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Speculative Latinidades: imagining Latinx identities in science fiction and fantasy Media and activism

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Speculative Latinidades: imagining Latinx identities in science fiction and fantasy Media and activism

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Content SPECULATIVE LATINIDADES:
IMAGINING LATINX IDENTITIES IN SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY
MEDIA AND ACTIVISM
by
Emily Rauber Rodriguez
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements of the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(CINEMA AND MEDIA STUDIES)
December 2023
Copyright 2023 Emily Rauber Rodriguez

ii
Table of Contents
List of Figures................................................................................................................................iii
Abstract.......................................................................................................................................... iv
Introduction..................................................................................................................................... 1
Scope................................................................................................................................... 3
Literature Review.............................................................................................................. 11
A note on the term “Latinx”.............................................................................................. 33
Chapter 1: ¡Presente!: Speculative Absence in Latinx Protest and Film...................................... 37
Theories of Absence, Invisibility, and Race ..................................................................... 45
Mass Disappearances........................................................................................................ 54
Finding the Personal ......................................................................................................... 74
Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 89
Chapter 2: People of Color: Brownness, Visuality, and the Mutability of Latinidad................... 91
Theories of Brownness ..................................................................................................... 96
Making Brown Faces...................................................................................................... 102
Generic Brownness......................................................................................................... 111
Transmedial Racial Mobility .......................................................................................... 119
Visualizing Black Latinxs............................................................................................... 124
Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 127
Chapter 3: The Mesoamerican Imaginary: Aztlán, Time Travel, and Foreign Indigeneity ....... 129
Indigenous Decontextualization...................................................................................... 140
Colonial Treasures and Trauma ...................................................................................... 144
Immortality as Colonial Curse ........................................................................................ 148
Combined Cultures ......................................................................................................... 151
New Approaches to Indigenous Mythologies................................................................. 156
Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 169
Chapter 4: Mestizaje in the Multiverse: Dualities, Hybridities, and Secret Identities................ 171
Theories of Dualities....................................................................................................... 174
Superheroes and Secret Identities................................................................................... 178
Undocumented Aliens..................................................................................................... 186
The Multiverse ................................................................................................................ 199
Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 207
Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 210
Bibliography ............................................................................................................................... 220

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List of Figures
Figure 1 Cartoon of the cybracero from Why Cybraceros? (1997).............................................. 64
Figure 2 The A Day Without a Mexican (2008) billboard ........................................................... 68
Figure 3 Lalo Alcaraz's Muerto Mouse illustration ...................................................................... 77
Figure 4 Fan art featuring Poe Dameron, Din Djarin, and Cassian Andor, by Cranity................ 85
Figure 5 Nina Mae McKinney in a publicity still for Hallelujah (1929).................................... 103
Figure 6 Nina Mae McKinney in a publicity still for Pinky (1959), Detroit Public Library...... 104
Figure 7 Suzette Harbin and Anne Francis in a makeup test for Lydia Bailey (1952)............... 104
Figure 8 George Chakiris (center) and the Sharks of West Side Story (1961)........................... 106
Figure 9 Ricardo Montalban and Esther Williams in On an Island with You (1948) ................ 107
Figure 10 Depictions of America Chavez in comics (2011 - 2021) and film (2022)................. 122
Figure 11 The Tarascan warrior figure at the center of North by Northwest (1959).................. 143
Figure 12 José Angel Gutiérrez, 1993. Photograph by Maureen Keating, Library of Congress.191
Figure 13 Screengrab from Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)................................ 194

iv
Abstract
This dissertation examines the representation and conception of Latinx identities within
speculative visual media, including film, television, and comics. Historically, Latinxs have often
been represented in speculative fiction as a more generalized idea: the universal pan-Latino.
These depictions tend to erase the nuances of race, class, nationality, or language that
characterize the group in reality. However, I argue that modern networked communities and
communal knowledge have driven the desire for representations of Latinxs in speculative visual
media away from a notion of pan-Latinidad as the primary means of community-building in
media, and towards—what, at least, is perceived to be—more specific and authentic depictions
of Latinidad. Ultimately, I find that representations of Latinxs in speculative media reproduce
many of the same conflicts about Latinx identity in society more broadly. Though recreating
increasingly specific human identities may seem counterintuitive within the endless scope of the
speculative, in fact, being seen as a unique individual, rather than as a generic ethnic form, is its
own fantasy for many Latinxs.
Each chapter pairs a speculative concept with a similar myth or conception about Latinx
identity. In Chapter 1, I examine speculative absences of Latinxs, including mass disappearances,
invisibility, hauntings, and bodily concealment, as compared to the perceived visibility or
invisibility of Latinxs as a group. Chapter 2 loosely follows the concept of the shape-shifter, but
in this context, focuses specifically on how the idea of brownness became linked with—and
sometimes, used to define—Latinx identity. Chapter 3 deals with interruptions of time, as
represented through Mesoamerican and South American indigeneity, which is seen within the
white American imaginary as being simultaneously ancient, historical, and real, but also foreign,

v
exotic, and unfamiliar. Finally, Chapter 4 explores dualities, including hybridities and secret
identities, and, as it particularly relates to Latinidad, the notion of mestizaje.
For marginalized artists, the work of correcting the stereotypical and shallow
representations that have historically dominated visual media is often first done by using art to
document their reality. This dissertation traces the unexpected emergence of the speculative to
achieve similar political effects, including the use of speculative concepts within activism. In
speculative media, Latinxs have often been invoked as undesirable outsiders, mysterious others,
ancient indigenous wizards, malleable utopian hybrids, conflicted dual souls. By taking more
control of these imaginaries, Latinxs can shape not only their representation in media, but also
their own futures.

1
Introduction
“Imagination … has the capacity to extend us beyond the confines of our skin,
situation, and condition so we can choose our responses. It enables us to
reimagine our lives, rewrite the self, and create guiding myths for our times.”1
- Gloria Anzaldúa, Unnatural Bridges, Unsafe Spaces (2002)
For marginalized people, imagination is a powerful tool. Imagination can give people the
perspective to rationalize their situation, the will to believe in the possibility of a better life, the
motivation to achieve it. It can give them a temporary respite from the harsh realities of life, or a
blueprint for escaping them. It can cause them “to recognize and rethink the status quo by
depicting an alternate world,” or, by presenting the reality they take for granted in their own
world as unfamiliar, thereby “expose its constructedness.”2 In a modern world designed largely
to maintain the status quo of the powerful, imagination is free and it is boundless.
At the same time, imagination can also be damaging. Dwelling on fantasies of a promised
better life can negate one’s drive to make changes in their present, which only serves to maintain
existing power imbalances. In calling religion an “opium of the people,” Karl Marx suggested
that “the abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real
happiness.”3 By giving people the utopic promise of an eternal life—achieved through
obedience, piety, and regular tithing—they may be less critical of the struggles of their
comparatively short, earthbound life. Similarly, a fantasy like the American Dream promises
equal opportunities for all, yet most of American history has demonstrated the opposite, despite
the concept’s engrained status in the national ethos. Further, imaginary concepts can create and
1 Gloria Anzaldua, “(Un)Natural Bridges, (Un)Safe Spaces,” in This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions for
Transformation, ed. Gloria Anzaldua and AnaLouise Keating (New York: Routledge, 2002), 5. 2 Catherine S Ramirez, “Afrofuturism/Chicanafuturism: Fictive Kin,” Aztlan: A Journal of Chicano Studies 33, no. 1
(2008): 185–86. 3 Karl Marx and John C. Raines, Marx on Religion (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2002), 171.

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perpetuate damaging falsehoods when set in opposition to reality. Harmful stereotypes can
develop with especially unfettered effect when one has no living evidence to which to compare
them. These fantasies can be harnessed for political purposes, even when they likely would have
no direct effect on most people. For instance, in the late 2010s, the looming threat of Central
American migrant caravans, identified by conservative television commentators as “invading
horde[s]” or a “full-scale invasion,”4 often appear in media around election times, when
conservative xenophobic fervor most needs to be stoked. Though most of these conservative
voters will never encounter one of these migrants, the idea of them is a motivating factor for
anti-immigrant politicians to gain their support.
When the imaginary is presented as being distinct from the expectations of reality, it can
also be used to dismiss the agency of marginalized people. Michel-Rolph Trouillot identified this
practice particularly in his historiography of the Haitian Revolution, in which some historians
dismissed the significance of white French colonists believing that a revolt was “impossible.” As
he wrote: “When reality does not coincide with deeply held beliefs, human beings tend to phrase
interpretations that force reality within the scope of these beliefs. They devise formulas to
repress the unthinkable and to bring it back within the realm of accepted discourse.”5 For the
white colonists, and white historians, the idea of the Haitian Revolution itself was
“unthinkable”—so beyond the realm of possibility that they could not prepare for it. Of course,
as Trouillot points out, that lack of expectation was not merely something that was ultimately
proved wrong but was instead an essential component of the revolution that could be exploited.
4 David Folkenflik, “Tensions Rise At Fox News Over Coverage And Rhetoric Surrounding Migrant Caravan,”
NPR, October 30, 2018, sec. Media, https://www.npr.org/2018/10/30/662253600/tensions-rise-at-fox-news-overcoverage-and-rhetoric-surrounding-migrant-caravan. 5 Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past : Power and the Production of History, Silencing the Past (Boston:
Beacon Press, 2015), 72.

3
What is “unthinkable” for one group may be a core, unfailingly obvious part of existence for
another.
This dissertation takes the “speculative” as a concept, and situates it within the context of
Latinx identity, which I define as US-born or US-raised people of Latin American heritage.
While this pairing has developed into, a productive theoretical connection, it stems from the
more basic combination of my own interests and identity. In their introduction to Altermundos,
one of the formative texts of the still-nascent Latinx speculative field, Cathryn Josefina MerlaWatson and B.V. Olguín catalogue a compelling and overarching justification for the study of
the Latinx speculative, but also state, with somewhat cheeky simplicity, “We also simply like
speculative fiction.”6 This level of personal justification was similarly conclusive in my own
work. Inherent to that justification though, was the realization that many of the media with which
I was interested in contributing to a scholarly dialogue had only been discussed in the context of
their importance to “science fiction studies,” or “Latino studies,” but rarely both. Thus, it became
almost immediately apparent to me that this project would have to come from a perspective of
developing this important connection.
Scope
In this dissertation, I bring together film, television, and comics produced in the US as
speculative media that is both narrative and visual. As narrative visual media makers, artists must
establish a definitive representation of their imagined worlds, thus establishing shared, tangible
realities that exist outside of each spectator’s mind—as opposed to a novel, where written
6 Cathryn Josefina Merla-Watson and B.V. Olguín, “Introduction: Latin@futurism Ahora! Recovering, Remapping,
and Recentering the Chican@ and Latin@ Speculative Arts,” Aztlan: A Journal of Chicano Studies 40, no. 2 (2017):
1.

4
descriptions may be interpreted differently by different readers. The act of making these
definitive choices, particularly when it comes to depicting Latinidad, is something that I find
particularly analytically generative. Latinxs can’t be defined by physical appearance alone, yet,
within visual media, visual representation is inherently suggested. Usefully, this tension
reproduces many of the same conflicts about Latinx identity in society more broadly. Further,
because the mainstream American film, television, and comic industries have historically
functioned as highly collaborative yet hierarchical systems, they often replicate societal power
structures, and thereby establish similar experiences of creative marginalization for those
marginalized by society at large.7 At the same time, non-indexical visual medium like comics
might have the tools to, as Derek Parker Royal argues, “dismantle the assumptions that
problematize ethnic representation … by particularizing the general, thereby undermining any
attempts at subjective erasure through universalization.”8
My interpretations of both the speculative and of Latinx identity are very broad. For both,
I rely first on how the artist or performer defines themselves or otherwise engages with these
various genres and communities. However, because I also include audience interpretation as part
of my discussion, that sometimes means I engage with works that were not intended to be “read”
as Latinx speculative works but have since become absorbed within that scope by way of their
reception. As filmmaker Frances Negrón-Muntaner reminds us, Latinx media should be defined
“not so much [by] the ‘content’ of the conversation,” but rather by “our participation in the act of
dialogue itself. … It is not what is said but the rituals of enunciation that ultimately create the
7 Charles Hatfield, Alternative Comics An Emerging Literature, 1st ed. (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi,
2005), 17.
8 Derek Parker Royal, “Introduction: Coloring America: Multi-Ethnic Engagements with Graphic Narrative,”
MELUS 32, no. 3 (2007): 9.

5
effect of a common project.”9 Thus, at times this meaning will be generated by way of the
discussion about a media object itself.
Importantly, I aim not to taxonomize Latinx characters and stories, but rather to interpret
their significance in making meaning about Latinidad, which motivates part of this wide scope. I
include many imperfect, incomplete, and messy examples of Latinidad. While some authors have
deemed, for example, a character like America Chavez who was born in space (and thus could
not be “of Latin American descent”) as not being sufficiently Latina for the purposes of their
study, I need only look to the floors of Comic-Con and Disneyland, and to the many little girls
cosplaying as her, that, to them at least, she is unequivocally Latina, and thus worth talking
about.10 Further, Latinx audiences, like many marginalized identities, are exceptionally good at
researching and recognizing other Latinxs in media. Thus, many of these connections have been
established based on non-diegetic information, yet are still meaningful. I aim to focus less on
proving these characters to be Latinx, and more on why some people might see them as such.
Similarly, I approach the speculative from a broad position, and seek to err on the side of
including borderline works rather than dismissing them. Speculative fiction has largely, and
mostly inarguably, been associated with the literary genres of science fiction and fantasy, but I
also include works more closely aligned with genres like horror and alternate histories in my
discussion. The act of speculation is not about providing a definitive and conclusive vision itself,
but instead a process that emphasizes the action of thinking about and considering these
possibilities. As I discuss throughout this project, I see this mode as accessible both in fictional
9 Frances Negrón-Muntaner, “Not an Academic Subject: Latino Media Aesthetics,” in The Future of Latino
Independent Media: A NALIP Sourcebook, ed. Chon A. Noriega (Los Angeles: UCLA Chicano Studies Research
Center Press, 2000), 122.
10 Frederick Luis Aldama and Christopher González, Reel Latinxs: Representation in U.S. Film and TV (University
of Arizona Press, 2019), 103.

6
media, but also activism. For my purposes, I define the speculative as the act of envisioning
material changes to what we know of the world, its beings, or its timeline, and presenting these
possibilities with particular emphasis towards these differences. While many examples of the
speculative are invoked with the intention to call attention to issues in our own world, I also
acknowledge that many generic and medium traditions—particularly among pulp comics and B
movies—are primarily designed to connect these works with each other. In both cases though, I
see the speculative as the active process of asking “What if?” as its primary mode of
engagement, rather than making a didactic proclamation about these possibilities.
This dissertation broadly traces representations of Latinidad across two major poles. On
one end is the historical representation of Latinxs in visual media as a more generalized idea: the
universal pan-Latino. These depictions tend to erase the nuances of race, class, nationality, or
language that characterize the group, but are potentially able to speak to a broader grouping of
Latinxs. As Sarah Banet-Weiser notes about the animated television character Dora the Explorer:
“Dora is pan-Latino intentionally so that as a Latina she has a wide appeal.”11 In this sense,
Latinidad is conceived of as a large communal entity, usually distinct from other racial or ethnic
groupings. For Latinxs, communities can be established based on these more generic similarities
that nonetheless distinguish them from other segments of the population. At the same time, this
act of making Latinidad more general can reflect stereotypes—or disinterest, or ignorance—that
non-Latinxs hold about Latinxs by not distinguishing their intra-group differences. I center this
strategy as loosely characterizing an era of identity formation informed by in-person
connections, physical appearance, and a wider definition of community.
11 Sarah Banet-Weiser, “What’s Your Flava? Race and Postfeminism in Media Culture,” in Interrogating
Postfeminism: Gender and the Politics of Popular Culture, ed. Yvonne Tasker and Diane Negra (Durham, NC:
Duke University Press, 2007), 221.

7
The Internet has obviously shifted the world in many ways, but several specific changes
have affected how Latinidad has been represented, and perceived, in media. First, it has allowed
Latinxs to network digitally with other Latinxs, allowing connections to form based on
increasingly specific backgrounds. For instance, in certain settings, Latinxs may value the shared
physical presence of other Latinxs, even if they have different backgrounds. The Internet,
though, can allow greater access communities that are more specific to her own identity. As
Latinidad becomes enunciated more specifically online in this way, both for Latinxs themselves
but also people who interact with them, there has been a correlating expectation of this
specificity in media. Audiences have grown more savvy in recognizing generic representations
of pan-Latinidad, which has caused a shift among artists, as well as major studios and publishers,
into depicting more specific representations—though these are often still surface-level.
Furthermore, the proliferation of knowledge sharing websites, such as user-created wikis, has
made actors and artists’ ethnic and national backgrounds much more available to people.
Audiences can check IMDb to see if the screenwriter of a film about a Mexican-American teen
was ever a Mexican-American teen themselves. This ability to instantly verify the potential
authenticity of a project—based on this type of non-diegetic knowledge—has led to expectations
that the cast, crew, or creators of a media work will always match the heritage of the characters
and events depicted therein. This association can detract from the perceived authenticity of a
character if the identities do not match up, but has also made specific Latinx heritage something
that must be enunciated and, at times, performed.
In the 21st century, digitally connected publics have grown used to personalized
algorithms on streaming services and social media, AI assistants that suggest email responses in
the sender’s voice, and access to nearly any piece of information, at any time, that one might

8
desire. Though these systems do allow us to maintain contact with people across the globe, they
are also often set up primarily to cater to our individual values and expectations. For an identity
like Latinidad, which is already uncomfortably broad in most of its definitions, this desire for
individuality produces an observable tension when applied to new Latinx-focused media. This
tension is particularly exacerbated in the speculative, as these works may not necessarily uphold
specific elements within their worlds. By examining Latinx speculative media from both before
and after this digital divide, I argue that modern networked communities and increased
individualization have driven a desire for representations of Latinxs that seem more specific and
more authentic, moving away from a notion of generic pan-Latinidad as the primary means of
community-building in media. Though recreating increasingly specific human identities may
seem counterintuitive within the endless scope of the speculative, in fact, being seen as a unique
individual, rather than as a generic ethnic form, is its own fantasy for many Latinxs.
Each chapter pairs a speculative concept with a similar myth or conception about Latinx
identity. In Chapter 1, I examine speculative absences of Latinxs, including mass disappearances,
invisibility, hauntings, and bodily concealment, as compared to the perceived visibility or
invisibility of Latinxs as a group. Within the seeming binary of “absent” or “present,” most of
these absences conceive of a more generalized Latinx identity, often as a direct and equally
broad response to racist and xenophobic anti-Latinx sentiments. These absences also inherently
engage with the issue of underrepresentation in media, a recurrent pattern over the history of film
and television that has taught some Latinx viewers to identify Latinidad in non-traditional, nondiegetic terms. This chapter examines the films Why Cybraceros? (1997), A Day Without a
Mexican (short, 1998), A Day Without a Mexican (feature, 2004), Sleep Dealer (2008), and Coco
(2017), and the streaming series The Mandalorian (2019 - ).

9
Chapter 2 loosely follows the concept of the shapeshifter, but in this context focuses on
how the idea of brownness became linked with—and sometimes, used to define—Latinx
identity. Brownness has sometimes been valorized by seemingly liberal thinkers as a teleological
end goal of human progression, achieved through racial mixture, yet, simultaneously, brown
people today often face discrimination and harassment. Within this contradiction lies the
transitive properties of brownness: sometimes, it can be invoked in opposition of our own visual
evidence—such as when audiences are meant to read white actors as “brown” characters—but its
visuality can also be used to stand-in indiscriminately for a wide variety of brown populations of
varying races and ethnicities. In speculative media, brownness is often used to denote otherness.
In some recent media, this reliance on brownness, alone, to represent Latinidad has somewhat
waned, and providing more variety in the appearance of Latinxs, including more representation
of Black Latinxs, has begun to be considered more specifically. This chapter interrogates the
function of brownness in the television series Star Trek (1966 -1969) and Game of Thrones
(2011 - 2019, the films Aliens (1986), Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), and Star Wars:
Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002), and the character of America Chavez in both comics
and film.6
Chapter 3 deals with interruptions of time, as represented through Mesoamerican and
South American indigeneity. Mesoamerican indigeneity occupies a distinct position within the
white American imaginary, being simultaneously ancient, historical, and real, but also foreign,
exotic, and unfamiliar. These cultures thus become frequent tropes in speculative fiction, as they
can provide historical grounding for more fantastical works, but also used to explain fantastical
occurrences due to their perceived mystery. These cultures have often appeared indiscriminately
mixed together, even with completely fictional elements, though artists have also emphasized the

10
extent of their historical research. More recently, efforts have shown demonstrated shifts towards
the depiction of specific cultures, rather than mixtures, though many films still repeat these
broader mistakes. This chapter analyzes indigeneity and interruptions of time in the films North
by Northwest (1959), Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977), From Dusk Til Dawn (1996),
The Road to El Dorado (2000), Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003),
The Fountain (2006), Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011), Freaky (2020),
Jungle Cruise (2021), and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022), and the graphic novel series
Tales of the Feathered Serpent (2020).
Finally, Chapter 4 explores concepts of “two-ness,” including dualities, hybridities, and
secret identities, and the notion of mestizaje, which is particularly related to Latinidad. Mestizaje
situates Latinidad as an in-between-ness, usually conceived of as the mixture of Spanish and
indigenous heritage, but defining Latinidad by this notion of duality situates it within a colonial
framework that privileges the mixture over the individual components that make it up. Aligning
Latinx characters within this duality—especially by giving them secret identities, causing
conflict between their “two halves”—reinforces these notions. The recently popular concept of
the multiverse in films and comics expands these either/or scenarios into infinite possibilities,
which can still emphasize internal conflicts, but may focus more on the individual sources—
sometimes more than two—that are causing the sense of division. This chapter analyzes the film
The Mask of Zorro (1998), the television series Roswell (1999 - 2002) and its reboot Roswell,
New Mexico (2019 - 2022), the comic series La mano del destino (2021), and multiple
transmedia iterations of the characters Superman and Spider-Man, ending with a discussion of
hybrid cosplay.

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To be able to dream about tomorrow, one first must believe that tomorrow could exist.
For marginalized artists, the work of correcting the stereotypical and shallow representations that
have historically dominated visual media is often first done by using art to document their
reality. For people who may not view you as a unique fellow human, showing them the quotidian
aspects of your life, and the struggles you face, is a universalizing, humanizing approach. The
ability—or desire—to depict more fanciful worlds in art has often necessarily comes after this
correction. Speculative fictions work most effectively when they can be distinguished from their
realities. Stemming from decades of this type of documentary, realist spirit, Latinx speculative
fiction often draws on presenting solutions to or escapes from real-life issues. Importantly, this
type of “speculative imaginary deeply intertwines sociopolitical and historical oppressive
experiences and engenders a unique typology of speculative productions that emerge from the
margins for the margins.”12 This marriage of the speculative with the political guides this project
and demonstrates that the speculative not only has power over fictional representation, but also
reality. In speculative media, Latinxs have often been invoked to represent undesirable outsiders,
mysterious others, ancient indigenous wizards, malleable utopian hybrids, and conflicted dual
souls. By taking more control of these imaginaries, Latinxs can shape not only their
representation in media, but also their own futures.
Literature Review
In a 1947 essay, the influential science-fiction author Robert A. Heinlein—who wrote,
among many other works, the first science fiction novel to make the New York Times Book
Review bestseller list, Stranger in a Strange Land (1961)—distinguished between the various
12 William A. Calvo-Quirós, “The Emancipatory Power of the Imaginary: Defining Chican@ Speculative
Productions,” Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies 41, no. 1 (March 15, 2016): 40.

12
types of science fiction narratives and frameworks as a guide for prospective science fiction
writers. Among these narratives he included “the gadget story” and the “boy meets girl” story,
but one approach that he noted was indeed “honest-to-goodness science fiction,” yet often not
treated as such, is what he called “speculative fiction.” Heinlein defined speculative fiction,
conversationally, as stories that embody “the notion ‘Just suppose—’ or ‘What would happen
if—’.”13 More specifically, he noted that, in these stories, “accepted science and established facts
are extrapolated to produce a new situation, a new framework for human action. … The story is
not about the new situation; it is about coping with problems arising out of the new situation.”14
In opposition to the purely sci-fi gadget story, which focuses on describing new technologies,
and the sci-fi boy meets girl story, which centers character drama within a new setting, for
Heinlein, speculative stories are defined by their combination: of how characters relate to and are
challenged by science, technology, and the changing world around them.
The intent of Heinlein’s original definition was to establish “speculative fiction” as,
essentially, science fiction that could still function within the boundaries of the contemporary
world. He specifically did not include works of fantasy that “violate[d] established scientific
fact” and “laws of nature.”15 However, the definition of speculative fiction has today expanded
beyond the specifics of the science fiction literary genre and into broader contexts. In many
cases, much broader: for instance, Darko Suvin defined the speculative as “an imaginative
frame-work alternative to the author’s empirical environment,”16 Similarly, R.B. Gill has defined
it as “works presenting modes of being that contrast with their audiences’ understanding of
13 Robert A. Heinlein, “On the Writing of Speculative Fiction,” in Science Fiction Criticism: An Anthology of
Essential Writings, ed. Rob Latham (1947; repr., London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2017), 19. 14 Heinlein, 19. 15 Robert A. Heinlein and Virginia Heinlein, Grumbles from the Grave, 1st ed. (New York: Ballantine Books, 1989). 16 Darko Suvin, Metamorphoses of Science Fiction : On the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre, Ralahine
Utopian Studies, Volume 18 (Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang, 2016), 6.

13
ordinary reality.”17 Though these definitions encapsulate most traditional readings of speculative
(or science, or fantasy) fiction, they could also apply to many works that are not intended to be in
dialogue with speculative fiction. For instance, in Janice A. Radway’s study of female romance
novel readers, she observed that “romance permits its reader the experience of feeling cared for
and the sense of having been reconstituted affectively, even if both are lived only vicariously.”18
Part of the pleasure in reading romance, for them, was the ability to escape into “an imaginative
frame-work” that contrasts with their “ordinary reality.” Of course, romance novels are not
typically included in considerations of speculative fiction, because they usually do not include
these other ineffable yet essential elements of speculative fiction—space or time travel, new
technologies, futuristic settings, magical creatures, and so on. The futility in finding this
perfectly balanced definition—exclusive enough to distinguish speculative fiction from all other
genres, yet broad enough to include all works considered to be part of this dialogue—caused
John Rieder, in his text on colonialism and science fiction, to make the “theoretically informed
decision” to “not … define science fiction,”19 pointing to Paul Kincaid’s similar conclusion that
“science fiction is not one thing,” but rather, “whatever we are looking for when we look for
science fiction.”20 This challenge of inclusivity/exclusivity is present in many attempts of
categorization—including identity—but the attempt itself can often prove a valuable tool in
enunciating patterns and frameworks.
For the purposes of this dissertation, in keeping with Suvin and Gill’s broader
approaches, I work with a fairly loose definition of the speculative, still largely identifying
17 R B Gill, “The Uses of Genre and the Classification of Speculative Fiction,” Mosaic: A Journal for the
Interdisciplinary Study of Literature 46, no. 2 (2013): 73, https://doi.org/10.1353/mos.2013.0021. 18 Janice A. Radway, Reading the Romance Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature, 2nd ed. (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1991), 97.
19 John Rieder, Colonialism and the Emergence of Science Fiction, The Wesleyan Early Classics of Science Fiction
Series (Middletown, Conn: Wesleyan University Press, 2008), 16.
20 Paul Kincaid, “On the Origins of Genre,” Extrapolation 44 (2003): 416.

14
speculative works by feeling, by way of their various science fiction and fantastical elements.
Luckily, these generic conventions have been particularly codified within the visual media that I
study here, including film, television, and comics, which perhaps makes the boundaries less
controversial. That being said, the canonical Latinx speculative media universe—speculative
media works with some conceivable tie to Latinidad, through character, content, or creator—is
still relatively small, particularly within American media. This lack of traditional objects has
caused scholars like Emily A. Maguire to advocate for the reassessment of works that might “not
correspond to limited notions of what constitutes science fiction writing (or what constitutes
Latino/a literature!)”21 Within Latinx science fiction studies, the act of recovering works not
traditionally considered part of the genre is a process that Rachel Haywood Ferreira has termed
“retrolabeling.”22 As the forebear of this retrolabeling tradition, Catherine S. Ramírez coined the
afrofuturist-inspired term “Chicanafuturism” in order to discuss Marion C. Martinez’s religious
sculptures, which had not previously been considered under these futurist terms.
23 Ramírez’s
article is oft-cited as the formal emergence of Chicano speculative studies. Other significant
works that have contributed to this spirit of retrolabeling include Ramírez’s re-evaluation Luis
Valdez’s 1967 play Los Vendidos,
24 Susana Ramírez’s look at the literary works of Gloria
Anzaldúa,25 Christine List’s approach to the films of Cheech Marin,26 and Shelley Streeby’s
21 Emily A. Maguire, “Science Fiction,” in The Routledge Companion to Latino/a Literature, ed. Suzanne Bost and
Frances R. Aparicio (Routledge, 2012), 352.
22 Rachel Haywood Ferreira, “Back to the Future: The Expanding Field of Latin-American Science Fiction,”
Hispania 91, no. 2 (2008): 354. 23 Catherine S. Ramirez, “Deus Ex Machina: Tradition, Technology, and the Chicanafuturist Art of Marion C.
Martinez,” Aztlan: A Journal of Chicano Studies 29, no. 2 (2004). 24 Ramirez, “Afrofuturism/Chicanafuturism.” 25 Susana Ramirez, “Recovering Gloria Anzaldua’s Sci-Fi Roots.(Nepantler@ Visions in the Unpublished and
Published Speculative Precusors to Borderlands),” AZTLAN - A Journal of Chicano Studies 40, no. 2 (2015): 203–
19.
26 Christine List, Chicano Images: Refiguring Ethnicity in Mainstream Film, Routledge Library Editions: Cinema ;
Volume 16 (London: Routledge, 2014).

15
work on Jaime Hernandez’s comics.27 Though there is now sufficient material to undertake a
comprehensive analysis of Latinx speculative media along fairly traditional metrics, this spirit of
flexibility and redefinition in Latinx scholarship—in terms of both the genre and of Latinidad
itself—remains an important motivating influence.
In many ways, Latinidad itself is an imaginary. There are certainly elements of
experience that many Latinxs share but, like trying to define “speculative fiction,” few
inarguably essential components beyond Latin American heritage.28 In Benedict Anderson’s
explanation of the nation as an “imagined political community,” he noted that his choice of the
word “imagined” stemmed from the fact that “the members of even the smallest nation will
never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of
each lives the image of their communion.”29 Cristina Beltrán defines Latinidad as the
“sociohistorical process whereby various Latin American national-origin groups are understood
as sharing a sense of collective identity and cultural consciousness.”30 Thus, to consider oneself
Latinx, one must feel some sense of communion with this incredibly diverse group, the definition
of which has sometimes historically changed depending on who is using it and for what purpose.
Alternately, and perhaps more easily, non-Latinxs must also recognize this communion in some
way in order to use the term as a general address, though they may not recognize the distinctions
within the group as readily. Though “the mass media, entertainment, and advertising industries
have increasingly addressed this large population as if it were a coherent community,”31 scholars
27 Shelley Streeby, “Reading Jaime Hernandez’s Comics as Speculative Fiction,” AZTLAN - A Journal of Chicano
Studies 40, no. 2 (2015): 147–66. 28 The concept of “Latin American heritage” can, of course, also be argued. 29 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities : Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Rev. ed.
(1986; repr., London ; Verso, 2006), 6.
30 Cristina Beltrán, The Trouble with Unity : Latino Politics and the Creation of Identity (New York, New York:
Oxford University Press, 2010), 4.
31 Daniel Mato, “Problems in the Making of Representations of All-Encompassing U.S. Latino-’Latin’ American
Transnational Identities,” Latino Review of Books 3, no. 1–2 (1997): 2.

16
and the public alike have problematized “Latinx” (but also its alternatives) as an allencompassing term, questioning to whom this mass categorization is most useful. For instance,
Arlene M. Dávila has pointed towards the Hispanic marketing industry as a “self-identified arena
of Latino self-representation” that has pushed the conception of a pan-Latinidad in the United
States for, largely, corporate interests.32 By both establishing and then addressing this “niche for
the ‘generic’ Latino,”33 these marketing efforts can reach a much larger audience than by
addressing each smaller group alone.
Despite ongoing and contentious debates about the preferred terminology about the panethnic term itself (between Latinx, Latine, Latino, and so on), when asked to describe their own
identity, a majority of surveyed Latinxs simply used the term for their ancestors’ origin (e.g.,
Mexican, Cuban, Salvadoran), rather than one of these broader terms.34 This movement away
from the pan-ethnic and towards the experience of the individual has also been emphasized on
social media, including the work of Afro-Indigenous scholar Alan Pelaez Lopez, who created the
hashtag “#LatinidadIsCancelled” in 2018 to reflect their dissatisfaction with anti-Blackness and
anti-Indigenous elements inherent to this pan-ethnic conception. Indeed, the imaginary nature
inherent to this broad of a term often serves to erase the lived, and often shared, experiences of
Latinxs, particularly those who are marginalized by way of other factors, including race,
indigeneity, gender, sexuality, class, disability, language, and/or immigration status. The
ramifications of living as a Black- or brown-skinned person in the United States have
demonstrably real effects, yet these experiences are not reliably communicated by the term
32 Arlene M. Dávila, Latinos, Inc. the Marketing and Making of a People, Updated ed. (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2012), 2.
33 Linda Martín Alcoff, Visible Identities Race, Gender, and the Self, Studies in Feminist Philosophy (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2006), 233.
34 Mark Hugo Lopez, “Hispanic Identity,” Pew Research Center’s Hispanic Trends Project (blog), October 22,
2013, https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2013/10/22/3-hispanic-identity/.

17
“Latinx” alone. Further, without other factors to define Latinidad, the overreliance on defining
this status by one’s nationality, or the nationalities of one’s ancestors, means that all the internal
identity frameworks that existed within that country—of race, indigeneity, and class—are
suddenly collapsed into a singular, much less meaningful adjective that describes nationality
alone.
Still, the pan-Latino identity has centuries-old roots in Latin America, so there remains
some value in studying the ethnicity as a whole, at least historically. Linda Martín Alcoff notes
that Venezuelan revolutionary leader Simon Bolivar sought to unite and name Latin Americans
as “a strategy of anticolonialism.”35 In fighting for their independence from Spain, each of these
what-would-become nations conceivably had the same fight. Conceptually united, they could be
stronger. This strategy has obvious parallels in today’s society, where, because of assumptions
built off centuries of imprecise ideas about race in the United States, many Latinxs may be
treated similarly by outsiders, despite their actual differences. Marta Caminero-Santangelo
suggests that the concept of Latinidad “allows us to express, to ourselves and to others, our
commitment to attending to the historical and present differences among Latinos.”36
While flattening the many identities that make up Latinidad is harmful, it, nonetheless
occurs. As such, it is important to study this element of how ethnic identities are received, even if
this reception is admittedly imperfect. Chon Noriega and Ana M. Lopez have noted that the
category of “Latino media” created an organizing factor that could be used to foreground Latinxmade films, while also simultaneously segregating them from “mainstream” films.
37 For studios
35 Alcoff, Visible Identities Race, Gender, and the Self, 233. 36 Marta Caminero-Santangelo, On Latinidad : U.S. Latino Literature and the Construction of Ethnicity (Gainesville:
University Press of Florida, 2007), 219.
37 Chon Noriega and Ana López, eds., The Ethnic Eye: Latino Media Arts, NED-New edition (University of
Minnesota Press, 1996), xii, https://doi.org/10.5749/j.ctttt23g.

18
financing these works, more generally “Latino”-focused films and other media would seem to
appeal to larger groups, and thus be a safer investment. However, in more recent years,
audiences are driving increased demand for less generic, and more specific representations of
Latinidad. That these changes are still being debated, and not yet settled upon, provides evidence
for Merla-Watson and Olguín’s assessment that “the possibilities for theorizing Latinidades are
again boundless and endless.”38 Cristina Beltrán further suggests approaching Latinidad “as a
site of ongoing resignifiability—as a political rather than merely descriptive category.”39
Media has played an important role in Latinx identity formation and community building
in the United States, and this project engages with both early and emerging traditions of Latinx
media scholarship. In the early 20th century, Spanish language print media “laid the foundation of
an imagined Latina/o community,” conceptually connecting readers across their city with other
Spanish speakers.40 Early Mexican silent film stars, including Ramon Novarro and Dolores del
Rio, found mainstream success in Hollywood, but as American racial formations about nonBlack Latinos shifted, their fellow Latino audiences increasingly found themselves increasingly
relegated to segregated theaters.41 Many studios also assumed that Spanish language films would
satisfy the cinematic needs of the (assumed) Spanish-speaking Latino audiences in the United
States, so few films were made specifically for Latino audiences beyond shifting the language.
Early Latino criticism of films often focused on binaries of good and bad representation, such as
38 Cathryn Josefina Merla-Watson and B. V. Olguín, eds., Altermundos : Latin@ Speculative Literature, Film, and
Popular Culture, Aztlán Anthology Series ; Volume 4 (Los Angeles: UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Press,
2017), 1.
39 Beltrán, The Trouble with Unity : Latino Politics and the Creation of Identity, 9. 40 Manuel G. Avilés-Santiago, “Latina/Os in Media: Representation, Production, and Consumption,” in Oxford
Research Encyclopedia of Literature, by Manuel G. Avilés-Santiago (Oxford University Press, 2019), 2,
https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.013.389.
41 José M. Alamillo, Making Lemonade out of Lemons : Mexican American Labor and Leisure in a California Town,
1880-1960, Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Centennial Series (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006); Laura
Isabel Serna, “Latinos in Film” (Oxford University Press, March 2017),
https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.363.

19
positioning Dolores del Rio as the aspirational sophisticate Mexicana and Lupe Velez as the
embarrassing stereotype. Later feminist analyses by scholars like Alicia I. Rodríquez-Estrada and
Clara E. Rodriguez identified these patterns in criticism—largely written by Latino men—which
also represented an important shift in intersectional feminist scholarship.42
In the ensuing years, limited, often stereotypical media representation, especially in the
dominant Hollywood studio system, drew protest—and further community building. Several
notable instances of 1960s and 1970s-era Chicano activism were centered specifically against
these negative representations in media, and Chon Noriega’s examinations of media activism in
this period are particularly fundamental for this study. In one protest, scholars, filmmakers, and
activists including José Luis Ruiz, Armando Navarro, Carlos Beltran, and Jesus Salvador
Treviño led a press conference and protest of the film Boulevard Nights (1979), which centered
on street gangs in East Los Angeles. At the premiere, Chicano activists marched with signs with
slogans like “Blvd Nights exploits, damages, stereotypes us” and “Stop Hollywood from
perpetuating Mexican stereotypes.”43 The rhetoric invoked in this protest reinforced, first, the
notion that representations of Chicanos as gang members, especially when produced for mass
non-Latinx audiences, were undesirable and potentially harmful to Chicanos as a whole.
Secondly, these protests positioned white-led Hollywood as the ultimate arbiter of bad Chicano
representation. Reductively, for Chicano filmmakers, progressing in their career meant they
could either work within the Hollywood system, with more exposure but potentially contributing
to these stereotypes, or work outside of it, in independent productions that were less negotiated
42 Alicia I. Rodríquez-Estrada, “Dolores Del Rio and Lupe Velez: Images On and Off the Screen, 1925-1944,” in
Writing the Range: Race, Class, and Culture in the Women’s West, ed. Elizabeth Jameson and Susan Hodge
Armitage (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997); Clara E. Rodriguez, Heroes, Lovers, and Others:
The Story of Latinos in Hollywood (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); Clara E. Rodriguez, “Dolores Del Rio
and Lupe Velez: Working in Hollywood, 1924-1944,” Norteamerica 6, no. 1 (2011): 69–91.. 43 “‘Boulevard Nights’ Premiere Protest,” March 23, 1979. Los Angeles Herald Examiner Photo Collection. Los
Angeles Public Library. https://tessa2.lapl.org/digital/collection/photos/id/28151.

20
but also less seen. Though Noriega notes the actual fluidity between these categories in practice,
he broadly characterizes these positions as “Mexican-American reformism,” which tends to work
inside the system, and “Chicano radicalism,” which works outside of the system.44 The
distinction between these two choices has similarly characterized much of the literature on this
era in Chicano and Latinx Studies, particularly in the 1990s and 2000s, and the effects can still
be seen today in both produced media and scholarship.
45
Though the choice between media assimilation and separatism animated many of these
protests and filmmakers, their position as a binary became increasingly unclear. Jesus Salvador
Treviño, one of the Boulevard Nights protest leaders and a UCLA Ethnocommuncations-trained
filmmaker, ultimately found a long and productive career through directing science fiction
television that largely did not engage explicitly with Chicano themes. Noriega names Treviño as
a “realistic radical,” or one who “takes the world as is and works within the system for social
change,” based on Treviño’s own descriptions of his approach to his work.46 Other Chicano
filmmakers also aspired towards making their cinema an alternative to Hollywood, both in the
sense of making “something different from Hollywood, yet something that also aspired to take
its place.”47 In the 1980s and 1990s, Chicano-focused movies found some of this mainstream
success, as major Hollywood studios produced and released films like Born in East L.A. (1987),
La Bamba (1987), The Milagro Beanfield War (1988), Stand and Deliver (1988), American Me
(1992), Mi Familia (1995), and Selena (1997). For the Chicano filmmakers who had made (some
44 Chon A. Noriega, Shot in America : Television, the State, and the Rise of Chicano Cinema (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 2000), xxvii. 45 Noriega and López, The Ethnic Eye: Latino Media Arts; Charles Ramírez Berg, Latino Images in Film
Stereotypes, Subversion, Resistance (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2002); Randy Ontiveros, “No Golden
Age: Television News and the Chicano Civil Rights Movement,” American Quarterly 62, no. 4 (December 2010):
897–923, https://doi.org/10.1353/aq.2010.a409344. 46 Noriega, Shot in America : Television, the State, and the Rise of Chicano Cinema, 134. 47 Noriega, Shot in America : Television, the State, and the Rise of Chicano Cinema, 164.

21
of) these films, we can imagine that they “had escaped the "cinema barrio" of their alternative
production companies and entered the mainstream, bringing positive, yet popular images with
them.”48 Though these examples of mainstream success made Latinos a greater part of national
popular culture, the films sometimes still represented negative stereotypes about Latinos, or, in
their universalization, seemed explicitly designed for non-Latinx consumption. Still, despite
these valid critiques, they may be remembered with nostalgic familiarity for Latinx audiences
today, in part because these audiences had so few movies from which to choose. Furthermore,
the supposed gulf between the middle-class liberal notion of mainstream success and the more
radical conception of independence was also skewered by artists like Harry Gamboa. As Noriega
characterizes, Gamboa pointed out that ultimately “both camps sought the same goal: access to
and success in the American film and television industry,” despite the vast ideological
differences between these desires. 49
Since then, the media landscape has expanded in some ways for Latinxs but regressed in
others. While traditional theatrical film releases and live television broadcasts are typically
designed to appeal as the singular finite choice of an individual viewer’s time— the purchase of
a movie ticket, choice of a DVD to rent, or selection a TV channel—the new influx of streaming
services instead courted viewers by the number of possible choices they offer. Since these
services do not charge for each individual movie or show, their success is predicated not on the
reaction to any single piece of media, but rather only if their audiences see the value in
continuing to subscribe. For streaming services, such as Netflix, who base their market value on
their number of subscribers, the need to constantly increase their subscriber base has also led to a
48 Chon A. Noriega, “Chicano Cinema and the Horizon of Expectations: A Discursive Analysis of Film Reviews in
the Mainstream, Alternative and Hispanic Press, 1987-1988,” Aztlán 19, no. 2 (1988): 1–32. 49 Noriega, Shot in America : Television, the State, and the Rise of Chicano Cinema, 200.

22
constant calculation of how to appeal to underserved (and as yet unsubscribed) audiences, which
has recently often included minority and international viewers.
50 After widespread protests
against racial injustice in 2020, many Hollywood studios and streaming services responded to
with further increased commitments to diversity. As such, representations of minorities “skyrocketed” in 2020, including an increase of Latinx characters from 4.6% to 5.7% of total
characters, in part due to the exacerbation of the COVID pandemic necessitating the inclusion of
streaming services in these media reports.51 However, these changes still lagged behind actual
Latinx demographics, with a population share of about 19% in 2020, and comparing data across
the past 15 years shows little sustained improvement outside of 2020.
52 As evidenced anecdotally
by Netflix’s One Day at a Time (2017 - 2019, 2020 - 2021), a reboot that centered a Cuban
family, the show earned fairly widespread critical praise, but was cancelled in 2019. The show
was then picked up by linear network Pop TV in 2020, and then cancelled again in 2021. While
it is not entirely fair to characterize an entire ethnicity’s media success on the lifespan of a single
television show—and of course, no show should be expected to run forever—the reality is that
while there are still so few examples of shows with Latinx characters, they necessarily take on
this significance.
Though the science fiction and fantasy genres offer potential for real-world inspiration
and influence, they have also been critiqued for their escapist and childish elements. As the
50 Olivia Khoo. “Picturing Diversity: Netflix’s Inclusion Strategy and the Netflix Recommender Algorithm (NRA).”
Television & New Media 24, no. 3 (2023): 281–97. https://doi.org/10.1177/15274764221102864. 51 Darnell Hunt and Ana-Christina Ramón, "Hollywood Diversity Report 2021: Pandemic in Progress" (Los
Angeles: UCLA Division of Social Sciences, 2021), https://socialsciences.ucla.edu/wpcontent/uploads/2021/04/UCLA-Hollywood-Diversity-Report-2021-Film-4-22-2021.pdf. 52 Dr Stacy L Smith, Marc Choueiti, and Dr Katherine Pieper, “Inequality in 1,300 Popular Films: Examining
Portrayals of Gender, Race/Ethnicity, LGBTQ & Disability from 2007 to 2019,” 2020, 42; Stacy L. Smith,
Katherine Pieper, and Sam Wheeler, “Inequality in 1,600 Popular Films:,” USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative (Los
Angeles: University of Southern California, August 2023), https://assets.uscannenberg.org/docs/aii-inequality-in1600-popular-films-20230811.pdf.

23
genres coalesced in early 20th century literature, some prominent critics saw these fantastic
narratives as being set in potentially harmful opposition to literary alternatives that more
obviously engaged with the issues of the real world. The audiences of these escapist works were
seen as people “who [seek] diversion from reality,” often equating them to children. 53 For
instance, in 1956 Edmund Wilson dismissed J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring (1954)
as “a children’s book which has somehow got out of hand.”54 Similarly, John Crowe Ransom,
who coined this usage of the term “escapism,” noted that the impulse stemmed from a
combination of “illusionism, anesthetic, and pathological infantilism.”55 Though it is difficult to
substantively compare these early critiques of the genre to more recent critiques of today’s
Marvel superhero movies—heavily corporatized speculative works that have dominated global
film throughout the 2010s and early 2020s—they retain similar rhetoric despite these different
contexts. For instance, actor Seth Rogen has stated that he does not watch Marvel films because
they are “geared toward kids,” and director Martin Scorsese infamously stated that superhero
franchises were “not cinema” and more akin to “theme parks.”56 Though both of these
filmmakers were referring more to the mega-conglomerate, anti-auteur franchises—which have,
certainly, been made to appeal to all ages and to rely on bombastic spectacle over emotional or
psychological resonance—than the speculative genre as a whole, they do echo the earlier
critiques. Further, while some publics may feel the need to defend these works’ serious, non53 Larry Konzack, “Escapism.” In The Routledge Companion to Imaginary Worlds, edited by Mark J. P. Wolf, 246-
255. Routledge Companions. New York London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2018, 246. 54 Edmund Wilson, “Oo, Those Awful Orcs!” The Nation, April 14, 1956. Reprinted by JRRVF.
https://jrrvf.com/sda/critiques/The_Nation.html.
55 Konzack, 246. 56 Sharf, Zack. “Seth Rogen Says Marvel Movies Are ‘Geared Toward’ Kids: They’re ‘Just Not For Me,’ an Adult
with No Children.” Variety (blog), February 2, 2023. https://variety.com/2023/film/news/seth-rogen-marvel-movieskids-1235510712/; Bell, BreAnna. “Martin Scorsese Compares Marvel Movies to Theme Parks: ‘That’s Not
Cinema.’” Variety (blog), October 5, 2019. https://variety.com/2019/film/news/martin-scorsese-marvel-themeparks-1203360075/.

24
escapist elements, many audiences, especially today, also proudly consume these works as a
method of mindless, apolitical escapism. One popular meme, deployed frequently against critics
who engage in any substantive analysis, depicts a man pinching another man’s mouth shut, while
saying, “Shhh, let people enjoy things.”57
Not all media have explicitly political aims, but media can be used as both a metric and a
method of change. Additionally, the more general notion of the speculative has also been used to
motivate direct activism. If, as R.B. Gill defines, the speculative deals with “matters that in the
normal course of things could not be,”58 then one major benefit of speculative media for
activism is that artists can depict these imaginative fictional worlds that “could not be,” and then
ask—why not? By presenting these fantastical realms, our own societal and cultural limitations
can become clearer. Indeed, the speculative is often used to evaluate sensitive issues that
audiences might not accept, or even recognize, in a more true-to-life form. Frederic Jameson has
noted science fiction’s ability to allow audiences the contextual perspective to identify “the
present as history,”59 letting them recognize existing cultural structures that are more easily
identified at distance. As such, speculative genres can be particularly useful for marginalized
groups to interrogate their own social roles, as well as to communicate otherwise uncomfortable
messages to those in power.
The speculative can also productively motivate real-life activism. As Arjun Appadurai
has noted, “the imagination, especially when collective, can become the fuel for action.”60 In
57 Ellis, Adam. “Shhh.” Web Cartoon. Books of Adam, February 3, 2016.
https://www.facebook.com/booksofadam/photos/a.160195804031634/1107530019298203/?type=3&theater.
58 Gill, “The Uses of Genre and the Classification of Speculative Fiction,” 72. 59 Fredric. Jameson, Archaeologies of the Future : The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions (London:
Verso, 2005), 152.
60 Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large : Cultural Dimensions of Globalization, Public Worlds ; v. 1 (Minneapolis,
Minn: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 19.

25
particular, the speculative can valuably illustrate these collective ideas and dreams about possible
futures to work towards, rather than just opposing some aspect of a current system. As Walidah
Imarisha writes in her introduction to Octavia’s Brood (2015), a collection of short speculative
stories focused on social justice: “All organizing is science fiction … Whenever we try to
envision a world without war, without violence, without prisons, without capitalism, we are
engaging in science fiction.”61 Co-author adrienne maree brown echoed this notion in a later
roundtable, saying that “our work [as author-activists] is to make the unimaginable feel
tangible.”62 To these author-activists, activism requires imagination—not only to even identify
the future for which to hope, but also to make its eventual achievement seem possible. These
expressions work within the system of what Gianpaolo Baoicchi, et al., define as the “civic
imagination,” or “the ways in which people individually and collectively envision between
political, social, and civic environments.63 Civic imagination can be invoked by individual
activists and groups, but also by government proposal. These imagined futures may also be
received in unintended ways. While Latinos for Trump co-founder Marco Gutierrez intended the
vision of a “taco truck on every corner”64 to be an ominous threat of Mexican dominance in the
United States, to many others, including the eventual founders of the taco truck-based voter
registration drive, Guac the Vote, his imaginative proposal was near-utopic and worth pursuing.
The speculative can also be used as a more simplistic motivator, even without promising
a specific vision. As Curtis Marez has argued, “Cesar Chavez's famous slogan—sí se puede / it
61 Walidah Imarisha, adrienne maree brown, and Sheree Renee Thomas, Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories
from Social Justice Movements (Edinburgh: AK Press, 2015), 10. 62 Walidah Imarisha et al., “The Fictions and Futures of Transformative Justice,” The New Inquiry (blog), April 20,
2017, https://thenewinquiry.com/the-fictions-and-futures-of-transformative-justice/. 63 Gianpaolo Baiocchi et al., The Civic Imagination : Making a Difference in American Political Life (Boulder, CO:
Paradigm Publishers, 2014), 55.
64 Mathew Rodriguez, “Latino Donald Trump Supporter Says More Mexicans Means a Taco Truck on Every
Corner,” Mic, September 2, 2016, https://www.mic.com/articles/153367/latino-donald-trump-supporter-says-moremexicans-means-a-taco-truck-on-every-corner.

26
can be done— encapsulates the ‘speculative,’ alternative worldbuilding qualities of the farm
worker movement.”65 Though Chavez’s slogan is often translated into English as “Yes, we can,”
its original Spanish emphasizes a more speculative concept. Rather than centering an active
subject who is fated to complete the action (“we”), the Spanish phrasing instead merely states
that the unspoken “it” object—the task, the goal, the future—is indeed possible. The power of
this simple phrasing lies in this undefined “it,” the unnamed thing that can be done, which can
now represent anything. The phrase thus serves as a fitting response to the denial of that
imagined world that “could not be;” “sí se puede” counters that, yes, it could.
As with all studies that center the power of the speculative to racially marginalized
people, the field of Afrofuturism has been influential on my work and on many of the other
sources with which I engage here. Mark Dery first coined the term “Afrofuturism” in 1993, in his
introduction to a collection of interviews with Black science fiction authors, having recognized
the seemingly obvious allegorical parallels between common science fiction tropes and the
American Black experience. As he describes: “African Americans, in a very real sense, are the
descendants of alien abductees; they inhabit a sci-fi nightmare in which unseen but no less
impassable force fields of intolerance frustrate their movements; official histories undo what has
been done; and technology is too often brought to bear on black bodies (branding, forced
sterilization, the Tuskegee experiment, and tasers come readily to mind).”66 He thus proposed
“Afrofuturism” as a method of developing “speculative fiction that treats African-American
themes and addresses African-American concerns in the context of twentieth century
technoculture.”67 Though his initial definition was inspired by literature—he references novelists
65 Curtis Marez, Farm Worker Futurism : Speculative Technologies of Resistance, Difference Incorporated
(Minneapolis, Minnesota ; University of Minnesota Press, 2016), 48.
66 Mark Dery, Flame Wars : The Discourse of Cyberculture (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1994), 180. 67 Dery, 180.

27
Octavia Butler and Samuel R. Delaney—throughout the piece, he broadens his scope into other
media, including music (beatboxing, Parliament), comics (Milestone), film (John Sayles’ Brother
from Another Planet), and visual art (Jean Michel Basquiat)—emphasizing that Afrofuturism has
always been more of a movement or mood than a specific genre or literary tradition. For Dery, it
seems, the goal in naming Afrofuturism and establishing its few observable parameters, was to
encourage more work to be created within that scope: naming the category in the hopes that it
could then be fulfilled.
Alondra Nelson later used “Afrofuturism” as the name of what would become her
popular Yahoo listserv, which emerged as a place for interested parties to foster further
discussion and refinement of the concept as a theoretical discipline and creative inspiration. The
group described Afrofuturism as “African American voices … [with] other stories to tell about
culture, technology and things to come” that featured “sci-fi imagery, futurist themes, and
technological innovation in the African diaspora.”68 Through debate on this listserve, Nelson and
her group also further widened the scope of the Afrofuturist canon to include more literature
(Nalo Hopkinson, Ralph Ellison), music (Missy Elliott, DJ Spooky), film (Julie Dash), and visual
art (Rammellzee, Fatimah Tuggar). Nelson not only advanced the visibility of Afrofuturism, but
also developed it in a communal, participatory way online, especially among Black intellectuals,
which was essential to its wider spread.
The field has since emerged in part as a way to expand the work of assembling
“countermemories that contest the colonial archive” by “reorienting the intercultural vectors of
Black Atlantic temporality towards the proleptic as much as the retrospective.”69 That is, for
68 Alondra Nelson, “Introduction: Future Texts,” Social Text 20, no. 2 (2002): 9. 69 Kodwo Eshun, “Further Considerations of Afrofuturism,” CR: The New Centennial Review 3, no. 2 (Summer
2003): 288–89.

28
Black artists and intellectuals to reclaim a future historically denied to them by the trauma of
slavery and institutional racism. As Daylanne K. English has noted, Afrofuturist works “imagine
and represent greater justice and a freer expression of black subjectivity in alternative times and
realities.”70 Working within Afrofuturism can allow Black creatives to envision a future where
the Black community is not only present—as opposed to white-dominated science fiction
elsewhere—but thriving. This possibility was cemented in popular culture with the debut of
Marvel’s Black Panther (2018), which depicted the fictional African country of Wakanda, which
had used technology to shield itself and its peoples from the horrors of slavery, and thus
developed as a provocative “What if?” of African pride and prosperity. As Isiah Lavender III
writes: “afrofuturism challenges readers to look past slavery’s many tragedies through the
science-fictional language employed by twentieth-century black writers. We have to look beyond
the past and hope for a different future.”71 Black Panther not only visibly proposed this futuristic
hope to mass audiences, but through media surrounding its release, its filmmakers—including
director Ryan Coogler and costume designer Ruth E. Carter—also explicitly referenced and
named this inspiration as Afrofuturism, thus ensuring its discursive legacy.
Building off the notion of Afrofuturism and transferring some of its concepts to a
Chicana identity, Catherine S. Ramirez defined Chicanafuturism as “Chicano cultural production
that attends to cultural transformations resulting from new and everyday technologies (including
their detritus); that excavates, creates, and alters narratives of identity, technology, and the
future; that interrogates the promises of science and technology; and that redefines the human.”72
70 Daylanne K. English, “Afrofuturism,” in Oxford Bibliographies, July 26, 2017, 193,
https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780190221911/obo-9780190221911-0004.xml. 71 Isiah Lavender III, Afrofuturism Rising: The Literary Prehistory of a Movement, New Suns: Race, Gender, and
Sexuality in the Speculative (Chicago: Ohio State University Press, 2019), 4,
https://doi.org/10.26818/9780814214138.
72 Ramirez, “Deus Ex Machina,” 78.

29
Ramirez had used this term to describe an exhibition of Chicana artists, who had each merged
(primitive, historical) folk art with (modern, scientific) computer technology. Ramirez viewed
this fusion as a specifically Chicana impulse, as it simultaneously “articulate[d] colonial and
postcolonial histories of indigenismo, mestizaje, hegemony, and survival.”73 In addition to visual
artists, Ramirez also proposed a Chicanafuturism through literature (Gloria Anzaldúa), theater
(Teatro Campesino, Cherrie Moraga), and performance art (Guillermo Gomez-Peña).
In distinguishing her theory from Afrofuturism, Ramirez emphasized that “Afrofuturism
reflects diasporic experience,” while “Chicanafuturism articulates colonial and postcolonial
histories.”74 She thus centers the main difference between the two futurisms as, for the Africana
diaspora, a trauma based on the forced dislocation away from a homeland (an outward
movement) and, for Chicanos, the trauma of the colonial invasion into the homeland (an inward
movement). However, this distinction largely relies on the Chicano reclamation of Aztlán, which
casts them as the original indigenous people of the American Southwest, rather than as Mexican
immigrants—and especially not as people with Spanish heritage—both of which would seem to
suggest some sort of diasporic significance. Attempting to define these histories so distinctly also
effectively negates the existence and experience of Black Chicanos. In her comparison of
Afrofuturism and Chicanafuturism, Isabel Millán issues the important reminder that the African
diaspora and Chicanos/Latinxs should never be considered fully separate groups, as this
contributes to the ongoing erasure of Afro-Latinxs.75
73 Ramirez, “Afrofuturism/Chicanafuturism,” 187. 74 Ramirez, “Deus Ex Machina,” 78. 75 Isabel Millán, “Engineering Afro-Latina and Mexican Immigrant Heroines: Biopolitics in Borderlands
Speculative Literature and Film,” in Altermundos : Latin@ Speculative Literature, Film, and Popular Culture, ed.
Cathryn Josefina Merla-Watson and B. V. Olguín, Aztlán Anthology Series ; Volume 4 (Los Angeles: UCLA
Chicano Studies Research Center Press, 2017), 279–97.

30
More recently, Cathryn Josefina Merla-Watson and B.V. Olguín have reframed
Ramirez’s term as the broader “Latin@futurism” in their discussion of what they call the Latin@
speculative arts. For them, Latin@futurism works to “repurpose and blend genres of sci-fi and
fantasy to defamiliarize the ways in which the past continues to haunt the present and future,”
particularly through cultural productions that “obscure colonialist boundaries between self and
other, between the technologically advanced and the ‘primitive,’ between the human and
nonhuman, and between the past and future.”76 In addition to the broader scope inherently
suggested by changing “Chicana” to “Latin@,” their definition also suggests broader possible
readings of what “speculative” could mean. They define the genre not necessarily by hard
science fiction themes and explicitly magical fantasies, but also include more general notions of
altered selves and time. That being said, while Ramirez’s Chicana-centered definition presented
issues in its narrowness—by specifically excluding the experiences of Black Chicanos and nonChicano Latinxs, both of whom might be more aligned to the “diasporic” impulse of
Afrofuturism—Latin@futurism potentially faces the opposite problem, of needing to encompass
so many groups that it loses some resonance as a marker.
As might be expected within a genre that is so often used to advance discussions and
represent larger issues, speculative fiction is notably associated with its passionate audiences. I
include audiences and fans as part of this project to emphasize that the identification process—
particularly when it comes to Latinxs—is not always as simple as intentional signifier and
passive recipient. It is often an active process of negotiation, both on a personal level, but also on
a communal one. Fandom studies provides a way to study “how we form emotional bonds with
76 Merla-Watson and Olguín, “Introduction,” 135.

31
ourselves and others in a modern, mediated world.”77 through the construction of fan
communities (fandoms). Many studies of fans, from scholars like Camille Bacon-Smith, Joli
Jensen, and Henry Jenkins largely sought to counter the perception of fans as uncritical couch
potatoes, positioning them instead as “interpretive communities that in their subculture cohesion
evaded the preferred and intended meanings of the ‘power bloc.’” 78 To the extent that we may
compare the marginalization of these geeky fans with racial and ethnic marginalization, early
fandom studies, like early ethnic studies, emphasized fans’ agency and individual identities
drawn from within the community, in opposition to assumptions and stereotypes established by
those outside the community.
Later waves of fandom studies, including work from Chad Dell,
79 Cheryl Harris,
80 and
Mark Jancovich81 have focused on the structures of fandom itself, and drew on Pierre Bourdieu’s
notion of cultural hierarchies to explain the relationships between fan objects and practices.
Importantly, this stage set up current work from scholars such as Rebecca Wanzo, Rukmini
Pande, and Mel Stanfill, who have written on the difficulties of navigating fandom for fans of
77 Jonathan (Jonathan Alan) Gray, Cornel. Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington, eds., Fandom : Identities and
Communities in a Mediated World (New York: New York University Press, 2007), 10. 78 Camille. Bacon-Smith, Enterprising Women : Television Fandom and the Creation of Popular Myth,
Contemporary Ethnography Series (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992); Joli Jensen, “Fandom as
Pathology: The Consequences of Characterization,” in The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media, ed.
Lisa A. Lewis, 1st ed. (Routledge, 1992), 9–29, https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203181539; Henry Jenkins,
Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (New York: New York University Press, 2006); Henry
Jenkins, Textual Poachers : Television Fans and Participatory Culture, Updated 20th anniversary ed. (1992; repr.,
New York: Routledge, 2013); Gray, Sandvoss, and Harrington, Fandom : Identities and Communities in a Mediated
World, 12. 79 Chad Dell, “‘Lookit That Hunk of Man!’: Subversive Pleasures, Female Fandom and Professional Wrestling,” in
Theorizing Fandom: Fans, Subculture and Identity, ed. Cheryl Harris and Alison Alexander (Cresskill, NJ:
Hampton, 1998).
80 Cheryl Harris and Alison Alexander, Theorizing Fandom : Fans, Subculture, and Identity / Edited by Cheryl
Harris, Alison Alexander. (Cresskill, N.J. : Hampton Press, 1998). 81 Mark Jancovich, “CULT FICTIONS: CULT MOVIES, SUBCULTURAL CAPITAL AND THE PRODUCTION
OF CULTURAL DISTINCTIONS,” Cultural Studies 16, no. 2 (March 2002): 306–22,
https://doi.org/10.1080/09502380110107607.

32
color.
82 While fandom has been widely studied as a mode of pleasure and entertainment, for
marginalized fans, it can also replicate the power structures found in culture at large, especially
in fandoms that are white-dominant. For fans of color, their relationship to the media objects
themselves, as well as to the broader fandom, may vary between “affirmational” or
“transformative” fan practices. Developing terms put forth by Livejournal user obsession_inc in
2009, Suzanne Scott names affirmational fans as “those that reaffirm the source material or
debate elements of the text while staying firmly within the established ‘rules’ of the fictional
universe,” while transformational fans are, quoting obsession_inc, “all about laying hands upon
the source and twisting it to the fans’ own purposes.”83 Generally, affirmation has been
characterized as a male way of doing fandom—valuing encyclopedic knowledge and loyalty to
canon—while transformational practices—including fan fiction and other derivative works—
have been characterized as more female. Even within these transfomrative spaces though, fan
practices are not homogenous. Rebecca Wanzo has noted that Black fandom can serve, at once,
as a “counter to white hegemony”—both towards white-dominant fan spaces and media works—
while also being “normative,” or affirmational, towards works with more positive representations
of Black characters.84 Much like marginalized media makers, marginalized fans must also often
decide whether to participate within a mainstream culture that may be harmful to them, or to
82 Rebecca Wanzo, “African American Acafandom and Other Strangers: New Genealogies of Fan Studies,”
Transformative Works and Cultures 20 (2015), https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2015.0699; Rukmini Pande and Swati
Moitra, “‘Yes, the Evil Queen Is Latina!’: Racial Dynamics of Online Femslash Fandoms,” Transformative Works
and Cultures 24 (2017), https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2017.0908; Rukmini Pande, Squee from the Margins : Fandom
and Race, Fandom & Culture (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2018); Mel Stanfill, “Doing Fandom,
(Mis)Doing Whiteness: Heteronormativity, Racialization, and the Discursive Construction of Fandom,”
Transformative Works and Cultures 8 (November 15, 2011), https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2011.0256; Mel Stanfill,
“The Unbearable Whiteness of Fandom and Fan Studies,” in A Companion to Media Fandom and Fan Studies, ed.
Paul Booth, Wiley Blackwell Companions to Cultural Studies ; 18 (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 2018),
305–18.
83 Suzanne Scott. Fake Geek Girls: Fandom, Gender, and the Convergence Culture Industry. Critical Cultural
Communication. New York: New York University Press, 2019, 36. 84 Wanzo, “African American Acafandom and Other Strangers,” 1.5.

33
create their own separate, smaller spaces—or, in some cases, to reappropriate sections of the
larger fandom for their own.
A note on the term “Latinx”
The preferred term used to describe people of Latin American descent within the United
States has varied widely throughout history. In the 1930 US census, “Mexican” was listed as a
racial category, which disappeared in 1940 with the instruction that, instead, “Mexicans are to be
regarded as white unless definitely Indian or other nonwhite race.”85 G. Cristina Mora notes that
governmental classifications, such as census categories, demonstrate a cross-field effect
“wherein the move toward developing a classification in the state arena sparks and accelerates
the institutionalization of that category,” often aided by the participation of ethnic leaders in
advocating for these terms.
86 In the 1970s, the term “Hispanic”—as utilized in the census
category—emphasized the American continent’s Spanish influence, organizing the identity
around Spanish speakers. The shift also importantly served to distinguish this group from nonHispanic whites, which was essential data for organizing cultural institutions such as the
National Council of La Raza (NCLR). The term “Latino” came into greater use in the 1990s,
minimizing the influence of the Americas’ Spanish colonizers, while also including descendants
of non-Hispanophone nations, such as Brazil, within the definition.
87 In Spanish, “Latino” is the
masculine form of the word, and “Latina” is the feminine. The masculine “Latino” also properly
serves as the neutral if describing a mixed-gender grouping. Alternatives like Latino/a, Latina/o,
85 Brian Gratton and Emily Klancher Merchant, “La Raza: Mexicans in the United States Census,” Journal of Policy
History 28, no. 4 (2016): 537, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0898030616000257. 86 G. Cristina Mora. “Cross-Field Effects and Ethnic Classification: The Institutionalization of Hispanic
Panethnicity, 1965 to 1990.” American Sociological Review 79, no. 2 (2014): 183–210.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122413509813.
87 Salvador Vidal-Ortiz and Juliana Martínez. “Latinx Thoughts: Latinidad with an X.” Latino Studies 16, no. 3
(2018): 384–95. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41276-018-0137-8.

34
and Latin@, thus emerged to foreground the women also represented by the term, preventing
their linguistic erasure.
88 However, these terms still relied on the gender binary of masculine or
feminine. Thus, “Latinx” emerged as the gender-neutral alternative, explicitly breaking the rules
of the Spanish language in order to defy its use of the masculine as the neutral form, as well as
the o/a gender binary. Queer people, scholars, and other generally progressive groups were
among its earliest adopters. “Latinx” grew in mainstream awareness throughout the late 2010s,
and was added to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, with some public fanfare, in 2018.
In 2020, in response to this seemingly new term, the Pew Research Center published a
study on its unpopularity. Based on a survey of “Hispanic Americans” conducted in December
2019, the study’s most damning, now frequently cited, conclusion, was that only about a quarter
of the surveyed Latinxs had even heard of the term, and only 3% preferred to use it to describe
themselves.89 The same study concluded that a majority (61%) preferred the term “Hispanic,”
and 29% preferred “Latino.” Among the frequent criticisms of “Latinx”—that continue today—
are its perception as a creation of American academics, its difficulty to pronounce, especially for
Spanish speakers, and its non-specificity in terms of representing such a diverse group. Some
have suggested “Latine” as an alternative that would solve some of these objections, with some
movements already deferring to this next new terminology.
As the reader will have already noticed, I use “Latinx” throughout this dissertation, and,
indeed, consider many of the objections listed above as positive factors in that choice. As an
American academic, working in the American academic system, studying American media, I
88 Cristobal Salinas Jr. and Adele Lozano. “The History and Evolution of the Term ‘Latinx.’” In Handbook of
Latinos and Education: Theory, Research, and Practice, edited by Enrique G. Murillo, et al., 2nd edition., 249–63.
New York, NY: Routledge, 2021.
89 Luis Noe-Bustamante, Lauren Mora, and Mark Hugo Lopez, “About One-in-Four U.S. Hispanics Have Heard of
Latinx, but Just 3% Use It,” Pew Research Center’s Hispanic Trends Project (blog), August 11, 2020,
https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2020/08/11/about-one-in-four-u-s-hispanics-have-heard-of-latinx-but-just-3-
use-it/.

35
generally use “Latinx” here to make the important distinction between people of Latin American
descent who were born or raised in the United States, my intended focus, and those who were
born and raised in Latin American countries. This distinction is particularly important for this
project, as one of my key factors of analysis is the homogenization of Latinidad that occurs when
the United States has tried to fit Latinxs into its particular racial and national structure. In terms
of Mexican identity, a Mexican filmmaker, born, raised, and working in Mexico, is both
informed by and speaking to an entirely different social framework than a Mexican-American
filmmaker born in East Los Angeles. Thus, I am indeed an American using “Latinx” to refer,
largely, to other Americans.
The pronunciation is also an entirely valid criticism: both “LAH-tin-ecks” and “luhTEEN-ecks” have been used as reasonable variations, and neither lend themselves well to
pluralization, especially aloud. It is an unwieldy, clunky, messy word, but it is a word that is
being used to try to describe a concept that is unwieldy, clunky, and messy. Since these people
are envisioned, in some way, as a group, we need some sort of term to describe them en masse. I
thus embrace the linguistic messiness that comes from trying to categorize such a diverse group.
I appreciate that the word gets caught in your throat when trying to say it aloud, because it makes
me more aware of when I am using it. While “Hispanic” and “Latino” can roll off the tongue into
sometimes mindless neutrality, often without considering the specific groups to which each term
actually refers, I only use “Latinx” when I know that I really mean “Latinx.” When speaking
about specific people or groups, I typically defer towards the appropriate terminology that
describes that group whenever possible. Despite the Pew survey respondents’ preferred choice, I
do not believe that “Hispanic” accurately describes the intended scope of this project given the
groups that it includes (Spaniards), and who it excludes (Brazilians).

36
Finally, other than the semi-futuristic nature implied by the “x”—used in superhero and
science fiction titles like X-Men and The X-Files, which do make its use especially appropriate
for my topic here—I have no particular preference among unwieldy gender-neutral pan-Latino
terms used to discuss pan-Latino topics, and would gladly use “Latine” more frequently.
However, I remain somewhat skeptical that some of the more vocal protesters against “Latinx”
would truly accept “Latine” as the perfect solution and would not push for another term once
“Latine” had been embraced. During the span of researching and writing this dissertation,
scholars’ preferred terminology for this group has shifted several times. Each term was slightly
imperfect and largely replaced by the next iteration as language and understanding evolved.
Importantly, “Latinx” broke out of scholarly use and became evidence of “fabricated woke
terminology,” so at least a portion of its opposition have come from “Hispanic Americans” Ted
Cruz and Marco Rubio, who desire greater alignment with whiteness, and would surely oppose
any pan-Latino term favored by liberal academics.90 As part of the speculative and creative
identity-making I detail throughout this dissertation, I choose “Latinx” here knowing full well
that it will probably be replaced by another term in five years, but, for now, I embrace that it
represents this specific perspective, context, and time.
90 Alan Nunez, “Sens. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio Introduce ‘Respect for Hispanic Americans Act’ That Bans
Federal Use of ‘Latinx’,” Al Día News, July 14, 2023, https://www.aldianews.com/en/politics/policy/another-latinxattack.

37
Chapter 1:
¡Presente!: Speculative Absence in Latinx Protest and Film
“I am visible—see this Indian face—yet I am invisible. I both blind them with my
beak nose and am their blind spot. But I exist, we exist. They'd like to think I have
melted in the pot. But I haven’t, we haven’t.”91
- Gloria Anzaldúa, “La conciencia de la mestiza,” Borderlands | La Frontera
(1987)
“How do you make the invisible visible? By taking it away.”
- Lila Rodriguez (Yareli Arizmendi) in A Day Without a Mexican (2004)
Nonviolence is, at its core, a strategy of palpable absence. As opposed to similar
concepts, such as pacifism, nonviolence is “a negative term,” in that it is defined by what “it
rejects or condemns”—which is to say, “violence.”92 While pacifism has generally been
associated with more conceptual desires for peace on a global scale, nonviolence has often been
invoked to describe the direct form of resistance in the face of violence. That is, as an idea,
nonviolence seems to function based on the expectation that violence is continuous and cyclical,
and that a human’s natural reaction when confronted with violence is to defend oneself with
violence. When reactionary violence does not occur, its absence is unusual enough to draw
attention.
Inspired by the civil disobedience led by Mahatma Gandhi in India in the 1920s and
1930s, nonviolent resistance came to particular prominence in the United States in the 1950s and
91 Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands | La Frontera: The New Mestiza (San Francisco: Aunt Lute, 1987), 86. 92 Andrew Gordon Fiala. “Introduction.” In The Routledge Handbook of Pacifism and Nonviolence, 1–4. Routledge
Handbooks in Philosophy. New York (N.Y.): Routledge, 2018, 2.

38
1960s under the leadership of activists like Martin Luther King, Jr. In the context of securing
civil rights for Black Americans, nonviolent resistance called specific and visible attention to the
massive power imbalance, overly aggressive policing, and disproportionate violence committed
by the US government against Black people. Peaceful sit-ins and marches that ended with clear
and cruel violence against Black protestors by white police officers illustrated, on this smaller
scale, the precise broader societal issues that were being protested. As a tactical strategy, its
method thus directly called attention to its intended message, making it particularly effective in
communicating that message to the general public.
With the popularization of live television broadcasts in the United States around the same
time, that these protests were so visually evocative—and that the protests looked like the
message they were trying to communicate—made them particularly resonant to a mass audience.
The cameras and national television networks also fundamentally allowed these moments to be
seen—witnessed—by the larger public. As Sasha Torres notes in her study of television and the
Black civil rights movement, television “captured and amplified the violence that movement
demonstrations occasionally sought, replacing it within a national, rather than regional,
context.”93 This white-on-Black violence, which might have been ignored as a Southern
problem, was suddenly present in living rooms across America. This presence shifted the
conversation, to the point that journalists Robert Donovan and Ray Scherer have noted that “the
civil-rights revolution in the South began when a man [King] and the eye of the television film
camera came together.”94 Though King’s non-violent legacy has frequently been invoked in bad
93 Sasha Torres. Black, White, and in Color: Television and Black Civil Rights. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University
Press, 2003, 23. 94 Robert J. Donovan and Ray Scherer. Unsilent Revolution: Television News and American Public Life, 1948-1991.
Woodrow Wilson Center Series. [Washington D.C.] : Cambridge [England] ; New York: Woodrow Wilson
International Center for Scholars ; Cambridge University Press, 1992.

39
faith by those who seek to discourage all forms of protest, the actual architecture of his activism,
particularly in regard to how it functioned within media, was intentional and calculated. Alexis
C. Madrigal has advocated a view of King as an “excellent television producer,” with “a keen
sense of drama, the use of celebrity, and television’s desire for villains and heroes.”95 Utilizing
this form of national media allowed protestors to emphasize their message by making their nonviolent reactions more publicly visible.
In many of their protests at this time, Chicanos also utilized nonviolence, civil
disobedience, and other acts that called attention to absence in some way. For instance, the East
Los Angeles Walkouts, or Blowouts, protested a lack of Mexican American representation in
school curricula and support for Mexican-American students. This lack of support was especially
significant because Mexican Americans made up a significant share of the student population,
yet were governed by mostly white school boards, administrators, and teachers. Walking out of
their schools thus signified both a refusal to engage with a system that they deemed
unacceptable, but also called attention to the size and strength of their community—as made
noticeable through their absence. Similarly, labor strikes and boycotts required an aspect of
withholding, and non-action, from workers or consumers. By being asked to go without table
grapes for a period of time to support striking workers, consumers suddenly had to acknowledge
the oft-ignored human component of how their grapes usually arrived there in the first place. As
an activist technique, boycotts are also an effective way to achieve widespread, low-level
awareness, since the barrier to participation is relatively low. Finally, on a more drastic
individual scale, the use of hunger strikes, from leaders like Cesar Chavez, can be understood as
a way of literally, slowly, making oneself disappear. Hunger strikes take an innate behavior of
95 Alexis C. Madrigal. “When the Revolution Was Televised.” The Atlantic (blog), April 1, 2018.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/04/televisions-civil-rights-revolution/554639/.

40
human survival—eating—and, by removing it, effectively decreases one’s physical presence.
The issue to which they wish to call attention thus becomes tied to their own personal, martyrlike sacrifice, rendering the passage of time without action distressingly visible by way of the
individual’s gradually shrinking body. Each of these acts aimed to call attention to the
significance of Chicanos—through their community membership, labor, buying power, or simply
their humanity—by temporarily enacting their absence.
In speculative media, absence functions most fundamentally as an allegory for agency. In
stories that center invisible people, ghosts, or other characters whose bodies are or become
absent in some capacity, the conflict usually involves them having to overcome—or accept—
their inability to be recognized by others or interact meaningfully within the physical world. The
lack of a physical form subverts the traditional divide between and connection to one’s self and
one’s community, allowing storytellers to explore the tenuousness of this relationship. Because
absent characters often cannot control their own environment, they sometimes must rely on
others to accomplish things they cannot do on their own. For instance, ghosts, such as the
dueling female specters in The Uninvited (1944), are sometimes presented as misunderstood
beings, attempting to use their limited—unintentionally terrifying—means to communicate with
the living in order to resolve a final conflict, which can allow them to pass on peacefully to the
next realm. On the other hand, a lack of perception can also allow characters to avoid the social
repercussions typically assigned to their actions. Some invisible characters, such as the titular
characters from Invisible Man (1933) and Hollow Man (2000), exploit their inability to be
perceived in order to commit crimes, unfettered by the typical boundaries of social surveillance.
Absent characters can thus express anxiety about a lack of personal control or recognition, but
also about an excess of anti-social individualism—that is, an excess of personal agency. For

41
narratives that focus on those left behind, like the events following “the Snap” in the Marvel
Cinematic Universe or shows like The Leftovers, these sudden disappearances can call attention
to the importance of community connections that may have previously been taken for granted,
or, on the other extreme, of relationships that may have been detrimentally co-dependent. In any
case, the sudden absence forces people to reconsider the relationship between their community
and themselves.
To analyze the invisibility of Latinxs in speculative media means that one must first
confront the fact that Latinxs are generally underrepresented in media, and thus, often not
present—with no explicitly intended allegorical meaning. In regards to Star Trek’s lack of Latinx
crew members, comedian John Leguizamo once joked that the omission “was proof that they
weren’t planning to have us around for the future.”96 But his joke calls attention to more serious
implications of these absences: as Cathryn Josefina Merla-Watson and B.V. Olguín have pointed
out, “being discursively cut out of the future is tantamount to being cut off from the future, with
the specter of genocide lingering.”97 These unintentional absences may also leave allegorical
traces. Adilifu Nama names the lack of Black characters in science fiction films as a “structured
absence,” because, even when not visible, their existence is nonetheless often used “as narrative
subtext or implicit allegorical subject.”98 In science fiction, the fear of the Other, or about
becoming the Other, frequently draws on tropes about Blackness in the United States, even if no
Black humans are actually depicted. Similarly, Curtis Marez identifies an “animating absence” of
Latinxs in Star Wars99 centering around the purposefulness of George Lucas—a native of
96 Merla-Watson and Olguín, “Introduction,” 139. 97 Merla-Watson and Olguín, 139. 98 Adilifu Nama, Black Space : Imagining Race in Science Fiction Film, 1st ed. (Austin: University of Texas Press,
2008), 15.
99 Marez, Farm Worker Futurism : Speculative Technologies of Resistance, 135.

42
California’s agriculturally dominant Central Valley with its many Latin American immigrant
farmworkers—writing a narrative about the farmer Luke Skywalker that includes only white
characters. Marez establishes an important analytical framework that focuses on the unseen,
emphasizing that reading between the lines for what is missing can reveal as much meaning as
examining that which has been presented visibly.
Despite recent growth as a percentage of the American population overall in the past few
decades, as well as representing what is now the highest per-capita share of the moviegoing
public,100 Latinxs remain largely absent from mainstream media.101 This is obviously not a new
observation, and has been the subject of scholarly criticism and protest by Latinxs for nearly as
long as moving image media has existed. But it is worth noting, particularly because this overall
absence in media also supports the ingrained perception of Latinxs as being invisible culturally.
In scholarship, the term “invisible” has been applied to Latinxs in many contexts, including
political and legal disenfranchisement,102 unclear racial identity,103 omission in scholarly
works,104 and underrepresentation in media and marketing,105 among others. Further, as the
Anzaldúa quote that opened this chapter suggested, for marginalized groups, a perception of
invisibility often comes alongside a simultaneous experience of hypervisibility. This is because a
100 Motion Picture Association of America, “2018 Theatrical and Home Entertainment Market Environment Report
(THEME)” (Washington, DC: Motion Picture Association of America, 2019), 27.
101 Darnell Hunt and Ana-Christina Ramón, Hollywood Diversity Report 2020: A Tale of Two Hollywoods (Los
Angeles: UCLA Division of Social Sciences, 2020), 7, https://socialsciences.ucla.edu/wpcontent/uploads/2020/02/UCLA-Hollywood-Diversity-Report-2020-Film-2-6-2020.pdf. 102 Elizabeth Vaquera, Elizabeth Aranda, and Roberto G. Gonzales, “Patterns of Incorporation of Latinos in Old and
New Destinations: From Invisible to Hypervisible,” The American Behavioral Scientist (Beverly Hills) 58, no. 14
(2014): 1823–33, https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764214550293. 103 Ana Y Ramos-Zayas, “Racialìzing The ‘Invisible’ Race: Latino Constructions Of ‘White Culture’ And
Whiteness In Chicago,” Urban Anthropology and Studies of Cultural Systems and World Economic Development
30, no. 4 (2001): 341–80. 104 Pedro Noguera and Aída Hurtado, “Invisible No More: The Status and and Experience of Latino Males from
Multidisciplinary Perspectives,” in Invisible No More: Understanding the Disenfranchisement of Latino Men and
Boys (Florence: Routledge, 2012), 1–15, https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203813492. 105 Dávila, Latinos, Inc. the Marketing and Making of a People.

43
group that feels powerless or ignored socially might also be the target of prejudice due to their
deviation from the “norm.” Their difference makes others more aware of them, but also marks
them as being outside the in-group, and thus unworthy of social consideration. As Avery Gordon
has noted, “the highly visible can actually be a type of invisibility.”106 In this sense, the dominant
group’s fixation on these differences can overshadow the realities of their experiences. They may
see people as being defined primarily by their difference, rather than recognizing them as
individuals themselves. One’s “visibility” can thus shift depending on context and perception.
These conflicts—between the hypervisible and the invisible, the communal and the
individual, the explicit and the accidental—guide the work of this chapter. While this project is
inherently related to issues of media representation, I seek to move beyond an approach that
considers any representation as progress—especially in this chapter that focuses on absence.
Though my focus on absence here, in opposition to presence, may seem binary, I do not aim to
broadly characterize these absences as “bad” any more than I will characterize all inclusions as
“good.” (Indeed, the remaining chapters of the dissertation will engage more fully with the
nuances of Latinx presence in media.) Instead, I am interested particularly in how absence is
deployed as an active, speculative concept in itself. Too often, underrepresentation in the media
industry is treated as a matter of unintentional ignorance, rather than as a series of pervasive,
active choices. I aim to shift that by focusing on absences not as mere gaps in representation, but
as statements in themselves.
The significance of these media absences, of course, does not conclude with the
production and release of the work itself. To that end, I also incorporate some analysis of fan
reactions and interpretations to these absences. As Kristen J. Warner has described in her work
106 Avery F Gordon, Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination, NED-New edition, Second
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008), 17, https://doi.org/10.5749/j.ctttt4hp.

44
on Black female fandom, Black female fans have largely chosen “to exist despite their
invisibility and exclusion from mainstream fan spaces.”107 Warner further argues that the
exclusion itself is often what motivated them “to develop space where their own interests,
agendas, and perspectives could be foregrounded.”108 To the extent that it can be considered
separate, Latinx fandom has developed in a largely similar way, though sometimes attempts to
replicate this type of communal fandom are made more challenging within such a diverse ethnic
group. (For instance, Black Latinx women may prefer to gather with the other Black women
Warner describes.) Like the artists themselves, fans must negotiate when it is appropriate to
appeal and gather more broadly, and when they can be more specific and authentic.
In this chapter, in keeping with the broader argument of this dissertation, I contrast
Latinx absences along two main lines: those that have been narratively utilized for more
universalizing, communal purposes, and those that are intended to be more personal or specific.
Even in looking at presence/absence, or visibility/invisibility, as a spectrum, most works that
deal with speculative absences tend to be fairly broad. When this type of allegory is invoked to
argue whether an ethnic group should exist or not, the specific nuances within that group are
often less important than enunciating, unequivocally, that yes, they should exist. These
“universal” absences often involve narratives in which either all Latinxs have disappeared—
regardless of nationality, race, or so on—or the absent Latinx is generic enough that they can be
understood to potentially stand in for any Latinx person. Universalization creates a pan-ethnic
connection that can emphasize the importance of allying Latinxs under the umbrella term
together, offering strength and identification within this larger group, but can also evidence the
107 Kristen J. Warner, ABC’s Scandal and Black Women’s Fandom (University of Illinois Press, 2015), 35,
https://doi.org/10.5406/illinois/9780252039577.003.0003.
108 Warner, 35.

45
ignorance of the non-Latinxs, who may treat all those under the umbrella as identical, rather than
understanding the group as a consortium of vastly different identities.
Alternately, more specific absences have been depicted by centering individual characters
within these disappearances, which can represent a more personal metaphor. The general trend of
underrepresentation has also taught many Latinx audiences to recognize and identify with
characters as “Latinxs” that do not bear any intentional, visible markers of such. These unruly
identifiers have been taught to see themselves even when they do not “see” themselves, signaling
new potential modes of identification beyond the indexicality that matches Latinx performer to
character.
Theories of Absence, Invisibility, and Race
Paraphrasing another review of Star Wars (1977), novelist Octavia E. Butler once noted
that the film had “every kind of alien, but only one kind of human—white ones.”109 The
industry-shaping film had imagined a galaxy full of new planets and alien species, conceived in
seemingly boundless creativity—except when it came to depicting people of color. Astronomer
Carl Sagan similarly noted that the discrepancy between a universe filled with many diverse
varieties of aliens but run by white people was an act of “human chauvinism.”110 People of color
have been historically underrepresented in every type of American media and in every genre, so,
in this sense, Star Wars was not an anomaly, but merely a continuation of racist mainstream
industry practices that positioned whiteness as the default. However, as Butler and Sagan’s
109 Frances M. Beal, “Black Scholar Interview with Octavia Butler: Black Women and the Science Fiction Genre,”
Black Scholar 17, no. 2 (1986): 17. 110 Colin Marshall, “Carl Sagan Tells Johnny Carson What’s Wrong with Star Wars: ‘They’re All White’ & There’s
a ‘Large Amount of Human Chauvinism in It’ (1978),” Open Culture (blog), July 14, 2021,
https://www.openculture.com/2021/07/carl-sagan-tells-johnny-carson-whats-wrong-with-star-wars.html.

46
comments illustrate, because speculative media functions as a re-imagination of the typical
boundaries of reality-based storytelling, it makes the absence of people of color in these works
seem especially pointed and intentional.
The absence of people of color in speculative media serves as a way of, at best, removing
their accessibility to imagination, relegating their presence as only significant in the context of
lived reality. At worst, it delivers on a white supremacist vision of a world populated exclusively
by white people. The gravity of Merla-Watson and Olguín’s earlier point, about media absence
conveying genocide, is emphasized by similarly demonstrable absences of these same groups in
reality, as people of color often “remain hidden from view in the barrios, ghettoes, reservations,
and prisons of the present.”111 For some white Americans, these all-white depictions of the future
are also, in fact, their ultimate goal. Thus when media delivers these visions uncritically—
whether the absence occurs through self-centered, unthinking omission by dominant white
creators, or through intentional, race-essentialist erasure—the inferred message is the same: we
imagine the future as white.
The divide between presence and absence—between being there and not—would seem to
be a relatively straightforward, binary status. Yet decades of theoretical writings, particularly in
the field of semiotics, would prove otherwise, pushing towards greater nuance in how these
metaphysical concepts are understood. For instance, rather than conceiving of them as
equivalent, oppositional binaries, Jacques Derrida instead positioned them, and other paired
concepts like them, as a “hierarchy” with an inferred “order of a subordination.”112 That is,
between presence and absence, presence is the dominant, driving force between the two, whereas
absence functions more like “non-presence” than as its own distinct concept. As such, Derrida
111 Merla-Watson and Olguín, “Introduction,” 139. 112 Jacques. Derrida, Limited Inc. : Abc ... (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977), 21.

47
noted that absence does not appear as “a continuous modification of presence,” but rather as “a
rupture in presence”113—a state in which presence remains, even during absence, as the natural
default. Of course, this status is only triggered when something is first present, or being expected
to be present. Derrida’s conception here importantly requires a distinction between “absence,” as
something that is not present, and “nothingness,” which has no such expectations, and thus
cannot be thought of as missing in the same way. An empty mailbox can be considered “absent”
of letters, because a letter’s is expected. Alternately, one would not describe a mailbox as being
“absent” of elephants, because there would be no expectation of one ever being in there.
In visual media, the choice between what is present and what is absent is of vital
significance, as most art is predicated on the decision of what is to be depicted within the
boundaries of the frame (or canvas, or page) and what is to remain outside. For non-abstract,
representational works, this choice also typically suggests a literal point of view that the
audience will temporarily inhabit when experiencing the art. For indexical media, such as film
and photography, that do not stem from the creation of an image from scratch as paintings and
drawings do, the selection of this perspective and framing is the core method of artistic
expression. Roland Barthes described the role of the photographer as one who “looks, limits,
frames, and perspectivizes when he wants to take,’”114 emphasizing both the spatial (the
boundaries of the frame) and temporal (the moment the shutter clicks) aspects involved in
producing the desired photograph. Barthes also noted that “every photograph is the certificate of
presence,”115 in terms its relationship to the subject it signifies. Notably, Barthes does not
113 Derrida, 8. 114 Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, trans. Richard Howard, 26. print (New York, NY:
Hill and Wang [u.a.], 1982), 10.
115 Barthes, 87.

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venture to remark that the photograph represents truth, or reality—which could be suggested or
altered by means of the framing and perspective—but merely that it certifies presence.
With continuous time-based visual media, multiplied to a greater extent than a singular
painting or illustration, the choice of each frame is a tiny, individual decision that is then
repeated many thousands of times per work. When that decision is replicated throughout many
films, over many decades, these choices become patterns, and patterns become industry
standards upheld by future generations. Thus, a white man pointing a camera at another white
man in the late 19th century can be seen reflected in modern films, which remain
overwhelmingly by and about white men.116 Absence thus becomes exclusion, and, in turn, a
critical underrepresentation on screen of the make up of the actual population. Mel Stanfill notes
that this repetition creates a “structural whiteness” in which “mainstream American culture …
default[s] to whiteness and … engagement with default‐white media.”117 Though modern media
has adapted somewhat to reflect changing expectations around diversity, particularly around race
and gender, whiteness is still often the default.
Even attempts to make non-white presence more visible in media have often been limited
by default-white frameworks. For instance, Oscar Hammerstein II’s theatrical reimagining of the
opera Carmen, set during World War II and featuring an all-Black cast, was later adapted into
the Hollywood musical film Carmen Jones (1954), also with an all-Black cast. In the 1950s,
Hollywood offered few leading roles for Black performers, so the film was significant in
foregrounding its Black stars. Dorothy Dandridge, for her performance as Carmen, would
116Accordwing to a study by the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative of the top 100 earning films at the American
box office in 2019, 10.6% were directed by women and 19.6% by a director of color, and of the named or speaking
characters—not accounting for the role’s prominence or complexity—were 65.7% white and 66% male; Smith,
Choueiti, and Pieper, “Inequality in 1,300 Popular Films: Examining Portrayals of Gender, Race/Ethnicity, LGBTQ
& Disability from 2007 to 2019.”
117 Stanfill, “The Unbearable Whiteness of Fandom and Fan Studies,” 305.

49
become the first Black woman nominated for Best Actress at the Academy Awards. However,
the Black actors’ uncharacteristically significant presence came only due to a complete absence
of white actors—in part due to restrictions against on-screen miscegenation—meaning that the
story was transferred into this new context without much narrative consideration of race, or,
especially, of the interplay between races. James Baldwin’s famous critique of the film notes that
the choice to make Carmen Jones an all-Black film, rather than a racially integrated one, creates
“a vacuum in which the spectacle of color is divested of its danger.”118 That is, though Carmen
Jones contains ample visible representation of Black actors, the significance of their race is
irreparably decontextualized due to being set in a seemingly fictional world that is absent of
white people. To show Black characters in a world in which only Black people seem to exist may
visually represent Blackness on a superficial level, but it did not represent an authentic
representation of the Black experience in the United States for Baldwin.
The Carmen Jones example is one instance where a binary status of “absent” or “present”
alone does not fully convey the significance of that absence or presence, and it also demonstrates
how race, specifically, has its own visual context. In addition to the complexities of how and in
which situations people of color can appear within certain spaces, there is the more basic
question of how people of color “appear”—that is, how their race is made visible through their
physical appearance. Critical race theorists have maintained the importance of the visuality
within the field, particularly in regards to physical appearance. As Michael Omi and Howard
Winant have described, much of early American critical race theory attempted to avoid the
seemingly essentialist, biological approach of defining race by physical appearance, and instead
centered studies of its genealogical nature. However, this impulse led instead to a misguided
118 James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984), 36.

50
“colorblind” approach, which failed to meaningfully account for phenological variety that affect
how people are racialized.
119 As Leilani Nishime expresses, we cannot “learn or wish away the
visuality of race” even if we hold an “intellectual belief in its fictionality.”120 By avoiding
discussion of appearance, scholars ignore a large part of how the understanding of race actually
functions in the United States. While many technical terms of race and ethnicity are defined
based on one’s (invisible) ancestry, the everyday experience of how others perceive one’s race,
based on one’s (visible) physical appearance, is a practical measure that can lead to vastly
different experiences in racialization for individuals even with seemingly similar heritage. Omi
and Winant thus called for upholding the “crucial and non-reducible visual dimension to the
definition and understanding of racial categories,”121 or as they name it, the “corporeal,” within
studies of racial theory. While conceptualizations of race and ethnicity reflect shifting norms in
American society, the individual physical human body is a stable, tangible object upon which
these changes are projected. However, the reality of these physical forms, in turn, also contribute
back to inform intellectual definitions and stereotypes.
In the United States, the conflict between invisible ancestry, intangible definitions, and
visible physical appearance has been largely focused on enforcing a rigid, yet imaginary, divide
between Blackness and whiteness. While both categories would seem primarily to describe
physical appearance, it has been the great project of white supremacy to define both as genetic
statuses as well, going beyond the visible alone. As the 1920 census instructed: “Any mixture of
White and some other race was to be reported according to the race of the person who was not
119 Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, Third (Routledge, 2015). 120 LeiLani Nishime, Undercover Asian : Multiracial Asian Americans in Visual Culture, Asian American
Experience (Urbana, [Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2014), xvi.
121 Omi and Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, 111.

51
White.”122 Whiteness here is conceived of not necessarily as a descriptor of the visible color of
one’s skin, but as a genetic trait that can be overruled by the presence of any non-white heritage,
no matter how small. Similarly, by this “one-drop rule,” Blackness is conveyed with any amount
of Black ancestry. Thus, regardless of how black or white a person’s skin actually was, by the
law, their racial designation depended on this potentially invisible aspect of their family lineage.
Like the differences people with similar ancestries might experience based on differences in their
physical appearance, the reverse is also true here: people with similar physical appearances can
be treated differently depending on their unseen racial and ethnic heritage. This simultaneous
dependence on both the visible and invisible was key to the semi-cohesive formation of
Blackness as a racial group, and also explains why attempts to categorize other racial and ethnic
groups as though they were similarly coherent have often failed.
Despite the fact that neither physical appearance nor ancestry alone can adequately
convey the complete picture of one’s racial identity and experience, the representation of people
of color in visual media has understandably skewed towards making race explicitly visible—to a
certain extent. For instance, in Hollywood films that featured both white and Black actors, lightskinned Black actresses like Fredi Washington and Nina Mae McKinney were sometimes cast
but made up with darker skin tones, to ensure that audiences read them as Black. Despite the fact
that these actresses were understood to be Black in their own life, with their existing skin tone,
this additional make up served to make their Blackness more visible and immutable on film.
Conversely, white actors also routinely used makeup to portray different ethnicities and races,
allowing them temporary passage into these various characters’ identities, even if their existing
appearance could have adequately conveyed this. This degree of racial mobility, however, was
122 Omi and Winant, 124.

52
not accessible to Black actors. As Ella Shohat and Robert Stam note, for Black actors, it was “not
the literal color of the actor that mattered in casting,” but rather “the ‘blood’ definition” of their
Blackness, meaning they could only play Black characters.123 Thus, throughout the 20th century,
mainstream visual media reinforced the notion that race was an always observable, visible trait
through makeup, while at the same time enforcing an invisible racial framework based on
genetics when actually casting the actors. Part of the fantasy of race in visual media, then, is an
erasure of any conflict between appearance and heritage. Using the tools of filmmaking—
casting, makeup, lighting—race can be made visibly and unambiguously legible in media in a
way that it is not always in real life.
The preference for representing race and ethnicity visibly in visual media makes the
depiction of a multi-racial ethnicity like Latinidad particularly fraught. By most definitions,
Latinidad is about one’s Latin American ancestry—their invisible cultural heritage—and not a
particular physical appearance. Because physical appearance is not part of the definition of
Latinidad, its significance has sometimes been ignored in favor of observations that can be
applied to broader ranges of Latinxs. In practice though, people with certain physical
characteristics, especially in certain geographic contexts, are more frequently racialized as
“Latinx” based on their appearance, while other Latinxs may not be. Linda Martín Alcoff has
underscored the importance of studying the visibility of Latinidad, stating that “unless we pay
close attention to the way in which Latino identity operates as a visible identity in public, social
spaces, our analyses of its social meanings and political effects will be compromised.”124 While
the choice to ignore discussions of physical appearance might seem to make Latinx identity more
123 Ella Shohat and Robert Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism : Multiculturalism and the Media, Second edition.,
Sightlines (Abingdon, Oxon ; Routledge, 2014), 189.
124 Alcoff, Visible Identities Race, Gender, and the Self, 2.

53
inclusive to Black, white, and brown Latinxs, in fact it serves to minimize the significance of
their distinct experiences. While there are reasons to discuss Latinxs en masse, acknowledging
that these differences occur based on physical appearance is crucial.
Socially, Shohat and Stam identify the tension between the cultural omnipresence and
filmic absence of race and ethnicity, which they argue parallels the fact that “the buried labor of
Third World people (migrant labor, ‘illegal aliens,’ groundskeepers, nannies) is camouflaged,
literally ‘undocumented.’”125 Latina women have been figured as especially susceptible to this
type of social absence, due to cultural intersections between race and gender. Many Latina
scholars have taken up these missing histories, and often attribute their pursuit to the making
these invisible women visible—that is, positioning invisibility as a status that can be corrected.
For instance, in building what she calls a “decolonial imaginary,” Emma Pérez argues that, with
few exceptions, Chicana women’s “lives remained invisible, enduring between the spaces of a
colonial imaginary, obscured in the sex-gender systems that fade in and out of the historical
imagination.”126 Similarly, Rosa Linda Fregoso notes the “apparent contradiction between the
visibility of meXicanas in cultural representation and their invisibility in the history of the
nation” in her attempt to combine the two fields of study.127 In her study of Chicana art, Laura E.
Pérez characterizes Ester Hernandez’s translucent sculpture, “Immigrant Woman’s Dress”
(1997) as an expression of “the idea of the barely visible, gendered history to which the piece’s
title refers.”128 Similarly, Laura Alvarez’s short film and art series “Double Agent Servienta,”
which follows a Latina woman maid who is also a spy, combines two professions, spy and
125 Shohat and Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism : Multiculturalism and the Media, 220. 126 Emma Pérez, The Decolonial Imaginary : Writing Chicanas into History, Theories of Representation and
Difference (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 10.
127 Rosa Linda. Fregoso, MeXicana Encounters The Making of Social Identities on the Borderlands, American
Crossroads ; 12 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 18.
128 Laura Elisa. Pérez, Chicana Art : The Politics of Spiritual and Aesthetic Altarities, Objects/Histories (Durham:
Duke University Press, 2007), 59.

54
servant, which “are both phantas(ma)tic, only partly visible social figures.”129 In Alvarez’s film,
the Latina’s invisibility becomes an asset in a cinematically acceptable way, rather than out of
ignorance.
In the literally fantastical sense, invisibility is a frequently recurring trope within
speculative literature and media, mythology, and folklore, defined as “a condition in which a
solid, non-microscopic object or person has physical existence but has been rendered impossible
to see.”130 Invisibility is a state that is thus inherently defined by external perception. The
invisible character is still present, even though they are not observable by others. Their visual
status does not affect their perception of themselves as being themselves. In fiction, the trope
often plays upon the idea of being able to observe without being observed, or to exist without
being perceived. Some speculative media—particularly those featuring white characters—have
played up the potential anti-social possibilities of this type of status, as it could allow someone
who is normally noticed to become unnoticed, and thus get away with tempting crimes.
However, the trope of invisibility can also serve as a way for marginalized people to take agency
over their own lack of agency by choosing to enact their own disappearance, thus denying the
opportunity to be defined by other people’s perceptions.
Mass Disappearances
In the film It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), banker George Bailey encounters a personal
crisis on Christmas Eve. A people pleaser to a fault, he has given up many of his own personal
goals for the sake of helping his community, but these continual sacrifices have taken their toll.
Standing on a bridge overlooking the dark, icy river below, he despondently questions whether
129 Pérez, 184. 130 Una McGovern, ed., “Invisibility,” 2007.

55
the world would be better off if he had never been born. When George’s guardian angel,
Clarence, appears, his main goal is to show George that his effect on the community is
irreplaceable, and that the world would indeed be worse off without him. To convince George of
this fact, Clarence brings him into an alternate timeline in which his wish has been granted—he
shows him a world where he was never born. George sees a town overrun by crime and cruelty:
his friends and family imprisoned, institutionalized, or dead without him there to help them.
Worst of all, his lovely wife Mary is now a dowdy spinster librarian. Shocked and appalled by
this horrible vision, George is convinced of the value of his life, and Clarence returns the newly
appreciative George to his own universe.
In the unchanging trajectory of his ordinary, everyday life, George could only see, and
thus dwell on, his failures. But through Clarence’s magic, George’s perspective shifted. By being
able to bear witness to his own absence, he could appreciate that his life did have a net-positive
effect on the world. Through a fantasy of his absence, he could better understand the significance
of his presence. It’s a Wonderful Life is one of the most enduring classics of the Hollywood
studio system, in part due to this simple, resonant concept. The film functions on a personal
level: showing a single person who wished he had never been born what this supposedly desired
alternate reality would look like, in order to counteract that desire. Essentially, it warns “be
careful what you wish for” by means of deploying that precise wish.
The notion of the mass disappearance of a portion of the population has roots in the
mythological and literary speculative, as well as in history, with often violent connotations. The
theological concept of the rapture, which still propels some sects of evangelical Christianity,
envisions an event in which the faithful will ascend to heaven en masse, creating a tattered,
broken world for those left behind. Genocides, or even the threat of genocides, have reshaped the

56
visible presence of entire continents, through the mass murder of segments of the population, as
well as through their escape or concealment. Throughout the latter half of the 20th century,
political dissidents in Central and South America, notably Argentina, Chile, El Salvador, and
Guatemala, became desaparecidos—literally, “disappeared”—a euphemism for kidnapping,
torture, and murder.
When the theme of mass disappearance has been used in visual fiction? , the focus is
typically on the people who remain visible. Often, the disappearance serves as a call for those
who remain to change their own behavior or make apparent systems that they take for granted.
For instance, both the Thief in the Night (1972 - 1983) and the Left Behind (2000 - 2014) film
series are set in apocalyptic, post-rapture worlds, and depict the horrors facing the unfaithful—
thus encouraging their largely Evangelical audiences to ensure they are living their life in a way
that will get them into heaven. Similarly, the television series The Leftovers (2014 - 2017), based
on a 2011 novel by Tom Perotta, imagines a world in which a random 2% of the global
population has disappeared in a “Sudden Departure”—not enough to cause a global catastrophe,
but enough to promote heavy reflection and ennui among remaining 98%. Y: The Last Man
(2002 - 2008), a comic series by Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra and short-lived television
series (2021), explores the ramifications of a world in which all mammals with a Y chromosome
have suddenly died. In addition to the devastating effect of losing half the world’s population, Y
also serves as a way to call attention to gender disparities in certain vital professions, such as
pilots and truck drivers, and how men’s sudden disappearance would affect global infrastructure.
In Avengers: Infinity War (2018), part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the supervillain
Thanos aimed to improve an overpopulated galaxy by “snapping” half of its population out of
existence—including many fan favorite superhero characters, such as T’Challa (Black Panther),

57
Peter Parker (Spider-Man), and Nick Fury—the effects of which took two full feature films, and
five in-universe years, to resolve.
In modern political discourse, expressing the desire that an entire group of people did not
exist or, at the very least, remained out of sight, has proved distressingly common. Though this
utterance may not always be explicitly genocidal—it may be expressed through restrictive
housing ordinances, opposition to diversity in media, paranoid Next Door posts—the underlying
desire is usually some variation on the basic wish that “these people” were not here. The targeted
people can change depending on the current issues at hand, and, of course, which populations are
particularly vulnerable at that moment. Largely, though, this perspective is based on viewing the
population as an anonymous mass, rather than as a diverse collection of individuals, and is often
stoked by generalizations and stereotypes about the group, rather than personal experience.
In the 1990s in California, the fervor over “illegal” immigrants from Latin America
taking resources from “real” Americans claimed much of this energy. In 1994, Republican
assemblyman Dick Mountjoy of Monrovia proposed the “Save Our State” initiative, and
gathered enough signatures to get it on the September ballot as Proposition 187. Prop 187 was an
anti-immigrant ballot initiative based on the claim that California citizens had “suffer[ed]
personal injury and damage” as well as “economic hardship caused by the presence of illegal
aliens in this state,”131 the majority of whom came from Latin American countries. While the
legalities of immigration itself were a federal matter, this statewide initiative proposed a more
localized workaround that would prevent undocumented immigrants from utilizing public
services, such as education and healthcare. This approach positioned the initiative in economic
terms—supposedly focused on preventing the state spending its resources on non-citizens—
131 Richard Mountjoy, “Illegal Aliens. Ineligibility for Public Services. Verification and Reporting. California
Proposition 187” (1994), 91.

58
rather than nakedly xenophobic fears. However, the enforcement of the bill also would have had
the effect of discouraging undocumented immigrants from openly and visibly residing in
California. Voters ultimately passed Proposition 187 by 59%, with non-Hispanic whites and
registered Republicans supporting it by the widest margins.
The passage of Prop 187 exposed a core hypocrisy of American consumerism. In theory,
many Americans opposed the notion of undocumented immigration, and especially of the
possibility that immigrants might gain any benefit from their presence in the United States.
Despite the myth of America as a “nation of immigrants,” many native-born Americans felt
threatened by these new immigrants, exhibiting a zero-sum mentality—that anything gained by
immigrants was something being taken from existing Americans. Yet at the same time, many of
these immigrants were heading to work in the United States precisely because of an economic
framework that ultimately benefitted Americans. American companies not only profited from
their cheap, exploitable labor, but consumers benefitted from lower prices, as well as an
economic boost of new people in their communities. That this legislation focused on withholding
services from immigrants, rather than criminalizing the people who hired or benefitted from
them—like the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act had—is significant. A law that
actually sought to end this labor practice completely might have focused on restricting other
aspects of the labor relationship, but these might have adversely affected these American
companies to a greater extent. To restrict only undocumented immigrants in their attempts to go
to the doctor, or to send their children to school, is a clear and cruel message. Americans want
and need the labor of undocumented immigrants, but they do not want to see the people
themselves as humans—nor, really, to see them at all. As Lysa Rivera notes, the United States

59
has a demand for labor that is fundamentally “invisible—and therefore easily disposable.”132 In
this way, the act of “dehumanization” serves several possible meanings: both to deny people
their humanity (dehumanize), but also to potentially remove these humans from public sight (dehumanize). Though one operation is intellectual and the other physical, both are evidence of a
supremacist desire to enforce a hierarchical view of humanity.
Proposition 187 was eventually overturned by a federal court, and its statutes never
implemented, due to the impossibility of its enforcement without racial profiling. Regardless of
its ultimate legal fate, however, its initial passage still reflected the will of the majority of
California active voters at that time,133 and thus served as an indication of the general cultural
discourse. It also served as a chilling manifestation of racist and xenophobic attitudes towards
Latinxs generally, a reaction that inspired works by several Latinx filmmakers around this time.
In particular, two short films set in California, and produced in the mid-1990s—which were both
later turned into feature-length films—engaged with this dehumanizing act through the
speculative. In each case, the films imagined worlds in which, through some science fiction or
fantastical intervention, Mexicans or Latinxs were no longer present in California. Thus, the
films ironically delivered the exact world that the 187 voters seemed to want, in order to,
hopefully, prove that it was not actually desirable.
The earlier of the short films, Why Cybraceros? (1997), was written and directed by
Peruvian-American filmmaker and digital media artist Alex Rivera. Why Cybraceros? is a faux
documentary film meant to justify the American agricultural industry’s (speculative) use of
132 Lysa Rivera, “Future Histories and Cyborg Labor: Reading Borderlands Science Fiction after NAFTA,” ScienceFiction Studies 39, no. 3 (2012): 426, https://doi.org/10.5621/sciefictstud.39.3.0415. 133 Of a total population of around 30 million Californians in 1994, there were approximately 19 million eligible
voters, and of those, about 15 million actually registered to vote. Of registered voters, only about 9 million voted in
this 1994 election. The initiative was passed with just over 5 million “yes” votes; California Secretary of State,
“Report of Registration,” September 8, 2000.

60
“cybraceros”—robotic workers controlled by Mexican pilots, in Mexico, who perform the labor
that undocumented immigrants might have done before, but without actually being present.
Rivera also co-wrote, with David Riker, and directed Sleep Dealer (2008), which expanded some
of the concepts from Why Cybraceros? into feature-length form, in a less-comedic, more hard
science-fiction style that followed a single Mexican worker’s experience within this system. The
short A Day Without a Mexican (1998) was written by Yareli Arizmendi and directed by Sergio
Arau, a husband-and-wife filmmaking team both born in Mexico. The film imagines a day in
which all people of Latin American descent suddenly disappear from California, and non-Latinxs
are left to fend for themselves—developing a newfound appreciation for Latinxs in their absence.
The short, like Why Cybraceros?, is produced in a mockumentary style. Arizmendi and Arau cowrote the screenplay for the feature A Day Without a Mexican (2004) with Sergio Guerrero, with
Arau again directing. The plot of the feature film is largely the same as the short—with some of
the faux interviews from the short directly recreated in the narrative—but this time follows Lila
Rodriguez, a TV reporter who has distanced herself from her Mexican heritage professionally,
who then becomes seemingly the only Latinx person in California to not disappear.
Both short films share many formal and narrative qualities, including the faux
documentary style, sarcastically comedic tone, and generally unfussy production design—
making them relatively easy to have produced independently, and approachable for casual
viewers to consume as entertainment, rather than didactic. Importantly, both shorts also center
the significance of the absent Latinxs primarily around their economic impact. The films don’t
argue for increased respect around diversity or immigration through moral appeal or logical
explanation, they instead demonstrate the importance of Latinxs’ role in the American economy.
In the world of Why Cybraceros? that labor is able to continue, thanks to technological

61
innovations, even when their physical bodies are absent, and to the phantom American viewer
that the film addresses, this is presented as an improved solution. Similarly, A Day Without a
Mexican takes much of its comedy from surveying the disaster resulting from non-Latinxs
having to do their own housekeeping, gardening, and domestic labor. Absent family members are
mentioned in passing more seriously, but the film’s core humor is in this unexpected labor gap.
Of course, due to the heavy employment of satire throughout each of these films, these
depictions are not necessarily intended to be read as completely supported perspectives. But in
taking this broader, macroeconomic view of Latinxs in the United States, the films necessarily
take a broader view of Latinidad.
The economic framing is particularly important to Why Cybraceros?, due to its direct
inspiration: an American industrial short film produced by the Council of California Growers,
called Why Braceros? (1962). Like Why Cybraceros?, Why Braceros? was intended to justify
the industry’s continued use of Mexican guest workers through the Bracero program, which had
begun in the 1940s to counteract wartime labor shortages. Why Braceros? emphasized the need
for manual, rather than mechanized, labor due to the delicate skill required. At the same time, the
film explained that since these jobs were also often “the toughest and least desirable,” farmers
could face shortages of domestic workers during the crucial harvest period. The film essentially
argued that the agricultural industry had diligently exhausted all domestic labor options, and
Mexican workers were needed to fill the gap. In part because of the defensive tone of the film,
the workers’ presence is framed only in economic terms, as it benefitted the American farmers.
Because the labor must be done in person, the film takes great care to emphasize that the
Mexican workers are clean, safe, and—most importantly—destined to return to Mexico the
moment their labor is no longer required.

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Of course, the timing of the Why Braceros? film is significant: it was not produced at the
beginning of the Bracero program, during World War II, when the need for the program was
more clear to Americans, and perhaps even inarguable. Instead, the film came out 20 years after
the program had been introduced. The agricultural industry had clearly become dependent on
these workers, and wanted to continue using them even as their original justification waned. On
this issue, at this moment in the early 1960s, American culture was thus torn between upholding
unfettered economic progress, and a resistance against budding civil rights movements. Between
capitalism and racism—two of America’s defining frameworks—in this case, Americans chose
racism. The Bracero program was terminated in 1964 despite industrial propaganda efforts like
Why Braceros?. The world of Why Cybraceros? emerges from the same conflict, but imagines a
satirically idyllic future where America doesn’t have to choose: it can maximize capitalist gains
without affecting its ethnic balance.
Why Cybraceros? follows the initial structure of the original propaganda film,
emphasizing the need in this futuristic world for demanding manual labor coupled with a
shortage of willing domestic workers. The film addresses some of the problematic aspects of the
earlier bracero program that are alluded to but unspoken in the original film. Fundamentally,
these are fears about workers who are humans who are present in one’s community: that migrant
workers might abandon their contracted jobs and disappear elsewhere into the country, or enter
the country not under legal contract yet blend in with the contracted workers, or vocally and
visibly protest against their mistreatment. At its core, each of these issues is a problem of the
physical: while their labor is eagerly accepted, their continued physical presence outside that
scope is undesirable and uncomfortable for racists and xenophobes. The fictional solution to the
problem of physicality proposed in Why Cybraceros is to remove the laborer’s physical body,

63
and replace it with a robotic farmhand. The robot could still be operated by Mexican workers,
using an internet connection, but, importantly, the workers could remain in Mexico. In this way,
as the film states, American farmers could gain “all the labor without the worker,” since “only
the labor of Mexicans will cross the border.”
In its imitation of a propaganda film designed to emphasize Mexican workers’ economic
effect, and to minimize their humanity, the depiction of Mexicans in Why Cybraceros? is fairly
broad and intentionally generic. A significant portion of the film, in fact, re-utilizes footage from
Why Braceros?, as well as other stock and archival sources—an eclectic mix that contributes to
its magpie-like “rasquache aesthetic.”134 In many of these clips, the workers are seen only in long
shots, from behind, or with their faces framed out of the shot. This style of clip essentially both
imitates and serves as B-roll, the supplemental footage often used in television news coverage
that illustrates the point of the story without necessarily being directly connected to it. These
clips show the work, and the workers, without focusing or lingering on any one of them in
particular. Instead, the workers in this footage are designed to be absorbed and understood
collectively as a mass. The cybracero program in the film is further explained using a simple
animation that depicts the Mexican worker graphically reduced to a sombrero, mustache, vest,
and feet, with overemphasized arms to denote his strength and ability to work. (The term
“bracero” comes from the Spanish word for arm, “brazo.”) The caricature represents the idea of a
Mexican worker, without even closely resembling a human person. Here, Mexicans are
satirically represented primarily by their function, rather than their individual humanity.
134 Debra Ann Castillo, “Rasquache Aesthetics in Alex Rivera’s ‘Why Cybraceros?,’” Nordlit, no. 31 (2014): 9,
https://doi.org/10.7557/13.3053.

64
Figure 1 Cartoon of the cybracero from Why Cybraceros? (1997)
By utilizing this anonymizing style in depicting the Mexican cybraceros, the film can
more effectively balance its delicate discursive project: delivering the precise prospective future
that it ultimately aims to refute. Formally and narratively, the film takes the perspective of
Americans who see Latin American migrant workers only for their economic role, and not as
humans. This viewpoint readily supports—and indeed, perhaps idealizes—a conception of a
labor workforce whose workers could be totally absent, yet still results in a product that can
generate profit. With no significant Mexican voices in the film to provide an alternate
perspective, the viewer has no choice but to inhabit that viewpoint. However, like the nonviolent
protests mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, not offering an explicit denial of this future
does not mean the viewer is expected to support it. Instead, presenting this lone perspective calls
attention to the true power in this society—American corporations—and who lacks the agency to
effectively voice their opinion—the Mexican workers. Depictions of the workers in obviously
racist, generic forms, like the cartoon, also work to lessen the authority of this dominant voice by
calling attention to their lack of nuance and empathy.
The dehumanization of agricultural migrant workers—who are largely Mexican,
including significant indigenous populations from Oaxaca and Guerrero—also importantly leads

65
to an erasure of difference within that population in the context of this issue.135 Opponents of
Mexican migrant workers, generally, would likely not care from which region of Mexico the
people originated, whether they primarily speak Spanish or Mixteco, to which indigenous group
they belong. Though these nuances are hugely important for the experiences and treatment of
these people while in Mexico, they become flattened within the context of their presence as
migrant workers in the United States. Their status as Latin American migrant worker becomes
their dominant and only identity factor for these discussions. Thus, because opponents engage
with this issue on such a broad level—by centering the debate as an economic rather than
humanist question, addressing all migrant workers as a communal mass, and refusing to
distinguish workers as individuals—Rivera mimics that same broad level in order to effectively
build his satire in Why Cybraceros?.
The short A Day Without a Mexican (1998) plays similarly broad, particularly in terms of
how Latinidad is defined. The mock documentary-style film depicts a day in which California’s
entire Latinx population suddenly disappears without a trace, leaving behind empty houses,
shops, and cars. Tongue firmly in cheek, these absences are depicted in an over-the-top, if
intentionally stereotypical, style. For instance, an early shot conveys this absence by dramatically
showing a tricked-out lowrider, with no driver, bouncing wildly down the street. In faux
interviews, Californians describe the impact of the disappearance on their lives, largely centered
around the economic impacts of the disappearance, with business owners, farmers, and
housewives lamenting the loss of their workers, and displeasure at having to now perform that
135 Richard Mines, Sandra Nichols, and David Runsten, “California’s Indigenous Farmworkers: Final Report of the
Indigenous Farmworker Study (IFS) to the California Endowment” (Indigenous Farmworker Study, January 2010),
http://www.indigenousfarmworkers.org/IFS%20Full%20Report%20_Jan2010.pdf.

66
labor themselves. The film also gestures toward more personal losses, such as a woman whose
Mexican husband and son have disappeared.
The film’s general approach to Latinx identity can be seen clearly through the joke
hidden in its title: A Day Without a Mexican. Despite seeming to be a straightforward
description, the film itself takes care to note that the disappearance is not, in fact, limited to
Mexicans, but rather that all Latinxs have disappeared. It is not only a day without Mexicans, but
without Central Americans, South Americans, or those from the Caribbean. The disappearance is
shown to apply to people born in Latin American countries who have immigrated to the United
States, but also to California natives with Latin American heritage. As seen with the woman’s
son, this also includes people who have “mixed” heritage from Latinx and non-Latinx parents.
No distinction is made based on language, skin color, or nationality. As long as they have Latinx
heritage, they are considered “Mexican” for the purposes of this disappearance. Arau and
Arizmendi have directly cited their inspiration for this aspect of the film by way of a Venezuelan
actor friend’s experience in Hollywood, when they were asked by an American executive where,
in Mexico, “Venezuela” was.136 By using “Mexican” as an encompassing term in the title, the
film thus conveys the perspective of someone who assumes that all Latinx people are Mexican, a
lazy and uncurious position that can cause harm to Latinx people. Like in Why Cybraceros?, the
distinctions between different facets of Latinidad are not explored fully in this film, because the
discourse with which the film engages is already on a much more basic, less nuanced level, and
is one that largely applies to all Latinxs.
The key to understanding the satire of this film, and in fact to recognizing it as satire, is
to accept that it vocalizes these positions without seeming to critique them. The film imitates
136 Lorenza Munoz, “No Spanish Spoken Here,” Los Angeles Times, May 13, 2004,
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2004-may-13-wk-movies13-story.html.

67
authoritative media styles, including news broadcasts and documentary-style talking head
interviews, that lend a sense of believability to the otherwise fantastical plot. But these different
formats require a constant shifting of perspectives—an experience that is especially heightened
in the short film, as it has little narrative throughline otherwise. Instead, the audience must
temporarily adopt the perspective of each speaker, many of whom likely differ from their own, in
order to follow the developments of the film. The film’s comedy does add a barrier to fully
identifying with these characters, emphasizing the absurdity of the scenario and, at times, their
outlandish opinions. Essentially, the film embodies, at times, the point of view of a racist who
believes that Mexicans should not be in the United States, and carries that wish out to its full and
ridiculous conclusion.
However, this discursive maneuver can easily be misunderstood, or even harmful to
certain audiences. Matching an opponent’s imprecision with equally broad strokes is useful if all
observers have been able to trace that aspect of the discourse. Without that context though, satire
and exaggeration may understandably be interpreted as legitimate opinion. This misalignment
between speaker and recipient occurred with the advertising campaign for the feature film, A
Day Without a Mexican (2004). Part of the film’s campaign included a simply designed billboard
that stated: “On May 14th, there will be no Mexicans in California,” with “May 14th” and “No
Mexicans” emphasized in red. Without any other context, the statement alone reads like a
chilling, racist threat—a desire to be enacted, on a specific day, rather than as a cheekily
provocative speculation to consider. One of these billboards was put up in Hollywood on April
23, 2004, outside of a Sav-On Drugs store on heavily trafficked Cahuenga Boulevard in Los
Angeles. Shortly after the crews had finished placing the ad though, a customer complained to

68
Sav-On employees that the ad was “offensive.”137 Sav-On employees contacted Viacom
Outdoor, who owned the ad space, and within a few hours the ad had been removed. A Viacom
Outdoor spokeswoman acknowledged that the ad had been deemed “inappropriate,” and
removing it was their attempt to “rectify the situation.”138 A second billboard in another location
was also removed a week later.139 To a Latinx person encountering this statement, the broad
provocation was indistinguishable from a xenophobic statement they might hear in their
everyday life, making it less than effective as satire, and, in fact, harmful.
Figure 2 The A Day Without a Mexican (2008) billboard
However, ads that were more explicitly directed towards Latinxs themselves and more
directly correlated to the real point of view of the filmmakers did not receive such complaints
from citizens. These ads’ messages were more straightforward, and did not rely on an ironically
racist statement to evoke emotion, but rather were presented as a secret shared between fellow
137 Erin Ailworth, “Movie Billboard Opens, Closes on Same Day After Bad Review,” Los Angeles Times, April 24,
2004, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2004-apr-24-fi-billboard24-story.html. 138 Ailworth. 139 Sergio Arau and Yarelli Arizmendi, “Beyond the Billboards,” Variety, July 14, 2004,
https://variety.com/2004/biz/columns/beyond-the-billboards-1117907734/.

69
Latinxs. The ads found this particular audience by using Spanish text, instead of English, thus at
least guaranteeing an audience of Spanish speakers. One such ad stated, “En catorce de mayo, los
gringos van a llorar” (“On May 14th, the gringos are going to cry”).140 The structure of this ad is
similar to “There will be no Mexicans in California,” by promising a specific future scenario on
a specific future date. But by addressing Spanish speakers specifically, it inherently creates an ingroup that can then mock the very people who, largely, would not understand the sign. This
strategy also creates a fairly basic conceptualization of its audience—as Spanish speakers who
would want to make fun of gringos—and does not introduce the shifted, embodied, and racist
perspective that the English ad did.
Audiences of color have often been asked to identify with the white character narratives
that dominate media, due to the racist belief that white characters are more universal or neutral.
Manthia Diawara has noted many instances of mainstream filmmaking that “position all
spectators, White and Black, to identify with the White hero.”141 In both Why Cybraceros? and A
Day Without a Mexican, Latinx filmmakers ask their audiences to embody this type of
perspective, and, indeed, to inhabit the very racist perspective that may oppose their existence,
and may not consider Latinxs to be individual people. This shifted perspective represents a
potentially troubling experience for Latinx audiences. As Diawara describes the Black audience
experience of the infamously racist Gus/Little Sister scene in The Birth of a Nation (1915), in
which a Black man chases a white woman to her death, “the Black spectator is placed in an
impossible position—drawn by the narrative to identify with the White woman, yet resisting the
racist reading of the Black man as a dangerous threat.”142 In these films, the Latinx filmmakers
140 Steve Lopez, “Progress Overtakes Movie, or Does It?,” Los Angeles Times, April 28, 2004,
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2004-apr-28-me-lopez28-story.html. 141 Manthia Diawara, Black American Cinema, AFI Film Readers (New York: Routledge, 1993), 213. 142 Diawara, 217.

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harness this experience for satirical purposes, by calling attention to the fact that Latinx
audiences have essentially always been asked to become this generic spectator, who is meant to
identify with white characters and white filmmakers. Here, the filmmakers control and shape that
perspective though, into a ridiculous and thereby unsympathetic perspective. As both filmmakers
reshaped their narratives for feature-length films, they both chose to animate their message
through more specific characters’ stories and avoid this more generic perspective.
Both of the feature film versions of these shorts—Sleep Dealer (2008), written and
directed by Rivera with co-writer David Riker, and A Day Without a Mexican (2004), written by
Arizmendi, Arau, and Sergio Guerrero, and directed by Arau—largely repeat the central conceit
of their shorts, following the remote cybracero workers of Mexico as they log in to work in the
United States, and tracing a day in a California that is suddenly absent of Latinxs. However, in
both cases, while the short films required audiences to take on the perspective of a person who
might desire these scenarios, the content of the feature films instead depict the more specific
implications of these absences and invisibilities primarily from the perspective of a person they
ultimately affect. For example, Sleep Dealer follows Memo Cruz, a Mexican man who makes
the choice to become a cybracero “node” worker. The viewer is so aligned to Memo that we
sometimes literally see the film through his eyes: many of the shots of his work in the United
States are mediated through what he would see through his own digital interface as worker,
rather than a more classically objective cinematographic style. For instance, instead of providing
a wide establishing shot of Memo’s first job at a construction site that might ground the viewer
spatially, Rivera instead shows us the disorienting and dizzying view from Memo’s digitally
limited perspective. Similarly, while A Day Without a Mexican explicitly recreates some of the
humorous interviews from its short version, the interviews in the short—like the feature film’s

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billboard—were largely presented without commentary from the (mostly unseen) “documentary”
crew, and allowed to stand on their own. The feature instead follows Lila Rodriguez, a reporter
who goes professionally by the Anglicized “Lila Rod,” to situate many of these perspectives, and
sometimes to challenge or offer commentary to them. In both cases, the feature films still
satirically deliver this civic vision of a racist’s dream world, but do not require the audience to
inhabit the perspective of someone who would desire that.
The films also develop their protagonists’ more specific identities as Latinxs. In addition
to the Mexican-born Memo, Sleep Dealer also follows Rudy Ramirez, a Mexican-American
military drone pilot who lives and works in San Diego. Ramirez is introduced through a Copsstyle reality show, in which his military engagements are broadcast to American viewers. In this
instance, he kills Memo’s father. By drawing these parallels, the film inherently asks us to
compare the circumstances of the two men: both are Mexican or of Mexican descent, both of
their jobs involve virtually operating machinery in other countries, both have similar
appearances, and, with Memo working in Tijuana, they are mere miles from each other, despite
the distance suggested by their digital connection. Yet, their lives are incalculably different due
to an invisible border that supports the desires of American imperialism. Ultimately, Memo and
Rudy team up together to fight the evil, water-stealing American corporation, and Rudy escapes
into Mexico. Their eventual reconciliation is a show of pan-Latinx/Latin American solidarity, but
both are clearly enunciated as particularly identities within that larger definition, rather than as
part of an anonymous Latinx mass.
In A Day Without a Mexican, Lila eventually becomes the focus of public fascination, as
she seems to be the only remaining Latinx person in the California. Based on her earlier attempts
to de-emphasize her Latinx heritage by changing her name, her lingering presence in this world

72
of non-Latinxs seems to function as the delivery of what she wanted: to not be seen as Mexican.
Through this experience though, she realizes that she does and should appreciate her Mexican
ancestry. However, as she comes to this personal emotional conclusion, her aunt reveals why
Lila has not disappeared: Lila was adopted and raised by her Mexican parents, but she is
actually, genetically, of Armenian descent. This revelation understandably causes Lila a crisis of
identity, especially following her very recent enlightenment in accepting (what she thought was)
her Mexican heritage, as well as poking fun at the malleability of perceived identities in a diverse
locale like Los Angeles. Despite Lila’s new knowledge about her background though, she
maintains that she “was raised Mexican,” and “treated [as a] Mexican,” based on people’s
assumptions that her parents’ identity would match her own. She was culturally raised believing
herself to be Mexican, which was not affected by her genetic status. Near the film’s conclusion,
she proudly declares aloud: “You belong to the people who taught you the world, and my heart is
Mexican!” With this, she “becomes” Mexican—and disappears. The film ends with a news
broadcast editorializing that “where we are from is not as important as where we were raised,
who loved us, who nurtures us,” and that “mind and heart” value more than “matter.” The film
thus enunciates a very specific view of Latinidad: one that is rooted primarily in the cultural
traditions, rather than ancestry or appearance. Eventually, Lila’s acceptance of her version of
Latinidad, and California’s admittance that they need Latinxs, resolves the disappearance, and
Mexicans are gratefully welcomed when they appear at the border. Both feature films appeal to a
sense of personal emotion when invoking these speculative worlds, positioning their (eventually)
absent protagonists as distinct and real humans. This discursively opposes the views of antiimmigrant activists, who could often only see immigrants as an anonymous, threatening mass.

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After 9/11, immigration and xenophobia became further engrained into American culture
as a matter of “national safety,” and on December 16, 2005, the Border Protection, Antiterrorism
and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005 (H.R. 4437) passed the US House of
Representatives. Though Middle Eastern people faced the harshest discrimination during this
period, this bill demonstrated the pervasiveness of xenophobia, once unleashed and politically
capitalized upon. Sponsored by Representative James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), the bill proposed,
among many other statutes, to criminalize the lack of legal documentation, as well as to
criminalize the provision of aid to undocumented immigrants. Unlike California’s earlier
Proposition 187, which had been represented as a reaction to the economic impacts of
immigration, the institution of H.R. 4437 was positioned as a matter of national safety. As
evidenced by the bill’s inflammatory name, uncritically linking immigration with terrorism, the
Sensenbrenner bill was built upon the fear that all immigrants were a threat to the United States,
and that, perhaps, the only way Americans could live safely in the future would be in an America
without immigrants.
In 2006, a May Day protest against the bill, organized by an array of local immigrant
rights groups and community organizers, including Centro Sin Fronteras in Chicago and the
Central American Resource Center in Los Angeles—but spread much wider by word-of-mouth,
radio ads, and social media—was advertised alternately as “A Day Without an Immigrant” and
the “Great American Boycott.” The name of the day, as well as, of course, its general concept,
was linked directly to the film A Day Without a Mexican.
143 On this day, immigrants and their
allies refrained from their typical participation in society—shopping, going to work, attending
school—in order to demonstrate the effects that their absence would actually have on the
143 Sasha Costanza-Chock, Out of the Shadows, Into the Streets: Transmedia Organizing and the Immigrant Rights
Movement (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2014), 23.

74
country, rather than allowing the fear-mongering bill to define them as a threatening mass. Like
the films, this action was designed to temporarily make real the speculative civic vision that had
been proposed in legislation: a country without immigrants. Just as the films worked to take a
speculative concept about what our future might look like, and hopefully convince others to
reject it by showing it to them, this action similarly depended upon translating an imagined
concept into reality, in order to convince people to revise their racist fantasies. The simple
concept, and relatively simple way to understand how to participate—albeit at the significant
personal cost of missing a day’s work or even risking one’s job—meant that the participatory
action elevated the desired message directly. Activists wanted to show what a world without
immigrants would look like, and participants made that happen through their action. The
simplicity of the action also allowed word of mouth to spread quickly via social media channels,
increasing potential awareness and participation. Importantly, just as A Day Without a Mexican
applied its speculative disappearance to all Latinxs—because that is who was actually affected
by these prejudices—the Day Without Immigrants broadened their address to all immigrants,
because that is who the legislation was directed towards. Demonstrating the resonance of this
speculative activism, similar protests have occurred since, including in 2017, shortly after the
inauguration of Donald Trump, and recently, in June 2023 in Florida, to protest governor Ron
DeSantis’s anti-immigrant legislation.
Finding the Personal
While these independent filmmakers and activists worked to take ownership of their own
absence, in the mid-to-late 2010s, mainstream media witnessed a sudden call to address the roles
they had played in maintaining the absence of people of color. The proliferation of more

75
accessible, online-based media criticism, such as the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite started by April
Reign in 2015, gave more widespread attention to undeniably racist patterns within mass media,
in ways that even casual media engagers could recognize and become invested. Further, the
racist, xenophobic, homophobic, and misogynist rhetoric of Donald Trump, during his
presidential run in 2016 and ensuing presidency, made racists bolder in sharing their views.
Trump’s campaign was, of course, designed only to appeal to certain segments of the population
and alienate all others, and he was not even elected with a majority of the vote that year, to say
nothing of the low percentage of the total population that vote represented. Thus, despite the
seeming signal of national support indicated by his election, these views were still largely in
contrast with the goals of many mass media companies, such as Disney, who typically aimed to
appeal to as many people as possible. Media companies were therefore tasked with the difficult
proposition of creating art that still appealed to a broad proportion of the world population—
including the racists—while also, at least implicitly, rejecting this alienating rhetoric. This
dichotomy gave way to many media objects around this time that can be characterized by
simultaneous forays into increased and specific “diversity” while still emphasizing familiar,
universal appeal. The priority of universalization often meant these diverse representations were
made less specific and more surface-level by design, which caused its own tension with the
audiences these they were attempting to represent. These examples underscore that “presence” is
not necessarily progress, and “absence” is not necessarily regression, but both can be more
complicated statuses negotiated by their audiences.
Following the release of Toy Story 3 (2010), veteran Pixar director Lee Unkrich—whose
directing credits for the animation studio also included Finding Nemo (2003), Monsters, Inc.
(2001), and Toy Story 2 (1999)—was inspired to pitch a story based on the Mexican cultural

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tradition of the Day of the Dead, a day of celebration and remembrance for one’s deceased
ancestors, and a film that would ultimately become Coco (2017). Though Unkrich and the
original story group members were captivated by the concept and potential for animated
storytelling, none of them were of Mexican descent. They intended to avoid this potential
shortcoming by writing the story from an “outside perspective”—a Mexican-American boy
learning about these traditions for the first time.144 This type of “fish out of water” storyline is
used frequently in speculative fiction, especially to introduce audiences to unfamiliar worlds.
Instead of Mars, Hogwarts, or Westeros though, in this case, it would be harnessed to introduce
non-Mexican American audiences to the unfamiliar world of Mexico—while still, hopefully,
also appealing to Mexicans and Mexican Americans. However, the lack of Mexicans in the
writers’ room, and, presumably, on Disney’s executive and legal teams as well, led to an issue
that almost derailed the project from reaching audiences, and especially Mexican audiences, at
all.
On May 1, 2013, the Walt Disney Company filed an application for several trademarks to
support merchandising for the film, a standard practice for major movie releases to ensure that no
other company can release a film or merchandise with similar phrasing. However, the phrases
included in this request—“Day of the Dead” and “Día de los Muertos”—were extremely generic,
seeming to wildly overstep the nature of trademarks, and emerging instead as a form of
trademark-based colonization. The backlash, led by Mexicans and Mexican Americans, was
swift, especially via social media where outrage can travel exceptionally quickly. Among
Disney’s loudest critics on this front was the Chicano cartoonist Lalo Alcaraz, founder of the
satirical Chicano zine, Pocho Magazine (1988-1998) and illustrator of the daily syndicated
144 Tasha Robinson, “Pixar’s Lee Unkrich on the ‘Anxiety’ of Directing Coco,” The Verge, November 22, 2017,
https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/22/16691932/pixar-interview-coco-lee-unkrich-behind-the-scenes.

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newspaper comic strip La Cucaracha (1992 - ). Alcaraz’s work has frequently skewered antiChicano/Latinx racism and prejudice, and this incident would become a fertile source of
inspiration. In one illustration, he drew a poster for a faux film entitled Muerto Mouse, depicting
an enormous, skeletal mouse stomping through a city, Godzilla-style. The tagline notes that “it’s
coming to trademark your cultura,” with faux legalese at the bottom stating “Dia de los
Muertos™ © 2013 The Walt Disney Company.”
Figure 3 Lalo Alcaraz's Muerto Mouse illustration
Disney quickly reversed this application, stating that it had inadvertently been filed
before the title had been finalized—which would now, surely, not be anything remotely
resembling the phrase Day of the Dead. Aware of the potential for a boycott among the precise

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audience it was attempting to court with this Latinx-themed film, Disney ultimately changed the
title to Coco, the name of one of the characters in the film. Disney also hired more cultural
consultants, including the cartoonist Alcaraz, and promoted screenwriter Adrian Molina to codirector. Though Unkrich cited Molina’s Mexican-American background as “a fringe benefit”—
emphasizing instead that the sample screenplay pages he wrote earned him the job—Unkrich
also acknowledges that Molina’s ability “to tap into his own family history, his family stories”
was hugely useful to the project.145 That being said, Molina has also stated that he grew up in an
area without a lot of other Mexican families, and thus “had trouble parsing what are the things
that are part of [his] identity that are Mexican and Latino, and what are the things that are unique
to [his] family.”146 Without the context of a Mexican community, the distinction between family
traditions, and larger cultural traditions, are obscured. In some ways, Molina’s story more closely
mirrors the story group’s original intent for the character—Mexican-American child who learns
about the Mexican traditions of his parents—but his Mexican-American identity was essential in
lending a sense of in-group authenticity to the film.
As cultural consultant, Alcaraz—once one of the film’s most outspoken critics—also
spoke in praise of the movie upon its release. He described his involvement in the making of the
film as being there “not just to make sure the cultural details were authentic, but also that the US
Latino audience could enjoy the film.”147 For instance, Coco includes references throughout that
may be missed by mainstream audiences, but are intended to directly address its Latinx
145 Robinson. 146 Manuel Betancourt, “Adrian Molina’s Journey From Growing Up Second-Gen to Co-Directing Mexico’s Biggest
Box Office Hit,” Remezcla (blog), February 27, 2018, https://remezcla.com/features/film/adrian-molina-interviewcoco/.
147 Lalo Alcaraz, “Lalo Alcaraz: The Movie ‘Coco’ Helped Americans Understand Dia de Los Muertos. I Was
Proud to Play a Role.,” San Diego Union-Tribune, October 30, 2020,
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/opinion/commentary/story/2020-10-29/coco-culturally-accurate-day-of-thedead.

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audiences, such as the threat of the chancla (sandal), and appearances of many icons of Mexican
popular culture within the underworld, including Pedro Infante, Jorge Negrete, María Felix, El
Santo, and Cantinflas. Alcaraz dismissed the potential criticism of the film’s possible cultural
appropriation, instead referring to the authenticity and care with which the film was created. As
he stated, part of the film’s success was because “specificity is universality.”148 By creating an
authentic narrative that is true to a culture, in Alcaraz’s eyes, mass audiences could also better
appreciate the culture. This “specific universality” defines much of Disney’s corporate output
today but is especially evident in Coco.
The film depicts a simplified version of the Day of the Dead and its rituals serves to make
the holiday more legible to non-Mexican audiences, as well as to root it as an unambiguous
marker of Mexicanness. In actuality, the holiday is a “syncretic fusion” between the Catholic All
Saints’ and All Souls’ Days, traditionally celebrated on November 1 and 2, and pre-Columbian
indigenous practices for “honoring ancestors,” as developed over centuries of imposed cultural
mixture.149 In addition to the altar offerings depicted, in relatively secular fashion, in Coco, the
rituals may also include cleaning and decorating gravesites, family gatherings, burning incense,
prayer, and attending mass. Though the holiday, in some form, has historically been celebrated in
various regions across Latin America, by the twentieth century it was primarily associated with
Mexico.150 While Mexican Americans celebrated the Catholic remembrance days in the 19th and
early 20th centuries, the indigenous aspects of the Day of the Dead were largely introduced to
these communities in the 1970s as part of the Chicano movement. In the United States, the Day
148 Alcaraz. 149 Regina Marchi, “Hybridity and Authenticity in US Day of the Dead Celebrations.” Journal of American Folklore
126, no. 501 (July 1, 2013): 272–301. https://doi.org/10.5406/jamerfolk.126.501.0272, 276. 150 Juanita Elizondo Garza, “Dia de Los Muertos.” In The Oxford Encyclopedia of Latinos and Latinas in the United
States, edited by Suzanne Oboler and Deena J. González. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.

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of the Dead became an “invented tradition” that served as “a symbol of Chicano identity that
privileged Mexico’s indigenous ancestry over its European.”151 This American version, which
further secularized many of the rituals away from specific religious elements, is likely more
familiar to most non-Latinx Americans. Though Coco depicts Day of the Dead as a relatively
stable, unnegotiated practice, its history is much more fluid. These changes are still in progress:
after the James Bond film Spectre (2015) set one memorable action sequence during a massive,
but fictional, Day of the Dead parade in Mexico City, Mexico’s tourism board set forth to make
the parade a permanent annual addition in the years since, in order to anticipate—and cater to—
the “expectations” of global tourists.152
The story takes place around the Day of the Dead, in which—in the film—all Mexican
people honor the memories of their deceased relatives through altars that include offerings of
sweets, fruits, drink, flowers, and other favorite trinkets. In Coco, the key offering is tangibly
rendered as a photograph of the deceased. If a deceased person’s photograph is present on an
ofrenda, then they are able to pass into the realm of the living on the Day of the Dead. Though
they remain invisible, these relatives travel to the land of the living each year to observe and
celebrate alongside their living relatives, who continue to preserve their memory even in death. If
no photograph is offered, then they must stay in the Land of the Dead, and if, as the years pass,
all the living people who once knew them, or knew of them through stories, are gone or forget
them, they fade away into their “final death.” Thus, being remembered allows the spirit to
survive after the death of the body, whereas being forgotten is rendered as an ultimate and
permanent death. In Coco, a traumatic incident in the family’s past—the protagonist Miguel’s
151 Marchi, 279. 152 David Black, “Live and Let Live: Spectre’s ‘Day of Dead’ Parade Now Real.” The James Bond International
Fan Club (blog), November 1, 2016. https://www.007.info/live-and-let-live-spectres-day-of-dead-parade-now-real/.

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great-great-grandfather abandoning his great-great-grandmother and their child—has
reverberated across generations into the present. When Miguel attempts to circumvent some of
the rules the family has established as a result of this generational trauma, he is inadvertently
transported outside his corporeal being, and into the realm of the dead. Though he can see and
hear the living, they cannot see, hear, or touch him. He can, however, now see—and be seen
by—his skeletal, deceased relatives. With their help, he travels into the Land of the Dead, and
ultimately is able to resolve his family’s trauma by finding the truth behind their nearly forgotten
family history. The film’s message underscores that memory can overcome distance and
disappearance, and emphasizes strong familial bonds.
While Coco’s plot elements are specific to a Mexican context—or at least, the film’s
interpretation of a Mexican context—and rooted in research and cultural consultation, the core of
the film’s theme is memory, especially generational memory, which is a topic that is relatable to
most humans. With this strategy of specific universality, the film proved successful in American
theaters, and, as of 2023, was still positioned just outside of the US’s all-time top 200. The film
was even more successful in Mexico, where it was, at the time, the highest grossing film, and
still remains in its top 10 as the highest grossing original (non-reboot, remake, sequel) film.
Perhaps unexpectedly, the film was also approved to play in China, despite the Chinese censor
board’s usual regulations against the depiction of the supernatural in film, such as ghosts and
talking skeletons. The story that circulated on Chinese social media though, and eventually
filtered to American news, was that the censors were so moved by the plot of the film, in which a
young boy “saves the day by ensuring that his ancestors are properly remembered and honored,”

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that they were inspired “to break their own rules and allow Coco to release in theaters.”153
Though that exact scenario may not have occurred in such narratively perfect detail, Coco did
prove extremely resonant to Chinese audiences, where it drastically outperformed all previous
Pixar entries, and earned box office returns closer to American action franchise sequels than
animated musical films. For most audiences, Disney had successfully balanced the specificity of
Mexican culture—as evidenced by its cultural consultants, who could lend their approval and
ensure a sense of authenticity—while also appealing to broader audiences, by centering this
specificity along more universal appealing narratives.
In recent years, this trend towards media with mass universal appeal has largely meant
the seemingly unfettered proliferation of mega transmedia franchises, such as the Marvel and DC
cinematic universes, Star Wars, Star Trek, Harry Potter, Jurassic Park, The Lord of the Rings,
and many more. As theatrical revenue began to be segmented into “blockbusters” and
“everything else,” more significant portions of studio slates have become devoted to these types
of expensive films that have, what they hope will be, a near-universal appeal that will result in
big box office returns. However, chasing this universal appeal often means sanding down the
edges of individuality that draw people in to identifying with certain characters. Sometimes, as
with Coco, this individuality can be emphasized in a still universally palatable way. However,
many other films still have limited diversity to ensure maximum appeal. Even “diverse” films
may engage in colorblind casting, or casting roles without a specific race or ethnicity in mind.
While this provides visual diversity, their lived experiences as that race or ethnicity are generally
not addressed. This scenario includes supposedly Latinx characters, usually based on the actor
153 Rob Cain, “‘Coco’ Got All Of Its Ghosts Past China’s Superstition-Hating Censors,” Forbes, November 27,
2017, https://www.forbes.com/sites/robcain/2017/11/27/how-coco-got-all-those-ghosts-past-chinas-superstitionhating-censors/.

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that portrays them, that never reference their Latinidad, or Latinx characters that only display
broad traits that could apply to (and thus, conceivably represent) many Latinxs.
As the stereotypical domain of the nerdy white male, the fans of these largely science
fiction and fantasy franchises make up what Mel Stanfill terms “Predominantly White
Fandoms,”154 despite their intended mass appeal. While all American media skews white,
science fiction and fantasy have the additional perception of having mostly white fans. In
recounting her experience at a screening of the original Star Wars trilogy, scholar Catherine S.
Ramirez took note of how few women were in the audience—and how few women were on the
screen—and concluded that the genre was not intended for her as a “feminist woman of color,”
but rather for “immature white male nerds with dubious politics.”155 In a genre that should be
defined by its limitless imaginative potentialities, its repeated focus on the “messianic white
boy”156 feels particularly purposeful. Despite this lack of inclusion though, many people of color,
including many of the scholars cited throughout, still feel drawn to the genre and its possibilities.
Against all odds, they may even find characters with whom they can identify, despite being
provided no canonical evidence these characters are in any way intended to represent them, at
least along racial or ethnic lines.
The Star Wars spinoff series The Mandalorian debuted on the streaming service Disney+
in 2019, following the exploits of a Mandalorian bounty hunter named Din Djarin. Djarin is
played by the Chilean-American actor Pedro Pascal, who launched to stardom (and a long reign
as “the Internet’s Boyfriend”) as a result of the popularity of the show. That Pascal became
154 Stanfill, “The Unbearable Whiteness of Fandom and Fan Studies,” 306. 155 Catherine S. Ramirez, “The Time Machine: From Afrofuturism to Chicanofuturism and Beyond,” in
Altermundos : Latin@ Speculative Literature, Film, and Popular Culture, ed. Cathryn Josefina Merla-Watson and
B. V. Olguín, Aztlán Anthology Series ; Volume 4 (Los Angeles: UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Press,
2017), ix.
156 Ramirez, ix.

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famous as a result of this show is somewhat curious, because—as we learn in the show—
Mandalorians subscribe to a creed that restricts them from ever removing their helmets around
outsiders. For the majority of the first season, Djarin’s face—and thus Pascal’s face—is never
visible. In a move that some might cynically identify as a cost-saving maneuver by Disney, in the
many scenes in which Djarin’s face is hidden by the helmet, he is frequently portrayed by body
doubles Brendan Wayne and Lateef Crowder, rather than by Pascal himself.157 But for passionate
fans, who have presumably been exposed to some sort of marketing that identified Pascal as Din
Djarin, they may suspend that disbelief, or even assume that Pascal’s performance is continuous
despite his actual absence. Latinx fans, in particular, who were familiar with Pascal’s ethnic
background, immediately linked the actor’s identity with this fictional character, and claimed
Din Djarin as one of the few examples of Latinxs in Star Wars, sometimes referring to him by
the nickname “El Mando.”
Djarin has been frequently portrayed in fan art alongside Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) and
Cassian Andor (Diego Luna). These characters all come from different entries in the various
series, which occur at vastly different times in the universe’s timeline, and the characters have
never interacted on screen. Their only communion is the fact that they are played by Latinx or
Latin American actors—an identity that has no true in-universe correlation, as Latin America
does not canonically exist in the fictional Star Wars galaxy. As seen in this fan art by Mexican
Tumblr artist Cranity, the connection between these characters occurred even before Djarin’s
face had been revealed in the Mandalorian series. Regardless of Pascal’s visibility, or even
presence, this non-diegetic fan knowledge—of who is supposed to be beneath the helmet—is
enough to sustain a claim on the fictional character’s Latinx identity.
157 Devan Coggan, “Pedro Pascal Praises His ‘Mandalorian’ Doubles: ‘They Do the Heavy Lifting,’” EW.com, July
29, 2022, https://ew.com/tv/pedro-pascal-the-mandalorian-star-wars-celebration-interview/.

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Figure 4 Fan art featuring Poe Dameron, Din Djarin, and Cassian Andor, by Cranity
The leap in ascribing an actor’s ethnicity to a fictional character they play, in a universe
that has no such ethnic framework, is one technique to identify possible avenues of
representation for Latinx fans. However, it is not the only one that fans employed in looking for
Latinidad in The Mandalorian. The premise of The Mandalorian is that the bounty hunter Din
Djarin is paid to capture a target, who turns out to be a toddler-like alien of the same species as
Yoda from the original Star Wars films, and whose name is later revealed as Grogu. Unable to
send the seemingly defenseless child to his doom, Djarin instead takes him on his adventures,
bearing heavy influence from the manga Lone Wolf and Cub by pairing gruff assassin with cute

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baby. From his first appearance, it is hard to overstate how instantly Grogu became an audience
favorite. Little was known about him other than what seemed to be genetically engineered
cuteness, as he could communicate only through high-pitched gurgles, waggles of his enormous
pointed ears, and exaggerated movements of his big, wide set eyes. Because his name, species,
and home planet, among everything else, were unknown, audiences colloquially referred to the
character as “Baby Yoda.” Grogu’s “voice” was created through post-production sound design, a
mixture of fox and kinkajou noises,158 and his physical performance was done either on set as a
puppet or as CGI. Thus, unlike Din Djarin, he had no identifiable human performer from whom
audiences might draw evidence to his possible identity. While some might assume that all
audiences would merely accept Grogu as an alien with no human corollary, the impulse to
personify a cute non-human character—and in doing so potentially claim another member of
your underrepresented identity as part of popular culture—proved strong.
Grogu’s possible Latinx identity was justified primarily through his relationship to his
caretaker Din Djarin, centering an idea of Latinidad as a learned culture rather than genetic
material. Though Djarin’s own ethnic identity was somewhat tenuously supported only by way
of the often unseen actor who portrays him, his bond with Grogu even more tenuously
established this further connection, yet still, widely accepted. As Twitter user @caraoluscubanus
succinctly explained, “Pedro Pascal is Latino, Therefore, Mando is Latino; El Mando adopted
Baby Yoda, Therefore, Baby Yoda is Latino” [December 21, 2019]. Like A Day Without a
Mexican’s Lila Rodriguez’s ability to “become” Mexican through heart and raised culture,
despite ancestral Armenian roots, so too can Grogu “become” Latinx solely through his
association with Pascal’s Djarin, despite not being human. The concept of a Latinx Grogu
158 Andrew Johnson, “Meet the Voices Behind Baby Yoda,” NBC 7 San Diego (blog), December 20, 2019,
https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/meet-the-voices-behind-baby-yoda/2233350/.

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emerged quickly, and was advocated for primarily by Latinx fans. After The Mandalorian’s
second episode, in which Grogu had been fully revealed, Syfy’s Fangrrls Twitter account asked
its followers for suggestions what to call him, as an alternative to the established but canonically
inaccurate “Baby Yoda.” Chicana pop culture writer Kate Sánchez (@OhMyMithrandir)
suggested “Yodito,” using the Spanish diminutive form meaning “little Yoda” [November 20,
2019]. Yodito functioned as an alternative to “Baby Yoda” that was a uniquely logical linguistic
construction that privileged the Spanish-speaking Mandalorian audience. In a later tweet,
Sánchez posted an image of Grogu alongside images of Poe, Cassian, and a masked Djarin, with
the caption: “Latinx in space is what this new era of Star Wars is about” [December 27, 2019].
When questioned why the non-human Grogu was included in this grouping, Sánchez reemphasized that “Yodito is the son of #ElMando” [December 27, 2019]. The term “Yodito” also
became a shorthand for expressing the notion of a Latinx Grogu, signaling the adherence to this
shared fan-based canon to other Latinx fans.
Yodito-specific memes emerged shortly after this point, and allowed posters to shift their
scope of address towards this specific portion of largely Latinx Star Wars fans. These memes
usually either paired text with an image of Grogu—offering a humorous caption about what his
expression might be conveying—or photoshopped additional images onto him that made him
more clearly “Latinx.” Yodito might look exasperated at his tías’ questioning about el novio,
look serene while enjoying pan dulce and coffee on a chilly day, or eat a bag of Hot Cheetos
while wrapped in a black-and-white cobija de tigre. Each of these memes not only
unquestioningly accepted Grogu as being Latinx, and drew its humor primarily based on that
assertion, but also offered a way for Latinx Star Wars fans to connect with other Latinx Star
Wars fan, which, historically, had felt like a relatively small subsection of the fanbase. Through

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these online fan communities—loosely organized around shared fan-based canon, rather than
explicit membership in a particular forum or group—Latinx Star Wars fans could widely share
Latinx-specific memes that equally drew on both their personal experiences as Latinxs, but also
their interest in Star Wars.
While Din Djarin might at times be conceived of as some variety of “space Chilean,”
based on his actor’s heritage, Grogu, importantly, has generally been characterized as a kind of
generic pan-Latinx. This impulse towards genericness stems from the still-small portion of both
Star Wars characters and fans that are Latinx. Yodito bonds this community pan-ethnically,
without attempting to characterize him more specifically. The memes, in particular, largely
follow a pattern of pan-Latinx online humor established in broader fora from YouTube, TikTok,
and sites like Remezcla and Buzzfeed’s Pero Like vertical around this time in the mid-to-late
2010s. In trying to attract Latinx audiences from within a greater online audience, these creators
and sites attempted to find shared experiences that would both appeal broadly to this group, but
also seem unique to them. In addition to the examples in the Yodito memes mentioned above,
many more of these pan-Latinx observations have become memes in and of themselves: the
threat of the chancla sandal, the disappointment of a cookie tin full instead of sewing notions, or
the all-healing powers of Vaporub. While these experiences may not be universal for all Latinxs,
they have become part of a shared vernacular of online Latinidad that can provide a way to
establish space for Latinxs away from non-Latinxs. Once this smaller grouping of pan-Latinidad
has been established, more specific groupings—based on nation, gender, language, race, or even,
within nerdier spaces, particular fandoms—can be more easily formed, and indeed, perhaps even
more greatly desired. Making claims to Latinidad for characters whose ethnic identities might be

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otherwise unclear, like Grogu and Din Djarin, serves as a beacon for organizing these Latinx
spaces.
Conclusion
As evidenced through these examples, “presence” and “absence” are complicated
concepts, particularly when applied to media representation. While it is tempting to consider all
presence as “good” progress, and all absence a “bad” history from which to move beyond, the
actual juxtaposition is more nuanced. By looking at examples of speculative media works that
have purposely made Latinxs disappear, we see Latinx filmmakers exhibit a sense of agency that
seeks to defy their broader, yet uncontrolled, social exclusions within the United States. Here, the
filmmakers enunciate their own absence before it can be done to them. In the context of reacting
to this uncontrolled Latinx underrepresentation over decades, we might also better understand
how a Latina viewer—in communion with other Latinx nerds online—could conceivably and
collectively identify, on an ethnic level, with a fictional, tiny green goblin.
Like presence and absence, the tension between the universal and the specific is similarly
complex, and, again, neither instance always maps directly to good or bad. While universal
appeals can erase the nuances of our individuality, sometimes that is the desired effect. When
building racial and ethnic coalitions along a common interest, or when trying capture attention
quickly to the biggest audience possible, this universalization might serve those purposes best.
Cynically though, the universal also appeals towards corporate interests, who may not care about
the differences between their consumers as long as they can be marketed towards, as well as to
misperceptions about ethnic identities that fail to distinguish the many nuances they contain.
Throughout this chapter, I characterize a general desire among Latinx creators to craft more

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specific and authentic representations. However, though specificity is often assumed to be based
in authenticity, it must be emphasized that it does not always come from a personally authentic
place, especially as corporations become more savvy and able to imitate our voices.

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Chapter 2:
People of Color: Brownness, Visuality, and the Mutability of Latinidad
In the late 1960s, as the civil rights movement gained momentum in the United States, a
group of Chicano activists met to form their own revolutionary group, patterned after the success
of the Black Panthers. The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, which was founded in Oakland
by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale in 1966, monitored police brutality and provided vital
services to the African American community. It had become synonymous with Black nationalist
movements that promoted Black separatism, opposing that integration with white people should
be their ultimate desired goal. As part of their iconic uniform, the Black Panthers wore black
berets, which were associated with the “revolutionary militancy” of the third world.159 The
Chicano militant group, founded by David Sanchez and Carlos Montes, chose a similar uniform,
but selected a brown beret to represent their group instead. Ultimately, they would come to be
known as the Brown Berets, enunciating an early chromatic distinction between Chicano and
Black activism, between brownness and Blackness. In a recruiting document that laid out the
main tenets of the group, the pamphlet’s authors noted that “the brown beret was chosen because
it is a symbol of the love and pride we have in our race and in the color of our skin.” They added
that the brown beret “acts as a symbol of unity among the Chicanos.”160 The designation of
brownness as the emblematic trait of Latinidad had earlier origins, but, enunciated by Chicano’s
159 Jo-Ann Morgan, “Huey P. Newton Enthroned—Iconic Image of Black Power,” The Journal of American Culture
37, no. 2 (2014): 129–48, https://doi.org/10.1111/jacc.12158. 160 Brown Berets, “The Purpose of the Brown Berets” (ca 1970), 1, Brown Beret Movement, Gloria Arellanes
Papers, Special Collections and Archives, John F. Kennedy Memorial Library, California State University, Los
Angeles.

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call to Brown Power, this revolutionary moment visually and politically codified the association
of brownness with Latinidad more permanently in the United States.
However, the inspiring notion of “Black Power” was shaped by a racist binary American
definition of Blackness—that is, that it was a genetic status based on having any amount of
Black ancestry, which could encompass a range of physical appearances. In the United States,
this “one-drop rule” understanding of race meant that America’s racial structure was largely
meant to designate, and treat, people as either Black or not-Black. Since, at least on a formal
level, both light-skinned and dark-skinned Black Americans were discriminated against equally
under this system, Black pride movements gave them strength as a community who had all faced
similar treatment, even if their skin was not equally “black.” The appeal of this non-white, skincolor-based community pride was strong for other groups who had faced discrimination though,
often based on their appearance, including the seemingly parallel 1960s movements of “Brown
Power” for Latinxs, “Red Power” for Native Americans, and “Yellow Power” for Asian
Americans developed. However, these movements introduced further contradictions. Without the
organizing framework of America’s Black-white racial binary, defining these ethnic groups
chromatically, based on stereotypical skin colors, did not correlate in the same way. Despite the
lack of reliable correlation between skin color and race though, brownness has persisted as a
mode of identification and description of Latinxs, as well as other groups often racialized as
brown. Brownness can thus effectively be imagined in some ways as more organizing concept
than strict phenotypical marker, much as José Esteban Muñoz has described the “sense of
brown.”161 However, if many Latinxs feel an affiliation with the idea of brownness, regardless of
161 José Esteban Muñoz, Joshua Chambers-Letson, and Tavia Nyong’o, The Sense of Brown, Perverse Modernities:
A Series Edited by Jack Halberstam and Lisa Lowe (Durham: Duke University Press, 2020), 42,
https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478012566.

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their observable skin tone, it becomes difficult to distinguish how physical appearance does also
affect the experiences of different Latinxs. While skin color is a factor in how people read race
visually, it does not always perfectly reflect that meaning back, as racialization is often based on
a complicated negotiation of appearance, genetic heritage, and societal norms and prejudices.
Being able to discuss what people look like is a vital tool in talking about race and
ethnicity, even if it is not the only factor. Michael Omi and Howard Winant have emphasized the
need to study the “crucial and non-reducible visual dimension to the definition and understanding
of racial categories.”162 As LeiLani Nishime reminds us: “Despite our intellectual belief in its
fictionality … we cannot, it seems, learn or wish away the visuality of race. To literally not see
agreed-upon markers of racial difference would mean that one did not learn to see the world in a
socially meaningful way.”163 Though the concept of “race” is a biological fiction, and
cataloguing the boundaries of race based on physical traits can feel essentialist—or even
phrenological—it also a necessary component in attempting to describe people’s lived
experience, which is often based on how other people racialize them based on their appearance.
Avoiding discussion of appearances means ignoring the undeniable social realities of this
experience.
As a multiracial ethnicity, it is especially important, though still understudied, to discuss
the visuality of race among Latinxs, since Latinxs in fact come in “every conceivable color.”164
This chapter seeks to examine and interrogate the link of brownness as an identifier of ethnic
Latinidad. Physical appearance is particularly important within science fiction and fantasy
media, as they may take place in fictional worlds where Earth and Latin America do not exist or
162 Omi and Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, 111. 163 Nishime, Undercover Asian : Multiracial Asian Americans in Visual Culture, xvi. 164 Alcoff, Visible Identities Race, Gender, and the Self, 3.

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may depict non-human characters. In these cases, artists cannot rely on dialogue, narrative, or
design elements to suggest Latinidad, as they might be able to in non-speculative works. Thus,
personal visual appearance becomes one of the primary, if insufficient, ways that speculative
media has attempted to communicate identity. Aside from notable examples of flexibility that
will be discussed, the association between brownness and Latinidad has been common—though
not exclusive—throughout the history of popular visual media, which has, in turn, both been
reinforced and helped to reinforce its connection in real life.
This chapter examines the use of brownness as a visual organizing principle for Latinx
identity. In a more fundamental sense, this chapter explores what Latinxs look like—or are
expected to look like—in speculative visual media. The blank slate of speculative fiction might
conceivably allow creators to reinvent the dominant ways of imagining race and ethnicity—as
they often freely reimagine technologies, social structures, cities, and so on—yet, repeatedly,
most mainstream works tend to reinforce their own contemporary racial systems instead. Though
much of speculative visual media still primarily centers white characters, there are moments
where visible difference is intentionally foregrounded. Indeed, Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, in her
analysis of the function of Blackness in speculative fiction, identifies “the dark fantastic” as “the
role that racial difference plays in our fantastically storied imaginations.”165 Within speculative
media, as well as visual media more generally, the stereotypical appearance of Latinxs often
varies depending on the level of racial difference that the work intends to signify. Though
Latinxs in media often have dark hair and dark eyes, their skin tone can appear white and brown,
often depending on their gender and the intended function or prominence of their role. Reflecting
anti-Black and anti-Indigenous bias in both the United States and much of Latin America, this
165 Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, The Dark Fantastic : Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger
Games (New York: New York University Press, 2019), 7.

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tends to mean that protagonists, women, and other characters intended to be “universally”
appealing are typically lighter skinned Background characters, villains, and other characters
whose racial difference is meant to be emphasized are often darker. By attempting to use racial
frameworks to describe a multiracial ethnicity, which generalizes the actual broad diversity of
Latinidad into a much narrower visual shorthand, these deeply held prejudices are in fact made
more readily apparent.
This chapter engages loosely with the concept of the shapeshifter, which is “an entity
with the power to change its shape, size, species, or even sex,” and which have persisted in
mythology, literature, and visual media for centuries and across many different cultures.
166 In
mythology and folk tales, changelings, werewolves, and vampires have tended to have—
sometimes uncontrollable—shapeshifting powers, as do specific entities like Lakota trickster
Iktomi or the Greek god Zeus. People who can change their appearance have also appeared
frequently in speculatively media, including Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886),
Nymphadora Tonks in the Harry Potter book and film series, or the young Camilo in Encanto
(2021). As a metaphor, the shapeshifter has some overlap with invisibility—in that it can grant
the person freedom and independence by means of not being detected as themselves—but more
fundamentally, it represents a break between or split between one’s inner self and one’s outward
physical appearance. Though these are usually linked, shapeshifters disrupt this permanent
connection and forge new meanings based on their new appearance.
I argue that the historic use of brownness to denote Latinidad in speculative visual media
exemplifies an understanding of American Latinidad that simultaneously rigidly upholds
Latinxs’ perceived social context within the United States—of being neither white nor Black—
166 Paul T. Beattie, “SHAPESHIFTER,” in The Ashgate Encyclopedia of Literary and Cinematic Monsters, ed.
Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock (Routledge, 2014), 508.

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yet also allows Latinidad to become unfixed and able to shift depending on narrative context.
The false perception that Latinxs are neither white nor Black is supported because of the
assumption of an immutable link between brownness and Latinidad, which in turn serves to
make the category both too broad—including people with brown skin who are not Latinx—as
well as too narrow—excluding people who are Latinx but do not have brown skin. The unilateral
belief that all Latinxs are brown can, at times, override observable appearance. Fundamentally,
this connection erases individual specificity in favor of communal meaning. Valuing communal
significance, over the individual, can occur to emphasize their difference from whiteness or
Blackness within the narrative, including by Latinxs themselves. In some more recent media
works, there has been a focus on portraying a wider range of Black, brown, and white Latinxs,
which counteracts some of the anti-Black racism that the narrower depictions long supported.
However, even this more apparent visual diversity is sometimes only rendered “skin-deep,”
without engaging further on issues of color, race, and Latinidad.
Theories of Brownness
The concept of a post-racial future is a frequent trope of optimistic, liberal thinking. It has
been invoked alternately as metaphor—a world where nobody cares about racial difference—but
also as biological speculative—a world where all humans have literally become the same race.
These seemingly utopic fantasies were particularly common within early-to-mid 20th century
nations in the Americas, being applied, as they were, to the divergent populations that had
resulted following centuries of colonization, enslavement, immigration, racism, and power
imbalances, and who now needed to be united under a singular national cause. While this
singular future race is sometimes explicitly described as having brown skin as a result of racial

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mixture, the values of whiteness are typically valorized above others—implicitly suggesting that
non-white people are imagined to be absorbed or erased by other means. Within the United
States, the notion of the “melting pot” conjures up the slightly gruesome image of these various
populations biologically converging on a molecular level, with the extremes in every aspect
being erased in favor of a homogenous average. The “melting pot” metaphor is a particularly
resonant one, reappearing in media frequently over the decades: UK pop group Blue Mink’s
1969 hit “Melting Pot” advocated a route for racial harmony by “turn[ing] out coffee-colored
people by the score.” More recently, Ilana Glazer’s satirically woke Broad City character
confidently proclaimed in a 2014 episode that gentrification would not matter in the future
because “statistically, we're headed toward an age where everybody's gonna be, like, caramel and
queer.” An op-ed in The New York Times, called “What Biracial People Know,” published at the
beginning of Donald Trump’s presidency, speculated that more mixed-race babies in the United
States would inherently mean less racism, because “being mixed makes it harder to fall back on
the tribal identities that have guided so much of human history.”167 These statements each
represent viewpoints in which racism is mistakenly attributed exclusively to the fact that
phenotypical difference exists, rather than by some humans defining and maintaining
exclusionary groups for purposes of power. They imagine the end of racism as the teleological
endpoint for civilization, based on the reproductive intermingling of different races, rather than a
system that has to be actively dismantled.
In 1925, Mexican philosopher and former Minister of Public Education José Vasconcelos
published La Raza Cósmica (The Cosmic Race), an essay in which he envisioned a future where
all the races of the world had merged into a singular, as he termed it, “cosmic” race. This global
167 Moises Velasquez-Manoff, “Opinion | What Biracial People Know,” The New York Times, March 4, 2017, sec.
Opinion, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/04/opinion/sunday/what-biracial-people-know.html.

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race, as he wrote, would also be precipitated by “interracial sexual unions”168 and would bring
out the strengths, and erase the weaknesses, of each race, allowing humanity to progress towards
a utopia motivated by love, beauty, and empathy. As he envisioned, this cosmic race would be
“the definitive race, the synthetical race, the integral race, made up of the genius and the blood of
all peoples, and for that reason, more capable of true brotherhood and of a truly universal
vision.”169 At the time of Vasconcelos’ writing, Mexico’s indigenous history was being newly
celebrated and reclaimed within mainstream political thought. Along with other key thinkers of
the era, including Andrea Molina Enriquez and Manuel Gamio, part of Vasconcelos’ goal here
was to advocate for an increased recognition and valorization of Mexico’s mixed-race (from
their perspective, native and white Spanish) mestizo population, which was, and remains,
Mexico’s racial majority. In that sense then, these pro-mestizaje projects worked to critique the
racial Darwinism that was promoted in the United States and Europe, which prioritized pure
white heritage above all else, and potentially elevate Latin America’s global status because of its
diverse racial makeup.
Though Vasconcelos states that “no contemporary race can present itself alone as the
finished model that all the others should imitate,”170 his seemingly utopic vision is ultimately
limited by his repeated elevation of white Europeans as the race of “superior ideals.” 171
Positioning his speculative ethnography within a framework of Mendellian genetics—that is, that
race is inherited by means of dominant and recessive gene types—he offers that, through a
project of intentional racial intermingling, “the lower types of the species will be absorbed by the
168 José Vasconcelos and Didier Tisdel. Jaén, The Cosmic Race : A Bilingual Edition, Johns Hopkins paperbacks ed.,
Race in the Americas (Baltimore, Md: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 3.
169 Vasconcelos and Jaén, 20. 170 Vasconcelos and Jaén, 32. 171 Vasconcelos and Jaén, 25.

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superior type,” and as such, he expects that “the traits of the white race will predominate among
the characteristics of the fifth race.”172 As he states, “inferior races, upon being educated, would
become less prolific, and the better specimens would go on ascending a scale of ethnic
improvement … that new race to which the White himself will have to aspire.” 173 Thus, for
Vasconcelos, while the cosmic race would be similar to yet slightly improved upon the
“superior” traits of the white race, the so-called inferior, non-white races, would be almost
entirely erased. Further, the few major imperfections he notes about white Europeans are mostly
related to historical actions—their “arrogance,” “materialism,” and “social injustice”174—rather
than the inherently negative personal traits regarding mental fortitude, personality, and lack of
ambition that he assigns to other races, including Black, Asian, and Indigenous. This suggests
that his view of the cosmic race is built on an imagined, benevolent whiteness as the ideal, with
the other races primarily providing the gifts of “malleability, rapid comprehension, and easy
emotion.”175
Though Vasconcelos denounces eugenicist projects based on racial purity, which he
terms “scientific eugenics,”176 he offers his concept of the cosmic race instead as being based on
an “aesthetic eugenics.”177 Throughout the essay, Vasconcelos repeatedly valorizes the notion of
“beauty” as the unifying organizational method for the cosmic race, based largely on a new
freedom for sexual unions based primarily on “the free choice of love, beauty, and joy”178 rather
than social norms. As a result of this freedom, he states that “life, founded on love, will come to
172 Vasconcelos and Jaén, 25. 173 Vasconcelos and Jaén, 32. 174 Vasconcelos and Jaén, 25. 175 Vasconcelos and Jaén, 37. 176 Vasconcelos and Jaén, 29. 177 Vasconcelos and Jaén, 30. 178 Didier Tisdel. Jaén, “Introduction,” in The Cosmic Race : A Bilingual Edition, Johns Hopkins paperbacks ed.,
Race in the Americas (Baltimore, Md: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), x.

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be expressed in forms of beauty.” 179 Vasconcelos’ focus on beauty is, in part, rooted in visual
appearance, but also reflects a Platonic notion of beauty equating it with moral goodness. He
uses “ugliness” as an umbrella term for circumstances that include “poverty, defective education
… [and] misery.” 180 Again, while these statements may sound idealistic, “aesthetic eugenics” are
nonetheless eugenics, based on his subjective views of desirable traits. He advises that, in this
future, “the very ugly will not procreate” 181 and thus, “the uglier stocks will give way to the
more handsome.” 182 Specifically, Vasconcelos predicts that within “a few decades of aesthetic
eugenics, the Black may disappear,” 183 clearly establishing his hierarchy of the “beauty,” and
thus, for him, value, of the world’s races. Though Vasconcelos does not venture to enunciate that
this cosmic race will be “a race of a single color or of particular features,” 184 his views clearly
demonstrate that, to him, the value of prolonged racial mixture—which he sees as a potential
future for Mexico—is the ability to move away from Blackness, towards whiteness, which can
be improved by the historical grounding of Mexico’s indigenous heritage.
In addition to racial mestizaje then, the modern emphasis on brownness in Latinxs can
also serve to represent their indigeneity, especially as a distinction from whiteness. Though, as
mentioned, Vasconcelos considered white Europeans as having superior ideals, he also saw room
for improvement in their personal character, which could be achieved by adding indigenous
heritage to the racial mixture. For groups like the Brown Berets, who faced discrimination in the
United States by white people, maintaining association with their white Spanish heritage could
be harmful. Chicanos could better vocalize pride in their difference through relation to their
179 Vasconcelos and Jaén, The Cosmic Race : A Bilingual Edition, 25. 180 Vasconcelos and Jaén, 30. 181 Vasconcelos and Jaén, 30. 182 Vasconcelos and Jaén, 32. 183 Vasconcelos and Jaén, 32. 184 Vasconcelos and Jaén, 20.

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indigenous identity, as particularly conveyed by their brownness. This point of pride was
especially illustrated in their vision of Aztlán, the mythical homeland of the Mexican (Aztecs)
that was located in the Southwest United States according to some legends. Their brownness thus
established them as true natives of the Southwest, rather than as the outsiders white Americans
made them out to be. However, tying brownness to these intangible concepts—indigeneity,
belonging, community—establishes a rhetoric that forces physical appearance to stand in for
ideas that it cannot satisfactorily represent.
Despite the danger of flattening Latinidad into a singular appearance, the idea of
brownness can still serve as a way of organizing the Latinx community in opposition to white
supremacy. In José Esteban Muñoz’s posthumously published The Sense of Brown, he utilizes
brownness as a unifier, in part because of the “incoherence” of the term Latino—that is, its
“inability to index, with any regularity, the central identity tropes that lead to our understandings
of group identities in the United States.”185 Instead, he introduces the concept of a “brown
commons,” which he describes as a “a movement, a flow, and an impulse to move beyond the
singular subjectivity and the individualized subjectivities.”186 He organizes this concept around
brownness because, as he notes, “brown is a common color shared by a commons that is of and
for the multitude.”187 Though his discussion in this book is largely centered around Latinidad, he
explains that his definition of “brown people” includes “people who are rendered brown by their
personal and familial participations in South-to-North migration patterns.”188 That is, brownness,
in all its contexts worldwide, nonetheless conveys a shared meaning within a global community
185 José Esteban Muñoz, Joshua Chambers-Letson, and Tavia Nyong’o, The Sense of Brown, Perverse Modernities:
A Series Edited by Jack Halberstam and Lisa Lowe (Durham: Duke University Press, 2020), 42,
https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478012566.
186 Muñoz, Chambers-Letson, and Nyong’o, 36. 187 Muñoz, Chambers-Letson, and Nyong’o, 36. 188 Muñoz, Chambers-Letson, and Nyong’o, 37.

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that is largely centered around whiteness. Importantly, this is relevant specifically to brown
Latinxs, as white and Black Latinxs are treated under different racial frameworks.
Muñoz further calls for scholars to go “beyond notions of ethnicity as fixed (something
that people are) and instead understand it as performative (what people do), providing a
reinvigorated and nuanced understanding of ethnicity.”189 The performative aspects of ethnicity
are made especially clear within the speculative works of my focus, as their creators—both
Latinx and non-Latinx—must often specifically choose which aspects of race and ethnicity to
include, and how to contextualize them, from a relatively blank slate.
Making Brown Faces
The United States’ conception of race has largely been predicated on a binary system
divided between Black and white. The classical studio film industry reinforced this system on
screen by adhering to rigid visual standardsthat clearly delineated between Blackness and
whiteness, leaving no room for racial ambiguity, which in turn established limitations on how
people of different races could interact on screen. Any relationships depicted on screen thus had
to be between two clearly white people, or two clearly Black people, rather than any suggested
mixture of the two. The Motion Picture Production Code, established by the Motion Picture
Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA), helped guide these types of restrictions within
mainstream American films from about 1934 to 1968 as a tool of industrial self-censorship.
Among the Code’s “absolute prohibitions”190 was miscegenation, defined as a “sex relationship
189 José Esteban Muñoz, Joshua Chambers-Letson, and Tavia Nyong’o, The Sense of Brown, Perverse Modernities:
A Series Edited by Jack Halberstam and Lisa Lowe (Durham: Duke University Press, 2020), 46,
https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478012566.
190 Francis Stuart Harmon, “MPPDA Digital Archive - Record #1191,” July 5, 1938,
https://mppda.flinders.edu.au/records/1191.

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between the white and black races.”191 Sometimes, this meant an actor, who was in fact Black,
might not “look” Black enough on screen. For instance, the light-skinned Black actress Nina
Mae McKinney is seen with artificially darkened skin in this publicity still for the all-Black-cast
pre-Code Hallelujah (1929), a role in which she, as the sinful Chick, seduces the darker-skinned
character Zeke played by Daniel L. Haynes. Alternatively, filmmakers could skirt miscegenation
fears by casting white actors who could be made darker with makeup, but with the understanding
that audiences would still read them as white. This technique can be seen in this makeup test
photograph for the Haitian-set Lydia Bailey (1952), where the white actress Anne Francis has
been made up to match the skin tone of supporting cast member Suzette Harbin. Even for a racial
identity that is more binary within the American racial framework, these examples still
demonstrate the uneasy tension between the concept of Blackness and the ambiguity with which
it can appear on film.
Figure 5 Nina Mae McKinney in a publicity still for Hallelujah (1929)
191 MPPDA, “MPPDA Digital Archive - Record #365,” June 29, 1927, 7, https://mppda.flinders.edu.au/records/365.

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Figure 6 Nina Mae McKinney in a publicity still for Pinky (1959), Detroit Public Library
Figure 7 Suzette Harbin and Anne Francis in a makeup test for Lydia Bailey (1952)

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Latinidad, and other non-Black and non-white races and ethnicities, fall outside of this
Black-white binary in the United States, both in social reality and on screen. Thus, brownness
developed as a possible visual intermediary between Blackness and whiteness that could be used
to uphold racial binaries, but also, at times, to avoid them. For instance, the singer-actress known
as Dona Drake, born Eunice Westmoreland, had Black ancestry—making her legally and
socially Black in the United States in the 1930s and 1940s—but, based on her light-skinned
appearance, was able to “pass” as a non-Black Mexican. She had a successful acting career, not
only romancing white men on screen, but eventually marrying Hollywood fashion designer
William Travilla. Similarly, since Black musicians could not join the Los Angeles Musicians’
Union, light-skinned African-American organist John Roland Redd first joined the union as
“Juan Ronaldo,” performing on the radio station KPMC. As his career progressed, he created
another persona: the French-Indian Korla Pandit, who became an iconic figure of mid-century
Los Angeles television.192 These examples are a few among many—and many more likely
unknown—of people who exploited the imprecision of physical appearance as a way of defining
racist social boundaries, and, particularly, the specific racial mobility that brownness offered.
While the use of makeup to distinguish between Black and white performers had
ostensible legal? and industrial motivations in Hollywood, the same practice occurred to Latinx
actors, and to actors portraying Latinx characters, as well. Here, the use of makeup to enunciate
their racial difference becomes a much clearer project of visualizing white supremacy. Famously,
in West Side Story (1961), the Puerto Rican actress Rita Moreno, who was playing a Puerto
192 Liesl Bradner, “How a Black Man From Missouri Transformed Himself Into the Indian Liberace,” The New
Republic, September 12, 2015, https://newrepublic.com/article/122797/how-black-man-missouri-transformedindian-liberace.

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Rican character, had her skin darkened with makeup despite her protests.193 Other Puerto Rican
characters, played by actors from a range of backgrounds, including the Greek George Chakiris,
Filipino-Colombian Jose de la Vega, and Mexican-American Rudy Del Campo received similar
dark makeup. The makeup effectively created a more unified brown skin tone for them, making
it easier for audiences to read them immediately as “Latino” and importantly distinguished them
from their white Irish rivals. The conflict between the two groups is emphasized through this
visual distinction.
Figure 8 George Chakiris (center) and the Sharks of West Side Story (1961)
193 Lynette Rice, “‘West Side Story’ at 60: An Oral History of the Film’s Shocking Oscar Triumph,” EW.com, April
9, 2021, https://ew.com/awards/oscars/west-side-story-flashback-george-chakiris-rita-moreno/.

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Figure 9 Ricardo Montalban and Esther Williams in On an Island with You (1948)
Further, Natalie Wood’s makeup in West Side Story—darker than her own skin tone, but
not quite as dark as the Puerto Rican male characters—also fits within a pattern of the
Hollywood Latina, which Priscilla Peña Ovalle has described as having “an exotic look that
could be read as ‘ethnic’ yet remained familiar enough for white women to appropriate.”194 The
importance of the marketability and accessibility of this exotic style to white American women
underscores the demonstrated preference for Hollywood’s Latina roles to be played by either
white Latina/Spanish women (Dolores del Rio, Rita Hayworth), or non-Latina white women,
such as Wood, Dorothy Lamour in Road to Rio (1947), or Esther Williams in On an Island with
You (1948). In each of these cases, and in almost all instances of skin-tone-altering makeup for
film, a darker makeup is applied to a lighter person. White skin thus becomes the blank canvas to
which other skin colors—other identities—can be temporarily applied. For Latinx roles though,
the choice to complete this transformation using makeup is somewhat nonsensical, given that
194 Priscilla Peña Ovalle, Dance and the Hollywood Latina: Race, Sex, and Stardom (New Brunswick: Rutgers
University Press, 2010), 8.

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Latinxs can already be white without need for makeup. However, the makeup underscores the
temporary nature of this ability to inhabit other cultures and identities, after which the subject
can safely return to full whiteness. It also delineates a desire for the clear, unambiguous
delineation of race and ethnicity. That is, a skew towards the generic median of Latinidad is
deemed preferable onscreen to the messy but true diversity of reality.
The use of brownface makeup to enhance and distinguish Latinx racial difference
continued over the next few decades, including in large-cast ensembles that included a range of
other identities. In the 1980s, big ensemble casts in science fiction films, such as The Thing
(1982) and The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984), tended to
reflect, at least on a surface-level, an attempt at increased diversity from previous generations.
Perhaps aware of the implications of depicting an all-white future, increasingly, these films
would include one or two Black characters, and, sometimes, an Asian or Latinx character. The
ensuing post-racial harmony, in the light of whatever horrible threat they faced together, thus
gave the films both a wider audience, as well as a somewhat utopic racial view. Racial difference
was often signified as visual alone—to complete the rainbow of diversity on screen—but
generally not deeply engaged otherwise.
In Alien (1979), written by Dan O’Bannon and directed by Ridley Scott, and its sequel,
Aliens (1986), written and directed by James Cameron, spaceship crew member Ellen Ripley
must fight for her life against deadly alien creatures. In the original film, the crew is mostly
white, though it does include one Black engineer, Dennis Parker, played by Yaphet Kotto. The
sequel, reflecting these slight changes in the standards of diversity, included several Black male
crew members, as well as a Latina character, Vasquez, played by Jenette Goldstein. Their racial
and ethnic identities largely do not play a role in the narrative of the film, beyond evidencing the

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racial progress of this future world. Thus, it is curious to note that Goldstein underwent an
extensive physical transformation for the role when the character’s Latinx identity seemed to be
a voluntary choice. This transformation included makeup-enhanced brown skin, and shortly
cropped black hair. Offscreen, Goldstein has dark reddish, curly hair and light skin, and
describes herself as “a short, freckle-faced Jewish girl who is half-Russian and half-Moroccan
and Brazilian.”195 In many cases, Goldstein’s naming of her own Brazilian heritage might seem
to justify her portrayal of the Latina Vasquez, much as Rita Moreno has largely escaped criticism
for the darkening of her skin in West Side Story. However, since Goldstein does not describe
herself as Latina, she states herself that she does not think she would be cast as Vasquez today.
It is important to pause here to note a distinction in the terminology of “brownface,”
which is often used interchangeably to mean any non-Latinx person playing (or even voicing) a
Latinx role. I argue this is an inaccurate deployment of the term and should be reserved for
scenarios—like this one—where a white-skinned actor uses make up to appear brown-skinned.
With this usage, “brownface” could accurately describe lighter-skinned Latinx actors, like
Moreno, who are made darker through makeup.196 An actor’s Latinx identity should not negate
the discussion of these changes in skin tone, as this only further solidifies the false connection
between (in)visible brownness and Latinidad. Additionally, specific masquerades beyond
changes to skin tone should be considered and named separately for more thorough analysis. For
instance, the creation of Carmen Miranda’s performance persona drew heavily on her
interpretation of Afro-Brazilian dances and culture, yet largely without the darkening of her skin
195 TooFab Staff, “‘Aliens’ Star Jenette Goldstein Reflects on Controversial Casting -- And Shares Touching
‘Titanic’ Story About James Cameron,” Toofab, April 22, 2016, https://toofab.com/2016/04/22/aliens-star-jenettegoldstein-vasquez-titanic-james-cameron-exclusive/. 196 Acknowledging, of course, that particularly during the Hollywood studio era, these types of decisions were not
made by the contracted actors themselves.

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tone.197 As Kathryn Bishop-Sanchez states, her success in this field demonstrated the Brazilian,
and American, impulse towards a ”whitening ideal,” in which Miranda became a “whitened
version of the quintessential icon of Afro-Brazilian femaleness.”198 Miranda achieved her
success by appropriating Black culture through her white body, which made her more
consumable for white audiences. In other cases, white actors with no Latinx heritage have been
cast in roles written as Latinx characters or depicting people with Latin American heritage, such
as Carey Mulligan playing the Chilean actress Felicia Montealegre in Maestro (2023). Here, the
choice to cast Mulligan—who appears with dark hair in some scenes, speaking in a broad midAtlantic accent for the role—essentially serves as a way for the filmmakers to minimize the
importance of the character’s ethnicity, transforming her into a supposedly neutral white figure.
Though these divergent examples all have similar roots in white supremacy, their differences
show that “brownface” as a blanket term for general appropriation makes it difficult to call
attention to the specific choices about how Latinidad is being visualized and considered within
media.
In the case of Aliens, Goldstein could well have played Vasquez as a Latina without the
use of changes to her hair and makeup. Aware of this, Goldstein reminded her interviewer, who
had asked about the controversy of her playing the role, that, of course, “people with Jewish last
names are Latino … you don't want to stereotype what Hollywood thinks is Latino.”199 The use
of makeup and hair in the film was a specific choice to ensure she was “read” as Latina, which,
in film, needs to be a specifically visually legible type of Latina, or else she would be read as
197 Miranda did appear in darkened skin tone in some live performances in Brazil, but her American film stardom
was achieved primarily with her natural light skin. 198 Kathryn Bishop-Sancez, Creating Carmen Miranda: Race, Camp, and Transnational Stardom. Nashville, TN:
Vanderbilt University Press, 2016, 44. 199 Staff.

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white. Here, Vasquez’s Latinidad is largely influenced by images of Chicano street gangs at this
time—seen in films like Walk Proud (1979) and Boulevard Nights (1979)—and enhanced
through costume, as she wears a red bandana around her head, and has a teardrop tattoo under
her eye. Vasquez’s butchness does set her apart from many representations of Latinas on screen,
though it also sets her apart from the more feminine, white members of the crew. (In one famous
exchange, a male crew member asks if she’s ever been mistaken for a man. She replies, “No,
have you?”) Here, the darker brown skin seems linked with the masculine. Vasquez is thus
removed as an object of desire for the presumed heterosexual male audience, thus positioning the
white, though not overly feminine, Ripley more securely in that role. Though these films have
been embraced for their shifting of gender norms, they also create a structure in which the white
woman is clearly centered as the emblem of futuristic femininity.
Generic Brownness
The use of skin-darkening makeup has, of course, not only been limited to Latinxs, but
also been used to signify a broad range of “brown” identities, including Native American, North
African, Middle Eastern, South Asian, and Pacific Islander. Like Latinxs, this overemphasis on
appearance—of brownness, in particular—for these groups often leads to an erasure of
individuality, and an assumption that all members of the group are interchangeable. In American
speculative fiction, a genre that has roots in colonial adventure fiction, brownness often serves as
a visual reminder of colonialism, made especially pertinent by the fact that many of the United
States’ objects of colonial rule or invasion, such as Native Americans and inhabitants of Latin
America and the Middle East, are largely brown people. A lack of available national or cultural
markers within these speculative universes sometimes means that these works rely even further

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on the appearance as signifier. In many cases, the representation of brownness as a marker of
difference alone is more significant than its connection to the actual population the metaphor
may have originally invoked.
One motivating factor in making this brownness more generic was due to the Production
Code’s restriction against “offensive” depictions against real countries and people. The
implications of Hollywood’s cinematic exports could be both political—losing the alliance of a
formerly friendly nation—as well as economic—a country boycotting the works of a studio who
produced a particularly offensive picture. In 1922, the Mexican government introduced an
embargo against American films, following a flurry of US-made films featuring Mexicans that
were “rife with stereotypes that undermined the government’s desire to project an image of
Mexico as a modern nation.”200 Shortly thereafter, the MPPDA met with Mexican officials and
specifically resolved “to prevent the production of any new motion picture films which present
the Mexican character in a derogatory or objectionable manner.”201 The association attributed
this decision to their wish “that friendly relations be maintained between this country and all
others and that nothing may be done by the motion picture industry to interfere in any way with
such friendly relations.” 202
However, in order to avoid these regulations—without major changes to scripts or sets—
studios would often simply invent a new, fictional name for these supposed Latin American
countries. While producing the film version of the play The Dove—which was about a Mexican
dictator who falls in love with a dancer in Tijuana—the Mexican Embassy informed its
200 Laura Isabel Serna, Making Cinelandia: American Films and Mexican Film Culture before the Golden Age
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014), https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1131df5, 156. 201 MPPDA, “Resolution, Record #204,” July 25, 1922, 1, MPPDA Digital Archive,
https://mppda.flinders.edu.au/records/204.
202 MPPDA, 1.

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producers that the film could not be set in Mexico due to its potentially offensive and
embarrassing subject matter. Thus, as producer M.C. Levee later explained, “we shifted it to the
coast of Costa Rica and used fictitious names that people never even heard of.”203 In fact, the
title cards in the film name the country as “Costa Roja,” and claim it is in the Mediterranean. As
Laura Isabel Serna points out, though, in contemporary reviews the Mexican public still readily
identified the intended setting as Mexico.204 Fictionalized Latin American countries have been
utilized frequently in films, for instance Dos Noches (1933), set in the mythical republic of
Luvania, Moon Over Parador (1988), set in the fictional South American country of Parador,
and even as recently as Blue Beetle, which is set in the fictional Palmera City instead of El Paso,
Texas. However, as the producer Levee also complained, working within a fully fictional space
also meant losing the “certain connotations” that a Tijuana setting would have conveyed to
audiences. In marketing terms, a specific place, like Tijuana, “has a meaning to the audience and
brings about a reaction in them than an unknown name cannot.” 205 Thus, while these fictional
Latinx geographies can avoid offending real Latinxs, they also lose the valuable specificity of
real spaces and real people.
Latinxs and brown people—of all varieties—have also frequently appeared as explicitly
fantastical races and peoples within larger science fiction and fantasy realms. For instance, in the
Game of Thrones (2011 - 2019) television series, characters from the region of Dorne are
represented by a diverse consortium of dark-haired, light-brown-skinned actors, including the
Chilean-American Pedro Pascal, Indian-Swiss-Italian-British Indira Varma, Māori-AngloAustralian Keisha Castle-Hughes, Singaporean-Chinese-English Jessica Henwick, and Sudanese203 M.C. Levee, “Speech/Address, Record #587,” May 8, 1929, 131, MPPDA Digital Archive,
https://mppda.flinders.edu.au/records/587.
204 Serna, Making Cinelandia, 171. 205 Levee, 131.

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English Alexander Siddig. As the unwieldy number of hyphenates here suggests, their similar
physical appearance was clearly the primary organizing factor in their casting, rather than any
shared ancestral heritage. In Games of Thrones, Dorne is distinct from the more Northern
European-inspired locales seen in the show, and represents a warmer both in terms of climate
and culture, sexually liberated, matriarchal society—which aligns with some stereotypes
commonly ascribed to brown people in media, such as the “fiery” Latina.
At times, this perceived mutability of the ethnic significance of brownness can lead to
unintended readings, particularly in fantasy universes onto which audiences must inherently
project their own cultural frameworks. For instance, in Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the
Clones (2002), the status quo of the universe is threatened by an army of clones, based on the
template of a Mandalorian bounty hunter named Jango Fett. Fett, and, thus, all of the clones, are
played by Māori actor Temuera Morrison. Though Star Wars features many human and
humanoid characters, it is not set on Earth. In later television shows and films, where we have
seen more people from the Mandalorian race, they have a relatively wide range of appearances..
However, the visual of a huge mass of brown men, emerging as a threat for the mostly white
protagonists, had unavoidable racial and ethnic significance for American viewers.
After the film’s premiere, the Detroit News gathered a diverse group of community
members to provide their reactions in a panel relating to the film. Two of the Latino panelists
thought Fett “looked totally Latino” and that “his kid”—the young Boba Fett, played by Daniel
Logan, who, like Morrison, is of Māori descent—"looked even more Latino.”206 These panelists
speculated that the clone army reflected a fear of Mexican immigration, based both on the
narrative metaphor of the scenario—an invading army of people—but also supported by the
206 Michael H. Hodges, “Critics Say ‘Clones’ Has Racial Stereotypes,” Detroit News, May 18, 2002, sec.
Entertainment.

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actor’s appearance as a brown man, which they read as Latino. Other panelists, however, viewed
his brownness differently. Iman Nouri, an Arab-American panelist, said, “I frankly think the
bounty hunter is Arab … he’s basically [portrayed] as a terrorist and ‘baba’ is Arabic for
‘father.’”207 As the first post-9/11 Star Wars film, this reading also seems entirely
understandable. Having been trained to understand brownness as having mutable ethnic
significance onscreen, in this case, these panelists both saw themselves reflected in that
brownness, and expected that a depiction of brownness was meant to represent a negative
allegory.
The panelists’ interpretations were met with criticism, both from Lucasfilm as well as
reactionary (white) fans and critics. Joshua Griffin of the fan site TheForce.net wrote an editorial
responding to the panel, critiquing the claim “that Clones is racial” [sic], which he said
demonstrated the panelists’ “ignorance of the saga and fandom.” He added that “Mace Windu,
Jango and Boba Fett and Vader”—played by Samuel L. Jackson, Morrison and Logan, and
voiced by James Earl Jones, respectively—“are actually the stars of the film, and that Lucas
should be commended for his casting not belittled.”208 Here, Griffin both characterizes the
panelists’ lack of Star Wars knowledge as a disqualification for their interpretation of the scene,
as well as negating these critiques with unrelated facts about other actors of color throughout the
entire series—at least one of whom (Jones) is never even seen. This stance reflects the somewhat
stereotypical reactionary white fan response, both through the attempt to gatekeep who is
allowed to consume and react to these films, as well as believing that the mere presence of
people of color in the film is enough to shield it from critiques of racism. Griffith establishes an
207 Hodges. 208 Joshua Griffin, “Detroit News Cries Racism in Episode II,” TheForce.net, May 18, 2002,
https://www.theforce.net/latestnews/story/Detroit_News_Cries_Racism_in_Episode_II_66692.asp.

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opposing binary between the good, loyal (white) fan who must defend the franchise against the
critical, bad (non-white) fans. Similarly, Ain’t It Cool News founder Harry Knowles stated that
the Latinx and Arab viewers were “reading racism into something that's not there—it's just in the
minds of the viewers.”209 However, whether or not the filmmakers intended this image to be
racist is largely insignificant, for my purposes at least. That these brown viewers saw the image
of a mass of brown men and assumed its intent was racist—based on their experience living as
brown people in the United States—is notable enough. Lucasfilm indeed denied any racist intent,
primarily by attempting to distance the films from any metric of critical racial analysis due to
their speculative elements. As spokesperson Jeanne Cole stated: “Star Wars is a fantasy movie
filled with creatures and aliens from all different planets and universes and galaxies. There is no
basis for this [criticism of racism].” 210 This response not only ignores the validity of these
panelists’ reception of these images, but also conveniently ignores the many instances of
inspiration for real historical cultures that Star Wars has historically relied upon and often
proudly emphasized.
The tradition of incorporating, and sometimes mixing up, various traditions of “brown”
cultures into a singular entity has also had a long history within the speculative, invoked to
communicate a general air of exoticism without specifying its origin. For instance, the character
of Khan Noonien Singh is one of Star Trek’s most enduring and iconic villains. Khan, the
singular name by which he is typically referred, was a genetically engineered superhuman, also
known as an Augment: a seemingly perfect specimen of teleological human progression resulting
from eugenicist experimentation that occurred in the years prior to Star Trek’s main narrative. A
former despot—but one of genetically heightened strength, intelligence, and ambition—he
209 Hodges, “Critics Say ‘Clones’ Has Racial Stereotypes.” 210 Hodges.

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escapes with some followers, and remains in a state of cryogenic stasis for nearly 200 years
before being discovered and awakened by Captain James T. Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise.
This encounter was covered in the first season of the original series, in an episode called “Space
Seed,” which aired in 1967. A later revenge plot following the events of the series propelled the
feature film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982).
Within the original series, the Enterprise’s famously racially diverse crew211 visualized a
speculative future that had progressed into a utopic society free from (human) racism, which of
course also directly addressed the context of the show’s 1960s American production. According
to a paraphrased statement from casting director Joseph D’Agosta published on StarTrek.com in
2013, at creator Gene Roddenberry’s directive, casting for the show was done in a “color-blind”
fashion, by choosing the best actor for each role regardless of their race. In this way, the show
could “adhere to the 23rd century values of Star Trek in the 1960s real world”212—that is, using
the fictional guidepost of a future racial utopia, the show could recruit a more diverse cast within
its production. While these nods toward depicting diversity were a monumental shift for the time,
many of these seemingly progressive choices reflected deeper, perhaps unintended issues and
assumptions from the liberal white producers.
In both the diegetic narrative and in the non-diegetic production, Khan’s identity reflects
a mixture of ethnicities and cultures, reflecting contemporary conceptions about brownness on
screen, notably in the confusion—or likely, unimportance—of indiscriminately mixing
influences from different brown populations. Though originally intended to be the Norse Harold
211 For the 1960s, at least: the main cast included the Black Lieutenant Uhura, played by Nichelle Nichols, the
Japanese Commander Sulu, played by George Takei, as well as a Cold War-era specific nod to world peace with the
Russian Ensign Chekov, played by Walter Koenig.
212 Maria Jose and John Tenuto, “Star Trek GUEST BLOG: The Evolution of ‘Space Seed,’ Part 3,” Star Trek,
September 24, 2014, 3, https://web.archive.org/web/20140924173452/http://www.startrek.com/article/guest-blogthe-evolution-of-space-seed-part-3.

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Ericcson, once the Mexican Ricardo Montalbán was suggested and cast, the character became
Sibahl Khan Noonien, whose “face reflect[ed] the sun-darkened Aryian [sic] blood of the
Northern India Sikh people, suggesting just a trace of Oriental blood.”213 However, neither
“Sibahl” nor “Noonien” correlate to North Indian names, nor names in any other existing culture,
again demonstrating the ease with which brown bodies are fictionalized. Anecdotally, “Noonien”
has been cited as the name of or, at least, a message to a fellow WWII veteran with whom
Roddenberry wished to reconnect. The Sikh naming inconsistency was pointed out by Kellam De
Forest, Star Trek’s resident researcher, in his report for the episode. As he politely notes: “This
name [Sibahl Khan Noonien] is not Sikh or Indian in form. ‘Khan’ is a Mongol title which has
found its way into some Muslim names in India and Pakistan. For proper name suggest: Govind
Bahadur Singh. All Sikhs use the name Singh after their own sir name.”214 In their next revision,
Coon and Roddenberry chose to only listen to De Forest’s final sentence, and renamed the
character as Khan Noonien Singh.
Within the narrative, Khan’s combination of cultures could emphasize that his
superhuman status was attained through selective breeding from a variety of different ethnicities.
Like Vasconcelos’ cosmic race, this concept would reject the notion of white supremacy, on at
least a surface level, by instead foregrounding the benefits of racial mixture over racial purity.
Montalbán’s brownness is also significant here, and that this “handsome” and “intelligent” end
result of genetic engineering should be a brown man does seem to be—and, for 1967, was
indeed—progressive. Khan’s crew, as evidenced by the names on their cryogenic pods, were
similarly diverse: his followers include people named “Rodriguez,” “Ling,” and “McPherson,”
both men and women. Ultimately though, the evil elements of this eugenicist experiment are
213 Gene Coon and Gene Roddenberry, “Space Seed,” shooting script, 1967. 214 Kellam De Forest, “Research on ‘Space Seed’” (De Forest Research, December 13, 1966), 2.

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revealed. By both episode and film’s end, the Enterprise’s usual, racially diverse crew is upheld
as the ideal: peacefully cohabitating, though also not racially mixing.
Transmedial Racial Mobility
While live-action film and television typically have some inherent racial or ethnic
meaning inscribed—sometimes unintentionally—into the bodies of their performers, nonindexical mediums like comics sometimes bear little resemblance to humans. The comics
aesthetic is often more stylized, and not necessarily constrained to the limitations of typical
human anatomy, which means people might not be able to read their characteristics in the same
way. A person’s eyes or nose may just be drawn as two dots, which makes it difficult to try to
identify them as racial characteristics. As Scott McCloud has argued, while comics with more
realistic styles make readers more aware of the characters as developed external beings, comics
with more simplistic and symbolic styles become “a vacuum into which our identity and
awareness are pulled … we don’t just observe the cartoon, we become it!”215
For instance, Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez’s art in Love and Rockets (1982 - ) is
presented in graphic, black and white illustration. Gilbert describes his own aesthetic as
“coloring-book style” with “stark, black-and-white contrasts.”216 The drawn style of their
characters, encountered separately from context of their comics, could certainly be interpreted as
universal or non-ethnically specific. However, they strongly convey the Chicana and Chicano
identities of their characters through dialogue, narrative, and other culture-based indications.
Additionally, while very few of the characters ever have shaded skin within the pages of their
215 Scott McCloud, Understanding Comics : The Invisible Art, 1st HarperPerennial ed. (New York: HarperPerennial,
1994), 36.
216 Frederick Luis Aldama, Your Brain on Latino Comics from Gus Arriola to Los Bros Hernandez, 1st ed.,
Cognitive Approaches to Literature and Culture (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2009), 177.

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books, many of them are illustrated with brown or Black skin on the comics’ covers or in color
editions of the books. While some readers might assume whiteness is intended when
encountering neutral, unmarked skin, this change indicates that readers are meant to understand
these characters as always having brown or Black skin, even when this shading is not present—
enforcing brownness as a concept that extends beyond the visible.
When comics characters—particularly, Latinx comics characters—traverse into new
mediums, the tension of their newly indexical representation can emphasize inherent differences
in the perspectives of audience interpretations. As Derek Johnson argues, “ongoing struggles for
discursive dominance constitute fandom as a hegemonic struggle over interpretation and
evaluation through which relationships among fan, text, and producer are continually articulated,
disarticulated and rearticulated.”217 He goes on to say that “competing interests advocate rival
‘truths’ that codify and recodify fandom within continually contested parameters.”218 As an
unruly audience, fans may interpret and understand their objects in different ways than other
fans, and, in some cases, these differences may be personally harmful.
The Marvel character America Chavez first appeared in comics in 2011 and was recently
introduced to more widespread audiences with a prominent role in the MCU film Doctor Strange
in the Multiverse of Madness (2022). America is a superhero who was born on another planet in
another universe, yet she was raised on Earth by Puerto Rican parents in New York. She is thus
typically characterized, accepted, and promoted as a Latina character, despite these
extraterrestrial origins. Her Latina identity has been signified and understood in large part
through her cultural upbringing, though, problematically, through her physical appearance as
217 Derek Johnson, “Fan-Tagonism: Factions, Institutions, and Constitutive Hegemonies of Fandom,” in Fandom:
Identities and Communities in a Mediated World, ed. Jonathan (Jonathan Alan) Gray, Cornel. Sandvoss, and C. Lee
Harrington (New York: New York University Press, 2007), 287.
218 Johnson, 287.

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well. Her first solo series, called America (2017-2018), was written by Bronx-born queer Puerto
Rican Gabby Rivera, and published as part of Marvel’s All New All Different timeline of the late
2010s that sought to increase diversity among their titles. Perhaps expectedly, this intentional
diversification on Marvel’s part faced heavy criticism largely from a certain segment of white
male readers, who perceived these changes as a direct threat on their identity, and engaged in the
misogynist and racist harassment of artists and employees as part of what is now known as
Comicsgate. Thus, as a comics character, America was already the focus of discursive conflict
regarding race, ethnicity, and representation.
In comics, the depictions of America, especially her skin tone and hair, have been widely
variable. In her first appearance in Vengeance (2011), she is shown as extremely light skinned,
but in subsequent appearances, including Young Avengers (2013), America (2017), West Coast
Avengers (2018), and America: Made in the USA (2021), her skin tone typically ranges between
medium and dark brown. Her hair is usually black or very dark brown and wavy or curly, though
in some semi-canonical material, such as official alternative covers, her hair has also been
depicted as a coiled texture. However, for the character’s first live action appearance, in the
Doctor Strange film, young, light-skinned Mexican actress Xochitl Gomez was cast. In addition
to Gomez’s physical appearance, which seemed to fit with Disney’s attempts to generalize
Latinxs for non-Latinx audiences by making them whiter, fans were also concerned that other
elements of her specific Puerto Rican-ness had been erased in favor of references more familiar
to Americans. For instance, her jacket had been adorned with a Mexican calavera and sacred
heart, instead of more specifically Puerto Rican emblems, and the text “Amor es amor” had been
added, which seemed to be Marvel’s single acquiescence to referring to her queer identity from
the comics. The instability of the depictions of America’s appearance and character led to

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conflicts among fans online, with some advocating that her whiter skin was canonically correct,
and some insisting she should have darker skin.
Figure 10 Depictions of America Chavez in comics (2011 - 2021) and film (2022)
Generally, fans who justified America’s whiter appearance in the film reflect a style of
fandom that might be identified more stereotypically as the white male nerd variety. For these
fans, their fandom is valued and expressed in terms of encyclopedic recall, fact-based
knowledge, and definitive evidence. For them, the character is the character. In this case, this
perception also seems to overlap with a perception of a more generalized Latinidad, without
distinction within that ethnic category. These commenters maintain that, since she is still Latino,
these differences are somewhat meaningless. This style of fandom discourse tends to veer
towards gatekeeping those who may not be as knowledgeable as far as back, thus especially
excluding people may be newer to comics fandom. In defending the choice to cast Gomez in
Doctor Strange, many commenters used side-by-side images to compare Gomez to earlier
instances of the character to prove that her skin tone matches what is depicted in the comic.
Significantly, they almost all use images from the comic Vengeance from 2011, in her whitest
iteration. Since that was her first instance as a character, her appearance here must be the
definitive answer to the question. The users here privilege the depth of their knowledge,
demonstrating their ability to recall her appearance in this specific, comparatively obscure
issue—which, importantly, preceded many of Marvel’s diversity efforts and some of its newer

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readers. As one commenter wrote, “those people must have never read a comic in their life.”
Their ability to make this comparison demonstrates a degree of expertise that they deny others.
In contrast, fans who protested the lighter America, and upheld her representation as a
darked skinned Latina might map more towards a more communal construction of fandom
particular to women of color. For a character like America especially, audience members might
feel a personal connection to her based on their own identity and appearance. Her specific
appearance in the comic that they read thus becomes more important than how she may have
once appeared in a previous iteration. Discursively, these users reflect a broader, communitybased style of comics fandom that proliferates especially through online connections. Rather than
relying on the evidence of a single issue, they demonstrate expertise by way of access to shared,
communal knowledge through online sources. These fans could bring together a breadth of
evidence, from a multiplicity of different recent sources—panels from different comics, toys,
variant covers—to support their claim.
The valuation of communal knowledge for these fans is also emphasized when they
include aspects of fan canon, or “fanon,” that have become generally accepted by these
communities as part of their expertise. For instance, several of these fans definitively stated that,
in part, Gomez’s casting was offensive because “America Chavez is Afro Boricua with Afro
Boricua parents,” or “Friendly reminder that America Chavez is Afrolatina.” Though she is
never explicitly named as Afro Boricua in the comics, these statements are based both on their
perception of how she looks in the comics, but also how their online community has defined her.
The idea that America Chavez is Afrolatina as a generally accepted fact within this section of
fandom has only emerged within the past few years. Previous critiques have usually only focused
on the discrepancy of her skin tone, rather than with her identity itself. While the availability of

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the internet decreased the impressiveness of being able to remember every issue and obscure fact
about these characters, this type of knowledge is being developed primarily within a fan
community. America’s race—and believing, or knowing, that she is Afro Boricua—thus
becomes a kind of fan-enforced canon that signifies membership within this discursive group.
Visualizing Black Latinxs
In addition to the many discussed inconsistencies that come as a result of considering
brownness as an essential trait of Latinidad, most significantly, this framework excludes Black
Latinxs from being considered Latinxs, which is unfortunately consistent with many other means
of anti-Blackness within Latinidad. Because of Americans’ tendency to conceive of Blacks and
Latinxs as entirely distinct groups, if someone is Black, they are usually assumed not to be
Latinx. This false perception can make it difficult for Afrolatinx actors to find roles. As
Afrolatina actresses Gina Torres and Judy Reyes have both expressed, they tended to be cast
primarily in Black roles, as they did not fit casting director’s mental image of what a “Latina”
looked like.219 Afrolatinidad can also be particularly challenging to convey in speculative media,
given its demonstrated dependence on physical appearance in the absence of cultural references.
Largely, Afrolatinidad in speculative media has been limited to depictions by Afrolatinx actors,
to the extent that they we might consider their identity as being unified with their character.
However, one significant pattern that has emerged among the relatively few Afrolatina
actors working in speculative film: the tendency for them to appear with unnatural, non-human
skin tones. For instance, Dominican-Puerto Rican Zoe Saldaña has played both the blue Neytiri
in Avatar (2009) and its sequels, as well as the green Gamora, in Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
219 Isabel Molina-Guzmán, “Commodifying Black Latinidad in US Film and Television,” Popular Communication
11, no. 3 (2013): 211–26, https://doi.org/10.1080/15405702.2013.810071.

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and other Marvel films. Lupita Nyong’o, who was born in Mexico to Kenyan parents, played the
orange Maz Kanata in Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015). Recently, Rosario
Dawson, who is of Puerto Rican, Taíno, Cuban, and African descent, played the orange Ahsoka
Tano on The Mandalorian (2020) and, very shortly, in her own solo series Ahsoka (2023 - ).
While Neytiri and Maz Kanata were both motion-captured and animated entirely as CGI,
Gamora and Ahsoka are played live, with skin color added to the still-recognizable actresses
through makeup and CGI. Again, though this is a relatively small sampling, given the relatively
small number of Afrolatinxs working in this genre—in turn, this proliferation becomes all the
more curious.
In one sense, the use of unnatural colors applied to these Black actresses serves to
emphasize their difference, as typically denoted by their skin tone. John G. Russell argues that,
in Avatar, the Na’vi must be rendered as blue because “having nonwhite actors play these roles
unaltered would … dampen the allegorical import of the film by making it an explicitly
literal/liberal comment on race.”220 Instead, the reconfiguration of the actors into imaginary blue
alien creatures allows the film “to more safely address the issues of colonial exploitation and
racism in the guise of an escapist entertainment.”221 Similarly, Danielle Alexis Orozco questions
the “insidious” motivations between the continual “alien ethnic other,”222 as evidenced through
her alien skin tones. Like the lighter-skinned Latinxs who were made darker with makeup, the
unnatural color here serves to emphasize racial difference beyond even our own human context.
From this perspective, the repeated casting of these Black actresses as colorful aliens suggests
220 John G. Russell, “Don’t It Make My Black Face Blue: Race, Avatars, Albescence, and the Transnational
Imaginary,” Journal of Popular Culture 46, no. 1 (2013): 212, https://doi.org/10.1111/jpcu.12021. 221 Russell, 212. 222 Danielle Alexis Orozco, “Race and Alien Face: The Other-Worldly Roles of Zoe Saldana,” Latinx Spaces |
Redefining Latinx Media, May 31, 2019, https://www.latinxspaces.com/latinx-film/race-and-alien-face-the-otherworldly-roles-of-zoe-saldana.

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that because their color already marks them as non-white, they are seen as logical choices to
represent this allegorical Blackness. Perhaps even more troubling though, is the thought that
these roles might be offered precisely to them to obscure their Blackness, by rendering it as
allegory alone.
These decisions are of course made on a much bigger level, beyond any one individual,
and thus, multiple of these explanations could be simultaneously true. But we might also read
some measure of agency into these actresses who have chosen these roles. For instance, Lupita
Nyong’o saw Maz Kanata as a balm that helped her resolve the traumatic bodily experience of
working on 12 Years a Slave (2013): “There was a liberation in being able to play in a medium
where my body was not the thing in question.”223 As a dark-skinned Black woman, Nyong’o’s
body was the constant subject of focus, but because Maz Kanata bore no indexical similarity to
Nyong’o, she could thus simply exist as a character. In many ways, a woman like Nyong’o—
who is Black, Mexican, Kenyan simultaneously—already breaks the inherent structures of
American racial and ethnic formation. To broaden Isabel Molina-Guzmán’s assessment of
Saldaña to apply to the whole group: each of these actresses are “Latina[s] who can perform
unambiguous US Blackness,” as well as “Black [women] who perform Latinidad … in doing so
[they] rupture dominant constructions of race and ethnicity in the United States and US popular
culture.”224 Being able to communicate their Blackness and Latinx identities simultaneously
already makes these women both acutely aware of, and perhaps, resistant to more rigid and
incomplete concepts of racial formation. We might hope, then, that have each chosen these
223 Kelley L. Carter, “Why Lupita Nyong’o Didn’t Want To Be Seen In ‘Star Wars,’” BuzzFeed News, December
13, 2015, https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/kelleylcarter/lupita-nyongo-didnt-want-you-to-see-her-face-instar-wars. 224 Molina-Guzmán, “Commodifying Black Latinidad in US Film and Television.”

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colorful roles precisely because of how they relate to them as new formations of race and
ethnicity.
Conclusion
In the opening monologue of his 2022 Saturday Night Live episode, actor Oscar Isaac
joked that as a half-Guatemalan, half-Cuban, brown-skinned man, casting directors considered
him “ethnically ambiguous,” meaning he could “play anything from a pharaoh [in X-Men:
Apocalypse (2016)] to Timothee Chalamet’s daddy [in Dune (2021)].” Throughout his career,
Isaac—born in Guatemala City as Óscar Isaac Hernández Estrada—has indeed played a variety
of nationalities, races, and ethnicities, including the biblical Joseph in The Nativity Story (2005),
the Greek aristocrat Orestes in Agora (2009), an Armenian man escaping genocide in The
Promise (2016), and the French artist Paul Gauguin in At Eternity’s Gate (2018). In just the past
few years, this type of racial and ethnic mobility has fallen rather quickly out of favor, as many
younger and actively online audiences have begun to expect near-perfect correlation between
character and actor along lines of race, ethnicity, religion, gender identity, ability, and sexuality.
This desire comes from a place of wanting what they see as authentic, individualized
representations, as well as ensuring that these performers, who are marginalized themselves, can
get these roles. It also stems from the practice of, in the absence of other canonical information,
projecting many of the actor’s qualities onto the character itself. If audiences use Isaac’s real life
identity to ascribe Latinidad to characters like Poe Dameron, this non-diegetic information
suddenly adds friction to instances where his identity explicitly does not match the character’s.
As online connections have made the diversity of individual Latinx identities more
visible—and given more voice to media reactions from non-critics—American audiences have

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demonstrated increasing awareness of the true range Latinidad appearances, beyond just the
brown. The animated fantasy film Encanto (2021), about the magical Madrigal family,
demonstrated Disney’s new strategies in depicting Latinidad, many of which resolve
inconsistencies of brownness mentioned throughout this chapter. The family represents a
relatively full spectrum of dark and light skin within family. Rather than a fictionalized,
generically unnamed “Latin American” country, the animated fantasy film is decidedly set in
Colombia, with their research foregrounded in every scene. But while these specific cultural
markers are designed to demonstrate authenticity, en masse in a corporate package, they can
convey they opposite. As Manuel Betancourt writes, the film seemed “painstakingly designed to
exude ‘Colombianness,’” and that it “EPCOT-ized Colombia to the point where every marker of
authenticity becomes nothing more than that: a mere sign that points solely to itself.”225 While
studios like Disney are attempting to respond to audience’s demands for authenticity and
specificity, their implementation often runs counter to the goals of mass appeal that Disney holds
even more dearly, thus resulting in these types of awkward in-betweens.
225 Manuel Betancourt, “COLOMBIA ENCHANTED IN MEMORIA AND ENCANTO,” Film Quarterly 75, no. 4
(2022): 68, https://doi.org/10.1525/FQ.2022.75.4.64.

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Chapter 3:
The Mesoamerican Imaginary: Aztlán, Time Travel, and Foreign
Indigeneity
“Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its
five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds. To seek out new life and new
civilizations. To boldly go where no man has gone before!”
- Gene Roddenberry, Star Trek (1966)
“There is a reason, after all, that some people wish to colonize the moon, and
others dance before it as before an ancient friend.”226
- James Baldwin, No Name in the Street (1972)
In 1969, at the First National Chicano Liberation Youth Conference in Denver, Colorado,
the Chicano poet Alurista227 presented his poem, “El plan espiritual de Aztlán,” whose title
would later be re-used for the preeminent manifesto of Chicano nationalism. In the original
poem, Alurista reflected on the status of Mexican Americans in the Southwestern United States,
who were treated as foreign outsiders despite living in an area that, prior to the Treaty of
Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, had in fact been under Mexican control. But, as Alurista and his
compatriots would bring up again now, the area had even earlier also been identified as a
possible location of Aztlán, the mythical homeland of the indigenous Mexica (Aztec) people.
The Mexica eventually settled in central Mexico, and their empire was central to the
development of the Mexican national identity. Thus, Mexican Americans’ assertion of
indigeneity, by way of this claim to Aztlán, both legitimized their presence as natives, rather than
226 James Baldwin, No Name in the Street. (New York: Dial Press, 1972), 193. 227 “Alurista” is the nom de plume of the Chicano poet born Alberto Urista Heredia.

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outsiders, to the United States, while also bolstering their connection to their Mexican identity.
Aztlán—as concept, myth, or future destiny—also became a permanent fixture within the
imagination of burgeoning Chicano activism.
Whether or not the homeland of the Mexica was indeed located somewhere in what is
now the Southwestern United States is not the focus of this chapter, nor was that historical proof
ultimately necessary for Aztlán’s emergence as a concept within Chicano thought. Chon Noriega
has named Aztlán as the “fundamental ideological construct, or living myth” of the Chicano civil
rights movement.228 Noriega adds that, since Aztlán was imagined as an “already lost
homeland,” its role was “more situational than situated.”229 That is, because there was no precise
locale to which it could be definitively tied, it could remain as a fantasy, always just out of reach.
It was precisely because of Aztlán's lost, mythic nature that it could become animated as a
driving force for activism. It offered historical legitimization to the movement, but its basis in
myth also meant it was malleable enough to be interpreted more metaphorically. As Virginia
Fields and Victor Zamudio-Taylor described in their introduction to The Road to Aztlán: Art
from a Mythic Homeland, the deterritorialization of Aztlán provided Chicanos with “a profound
sense of place, while still embodying the longing for origins.”230 Similarly, the artist and curator
Amalia Mesa-Bains has noted that the mythologizing of Aztlán paralleled other seemingly
impossible goals, such as “homeland, return, [and] decolonization,” which, like Aztlán,
“remained imaginary sites of meaning.”231 Aztlán’s location in the imaginary meant that it could
228 Chon Noriega, “In Aztlán: The Films of the Chicano Movement,” Whitney Musem of American Art: New
American Film and Video Series 56 (1991): 1. 229 Noriega, 4. 230 Victor Zamudio-Taylor and Virginia Fields, eds., The Road to Aztlan: Art from a Mythic Homeland, 1st ed. (Los
Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2001), 42.
231 Amalia Mesa-Bains, “Spiritual Geographies,” in The Road to Aztlan : Art from a Mythic Homeland, ed. Victor.
Zamudio-Taylor and Virginia Fields, 1st ed. (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2001), 334.

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be linked with other concepts, rather than merely existing in the past—and indeed, might even
possibly exist in the future.
In a fundamental sense, the adoption of Aztlán as the core myth of the Chicano
movement was a reclamation of history and space, and an interruption of the generally assumed
linear conception of time. As Fields and Zamudio-Taylor argued, “Aztlán brought together the
remote past and a precise present” by “inscribing the present into a cultural corpus of longstanding legends, traditions, and cosmologies derived from pre-Columbian civilizations.”232 It
rejected the idea that the past is only the past, instead, emphasizing the reverberations of even
seemingly distant historical events into our present. Specifically, by focusing on Aztlán,
Chicanos imagined their present struggle within a white-dominant United States as being
coterminous with the pre-Columbian historical moment. Faced with this repeated scenario, they
then choose to align themselves with the indigenous culture in opposition to European
colonizers. By equating their modern struggles with their indigenous ancestors, they open up a
speculative framework in which they might hope to alter the repetition of events of the past in
some way, to avoid their own metaphorical colonization and genocide. The different contexts of
these scenarios—Chicanos were largely a population of already mixed heritage, rather than their
own discrete, indigenous culture, and were not facing a traditionally explicit act of
colonization—highlights the specificity of their choice to bring this particular indigenous past
forward rhetorically. Curtis Marez has termed this project “indigenismo of the antique,” invoking
the similar concept deployed in early modern Mexico that promoted indigenous heritage on, at
least, an intellectual level, and notes that it was used for Chicanos to deny the “claims of
232 Zamudio-Taylor and Fields, The Road to Aztlan: Art from a Mythic Homeland, 42.

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manifest destiny and white nativism” within the United States.233 While the invocation of Aztlán
fundamentally served to equate these timelines, it also provided a way for Chicanos—often
defined by their mixed heritage, and in previous generations, even sometimes understood as
white—to enunciate their own identity framework that emphasized their claims to indigeneity
while also minimizing their whiteness. The notion of Aztlán further distinguished Chicanos from
other ostracized racial and ethnic groups, including other Latin Americans, African Americans
and Asian Americans, who could not argue this native status, while also emphasizing their
distinction from Native Americans.
In American visual media, Mesoamerican and South American indigenous cultures have
also taken on a mythical state, though often with less personal political significance. Like the
Chicano usage of Aztlán, the presence of indigenous cultures in speculative fiction begins but
does not necessarily end in historical fact. Importantly, their incorporation often provides
speculative works with a connection to a specific, legitimate historical moment, which, in this
case, can provide grounding context upon which to build more fantastical worlds. Yet, a
presumed unfamiliarity with these cultures for American audiences means that they are also
often used to support explicitly fantastical elements under the guise of exoticism. Many media
works that use Latin indigenous cultures foreground the historical research the artists have taken
in creating these worlds, but almost all of them also emphasize the limitations of the fantasy
genre when pressed on the actual authenticity of these representations. Fantasy works do often
loosely draw from history as a base for speculative world building, such as George R. R.
Martin’s quasi-Middle Age English setting and narrative inspiration from the 15th century Wars
of the Roses in his Game of Thrones series (1996 - ), or George Lucas’ borrowing of Japanese
233 Curtis Marez, “Signifying Spain, Becoming Comanche, Making Mexicans: Indian Captivity and the History of
Chicana/o Popular Performance,” American Quarterly 53, no. 2 (2001): 267, https://doi.org/10.1353/aq.2001.0018.

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terms (“jidai”), customs, and aesthetics in Star Wars (1977). Even if audiences recognize these
references, they large understand them as decontextualized, and not intended to represent the
actual culture. However, when these indigenous cultures appear in fantasy, they frequently
appear as a muddled version of themselves—including, sometimes, the use of their actual
name—as if they were their own fictional trope. In truth, in many ways they are. Although these
creative works often emphasize their specific references to these cultures, an accurate
representation of these cultures is typically not the end goal. Rather, artists, Latinx and nonLatinx alike, often draw primarily on the idea of them. I argue that American speculative media
repeatedly draw on these Latin indigenous cultures precisely because of the combination of their
specificity—which lends them a perception of authenticity—but, more importantly, for the more
generic historical qualities they possess as a means to represent colonization, conquest,
continental trauma, and the past. These two states—the generic, and the specific—can exist
simultaneously is in part due to ignorance of the actual cultures, which is exacerbated with each
further fictional invocation.
The use of Latin indigenous cultures in American speculative media often signifies a
disruption of time, as demonstrated in regards to Chicano activism, but also relevant for other
Latin American and Caribbean activists.
234 While activists tend to want to emphasize the
continued existence of these cultures though, the popularity of the trope in fiction stems from the
false perception that these cultures no longer exist, and thus represent a far-gone historical
period. When native cultures are used to represent the past, this often means they are depicted in
narrative opposition to a forward march of modern society. American media in general has had
234 Sherina Feliciano-Santos, A Contested Caribbean Indigeneity: Language, Social Practice, and Identity within
Puerto Rican Taíno Activism. Critical Caribbean Studies. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2021.

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little interest in depicting modern people with indigenous heritage, which is particularly apparent
in speculative genres, which tend to center the ancient forms of these civilizations even when
otherwise set in present day or the future. That many of these indigenous appearances occur
alongside more speculative interruptions of time— immortality, time travel, alternate histories—
underscores this association.
In the mainstream American imagination, Mesoamerican and South American
indigeneity are often conceived of separately from what is termed “Native American”
indigeneity. That is, the descendants and members of indigenous cultures whose traditional land
roughly correlates to the modern geopolitical boundaries of the United States are categorized
differently than the descendants and members of indigenous cultures that historically resided
within Mexico or Central or South America. In order to support this division though, the true
range of tribal entities that make up these consortia are usually collapsed into these more general
groupings, despite significant geographic, and sometimes temporal, distance between them. In
media, the cultural distinctions between Chumash, Osage, or Susequehanna—or between Mexica
and Maya—are often negligible. The process of erasing these tribal differences reflects
prejudices held by American non-Natives, for whom indigeneity alone is the primary
distinguishing factor. For Robert Berkhofer, the very “idea and the image of the Indian” is itself
“a White conception,” because, prior to Europeans’ arrival, the inhabitants of America had no
reason to imagine themselves collectively in this way.235 The concept of a “Native American” is
only meaningful when and if the foil of a non-native American exists, and, by extension, when
there is a motivation for these groups to be separated and defined. As Liza Black has argued,
reducing complex and distinct cultures into a singular, inaccurate, and sometimes merged
235 Robert F. Berkhofer, The White Man’s Indian : Images of the American Indian from Columbus to the Present, 1st
ed. (New York: Knopf, 1978), 16.

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representation “supported the erosion of tribal sovereignty.”236 In mainstream films, television
shows, and comics, the Native American is almost always present as, to apply Berkhofer’s term
to media, the “white man’s Indian”—more concept than specific human.
The Western, especially, was a popular genre in film, comics, pulp novels, and television
throughout the first half of the 20th century, and relied on this dehumanized view of indigeneity.
The drive for western continental expansion has been called “the dominant national myth of the
United States,” and Westerns relied on a shared white nostalgia for this era.237 Many of the
common tropes of the Western are designed to provide the audience with base thrills and
excitement, sometimes through mass, casual violence perpetrated against Native Americans in a
flippant recreation of real genocide, which ultimately “reifies white supremacy and Indigenous
erasure.”238 The casualness of this violence—for example, dozens of Native Americans being
killed by a single white marksman who never seems to take a hit—further makes “genocide
come across as childhood games of make-believe.”239 This humanity is sometimes so obscured
that, as Armando José Prats describes, in these films, the “unseen” Indian antagonist “tends to
appear before us as a loose collection of fragments, at once hinting at and concealing a complete
human identity.”240 These fragments are also dehumanized, and often violent—the shadow of an
arrow, the suggestion of a scalping, the yelp of a war cry—that builds up the Native character as
a fictional trope, rather than as an actual human being.
236 Liza Black, Picturing Indians: Native Americans in Film, 1941-1960 (Lincoln: Nebraska, 2020), 2,
https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv14npjp0.
237 Carl Abbott, Imagined Frontiers : Contemporary America and Beyond (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 2015),
14.
238 Black, Picturing Indians: Native Americans in Film, 1941-1960, 2. 239 Black, 2. 240 Armando José Prats, Invisible Natives : Myth and Identity in the American Western (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 2018), 23, https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501729539.

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Furthermore, even though the Western as film and TV genre was most popular between
1900 and 1960, these works were almost always set in the “Old West,” which is to say the major
period of expansion along the western American frontier that took place between 1860 and 1900.
This meant that depictions of Native Americans, even those that were more specific or humane,
were still almost always centered in the past. In film, especially, the Western became especially
popular in the mainstream industry during the 1940s and 1950s, nearly a century after the period
they were depicting. Like many other racial and ethnic groups, Native American characters
tended to only be included in mainstream films when “narratively necessary,” which meant they
appeared infrequently in stories where their indigeneity was not the sole reason for their
presence. With few Native American roles available outside this genre, this discrepancy meant
that, as Carol Gerster has argued, “to non-Indians, these films convey[ed] the impression that
American Indians are relics of the past.”241 This media stereotype had reverberating implications
for Native Americans in the United States, and evoking their continued presence in modern
society became a motivating goal in protest movements in the 1960s.
In Latin American society, and ensuing cinematic traditions, indigeneity took a similar
focus on the past, yet importantly within a different regional context. As Josefina SaldañaPortillo notes, “the Indian has been understood as the cause for the failure of national cultures to
congeal in Latin America,” and thus became the focus of modernization and integration projects
in the early 20th century.242 The lingering remnant of indigeneity into the present, then, emerged
as a symbol of the failure and perversion of the national project of mestizaje. In the context of
241 Carole Gerster, “Native Resistance to Hollywood’s Persistence of Vision:,” in Native Americans on Film, ed. M.
Elise Marubbio and Eric L. Buffalohead, Conversations, Teaching, and Theory (University Press of Kentucky,
2013), 141, http://www.jstor.org.libproxy2.usc.edu/stable/j.ctt2jckh3.11.
242 Josefina Saldaña-Portillo, “Who’s the Indian in Aztlán? Re-Writing Mestizaje, Indianism, and Chicanismo from
the Lacandón,” in The Latin American Subaltern Studies Reader, ed. Ileana. Rodríguez, Latin America Otherwise
(Durham: Duke University Press, 2001), 402–23, https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822380771.

137
Mexican film, the subgenre of Aztec-themed horror film provides a particularly resonant
demonstration of this symbolism. These films include El signo de la muerte (1939), in which two
journalists attempt to solve the murder of a virgin apparently sacrificed to Quetzalcoatl; a trilogy
of films produced by Guillermo Calderón that began with La momia azteca (1957), each of
which followed the cursed exploits of the resurrected Aztec mummy Popoca; and Santo en la
venganza de la momia (1971), in which the wrestler Santo accompanies a group of
archaeologists who pay the price for disturbing an Aztec warrior’s tomb. As Colin Gunckel has
argued, these Aztec horror films use “cinematic horror to engage the tensions and anxieties of a
Mexican culture and nation in transition,”243 evidencing a “simultaneous admiration and disdain,
attraction and repulsion.”244 That the violent, unreasonable Aztec mummy is such a frequent
form of this horror in Mexican films, underscores its status as a vestige of Mexico’s past that
threatens its present.
While these representations of ancient indigeneities were positioned as threats to
modernity, the other side of Mexico’s postrevolutionary project of mestizaje was an assumption
that all Mexicans had some degree of indigenous heritage themselves, which should be valued.
However, like the flattening of difference that mestizaje aimed to achieve, the flattening of
mestizaje itself into a singular racial category also served to conceptually erase the varying
degrees that people might be connected to their living indigenous ancestry. If, as a point of
national pride, all Mexicans were the result of mestizaje, then there should be no substantive
difference between those with living relatives who have had the opportunity to experience and
practice the culture. Although t those with more distant indigenous roots who may not have ever
243 Colin. Gunckel, “El Signo de La Muerte and the Birth of a Genre: Origins and Anatomy of the Aztec Horror
Film,” in Sleaze Artists Cinema at the Margins of Taste, Style, and Politics, ed. Jeffrey Sconce (Durham: Duke
University Press, 2007), 122.
244 Gunckel, 126.

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experienced that culture first-hand. Similarly, a singular category of mestizo could not account
for the difference in experience for a white or light-skinned Mexican, who might be “read” closer
to Spanish, and a a dark-skinned Mexican, who might be “read” closer to indigenous. Of course,
as the ugly stereotypes and fears about indigeneity above show, in film especially, this slippage
typically only worked in one direction. Darker-skinned actors could not usually stand in as a
character that was meant to be understood as lighter than their own skin tone. However, white
Mexicans could claim indigenous ancestry when convenient, while still enjoying the privileges
that their whiteness afforded them. In Mexico’s Golden Age of film, light-skinned actors like
Dolores del Rio could play indigenous characters, such as María Candelaria (1943), while also
working and traveling globally. Monica García Blizzard has named the practice of white actors
performing as indigenous characters “whiteness-as-indigeneity,”245 which she describes as “an
enduring and idiosyncratic form of on-screen racial masquerade, a racialized visual pact with the
Mexican spectator based on shared colonized codes of beauty and subjectivity.”246 While
whiteness-as-indigeneity required a certain level of suspension of disbelief from the Mexican
viewer, it also helped support the ignorant North American notion that collapsed Latin American
racial identity into a singular category, which was then replicated in film.
Each of these main issues—dehumanization and reduction to broad stereotypes, the
collective merging of different groups into a single inaccurate amalgamation, an assumption that
these people exist only in the past—apply to media representations of all indigenous peoples of
the Americas. While these assumptions have largely been made by non-Native and non-Latinx
people, I recognize the often fraught nature of the political relationship between Native
245 Mónica Garcia Blizzard, The White Indians of Mexican Cinema, SUNY Series in Latin American Cinema (State
University of New York Press, 2022), 27, https://doi.org/10.1353/book.100680.
246 Garcia Blizzard, 46.

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Americans and Latinxs, including historical conflicts with early Mexicans, who aimed to
distance themselves from indigenous identity—which they understood as a persecuted status—as
well as historic Chicano appropriation of Native American imagery. In the past year, this divide
has become newly relevant, with the sisters of deceased activist Sacheen Littlefeather, perhaps
one of the recognizable protestors for Native American rights, disputing her claims that their
family was of Apache-Yaqui descent, but were in fact Mexican American. While many Latinxs
do have indigenous heritage, it is significant that that heritage—Aztlán not withstanding—
typically comes from indigenous cultures elsewhere in the Americas, and thus the political
context of their indigeneity is largely displaced. This means they might be considered,
simultaneously, both foreign and indigenous. While Native Americans are considered a part of
“our past,” as US Americans, Mesoamerican and South American indigenous cultures are more
commonly thought of as “someone else’s past.” Importantly, this sense of foreignness also gives
American media the chance to, by focusing on Mesoamerican cultures rather than Native
American, indulge their creative fascination with the historicism of indigeneity without
necessarily needing to reckon with their own colonial, genocidal past.
Prevailing notions about race and ethnicity in the United States are already limited and
imperfectly drawn. This chapter seeks not to interrogate personal experiences of these groupings
in reality, but rather to explore how these frameworks are reconstructed in speculative fiction,
where these imperfections are magnified and prejudices foregrounded. While, as the BritishGhanian theorist Kodwo Eshun notes in his discussion of Afrofuturism, the powerful can choose
their own futures, by doing so they “[condemn] the disempowered to live in the past.”247 If
247 Eshun, “Further Considerations of Afrofuturism,” 290.

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indigenous people are supposed to be confined in the past, then their appearance in the future, or
even, the present, is itself a speculative and revolutionary act.
Indigenous Decontextualization
Within American speculative media, representations of Mesoamerican and South
American indigenous cultures tend to operate as their own generic trope. In the sense that tropes
are “rhetorical devices or units of metaphor” used as “mechanisms to deliver meaning” in
literature and media, their significance is derived and codified primarily through their repeated
use in these genres, rather than being informed by reality.248 When indigenous cultures appear in
speculative works, they tend to emphasize a connection to the past that is, theoretically, based in
historical fact, yet, in practice, can be totally unfixed from reality. Often, the general concept of
these cultures is the most important part in their inclusion: they represent something that is both
exotic and mostly unfamiliar, but also grounded and historical. In the same way that modern
movie studios today rely almost entirely on the name recognition of intellectual property, these
indigenous cultures can be drawn upon as a visual and narrative shorthand to help establish
theme and setting, without having to potentially alienate audiences by inventing entirely new
worlds from scratch.
Perhaps the prime example of using an indigenous culture to thematically convey this
simultaneous sense of the ancient and the exotic was Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope
(1977). While most of the film was shot inside Pinewood Studios in England, Star Wars
production also made use of location shooting, including the deserts of Tunisia and Death Valley
as Tatooine and the Redwood forests of Northern California as Endor. The use of real structures,
248 J. Meryl Krieger, “Trope.” In Encyclopedia of Gender in Media, edited by Mary Kosut, 399–401. Thousand
Oaks, Calif: SAGE Publications, 2012.

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such as desert huts in Tunisia, gave the film an immediate sense of authenticity—since these
structures did and do actually exist—yet would also be unplaceable to most American and
European audiences. These elements of authenticity also worked to legitimize the worldbuilding
of the larger fictional universe, balancing the entirely invented locales with those that had a more
lived-in feel. One sequence towards the end of the first movie, that was to be shot on location,
was the site of the Rebel’s hidden base on the moon Yavin IV. As the heroes descend onto the
planet via spacecraft, they have, for now, defeated the evil. The film ends on a hopeful,
optimistic note, yet hints toward more adventures to come. In contrast to the barren desert
landscape where the film begins, the storyboards for this sequence envisioned a lush, green forest
covering the land, with the wide-open sky opening into possibility rather than into an oppressive
emptiness.249 The location ultimately chosen to film this scene was Guatemala, and, specifically,
the Mayan ruins of Tikal.
Most of the scene could be filmed in an interior set built at Pinewood Studios in England,
so the Guatemala second unit crew only needed to secure a few wide, establishing shots over a
period of five days. One of the shots shows a rebel guard scanning the incoming spacecraft,
looking out over a verdant landscape with several tall pyramid structures—Tikal— visible jutting
out from the trees. No other structures are visible, just the sky, trees, and these ancient pyramids.
This wide shot gives the film an immediate sense of scope that would be nearly impossible to
create on a set, combining a seemingly boundless forest and open sky with these impressively
tall structures. Importantly, while most American and European audiences might vaguely realize
that these were human-created structures—the conception that links pyramids to the ancient
world is fairly strong—they would likely not be able to immediately identify them as Mayan.
249 J. W. Rinzler, Star Wars Storyboards : The Original Trilogy, Original Trilogy Star Wars Storyboards (New York:
Abrams, 2014).

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Star Wars incorporates many of these types of these references to real historical cultures, such as
the Hopi-inspired “squash blossom” for Leia’s iconic dual hair buns, but, like the pyramids,
typically only engaged with them as surface-level aesthetics. There are no Hopi, Mayans, or even
mestizo Guatemalans in the original films. But these types of references allowed the films to
achieve this simultaneous sense of the ancient and the exotic by removing them from their lived
and historical contexts, as well as from the people from whom they originated. While much of
science fiction media takes place on a futuristic Earth, Star Wars reversed this expectation with
its famous declaration that it was taking place “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.”
Ultimately, the incorporation of these decontextualized references to indigeneity served to
support this thematic combination of historicity (a long time ago) that was nonetheless somehow
foreign or unfamiliar (far, far away).
This type of conceptual extraction is frequent for references to Mesoamerican cultures,
even when they are specifically named. In fact, ironically, this can sometimes indicate even less
specific engagement with the actual culture. For example, the trope of the “Aztec” is commonly
used as a shorthand that can be used to explain mystical occurrences—or rather, to avoid having
to explain mystical occurrences. The final shot of Robert Rodriguez’s From Dusk Til Dawn
(1996) reveals that the vampire-filled bar from the film is in fact the top layer of an Aztec
pyramid. Though vampires have no association with Aztec culture, the slow, dramatic zoom out
to the pyramid lends a sense of gravitas to the reveal, as if it were meant to explain all of the
previous fantastic events. Similarly, in the horror-comedy Freaky (2020), in which a teenage girl
switches bodies with an adult male serial killer, the source of their swap is explained by a blood
connection formed by an Aztec dagger, nonsensically named in the film as La Dola. Again, the
dagger is only used to motivate the plot, and there is no particular reason for it to be named as an

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Aztec object. Within popular culture, Aztecs are often associated with the practice of human
sacrifice. Thus, the “Aztec” as shorthand conveys both a sense of mystical ancientness, but also
expectations of violence.
Figure 11 The Tarascan warrior figure at the center of North by Northwest (1959)
Many of these decontextualized indigenous objects could be described as “MacGuffins,”
the term, coined by screenwriter Angus MacPhail and popularized by director Alfred Hitchcock,
that describes an object that motivates a character’s journey, but whose actual form is
inconsequential in comparison to its narrative function. One of Hitchcock’s most iconic
MacGuffins is the pre-Columbian “Tarascan warrior” figure featured in North by Northwest
(1959), which holds secrets of international intrigue within its “bellyful of microfilm.”250 The
contents of this microfilm are never fully explained, nor the choice to hide them within this
figure. The figure first appears in the film at an auction, during which it is described to be from
250 Ernest Lehman, “North by Northwest” (shooting script, August 12, 1958), 154.

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the state of “Kolemia,” Mexico.251 This historical information about the figure, though fully
written out in the shooting script, is only heard as background patter during its auction scene. To
the average viewer, the historical detail of the chatter sounds close enough to be believable for
the extent that the matters to the narrative—which is to say, not all that much. Like all
MacGuffins, its historical accuracy is of far less importance than its ultimate role as
representative of the pursuit. In this way, it perfectly fits its description as a MacGuffin, and in
doing so also ably conveys the most common ways that Mesoamerican cultures appear in
American speculative media: as a way to move the plot forward, symbolize a character’s desire,
or provide an exotic setting without a need to go deeper. Like the Tarascan figure’s belly of
microfilm, Mesoamerican culture in American media often functions more like a shell for deeper
meanings held within, than as their own subjects.
Colonial Treasures and Trauma
Treasure—literal gold bars, coins, jewels, and so on—is one subset of MacGuffin whose
pursuit is more directly legible to most audiences than total plot-driven non-sequitur, but still
functions primarily as representative plot device. The dream of becoming wealthy is resonant
and relatable, and gold is often used to visibly and tangible represent this goal, as opposed to
more modern yet non-stackable concepts of currency. Gold can also be used in speculative media
to represent that is easy for audiences to understand as valuable but isn’t inherently related to a
modern currency system that might be distractingly modern. When used in association with Latin
American indigenous cultures, as it often is, the imagery of gold also harkens to the colonial age,
when the pursuit of this wealth drove contemporary European explorations as well as our own
251 “Kolemia” was likely meant to refer to the modern-day Mexican state of Colima, just at the edge of what was
once known as the Tarascan empire, though which is now more properly referred to as the Purépecha empire.

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modern associations with them, including, in both cases, legends like El Dorado. In this context,
the pursuit of treasure can serve as a stand-in for the act of colonialism itself, attaching tangible
spoils to the exploitation and ownership of this “new” land.
While this treasure as plot device is sometimes currently in the possession of a living
indigenous culture, such as Maya-like civilization in The Road to El Dorado (2000), much more
frequently, the treasure belonged to a now-lost culture. For instance, Secret of the Incas (1954),
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), and Romancing the Stone (1984) all detail searches for lost
Mesoamerican or South American treasure, whose civilizations have now died out. Even the
Nickelodeon game show Legends of the Hidden Temple (1993 - 1995) had children racing
through a maze of “Mayan ruins” (guarded, anachronistically, by an Olmec head), essentially
playing tomb robber as they searched for “ancient artifacts” that represented their prizes. The
trope has proved resonant for decades, and more recent explorations include National Treasure:
Book of Secrets (2007), Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), The Lost
City of Z (2016), Dora and the Lost City of Gold (2019), and The Lost City (2022). Each of these
films and television shows involve someone from the modern world—often, an American—
seeking to claim treasure from a long-past indigenous Latin American culture. Many of these
films also have speculative elements: in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, extraterrestrial beings are
shown to have made pre-colonial contact with tribes in South America, and in Dora and the Lost
City of Gold, Dora discovers the gods of a lost Incan civilization.
Positioning these treasures as being from lost cultures achieves several factors. First,
because the treasure does not seem to belong to any currently extant culture, the protagonists can
pursue it without seeming to create a conflict over its ownership—aside from conflict with other
treasure seekers. They are not stealing it from an indigenous culture, rather simply beating others

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who also wish to claim it. This removes some level of narrative guilt, in which audiences might
feel less sympathy for the protagonists. Further, the focus is usually not on the lost treasure of a
Native American tribe, which might be too close a metaphor to history to be distanced as
entertainment. At the same time, Americans may feel an inherent sense that Native Americans
have already been exploited, thus Mesoamerican and South American tribes represent a new
culture that has not been mined by Americans. Since these tribes were presumably conquered by
the Spanish or Portuguese, when Americans or other Anglophones claim the treasure, they are
also subverting the historical record by proving mastery over the Spanish.
However, Anglophones can also absorb the ill effects of colonial guilt when pursuing this
Mesoamerican treasure. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003), directed
by Gore Verbinski and written by Terry Rossio and Ted Elliott, is centered on a treasure chest
full of “Aztec gold.” The film is set in the late 17th or early 18th century, during the Golden Age of
Piracy, but was more directly based on the Disneyland theme park ride, also called Pirates of the
Caribbean. While most pirates sack and pillage ships and harbors in search of treasure they can
plunder, the pirates in this film are actually returning treasure. That is because they all took and
spent coins from this treasure chest, and only later realized they were cursed. Any person who
takes one of these coins out of the chest is granted immortality, until they return both the coin
and a blood offering to the chest. In the film, this immortality is treated as both a curse and a
benefit: though the person cannot die, they also cannot enjoy most human pleasures, like eating
and drinking. For pirates, who are typically characterized in fiction by their dangerous lifestyles
and overindulgence in carnal pleasures, this eternally sober lifestyle is especially painful. The
film establishes that the curse’s origin dates to the Spanish colonial era when the Aztecs offered
this very treasure to Hernán Cortés in exchange for leaving them alone. Instead, Cortés took the

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treasure and the continent, and the Aztec’s “heathen gods” created the curse. Thus, the curse is
not only a punishment for colonial greed, but also represents its reward—the Spanish ultimately
claimed the gold and the continent, but at a moral cost to their eternal souls.
Importantly, the legend of this cursed gold is not represented on screen, nor described by
a Mexica nor Spanish representative relating their own experience, but rather is a story told by
British pirates, to each other, as a cautionary tale. It is received more as a parable against greed
than historical fact. (Indeed, the Mexica did not use gold coins as currency.) However, as the
film demonstrates, the treasure chest is indeed cursed, and the pirates do live a zombie-like halflife, indicating that the Aztecs in this film are capable of such mysticisms. Like the vampires in
From Dusk Til Dawn and the body switching dagger in Freaky, the explanation of “Aztec” is
deemed narratively sufficient. Connecting these elements to the Aztec culture assumes American
audiences will accept the degree of worldbuilding shorthand that any previous knowledge of this
culture affords, but also assumes that the exotic mystery of this culture offers enough explanation
for not questioning these fantasies.
That the titular curse of The Black Pearl is a kind of damned immortality—and that this
trope was revisited in the franchise’s fourth entry, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
(2011)—demonstrates this strong association between Mesoamerican indigeneity and alterations
of time. Fundamentally, this association stems from a belief that these cultures no longer exist in
any form, and are thus inherently part of the past, which stands in contrast to the present. In On
Stranger Tides, the film’s plot is motivated by the characters’ search for the Fountain of Youth,
which is said to grant eternal life. The Fountain of Youth in this film differs from most legends
that feature it and plays more into the concept of its position within a colonial zero-sum game. In
most versions of the story, any person who drinks from or bathes in the waters of the Fountain of

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Youth becomes healed from their illness, or may be granted infinite life, often visualized as an
eternally youthful appearance. This is a somewhat utopian conception—anybody who finds the
Fountain can partake from it, infinitely, with no consequence. On Stranger Tides, however,
embraces a more economic model, in that there is a limit to the universe’s life balance that must
be maintained, and any years added to one person’s life must be taken from someone else. This
is, at least, how the ritual of the pair of Spanish chalices works: the person who drinks from a
cup (with a mermaid’s tear in it) gains all the remaining years of life from the person who drinks
from the other cup (that does not have a mermaid’s tear in it). This functionality essentially
transforms a utopian imaginary into a transactional experience, and emphasizes that, in real life,
few things can be acquired without a cost to someone else. Transforming this pursuit of
immortality into an exchange of life emphasizes the cruelty of colonization, though this message
is also relatively easy for audiences to ignore within the sweeping fantasy adventure.
Immortality as Colonial Curse
The Fountain of Youth, of course, had longer mythical origins, and has appeared, in some
form, in writings across thousands of years of human history. The concept of healing waters that
offer a solution to the innate, yet inevitable human fear of death, aging, and illness is a resonant
one, but the Fountain came to be particularly associated with the Americas with accounts of the
explorations of Juan Ponce de León in the 16th century. Along with other frequently used
mythical destinations of the Americas, such as El Dorado and Atlantis, the Fountain of Youth
has appeared frequently in American speculative media, as it takes the more general, and less
sympathetic, political outcome of colonization, and turns into a more specific imagined goal that
can motivate the story. In many of these works, it is the indigenous people who hold the secret to

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eternal life—whether by spring, magic coin, or other method—and white Europeans who claim
it. This pattern reflects both the colonial genocide, of Europeans literally taking life from
indigenous cultures, but also expresses a desire to claim a piece of the physical longevity that
these cultures have had over the land, in order to truly “own” it.
The Fountain (2006), written and directed by Darren Aronofsky, weaves together three
narratives from three different time periods, locations, and, to some extent, generic conventions,
in a story about love and loss. In the segment set in the present day, Hugh Jackman plays Tom, a
cancer researcher dealing—not very well—with the impending death of his terminally ill wife,
Izzi, played by Rachel Weisz. Izzi is also working on a book she calls The Fountain, about
Spanish conquistadors in Guatemala who are searching for the Tree of Life, which they believe
will grant them immortality. This section makes up the second part of the film. Viewers may
understand this portion as either the plot of her book, depictions of the historical events that she
researched while writing the book, or something like a flashback to characters’ previous lives, an
interpretation that is supported by the fact that Rachel Weisz also plays the Spanish queen
Isabella, and Hugh Jackman, the conquistador named Tomás. The film’s third section is much
more of an existential fantasy, again featuring Hugh Jackman, referred to as Tommy, who is now
alone in an orb that is floating in space towards a dying star, and can interact with “memories”
from the other two sections. The three sections overlap throughout the film, with certain scenes
intercutting between characters from different time periods or repeating later in the film with
different versions of the characters. We might conceive of these sections, loosely, as the Past,
Present, and Future. Thus, in keeping with its greater themes about loss and grief, the non-linear
structure allows the film to explore the ways in which time, and people, and history, can be
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If the Present section sets up the core fictional plot of the film, and the Future establishes
its philosophical framework through fantasy imagery, the Past connects, for North American
viewers at least, the historical and the speculative, by way of seemingly exotic Mesoamerican
mythology. Neither of the other two sections are set in Central America, nor do Weisz or
Jackman have any Central American (or Spanish) heritage. Thus, the intentional decision to set
this part of the story here, and not in any other location or era in world history, seems to have
been motivated specifically because of the narrative possibilities of its association with a
conceptual Fountain of Youth, or Tree of Life, and its link to Mayan culture. In each of the
sections, the white protagonist ultimately gains transcendence about life through knowledge
imparted by Mayans. Most directly, in the Past, Tomás is identified by a Mayan priest as the
First Father, and sacrifices his body to the Tree of Life, gaining immortality (which is,
unexpectedly, non-corporeal) by feeding the plants and trees that will live on. In the Future,
Tommy and his orb are consumed by the dying star Xibalba, which is characterized within the
film as the Mayan underworld. In the Present, Tom comes to accept Izzi’s death after reading,
and completing the ending, of her book, which joins together the Past and Future.
Though Mayan mythology—particularly notions of the creation of the universe and the
afterlife—is core to the underlying philosophy of the film, most of it is imparted to the audience
by intermediaries. The Mayan priest, played by Fernando Hernandez, is one of the few Mayan
characters with actual lines, though his scenes only take place in the Past section. Not only do
living indigenous characters only exist in the Past in this film, but this limitation also means that
there are no modern indigenous representatives to convey and interpret their own culture—
despite the film’s theme of eternal life. Instead, their culture is primarily interpreted, studied, and
accessed by the white European characters—with Tommy becoming part of Xibalba—as well as,

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ultimately, the ability to cross temporal streams through immortality. By weaving together these
different time streams, the core of the story becomes one about repetition and commonality. The
film takes specific Mayan mythology and renders it so broadly applicable that it becomes
universal.
Combined Cultures
Some films have also generalized between indigenous cultures, indicating the
insignificance of these distinctions to many American and European filmmakers. For instance,
That Man from Rio (1964) invented a culture called the Maltecs forges Maya and Toltec into a
non-specific in-between—because the actual culture itself did not really matter and would likely
only complicate the plot. In these cases, the key elements of the Mesoamerican fictional trope
become more clear: ancient civilizations, often with no living members, remembered by the
now-valuable art or treasure that we see in our own time, and having some relation to modernday Latinxs or Latin Americans that isn’t always entirely clear.
The animated DreamWorks film The Road to El Dorado (2000), written by Ted Elliott
and Terry Rossio—who also wrote the first Pirates of the Caribbean—is set in 1519 and follows
two Spanish con artists, Tulio and Miguel (voiced by Kevin Kline and Kenneth Branagh), who
discover a map that supposedly leads to El Dorado, the legendary lost city of gold in the
Americas. With the help of a native woman, Chel, they make their way to the fabled El Dorado,
and are immediately embraced as gods due to their resemblance to figures on a prophetic codex.
At first, nearly all the villagers, including the king, Tannabok, seem convinced of their godlike
status, with the exception of Chel, a savvy swindler herself, and Tzekel-Kan, the high priest who
wants to usurp power. Though Tulio and Miguel discover that the city does have a vast stock of

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gold, and are tempted to abscond with the treasure, they ultimately overcome their selfishness
and choose instead to save the community from the approaching Spanish. This choice positions
the film as an alternative history—at least against Spanish conquest—though still evidencing
some of the colonial mentality that makes these types of narratives appealing for Americans.
Though Tulio and Miguel are initially motivated by their desire for gold, that becomes
linked with their desire for independence and the freedom that this new world begins to
represent. One early song, “The Trail We Blaze,” praises the “virgin vistas, undefiled” of the
land upon which they have arrived. This perspective changes little by the film’s end, even after
they realize that there are entire existing civilizations already on this land, but they happily
abandon the tangible golden treasure and instead go off to continue their “explorations” of this
“untouched” land. The film’s resolution underscores the liberal narrative benefit of using
treasure as a stand-in for colonialism. Because Tulio and Miguel can easily abandon this goal in
favor of less tangible, more altruistic (though still colonial) desires, they can be positioned as the
“good” Spanish conquistadors, as opposed to Hernan Cortés, who is the villain of the film.
Importantly, in the film Cortés’ motivation is also shown to be this treasure, rather than a
conquest of land and people, which might be harder, and more upsetting for a children’s film, to
convey visually. The film thus positions colonialism in the selfish pursuit of treasure as bad, but
colonialism as it informs a personal journey as acceptable. This allows the audience a more
sympathetic entry point they can identify with, while still foregrounding a white experience of
this narrative. The film depends upon a colonial imaginary that desires taking from a culture
benefit? , while also allowing for a spectrum of colonialism that allows for more innocent
perpetrators, applying modern liberal desires to a violent historical moment.

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Never mentioned by name, the depiction of El Dorado’s semi-fictional indigenous
culture is situated tensely between simultaneous claims of both authenticity and fantasy. The
lyrics of the song “The Trail We Blaze” underscore the duality of this project, stating that the
heroes are “changing legend into fact” and “turning myth into truth.” As the legendary lost city
of boundless treasure, the myth of El Dorado is notable in that it is, in a practical sense, a fiction,
yet it is a fiction that became a part of the historical record by motivating actual expeditions
within Latin America, much like the Fountain of Youth. This dichotomy is key to understanding
the complicated approach Dreamworks took towards balancing these two sides in The Road to El
Dorado and illustrates larger perceptions of Latin America in American media.
In both the production and later positioning of The Road to El Dorado, Dreamworks first
demonstrated a commitment to authenticity, specifically in regard to citing their primary
inspiration for the look and design of El Dorado as Mayan culture. Dreamworks hired “cultural
specialists” to ensure details about costumes and food would be accurate, which they mentioned
in a promotional piece in Hispanic magazine.252 Early in the production process, the crew visited
the ancient Mayan sites of Tulum, Chichen Itza, and Uxmal on the Yucatan peninsula to draw
inspiration. This trip—highlighted on the DVD special features—was led by American
anthropologist John Pohl, who was there to “guide the filmmakers in their quest to be faithful to
the Indian civilizations of what is today Mexico and Central America.”253 Like Walt Disney’s
goodwill tour across Latin American in 1941, which resulted in Saludos Amigos and The Three
Caballeros, the animators’ trip here served to legitimate their later Latin-inspired production.
Though there was not a significant Mexican contingent on the production team, the tourist trip
252 Diana A. Terry-Azios, “The Myth of El Dorado: DreamWorks’ Latest Cartoon Revives a Mexican Legend -
Hollywood Style,” Hispanic (Miami, United States: Hispanic Publishing Corporation, March 2000), 62. 253 James Scorer, “‘X’ Never, Ever Marks the Spot: Latin American Lost Cities on Screen,” Iberoamericana 11, no.
44 (2011): 107.

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allowed the animators to themselves become the authorities on sharing the culture with other
non-Mexican audiences.
Despite the film marketing’s emphasis on Mayan culture, it is important to note that the
Mayans were not actually related to the legend of El Dorado, and the film utilized references to
many other different Mesoamerican cultures. As producer Bonnie Radford offered as a preemptive defense, the film was “meant to represent all the Mesoamerican cultures,” not just the
Maya.254 Director Don Paul similarly cautioned that the film was “not meant to be an exact
reflection of any one culture,” as they considered the film to be set “in a mythological place,”
rather than a real one.255 Indeed, the actual historical searches for a lost city of gold were
concentrated mostly in South America, with the legend likely stemming from the rituals of the
Muisca people who lived in the highlands of Colombia and whose king covered himself in gold
dust as part of an initiation rite. Later expeditions also explored what is now Venezuela, Brazil,
and the US states of Arizona and New Mexico. This makes the choice to focus on Mayan culture
for this film an intentional invention, perhaps drawing on a slightly more recognizable culture for
American audiences, that is still mysteriously exotic. Separating the historical record in this way
allows the filmmakers to define their own moments of authenticity, and opens the door to
incorporating references from other cultures, such as the Mexica, Inca, and Toltec. The
speculative acts as a further shield towards these criticisms, as the high priest’s ability to conjure
spectral creatures of course has no historical basis. As James Scorer has noted, “as a real space,
Latin America means little in the film,” but “as cinematic device, [Latin America is] a mythic
space that provides the drama.”256 Despite the claims toward historical inspiration then, it
254 Terry-Azios, “The Myth of El Dorado,” 62. 255 Scorer, “‘X’ Never, Ever Marks the Spot,” 107. 256 Scorer, 107.

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becomes clear that the native culture in El Dorado really just needs to function as any
Mesoamerican culture. The particular one is not only not important, but the filmmakers probably
correctly assume that most mainstream audiences will not recognize the difference.
The confusion between the Mesoamerican is represented in audience interpretations as
well and supports the assumption that many American audiences—including both non-Latinxs
and Latinxs—would not fully realize these historical inaccuracies. For instance, in his review of
the film, Washington Post film critic Stephen Hunter described Chel as an “Aztec babe” and said
that the film constitutes an example of “Montezuma’s revenge,” demonstrating an obvious
slippage between the culture as depicted in the film and the Mexica culture that is more familiar
to many Americans.257 Similarly, a Hispanic magazine article that appeared before the film’s
release seemed largely designed to quell assumptions about the film’s desire to factually
represent Mesoamerican culture and emphasized its role as a universal fable instead. Despite this
hedging, and the fact that this article was intended for Latinx readers, the article’s author
mistakenly and repeatedly referred to Olmos’ character as an “Aztec chief.”258 These mistakes
reflect frequent misattribution of characters, but also, likely, their frequent use as generic
versions of themselves.
Finally, the cast also included several Latinx actors, including Edward James Olmos in
the role of Chief Tannabok, and Rosie Perez as Chel. Casting these two actors in particular—
Olmos is Chicano, Perez is Puerto Rican, both are US-born—seems to indicate that they were
casting based primarily on Latinx identity as a singular category, rather than delving deeper into
indigenous heritage, or even staying cohesive within a segment of Latinidad to convey this
257 Stephen Hunter, “‘Road to El Dorado’: Genocide in Toon,” The Washington Post (1974-), March 31, 2000, sec.
Style, C5.
258 Terry-Azios, “The Myth of El Dorado,” 62.

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fictional culture. Perez’s casting and performance is especially interesting here, because while
Olmos has what might be described as a more neutral American accent, Perez’s distinctive voice
marks her character as undeniably yet anachronistically Brooklyn-born. Both are performing a
version of an audible Latinidad that is important for the film’s gestures towards diversity, but in
doing so further emphasizes the true span of Latinx identities. The casting of Latinx actors in
these roles also demonstrates the association American media has of Latinidad with indigeneity,
as Latinx actors were only brought in to perform as the indigenous characters, while the
Spaniards were voiced by non-Spanish speaking white voice actors.
As an alternative history, The Road to El Dorado offers an optimistic if naïve view of
colonialism, both in establishing a framework of “good” and “bad” colonizers, but also by
offering a path of salvation for the indigenous culture (thanks to the “good” colonizers). At the
film’s end, Tulio and Miguel block the only accessible tunnel leading to El Dorado, thus
preventing Cortés and his crew—or, presumably, any other outsider—from ever reaching it. This
isolation might presumably allow the El Dorado to be spared from the effects of colonialism,
which might seem to effectively erase the now-uncomfortable, initial colonialist impulses driving
much of the early film. Of course, erasing this portion of uncomfortable history also falls in line
with the film’s other attempts at representing all Mesoamerican cultures by erasing their
specificity, and only choosing certain elements, as narratively or visually useful, to depict.
Though the filmmakers evidenced their research and inspiration, it primarily served to create a
broadly fantastical, and palatable, view of the colonial era.
New Approaches to Indigenous Mythologies

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In the past few years, the story tropes of Mesoamerican indigeneity, especially as
represented through everlasting life, have continued to proliferate, but works have tended to
make more direct efforts to engage with these cultures on a more specific level. Usually this
process involves foregrounding their research, and linking the depicted culture to a specific
culture and time period. Even when working in explicitly speculative genres, audiences are much
more aware of these stereotypes, especially the indiscriminate conglomeration or fictionalization
of indigenous cultures as seen in The Road to El Dorado. Big media corporations, like Disney,
are increasingly aware of how they have presented these cultures in the past, and now seem to
simultaneously strive towards an El Dorado-style research ethos, evidencing their authenticity,
yet avoiding the depiction of specific indigenous cultures to avoid being judged on accuracy.
This means that the way these films evidence indigeneity could come off as generic but is often
framed in a way that attempts to appeal directly to the indigenous people and Latinxs whose
approval they need to capture. Though not always successful in this pursuit, the fact that
filmmakers and other artists continue to attempt to harness the allegorical possibilities of these
Mesoamerican indigenous cultures demonstrates their resonance in the American imagination.
The success of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise for Disney motivated further rideto-film adaptations, and they had an array of options that evoked similar mid-century white
nostalgia for the adventurousness of past centuries. The Jungle Cruise, originally called the
Jungle River Cruise, was one of the original rides at Disneyland’s opening in 1955. The waterbased ride takes guests on a boat that drifts along a lushly vegetated river, led by a guide who
narrates the experience, pointing out the plants, animals, and people. The narrative context of the
ride is set up within the queue, which evokes the headquarters of a 1930s British colonial trading
post. The colony in question is intentionally generic: the single river of the ride carries visitors

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through an amalgamation of several rivers of Asia, Africa, and South America, merging these
disparate cultures within the parkgoer’s imagination, and effectively making the ride a tour of
British colonialism. The last part of the ride, ostensibly set along the Amazon River, features a
piranha attack, as well as introducing the character of Trader Sam, who guides imply practices
head shrinking—associated with certain tribes of the Amazon—as well as cannibalism. Which is
to say, the Jungle Cruise ride is rooted in some of the basest stereotypes of Latin American
indigeneity. Though some of the more obviously racist aspects were edited in 2021 after
refurbishments at both Disneyland and Disney World, the colonial DNA of the ride is still an
inherent part of the experience—exploring strange and exciting new worlds, from the safety of
an enclosed vehicle, the emotional distance of a mocking guide, and the knowledge that one will
be returning to “civilization” shortly.
The Jungle Cruise film (2021) had been a long-stagnating project for Disney, first plotted
around the time of the success of the first Pirates of the Caribbean film, but delayed by creative
differences, cast and crew changes, and then the pandemic, before finally premiering in 2021.
The film ultimately was directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, and starred wrestler-turned-mega-movie
star Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as the river skipper Frank, and Emily Blunt as British
adventurer/botanist Lily Houghton, who is in search of the Tree of Life located somewhere off
the Amazon River. In the film, the flowers on the Tree of Life, or “Lágrimas de Cristal” tree
(“Crystal tears”), have healing powers, and are protected by the Puka Michuna tribe. In a
prologue set in 1556, a conquistador called Don Aguirre, played by Venezuelan actor Edgar
Ramirez, leads a Spanish army in search of the tree. However, the Puka Michuna refuse to give
them the location, and after a battle, the chief curses the Spaniards with eternal life—with the
additional stipulation that they can also never leave sight of the Amazon River. The Spaniards

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thus are cursed, in some way, with what exactly what they had sought—immortality—but while
their lives are infinite, their location must remain fixed. They have longevity, but not freedom,
and command of neither their time nor space. Meanwhile, in 1916, Dr. Houghton’s quest to find
the Tree of Life is positioned as a noble quest for scientific knowledge, while a German prince
emerges as a rival contender for its discovery, with more nefarious militaristic intentions.
Jungle Cruise emerged at a curious moment for studio cinema, and Disney in particular,
as the film—based on probably Disneyland’s least “woke” ride—was being released the summer
following mass protests against police brutality against Black Americans, and increased
awareness about how white supremacy operates on a societal level. This had extended into the
mainstream media industry, with changes, including public commitments to diversity and equity,
being adopted with slightly more urgency. As mentioned, refurbishments to the ride were
undertaken just ahead of the movie’s release, including the reimagining of a safari group trapped
climbing a pole by an angry rhino, which had previously depicted, at the bottom of the pole, four
identical Black men in fezes, khaki uniforms, and backpacks, and at the top, a white man in a
pith helmet. Disneyland’s new presentation of the scene changes updates and diversifies the
trapped travelers, who now represent a more individualized variety of skin tones, hair colors,
ages, genders, and interests (one carries an easel and painting supplies, another a butterfly net).
In a press release, Disney stated that the changes had been made in order to “reflect and value the
diversity of the world around us,”259 signaling their desire to foreground that these changes had
been made specifically as part of a diversity effort. However, they also emphasized that the
259 Michael Ramirez, “New Adventures to ‘Cast’ Off Soon Along World-Famous Jungle Cruise at Disneyland Park
and Magic Kingdom Park,” Disney Parks Blog, January 25, 2021,
https://disneyparks.disney.go.com/blog/2021/01/new-adventures-to-cast-off-soon-along-world-famous-junglecruise-at-disneyland-park-and-magic-kingdom-park/.

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overall ride would “stay true to the experience we know and love,”260 assuring their most loyal
fans that these diversity efforts would not impact the overall spirit of the ride. Indeed, the
narrative experience of the ride remains wholly dependent on emulating a British colonial
expedition into Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Thus, these types of minor, surface-level changes
allow Disney to demonstrate evidence to their commitment to diversity, while also not actually
making broader systemic changes that might alter the company’s larger commitment to their
brand’s history. A similar approach was taken for the representation of indigeneity in the film.
In the film, the fictional Puka Michuna tribe guard access to the Tree, and their modern
descendants also work with Frank to perform spectacles of indigeneity for tourists. Fictionalizing
the tribe is a frequent strategy in speculative films, as it allows the filmmakers to pick and choose
which aspects to keep, without being beholden to standards of accuracy. According to Disney’s
press notes for the film, the filmmakers utilized an (uncredited) cultural advisor “that made sure
everything was properly represented,” and also utilized Omagua, from the Tupi-Guarani family
of languages, as a basis for the Puka Michuna’s language, which director Collet-Serra said gave
the characters “an added sense of reality.”261 The Puka Michuna also appear in the modern day
segments, when they jump out during one of the river cruises and appear to attack the tourists,
which directly references the native attack scene in the ride. Later, however, it is revealed that
this attack, and their costumes, is merely part of a performance for pay, in conjunction with
Frank. At one point when a staged kidnapping starts to go wrong, Trader Sam, played by
Mexican actress Veronica Falcón, threatens to start charging Frank more for “this booga booga
nonsense.” This reversal of expectations still offers non-Native audiences the thrill of the
260 Ramirez. 261 “Jungle Cruise Press Notes” (Disney Enterprises, Inc., 2021), https://lumierea.akamaihd.net/v1/documents/jungle_cruise_press_kit_final_lo-res_7-22-21_39de8ff1.pdf.

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menacing indigenous threat yet calls attention to its falsity in order to distance itself from the
initial stereotype. Including the scene allows Disney to satisfy, first, the history of the park and
emulating the thrilling experience of non-Native audience members encountering dangerous
Natives andthen, to a lesser extent, contextualizing, in a semi-historical way, the experience of
indigenous tribes that alleviates some of the potential criticisms.
Disney continued to foreground Mesoamerican indigeneity, particularly as a way to
engage with Latinx audiences and reclaim problematic aspects of its own corporate image, in
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022). The film features Mexican actor Tenoch Huerta as
Namor, and whose kingdom and costumes are drawn explicitly from Mayan and Aztec culture.
Namor had never been conveyed as Mesoamerican, though—this was newly conceived for the
film. Introduced as an antihero in a 1939 comic, Namor, also known as the Sub-Mariner, was
born in the underwater kingdom of Atlantis, the offspring of a human male, sea captain Leonard
McKenzie, and the Atlantean Princess Fen, of the species Homo mermanus. Namor, however,
was a mutant with added abilities that neither of his parents’ lineages contained. These powers
included swimming at high speeds, flying—thanks to Mercury-like winged ankles—
communicating with marine creatures, and super-strength. Writer and artist Bill Everett created
the character, drawing on inspiration from sea adventure stories by Jack London and historical
expeditions to the South Pole. Though some scholars have noted that Namor’s dark hair and
widow’s peak carry a connotation that he was intended to be read as a “non-white” character,262
intentional racial otherness at this time in comics was typically both rare and, when present,
foregrounded to a heightened and unmistakable degree. Namor is instead linked more to the sea
262 Nili Blanck, “The Mesoamerican Influences Behind Talokan King Namor From ‘Black Panther: Wakanda
Forever’ | History | Smithsonian Magazine,” November 10, 2022, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/themesoamerican-influences-behind-namor-from-black-panther-wakanda-forever-180981106/.

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than any one particular country or race, though his Atlantean palace in the comics drew on
largely on Greek and Roman influences, and his name is, of course, the word “Roman” spelled
backwards. His hybrid heritage from both the surface people and the Atlanteans marked him as
an outsider in both cultures. His outsiderness is particularly noticeable among the Atlanteans,
who are largely humanoid but have blue skin. As he describes himself, he is the “spawn of two
worlds… yet fated to belong to none.”263 This sense of duality has obvious connections to the
notion of Latinx mestizaje, though Atlantis also has more specific, if troubling, connection to the
Mesoamerican.
The legend of Atlantis emerged as a Platonic allegory about hubris, describing an
advanced but immoral civilization that was cursed by the gods to become submerged under the
ocean. Plato told the tale in a compellingly pseudo-historic style, with clear allegories that
resonated with later writers, inspiring further plays on the story, and with just enough—but not
too specific—details that readers could conceive of its possible basis in lived history. The
generally accepted location for Atlantis is somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean, which gained its
own popular allegorical resonance for Europeans during the 16th and 17th centuries. Thus, when
Europeans began to encounter the indigenous people of the Americas, the descriptions sparked,
for some, the racist notion that an intermediary culture like Atlantis must have existed due to the
advanced nature of these indigenous civilizations. The additional layer of imagination for
Europeans to conceive of these advanced civilizations as existing across such an impossibly vast
body of water compounded this view and their association with Atlantis. The racist denial of
indigenous agency and progress has reappeared throughout history, including in modern series
like Ancient Aliens, which attributes much of their progress to extraterrestrial influences.
263 Roy Thomas and Dann Thomas, “A Legend A-Borning,” Saga of the Sub-Mariner, July 19, 1988, 23.

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When it was announced that Namor would embody Mayan characteristics, some scholars
were concerned about the possibility that Wakanda Forever would reassert these stereotypes.264
However, Atlantis as intermediary for indigenous America is a somewhat dated conceit—the
function that this perception performs has arguably been popularly replaced by the alien
conspiracy theory, so it is a less sensitive comparison. Today, Atlantis is more commonly
invoked as a representative for a great, lost civilization. In many cases, these fictional depictions
imagine Atlantis as an underwater utopia, inaccessible to the modern human, yet still thriving.
This framework of the Atlantis legend has a clearer and more sympathetic connection to
Mesoamerica, positioning them as lost, great civilizations—though this characterization
obviously also has its own shortcomings. Wakanda Forever’s depiction of Talokan more closely
matched this version of Atlantis: not as an intermediary between European and Mesoamerican
cultures, but rather as a refuge for the indigenous people of Latin America to escape
colonization, survive with their culture intact, and establish their own, revisionist timeline of
development. But it also depicts this Mesoamerican culture as being something from the past,
being brought into the present only due to speculative intervention.
Throughout Wakanda Forever, flashback scenes explain the origin of Talokan, the
underwater kingdom of the Talokanils, which is located off Mexico’s Yucatan coast. In the
1500s, Spanish conquistadors attack a Mayan village, which happens to be near the site of a
crashed meteorite that afforded magic powers to some of the local flora. The village’s shaman
realizes that consuming the glowing flowers allows their people to breathe underwater, so, in an
effort to escape their annihilation, the entire surviving population eats the flowers and moves
underwater. Namor’s mother was pregnant with him at this time, and her consumption of the
264 Blanck, “The Mesoamerican Influences Behind Talokan King Namor From ‘Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’ |
History | Smithsonian Magazine.”

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flowers gives him even more special powers, including the ability to fly and move seamlessly
between ocean and land. Namor eventually comes to lead Talokan, though here is known as
K’u’ulkan—the name for the feathered serpent deity worshipped by the real-life Yucatec Maya
of this period and location. Namor, though frequently used to refer to him in the film, is in fact
the name given to him by one of the Spaniards he later killed for revenge, who said he was
“without love,” or “sin amor.” This explanation reverse engineers the name’s origin from the
comic, where “Namor” merely reflected the writer’s idea to spell “Roman” backwards.
Since Namor originally had no connection to Mesoamerican culture, all these additions
and references to actual historical events and cultures were newly added specifically for the film.
Like some other modern productions that explicitly draw on Mesoamerican culture, more of
which will be discussed in the next section on alternate histories, the filmmakers freely
emphasized their research and influences to ensure acceptance. Yucatec Maya was the dominant
reference for this fictionalized culture, including the use of their language—rather than an
invented dialect—for the Talokanil characters to speak. Costume designer Ruth Carter also cited
inspiration from artwork from Mayan vases in designing the looks for the Talokanils, and
particularly called attention to Namora’s265 feathered headpiece, for which she stated her team
“worked really hard to represent Mayan culture with that piece.”266 She elaborated that her task
was “creating a new world that’s based on a real historical anchor,” and that part of the reason
they paid such attention to historical detail was because “you want the people who have this in
their lineage to be proud that this was accurate.”267 The design and history of the Talokanils in
265 Namora is a cousin of Namor. 266 Ingrid Schmidt, “Ruth E. Carter on Designing ‘Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’s’ 2,100 Costumes and Its New
‘Latino-Future’ Style,” The Hollywood Reporter (blog), November 19, 2022,
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/black-panther-wakanda-forever-costume-designer-ruthcarter-1235265139/. 267 Schmidt.

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the film did incorporate some non-Mayan inspiration—for instance, the name Talokan also
comes from the Aztec term “Tlālōcān,” the afterworld paradise for people who died from
drowning—as well as, of course, more fantastical elements, such as their blue skin and ability to
control sea creatures and breathe underwater. Carter’s enunciation of ancestral pride being a
primary motivator in their commitment to authenticity is especially important though,
considering how the first Black Panther (2018) had resonated with Black audiences.
Some early reactions to the film’s promotional materials, in fact, feared that the conflict
would be reduced being between “Space Africans vs Sea Mexicans.”268 Carter similarly set up
this dichotomy when she described her designs for the Talokanils as being “similar to Afrofuture for Wakanda, it’s like Latino-future.”269 These comments both reflect a perception—and
indeed, the mainstream media’s initial framing—that the film was about Black and Latinx
communities. This assumption fit within overall false perceptions about race and ethnicity in
America: namely, that Blackness and Latinidad are two distinct, non-overlapping identities, and
that Latinidad is synonymous with indigeneity. This perceived division is further enhanced by
the conflict between Talokan and Wakanda in the film, which take on the weight of these
allegories. In their pasts, both Talokan and Wakanda were struck by meteors that contained
vibranium, giving them access to this valuable fictional resource, but also making them potential
targets for exploitation by First World powers. The Wakandans chose to conceal themselves
from the outside world, but stayed in their homeland, allowing them to progress to a great degree
as Europe colonized and enslaved the members of other African nations. This speculative fantasy
268 Dok [@Dok845], “Early Reviews of Black Panther 2 Are Taking the ‘Need to Let It Marinate’ Tack, Which
Adds Weight to My Suspicion That the ‘Space Africans vs Sea Mexicans’ Plot Will Be Super Fucked up and No
One Will Be Good at Talking about It.,” Tweet, Twitter, October 27, 2022,
https://twitter.com/Dok845/status/1585654627373965312.
269 Schmidt, “Ruth E. Carter on Designing ‘Black Panther.”

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thus corrects the trauma of a forced enslavement that took them away from their homeland.
Alternately, Talokan use vibranium’s powers in order to escape their homeland and make their
way freely into the ocean, losing their connection to the land in the process, but remaining safe
from the forced loss of their culture through Spanish integration. The ability to travel freely from
a dangerous homeland to live in safety also parallels modern narratives of Latin American
immigration. Thus, while the film represents these cultures in a more considered way than some
previous depictions, it also reinforces these standing notions about race in America through its
conflict.
However, while some of these discussions may have been limited within the scope of the
film itself, its release provided important context for mainstream discussion of issues of
Latinidad and Blackness that are usually ignored or discussed with little nuance. For instance, in
interviews while promoting the film, Tenoch Huerta repeatedly called attention to the whiteness
of Latin American media—which he said looks “like it’s made for Scandinavians,”270 critiquing
Mexico’s colorism, which might be an unfamiliar concept to many North American audiences
who don’t recognize race on a spectrum. Similarly, Lupita Nyong’o, who plays Nakia in the
films, was born to Kenyan parents in Mexico City and speaks fluent Spanish, but as a darkskinned Black woman is rarely cast in Spanish-speaking or other Mexican roles. In this film,
during a scene where she is in Mexico investigating Namor’s origin, she was able to speak
Spanish and her delight at this “gift”271 was picked up in several mainstream media outlets,
prompting wider discussions about Afrolatinidad and compartmentalized American racial
270 Carlos Aguilar, “Tenoch Huerta Mejía and the Beauty of Representation in ‘Wakanda Forever,’” The New York
Times, November 16, 2022, sec. Movies, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/16/movies/tenoch-huerta-mejiawakanda-forever.html. 271 Armando Tinoco, “‘Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’ Star Lupita Nyong’o Says Speaking Spanish In Marvel
Film ‘Was A Gift,’” Deadline (blog), November 14, 2022, https://deadline.com/2022/11/black-panther-wakandaforever-lupita-nyongo-speaking-spanish-marvel-film-was-a-gift-1235171311/.

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formations. Thus, while making some of the indigenous elements more fantastical and generic,
the film provided representation for a more diverse range of Latinxs.
As demonstrated with the Chicano connection to Aztlán, for US-born Latinxs, the link to
indigeneity can often serve as a link to their identity as Latinxs. As Victor Zamudio-Taylor and
Virginia Fields wrote in their companion publication to the LACMA exhibition, The Road to
Aztlán: Art from a Mythic Homeland, “the concept of Aztlán served as a legitimizing strategy,
enabling Chicanos to assert an indigenous identity and fostering a sense of belonging.”272 In
recent speculative media, American Latinxs have forged their own, more specific connections to
their own heritage by setting speculative stories within these Mesoamerican cultures. This
process not only operates as a “legitimizing strategy” for their own claims to indigenous
heritage, but also begins to establish more authentic depictions of Mesoamerica into the cultural
canon as potential sources of inspiration that go beyond fleeting, superficial uses described
earlier.
In Feathered Serpent, Dark Heart of Sky: Myths of Mexico (2018), Mexican-American
novelist and historian David Bowles compiled and retranslated some of the core myths of
Mesoamerican cultures for English-speaking young adult readers, with the stated aim of making
these stories as familiar to American readers as the storytelling traditions of ancient Greece or
European fairy tale. Following the publication of this book, Bowles began adapting the stories
into an ongoing series of middle-grade graphic novels, called Tales of the Feathered Serpent,
with his illustrator daughter, Charlene Bowles. Bowles has justified the choice to adapt the
written story into a graphic novel form by noting that many of the known Mayan legends have
come from hieroglyphs, and thus “blending written words and images” through this more visual
272 Zamudio-Taylor and Fields, The Road to Aztlan: Art from a Mythic Homeland, 39.

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mode of storytelling “allow[s] our brains to process stories more like our ancestors did, using
multiple parts of our brains to understand more fully.”273 The first issue in the series, “Rise of the
Halfling King,” was published in 2020, with “The Hero Twins in the Realm of Fear,” and “Sak
Nikte and the Fall of Chichen Itza” planned as future installments. “Rise of the Halfling King”
tells the story of the dwarf king of Uxmal, who was born (in an egg, to a witch) in Kabah, both
on the Yucatán peninsula near Chichen Itza.
Throughout the graphic novel, Bowles emphasizes its historicity and specific basis in
Mayan legend, in keeping with its educational tone and intended audience of middle-grade
readers. On the opening page, where a fantasy novel like The Lord of the Rings or Game of
Thrones might provide an illustrated map of the speculative land to situate readers, Bowles has
included a map of modern Mexico (and southern edge of the United States), with the relevant
locations of this story marked: Uxmal, Kabah, Chichen Itza, Tulum. The opening materials also
include a list of characters, which loosely describe their role in this story in the Shakespearean
style, but, also in some cases, expositional historical context that might be difficult to integrate
seamlessly into the narrative. For instance, for the monkey character Maax, the text notes that
“spider monkeys were revered by the Maya.”274 These facts are delivered with an authoritative
tone, emphasizing that this text is not just intended as entertainment—though the manga-like
style certainly seems to hope to attract readers as such—but also a learning material. This comicteaching mode seems to seek to counteract the many false narratives of Mesoamerican culture
that have previously existed in speculative fiction, while still maintaining the enticement of a
fantastical, graphical world.
273 David Bowles and Charlene Bowles, Rise of the Halfling King, Tales of the Feathered Serpent (El Paso, TX:
Cinco Puntos Press, 2020), 62.
274 Bowles and Bowles, 5.

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Conclusion
Non-Latinx Americans have demonstrated a fascination with Mesoamerican cultures, as
they provide an enticing combination of historicity and exoticism, familiarity and foreignness.
This interest did not only occur in media, as discussed here, but also art and architecture. The
Mayan Revival architectural style, for instance, appeared as a brief trend in the 1920s and 1930s,
drawing inspiration from the pyramids, geometric constructions, and facades seen in Mayan
ruins. Some of these buildings include the Mayan Theatre in Los Angeles, built in 1927, and
Frank Lloyd Wright’s famed Ennis House, built in 1924, both still standing today. Though
referred to as “Mayan Revival,” this style often mixed elements of other Latin American
indigenous cultures. Like the many other revival architecture styles—Egyptian, Greek, Spanish
Colonial—they reflect an interest in other cultures that is nonetheless often expressed
inaccurately, by emphasizing the elements that seem most interesting or unique without delving
deeper into their history or context.
This chapter has detailed some of the ways that Mesoamerican and South American
indigenous cultures have been represented in North American speculative visual media. Though
many of these media works could have used entirely fictionalized cultures, the ones mentioned
here, in some way, explicitly acknowledged their connection to indigenous cultures, either within
their text or in press materials. This demonstrates that there is indeed a specific desire to
incorporate these cultures, and that these cultures carry with them a certain significance that
fictionalized cultures would not. However, that significance often works as justification for the
cultures to be decontextualized or reformatted to shape the needs of the story. Working in
speculative fiction often carries with it an inherent defense for inauthenticity: if dragons and

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sorcerers exist in this world, then there can be no expectation for accuracy elsewhere. When
Mesoamerican cultures are incorporated then, they are often freely mixed, reinvented, and
repurposed. At the same time, this freedom of interpretation has also proved generative for
Chicano and Latinx activists seeking to form their own space. Recent works, often spearheaded
by Latinx creators, have aimed to correct some aspects of the fictionality of these earlier
narratives, and emphasize more of the cultures’ real histories. Much like the Chicano film
movement of the 1960s, which skewed toward documentary, these calls for accuracy seek to
show the real cultures, in opposition to the stereotypes and misperceptions perpetrated by the
mainstream American media. However, the inherent tension of conducting this corrective
process within the speculative genre is that the pursuit of supposed cultural authenticity functions
alongside explicitly fictional narratives and mythologies. Thus, the seemingly contradictory
attempt of locating the authentic within the fantastic creates an uneasy compromise: between a
desire for absolute accuracy in terms of cultural referents, while simultaneously invoking
shapeshifters, immortal beings, and talking monkeys.

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Chapter 4:
Mestizaje in the Multiverse: Dualities, Hybridities, and Secret Identities
In 1987, Chicana feminist writer Gloria Anzaldúa published her formative text,
Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, in which she reflected on the meaning generated by
the US-Mexican border, including the people, like herself, that have been shaped by it. As she
wrote: “the U.S.-Mexican border es una herida abierta [an open wound] where the Third World
grates against the first and bleeds. And before a scab forms it hemorrhages again, the lifeblood of
two worlds merging to form a third country—a border culture.”275 As she goes on to say, this
borderland “is a vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural
boundary.”276 Anzaldúa's conception of border culture emphasizes it as a point of mixture, from
which neither side can claim full influence, but whose very combination creates its meaning. The
tenuous nature of the borderland reflects that these two cultures—the United States and
Mexico—have historically developed in distinct-enough trajectories that the clash upon their
rejoining becomes significant. At the same time, Anzaldúa also acknowledges that the origin of
this difference—the border—is itself an unnatural invention. Like many sociopolitical inventions
though, it nonetheless has very real effects on the world and how people and cultures have
developed.
Anzaldúa’s influential conception here is one example of how the Latinx experience has
been characterized in terms of its hybridity, often as an embodiment of opposed dualities: United
States and/or Latin America, indigenous and/or foreign, English and/or Spanish, assimilated
275 Anzaldúa, Borderlands | La Frontera: The New Mestiza, 3. 276 Anzaldúa, 3.

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and/or resistant. As Román de la Campa writes, Latinxs in particular occupy “a different, if
unstable, sense of ontological space characterized by doubleness … with which it maintains
contact in multiple and contradictory ways.”277 The idea of a national border itself has proved a
fertile source of metaphor, both in fiction and in cultural theory, particularly in regards to the
notion of “border crossing,” and particularly when dealing with Latinx and Latin American
subjects. Similarly, as with many minority groups in the United States, the hyphen has served as
a visible, textual marker of duality that distinguishes between “Americans” and other hyphenated
Americans—African-American, Asian-American, and so on—which emphasizes their difference
from “neutral” (white) Americans.
Anzaldúa found strength in this hybridity, and advocated for the recognition of a “new
mestiza consciousness … a consciousness of the Borderlands,” which she called
“nepantilism.”278 Nepantla, which she cites as “an Aztec word meaning torn between ways”279
means having “a tolerance for contradictions, a tolerance for ambiguity.”280 For Anzaldúa, the inbetween-ness inherent to the experience of Chicana/os was both an asset and a point of pride, but
also a framework for approaching life and art. Due to their experience being raised in these
border spaces, Mexican Americans should be more comfortable with moments of contradiction,
which would then be reflected in their creative aesthetic. Anzaldúa further called for an end to
“dualistic thinking”281— to embrace a mixed identity that cannot be defined as “either/or,” but
rather must be thought of as “both/and.” Chicana feminist scholar Chela Sandoval also described
the benefits of this mestiza consciousness, “made up of transversions and crossings” as it allows
277 Román De la Campa, “Latinos and the Crossover Aesthetic,” in Magical Urbanism : Latinos Reinvent the US
City, by Mike Davis (London ; Verso, 2000), xiv. 278 Anzaldúa, Borderlands | La Frontera: The New Mestiza, 77. 279 Anzaldúa, 78. 280 Anzaldúa, 77. 281 Anzaldúa, 80.

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“mestiza feminism comes to function as a working chiasmus (a mobile crossing) between races,
genders, sexes, cultures, languages, and nations.”282 Thus, the mestiza consciousness makes
accessible, and indeed insists upon, “polymodal forms of poetics, ethics, identities, and
politics.”283
Even for non-Latinxs, choice is the basis of conflict in most fiction. A hero’s active
decisions between different options motivate the forward motion of narrative flow in most
stories. The choice between two possibilities is thus one of the simplest story elements, and
serves as a heightened yet relatable version of the constant stream of decisions we must make in
our own lives. Understandably then, doubles make frequent appearances in fiction—the literary
foil, the doppelgänger, the alter ego—as distinct representations of choice and difference made
visible. By portraying two options two side-by-side, the differences—and similarities—between
the primary subject and its alternative can be more readily examined, given the immediate
context to be able to compare what it is and what it is not. In speculative fiction, these dualities
are sometimes imagined even more distinctly as split, secret, or stolen identities. An evil
mastermind might create identical clones that threaten individualized self-determination, as in
Spy Kids (2001), or a superhero, spy, or alien may need to live a “double life” in order to hide
part of their identity or protect their loved ones—like the Cortez parents who hide their work as
super spies from their children, also featured in Spy Kids. These types of narratives are
particularly gratifying for audience members, who, unlike those within the story, are often
uniquely privileged with omnipotence to know the “true” version of the character, and who,
themselves, can typically live only a single life.
282 Chela Sandoval, “Mestizaje as Method: Feminists-of-Color Challenge the Canon,” in Living Chicana Theory, ed.
Carla Trujillo (Berkeley: Third Woman Press, 1998), 352.
283 Sandoval, 352.

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This chapter engages with speculative fictions that involve dualities as they relate to
Latinx characters or performers, as well as works that may have emerged from an assumption of
duality but reach beyond it. The struggle of having to choose between two identities or hide a
certain part of one’s identity to the world, is a frequent recurring trope for stories by and about
Latinxs, and thus is, in turn, often incorporated into speculative narratives where these tropes are
similarly popular. Calling attention to dichotomies in both reality and fiction can offer a
productive space to work through questions and challenges about self-identification, but can also
lead to an overemphasis of the idea of Latinxs being perfect hybrids—particularly when
mestizaje is depicted as an equal mixture of white Spanish and indigenous. This impulse is
common within works made by both Latinx and non-Latinx creators alike and can evidence a
troubling echo of the eugenicist logic that upheld mestizaje as civilization’s end goal. While an
emphasis on hybridity does reject the framework of racial purity, and would seem to privilege
each unique individual, characterizing Latinidad in this way can actually erase potential
discussions of racism and colorism. While racial mixture may be a component of many Latinxs’
heritage, it is not identical, and is not expressed identically, in all Latinxs. This chapter evidences
some more recent strides away from this elevation of duality and past genealogical history, and
instead focusing on the actions and experiences of Latinxs today.
Theories of Dualities
In 1903, W.E.B. DuBois wrote on the concept of double consciousness, his term for the
unique experience that Black Americans face living as visible Others in a white-dominant
society. As he stated: “It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always
looking at one’s self through the eyes of others … One ever feels his two-ness—an American, a

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Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body,
whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.”284 For Du Bois, this double
consciousness means that Black Americans experience their lives from their own perspective, as
well as from the perspective of how they appear to whites, and they must constantly consider
these dual, simultaneous, and often contradictory perspectives. Black Americans are never
afforded the neutrality of simply being “American,” as whites are, but receive (at least) the
secondary qualifier of their Blackness. Similarly, Du Bois’ metaphor of the “veil” functions as a
barrier that prevents white Americans from understanding Black life, and Black Americans to
see themselves outside of that context.
Though the divide between white and Black has historically been the definitive racial
organizing principle in the United States, the concept of multiple consciousnesses has proved
resonant for other minority groups negotiating their own experiences in a white dominated
society. Juan Flores and Miriam Jiménez Roman introduced the idea of a “triple-consciousness”
to describe their Afrolatinidad, in which “one ever feels his three-ness—a Latino, a Negro, an
American.”285 They admitted, however, that this framing was slightly “provocative” in its
potentially endless utilization of multiple consciousnesses to encompass various intersectional
identities. The ability to theorize about populations who rarely perfectly fit within the boundaries
of a binary has proved challenging. Vocalizing against the notion that “immutable, ethnic
differences” represent “an absolute break in the histories and experiences of ‘black’ and ‘white’
people,” Paul Gilroy suggested sitting instead with the more difficult theories of “creolisation,
métissage, mestizaje, and hybridity,” which he described as “rather unsatisfactory ways of
284 W.E.B. Du Bois, Souls of Black Folk, ed. Manning Marable (1903; repr., Taylor and Francis, 2015), 2. 285 Juan Flores and Miriam Jiménez Román, “Triple-Consciousness? Approaches to Afro-Latino Culture in the
United States,” Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies 4, no. 3 (2009): 327,
https://doi.org/10.1080/17442220903331662.

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naming the processes of cultural mutation and restless (dis)continuity that exceed racial
discourse and avoid capture by its agents.”286 The need to organize people into races has proved
a lasting impulse in the Americas, even as individual unruliness defied these attempted
categorizations.
In 18th century Spanish casta paintings, artists depicted a rigid, hierarchical conception
of race in the colonial Americas. These works showed a multitude of different interracial
couplings and gave a name for the offspring that this union would produce. For instance, a
Spanish man and indigenous woman produced a mestizo. Though these taxonomical renderings
seem definitive, colonial era historians have demonstrated that the actual practice of caste at this
time was more flexible than the paintings suggest, showing “ample evidence of individual
movement from one caste category to another” despite “the categories themselves … [being]
defined in entirely genealogical terms.”287 Thus, though the definitions would seem to be
indisputable, as they were based on biology, in practice there were other factors that affected
one’s lived experience, including appearance and social status. As Rebecca Earle argues, “an
individual’s ancestry was often provisional because it was based on what others believed.”288
Identity was, and is, something that can simultaneously be thought of as being rigidly defined by
genealogy, yet also dependent on social factors and beliefs that are more fluid and, indeed, in
some ways, imaginary.
Mestizo was the term used to described mestizos having children with other mestizos, but
in these types of paintings, only the original intermixing is depicted. That is, the mestizo here
286 Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic : Modernity and Double Consciousness (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University
Press, 1993), 2.
287 Rebecca Earle, “The Pleasures of Taxonomy: Casta Paintings, Classification, and Colonialism,” The William and
Mary Quarterly 73, no. 3 (2016): 432, https://doi.org/10.5309/willmaryquar.73.3.0427. 288 Earle, 433.

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represents a person that has an equal balance of white European (male) heritage and indigenous
(female) heritage, with each coming from one single, pureblooded parent. The depicted purity of
the original parents was necessary in order to be able to calculate and name specific each
subsequent offspring—some paintings would require at least 12 generations to appropriately
cover all depicted pairings, becoming increasingly granular as each generation became more
distant from their Spanish great(-great-great-great-great)-grandparent. Though the taxonomy of
these casta paintings is no longer relevant in today’s age, the fascination with—and valuation
of—mestizaje as a concept has proved resonant. However, Gabriela Raquel Rios notes that
valuing mestizaje in this way does not in fact “[explode] the notions of purity,” as might be
expected, but “actually reifies them because it relies on ‘pure’ subjects that then ‘mix’ to create
the mixed ‘mestiza consciousness’ that is ultimately superior to its ‘parts.’”289 In this way, this
exaltation of mestizaje aligns closely with the notion of the cosmic race advocated by Mexican
social scientist José Vasconcelos and other Mexican nationalists in the 1920s.
Recently scholars have begun further problematizing the reliance on mestizaje as the
defining framework for Latinidad, including the earlier heralded work of Vasconcelos and
Anzaldúa. As Alicia Arrizón emphasizes, “it is imperative to understand mestizaje as the product
of a history formed by cultural encounters, colonial difference, and the “whitening” of the
Indigenous/black subordinated colonial subject.”290 By valorizing mestizaje, its proponents
celebrate making the white race less white, but they also celebrate making non-white races more
white. Rios reminds us that “even though the mestiza becomes visible, she does so only at the
289 Gabriela Raquel Rios, “Mestizaje,” in Decolonizing Rhetoric and Composition Studies New Latinx Keywords for
Theory and Pedagogy, by Iris D. Ruiz and Raúl. Sánchez, 1st ed. 2016. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan US, 2016),
120, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-52724-0. 290 Alicia Arrizón, “Mestizaje,” in Keywords for Latina/o Studies, ed. Deborah R. Vargas, Lawrence La FountainStokes, and Nancy Raquel Mirabal, 1st ed. (New York: New York University Press, 2017), https://searchcredoreference-com.libproxy1.usc.edu/content/title/nyupresskls?tab=entry_view&entry_id=27727485.

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expense of the Indigenous.”291 Eric Rodriguez and Everardo J. Cuevas call on Latinxs “to
embrace our messy, problematic stories” as “a way to practice decoloniality … Rather than
trying to compose the mestizx through blood quantum, for instance, we should begin by
examining our stories as they exist, our traditions, our words, our names, our foods—our
rhetorical practices—and beyond simply acknowledging their Indigenous origins, remembering
and relearning how to honor them.”292 Thus, rather than focus on upholding the mixture itself
alone, these scholars advocate for better interrogation and support of what the pieces of the
mixture themselves signify, particularly in terms of indigeneity.
Superheroes and Secret Identities
In 1905, Baroness Orczy published her novel The Scarlet Pimpernel, following a
successful run of a play of the same title in London. The novel is set at the beginning of the
French Revolution, during the Reign of Terror, when French aristocrats were being guillotined in
public executions. The novel depicts a fictional, swashbuckling hero who saves these aristocrats
from their deaths, though his own identity is an intentional mystery. The reader, however, is
among the few privileged to know that in real life, the Scarlet Pimpernel is in fact Sir Percy
Blakeney, a dandy baronet whom few would suspect as the brave and dashing hero. Blakeney
utilizes this double life to carry out his extralegal deeds without repercussions and avoid threats
to his loved ones, but also so that the mantle of the “Scarlet Pimpernel” can be passed along if
needed, while still inspiring the same mythic legacy. Presumably, to some extent, he also hides
his identity in order to avoid the optics of an elite like himself only looking out for other elites.
291 Rios, “Mestizaje,” 120. 292 Eric Rodriguez and Everardo J. Cuevas, “Problematizing Mestizaje,” Composition Studies 45, no. 2 (2017): 3.

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The anonymity of the hero means his personal motives against the Reign of Terror can go
unanalyzed.
Though The Scarlet Pimpernel was hugely popular in its own time, its influence reached
well beyond nineteenth century of readers. The concept of a person secretly engaging in heroics
as part of a double life has proved an appealing and resonant idea in fiction, and aspects of this
trope have been repeated throughout literary history, with particular success within the subgenre
of the superhero and, in turn, in the medium of comics. In a 2018 social media interview, famed
comic book writer and Marvel co-creator Stan Lee stated that: “The Scarlet Pimpernel was the
first superhero I had read about. The first character who could be called a superhero .… He wore
a disguise, but it wasn't a mask or anything like that. He just didn't let people know who he really
was.”293 Stan Lee would go on to create characters with secret identities, such as Spider-Man
(aka Peter Parker) and Iron Man (aka Tony Stark). Even before Lee’s time, two of the most wellknown superheroes, Superman (aka Clark Kent) and Batman (aka Bruce Wayne) had alter egos.
The character known as Zorro first appeared to the American public in 1919, as the star
of a five-part magazine serial called “The Curse of Capistrano” by Johnston McCulley.
McCulley was a prolific pulp author, contributing tales of supervillains, mentalists, and spies to a
variety of publications, including Detective Story Magazine, All-Story Weekly, and The Argosy.
The story of Zorro here, and in most of its future adaptations, is set in 19th-century California,
during the time of Mexico’s rule of the territory, and follows Don Diego Vega (in later versions,
Diego de la Vega), an aristocratic man of Spanish heritage born in California. Vega’s secret alter
ego, though, is Zorro, a vigilante in a black mask and cape who enacts his own brand of
293 Stan Lee [@TheRealStanLee], “Who Was the First Hero You Were Introduced to? In His Latest Video, Stan
Talks about the Very First Superhero He Read about and Was Inspired by. #FlashbackFriday
Https://T.Co/N4yLyXBycy,” Tweet, Twitter, September 7, 2018,
https://twitter.com/TheRealStanLee/status/1038133959962505216.

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extralegal justice. These early stories embodied many of the familiar tropes of the pulp adventure
novels—daring escapes, skilled swordplay, thrilling cliffhangers. Zorro’s tale was quickly
adapted into a silent film, The Mark of Zorro (1920), starring Douglas Fairbanks in one of his
most iconic roles, which helped to establish the adventure film genre. Several other significant
Zorros have included Tyrone Power in a 1940 remake, Guy Williams on the ABC television
series Zorro, which aired from 1957 to 1961, and Antonio Banderas in The Mask of Zorro (1998)
and The Legend of Zorro (2005), among many other iterations in between and since.
Given these very early appearances in media, Zorro has been put forth by some Latinx
scholars as “America’s first superhero,”294 the accuracy of which depends somewhat on the
definition of superhero. Benjamin Saunders has offered a loose definition of superhero as “a type
of fictional character gifted with extraordinary powers and dedicated to a program of justice,”295
in keeping with other definitions that require both irregular ability and some sort of moral
guidance. Some definitions require these extraordinary powers to be explicitly beyond the realm
of the human—flight, super-strength, invincibility—but such requirements would also exclude
characters like Batman and Iron Man, who are frequently recognized as superheroes despite their
powers mainly stemming from their access to high-tech gadgets. I include this debate to
demonstrate that for some Latinx audience members and scholars, the desire to name Zorro as a
superhero, and thus, the first superhero, seems to stem from a desire of being able to claim him
as Latinx. But Zorro’s Latinidad, like his superhero-ness, is also a matter of debate.
The Mask of Zorro, the film starring Antonio Banderas as the hero, premiered in 1998.
This version in fact includes two Zorros: an elder Zorro, Don Diego de la Vega, played by
294 Stephen J.C. Andes, Zorro’s Shadow: How a Mexican Legend Became America’s First Superhero (Chicago:
Chicago Review Press, 2020), x.
295 Benjamin Saunders, “Superhero,” in Keywords for Comics Studies, ed. Ramzi Fawaz, Deborah Whaley, and
Shelley Streeby, vol. 12 (New York: NYU Press, 2021), 200.

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Anthony Hopkins, who is retiring the mask, and a younger Zorro-to-be, Alejandro Murrieta,
played by Antonio Banderas. The de la Vega Zorro in the film, played by Hopkins, is understood
to be the same Zorro the audience would have known from earlier incarnations, though most of
his adventures take place before the film begins. In the brief glimpse of his adventures we do see,
he is a Robin Hood-like figure, fighting against the military and aristocratic elites on behalf of
the poor and indigenous. Unfortunately, though, his real identity—as Don de la Vega—is
ultimately revealed to his enemies, which leads to the death of his wife, the kidnapping of his
daughter, and the loss of his aristocratic status and wealth. When the villain Don Rafael Montero
discovers his identity, he seems most offended by de la Vega’s betrayal of his status, calling him
“a traitor to your country and your class.” Unlike the Scarlet Pimpernel, who is an elite who
fights for his fellow elite, this Zorro is an elite who fights for the poor, which is a particularly
appalling class betrayal. Because this Zorro operates in direct conflict to the expectations of his
status, his anonymity allows him to maintain both the luxuries of his status but also the moral
high ground. When both sides of this identity are revealed, he no longer has the protective
strength of this separated duality. For this Zorro, the unification of his two halves means losing
both.
The film’s establishment of the new Murrieta Zorro, who is not an aristocratic Spaniard
but rather a Mexican peasant, drastically shifts the meaning of the role, as well as the
significance and deployment of his secret identity. It also explicitly situates the film within a
dialogue of American Latinidad. Within the film, Murrieta is presented as the brother of Joaquin
Murrieta, the real Mexican folk hero sometimes called the “Robin Hood of the West.” The real
Murrieta, or at least the real mythic version of Murrieta, became a figure of resistance for
Mexican Americans, as a defender of Mexican dignity in the face of shifting national borders

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that went beyond individual control.296 Catherine Leen argues that this change in fact “reclaims
the Zorro myth for a Mexican and Chicano audience and gives it an added authenticity and
resonance.”297 Murrieta also inhabits several identities throughout the film: Murrieta himself, a
Mexican bandit consumed by his desire for revenge, and a, known recognizable fugitive; the
masked vigilante Zorro, an identity he inherits from de la Vega; and the Spanish dandy Don
Alejandro del Castillo y García, who he plays in order to gain information from the other
Californio Dons. Murrieta’s racial mixture allows him to easily blend in with both California
Dons but also with indigenous beggars.298 As a Mexican-Californian, he is shown to have the
racial mobility to access each world, and can move between these roles.
The film’s plot also works to enunciate the film’s Latinx resonance, particularly in terms
of its mestizo hero. The Murrieta Zorro must ultimately free the enslaved indigenous people who
have been forced to work at a gold mine on behalf of the Californio Dons, who are scheming
against Mexico by attempting to claim California for their own. Ultimately, the Zorros, working
together, defeat the Dons, freeing both the enslaved people and California itself from their
unethical influence. Aligning the film’s narrative as a conflict between indigenous people and the
corrupted creole Spaniards was also a way to position the film as a “resurrection and radical
updating of heroic sagas,” as well as one “that point[s] a way forward for Chicano resistance.”299
Though California’s fate is not mentioned directly in the film, a brief mention of the ongoing
Mexican-American War suggests that, though these characters won the battle against the Dons to
remain part of Mexico for now, they will soon be part of the United States.
296 David Bacon, “Miners & Mayos: A Descendent of Joaquin Murrieta,” Institute for Global Communications,
December 15, 2001, http://dbacon.igc.org/TWC/mm02_Murrieta.htm.
297 Catherine Leen, “The Caballero Revisited: Postmodernity in The Cisco Kid, The Mask of Zorro, and Shrek II,”
Bilingual Review 28, no. 1 (January 2004): 33. 298 Murrieta’s racial mixture as signified by the narrative at least; Murrieta is played by the Spaniard Antonio
Banderas, while de la Vega is played by the Welsh Anthony Hopkins.
299 Leen, “The Caballero Revisited: Postmodernity in The Cisco Kid, The Mask of Zorro, and Shrek II,” 35.

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By the film’s end, the Murrieta Zorro is able to combine aspects of all his identities into a
neat package that no longer requires duplicity: he can openly tell his children tales of his exploits
as Zorro—which, now that the indigenous poor have been free, need only remain as an
extracurricular hobby—while also living the fantasy lifestyle of a Don, thanks to his wealthy
wife. While the revelation of the Spaniard de la Vega’s secret identity ruined him, the resolution
of the Mexican Murrieta’s access to multiple identities—in a testament of Latinx wish
fulfillment—not only helped him to victory, but their combination into acceptably mixed
equilibrium was itself the happy ending.
While Zorro could eventually resolve his duality by shedding the “secret” half of his
identity, other Latinx-centered narratives reconcile these contradictions in the opposite direction:
with the “secret” identity becoming the dominant one. This framework is particularly notable in
the world of lucha libre wrestling, which remains popular as a sport in Mexico, as well as
making inroads in the United States in both sports and media. While Mexican lucha libre films
and comics generally starred the known wrestlers themselves, in the United States, where the
sport tradition is less established, lucha libre often appears in more conceptual or aesthetically
referential forms. The Mexican films often incorporated elements of horror and science fiction—
with wrestlers fighting mummies, ghosts, and vampires—a tradition that has carried into these
American versions, and luchador-centered narratives frequently engage in the speculative. The
importance of having their faces constantly hidden by masks, obscuring their true identities, have
also made them a popular reference for superhero stories, as well as Latinx stories.
Though the flamboyant, colorful masks are now perhaps the most iconic symbol of the
sport, lucha libre wrestlers did not all initially wear masks, but they have since become “an

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integral part of the performance.”300 The use of masks paralleled the growing popularity of
masked heroes in comic books throughout the 1950s, and films that starred masked wrestlers,
such as El Santo, also spread the tradition to generations of future fighters. Today, the luchador
mask often serves as a symbol of Mexico itself, both in stereotypical invocations in American
beer commercials and takeout menus, but also in nationalistic displays of Mexican pride, such as
fans wearing them as they cheer on their team at the FIFA World Cup. The luchador’s mask had
historical precedents in Mexico, including the “inversion ritual” of the sacred clown, Christmas
pastorelas, and Nahuatl combat plays.301 Tamara L. Mitchell has also linked the importance of
the mask to the bandanas worn by Salvadoran rebels in Horacio Castellanos Moya’s novel La
sirvienta y el luchador (2011), as a “conferrer of anonymity and mystique.”302 With the masks’
imagery frequently playing off the embodiment of jaguars, eagles, and snakes, the masks also
linked “the wrestling performance with the idea of a unified Mexican national culture rooted in a
pre-Hispanic past.”303
Ultimately, the mask becomes more than the wrestler performer’s alternate identity: it is
their only public identity. In the official Mexican lucha libre industry, a complex set of rules
governs those wrestlers who choose to use masks. They must be licensed by the wrestling
commission, to ensure that they do not feel emboldened by their anonymity and thus cheat the
audience of properly motivated matches, and they “must never publicly expose his or her
unmasked face, or disclose his or her identity.”304 The Mexican cultural critic Carlos Monsivais
300 Heather Levi, The World of Lucha Libre: Secrets, Revelations, and Mexican National Identity, American
Encounters/Global Interactions (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008), 110,
https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822391470.
301 Levi, 107. 302 Tamara L Mitchell, “A Narrative Vaivén: Lucha Libre and the Modern Nation Unready-to-Hand in Horacio
Castellanos Moya’s La Sirvienta y El Luchador,” MLN 136, no. 2 (2021): 270,
https://doi.org/10.1353/mln.2021.0015.
303 Levi, The World of Lucha Libre: Secrets, Revelations, and Mexican National Identity, 113. 304 Levi, 114.

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describes the wrestler El Santo’s silver mask not as a concealer of his identity, but in fact its
creator.305 Similarly, as J. Gonzo writes as prologue to La mano del Destino, “the Luchador does
not don his mask to conceal his identity, but rather to reveal it.”306 The concept of “El Santo” as
a figure emerges from the fact that the audience does not know the human underneath, and
instead accepts the performer and character before them as a single, merged being, even as he
may perform fantastical feats or confront supernatural beings. Generally, lucha libre wrestlers are
not shown to struggle with different aspects of their identity as masked fighters with secret
identities often do. Their only conflict comes if those identities are made separate through their
revelation.
The comic series La mano del destino (2011, 2021), by J. Gonzo, the pen name of
Chicano artist Jason González, follows the downfall of a luchador who faced the ultimate shame:
being unmasked in the ring. In an attempt to return to the wrestling world, he makes a deal with a
mysterious promoter in exchange for magical powers that will allow him to take his revenge. In
extratextual information published alongside the comic, Gonzo identifies how the figure of the
luchador can stand in for and also metaphorically “resolve” issues about his mestizo identity.
Lucha Libre’s tradition of masks allowed for a heightened exploration of identity as both
an internal and social construct and the dynamic between the two. … On some level all
Mestizo peoples have to reconcile their identity with their ancestry; being both
Indigenous and European, but neither precludes one’s identity from being solely affixed
to heritage, but rather, defined by action and impact. Perhaps this is why Mexicans exalt
the Luchador as highly as they do — the Luchador obliterates their inherent identity to
construct one made solely of deeds.307
Gonzo identifies the luchador as a restorative figure for the mestizo, whose identity may conflict
with their mixed ancestry. As a Chicano, he finds power in avoiding the seemingly contradictory
305 Carlos Monsiváis, Los rituales del caos, 2. ed., 5. reimpr, Biblioteca Era Ensayo (México: Ediciones Era, 2009),
228.
306 J. Gonzo, La Mano Del Destino (Los Angeles : Portland, OR: Top Cow Productions ; Image Comics, 2021), 6. 307 Gonzo, 95.

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trap of duality at all though, and instead finds meaning through what he does rather than just
what he is. This anonymity subsumes the performer’s own identity and personal history,
allowing them to bypass the significance of their specific heritage—the exact number of Spanish
ancestors, or indigenous blood quantum—and instead focus on the present and future of their
experience. Gonzo’s statement here suggests a desire to move beyond the historically centered
concept of mestizaje, and instead, in the future, move into a more holistic view of how people are
treated and treat others today.
Undocumented Aliens
The dual meaning of the term alien—to mean both immigrant and extraterrestrial space
creature—has proved a fertile creative ground in representing Latinidad in speculative media, as
they are often assumed to be immigrants.308 The notion of duality, or secret identity, is also
particularly resonant when it comes to depicting undocumented Latin Americans in the United
States, because of the “assumption that undocumented workers are unorganizable because they
fear deportation,” and thus must stay hidden. 309 In the opening scene of Men in Black (1997), a
van full of (apparently) Latin American immigrants is stopped by the US Border Patrol, who are
in turn stopped by two men in black suits. One of the men in black, Kay, speaks friendly,
collegial Spanish to the immigrants, before reaching the last man, who smiles and blankly nods
to all of his questions, including “You don’t speak a word of Spanish, do you?” Kay reveals the
man to be not a human immigrant, but an actual space alien, who has disguised himself as an
undocumented Mexican immigrant in order to enter Earth surreptitiously. Kay sarcastically
308 Edwin F. Ackerman, “The Rise of the ‘Illegal Alien,’” Contexts 12, no. 3 (August 1, 2013): 72,
https://doi.org/10.1177/1536504213499883.
309 Costanza-Chock, Out of the Shadows, Into the Streets: Transmedia Organizing and the Immigrant Rights
Movement, 11.

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reminds the border patrol agents to “Keep on protecting us from the dangerous aliens,”
emphasizing the film’s intentional play on these concepts.
The connection between alien and immigrant has not just been used for Latin American
immigrants, though this does become a potential lens that Latinx viewers can use to narratively
identify with non-explicitly Latinx characters. For instance, Superman was created by writer
Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster in 1938, and has appeared in comics, radio serials, television
shows, and feature films. The basic Superman origin story is that he was born on the planet
Krypton, but when it faced destruction, his father sent him off in a spaceship, hurtling towards
the relative safety of Kansas, USA, Earth. There, the child is raised by farmers as Clark Kent,
thus imbuing him with the cultural ethics of white, mid-century Americana that ground his
superhuman powers. The dual identities of Superman and Clark Kent, contained within a single
body, are inherent to the nature of the character, and the premise of much of the excitement in
early Superman works. As Superman races to save the world against supervillains, he must
balance these actions against his more quotidian obligations as Kent—work deadlines, dates with
his girlfriend, and so on. By presenting this dual identity as being part of the same person, “the
extraordinary nature of the hero” can be better “contrasted with the mundane nature of his alterego.”310 When thrown against the context of his normal and relatable daily life as Kent, his
actions as Superman become even more exciting. Further, Superman’s Christ-like sacrifice is
emphasized by his secret, binding him by “certain specific restraints which are peculiar to him
and him alone.”311 Superman not only protects the people of the world, but gains no recognition
310 Richard Reynolds, “Masked Heroes,” in The Superhero Reader, ed. Charles Hatfield, Jeet Heer, and Kent
Worcester (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2013), 106,
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/socal/detail.action?docID=1113445.
311 Reynolds, 105.

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or benefit in his real life, and indeed, often loses out on personal opportunities due to the selfsacrifice of maintaining his hidden identity.
Though Superman became an icon of white American masculinity, his struggle to
reconcile the two halves of his identity has been resonant for many minoritarian and immigrant
readers, including his Jewish creators. Thus, despite early critics identifying him as “a symbol of
violent race superiority”312 and warning that Superman’s “philosophy of ‘hooded justice’ in no
way indistinguishable from that of Hitler and the Ku Klux Klan,”313 Superman remained a source
of identification primarily because of his secret identity. In particular, Andrew J. Kirk notes that
“through his own identity negotiation, Superman struggles with his difference in ways that are
similar to his queer human counterparts,”314 pointing particularly to Andy Warhol’s use of the
figure in “Superman” (1981) from his Myth series. Art historian Donna de Salvo has noted that
“as a gay man in the 1950s, Warhol grew adept at constructing a language of signs and symbols
which could live two simultaneous lives, one public, the other private.”315 Thus despite
Superman’s role in popular culture as the ultimate symbol of earnest white-bread Americana, the
secrets he must keep in order to maintain the distinction of his dualities remains an appealing
source of identification for many readers that might not particularly identify with this type of
character otherwise.
One important interpretation of the Superman story that is vital in conceiving his relation
to Latinidad is his immigration status. While many superheroes’ and supervillains’ origins begin
312 Fredric Wertham, Seduction of the Innocent (New York: Rinehart and Company, Inc., 1953), 381. 313 Gershon Legman, “Love and Death: A Study in Censorship,” in Arguing Comics: Literary Masters on a Popular
Medium, ed. Jeet Heer and Kent Worcester (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1949), 118. 314 Andrew J Kirk, “‘Sometimes You’ll Feel like an Outcast’: Using Superman to Interrogate the Closet”
(Carbondale, Southern Illinois University, 2009), ii.
315 Donna M. De Salvo, “‘Subjects of the Artists’: Towards a Painting Without Ideals,” in Hand-Painted Pop :
American Art in Transition, 1955-62, by Paul. Schimmel and David. Deitcher, ed. Russell. Ferguson (Los Angeles:
Museum of Contemporary Art, 1992), 86.

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with an accidental physical transformation that gives them powers, Superman’s superpower
comes because of his migration from Krypton to Earth. Had Krypton’s similarly powered
populace survived, Superman’s—born Kal-El— powers there would have been unremarkable. It
is not until Kal-El moves from Krypton to Earth that his difference becomes pronounced, and he
becomes extraordinary within this new context. Superman’s core story is of a parent sending
their child to a new land, for the opportunity of a better life. Superman is an immigrant refugee
who ultimately integrates and is fully accepted (and indeed, depended upon) as a positive within
American life.
Many scholars have written about Superman as an allegory for Jewish refugees,316 an
interpretation made especially resonant given the character’s emergence in the years just before
the start of World War II, and the fact that Superman’s creators, Siegel and Shuster, were both
Jewish and had parents that fled Europe to North America. Gary Engle has argued that
Superman’s superpowers “are the comic-book equivalents of ethnic characteristics,” and that
“the myth of Superman asserts with total confidence and a childlike innocence the value of the
immigrant in American culture.”317 The benefit of having Superman around to protect the
modern Metropolis outweighs any hesitation its citizens might have had about welcoming “KalEl, the alien immigrant Other vigilante with the Semitic-sounding name,” making “the price of
victory: his heritage.”318 Like many speculative works with origins in political allegory,
316 For instance: Andrae et al., Siegel and Shuster’s Funnyman: The First Jewish Superhero, from the Creators of
Superman; Brod, Superman Is Jewish? : How Comic Book Superheroes Came to Serve Truth, Justice, and the
Jewish-American Way; Lund, Re-Constructing the Man of Steel: Superman 1938–1941, Jewish American History,
and the Invention of the Jewish–Comics Connection; Weinstein, Up, up, and Oy Vey! : How Jewish History,
Culture, and Values Shaped the Comic Book Superhero. 317 Gary Engle, “What Makes Superman So Darned American?,” in Popular Culture: An Introductory Text, ed. John
G. Nachbar and Kevin Lausé (Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1992), 334.
318 Bradley Bailey, “O Superman: The Many Faces of the Man of Steel,” in Configuring America: Iconic Figures,
Visuality, and the American : Identity., ed. Klaus Rieser, Michael Fuchs, and Michael Phillips (Bristol: NBN
International, 2013), 99.

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depicting a refugee narrative through the fictional framework of the planet Krypton—rather than
presenting Superman as a Jewish refugee from Lithuania—allowed readers to experience the
story, and potentially develop empathy for the situation, without bringing in their existing
prejudices.
As popular ire against immigrants shifted away from European refugees and towards
Latin Americans, so too did the claiming of Superman as immigrant allegory. Given that he
arrived on Earth with no prior approval, Superman’s crash landing in Kansas has been
interpreted as an illegal arrival into the United States, making him an undocumented immigrant.
Superman’s status as a literally undocumented alien immigrant—yet also the consummate
American hero—made him an obvious object of the activist imagination. In 1993, at an event for
the Texas senate race, attorney and professor José Angel Gutiérrez was photographed grinning
while holding up a shirt that read “Superman was an illegal alien.” The shirt is a tongue-in-cheek
attempt to call attention to the hypocrisy of a person who might idolize Superman as a character
and enforcer of “the American way,” yet simultaneously oppose undocumented immigration or
political refugees in real life.

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Figure 12 José Angel Gutiérrez, 1993. Photograph by Maureen Keating, Library of Congress.
Similarly, in response to a 2006 New York Times op-ed that quoted conservatives
complaining that Superman had newly become too liberal, a letter to the editor pointed out that
“in all versions of the tale, Superman arrived as an undocumented alien.”319 The writer asked
why these conservative bloggers could have sympathy for one undocumented immigrant’s
(Superman’s) struggles, without presumably extending that empathy to the millions of
undocumented people in the United States. The answer, unfortunately, is that it is very easy for
people to enjoy fictionalized characters without feeling the need to extend those same empathies
in their real life, and that pointing out hypocrisies often does little to change their minds.
319 John Burckardt, “Super but Undocumented: Letter,” The New York Times, July 5, 2006, 16.

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Regardless, Superman emerged as a useful tool for conceptualizing immigrant rights, particularly
in regard to those who are undocumented and may feel like they are also living in a double life.
Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel (2013), starring Henry Cavill as Superman, was a reboot of
the Superman film franchise and the first film in the DC Extended Universe (DCEU) film series.
Though Man of Steel was presented as a standalone Superman film, its ambitions were clearly
broader, making it and the future DCEU appearances of Superman less focused on developing
the individual character and more focused on establishing his role within the team. As such, the
struggle of his secret identity is vastly downplayed in these films to an almost negligible extent.
For one, the Lois Lane in the film almost immediately figures out that Clark Kent is Superman,
thus removing one of the major motivators for Kent’s secrecy. There are some references to this
dual identity, including separate funerals for “Superman” and “Clark Kent” after his later
(supposed) death, but the back-and-forth conflict of secrecy is mostly absent. This is in part in
service to the needs of the larger DCEU storylines, but also reflects shifting notions about the
possibilities of anonymity in a post-9/11 world. As Tom De Haven observed, “In our time of
Homeland Security, the whole business of assuming and maintaining a ‘secret identity’ seems
impossible, anachronistic.”320 As this potential node of identification for Latinxs and Superman
waned, though, another became more prominent and explicit within the text.
Man of Steel premiered in 2013, the year following the institution of the Deferred Action
for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which was announced by Barack Obama in June 2012. The
institution of DACA renewed debate around immigration within the collective American
discourse, especially in regard to undocumented and young immigrants. As quoted in Henry
Jenkin’s introduction to the text By Any Means Necessary, at least one undocumented immigrant
320 Tom De Haven, Our Hero: Superman on Earth, Icons of America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010),
39.

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rights advocate, Erick Huerta, has explained that he feels connected to Superman because he is
“from another planet . . . and grew up in the United States, just like me.”321 In the sequel to Man
of Steel, Batman v Superman (2016), Superman’s status as immigrant-alien, who arrived in the
United States as a baby after being born elsewhere, was explicitly, if briefly, acknowledged.
Part of the premise of this sequel is that Superman is being held accountable by the US
government for his actions in the first film, namely, fighting and killing General Zod on the
streets of Metropolis. The chaos and violence of this battle, typically taken for granted in these
types of films, have turned some of the public against Superman. They believe that, as an alien
on Earth, his powers should be regulated, and he should not be allowed to act freely. As
Superman arrives at the Capitol for testimony, he is confronted by a crowd of protestors. Many
of them carry anti-alien protest signs inspired by real (ultra-conservative) protests: for instance,
“You can’t be Christian and pro-alien” mimics the American Life League’s “You can’t be
Catholic and pro-abortion” signs, and “God hates aliens” and “Aliens doom nations” are
immediately identifiable riffs on the Westboro Baptist Church’s infamous screeds against
homosexuality. Alongside these more recognizable signs are several others that read “Superman
= Alien,” “Aliens are Un-American,” and “Superman is an illegal alien.” Unlike the use of this
same phrase by earlier immigrant rights activists, in this context—where Superman is not
universally beloved, but is instead a controversial figure—his uncertain immigration status is
now being deployed against him as a negative, rather than being reclaimed. However, aligning
this perspective with protestors inspired by the Westboro Baptist Church, as well as speaking
against the titular hero of the film, also clearly positions it as not being intended to speak for the
321 Henry Jenkins, “Youth Voice, Media, and Political Engagement: Introducing the Core Concepts,” in By Any
Media Necessary: The New Youth Activism, by Henry Jenkins et al., Connected Youth and Digital Futures (New
York: New York University Press, 2016), 32.

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audience. Thus, it does ultimately perform a similar function to the earlier immigrant rights
activists, by recontextualizing “illegal alien” as being associated with a character with whom the
audience already sympathizes.
Figure 13 Screengrab from Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)
At the same time, like DACA, the solution to Superman’s illegal alienness in the film is
in fact a bureaucratic registry that seeks to limit his opportunities based on legal surveillance. A
similar conflict arose in parallel within the MCU, involving the so-called Sokovia Accords
established in the film Captain America: Civil War (2016), which were based on the
Superhuman Registration Act seen in the comic series Civil War (2006). This act sought to
require superheroes to register with the government, which would preclude their ability to
maintain a secret identity. Again, like DACA, this registration provides some benefits, but at the
same time endangers the registrant with obvious drawbacks if a corrupt government would
choose to misuse their willingly provided information.
Finally, though these instances of making explicit connections to Latin American
immigrant narratives alone represented a significant shift when applied to a character like
Superman, his story has also continued to be used in more direct examples of activism. Around

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the time of Man of Steel’s premiere, in 2013, the Imagine Better Network, established by the fan
community activist group the Harry Potter Alliance (HPA), partnered with the immigrant rights
group Define American, led by Jose Antonio Vargas, to launch the “Superman is an Immigrant”
campaign. The project included a Tumblr page which “encouraged people to share their stories
of heritage and identity, sparking a conversation around immigration reform.”322 Participants
would share an image or story of either of themselves or of their family, each of which
concluded with pre-printed text that referenced Superman’s famed slogan: “I am the American
way.” Though Neta Kligler-Vilenchik notes that the campaign’s use of Superman “brought a
fresh perspective into the conversation around immigrant reform,” she concludes that his
invocation was so broad that it “did not engage the in-depth passion of fans,”323 thus limiting its
potential reach and effectiveness. Further, in attempt to make the Superman campaign widely
relevant, it was not explicitly focused on undocumented immigrants, or Latin American
immigrants, but rather the notion of immigration as a whole. This made participation more
widespread, but also more surface-level. Participants may or may not have had a personal
connection to Superman’s story, beyond repeating this catchphrase. Like the Snyder films,
Superman’s status as an immigrant alone is emphasized within this project, rather than his
identity as a secret immigrant.
One of the Define American organizers, Julián Gustavo Gomez, was himself
undocumented, and had publicly “revealed” this aspect of his identity in an online video in 2012.
In a later op ed published around Man of Steel’s release, and the Superman is an American
campaign, he wrote: “Superman struggles with his identity as an immigrant, terrified that if he
322 Neta Kligler-Vilenchik, “‘Decreasing World Suck’: Harnessing Popular Culture for Fan Activism,” by Henry
Jenkins et al., vol. 3 (United States: New York University Press, 2016), 135.
323 Kligler-Vilenchik, 135.

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tells the American people that he’s from another place, they will reject him. I felt that same fear
when I was old enough to understand what it meant to be undocumented.”324 Gómez’s op ed,
compared against the DCEU films and earlier communal activist efforts, reveal both the benefits
and limitations of attempting to align minoritarian identification onto a broadly formed character
like Superman. Both the DCEU films and the Imagine Better campaign moved away from
foregrounding Superman’s dual identity as a secret, which was long regarded as one of the core
components of his character. Instead, they both emphasized his status as an immigrant. While
this decision made his story more universally understandable, it also took away some of the
individual resonance that his secret identity provided, particularly for undocumented immigrants.
For media that more distinctly centers the alien as Latin American immigrant allegory
though, the secrecy factor remains more present. For instance, the WB television series Roswell
(1999 – 2002) follows a group of high school students in Roswell, New Mexico, as they navigate
the perils of young adulthood. What set Roswell apart from other teen-focused soaps like Felicity
(1998 – 2002) and Dawson’s Creek (1998 – 2003) of the same era, though, is that some of the
teenagers are aliens, rather than humans. The alien teens thus have to contend both with getting
dates to prom, as well as being surveilled and pursued by shadowy government agencies.
Because the government is after them, they have to work to keep their alien identities secret from
the rest of the town. In 2019, the show was rebooted as Roswell, New Mexico (2019 – 2022), and
followed much the same premise, but made the immigrant-alien allegory much more explicit.
The original young adult book series Roswell High (1998 – 2000) by Melinda Metz that
both series are based on had established the ironic twist that the teen alien “immigrants” are
actually the popular, seemingly all-American white kids, while the human who begins to uncover
324 Julian Gustavo Gomez, “Immigrants Are the American Way,” Huffington Post, July 16, 2013,
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/superman-is-an-immigrant_b_3606264.

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their secrets, Liz Ortecho, is Mexican American. This reversal of expectation seems particularly
poignant given the series’ emergence in the years following the Illegal Immigration Reform and
Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, which distinguished between “aliens” and “nationals of
the United States,” and, which, despite the generalized language, disproportionately penalized
poor Mexican and Latin American immigrants, as opposed to those coming from European
countries.325 The reversal in the book calls attention to American assumptions and prejudices
about who is expected to be the immigrants/aliens, and who actually is. Despite this intentionally
provocative set up, the book series largely doesn’t engage with racial politics otherwise though,
largely deferring to the more metaphorical scenarios offered by the alien characters. The first
WB television series took this avoidance to an even further, more generic extreme, bypassing the
visible conflict almost entirely by transforming the main character from Mexican-American Liz
Ortecho into the American-American Liz Parker, and casting non-Latinx actors in most of the
major the roles, including both Liz, her family, and all the alien teens. In contrast, the reboot
series not only returned Liz’s Latinidad, but also made her identity a key part of the show and
her character. Rather than implying Latinidad through allegory alone, the reboot centralized it.
Though the original TV series did not utilize the explicit ironic metaphor of Latinidad in
its casting, other symbols coded aliens as narratively Latinx. For instance, one frequent setting is
an extraterrestrial-themed taco shop they visit features an alien wearing a sombrero and poncho
as its logo. One of the aliens, Michael, also has an affinity for spicy food, and carries a bottle of
hot sauce with him to make human food better suited to his tastes. Since the aliens cannot reveal
their secret identity to any outsiders, they stay in relative isolation, though their ultimate aim is to
325 Jacqueline Hagan and Nestor Rodríguez, “Resurrecting Exclusion: The Effects of 1996 Immigration Reform on
Families and Communities in Texas, Mexico and El Salvador.,” in Latinos: Remaking America, ed. M SuarezOrozco and M Paez (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2002), 190.

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find others like themselves and form a community among those with similar backgrounds. They
also attract suspicion of law enforcement. When a cop begins to arrest one of the aliens, the alien
asks if the cop is going to read him his rights, to which the cop responds, “Do you have any
[rights]?” The cop questions the alien’s legal status, echoing similar debates about what rights
must be granted even to non-citizen immigrants. Similar to other allegories about racial
discrimination that feature white performers, this universalized version of the story invites
sympathetic identification from non-Latinx audience members.
The reboot, which debuted towards the tail end of the Trump presidency, was one of
several racebent reboots that appeared in the late 2010s, combining the contemporary proclivity
for remakes of older shows with updating the race or ethnicities of their characters to be more
diverse. Along with Roswell, New Mexico, shows like Charmed (2018 – 2022), Magnum P.I.
(2018 – 2023), and One Day at a Time (2017 – 2020) each featured Latinx actors playing
character that had previously been non-Latinx white. While Liz was a high school student in the
original series, here, she is a biomedical scientist who has returned to her hometown after her lab
loses its funding (because “someone needs funding for a wall”). The reboot vocalizes its newly
prominent Latinidad in many ways throughout the series. Many of the human characters are
played by a racially diverse set of Latinx actors, including Liz and most of her family, the
sheriff’s son, and her friend Maria De Luca. What were implicit metaphors about Latinidad in
the book and original show are now explicit narrative points or even lines of dialogue. In the
pilot, Liz protests being stopped at an ICE checkpoint, under suspicion of being an
undocumented immigrant, while white drivers were allowed to pass freely. A conspiracy theorist
podcaster repeatedly invokes familiar anti-immigrant rhetoric transferred to alien subjects:
“Aliens are coming, and when they do, they’re gonna rape and murder and steal our jobs!” By

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returning the protagonists’ Latinidad, the reboot series can better call attention the metaphor of
immigrant alienness as applied to a non-Latinx body. More specifically, the setting and
characters explicitly center the undocumented Mexican experience, especially through the
presence of Liz’s undocumented father, who at one point in the series is detained by ICE. The
Latinx identity of the show is largely carried by these explicit and literal references.
While secrecy was a key part of the original show—which could only represent Latinidad
through narrative allegory like this—the aliens’ struggle with their secret identities is a much less
important part in this reboot. For the most part, the drama of the series lies in its interpersonal
conflicts, and even the more explicitly alien-centric plots are often couched in the context of a
personal betrayal or intrigue. Foremost, the show is a nighttime soap opera, with its hard science
fiction elements a secondary function. This perhaps is in keeping with the notion that, like in the
DCEU Superman films, a true secret identity is impossible in a post-9/11 world of constant
surveillance. But it may also reflect a sense that more pathways exist today for undocumented
youth to be able to live in the United States, “out of the shadows.”326 In Roswell, Liz definitively
learns of Max’s secret in the pilot. From there, the other aliens seem to have little need to hide
around her as they did in the original show. The reboot thus unambiguously centers its Latinidad,
yet also reduces the focus on secret identities as their primary metaphor. Here, Latinidad is an
inherently political status that is enunciated through its vocal engagement with the world around
itself.
The Multiverse
326 Costanza-Chock, Out of the Shadows, Into the Streets: Transmedia Organizing and the Immigrant Rights
Movement.

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As an essentially infinite medium by design, comics are traditionally published on a
frequent and ongoing basis. For larger comic publishers, like Marvel and DC, who own the rights
to the characters, these comic narratives can span decades, but can also span across different
artists, writers, and mediums. To this end, the publication of several, sometimes simultaneous
continuities, often referred to as “Universes,” allow readers to distinguish between discrete
storylines, while avoiding the disturbance of previously established canons. For example, Earth616 is historically the setting of most Marvel Comics; Earth-1610 is home of the “Ultimates”
(instead of the “Avengers”); and most of the events of the Marvel Cinematic Universe take place
in Earth-199999. Universes allow these massive publishers to experiment within established
narratives, such as bringing a fan-favorite character back to life, while allowing the main
narrative to continue with the gravity of those ramifications. The concept of the “multiverse” has
also allowed exploration and crossover between these universes, which has been deployed in
several recent films as well. For instance, Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) stars both the
current Spider-Man, Tom Holland, but also features appearances from the actors who played the
character in previous Spider-Man franchises, Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield. Doctor
Strange and the Multiverse of Madness (2022) continued this theme by including America
Chavez, the interdimensional teen whose superpower is punching into different universes.
The character of Miles Morales first appeared in the comic Ultimate Fallout #4 in 2011,
in a series that traced the effects of the death of Peter Parker’s Spider-Man in the Ultimate
universe, known as Earth-1610. For most of the issue, the audience does not see Morales.
Instead, the comic follows a mysterious figure in a black-and-red Spider-Man costume is seen in
the city fighting crime. At the story’s conclusion, the reveal of this Spider-Man as a young Black
teen is treated as a momentous surprise. As then-Marvel Edtior in Chief Axel Alonso stated at

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the time, “When the opportunity arose to create a new Spider-Man, we knew it had to be a
character that represents the diversity—in background and experience—of the twenty-first
century.”327 The choice to make Spider-Man a “diverse” (i.e., non-white) character was clearly
on Marvel’s mind at this moment, and represented a benefit to their company. It should be noted
that the creators of the Miles Morales character are writer Brian Michael Bendis, who is a white
American man, and artist Sara Pichelli a fair-skinned Italian woman. That distinction is not to
suggest that they are incapable of creating an authentic or resonant narrative about Blackness or
Afrolatinidad, but rather to emphasize that this incarnation of Miles Morales was not informed
by autobiographical experience. While this authorial perspective is not always necessary in
fiction, particularly in a collaborative medium like comics that might involve the input of many
authors, artists, and editors, it does create some potential conflict in the fictional Morales’
expressions and opinions about his identity. As one of the few Afrolatinx characters in Marvel
comics history, his words are nonetheless filtered through the perspective of white creators—
albeit ones with historically demonstrated progressive sensibilities.
In most iterations of the character, Spider-Man’s alter ego is Peter Parker, a nerdy white
high school student who gains his superpowers after getting bitten by a radioactive spider. Parker
typically maintains a separation between his identities, to both dramatic—threats of exposure to
his identity—and comedic—earning money by selling photographs of Spider-Man—effect. In
most of these versions, and like many other comic heroes, his parents are dead, and he is being
raised by his uncle Ben and aunt May. The death of his parents is relatively narratively
inconsequential, having taken place well before the start of the story. Ben and May are
327 Marvel.com, “The New Ultimate Comics Spider-Man,” Marvel.com, August 12, 2011,
https://web.archive.org/web/20110812000730/https://www.marvel.com/news/story/16394/the_new_ultimate_comic
s_spider-man.

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functionally his parental figures, though they are almost invariably referred to as “Uncle Ben”
and “Aunt May,” emphasizing their role to readers and audiences. In many versions, the death of
Uncle Ben shortly after Parker acquires his superpowers is Parker’s inciting moral motivator that
forces him to commit to using his powers responsibly.
The Miles Morales Spider-Man comics take many of these aspects and repeat them:
Morales is also a high school student who gets bitten by a radioactive spider, and he maintains
his role of Spider-Man as a secret identity in between classes and other teenage distractions. Like
some iterations of Parker, Morales also attends an elite, technologically focused high school, but,
as an Afrolatinx native of a working-class Brooklyn neighborhood, this puts him at odds and out
of place even without superpowers. Another significant change, though, is that Morales’ parents
are not only alive, but they are a significant part of the narrative. Morales’ father is Jefferson
“Jeff” Davis, a non-Latinx African American man (with apparently no intended connection to the
Confederate general of the same name), and his mother is Rio Morales, a non-Black Puerto
Rican woman. Thus, Morales’ Afrolatinx identity in the comic is made up of a mixture between
two distinct parts: a non-Latinx Black half, and a non-Black Latinx half. This conception of
Afrolatinidad parallels what Miriam Jiménez Román and Juan Flores call a “very common
assumption” in their introduction to The Afro-Latin@ Reader—that “Afrolatinx” refers primarily
to someone who is the child of one Latinx parent and one Black parent.328 This enforces the false
notion that the groups are mutually exclusive, as well as envisioning Afrolatinxs as being a
perfect but divergent mix between cultures, rather than part of a broader community of other
Afrolatinxs, especially in New York.
328 Miriam Jiménez Román and Juan Flores, “Introduction,” in The Afro-Latin@ Reader: History and Culture in the
United States, ed. Miriam Jiménez Román and Juan Flores, A John Hope Franklin Center Book (Durham [NC: Duke
University Press, 2010), 1–15, https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822391319.

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In the second issue of his solo series, Morales’ suit gets ripped during a fight with an
enemy, inadvertently making his skin underneath the suit visible. Had the skin underneath the
ripped suit been white—as often occurs in comic books—the public likely would have accepted
it as unremarkable and expected, but the reveal of Spider-Man’s brown skin causes a stir. Unlike
the white Peter Parker Spider-Man, Miles has additional, potentially identifying, secret identity:
“his Afro-Latinidad veiled behind a nonracialized Spider-Man mask.”329 As evidenced in this
sequence, most people assumed, even without evidence, that the human beneath the Spider-Man
costume would be white. This allowed Morales to pass through the city effectively without race,
while in the role of Spider-Man. Morales’ best friend, Ganke Lee, shows him a YouTube video
that features a young female vlogger, called Danika Hart, excitedly proclaiming: “The new
Spider-Man is brown. He’s a kid of color. This is huge!!!”330 Her excitement is not related to a
singular ethnic or racial identity, however, as she wonders aloud: “Is he African American? Is he
Indian? Hispanic? I don’t know. But he is def color. So exciting!”331 For Hart, the mere
possibility that Spider-Man is non-white is a significant prospect, no matter his actual identity.
That excitement is a testament both to the typical homogeneity of most superheroes—that any
trace of non-whiteness is significant—but also to the importance that a Black or brown SpiderMan would convey.
However, the vlogger’s reaction also evidences the importance of how race is conveyed
by visual information—in comics generally, but also in real life. As Jorge J. Santos writes,
“Miles’s biracial identity [in the comic] is exclusively coded visually, sidestepping direct
discussion of Afro-Latinidad, racialized experiences, biculturalism, or sociopolitical
329 Sika A Dagbovie-Mullins and Eric L Berlatsky, eds., Mixed-Race Superheroes (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers
University Press, 2021), 186, https://doi.org/10.36019/9781978814639.
330 Brian Michael Bendis and Sara Pichelli, Spider-Man: Miles Morales Vol. 1 (Marvel Comics, 2016), 36. 331 Bendis and Pichelli, 36.

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consciousness.”332 At one point, Morales rejects his potential classification as “Black SpiderMan,” because he doesn’t want “to be the Black Spider-Man,” he wants “to be Spider-Man.”333
He further rejects the title of Black Spider-Man, because, as he says, “First of all, I am half
Hispanic.”334 However, these surface-level discussions about Morales’ race ultimately mean that
“race functions exclusively as little more than context for a visual reading protocol—rarely do
these elements ever reach the level of content.”335 In part, that is because Morales, in the comic,
is not designed to be particularly revolutionary or racially specific, as might be suggested by the
lack of Black artists and writers working on the title early on, but also through Marvel’s vague
statements about “diversity.” Dagbovie-Mullins calls this tension “a form of narrative double
consciousness,” in that “the visuals attend to the implicit racial aspects of Marvel’s first major
Afro-Latinx character in the comics, just as the verbal attends to the demands of a largely white
readership in order to make Miles compatible with Spider-Man’s everyman mythos without
alienating the Spider-Man readership by making Miles too racially specific.”336 Morales’
racialization in the comic becomes vague because of the tension between a mestizo-like
depiction of Morales being the combination of two distinct halves, yet visually, matching only
what Americans usually read as Black, rather than Afrolatinx. Though that is in itself indicative
of American confusions about race, and Afrolatinidad in particular, this character has been
represented in other ways.
The animated film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) introduced the character of
Miles Morales to wider audiences—as well as to the concept of a multiverse, as it predated the
332 Jorge J Santos, “Talented Tensions and Revisions: The Narrative Double Consciousness of Miles Morales,” in
Mixed-Race Superheroes, ed. Sika A Dagbovie-Mullins and Eric L Berlatsky (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers
University Press, 2021), 180, https://doi.org/10.36019/9781978814639.
333 Bendis and Pichelli, Spider-Man: Miles Morales Vol. 1, 36. 334 Bendis and Pichelli, 36. 335 Dagbovie-Mullins and Berlatsky, Mixed-Race Superheroes, 190. 336 Dagbovie-Mullins and Berlatsky, 188.

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live-action use in Spider-Man: No Way Home. In Into the Spider-Verse, Morales is a teen from
Brooklyn who attends the elite Visions Academy. He is voiced by Shameik Moore, who is Black
and of Jamaican descent. As in the comic, his parents are Jefferson “Jeff” Davis, here a police
officer voiced by Brian Tyree Henry. His mom is Rio Morales, voiced by Luna Lauren Vélez. As
in the comic, Jeff is depicted as non-Latinx Black, and Rio is Puerto Rican. However, in the film,
Rio—though her race is never verbally enunciated—has darker skin than her comic counterpart,
and her voice actor, Vélez, is Afro Puerto Rican. As such, the audience is likely meant to
understand that Miles Morales has two Black parents, one of whom is Latina. Thus, Morales’
conflict about his identity is much less bifurcated than in the comic version, because he does not
experience himself as being half-Black and half-Hispanic, and thus his conflict is not rooted in a
sense of being torn between two sides.
The film opens with this universe’s Peter Parker, a blond-haired, blue-eyed Spider-Man
voiced by Chris Pine, stating “There’s only one Spider-Man, and it’s me.” However, when this
Spider-Man dies, the audience meets Morales, as well as a number of other alternate SpiderMen. Portals begin appearing that bring Spider-Men from other dimensions into his. These other
Spider-Men include Spider-Man Noir (a 1930s detective), Spider-Ham (a Looney Tunes-esque
talking pig), and Peni Parker (a Japanese-American girl with a mecha sidekick). Unlike
comparisons between Morales and Peter Parker, in this film, race is not the only significant
difference between the various Spider-Men. Morales might also be qualified as “human SpiderMan,” “Brooklyn Spider-Man,” or “teen boy Spider-Man.” By introducing so many other
options—rather than just a binaric, either/or—Morales can shed even the threat of being known
as “Black Spider-Man,” and instead embrace the multiverse in which all Spider-Men carry the
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Though slightly out of the main scope of this dissertation, the medium where Morales’
Afrolatinidad has been perhaps most distinctly, yet least didactically, ascribed is in the video
game Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales (2020). A spin-off sequel of Marvel’s Spider-Man
(2018), which used Peter Parker as its lead character, Miles Morales allowed the player to play as
Morales within an open-world setting. Because this type of video game requires less economy in
terms of dialogue, visuals, and the audience’s engagement time overall than with a time-limited
film or page-limited comic, more references to Morales’ Afro Puerto Rican identity can be
included throughout the game without relying on dialogue cues. In fact, his identity—whether
“Afro Puerto Rican,” “half-Black, half-Hispanic,” or “Afrolatinx”—does not even need to be
enunciated as at all. The game communicated much of this by how the player sees Morales
interact with his world, rather than naming him as part of a group. For instance, one early
mission is to get through Christmas dinner with Morales’ mom, Rio. The player can explore
Morales’ childhood room, finding, among other items, a ticket stub for a play called “Amor,
Vida, Engaño,” or an old television set, which he remarks is “as old as abuela.” The Christmas
setting allows the player to interact with, and see how Morales interacts with, specific Puerto
Rican cultural traditions, including the depiction of traditional foods (roast pork) and the fact that
this main holiday celebration is occurring at night of December 24th, rather than the morning of
the 25th. Rio also sends Miles to put on some music for dinner, directing him (and thus the
player) to choose from his father’s vinyl collection, which includes Black musical legends Art
Blakey and Otis Redding, but also Puerto Rican salseros Willie Colón and Héctor Lavoe. Thus,
the player can understand Miles’ identity not merely through a certain term—which, as this
dissertation has detailed, can be a messy process—but rather how this character, specifically,
engages with these aspects of Puerto Rican culture. Latinidad is not rendered here as something

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that can be broadly applied to any one person, but rather, as individual’s way of connecting to
the world around him.
Conclusion
As Suzanne Scott has noted, cosplay “typically presents itself as a form of mimetic fan
production,”337 where the material goal is to create as close to a tangible reproduction of the
original fictional source as possible. Racebent cosplays, in which cosplayers of colors depict a
fictional character as a different race—usually by virtue of their own presence as wearer of the
costume—can be conceived of as simultaneously mimetic and transformative, as well as “a way
of resisting dominant ideology by opening breathing spaces within exclusionary
meaningscapes—text, lived, fandom—without compromising their racial identity (lived
experience).”338 Racebent cosplay might allow cosplayers of color to temporarily inhabit the role
of a beloved white character, but also calls attention to the often limited number of characters
that may match the cosplayers racial or ethnic identity. Because other elements of the costume
might be near-perfect recreations of the fictional character, the racial or ethnic difference of the
cosplayer is typically foregrounded, even if that is not their intention or desire.
As public awareness of fan conventions and cosplay grew by way of more easily shared
photo galleries and blog posts published online in the late 2000s and early 2010s, many
cosplayers began experimenting with unique and creative cosplays that had never been seen
before. One such trend was hybrid cosplays, which combine visual elements of two or more
fictional characters. For instance, a hybrid cosplay might demonstrate what it would look like if
337 Suzanne Scott, “‘Cosplay Is Serious Business’: Gendering Material Fan Labor on Heroes of Cosplay,” Cinema
Journal 54, no. 3 (2015): 146, https://doi.org/10.1353/cj.2015.0029. 338 Ellen Kirkpatrick, “On [Dis]Play: Outlier Resistance and the Matter of Racebending Superhero Cosplay,”
Transformative Works and Cultures 29 (2019): 6.3.

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the Disney princess Jasmine were also a Mandalorian from Star Wars, or if Tony Stark were a
Jedi. These hybrid cosplays allowed cosplayers more creativity in inventing their own character
designs, while still drawing on recognizable sources, as well as ensuring their costume would be
totally unique. At fan conventions in Southern California in the mid-2010s, a corollary trend
emerged among Latinx cosplayers, in which they appeared as racebent characters, but also
reimagined other aspects of the character, such as their costume, hair, and props, as though the
character themselves were Latinx. The earliest example of these was the Monkey Monsters
Cosplay family, who dressed as cholo versions of Star Wars characters, including Han Cholo,
Princess Loca, and Artudito. Several photos of their costume went viral in 2015. Other instances
of this style of cosplay have included Captain Mexico, who transformed Captain America’s
shield and cape into Mexican flags, and Mexican Wonder Woman, who reimagined Wonder
Woman’s eagle insignia as a blocky, UFW-style huelga bird, and who carries a golden “chancla”
of truth.
These hybrid Latinx identity cosplays allow cosplayers to embody elements of iconic
white characters, while also being able to fully identify with them as (newly) Latinx characters.
As with other instances of fan racebending, these cosplays call attention to a lack of characters of
color within mainstream media, but they also seem to deny a colorblind approach to repairing
that gap. Instead, they demonstrate the fundamental role of one’s race and ethnicity in
developing one’s identity and seem to advocate for a more holistic approach in creating minority
characters that goes beyond changing the color of their skin. This point is especially important
for Afrolatinxs and other identities that might not be inherently visible, as a way of
foregrounding that which might get erased through mimetic cosplay. Fundamentally, these
hybrid identity cosplays allow fans to express pride in their culture within a convention space

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that is often overwhelmingly white, but they also allow cosplayers to consider deeper questions
of what their Latinx identity means to them, and how these identities can be rendered flexible
enough to retain meaning within the speculative contexts from which the characters originate.

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Conclusion
This dissertation concludes at a time when speculative media has largely moved from
being the fare of geeky outsiders to an increasingly dominant mainstream force. Simultaneously,
studios and publishers have become more aware of a need of—or, at least, a profit to be made
from—so-called diverse content. Thus the notion of a Latinx speculative in media, and the
representations of Latinxs in speculative media more generally, have become increasingly
relevant subjects today. As these issues become more foregrounded though, decades of debates
and struggles about what it means to be Latinx, and what being Latinx should mean, now play
out in the broader and more unwieldy scale of global popular culture. The tension between the
universal and the specific has long characterized representations of Latinxs in media, reflecting
broader cultural conflicts about Latinidad, such as the divided impulse between assimilation and
separatism, or working within or outside existing structures. As Chon Noriega has characterized,
“the paradox of incorporation involved exchanging difference for identity.”339 Though often
established as binary poles, these broadly shaped goals are in fact informed by many different
parties with many different aims, some of which may overlap and some of which may conflict,
and some of which may be the result of explicit lobbying while others are unconscious choices.
That there is no single spokesperson of Latinidad who shapes the direction of the ethnicity is part
of why these discussions particularly interest me, as well as why I think situating them within the
context of speculative media is particularly generative.
Does Latinx artistic success come from the proliferation and acceptance of our works into
and by the mainstream? Mainstream media is inherently designed to appeal to the largest group
339 Noriega, Chon A. Shot in America : Television, the State, and the Rise of Chicano Cinema. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 2000, xxviii.

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of people, which means Latinidad in these works tends to be categorized and represented by its
broadest, most neutral possible definition. For some Latinxs, this broadness may represent a goal
in and of itself, through their valuation of the strength of pan-ethnic solidarity. United under the
singular Latinx/o/a/e signifier, rather than relinquishing ground to the many intersectional
qualifiers of nation, gender, class, race, ability, and so on, Latinxs can be made distinct from
other groups, and perhaps better equipped to advocate for their group as a whole. However, this
reliance on external validation, particularly by white people, can reinforce an uncomfortable
patriarchal relationship that replicates stereotyped ideas. I have positioned this viewpoint, that
privileges the universal, as one rooted in in-person community building, often imperfectly
defined but focused on practical accomplishments, especially through comparison to other racial
and ethnic groups.
Alternately, does Latinx artistic success come from achieving more specifically resonant
representation that can thus be deemed as authentic? This approach privileges the individual's
unique identity and experiences, and can more deftly represent identities that do not align
perfectly within a discrete conception of Latinidad, such as Afrolatinxs and mixed-race or
mixed-nationality Latinxs, as well as other intersections. I see this approach as having come from
digital technologies, particularly the ability to communicate widely with many different Latinxs,
and greater access to information, such as online databases that catalogue artists’ and performers’
racial and ethnic identities that might have been previously unknown. Further, the introduction of
technology like personalized viewing algorithms, social media feeds, and AI assistants have
meant that greater portions of our lives increasingly cater specifically to our individual needs and
interests. The specific approach to Latinidad reflects an expectation that media will also match
precisely to our personal values and, at times, identities.

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Though I generally characterize the universal approach as reflecting the priorities of an
older period, and the specific approach as a more recent development, I do not aim to position
either as an obvious or improved progression. Rather, I have attempted to analyze why these
choices have been made, and for what purpose. For instance, while one might expect the
universal to correlate with massive studio outputs, and the specific to align with independent
productions, I have detailed examples throughout where the opposite is true: individual Latinxs
may see the benefit of appeals to collective or genericized Latinidad, while corporations may
have learned specific representations perform a bit better at the box office. Neither version
perfectly reflects and upholds Latinidad—and the expectation that Latinidad can or should be
perfectly represented in media is already something of an ideological trap.
As can perhaps be observed in the tension in my own writing, Latinidad is itself a sticky
and sometimes messy concept, which is especially exacerbated when the boundaries of real
people’s lived experience are removed when discussing the speculative. Though Latinx, as the
umbrella term, puts my work in discussion with other Latinx media studies, it also makes for an
unwieldy subject. When invoked, it is probably relatively rare that the term accurately describes
the intent or experience or desire of all Latinxs, and often requires many qualifiers to get more
closely to its intended meaning. The gymnastic work in this endeavor does create some doubt as
to the usefulness of this large pan-Latinidad as an organizing identity. Yet, as it has become
engrained within the United States, the identity is indisputably often conceived of in this wider
and more generic format, and people with opposing backgrounds and beliefs are indeed grouped
together under it. In some ways, I approach the idea of Latinidad, and of the phantom Latinx
subject, as imaginaries themselves. Though they might not have a perfect, real-life corollary,
they do represent an idea that has meaning.

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In the past several years of researching and writing this dissertation, some comparatively
large strides have been made in terms of Latinx representation in speculative media. Though
these changes have not been seismic on an overall industrial scale, as ongoing demographic
studies continue to remind us,340 to someone who was actively attempting to watch, read, and
otherwise absorb and consider all or most of these materials, it began to feel somewhat like an
avalanche. In 2015, my subject seemed like it might be a stretch of the extant material, but in
2023—with its Latina Wednesday Addams, Supergirls, and Snow Whites—it now seems more
logically scoped. As announcements of new Latinx-centered films and new characters trickled
out over the years, my husband would somewhat jokingly forward them as apologies instead of
just news updates, knowing it usually meant I would have to revise or reconsider portions of the
dissertation I might have considered complete. One of these, DC’s Blue Beetle (2023), was,
concerningly, set to be released during the final stages of my revisions. Yet, as the film’s
production and release revealed, rather than contradicting what I had already written, it in fact
largely neatly reflected back many of the arguments and analyses I developed throughout the
dissertation. As such, I will conclude this dissertation with a short discussion on how the very
recent example of Blue Beetle evidences a tension between universal appeal and specific
resonance.
In the original comics, Blue Beetle was not written as a Latinx character: his first alter ego
was Dan Garret, a white police officer. In 2006 though, the Mexican-American teenager Jaime
Reyes took up the mantle as the superhero. Reyes is not the most defining incarnation of Blue
Beetle—long time readers of the comic may not have even known of the Reyes version, if they
did not read that arc—but became notable primarily because he was one of the few major Marvel
340 Smith, Pieper, and Wheeler, “Inequality in 1,600 Popular Films:”

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or DC characters with explicitly named Latinx heritage. The awareness that DC had one
Mexican-American superhero could spread to broader, even non-comics-reading, audiences
through online databases and pop culture websites that detailed Latinx presence in media. When
the feature film Blue Beetle was announced in 2021, to become part of the DC Extended
Universe that also included Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, and the Flash, the elevation of
this somewhat minor hero to a solo film might have seemed a curious choice. However, the
strategic element of DC’s decision was emphasized by immediately announcing that they would
depict Blue Beetle in his Jaime Reyes form.
DC’s intent to promote this film as a “Latinx” project from the beginning was clear. By
choosing Reyes as its Blue Beetle, rather than Garret, DC could potentially distinguish
themselves from rival Marvel, who at that point had not yet released a live-action film that
starred an established Latinx superhero character. Early press materials alternately referred to
Blue Beetle as the “first Latino superhero with a live-action, solo film,” “the first Latino
superhero film for DC,” or “the first superhero movie directed and written by and starring
Latinos.”341 Each of these carefully worded phrases depended on an invocation of the
generalized “Latinx” in order to position this film as the “first” among that larger group, and
thus, attempting to appeal to all within that wider group of Latinxs. Presumably, they hoped to
bank on the similar success of a film like Black Panther, which had attracted wide audiences
overall, but had obviously special cultural resonance—and repeat viewing—for Black audiences.
With Latinx audiences marking a huge share of the moviegoing public, the studio attempted to
recreate this success with Blue Beetle, but in doing so was inherently attempting to address a
nonunified, diverse group. Of course, with less carefully qualified phrasing, the tenuousness of
341 Clayton Davis, “27 Latino Organizations Unite in Support for ‘Blue Beetle’ During Hollywood Strikes,” Variety
(blog), August 10, 2023, https://variety.com/2023/film/news/blue-beetle-latino-groups-letter-support-1235692668/.

215
this attempted cohesion was made clear. For instance, when writer Umberto Gonzalez tweeted
that “#BlueBeetle is here & Latinos FINALLY have a superhero of their own reflected on the big
screen,”342 users were quick to point out other Latinx superhero characters that had already
appeared on screen, including, most glaringly, recent animated films featuring the Afro-Latino
character Miles Morales. Without the necessary qualifiers of “live-action,” “lead,” “solo,” “DC,”
“by Latinos,” the assumption by non-Black Latinxs that Jaime Reyes represented them in a way
that Miles Morales did not was made more clear.
Part of the film’s strategy of intentional Latinx generality was emphasized through the
film’s setting: instead of El Paso, Texas, where the comic had been set, the film used the
invented Palmera City. As a hybrid of Latinidad, the “make-believe city looks like a version of
Miami—shiny and new, glimmering above a warm beach—but with an airport that resembles the
glossily revamped LaGuardia in New York City, greenery that looks like it could be Puerto Rico,
and rolling hills that recall California more than Florida.”343 Thus, the setting did not commit to
any one region, and potentially risk alienating any large pockets of Latinx populations, but
instead included aspects designed to be geographic familiar for a wider range of Latinxs. The
delocalization also helped make some of the issues in the film less controversial, and potentially
more relatable to non-Latinx audiences as well. For instance, while the film engages with the
subject of gentrification, by placing it in a fictional setting it does not risk directly implying any
reference to specific gentrifiers within a certain city. Similarly, it does not risk accusation of
342 Umberto Gonzalez [@elmayimbe], “#BlueBeetle Is Here & Latinos FINALLY Have a Superhero of Their Own
Reflected on the Big Screen. The Film Is so Incredibly Good, so Unique & Delivers on All Fronts Giving the
Superhero Genre Much Needed Sazón! The Film ’s Tangerine Dream Inspired Synthwave Score Also Rocks!
Https://T.Co/C6QgvexlTx,” Tweet, Twitter, August 11, 2023,
https://twitter.com/elmayimbe/status/1690045436055236611.
343 Monica Castillo, “‘Blue Beetle’ Director Angel Manuel Soto Reveals the Importance behind His Palmera City,”
Mashable, August 17, 2023, https://mashable.com/article/blue-beetle-palmera-city-gentrification.

216
avoiding issues particularly pertinent to Latinxs in El Paso, such as the domestic terrorism
shooting in 2019.
While the setting was made more universal, DC followed many of the guidelines
established in recent, previous studio releases that featured Latinx leads, by being sure to secure
claims to its authenticity through the foregrounding of its filmmakers’ identities. As prominently
noted in the press release, its director, Angel Manuel Soto is Puerto Rican, and its writer, Gareth
Dunnet-Alcocer, is Mexican-born.
344 Xolo Maridueña, who is of Mexican, Cuban, and
Ecuadorian descent, was cast as the hero. As quoted upon the reveal of his casting, Maridueña
said: “The only thing that is on my mind right now is just the fact that he’s Latino. I have so
much pride in getting to be a part of this project … it’s so important.”345 Thus, while the film
itself is emphasized as simply a generically “Latino” film—ensuring the broadest possible
interpretation of the character that could appeal to all Latinx audiences—its creators’ specific
identities as Latinxs are emphasized in metatextual materials to ensure that Latinx audiences can
enter with an expectation of authenticity. Like Sarah Banet-Wesier’s comments on Dora the
Explorer, the framing here demonstrate “that race and ethnicity matter … as a kind of ‘authentic’
pleasure and an unproblematic embrace of ‘difference.’”346 Their Latinidad is enunciated, but
largely centered as an explanation of their personal attachment to the importance of the story and
as verified authorities, rather than as a factor that could be distancing for non-Latinx audiences.
While the film’s setting skewed towards a more speculative and universalizing view of
Latinidad, the seemingly authentic perspective of the filmmakers meant they could balance this
344 Umberto Gonzalez, “‘Blue Beetle’: Angel Manuel Soto to Direct Film About DC Comics’ Latino Superhero
(Exclusive),” TheWrap (blog), February 23, 2021, https://www.thewrap.com/angel-manuel-soto-blue-beetle-latinosuperhero-dc-warner-bros/. 345 Marc Malkin, “‘Cobra Kai’ Star Xolo Maridueña on Being Cast as Blue Beetle for HBO Max: ‘Representation Is
So Important,’” Variety (blog), August 4, 2021, https://variety.com/2021/film/news/xolo-mariduena-blue-beetlehbo-max-1235033632/. 346 Banet-Weiser, “What’s Your Flava? Race and Postfeminism in Media Culture,” 221.

217
with more specific—though still largely legible—references to Latinx popular culture. For
instance, the film makes specific reference to Mexican television shows, with which many
Mexican-Americans and other Spanish speakers of this era would be familiar, including Sábado
Gigante, María la del Barrio, and El Chapulín Colorado. Though the film works structurally and
thematically for viewers who may not be familiar with these types of references, their presence
works as a direct address to Latinx audiences. As critic Monica Castillo wrote, the film still
works for non-savvy, non-Latinx viewers, but “if you do recognize the Soda Stereo song, know
who voices Khaji-Da (Becky G), or know how it feels to be addressed as ‘mijo,” then the movie
works on a different level, one most superhero movies have never acknowledged for Latino
audiences.”347 Like many other studio-made, Latinx-themed films, the Latinx audience is
primarily engaged through these types of references, offered as evidence of the film’s, and the
filmmakers’, authenticity.
The repetition of their Latinx identities, and Blue Beetle’s Latinx identity, also served as a
not-entirely-subtle call to Latinx audiences to support the film. These calls became particularly
vocal leading up to the film’s premiere in August 2023, which occurred in the midst of the
Writers Guild of America and Screen Actors Guild strikes—meaning that neither its writers nor
actors could promote the film. In response to its low projected box office returns, a consortium of
27 film-based Latino organizations, including the Hispanic Caucus Institute, the National
Association of Latino Independent Producers, and the Latino Film Institute, released a letter
emphasizing the need to “support Latino creatives.”348 Situating the importance of media, they
stated that “Stories are … a powerful tool for social change that fuels our collective movement to
347 Monica Castillo, “‘Blue Beetle’ Review: A Familiar, But Fun & Winning Superhero Movie With MuchWelcome Latinx Identity At Its Center,” The Playlist (blog), August 17, 2023, https://theplaylist.net/blue-beetlereview-a-familiar-but-fun-winning-superhero-movie-with-much-welcome-latinx-identity-at-its-center-20230817/. 348 Davis, “27 Latino Organizations Unite in Support for ‘Blue Beetle’ During Hollywood Strikes.”

218
build a more equitable, just world for those who have been historically underrepresented and
marginalized.”349 To this significance, they added a call to action: “For the sake of current and
future generations of Latinos, we will not delay our progress any longer. We invite you to join us
in our effort to amplify the work that countless Latino artists have worked so hard to create.”350
Through this statement, these Hispanic and Latino film entities positioned the purchase of a
movie ticket as an act of activism, a crucial act in combatting centuries of underrepresentation
and marginalization of Latinxs. In keeping with a recent trend toward “corporate social activism”
that encourage activism by way of consumer purchases, these Latinx film groups position
mainstream, box office success as the most effective method of change. 351 As with many
examples discussed throughout this dissertation, Blue Beetle represents the shift towards media
conglomeration that sees greater diversity not as moral calling but as new potential profit. It is
perhaps an overly cynical, if accurate, ending to note here that Latinxs must be pressured to
contributing to their own representation—to imagining themselves as heroes—by spending
money on massive corporate media somehow positioned as an act of activism.
Though corporations have harnessed the language of social justice and of, what can be
accepted as, authentic Latinx identities, Latinidad remains an active site of negotiation for many
Latinxs. Through alternative interpretations, Latinidad can be conceived of not merely as a
conceptual dividing line between other enormous ethnic groups, used to breed rivalries or sell
products. Latinidad can represent what you do, who you are, how you were raised. It can be
critiqued and scrutinized, while at the same time providing some communion between people
with similar experiences. It can, and perhaps should, mean many different things to many
349 Davis. 350 Davis. 351 Tom C. W. Lin, The Capitalist and the Activist (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2022).

219
different people. Taking up Heinlein’s notion of speculative fiction, we may consider “what
would happen if…” Latinidad was just the beginning of a thought, not its definitive end.

220
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Abstract (if available)

Abstract This dissertation examines the representation and conception of Latinx identities within speculative visual media, including film, television, and comics. Historically, Latinxs have often been represented in speculative fiction as a more generalized idea: the universal pan-Latino. These depictions tend to erase the nuances of race, class, nationality, or language that characterize the group in reality. However, I argue that modern networked communities and communal knowledge have driven the desire for representations of Latinxs in speculative visual media away from a notion of pan-Latinidad as the primary means of community-building in media, and towards—what, at least, is perceived to be—more specific and authentic depictions of Latinidad. Ultimately, I find that representations of Latinxs in speculative media reproduce many of the same conflicts about Latinx identity in society more broadly. Though recreating increasingly specific human identities may seem counterintuitive within the endless scope of the speculative, in fact, being seen as a unique individual, rather than as a generic ethnic form, is its own fantasy for many Latinxs.

Each chapter pairs a speculative concept with a similar myth or conception about Latinx identity. In Chapter 1, I examine speculative absences of Latinxs, including mass disappearances, invisibility, hauntings, and bodily concealment, as compared to the perceived visibility or invisibility of Latinxs as a group. Chapter 2 loosely follows the concept of the shape-shifter, but in this context, focuses specifically on how the idea of brownness became linked with—and sometimes, used to define—Latinx identity. Chapter 3 deals with interruptions of time, as represented through Mesoamerican and South American indigeneity, which is seen within the white American imaginary as being simultaneously ancient, historical, and real, but also foreign, exotic, and unfamiliar. Finally, Chapter 4 explores dualities, including hybridities and secret identities, and, as it particularly relates to Latinidad, the notion of mestizaje.

For marginalized artists, the work of correcting the stereotypical and shallow representations that have historically dominated visual media is often first done by using art to document their reality. This dissertation traces the unexpected emergence of the speculative to achieve similar political effects, including the use of speculative concepts within activism. In speculative media, Latinxs have often been invoked as undesirable outsiders, mysterious others, ancient indigenous wizards, malleable utopian hybrids, conflicted dual souls. By taking more control of these imaginaries, Latinxs can shape not only their representation in media, but also their own futures.

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Creator Rauber Rodriguez, Emily (author)

Core Title Speculative Latinidades: imagining Latinx identities in science fiction and fantasy Media and activism

School School of Cinematic Arts

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Cinema and Media Studies

Degree Conferral Date 2023-12

Publication Date 11/21/2023

Defense Date 09/25/2023

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

Tag activism,comics,critical ethnic studies,fantasy,fictional ethnicity,Film,identity,Latine,Latinidad,Latino,Latinx,media,OAI-PMH Harvest,Science fiction,speculative fiction,Television

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Language English

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Advisor Serna, Laura Isabel (committee chair), Belisle, Natalie (committee member), Duong, Lan (committee member), Jenkins, Henry (committee member)

Creator Email emily.rauber.ro@gmail.com,rauberro@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-oUC113777755

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Legacy Identifier etd-RauberRodr-12488

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