How Black is La Negra Angustias ?
2012; Routledge; Volume: 26; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/09528822.2012.679037
ISSN1475-5297
Autores Tópico(s)Latin American and Latino Studies
ResumoAbstract This article discusses the film La Negra Angustias (1949), directed by Matilde Landeta. Angustias was a poor mulata country girl who joined the Mexican Revolution at its beginning and became a colonel in the Zapatista army. The film was directed by a pioneer of the film industry in Mexico. It tells a fascinating story of great aesthetic quality, and is also a critical film in terms of gender, race and class. The treatment of the relationship between genders and the way of understanding the feminine are exceptional in Mexican cinematography of the first half of the twentieth century. Matilde Landeta was one of the few directors of social conscience to empower women and to show the hidden face of poverty, racism and social injustice in general. Keywords: Eli BartraNegra AngustiasMatilde LandetaMaría Elena MarquésFrancisco Rojas GonzálezBlacknessgenderironyMexican Revolution Mestizo Notes 1. Michele Wallace, ‘Why Are There No Great Black Artists? The Problem of Visibility in African-American Culture’, in Michele Wallace and Gina Dent, eds, Black Popular Culture, Bay Press, Seattle, 1992, p 342 2. Alicia Castellanos, ‘Para hacer nación: discursos racistas en el México decimonónico’, in José Jorge Gómez Izquierdo, ed, Los caminos del racismo en México, México, Plaza y Valdés/Instituto de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades-BUAP, 2005, p 106. See also Jorge Gómez Izquierdo, ‘El mito del mestizo, definición racista de la identidad nacional’, Metapolítica 67, Mexico, November–December 2009, pp 42–49. 3. A recent article under the headline ‘Not afro-mestizos or afro-Mexicans… Mexican blacks demand that INEGI count them properly and call them what they are’ stated that a meeting of Black Peoples in Huehuetán, Guerrero, raised its voice ‘against the Western world and its culture of political correctness which insists on calling black people “of African descent”’. See Misael Habana de los Santos, ‘Negros mexicanos demandan al Inegi que los cuente bien y los llame por su nombre’, La Jornada, Mexico, 8 June 2010, p 33. 4. ‘Realidad del México Negro’, unattributed, Revista Caoba, online at: http://es.caoba.org/mundoactual/comunidades/afromexico/article.html 5. Carlos Tello Díaz, ‘Los negros de México’, 14 October 2005, online at: http://www.dossierpolitico.com/vernoticiasanteriores.php?artid=3495&relacion=dossierpolitico 6. La Negra Angustias, directed by Matilde S Landeta, Mexico, 1949, eighty-one minutes. Cinematographer: Jack Draper; Editor: Gloria Shoemann; Cast: María Elena Marqués, Eduardo Arozamena and Agustín Isunza. 7. See for example Carmen Juana Huaco-Nuzum, ‘Mestiza Subjectivity: Representation and Spectatorship in Mexican and Hollywood Films’, doctoral dissertation, University of California, Santa Cruz, 1993; Elissa J Rashkin, Women Filmmakers in Mexico: The Country of Which We Dream, University of Texas Press, Austin, 2001; Julianne Burton-Carvajal, Matilde Landeta, hija de la Revolución, CONACULTA/IMCINE, Mexico, 2002; the video by Patricia Días, ‘My Filmmaking, My Life’, Maya Films/IMEVISION/Channel Four Television, 1990, colour, thirty minutes; Raquel Peguero, ‘No soy la primera, pero sí la más terca y ese es mi chiste: Landeta’, La Jornada, Mexico, 19 August 1997, p 25; Susan Dever, ‘Las de abajo: La Revolución Mexicana de Matilde Landeta’, Archivos de la Filmoteca 16, 1994 10. Omar García, Reforma, Mexico, 23 April 2003, online at: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-128626218.html, link no longer active 8. See Graciela Hierro, ‘Filosofía y feminismo’, in Patricia Bedolla Miranda and Olga Bustos, eds, Estudios de género y feminismo I, Fontamara, Mexico, 2000, pp 147–158. 9. Rosario Ferré, ‘De la ira a la ironía’, in A la sombra de tu nombre, Alfaguara, Mexico, 2001, p 165 11. Chucho el Roto was a famous bandit in nineteenth-century Mexico; like Robin Hood he is reputed to have given some of what he stole to the needy. 12. Patricia Mohammed, ‘A Symbolic Visiting Relationship: Caribbean Feminist Historiography and Caribbean Feminist Theory’, in Eudine Barriteau, ed, Confronting Power, Theorizing Gender: Interdisciplinary Perspectives in the Caribbean, University of the West Indies, Kingston, 2003, p 123 13. According to Carmen Huaco-Nuzum. See ‘Matilde Landeta: An Introduction to the Work of a Pioneer Mexican Film-Maker’, Screen, vol 28, no 4, autumn 1987, p 102. See also the interview with Matilde Landeta in Patricia Martínez de Velasco Velez, Directoras de cine: Proyección de un mundo oscuro, Instituto Mexicano de Cinematografía-CONEICC, Mexico, 1991. 14. Francisco Rojas González, La Negra Angustias, Fondo de Cultura Económica, Mexico, 1984, p 180, first edition 1944, National Prize for Literature 1944 15. See Las mujeres en la Revolución Mexicana, Mexico, INEHRM/IIL de la H Cámara de Diputados, 1992. See also Elena Poniatowska, Las soldaderas, Era/INAH, Mexico, 1999. 16. It is said that during the Revolution there were a number of extremely bloodthirsty women. It may be that the author of the novel was inspired, in some way, by this fact. Although subsequent to the work's publication, stories appeared in the newspapers of women's violence during the fighting. See, for example, Emilio García Riera, ‘Dos mujeres, valientes soldados de la Revolución’, El Nacional, 8 November 1959, p 3, p 7; and ‘Dos sanguinarias mujeres en la lucha armada’, El Nacional, 29 November 1959, p 3, p 10. 17. Emilio García Riera, Historia documental del cine mexicano, vol 4, Era, Mexico, 1972, p 67 18. Ibid 19. Julia Tuñón, ‘Entre lo natural y lo monstruoso: violencia y violación en el cine mexicano de la edad de oro’, GénEros 4, Asociación Colimense de Universidades/Universidad de Colima/Centro Universitario de Estudios de Género, 12 June 1997, p 70 20. Leonardo García Tsao, ‘El espejismo sobre el espejo: la mitología del cine mexicano’, in Enrique Florescano, ed, Mitos mexicanos, Aguilar/Nuevo Siglo, Mexico, 1995, p 226 21. Gertrud Koch, ‘¿Por qué van las mujeres a ver las películas de los hombres?’, in Gisela Ecker, ed, Estética feminista, Icaria, Barcelona, 1986, pp 144–145 22. Martínez de Velasco Vélez, op cit, p 57 23. Ibid, p 59 24. William H Beezley, Mexican National Identity: Memory, Innuendo and Popular Culture, University of Arizona, Tucson, 2008, p 13 25. Zuzana M Pick, Constructing the Image of the Mexican Revolution: Cinema and the Archive, University of Texas Press, Austin, 2010, p 216 26. Martínez de Velasco Vélez, op cit, p 59
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