The Chicano struggle for equality has been a transformative force for Mexican Americans. As a minority within a minority, Chicanos are characterized as people born in the States but having Mexican origins. Their official fight for equality and civil rights also started right after the African American Civil Rights Movement started. Ever since the end of the Mexican-American war, the Mexicans who became Americans in the Western region, have been facing unjust racial discrimination and have had to tackle offensive stereotypes associated with them.
This racial persecution triggered the birth of Chicano. Originally used as a pejorative, Chicano was embraced by the Mexican Americans as a term for their self-empowerment. This was the time when Mexican Americans started embracing their identity openly, in terms of their cultures, traditions, style, and food. Characterized as El Movimiento, this fight for resistance also came through their literature and cinema.
Chicano Cinema
El Movimiento gave birth to the Chicano consciousness which became a driving force in Chicanos openly embracing their ethnic identity. The influences of Chicano consciousness also started coming through in filmmaking as well which gave birth to the Chicano Cinema.
Just like Chicanos, the Chicano cinema is distinct in its identity as well. The films made under the banner of Chicano cinema are frequently, if not always, set in the Southwestern region and the border states. These films predominantly highlight the political, economic, and social struggles and stereotypes faced by Chicanos in America.
These stereotypes assume every Mexican American individual to be an illegal immigrant, a gang member, a criminal, or a Chicana to be hypersexual or a sex worker.
These stereotypes are offensive because portraying them through media fuels public perception which forces Chicanos to be limited to these stereotypes. This also stops them from being treated as an equal civic citizen.
Chicano cinema also began because experienced Latino actors were not preferred for roles in Hollywood movies due to their ethnicity or if they were hired, they would be explicitly typecasted. Chicano films would give chances to experienced Latino actors and dismantle the offensive stereotypes as a form of resistance to cultural subjugation.
Chicano cinema also paved the way for on-screen representation of Latino faces which dismantled the standard Chicano image perpetuated by mainstream media. This enabled the Chicanos to be perceived as normal human beings, able to play a part in the growing political, social, and cultural landscape of the US.
Top Chicano Movies You Should Watch
Let’s discuss some Chicano movies that have done an amazing job of portraying a strengthened Chicano identity. We recommend watching these movies with your kids over the weekend, with Optimum’s On-Demand service. You can order these movies to get instant access. For more information, you contact atencion al cliente de Optimum en español.
Here are our top recommendations form the Chicano cinema.
- Please Don’t Bury Me Alive!
Considered as the first Chicano Feature Film, Please Don’t Bury Me Alive! is said to be historically, culturally, and aesthetically significant. The film focuses on a troubled, unemployed Chicano young man who gets into petty theft and is then trapped in a drug deal by the police. Consequently, he gets a ten-year prison sentence while a white person, who was arrested for the same offense, was given probation by the judge. The film does an excellent job of highlighting the disparities in the treatment of whites and people of color. Interestingly, the movie is based on the true events of a trial, witnessed by the director Efraín Gutiérrez. The film also highlighted the resourcefulness of the first wave of Chicano cinema.
- La Mission
The film features a father and son duo living in San Francisco. It depicts the generational difference as the father is threatened by the gentrification of their neighborhood and his son’s homosexuality. Rich in Mexican imagery, the setting is a barrio and is artfully depicted as a cultural familial home, rather than a stereotypical center of crime and poverty. Another way in which the film dismantles the stereotypes is by showing the father, Che, to be a reformed inmate having a passion for building low-rider cars and being a single parent.
- La Misma Luna
Using Melodrame as the genre to depict the struggles of Chicanos having to leave their kids in Mexico to earn a living in the US. An undocumented single mother, Rosario is forced to work on low wages and is routinely exploited by her employers. Her son, previously living with his grandmother in Mexico, is forced to go and find his mother in the US after the death of his abuela. The movie is a heartwrenching tale of an innocent child trying to find his mother in an alien country that is cruel to his people.
- East Side Sushi
Featuring yet another single parent, the movie revolves around Juana who lives with her father and her daughter. Together they run a fruit cart business while having to work multiple jobs to earn a living that barely gets them by. After getting mugged, Juana, an expert Mexican cook, decides to look for opportunities as a chef and finds herself a sous chef at a Japanese restaurant. The ethnically Mexican woman learns the art of sushi-making but finds trouble getting a job due to her ethnicity and her gender. The film interestingly portrays culture mixing, as Juana secures the respect of her Japanese peers by coming second in a sushi-making competition.
Wrapping Up
Focusing on the popular themes of oppression, racial subjugation, and integration, Chicano cinema continues to thrive due to the increasing representation of the Chicanos in the mainstream media.
