cruz’ character, Lena, down a staircase in order to prevent her from leaving, and psychological, as when Martel orders his son, Ernesto Jr. to film Lena while she is working on a film set as a mode of surveillance that keeps her under his control. While Abrazos rotos portrays specific instances of the different forms of abuse that Lena endures, Almodóvar still avoids representing the physically violent scene that leaves Lena badly beaten and forces her to finally leave her abusive husband. Instead, he emphasizes the ways in which Martel’s psychological control of Lena is much more sinister through the documentary film- within-a-film, which symbolically holds her captive through the all-encompassing gaze of the camera that follows her every movement. In a key scene, Lena attempts to destroy 226 the camera and after some struggle with the cameraman, ultimately, confronts the camera by returning its gaze and directly addressing it and the elder Martel, who watches the footage every night. In her tirade, she affirms her love affair and determination to leave him, thus confirming Martel’s worst fears. When she returns home to gather her things, he retaliates by pushing her down the steps. Injured, she agrees to remain with him in exchange for her lover’s artistic freedom while they complete their film production. Lena’s abusive relationship and sexual awakening recalls Almodóvar’s earlier film, Live Flesh that portrayed another woman, Clara, in an abusive marriage. Like Lena in Abrazos rotos, Angela Molina’s character, Clara, rekindles her passion through an affair with a more sensitive, younger man who stands in contrast to her Francoist cop husband. This affair eventually gives her the strength to break from the cycle of violence and leave her husband. In the case of Abrazos rotos, Lena finds love with a Spanish film director, who fulfills her dreams of becoming an actress and contrasts with her manipulative and abusive Chilean husband. While both women ultimately attempt to flee from their abusive partners, both end up dying violent deaths. Clara and her husband, Sancho shoot themselves at the end of Live Flesh after she attempts to leave him, a final shootout scene reminiscent of the Hollywood classic, Duel in the Sun, directed by King Vidor. After a violent altercation with Martel, who physically beats her off-screen, Lena flees her abusive marriage and eventually dies in an unrelated fatal car crash. The serious treatment of gendered violence in both of these films affirms Almodóvar’s concern with this issue and demonstrates a significant shift in the portrayal of gendered violence over 227 the course of his oeuvre through an engagement with differing conceptions of masculinity. While Live Flesh focused on generational differences within masculinity in the post-Franco period, Abrazos rotos engages with national differences in the post-1992 era. Sancho represented the violent and abusive male more reflective of the repressive Francoist regime than the post-Franco transitional period where the latter film configures the abuser as a ruthless businessman of Latin American origins. In both instances, the post-Franco man, is representative of a sensitive and nonviolent masculinity that idealizes the new, modern Spanish man and ignores the continuation of certain conditions of Spanish masculinity that lead to gender violence in Spain by displacing violent tendencies onto the character of Martel. As a businessman in the 1992 era, Martel also functions as a critique of the transnational model of global capitalism, which usurps female bodies as sites of labor and sources of pleasure. It is not a coincidence that Lena worked as Martel’s secretary and needed to resume her sideline gig as a call girl out of financial necessity. Because of his wealth, Martel could provide the medical care that her ailing father required and thus secure Lena in exchange, a factor that emphasizes the threat of transnational forces to the national and gendered body. 100 Lena’s vulnerability stems from her subordinated position as a woman of limited financial means, which trumps any potential power she has over Martel as a Spanish national. In this regard, Abrazos rotos is a daring critique of the status of contemporary Spanish women and their 100 This latter critique is not limited to Latin America, but also to the hegemonic power of the Hollywood film industry, which usurps Spanish locales and labor for its productions as evident by Judit’s dealings with American film companies, whose encroachment threatens the national film industry. 228 continued susceptibility to gender violence. Whereas Sólo quiero caminar plays up the vengeance narrative as retaliation against domestic abuse, both films highlight a Spanish woman’s economic status and social marginalization—Ana works as a sex worker and marries Félix because she buys into his promise of economic security—as a contributing factor for their susceptibility to violence. Through his thematic engagement with the issue of gender violence and its effects, Almodóvar’s films broaden discourse on gender violence and its representation within Spanish cinema. Since the mid-90s, his films no longer dismiss the gravity of gendered violence and refuse to participate in the visualization of gendered violence without a consideration of the complexity of its various forms and the ramifications for perpetrators and / or victims. Rather than treating this shift as a rupture between his earlier films and those of the last decade or so, through the act of retroserial re-reading, we have seen that a concern for gender violence bridges much of his work and is often allied with social concerns affecting contemporary Spain. In this regard, Almodóvar domesticates violence in the triple sense of the word by engaging with it thematically as a social issue that affects the home, Spanish society—the domestic homeland—, and through a resistance to its visualization, which allies him with the strategies of anti- gender violence activists throughout the Hispanic Atlantic. Conclusion The attempt to imagine an anti-violence solidarity across the Hispanic Atlantic through film, media and the Internet appears to stand in opposition to the spectacles of 229 violence exhibited in film, literature and television of the same period. However, as this chapter demonstrates both engagements with violence enable an interrogation of racialized, gendered and sexualized identities within local and transnational contexts. Whether using violence as a mode of critique or resisting images of violence within gender anti-violence activism, the film and media texts discussed in this chapter offer counter narratives to dominant representations of violence that promote cultural stereotypes of the Hispanic Atlantic. The thematic concern with violence within the Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary, thus, enables these films to resonate as social issues within their local contexts, but also allows for a bridging across the Hispanic Atlantic, which shares many of the same concerns. 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Web. 2 May 2012. <http://www.nytimes.com/2011/ 02/24/world/europe/24iht-spain.html?pagewanted=all>. Moreiras Menor, Cristina. “Spectacle, trauma and violence in contemporary Spain.” Contemporary Spanish Cultural Studies. Eds. Barry Jordan and Rikki Morgan- Tamosunas. London: Arnold, 2000. 134-142. Print. Nadie hablará de nosotras cuando hayamos muerto. Dir. Agustín Díaz Yanes. Perf. Victoria Abril, Pilar Bardem and Federico Luppi. 1995. Alta Films, n.d. Videocassette. O'Connor, Jenny. “Slap and Tickle: Violence as Fun in the Movies.” Gender and Interpersonal Violence: Language, Action and Representation. Eds. Karen Throsby and Flora Alexander. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. 214-228. Print. Piedras. Dir. Ramón Salazar. Perf. Antonia San Juan, Najwa Nimri, Vicky Peña, Mónica Cervera and Ángela Molina. 2001. Manga Films, 2003. DVD. Pretty Woman. Dir. Garry Marshall. Perf. Richard Gere, Julia Roberts, Jason Alexander, and Ralph Bellamy. 1990. Touchstone/Disney, 2005. DVD. Princesas. Dir. Fernando León de Aranoa. Perf. Candela Peña and Micaela Nevárez. 2005. IFCFilms, 2007. DVD. Ramírez Berg, Charles. Latino Images in Film: Stereotypes, Subversion, and Resistance. Austin: Univ of Texas P, 2002. Print. 235 Ríncon, R. and J. Martín-Arroyo. “114 mujeres asesinadas tras Ana Orantes: Hace 10 años su muerte despertó la conciencia sobre la violencia doméstica.” ElPais.com 16 December 2007. Web. 29 May 2010. <http://www.elpais.com/ articulo/andalucia/114/mujeres/asesinadas/Ana/Orantes/elpepuespand/20071216el pand_1/Tes>. Rodrigo D: No futuro. Dir. Victor Manuel Gaviria. Perf. Ramiro Meneses, Carlos Mario Restrepo, and Jackson Idrian Gallego. 1990. Facets, 2004. DVD. “Rosario Tijeras.” ProimaginesColombia.com. Proimágines Colombia. n.d. Web. 24 May 2012. <http://www.proimagenescolombia.com/secciones/cine_colombiano/ peliculas_colombianas/pelicula_plantilla.php?id_pelicula=277>. Rosario Tijeras. Dir. Emilio Maillé. Perf. Flora Martínez, Unax Ugalde, and Manolo Cardona. 2005. DistriMax, 2009. DVD. Ruiz-Pérez, Isabel, Juncal Plazaola-Castaño, María del Río-Lozano, and the Gender Violence Study Group. “How do women in Spain deal with an abusive relationship?” Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health 60 (2006): 706-711. Print. “Saca Tarjeta Roja al Maltratador.” Ministerio de Igualdad, March 2010. Web. 25 March 2010. <www.sacatarjetaroja.es>. Saenz, Noelia. “Domesticating Violence in the Films of Pedro Almodóvar.” Companion to Pedro Almodóvar. Eds. Marvin D’Lugo and Kathleen Vernon. Oxford, England: Blackwell, in press. Print. San Cristobal Orea, Rebeca. “El caso de Ana Orantes.” Informativos Telecinco.com. 25 November 2008. Web. 12 November 2009. <http://www.telecinco.es/ informativos/sociedad/noticia/52840/El+caso+de+Ana+Orantes>. Scarface. Dir. Brian De Palma. Perf. Al Pacino, Steven Bauer, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio. Universal, 1983. Film. Smith, Paul Julian. Desire Unlimited: The Cinema of Pedro Almodóvar. 2 nd edn. London: Verso, 2000. Print. Socolovsky, Jerome. “Spain's Domestic Violence Fatalities Rising.” Feminist.com- Women's eNews. 31 October 2003. Web. 11 November 2009. <http://www. feminist.com/news/vaw7.html>. Solas. Dir. Benito Zambrano. Perf. María Galiana, Ana Fernandez, Carlos Álvarez, and Antonio Dechent. 1999. Filmax, 2003. DVD. 236 Sólo mía. Dir. Javier Balaguer. Perf. Sergi López, Paz Vega and Elvira Mínguez. 2001. Wellspring, 2004. DVD. Sólo quiero caminar [Walking Vengeance]. Dir. Agustín Díaz Yanes. Perf. Diego Luna, Ariadna Gil, Victoria Abril, Elena Anaya, Pilar López de Ayala and José María Yazpik. 2008. Maya Entertainment, 2010. DVD. “Spot 8 Saca Tarjeta Roja 2’’00’’.” YouTube.com 17 March 2010. Web. 1 April 2010. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JP9Ung7L-Mo&list=UUATAKu6- saVrD54zmapeM3g&index=1&feature=plcp>. Strauss, Frederic, ed. Almodóvar on Almodóvar. Trans. Yves Baignères and Sam Richard. Rev. ed. London: Faber and Faber, 2006. Print. Te doy mis ojos [Take My Eyes]. Dir. Icíar Bollaín. Perf. Luis Tosar, Laia Marull, Candela Peña, and Rosa María Sardà. 2003. New Yorker, 2006. DVD. Tesis [Thesis]. Dir. Alejandro Amenábar. Perf. Ana Torrent, Fele Martínez, and Eduardo Noriega. 1996. Vanguard/ Tanelorn Films, 1999. DVD. The Others. Dir. Alejandro Amenábar. Perf. Nicole Kidman, Christopher Eccleston, and Fionnula Flanagan. Cruise/Wagner Productions, 2001. Film. The Virgin of Juárez. Dir. Kevin James Dobson. Perf. Minnie Driver, Esai Morales, Ana Claudia Talancón, Guillermo Díaz, and Angus Macfadyen. 2006. Netflix, 2012?. Streaming video. The Wild Bunch. Dir. Sam Peckinpah. Perf. William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, and Robert Ryan. 1969. Warner Home Video, 2006. DVD. Tierney, Dolores. “The Appeal of the Real in Snuff: Alejandro Amenábar’s Tesis (Thesis).” Spectator 22.2 (Fall 2002): 45-55. Print. Titian. Danaë Receiving the Shower of Gold. 1553. Museo del Prado On-line Gallery. 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DVD. 238 Conclusion: Global Hispanidad? Programming the Hispanic- Atlantic Imaginary I began this project by citing Benicio del Toro’s acceptance speech at the Goya Awards and Pedro Almodóvar’s designation of a Gabi Lifetime Achievement Award at the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival in 2009 as two moments that illustrated the existence of a Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary in the contemporary era. Bothe of these moments are a product of the intertwining of film and media industries across Spain, Latin America and the United States, which share an interest in a geocultural solidarity by expanding their audiences across the Hispanic Atlantic as mutually beneficial to national (Spain) and local [i.e. U.S.-Latino) media markets. As an established Puerto Rican actor in Hollywood, Del Toro is a paradoxical figure that represents subalternity, due to his membership within a minority group in the United States, but also hegemony, through his association with the Hollywood film industry. Similarly, his acceptance of an award for his role as “Che,” an international symbol of subaltern resistance and Latinidad, alludes to the Spanish national film industry’s paradoxical desire for transatlantic solidarity against the hegemony of the United States, while also relying on this connection to elevate its own status. In the same vein, LALIFF’s uncritical celebration of an internationally known and respected Spanish auteur functions to elevate the status of Latino film to the realm of foreign arthouse cinema, since Almodóvar has “paved new paths in the world of Spanish and Latino film” (Dermer 3). However, as pointed out in my introduction, Benicio del Toro’s acceptance 239 speech as a “magnified moment” (Hochschild 16) reveals that while the Hispanic- Atlantic imaginary is increasingly visible and heavily embedded within these institutional structures, the current mediascape for Spanish-language and Latino-themed film and media must be understood as a product of a historical, cultural and industrial investment in creating an imaginary bridge across these geographic spaces rather than a naturally occurring commonality. While this project has almost exclusively focused on the production of and thematic concern with mediating a Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary through an analysis of film texts, this last section shifts the discussion towards a brief examination of how this imaginary is programmed and consequently circulates across these geographic spaces through a discussion of film festivals and new media technologies. Also, since my project emphasizes work produced by Spain and to a lesser extent, Latin America, these final thoughts shift the discussion to the United States and its Spanish-speaking and/or Latino- identified population. Growing interest in the U.S.-Latino market is key to incorporating the United States into this broader geocultural imaginary, where Miami and Los Angeles have emerged as important “centers” for the production of film and media on a transhemispheric and increasingly transatlantic scale. In the present moment, the Hispanic Atlantic is largely split across two geographic-geocultural divides – as a transatlantic circuit between Spain and Latin America and a North-South hemispheric circuit between Latin American and the United States. Spaniards interested in the U.S. Spanish-language market must navigate the terrain of internal “Latino” politics, especially as Spanish actors become incorporated as 240 “Latinos” in Hollywood, thus ignoring the distinct national and racial/ethnic backgrounds of these disparate groups. While the Spanish film industry relies on Latin America as a partner in production and as a market for its media, it also has its eyes set on the increasing Spanish-speaking market within the U.S., where films are promoted within festival circuits and then exhibited via Latino media networks on television, cable, satellite TV channels, the straight-to-DVD market and increasingly, new media technologies, such as Video-on-Demand (VOD) and instant-play streaming. For instance, while the film Al otro lado is a Mexican-financed film, the film was marketed to Latino audiences throughout the U.S based on the familiarity of Spanish actress, Carmen Maura and her association with the films of Pedro Almodóvar (Ault). Programming the Hispanic-Atlantic Imaginary Film festivals across the Hispanic Atlantic are sites where the Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary is negotiated through programming choices that promote a shared identity, while presenting “an alternate distribution network” for foreign language and independent films (Handling as qutd in Turan, 8). Although not a comprehensive study of the numerous film festivals that take place within and across the Hispanic Atlantic, I would like to point out a few different festivals that have shaped the contemporary Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary. Since 1975, the Festival de Cine Iberoamericano de Huelva has showcased films and artists from Latin America, Spain and U.S. Latino. Its origins point to Spain’s investment in Latin American culture as it transitioned to democracy and its role as a mediator between Latin America and the European market. Because of its 241 location in southern Spain and its mission of bridging the Atlantic, the Festival awards a “Gran Colón” to the best feature. On the other side of the Atlantic, the Havana International Film Festival of New Latin American Cinema begins in 1979 as a key site for presentation and promotion of Latin American, Caribbean, Spanish and U.S. Latino cinema. Since 1997, the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival (LALIFF) has promoted the work of Latina/o filmmakers and/or Latino-themed films that were historically marginalized within Hollywood. As LALIFF has grown, it has expanded its definition of “Latino,” screening films from across Latin America and Spain, as well as more mainstream Hollywood fare. This move towards a broader Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary is based on the Festival’s mission of “inclusiveness rather than restrictiveness” (Johnson D-6). In defense of this loose definition of “Latino,” Marlene Dermer, Director, Programmer and Co-Founder of the Festival, proclaims, “‘Why not?’ Just as many Latino and Latin American actors and filmmakers have migrated into non-Latino movies, she reasons, the reverse also can be true” (Johnson D-6). I reference this quote from Dermer as an example of how LALIFF, as well as the other festivals mentioned, envision a solidarity across these cinemas that overlooks the legacies that permit the construction of these transatlantic and transhemispheric bridges. I do not believe that an International Latino Film Festival should solely focus on Latino cinema, since the “international” part of the title necessitates a certain degree of international collaboration. Since these Festivals function as a strategy of resistance against a dominant system, i.e. Hollywood, that marginalizes the work of minority and foreign filmmakers, my hope is that these institutions become more conscious of how they promote a shared identity. As noted 242 throughout this project, U.S. Latino, Spanish and Latin America cinemas have often struggled to find distribution and exhibition domestically, as well as internationally, so any effort to promote these industries merits applause. While film festivals maintain a central role in the promotion of a Hispanic- Atlantic imaginary, the changing landscape of television, the growth of the home entertainment industry and the development of new media technologies has altered the manner in which media is consumed, but most importantly, has helped dismantle the boundaries of Spanish, Latin American and Latino cinema by providing alternatives to traditional distribution and exhibition networks. According to Angelique Flores, “The DVD sell-through business has witnessed the emergence of a parallel Spanish-language industry that thrives by appealing to the country’s estimated 28.1 million Spanish speakers and their estimated $863.1 billion in buying clout.” The desire to capitalize on the population of Spanish speakers in the U.S. has produced distribution companies specializing in the Spanish-language home video market, such as Venevision, Maya Entertainment as well as major Hollywood players. For example, in 2006, Warner Home Video released a second-wave of Spanish-language titles under its “Colección Latina” label, “noting that sales of original Spanish-language DVDs have grown 83% from 2000 to 2005 (“Warner Home Video Announces…”). Because only “quality” Spanish and Latin American cinema have historically screened in the art house circuit in the United States, the growth of the home entertainment market catering to Spanish-language speakers and/or Latino audiences has become another point of entry into the United States for those films from Spain and Latin America that are not necessarily a suitable fit 243 for the art house circuit—such as genre films. Additionally, only a few auteurs have managed to transcend this niche categorization and achieve mainstream distribution. For example, Pan’s Labyrinth, directed by Guillermo del Toro was marketed to “three disparate audiences,” according to Picturehouse president, Bob Berney, “Spanish- language speakers, the art house crowd and the sci-fi/fantasy fans who [had] previously demonstrated an interest in the director’s body of work” (Flores). The ultimate success of Pan’s Labyrinth as well as that of critically-acclaimed films by Alejandro González Iñárritu, Alfonso Cuarón and Pedro Almódovar has been beneficial to the Spanish- language home entertainment market, but do not always translate into theatrical distribution for the majority of films. An article published in The Hollywood Reporter notes that “theatrical distributors have been slow to embrace Spanish-language material—which is what makes the Oscar nominations [of Pan’s Labyrinth, Babel, and Children of Men as well as Penélope Cruz and Adriana Barraza] all the more noteworthy” (Flores). Although theatrical distribution remains limited to those films that can guarantee box-office returns, shifts in the television industry and the development of new media technologies provides another alternative distribution and exhibition outlet for the U.S.- Latino population. In his analysis of the distribution strategies of art house cinema, Lucas Hilderbrand points to the development of Video on Demand (VOD) as one strategy that art house and independent distributors, IFC Films and Magnolia Pictures, have used to distribute films because it “minimize[es] the costs of distribution and promotion, but also [presents]… more immediate revenue-sharing” (26). According to Hilderbrand, when 244 Video on Demand began in 2000, the term was used to describe the “delivery of content on request” by cable and satellite providers, as well as “web-based video…more often understood as instant-play streaming or as (unauthorized or licensed) downloads (26). While the illegal downloading of licensed content has become heavily restricted, instant- play streaming has become a profitable distribution alternative. Hilderbrand argues, “if VOD presents an alternative to theatrical exhibition, streaming video has emerged as an alternative to DVD releasing” (28). In recent years, both Netflix and Hulu.com have dominated the streaming video market. Of particular interest is the manner in which both companies have targeted the U.S.-Latino market through the acquisition of film and media content from the United States, Latin America and Spain. In December 2011, Hulu launched Hulu Latino, A section for Spanish-language programming that draws from 11 content companies [including] Univision, Galavision and Telefutura….Next year, [the site will offer] content from Azteca America, Butaca, Caracol Television, Comarex, Estrella TV, Imagina US, Laguna Productions, Maya Entertainment, RCTV, Todobebe and Venevision (Wallenstein 5). A leader in streaming video and DVD rentals, Netflix’s catalog is similarly comprised of a wide range of Spanish-language and Latino-themed films. Through the distribution of the Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary, Netflix and Hulu.com, along with television, enable a transnational domestic viewing experience for a large number of U.S.-Latino audiences that is increasingly transatlantic, evident in the telenovela, La Reina del Sur. Filmed in Morocco, Spain and Colombia and starring Kate del Castillo, a Mexican actress, the telenovela presents a Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary through its narrative, production, distribution and reception across the Hispanic Atlantic. Based on 245 the best-selling novel by Spanish author, Arturo Pérez-Reverte, La Reina del Sur ‘Queen of the South’ focuses on Teresa Mendoza, a Mexican woman who moves to southern Spain and eventually becomes a significant figure in the international world of drug trafficking. Produced by NBC’s Telemundo network and shot primarily in Colombia, La Reina del Sur was the network’s “most expensive telenovela ever with a budget of $10 million” (Andreeva; De la Fuente 4). With its huge budget and themes of drugs, sex and violence, La Reina del Sur was a huge success in the United States, where it “ranked No. 1 at [its] 10 p.m. across all broadcast networks, beating Univision, CBS, ABC and NBC, on March 8” (De la Fuente 4). Its high ratings continued through the series finale on May 30, 2011, when it “was the No. 1 broadcast program of the night, of any language” (Andreeva). In addition to its high broadcast ratings, the telenovela’s popularity was also attributed to its availability on Telemundo.com, where viewers could watch episodes online as well as see additional content (“La Reina del Sur Lands in Cyprus”). Because of its successful first-run, La Reina del Sur is currently re-airing with English subtitles on the bilingual youth channel, Mun2 and has even sparked interest in an English-language adaptation and has aired in Cyprus (Mo; Andreeva; “La Reina del Sur Lands in Cyprus”). While La Reina del Sur’s popularity benefits from a big production budget, its sexy protagonist and engagement with narco culture, I argue that its popularity also stems from its transnational and transatlantic storyline, which follows the main character’s journey from Mexico to Morocco and then southern Spain, illustrating all three of the motifs I have described in this dissertation as central to the Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary. 246 The Global Negotiation of Hispanidad Although my project has focused on the mediation of a Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary that unites the film and media industries of Spain, Latin America and the United States, it is not my intention to erase the differences that exist within and across the Hispanic world. In recent decades, global media industries have commodified Hispani and Latino identity, as imagined by both Spain and the United States, in an attempt to cultivate a Spanish-language film and media market, evident in the “Latin boom” of the 1990s, the rise of international coproductions between Spain and Latin America and the Hispanic presence within Hollywood. While the desire for a unified Spanish-language media market is beneficial for both Spain and Latin America and crucial in the attempt to maintain national and independent film industries outside of the Hollywood film industry, its targeting of and claims to represent the Hispanic Atlantic audience is based on assumptions about commonalities of language, religion and culture that are rooted in discourses of Hispanidad and its legacy of colonial empire that resulted in gendered, racial, sexual and classed hierarchies. Consequently, these efforts at hailing an audience for Spanish-langauge film and media fail to acknowledge the national and local differences that structure the relationship of these disparate groups. Relying solely on Hispanidad, as the source of a shared identity has historically been premised on the promotion of sameness over difference, which obliterates national, regional and internal differences in language and culture. Thus, Hispanidad cannot be accepted uncritically as it is embedded within a discursive framework that maintains internal hierarchies that remain pertinent to the 247 contemporary Hispanic Atlantic. For example, Spaniards moving to the U.S. must navigate the terrain of internal “Latino” politics, which raises questions of race/ethnicity and often class, especially as Spanish actors are incorporated as “Latinos” in Hollywood. Similarly, both “Hispanic” and “Latino” are labels that have been used interchangeably to describe pan-national alliances and function as a negotiation tool for the political and economic power of the U.S.-Latino population. Therefore, in order to create a successful transatlantic and transhemispheric bridge, the Spanish-language film and media industry must acknowledge and foreground the multiple identities that define the experience of Latin Americans, Spaniards and U.S.-Latinos, especially since each group in and of itself does not constitute a singular identity. Final Thoughts and Future Research Building on the work of scholars within Hispanic Atlantic/Transatlantic Studies, I argue that film and media are the most visible enunciation of this interdisciplinary framework. Although the overlapping film and media industries that constitute the Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary are mobilized as a form of resistance, these collaborations are fraught with internal tensions due to its colonial history and the resulting national, gendered, sexual and racial legacies that continue to structure identities both within and across the Hispanic Atlantic. Given this broad geocultural mapping, my dissertation largely focuses on Spain’s role in mediating a transatlantic imaginary and thus, relies on case studies that focus on the changing face of Spanish national cinema, such as the feminization of migration discussed in chapter 2. Similarly, I explore Spain’s role in 248 fostering cinematic production across the Atlantic, but occasionally explores other national and/or local film contexts in order to demonstrate the dialogic nature of these exchanges as seen in chapters 1 and 3. While I have outlined themes that illustrate a common bridge across the Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary, I do not wish to limit its definition to this perspective. In this regard, possibilities for future research include an examination of cinema from different film industries and more specifically, work on Argentinean cinema, whose film and media industry is robust and characterized by a number of co-productions with Spain. Similarly, the scale of this project is limited by an almost exclusive focus on Spanish-language films produced in collaboration with Spain, which does not take into account the linguistic diversity that characterizes Spanish film and media nor the broader Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary. In Spain, Spanish film and media is produced in castellano, but also in Catalan, Euskera and even in English. Similarly, while Spanish is the official language of most countries across the Hispanic Atlantic, other languages are just as prominent, including Portuguese, English and various indigenous languages of Latin America. In thinking of the Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary as a counternarrative to Hispanidad, it is essential that one take into account the multicultural nature of this geocultural configuration, if we are to move beyond the hierarchical legacies that have and continue to structure this alliance. 249 Chapter Bibliography Al otro lado. Dir. Gustavo Loza. Perf. Carmen Maura, Héctor Suárez, Susana González, Vanessa Bauche, Nuria Badih, and Adrian Alonso. 2004. Unicine, 2007. DVD. Andreeva, Nellie. “Fox TV Studios to Develop English-Language Version of ‘La Reina del Sur’.” Deadine.com 9 March 2012. Web. 28 May 2012. <http://www. deadline.com/2012/03/fox-tv-studios-to-develop-english-language-version-of-la- reina-del-sur/>. Ault, Susanne. “First Look Strengthens Studio Latino label. 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Asset Metadata

Creator Saenz, Noelia Vicenta (author)

Core Title Mediating Hispanidad: screening the Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

School School of Cinematic Arts

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Cinema-Television (Critical Studies)

Publication Date 07/25/2014

Defense Date 06/08/2012

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag empire,film,Hispanidad,immigration,OAI-PMH Harvest,Spanish cinema,Violence

Language English

Advisor Kinder, Marsha (committee chair), Gutierrez-Albilla, Julian Daniel (committee member), Marez, Curtis (committee member)

Creator Email nsaenz@usc.edu,nvsaenz78@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c3-68297

Unique identifier UC11289461

Identifier usctheses-c3-68297 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-SaenzNoeli-1016.pdf

Dmrecord 68297

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Saenz, Noelia Vicenta

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA

Abstract (if available)

Abstract This dissertation examines the Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary as a critical site for the negotiation and promotion of a broader transatlantic identity, increasingly mediated through film and media production, distribution and consumption from Spain, Latin America and the United States. Since the 1990s, Spanish-language cinema has extended its national and linguistic boundaries through a number of Spanish-Latin American coproductions and films that either thematically or industrially engage with both regions as a common cultural and linguistic market. Similarly, the 1990s have seen the growth of U.S.-Latino and Spanish-language media that connect the U.S. with Latin America and, increasingly, Spain. This transatlantic and transhemispheric mapping recalls the Hispanic Atlantic and the period of colonization that created a commonality of language, religion and culture across these geographic spaces. Because the Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary encompasses a wide range of national film and media industries, with their own industrial history, this dissertation largely focuses on Spain’s role in mediating a transatlantic imaginary and thus, relies on case studies that focus on the changing face of Spanish national cinema and its role in fostering cinematic productions across the Atlantic. Yet, it also occasionally explores other national and/or local film contexts — Cuba, Mexico, Colombia, Bolivia and the United States — in order to demonstrate the dialogic nature of these exchanges. ❧ Although the Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary is mobilized as a form of resistance against the global dominance of the Hollywood industry, these imaginings are fraught with internal tensions given their colonial history and the national, gendered, sexual and racial legacies that continue to structure identities both within and across the Hispanic Atlantic. These legacies shape the industrial structure of these collaborations, but are also evident within the narratives themselves. While attempts to cultivate a Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary across the Spanish-speaking world is not a recent phenomenon and can be traced to the Spanish colonial project as a whole, this dissertation uses the Hispanic Atlantic as a framework that explores the power relations inherent within singular conceptions of Hispanic identity, culture and politics. With this in mind, the films and media texts discussed in this dissertation focus on gender, race and national identity as instrumental to reconfiguring transatlantic and transhemispheric bonds. Rather than viewing these overlapping film and media structures and practices as the result of a top-down and univocal articulation, the Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary demonstrates that these efforts are more dialogic in nature, thus, incorporating different national and multicultural voices that comprise the Spanish-speaking world.