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95 elusive identities: representations of native latin america in the contemporary Film industry rOcíO QuisPe-aGnOli the representation of latin american nativeness in contemporary motion pictures uncovers the consumption of an indigenous subject that is usually victimized, eroticized, infantilized, and/or exoticized in the film industry. i consider each of these processes—victimization, infantilization , eroticism, and exoticism—varieties of the fictionalization that is set in motion when filmmakers intend to transmit their understanding of a pre-european nativeness that developed in the territories today known as latin america. in spite of different backgrounds, careers, and agendas, u.s., european, and latin american filmmakers share a common goal when they address nativeness: representing1 the indigenous difference2 through the fictional construction of the “indian” that will convey their understanding of “authentic” nativeness. in this process of representing the indigenous difference , distortion3 takes place. as Homi Bhabha explains, cultural nationalist criticisms “represent the problem of difference and discrimination as the problem of image and its distortion.”4 in this article i study this distortion: the representation of the latin american indigenous difference through processes of cinematic fictionalization that aspire to display latin american nativeness. to support my analysis, i refer to examples from the u.s. film industry vis-à-vis motion pictures of Hispanic/ latin american production of the last decades of the twentieth century and the first years of the twenty-first century, specifically films within the genre of “historical cinema.”5 the primary investigation deals with the intentions or 96| Rocío Quispe-Agnoli agendas that steer the process of fictionalization of native/indigenous voices and images of latin america. does this fictionalization respond to a contemporary colonizing gaze that still repeats the stereotypes and images set by the official european histories of the sixteenth-century conquistadores? Or is this fictionalization used to reinvent voices and images of native latin americans who could not be known and/or have been relegated to being mute participants in their “own” historical discourse? the answers to these questions will frame my analysis of cinematic representations of early indians of the americas, with special emphasis on the andean region. in order to contextualize my analysis, i will refer to Hollywood productions such as Apocalypto, directed by mel Gibson and released by the end of 2006 and intended to explain the fall of the mayas prior to the arrival of the spaniards. compared with Gibson’s relative success in the global market, The New World, directed by terrence malick and released in 2005, offers a contrast with its lack of success in the box office. the second part of malick’s film tells the story of Pocahontas’s discovery of urban europe as a new world. malick’s film will then bring me to a 1989 mexican production, Cabeza de Vaca, directed by nicolás echevarría, which refers to the eight-year journey of a sixteenth-century spanish explorer, and his encounter with several indigenous groups of the southern coasts of north america. this film, as we will see, has been/is misunderstood even within scholarly circles because, as i argue, its visual rhetoric assumes a viewer who expects verbal communication in his/her language. the review of these films that depict early amerindians sets the stage for my discussion of the representation of andean people in the film industry. departing from the notions of “colonial desire,”6 “stereotype,”7 and “fictocriticism ,”8 i examine the filmic representation of the early sixteenth-century andeans and the inca ruler in irving lerner’s The Royal Hunt of the Sun (uK/u.s. 1969), the only film produced on the spanish-andean encounter . lerner’s film focuses on the exoticism of the inca empire, and its fall incarnated in the tragic end of atahualpa, the last sovereign emperor of the tahuantinsuyu, or the inca empire. The Royal Hunt of the Sun approaches Gibson’s representations of early amerindians as noble savages who must be conquered because they are still “primitive.” to address the representation of andean people in this film, i will also refer to another film that focuses on the early mestizo identity, and a contemporary historical novel that intends to represent incas, aztecs, andtaínos.the quite unknown film The Elusive Good (El bien esquivo, 2001), directed by augusto tamayo san román, intends to portray the ambivalent identity of a mestizo who, after the death of his father, must return to early colonial Peru in search of his spanish-andean identity. [18.221...

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