Robinson - Chucho El Roto en Mexico

Chucho el Roto in Mexico’s Post-1968 Cinema:
Banditry, State-Sponsored Violence,

and the Alternative National Family1
Amy Robinson
Bowling Green State University
Legendary bandit Chucho el Roto was portrayed by renowned actor Manuel

López Ochoa in a film series made and released in the wake of violent
repression of Mexico’s student movement. The four films provide enter-
tainment with their charismatic leading man, melodrama, romance and
comedy. Yet, the series also allegorizes and critiques Dirty War tactics
employed in Mexico by portraying how the powerful abuse their authority to
criminalize, imprison, torture and murder young idealists with an alternative
vision for society. The popular figure of the bandit thus constituted a timely
vehicle for critical reflection about political violence within a repressive
climate.
Chucho el Roto, el bandido legendario, fue retratado por el afamado actor

Manuel López Ochoa en una serie de pelı́culas filmadas y estrenadas tras
la violenta represión del movimiento estudiantil mexicano. Las cuatro pelı́culas
proporcionan entretenimiento gracias a su carismático protagonista, al melo-
drama, el romance y la comedia. Sin embargo la serie también alegoriza y critica
las tácticas de la Guerra Sucia empleadas en México, y lo hace mediante un
retrato del poderoso abuso de sus autoridades para criminalizar, apresar, tor-
turar y asesinar a jóvenes idealistas con una visión alternativa para la sociedad.
La figura popular del bandido constituyó ası́ un vehı́culo oportuno para la
reflexión crı́tica sobre la violencia polı́tica dentro de un clima represivo.
1. A preliminary version of this paper was presented at the Kentucky Foreign

Language Conference in April 2012. I am grateful to the assistance of Yttze Quijada and
the librarians at the UNAM’s Biblioteca Nacional for helping me secure copies of the
third and fourth films of the series analyzed here.
Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos Vol. 30, Issue 2, Summer 2014, pages 446–478. issn 0742-
9797, electronic issn 1533-8320. 2014 by The Regents of the University of California. All rights
reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content
through the University of California Press’s Rights and Permissions website, at http://www.
ucpressjournals.com/reprint.info.asp. DOI: 10.1525/msem.2014.30.2.446.
446
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Robinson, Chucho el Roto in Mexico’s Post-1968 Cinema 447
Key words: Jesús Arriaga, Chucho el Roto, Manuel López Ochoa, 1968,
student movement, banditry, violence, Mexico, film, popular culture.
Palabras clave: Jesús Arriaga, Chucho el Roto, Manuel López Ochoa, 1968,
movimiento estudiantil, bandidaje, violencia, México, cine, cultura popular.
Within two and a half years following the violent repression of the
student movement in Tlatelolco Plaza on October 2, 1968, an enter-
taining film series was made and released about the legendary, late
nineteenth-century bandit Jesús Arriaga, better known by his nick-
name Chucho el Roto. The series was made up of four films that were
produced and directed by Alfredo Zacarias, written by Carlos Chacón
Jr., and starring Manuel López Ochoa: La vida de Chucho el Roto
(1970); Yo soy Chucho el Roto (1970); Los amores de Chucho el Roto
(1970); and El inolvidable Chucho el Roto (1971). The production of
each of these films began in 1969, and the last one was released in
early 1971, just a few months prior to yet another massacre of stu-
dents carried out by the Halcones paramilitary group on June 10,
1971.2 The film series is thus historically bookended by two of the
most infamous acts of state-sponsored violence against students in
Mexican history. During this time period recollections of the violence
at Tlatelolco were still fresh in people’s minds, although the details
were officially obscured; ongoing state violence was still being per-
petrated against those who were incarcerated or those who felt vul-
nerable to potential persecution; and the threat of future state
violence was all too real.
This Chucho el Roto film series has not been an object of study in
the literature on Mexican cinema. In popular culture, however, the
series would seem to form a key part of a national love affair with
López Ochoa’s iconic portrayal of this beloved bandit in a variety of
genres since the 1950s. López Ochoa starred as Chucho el Roto in
a long-running radionovela, a comic book, a telenovela, and the film
series.3 Despite having portrayed scores of characters throughout his
2. David Wilt clarifies that he lists the films according to ‘‘the date principal
photography began’’ (2004, 4). The entries for the four films are cataloged under the
year 1969 (see pages 399, 404, and 411). According to the Internet Movie Database
website (as of July 2012), the four films were released during a six-month window, on
August 13, 1970; August 27, 1970; October 8, 1970; and February 4, 1971.
3. The first comic book series about Chucho el Roto ran in Pepı́n from 1939–1941
(Rubenstein 1998, 30–31). I refer here, however, to a comic book version of Chucho el
Roto appearing in the weekly magazine Doña Sara la mera mera. The strip depicts
López Ochoa as Chucho el Roto and was used to promote the radionovela by
including publicity for the XEW station and its programing of the Chucho el Roto show,
as well as written responses to fan mail by López Ochoa himself.

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448 Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos
celebrated acting career, López Ochoa’s death on October 25, 2011,

served as a reminder of how intensely he was associated with this
particular legendary character. Indeed, virtually every obituary and
homage pointed to his portrayal of Chucho el Roto as the defining
feature of his professional identity.
In this article, I discuss how this film series follows the basic
paradigm of the life and times of Chucho el Roto, a historical figure
upon which this and numerous other works (including plays, novels,
and films) have been based. I point out the film series’ key differences
with the most commonly iterated storyline about Chucho el Roto.
Like the conventional storyline, the film series is packaged as an
endearing story about a nonviolent thief that includes romance,
melodrama, and even comedy. Yet, within those parameters, it also
delivers a pronounced representation of the unjust criminalization,
secret detention, and cruel torture of Chucho el Roto as well as
members of his gang and family. I argue that the series allegorizes
contemporaneous outrage generally directed at the polarization of
wealth and privilege in Mexico, but particularly directed at the vio-
lence perpetrated by the state apparatus against those unfairly
deemed subversives. The criminalization and persecution of Chucho
el Roto during the late nineteenth century, like that of the student
movement in the 1960s and 1970s, was legitimized by the threat that
these antagonists purportedly represented to the strict order of the
so-called national family under a period of authoritarian rule. This
persistent thief’s role was similar to that of the student movement in
that he was perceived by the dominant society as a disrespectful child
who would not learn to obey. Nevertheless, such threats against the
hegemonic order simultaneously represented a shift in cultural atti-
tudes about the desirability of this type of national familial pact in
which the authorities’ demands for order and the strict rule of law
trumped the subordinated subjects’ desires for liberty and popular
justice.
Despite the fact that representations of Chucho el Roto had faced
censorship in the United States in an earlier film version, and despite
the sharp political edge included in many fictional portrayals of Chu-
cho el Roto, this generous bandit is not known as a controversial icon
in contemporary Mexico.4 On the contrary, his status as an innocuous
4. See Rogelio Agrasánchez’s comment on the censorship of Chucho el Roto

(1934) in New York and Chicago based on a concern that the film version praised
robbery (2006, 27–28). Indeed, the New York State Archives web page states (as of July
2012) that this film was rejected ‘‘for sacrilegious scenes and a likelihood to contribute
to class warfare.’’ It was ultimately revised to suit the censors and released in an altered

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stock character representing generosity and benevolence can be so

vacated of specific meaning that his name has been exploited by
popular restaurants, tourist sites, and even a brand of tequila.5 There
is similarly no indication that the post-1968 film series caused any stir
as a political commentary, and its inoffensiveness as an entertaining
and predictable historical melodrama may have been precisely the
intention of the films’ creators and participants.
According to López Ochoa in a phone interview, neither the
film’s director nor the writer intentionally ingrained in the series
a political message relating to the student movement. 6 López Ochoa
explained that he personally preferred to keep his character’s popu-
lar identity distanced from any formal political positions or pro-
nouncements, and he praised Carlos Chacón Jr.’s writing for
keeping the Chucho el Roto character unsullied by politics. Never-
theless, he mentioned that the story’s broad message against social
injustice could be adapted to suit any context. López Ochoa further
acknowledged that Chucho el Roto was perceived in political terms.
For example, he noted that the radio show had been banned in
Ecuador because of its presumably socialist message and also that
Salvador Allende called him personally to express his admiration for
the Chucho el Roto character.7 To address the murky question of
intentionality, I point to Roland Barthes’s influential argument in
‘‘The Death of the Author,’’ originally published in 1967 as ‘‘La mort
de l’auteur (1977). His reasoning has led to a premise in contempo-
rary literary analysis that the meaning of a work for readers cannot be
limited to a quest for authorial views. John Mraz’s analysis of the 1976
film Canoa illustrates the applicability of that premise in post-1968
Mexico. On the one hand, Mraz aptly demonstrates that Canoa has
been repeatedly and appropriately interpreted as an allegorical com-
mentary on the events of 1968. On the other hand, Mraz’s quotes
Tomás Pérez Turrent, the film’s script-writer, as saying: ‘‘Canoa is not
and never pretended to be a movie on the events of ’68’’ (2009, 209).
Moreover, in response to the notion that others perceived it ‘‘as
-
form. See also Román Gubern and Paul Hammond’s Luis Bunuel: The Red Years, 1929–
1939 regarding this same film being exported to Spain, and the title character actor,
Fernando Soler, eventually going on to act in films by the revered and provocative
director, Luis Bunuel (2012, 198).
5. For example, there is an elegant Mesón de Chucho el Roto restaurant in
Querétaro, a Chucho el Roto restaurant in Mexico City’s Colonia San Angel with
Oaxacan style food, Chucho el Roto tours in the San Juan de Ulúa museum, and an
official trademark for Chucho el Roto under the category of tequilas.
6. The author’s phone interview with Manuel López Ochoa, April 25, 2011.
7. The author’s phone interview with Manuel López Ochoa, April 25, 2011

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a metaphor for 1968,’’ Pérez Turrent said: ‘‘I never thought that nor
did it occur to me to script it out that way’’ (209).
My analysis of the post-1968 Chucho el Roto series determines
that these four films did indeed provide an important vehicle for
critical reflection, if only indirectly, about the oppression of dissent
in the late 1960s. The series achieves this through its portrayal of the
Porfiriato-era elites’ criminalization, torture, disappearance, and
murder of those criminals deemed dangerous to the stability of dom-
inant society. Although still set in the Porfiriato, I contend that these
films make key changes to the canonical Chucho el Roto narrative,
and that these changes accentuate and underscore its allegorical
potency. Moreover, the films’ portrayal of Chucho el Roto as the
benevolent patriarch of a nontraditional bandit household echoes
the lofty ideals of the student movement in that it posits a vision,
however fantastical, for an alternative, more just society than that of
the post-revolutionary dominant society’s rendition of the national
family. In the following sections, I first review the life and historical
literature associated with Chucho el Roto; then I contextualize this
post-1968 film series in its cinematographic and political history; and
finally I discuss the films’ allegorical elements.
The Life and Literature of Chucho el Roto

Jesús Arriaga was born circa 1835, had an extraordinary criminal
career spanning more than a decade, and died as an inmate in the
San Juan de Ulúa prison in 1885. His nickname ‘‘el Roto’’ refers to
a poor person feigning an elevated status by wearing nice clothes,
and the successes of his criminal career were attributed to his elab-
orate use of disguises. His criminal career is contextualized by the
early years of the long reign of power known as the Porfiriato (1876–
1910), in which rural bandits were criticized for wreaking disorder in
the countryside.8 By contrast, Chucho el Roto’s legacy as an urban
bandit derives from his long trail of crimes throughout urban hubs in
central Mexico, his penchant for jailbreaks, his presence in the main-
stream press, and his popularity across social classes. Although not
a threat to the political, economic, or social stability of the period,
Chucho el Roto nevertheless could be interpreted as a thorn in the
8. Chucho el Roto’s crime spree likely began during the presidency of Benito
Juárez, continued through Dı́az’s first term, and peaked during Manuel González’s
presidency from 1880–1884. His final capture and death occurred at the beginning of
Dı́az’s second term. For a review of his criminal history and death, see Robinson 2009
(10–15).

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side of the ruling elites, particularly as his celebrated criminal legacy

tarnished the image of the president as Mexico’s grand patriarch.
From the perspective of the authorities, Chucho’s criminal record
justified his capture and imprisonment in San Juan de Ulúa prison
fortress, which was a harsher alternative to those Mexico City prisons
from which he had previously escaped. Indeed, being sentenced to
San Juan de Ulúa was seen as the equivalent of a death penalty
because of its intolerable conditions, and it could even be interpreted
as indicating a prisoner’s status as that of a political rival in that the
prison was known to house political prisoners (Casanova Krauss,
1977, 48).9 There were, however, ample alternatives to such official
perceptions of Chucho el Roto as a dangerous criminal or potential
threat to national stability.
Widespread attention to his life of crime and even his untimely
death in San Juan de Ulúa in 1885 spawned a legend about Chucho el
Roto as a generous, nonviolent, and even martyred thief akin to
Robin Hood. Chucho el Roto can be heralded as an apt example of
what Eric Hobsbawm termed ‘‘social banditry’’ in that Hobsbawm has
convincingly argued that certain criminals are recognized as being
more than vulgar criminals.10 Their criminal pursuits, rather, are
celebrated to the extent that they are perceived as pitting ‘‘the weak
against the strong, the poor against the rich, the seekers for justice
against the rule of the unjust’’ (2000, 18). Similarly, Michel Foucault
illustrates how state-sponsored executions of contrabandists, in tan-
dem with anticriminal propaganda literature that circulated about
certain criminals, could ironically contribute to a cultural admiration
for the struggles that such criminals waged against society (1995,
71–72). In that way, the public ‘‘curiosity’’ about such crime and
punishment was, Foucault states, ‘‘also a political interest’’ (68).
Whereas Hobsbawm’s social bandit theories have been criticized for
aggrandizing the actual political role that a given bandit may have
played in a peasant society, it is an audience’s ability to apply its own
political perspectives to banditry and the greater societal dynamic
9. See also Casanova Krauss’s descriptions of the physical layout and dismal
conditions of the cells, including the cell that housed Chucho el Roto in 1885, which
measured less than two square meters. Casanova Krauss asserts that it was Porfirio Dı́az
who specifically ordered that certain cells in San Juan de Ulúa be used for political as
well as military prisoners (1977, 19).
10. For a review of the social bandit debate, particularly with respect to Chucho el
Roto, see Robinson (7–8). This discussion includes references to recent scholarship on
literature about banditry that signals a methodological shift from historical inquiries
into the reality of banditry to literary analysis of historical discourse about banditry.

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into which it is inserted that informs this examination of the post-

1968 representations of Chucho el Roto.
Late nineteenth-century representations of Chucho el Roto dem-
onstrate that even the earliest writers used this bandit as a foil onto
which they could attach political messages, not with an elitist per-
spective about the depravity of the lower classes, but rather about the
corruption of dominant society. For example, he was portrayed in the
press as more legitimate than law enforcement and as morally supe-
rior to politicians (Robinson 2009, 14; Vanderwood 1992, 91). Like-
wise, the earliest play about him in 1888 was critical in that it
acknowledged that Chucho el Roto was a benevolent criminal in
a society of inequalities and injustices. This portrayal could have
provoked politically motivated ‘‘curiosities’’ among the audience,
despite this Porfiriato-era play’s ultimately hegemonic and moralizing
message that one should always choose to live under society’s rules
(Robinson 2009, 17–18). Not until 1911 do we find the first indication
of a plot line about unrequited love as a motivation for Chucho el
Roto’s criminal career, but the centrality of the love story did not
expunge the political elements from future scripts.
A 1911 play about Chucho el Roto, written by Antonio Fuentes
and performed in San Antonio by the Carlos Villalogı́n Theater Com-
pany, included the characters Don Diego de Frizac and Matilde de
Frizac, both of whom then appeared as key characters in virtually
every other later version (Robinson 2009, 16).11 The de Frizac fa-
mily’s role would become reified in the canonical storyline as the
anonymously authored 1916 version was repeatedly republished in
Mexico over the following decades. Other distinct versions would
later appear that incorporated the 1916 version’s principal ele-
ments.12 The basic story line of the 1916 version related that Chucho
el Roto was a humble carpenter who fell in love with Matilde de
11. There was an elite Frissac family in Mexico, and their former home in Tlalpan
(once the home of former Mexican president Adolfo López Mateos) is now home to
a cultural institute, Instituto Javier Barrios Sierra. Although information about the
home links it to the Chucho el Roto legend, there is no indication of any historical
validity to the relationship between the actual Frissac family and the actual Jesús
Arriaga, alias Chucho el Roto.
12. All published in Mexico, republished editions of the anonymous 1916 version
were printed in 1937 (published by Imprenta Tricolor), 1944 (published by Ediciones
populares mexicanas), 1945, 1954, and 1962 (published by El Libro Espanol), 1963
(published by Editorial Divulgación), and 1969 (published by Editorial Nacional).
There were also distinct anonymously authored novels that were variations of the
original 1916 version: 1934 (published by Editorial Toluca) and 1981 (published by
SEP-Conasupo).

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Frizac, the niece of wealthy aristocrat Don Diego de Frizac. Matilde

fell in love with Chucho, rejected him because of their unequal status,
and then gave birth to their daughter Dolores (Lolita) in secrecy.
Chucho later kidnapped Lolita, and the de Frizac family used their
influence to have him arrested for the crime of kidnapping. After
escaping from jail, Chucho and his bandit gang episodically used
disguises and ingenuity to rob wealthy targets, all the while finding
ways to distribute the stolen riches to the poor. He was famously
nonviolent, vowing to maintain his honor by never staining his hands
with blood.
This melodramatic love story’s political undertones are occasion-
ally explicit in that Chucho and his gang are fighting a cause described
in socialist terms. For example, in the 1916 version, Chucho’s beliefs
were ‘‘incipient socialism’’ on behalf of the proletariat in a struggle
‘‘against capital . . . the State . . . the Government’’ (Robinson 2009, 21,
citing the novel). A later, anonymously authored novel about Chucho
el Roto was published episodically from 1922–1923 in the newspaper
El Mundo, which was under the direction of Martı́n Luis Guzmán at
the time. Despite radical plot and character differences with the 1916
version, this post-revolutionary novela de folletı́n notably main-
tained a similar political edge by incorporating its own socialist rhet-
oric.13 For example, it included references to the utopian socialists as
ideological informants of Chucho’s crimes and efforts to redistribute
wealth. And Chucho’s crimes generally targeted the wealthy whose
capitalist exploitation of the working class was regarded as the origin
of society’s ills.
The basic moral and political conundrum posed in such repre-
sentations of Chucho el Roto was stated in the prologue of the 1916
novel, and the numerous republications of this edition contain this
same prologue. On the one hand, the anonymous ‘‘Editor’’ laments
that men whose attributes include ‘‘una audacia asombrosa’’ (‘‘a star-
tling audacity’’) as well as ‘‘la magnanimidad y nobleza de un gran
corazón’’ (‘‘the magnanimity and nobility of a great heart’’) can be
found doing something as ‘‘abominable y repugnante como la del
robo’’ (‘‘abominable and repugnant as theft’’).14 On the other hand,
the Editor points out that the ‘‘Sociedad’’ (‘‘Society’’) can be so ‘‘cruel
e injusta’’ (‘‘cruel and unjust’’) that it could drive honorable men into
a life of crime. Feigning objectivity, the Editor tasks the readers with
the ultimate judgment:
13. For an elaborated discussion of this 1922–23 novel, see Robinson 2009 (23–28)
14. Translations by the author.

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Toca, pues, a nuestros lectores dar su veredicto conforme a su conciencia, ya

absolviendo o condenado a Jesús Arriaga (a) ‘‘Chucho el Roto’’, primer
personaje de esta pequeña obra, o a la sociedad en que él viviera . . .
It is up to the readers, then, to follow their conscience and give their verdict,
absolving or condemning Jesús Arriaga (a.k.a. ‘‘Chucho el Roto’’), the main
character of this small work, or the society in which he lived . . .
Beginning with this 1916 novel, but continuing in subsequent narra-

tives about Chucho el Roto, the creators of these stories capitalized
on their audiences’ interest in pondering the role of individuals in
a complex society. These were generally not messages delivered in
sophisticated prose or complex narrative style and thus reserved for
elite audiences. Rather, they were delivered with understandable
language to posit basic, timeless conflicts between good and evil,
integrity and corruption, the individual and the collectivity. Such
conflicts resonated in, but also well beyond, Chucho el Roto’s own
historical context.
Cinema and Politics in Post-1968 Mexico

This film series coincides with the tail end of a post–Golden Age,
decade-long demise of Mexican filmmaking that occurred during the
presidencies of Adolfo López Mateos (1958–1964) and Gustavo Dı́az
Ordaz (1964–1970). Based on a decline in state funding for film as
well as a climate of authoritarianism, Carl J. Mora generally describes
the state of the film industry during this post–Golden Age period as
made up of ‘‘producers of nonexistent social vision in combination
with nervously conservative officials’’ who ‘‘were to render the film
industry almost totally unreflective of the problems and tensions of
Mexican society’’ (1997, 37). And yet, the film series also marks the
cusp of Mexico’s Nuevo Cine, a renewed heyday for Mexican filmmak-
ing under Luis Echeverrı́a’s presidency (1970–1976), characterized by
films that were to be afforded the liberty and support to deal ‘‘frankly
with social issues and that were more politically daring, more sexu-
ally explicit, and to a degree narratively and aesthetically experimen-
tal’’ (Ramı́rez Berg 1992, 29). The lack of discussion about this film
series in the critical literature could perhaps be attributed to having
fallen between the cracks of these two distinct periods in the history
of Mexican cinema. There may be low expectations about the film
series’ social significance given that it was made during the Dı́az
Ordaz presidency, and yet I contend that it defies such expectations
by incorporating the extremely timely and controversial issue of the
state’s abuse of power within a perhaps unlikely form: a remake of

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a popular historical melodrama about unrequited love and Mexico’s

whimsical version of Robin Hood as played by one of Mexico’s dash-
ing leading men.
The film series marks a peak in cinematic representations about
this legendary bandit. A host of actors have been associated with
Chucho el Roto, from the first, silent film that came out about him
in 1919 (with Leopoldo del Cerro) until López Ochoa came to be
recognized as the embodiment of Chucho el Roto by the late 1960s.
Other actors to play Chucho el Roto include Fernando Soler (1934),
Luis Aguilar (1954), and Carlos Baena (1961–1962).15 Despite the
acclaim of each of these actors, it was López Ochoa who firmly estab-
lished his identity as Chucho el Roto through a wildly popular radio-
novela that aired for eleven years with reportedly over 3,000
chapters.16 López Ochoa then worked with the writer Carlos Chacón
Jr. to have the concept adapted to a telenovela in 1968 that was
produced by Valentin Pimstein and directed by Fernando Wagner.
In the transition from radionovela to the television and movie
screens, changes were made in the lineup of actors to conform to
the visual expectations of the characters.17 For example, Amparo
Garrido was the voice of Matilde in the radionovela, but Blanca
Sánchez portrayed Matilde in the telenovela and the subsequent film
series.18
To argue that the four films of the post-1968 film series collec-
tively and allegorically portray political and moral critiques that were
15. Two other related films are, respectively, about the son and daughter of
Chucho el Roto after their father’s death: La sombra de Chucho el Roto (1945) and El
Tesoro de Chucho el Roto (1960). More tangentially related, the 1952 film Chucho el
Remendado stars Germán Valdés, commonly known as Tin Tan, in the lead role that
reads as a knock off of the Chucho el Roto plotline.
16. The entire Chucho el Roto radionovela is housed in Mexico’s Fonoteca Na-
cional, which has hosted recent events (‘‘Vamos a la Fonoteca con Eugenia León’’ in
2010 and ‘‘Vamos a la Fonoteca con Jaime Almeida’’ in 2012) with speakers discussing
the importance of the Chucho el Roto radio show in the history of Mexican radio and
also the tremendous impact of this particular character on Mexico’s collective imaginary.
17. The author’s phone interview with Manuel López Ochoa, April 25, 2011.
18. This change in actors helps provide some circumstantial evidence about the
popularity of the filmed versions. If the success of López Ochoa’s Chucho el Roto
character were limited to the radio show, then a popular connection between Blanca
Sánchez and the role of Matilde would be weak. Yet, following Sánchez’s death in
2010, a brief news article dedicates an entire paragraph to her role as Matilde. The
article calls her role as Matilde as ‘‘uno de sus personajes más recordados de su car-
rera’’ (‘‘one of the most recalled characters of her career’’) and states that films were
made because of the commercial success of the telenovela (cited in Univision.com
article ‘‘La actriz Blanca Sánchez falleció la noche del jueves debido a una falla renal’’,
January 8, 2010).

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being leveled against the repression of the student movement is a sig-

nificant claim for two reasons. First, it might contradict a perception
of Chucho el Roto as simply a romantic hero figure, such as how he
was introduced in the opening chapter of the radionovela. The
radionovela does not begin with the moral and political conundrum
like that of the 1916 novel’s prologue. Instead its narrator declares
from the outset that the main character to be introduced is a hero and
a generous friend to the poor. Presented in this way the outcome of
representing Chucho el Roto does not seem to be making the audi-
ence think critically, but rather to relish the fantasy of a generous
bandit committing charming crimes in solidarity with the downtrod-
den. Second, this argument challenges the widely held assumption
that nondocumentary film was unwilling or unable to depict the
repression of the era even through symbolism or allegory. Although
investigators point to works of theater, documentary film, or investi-
gative reporting that portrayed the events of 1968 within the first few
years that followed, the first fictional film about 1968 is considered to
be Jorge Fons’s 1989 Rojo amanecer.19 Even more than two decades
after the events it depicted had passed, Fons’s film was still subjected
to scrutiny and censorship that delayed its release until 1990 (Mraz
2009, 211–212).
Despite this being a time of widespread social change across the
globe, in Mexico repressive tactics helped keep critical messages from
finding cinematic or other mediums for expression and dissemina-
tion.20 Only a handful of films are credited with representing the
tensions surrounding the violence against student demonstrators,
and the list grows perilously small if we look for films in the imme-
diate aftermath of the Tlatelolco massacre. The documentary El grito
was made in 1968 prior to the violence of October 2 as a portrayal of
the student occupation of Mexico’s national university, the UNAM; it
was released in 1970. Two other films released in the wake of the
Tlatelolco massacre, Alfredo Joscowicz’s Crates (1970) and El cambio
19. Mraz argues that director Felipe Cazal’s work should also be considered as
films that found ways to represent 1968. Cazal’s 1975 film El apando was based on José
Revueltas’s experiences of being imprisoned as a leader of the student movement, and
Mraz argues that Cazal’s 1976 film Canoa, through allegory, ‘‘filled the cinematic space
for ’68’’, a feat that would not be repeated until the much later release of Rojo ama-
nacer (2009, 211).
20. This focus on the political messages of post-1968 literature and film does not
intend to imply that pre-1968 cinematographic or other literary traditions in Mexico
have been apolitical or unconcerned with social commentary. Rather, it highlights the
uniqueness of this Chucho el Roto series through its reworking of a popular cultural
icon in an easily digestible form and the extreme political context that it allegorizes.

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(1971), are characterized as allegories. Rather than allegories of the

state’s use of violence against the students, they are instead described
by Mora as commentaries on the difficulties students had in adjusting
to the failure of the movement to create ‘‘meaningful change in Mex-
ico’’ (1997, 54). In the realm of theater, Bixler asserts that, following
the tragic events of 1968, ‘‘Mexico’s dramatists were quick to stage
a historical episode that official history was determined to hide or at
least distort’’ (2002, 121). She cites as examples of the theater of ’68:
‘‘Enrique Balleste’s Vida y obra de Dalomismo, Pilar Campesino’s
Octubre terminó hace mucho tiempo, and Jesús González Dávilas’s
La Fábrica de los Juguetes, all written in 1969 and 1970’’ (2002, 121).
Nevertheless, owing to what she refers to as ‘‘unofficial censorship’’
and prohibitions from staging certain plays, Bixler concludes that
‘‘the memories of Tlatelolco remained relatively unstaged until the
1980s’’ (121).
In contrast to the paucity of timely visual reminiscences of the
violence and repression of the era, a more fully exploited space for
reaction to 1968 was the realm of the written word. Elena Poniatows-
ka’s La noche de Tlatelolco (1971) stands out as a masterpiece of
investigative journalism and testimonial style that incorporates
a plethora of genres into an interwoven collection of fragmented
memories from, about, and relating to October 2, 1968. She arranges
excerpts from interviews, news reports, political speeches, letters,
and novels, as well as the text from signs, chants, and poems, into
a dizzying avalanche of contradictory information and emotions that
seem to place the reader in the midst of the terror and confusion
characterizing the moment. This seminal work ironically implants
a deep skepticism about the ability of the written word to transmit
the truth about this controversial event, particularly when blame for
criminal acts is being alternatively assigned, deflected, and obscured
by, and on behalf of, a myriad of involved parties. La noche de
Tlatelolco joins a number of other key, especially fictional works
about 1968 that began to be published in 1971.21 And yet this water-
shed moment calls attention to the relative dearth of representations
of 1968 in the even more immediate aftermath of the massacre,
21. For thorough reviews of the literature of 1968 that shed light on the general
lack of fictional representations of 1968 prior to 1971, see studies by Lanin A. Gyurko
(1984), Dolly Young (1985), Gonzalo Martré (1986), and Ryan Long (2005). The list of
pre-1971 publications contains important works in the genre of the essay (such as
Octavio Paz’s Posdata), in the chronical (such as Carlos Monsivaı́s’s Dı́as de guardar),
and in the testimonial (such as the writings from prison by José Revueltas).

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making the Chucho el Roto film series, which predominantly

appeared over the course of 1970, all the more intriguing.
Although one might expect that a representation of 1968 would
focus directly or indirectly on the killing of the student protesters,
the movement had other urgent issues before, during and after the
events at Tlaltelolco: political authoritarianism and the unjust crim-
inalization of dissent. The post-1968 period is characterized by
a highly authoritarian state as well as a tide of popular social move-
ments being experienced across the globe. Dı́az Ordaz was president
of Mexico from 1964–1970, and he is generally held responsible for
a crackdown on social unrest that culminated in the Tlalelolco mas-
sacre and that also included the imprisonment and torture of activists
in the movement.22 Dı́az Ordaz’s protypical nemesis, as characterized
by Elaine Carey, was ‘‘the Mexican male student activist’’ in that he
was considered ‘‘a danger to political authority and to the ideals of
the Mexican Revolution because he rejected the illusion of the met-
aphoric revolutionary family put forth by the Partido Revolucionario
Institucional’’ (2009, 60). In response to the youth’s challenges, the
government waged what Carey describes as a double -pronged
approach of
direct and indirect confrontation. The direct response included police and
military action on the streets of Mexico City. The indirect assault on the
students came in the form of antistudent rhetoric that circulated in the
government-controlled press. In turn, a war of words and discourse emerged
between the government and the students of Mexico City, and this battle was
waged in the press and on the streets. (2009, 60–61)
This struggle for perceived legitimacy was tipped heavily in favor of

the ruling party in that they could exploit their control over public
discourse, but also on existing laws, law enforcement and jails to
criminalize those carrying out anti-government actions or participat-
ing in anti-government movements.
Eric Zolov lists the six demands of the student movement and
generally characterizes them as a manifestation of ‘‘the students’ rage
at the authoritarian nature of Mexican politics’’ (1999, 121):
1 Freedom for political prisoners

2 Elimination of Article 145 of the Penal Code
22. It is beyond the scope of this paper to review the Tlaltelolco literature referent
to political imprisonment and torture, and instead I refer readers to examples of tes-
timonials included in Elena Poniatowska’s Massacre in Mexico (1992, 97–120) as well
as the letters from prison by José Revueltas that make up the third section of México 68:
Juventud y revolución (1978, 187–300).

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3 Abolition of the riot police (granaderos)

4 Dismissal of the Mexico City chiefs of police
5 Indemnification for victims of repression
6 Justice against those responsible for repression
(1999, 121)
However, a far more specific critique is being waged through these

demands. The students’ demands respond to how political authori-
tarianism was being employed to criminalize dissent, as well as to
physically repress and incarcerate dissenters under the full authority
of the law. All six demands indeed refer to the state apparatus of law
enforcement that was expressly authorized to repress those gather-
ings deemed riots and jail those individuals deemed subversives. In
particular, Article 145 was a clause ‘‘that dated back to World War II
efforts to fight internal subversion instigated by the Axis powers’’
(Zolov 1999, 121–122). This law made it possible to imprison anyone
for carrying ‘‘on political propaganda among any foreigner or Mexi-
can national, spreading ideas, programs or forms of action of any
foreign government which disturb the public order or affect the sov-
ereignty of the Mexican State’’ (Stevens 1970, 62–63, citing the Penal
Code).
In practice, this article of the Penal Code was a way to criminalize
certain forms of dissent and, among many other cases, famously led
to the jailing of muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros from 1959–1964. As
Evelyn P. Stevens explains, ‘‘Government spokesmen often lump the
illegal activities of subversives together with the constitutionally pro-
tected activities of dissenters and protesters in order to tar the latter
with the same brush of disloyalty as the former’’ (1975, 369). Corrob-
orating this assertion, Halbert Jones’s analysis of the history of the
social dissolution law and its implementation (until its repeal in
1970) finds that subsequent to the article’s revision in 1951 there was
‘‘extensive use of Article 145 against activists, intellectuals, and labor
leaders that criticized or resisted the authority of the central govern-
ment’’ (2009, 15).23 This law was but one tool wielded by the ruling
authorities as they repressed demands voiced by such movements as
those mobilized by students, workers, and peasants over the years.
Fernando Herrera Calderón and Adela Cedillo calculate that, in
aggregate, Mexico’s Dirty War that began in the 1960s and extended
through the early 1980s included ‘‘more than 3,000 people disap-
peared and executed, 3,000 were political prisoners, and 7,000 were
victims of torture’’ (2012, 8). Beyond those statistics for those who
23. Cited with permission from the author.

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were formally repressed, anyone involved in organized dissent in this

era would have been potentially subject to criminal prosecution.
Stevens attempts to calculate the active involvement in large-scale
movements, beginning with ‘‘the student strike of 1956 at the Poly-
technic Institute’’ and including participation in subsequent strikes
and uprisings until the early 1970s. She concludes that involvement
can be roughly estimated at 500,000 participants (1975, 369). As
compared to other national contexts, she deems the high level of
popular participation in Mexico, especially during the 1960s, as
‘‘remarkable’’ considering the oppressive political regimes that char-
acterized the period (371). I do not claim that the Chucho el Roto film
series narrates the tragic story of the victims of Mexico’s Dirty War.
Rather, I argue that the film series’ unique version of a classic tale
about a generous bandit could have provided viewing audiences with
a timely vehicle for critical reflection about the state’s abuse of power,
as well as the importance of combatting it.
The Film Series as Post-1968 Allegory

Like the 1916 novel, the film series begins with a stark contrast
between two distinct family units. On the one side is the wealthy
de Frizac family, which is made up of Don Diego de Frizac and his
two nieces, Matilde and Carolina. They live in a mansion, their
origins and tastes are European, and they are catered to by a team
of servants and staff. Their greatest concerns are protecting their
wealth, marrying well, and manifesting their status through their
elegant clothes, proper manners, and cultured hobbies. By contrast,
the Arriaga family resides in a humble home in a working-class
neighborhood and includes Jesús Arriaga, his sister Guadalupe
(Lupe), and their widowed mother. Their greatest concerns are
making ends meet, having a close-knit family with home-cooked
meals, and maintaining honorable values. As the standard Chucho
el Roto narrative goes, these two family models first intersect
through a business relationship in that Chucho’s work as a carpenter
takes him into the de Frizac home to repair furniture. Later, Matilde
and Chucho are drawn to each other by romance, love, and eventually
secret trysts that result in a pregnancy, all of which is perceived as
dishonorable in both houses. From Chucho’s perspective, they should
legitimize their union and future baby through marriage, thus forming
a radically new, cross-class family model in Mexico. However, the de
Frizac family rejects that possibility and instead seeks ways to pro-
tect the basic contours of their original family unit from this outside
menace.

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Film One
From this predictable foundation, the first film of the series makes
several simple but significant deviations. In the standard version
established by the 1916 novel, Matilde and Chucho’s daughter Lolita
is born in secrecy and eventually returned to the de Frizac mansion as
a supposedly adopted child. At that point, Chucho kidnaps his daugh-
ter, a reprehensible crime that the readers would nevertheless per-
ceive as justified because it is portrayed as morally superior to the
values and actions of the de Frizac family. The police eventually cap-
ture and jail Chucho for the kidnapping. By contrast, in La vida de
Chucho el Roto, the plot shifts the fundamental conflict between
Chucho and the de Frizac family to a time when Matilde is still preg-
nant. Merely because she is ashamed of her sister’s pregnancy with
a lower-class man, Carolina first tries to have Chucho killed, and
when that does not work, she arranges for Chucho to be arrested for
a crime he did not commit. Whereas his identity in the 1916 novel as
a kidnapper can be construed as a true threat to the integrity of the de
Frizac family, in La vida de Chucho el Roto, Chucho’s only tragic flaw
is his aspiration to become a new kind of father figure in a new kind
of family.
The wealthy family’s orchestration of an attempt on Chucho’s life
mimics the violence of October 2, 1968. Carolina attempts to serve
her family’s interests against the threat personified by the young and
idealistic Chucho el Roto by arming the night watchman. She in-
structs him to position himself out of site, wait for Chucho to enter
their lush, enclosed courtyard in his efforts to convince Matilde to
accept their union, and then shoot him. The dutiful servant eventu-
ally fires at Matilde’s unarmed, unsuspecting suitor and wounds him.
When another servant, Plácido, rushes to the scene and sees Chu-
cho’s apparently lifeless body, he tells Carolina that it is not in their
interests for him to die in their courtyard. She coldly responds by
ordering Plácido to throw Chucho out onto the street. Such images
paint the elite nemeses of Chucho el Roto with a shocking tint of
malevolence, and they moreover provide an eerie reminder of how
just two years earlier Mexico’s actual government had armed sharp-
shooters to fire on students gathered together in Tlaltelolco Plaza and
then attempted to cover up the evidence of bloodshed by hauling
away the bodies of victims without producing accurate lists of the
dead or imprisoned.
Chucho survives the shooting with just a scrape and continues to
yearn for a relationship with Matilde, which provokes Carolina to
conceive of an even more conniving plan to have Chucho eliminated

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as a threat by having him jailed. This unusual plot twist lays the
groundwork for the film series ultimately to echo the tensions sur-
rounding the student movement’s critique of the unjust detention of
protestors and activists. Carolina’s ruse involves taking a clock from
the de Frizac home as a gift to the Arriaga women, and then later
reporting to the police that Chucho stole the clock. Chucho’s mother
and sister are scandalized to learn from Carolina about Matilde’s
pregnancy, and Chucho’s ailing mother dies shortly thereafter. While
he is still in mourning and attempting to make arrangements for her
burial, the police storm the Arriaga home to arrest Chucho for the
crime for which he has been framed. His imprisonment leads to
Chucho becoming functionally disappeared in that Matilde will not
learn what happened to him until years later, and he will become
otherwise disconnected from his family and society. Carolina’s ac-
tions thus expose the de Frizac family as willing and able to blatantly
exploit their privileged status to commit violent acts with impunity
and to orchestrate the judicial system’s unjust criminalization of ene-
mies to the elite. More than anything else, these post-1968 films
portray such abuses of privilege and authority as the fundamental
motivation for Chucho’s criminal career until his death at the end
of the series.
In La vida de Chucho el Roto, the representation of Chucho’s
arrest and incarceration reveals the brutality and corruption of the
legal system in a notably distinct manner from that of the standard
Chucho el Roto narration. Following the 1916 novel’s basic plot, first
Chucho is arrested for kidnapping and then he is put into solitary
confinement, first for a month and later for four months. There, he
undergoes a sort of political awakening, and he will thus already har-
bor a critical attitude when he is eventually moved to a common cell
with other men who will become his gang members. The film series, by
contrast, includes elaborated confrontations between Chucho and the
judge, torture by the guards, prolonged and intensified solitary con-
finement, and a delayed political awakening that occurs among his
cellmates by means of a newfound access to books. Although late
nineteenth-century prisons were lambasted at the time as ‘‘schools for
crime,’’ this film’s representation of Chucho’s dedication to reading as
a means to becoming an apt combatant against dominant society
breathes a decidedly new meaning into that expression.24
When Chucho is first brought in before the judge, he is told to
sign a blank confession with the clarification that the judge himself
24. See, for example, Pablo Piccato’s mention of Antonio Martı́nez’s 1871 critique
of prisons as ‘‘true schools of crime’’ (2001, 181).

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will later fill in the details of the confession.25 It is clear that the
official version of events will concur with the accusation that the
powerful Don Diego de Frizac has relayed, and the judge encourages
Chucho simply to corroborate that narrative. Chucho, however, re-
fuses to sign and instead professes his innocence. He is then led into
solitary confinement, where he remains for one month. The judge
uses this tactic to debilitate the accused and encourage him to sign
the confession. At the end of the month, Chucho is given a second
audience before the judge, who is satirically portrayed as glutton-
ously devouring his lunch in front of the emaciated and unkempt
prisoner. Rather than succumb to the power of the system to crimi-
nalize him unjustly, Chucho reiterates that he has committed no
crime. Moreover, he says that if justice were to be carried out, the
powerful man falsely accusing him is, in fact, the one who should go
to jail: ‘‘Exijo que se encarcele al que me acusa . . . La justicia tiene que
ser lo mismo para el pobre que para el rico’’ (‘‘I demand that my
accuser be imprisoned . . . Justice has to be the same for the poor as
for the rich’’). Impunity for the elite reigns, however, and a defiant
Chucho is forced back to solitary confinement with screams of ‘‘mal-
dita justicia!’’ (‘‘damned justice!’’). The film elaborates on Chucho’s
enraged perception of injustice in Mexico by occasionally cutting to
concurrent events taking place in the de Frizac home. There, we find
the baby has been born, and Don Diego is confident that they can use
the family’s means to cover up reality because, as he assures ‘‘el
dinero todo lo puede’’ (‘‘money can do anything’’). We also learn
that Matilde had heard those shots so long ago in her own courtyard
and that she never dared to ask what had happened, producing an
echo of post-1968 censorship about the violence at Tlatelolco, as well
as any desire people may have felt to move on from the violence, as
symbolized by Mexico’s hosting of the Olympics later that month.
The film takes viewers back to the jail, however, where Chucho
ultimately serves two stints in solitary. The first stint is for a month,
and the subsequent one lasts so long that he goes insane and loses his
eyesight. Moreover, Chucho is portrayed as being tortured in a variety
of ways within the terrifying conditions of solitary confinement. First,
25. Poniatowska includes many testimonials of imprisoned students that echo

Chucho’s fictional experience. Following is one example: ‘‘All I know is that they made
me sign a false confession obtained illegally, by force. There are fifteen other prisoners
like me here, innocent people who had nothing to do with the Student Movement . . .
Like me, they’ve been in here two whole years now, without a hearing, without a trial,
and without having had any connection whatsoever with the Movement’’ (1992, 130,
italics in original).

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he is made to eat scalding soup with his hands, and his cries of pain
are met with amusement by his jailers. Second, the food deprivation,
humidity, and cramped conditions weaken his body to the extent that
he cannot fully stand once he is allowed to step outside the cell.
Third, after attempting to escape, he is promptly trapped in a patio
area of the prison and brutally beaten by a team of guards even after
they have thoroughly subdued him. Lastly, in one scene a guard or-
ders Chucho to leave his cell and march up a steep stone staircase
that leads to an unprotected ledge, as though carrying out a simulated
or perhaps actual execution. Fortunately, at that very moment,
another prisoner intervenes, and Chucho is not only spared the cruel
intentions of the guard, but he is finally transferred to another cell.
And yet the film implants in viewers’ minds that the penal system
continues its use of torturous solitary confinement by showing that
Chucho’s transfer to another cell coincides with the guards bringing
in another prisoner, who shows signs of having been beaten, to take
his place.
Beyond the visual impact of witnessing the bodily effects of both
tortured prisoners as they are passed by each other, that sad prisoner
is recalled when the film draws connections between prisoner abuse
and the political motivations of the justice system. In Chucho’s new
cell, one of the new cellmates, the lawyer Rafael Barragán, explains
that ‘‘todas las cárceles están llenas de presos polı́ticos’’ (‘‘all of the
jails are full of political prisoners’’), and that he himself has been
jailed for conspiring against the regime. That character and that line
also appear in the 1916 novel, and contextualizing historically the
plot, it would be associated with the repression of the fledgling
rebellions against Porfirio Dı́az in the 1880s. Simply including in the
film a line from the standard version in this remake of the legendary
Chucho el Roto story would be unlikely to provoke scrutiny or calls
for censure. The film takes the representation of political prisoners
much further, however, by complementing that line with a focus on
the jail as a place of torture that can retain, at the will of the elite, both
the innocent and the politically motivated. This protracted focus on
the plight of political prisoners would have risked wading into ongo-
ing tensions related to Dı́az Ordaz’s public and much critiqued asser-
tion in the wake of the events of October 2, 1968, that there were no
political prisoners. To that, the renowned activist in the student
movement, José Revueltas, wrote from jail in 1970 that efforts to deny
the existence of political prisoners had been futile because ‘‘la noción
de presos polı́ticos se ha filtrado y se ha hecho presente en la vida
pública de México como una conciencia social’’ (1978, 286, italics in
original) (‘‘the notion of political prisoners has been filtered down

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and has been made present in the public life of Mexico as a social
consciousness’’). Indeed, Revueltas states that the mere ‘‘reconoci-
miento de la existencia de presos polı́ticos por la opinión
pública . . . ha sido . . . una victoria del movimiento’’ (290) (‘‘acknowl-
edgement of the existence of political prisoners by public opinion . . .
has been . . . a victory of the movement’’).
In the new cell, Chucho regains his eyesight, gets cleaned up, and
meets what will become his new family of sorts, the future members
of his bandit gang. In the standard Chucho el Roto storyline, this
encounter finds Chucho as already enlightened about his future
social cause, which is framed as an economic problem of wealth
being unevenly distributed. By contrast, in the film version, Chucho
comes to frame his unjust imprisonment among his new friends as
a problem of ignorance. His solution is to read as much as possible,
and, as a result of the knowledge he gains from studying the books
belonging to his cellmate Rafael Barragán, he will be equipped to
combat the wealthy’s ability to exploit the less-educated poor. Chu-
cho’s efforts pay off in that he eventually uses his new skills to orches-
trate the escape of the entire gang by outwitting and overpowering
his unsuspecting jailers. In the process, Chucho reiterates his original
innocence by indignantly telling the judge that the jailbreak consti-
tutes his first crime. This also serves as a reminder to audiences that
the film has moved the timing of Chucho’s incarceration so it occurs
prior to the kidnapping. The entire gang eventually flees in the film’s
final scene with the authorities taking shots at them all the while. The
bandits running from gunfire becomes a recurrent image throughout
the series.
Film Two
We learn in the second film, Yo soy Chucho el Roto, that Chucho
spent three years in prison, a fact that Don Diego and Carolina kept
as a secret from Matilde until news reports of his escape expose the
truth that he survived the shooting. Matilde declares that despite her
family’s efforts to expunge Chucho from her memory she will never
forget all that has happened, and this sentiment may have resonated
with the post-1968 struggle to keep the repression of the student
movement alive in popular memory. We learn that after the jailbreak
Chucho, his sister, and the bandit gang live together as a sort of
nontraditional family in a large home. After the gang carries out a few
heists, Lupe is saddened to discover that her brother is a thief. Chu-
cho reassures her with the standard characterization of Chucho el
Roto’s banditry that his actions are against society and on behalf of

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the poor. Yet the film adds another layer to his declared motivation
that further reminds us of his physical victimization in that he also
tells his sister that his life is dedicated to making sure others will
never have to experience what he endured.
Yo soy Chucho el Roto proceeds with classic portrayals of our
character in that Chucho carries out clever heists by using disguises.
The disguises allow him to access and expose the inner workings of
elite circles, particularly targeting wealthy families, lucrative busi-
nesses, and the Governor. Providing the comedic element of the film
series, the elite are portrayed as corrupt, exploitative, and incompe-
tent. Moreover, they are seen as vulnerable to the intrusion of an-
tagonists like Chucho who are capable of subverting their power and
authority. Amidst the various heists, Chucho kidnaps Lolita who is,
unsurprisingly, happier in the welcoming home of the bandit gang
than she was in the cold, secretive, and authoritarian culture of the
de Frizac mansion. This leads to an intensified pursuit of the bandit
by the combined forces of government (the Governor), the wealthy
(the de Frizacs), and the police (under the command of a different
Comandate in each film).
In contrast to the portrayal of the elite as an easy target of
Chucho’s crimes and mockery, the scene in which the de Frizac sis-
ters have an audience with the Governor reignites the film series’
allegorical potential by adding unique plot elements. These include
representations of a distraught family seeking their missing loved one
and the state’s use of torture against the innocent. At risk of blemish-
ing their family’s reputation if the truth is exposed about Lolita’s
origins, Matilde and Caroline plead with the Governor to dedicate
his resources to locating the missing girl. Referring not only to her
own tragedy, but also to the terrible crime of kidnapping children in
general, Matilde says, ‘‘Han raptado a una criatura. Eso es un crimen
terrible’’ (‘‘They have kidnapped a child. That is a terrible crime’’).
Their meeting turns into an interrogation of sorts, however, when the
Governor senses that Matilde is hiding something. He threatens to
suspend the search altogether unless Matilde reveals the names of the
girl’s parents. She eventually buckles under the pressure to name
names, and the Governor reacts with scorn to her confession that
she had a relationship with the man accused of crimes by her own
uncle.
The Governor tells Matilde that the Comandante is already trying
to find information about Chucho’s whereabouts by using ‘‘métodos
muy persuasivos’’ (‘‘very persuasive methods’’) in his interrogations
of the doctor who has cared for Chucho and his gang at their hideout.
The film then cuts to the Comandante torturing the doctor in spite of

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his insistence that he does not know where the hideout is because the
bandits always blindfolded him on the journey. Chucho turns the
tables on this kind of abuse in a dramatic scene that allows him to
confront the state as torturer without turning into that which he
opposes. When the Comandante emerges from his interrogation of
the doctor, Chucho grabs him, blindfolds him, and takes him to his
hideout. There, Chucho and his gang string up the Comandante in
the same fashion that the doctor had been strung up, and they begin
interrogating him about the location of the hideout to which they
have just brought him. The bandits threaten to hang the Comandante
if he does not talk, and this is disconcerting because it is clear to the
audience that the Comandante could not possibly know the answer
to their questions. The increasingly desperate Comandante accuses
the bandits of being barbarians for continuing with their threats
despite being fully aware that he cannot respond to their questions.
While this scene complements previous representations of society’s
powerful men as buffoons to be mocked, it also provides a uniquely
incisive critique in that Chucho gets the torturer himself to articulate
the point that torture is wrong. Once they have deemed that their
lesson has been learned, the bandits require the Comandante to sign
a false letter stating that he is part of the bandit gang. Unlike the
state’s use of false confessions to imprison the innocent, this scheme
is merely designed to protect the bandits against the freed Coman-
dante. They explain to the Comandante that they will have that letter
published in newspapers if he defies them, implying that the fear of
being subject to the wrath of his fellow law enforcement officers will
be enough to keep the Comandante in line.
The torture scenes in Yo soy Chucho el Roto underscore the
ironic contrast between the criminalized Chucho’s famous dedica-
tion to nonviolence and the state’s unjust exploitation of its monop-
oly over officially legitimate violence. Indeed, the Comandante
attempts to justify his use of violence by telling the bandits that to
torture is ‘‘cumplir con mi deber’’ (‘‘to fulfill my duty’’). This echoes
critiques of the state in the post-1968 era, as seen in writings by
political prisoner José Revueltas in which he characterizes the use
of torture as not just an isolated practice, but rather as the epitome of
the state apparatus at that time. He states the following in a letter
from prison dated December 2, 1968:
Estamos en contra de esa esencia, esa institución fı́sica, legal y moral que se
llama policı́a, y que fı́sicamente nos tortura y nos golpea, no por accidente,
sino porque en golpear y torturar radica su esencia, su esencia moral y legal.
(1978, 192, italics in original)

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We are against that essence, that physical, legal and moral institution called
the police that physically tortures and beats us, not by accident, but because
its essence, its moral and legal essence, lies in the acts of beating and
torturing.
The state-sponsored violence wielded against Chucho in the first film

and against the doctor in the second film is particularly egregious
because the state is portrayed as victimizing innocent individuals who
were targeted by the state for interrogation after merely doing what
they thought was right.
By the end of the series’ first film (with the jailbreak) and
throughout the series’ second film (with the kidnapping and thefts),
Chucho’s status changes to that of an actual criminal. In this way his
character now more closely resembles the portrayal of Chucho el
Roto in the standard version of this legendary bandit. The 1916 novel,
however, does not portray the state as using violence against the
criminal Chucho el Roto, prior to confining him in the San Juan de
Ulúa prison because he proves too elusive for them. By contrast, in
the film series, the state’s use of violence against their criminal nem-
esis is a regular occurrence. For example, in the final episode of the
second film, our bandit is pursued by the police after a successful
heist. The disguised Chucho is stopped at a checkpoint, they discover
his true identity, and he flees on foot. The police chase after him with
bullets flying and ultimately find bloody evidence that he has been
wounded. Over the course of the next few days while conflicting
news reports circulate about his fate, he manages to drag himself
back to the bandit hideaway. The film ends with Chucho stoically
instructing his friends about how to remove the bullet lodged in his
leg, a doctor arriving to fully cure him, and the happy gang celebrat-
ing his recovery ‘‘como una sola familia’’ (‘‘like one family’’) with
a shout of ‘‘Viva Jesús Arriaga!’’ (‘‘Long live Jesús Arriaga!’’).
Film Three
The third film, Los amores de Chucho el Roto, begins by reminding
audiences of three key targets of the series’ overall critique: false
imprisonment and torture, the state’s abuse of authority, and igno-
rance. First, we hear Chucho say that the origin of his shameful iden-
tity as a thief can be traced back to how much he suffered in prison.
Second, the de Frizac family meets with a new Comandante whose
unwelcome flirtations with Matilde foreshadow a sexualized form of
violence that adds a new, disturbing layer to the series’ representation
of the corruption of those in power. Moreover, we find that the pursuit
of Chucho el Roto has evolved into raids of business establishments,

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and that the bandits rather than the police enjoy popular support.
Third, we see Chucho spreading his key moral lesson to his daughter,
not to end the polarization of wealth as the standard Chucho el Roto
story would say, but rather to put an end to ignorance.
Los amores de Chucho el Roto can then be synthesized into two
key and unique storylines that both reveal a scathing critique of the
police force. In the first storyline, rather than fulfill his duty to find the
missing person that the de Frizac family seeks, the new Comandante
abuses his status to make improper demands of Matilde in exchange
for his help in locating Lolita. He insists that she must be his, an
ambiguous demand with rape as its subtext. Yet, in keeping with the
prudish cultural context that characterizes the film’s domestic settings,
his remarks play out as a crude marriage proposal. To coerce her into
submitting to him, he taunts Matilde with the suggestion that he may
already have her daughter, but that the only way she will find out is if
she agrees to be with him. He later intensifies this threat by dishonor-
ably propositioning Matilde alone in her room, making her believe
that he already has the daughter, and her only chance of getting Lolita
back is to be with him. Even though Matilde directly accuses him of
abusing his authority, she eventually gives in and agrees to marry him
because she would do anything to get her daughter back.
This plotline generates high suspense for the audience because
viewers know that the Comandante does not have the girl; Lolita
merely ran away from Chucho’s home and is struggling to make her
way to the de Frizac mansion. This suspense generates profound
empathy for Matilde’s shock and disgust with the Comandante. Here
is a law enforcement officer who exposes himself as willing and able
to hold an innocent girl against her will without any just logic, only
possibly setting her free through some extralegal and immoral
arrangement. The addition of this storyline to the standard Chucho
el Roto narrative, in which even Lolita’s estranged parents can com-
miserate about the hardship of having a lost loved one and the help-
lessness of not being able to trust the authorities to help them in their
search, encourages a moral consensus against the state regardless of
one’s status. Indeed, the film portrays how the privileged (like Ma-
tilde) and the subversive (like Chucho) can build partnerships, at
least when it comes to a shared comprehension of the need to locate
the disappeared. This notion of a consensus between traditional riv-
als is elaborated in this film’s portrayal of a desire between Chucho
and Matilde to come together as a nonconventional, happy, and
honorable (by their own standards) family unit whose nemesis is
Mexico’s corrupt and violent leadership, exemplified by Don Diego,
the Governor, and the Comandante.

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Matilde fortunately gains the upper hand by finding out that the
Comandante does not have her daughter when Lolita finally arrives at
the de Frizac house on her own. On the bright side, Matilde can now
call off the wedding with the despicable Comandante. Unfortunately,
the Comandante now wants to interrogate the girl to extract infor-
mation from her about Chucho’s whereabouts. The Comandante
then threatens Don Diego to a duel for denying him access to the
girl, and this prompts both Carolina and Don Diego to try to get the
information from her themselves. These multiple layers of intimida-
tion suggest that nobody is immune to becoming a target of the
state’s oppression, and, at the same time, nobody is immune to
becoming entrapped in the logic that interrogating the innocent is
a necessary action. Don Diego and Carolina continue to take matters
into their own hands by figuring out that Chucho’s sister Lupe, who
has been visiting the de Frizac home unsuccessfully disguised as
a dressmaker for the young Lolita, can lead them to the bandits’
hideout. Their tip ultimately facilitates the Comandante’s arrest of
Chucho in a chaotic shootout that Don Diego describes as ‘‘una lluvia
de balas’’ (‘‘a rain of bullets’’).
The third film’s second unique storyline that exemplifies the
brutality of the state relates the aftermath of Chucho’s arrest. We
learn that the Comandante has Chucho brutally beaten and then
forces the abused, bound, and exhausted prisoner to march behind
the officers on horseback toward his sentence in San Juan de Ulúa
prison. Chucho is accompanied by another prisoner, and the two
men struggle together to keep from being outpaced and dragged
behind the horses. The other prisoner informs Chucho that he ex-
pects the officers to apply the ley fuga, the historic practice of releas-
ing prisoners for the purpose of shooting them in the backs as they
flee. Armed with this information, Chucho does not flee when
informed that night by his captors that the prisoners can leave.
Rather, he stays in the camp and seeks out the Comandante. In
a rather convoluted turn of events, Chucho gets his revenge without
technically staining his hands with violence by taking the Coman-
dante’s clothes and then setting a fire with a nearby lantern. The
Comandante wakes up out of uniform, runs about yelling ‘‘fuego!’’
(‘‘fire!’’), and is shot dead by the soldiers waiting to ambush the
fleeing prisoners. Chucho is then able to reunite with his bandit gang,
which receives him with a gleeful shout of ‘‘Viva Jesús Arriaga!’’
Despite the happy ending, this episode illustrates that, within the
film’s historical setting, a culture exists in which state officials rou-
tinely use extralegal measures to torture and disappear those taken
into custody. To the extent that any audience member would draw an

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association between the repressive, authoritarian nature of the Dı́az

regime that generally contextualizes the Chucho el Roto story and the
perception that Dirty War tactics were being employed by Mexico’s
contemporary leaders, this episode could serve as a powerful
allegory.
Film Four
In the series’ final film, El inolvidable Chucho el Roto, we find a sim-
ilar development of two key plotlines that highlight the state’s brutal
treatment of the young and idealistic. The first plotline takes place in
the de Frizac mansion where Chucho and Matilde’s occulted alterna-
tive family forms increasingly stronger bonds. Although they are offi-
cially prohibited from being together as a family unit, both Chucho
and Lupe use disguises to enter the home and spend time with Ma-
tilde and Lolita. In melodramatic fashion, Don Diego and Carolina de
Frizac realize that Chucho’s sister has infiltrated their home, and they
report her to the latest Comandante. Lupe is hauled away to an empty
basement room in the family mansion, where she will be questioned
about Chucho’s whereabouts. It is apparent that Don Diego is com-
plicit in the violence associated with such interrogations because, as
Lupe is being led away, he warns her the interrogation will not be
mild. When the scene shifts to the basement room in which both Don
Diego and the Comandante are participating in the interrogation in
which their prisoner sits passively on the room’s only chair, Lupe is
notably disheveled, appearing to have been already roughed up a bit.
The two men stand above her, threatening her with intimidating
comments about sending her to jail and withholding a tempting glass
of water if she does not reveal the information they seek.
Although the scene provides some comic relief with Don Diego’s
bumbling attempts to participate in the interrogation, at one point
the Comandante’s threats against Lupe seem so harsh, that Don Die-
go turns serious as he tries to convince the Comandante to relent.
This hint of solidarity between rivals intensifies when Carolina sud-
denly opens the door and is startled at the scene she witnesses. At first
the camera focuses on her horrified face, and then it cuts to a view of
the interrogation room scene from her perspective. This simulta-
neously aligns the audience’s gaze with that of Carolina, and thus
the three individuals in the interrogation room appear to be looking
back directly at us. Throughout the entire film series up to this point,
Carolina and her uncle have been actively and even violently conniving
against Chucho el Roto and all that he represents. But, at this moment,
when we join her in witnessing the realities of this persecution,

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Film poser images include (clockwise from top left): the core bandit gang;
the alternative family unit with Matilde, Chucho, and Lolita; Chucho being
tortured in San Juan de Ulúa; San Juan de Ulúa exterior; Lupe being
interrogated in the de Frizac home.
Carolina and the viewers who share her gaze are confronted with
a moral dilemma of how to respond to this surprising and disturbing
scene. It is apparent that if Carolina just closes the door and walks
away, it would permit her to continue simply hating and fearing the
likes of Chucho el Roto, who threatens her image of society and her
privileged role in it. On the other hand, refusing to ignore this violent
interrogation scene that is taking place under her own roof requires
her to recognize her own complicity in the immoral and inhumane
police practices wielded against those deemed threats.
Before Carolina has a chance to react, the ‘‘inolvidable’’ (‘‘unfor-
gettable’’) Chucho el Roto bursts into the room, beats up the bad
guys, and escapes with Lupe. This leads to yet another example of
police corruption that could resonate with a post-1968 context. In
the armed Comandante’s attempts to pursue Chucho, he accidently
shoots and kills another officer, later referred to by Don Diego as
a ‘‘policia secreto’’ (‘‘secret police’’). Both the Comandante and Don
Diego know the truth about what happened, but when confronted
about the dead body, they falsely accuse Chucho of the murder.

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Audience members may recall that the student activists were accused
of mishandling their weapons and causing the deaths at Tlatelolco
Plaza. In contrast to these accusations, both Chucho el Roto and the
student movement share a posture of nonviolence.
The second key plotline of the series’ fourth film revolves around
Chucho’s final capture. This grounds the film in one of the most basic
components of the standard Chucho el Roto story, which is that
Chucho is eventually captured, sent to San Juan de Ulúa, betrayed
by a fellow prisoner, sentenced to torture by the prison’s execu-
tioner, and dies with the love and forgiveness of his family. The film
version strays from that standard plot with three notable changes.
First, the Comandante first attempts to capture Chucho by kidnap-
ping Lolita and leading Chucho el Roto to find her bound and gagged
in a remote area. We learn later that Don Diego and the Governor
were complicit with this plot. The scene ends with gunfire that leads
to the death of Rorro, a core member of the bandit gang, and the
Comandante’s soldiers who are responsible for his death react with
complete indifference to his lifeless body. With the news that Chucho
escaped, the Comandante is reprimanded by the Governor for his
various mistakes in handling the case. The Governor even orders that
the Comandante be arrested for his accidental shooting and for
falsely blaming Chucho for the crime. The Governor’s seeming turn
toward justice is short lived, however. When the Comandante at-
tempts to flee, another soldier shoots him dead, and the Governor
congratulates him for ‘‘cumplir con su deber’’ (‘‘fulfilling your duty’’).
The logic that reigns is to shoot to kill one’s enemies, and this holds
true even when the orchestrators of this violence, Don Diego and the
Governor, are in close proximity to, and in plain sight of, the
bloodshed.
The second divergence from the finale of the standard plot is that
Chucho and his gang relocate to Veracruz, where they plan to commit
one more heist before putting an end to their now too dangerous
criminal career. This plotline gives him the chance to reflect on the
possibility of being eventually sentenced to the city’s infamous San
Juan de Ulúa prison. With the prison fortress behind him, Chucho
recalls that this is a prison where great men like Benito Juarez have
been jailed ‘‘por haber hablado contra la opression’’ (‘‘for having
spoken out against oppression’’). He then reflects that while his indi-
vidual efforts to redistribute wealth have helped the poor, it is now
necessary for the entire pueblo to rise up and take the situation more
decisively into their own hands. On the one hand, this comment
underscores the prerevolutionary historical context of the Chucho
el Roto story, despite the fact that the standard 1916 version is explicit

200.52.254.249 on Mon, 14 Dec 2020 17:16:18 UTC
in Chucho’s resistance to his banditry evolving into a revolution. On

the other hand, it also brings the film series full circle by recalling
Chucho’s bandit origins as a function of the society’s repression of
ideas. This could refer to his cellmate Rafael Barragán and others who
were jailed for having political ideas that opposed the established
regime. Or, it could refer to his own experience for being jailed
because of his self-described ignorance and for daring to aspire to
the possibility of a new kind of family unit that did not conform to
expectations of the rich and powerful.
The third divergence is that Chucho’s arrest is predicated on the
traitorous acts of Fiera, one of Chucho’s former gang members. Fiera
discovers information about Chucho’s final heist and relays that infor-
mation in exchange for an award offered. Rather than turn over the
monetary reward, the Governor instead sentences Fiera to San Juan
de Ulúa along with Chucho. Fiera betrays him again in prison by
revealing his plans to escape and, indeed, Chucho’s escape is
thwarted when he is recaptured and brutally beaten on the shores
of Veracruz. He is then returned to the prison where he suffers a bru-
tal and oddly homoerotic whipping by the prison assassin. This scene
is interrupted by another imprisoned gang member, Changa, again
giving the audience the sensation of witnessing a torture session
through another character’s eyes. Ultimately, however, Changa is
shot by firing squad as he screams out ‘‘Viva Jesús Arriaga!’’ As for
Chucho, his death occurs while surrounded by his female family
members on his death bed, with the satisfaction that he has finally
realized his dream of marrying Matilde in a brief ceremony held by
the prison chaplain. The audience is thus left clinging to the fantasy
implanted by the film that a consensus between traditional rivals is
possible and that an alternative family could actually become legiti-
mized in Mexico, in spite of the state’s use of persecution, torture,
and murder to protect the status quo.
Conclusion
In contrast to the image of Mexico as a nation bound to the order
imposed by its patriarchal president, dutifully keeping his disobedi-
ent children in line, this Chucho el Roto fantasy asks us to rethink
Mexico’s seemingly natural order. Dı́az Ordaz wrote in his memoirs
that the popular movements that wracked his presidency ‘‘want to
change this Mexico of ours. They want to change it for another which
we do not like. If we want to preserve it and we remain united, they
will not change what is ours’’ (Krauze 1998, 724–725, citing the
memoirs). This film series about Chucho el Roto creates a sort of

200.52.254.249 on Mon, 14 Dec 2020 17:16:18 UTC
consensus in favor of the obviously good Chucho against the obvi-

ously bad authorities that permits a revalorization of this ‘‘we’’ and
‘‘them’’ and thus the possibility of unity in support of another sort of
Mexican family. This melodramatic family love story set in the late
nineteenth century carries a political message if its specific scenes
and images are read as allegories of the violent state-sponsored
repression that characterized the political context of the audience
members.
Given the oppressive political climate, it is logical to find that the
public sphere was largely sheltered from overt representations of
public discontent. And yet, the widespread nature of the movement
suggests that the controversial political positions were hardly
silenced. This is illustrated in Zolov’s analysis of youth music’s coun-
terhegemonic potency before, during, and after the height of the
student movement. The Chucho el Roto film series falls within the
historical period in which Zolov determines that ‘‘La Onda’’ music
was a particularly capable vehicle for challenging the legitimacy of the
Mexican revolutionary family. His focus on youth music frames soci-
etal tensions as a generational conflict in which the Mexican coun-
terculture became a core source of rebelliousness. By contrast, this
analysis of López Ochoa’s widely appealing Chucho el Roto character
suggests that vehicles for counterhegemonic critique were available
in the historically popular figure of the bandit, across generational
divides and beyond the parameters of a particularly youth-oriented
form of countercultural rebelliousness.
The Chucho el Roto film series, like protest music or theater from
the era of Argentina’s Dirty War, achieved its political commentary on
the stage of mass culture by communicating through metaphor and
allegory.26 With respect to Argentine theater during the Proceso, Jean
Graham-Jones explains that playwrights defied censorship to mani-
fest ‘‘sociocultural resistance’’ in their work by employing ‘‘such rhe-
torical figures as metaphor, allegory, and analogy, and the
reappropriation of cultural codes already in place’’ (2001, 602). Mraz
defends a post-1968 Mexican film against those that would dismiss its
allegorical potential by stating what he calls an ‘‘obvious’’ position:
that ‘‘it is ingenuous to believe that a movie about students, commu-
nism, police, and bloodletting would not immediately and inces-
santly thereafter be seen as a synecdoche for that period’s strife’’
(2009, 210). I believe this analysis similarly demonstrates that
a post-1968 film series about corrupt officials, political prisoners, and
26. See, for example, Luraschi and Sibbald’s 1993 study of the songs of Marı́a
Elena Walsh, Argentine singer, poet, and author of children’s literature.

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the use of torture during the Porfiriato would be perceived as an

allegory of Mexico’s repressed student movement.
At first glance such synopses seem inapplicable to a film series
about Chucho el Roto, whose cultural significance as a laudable, lov-
able Robin Hood had already been firmly established for Mexican
audiences. Yet this post-1968 film series adjusts the conventional
focus on Chucho’s efforts to redistribute wealth to further cast the
bandit as a sort of student, and Mexico City’s police force as blood-
thirsty in their dutiful efforts to fulfill the violent directives of the
capital city’s political and economic elite. In particular, each of the
series’ four films pointedly portrays Mexico City officials’ egregious
use of torture against the innocent and idealistic. Despite any pre-
conceptions that audiences may have had about Chucho el Roto,
viewing the series through a post-1968 optic would prod viewers’
political curiosities to infer a critique of present reality by way of the
films’ insistent representation of how those in power have criminal-
ized those with different ideas about society as a way to legitimize the
state’s use of repression and violence.
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Chucho el Roto in Mexico’s Post-1968 Cinema:

Banditry, State-Sponsored Violence,

Legendary bandit Chucho el Roto was portrayed by renowned actor Manuel

Chucho el Roto, el bandido legendario, fue retratado por el afamado actor

1. A preliminary version of this paper was presented at the Kentucky Foreign

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celebrated acting career, López Ochoa’s death on October 25, 2011,

4. See Rogelio Agrasánchez’s comment on the censorship of Chucho el Roto

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stock character representing generosity and benevolence can be so

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The Life and Literature of Chucho el Roto

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side of the ruling elites, particularly as his celebrated criminal legacy

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into which it is inserted that informs this examination of the post-

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Frizac, the niece of wealthy aristocrat Don Diego de Frizac. Matilde

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Toca, pues, a nuestros lectores dar su veredicto conforme a su conciencia, ya

Beginning with this 1916 novel, but continuing in subsequent narra-

Cinema and Politics in Post-1968 Mexico

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a popular historical melodrama about unrequited love and Mexico’s

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being leveled against the repression of the student movement is a sig-

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(1971), are characterized as allegories. Rather than allegories of the

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making the Chucho el Roto film series, which predominantly

This struggle for perceived legitimacy was tipped heavily in favor of

1 Freedom for political prisoners

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3 Abolition of the riot police (granaderos)

However, a far more specific critique is being waged through these

23. Cited with permission from the author.

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were formally repressed, anyone involved in organized dissent in this

The Film Series as Post-1968 Allegory

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25. Poniatowska includes many testimonials of imprisoned students that echo

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The state-sponsored violence wielded against Chucho in the first film

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association between the repressive, authoritarian nature of the Dı́az

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in Chucho’s resistance to his banditry evolving into a revolution. On

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consensus in favor of the obviously good Chucho against the obvi-

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the use of torture during the Porfiriato would be perceived as an

Agrasánchez Jr., Rogelio. 2006. Mexican Movies in the United States: