American Me

Edward James Olmos directs and acts in the film American Me (1992), which is inspired by true events and examines the life of a Chicano mobster as he comes to understand how his life choices have affected those closest to him. First we are introduced to the poetic reminiscence of Montoya Santana (Edward James Olmos), who is in prison sifting through a box of old photographs. His musings take the plot back to the Los Angeles in the year June 1943, when his parents, Pedro and Esperanza, two proud ‘zoot suitors’ had first started to date. Their love for one another is strong, but it is overshadowed by the racial tension between Latinos and US sailors which leads to a night of sickening chaos as the couple is caught up in one of the famous Zoot Suit Riots. Sailors beat Pedro to a pulp and rape Esperanza with absolutely no remorse. Montoya then shifts to the year 1959, when he was 16 years old and starting a Latino neighbourhood gang called La Primera. The gang allows Montoya (nicknamed Santana) a reprieve from his father’s chronic anger. Members are initiated via a small tattooed symbol on the back of their hand at the bottom of their thumb. The group consists of Santana; his best friend JD (William Forsythe), who is Caucasian but walks and talks like a Latino; and the newly-initiated Mundo. The group decides to take a shortcut one night after Mundo’s initiation which brings them through the Hazard gang’s territory, provoking a chase. La Primera breaks into a shop and manages to lose their pursuers, only to encounter an enraged storeowner who shoots JD and almost kills him. The breaking-and-entering gets Mundo and Santana time in Juvenile Hall. His first night there, Santana is raped by a fellow juvenile, but then refuses further submission and stabs his rapist in the throat. That killing earned Santana a jail sentence once out of Juvenile Hall, but also the respect of every adolescent in his surroundings. Santana knows that a clica is built upon respect and so he begins to assemble a Latino gang by the name of La Ema (for the Mexican Mafia) which unconditionally welcomes JD once he is out of the hospital and also serving his sentence.

The film progresses to Folsom State Prison where the original gang has grown and the choices they have made to survive have earned them 10-25 years; but the power that they now possess by way of extortion, gambling, prostitution, drugs sales, and even charging rent to inmates, has made them the ultimate force in the prison hierarchy, with the only other gangs in the yard being the Black Gorilla Family and the Aryan Brotherhood. Santana still receives visits from his mother and much younger brother, Paulito. Other visitors secretly supply La Ema with drugs through a method of hiding the package in a series of body cavities. A riot is almost imminent between the Black Guerilla Family and La Ema when a black inmate contaminates some of the cocaine and is then set on fire and killed by Latinos as punishment; but the excitement is set back to just a solemn threat from the African American gang to Santana once the guards begin to arrive. This event causes Santana to be sent to the Hole for solitary confinement; which he only laughs at because he can still run his business from such an isolated location. But the business is beginning to fail as the prison system attempts to break-up La Ema by sending its members to different prisons. Soon Folsom sees new Latino gangs surfacing, such as Nuestra Familia headed by El Chucko. To halt this threat, Santana enlists La Ema’s newest and youngest member, Little Puppet, to kill El Chucko and restore power to La Ema. Life for Santana then begins to change as he receives news of his mother’s death and soon after JD is released. Then, after an astonishing 18 years of prison time and many years to think about his actions and their effects, Santana is finally released into a world that he has difficulty adjusting to. He is welcomed by his friends and family, all except his father, at an intimate celebration and begins to take a liking to Julie (Evelina Fernández), Little Puppet’s cousin. Julie attempts to make light of his struggle in the outside world; but Santana is unable to react as he can’t seem to think with his heart instead of his head.

It doesn’t take long for Santana and JD to get back into business by first confronting the Italian Mafia boss with their proposal of running the drug business in East L.A. and all trades with Mexico in exchange for the safety of the son of the Italian boss, who incidentally was just sent to Folsom. The boss laughs at their offer, until he hears the news that his son was raped and killed on account of La Ema. Meanwhile, Santana opens up to Julie as they get to know each other and she shows him many things for the first time such as driving, going to the beach, and making love, which Santana fails to adjust to as he flips Julie over and attempts to have anal sex with her before she runs away from him screaming. Perhaps things would have eventually worked out between them if it hadn’t been for the Italian boss’ retaliation of sending pure, uncut cocaine into the Mexican barrios and immediately causing upwards of 50 deaths, including Julie’s younger brother, Nito. After this, Santana and his father finally bond as they sit by Esperanza’s grave. It is here that Pedro tells his son about his mother’s rape and how he could never truly love Santana because he always knew that it was an indiscriminate sailor who had fathered him, and not Pedro.

The drug business begins becoming a dangerous place as the Black Gorilla Family stays true to its previous threat and kills several young Latinos by making them deeply breathe-in the pure cocaine which they are cutting for Santana. In an attempt at normalcy, Santana acts as best man at the wedding of the recently-released Little Puppet. Santana is able to talk to Julie outside of the reception and he explains that he is simply working with this reality of drugs, but Julie is repulsed and says she once cared about him, but she doesn’t know this monster who he is now. Suddenly, two police officers appear and start interrogating the two as to why they are on the street talking. After searching ‘Santana’s’ jacket (which is actually Little Puppet’s) the officers find Little Puppet’s drug stash and Santana is then sent back to Folsom. JD goes through with a plan to enlist the Aryan Brotherhood to send a message to the Black Gorilla Family, which ends up being utter bloodshed with racial overtones that Santana disapproves of. La Ema begins to quietly talk about Santana’s new weakness while they solicit Puppet (Little Puppet’s older brother) to kill Little Puppet for accidentally putting Santana back in prison. The film ends in a spirit of utter madness as Puppet reluctantly kills his younger brother, imploring him not to look him in the eyes as he does it; Santana voluntarily concedes to his murder by La Ema as they stab him with the same brutality as any other; and on the outside, Paulito follows in Santana’s footsteps as he initiates younger kids into the gang and then gives them a gun to shoot at the other neighbourhoods in the name of La Primera. But which innocent bystander should the new recruits shoot? It doesn’t matter.

Even the title of American Me taps into the identity crisis existing for Chicanos living in America. Santana says that his parents were proud pachucos, but this didn’t stamp out the Zoot Suit Riots in their era which were ignited by racism and fuelled by media coverage which hailed the sailors for ‘purifying’ America during a time of nationalistic frenzy. This prejudice continues when Santana is a teenager, especially in Juvenile Hall where the gangs are no longer segregated by neighbourhood locations, as in the Chicano barrios, but instead by race. The power hierarchy runs on machismo pride and because of its connection to survival, no ethnic groups are excluded. Near the end of the film, it is revealed that both Julie and Pedro have the Mexican gang tattoo on their hands, which Julie tries to hide with make-up and Pedro looks at with disdain. This symbolism drills home the fact that even those people in the Mexican community who don’t approve of the drug trade are still affected by it due to their connections of family and race. Julie condemns Santana’s actions by saying, “There’s no fucking hope for our kids, for our barrios, with people like you around.” And this cycle doesn’t end with Santana’s death. The message is clear: the Chicanos in this community will never be rid of the crime and drugs that pervade their streets. Malleable adolescent minds look up to the drug lords and see only the attractive shell of power which surrounds these ordinary men of flesh and blood. Everything: the racism, the clicas, the death, the drugs; will continue because the thirst for supremacy is now in that blood.

Lone Star

Lone Star (1996) follows Sam Deeds, a cynical Texas sheriff, as the discovery of a forty year-old skeleton in the desert prompts him to unravel the complex histories of his community. The film goes beyond the typical crime drama in that its plot serves as a vehicle to explore contemporary multiculturalism and the politics of history.

Lone Star begins with two men searching for old bullets in a Rio County desert, once used as a military firing range, when one stumbles upon a half-buried skeleton with a sheriff’s badge and Masonic ring. They call Sheriff Sam Deeds (played by Chris Cooper) who takes an immediate personal interest. Subsequent scenes highlight the racial dynamics of Rio County; the coexistence of Latino, Black, Native-American and White communities is tense due to historical strife, current inequalities and racial prejudice. Sam arrives in the midst of three old men reminiscing about his father Buddy Deeds. Even though Sam is clearly pained to be living in his father’s shadow, a man with legendary status, he asks that mayor Hollis Pogue retell his story. Back in 1958, Hollis and Buddy were deputies for Sheriff Charlie Wade, infamous for his corruption and ruthlessness. In a flashback, Buddy threatens Wade to leave town because folks are sick of living under his thumb, and the next day Wade disappears with $10,000 of county money. The rest of the film will be concerned with uncovering the many facets of this legendary character.

Meanwhile, another legend is being discussed. Pilar Cruz (played by Elizabeth Peña) debates with fellow teachers about how the Battle of the Alamo ought to be taught; every opinion is hot-headedly voiced from the staunchly orthodox to radically revisionist. Pilar and Sam were high-school sweethearts but their parents forbade the relationship so they parted ways; they exchange only a few terse conversations after the passage of many years. Sam is certain that the skeleton belongs to Charlie Wade, and resolves to determine whether it was his father who killed him. Sam attempts to pry into the memories of the older generation for clues, but finds that characters such as Hollis and Otis Payne, owner of the only bar where African-Americans feel welcome, have great affection for Buddy and are reluctant to share details of the night that Wade disappeared. However, he discovers that Buddy had an ambivalent sense of morality. Unlike his scoundrel of a predecessor, Buddy is remembered as being benevolent and just, however he would overlook minor infractions in return for favours. Only one individual speaks negatively of him, telling Sam about how he had a Mexican community removed from where he thereafter bought cheap lakeside property. Sam is motivated by the search for truth, but he is also resentful of the universal admiration for his father; if Buddy was a murderer Sam wants the world to know.

The director intermittently turns his lens to the lives of sub-characters, whose storylines portray experiences with racism and generational differences in social attitudes. Notable among these characters is Pilar’s mother, who is merciless with the illegal immigrants she employs and calls the border patrol when she spots new arrivals from her back porch. Meanwhile, Sam fills in more pieces of the puzzle. The bullet collectors from the beginning find a Colt 45 pistol shell amongst the customary M1 rifle shells; this was the type of gun Buddy used. Sam also goes down to Mexico to hear the story of how Wade killed a man named Eliano Cruz point-blank for transporting illegals, told by a survivor of this incident. The final piece falls into place when an acquaintance drops the fact that Buddy had a mistress, prompting Sam to search his father’s belongings until he finds a love letter from none other than Pilar’s mother. When he confronts Hollis and Otis about this, they spill the entire story; Wade found young Otis running after-hours gambling and was about to kill him when Buddy burst into the bar, in the moment when Hollis shot Wade in horror. The three buried Wade, taking money from the safe to make his disappearance seem realistic and gave it to Cruz’s widow, who Buddy later conceived Pilar with. Sam, who in the course of his journey mended his relationship with Pilar, reveals this history to her, but despite their blood relationship they decide to be together. Her words which close the movie offer an apt maxim for generations striving to overcome historical prejudice: “Forget the Alamo.”

Lone Star is a meditation on how a multicultural community, in which each racial group differently experienced the traumas of war, displacement and slavery, strives to write an all-encompassing political history and overcome prejudice to peacefully coexist. The investigation Sam undertakes to determine how Wade died is a metaphor for the process of writing political history; not only is it difficult to recover the exact deals, but history is influenced by the subjective viewpoints of its authours. In the end he settles with the hybrid of truth and myth that is palatable to most people.

Lone Star has a well-developed narrative on the U.S.-Mexico border which spans from the deeply conservative fear of loosing a clear demarcation between superior and inferior “civilizations,” to the liberal opinion that borders are “invisible lines” imposed by governments to the detriment of fundamentally equal human beings. The border is portrayed as porous, but only one way; Sam takes it for granted that he can spend the afternoon in Mexico, while Mexicans risk their lives to cross the border. The relationship between Sam and Pilar is a metaphor for that between the U.S. and Mexico; the two were always bound together by blood and experienced eras of alienation from each other. The fact that the pair wish to forget history and embark on an incestuous relationship certainly indicates the director’s optimism about future U.S.-Mexico relations.

Big Jake

Big Jake (1971) stars John Wayne as Jacob McCandles, a rough-and-ready cowboy who heads down to Mexico to retrieve his kidnapped grandson from the villainous John Fain. The film opens with an odd photographic sequence comparing the East coast versus the West coast at the turn of the century; while life in the East is comfortable and civilized, it is still wild and rugged in the West, with settlers battling the Native Americans and struggling against the elements. Yet another threat to frontier life is made clear when John Fain and his band of cutthroats descend on the McCandles ranch and kill practically everyone present. They kidnap youngest of the McCandles clan and thrust a ransom note at Martha McCandles, the stoic matriarch of the family. Martha receives offers of assistance from the army and the Rangers, but instead sends a message to her ex-husband Jacob, requesting his return to the ranch. Jacob left a decade ago, turned out by Martha for his womanizing ways, but he is not in the least perturbed by having missed his three boys grow into men. He is a straightforward, freedom-loving man who roams the country buying and selling livestock, solitary except for his uninventively named dog, Dog.

McCandles returns to the ranch, awkwardly reunites with his sons and plans to deliver the million dollar ransom to the location shown on the note. In what is perhaps a self-referential moment recognizing the obsolescence of traditional Westerns, Jacob, who stubbornly insists on riding horseback, is ignobly relegated to act as backup for the younger men who speed off in then-modern automobiles to save the boy. However, Jacob comes out on top when the men are ambushed by the Fain gang and suffer casualties, and only he presses on with his Native-American ally Sam, his two sons James and Michael, and the trusty Dog. Much time is spent depicting their voyage into Mexico, near the end of which Fain informs them to bring the ransom to a town called Escondero.

When they arrive at Escondero, they sense that the place is crawling with Fain’s men, so they create an elaborate ambush to kill them. Fain responds by sending for Jacob, warning that if anything is amiss when they collect the ransom the boy will be shot by a hidden sniper. At this time the sons find out that there is nothing but newspaper cuttings in the trunk, which at first outrages them, then they realize heroism inherent to the fact that Jacob refuses to negotiate with outlaws. It does not take long after they ride into Fain’s hideout for Jacob to initiate a shootout. This ends in the bloody death of Fain and his gang and victory for Jacob who recovers his grandson. In fact, the film ends with a sort of grotesque optimism. In the freeze frame of a beaming Jacob embracing his kin after delivering the classic line “Let’s go home,” there are two conspicuous absentees; these are Jacob’s long-time Native-American friend Sam and his loyal beast Dog, both of whom were hacked to death by machete and disturbingly forgotten by the celebratory heroes.

Big Jake fits squarely into a history of racial iconography that associates white individuals with mastery over nature through science and technology and other races with being “in touch” with nature, or existing in a “primitive” relation to it. The film highlights how the white characters are at the technological forefront of 1909; they compress time and distance with automobiles, make the seasons irrelevant with canned food, hunt with more advanced firearms and exploit natural resources with oil wells. In contrast, the Mexicans by and large blend into the landscape, such as women perpetually washing clothes by the riverside, as does the Native-American character, who materializes out of nowhere and is uncannily attuned to his surroundings.

However, despite the dearth of Mexican characters, Mexico is projected as a respected foreign power. The army general who offers to help Martha McCandles takes pains to describe how he has been granted permission by the Mexican government to make an incursion in its territory. Mexico and the U.S. are shown to be observant of border-crossing protocol, much to the dismay of the criminals, one of whom wrongly announces “There ain’t nothing they can do to us here” upon entering Mexico. The film also makes a point of holding a mirror to American racial prejudices by showing the more extreme prejudices supposedly held in Mexico. When the heroes check into a hotel in Escondero the clerk frankly states that dogs are allowed, but not Indians, and then a Chinese man is shown exiting a room. This ridiculous racial, and even species, hierarchy may shock audiences, but it is no more arbitrary than the hierarchy at the McCandles hacienda amongst the black and Mexican servants. Just as territoriality indicates sameness between Mexico and the United States, as both countries have strong state apparatus to maintain borders, so too does prejudice in that both countries have a self-entitled dominant race.

Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights

Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights (2004) is the sequel to 1987’s Dirty Dancing; and while it still maintains the common theme of social-class segregation, where the rich girl discovers her true disposition through dancing with the poor heart-throb, this newer version also introduces the aspect of interracial relationships. It begins with Katey Miller (Romola Garai) reluctantly moving with her family to Havana, Cuba, in her last year of high school because her father was offered a position there through the Ford automobile company. The date is November 1958, and while most girls are thinking about Elvis, Katey is reading Jane Austen and determined to go to college. Katey describes her feelings about coming to Cuba in three thoughts: her high school Spanish will be worthless, Fidel Castro leading a revolution against President Batista, and she doesn’t know anyone. While Katey is an isolated brainiac, her younger sister, Suzie, quickly makes friends with the other displaced American teenagers living in the resort which is their home while in Cuba. James (Jonathon Jackson), the son of Katey’s father’s boss, immediately takes a liking to Katey’s subtle intelligence, but she is constantly ridiculed by the popular socialite Eve. Becoming flustered, Katey accidentally knocks over the tray of a near-by waiter (Diego Luna), spilling all the drinks. Eve mutters, “Stupid spic” loud enough for him to hear as he walks away. Katey is disgusted at this remark, and she quickly looks for the waiter in order to apologize and pay for the drinks. She attempts her shaky Spanish and is met with the defiant response of, “I speak English, and I don’t need your charity.” The next day, Katey misses her bus at school and sees the same Cuban waiter dancing in the street as she walks home, but this time she is drawn to his energy and charm as he dances free-style to the afro-Cuban beats. He soon notices her and, after introducing himself as Javier,offers to walk her home. On the walk, they encounter a street band playing serene music to a crowd of onlookers. Suddenly, Javier attempts to usher a surprised Katey off the street with the explanation that she doesn’t know what the song means, just as dozens of policeman swarm in on the crowd. The two are separated and Katey returns to her resort.

The next day, Katey attempts some of the sexy dance moves she saw Javier use and is mortified when she realizes that he had been watching her the whole time. He invites her to the local club La Rosa Negra, but she reluctantly refuses as she is scheduled instead to be at the country club that night with James. The country club proves to Katey to be a boring replica of American life, minus the striking red dress she borrowed from a hotel maid, and she asks James to take her to La Rosa Negra. In the local club, Katey is spellbound by the thriving mass of flesh before her and chooses to dance the night away with Javier; much to the frustration of James, who is confronted and threathened by Javier’s revolutionary-minded brother, Carlos. James manages to finally steal Katey away and then attempts to make-out with her in his car. Katey slaps James after his sickening attempt to woo her, and dashes back into the club to Javier. The two walk back to the hotel together, unaware that they are being watched by Suzie and Eve. The next day, Javier is fired for ‘mingling with the guests’.

Katey searches for Javier and finds him in a ‘chop shop’ painting stolen cars. In attempts to smooth things over, she suggests that they enter the Amateur Latin Ballroom Dance contest, which Katey had learned about from the resort’s dance instructor (played by Patrick Swayze, the original heart-throb of Dirty Dancing). Javier just laughs because although Katey has dancing background from her parents who used to be professional dancers, she doesn’t exactly have that ‘Latin’ vibe. However, the tempting lure of the $5,000 prize money and a trip to America, which would solve Javier’s family’s economic crisis, gives the pair a reason to start practicing to win. Despite their different dancing styles and frustrations, the two gradually begin to grow closer and attempt to keep their romance a secret from Katey’s parents. Javier divulges to Katey that his father was taken from their home one night by Batista’s police under suspicion of being a revolutionary. Due to all the political unrest in Cuba, Javier proclaims that if they win the contest, he will bring his family to America. The final tweak to their routine comes when the dance teacher informs Katey that she has to connect with her fear of this Latin dancing in order to connect with her partner.

The semi-finals take place at The Palace, a haven of socialites which Carlos refers to as ‘Batista’s Playground’, and Javier and Katey’s romance is revealed to everyone. Although they make it to the finals, Katey’s parents are appalled that she would lie to them. Her mother cannot accept that her daughter is interested in Javier and that she would “kiss a Cuban in front of everyone.” The fight with her mother compels Katey to spend the night at Javier’s where she tells him that she never wants to leave Cuba. The next morning Katey makes amends with her mother and is given the blessing to continue in the contest. Katey and Javier compete last in the finals and are doing a sensational performance, when suddenly Carlos and other revolutionaries, posing as waiters at The Palace, begin shooting guns which creates chaos as everyone runs to the exit. Javier sprints after Carlos and manages to save his brother’s life just as a policeman puts a gun to his head in the deserted kitchen. The two escape and then argue about the morals of the revolution. Their feud is finally dissolved through the compassion of their brotherly bond at the exact moment that a commotion is heard in the streets. The people of Cuba are celebrating that President Batista has fled the country. Javier spends the night with Katey in a beach cabana and in the morning the two of them discuss their future. Katey is disappointed that, due to the revolution, Javier would rather stay in his own country than travel to America. Katey’s family, along with all the other Americans at the resort, decide to leave Cuba for their safety. Katey goes to Javier’s house for a final tearful good-bye. The two proclaim that they will never be without one another in their hearts and begin to sway to a silent beat in Javier’s courtyard. The last scene shows them at the local club with the coveted title of King and Queen of La Rosa Negra.

The blithe plot of this film rides along the spiky ridge of a politically-charged period in Cuban history from November 1958 to January 1959, marking the climax of the Cuban revolution. Katey’s family personifies the many American corporations which took up residence in Cuba while the country was under Batista’s rule. Havana is displayed through their eyes as a foreign playground for the rich; and although Katey is able to dive into the rich Cuban culture, the rest of the ‘gringos’ keep a racial division via their segregated resort. The opposite Cuban image is embodied in Carlos, an active member of the revolution’s uprising. His comments add texture to the motivation behind the common people against Batista. Javier’s life displays a young man striving to sustain his family and culture in a country where there’s “not such a thing as ‘just singing’ anymore”. The plot places America as an architect in Batista’s evil rule, due to the earlier trade relations between the two countries. Albeit that the main characters attempted a mixing of races with their love affair, in the end they do not win the dance competition and they cannot stay together, signifying the separation of relations between Cuba and America post-revolution. The movie may state at its opening that the events are based on a true story, but this is accurate only when viewed on the larger stage of the political dance of that era between the U.S. and Cuba.

The Alamo

The Alamo (1960), directed by and starring John Wayne, shares the same narrative elements of other films in its genre, but with the difference that it goes to surprising lengths to humanize the enemy Mexican army and show positive relationships between Mexicans and Anglo-Americans. The majority of this epic feature is not dedicated to the battle itself, which after all was a devastating American loss, but instead to the drama preceding it, which shows how American heroism lead to the creation of the Republic of Texas.

The film opens with a conversation between General Sam Huston and Colonel Travis that gives the viewer the key facts of the incipient tale. Huston has command over Texan armies trying to repel the forces of Mexican president Santa Anna, who is advancing northward to quell dissent among American settlers in Mexican-owned Texas. The problem is that these armies hardly exist, so he charges Colonel Travis with buying him time until he can assemble and train his men. San Antonio is located about two days ride from where Huston is encamped. This is where Travis and his twenty-seven soldiers are to hold off Santa Anna, who is rumoured to be marching with 7,000 battle-hardened troops. Soon Colonel Bowie arrives with 100 volunteers. Tension between the men is immediately apparent. Bowie missed the meeting with Huston due to a hangover and is incredulous that they are to protect the broken-down mission with their meager forces against the daunting Mexican army. More assistance arrives with Davy Crockett (played by John Wayne) and his band of twenty-three coonskin-capped Tennesseans.

Subsequent events serve to illustrate the characters of three leading men. Bowie is a rugged individual who is constantly rubbed the wrong way by Travis's upper-class airs and military formalities. Crockett is multi-faceted, able to play the eloquent ex-congressman when not performing his folksy attitude amongst the Tennesseans, and becomes the intermediary between the other two. While the Mexican army masses outside the Alamo's walls, an argument occurs between the men as to boost morale Travis wants to exaggerate the number of troops that one General Fannon is bringing to their aid, while Bowie detests lying to his men and wants to retreat. Arguments worsen when Bowie and Crockett takes matters into their own hands by leading the men to sabotage a militarily strategic Mexican cannon; the plan works out but Travis is infuriated and threatens to have Bowie arrested. However, the men learn to work together, coordinating to steal Mexican beef cattle, and despite having little hope of crushing Santa Anna and their jarring personality differences, each man decides to stay and fight for the Alamo.

On the first morning of battle, Santa Anna makes a surprising show of gallantry by informing those in the Alamo that they have one hour to evacuate women and children, and that they will be provided with transportation to a destination of their choice. The non-combatants leave, with the exception of Captain Dickinson's brave wife, after which the battle commences. Though a third of the American garrison is lost to casualties, morale is still high at the end of the day. However, the leaders know that Santa Anna underestimated them and will redouble his efforts tomorrow, and they receive the devastating news that General Fannon’s reinforcement army has been ambushed. Interestingly, Travis does not, as Alamo legend suggests, deliver a rousing speech about liberty and draw a line in the sand for loyal men to cross, but instead opens the gates and gives them honorable leave. Despite this, the men follow Bowie in standing by Travis, signifying their allegiance. The next day the battle takes place, a grim spectacle that claims the life of every American man. The film closes as the Mexican army find a terrified Mrs. Dickinson hiding with her daughter and a Mexican boy, but then stand to attention as she walks through them, over the horizon towards General Huston.

The Alamo fleshes out the personalities of the familiar American heroes, patriotically displays American heroism and commitment to individual freedom, and idealizes race relations. The latter point is carried through to a surprising degree. Unlike other Alamo adaptations which vilify Mexicans, this film both posits harmonious relations between Mexicans and Anglo-Americans, as well as uniquely humanizes its enemy. Bowie angrily jumps to the defense of the Mexican mayor when Travis treats him with racist suspicion when he offers information about Santa Anna. Bowie, who is married to a Mexican woman, speaks highly of Mexicans to Crockett when he says “they’ve got courage, they’ve got dignity, they ain’t afraid to die. And what seems important to me is they ain’t afraid to live. Today’s important to them, not the dollar tomorrow might bring.” Crockett also becomes briefly, but platonically, involved with a Mexican woman who alerts him to a stash of gunpowder and rifles. So the film projects a positive role for Mexicans in the Battle of the Alamo: not only are they friends and family of Americans, but they offer information and arms against Mexico in favour of Texas.

Even the Mexicans who are assaulting the Alamo are portrayed as fighting with the same bravery, dying with the same dignity, and acting upon the same sense of justice as the Americans. The Alamo goes so far as to strain the limits of credibility when, following the stress of battle, two men gaze admiringly down at their enemy and say: “Sure killed many a brave man today” and “Funny, I was proud of them, even while I was killing them, I was proud of them.” Santa Anna is portrayed as noble adversary, but the opening credits call his government “tyrannical” and an affront to the American values of liberty and republicanism. The Alamo still posits a battle between good and evil, with Santa Anna firmly in the latter camp, but not all Mexicans are connected to this figure. In this film Mexicans occupy contradictory positions: they are both friend and foe, foreigner and countryman.

Martyrs of the Alamo

For almost a century filmmakers have been mythologizing the Battle of the Alamo, the site where a handful of Anglo-American Texans stood their ground against the Mexican army in events leading to Texan Independence. Martyrs of the Alamo (1915) is the earliest surviving silent film to depict this event. In this rendition, the heroes are fighting against not only a territorial threat, as the Mexicans aim to oust Texan settlers from San Antonio, but also a moral threat, as the Mexicans are depicted as lecherous toward Anglo-American women.

Martyrs of the Alamo gives two reasons behind the Texas Revolution. Antonio López de Santa Anna, President of Mexico, sparked the ire of Texan settlers by introducing an anti-federalist constitution, denying them a state government. On top of this affront to American liberty, the despicable Santa Anna and other Mexicans sexually prey upon the Texan womenfolk. The film takes place in the town of San Antonio, which is overrun by rowdy and obnoxious Mexican soldiers. This grates upon our heroes, including the sharp-witted Silent Smith, noble James Bowie and jovial David Crockett. Prompted by the crack-down on their civil liberties and the moral depravity of the Mexicans, they resolve to band the men together and seize San Antonio while Santa Anna is absent. The Texans overwhelm the Mexican army, and to demonstrate their magnanimity they let the survivors leave San Antonio. The moral order is temporarily restored.

However, their benevolence backfires when Santa Anna hears about this humiliating defeat, and he vows to never rest until Texas is crushed. Meanwhile, Colonel Travis is sent by General Huston, an important Texas Revolution leader, to replace the sick Bowie as garrison leader. Travis delivers his legendary speech in which he demands that the men who will sacrifice their lives for Texas step over a line that he draws in the soil. All men step over, including Bowie being carried on a stretcher. Santa Anna has his troops surround the Alamo and sends a messenger with an ultimatum to surrender. When the messenger returns with a negative response, Santa Anna unleashes the brunt of his army, much superior in terms of soldiers and arms, upon the Alamo. Days of battle ensue in which the Texans show great heroism and sacrifice as they stave off endless waves of Mexican aggressors. Silent Smith exits the Alamo via a secret passageway and rides to General Huston with a plea for reinforcements.

While Huston advances towards the Alamo it is being defeated. Mexicans pour through the cannon-blasted walls, killing everyone in sight including the bed-ridden Bowie. Although the text optimistically states that “before each patriot’s death, many a foe had fallen,” the grim tableaus at the battle’s end show the high Texan casualties. The surviving men are shot (Travis and Crockett are inexplicably absent) and women are sequestered for Santa Anna’s sordid pleasure. As the text tells us, “An inveterate drug fiend, the Dictator of Mexico [is] also famous for his shameful orgies.” The Mexicans let one woman go to inform Huston what happened to the garrison. She finds Huston, tragically close to the Alamo with reinforcements, and he plans to attack the Mexican camp at San Jacinto. Silent Smith infiltrates the camp under the highly implausible guise of a deaf-mute game hunter to observe their activities. Huston launches an attack while the Mexicans are having a siesta and subjugates the camp in less than twenty minutes. Santa Anna, who before the battle began was drugged up in tent-turned-harem of female dancers, is found cowering in the bushes. Huston has Santa Anna, still in a drug-induced stupor, sign a document acknowledging Texas as a free and independent republic.

The Battle of San Jacinto gave birth to the rallying cry “Remember the Alamo!” This phrase, which alludes to a shared memory of grief inflicted by a foreign aggressor and the subsequent triumph of statehood, has become immortalized in American national myth. However, as historian Holly Beachley Brear has noted, the negative role of Mexican-Americans in this myth, projected in numerous Alamo films, makes it highly contestable as a national symbol. For Brear, the Alamo “serves mythologically as a second birthplace for the American,” but as Hispanics are cast as the oppressors, they are excluded from using the Alamo to construct their sense of national pride as other Americans do. The Alamo recalls an extremely violent chapter in Hispanic/Anglo relations as they battled over territory on the frontier. Added to this, Alamo legends often depict this battle as one between two national or racial character types rather than territorial entities.

This is nowhere more apparent than in Martyrs of the Alamo. The primary anxiety in the film is the threat posed to virginal Texan women by rapacious Mexican men. As the audience is informed early on, “Under the dictator’s rule the honor and life of American womanhood was held in contempt.” Women’s bodies often allegorically stand in for territory, and the integrity of both must be protected from invaders. The film continues to depict Mexicans and Americans on the opposite ends of the spectrum morally and temperamentally. For example, the Americans benevolently let enemy soldiers free versus the Mexicans who cruelly shoot their prisoners, or the Americans fight bravely and persistently versus the Mexican troops who are cowardly and dispirited. Myths distill actual events for the relevant elements to tell a good national story, leaving many alternative readings of those events unexplored. The question of how champion of liberty James Bowie can justify owning slaves is just one example of this.

YouTube Link: A brief introduction and the first ten minutes of the film.

Giant

Giant (1956) is an epic drama that spans three generations of the Benedict family as members of their close-knit Texan community become oil-rich. The film focuses mainly on Jordan “Bick” Benedict Junior, his struggle to maintain a ranching legacy in his family against the dynamic personalities of its members and his life-long contention with ranch-hand turned millionaire Jett Rink. However, there is also a sub-plot that portrays racism against Mexican-Americans by white Texans, a situation which improves incrementally with every new generation.

Bick (played by Rock Hudson) is a Texan rancher who meets socialite Leslie (played by Elizabeth Taylor) when he travels to Maryland to buy her stallion. He is enamored with her, though shocked by her frank and intelligent remarks, and they quickly marry. When the couple leave lush Maryland for dusty Texas, it is clear that Leslie is in a much tougher and cruder world. She must get used to new codes of behavior, most notably in the greater docility expected of her gender and unsympathetic attitude towards Mexicans. Mexicans form the Benedict household and ranch staff but Bick quickly stops Leslie from thanking them or inquiring their names, stating curtly: “Here we don’t make a fuss over those people.” Leslie also meets Bick’s formidable sister Luz and their oddball ranch-hand Jett (played by James Dean), who clearly irks Bick but Luz keeps him at the ranch out of compassion.

Leslie is resolutely dealing with the hardships of married life on a Texas ranch when their home-life is shaken up by Luz’s death. In her will, Luz bestows to Jett a plot of land. Jett lacks direction in life and gives the impression of being simple-minded, but he is astute enough to honour the will instead of taking the $1200 that Bick offers him in lieu of the land, wanting to keep the family ranch intact. The Benedicts have twins, Jordan III and Judy, who temporarily ease their marital strife. However, Bick finds the family structure that the male Benedicts upheld for generations unraveling when Leslie sidesteps his authority to improve the living conditions of the Mexican household and ranch staff, and his young son is terrified by horse-riding. This initiates a sense of failure in him which compounds throughout the film.

To intensify Bick’s resentment, Jett strikes big while prospecting for oil. Bick watches helplessly as trucks drive across his cattle ranch, but even he must concede to building wells with an increased demand for petroleum during WWII. After this point, the film transitions its focus from the couple to their struggle to accept the life choices of their young adult children. Jordan III balks the tradition that he take over the ranch, electing instead to become a doctor and controversially marry a Mexican girl named Juana. Judy and her fiancée also reject ownership of the ranch, favouring to start up their own homestead. Luz Junior, born some years after the twins, has a schoolgirl crush on Jett. Meanwhile, Jett has skyrocketed into fame and fortune, but it proves more than he can handle. The Benedicts travel to one of Jett’s hotels where Texan elites have gathered to see him deliver a national radio address. Jett drinks himself to oblivion, brawls with Jordan III who is incensed about racist policies in the hotel, and publicly passes out on a banquet table. On the way back home, an embittered Bick is redeemed when he fist-fights a diner owner who refuses service to a Mexican family, finally becoming a hero to Leslie. The film closes as they muse about the success and transformation of their family line while watching over their grandchildren, with the camera panning in on two pairs of blue and brown eyes, signaling the hopefulness of the next generation.

Giant (1956) has three interlacing stories: the growth and change of the Benedict family, the rise and fall of oil baron Jett Rink, and the physical and symbolic integration of Mexicans into the United States. As we learn from Jett, generations ago the Benedict family bought their 590,000 acres “from some ignorant Mexicans” at a meager 5¢ per acre. Now, the Mexicans are living in squalid conditions working for an Anglo-American, and targeted by vicious racism. At the beginning, Bick has zero interest in the Mexicans and is exasperated when Leslie enlists Dr. Guerro to review their living conditions, stating: “I’m not the Red Cross, I’m a cow man.” However, one of these racial “others” who he only conceived of as labourers enters his family as a daughter, which causes him to extend his sphere of personal responsibility even to the unknown Mexican family in the diner. By the end of the film, his son shares a practice with the Mexican doctor, and there is a beloved mixed-race child amongst his grandchildren. Mexicans are also portrayed as symbolically becoming part of the United States via their participation in WWII. The first person from the ranch to enlist is Angel Obregón Jr. who dies in action abroad. His funeral is a moving scene in which his flag-draped coffin is surrounded by the Mexican community, and then approached by Bick who solemnly presents Angel Obregón Sr. with the Texas flag. This flag, which to him was previously a symbol of whiteness, is now the property of both cultures.

100 Rifles

Along with the typical Western elements of train hijacks and shoot-outs, 100 Rifles (1969) features almost all of the central characters provocatively wet and/or half-naked. However, when the protagonists are not dropping their clothes, they are delivering a story about personal responsibility, set against a very specific politico-economic backdrop.

The opening scene establishes that the Mexican military ruthlessly executes the Yaqui, the indigenous people of Sonora, upon the slightest provocation. Right in front of freedom-fighter Sarita (played by Raquel Welch), they hang her father for attempting to steal a rifle. In town, the brutality continues when nine Yaqui are presented before General Verdugo and gringo businessman Steven Grimes. As Grimes winces, Verdugo has them lined up so that he can slay three with a single bullet, minimizing his costs. One of our heroes, Yaqui Joe (played by Burt Reynolds), makes a ruckus so they can escape. His ad hoc plan fails and he is dragged before the sneering General, but an African-American police officer named Lyedecker (played by Jim Brown) halts the General from killing Joe, for he intends to bring Joe to justice in the United States for a bank robbery of $6000.

Lyedecker assumes that he can reason with the General, but finds out that his credentials are moot in Mexico, and he is just as much a prisoner as Joe. Joe escapes and Lyedecker pursues, and after outrunning the Mexican military they level with each other: Joe feels that in spending the $6000 on rifles to arm the Yaqui, target of an ethnic cleansing plan by Verdugo and his German advisors, he is finally doing something virtuous. Lyedecker aspires to be a full-time police officer, and catching this thief is another feather in his cap. They have little time to convince each other of their respective causes; the military arrives, handcuffs them together and brings them to where the rifles have been uncovered. The General wants to have them killed, alongside the Yaqui who are being executed for petty crimes, but as they face the firing squad Sarita appears and snipes the squad leader. She and other Yaqui pour over the walls, fight with the military, and retreat with the rifles and our heroes.

Joe and Lyedecker are constantly bickering, and Lyedecker resolutely wants no part in the Yaqui struggle; as soon as the military is off their backs he is going to haul Joe back north. The tides turn, however, when the military seize Yaqui children from a pillaged settlement to exchange for rifles, and Lyedecker feels compelled to assist in their rescue. The team successfully overtakes military forces, has a wild party, and leaves the ranch a blazing inferno. Lyedecker and Sarita have sex and his tenderness for her further aligns him with the Yaqui cause. Lyedecker and Joe find out from Grimes, who they took hostage at the ranch, where the stops are for the train to Nogales, where the General awaits. They hatch a plan to stall the train at a water tower, by means of diverting its military passengers with a half-naked Sarita showering beneath it, then hijack it and descend upon Verdugo. The plan works and a shoot-out ensues in Nogales. Lyedecker fires the last shot, killing Verdugo’s horse, which leaves the General to the Yaqui’s vengeance. With Sarita killed in battle, Lyedecker sees that the Yaqui need a leader and entrusts Joe to this task, returning back north empty-handed but a nobler man.

100 Rifles does not employ any conventions to inform the viewer that its context is based on historical fact, such as spoken/textual introduction, provision of dates, or use of real names, which is why elements of the story seem extreme or incongruous. However, there was indeed a epoch in Mexican history, the second reign of Porfirio Diaz (1884-1911), in which the Yaqui were systematically persecuted by the state, and if not killed were forced into labour. Also during this time, Germany adopted a policy of overhauling and equipping the Mexican military, in an effort to curb American influence. In 100 Rifles, this epoch provides a good vehicle for a range of social criticisms. To begin with, Steven Grimes is representative of American business interests in Mexico; he owns a railroad monopoly in Sonora that wrongly traverses Yaqui territory. He is duplicitous, self-interested and spineless; he has no qualms about the Yaqui executions but he does not have the stomach to watch it. His constant fretting about how “Washington” will react to events in Mexico implies that his activities are not legitimate, yet tacitly approved.

Furthermore, the power invested in the state and its representatives is also questioned, most notably when Joe and Lyedecker are moments away from death. Their desperate dialogue starts with incredulity that they are awaiting execution and ends with Joe condemning Lyedecker for wanting to be a part of the police establishment, claiming that the American justice system is just as brutal and arbitrary as the Mexican one. From amoral capitalism to skewed law enforcement, the Mexico of 100 Rifles is a place where ills seen in the United States are played out to greater extremes. These issues, with the added component of race, were particularly important in Civil Rights Movement era 1969 when the film was made. Race is also explored in the movie; it is centered on the racially-motivated slayings of Yaqui by the Mexican government, its leading characters are African-American and Yaqui-American, and it has an interracial sex scene. However, though Lyedecker found that in Mexico justice must be served outside the system, in that a criminal bank robber can become a heroic freedom fighter, he ultimately returns to the United States with faith in the system, determined to stay the course in becoming a cop.

Island in the Sun

Robert Rossen’s 1957 film, Island in the Sun, takes place on the hypothetical Caribbean Island of Santa Marta, a former French plantation colony which is now a country administered by a British elite. At the time of its release, the film was very avant-garde in its exploration of racial tension and interracial romances; in particular, an on-screen interracial kiss between actor Michael Rennie and Dorothy Dandridge attracted a great deal of attention in the U.S.. The plot unravels before a backdrop of lush, beautiful Caribbean scenery and idyllic scenes of island life.

The protagonists of the film are many, both black and white. Maxwell Fleury, played by James Mason, is a white plantation owner’s son with an inferiority complex who plans to run in the upcoming island-wide election. He is suspicious of his beautiful wife Sylvia, whom he suspects of cheating on him with another island man, Hilary Carson, based on a misinterpretation of a few minor coincidences. Fleury’s younger sister Jocelyn (Joan Collins) is being courted by the dashing Euan Templeton, a war hero visiting his father, the island’s governor Lord Templeton. The plot also follows David Boyeur, played by Harry Belafonte, a young ambitious black leader who will run against Fleury in the election and has the vast majority of the people’s support. A romance between Boyeur and Mavis Norman (Joan Fontaine), a white woman from the white elite class, creates a lot of tension in the film. Finally, the film follows the interracial romance between Margot Seaton (Dorothy Dandridge), a black drug-store clerk, and Denis Archer (John Justin), a white aide to the Governor.

Maxwell Fleury’s father Julian is revealed by the local newspaper to have a most unsavoury history; he has a black grandmother. Jocelyn and Maxwell are horrified by the news, as it constrains their social relations on the island. Jocelyn is convinced that Euan Templeton, a future member of the House of Lords in England, will not marry her because she is one-sixteenth black. As a self-perceived compromise to marrying him, she begins to have sexual relations with him and becomes pregnant. Convinced that she must flee and hide her baby because it may be black, she begs her mother for help, at which point her mother reveals that Jocelyn in fact has no black blood because Mr. Fleury is not her father and encourages her to quickly marry Euan. Maxwell, on the other hand, sees the news of his partial blackness as an opportunity to try to gain black votes. One night, as he leaves the Santa Marta Club alone, Maxwell sees Hilary Carson, the man he suspects of having an affair with his wife, and murders him accidentally in his apartment, despite Carson’s denial of the accusation. The rest of the movie follows the Police Chief’s investigation of the murder and Maxwell’s guilt-ridden paranoia about being discovered.

In the end of the film, it is clear that Boyeur has more voter support than Maxwell Fleury, as demonstrated in a scene in which the black crowds begin to drown out Fleury’s speeches with calypso music and cheer hugely for Boyeur. Boyeur is black, one of the people, and so he will win. Maxwell turns himself in to the police, who will try to minimize his sentence. Jocelyn and Euan Templeton leave on a plane for England together, as do Margot Seaton and her love, Denis Archer, both couples hoping to make a future there. David Boyeur and Mavis Norman’s interracial relationship doesn’t work out because Boyeur insists he can never lead his people if he is married to a white woman.

This film portrays the Caribbean as a natural paradise where there are racial tensions, but shows no true interracial violence or hatred. Indeed, the scenes at parties and in the streets of the town always show intermingling blacks and whites. The island’s government seems accepting of black political rights, as shown by the David Boyeur’s ambitions - although his victory is not shown in the film. The line between blacks and whites is predominantly economic in the film; the whites are very rich, while the blacks are labourers on the plantations and fishermen in their villages. There is tension between the races because of history; the black characters’ fathers were slaves on the plantations of the white characters’ fathers. This history is what prevents Boyeur and Mavis Norman from being together. Despite the evident lack of hatred, there is acknowledgement of mild conflict as well as minor racism, as shown in the reactions of the Fleurys to the news of their partial blackness. Overall, however, the film portrays interracial romances and general racial harmony, and creates an atmosphere of imminent political equality for the island’s blacks, which shows an almost naïve hopefulness about the future of racial interactions in the Caribbean. The only doubt about this hopefulness is shown in the casting of the black protagonists, who are essentially white in their dress, manner, and speech. Dorothy Dandridge and Harry Belafonte are both definitely less black than the rest of the black islanders in the film.

Posse

Mario Van Peebles's Posse sets out to re-envision the making of the US West, and so also a central aspect of the country's mythological history. The film's claim is that African Americans were central to the movement west: that up to a third of cowboys were black, and for instance also that Los Angeles was a majority black town at its foundation. Moreover, with its street-smart beat and stars such as Isaac Hayes and Big Daddy Kane, the movie wants to draw a direct lineage between the posses of the wild west and the posses of the contemporary urban metropolis.

But the film starts in the Cuban-American war of 1898. Here we meet the movie's protagonist, Jesse Lee (played by Van Peebles himself), and its antagonist, Colonel Graham (Billy Zane). Graham commands Lee and a rag-tag of other mostly black soldiers to undertake a secret mission, in civvies, to intercept a Spanish supply convoy and grab whatever arms and ammunition may be available. But the real object of the raid is gold, and Graham's aim is to frame the men for desertion and then to disappear with the loot. A shoot-out ensues, in which Lee shoots Graham's eye out, and those that survive of Lee's troop become mutineers for real, scarpering off to the mainland to become the film's eponymous posse. Soon they find, however, that the Colonel has raised a posse of his own, and is set on tracking them down, to demand his bullion back, and to seek an eye (or more) for an eye.

This plot overlaps with and is in some tension with another, in which Jesse melts down some of his gold into bullets, for it is only with such precious armament that he can put an end to the demons that haunt him from his past. He sets out West, to the site of a utopian black community founded by his father on peaceful, non-violent lines, but which the elder Lee never got to see as he was brought down and killed by vengeful white vigilantes. One by one these tormentors from the past are dispatched by Jesse's deadly sharp-shooting, and in the process he persuades the community of Freemanville that sometimes it's no crime to stand up for your rights with a show of force. In the middle of the final gun-battle, one character is seen asking "Why can't be just get along?" in an ironic echo of Rodney King's plaint in the context of contemporary white vigilantism. But the entire film is designed to show the myriad reasons why such liberalism is a dead-end for the cause of African American justice.

The film's major contradiction is that it is, well, just a film, and as such its politics consists in the liberal gesture of representation and revisionism. Its charge is that Hollywood has whitened the image of the West, erasing the African American presence from the frontier. In so far as Posse aims to put black faces back in the frame, and for all its representational shock tactics (easily absorbed by the MTV generation, however), it's no more, if no less, than an extension of Black History month.

The film's narrative contradiction, on the other hand, concerns the uneasy interplay between its two plots: the Cuban-American "Buffalo Soldiers" on the one hand, and the lone avenger of the father's shattered dream, on the other. A sign of this tension is the fact that Lee is repeatedly separated from his posse. For his gang is in fact an inter-racial assemblage, forged in the realization that foreign wars such as the intervention on Cuban soil have less to do with liberty than with plunder and the continued exploitation of the US color line. The posse itself, in short, has more to do with class; it is Lee's personal battle with his truncated inheritance that revolves around race.

There's an attempt to bring the two plotlines together: first when the posse rallies round to defend Freemanville, and it is the group's white character who becomes the sacrificial victim for Anglo rage; and second when it turns out that the community's black mayor cares more about money than about solidarity, and is prepared to sell the communal land when the railroad nears and raises property prices. Accordingly he, too, has to die, albeit at white hands rather than black, leaving Jesse racially pure if still uncertain about class.

But the final encounter is with the Colonel, and the principle that the last battle is the most significant suggests that it's the Cuban-American trauma rather than the collapse of frontier utopianism that most marks Jesse's fate. Perhaps Van Peebles is never quite idealistic enough to believe that the failure of non-violent communalism is such a disaster. Still, the fact that he casts his own father in the film, as well as a host of stars from the past, not least the veteran black actor Woody Stode who relates the entire tale as though in flashback, suggests that the director himself can't quite make up his mind about this inheritance of attempts to work within rather than without the system.

YouTube Link: Intelligent Hoodlum, "The Posse (Shoot 'Em Up)".