Glamour in the Andes_Women in Peruvian cinema_Teitelbaum

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Glamour in the Andes: Indigenous
Women in Peruvian Cinema
Iliana Pagán-Teitelbaum
a
a
Coop. Los Robles 903-A , San Juan, PR 00927, Puerto Rico
Published online: 12 Mar 2012.
To cite this article: Iliana Pagán-Teitelbaum (2012) Glamour in the Andes: Indigenous
Women in Peruvian Cinema, Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies, 7:1, 71-93, DOI:
10.1080/17442222.2012.658297
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17442222.2012.658297
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Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies
Vol. 7, No. 1, March 2012, pp. 71–93
Glamour in the Andes: Indigenous
Women in Peruvian Cinema
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Iliana Pagán-Teitelbaum
This study analyzes racist cultural representations in two purportedly pro-indigenous
Peruvian films directed by non-indigenous filmmakers during and after the Peruvian
civil war in which 70,000 people, mostly Quechua-speakers, were killed (1980–2000).
I contend that in the films Gregorio (1984, dir. Grupo Chaski) and Madeinusa (2006,
dir. Claudia Llosa), the positive image of indigenous Peruvian women as migrant
subjects with agency is weakened by the dominance of a ‘foreign’ and exoticizing gaze
over the marginalized ‘other.’ Even though the films of Chaski and Llosa may intend
to reject the stereotyped representation of indigenous women, they nevertheless end up
by reinforcing a negative image. By denying self-representation or distorting traditional
Andean values, these two films participate in the recurrent media practice of cultural
violence against the indigenous peoples of the Americas.
Keywords: Andean film; indigenous Peru; racism; Grupo Chaski; Claudia
Llosa; cultural violence
The filmic narratives of Gregorio (Espinoza et al., 1984), directed by the film
collective Grupo Chaski, and Madeinusa (Llosa, 2006), directed by Claudia Llosa,
construct an uncommonly positive image of indigenous Peruvian women as migrant
subjects with agency – that is to say, with the capacity to act and make decisions
in the world. However, in these films, the positive image of indigenous women as
social protagonists is weakened by the dominance of a ‘foreign’ and exoticizing
gaze over the marginalized ‘other.’ The films of Chaski and Llosa may intend to reject
the stereotyped representation of indigenous women, but they nevertheless end up
by reinforcing a negative image. In the selection of the cast and the structuring of
the narrative argument, the representation of the indigenous female in these
films replicates dominant Eurocentric patterns. By denying self-representation
(in choosing white or Euro-descendant actresses to perform the roles of indigenous
women), or by offering a verisimilar portrayal that negatively distorts traditional
Andean values, these two films participate in the recurrent media practice of cultural
violence against the native peoples of the Americas.1
In his book Culture and Imperialism, Edward W. Said (1993) underscores the
importance of narratives as creators of identity and history. According to Said,
ISSN 1744–2222 (print)/ISSN 1744–2230 (online)/12/010071–23 ß 2012 Taylor & Francis
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certain narratives are allowed to thrive while others are blocked (1993, p. xii).
The ‘power to narrate’ determines which narratives about the ‘other’ are allowed
access to the dominant media. As demonstrated by the cultural critics Ella Shohat
and Robert Stam, ‘filmic fictions inevitably bring into play real-life assumptions’
about space and time, and about social and cultural relations. Even if they do not
claim to represent specific historical incidents, films that represent marginalized
cultures in a realistic way do make implicit factual claims (Shohat & Stam,
2004, p. 179).
In the case of the representation of Native American peoples in the dominant
cinema of the 20th century, portrayals of Native Americans have often been criticized
for flattening, suppressing, or mixing up the cultural and geographical differences
of indigenous peoples in order to create an ‘instant Indian’ (Bataille & Silet, 1980,
p. 40). A blatant example of the ‘instant Indian’ can be seen in the fourth film
of the Indiana Jones series, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
(Spielberg, 2008). Directed by Steven Spielberg and filmed mainly in Hawaii,
indigenous elements characteristic of different regions and eras of Peru are combined
together with indigenous elements of Mexico and Mesoamerica, along with elements
of ancient civilizations of Greece, Egypt, Iraq, and China, to create a group of
supposedly Peruvian indigenous people who live in the low coastal region, yet dress
in a mixture of styles from the distinct highland regions of Peru; who speak
Quechua (the main indigenous language of the Andes) like the Mexican Pancho
Villa supposedly did, and who listen to Mexican Ranchera music (Wikipedia, 2008b;
Arellano, 2008).
These mistakes are not a simple ‘historical imprecision’ due to the ignorance
of Spielberg’s research team, but are part of a racist tradition of representation of
indigenous peoples in dominant cinema. This tradition is fostered by stereotypes
that originated from a racist prefabricated ideology initially destined towards
Jews and Muslims, the internal ethnic and religious ‘others’ of Medieval Europe.
During the Christian Reconquista of the Iberian Peninsula, anti-Semitism and
anti-infidelism provided a conceptual apparatus against the ‘internal others,’ which
was later recycled and projected outward against Europe’s ‘external others,’ the
indigenous peoples of Africa and the Americas. As Shohat and Stam point out,
‘preexisting forms of ethnic and religious otherizing were transferred from Europe to
its colonies’ providing a ‘pretext for enslavement and dispossession.’ From the period
of the Christian-European conquest of the American continent, hegemonic
representations have tended to apply the stereotype of the ‘infidel’ to Native
Americans, describing indigenous peoples as ‘savages, infidels, and sexual omnivores’
(Shohat & Stam, 2004, p. 60).
Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano condemns the ways in which Eurocentric
discourses treat Native American peoples as ‘others,’ denying indigenous peoples’
‘different’ identities and even their right to exist. The indigenous peoples of the
Americas, Galeano states, live in exile in their own land (1997, pp. 18–19).2 Within
their own countries, people of indigenous descent are rejected as ‘others’ even when,
in some instances such as in Peru, they constitute a majority of the national
population. If acknowledged by the media, indigenous peoples still tend to be seen
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73
as ‘anachronisms’ from the past or as an obstacle to ‘progress’ (Bataille & Silet, 1980,
pp. 36–37). As Said highlights, in Eurocentric representations, non-European
peoples tend to lack history, culture and integrity, and when there is anything worth
being described, it is ‘unutterably corrupt, degenerate, irredeemable,’ and serves
to satisfy the ‘exotic tastes’ of European or North American audiences (1993, pp. xix
and xviii).
In Peru, the indigenous woman of the Andean mountain range provinces is one
of the ‘internal others’ that has been repeatedly stereotyped and emptied of history
by the dominant media. The Peruvian version of the ‘instant Indian’ woman
has consisted of adding braids and a traditional skirt to Euro-American actresses
in televised soap operas, or to male actors in purportedly comic television programs.
The Peruvian productions of soap operas Simplemente Marı´a (1969), Natacha
(1991), and Luz Marı´a (1998) repeat the story of the provincial girl who migrates
from the interior of Peru to the coastal capital of Lima to become a servant, and who
later marries the rich man in whose mansion she works.3 In these soap operas, white
actresses of European descent are transformed into ‘instant’ provincial figures
by virtue of a pair of braids, a naı̈ve attitude, and a mocking imitation of the ways of
speaking in rural, non-metropolitan regions of Peru.
Since the 1970s, Peruvian television also broadcasts a grotesque and demeaning
caricature of the so-called chola (a degrading term for women of Andean descent)4
represented by male actors. In radio and television transmissions of the 1970s and
1980s, Guillermo Rossini represented the Andean woman of the ‘deep’ voice
(La Republica, 2005). The character of the ‘Chola,’ created by Rossini and
popularized in the comedy program Risas y Salsa [Laughter and Sassiness], would
be further degraded in the characters of Ernesto Pimentel’s ‘Chola Chabuca’ and
Jorge Benavides’ ‘Paisana Jacinta’ [Country woman Jacinta].5 As stated by Peruvian
writer Dante Castro (2005), these characters are pathetic mockeries of Andean
women that reveal ‘an intercultural and interethnic conflict that is always resolved in
favor of hegemonic culture.’6
The lack of a plural access to means of mass communication denies the possibility
of allowing the entrance into society of images created by disempowered and
underrepresented communities. Peruvian anthropologist Rodrigo Montoya asserts
that in Peru there are ‘profound mechanisms of racial discrimination,’ which no one
wants to talk about (1986, p. 49). Even though the majority of the Peruvian
population is of indigenous descent (80 percent), the indigenous peoples of Peru do
not have access to the dominant means of communication. Peruvian television
programming is usually produced in Lima, and the owners of television channels
are all ‘white.’ This contributes to the reproduction of Eurocentric patterns in which
success, beauty, and love appear associated with blond hair, light-colored skin, and
a tall stature (as in the infamous advertising campaign of Gloria milk in Peru7). In the
recent 2011 elections, violently racist reactions against the presidential candidate
of indigenous descent that won the elections, Ollanta Humala, became visible in
social networking spaces such as Facebook with cries to impede the vote of Andean
people, or calls for the death of all Peruvians of indigenous descent (Bruce, 2011;
Ruiz Tovar, 2011).8
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In a 2005 article regarding the celebration of the United Nation’s International
Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (21 March), Peruvian journalist
Alberto Garcı́a asks why the ‘white race’ predominates as the standard of beauty in a
multicultural country like Peru. ‘Have you ever asked yourself why all the people on
TV programs or publicity look different than yourself, your neighbors, or the
majority of Peruvians? Why there are no people with Andean or mestizo features in
TV commercials?’ (Garcı́a, 2005). It is not surprising that, as journalist Luis Arriola
(2007) points out, many Peruvians secretly or unconsciously aspire to look like
the tall, blond, blue-eyed advertisement models. Peruvian blogger Carlos A. Quiroz
demonstrates that it is common for Peruvian television to depict ‘white people as
successful, aristocratic, refined and cosmopolitan,’ while indigenous, black, or
mestizo people are portrayed as ‘poor, dirty, awkward, frustrated’ beings that ‘aspire
to imitate the lives of whites as their goal for success.’ Quiroz (2007) adds that even
when television images attempt to show a more serious portrayal of indigenous
peoples or of those of African descent, the final message is that their customs
are ‘exotic and related to the past.’ The absence of alternative images that create a
dialogue with, debate, or reject the constant media caricatures of people who are not
Euro-descendant magnifies the dangerous and alienating repercussions that a torrent
of images loaded with negative stereotypes can have on the contemporary imaginary.
In their first feature film, Gregorio (1984), the directors of the film collective
Grupo Chaski [Chaski Group9] reject the derisive stereotypes of the Andean woman.
Chaski was formed in 1982 by Peruvians Marı́a Barea, Fernando Barreto, and
Fernando Espinoza, Uruguayan Alejandro Legaspi, and Stefan Kaspar, from
Switzerland. Committed to altering commercial cinematographic practices and
making films with and for marginalized communities, the members of the collective
were conscious of power dynamics, and were ready to create a space of inclusion in
their films (McClennen, 2008, p. 1). Following the tradition of Cuzco Cinema Club,10
whose founders directed the first film in Quechua, Kukuli [Dove] in 1960 (Figueroa
& Nishiyama, 1960), Chaski dared to start their film Gregorio in a ‘dominated
language,’ the indigenous language Quechua (Mazzotti, 2002, pp. 37–58). In
addition, Gregorio focuses on the problems of Andean migrants expelled from the
mountains by what Peruvian intellectual José Carlos Mariátegui already condemned
in 1928 as the ‘problem of land’ (Mariátegui, 1974, pp. 50–104).11
In Chaski’s film, Juana (Gregorio’s mother) migrates to Lima with her family.
Juana is presented as a beautiful young indigenous Quechua-speaking woman. Juana
is a secondary character, but even though the film centers on how her son Gregorio
becomes a working street-child, the film allows spectators to recognize Juana as
an intelligent, strong, independent, responsible, and hard-working woman. Juana
participates in making the household decisions; she has good relations with the
neighbors of the arenal or desert squatter camp on the outskirts of Lima where
the family settles; she gets a job when she becomes a widow; and she always cares
for her children.
Juana’s attributes contrast with the stereotypes typically ascribed to Andean
women in the dominant media. Juana is not a childish, naı̈ve, savage or ignorant
woman, like the provincial girl in the soap operas. She also does not portray the
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Indigenous Women in Peruvian Cinema
75
Figure 1. Vetzy Pérez-Palma (a white actress from Lima, Peru) as the indigenous migrant woman,
Juana, in the film Gregorio (Espinoza et al., 1984).
caricature of the indolent, stupid, filthy, and even bestial woman that is associated
with Andean women in television comedy programs that – even today – constantly
‘confuse’ the character of the indigenous woman with a llama or a dog (i.e. the
character of an Andean woman walks in a room, and other characters comment on
the ‘dog’ that just got in, or ask what that ‘llama’ is doing there). The distancing
from these stereotypes, however, comes at a very high price: the almost
immediate westernization of Juana and the utilization of a Euro-Peruvian actress,
Vetzy Pérez-Palma, to perform the role of the indigenous woman.
According to a recent communication with Alejandro Legaspi, co-director of
Gregorio, Pérez-Palma was an actress from Lima who had studied in the National
School for Dramatic Arts. Pérez-Palma did not speak Quechua. Legaspi himself
admits that this constitutes ‘a serious flaw in the film’ but that ‘unfortunately there
are very few actors who speak Quechua’ (Alejandro Legaspi, personal communication, 17 July 2008). Producer and co-director Stefan Kaspar adds that the selection of
Pérez-Palma was a much-debated ‘mistake.’ In Kaspar’s opinion, it ‘would’ve been
better to work with an Andean woman – not necessarily a professional actress.’
However, Kaspar and Legaspi lost (three to two) in Grupo Chaski’s final vote (Stefan
Kaspar, personal communication, 27 January 2009). As a result, Pérez-Palma was
disguised to look like an indigenous woman in Gregorio (see Figure 1). The casting of
a white actress in the role of the indigenous woman reminds us that white people
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I. Pagán-Teitelbaum
may be cast in any ethnic role, while people of ‘other’ colors are limited to roles
assigned by their ethnicity (Shohat & Stam, 2004, p. 189).
With two short braids and traditional clothing, Chaski created their version of the
‘instant Indian’ woman. Pérez-Palma displays a face enhanced by makeup, and
eyebrows shaped into an artificial arch, traits that do not fit in with the figure of a
campesina mother recently arrived from the mountains. In spite of pronouncing
some words in Quechua, Pérez-Palma’s representation of an ‘instant Indian’ woman
constitutes a missed opportunity to allow the screen images of underrepresented
sectors of majority ethnic groups in Peru. Quechua is one of the official languages in
Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Colombia. With almost five million speakers of Quechua
in Peru, and 10 million Quechua speakers in South America (in Peru, Bolivia,
Ecuador, Colombia, Argentina, and Chile), Quechua is the indigenous language with
the greatest number of speakers in the Americas (Cavero, 2005; Chirinos, 1998, p. 3;
Wikipedia, 2008d). Chaski Group’s decision not to cast an actress from the Quechuaspeaking community to interpret the role of Juana inadvertently recurs in a typical
insult: ‘you are unworthy of self-representation’ and ‘no one from your community
is capable of representing you’ (Shohat & Stam, 2004, p. 190).
It is possible that in order to deal with the problematic incongruity of having to
disguise Pérez-Palma as an indigenous woman, Chaski opts to transform the persona
of Juana immediately after her arrival in Lima. In an implausible evolution of the
character’s image, Juana rapidly loses her Quechua language, her braids, and all
Andean forms of expression and dress (see Figure 2). During most of the film, the
character flaunts the appearance of a westernized woman from Lima. Unfortunately,
the film’s positive narrative about the indigenous migrant is therefore not associated
with the image of an indigenous woman, but instead with the image of a white
Limeña.
In Gregorio, Chaski endeavors to forge a positive image that extracts the Peruvian
indigenous migrant woman from her usual invisibility in the media. Nonetheless,
by using a non-indigenous actress and adhering to the glamorous esthetic canons
of western beauty, the film erases the possibility of an image of indigenous beauty
and strength. As a result, the film does not achieve the balance in the representation
of the Peruvian indigenous woman that Chaski previously sought in their
excellent 1982 documentary, Miss Universo en el Perú [Miss Universe in Peru]
(Grupo Chaski, 2008 [1982]).
Conversely, cultivating an Andean esthetic and choosing an actress from the
Quechua-speaking community does not automatically assure a balanced or just
representation of the indigenous woman. ‘Nor does chromatically literal selfrepresentation guarantee non-Eurocentric representation. The system can simply
‘‘use’’ the performer to enact the dominant set of codes’ (Shohat & Stam, 2004,
p. 190). This is the case with the film Madeinusa (2006), by Peruvian filmmaker
Claudia Llosa (niece of the Nobel Prize-winning author Mario Vargas Llosa).
The leading role in Madeinusa is performed by Magaly Solier, a young Quechuaspeaking woman from Ayacucho, one of the poorest regions of Peru (see Figure 3).
The participation of the Quechua-speaking community from a different region,
Canrey Chico in Huaraz, and the filming in this Andean town for six weeks in 2005,
77
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Indigenous Women in Peruvian Cinema
Figure 2. Juana immediately loses her Andean characteristics. The positive narrative about the
indigenous migrant is associated with the image of a white Limeña.
contribute to a realist Andean representation that appears to be deceptively
ethnographic. The false ethnography of Madeinusa proffers a picturesque but
distorted and misleading representation of indigenous traditions and poverty in the
Andes. According to Llosa’s film, it is the depraved way of life of the Andes
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I. Pagán-Teitelbaum
Figure 3. Director Claudia Llosa chose a Quechua-speaking actress, Magaly Solier (from Huanta,
Ayacucho, Peru), and used an Andean filming location (Canrey Chico, Huaraz, Peru) in the filming
of Madeinusa (Llosa, 2006).
that drives the young female protagonist, whose name is Madeinusa (an allusion to
the local admiration of all things foreign12), to escape to the capital, Lima.
Llosa’s film uses an Andean filming location and a Quechua-speaking central
character in order to tell a story that violently caricaturizes the Quechua-speaking
people of what the director calls a ‘forgotten town in the mountain ranges of Peru’
(Matons, 2007b). Llosa relies on a colorful and vibrant cinematography to convey the
story of a naı̈ve, backward, superstitious, and savage indigenous community that
believes that everyone may sin during ‘Holy Time’ (a play on the Christian religious
holiday of Holy Week) because Christ is dead, and therefore he ‘can’t see.’
The most degenerate ‘sin’ that Llosa’s film tries to concern and shock the spectator
with is the usurpation of the girl’s virginity by her pedophile father, the Town
Mayor, Mr Cayo (Ubaldo Huamán). Mr Cayo, the highest figure of authority in
‘Manayaycuna’ (closed town in Quechua), sleeps in a small bed between his two
adolescent daughters (see Figure 4). He is shown to be sexually aroused by the
physical proximity to his daughters, and is waiting to have sex with his daughter
Madeinusa during Holy Time. Other ‘sins’ represented in the film are institutionalized lechery and infidelity, theft amongst neighbors, general alcoholism, wanton
waste of food, homicide, betrayal, and dishonesty. The protagonist is persistently
associated with the corrupt, degenerate, and repulsive. In the opening scenes, the
character of the young indigenous woman is associated with lice and dead rats (see
Figure 5). Salvador [Savior] (Carlos de la Torre), the innocent white interloper with
the European-accented Spanish, has the young woman’s name on his shirt label
(‘MADE IN USA’), and perceives the town of Manayaycuna with distrust and
disgust.
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Indigenous Women in Peruvian Cinema
79
Figure 4. The Town Mayor, Mr Cayo, shares a bed with both daughters, and sexually harasses
his daughter Madeinusa.
Figure 5.
Madeinusa is associated with disgusting things, such as dead rats.
Peruvian intellectual Rocı́o Silva defines disgust as ‘an aversive sensation produced
by personal unexpected contact with an object or subject that provokes both rejection
and attraction, due to the strange fear that it may contaminate us.’ In the Peruvian
context, Silva analyses disgust as an ‘affective platform used to construct trashed
alterities’ with the goal of turning the other into a ‘disposable being that has
practically lost its human condition’ (2008, pp. 155–157). One of the reactions
the film Madeinusa seeks to provoke is disgust, in the face of the abject customs of
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I. Pagán-Teitelbaum
Madeinusa and her isolated village, Manayaycuna. As the Peruvian sociologist
Vicente Otta (2008) points out: ‘This stuff is disgusting! says the white Limeño the
first time he tastes the Andean food he’s been given to sate his hunger.’ According
to Otta (2008), Salvador’s verbal expression ‘epitomizes the character’s attitude
towards the community he is in, and at the same time, it exemplifies the director’s
view of the indigenous world she wanted to present: distance, incomprehension, and
rejection.’
The character Madeinusa represents an icon of exotic, sexualized, and perverse
beauty. Dressed in the white habit of the Virgin, Madeinusa’s gaze seduces the
reticent ‘Prince Charming’ Salvador in their first encounter (see Figure 6). Later,
Madeinusa tempts him to ‘take’ her virginity so that he will relocate her to Lima. On
the same night – as is suggested by the off-screen sound of the sexual moaning of the
girl and her father – Madeinusa also has sex with her dad before the astonished gaze
of Salvador, who peeks through an open window (see Figure 7). The public is
encouraged to desire to look together with Salvador, and to feel disgust with him, as
the camera identifies constantly with his masculine western gaze, which is supposed
to guide the spectator in entering the ‘unknown’ culture of the ‘repulsive’ Andean
town invented by Llosa.
Apart from reproducing the formula of the indigenous woman as a sexually
degenerate woman who ‘offers’ her virgin body to the ‘conquistador’ from Lima as
well as to her father, Madeinusa’s backward and ignorant qualities are emphasized
in the clichéd scene in which the white man, Salvador, shows her the mechanism
of a voice recorder, a technology she supposedly has no knowledge of.
Additionally, Madeinusa is represented as a killer and a traitor. Before migrating
to Lima in search of the glamour and beauty promised by her fashion and lifestyle
magazines featuring blond women, she kills her father in an unexpected act of
violence, and then betrays her ‘savior’ accusing Salvador of committing the murder.
The superficial appeal of the physically beautiful protagonist Madeinusa is
ruptured by her repulsive behavior. The allegedly sophisticated search of the
character Madeinusa for ‘absolute liberty’ (according to Llosa in Matons, 2007b),
does not entail liberation from any of the mechanisms that oppress Andean women,
but instead implies a participation in the erotic fantasies of the hegemonic masculine
figures. Madeinusa exhibits her beauty in an individualistic competition against her
sister Chale (Yiliana Chong) and the other young women in her village (see Figure 8).
It is ironic that the female adolescents compete before a masculine jury for the
opportunity to represent the Virgin, precisely during the days in which their fathers
would be authorized to take their virginity. Madeinusa’s triumph in the glamorous
Virgin contest turns her into an object of lust for all the men in the town, including
her father.
During the movie, Madeinusa continually carries out household tasks, often
cooking or cleaning her home. She is superstitious and believes dead rats bring good
luck in love. The unpleasant, unprotected sex with Salvador and with her father does
not appear to have any repercussions for the health of the young woman. The escape
to Lima with a truck driver is presented as a bittersweet success for Madeinusa, and
yet the disturbing violence at the end of the film discourages spectators from
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Figure 6. Madeinusa, with an exotic and perverse beauty, seduces the Limeño newcomer,
Salvador, with her gaze.
Figure 7. Salvador (Carlos de la Torre) spies upon the incestuous act of Mr Cayo and his daughter
Madeinusa through the window.
empathizing with her problems and aspirations. In contrast with films like Iracema,
uma transa amazónica [Iracema, a Trans-Amazonian Affair] (Bodansky & Senna,
1974), Madeinusa does not explore the dangers of a young girl prostituting herself to
truck drivers in order to escape a rural area. Unlike films such as Juliana (1988, dir.
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Figure 8. In the contest for the most beautiful Virgin, the young women compete against each
other before the masculine jury.
Grupo Chaski, Peru), Llosa’s film does not delve into the difficulties of a girl who
tries to survive on her own, on the streets of Lima. Madeinusa is limited to exalting
the beauty of Solier’s face and the treacherous evil that Madeinusa stands for.
The moral backwardness of Madeinusa and her people demand ‘salvation’ and
‘modernization’ by the westernized white people of the capital, symbolized by
Salvador.
If the film appears to focus on an exaggeratedly primitive, irrational, and
dangerous vision of the Andes, for the director ‘everything that happens in the movie
could have really happened’ (see Figure 9) (Crusellas & Bernet, 2007). Llosa reiterates
that her goal was to create the ‘sensation’ that everything was ‘real,’ and that in order
to do this the film was based on ‘very real festivities’ so as to ‘blur the line between
fiction and reality’ (Crusellas & Bernet, 2007). She explains that she was interested in
constructing a town that was ‘absolutely verisimilar’ (Matons, 2007b). While Llosa
makes it clear that the represented tradition of the ‘Holy Time’ does not exist, she
affirms that ‘it is based on all the cultural diversity that one can find in Peru’
(Crusellas & Bernet, 2007) and that the spirit of the town of Canrey Chico (where the
movie was filmed) ‘is totally embodied in the film’ (Casanovas, 2005). Llosa expresses
candidly that the people ‘of the mountains are so different and so honest’ that she
wanted to ‘bring us closer to the soul of the Andes’ (Matons, 2007b) where one can
find ‘more truth’ (Crusellas & Bernet, 2007).
This ‘idealized’ vision contrasts with the degenerate representation of Andean
people in Madeinusa. Llosa imagines and recreates a group of people that are at the
same time attractive and repulsive. In spite of incorporating Andean actors and rural
filming sites, incorporating the Quechua language (providing subtitles in European
languages for those who do not speak Quechua), incorporating detailed Andean
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83
Figure 9. The tradition of ‘Holy Time’ does not exist, but Llosa affirms that ‘it is based on all the
cultural diversity in Peru’ (DVD Extras: Interview with the Director) (Crusellas & Bernet, 2007).
traditions such as religious festivities and processions, dances and comparsa music,
traditional masks and festive Andean costumes, all of these elements are seen from
the outside, as chaotic, erotic, and exotic. Seen through a shaky camera, indigenous
people without faces jump around a great bonfire. The ancient dance choreographies,
traditionally rehearsed for months, are presented as nonsensical running and
scuttling. Masks that customarily make fun of the Spanish colonizers are substituted
with masks of giant penises (see Figure 10). Far removed from a film like Palpa y
guapido: el abrazo de la memoria [Palpa and Guapido: The Embrace of Memory]
(Calero, 2004), Madeinusa omits all of the organizational efforts and community
work required to accomplish big community festivities.
As in many supposedly pro-indigenous films, in Madeinusa there persists a ‘good
Indian/bad Indian binarism’ in which indigenous peoples tend to be seen
concurrently as ‘the best and the worst of humans, at once noble and savage’
(Shohat & Stam, 2004, pp. 66–67). For Llosa, indigenous people embody a wild
uncultivated authenticity that has been lost in the ‘civilized’ urban world. At the same
time, in her film Llosa personifies indigenous people as ‘myopic beasts’ that, as the
Peruvian film producer Pilar Roca (2008) denounces, ‘appear on the screen raping
their daughters, getting drunk until exhaustion, and betraying the candor of a highclass Limeñito who committed the imprudence of bringing his beautiful humanity to
that miniature hell.’
The discomfort of some of Canrey Chico’s inhabitants with the final product
of their participation in the film is exposed in cybernetic comments such as that of
Eugenia Alamo, originally from the town where the movie was filmed. In response
to an interview of Llosa, Alamo remarks and corrects that ‘where Madeinusa
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I. Pagán-Teitelbaum
Figure 10. Andean festivities are presented as chaotic, and giant penises substitute the traditional
masks.
was filmed . . . is not unknown and much less forgotten,’ to which she adds that
one should not believe everything the film presents because there is ‘much that is
invented’ (Casanovas, 2005). Alamo’s concern in correcting the director of
Madeinusa is reasonable because fiction films do have real repercussions in the
world. As pointed out by Wilfredo Ardito, a lawyer of the Peruvian Association for
Human Rights, Llosa’s defenders incorrectly maintain that ‘it’s a mistake to judge the
content of Madeinusa, because it is a work of fiction’ (Ardito, 2006). In fact, authors
of fiction do transmit messages:
In the case of cinema, messages can be transmitted by the screenplay as well as by the
choice of actors, their physical traits, the setting, the photographic composition, and the
solidarity or rejection that each character attempts to elicit in the spectators.
(Ardito, 2006)
If a film affirmed an admiration of the Ku Klux Kan or the Jewish holocaust, it would
be deemed censurable. In the same manner, a filmic text is censurable if it portrays
a contemporary indigenous town as inhabited only by ‘drunken, primitive, and violent
creatures.’ In the present, it is unthinkable not to generate resistance when distributing
a film that completely distorts ‘the Andean cosmovision, invents a community which
approves of adultery and incest . . . [and] transforms the most solemn traditions,
such as those relative to Holy Week, into grotesque orgies’ (Ardito, 2006).
Furthermore, the marginalized Andean inhabitants of Peru run the risk of being
perceived through what Tunisian essayist Albert Memmi calls the ‘mark of the
plural.’ This means that any negative behavior or negative image of any member of
an oppressed and underrepresented community ‘is instantly generalized as typical,
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Indigenous Women in Peruvian Cinema
85
as pointing to a perpetual backsliding toward some presumed negative essence’
(Shohat & Stam, 2004, p. 183). In this way, the filmic representations of marginalized
people become allegorical. Every subaltern performer or role is seen by the
hegemonic discourse ‘as synecdochically summing up a vast but putatively
homogenous community.’ Not all negative stereotypes exercise the same power
in the world. Socially empowered or dominant groups are represented by a wide
spectrum of images that do not allow generalization. When stereotypes operate as
part of a ‘continuum of prejudicial social policy and actual violence against
disempowered people,’ they place the bodies of those persons in danger. The
denunciation of exaggerated distortions and negative stereotypes arises from the
‘powerlessness of historically marginalized groups to control their own representation’ (Shohat & Stam, 2004, pp. 183–184).
It is very possible that a public that is not familiar with the history and culture
of the Andes could accept Llosa’s twisted representation of the Andes as truthful.
Even the Peruvian audience, which has lacked alternative, non-stereotyped
representations of their indigenous communities for centuries, could accept Llosa’s
view. Llosa’s distorted representation of the Andes could then help to reinforce the
racist hegemonic myths13 that help cultivate animosity against contemporary
indigenous people, to the point that the central indigenous component of the
country has been ‘invisibilized,’ and people in Peru prefer to avoid the designation
of ‘indigenous,’ since it has such a degrading connotation (Ardito, 2007). The violent
confusion caused by Llosa’s efforts for verisimilitude is evident in the statement
of Delia Wismann, a Peruvian resident of Miami, who comments that she was
‘fascinated’ by the film Madeinusa and she felt ‘proud’ that someone in her country
showed ‘the problems of those remote peoples, so far away from modern society.’
Finally, Wismann adds that she would like to ‘know the comments of the inhabitants
of the town where the movie was filmed. What did they feel when they saw
themselves depicted?’ (Casanovas, 2005).
Llosa seems to think that she maintains a pro-indigenous perspective, and yet her
film upholds the terrible social fracture that generated a civil war in Peru for two
decades (1980–2000). According to the 2003 Final Report of the Comisión de la
Verdad y Reconciliación [Commission for Truth and Reconciliation],14 the internal
war in Peru produced more than 70,000 deaths, mostly of rural indigenous people
(Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación, 2004, p. 9). Peruvian historian and
sociologist Nelson Manrique points out that the devastating violence of the armed
conflict in Peru was generated by a ‘profoundly excluding and segregationist State,
which inherited and adopted a racist and anti-indigenous colonial discourse,
that saw Peruvian society as divided in castes, and that considered Whites
intrinsically superior, and Indians inferior, for biological reasons’ (Manrique, 2002,
pp. 45 and 57).
In its report, the Commission for Truth and Reconciliation describes the:
feeling of exclusion and indifference experimented by the people and the communities
that were the main victims of the internal armed conflict. Many Andeans felt that in
the important centers of political and economic power of Peru, people thought
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I. Pagán-Teitelbaum
that what had happened in Andean towns, houses and families was happening in
another country.
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(Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación, 2004, p. 20)
The director of Madeinusa follows a similar logic in her film. In coming close to the
Andes, we enter an alien world of questionable ethics and incomprehensible desires.
The lack of integrity of all of the Andean characters depicted in the film, especially the
protagonist, reveals a rejection of the internal others of Peru (a majority of the
Peruvian population), who are seen as distanced from the precepts that would define
the human condition (deposited only in a minority).
In the Entrevista a la directora y actriz [Interview with the Director and
Actress] included in the DVD of Madeinusa (produced in Spain by Cameo)
(Matons, 2007a), Llosa manifests that the ‘surreal’ sensation she recreates in her
film ‘is a very common sensation when you travel to countries’ (Crusellas &
Bernet, 2007). Following an uncomfortable silence, the Peruvian filmmaker
corrects the phrase in which she has suggested that for her, traveling in Peru is
like traveling to a foreign country. After hesitating in search for a more adequate
expression, she adds ‘[to countries] . . . that are so different, like Peru.’ Llosa
perceives the inhabitants of the interior of Peru as so ‘different’ that in her film
she symbolically ‘trashes’ [basuriza] the historically excluded indigenous
populations that in the recent war were ‘localized as symbolic waste sites
during the process of violence’ (Silva, 2008, p. 90).
Llosa delves into the perplexity that the Andean environment causes her, and
explains in a disconcerted manner that it is a place:
where, for example, a marvelous, fantastic adobe house can make you feel like you
are in the most beautiful environment, that prompts you to take a photograph,
but at the same time you’re saying, Ugh! It’s complicated, isn’t it? How can they live
that way?
(Crusellas & Bernet, 2007)
In her discourse, as in her cinematography, Llosa hyperbolizes the adjectives
regarding the beauty of the rural Andes and wants to capture it in photography.
At the same time, an undefined sentiment (guilt? disbelief? feeling of injustice?
disgust?) stops her (briefly) in the act of depicting the violent poverty of the rural
Andes as beautiful. Accordingly, Madeinusa overstates the beauty of Madeinusa,
highlights the intensely colorful costumes and festivities, and makes the scenery of the
mountains, valleys, and lakes of the Andes monumental (see Figure 11). The film also
amplifies the sensation of confusion created by the beautiful but incomprehensible,
and horrible experience of Salvador (and the spectator who must accompany him),
in traveling to and being trapped in a rural community of Peru.
Far from making visible the problems and idiosyncrasies of the Andean woman
and her community, the award-winning15 film Madeinusa brings us close to an
indigenous woman and her people from the hackneyed perspective of the white man
who discovers unconquered (feminine and geographical) territory. The indigenous
cultural elements included in Llosa’s film do not allow a just representation of the
Andean town that was filmed, but instead serve to reaffirm the preexistent idea of
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Indigenous Women in Peruvian Cinema
Figure 11.
landscape.
87
In Madeinusa, Llosa takes advantage of the monumental beauty of the Andean
the immorality and backwardness of the Andean community. The beautiful
Madeinusa repeats the formulaic story of an infantile, selfish, treacherous woman,
erotic champion of the corrupt and the perverse. She requires salvation, but she is
irredeemable. Her imminent arrival as a migrant to Lima should be perceived,
therefore, as a threat to urban civilian society. Madeinusa symbolizes the Andean
woman as part of a sector that is judged to be excludable as citizen, not essential,
and disposable, just like the thousands of indigenous women killed during the last
war. If cultural violence is defined as any aspect of culture that is used to justify or
legitimate structural violence so that it becomes acceptable to society, then Llosa’s
film is violent, because it legitimizes the discourses of indigenous inferiority and
white superiority that justify the invisibilization, marginalization, and exclusion of
the majority of the population of Peru.
In this investigation, I seek to illustrate how racist stereotypes of indigenous
peoples of the Americas have been retransmitted for centuries in our societies and
the media, to the point that these stereotypes have become almost ‘invisible.’
The violence of the discriminatory stereotype has had a profound impact on the
effort to make it seem ‘normal’ or ‘necessary’ to deny, assimilate, marginalize, or
exploit the indigenous ‘other.’
On the one hand, the marginalization and negation of indigenous communities
in their own countries make it possible for markets to profit from the pretended
exoticism of the indigenous person, who is constructed as exotic in his or her own
land, and as archaic in spite of existing in the present (sometimes as a majority of the
population, as is the case in Peru). On the other hand, through the repeated
stereotypes, the supposed inferiority of the indigenous individual is put forward as
congenital and impossible to remedy, and as an obstacle to national goals.
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I. Pagán-Teitelbaum
In the past, Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa (presidential candidate in 1990 and
Nobel Literature Prize winner in 2010) provided a relevant example of antiindigenous discourse in Latin America. For Vargas Llosa, a ‘free and decent’ modern
society could only achieved in a state in which the ‘native population is scarce or
nonexistent.’ With this objective in mind, Vargas Llosa urged the ‘Indians to pay this
high price’; that is, ‘to renounce their culture – their language, their beliefs, their
traditions, and customs – and adopt those of their old masters’ (Vargas, 1992,
p. 811). The ‘problem’ of the ‘stubborn’ existence of ‘others’ with non-European
traits and non-westernized cultures is a paradoxical conundrum in Peruvian society.
Nonetheless, the racist solution – a homogenization of all the ‘different’ nonwesternized populations and cultures of the world – is unacceptable. (Pointing to
a possible transformation in the 21st century, it should be said that Vargas
Llosa publicly supported indigenous Humala’s electoral bid against Keiko Fujimori
in 2011.)
The directors of the Peruvian films Gregorio and Madeinusa take some small steps
to go beyond the racist tradition of representation of indigenous women.
Nevertheless, their gestures toward a pro-indigenous (and pro-woman) cinema are
insufficient. In the two movies, the filmmakers of the Grupo Chaski and Claudia
Llosa resort to discriminatory practices and representations, as if it were impossible
for them to ‘see’ or perceive the racist discourse that is incorporated in their films.
In Gregorio (Espinoza et al., 1984), the film pursues the spectator’s empathy
towards Juana and the struggles of migrant Andean women in Lima. However,
the directors of Grupo Chaski did not consider it indispensable to enable the selfrepresentation of a Quechua-speaking Andean woman in their film. Instead, Chaski
accepted as feasible and credible the paradoxical substitution of what should have
been an Andean or Andean-descendant actress by a white actress from the coast
of Lima.
Twenty years later, Peruvian director Claudia Llosa carries out a commendable
search process in the mountains of Ayacucho, Peru, in order to find an Andean
woman to perform the leading role in the film Madeinusa (Llosa, 2006). Despite this
positive step towards self-representation and making indigenous women visible,
Llosa utilizes Andean actress Magaly Solier and the Andean community of Canrey
Chico to give credibility to a monstrous and imaginary indigenous world. Llosa’s
deformed invention follows a racist filmic tradition of representation of indigenous
people in the Americas, and, at the same time, her film serves to confirm the racist
stereotypes against the indigenous community in Peru.
The fact that a film with racist characteristics such as Madeinusa won 14
international awards in 2006 implies that the ‘invisibility’ of racism against the
indigenous community in film constitutes a ‘blindness’ of global proportions.
Her next film La teta asustada [The Milk of Sorrow] (2009) repeated reputable racist
patterns of representation of indigenous women, and it still won international prizes
such as the Golden Bear Award. The filmic tradition of racism against indigenous
people is so ingrained in the collective imaginary that even directors and critics who
consider themselves to be ‘pro-indigenous’ are unable to break away from this
alienating tradition. In this essay, I establish that it is urgent to make visible and
Indigenous Women in Peruvian Cinema
89
unacceptable the ‘invisible’ mechanisms of cultural violence against the indigenous
peoples of the Americas.
Acknowledgements
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An initial version was presented at the Global Gender Faculty Seminar, University of
Pennsylvania, in Fall 2008 – many thanks to the paper’s respondents: Dr Ania Loomba,
Dr Rita Barnard, and Dr Ellen Scott. A Spanish version, ‘El glamour en los Andes:
la representación de la mujer indı́gena migrante en el cine peruano,’ was published
in Revista Chilena de Antropologı´a Visual, vol. 12, no. 2, 2008 (available at: http://
www.antropologiavisual.cl/pagan.htm) and republished in Centro Guaman Poma de
Ayala’s Crónicas Urbanas, vol. 14, 2009.
Notes
[1] Johan Galtung defines cultural violence as ‘any aspect of a culture that can be used to
legitimize violence in its direct or structural form. Symbolic violence built into a culture does
not kill or maim like direct violence or the violence built into the structure. However, it is
used to legitimize either or both, as for instance in the theory of a Herrenvolk, or a superior
race’ (1990, p. 291). For a more detailed definition and analysis of the concept of cultural
violence, see Johan Galtung (1990, esp. ‘Cultural Violence’).
[2] All translations are my own, unless otherwise specified.
[3] Simplemente Marı´a was directed by Carlos Barrios Porras, Panamérica, starring Saby
Kamalich (Euro-Peruvian actress, daughter of an Italian and a Croat). Natacha was directed
by Grazio D’angelo, Panamericana (Pantel), starring Maricarmen Regueiro (EuroVenezuelan actress); the program is a version of the film Natacha (1972, dir. Tito
Davison). Luz Marı´a was directed by Eduardo Macı́as, América Producciones, starring Angie
Cepeda (Euro-Colombian actress).
[4] The controversial designation of cholo – a demeaning term used to refer to people of Andean
descent – may actually come from the Nahuatl term ‘xoloitzcuintli,’ which referred to the
sacred dog created by the Aztec god Xolotl to guide humans (Wikipedia, 2008c, 2008e).
According to Carlos A. Quiroz (2006): ‘Spaniards used the diminutive xolo or Mexican dog
as an insult against people of mixed indigenous descent . . . With time the castilianized word
was spread along the navigation routes of the Caribbean.’ The term cholo is registered in
The Royal Commentaries (1609 and 1616), a Peruvian colonial chronicle by Garcilaso de la
Vega: ‘The child of a Black man and an Indian woman, or of an Indian man and a Black
woman, is called mulatto. Their children, in turn, are called cholo; this is an expression from
the Windward Islands; and means dog, not of pure breed but of the most scoundrel kind;
and the Spaniards use it as infamy and vituperation’ (Wikipedia, 2008a).
[5] Rossini represented ‘Chola Dionisia’ in the program Estrafalario [Outlandish], Peruvian
National Television, Channel 7. Risas y Salsa was directed by Aldo Vega and later by
Guillermo Guille, 1980–1999, Channel 5, Panamericana Television (Pantel). Jorge Benavides’
racist characterization of the Andean woman on Channel 2, Frecuencia Latina, has been
widely criticized as aggressive and monstrous (Espinoza, 2005). The Peruvian civil society
organization Coordinadora Nacional de Derechos Humanos [National Coordinator for
Human Rights] obtained a ban for ‘Paisana Jacinta’ in 2004 because of its excessive racism
(Garcı́a, 2005).
[6] There is also a masculine counterpart of the caricature of the Andean female. The ridiculous
‘Cholo’ is a common character, especially among street comedians who go by names
such as Cholo Basilio, Cholo Seferino, Cholo Juanito, and Cholo Arcade (Asociación de
Comediantes y Artistas del Perú [Peruvian Association of Comedians and Artists], 2008).
90
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[7]
[8]
[9]
[10]
[11]
[12]
[13]
[14]
[15]
I. Pagán-Teitelbaum
Interestingly, one widely known figure is that of ‘Cholo Cirilo Quispe Mamani’ performed by
Ubaldo Huamán, an actor from Cuzco. Huamán participated in the film Madeinusa
portraying Cayo, the town Mayor and father of Madeinusa. During the post-production of
the film, the director Claudia Llosa refers to actor Ubaldo Huamán as the stereotyped
Andean character ‘Cholo Cirilo’ (for which Huamán is famous) instead of using his name:
‘With Cirilo we had a very affectionate relationship based on laughter, on friendship, see?
He has an incredible talent . . .’ (Matons, 2007b).
Gloria [Glory] evaporated milk publicity won anti-prizes in Peru for its racist advertising
schemes that consistently exhibit rich white families, while urging Peruvian children to grow
taller by drinking the canned milk (Garcı́a, 2005; Flores, 2008). This expensive product is
typically marketed and sold to lower-class families, which must then mix the concentrated
drink with boiled water. For more information on the history of the Gloria milk industry
in Peru, see the documentary Perú: ni leche ni gloria [Peru: Neither Milk nor Glory] by
Grupo Chaski (2008a [1986]). Most Peruvians (70–90 percent) are lactose intolerant
(Maurer, 2007).
In spite of an intense fear campaign by the media, it was the first time that the capital of Lima
did not decide the electoral result (QL, 2011). Non-Spanish-speaking indigenous people
acquired the right to vote in Peru in 1979 (Manrique, 2011).
‘Chaski’ is Quechua for messenger or courier (especially during the Inca era).
Renowned Peruvian film institution founded in 1955 by Luis Figueroa, Eulogio Nishiyama,
César Villanueva, Manuel Chambi, and Vı́ctor Chambi.
In Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality, especially ‘The Problem of Land,’ Mariátegui
asserts that the ‘problems of the Indian’ are socioeconomic problems rooted in the land
tenure system of the Peruvian economy (based on the latifundio or large landowner system
implanted by Medieval Spain during the colonization); according to Mariátegui, indigenous
people cannot escape feudal servitude until they gain control over agricultural lands (1974,
pp. 50–104).
According to Elizabeth Cavero (2005), racist discrimination in Peruvian society has brought
generations of indigenous descendants to name their children ‘John’ or ‘Shirley,’ and to
prevent them from learning Quechua at all costs.
See Sebastián Salazar’s 1964 Lima la horrible [Lima the Horrible] for an analysis of the myths
(such as the ‘Colonial Arcadia’ and individualism) that have created and sustained a racist
Peruvian nation, divided into ‘two opposite fates, two opposite and . . . enemy factions’
(Salazar, 2002, p. 32).
This report was product of an investigation commissioned by the Peruvian Government as
part of a process of justice, reparation and healing, after the immense violence suffered
in Peru during the decades of 1980–2000.
See ‘Awards for Madeinusa’ (Internet Movie Database, 2006).
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Iliana Pagán-Teitelbaum is at Coop. Los Robles 903-A, San Juan, PR 00927, Puerto Rico (Email:
[email protected]).