A Day Without a Mexican

A Day Without a Mexican (2004) is a mockumentary that imagines what would happen were all the Mexicans to disappear from California. The movie stresses the role of the media, and so it begins with an emergency news broadcast announcing that “the Mexicans are all gone.” Next the scene shifts to a few days before the disappearance and shows a montage of Mexicans working at various jobs, to show how Mexicans are an integral part of California life. But it remains to be seen of how much their contributions are appreciated, as an interview with the California State Senator Stephen Abercrombie (John Getz) reveals that he has to defend himself against his wife hiring illegal immigrants to paint their living room. Next the images move to an anti-immigration protest on the Mexico-California border where activists complain that Mexicans are taking jobs from Americans, eating up the economy’s welfare, and bringing drugs into the country. Budding news reporter Lila Rod (Yareli Arizmendi) is then shown auditioning for employment at the local news station. A man from the station tells her not to Americanize her Spanish seeing as many Latinos have no career without their accents. A contrast of immigration views is then presented between a father and son; the father whose best friend is a Mexican working on his farm, and the son who suffers from the prejudice paranoia that the Mexican workers will hurt his child or his father’s business.

Then, rather abruptly, all the Mexicans begin disappearing. The only explanation is a strange fog that is surrounding California, cutting off all communication to the rest of the world. The effects of such a loss begin to reveal themselves: farmers lose their entire crops because they don’t have any labourers; no garbage clean-up; no maids or nannies; no celebrity latinos; no workers employed at minimum wage jobs. The problems begin to multiply; not to mention the confusion as Latinos disappear while driving, causing their cars to veer wildly in the streets, one of which hits Lila Rod while she is driving in her car. Senator Abercrombie (who is now acting governor because his superiors are also Latinos gone missing), declares a state of emergency. Is it terrorism? Is the military kidnapping unsuspecting people? Others believe that the apocalypse is upon them and is taking the most faithful first. As the days trudge along, the Caucasian population falls to pieces as they have to perform the menial tasks that the Mexicans had previously taken care of. Restaurants close due to no servers, cooks, dishwashers, or fresh food. The drug trade becomes secondary to the thriving ‘fresh fruit and vegetable’ trade. The border patrol attempts to clean up their image which projects them as racist nationalists, an image not unfounded by the characters.

Eventually it is discovered that Lila Rod (or Rodriguez) is the only Mexican left untouched by the ‘disappearance epidemic’. She is at first worshipped as a sign of hope in these dark days as she donates her body to science in an attempt to discover why she is ‘the missing link’. But her popularity soon turns sour as the remaining racist Californians begin to celebrate the disappearance. Lila soon realizes that the government’s primary objective is to safeguard the rest of the population against disappearing (with a vaccine made from Lila’s blood), and secondary is to find the missing Mexicans. When the scientists express that they want to ‘flatline’ Lila to see if she can go to a parallel world to discover where all the Mexicans are, her Aunt Gigi confesses that Lila is actually Armenian and her Mexican ‘parents’ had kindly taken her in as their own daughter. Lila breaks down and wails that “love is thicker than blood” and that her heart is Mexican. With that, she disappears, despite being Armenian.

At this point there are 13 million people missing. As all the main characters sadly reminisce about their absent loved ones, a small drop of water falls from above each of them; an act somewhat similar to christening. They have completely transformed their views of Mexican immigrants and have realized how essential each person is to California and the people there within. The fog then magically clears up and the Mexicans all reappear, just as they were, with no memory of the event. They are welcomed back with appreciation, love, and public displays of affection. Perhaps the most comical reception is when the entire border patrol descends on two unsuspecting Mexicans trying to cross the border. The officers can’t believe their eyes and ask them, “¿Son Mexicanos ustedes?” (Are you Mexican?); and an affirmative reply results in an eruption of cheers as the border patrol hug the two illegal immigrants and carry them around on their shoulders. The two Mexicans look at one another and agree that, “Damn, these Americans are fucking cool!”

The film is interspersed with details of the Mexicans vital role in California’s society, such as:

*Thanks to the Mexicans, California is the world’s fifth largest economy.
*20% of all K-12 California students are Hispanic.
*Mexicans comprise a third of all Californian consumers.
*Eight of the L.A. Dodgers are Latinos.
*60% of California’s construction workers are Mexican.
*Mexicans contribute to the economy far more than they take from it in social services.

The reality of American ignorance regarding Mexican identity also goes on display when Abercrombie comments that he doesn’t want illegal Mexicans from Guatemala or Honduras working for him; or when a meter maid comments that they’re all Mexicans south of the border, prompting a message on the screen which states that there are in fact 40 countries south of the US-Mexico border. The devastation in the aftermath of the disappearance questions previous prejudices, such as the Mexicans stealing employment opportunities; whereas afterwards, the remaining Americans are forced into the hard-labour jobs which they loathe. The social message presented becomes an issue of humanity, not race. A colleague comments to Lila that California now needs the Mexicans, and she replies, “I wish they could have heard that before.” This film blatantly states the obvious: For a state which is dependent upon Mexicans for its survival, the non-Hispanic population certainly does not view the societal role of Chicanos, as well as those seeking citizenship, as vital.

Selena

The biopic Selena (1997) begins with an excited Selena Quintanilla-Pérez (played by Jennifer Lopez) surrounded by supportive family and friends and getting prepared to sing in the Houston Astrodome, February 26, 1995, to what reporters say is the arena’s largest crowd ever. But how did she get here? What’s the story behind Selena’s rise to fame? And so the movie gives a flashback to Corpus Christi, Texas, 1961, with Selena’s father, Abraham (Edward James Olmos), singing 50s love songs in a Mexican barbershop trio.

This talented trio is called The Dinos, and they are continually turned down by owners of white clubs because they are Mexican, and also refused by Mexican clubs because the group only knows "gringo music." Caught between two competing worlds, Abraham is haunted by memories of rejection until 1981, in Lake Jackson, Texas, when his nine-year-old daughter Selena takes an interest in her father’s hobby of singing his old tunes. Her interest sparks an idea in Abraham to start a family band, although "family" means only his son and two daughters, not himself. He forces the children to practice the music and even opens up a Mexican restaurant (for all those gringos that like Mexican food) so that he can showcase "Selena y Los Dinos" playing songs like “Blue Moon” and “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” His wife fears that he is becoming obsessed with music again and living vicariously through his children, but Abraham insists that Selena has the talent to make it big and he continues to get publicity for the children, even after the restaurant goes broke due to "Reaganomics" and they have to leave their home. The children become depressed when they realize that their music isn’t as big a hit in the county fairs as it was in the restaurant because the Tejano audience enjoys only male performers. Then one day, in hopes of cheering up Selena, her mother teaches her the Cumbia dance moves of "the washing machine," which Selena uses to liven up the act. From here a star is born.

The film jumps to 1989 in El Paso, Texas, with the family band playing to huge crowds at the county fair and Selena slowly becoming a sensation. Her fame is shown in many amusing situations, such as when the tour bus becomes stuck off the side of the road and two very tough-looking Mexicans with tattoos and goatees almost trip over each other at the chance of helping "Selenas." Her father continues to push for the big time, and although Selena is just as driven as he is, she still finds herself yearning for a normal life, one which offers someone whom she can love. Enter Chris Pérez (Jon Seda), a wild, rebel guitarist with long hair and ripped jeans, brought into the band despite Abraham’s complaints. After the family cleans up Chris's image, sparks begin to fly between him and Selena. On their tour of California, Chris lets his punk friends trash his hotel room and as a result is almost fired by the enraged Abraham. Chris declares to Selena that acts like a punk because she’s too good for him, and she responds that he is simply trying to keep up an image that isn’t him. After this encounter, their love blooms though Abraham becomes suspicious of their romance. The band members also become apprehensive of what this will do to the performances, but everything appears to be going well with their new number one song and a promising tour in Mexico.

Abraham is hesitant to let his daughter perform in Mexico because although her songs are all in Spanish, it is not her native language. Still scarred from his own experiences as a singer, he exclaims that the Mexicans don’t accept Mexican-Americans; in fact, stuck in cultural limbo they constantly have to be more Mexican than the Mexicans and more American than the Americans! But Selena is persistent and shows her star quality when she charms the Mexican press which leads to an incredibly successful Mexican tour. Yet, despite all this good exposure, Abraham still can not tolerate Selena dating Chris and so he fires him, causing the two to take their relationship into hiding. Finally Selena is fed up with the situation and she and Chris marry without her father’s consent. Abraham is at first enraged, but then, when Selena returns home with her new husband, her father realizes that he had pushed her to do it and he is proud that she made the decision on her own. Selena’s family then welcomes Chris with open arms.

After this, success can not seem to stay away from the 20-year-old Selena. She opens clothing boutiques with her own designs, wins a Grammy, and starts to record an English cross-over album. She and Chris even talk about having kids. But Abraham comes to Selena with suspicions that her business and fan club manager, Yolanda Saldavar, has been swindling money and writing odd cheques. Selena is incredulous until they confront Yolanda and her pleas of innocence seem doubtful; yet they still allow Yolanda to work for them as long as she accounts for all the finances. This brings the film back to its beginning with the 1995 performance at the Houston Astrodome, Selena’s shining moment as a cross-over artist. Suddenly, we are confronted with images from a newscast and the reporter stating that the beloved singer Selena has been shot by her employee Yolanda Saldavar after they had met to go over some finances. The finale of the biopic of this admired human being flashes scenes of her family receiving the news of her death in the hospital, a solitary microphone in an empty arena, and thousands of fans, with pictures of the real Selena, holding a candlelight vigil for the untimely death of a star in her prime.

Selena contains compelling plot similarities to La Bamba, another biopic of a Mexican-American star cut down in his prime. Yet these two singers accepted their cultural backgrounds in a different ways, with Ritchie trying to be more white while Selena embraced her Mexican roots (although they were foreign to her) and attempted to cross over to English recordings from there. Her father, who was plagued with ambivalence about his own dual identity, made sure that Selena was able to sing in Spanish from a young age, even teaching her to trill a Spanish ‘r’ at age eight. He insists that as Mexican-Americans they need to speak English perfectly for the whites and they need to speak Spanish perfectly for the Mexicans, and therefore they “gotta be twice as perfect as everybody else!” The film displays the sentiment that in the 1950s, crossing over was simply not possible for either Abraham or Ritchie Valens, but that by the 1990s Selena could prove that such opinions had been changed. Not only did she achieve a cultural cross-over, but she became the top Mexican-American performer of her time, male or female, and ultimately was accepted on both sides of the border for who she was.

Touch of Evil

"This isn't the real Mexico. You know that." So says anti-narcotics cop Miguel Vargas to his new bride, Susie, in Orson Welles's Touch of Evil.

Vargas, the senior cop who has just arrested one of the drug-running Grandi family in Mexico City, wants to clean up the reputation and image of his country, and so ensure that the place is safe for his young American wife. "I suppose," he says, "it would be nice for a man in my place to be able to think he could look after his own wife in his own country."

It turns out, though, that, the American motel in which Susie seeks refuge, "just for comfort," is a place of nightmarish danger: Janet Leigh here anticipates her performance in Hitchcock's Psycho, as in this isolated and eerie motel her character is harassed, drugged, raped (metaphorically if not literally), and abducted by a gang of the younger Grandi family members. Over the course of the film, Susie endlessly crosses between the US and Mexico ("Across the border again?" she shrugs early on), but finds no respite either north or south.

For corruption and danger seep both sides of this porous border.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the film's famous opening long take. In its three and a half minutes, we see a bomb placed in a car outside a Mexican nightclub, which we then follow as its path entwines with that of the honeymooning couple Vargas and Susie. Camera, characters, and audience are drawn in this same uninterrupted sequence across the frontier to the US side. Alongside the raucous noise and music coming from cantinas and bars, alongside the brusque questions or idle chit-chat at the customs post, we hear the timer's tick-tock on the soundtrack, premonition of transborder violence that the guards will be unable to prevent.

Suddenly, the bomb explodes, bringing the film's first cut and tearing apart two mixed race couples: the car's occupants (an American businessman and Mexican stripper), instantly killed; and Vargas and Susie, their honeymoon peace shattered and a rift opened between national interests and private wellbeing. "This is going to be very bad for us," Vargas tells his wife. "For us?" she asks. "For Mexico, I mean," he replies.

But if Vargas starts out with a clear conception of his obligations and responsibilities to the nation, and an equally clear conception of their limits--regarding the US investigation of the bombing he declares himself to be "merely what the United Nations would call an observer"--as the film progresses this sense of a boundary between proper and improper soon becomes frayed and uncertain.

Increasingly desperate, searching for his wife on discovering her absence from the motel, he charges into a seedy dive and goes about the younger Grandi clan-members with his fists. "Listen, I'm no cop now. I'm a husband!" he shouts shortly before sending the bar crashing down.

Dishevelled and disorderly, driven by an anguished sense that his wife has been unjustly taken from him, Vargas has come to resemble his would-be nemesis, the corrupt US cop Hank Quinlan, played by Welles himself as a local hero now grotesquely gone to seed.

For thirty years Quinlan has been planting evidence to frame those he is convinced are guilty, after he had allowed his wife's killer, some "halfbreed," to go free. Ever since, he has been disgusted both with Mexicans and with "starry-eyed idealists. They're the ones making all the real trouble in the world." Vargas is Mexican and, at least at first, idealist: no wonder Quinlan should try to bring him down.

Quinlan's no hero: bloated, arrogant, and devious he personifies the state at its most corrupt. Vargas has to remind him that "the policeman's job is only easy in a police state. That's the whole point, captain. Who is the boss, the cop or the law?" The irony is that it should be Latin American chiding a US citizen about corruption and the dangers of dictatorship. But Quinlan's response poses a further irony: "Where's your wife, Vargas?" he asks, indicating his awareness that this macho Latin has failed to protect his woman. And Quinlan's intuition always seems to prove correct: in the film's closing moments, we learn that the man that he had tried to frame (another Mexican in a mixed relationship) has finally confessed to the crime of planting the bomb in what was his girlfriend's father's car.

Welles's vision is dark and unflinching. He allows us few certainties. This isn't the "real Mexico," and there's little pretence that Charlton Heston, playing Vargas, is a "real" Mexican: national identity and difference are presented as illusory; but these are illusions nurtured by the prejudice that drives almost every aspect of the film's plot. Even the otherwise innocent Susie displays a casual racism in nicknaming a Grandi minion "Pancho." "Why?" she is asked. "Just for laughs, I guess," is the best she can answer.

There's not much in this movie that's a laughing matter. Any attempt to save face or to present the law as other than a fundamentally dirty business is as self-defeating as Quinlan's final gesture, his attempt to wash his hands in the fetid rubbish-filled waters of the canal in which he finally dies. In the end, judgement is futile: Quinlan was "some kind of a man," as his former lover Tanya remarks, but "what does it matter what you say about people?"

Tanya (a remarkable cameo from Marlene Dietrich) is one of the few characters who retains self-control through the film. Tanya, whom we see calmly doing her accounts, a financial reckoning that abstracts from the desires and waywardness upon which her brothel thrives. "It's old, it's new," she says of the pianola installed in her parlour. "We got the television too."


And behind all the characters, often present somewhere within the frame, are the oil wells that like capital itself know no nationality. The oil wells, "pumping up money... money," that are the imperturbable, mechanical, inhuman backdrop to this tale of jealousy and prejudice, corruption and carnage, cross-border desire derailed.