Sanchez A Discourses of Migration in Documentary Film Translating The Real To The Reel

Discourses of
Migration in
Documentary Film
Translating the Real to the Reel
Alexandra J. Sanchez
Discourses of Migration in Documentary Film
Discourses
of Migration
in Documentary Film
Translation Studies Research Unit
KU Leuven
Antwerp, Belgium
ISBN 978-3-031-06538-5 ISBN 978-3-031-06539-2 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-06539-2
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Everyone is acquainted with dogs and horses, since they are seen daily. To
reproduce their likeness is very difficult. On the other hand, since demons
and spiritual beings have no definite form, and no one has ever seen them,
they are easy to execute.
—E. H. Gombrich (1984)

To mama and papá, and every other unsung migrant out there. Your stories
matter
Acknowledgments
First and foremost, I would like to thank my supervisors Profs. Drs. Inge
Lanslots and An Van Hecke (KU Leuven Campus Antwerpen) for taking
me on as a Ph.D. student for their research project “The Representation
of Migration from Latin America to the United States: Documentary
Filmmakers as New Storytellers on Border Crossing” (2017–2021). My
four-year journey with them resulted in a doctoral dissertation, which
laid the groundwork for the present book.
I would also like to thank my doctoral jury for their invaluable
feedback: Profs. Drs. Elisabeth Bekers (Vrije Universiteit Brussel), Peter
Flynn (KU Leuven Campus Antwerpen), María Isabel Alfonso (St.
Joseph’s College New York), and Lieven D’hulst (KU Leuven Campus
Kortrijk).
Many thanks, also, to the academics and students whom I met during
my research stay at the University of California Santa Cruz (2018–
2019) and who all, in their own way, influenced this work: Prof. Jennifer
Maytorena-Taylor, Prof. Dr. Sylvanna Falcón, Prof. Dee Hibbert-Jones,
Prof. Dr. T.J. Demos, Prof. Dr. Juan Poblete, and the URAP focus group
ix
x Acknowledgments
(Tatiana Ruíz, Luis Diego Ramírez, Lehna Cohen, Crystal Cisneros-

Villa, Gina Fernández, Araceli Herrera, Crystal Farmer, Nattjelly Lupita
Betancourt Ramos, and Andrea Rosas). I would also like to express
my gratitude to the members of the independent documentary film
community who generously shared their insights with me: Sally Jo Fifer
(President and CEO of ITVS), David Eisenberg (Senior Director of
Production at ITVS), Luis Ortiz (Managing Director of the Latino
Public Broadcasting), Stephen Gong (Executive Director of the Center
for Asian American Media), Casey Davis Kaufman (Associate Director
for WGBH’s Media Library and Archives and Project Manager for
the American Archive of Public Broadcasting), Nicole Tsien (Associate
Producer of POV), Sophie Harari (Associate Producer of POV), Alice
Quinlan (Director of Community Engagement and Education at POV),
and Dolores Morris (Documentary Producer at HBO). Mis gracias, also,
to the documentary makers who allowed me to use screenshots of their
work in this book: Cecilia Aldarondo and her mother Nylda Dieppa,
Juan Carlos Zaldívar and his late father Pachuco, Natalia Almada, and
duo Almudena Carracedo and Robert Bahar.
Finally, last but not least, Quang, my fellow Cold War baby. For
everything: merci.
Contents
1 Introduction 1
2 Documentary Makers as Translators: Translating
the Real to the Reel 13
3 Four Factors of Translation: Contexts, Agents,
Practices, and Discourses 39
4 The Universal Experience of Migrant Mothers 73
5 The Universal Experience of Migrant Fathers 89
6 The Universal Experience of Migrant Children 109
7 The Group Experience of Migrant Citizens 129
8 The Group Experience of Bicultural Migrants 149
9 The Group Experience of Migrant Criminals 165
10 The Individual Experience of Migrant Queers 193
11 The Individual Experience of Migrant Adoptees 215
xi
xii Contents
12 The Individual Experience of Migrant Celebrities 239

13 Conclusion 261
Index 275
About the Author
Alexandra Jorgevna Sanchez is a Research Fellow at KU Leuven

(Research Group Translation and Intercultural Transfer—Translation
Studies Research Unit). She studies how the Latin American diaspora
translates itself and is translated by others.
xiii
List of Figures
Fig. 3.1 Made in LA (Carracedo & Bahar, 2007; screenshots

by the author) 50
Fig. 3.2 Memories of a Penitent Heart (Aldarondo, 2017;
screenshots by the author) 52
Fig. 3.3 90 Miles (Zaldívar, 2003; screenshots by the author) 57
Fig. 7.1 Made in LA (Carracedo & Bahar, 2007; screenshots
by the author) 139
Fig. 9.1 Al otro lado (Almada, 2006; screenshots by the author) 171
Fig. 9.2 Al otro lado (Almada, 2006; screenshots by the author) 189
Fig. 10.1 Memories of a Penitent Heart (Aldarondo, 2017;
screenshots by the author) 206
xv
List of Tables
Table 1.1 Corpus (documentary, documentary maker, PBS

premier) 7
Table 3.1 Corpus (documentary, documentary maker, theme,
level of identity) 65
xvii
1
Introduction
On June 21, 2015, the 74th Annual Peabody Awards Ceremony

premiered on national television in the United States. Among the
winners that night was No le digas a nadie (Shwer, 2015), a documentary
that the host of the ceremony, actor Keegan-Michael Key, described as
a “remarkable film” highlighting “the harshness of immigration policy
that regularly ostracizes and criminalizes young people, who are just
as American as any of us” (“Mikaela Shwer”, 00:00:21). The audience
watched on as documentary filmmaker Mikaela Shwer, accompanied by
her protagonists Angy and Maria Rivera, graciously received the award
and delivered an acceptance speech in which she thanked the mother–
daughter duo for “the incredible work that [they were] doing to be […]
the face of immigration” and for “trusting [her] to help share this story”
(00:01:34). Here we had a woman filmmaker, a black host, and undoc-
umented Latinx activists taking center stage in an institution founded
on patriarchal, Eurocentric values (cf. Winston et al., 2017), seemingly
providing living proof that Americans were now in a ‘post’ racial and
‘post’ gender era (cf. Nicholson, 2010).
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2022
A. J. Sanchez, Discourses of Migration in Documentary Film,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-06539-2_1
2 A. J. Sanchez
Roughly a year later, another (inter)nationally broadcast speech would

attest to a diametrically opposite reality. During the final presidential
debate, when asked to elaborate on his plans to tackle immigration, then-
candidate Donald Trump famously answered: “[…] we have some bad
hombres here, and we’re going to get them out” (Blake, 2016). Trump’s
use of Mock Spanish—Spanish utterances in English speech that indi-
rectly index whiteness as an unmarked normative order and reproduce
highly negative, racializing stereotypes of the Latinx community (Hill,
1995)—was, in and of itself, nothing out of the ordinary for a rhetori-
cian of his caliber. What was so exceptional was his coupling of Mock
Spanish with the age-old stereotype of the Mexican bandit: the ‘bad guy’
with a Spanish accent who has pervaded the public imagination for over
a century. However, Trump’s catchy one-liner hit home with his elec-
torate not because it was mildly creative. It caught on because it was
blatantly offensive. His trademark, after all, was his readiness to taunt
the opposition with its taboos: a signature move that made him look
“authentic” (Sclafani, 2017) in comparison to the pokerfaced attitude
of so-called nasty woman Hillary Clinton (cf. Kray et al., 2018). For as
insulting as his words about Latinx migrants may have been, they did
evoke a familiar image: el bandido, an old American cliché decked out in
a new, Trumpian jacket.
Donald Trump’s bad hombre harks back to one of the oldest and most
widely recognized Latinx stereotypes: the Mexican bandit. Although
historically el bandido can be traced back to the American conquest
of the Wild West, audiovisually the figure became a staple with the
arrival of the Western (Fojas, 2009). In their glorification of the Manifest
Destiny that led to the annexation of a vast amount of Mexican territo-
ries, Westerns were eager to justify “taking a rich land away” by depicting
Mexicans as “people who were not making good use of it” (Delgado,
2007, p. 1721). Hence, el bandido became generally known as:
dirty and unkempt, usually displaying an unshaven face, missing teeth,

and disheveled, oily hair […]. Behaviorally, he is vicious, cruel, treach-
erous, shifty, and dishonest; psychologically, he is irrational, overly
emotional, and quick to resort to violence. His inability to speak English
1 Introduction 3
or his speaking English with a heavy Spanish accent is Hollywood’s way

of signaling his feeble intellect. (Ramirez-Berg, 2002, p. 68)
Over the years, the trope of legitimate conquest that generated the
Mexican bandit progressed into another: the trope of illegitimate Recon-
quista (cf. Chavez, 2013) by a brown tide (cf. Santa Ana, 2002) of
undocumented immigrants (cf. Pérez Huber & Solorzano, 2015). The
emergence of this new figure, to which Trump referred as “bad hombre,”
is intimately linked to the changes that the US immigration policy
has undergone since the days of the gunslingers of the Wild West
(cf. Fleegler, 2013).
From Bandido to Bad Hombre

In the United States, the earliest comprehensive immigration law was
adopted in 1917. Prior to that date, there had only been a range of
exclusionary provisions aimed at prohibiting immigration and autho-
rizing the deportation of, among others, convicts, lunatics, imbeciles,
professional beggars, anarchists, polygamists, and women with immoral
purposes (Mendelson, 2009). As the nation grew more nationalistic with
the advent of World War I, it also became more inclined to believe
that “new immigration” was a “problem” (Garis, 1927). Hence, in the
coming years (1917–1924), a series of bills was passed to maintain
the racial composition of the United States by restricting immigration
based on national origins. Reinventing the “American” as a settler from
the larger area of northwestern Europe, these bills purposefully based
themselves on censuses that were disadvantageous to immigrants from
elsewhere (Haney Lopez, 1996). This is where the “constative fallacy”
began that would characterize US immigration policy: “the mispercep-
tion that actions are describing an identity they are actually creating”
(Yoshino, 2002, p. 901). Only in 1965, under the influence of the
civil rights movement, were the national origins quotas replaced by the
“first come, first served system” of the Immigration and Nationality Act
(INA). Most importantly, the Act was the first to impose numerical limits
4 A. J. Sanchez
on immigration from Latin America, a region whose historical migra-

tory flows had always been significant. US foreign policy toward Latin
America, however, would soon spill over into its immigration policy,
causing it to split in two different directions.
In 1966, in an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of Fidel Castro’s
government, Congress enacted the Cuban Adjustment Act (CAA), which
granted Cuban migrants the status of refugee and permitted them to gain
permanent residence after one year of physical presence in the United
States, regardless of whether they had entered the country legally or not.
This arrangement remained unaltered until President Clinton instated
the “wet foot, dry foot” policy in 1996, which stipulated the interdic-
tion and repatriation of Cuban migrants intercepted at sea by the US
authorities. In 2017, in his final week in office, President Obama ended
this policy as a “gesture of goodwill” toward the Cuban government (de
Bhal, 2018). The CAA itself remained intact, although from then on
its “preferential treatment” was supposed to be extended only to Cuban
migrants who entered the country legally (Meyers, 2018).
The US immigration policy was less benevolent toward the rest of
Latin America. Congress vacillated for several decades (1930–1965)
between the deportation and legalization of its Mexican farm-workers,
unsure whether to protect a workforce it desperately needed or to remain
coherent with its deportation system (Romero, 2010). In 1965, it ruled
in favor of the latter by letting the Bracero Program expire—a labor
initiative that had been, up to that point, the main source of foreign
farm labor in the United States. This decision is at the base of the “Mex-
ican preponderance” among undocumented immigrants in the United
States; the migratory flows from Mexico continued, but the millions of
Mexican migrants suddenly went from “authorized workers” to “illegal
aliens” (Flores & Schachter, 2018). In 1986, the Immigration Reform
and Control Act (IRCA) was passed to deter unauthorized immigration;
it allowed undocumented migrants who already resided in the United
States to apply for legal status while limiting the access to social bene-
fits and criminalizing the hiring of all future illegal aliens. In 1996,
the passing of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Respon-
sibility Act (IIRAIRA) fundamentally transformed life for all immi-
grants—undocumented, documented, and quasi-documented alike—by
1 Introduction 5
expanding (in some cases retroactively) the grounds for exclusion and
deportation (Menjívar, 2016).
A decisive factor that drove the criminalization of immigration law
was the US’ growing discomfort with Mexico’s notoriety as a prominent
source of contraband in the “war on drugs” it was waging. Over time,
these congressional and presidential concerns over human and drug traf-
ficking led to an ever-increasing militarization of the southern border,
spurred by the Supreme Court’s support of racial profiling as a constitu-
tionally sound tool to identify undocumented migrants (Romero, 2010).
The tendency to treat illegal immigration as a crime culminated after
9/11, which led President Bush to declare a “war on terror” and sign
the PATRIOT (Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and
Obstruct Terrorism) Act—a bill that used immigration policy as a tool
to identify possible terrorist and criminal threats to the United States.
As a result of the Bush Administration’s approach to immigration, the
mass detention and deportation of undocumented immigrants skyrock-
eted during the Obama and Trump Administrations (Guerrero, 2021).
To this day, the overwhelming majority of undocumented deportees hail
from Mexico and Central America, making Latinxs preeminent targets
of the criminalization of immigration policy (Cervantes et al., 2018).
Aim of the Book

It is precisely in the contradiction between the discourses of migration
as exemplified by the US immigration policy or Donald Trump’s “bad
hombre” and those exemplified by the Peabody Awards or Shwer’s No le
digas a nadie that the present book takes root. Its point of departure is the
brand of poststructuralism that pushed identity toward post-identity, a
container of worldviews that recognize the invented, constructed primor-
diality of identity as well as ideologies that fall prey to these so-called
inventions (cf. Croucher, 2003). Of special interest is the US indepen-
dent documentary scene, which developed so as to offer an alternative,
subjective lens to social issues (Heyman, 2018)—a goal that runs parallel
to poststructuralism’s suspicion of objectivity (Renov, 2012). If, on one
end of the discursive spectrum, we have a rejection of older valuations of
6 A. J. Sanchez
power and difference and, on the other, a denial of their importance and
depth (cf. Nicholson, 2010), then this book focuses on openly subjec-
tive media texts that, like No le digas a nadie, find themselves at the
intersection of both dialectical habits of thought.
In particular, real-life stories of migration from Latin America to the
United States are at stake here. In order to be inclusive, the present book
will refer to this community of Latin Americans in the United States
as “Latinx”—a term which, as the editor of Latino Studies declared, has
become an established alternative to other gender-inclusive terms, such
as Latina and Latino, Latin@ or Latina/o (Torres, 2018). Hence, in
this book, “Latinx (im)migrants” are understood to be all people who
are about to migrate or already have immigrated (sometimes generations
ago) to the United States from Latin America—a geographical region
that includes all Western Hemisphere countries south of the United
States, regardless of their language. However, the book centers on Latin
American countries that were once colonies of the Spanish or Portuguese
crown and omits other former European colonies, because the identity
formation of the latter is generally considered to have emerged in a signif-
icantly different context than that of the former (cf. Santos, 2002). The
question that this book sets out to answer is how documentary makers
like Shwer, in their (conscious or unconscious) knowledge of the above-
mentioned discursive spectrum, go about translating stories of migration
like Angy and Maria’s from “the real” to “the reel.”
More specifically, the book considers documentary making as a form
of translation and documentary makers as translators. It centers on how
“independent documentary makers”—that is, documentary makers who
were not employed by the distributing broadcast network, whose work
was acquired and licensed by the distributing broadcast network to show-
case publicly, and who were free to make the final choices about the story,
characters, and crew (Chattoo et al., 2018)—translate real-life discourses
surrounding Latin American migration to the United States to the docu-
mentary film reel. In other words, in this book, translation theory is used
as a heuristic tool that facilitates the discourse analysis of its corpus.
Concretely, the book focuses on the discourses of (a) 18 indepen-
dent documentaries; (b) with at least one Latinx protagonist (who, when
filming began, either had already immigrated to the United States from a
1 Introduction 7
Latin American country or was planning to do so); (c) that were broad-
cast on the PBS (Public Broadcasting Service) series POV, the first and
longest-running series of independent nonfiction films in the United
States; (d) from the program’s inception in 1988 until the present day
(Table 1.1).
The book’s transversal application of translation theory to documen-
tary films goes beyond interdisciplinarity. It strives to achieve antidis-
ciplinarity, as understood by Halberstam: ways of acquiring knowledge
that lead to unbounded forms of speculation and modes of thinking that
ally not with rigor and order but with inspiration and unpredictability
Table 1.1 Corpus (documentary, documentary maker, PBS premier)

# Documentary Documentary maker PBS premiere
1 Carmen Miranda: Bananas Helena Solberg 1995
Is My Business
2 The Transformation Carlos Aparicio and 1996
Susana Aiken
3 Fear and Learning at Laura Simón 1997
Hoover Elementary
4 Corpus: A Home Movie for Lourdes Portillo 1999
Selena
5 The Double Life of Ernesto Catherine Ryan and Gary 1999
Gomez Gomez Weimberg
6 La Boda Hannah Weyer 2000
7 Our House in Havana Stephen Olsson 2000
8 My American Girls: A Aaron Matthews 2001
Dominican Story
9 Escuela Hannah Weyer 2002
10 Discovering Dominga Patricia Flynn and MJ 2003
McConohay
11 90 Miles Juan Carlos Zaldívar 2003
12 Al otro lado Natalia Almada 2006
13 Made in LA Almudena Carracedo and 2007
Robert Bahar
14 The Ballad of Esequiel Kieran Fitzgerald 2008
Hernández
15 Sin País Theo Rigby 2012
16 No le digas a nadie Mikaela Shwer 2015
17 Memories of a Penitent Cecilia Aldarondo 2017
Heart
18 Voices of the Sea Kim Hopkins 2018
8 A. J. Sanchez
(2011). Rather than depending on a particular discipline as “an over-

trained pied piper leading obedient children out of the darkness and into
the light” (ibid., p. 14), the present book attempts to amplify Translation
Studies and its framework of “punishing norms that discipline behavior”
(ibid., p. 3) by drawing on other disciplines, such as Media, Migration,
and Discourse Studies.
Previous analyses of documentary depictions of migration have
inferred that the genre can be used to intervene in the politics of glob-
alization (Demos, 2013), communicate the bodily, spatial, and temporal
dimensions of the migration experience (Köhn, 2016), bring about
social change in the public sphere (Loustaunau & Shaw, 2018), contest
the exclusionary discourse on migration that defines mainstream media
outlets (Demo, 2012), respond to a political context in which migrants
have been racialized and criminalized (Schreiber, 2018), and so on. These
studies have sufficiently explored the ways in which the documentary
film form can convey counterhegemonic discourses (“counterdiscourses”;
cf. Zimmerman, 2000) of migration. However, a systematic analysis of
these discourses has not been conducted yet. Hence, the goal of this book
is to produce “undisciplined knowledge” (Halberstam, 2011) on the kind
of counterhegemonic discourses that the documentaries of the corpus
have been conveying over the last thirty years. The book relies on trans-
lation theory to lay out its conceptual framework, which it complements
with a mixture of text and discourse analysis, interviews, ethnographies,
etc.
In Chapter 2, the theoretical framework of the book is discussed.
Translation theory is used to approach the abovementioned POV docu-
mentaries as “intersemiotic translations” (cf. Jakobson, 1959) from one
medium (“the real”) to another (“the reel”). This equation allows for an
analysis of the corpus according to the “four basic factors of translation”
(Flynn & Gambier, 2011): contexts, agents, practices, and discourses.
Chapter 3 looks into three of these four factors: the contexts, agents,
and practices of the 18 POV documentaries of the corpus. Discourse,
the fourth factor of translation, is addressed in the next nine chapters.
In Chapters 4 to 12, a discourse analysis of the corpus is conducted.
1 Introduction 9
Finally, Chapter 13 offers a conclusive overview of the “undisciplined

knowledge” (Halberstam, 2011) on the discourses of migration that this
book brings to light.
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Banditry. Qualitative Inquiry, 21(3), 223–238.
Ramirez-Berg, C. (2002). Latino images in film: Stereotypes, subversion, and
resistance. University of Texas Press.
Renov, M. (2012). Theorizing documentary. Routledge.
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Romero, V. C. (2010). Decriminalizing border crossings. Fordham Urban Law

Journal, 1, 273–302.
Santa Ana, O. (2002). Brown tide rising: Metaphors of Latinos in contemporary
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Metadiscourse, and Political Identity (1st ed.). Routledge.
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Winston, B., Vanstone, G., & Chi, W. (2017). The act of documenting:
Documentary film in the 21st Century. Bloomsbury Publishing USA.
Yoshino, K. (2002). Covering. The Yale Law Journal, 111(4), 769–939.
Zimmerman, P. R. (2000). States of emergency: Documentaries, wars, democracies.
University of Minnesota Press.
2
Documentary Makers as Translators:
There is a wealth of scholarship on Latinx tropes and typifications in

the media (e.g. Aldama & González, 2019; Aldama & Nericcio, 2019;
Lie et al., 2012) as well as on polarizing media frames of migration (e.g.
Brabeck et al., 2011; Ommundsen et al., 2014; Van Gorp et al., 2021).
However, the literature on media texts that seek to transcend these stereo-
typizations remains scarce. In order to address this knowledge gap, the
present book canvases the discourses of migration in documentaries that
pride themselves on their “counterdiscourse to both transnational and
nationalist media and their de facto privileging of commercial exchange
values” (Zimmerman, 2000, p. xix). Concretely, the book charts the
discourses of migration present in 18 documentaries dealing with Latin
American migration to the United States that were broadcast on the
PBS series POV between 1988 and the present day. To that end, it uses
the “metaphors” of the translation process (St. Andre, 2014) as a “met-
alanguage” (Gambier & van Doorslaer, 2009). This equation between
translation and nonfiction film allows for the consideration of discourse
as a basic factor of translation, whose meaning is amplified when inter-
preted in function of the other factors: contexts, agents, and practices
(Flynn & Gambier, 2011). In other words, the book relies on the “tool”
Switzerland AG 2022
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-06539-2_2
14 A. J. Sanchez
of translation (D’hulst, 2012) to comprehend what kind of discourses

are contained in the “intersemiotic” translations (cf. Jakobson, 1959) of
its corpus: their transfers from one medium (“the real”) to another (“the
reel”).
The cornerstone of this book’s translation heuristics is Espagne’s defi-
nition of cultural transfer: a process of selection of cultural knowledge
guided by the “specific needs of the target system” (Espagne, 1999,
p. 286; my translation). Espagne’s formula was taken onboard by trans-
lation scholars as it was in keeping with the so-called “cultural turn”
that translation scholars Bassnett and Lefevere famously promulgated
in 1990. Fueled by poststructuralist thought, the cultural turn incited
Translation Studies to view their former reliance on the equivalence
between sources and targets as, on the one hand, too eager to accept
meaning as a stable and easily transferrable entity and, on the other, too
dismissive of the circumstances and ideologies that inspired the target
system to import a foreign source text (Leal, 2012). Thanks to the
cultural turn, translation scholars began taking notice of culture-specific
frameworks, such as the one proposed by Espagne and Werner (1988).
From then on, the defining feature of these culture-specific approaches
of translation became their “target-orientedness” (Marinetti, 2011). This
novel focus on the end product allowed for translation to be regarded
as the expression of larger transfer movements aimed at transforming a
source text into a target text that fulfills specific functions for its audience
in the target culture.
Already hinted at by Even-Zohar in 1990 and 1997, the abovemen-
tioned concept of transfer has been gaining terrain in Translation Studies
over the decades (Weissbrod, 2004). Göpferich even tentatively rechris-
tened the discipline “Transfer and Translation Studies” (2007, 2010),
which leveled the playing field for D’hulst to plead for an expansion of
the notion of transfer. He proposed that translation scholars step outside
purely linguistic explorations of translation theory and widen their field
of interest by using translation theory as a heuristic tool to study all
kinds of “assumed transfer”—that is, all features presented or regarded as
transfer features within a given cultural setting (2012). It is precisely the
2 Documentary Makers as Translators… 15
“assumed transfer” of real-life discourses of migration to the documen-

tary film form1 that the present book explores, with the help translation
theory.
Adaptation scholars have also been drawn to translation as a concep-
tual framework because, as Stam explains, the “trope of adaptation as
translation” allows the adapted text to be approached as “a principled
effort of inter-semiotic [sic ] transposition, with the inevitable losses and
gains typical of any translation” (2000, p. 62; cf. Hutcheon, 2006).
Stam’s use of translation as a trope endows his discussions of adapted
(film) texts with a myriad of possibilities, all stemming from the rela-
tively recent view that translation is, first and foremost, a sociocultural
practice (cf. Toury, 2012; Venuti, 2008). As film scholars Welsh and
Lev suggest, reconfiguring adaptation as translation replaces the leading
question “How has a given adaptation succeeded or failed in capturing
the leading textual features or its sourcetext [sic ]?” with open questions,
such as “How has a given adaptation rewritten its sourcetext? Why has
it chosen to select and rewrite the sourcetexts it has? How have the texts
available to us inevitably been rewritten by the very act of reading? and
How do we want to rewrite them anew?” (2007, p. 332).
In order to ask the same questions, documentary scholars have also
shown interest in translation as a conceptual model. Nichols, who along
with Beattie (2004) can be credited for having laid the groundwork
for modern-day Documentary Studies, relies on translation to separate
documentary style from style in fiction:
Style in fiction derives primarily from the director’s translation of a story

into visual form; it gives the visual manifestation of a plot a style distinct
from its written counterpart as script, novel, play, or biography. Style
in documentary derives partly from the director’s attempt to translate
her perspective on the historical world into visual terms, but it also
stems from her direct involvement with the film’s actual subject. That is,
fictional style conveys a distinct, imaginary world, whereas documentary
1 Approaching audiovisual texts as intersemiotic translations is not unheard of, neither in Adap-
tation Studies (e.g. Perdikaki, 2017), Documentary Studies (e.g. Gershon & Malitsky, 2011)
nor Translation Studies (e.g. Davier & Van Doorslaer, 2018). Similarly, Cattrysse proposes a
translation-based approach in film and adaptation studies (2014). See also Martínez and Cerezo
Merchán (2017).
16 A. J. Sanchez
style or voice reveals a distinct form of engagement with the historical

world. (Nichols, 2010, pp. 43–44)
Bruzzi, another preeminent scholar of the field, also makes reference

to the practice of translation to define the nature of documentary film:
“Documentary film is traditionally perceived to be the hybrid offspring
of a perennial struggle between the forces of objectivity (represented by
the ‘documents’ or facts that underpin it) and the forces of subjectivity
(that is, the translation of those facts into representational form)” (2006,
p. 46). Further on, Bruzzi paraphrases Hayden White to reconfigure
documentary making as “translating knowing into telling” based on the
artform’s construction of “fluid narratives out of potentially fragmentary,
disjointed material” (ibid., p. 87).
Similarly, Zimmerman also draws on a canonical text to argue that
the independent documentary is essentially a translation of “counterdis-
course to both transnational and nationalist media and their de facto
privileging of commercial exchange values” (2000, p. xix). Referencing
Bhabha’s trope of cultural translation, Zimmerman presents indepen-
dent documentary making as an “insurgent act” and “a war over a
discursive territory, a war over how the public spaces of the nation are
defined and mapped, a war between the faux homogeneity of corpo-
ratist multiculturalism that absorbs and vaporizes difference and a radical
heterogeneity that positions difference(s) and conflict(s) as a core of
contestation over identity with frisson as its modus operandi” (2000,
pp. 13–14). Zimmerman’s allusion to the concept of cultural transla-
tion builds on the “translational turn” (Bachmann-Medick, 2013) that
Cultural Studies underwent in the early 1990s. Bhabha’s use of the
concept of translation is a textbook example of the translational turn’s
call for hybridization in terms of form (interdisciplinarity) and content
(discursive in-betweenness), which implied a cross-fertilization between
cultural and translational practices that encouraged scholars to widen
both disciplines: Translation Studies and Cultural Studies.
Inspired by the agenda of Cultural Studies to destabilize received
notions of “foreign” and “familiar” and to challenge restrictive social
norms (Conway, 2012), Translation Studies (TS) in turn branched out
into the analysis of “committed approaches” to translation (Brownlie,
2010). The goal was to nuance previous, dichotomous stances whereby

the translator was either seen as colluding with the status quo and
producing fluent, self-effacing translations or opposing power differen-
tials through foreignizing strategies and terms that were unfamiliar to
the receiving culture (cf. Tymoczko & Gentzler, 2002; Venuti, 2008).
One subfield of Translation Studies that has been particularly prolific
in terms of describing the effects of culture and power in translation
is imagology. Originally rooted in literary studies, imagology aimed to
describe, analyze, and raise awareness of the origin, process, and func-
tion of national prejudices and stereotypes (Beller & Leerssen, 2007).
Imagology then crossed over to translation to “show TS scholars how
imagology and its conceptual apparatus can help broaden and deepen
our understanding of the discursive construction of cultural phenomena
in translation” (Flynn et al., 2016, p. 8). Thus, being a “conceptual
apparatus” (Beller & Leerssen, 2007, p. 12), imagology as understood
from the perspective of TS echoes the documentary/translation parallel
mentioned earlier. As van Doorslaer contends, a translator who has been
tasked with the interlingual, intralingual, or intersemiotic translation of
cultural images functions as “a cultural mediator, an informant transfer-
ring cultural knowledge, and as such also authoring a new text” (2019,
p. 62).
Expounding the notion of “translation as mediation” (Roig-Sanz &
Meylaerts, 2018), van Doorslaer coined the term “journalator” to rede-
fine the journalist as an agent “who makes abundant use of translation (in
its broader definitions) when transferring and reformulating or recreating
informative journalistic texts” (2012, p. 1049). The journalator’s task
is then to entextualize news by reformulating the source text “in response
to priorities and values relevant within the target context” (Kang as cited
in van Doorslaer, 2012, p. 1050). Similar to van Doorslaer’s plea to
consider journalism a form of translation2 is documentary film scholars
Gershon and Malitsky’s call for a revision of documentary making
as a process of entextualization by the documentary maker. Like van
2 Van Doorslaer’s merger of Translation Studies and Journalism Studies can be placed within the
discipline of “journalistic translation research.” This subfield of Translation Studies is interested
in (1) news writing strategies; (2) language/sign transfers that can be interlingual, intralingual,
or intersemiotic; and (3) all other types of (non-linguistic) transformation (Valdeón, 2018).
18 A. J. Sanchez
Doorslaer’s journalators, Gershon and Malitsky’s documentary makers

“transform speech and events into circulable texts” via entextualization
processes imbued with the ruling ideologies (2011, pp. 50–51).
Based on the “entangled history” (Werner & Zimmermann, 2006)
between Documentary Studies and Translation Studies, and specifically
between “independent documentary making” (Zimmerman, 2000) and
“committed approaches” to translation (Brownlie, 2010), the present
book considers documentary making as a form of translation and the
documentary maker as a translator. Similar to van Doorslaer’s jour-
nalator, the documentary maker is therefore viewed as an agent “who
makes abundant use of translation (in its broader definitions)” (2012,
p. 1049) for the transfer of real-life discourses to the documentary film
form.
Focusing on independent documentary makers who circulate in a
post-identitarian context that is, on the one hand, plagued by “a sense of
exhaustion around the whole project of identity” (Millner, 2005, p. 541)
and, on the other, keen to broach “new topics” in order to “break out
of a rather stifling orthodoxy” (Eagleton, 2004, p. 222), this book aims
to chart their discourses of migration. More specifically, the book centers
on how “independent documentary makers”—who were not employed
by the distributing broadcast network, whose work was acquired and
licensed by the distributing broadcast network to showcase publicly, and
who were free to make the final choices about story, characters, and crew
(Chattoo et al., 2018)—translate discourses of migration from the real
to the reel.
Previously, documentaries on migration to the United States have
been investigated as performances of artivism (Demos, 2013), as exam-
ples of visual anthropology (Köhn, 2016), as creative and critical media
strategies (Schreiber, 2018), and as acts of resistance at the hand of the
Chicano movement (Demo, 2012) and the Latin American diaspora
(Loustaunau & Shaw, 2018). However, since these analyses examined a
selection of handpicked narratives, they lacked what TV scholar Straub-
haar calls a “systemic focus” (2007, p. 2). The “ecologies” (Altheide,
1994) in which these documentary narratives were embedded have
remained largely understudied. In contrast, the present book favors a
more holistic approach. By rooting its conceptual framework in Trans-

lation Studies, it looks at the documentaries of its corpus as if they
were translations that were molded to the needs and expectations of
their target system. This framing allows for the documentary makers of
the corpus to be approached as agents who performed “intersemiotic”
translations (cf. Jakobson, 1959) of real-life discourses of migration to
the documentary form. This logic, in turn, facilitates the contextualiza-
tion and comprehension of the different discourses of migration that are
present in the corpus.
The book restricts itself to (a) independent (b) documentaries for
two reasons. On the one hand, the US independent documentary scene
developed to offer an alternative and subjective lens to social issues
(Heyman, 2018), making its texts susceptible to exploring counter-
hegemonic discourses (“counterdiscourses”; cf. Zimmerman, 2000) of
migration in which the book is interested. On the other hand, it may
be argued that the transfer process of translation sensu stricto closely
resembles that of the documentary film; both take place between source
and target poles; both apply to products; both need agents manipu-
lating those products; both recur to one or more linguistic carriers; and
both make use of specific procedures or techniques to impose formal,
semantic, or functional changes on the transferred products (cf. D’hulst,
2012). Additionally, what distinguishes the audience’s involvement with
the documentary from its involvement with other genres is the anticipa-
tion of “an oscillation between the recognition of historical reality and
the recognition of a representation about it” (Nichols, 2010, p. 39). In
this way, the documentary’s genre-defining “claim to the real” (Winston,
1995) could be seen as mimicking the (traditional) objective of transla-
tion: seeking equivalence in the target text by professing fidelity to the
source text (cf. Toury, 2012).
This book contends that, as the field of Translation Studies is premised
on the exploration of the translator’s ability to represent a source text
and make authenticity claims about their representational work (Flynn,
2013), it lends itself to the analysis of the documentary—a genre
characterized by a translation-like “oscillation between the recognition
of historical reality and the recognition of a representation about it”
20 A. J. Sanchez
(Nichols, 2010, p. 39). Moreover, following Bassnett and Lefevere’s “cul-

tural turn” (1990), the field has grown increasingly interdisciplinary,
crossing over from textual to cultural translation,3 exploring new epis-
temological impulses,4 and drawing from other disciplines to develop
translation-oriented approaches5 (Bachmann-Medick, 2009). Such inter-
disciplinarity enables the present book to posit documentaries as “post-
translations” (Gentzler, 2016), “*translations” (Tymoczko, 2014), or
“translations2” (Hermans, 1995)—stylizations that were born out of
Translation Studies’ persistent call “to expand outwards, to improve
communication with other disciplines, to move beyond binaries, to
engage with the idea of translation as a global activity, and to configure
the planetary into all our thinking” (Bassnett & Johnston, 2019, p. 187).
What makes the cultural turn in TS especially appealing for this book
is its view that all transferred products are “facts of the target culture”
(Toury, 2012, p. 24). From this perspective, translations can be clus-
tered around their contexts, agents, practices, and discourses: “basic
factors relating to translation, each with its own set of methodological
implications […] separated out from the messy reality of translation for
methodological purposes only” (Flynn & Gambier, 2011, p. 90). Only
by gradually laying bare the intricate relations between these factors of
translation (contexts > agents > practices) can the discourses of these
translations be properly identified. This gradation is purely formal; the
contexts, agents, practices, and discourses of a translation are, in fact,
inextricably intertwined with each other. In this book, however, these
factors have been “separated out from the messy reality of translation for
methodological purposes only” (ibid.).
3 See, for example, the interdisciplinary subfield of imagology (Flynn et al., 2016).
4 See, for example, the interdisciplinary subfield of postcolonial Translation Studies (Bandia,
2014).
5 See, for example, the interdisciplinary use of Latourian actor—network theory in Translation
Studies (e.g. Gonne, 2018; Van Rooyen, 2019).
Contexts
Ever since the cultural turn in Translation Studies (Bassnett & Lefevere,
1990), the translator has been recognized as having agency—the ability
to exert power in an intentional way (Buzelin, 2011). This concept of
agency, however, cannot be detached from the translator’s target struc-
ture (“context”), as the latter bestows upon the former the social role of
mediator between the foreign source text and the target structure itself.
In this vein, Giddens6 suggests to view all social agents—such as
translators (cf. Van Rooyen, 2013)—as individuals who organically inter-
nalize the structure on which their role of agent depends. After all, “the
structural properties of social systems are both medium and outcome of
the practices they recursively organize” (Giddens, 1984, p. 25). Hence,
from a Media Studies perspective, the properties of Giddens’s structure
are seen as boundaries within which cultural agents operate and which,
therefore, provide them with resources as well as constraints (Straub-
haar, 2007). Similarly, from the vantage-point of translation theory, the
source-to-target transfer is considered to be imbued with the norms and
expectations of the target structure, because the agent who performs this
transfer is so as well (Toury, 2012). To understand this transfer, it is there-
fore imperative to pinpoint the said norms and expectations (“structural
properties”).
In this book, the agents are independent documentary makers who
“make the final choices about story, characters, and crew” themselves
(Chattoo et al., 2018, p. 499) and who are not employed by the program
POV. The latter only acquires the rights to showcase their films on PBS.
Yet, the book’s hypothesis is that, despite their apparent artistic freedom,
POV’s independent documentary makers still internalize the norms and
expectations (“structural properties”) of PBS (“target structure”) and
adapt their discourses accordingly. In order to better understand the
nature of the discourses that the agents of this corpus applied in their
6 Although the present book favors Giddens’s structuration theory to give shape to this symbiosis
between agency and structure, in Translation Studies different schools of thought have defined
the “context” of an agent. Apart from Giddens’s structuration theory (e.g. Van Rooyen, 2013),
there is also Latour’s actor—network theory (e.g. Gonne, 2018), Lahire’s habitus theory (e.g.
Meylaerts, 2013), and Bourdieu’s theory of fields (e.g. Simeoni, 1998).
22 A. J. Sanchez
documentaries on Latin American migration to the United States (“target

texts”), a literature review of the structure in which the documen-
tary makers were made to operate—namely PBS and its independent
documentary series POV—will be conducted in the next chapter.
Agents
The cultural turn in Translation Studies revealed that no transfer process
from one semiotic system to another happens in isolation. It is a sociocul-
tural event, influenced by a multitude of factors, that turns translations
into facts of the target culture (Toury, 2012). However, the role of the
translator in the transfer process was neglected until translation scholars
such as Gouanvic (1999) and Simeoni (1998) began applying Bourdieu’s
field theory (cf. Bourdieu, 1977) in order to relate the structures in which
agents of translation circulate to the translation decisions they make in
their target texts.
As Meylaerts7 explains in her seminal essay The Multiple Lives of
Translators, Bourdieu’s field theory was meant to transcend the binarity
that had existed up until that point in sociology, vacillating between a
theory of effects (“structure”) and a theory of strategies (“agency”) for the
explanation of societal phenomena (2013; cf. 2008, 2010, 2017). Bour-
dieu’s notion of “habitus” (cf. Bourdieu, 1993) united both paradigms
as it posited that social agents developed dispositions throughout their
lifetime via an unconscious internalization of their surrounding social
structures. These dispositions entailed principles, attitudes, opinions,
ways of thinking, and acting—all resulting from certain life conditions.
Hence, Meylaerts defines “habitus” as a social identity that coincides with
the way social agents view the world and their place in it.
Meylaerts also insists on the “multipositionality” of the translating
agent, which contradicts the traditional view of social agents’ habitus
as predominantly directed and defined by their profession. The same
7 Although the merit of using Bourdieu’s theory for translation analyses has been examined by
a great number of scholars (e.g. Inghilleri, 2003; Sela-Sheffy, 2005; Wolf & Fukari, 2007),
this book prefers Meylaerts’s use and exploration of Bourdieu’s conceptual framework as it is
arguably the most well-rounded and complete (2008, 2010, 2017).
tendency exists in Translation Studies and is based on two common,

but incorrect assumptions: (1) there is an autonomous field of transla-
tion and (2) translation is an exclusively professional activity that can
only be performed by highly skilled professionals. Meylaerts, on the
other hand, proposes that translating is more often than not the trans-
lating agent’s secondary activity, because translation is itself a vague (“not
autonomized”) field that is only activated when a target culture sees it fit
to import a particular foreign source text. Moreover, formal training is
rarely a requirement for a translator. Therefore, Meylaerts suggests that
in order to better gauge the agents’ “translation practice, their perception
and self-perception,” it is important to pay attention to their socialization
in other fields than translation and to acknowledge that translators lead
“multiple lives” outside the translation industry (2013, pp. 108–109).
Mutatis mutandis, Meylaerts’s holistic perspective of the habitus could
equally be applied to the independent documentary makers showcased
by POV, as their agency is largely defined by PBS (“structure”). Owing
to the chronic scarcity of funds for documentary making in the United
States, it is rare for an independent documentary maker not to have
other sources of income. Just like the “traditional” translation profes-
sion, the field of independent documentary making is porous and fickle,
fully dependent on whether a real-life story (“source text”) comes to
the attention of the documentary maker whose transfer of this story to
the documentary form (“target text”) may or may not interest PBS—
or, in this case, the PBS program POV (“target structure”). Additionally,
with the advent of digital media and the increased availability of film
equipment, documentary makers are more likely to be autodidacts who
learn the job on the go. Finally, because of public broadcasting’s mission
to diversify the public sphere, PBS has grown increasingly committed
to securing diversity in front of and behind the lens (Chattoo et al.,
2018). As will be argued in the following chapter, it seems that, over
time, the non-professional aspects of the documentary makers’ habitus
(e.g. gender, ethnicity, sexuality) have become an increasingly influen-
tial factor in the selection of POV and ITVS documentaries.8 Hence,
8 So much so, that some voices are starting to protest against the “identity epistemology”
(“Glenn Loury on Race, Inequality, and America,” 2020) that underlies this focus on “diversity
24 A. J. Sanchez
in order to explain the documentary makers’ discourses in the following

chapters, it is imperative to pinpoint their habitus: their internalization
of all the structures— which include public broadcasting—that influence
the way they translate stories from the real to the reel.
Translation scholars usually have recourse to a number of ways to chart
these internalizations, such as combing through archives related to the
translation at hand or reviewing the translator’s drafts, correspondence,
and footnotes (e.g. D’hulst & van Gerwen, 2018; Meylaerts & Gonne,
2014). For this book, a generous source of paratextual material of the
agents’ habitus has proven to be the website of POV itself (http://arc
hive.pov.org). The biographical blurbs that are featured on this website
are analyzed in the next chapter.
Practices
In this book, “practices” are understood to be entextualizations of partic-
ular intersemiotic translation decisions. These were invariably influenced
by the translating agents’ contexts, habitus, and discourses at a given time
and place in the world (Flynn & Gambier, 2011). Although there are
no fixed categories of translation decisions, some taxonomies are more
widely used than others (e.g. Baker, 1992; Chesterman, 1997).
In fact, even the terminology used to refer to these translation deci-
sions varies. Among others, they have been called “procedures” (Vinay &
Darbelnet, 1995), “techniques” (Nida, 1964), “processes” (Kiraly, 1995),
and “strategies” (De Beaugrande, 1978). However, Gambier’s definition
of the term “translation strategy” is arguably the most specific one, as it
introduces a second “level of intervention” of the translator’s agency by
means of the concept of “translation tactic”:
in terms of agency”—“the idea that experiences of the marginalized have long been misrepre-
sented by the mainstream and that, to understand those experiences, we need to hear from the
marginalized directly” (Gill, 2020; cf. Carlson et al., 2017; Lewis, 2019). It should be noted,
however, that this line of thinking is generally considered “multicultural conservatism” cutting
across the boundaries of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality (Dillard, 2001).
We have at least two levels of intervention. Firstly what the military call
strategy or a planned, explicit, goal-oriented procedure or programme,
adopted to achieve a certain objective (with priorities, commands, and
anticipations), and secondly tactics, or a sequence of steps, locally imple-
mented. Strategy is achieved through tactics, subject to monitoring and
modification adapted to a given situation. In differentiating strategy for
a translation event (which includes what is happening before and after
the translation per se, such as making a deal with the client, terminology
mining, delivering the output in a given format, etc.) and tactics in a
translation act (translation in a narrow meaning), we can better highlight
the division of labour and responsibilities in translation. (2010, p. 412)
The interaction between different levels of intervention that is implied

by Gambier’s “strategies” and “tactics” can be considered applicable to the
documentary makers of the corpus because they tend to rely on tactical
uses of media technologies to introduce discontinuities in hegemonic
discourses and disorient the strategic system of powerful media institu-
tions (cf. Sützl & Hug, 2016; Heyman, 2018). This is especially true if
Gambier’s understanding of “strategies” and “tactics” is complemented
with that of de Certeau.
De Certeau’s interest in tactics and strategies started with his cogi-
tations on Foucault’s focus on dominant texts, which allegedly only
reproduced the marginalization of historically underrepresented voices
(cf. Briggs, 2015). Although concurring with Foucault that the grid
of power was becoming ever more pervasive and extensive, de Certeau
disagreed with his implication that individuals were either enabled or
constrained by the power-generated discourses that govern them. To go
beyond Foucault’s fatalistic views, de Certeau attempted to explain how
everyday individuals, in their everyday lives, manage to mitigate the said
discourses. He employed the terms tactics and strategies to signify their
quotidian ways of coping with possibilities and interdictions. Hence,
tactics were to be understood as “the ingenious ways in which the weak
make use of the strong,” whereas strategies were to be seen as “a calculus
of force-relationships which becomes possible when a subject of will
and power (a proprietor, an enterprise, a city, a scientific institution)
can be isolated from an ‘environment’” (2011, pp. xvii–xix). Over time,
de Certeau’s tactic became a heuristic tool, commonly used to uncover
26 A. J. Sanchez
the myriad ways in which people constantly and creatively manipulate

mechanisms of discipline, conforming to them only in order to evade
them (Alonso, 2017).
As was argued earlier, around the same time that the indepen-
dent documentary scene underwent a paradigmatic shift that embraced
counterhegemonic discourses (Zimmerman, 2000), Translation Studies
experienced a “cultural turn” (Bassnett & Lefevere, 1990). Under its
influence, a number of translation scholars began advocating for “com-
mitted approaches” of translation—practices of translation that exposed
previously ignored power differentials in target texts (Brownlie, 2010).
One of the best-known calls for translational activism is Venuti’s plea to
end the “invisibility of the translator” (2008).
Based on an overview of translations from the seventeenth century
until the present day, Venuti argues that the default strategy of trans-
lation has been one of fluency. Supposedly always involving a degree
of ethnocentric violence, these traditional translations tend to erase the
cultural specificities of the source text in order to trigger an “illusion”
of domesticated foreignness—a suspension of disbelief that involves
making translators invisible by ignoring their intervention in the transfer
process between foreign sources and domestic targets (Gouanvic, 2005).
Consequently, Venuti pleads for “foreignizing” translations: target texts
in which the translators’ interventions are visible thanks to translation
decisions that force the said texts to reveal themselves as domestic repro-
ductions that are subservient to foreign originals. These foreignizing
translations are allegedly capable of pointing to themselves and, there-
fore, make visible not only the agent at the helm of the transfer but also
the violence that the transfer operation may entail. According to Venuti,
translation is a process “by which the chain of signifiers that constitute
the foreign text is replaced by a chain of signifiers in the translating
language,” and it is therefore essentially guided by “the strength of [the
translator’s] interpretation” (2008, p. 13).
Readily acknowledging that translations have to conform to a certain
degree of domestication on account of the translator’s obligation to
draw on the resources of the translating language and culture, Venuti
does plead in favor of translations that flaunt their partiality. As it is
impossible to do that consistently throughout the translation because of
the inherently domesticating nature of the endeavor, Venuti takes satis-

faction in defamiliarizing, estranging, foreignizing translation decisions
that give proof of the translator’s so-called reflexivity: awareness of the
target text’s partiality (cf. Kadiu, 2019).
Although criticized for, among others, unnecessarily distancing the
target language from the reader (Bassnett, 2005), erasing translators
by prioritizing the foreign source over the foreignizing agent (Boase-
Beier, 2010), and inciting stereotypical representations of Otherness
(Polezzi, 2017), Venuti’s distinction between foreignizing and domesti-
cating translations has raised awareness in Translation Studies about the
translator’s agency to anticipate possible geopolitical and social injustices
in the target text (Brownlie, 2010). Most importantly, Venuti’s conceptu-
alizations provided a heuristic framework for the valuation of translators
who were willing to explore their agency’s counterhegemonic potential
for the sake of addressing power imbalances. In this book, Venuti’s logic
makes it possible to pinpoint and reflect on the intersemiotic translation
choices (“practices”) of the documentary makers of the corpus.
Inspired by previous analyses that relied on Venuti to identify and
explain the nature of a translator’s decisions by holding them up against
more traditional taxonomies of translation (e.g. Kadiu, 2019; Myskja,
2013), the next chapter of the book resorts to a similar methodology.
Applied to documentary makers, this approach consists of evaluating
their manipulations (“tactics”) of Nichols’s 6 documentary modes of
representation (“strategies”)—an established taxonomy9 in Documentary
Studies (cf. Bruzzi, 2006; Ward, 2006). Importantly, like nearly all docu-
mentaries, the films of the corpus hybridize several of these modes of
representation (cf. Cagle, 2012). However, just as was the case with Flynn
and Gambier’s four factors of translation, Nichols’s six modes of docu-
mentary representation have been “separated out from the messy reality
of [documentary film] for methodological purposes only” (2011, p. 90).
9 Per Nichols’s own demand, his taxonomy should be considered more of “a pool of resources
available to all” than “a genealogy of documentary film” (Nichols, 2010, p. 159).
28 A. J. Sanchez
Discourses
In Translation Studies, the term “discourse analysis” has been used to
designate investigations of (1) language in use, in contrast to the tradi-
tional structural linguistics focusing on language as a system; (2) oral
communications, in contrast to written communications; (3) commu-
nicative behavior (e.g. spoken interactions, turn-taking mechanisms,
face-work); (4) commonalities in terms of text and talk (e.g. the discourse
of an author, a political movement, a literary genre); and (5) discursive
reproductions of real-life power relations (Schäffner, 2013). The latter
is generally known as Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and it is the
type of discourse analysis in which the present book is interested. More
specifically, this book focuses on Critical Discourse Studies (CDS)—a
relatively novel amplification of CDA.
Critical Discourse Studies cannot be labeled as an approach, a theory,
or a method. It is a discipline that does not restrict itself to “applied
analysis” as it also includes “philosophical, theoretical, methodological
and practical developments” (Flowerdew et al., 2017, p. 2). Building on
CDA’s focus on “the analysis of fundamental social problems, such as
the discursive reproduction of illegitimate domination” (Van Dijk, 2008,
pp. 821–822), CDS can be used for the purpose of dismantling struc-
tures of social domination as well as to champion discourses that are
attentive to the ideologies invested in the representation of socially subor-
dinated groups (Roderick, 2018). Moreover, CDS does not consider
linguistic utterances as its default object of study. Instead, it ventures
into multimodal analyses of all types of semiotic systems, from visual
communication and media texts to magazines, advertising, music videos,
and so on (Machin & Mayr, 2012). This extension toward counter-
hegemony and multimodality echoes the present book’s research interest:
discourses that go against mainstream representations of a socially subor-
dinated group, such as Latinx (im)migrants, and that involve multimodal
communication.
Of particular significance to the present book is Roderick’s call for
mutualism between critical approaches to communication and discourses
that are “defined through alterity” (2018, p. 167). Using Latour’s essay
“Why Has Critique Run out of Steam?” as inspiration, Roderick pleads
for CDS’ transcendence of their previous binarism, eternally vacillating

between “fairy” and “fact” positions: the former refers to critics who
claim they can demystify (mis)representations of the real world, the
latter to critics who assume they are capable of debunking the fetishes
of the powerful. Suggesting that both positions are more concerned with
reasserting the supposed sophistication of the critics themselves than with
sincerely engaging in the matters of others, Roderick follows Latour in
his proposition to carve out a third, “fair” position in the fabric of CDS:
one that uses discourse analysis to denaturalize what “has been made to
be experienced as natural and self-evident” (ibid., p. 164).
This is where the tool of CDS, as understood by Roderick, partially
coincides with the tool of translation, as understood in this book.
While one method studies how certain acts of communication came
to be seen as “natural” in the context in which they were performed
(cf. Roderick, 2018), the other investigates how transferred products
came to be viewed as “facts” by the target culture that commissioned the
transfer (cf. Toury, 2012). Additionally, the discourse analysis conducted
in this book departs from the abovementioned “fair” position, which
pays attention to ideology that does not “[lift] the rugs from under the
feet of naïve believers” but rather “offers participants arenas in which to
gather” (Latour as cited in Roderick, 2018, p. 164).
As will be argued in the next chapter, the corpus of this book seems to
have emerged in a post-identitarian context that was concerned with “the
ways identity categories are deployed to sustain the status quo and […]
the ways alternative notions of identity already exist that defy, decon-
struct, or perversely alter power asymmetries” (Roof, 2003, p. 3). Hence,
the point of departure of the present discourse analysis is not the emanci-
pation from power abuse but rather the negotiation of and/or resistance
to such abuse (cf. Hughes, 2018). In reference to Foucault’s positivity
of discourse, this type of critique is known as Positive Discourse Anal-
ysis (PDA) because of its focus on how discourse can be construed as an
inspiring artifact that can offer a message of encouragement, hope, and
strength in times of difficulty (Nartey, 2020). Hence, PDA is generally
defined as a method that (1) approaches discourse not as a static entity
but as a constant struggle over meaning, (2) emphasizes the fluidity of
30 A. J. Sanchez
what is predominant and what is dissenting, and (3) allows for alter-
native representations to shift into a mainstream space (Macgilchrist,
2007)—an agenda that coincides with the mission of public broadcasting
(cf. Mccauley et al., 2016).
Given that there are no clear methods or prescribed approaches in
PDA, the analysis conducted in the next chapters will consist of a close
reading of the documentaries of the corpus. This PDA will be based on
the assumption that the corpus consists of (a) acts of communication
on the topic of Latin American migration to the United States; (b) that
have undergone a semiotic transfer from real-life to the documentary
form; (c) whose transfer was performed by agents influenced by contexts
that made the discourses about these acts of communication likely to be
progressive rather than oppressive (cf. Hughes, 2018).
In the following chapter, a thorough discussion follows of the contexts,
agents, and practices of the corpus. This chapter sets the scene for the
Positive Discourse Analysis of the 18 documentaries of the corpus, which
is conducted in Chapters 4 through 12.
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3
Four Factors of Translation: Contexts,
Agents, Practices, and Discourses
Contexts
The story of public broadcasting in the United States can be traced back
to the Titanic. Up until 1912, when the Titanic sank, radio functioned
primarily as a point-to-point form of communication and there were
virtually no regulations surrounding radio licensing. However, after the
tragedy, the public perception was that radio amateurs had circulated
misinformation about the scale and scope of the disaster and that ships
capable of aiding the sinking Titanic had failed to receive its distress call.
That is how the Radio Act of 1912 came to allow the government to
intervene in the “structuring of speech, of the press, and of other media”
(Perlman, 2016, p. 4). Radio interest grew exponentially and by 1927 a
new Radio Act was meant to put a cap on the mushrooming radio sector
by declaring that the airwaves were a scarce public resource. Congress
ruled that the allocation of broadcast licenses was to be guided by
“public interest, convenience, and necessity” (“The Radio Act,” 1927).
However, what this “public interest” entailed would only start to be

Switzerland AG 2022
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-06539-2_3
40 A. J. Sanchez
defined and codified from 1934 on. By then, an awarded broadcast

license had become synonymous with licensee property rights and broad-
casting—which by then also included television—had already turned
into a competitive marketplace. It is only at that point, however, that
Congress started voicing concern about the need to set aside airwaves for
noncommercial licensees (McChesney, 2004).
From its early beginnings, public service broadcasting in the United
States was forced to scrape by as it depended on meager federal funding
and donations from subscribers (“viewers like you”). The US Telecom-
munications Act of 1996, passed under the Clinton Administration,
delivered the final blow. It deregulated the telecommunications market
by equating the public interest with the public’s interest, as exempli-
fied by the following quote by Federal Communications Commission
chairman Mark Fowler and his legal associate David Brenner:
Our thesis is that broadcasters as community trustees should be replaced

by a view of broadcasters as marketplace participants. Communications
policy should be directed towards maximizing the services the public
desires […]. The public’s interest, then, defines the public interest […].
The first step in a marketplace approach to broadcast regulation, then,
is to focus on broadcasters not as fiduciaries of the public […] but as
marketplace competitors. (1981, pp. 3–4)
In other words, it was thought that by removing the limit on broad-

casting stations that one corporation could own, the number of televi-
sion channels would increase, organically triggering a diversification of
content (Mccauley et al., 2016).
The irony here is that to compete with this expanding commercial
television market, public television was forced to become more commer-
cialized (Cook, 2006). After 1996, public television executives had no
other choice than to reinvent PBS as a brand and turn the cultural
value of the “old PBS” into financial value for the “new PBS” (Hoynes,
2016). The public service that used to be a given in public broad-
casting—namely for its capacity to serve as “a forum for debate and
controversy,” to provide a voice for “groups in the community that may
otherwise be unheard,” and to “help us see America whole, in all its
3 Four Factors of Translation: Contexts … 41
diversity” (Carnegie Commission on Educational Television, 1967)—

was now “increasingly being packaged and sold to consumers who [were]
brand-loyal to PBS” (Hoynes, 2016, p. 50).
Deregulation coincided with what Henry Jenkins calls “convergence
culture”: an environment “where old and new media collide, where
grassroots and corporate media intersect, where the power of the media
producer and the power of the media consumer interact in unpredictable
ways” (2006, p. 2). According to Jenkins, convergence consists of a
top-down corporate-driven process and a bottom-up consumer-driven
process:
Corporate convergence coexists with grassroots convergence. Media

companies are learning how to accelerate the flow of media content across
delivery channels to expand revenue opportunities, broaden markets, and
reinforce viewer commitments. Consumers are learning how to use these
different media technologies to bring the flow of media more fully under
their control and to interact with other consumers. The promises of this
new media environment raise expectations of a freer flow of ideas and
content. Inspired by those ideals, consumers are fighting for the right to
participate more fully in their culture. (2006, p. 18)
It could be argued that PBS fed into this combination of deregulation

and convergence: it made itself more marketable by offering program-
ming that complimented its already established reputation of “town hall
of the air” with convergent grassroots content, seemingly plucked from
the street (Starr, 2016). PBS’s tradition of service to the non-mainstream
paved the way for a series such as POV: the very first showcase of
independent documentaries on national television.
In the 1980s, growing neoliberalism triggered a crisis in US docu-
mentary production. As Zimmerman explains, the Reagan Administra-
tion—a strong advocate of deregulation—played a major role in this
crisis when it kept altercating with Congress over funding cutbacks
at PBS (1982). It eventually proposed a 50% reduction in National
Endowment for the Arts as well as in National Endowment for the
Humanities budgets. Naturally, independent documentary makers were
hit the hardest. As they worked outside the corporate management model
42 A. J. Sanchez
in order to maintain control over all phases of production, public tele-

vision had traditionally been their main source of funding. Since public
television’s congressional mandate was to obtain programming from a
diversity of sources, it had always provided a logical doorway to the
support and showcasing of documentary programs that, owing to the
controversial (“independent”) nature of their content, point of view,
and/or style, were not very likely to obtain funding from private sources.
Outraged by this turn of events, independent documentary makers
soon organized themselves to remind Congress of public television’s
diversity mandate, which included airing a broad spectrum of political
viewpoints as well as reflecting the diversity of American social, cultural,
and political issues. Their intervention launched the then-novel idea that,
as the government depends on informed citizenry, the public—which,
in this case, overlaps with the PBS audience—does not only hold a
constitutional right to produce diverse viewpoints but also to have these
viewpoints publicly disseminated.
In 1988, independent creators obtained funds from the Corporation
for Public Broadcasting (CPB); on the one hand, for ITVS (Independent
Television Service), a production unit that was not guaranteed airtime
on PBS but was allowed to concentrate solely on independent work
that fit within the “public television ecology” (Aufderheide, 2019); on
the other hand, for POV, an anthology series for independent work
that, to this day, continues to be a major outlet of ITVS documen-
taries. In other words, the independent documentary scene in the United
States, as it is understood today, emerged from the perceived need to
go against the deregulatory avalanche of commercial narratives geared
toward profit maximization and support of the dominant political system
(Zimmerman, 1982, 2000).
From that moment onward, the independent documentary became
almost synonymous with authorial voice and point-of-view reporting
(Chattoo et al., 2018). By focusing on beyond-objectivity storytelling
and challenging the notion of there being two sides to every story
(cf. Aufderheide, 2019), the independent documentary paradigm coin-
cided with the post-identity project of looking “both at the ways identity
categories are deployed to sustain the status quo and at the ways alterna-
tive notions of identity already exist that defy, deconstruct, or perversely
alter power asymmetries” (Roof, 2003, p. 3). Marc Weiss, the creator
of POV, actually came up with the idea for the show because he
wanted to offer airtime to independent documentaries that had been
rejected elsewhere owing to their unconventional explorations of style,
voice, aesthetics, and so on (Heyman, 2018). Hence, one of the POV
missions became to provide a platform for voices not present elsewhere,
which echoed the original 1967 mandate for public television (Bullert,
1997). However, after the 1996 Clintonian deregulation, the “audience-
as-market” (Ang, 1991) began to expect such a stance from a PBS show.
Thus, as a proxy for the “town hall of the air” into which public broad-
casting had evolved (Starr, 2016), POV organically synched with PBS’s
post-deregulation, three-point mission to be America’s largest classroom,
its largest stage, and its most trusted1 window to the world (Mission and
Values, n.d.).
Although millennials are increasingly turning to streaming, public
broadcasting continues to garner the largest audience at any single time
for any medium (Aufderheide, 2019). According to the PBS website,
public broadcasting reaches 100 million US Americans through tele-
vision and more than 28 million online viewers (Mission and Values,
n.d.). Not only does POV’s distribution have an impressive reach but
it also pays documentary makers for the rights to broadcast their
program on PBS, while allowing them to retain their own voices. Thanks
to this agreement, POV has a wealth of independent documentaries
from which to pick every year—films for which it has thus far been
awarded 25 Peabody Awards, 38 Emmy Awards, 3 Academy Awards, 14
duPont-Columbia Awards, etc. This selection is made not only by semi-
independent PBS programmers but also by outside screeners, an editorial
advisory committee, and POV’s own executive producers. Guided by the
principle that POV films should “speak for others in society” rather than
“for themselves” (Weiss as cited in Bullert, 1997, p. 33), POV ends up
selecting 14 to 16 feature-length documentaries per year.
1 Every year, PBS publishes a so-called Trust Brochure on its website, which contains the
percentage of trust bestowed on PBS by the American public (e.g. “For 17th Consecutive Year,
Americans Name PBS and Member Stations as Most Trusted Institution,” 2020). PBS has been
consistently voted #1 in public trust—ahead of commercial TV, the federal government, and
even the courts of law.
44 A. J. Sanchez
In conclusion, prior to POV’s inception, public broadcasting was

synonymous with “the public sphere”: a forum in which private people
come together to form public and compel the public authority to legit-
imate itself before public opinion (Habermas, 1991). However, when
deregulation began taking hold of public broadcasting, these private
people of which the public sphere was supposed to be made up became
synonymous with “governmental bureaucrats who [rationalized] the
system and [programmed] politically safe shows […] to curry the favor of
major corporations and an upper middle-class, check-writing clientele”
(Zimmerman, 1982, p. 10). Consequently, when the neoliberal Reagan
Administration pushed independent documentary makers into a state
of crisis, the latter organized and confronted PBS by presenting them-
selves as a “counterpublic sphere” (Fraser, 1990) that existed in the public
interest.
Therefore, it could be argued that, true to the post-identity paradigm
that began taking shape around the same time, independent documen-
tary collectives such as ITVS and POV developed an ethos that moved
beyond the facile tendency of romanticizing the political capabilities of
alternative identities (cf. Downey & Fenton, 2003). Instead, they insisted
that nonmainstream media had to be involved in public broadcasting
in order to aid PBS to generate a healthy public sphere. As representa-
tives of “subaltern counterpublics,” they were to “formulate oppositional
interpretations of their identities, interests, and needs” (Fraser, 1990,
p. 61), offering much-needed counter-publicity “for prevailing products
and practices” (Downey & Fenton, 2003, p. 193). Hence, PBS eventu-
ally echoed the (counter)public mission for which it had initially acted
as a foil. In a deregulated telecommunications market guided by the
public’s interest rather than by the public interest, public broadcasting
was forced to align itself with the “zone of conscience and conscious-
ness” from which politically engaged media content, such as independent
documentaries, emerged (Zimmerman, 2000, pp. 13–14).
Agents
Starting from 1996, POV systematically dedicated a webpage to every
one of its selected documentaries, which included a biographical blurb
of the documentary makers, next to additional reading material, lesson
plans, discussion guides, and so on. What follows is a habitus review:
an assessment of the biographies published on POV’s website (http://arc
hive.pov.org) concerning the documentary makers of the corpus, which
were either written by the documentary makers or (tacitly) approved by
them.
A number of factors keep recurring in these biographical blurbs:
their previous experience in the audiovisual field; their (media) activism;
their formal training; their accolades; their personal background; and
credits that attest to their filmmaking abilities beyond directing. The
frequency with which the documentary makers of the corpus stress their
previous/other audiovisual credits, degrees, and accolades reveals their
eagerness to prove their virtuosity as independent documentary makers.
This wish to distinguish themselves from other professionals is, in and
of itself, a natural feature of their highly competitive field. Interest-
ingly, however, many of these agents of translation tend to frame their
capability as independent documentary makers by means of degrees
or professional experience that are not directly related to the inde-
pendent documentary-making scene itself. Matthews holds an MA in
English Literature, for example. Ryan and Weimberg allude to their
commercial documentaries, Olsson to broadcast journalism, Carracedo
to directing, and Hopkins to general TV work. Additionally, although
some of the descriptions make it appear as if independent documen-
tary making is currently the documentary makers’ main professional
activity, the versatility of their other credits—from the organization
of film festivals (Zaldívar; Bahar) to photography (Rigby), teaching
(Simón), producing (Fitzgerald; Shwer; Aldarondo), or writing (Flynn;
McConohay)—suggests otherwise. Both of these elements corroborate
the hypothesis that independent documentary making, like translating,
is a field that is not “autonomized” and therefore characterized by the
“multipositionality” of its agents (Meylaerts, 2013).
46 A. J. Sanchez
A field that is not autonomized cannot guarantee its agents of trans-

lation a straightforward “intermediary position” (Buzelin, 2011). There-
fore, the “community of practice” is key in confirming the agents’ status
of mediator (Wenger, 1999; cf. Cadwell et al., 2020). This community
of practice consists of all those who are somehow involved in the trans-
lations that the documentary makers (“agents of translation”) produce,
but the power to grant or withhold the agents’ status lies primarily with
the authoritative establishments that regulate the said community (Kosk-
inen, 2011). The prestige that these establishments award by means of
accolades is essentially evidence of the fact that some agents of trans-
lation are more worthy of “patronage” and able to perform qualitative
transfers than others, which lends them both credibility in and undis-
puted access to a field that is difficult to define and therefore to valorize
(cf. Lefevere, 1992). Hence, it could be argued that the documentary
makers view their accolades as clear authentications of their otherwise
vague status by the patrons of their ambiguous field. This could explain
the general insistence of these documentary makers not only on their
training and experience but also on the awards, grants, and prizes that
they have received from media institutions such as the Rockefeller Foun-
dation (Aiken and Aparicio), the Sundance Institute (Aldarondo), or
the Academy Awards (Portillo). Consequently, the documentary makers’
habitus not only consist of internalized schooling systems and work envi-
ronments but also of authoritative media institutions, which provide
them with formal knowledge, practical skills, and prestige.
Another trait that many of the documentary makers examined in this
book seem to share is their involvement in media activism: the tactical
use of media technologies to introduce discontinuities in hegemonic
discourses and disorient the strategic system of powerful media institu-
tions (Sützl & Hug, 2016). Zaldívar refers to his membership of NALIP,2
Bahar to his establishing of Doculink,3 and Hopkins to her co-founding
2 The National Association of Latino Independent Producers seeks to change media culture by
advocating and promoting the professional needs of Latinx artists in media. See https://www.
nalip.org/.
3 Doculink is a community for documentary filmmakers who share information, leads, ideas,
and a commitment to support each other’s growth as nonfiction filmmakers. See http://www.
doculink.org/.
of a documentary department in a Cuban film college. Some also allude

to philanthropy that is not media-related: Simón touches on her advo-
cacy of immigrant rights and education, Weyer on her dispensing of
vaccinations in rural Paraguay, Carracedo on her academic research on
the US–Mexico border, and McConohay on her ties with the World
Affairs Council.4 Just as often as they cite their humanitarianism, the
documentary makers bring up their background. For example, Almada
and Portillo disclose that they are Mexican-American, Zaldívar is Cuban-
American, Hopkins is British-American, and Carracedo is Spanish. These
identity markers, which may appear circumstantial, become contingent
when they are placed in the documentary makers’ context.
As explained earlier, the public discourse has become increasingly
antagonistic toward Latinx immigrants in the United States. In a dereg-
ulated mediascape that has come to cater to the public’s interest rather
than to the public interest, mainstream media outlets have tended to side
with antagonizing discourse, portraying Latinx immigrants as dangerous
and animalistic burdens to society (e.g. Chavez, 2013; Santa Ana, 2002).
POV, on the other hand, was premised on the idea that since public
broadcasting is responsible for reflecting the public sphere in all its diver-
sity, it must encourage independent documentary makers to transfer
non-mainstream perspectives from real life to the documentary reel. This
premise stemmed from what Aufderheide calls the “public television
ecology”: an environment that “emerged from the civil and human rights
struggles of the 1960s” and “perceived public television as a venue with
an obligation to showcase […] dissident viewpoints, often skewing liberal
or left” (2019, p. 6). Aufderheide’s “public television ecology” could be
seen as another habitus—another social structure that the documentary
makers internalized. As independent documentary making is a loosely
defined field with unclear requirements for its agents, the understanding
of and conscious partaking in its ecology becomes a crucial factor in the
demonstration of the agents’ merit. This logic aligns with the documen-
tary makers’ keenness to demonstrate their participation in a broad range
4 The World Affairs Council is a nonprofit, nonpartisan forum for the public to join leading
foreign policy and international relations experts to discuss and debate global issues. See https://
www.worldaffairs.org/.
48 A. J. Sanchez
of civil and human rights struggles, which are core elements of the said
public television ecology.
Additionally, public broadcasting distinguishes itself from commercial
media through its active support of diversity, both before and behind the
lens. Not only have PBS programs such as POV been called upon to
feature more people of color and women on-screen, but they have also
made an increasing effort to endorse creators from historically underrep-
resented communities behind the scenes (Chattoo et al., 2018). Among
the documentary makers of the corpus, there are indeed more women
than men and quite a few people with a hyphenated identity. It could
be argued that the embodied knowledge of belonging to an under-
represented segment of the public sphere also counts as habitus. This
could explain why, in a highly competitive and non-autonomized field,
documentary makers brandish their internalization of such knowledge as
another badge of honor that justifies POV’s selection of their work.
Practices
Poetic Mode
The poetic mode dates back to the early beginnings of documentary

film. Essentially a counterpoint to Hollywood’s Golden Age and its over-
bearing preoccupation with fictional worlds, this mode of representation
does not allow social actors to take on the full-blooded form of char-
acters with psychological complexity and a fixed worldview. By keeping
the rhetorical element underdeveloped and stressing mood, tone, and
affect instead, the poetic mode opens up the possibility of alternative
forms of knowledge. Eschewing making sense of events realistically, this
mode represents reality “poetically” through a series of fragments, subjec-
tive impressions, incoherent acts, and loose associations. (Nichols, 2010,
pp. 172–173)
Although all the documentary makers of the corpus hold on to a

narrative arc, they do make regular use of “poetic” sequences to trigger
a sensory overload on the part of the viewer in tactical instances. For

example, in Made in LA, Carracedo and Bahar splice in a kaleidoscopic
sequence of images of many anonymous hands slaving away at sowing
machines, the whirring sound of which they superimpose over the images
of various storefronts in Los Angeles (00:00:20; Fig. 3.1). In Fear and
Learning at Hoover Elementary, Simón uses the same poetic tactic to
catapult us into the chaos of the protest marches against Proposition
187 (00:01:00). Aldarondo bombards us in Memories of a Penitent Heart
with a string of audio and visual fragments of vitriolic hate speech against
LGBTQ+ rights in the United States (00:34:19).
There are also instances of documentary makers overwhelming their
viewers with information. In The Double Life of Ernesto Gomez Gomez ,
Ryan and Weimberg begin their film by audiovisually teleporting us
right to their dramatic dénouement and firing away shot after shot
of seemingly unrelated events: images of an as-yet-unknown woman’s
triumphant release from prison (00:01:09), a young man—the future
protagonist—breaking down in this woman’s arms (00:00:26), and Pres-
ident Clinton giving a speech on the release of Puerto Rican political
prisoners (00:01:02). Similarly, in Our House in Havana, Olsson errat-
ically switches back and forth between present-day footage of his main
character Silvia pining for her Cuban past (00:09:50), archival footage
of one of Fidel Castro’s discourses against the imperial tyranny of the
United States (00:09:44), and what appears to be future footage of Silvia’s
house in modern-day Havana (00:10:54).
A less aggressive tactic is the addition of seemingly unrelated images
to the storyline that, in hindsight, were commenting on the events we
were witnessing. In No le digas a nadie, for example, Shwer slides the
camera’s gaze over a selection of trinkets in her protagonist’s room, such
as colorful drawings, handmade bracelets, or a yellow, blue, and red
handbag imprinted with the word COLOMBIA (00:01:51). Only much
later do all of these separate objects click together like pieces of a puzzle:
when it is revealed to the viewer that, for example, Shwer’s protag-
onist Angy first communicated about having been sexually assaulted
through drawings (00:35:30), that her journey toward self-acceptance
began with her selling “education bracelets” to fund her schooling
(00:10:32), or that Angy and her mother fled Colombia when she was
50 A. J. Sanchez
Fig. 3.1 Made in LA (Carracedo & Bahar, 2007; screenshots by the author)
just a toddler (00:04:13). In Memories of a Penitent Heart , on the other

hand, Aldarondo’s poetic referencing is immediate when she alternates
family photos of her HIV-positive protagonist—her uncle Miguel—in a
hospital bed with stock footage of stained glass windows and oil paintings
depicting Jesus’s crucifixion. With this poetic juxtaposition, Aldarondo
intervenes subtly in her film’s storyline to point out the overwrought
religiosity that had always surrounded her queer protagonist—even as he
was on his deathbed (00:41:00-00:45:15; Fig. 3.2).
Perhaps the most surprising of these poetic tactics is the referen-
tial symbolism created by the collective of documentary makers of this
corpus in terms of their “natural meaning units” (Greer et al., 2013)—
that is, the recurring themes that they weave into their audiovisual
stories. These thematic choices seem to confirm Kluckhohn and Murray’s
seminal claim that every man is in certain respects like all other men,
like some other men, and like no other man (1948). More recently,
Sue’s “tripartite framework of personal identity” (2001) further elab-
orated on this age-old adage by proposing that all people belong to
three concentric circles: only they belong to the first (“individual level”),
only some others belong to the second (“group level”), and everybody
belongs to the third (“universal level”). In terms of the corpus, some
documentaries naturally seem to hover toward explorations of universal
aspects of migrancy, such as motherhood, fatherhood, and childhood.
These are identity markers that have been understood by all civiliza-
tions, throughout history. Then, there are also documentaries that dwell
on concepts such as criminality, biculturalism, and (non)citizenship:
stories that emerge from the protagonists’ group experience as migrants
in a foreign country. Finally, there are a number of documentaries that
address topics such as queerness, adoption, and celebrity: subjects that
refer to identitarian questionings to which only certain individuals of
the community (“group”) of Latinx migrants can relate. In other words,
it could be argued that thanks to their shared counterhegemonic context
(cf. sections “Contexts” and “Agents”), the documentary makers of the
corpus organically subscribe to imagine all personal identities—including
those of migrants—as containing universal, group, and individual levels
of experience.
52 A. J. Sanchez
Fig. 3.2 Memories of a Penitent Heart (Aldarondo, 2017; screenshots by the

author)
Expository Mode
Assembling fragments of the historical world into a rhetorical frame, the

expository mode addresses the viewer directly with titles or voices that
propose a perspective, advance an argument, or recount history. This
mode relies heavily on an informing logic carried by the spoken word,
which it tends to relegate to either voice-of-God (the speaker is heard
but never seen) or voice-of-authority (the speaker is heard and also seen)
commentary. Contrary to the poetic mode where editing is used to estab-
lish rhythm, symbolism, or pattern, in the expository mode the editing
is evidentiary as it is meant to audiovisually support the spoken argu-
ment. Hence, this mode is largely concerned with evoking an impression
of objectivity and instilling a sense of credibility. It is an ideal mode for
conveying information or mobilizing support within a framework that
pre-exists in the film. (Nichols, 2010, pp. 175–178)
As was mentioned earlier, the modern-day independent documentary

emerged from a “public television ecology” that was set on countering
the deregulatory avalanche of commercial narratives geared toward profit
maximization (Zimmerman, 1982, 2000). In striving for representation
of the diverse and, per definition, subjective voices of which the public
sphere consists, independent documentary makers made it a point of
honor to be perceived as beyond objective (Aufderheide, 2019). Hence,
over time, the independent documentary genre’s signature became its
reliance on authorial voice and point-of-view reporting (Chattoo et al.,
2018).
At first glance, several of the documentary makers of the corpus
seem to recur to voice-over commentary that appears to hark back to
the originally objectivity-concerned expository mode. In The Double
Life of Ernesto Gomez Gomez , for example, Nuyorican poet and activist
Piri Thomas delivers voice-of-God commentary, like actor Tommy Lee
Jones does in The Ballad of Esequiel Hernández . In Carmen Miranda:
Bananas Is My Business and Fear and Learning at Hoover Elemen-
tary, documentary makers Solberg and Simón provide voice-of-God-like
narration as well, as they never feature on-screen. In 90 Miles, on the
54 A. J. Sanchez
other hand, it could be argued that documentary maker Zaldívar relies

on the voice-of-authority commentary because he makes several camera
appearances.
This tactic, however, does not seem to aim so much for objectivity
as it does for authenticity. In our post-identitarian era of “categorical
flux,” the fragmentation of the identitarian landscape has generated so
many uncertainties and ambiguities about (self-)identification that there
is an increased demand for and policing of “authentic” identity narra-
tives (Brubaker, 2016). In this light, the choice of documentary makers
Ryan and Weimberg, on the one hand, and Fitzgerald, on the other, for
respectively Piri Thomas and Tommy Lee Jones appears rather inten-
tional. Piri Thomas, a figurehead of the emancipatory movement of
Puerto Rican Americans, lends an aura of embodied knowledge to their
film. The same could be said of Tommy Lee Jones, who is an authority
of US–Mexico border activism and whose participation in Fitzgerald’s
film implicitly entails a blessing of the documentary’s openly unobjective
narrative. Hence, these documentary makers’ reliance on voice-of-God
narration from social actors who are perceived as having access to in-
group knowledge of the social issue at hand allows them to legitimate
their “beyond-objectivity storytelling” (cf. Aufderheide, 2019).
By contrast, Solberg, Zaldívar, and Simón bring politically laden
stories of ethno-racial belonging that may easily be accused of being
overly biased or even skewed. By turning their “embodied identities” and
their ensuing “authentic” knowledge on inherently Brazilian, Cuban, and
Californian polemics into a crucial, legitimizing feature of their argu-
ment thanks to their voice-over narration, they anticipate possible doubts
about the perceived factuality of their films (cf. Brubaker, 2016).
Finally, Aldarondo goes a step further in tactically adapting the expos-
itory mode to her narratological advantage. In Memories of a Penitent
Heart , she plays around with the “logic of trial” (Wacquant, 1997)
that is so intimately tied to the rhetorical nature of the expository
mode: constructing an argument that seeks out victims or culprits rather
than identifying the mechanisms that force them into either position.
She falls back on her voice-of-God commentary throughout the film
to navigate through equally inculpatory as exculpatory evidence about
the “true” nature of her uncle Miguel, her grandmother Carmen, her
uncle’s partner Robert, her grandfather Jorge, and her mother Nylda.
Eventually, however, she questions her own stubborn desire for a clear
resolution to a family quarrel that is so multifaceted and layered that
it is beyond any straightforward logic of trial. At the end of her film,
by overlapping the audio of a phone call in which she discusses the
artificiality and therefore futility of her expiatory endeavor with poetic
images of Floridian canals, Aldarondo invites us to reconsider the veracity
of the meandering story through which her voice has just guided us.
Rather than undermining the truthfulness of her storytelling, she cele-
brates its beyond-objectivity with this tactic and thus transcends the rigid
subjective-objective dichotomy of traditional documentary making.
Observational Mode
Prioritizing the unabashed filming of people over the construction

of formal patterns (poetic mode) or persuasive arguments (expository
mode), the observational mode strives to spontaneously capture people’s
lived experiences. By placing the responsibility on the viewer to deter-
mine the significance of what is said and done in front of the camera’s
lens, this mode retires the position of the filmmaker to that of an
observer. Somewhat related to the ethnographic “cinema of attractions”
tradition that surveys supposedly exotic or bizarre behaviors, the obser-
vational mode raises a series of ethical considerations that involve the act
of watching others go about their affairs. Additionally, its ethically prob-
lematic indexicality often fails to accentuate the referential gap between
the unedited footage as it was originally shot and the edited sequence
that is presented to the viewer. (Nichols, 2010, pp. 179–182)
Considering public broadcasting’s evolution toward a three-point

mission to be “America’s largest classroom, largest stage, and most trusted
window to the world” (Mission and Values, n.d.), the observational mode
could be expected to predominate in the documentaries of the corpus.
Surprisingly, that does not seem to be the case.
As was posited above, because the documentary makers of the corpus
are encouraged by their context to promote positive discourses on social
56 A. J. Sanchez
issues such as migration, their unique selling point is the treatment of

overtly personal angles on these overgeneralized topics. However, with
positive discourses, the trick is to arouse the viewers’ curiosity with coun-
terintuitive information without presenting them with unsurmountable
levels of uncertainty and thus losing their attention (Macgilchrist, 2007).
Although there are plenty of instances where the documentary makers of
the corpus leave the camera rolling to capture their own or their char-
acters’ lived experiences, such as when Zaldívar unexpectedly records
his father Pachuco’s endearing reaction to his coming out in 90 Miles
(00:13:20; Fig. 3.3) or when Hopkins interweaves her main plotline
in Voices of the Sea with handheld footage of her characters’ hazardous
crossover to the United States (01:06:09), there is always an implied level
of reflexivity in their presentation of these seemingly uncut rushes.
At all times, the documentary makers have to remain mindful of the
so-called “curiosity gap”—the assumption that the viewers seek moderate
gaps between their current level of knowledge and their desired knowl-
edge state. The key, then, for these documentary makers who are well
aware that they are piquing their audience’s interest with titillating
content on seemingly trite material, is to meet them “where they are
and add a manageable amount of new information” (Macgilchrist, 2007,
p. 88).
Hence, rather than relying on the bizarre or exotic nature of
unabridged observational footage to draw in their audience, as per the
“cinema of attractions” tradition, these documentary makers rely on
frames with which the audience is somewhat familiar (e.g. motherhood,
fatherhood, childhood, biculturalism, citizenship, criminality, queerness,
fame, adoption). Having activated their shared knowledge with the
audience, they then add a new dimension by introducing defamiliar-
izing observations and thus entering into dialogue with this familiar
frame—via audiovisual means.
In Fear and Learning at Hoover Elementary, for example, Simón leaves
the camera rolling as her colleague, elementary school teacher Diane
Lee, unselfconsciously advocates for the “children of today that belong
here”—as opposed to the migrant, often undocumented majority of her
own students (00:01:16). Later on, when Diane asks for another inter-
view to “explain [herself ]” (00:41:48) on some of the statements she
Fig. 3.3 90 Miles (Zaldívar, 2003; screenshots by the author)

58 A. J. Sanchez
made earlier, Simón accepts while still abstaining from direct commen-
tary. However, from behind her camera, she does ask Diane whether
she has ever felt “discriminated” (00:42:30). Without any further inter-
vention, Simón records how Diane corners herself with her impulsive,
hypocritical answer, “Not until yesterday, when you told me people think
I didn’t belong here!” (00:42:34).
In the same vein, in The Transformation, Aiken and Aparicio do
not appear to have any underlying intentions when they film former
drag queens Ricardo and Hugo catching up with each other. When the
men start speaking in hushed tones with each other, seemingly trying
to discuss something off camera, Aiken and Aparicio keep recording,
catching the gist of Ricardo and Hugo’s exchange, in which they ques-
tion the sexuality and gender identity of their supposedly irreproachable
pastor Terry—the macho man who convinced them to leave their old
lives behind (00:18:03). Interestingly, Aiken and Aparicio juxtapose the
observational footage of the latter gossiping about the former with inter-
view fragments in which Ricardo blindly rehashes Terry’s conservative
views on queerness. Although the documentary makers never make
overt appearances in the documentary, it is their mixing and matching
of apparently pristine, purely observational rushes that reveals to us,
viewers, how they interpret these observations. Similar to Simón’s compi-
lation of contrasting observational footage of Diane, which points out
her hypocritical stance toward (migrant) children, Aiken and Aparicio’s
editing hints at Terry, Ricardo, and Hugo’s sanctimony toward (migrant)
queers. In other words, in both instances, the documentary makers tacti-
cally use the observational mode to create a manageable curiosity gap
between familiar frames and defamiliarizing observations.
Participatory Mode
Just like the observational mode draws on ethnography, the participa-

tory mode echoes anthropology by placing filmmakers in the role of
field workers who do not allow themselves to “go native” but retain a
degree of detachment from whoever they are describing. Stepping out
from behind the cloak of voice-over commentary (“expository mode”),

stepping away from poetic mediation (“poetic mode”), and stepping
down from a fly-on-the-wall perch (“observational mode”), the film-
maker becomes another social actor. De-emphasizing persuasion to give
us a sense of what it is like to be in a given situation, while omitting
what it is like for the filmmaker to be there too, this mode represents the
historical world as it is witnessed by somebody who actively engages with
it. Permitting the filmmaker to serve as a mentor, critic, interrogator,
collaborator, or provocateur, the interview is the most common tool
with which the participatory mode triggers and documents the encounter
between filmmaker and film character. (Nichols, 2010, pp. 185–191)
As the introductory text on the website of POV states, “POV films

are known for their intimacy, their unforgettable storytelling, and their
timeliness, putting a human face on contemporary social issues” (POV
| American Documentary, n.d.). Taking POV’s concern with humanizing
intangible social issues to heart, the documentary makers of the corpus
regularly resort to interviews with their flesh-and-blood Latinx protag-
onists. As a matter of fact, when Shwer received a Peabody Award for
No le digas a nadie, she even thanked Angy and Maria in her acceptance
speech for being “the face of immigration” (“Mikaela Shwer,” 00:01:34).
However, the documentary makers of the corpus do not seem to fall
back on interviews to draw attention to their participation per se in the
historical world of their characters, as was argued by Nichols. There are
countless instances of masked interview scenes in the corpus: instances
where the interviewee seems to address the camera and/or the interviewer
promptly, without the documentary maker’s intervention, such as Helen’s
sorrowing over her parents’ deportation as she is cooking a bean stew in
Sin País (00:10:55). Talking head interviews are also common: moments
where the documentary makers’ questions have been edited out, but the
interviewee is filmed from the bust up looking either directly at the
camera, as with Monica’s testimonial in My American Girls: A Dominican
Story (00:07:54) or at the interviewer behind the lens, as with Silvia’s
musings in Our House in Havana (00:10:18). In fact, the documentary
makers’ audio/visual interventions are so rarely included in the final cut
60 A. J. Sanchez
that the Q&A-format of the traditional interview seems to be more of

an exception to the rule in the corpus, such as Almada’s back and forth
with Mexican border crossers in Al otro lado (00:45:38).
What could explain the documentary makers’ self-erasure in inter-
views—a tactical adaptation of a strategy that was originally supposed
to highlight the filmmaker’s participation—is their implied subscription,
as independent documentary makers, to the “public television ecology”
that “emerged from the civil and human rights struggles of the 1960s”
(Aufderheide, 2019, p. 6). In the light of these agents’ activistic context,
the goal of their interviewing is not to stage an “encounter between film-
maker and [film character]” (Nichols, 2010, p. 191) but rather between
character and viewer, with the goal of triggering the latter’s empathy.5
As was argued earlier, the independent documentary makers of this
corpus are imbued with the engaged ecology of public broadcasting.
They are not apolitical creatives; these filmmakers are encouraged by
their “context” to take on the role of translator-mediator between
underrepresented voices and the vast audience of PBS. Hence, in their
function as documentary makers, their goal is to bring their subjects’
plight as close as possible to the viewer. Rather than victimizing their
Latinx protagonists with affective framing (“poetic mode”), lecturing the
viewer by means of authoritarian commentary (“expository mode”), or
expecting the audience to solve the ethical riddle of the events that are
unfolding in front of its eyes (“observational mode”), this tactic incites
a phenomenological exchange between Latinx subject and anonymous
viewer.
Thanks to their self-effacing interviews, the documentary makers
invite their viewers to encounter their subjects. By creating an “illusio”
or suspension of disbelief of their intervention in this encounter
(cf. Gouanvic, 2005), they bring the viewer on par with the subject in
order to facilitate an empathy-inducing mirroring between them. Hence,
5 As promulgated by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR),
a crucial element in storytelling that strives toward “changing the public narrative on migration”
and “promoting tolerance” as well as “confronting xenophobia against migrants” is fostering
empathy (Expert Roundtable on Shaping the Public Narrative on Migration, 2016). “Max-
imising Migrants’ Contribution to Society” (MAXAMIF), a multipronged research project
consortium funded by the EU Commission, concurs by calling for an impact on public opinion
of migration via “real-life stories, which engage empathy” (“Research,” 2019).
rather than educating the audience on known unknowns, this tactic

allows the documentary makers to stimulate the audience to identify
with the film’s subjects and thus confront their unknown knowns: things
they did not know that they knew (cf. Žižek, 2006).
Reflexive Mode
The focus of attention for the reflexive mode is the process of nego-
tiation between filmmaker and viewer. Rather than following how the
filmmaker engages with other social actors (“participatory mode”), this
mode attends to the filmmaker’s engagement with us, viewers, speaking
not only about the historical world but also about the problems and
issues of representing it as well. Instead of making us see through docu-
mentaries to the world beyond them, the reflexive mode asks us to see
the documentary for what it is: a construct, a representation. From a
formal perspective, reflexivity makes us aware of our assumptions and
expectations about the documentary form itself. From a political perspec-
tive, reflexivity points towards our assumptions and expectations about
the world around us. Both perspectives rely on techniques that jar
us, achieving ostranenie—making the familiar strange. (Nichols, 2010,
pp. 195–198)
In Introduction to Documentary, Nichols himself refers to Portillo’s

Corpus: A Home Movie for Selena as a textbook example of the reflexive
mode. Allegedly, by creating a family portrait of Selena and her legacy,
the documentary maker surreptitiously nudges her viewers into contem-
plating whether the popular Tex-Mex singer was a positive role model
for young women or a victim of “stereotypical images of female sexu-
ality” (2010, p. 200). However, Nichols does not explain how Portillo
manages to do so.
It could be argued that Portillo’s reflexivity only surfaces when she
wants to be perceived by the viewer as self-conscious about her partiality.
Thus, her tactical reflexivity echoes Venuti’s concept of foreignization
(2008), which foments defamiliarizing translation decisions that give
62 A. J. Sanchez
proof of the translator’s reflexivity—that is, awareness of the resulting

target text’s partiality (Kadiu, 2019).
As the public television ecology of independent documentaries allows
filmmakers to behave as translator-mediators between underrepresented
voices and the vast audience of PBS, there is also an expectation of
support in terms of the discourses that they underwrite regarding these
marginalized voices. Hence, in occasions where they broach polemical
topics or adhere to controversial stances, they tend to signify their inten-
tional endorsement of the said ecology by falling back on audio/visual
translation decisions that give proof of their reflexivity and remind us
to “see the documentary for what it is: a construct, a representation”
(Nichols, 2010, p. 195).
In Corpus: A Home Movie for Selena, Portillo’s reflexivity—her
self-conscious partiality—arguably shines through when she antago-
nizes some of her characters by means of her editing choices. One
example hereof is when Portillo tactically juxtaposes Latinx writer Sandra
Cisneros’s allusion to Abraham Quintanilla’s exploitation of his daughter
Selena (00:31:40) with a talking head interview in which Abraham
seemingly contradicts these claims (00:32:18), followed by footage of a
Lolita-like Selena performing in a nightclub at the age of 15 (00:32:23).
The same could be said of the moment when we, the viewers, become
aware of documentary maker Fitzgerald’s discomfort in The Ballad of
Esequiel Hernández with Cpl. Torrez’s blind loyalty to the Marines—
which leads him to be incapable of accepting his part in the senseless
shooting of a Latinx high-schooler. Without uttering a word, Fitzgerald
manages to imply how the Cpl.’s loyalty can easily be interpreted as
brainwashing when he follows Torrez’s impassioned speech about the
Marine Corps (00:49:49) with footage of him asking his toddler to recite
the Marines’ slogan. Eager to please, the latter quickly recites: “Honor,
courage, commitment!”—clearly unaware of the meaning of these words
or their impact on his father and himself (01:11:10). Another example
of this reflexivity of the public television ecology is Aldarondo’s under-
mining in Memories of a Penitent Heart of the supposed North American
open-mindedness—as opposed to Latinx backwardness—toward queer-
ness by interrupting her film with a collage of audiovisual examples
of homophobia in the United States (00:34:19). Up to that halfway
point in her film, her storyline seemed to veer toward an acceptance of

her traditional Puerto Rican family’s blame for the death of her queer
uncle. However, her splicing in of the abovementioned deluge of US-
bred queerphobia derails the documentary into a whole other direction:
that of a merciful—because more holistic—view on her family’s past,
present, and future.
Additionally, the application of Venuti’s foreignization model to the
reflexive mode can offer another constatation (2008). Contrary to tradi-
tional translators who have to accept a certain level of domestication
of the foreign language in their target text, the documentary makers of
the corpus have the option to adhere to “performative foreignization”
by means of subtitling (cf. Kadiu, 2019). Subtitles (Spanish>English)
are another way of making the documentary makers visible, both by
signaling their reflexivity in terms of their intervention in the encounter
between film character and viewer and by stressing their intention
to interfere minimally in the said encounter. When the documentary
makers do rely on dubbing (Spanish>English), as in The Double Life
of Ernesto Gomez Gomez (00:01:54) or Carmen Miranda: Bananas Is
My Business (00:30:40), they do so for purely poetic reasons: to evoke
Ernesto/Guillermo’s linguistic duality in the former and to intimate that
Carmen mistook her exoticization and eroticization in the United States
for a genuine appreciation of her artistic prowess in the latter.
64 A. J. Sanchez
Performative Mode
Approaching knowledge as based on the specificities of personal expe-

rience, the performative mode sets out to demonstrate how embodied
knowledge provides entry into an understanding of the more general
processes at work in society. By viewing meaning as subjective
phenomenon, this mode presupposes the existence of an inherent mutu-
ality between experience, memory, emotion, value, belief, commitment,
principle and the societal constructs that engender them. Due to its
interest in performative moments that draw us into subjective, the
performative mode ends up addressing us, viewers, emotionally and
expressively rather than pointing us to the factual world we hold in
common. (Nichols, 2010, pp. 201–202)
According to Nichols’ diachronic overview of the documentary modes

of representation, the performative mode emerged in the 1980s, which
coincides with the inception of non-profit organizations such as POV,
aimed at fostering the independent documentary community. As POV’s
name implies, its objective is to introduce personal points of view that
put “a human face on contemporary social issues” (POV | American
Documentary, n.d.)—in other words, “embodied knowledge” that can
provide PBS’s audience “entry into an understanding of the more general
processes at work in society” (Nichols, 2010, p. 201).
Considering the contexts and agents of this book, the performative
mode could be seen as an organic feature of the corpus. However, the
tactical application of this mode in the documentaries of the corpus does
not simply “draw us into subjective” (ibid., p. 202). It could be argued
that because of the “public television ecology” (Aufderheide, 2019) in
which the documentary makers of the corpus circulate, their documen-
taries are not mere art pieces that end when their final credits stop rolling.
Rather, as the POV website confirms, they are pieces of communica-
tion meant to engage the public sphere in a productive conversation
on complex social issues (“Engage Your Community | Engage | POV,”
2019).
Based on the belief that the deliberate pursuit of diversity in all

facets of public life is a democratic endeavor, public broadcasting sees
its content as an opportunity to multiply televised encounters between
film characters and viewers who would have otherwise remained distant
social actors (Kidd, 2012). Therefore, PBS and its affiliate programs
(such as POV) are perhaps better seen as meeting platforms that no
longer solely aim to educate the nation, which was the original purpose
of public broadcasting (cf. McChesney, 2016). Rather, they seem to take
the poststructuralist assumption to heart that reality is constructed by
human interaction (cf. Berger & Luckmann, 1991) and that, in order to
fulfill their mission of serving as “a forum for debate and controversy,”
providing a voice for “groups in the community that may otherwise
be unheard,” and “[helping] us see America whole, in all its diversity”
(Carnegie Commission on Educational Television, 1967), they are to
expose their vast audience to as many points of view as possible.
Discourses
In the following nine chapters, a Positive Discourse Analysis is performed
on the corpus. Structured according to Sue’s “tripartite framework of
personal identity” (2001), each chapter will be exploring one of the
recurring themes or “natural meaning units” (Greer et al., 2013) that
were established in the “practices” section (Table 3.1).
Table 3.1 Corpus (documentary, documentary maker, theme, level of identity)

Documentary Level of
# Documentary maker Theme identity
1 Carmen Miranda: Helena Solberg Fame Individual
Bananas Is My
Business
2 The Carlos Aparicio Queerness Individual
Transformation & Susana
Aiken
(continued)
66 A. J. Sanchez
Table 3.1 (continued)

Documentary Level of
# Documentary maker Theme identity
3 Fear and Learning Laura Simón Childhood Universal
at Hoover
Elementary
4 Corpus: A Home Lourdes Portillo Fame Individual
Movie for Selena
5 The Double Life of Catherine Ryan Adoption Individual
Ernesto Gomez & Gary
Gomez Weimberg
6 La Boda Hannah Weyer Biculturalism Group
7 Our House in Stephen Olsson Motherhood Universal
Havana
8 My American Girls: Aaron Motherhood Universal
A Dominican Matthews
Story
9 Escuela Hannah Weyer Biculturalism Group
10 Discovering Patricia Flynn & Adoption Individual
Dominga MJ
McConohay
11 90 Miles Juan Carlos Fatherhood Universal
Zaldívar
12 Al otro lado Natalia Almada Criminality Group
13 Made in LA Almudena Citizenship Group
Carracedo &
Robert Bahar
14 The Ballad of Kieran Criminality Group
Esequiel Fitzgerald
Hernández
15 Sin País Theo Rigby Childhood Universal
16 No le digas a Mikaela Shwer Citizenship Group
nadie
17 Memories of a Cecilia Queerness Individual
Penitent Heart Aldarondo
18 Voices of the Sea Kim Hopkins Fatherhood Universal
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4
The Universal Experience of Migrant
Mothers
In Our House in Havana (2000), documentary maker Stephen Olsson

centers on Cuban-American Silvia Morini as she ends her exile of
37 years to make her son Guillermo’s dearest wish come true: to revisit
their house in Havana. Being the voice of history in the documentary,
Silvia explains to the viewer that she was bullied out of Cuba after the
Revolution of 1959, together with other bourgeois Cubans who refused
to acquiesce to the new political regime. Although she had tried giving
Fidel Castro the benefit of the doubt, when her properties were repos-
sessed and distributed among the population by his government, she
and Guillermo fled to the United States in the hope of returning one
day. However, when the Castro regime unilaterally decided to nation-
alize oil refineries, the United States saddled Cuba with a commercial,
economic, and financial embargo as well as a travel ban. Only after
1978, a fragile policy of family reunification made it possible to visit the
island under restrictive conditions. However, it would take until 1992—
when President Bill Clinton signed the Helms–Burton Act and codified

Switzerland AG 2022
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-06539-2_4
74 A. J. Sanchez
the embargo—for travel to Cuba to become more mainstream. Never-

theless, Silvia continued to believe that by not returning to Cuba, she
was boycotting the Cuban economy (00:12:30; 00:54:05). As Guillermo
explains, like so many other “Cubans [in exile],” his mother was “against
giving a dollar to Castro” (00:31:38). Yet, over the course of the docu-
mentary, Silvia’s stance on the US foreign policy toward Cuba starts
shifting. As she goes from being a hardliner to becoming a dialoguera
(cf. García, 1998), the motivations behind her change of heart also
alter significantly. From a devoted mother who is willing to sacrifice her
convictions for the sake of her son, in front of Olsson’s camera, Silvia
transforms into a political activist whose care and concern expand from
her nuclear family unit to that of an entire diaspora.
In My American Girls: A Dominican Story (2001), documentary maker
Aaron Matthews also focuses on a Latinx mother, Dominican immigrant
Sandra Ortiz, whose life revolves around her three daughters: Monica
(21), Aida (16), and Mayra (14). The documentary follows the family’s
increasingly difficult balancing act to find a middle ground between their
newly adopted American belief system and their Dominican norms and
values. As the Ortiz’s story unfolds across borders, Sandra’s perspectives
undergo a perceptible modification. As the camera rolls, Sandra and
her husband Bautista are shown investing all their hard-earned money
into a house they are building in the Dominican Republic, where they
hope to retire. However, over the course of Matthews’s film, it slowly
begins to dawn on Sandra that “home” is where her daughters are—
“American girls” who set out to integrate into a larger community of
Dominican-Americans who have settled in the United States to stay.
Like Olsson, Matthews captures how a migrant mother’s involvement
with her own house(hold) broadens over the course of the documentary
and ends up encompassing not only her family but the transnational
Dominican-American community as well.
Motherhood and Marianismo

Even though Latin Americans are not a homogeneous people (cf.
Hernandez & Curiel, 2012), they do tend to hold similar beliefs about
gender roles and family values, such as marianismo/machismo (Da Silva

et al., 2018). The latter refers to a cult of the female moral high ground:
a celebration of women as “semi-divine, morally superior to and spiritu-
ally stronger than men” (Stevens, 1973, p. 91). Of course, women who
endorse honorific codes of conduct that perpetuate male domination and
female subordination are not unique to Latin America. What is typi-
cally Latin American, however, is the existence of honor cultures where
the Roman Catholic veneration of the Virgin Mary plays a central role.
Here, religion predicts honor beliefs for both genders: mariana piety,
devotion, and obedience sets the tone for male roguery. Hence, as a
form of female chauvinism, marianismo is rather a reciprocal arrange-
ment whereby Latinx women accept uncouth machista behavior in the
hope that it will underscore their wifely saintliness and guarantee them
the support of their community (cf. Glick et al., 2016).
According to the Marianismo Beliefs Scale, Latinx women tend to
adhere to five behavioral tenets: the Family Pillar, the Virtuous and
Chaste Pillar, the Subordinate to Others Pillar, the Silencing Self to
Maintain Harmony Pillar, and the Spiritual Pillar (Castillo et al., 2010).
These ideals hark back to the typically Latin American values of collec-
tivism (the encouragement of interdependence and group collaboration
rather than individual achievement); simpatía (the ability to maintain
harmonious, positive relationships by treating others with dignity and
respect); personalismo (the cultivation of inner qualities rather than mate-
rial wealth); respeto (mindfulness regarding an individual’s responsibilities
to the family and society at large); and familismo (the importance of
loyalty, solidarity, and reciprocity within the family unity) (Ruiz, 2005).
In Our House in Havana, Silvia does not only bestow her simpatía,
personalismo, respeto, familismo, and sense of collectivism upon her
nuclear family, which consists of her Cuban American son Guillermo
and American second husband Heath, but also upon the anticastrista,
predominantly bourgeois Cubans who fled to the United States in the
1960s. For decades, she was loyal to this collective of exiles, of whom it
is implied that their judgmental attitude kept her from traveling back to
Cuba. Sitting in a wicker chair, casually talking over the phone with an
unnamed friend, Silvia states:
76 A. J. Sanchez
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But now I’m charged. You know? It was like I had a
cork, you know, on the bottle of champagne? And now, all my things
[are] coming up and, uhm, I’m so excited. Of course, a lot of Cubans
have [said] “Silvia, you are going to Cuba? You, of all people?” [and] I
say “Hey, you know, I’ve changed my mind.” It’s a woman’s privilege.
(00:12:29)1
Turning to the camera, Silvia goes on to give a talking head interview

in which she explains that, after the Revolution, she concurred with the
Cuban, largely Miami-based defectors: “We’ve done so many pickets in
Washington and we want [Fidel Castro’s] downfall. And we feel if we
have a blockade and sort of squeeze Fidel and the government, it would
fall. But it hasn’t” (00:10:18). However, she is quick to foreshadow her
approaching apostasy by declaring that she found it “ridiculous” that “in
Miami everybody was talking about going back […] pretty soon,” based
on the unrealistic assumption that Fidel Castro’s military coup would
somehow be undone (00:09:33). Shortly before this confession, Silvia
had already revealed to Olsson’s camera how traumatic her departure
from Cuba had been because of the repossession of her palatial villa,
together with all its contents. After the confession, we are made privy
to supposedly future footage that mimics Silvia’s gazing at her now-
dilapidated house in Havana (00:10:54). In the same interview, she also
foreshadows the impoverished state of her once stately mansion, thus
implying that the whole of Cuba—which, from her bourgeois perspec-
tive, had been a paradise until the Revolution—has been decaying under
Castro’s reign. Claiming that when, in the 1960s, she had witnessed the
aggression of Cuba’s Marxist–Leninist regime from up close, she knew
“we weren’t going back”—a reference, assumedly, to the loss of her care-
free life in pre-revolutionary times rather than to the physical place that
proletarian Cuba had become (00:09:50).
1 In the following chapters, all direct quotes will be transcriptions. Occasionally, they will
contain spoken language that may be considered (grammatically, syntactically, lexically, etc.)
incorrect. To be respectful of the speakers’ idiolects, it was decided not to add the adverb “sic”
to the transcripts whenever a supposed linguistic error was recorded.
Olsson regularly interrupts this sit-down interview by splicing in

black-and-white stock footage of Fidel Castro that supports Silvia’s
declarations:
There is no step back in the history of our country. We will never waver
on our revolutionary course. We will stand up in the face of imperialists…
who are, and always will be our enemy. […] We will hold firm to the road
of Marxism-Leninism… Our country or death! We will win! (00:09:44;
translation in the original)
Curiously, at the end of Castro’s speech, the camera pans over and
hovers above the cheering audience before landing in the shrubbery of
an impressive mansion. As the title “Our House in Havana” (00:10:54)
appears in front of this black-and-white shot of what appears to be Silvia’s
house, the anachronism of this sequence becomes apparent. Although
the building itself looks contemporary, going by its modern-looking
fire extinguisher and Soviet-style boiler, Olsson’s black-and-white filter
ties it in with Castro’s historical footage, symbolically predicting Silvia’s
upcoming confrontation between the reality of Cuba’s present and her
nostalgia of Cuba’s—and, by extension, her own—past.
As Silvia’s choice to go back to Cuba can be seen as an act of disloyalty
vis-à-vis the collective of Cuban exiles in the United States, she appeases
her conscience by explaining her faux pas with the only absolving moti-
vation in the marianista mindset: her son. In the interviews leading up
to Silvia and Guillermo’s arrival in Cuba, she implies in various ways that
had it not been for the sake of her son’s well-being and his need to—in
Guillermo’s own words—“revive” his memories (00:14:38), she would
never have committed the “sin” of visiting her home country again:
I really started because of my son, that is a photographer. He really wants

to go to Cuba and we had left when he was nine years old. […] I wanna
see it myself, judge myself, and then I don’t know that what I’m gonna
say will be the right thing, but it’s gonna be the right thing for me. And
maybe my son will have another version, because he is a different age.
(00:11:23)
78 A. J. Sanchez
True to the Spiritual Pillar of the Marianismo Beliefs Scale, according

to which Latinx women cast themselves as “the spiritual leaders of their
families, responsible for their spiritual growth and religious practice” (Da
Silva et al., 2018, p. 5), Silvia asks the heavens for guidance. Armed
with the prayer book of Faustina, her favorite Catholic saint, she goes
to church with her husband Heath in order to decide whether or not to
board their plane. While sitting on a prayer bench next to her impas-
sive husband, Silvia is filmed intensely staring at the altar and fervently
crossing herself (00:11:58).
Eventually, Silvia herself reveals the marianista reasoning behind her
decision to journey back to Cuba. Being her household’s spiritual leader
and, therefore, the one who is in closest contact with God, she suggests
that she is the best placed to interpret Faustina’s signs from above:
Faustina is the one that I really been asking to her if it was OK to go to

Cuba. […] If she thought it wasn’t the right time, then she’d find a way
to tell me. OK? But apparently she’s telling me “Yeah, it’s OK, let’s go!”
So Silvia is going, I’m happy. (00:13:39)
Once in Cuba, she is shown going to church again, where she takes
a liking to a priest who not only supports her anticastrista beliefs but
also confirms that he regularly hands out Faustina-related pamphlets to
his churchgoers (00:29:59). With him, she shares the moral dilemma of
her visit to Cuba and implies, once again, that she only reneged on her
political exile for the sake of her son:
I asked Faustina if I should ever come back to Cuba… because my son

and I weren’t getting along, so I asked Faustina… and finally, BOOM,
Faustina had us come here. So every time I have a problem, I open the
book and ask for help. (00:30:29; translation in the original)
In My American Girls, sacrifice also underlies Sandra’s motherly exis-

tence. In the comfort of her bedroom, Sandra’s middle daughter Ayda
confesses in a heartfelt exchange with the camera that Dominicans
“have it a lot harder than other kids” (00:05:22). Being first-generation
Dominican-Americans, she and her sisters cannot turn to their parents
for advice about “Huckleberry Finn or, like, Charles Dickens” because
“they are from the Dominican Republic” and “they never had that educa-
tion” (00:05:25). As if trying to prove that Sandra does the best she can,
Matthews follows up Ayda’s indirect jab at her parents’ lack of educa-
tion with footage of her mother cleaning hospital wards. In a voice-over,
Sandra admits: “[It] is not easy, standing from 5 o’clock in the morning
to 10, 11 o’clock at night, is not easy” (00:05:50).
Still, despite Sandra’s good intentions, her oldest daughter Monica
resents her mother for working so much; in Monica’s mind, Sandra
had better invest those hours in her children and their schoolwork.
Over B-roll of Sandra and Bautista cleaning offices, which is interspersed
with home footage of Monica’s sisters goofing around with their friends,
Monica confides to the viewer:
I’ve told my parents that they should really think about not going to clean
the doctor’s office at night. I mean, their lives are crazy enough without
having a second job. And what do they make? An extra 100 bucks a
week? But I’m like “That extra 100 bucks a week is causing you no time
with your kids.” Ugh! (00:07:54)
Still looking straight into the camera, she segues into the central
predicament of the documentary:
I know that mami and papi want to build their house in the Dominican
Republic. I mean, so many Dominicans come to this country with the
idea that they’re going to work temporarily and make their money and
then go back, you know, to live in their dream house. But they’ve made
this their home now and they have to think about the present too.
(00:08:40)
By means of Monica’s soliloquy, Matthews foreshadows the crux of his

film: Sandra and Bautista’s difficult choice between retiring to the house
of their dreams in the country of their past or settling for imperfect living
quarters in a country where their children have a future.
As the camera keeps rolling, Sandra’s vacillation becomes easier to
understand. Falling back on the Family Pillar as well as the Subordi-
nating to Others Pillar of marianismo, she points out that she was the
80 A. J. Sanchez
first of her family to come to the United States (00:01:02). As she grew
up poor and because she happened to be the oldest of 14 brothers and
sisters, she was expected to sacrifice herself by leaving her home behind
and supporting her family from afar, in the United States (00:05:50). In
a talking head interview that coincides with images of her working at the
hospital, Sandra adds: “That’s why I cannot go to school. And I cannot
have a education but I wish my children working hard because I know
is the best way to live in… in this world” (00:06:10).
When Mayra, Sandra’s youngest, comes home with slipping grades,
Sandra does not shy away from reminding her daughter that she is “sac-
rificing too much so [Mayra] can get ahead” (00:32:09). Here, Matthews
seems to suggest that Sandra’s sacrifice did not end when she established
her own nuclear family unit in the United States. Instead, her sacrificial
burden doubled: not only did she have to take care of her family in the
Dominican Republic but she was also forced to act selflessly toward her
husband and children in New York City.
Undoing Marianismo
Although marianismo does correspond to a perceived societal truth
(Castillo & Cano, 2007), it is premised on a number of injurious
assumptions. Not only does it contain ahistorical, essentialist, anachro-
nistic, sexist, and orientalist elements (Navarro, 2002), but it also
partakes in victim blaming by claiming that Latin American wives tend
to accept callousness from their husbands because it benefits their saintly
status of wife/mother (Ehlers, 1991). Additionally, it relegates women
to the domestic sphere, where they are supposedly so content with
their feminine reign that they do not even consider to challenge the
general balance of power.
In imitation of this skepticism toward marianismo, Olsson and
Matthews follow Silvia and Sandra as they put their understanding of
motherhood to the test. Initially compliant with the self-sacrificial nature
of their motherly role, they begin acquiring a new sense of self once
they realize that women do not have to put up with unhappiness and
suffering—a belief that dates back to colonial times (cf. Boyer, 1989;
Ehlers, 1991). While the camera keeps rolling relentlessly, Silvia and
Sandra slowly but surely step away from the house they left behind in
Cuba and the Dominican Republic, respectively. Tired of the mental
“domestic exile” (cf. Rocha-Sánchez & Díaz Loving, 2005; Utomo,
2014) that they have been imposing on themselves for years, they break
free from their mental prisons by redirecting the aim of their mothering
and engaging with the transnational community in which they circulate.
Once they do away with interpretations of motherhood that only accept
biological kinship as a warranty of social or emotional proximity, Silvia
and Sandra begin to partake in “careship” (cf. Challinor, 2018) instead: a
mutual sense of solidarity and commitment that connects human beings
to each other through social action and cultural meaning.
Their motherhood-induced domestication—a self-imposed mental
house arrest that prevents them from thinking outside the framework
of their household—begins to dawn on Sandra and Silvia because of the
motherly love for their children. Thanks to the transformative love ethic
of motherhood (cf. Velazquez, 2017), both Sandra and Silvia allow the
love they have for their offspring to take over and transform them from
within. In both documentaries, Sandra and Silvia go through a number
of epiphanies, which lead them to question the mother–child dynamic
that dictated most of their adult lives.
In Our House in Havana, it turns out that Guillermo’s journey back to
Cuba will not be a personal quest. As a photographer, he aims to capture
present-day Cuba on film in the hope that it might appease the Cuban-
American exiles who remain hostile toward the castrista government and
its subjects (00:31:40). Silvia seemingly goes along with her photogra-
pher son’s agenda, still playing the role of “madre abnegada” (Subero,
2016) who puts her own needs and wishes aside in order to seek justice
on behalf of her child.
Shortly afterward, Olsson orchestrates Silvia’s epiphany—the birth of
her own agenda—by juxtaposing footage of her boarding her return
flight to the United States (00:47:36) with a musical sequence, shot the
evening before, in which she is filmed dancing to a salsa song. As she is
happily twirling around a live band, the deceivingly cheerful song hints at
the gravity of Silvia’s actual state of mind, as its lyrics are exclamations of
82 A. J. Sanchez
a dying person who is resisting their approaching end (00:46:13). In a sit-

down interview, filmed sometime after her return to the United States, a
teary Silvia expounds on those shots:
I wanted to depart but, on the way, I wanted to stay a little longer. You
know? And different emotions, different things. Some sad, some happy.
So anyway, we finally start walking out and going up the steps of the
plane and when that happened, without even knowing, I turned back…
[tears up] I can’t talk about this. Too emotional. Always, very emotional…
[mumbles]. So, I turned back [sniffs] and I saw some people say goodbye
that didn’t know me [sniffs]. And one of them even threw me a kiss. And
then I knew what the word freedom meant. Those people couldn’t get
out of the island. And I could. And that just broke my heart [sniffs].
And I cried. (00:47:38)
Only then, as Silvia implies, did she understand her son’s desire to act
as a bridge between all Cubans: those who have no choice but to stay on
the island and those who refuse to go back.
That being said, Silvia does not simply replicate Guillermo’s somewhat
simplistic ambition to bring present-day Cuba on a photographic platter
to the exiles in the United States. After having gone through a depressive
period, during which she was “blocked” and “[her] hands were tied,”
Silvia began wondering: “Maybe I wasn’t doing what I had to do? Maybe
there was something else? […] Why can’t I find that something else?
Why can’t I help?” (00:51:31). In an effort to escape the “horrors of
marianismo” that make women “abject through a lack of identity beyond
motherhood” (Subero, 2016, p. 145), Silvia uses her son’s drive as an
inspiration that sets her on a very distinct life path.
In the final moments of Our House in Havana, Silvia is shown talking
on the phone with a politician about her belief that the embargo must
be undone, “because when you’ve done something for 39 years and it
hasn’t worked, it is time to change” (00:52:55). She reveals that, after
several psychotherapy sessions, she began calling the White House, US
Senator Jesse Helms, “and everybody that [she] could” to put an end to
the embargo (00:52:36). The documentary concludes with Silvia’s state-
ment that, to those who accuse her of having become a communist, she
simply replies that she has become “human, more human” (00:54:24).
Like Silvia in Our House in Havana, the mother-protagonist of My

American Girls allows the love she has for her offspring to transform
her by opening up to their mentality. In particular, Sandra is “so proud”
of Monica, the first of the family to graduate from college (00:11:10).
Matthews goes along with this portrayal of Monica as the maverick of the
family, not only because of her academic achievements but also because
of her fearlessness to break away from the expectations and burdens of
familismo. As she explains: “I think that a lot of Latinos in this country
that are trying to make it here, they struggle with that” (00:39:03).
Following Monica’s lead, Sandra slowly begins to question her role of
madre abnegada toward her children and husband. The first inkling of
Sandra’s rejection of marianismo becomes apparent when—in a voice-
over that accompanies images of her early morning commute to the
hospital—she acknowledges: “Sometimes I forget who I am working
[for], for me or for my daughters? I don’t know, I’m tired to thinking
about work. I’ve been working from the first day I came to this coun-
try” (00:09:52). Having already voiced her doubts about relinquishing
her sense of self for her daughters, she does the same with her husband
when she catches him going through photographs of the house they’re
building in the Dominican Republic:
[Sandra] Maybe you say you wanna go and then after you living there
for few months, you wanna coming back. […] [Bautista] No, no, no. I
wanna stay there. [Sandra] That’s what you say now, you not living there
yet. [Bautista] I wanna stay there. [Sandra] We never know. (00:16:25)
It is as if Sandra were replicating Monica’s earlier remark: “But [mami

and papi] made this their home now and they have to think about the
present too” (00:08:53). In fact, over the course of the documentary,
Sandra appears not only to come to terms with Monica’s rebellious streak
but she seemingly even begins looking up to it.
When Monica announces that she won’t be able to join her parents
and siblings on their trip back to the Dominican Republic, Sandra’s reac-
tion is almost one of admiration: “I have feeling she not gonna made
it cos she have a lot of work to do. Monica is a real American girl.
Yup!” (00:45:48). From that moment on, it is almost as if Sandra begins
84 A. J. Sanchez
molding herself after Monica and her decision to put her own life first.
However, as was the case with Silvia, Sandra does not copy her child’s
ambition. Instead, she draws on Monica’s ideas to follow her own path;
Monica may prefer her life in the United States, but Sandra likes her life
on the island better.
In order to offer proof of Sandra’s mental change, Matthews contrasts
images of Sandra in the United States, slaving away within the confines
of her home or on the premises of her jobs, and Sandra singing, dancing,
swimming, and laughing in the Dominican Republic. There, for the first
time, Sandra takes the time to think about her own feelings: “When I’m
here, I forgot everything in New York. I forgot uhm… my job, I forgot
hospital, I forgot everything” (00:50:55). She does admit, however, that
not everything is perfect on the island. Agreeing with Ayda’s state-
ment that the Dominican Republic is “like… a Third World country”
(00:28:54), Sandra insists on using her relative wealth, acquired through
hard labor in the United States, to help those in need. One of the first
things she does when she arrives in her hometown is to distribute food
to the poor (00:49:35). One of the last things she does before departing
is to organize a reunion for all those who wish to have a seat at her table,
regardless of whether or not they are related to her (00:56:44).
This newly found sense of purpose, which goes beyond her own
nuclear family, stays with her and helps her make a final decision about
her future. After flying back to New York and picking up her daily
routine, Sandra takes her girls’ wishes into consideration once more,
because she knows full well “they want to stay in America” (01:00:50).
This time around, however, she does not allow her motherly duties to
stand in the way of her personal ambitions any further because, just
like Silvia, she has found a purpose on the island that set her free from
her domestic exile and from the restrictions of mariana motherhood.
Although the documentary closes with Sandra’s admission that she knows
that her girls will be “more happy in this country” (01:01:20), she has
no doubt that someday she and Bautista will end up in the Dominican
Republic, even if it means she will have to “be leaving [her] family again”
(01:00:08).
Beyond Motherhood
In Our House in Havana (Olsson, 2000) and My American Girls: A
Dominican Story (Matthews, 2001), two mothers grapple with the
meaning of their American present and their Latin American past.
Both films testify to the kind of nostalgic, existential questioning that
surrounded Latinx migration in the United States before the “war on
terror” erupted. This was a time when the legality of immigrants and
the nature of their status were relegated to the sidelines of their everyday
lives. Hence, the documentaries focus on the psychological make-up of
their transnational and transient Latinx protagonists as these undergo the
“double transition” (cf. Challinor, 2018) of being a mother in an alien
environment.
Mothers Silvia and Sandra are initially depicted as nostalgic Caribbean
immigrants who pine after and idealize the life they left behind in their
countries of origin. As the events unfold, it becomes increasingly clear
that their need to romanticize the past is actually a coping mechanism
through which they deal with the trauma of their forced emigration.
Their “loss of homeland” (cf. Pérez, 2015) is ambiguous because it is
characterized by uncertainty and unanswered questions that can never
be fully resolved.
This ambiguous loss is particularly tricky because there are no clear-
cut answers as to how a healthy grieving is best stimulated. Moreover, the
“double transition” (cf. Challinor, 2018) of migrant mothers into moth-
erhood and into a new sociocultural environment means they are the
worse for wear because they are made to experience interruption twice
over. Sandra and Silvia’s nostalgia is further complicated by the fact that
they hail from Latin American countries, where many mothers are still
held to the exacting standards of marianismo (cf. Greer et al., 2013). As
marianas, they are expected to sacrifice themselves for their children and
endure suffering better than men, while remaining submissive, religious,
modest, and humble.
At first, Cuban-American Silvia Morini and Dominican-American
Sandra Ortiz seem to comply with marianismo, without ever paying a
second thought to the burdens this cultural expectation adds to their
lives. Their concern is with their house and household in their countries
86 A. J. Sanchez
of origin and reception. Silvia only wants to go back to Cuba to have

another look at the house where she was born, and Sandra cannot wait to
go back to the dream house she is building in the Dominican Republic.
However, their journey back soon forces them to become “introspective,”
as Silvia’s husband Heath describes it (00:50:44). When Sandra and Silvia
realize that they can transfer the “love ethic” (cf. hooks, 2018) that they
have been reserving exclusively for their children to a larger audience,
the scope of their activism widens considerably and becomes much more
fulfilling.
Instead of merely re/acting within an oppositional framework that
labeled them as victims against the oppressor, they become aware of
their capacity to serve as a bridge, not only for themselves but also for
the community from which they emerge and to which they return (cf.
Velazquez, 2017). Once they allow the love for their children to trans-
form them, the arbitrariness of their marianismo begins to dawn on
them. Silvia and Sandra become capable of undoing their lack of iden-
tity beyond motherhood (cf. Subero, 2016) when they choose a clear life
path of their own: one that is motivated by their personal desires and
aspirations.
Through social action and an increased understanding of the cultural
meaning of their migrant status, Silvia and Sandra’s transnational exis-
tence becomes synonymous with a “careship” (cf. Challinor, 2018) that
enables them to connect with fellow Cuban-Americans and Dominican-
Americans outside their family unit. In the end, Sandra and Silvia’s
prioritizing of their own happiness turns out to be more selfless than
their previous self-abnegating behavior; in the long run, it benefits
considerably more people than their closest family and relatives.
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5
Fathers
In 90 Miles (Zaldívar, 2003) and Voices of the Sea (Hopkins, 2018),

documentary makers Juan Carlos Zaldívar and Kim Hopkins explore
the psychological turmoil that accompanies their protagonists’ decision
to defect to the United States and leave their Cuban homeland behind.
In their deconstruction of the (aspiring) migrants’ psyche before and
after their crossover, both documentary makers focus on a father figure.
Testing the boundaries of the machista stereotypes of authoritative stern-
ness and mental stoicism that are associated with Latinx fatherhood, the
Cuban-American Pachuco in 90 Miles and the Cuban Pita in Voices of
the Sea are portrayed as emotionally intelligent family heads who are
conflicted about how to ensure their family’s well-being. As Miami-based
Pachuco—the father of documentary maker Juan Carlos Zaldívar—
ponders the consequences of his escape from Cuba in the 1980s, Pita’s
family and friends are still contemplating whether or not to flee from the
island by sea when the Obama Administration threatens to put an end to
the exceptional treatment of Cuban immigrants. By depicting migration
as a fickle endeavor that these measured Cuban fathers—who are at the

Switzerland AG 2022
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-06539-2_5
90 A. J. Sanchez
mercy of political forces beyond their control—approach as a gamble,

Zaldívar and Hopkins expose the ambiguity of the US immigration
policy toward Cuba.
Abstract Policy, Real People

Throughout both films, the documentary makers use iconic fragments
of Cuban music to contextualize the human heartbreak that is unfolding
before our eyes. For example, 90 Miles begins with Juan Carlos’s own
memories of Cuba, 90 miles away from Florida, where he grew up. As
Carlos Puebla’s original rendition of Hasta Siempre Comandante plays in
the background, a slew of black-and-white archival images flashes by:
statues, flags, and portraits of José Martí and Che Guevara splayed out
across Havana’s Plaza de la Revolución, military parades by the Fuerzas
Armadas Revolucionarias, Cubans cheering in honor of Fidel Castro, and
so on (00:00:02). A final farewell to El Ché, Puebla’s ballad returns a
couple of times in Zaldívar’s film, as a symbol of his and his family’s
long-lost communist ardor. Another melody that resurfaces every now
and again is the lesser-known El colibrí by Cuban-American José Conde:
“Oye bien, oye bien / Hay un colibrí que salió de su nido / Mirando a su
nido el colibrí volaba / Extrañando a su nido el colibrí voló”1 (00:35:57).
Throughout the documentary, the song keeps haunting the protag-
onists, reminding them of the nest they left behind in Cuba. Finally,
a little-known rendition of Babalú—an Afro-Cuban song that Ricky
Ricardo turned into American patrimony in I Love Lucy (cf. Waldman,
2003)—announces a new era for the Zaldívar household. Originally
titled San Lázaro, the song dates back to the time when African slaves
were forced to pretend that their chants about Yoruba gods like Babalú-
Ayé were homages to Catholic saints like Saint Lazarus.2 With its ambi-
guity, the song celebrates the diversity of cubanidad , seemingly implying
that the Zaldívars’ new American reality is just another ingredient in their
1 “Listen up, listen up / A hummingbird left its nest / Looking at its nest the hummingbird
flew around / Missing its nest the hummingbird flew away” (00:35:57; my translation).
2 This brought forth the religious practice of Santería, a mixture of Roman Catholicism and
West-African polytheism.
“Cuban stew” or ajiaco (cf. Ortiz, 2014)—a classic metaphor for Cuba’s
perpetual heterogeneity.
By contrast, the song that cleaves Voices of the Sea in two is Willy
Chirino’s political chant Nuestro Día: “Mi padre me vistió de marinero
/ Tuve que navegar 90 millas / Y comenzar mi vida de extranjero /
Huyéndole a la hoz y al verdulino / Corriendo de esa absurda ideología”3
(00:36:53). Humming through the windows of an innocent-looking car
that drives by the camera under the cover of darkness, the song is actu-
ally summoning migrants-to-be to join their attempt to defect by sea.
The next morning, when it turns out that Roilán—Pita’s brother-in-
law—jumped at the occasion and is now sailing somewhere along the
Florida Straits, the mood of the documentary changes completely. Up
until that point, emigration seemed a fuzzy idea to Pita’s clan, some-
thing discussed and considered but still quite intangible. However, with
Roilán’s departure, the stark reality of migration hits them hard.
Shortly after Roilán manages to make it safely to Arizona, Pita’s best
friends Michel and Estrella also try to defect, but they are less fortunate.
Having yet again failed to flee from Cuba, at the very end of the film it
turns out that they were apprehended at sea by the US Coast Guard, sent
to the Guantanamo Naval Base for 14 months, and finally relocated to
Australia. Hence, from Roilán’s lucky escape onward, the visuals of Voices
of the Sea are interlaced with the nineteenth-century habanera La bella
cubana—a melancholic hymn to Cuba’s sad beauty by the Afro-Cuban
expatriate José White (cf. Lam, 2018).
Considered together, these musical masterpieces paint a tragic picture
of the Caribbean island: a country that has been losing its inhabi-
tants to the American Dream for decades, despite their reluctance to
leave. The musical score in both documentaries thus also alludes to
Cuba’s conflicted relationship with the United States. According to San
Lázaro, it is a tale of mutual influence and exchange, whereas for Willy
Chirino, the Cuban-American bond is marked by political absurdity and
oppression.
3 “My father dressed me as a sailor / I had to sail 90 miles / I had to start to live as a foreigner
/ Fleeing the sickle and hammer / Escaping from this absurd ideology” (00:36:53; translation
in the original).
92 A. J. Sanchez
Indeed, the relationship between the United States and Cuba has been
marred by imperialist intrigue and anti-imperialist revolt ever since the
nineteenth century. The United States were already a long-established
trade partner of Cuba’s sugar industry when, in 1898, they intervened
in the Cuban independence wars against Spain (1868–1898). With the
help of the traditional Cuban elites, the United States went on to set up
a Republic in 1902—the first of many puppet governments meant to
ensure the triumph of the Cuban oligarchy and the demise of any social
revolution (cf. Pérez, 2003). The occupation and planned annexation
of Cuba (as well as of Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Guam, and other
Pacific islands) was a logical next step of the American project, dictated
by such foundational documents of US foreign policy as the Monroe
Doctrine and the Manifest Destiny (cf. Pérez, 2014). By merit of the
island’s geostrategic position and economic potential, the control over
Cuba was considered both a necessity for the survival of the American
Republic and a right stemming from nature, politics, and predestination
(López & Yaffe, 2017). With these ambitions in mind, the Platt Amend-
ment was added to Cuba’s first constitution, authorizing the United
States to intervene in internal Cuban affairs and establish a naval base
on Guantánamo Bay. Consequently, by repeatedly endorsing blatantly
corrupt governments and consistently ignoring the Cubans’ indignation
at the imperialist treatment of their country, the United States set the
stage for Castro’s rise to power in 1959 (cf. Hughes, 2010).
Initially, Fidel Castro’s feat was applauded by most Cubans; he was
seen as a revolutionary hero who had defeated a corrupt and brutal dicta-
torship despite tremendous odds (cf. Masud-Piloto, 1995). In 90 Miles,
Pachuco’s son Juan Carlos and Pachuco’s brother Wicho confirm that
most Cubans were initially enthusiastic about the Revolution, “hoping,
like most people, that the overthrow of the Batista dictatorship would
mean a better future for Cuba” (00:22:08). However, mass emigration
ensued when the people began witnessing “persecutions, limited human
rights, […] issues of repression” as well as forced repossessions of proper-
ties and goods (Castellanos & Gloria, 2018, p. 79). In Voices of the Sea,
Pita expounds:
Revolution is beautiful. In 1959, Cuba was very happy. I was a little child
but I saw it in my parents, my grandparents—Cuba was truly happy.
People in the streets… beautiful. But we were cheated. It means nothing
to me now. That was a moment in history and nothing else. (00:17:52;
translation in the original)
Wicho and Juan Carlos corroborate Pita’s feelings of betrayal. Their

grievance concerns the treacherous way in which the new govern-
ment introduced communism to Cuba. To them, Cuba became another
Czechoslovakia: “a caricature” (00:22:34; translation in the original).
Consequently, when the Castro regime established a Communist
Party, the United States retaliated by imposing the most stringent
embargo in US history, which prohibited Americans from traveling to
Cuba, investing in Cuba, exporting US products to Cuba, or importing
Cuban goods (cf. Weinmann, 2004). Additionally, in 1966, the Johnson
Administration enacted the Cuban Adjustment Act (CAA). This was
meant, on the one hand, to create an asylum for the Cuban refugees
who left their communist country for political reasons and, on the other,
to destabilize the new communist regime under Fidel Castro (cf. Meyers,
2018). From then on, the parole status of Cuban nationals in the United
States could be changed to that of LPR (“lawful permanent resident”)
after a physical presence in the country of more than one year.
Although the US immigration policy toward Cuba has been variously
criticized for its anomalies and abuses (“An End to Cuban Exception-
alism,” 2015), its contradictions (Nackerud et al., 1999), its reluctance
to view Cubans through the prism of international law (Fullerton, 2004),
its unjust favoring of Cubans over other immigrants (Flores, 2015), its
irrationality (Weinmann, 2004), and its hypocrisy (Muscarella, 2016),
it has remained relatively unchanged, triggering several waves of migra-
tion. The Historical or Golden Exiles of 1959–1962 partially coincided
with the child refugees of Operation Peter Pan, conducted in 1960–
1962. They were succeeded by the exiles of the Freedom Flights of
1965–1973, those of the Mariel boatlift of 1980, the Cuban rafters of
1994–1996, and the Dusty Feet migrants of 2015–2017 (Castellanos &
Gloria, 2018). This being said, in legal terms, there is quite a difference
between the Marielitos of 1980 and the arrivals before and after them.
94 A. J. Sanchez
This Cuban diasporic flux can be divided into three groups that
fall, chronologically, under three distinct US foreign policy approaches
regarding Cuba: (1) destabilizing the revolutionary government by
enforcing a blockade and fast-tracking all Cuban entrants to the LPR
status in the 1960s; (2) normalizing relations in the 1970s while holding
on to previous sanctions; (3) reversing previous policies from the 1980s
onward (Pérez-Stable, 2016). The Reagan Administration initiated the
overhaul of past tactics by applying—for the first time since the Revo-
lution—restrictionist terminology to Cuban arrivals. Although the CAA
still applied to the Marielitos, they were symbolically denied the status
of refugee and given the pending status of “entrant” instead (Henken,
2005). This changing rhetoric crystallized under President Clinton,
whose “wet foot, dry foot” policy dictated that only Cubans who reached
US land would be eligible for LPR status. Those found at sea would
be considered illegal aliens and would not be granted asylum or refugee
status (cf. Masud-Piloto, 1995). Moreover, depending on their ability to
prove their fear of persecution, they would either be returned to Cuba or
taken to Guantanamo Bay for further processing and a possible relo-
cation to a third country (cf. Dastyari, 2015). Finally, the change in
US foreign policy toward Cuba reached its peak during Obama’s fourth
quarter, when he reversed Clinton’s “wet foot, dry foot policy” as part
of a larger effort to normalize relations with Cuba (cf. Meyers, 2018).
This reversal effectively ended the preferred immigration status of Cuban
nationals. Currently, because the CAA remains intact, Cubans are still
eligible for a fast-track LPR status but—in theory—only if they enter
the United States legally.
Familism and Materialism

The political circumstances and economic hardships that force the father
figures of 90 Miles and Voices of the Sea to choose between Cuba and
the United States differ quite considerably. Were it not for their shared
memories of Cuba’s glorious first few months under Fidel Castro and
their similar disillusionment with the country’s current state of affairs,
the protagonists of 90 Miles and Voices of the Sea would have very little
in common. The portrayal of their contexts of departure and reception

is so diametrically opposed in both films that Pachuco, Pita, and their
respective families could pass for migrants from different countries.
In 90 Miles, Juan Carlos Zaldívar remembers—using a voice-over—
how during the first two years after the family’s arrival in Miami, he
was “very outspoken” about the anti-American beliefs that the Cuban
school system had ingrained in him (00:11:46). He was “still spouting
out communist slogans” (00:11:49) and, for example, failed to under-
stand why schoolchildren in Miami did not wear uniforms, as it only
“created this atmosphere that there was nobody to answer to” (00:11:36).
Conversely, in the Cuba of Voices of the Sea, such communist zeal
and anti-Americanism are nowhere to be found. The moment that
best illustrates Pita’s family’s veneration of anything American is when
Roilán manages to call his sister Mariela—Pita’s wife—for the first time
from the United States. While Mariela is desperately trying to deci-
pher through the static noise how long Roilán’s sea voyage lasted and
how he is surviving on shore, her children Orlandito and Cynthia are
heard shouting enthusiastically in the background, repeatedly asking
their uncle for an iPod (00:49:13). By asking for such an emblematic
US product, Pita and Mariela’s children unconsciously commodify the
United States and glorify its capitalism, even before reaching US soil
themselves.
Commodities, however, were not the primary concern of Pachuco’s
family when they decided to emigrate during the Mariel boatlift era.
Pachuco’s wife Nilda is adamant that “[a] lot of people had a tough time.
But you were never without a pair of shoes or in need of anything. On
the contrary, you never knew what it was like to be without food or
milk. You had anything you wanted” (00:02:57). Documentary maker
Zaldívar reveals that Pachuco actually held a job of which he was proud
in Cuba. As a manager, he distributed jewelry throughout the island
and was in charge of the entire province of Holguín (00:20:37). Albeit
surreptitiously, he even managed to build a house for his family, having
been denied official housing for wearing medals of patron saints and
displaying Catholic paintings in his home (00:23:20).
Fast-forwarding to the Dusty Feet era, the contrast with the Cuban
family of Voices of the Sea could not be starker. In the first scene of the
96 A. J. Sanchez
film, a fisherman indirectly introduces himself to the viewers by vocal-

izing a tune that presents him as “Pita” or “fishing line”: “Pita va al mar
/ Y no pesca na’ / Y no pesca na’ / Y no ve los peces / Pita va arriba y
no ve los peces / Y no ve los peces”4 (00:04:35). This scene—in different
variants—recurs many times throughout the film: Pita casting nets from
his worn rowboat, patiently bobbing along the ocean, waiting for the
fish to bite. Over the course of the documentary, it becomes clear that
Pita’s catch is consistently meager: so much so that he and Mariela have
had to pull her oldest son from school (00:24:10) and are slowly but
surely easing her second oldest son Karel into the family trade as well
(01:02:00).
Talking to Hopkins’s camera, Mariela explains that it is for the sake of
her children from a previous marriage and the son she shares with Pita
that she is considering an illegal crossover. However, she does acknowl-
edge that her chances of making a successful “dry foot” landing are slim,
as she learned from her previous attempt:
[Mariela] A better future for my kids… that was the idea. I’ve already
had to take my eldest out of school. And the others I might have to do
the same. We’ll never do anything or be anybody. “What do you want
to be?” “Fisherman!” They don’t know any different. They have no hopes
for anything else. It is what it is. It wasn’t as easy as I thought. It’s very
disappointing to get so close. We saw the coast, keys, lights. We couldn’t
do anything, but get sent back. (00:22:43; translation in the original)
In the meantime, their younger children Karel and Orlandito are

pictured getting ready for school, only to be shown taking off their
uniforms shortly afterward. The first time, it turns out the school bus
broke down on the way to school (00:42:30). The second time, Pita
explains to Hopkins’s camera that the teachers simply failed to show up
for work:
4 “The fishing line is cast in the sea and it doesn’t catch anything / It doesn’t catch anything
/ The line is reeled in and it doesn’t see any fish / And it doesn’t see any fish” (00:04:35; my
translation).
Like always, [Orlandito] goes to school 3 times… and has class once.
Twice he goes and comes back. If it’s not one reason, it’s another. Here
it’s not easy for kids to learn to read and write. A teacher’s salary is
not enough, so they don’t turn up. Sometimes they’d rather solve their
own problems, rather than remain in class. (00:44:11; translation in the
original)
By contrast, in 90 Miles, Juan Carlos recalls in a voice-over that he

had been awarded a fully funded scholarship to study film and television
at a Cuban “boarding school for gifted kids” two years before defecting
(00:06:06). The grant was “a guarantee that [he] could study what [he]
loved while contributing to the revolution” (00:06:13). Consequently,
when his father presented him and his sister Nilvi with the option to
leave Cuba, Juan Carlos “cried straight through for three days” and
refused to leave his beloved country (00:06:22). In the end, Nilvi and
Juan Carlos decided to go, but only because they did not want to be
separated from their family (00:06:50).
Years later, in Miami, a nostalgic Pachuco seemingly regrets departing
from the Cuba of his past, where he appeared to have it all. In present-
day Cuba, we find an equally unhappy Pita who barely makes both ends
meet but still holds on to the idea that his family is better off where they
are. In a late-night confession to Hopkins’s camera, he tearfully recounts:
I know many people… who went because people told them—over there
everything’s incredible, you’ll get everything you need. So they create that
sweet dream… of a new life there. But they’ll end up living underneath
a bridge. I know them, they’re friends of mine. But I’m going to tell you
the truth, there’s nothing like Cuba… for me. I was born here and would
like to die here. If I go there… there’s nothing for me. There’s nothing.
(00:39:20; translation in the original)
Pachuco seems to coincide with Pita, as his sullen demeanor

throughout 90 Miles appears to suggest. In a voice-over that accompa-
nies footage of Pachuco working a 12-hour shift at a Miami shoe store,
Zaldívar wonders whether his father feels that he somehow failed the
family: “He thought that when we came to the United States, he’d be able
to buy us anything and that mom wouldn’t have to work” (00:21:35).
98 A. J. Sanchez
Slowly but surely, Zaldívar’s film turns into an attempt at unraveling the
reasons behind Pachuco’s depression. Similarly, Hopkins digs ever deeper
into the mystery of Pita’s unwillingness to emigrate.
Machismo and Fatherhood

As a psychological construct, machismo has traditionally been associated
with violence, hypermasculinity, sexual aggression, the domination of
women and children, and so on. However, the documentary makers of
Voices of the Sea and 90 Miles are nuanced in their depiction of Latin
American masculinity in that they appear to embrace a multidimensional
conception of machismo. Indeed, over the years, the concept of machismo
has undergone a profound transformation. Repeatedly denounced for
being “a grand narrative about Latino men’s cultural history, social
experiences, and gender behavior that promotes an essentialist view of
masculinity” (Falicov, 2010, p. 310), maintaining “a monolithic repre-
sentation of machismo” (Torres et al., 2002, p. 164), and stereotyping
Latino men “as negative role models, whose identity is based on a model
of pathology” (Mayo, 1997, p. 52), machismo is currently more likely
to be interpreted as caballerismo by Latinx men—“a code of masculine
chivalry” that values social responsibility and emotional connectedness
(Arciniega et al., 2008, p. 20). In Voices of the Sea and 90 Miles, Pita
and Pachuco seem to be portrayed as caballeros rather than traditional
machos, as they appear aware of the double standards imposed on them
by the Latin American cult of masculinity. Machismo gives these men
a framework in which they can be loving and responsive fathers and
husbands (cf. Concha et al., 2016). However, when Pita and Pachuco
are incapable of fulfilling certain expectations toward them that emanate
from this framework, it also brings about “gender-role stress” (cf. Pleck,
1981).
In other words, more traditional understandings of Latinx gender
constructs still circulate. Historically, machismo has been approached as
a standard of behavior that celebrates masculine gender roles specific to
Latino cultures and gives rise to a certain cult of manliness (Torres et al.,
2002). Familismo lies at the heart of this cult: a strong sense of duty
to participate in and ensure the physical and mental well-being of the

(extended) family (Mayo, 1997). Contemporary views on both marian-
ismo (e.g. Gil & Vazquez, 1996) and machismo (e.g. Mirandé, 1997)
have simply expanded the spectrum of Latin American gender role expec-
tations to include gender-positive as well as gender-negative behavioral
traits. Hence, it has been found that modern-day Latinx men tend to
subscribe to different types of masculinities and embrace polar behaviors
that encompass positive and negative elements, not necessarily exclusive
of each other (Torres et al., 2002).
In 90 Miles, Zaldívar subtly expresses his admiration for Pachuco’s
holistic take on machismo and fatherhood. He does so by mixing footage
of his father’s Cuban friends and relatives singing his praises to the
camera, emotional one-on-one interviews with the man himself, and
personal recollections of Pachuco’s bravery, heroic idealism, and gentle
affection—all polar characteristics that belong to the broad spectrum of
modern-day machista behavioral patterns. In a bid to figure out whether
“the cause of [Pachuco’s] depression is something that [they] left in
Cuba” (00:28:13), Zaldívar decides to return to the island for the first
time since 1980 and piece together what his father had been like prior
to their defection. In Holguín, his relatives Lilia and Otero remember
his father as “a man with lots of personality” (00:35:20; translation in
the original) and “a great guy, just a great guy” (00:35:36; translation
in the original). Aguirre, an old friend, recalls the acto de repudio or
act of hate (cf. Campisi, 2016) that they were supposed to perform—a
common practice during the Mariel boatlift, meant to publicly announce
and denounce the departure of another traitor. There was “no hate at
that meeting,” Aguirre assures Zaldívar: “they started to praise him so
much… that I wish you could have been there” (00:38:25; translation
in the original). Another friend refers to him as “the official block orga-
nizer” (00:39:36; translation in the original), while yet another proudly
shows Zaldívar a group picture of himself and Pachuco, posing in front
of the impressive amount of sugarcane they harvested with their team of
revolucionario volunteers (00:36:16).
However, Zaldívar mentions an event that proves that his father did
also have quite a temper, but only when it came to defending righteous,
honorable causes (00:16:15). To further emphasize Pachuco’s nurturing
and affectionate nature, Zaldívar thinks back to their traumatic boat lift
experience. Having lost all sense of distance, pressed between a crowd of
100 A. J. Sanchez
people on the vessel, the documentary maker remembers looking up to

see his father’s face. In reply, Pachuco simply “kissed [him] on the head”
and “told [him] that everything would be fine” (00:08:32). Years later, his
father surprised him yet again with his tenderness when Zaldívar came
out as gay to him, on camera—footage he includes in 90 Miles. After
having hinted at his homosexuality, with his camera pointed at Pachuco,
the documentary maker keeps rolling, capturing the moment when his
father tells him that it is “better to deal with things sooner than later”
because it gives everybody “more time to mature together” (00:13:20;
translation in the original). His reaction is so heartfelt that it incites
Zaldívar to break the fourth wall and leap up from behind the frame
to give his father a hug. Entangled in their embrace, Pachuco and Juan
Carlos are filmed whispering how much they love each other (00:13:30).
As it turns out, it is only Zaldívar’s second trip to Cuba that allows
him to piece all these different clues about his father’s inner life together
and crack the code to his machismo. Having been invited to a Havana
film festival, Zaldívar films himself standing on a hill, staring at an
angry mob below him: a group of activists denouncing the US govern-
ment’s refusal to return five-year-old rafter Elián González to his Cuban
father.5 Consumed by the protesters’ zeal, Zaldívar cannot help but draw
a parallel with his relationship with Pachuco. Having struggled for years
to understand why Pachuco decided to desert his native country and
leave an impressive network of friends and family behind, Zaldívar begins
realizing that Pachuco acted out of a deep sense of familismo:
The demonstrations in 1999 threw my relationship with dad into a

different perspective. My dad thought that raising me a communist would
give me a better life in Cuba. But it also distanced me from him. In 1980,
when my father gave me the decision to leave Cuba, what he was really
asking me to do, was to trust in him. (00:48:13)
5 In 1999–2000, the Elián González incident involved a struggle between the governments of
Cuba and the United States over the custody of five-year-old Elián González, who was the lone
survivor of a group of Cuban rafters. He was eventually returned to his father in Cuba (cf.
Hershberg & LeoGrande, 2016).
With this realization, the documentary comes full circle, suddenly

throwing Zaldívar’s boarding school days in a new light. It dawns on the
documentary maker that Pachuco—who mentioned on separate occa-
sions that, at the time, his son had been “negative” about going to
America because he “already believed strongly in the Revolution” and
was “more with them than with us” (00:05:35; translation in the orig-
inal)—had simply been desperate to prevent the Cuban government
from alienating the Zaldívar family members from each other. For the
sake of his family, Pachuco decided to sacrifice his personal well-being
and rootedness. As the head of his household, he took it upon himself to
provide his family with an environment that would foster their bonds,
not destroy them.
The tragedy of 90 Miles lies in the fact that Pachuco does not seem
to believe that his gamble paid off. As he complains to his son: “I
haven’t completely adapted to this system… Especially when it comes
to the family because… We don’t see each other; we don’t visit often;
we’re hardly ever together” (00:19:57; translation in the original). Thus,
the origin of Pachuco’s intense sadness—the mystery Zaldívar has been
trying to solve throughout the documentary—is eventually revealed as
stemming from the loss of his Cuban, familismo-oriented fatherhood
rather than his Cuban fatherland.
In Voices of the Sea, Pita could pass for Pachuco’s alter ego—the man
Pachuco would have become had he remained in Cuba, resigned to
the family’s lack of resources but proud of his success at having kept
everybody united. Trying to get through to Mariela, who is desperate to
leave, Pita is filmed going through photographs of relatives who left the
island during the Mariel boatlift, in a bid to prove that they look “miser-
able” in the pictures they have been sending him from the United States
(00:07:40). Much later, facing the camera, Pita once again refers to those
photos to warn Mariela of the grief that awaits her across the border:
All of my family from my father’s side left in the 80s. My cousin was
maybe 8 or 9. I used to compare photographs—this is my cousin when
she was here. This one is when she left. After the brutality of the United
States… She was a flower. After a month, you could see the sadness, the
102 A. J. Sanchez
difference. The same thing was going to happen to her, exactly the same.
Viewed from this angle, Pita’s brand of machismo seems to be heavily

influenced by fatalismo—the typically Latin American machista belief
that “a particular condition is unavoidable or its course unalterable if it
represents the will of God” (Abreu et al., 2020, p. 195). Keen to under-
score that he is not a religious man in the traditional sense of the term,
Pita points out the following: “I believe that a perfect nature exists. And
nature determined… you can’t make it” (00:53:40; translation in the
original). In response, a teary-eyed Mariela ruefully smiles at the camera,
stands up, and walks away, visibly hurt by Pita’s deterministic stance.
Yet, the events that unfold in the documentary seem to legitimize Pita’s
fatalism.
As a television broadcast reports on the impending normalization of
the relationship between the United States and Cuba, the atmosphere
among Pita’s friends and family becomes increasingly tense. In front of
the camera, Michel and his wife Estrella act as if these talks of a thaw
are laughable: “They won’t agree on anything. That’s stupid. That is
only blah, blah, blah…” (00:20:30; translation in the original). However,
shortly afterward, they disappear without a trace, only taking a handheld
digital camera with them to document their perilous sea journey—
presumably at Hopkins’s request. While the main plotline of Voices of the
Sea remains Pita’s struggle to keep his family financially afloat in Cuba,
from then on, the film is regularly interrupted by the low-quality footage
of Michel and Estrella’s small camera, with which they capture their
escape on a motorboat that they share with about a dozen of other defec-
tors. The images become increasingly disturbing as the group of people is
shown to go from exhilaration to desperation in a short amount of time.
Eventually, having had to throw the broken engine overboard in order to
lighten the weight of their vessel, the Cubans are almost happy to see the
approaching US Coast Guard. That feeling, however, is short-lived:
[Group] You think at the last minute you can trick me by making me
jump into the water and take me back to Cuba. We’ve all experienced
that before. We didn’t make it this far for you to take us back to Cuba.
What we want is the American dream. The only thing I own are the
clothes on my back. I have nothing in Cuba. The camera is necessary so
that we can record this, do you understand us? [US Coast Guard] You
probably won’t make it! (01:06:09; translation in the original)
After some more negotiating, the camera cuts to Michel’s hands,

pensively fingering the digital camera with which he is trying to record
the exchange. Suddenly, Hopkins fast-forwards by taking us to the
Cuban mainland, where we catch sight of a defeated-looking Michel.
Sitting next to Pita, Michel is filmed showing him the footage that we
just saw. Apparently, they were lucky to have been caught by the United
States rather than the Cuban Coast Guard as the latter would have fined
them for attempting to defect. Vowing to the camera that he will “try
it again later” (01:09:49; translation in the original), Michel disappears
shortly hereafter, only to reappear together with Estrella on the news after
having besieged a lighthouse (“dry foot”) in Florida waters (“wet foot”).
Curiously, the report in question is read in English by somebody with
a distinctly American accent, signifying that whoever is watching this
news flash is not in Cuba, but in the United States. The camera abruptly
cuts to Roilán’s face as he eagerly scans the television screen, somewhere
in Phoenix, Arizona, as per the captions (01:12:10). This is the first
time after his surprise defection that Roilán features in the documentary
again. Seemingly happy about the coverage that Michel, Estrella, and
their fellow “lighthouse rafters” (01:17:21) are receiving, a teary Roilán
discloses that he often thinks back to Pita’s prophetic admonition:
Sometimes I’d rather not call Cuba because I feel bad. No amount of
money… is worth having your family far away. That’s what Pita told me.
If you go… be strong. Don’t turn back. You know what you’re leaving
behind. It’s a lot. When you come back… prove to us you did it to help
us. Don’t abandon us. For this… For this I love Pita, because he knows.
Juxtaposed with the news report on Michel and Estrella’s latest

unlucky escape, Roilán’s speech is a symbolical endorsement of Pita’s
fatalismo and Pachuco’s familismo. In the eyes of these Cuban caballeros,
it is better to leave things as they are—however unbearable they may
seem—if it can guarantee that their family ties remain intact.
104 A. J. Sanchez
Eventually, after having been diagnosed with stage III cervical cancer,
even Mariela begins to echo Pita’s fatalism: “After finding out about my
illness… is when I realized that, that maybe there’s less time for… like to
be together” (01:20:25; translation in the original). Hopkins then slowly
brings her film to a close by stringing together disparate images of a
happier-looking Mariela and Pita spending quality time with each other,
celebrating Karel’s fifteenth birthday, or watching Fidel Castro’s funeral
on TV. With the help of these images of their children shot from a variety
of different angles, the camera echoes Mariela and Pita’s all-encompassing
parental affection. Here, Hopkins seems to suggest that thanks to her
protagonists’ decision to stay in Cuba, they remain a close-knit family
whose affective wealth far outweighs their material poverty.
Caballeros and Fathers

By focusing on Marielitos in 90 Miles and Dusty Feet migrants in Voices
of the Sea, Zaldívar and Hopkins make a strong case for the arbitrari-
ness of Cuban exceptionalism, albeit for reasons that have been largely
overlooked by critics. Instead of delving into the moot point of whether
Cuban émigrés deserve special treatment depending on their status of
migrants/refugees (e.g. Muscarella, 2016) or their political and economic
motivations (e.g. Weinmann, 2004), the documentaries make a broader
point about how deeply the rhetoric on migration in receiving and
sending countries can affect the mental and physical well-being of their
migrants.
Trapped between the anachronistic Cuban Adjustment Act of the
United States and Cuba’s own anachronistic and repressive emigration
policies (cf. Henken, 2005), the casts of 90 Miles and Voices of the
Sea are portrayed as unwilling participants in a mosaic of push–pull
factors driving Cuban emigration (cf. Argüellová, 2017). These films
are not about lone wolves dreaming of an easier life abroad, but about
caballero fathers carefully considering which environment best guaran-
tees the sanctity and sanity of their family units. To Pita and Pachuco,
migrating or staying put is a Catch-22. Their task, as family heads,
is to figure out which is the lesser of two evils and stoically bear the
consequences of the outcome of their choice, for the sake of their loved
ones.
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6
Children
In Fear and Learning at Hoover Elementary (Simón, 1997) and Sin País
(Rigby, 2012), documentary makers Laura Simón and Theo Rigby give
the floor to the children of undocumented migrants. Depicting two
different but equally pivotal points of the “deportation regime era” (De
Genova & Peutz, 2010), both approach the issue of illegal migration
and deportability from the perspective of Latinx minors under threat of
their own or their family’s precarious legal status. Focusing on the very
real trials and tribulations of a voiceless segment of the Latinx commu-
nity, the documentary makers capture the changes in demeanor that their
child protagonists display over the course of their films. Starting off by
affectively framing both sets of children as having an ambiguous rela-
tionship with their American parens patriae (cf. Estin, 2018), Simón
and Rigby then proceed to highlight the impact of the US deportation
regime on the children themselves. Seemingly more resilient and wiser
than some of their adult foils (e.g. parents, teachers, US government
officials), Simón’s and Rigby’s protagonists are not glorified for their
perceived precociousness. Rather, by means of their protagonists’ life
stories, the documentary makers denounce the policies that are forcing
these children to grow up too fast.
Switzerland AG 2022
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-06539-2_6
110 A. J. Sanchez
Children as Deportees
The deportation of racialized noncitizens has a long history in the United
States. The creation of “immigrant detainees” (cf. Hernández, 2008)
and their limbic legal position between arrest or exclusion and depor-
tation was made possible by the nineteenth-century Supreme Court
ruling Fong Yue Ting v. United States, which determined that deporta-
tion constitutes an administrative process—not a lawful punishment for
a crime—whereby undesirable noncitizens could be returned to their
countries of origin. The legal fallacy of this ruling is that, being an
administrative process, detention pursuant to deportation falls outside
the protections of the criminal justice system and does not guarantee
that a person charged with this administrative offense will be considered
innocent until proven guilty or safeguarded from unjustified pre-trial
and post-sentence detention. Between 1997 and 2012, foreign nationals
of Latin American origin—especially working-class men (Das Gupta,
2014)—were disproportionately targeted in this endeavor, largely as a
result of the racial profiling that became standard practice during this
15-year-long “deportation crisis” (Golash-Boza & Hondagneu-Sotelo,
2013). Fear and Learning at Hoover Elementary, aired in 1997, and Sin
país, aired in 2012, take place at the beginning and end of this era.
In Fear and Learning at Hoover Elementary, Californian elementary
school teacher Laura Simón temporarily wears a filmmaker’s hat as she
follows her students and co-workers at Hoover Elementary during the
months preceding the vote for Proposition 187. A controversial voting
initiative proposed by the State of California in 1994, Proposition 187
was passed by the Californian electorate but ruled unconstitutional by
the courts, as it not only denied undocumented immigrants access
to public benefits (e.g. nonemergency health care, education) but also
enabled any state employee—public school teachers included—to notify
INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) of the suspected undocu-
mented status of any apparently illegal alien (cf. Santa Ana, 2002). In Sin
país, by contrast, Theo Rigby captures the effects of the deportation crisis
from the perspective of a mixed-status family. Mimicking the gaze of a
passive bystander, Rigby’s camera witnesses the woes and worries of the
Mejía family, shortly before and right after the deportation of father Sam
and mother Elida to Guatemala.
In a way, Rigby’s Sin país picks up where Simón’s Fear and Learning
at Hoover Elementary leaves off. After the dismissal of California’s Propo-
sition 187, a federal bill was passed to appease the nation’s outrage at the
government’s seeming passivity toward illegal immigration: Sect. 287(g)
of the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility
Act (IIRAIRA). Allowing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
to enter into cooperation agreements with state and local law enforce-
ment, 287(g) programs permitted police officers to enforce federal
immigration laws on whoever they stopped and, if necessary, commence
deportation proceedings. Although Sin país does not explain why Sam
and Elida were targeted by ICE, on the website of the documen-
tary’s distribution company it says that “immigration agents stormed
the Mejía’s house looking for someone who didn’t live there” (“Sin País
(Without Country),” 2013). In other words, the Mejías were indeed
racially profiled, as per Sect. 287(g), prior to being arrested on suspicion
of their status.
Simón, on the other hand, captures the chaos and turmoil of the
events leading up to what would become a downright deportation crisis
in the opening sequence of her film. Fear and Learning at Hoover
Elementary begins with a silent black title screen, which describes the
film’s premise as follows: “California’s Proposition 187 denies public
education and health care to undocumented (illegal) immigrants. It is
primarily targeted at the Latino population, which is the fastest growing
ethnic group in the United States” (00:00:02). The camera then cuts
to a panoramic view of Los Angeles’ ominous skyline, whose cloudiness
symbolically evokes the storm brewing over the city (00:00:22). Simón
supplements the sound of falling rain that accompanies her static shot
of LA with the unexpected hum of a helicopter (00:00:36), whose flight
she captures in a panning shot of the smoggy city of LA. Momentarily
interrupting the helicopter shot with a sober black-and-white title screen
(00:00:43), the camera shortly repeats its panning before closing in on a
buzz coming from somewhere within that pan shot, as suggested by the
camera’s zooming in on the streets of LA.
112 A. J. Sanchez
The next scene reveals the source of this mysterious noise: its view
obstructed by the flashing red-and-blue lights of a police car, the camera
catches a glimpse of what appears to be a group of angry protesters
(00:01:00). In a kaleidoscopic sequence of mood shots, Simón hints at
the Latinx identity of the picketers by including images of their Latin
American flags and banners against Proposition 187 as well as audio
of their chants (“La Raza unida jamás será vencida”).1 The protesters’
rumble is eventually overtaken by the voice of an unknown woman, later
identified as Diane Lee, a teacher at Hoover Elementary, who declares:
I think they shot themselves in the foot showing the Mexican flag. I’m
sorry, this is gonna sound really bad but if they love Mexico that much,
why don’t go back? I pay taxes, I work hard, I’m patriotic. We need to take
care of the people that are here. The children of today that belong here
need to be taken care of and there’s gonna be no money left. (00:01:16)
Diane’s aside reveals that there are two markedly polarized sides to
Proposition 187 in LA, as exemplified by the subsequent amalgam
of campaign video advertisements promoting (00:01:35) and discred-
iting (00:02:18) the measure, footage of peaceful protesters marching
against it (00:01:50) and being assaulted by police officers in full gear
(00:02:13), and a clip of a press conference given by then-Governor of
California Pete Wilson in which he joyfully announces the passing of the
proposition (00:03:22). This whirlwind of images and sounds is punc-
tuated by the testimony of a little girl, who states matter-of-factly that
“American people, they don’t want us in here no more, they don’t like us,
only cos we’re Latinos, they don’t like us,” before being drowned out by
the rest of Simón’s footage (00:02:02).
1 The concept of la raza latina dates back to the mid-nineteenth century. Best translated as
“Latin lineage” rather than “Latin race,” the notion of a clearly demarcated Latin American
identity was formulated as a response to the growing Anglo domination of the hemisphere
(cf. Lazo, 2018). Originally meant as an attempt to provide Latin American peoples with a
distinct cultural and historical lineage, “la raza” has become a problematic term in recent years
because of its ambiguous history, steeped in a rhetoric that has been labeled as both anti-white
and inconsiderate of indigenous Latin Americans (Contreras, 2017). Hence, in 2017, the largest
Hispanic civil rights organization of the United States NCLR (National Council of La Raza)
changed its name to UnidosUS.
The child’s statement becomes even more poignant when it is

echoed, shortly afterward, by a woman—later revealed to be Simón’s
fellow school teacher Arcelia Hernández—who passionately addresses the
camera with the following words:
They are feeling threatened by the many brown faces. What would
happen if every child in the Pico-Union, Koreatown, Chinatown, Japan-
town received a good education? And we became attorneys? And
we became medical doctors? And we became teachers? Would the
social structure, the power/social structure be challenged even more so?
(00:02:35)
After Arcelia’s emotional outburst, Simón segues into the next scene
with the help of a pirecua, a traditional Mexican song form with indige-
nous, European, and African influences. During the musical intermezzo,
Simón—who never appears on camera—introduces herself in a voice-
over as a first-generation immigrant from Mexico and a fourth grade
teacher at Hoover Street Elementary, a school situated in Pico-Union, “a
neighborhood that is often thought of as the Ellis Island of Los Angeles”
(00:04:27). As the camera pans over the colorful streets of Pico-Union,
Simón expresses her dismay at the popularity of a proposition “aimed at
[her] kids” (00:05:18) and thus brings us back to the little girl featured
earlier. Talking over images of the hustle and bustle of Hoover Elemen-
tary, Simón discloses that, the day Proposition 187 passed, that same girl
asked her whether “she was now a cop who was going to kick her out”
(00:05:30). This little girl, Simón tells us, is called Mayra.
Walking toward Simón’s camera, Mayra introduces herself as “the vice-
president of this school” (00:06:00). Toting a red sash in evidence of what
she calls her “job” of vice-president of the student council (00:06:10),
Mayra proudly shows the camera around her school: “some kids got good
minds, some kids… they get their brains off line” (00:06:30), “it’s a big
playground… it gots a lot of games” (00:06:40), “there’s a bullet right
there, there’s one here and all the way over there, there’s one” (00:07:11).
Her interview reaches a questionable apotheosis when Mayra is filmed
violently declaiming her thoughts to nobody in particular:
114 A. J. Sanchez
When I grow up, Imma be a person that’s gonna fight for this country.
Imma be important person. I’m going to a good college and Imma learn
really good until I get that job. And Imma fight for the persons. I wanna
be important person. I want them to be glad I’m there. I want them to
come to me and say thank you. I wanna be a lawyer. (00:08:30)
Still off camera, Simón explains to the viewer how out of character
it was for Mayra—“the most determined” of her students who allows
“nothing […] to get in her way”—to be worried about Proposition
187 and have “fears about being sent back to El Salvador” (00:08:44).
The scene closes with Mayra’s revelation of her and her mother’s mixed
statuses: she is an American citizen, but her mother is not. Reflecting on
her predicament in front of Simón’s camera, Mayra points out where the
shoe pinches in the immigration debate: “If I’m American, I won’t have
to leave. But my mom will. And who would I stay with? Nobody. I won’t
got nobody” (00:09:00).
In Sin País, the mixed status of the Mejía family is again the crux of
the matter. Rigby’s build-up to the issue that is at the heart of the docu-
mentary relies on the same affective framework as Simón’s. He, too, plays
with the contradiction between immigrant children’s expected innocence
and their perceived worldliness in order to summon a sense of discom-
fort. His first image is a static pan shot of a view that is immediately
recognizable as the Golden Gate Bridge of San Francisco. Rigby goes
on to superimpose the documentary’s Spanish title (“Sin País”) on the
panorama so as to evoke the paradox at the heart of his film. Here,
we have a family who is de facto firmly rooted in San Francisco, but
who—for intangible, political reasons—is considered “without country”
(sin país).
Next, a slew of home videos of toddler Gilbert, the family’s eldest
son, begins rolling. He is shown frolicking in a park overlooking the
Golden Gate Bridge with his parents (00:00:33), celebrating his sixth
birthday (00:01:00), addressing the camera in Spanish to greet and
update the family’s relatives who stayed behind in Guatemala (00:01:08),
and dancing to a rhythmic Latin song with his one-year-old sister Helen
(00:01:45). His mother’s voice is heard explaining off camera that she,
her son, and her husband came to the United States with “a dream” and
to “make a little money” (00:00:49; translation in the original). However,

their expectations changed over time as their family expanded with the
birth of Helen and Dulce. Now, for all three of the Mejía children, of
whom only Gilbert is undocumented because of his foreign birth, “there
is no other country but the one they have lived in” (00:01:40; trans-
lation in the original). With this succinct sentence, Elida foreshadows
that the drama that will unfold before our eyes finds its source in the
imagined, yet very real, gap between belonging and unbelonging within
mixed-status families.
Having alluded to the impeccable moral character of the Mejía parents
and the innocence of the Mejía children by means of Elida’s voice-over
and the family’s private footage, Rigby fast-forwards to the present day. It
is revealed that Gilbert is currently 19, Helen is 13, and Dulce is 4. Rigby
moves on to film the present-day Mejía children in situations that testify
to their uncharacteristic sense of duty and responsibility for youngsters
of their age. Teenager Helen is shown making tortillas for her father’s
birthday (00:02:24), studying arduously for a math test (00:08:58), and
cogitating out loud about planning to “apply for [her] parents to become
citizens when [she’s] 21” (00:10:55).
Young adult Gilbert’s portrayal is that of a precocious humanitarian,
who defends the entire undocumented Latinx community when he
protests against his parents’ and his own deportation. Still hoping for
a miracle intervention by “some Senator or something” who might want
“to help [them] out” (00:03:35), Gilbert does not sit still—either before
or after he and his sister are forced to drop Sam, Elida, and Dulce off at
the airport (00:05:05). Instead, he is filmed protesting and chanting in
the streets (00:03:52) in a bid to stop his parents’ deportation, giving a
phone interview to the San Francisco Chronicle about his family’s “Amer-
ican nightmare” (00:04:30), and acting as a surrogate parent for Helen
(00:09:04).
Emulating Simón’s portrayal of Mayra, Rigby frames the Mejía chil-
dren as wise beyond their years. With this discursive tactic, he attempts
to subvert his viewers’ expectations and beliefs surrounding childhood as
a “natural, universal and biologically inherent period of human develop-
ment” (Robinson, 2011, p. 115). Although children have “played crucial
116 A. J. Sanchez
roles in the struggles of marginalized groups to secure basic member-

ship rights” (Gash et al., 2020, p. 44), in political debates they continue
to be depicted as “either innocent, deserving, and legitimate on the one
hand or as risky, costly and unworthy on the other” (ibid., p. 47). It
could be argued that, in defiance of this tendency, Simón and Rigby use
excerpts such as teacher Diane’s hammering on the importance of taking
care of “children of today that belong here” (00:01:31) or the Mejía
attorney’s insistence on his clients’ merits (00:04:14) to display how
immigrant children are either held to impossible standards of excellence
or blamed for their problematic performance of childhood innocence (cf.
Duschinsky, 2013).
With their ambiguous portrayal of childhood, both Simón and Rigby
imply from the beginning that they intend to go beyond cliché represen-
tations of migrant children as either victims who are forced or coerced
into migration or unlawful agents who will burden the system for tax-
paying citizens (cf. Thompson et al., 2019). Instead, they question the
pitfalls of the neoliberal discourse underlying visions of the child as a
competent actor (cf. Pechtelidis & Stamou, 2017).
Immigration as Difficult Knowledge

Until recently in Western history, children were believed to conform to
dichotomous models of childhood: they were either demonic/Dionysian
or angelic/Apollonian (Jenks, 1996). These polar views of children as
inherently fierce, cruel, and threatening or, on the contrary, as innocent,
dependent, and pure were shaped by the pre- and postlapsarian under-
standings of the Christian doctrine of original sin (Pechtelidis & Stamou,
2017).
The construction of such a Janus-faced child can be traced back to
the eighteenth century. Under the influence of the biopolitical power
construct that began taking hold of the Enlightened West, the child
turned into Rousseau’s Émile—a governable child subject who, like early
modern society itself, could be defined and controlled with the help
of prescriptions of pedagogues and child-rearing experts (Smith, 2012).
However, with the advent of (neo)liberalism, the focus began shifting
from Dionysian/Apollonian governability to an Athenian individualiza-

tion of risk (ibid.). Neoliberal regimes such as that of the United States
tend to favor the “Athenian” model of childhood, as it distances itself
from the responsibility of producing either Dionysian (“bad”) or Apol-
lonian (“good”) children-citizens by means of a responsibilization of the
children-citizens themselves. Held accountable for their own regulation
and socialization, Athenian children are made to believe that neoliberal
concepts of “competition,” “choice,” and “enterprise” will guide their
way.
Initially seemingly blind to the sophism of the Athenian child-
hood model, Simón prides herself on her own responsibilization of the
students in her class. Being well aware that “90% of [her] students are
political or economic refugees from Mexico, Guatemala, or El Salvador”
(00:05:00) and that their background forces them to enroll in Hoover
Elementary, a low-income school “located on the street that is the
dividing line between the Mexican 18th Street Gang and the Salvadorian
Mara Salvatrucha Gang” (00:07:00), Simón assures us that she makes
“[her] kids work very hard” (00:07:56). She even has them pick their
future college and career at the beginning of the school year (00:08:10).
In a voice-over, she explains that “as a fellow immigrant” she is convinced
that education is these children’s “best chance” (00:08:00).
Her optimism dims, however, when she pays Mayra a visit at home.
As an elated Mayra is filmed showing off her favorite doll and her new
library book, the camera pauses on a piece of paper hanging over her
bed: the “dream diploma” from Smith College (00:33:50) that Simón
awarded Mayra in exchange for the little girl’s promise “to replace it
one day with the real thing” (00:33:54). However, in an instant, Mayra’s
mood goes from aspirational glee to utter sadness when she gives Simón
a chilling account of how she and her mother went homeless after her
father was killed in a robbery (00:28:42). In the context of Mayra’s small,
run-down apartment in a building for those who “live illegally in Los
Angeles” (00:16:00), Simón’s insistence on the importance of staying
in school suddenly seems meaningless and, above all, tone-deaf in the
grander scheme of things.
Indeed, Simón appears to accentuate the fallacy of placing the respon-
sibility of societal success on migrant children by interspacing Mayra’s
118 A. J. Sanchez
house tour with footage that attests to the other, darker side of the
responsibilization coin. In a fly-on-the-wall scene of a staff meeting at
Hoover Elementary, Simón films a passive-aggressive exchange between
the principal who bemoans that the school is losing funds because of the
low attendance rate, and a teacher who reminds him that some parents
do not know when their employers will allow them to take time off to
go back to their countries with their children (00:23:13). Here, Simón
adds footage of a sit-down interview with her colleague Diane. As the
perfectly acculturated granddaughter of Russian immigrants, Diane feels
entitled to “blame the families” who, unlike her own relatives, do not
treat school with enough reverence: “[…] school is important, it’s not
somewhere where you go to be babysat and have two meals a day and
play, it’s somewhere you go to learn” (00:26:30).
Simón uses Diane’s rant as a foil to a statement made by Carmen, an
actively involved parent, in which she expounds—in Spanish—that the
teachers need to be “more considerate of these people” and “understand
that a lot of these parents can’t read or write” (00:23:40; translation in the
original). Perhaps the most painful—because most clear-cut—of these
loosely related clips is one that features Simón’s fellow teacher Arcelia. As
she is filmed talking with her colleagues about the fact that the parents
are unhappy with their lack of interaction, an unnamed teacher inter-
venes by blaming the children for being the source of the short-circuit
between teachers and parents: “[…] the child takes the note […] in the
backpack and the parents never look in the backpack” (00:25:00).
Similarly, Rigby’s initial congratulatory framing of the Mejía children’s
precociousness and their parents’ unwavering support grows darker as
the events unfold. What marks a clear turning point in Sin País is the
moment when Dulce and Gilbert are pictured at the airport, giving
their mother, father, and baby sister a final, tearful hug before watching
them walk away toward the security check, as their attorney is helplessly
standing by (00:05:05). In footage shot some time afterward, Gilbert
discloses that, in some ways, he and Helen have gotten closer after their
parents left, but that their relationship has become more “difficult” in
other ways (00:09:00). Naturally, Helen does not accept her brother’s
new role of surrogate parent and regularly reminds him: “[…] you’re not
my mom or dad” (00:09:10).
In turn, Helen confides to Rigby that she is desperate about having

to wait until she is of legal age (in seven years) to apply for a reuni-
fication with her parents: “Way to take them out, right when I need
them the most” (00:11:06). Her anger seems to be directed at the
US government—a legal body whose “wide range of state and federal
statutes and policies” should “reflect the government’s role in protecting
children as parens patriae” (Estin, 2018, p. 593; emphasis in the orig-
inal). However, the US’ constitutional tradition does not require the
state or federal government to protect immigrant children’s interests,
which makes the routine separation of these underage citizens from their
noncitizen parents perfectly legal.
The insidiousness of this setup can be traced back to the paterfamilias
principle, which underwrites the American understanding of settler colo-
nialism. The Western idea of civilizational progress rests on the logic
that “human beings, as individuals and as a species, progress out of a
bestial state into a fully human state through education” (Rollo, 2018,
p. 64). Premodern societies were thus classified as orphan civilizations
and their peoples were legally defined as wards of the United States,
which precluded them from making claims to land. Since the child was
to the adult what the Indian was to the European, children–indigenes
became the disposable property of their parents–colonizers. The parallel
is easily made with all non-European peoples, such as migrants from
non-European countries. The children of these infantilized peoples—as
opposed to fully adult European peoples who have “already undergone
the violent education in faith and reason that they are now morally
obliged to impose on non-European peoples” (ibid., p. 74)—thus carry
the double burden of “the cipher of the primitive” (ibid., p. 73).
Helen bears witness to this fact when she is filmed crying on camera
because of her mother’s threat that if “[her] grades aren’t that good,
[she will be] coming back” to Guatemala (00:15:30). Elida’s warning
betrays the intense pressure under which Helen finds herself, having
to perform exceptionally well in school for the sake of disproving the
popular idea of her American parens patriae that “the U.S.-born chil-
dren of undocumented immigrants are undeserving recipients of full
membership” (Gash et al., 2020, p. 53). Yet, Gilbert’s situation is even
more precarious as it exemplifies the abovementioned double burden
120 A. J. Sanchez
(cf. Rollo, 2018). Although he is already 19 years old, he is infan-

tilized twice over by the US legal system as the undocumented child of
non-European parents. Contrary to his younger sister, who is an Amer-
ican citizen, he is effectively landlocked because of his status. Hence,
Rigby pictures Helen traveling back and forth between Guatemala and
the United States to visit her parents (00:14:00). Gilbert, on the other
hand, is filmed having to find solace in phone calls (00:08:20) and Skype
conversations (00:17:55).
Simón further elaborates on the treachery of this neoliberal, Athe-
nian approach to childhood in a scene that is palpably uncomfortable
because of its disavowal of the “childhood innocence ideal” (cf. Bennett
et al., 2017). Simón sits a small group of Latinx students in front of
her camera and begins launching a list of politically loaded questions at
them, ranging from “Do you think teachers who voted for 187 should
teach at this school?” (00:10:38) to “How does [the word ‘illegal alien’]
make you feel?” (00:11:20). Thus, she seems to be testing the popular
presumption that “children exist in a space beyond, above, outside the
political” because they are supposed to be “noncombatants whom we
protect from the harsh realities of the adult world” (Jenkins, 1998, p. 2).
Because the scene is taking place in the school’s library, the symbolic
epicenter of all knowledge, the school librarian eventually joins in on
their conversation, as Simón obliquely warns us for his intervention in
a voice-over: “Making this film has made me really examine who we are
as teachers and what we do to our kids. I realized that even if 187 never
gets enforced, the damage has already been done” (00:37:55).
Seemingly unaware of the astuteness and sophistication that the chil-
dren have been showing prior to his participation, Mr. Piepmeyer chimes
in by disguising his patronizing views with deceivingly harmless remarks
that appear to hark back to the Western homology between the non-
European Other and the child (cf. Rollo, 2018). Rather than conversing
with the children, he lectures them by equating “illegal immigrants”
(00:38:30) with extra mouths to “feed and clothe” (00:38:20). In his
soliloquy, he also states that immigrants are unwilling to “start working
towards citizenship” (00:38:48) and claims that “all of [those] that aren’t
legal” (00:40:28) inevitably end up littering the streets of Los Angeles.
Strengthened by the benevolent presence of Simón’s camera, the students
riposte with a series of clever remarks; “some people have luck and
they have the chance to be, uh, American citizens but not all of us
do” (00:38:55); “well, now my mom is 38 and she knows very well
English but they still don’t, don’t wanna her to be an American citizen”
(00:39:02); “we know that we don’t belong here but, uh, we came here
for a better, uh, opportunity” (00:39:10); “American people [throw trash
on the streets] and […] legal people do too” (00:40:37); “[the country]
ain’t yours, it’s everybody’s” (00:40:54).
In this interaction between an adult authority figure and “child educa-
tional subjects” (Smith, 2012, p. 30), Simón unveils childhood inno-
cence to be a “contradictory concept constructed by adults for adults”
(Robinson, 2011, p. 117). By capturing how the librarian’s attitude
becomes defensive and hostile toward the children as their conversation
progresses, Simón suggests that the man is increasingly taken aback by
how articulate these students turn out to be. Indeed, toward the end of
the library scene, Mr. Piepmeyer is filmed sheepishly smiling and chuck-
ling at Simón’s camera (00:40:53) when it seems to dawn on him that the
lecture he intended to give escalated into a debate. His surprise could be
ascribed to the children’s unexpected understanding of “difficult knowl-
edge” (cf. Britzman, 1998)—that is, information that has traditionally
been considered as traumatizing for children, such as sex, death, and
politics (cf. Silin, 1995).
However, in Fear and Learning at Hoover Elementary and Sin País,
the notion of difficult knowledge proves to be no more than an impo-
sition on children by adults who use it to keep the adult–child power
relationship intact and keep the mutually exclusive worlds of adults and
children separate. Simón’s film seems to confirm that adults select knowl-
edge that is deemed inappropriate “in the name of protecting childhood
innocence” (Robinson & Davies, 2008, p. 344) only to naturalize the
difference between adults and children, and therefore to reassure adults
in their understanding of the world. As demonstrated by Simón and
Rigby, this adult gatekeeping of difficult knowledge is “ethically violent”
(Hopkins, 2013) because it only serves to constrain the ways in which
children can fend for themselves. Instead of teaching them how to
negotiate and respond to the knowledge that might prove difficult,
122 A. J. Sanchez
adult gatekeepers essentially muzzle child subjects by insisting on their

innocence.
With the footage that follows the library scene, Simón signifies that
the children’s rhetorical victory over Mr. Piepmeyer is, unfortunately,
no more than a serendipitous blip—an exception to the rule according
to which children are assumed to lack cognitive, emotional, and moral
capacities and are therefore not to be treated as full citizens of a
democratic polity (cf. Rehfeld, 2011). In clips that mimic the absur-
dity of Hunter S. Thompson’s 1971 novel Fear and Loathing in Las
Vegas,2 it is the adults—the people who are allowed to vote on difficult
knowledge—who demonstrate questionable mental capacities.
Toward the end of the film, Diane asks Laura for another interview to
“explain [herself ]” (00:41:48) with regard to some of the statements that
she made earlier, out of concern that her words might be “taken out of
context or even in context” to make her appear “hardlined” (00:41:43).
Diane’s clarification is not a rectification: she does not feel guilty about
her words and neither does she regret voting in favor of Proposition 187.
Instead, she declares that she felt the need to defend her views in order to
be “understood, not misunderstood” (00:41:50) because, in her previous
interview, “Laura mentioned that there is teachers that don’t feel [she]
should be here” (00:41:57). When Simón asks Diane whether she ever
felt “discriminated” (00:42:30), she mutters: “Not until yesterday, when
you told me people think I didn’t belong here!” (00:42:34). She then
starts giggling self-consciously, as if suddenly aware of the irony of feeling
victimized because she voted for a blatantly discriminatory proposition.
To illustrate the consequences of her vote—the severity of which seems
to escape Diane—Simón moves on to tell us that Mayra’s mother no
longer allows her to interview Mayra, because a neighbor suggested that
Simón “may one day turn her child in” (00:44:07).
2 There are no discernable references to Thompson’s novel in Simón’s documentary, but her title
is suspiciously similar to Thompson’s. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is often considered to be
the foundational text of Gonzo journalism: a style of reporting that is irrational, grotesque, and
unapologetically subjective because of the irrational, grotesque, and unapologetically subjective
topics on which it tends to report (cf. Alexander and Isager, 2018). In this sense, Simón’s
directing is not too far removed from the basic tenets of Gonzo journalism. Additionally, the
novel’s subtitle A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream directly applies to the
premise of Fear and Learning at Hoover Elementary.
Nevertheless, it is Carmen—a Spanish-speaking parent—activist who

came to the United States as an immigrant herself—who delivers the
biggest blow in this sequence when she discloses that she is “a bad person”
(00:47:11 translation in the original) because she also voted in favor of
187. Her logic for doing so is strikingly close to Diane Lee’s and Mr.
Piepmeyer’s:
This used to be a close community. It was very tranquil. People would

take walks. We all knew each other. And now, you can’t even take a
walk. There are shootings. I’ve already been in two. And why? It’s the
people who have recently immigrated. They’re not interested in clean-
liness. They’re not interested in union. They’re not interested in helping
one another. They just take services. Take services. Take services. But they
give nothing. That’s what I dislike about them. (00:46:26; translation in
the original)
Simón follows this shock revelation up with Arcelia’s reaction to

the news that Carmen—Arcelia’s housemate and fellow activist—voted
in favor of the law against which both of them organized the first
demonstration in Los Angeles (00:37:02). Having surmounted her initial
perplexity, Arcelia delivers a climactic speech that diagnoses the core issue
of Fear and Learning at Hoover Elementary:
If you point to someone and you say they are the cause and they are the
problem, then you can make people believe that if you make them go
away somehow, your life will be better. And not only will your life be
better, you will be worth so much more. And I think sometimes people
need that sense. (00:48:25)
What Arcelia appears to hint at is that rationalizing “the scapegoating

[…] of Latino migrants” (Hernández, 2008, p. 50), like rationalizing the
incapacitation of children, allows for the construction of a clearly divided
world that answers to a set of seemingly natural and universal rules that
only benefit the legal adult. In turn, such sophism enables the emer-
gence of social stigma: an “attribute that is deeply discrediting” because
it can stigmatize “one type of possessor” while confirming “the usualness
of another” (Goffman, 2009, p. 3). The maliciousness of such dialectic
124 A. J. Sanchez
mechanism is that it gives rise to discourses of “deservedness” (cf. Gash

et al., 2020), according to which migrants who manage to stay away from
the stigma of pre-established images of migration (cf. Schuster & Majidi,
2015) are promised upward mobility (cf. Kasinitz, 2008).
Carmen’s stance should therefore not come as a surprise. As an immi-
grant herself, she is aware of the fact that belonging to an oppressed
minority group is not advantageous and she therefore seeks to avoid
the stigma of association with the group, even by analogy (cf. Kasinitz,
2008). For Carmen, this comes down to differentiating herself from “the
people who have recently immigrated” (00:46:26), which leads her to
imply that her kind were model immigrants—a reasoning that echoes
Russian-American Diane’s problematic stance on immigration.
Dismantling Deservedness
In Fear and Learning at Hoover Elementary and Sin País, documentary
makers Simón and Rigby draw attention to the discourses of deserved-
ness that surround their protagonists, who are both immigrants and
children. This avowal of deservedness can be linked to the modern-
day assumption that it is the immigrants themselves, rather than their
receiving society, who are responsible for their successful societal incor-
poration. Hence, based on the same neoliberal discourse of enterprise,
immigrant children are also tasked with their own self-actualization (cf.
Smith, 2012).
Throughout their films, Simón and Rigby give real-life examples of
immigrant children who are regarded by their entourage as undeserving
of protection, resources, and care despite their best efforts to fulfill
the “childhood innocence ideal” (cf. Bennett et al., 2017; Duschinsky,
2013). Their denouncement of this flawed logic culminates when they
reveal that Mayra and the Mejía children are not rewarded for their exem-
plary behavior after all. In the end, Sam, Elida, and Gilbert “remain in
limbo” (00:19:07), and Mayra and her mother are forced to move back
to El Salvador (00:49:18), having been duped by “a world that simply
isn’t willing to invest in them” (00:49:37).
These unsatisfying endings allow Simón and Rigby to expose the wide
range of strategies of responsibilization that, in the United States, reas-
sign the societal responsibility for tackling inequality and disadvantage to
the migrants themselves and their children. In one fell swoop, the docu-
mentary makers also demonstrate that the dominant narrative of how
immigrants can overcome adversity through hard work and perseverance
is inadequate (cf. Abo-Zena, 2018): it only disregards all the obstacles
that are beyond their control and, in so doing, obscures and reinforces
unequal relations of power (cf. Smith, 2012).
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252.
7
The Group Experience of Migrant Citizens
In Made in LA (Carracedo & Bahar, 2007) and Don’t Tell Anyone

(Shwer, 2015), documentary makers Almudena Carracedo, Robert
Bahar, and Mikaela Shwer zoom in on undocumented Latinx immi-
grants who come up for their rights thanks to grassroots initiatives in
their sanctuary cities. In Made in LA, the undocumented seamstresses
Maura, María, and Lupe decide to sue Forever 21 for labor malpractices,
despite their own precarious legal status. Don’t Tell Anyone, on the other
hand, focuses on the difficult coming-of-age process of undocumented
New Yorker Angy, a Youtubing DREAMer1 with college ambitions.
1 The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act (DREAM Act) was first
introduced in 2001 as a bipartisan bill aimed at students “with good moral character” who had
arrived in the United States before the age of 16 and who intended to attend college. The Act
was meant to allow eligible undocumented students to obtain legal status. Since 2001, multiple
versions of the bill have been introduced. So far, none received enough votes to be passed.

Switzerland AG 2022
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-06539-2_7
130 A. J. Sanchez
Sanctuary jurisdictions2 emerged in the 1980s, when certain cities,

counties, and states began declining federal detention requests made
by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) related to undocu-
mented migrants. Over time, these spaces became something resembling
a national network of movements that argued for the protection of
the basic rights of all those fleeing for safety, including undocumented
people (cf. Hintjens & Pouri, 2014). After 9/11, this network of move-
ments picked up again when the PATRIOT Act made it possible for
the Department of Justice (DOJ) to ask local police to not only call
the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) if they suspected that
interviewees were in violation of any immigration-related regulations but
also to detain without bond anyone found guilty of such offenses (cf.
Ridgley, 2008). A number of so-called sanctuary cities refused to coop-
erate, thus openly questioning the power of the US nation-state over its
urban polities. Their attitude was in line with a growing unease in blue
states—liberal bastions such as California and New York—surrounding
the nationalistic and protectionist behavior of the US government after
9/11. In an age of prolonged international capitalism and ever-expanding
globalization, the manifest desire of sanctuary cities to glocalize the
nation-state coincided with a growing awareness that the rights of docu-
mented citizens should extend to all economically active social actors
(cf. Habermas, 2003). Post-national discourses of this kind contend that
human rights should be universal and, therefore, applicable to immi-
grants on the basis of personhood rather than membership in a political
unit (cf. Soysal, 1994).
Shot post-9/11 in two sanctuary cities, Made in LA and Don’t Tell
Anyone give voice to Latinx migrants who not only promote this kind
of thinking, but who also embody it and put it into practice. Both
films are children of their time in their insistence on the supranational
2 It is unclear how many boxes a city/county/state needs to tick in order to qualify for the title
of “sanctuary jurisdiction,” but some cities proffer their intention to become or remain a city
of sanctuary independently, such as New York City (cf. Ferreras-Copeland & Menchaca, n.d.).
However, certain jurisdictions operate as sanctuaries for years without any formal declaration.
Los Angeles, for example, only recently declared itself “a city of sanctuary,” even though this
resolution only reaffirmed the city’s existing policies (cf. Smith & Ormseth, 2019).
universality of human rights, the multiple transnational memberships

of immigrants, and the subnational social networks and practices that
function as alternatives to traditional state-based citizenship models.
Transnational Urban Citizenship

The opening scenes of Made in LA and Don’t Tell Anyone set the tone
for their narratives by emphasizing the transnational, hyphenated exis-
tence of their protagonists. Angy, the protagonist of Don’t Tell Anyone,
as well as Lupe, María, and Maura of Made in LA are depicted as being
neither here, in their US sanctuary cities, nor there, in their Latin Amer-
ican countries of origin, but somewhere in between. Their nation is a
hyphenation: “a spiritual bilocation, the sense of being in two places at
once” (Pérez Firmat, 2012, p. xi).
Made in LA opens with a frame of the glowing sun, slowly rising
above the streets of a still empty, yet visibly very large urban center:
the city of Los Angeles. As Carracedo and Bahar’s camera continues
rolling, early risers are seen crossing the street, shop owners are opening
their stores, workers are sweeping the sidewalks, vendors are rolling their
merchandise out onto the streets. When a disembodied female voice
starts speaking Spanish, it suddenly becomes clear that these sleepy Ange-
lenos are Latinx. They are depicted as being surrounded by a plethora
of English traffic signs, street names, and billboards. The English subti-
tles that accompany the woman’s Spanish speech only strengthen the
already overwhelming sense of bilingual bifurcation that is evoked by
these first few seconds of film: “When everything started, we didn’t know
what was going to happen, we just knew what we had to do” (00:00:20;
translation in the original). Cutting the woman off before she has time
to explain herself, the camera then discloses her identity: Lupe, who is
getting ready for work—like the people in Carracedo and Bahar’s B-roll.
On her way there, the camera hovers for a split second over a street sign
that reads “Fashion District.” Eventually, Carracedo and Bahar lose track
of Lupe and, instead, cut to a kaleidoscopic sequence of various anony-
mous hands slaving away behind sowing machines, the whirring sound of
which Carracedo and Bahar superimpose over images of the shop owners
132 A. J. Sanchez
shown earlier. Whereas before Lupe’s appearance it was not clear what
these vendors were selling, the camera is now retracing its own steps and
giving us a better look at what the vendors are exhibiting: cheap-looking,
flimsy garments that have been “made in LA” by the likes of Lupe.
The next protagonist that Carracedo and Bahar introduce to us is
Maura. As she is walking to work, she tells the camera in Spanish:
“We were scared, but we couldn’t let fear paralyze us” (00:00:56; trans-
lation in the original). Third protagonist María, on the other hand, is
already sitting behind her sowing machine, working on some multicol-
ored zippers, as she confides in Spanish: “Our only option was to fight”
(00:01:03; translation in the original). Once again, a dizzying assortment
of images overwhelms the spectator: nameless, faceless people—some of
whom seem to have brought their infant children to work—cutting,
sowing, and ironing away at an array of fabrics. The nauseating repeti-
tiveness of these frames turns into panic when the camera walks in on
the owners of this sweatshop-like place. Their faces blurred, they are
heard saying in broken Spanish, which signals their non-Latinx back-
ground, “What is going on?” before slamming their door shut (00:01:51;
translation in the original).
As the narrative of Made in LA slowly unfolds, it becomes clear that
what these women have been cryptically hinting at in the opening scene
is the lawsuit that they have filed via the grassroots organization Centro
de trabajadoras de costura (Garment Worker Center) against the owners
of Forever 21, an LA-based international clothing brand that sells mid-
end clothing for extraordinarily low prices. As it turns out, these prices
are only made possible by imposing inhumane working conditions and
salaries that are well below minimum wage on undocumented workers
like Maura, María, and Lupe.
Once the harsh reality of Carracedo and Bahar’s main characters has
been made clear, the documentary makers begin to focus on the intri-
cate, bicultural background of their three protagonists. With the help of
photos, videotapes, and oral accounts of their pre-LA pasts, Carracedo
and Bahar allude to who these women were before they crossed the
border—illegally. María was born on a Mexican ranch, where she met
her current husband at the age of 14. Together, they fled to the United
States when María turned 18 and settled in LA, where their children
were born. Lupe, however, is single and childless. After the death of her
mother in Mexico, she decided to run away to her sister in LA, who had
been living there illegally for some time already. Finally, Maura reveals
that she left three little children behind in El Salvador 18 years ago. At
22, she was a single mother who could not make ends meet in her war-
torn country. To explain the desperation of her situation, Maura plays an
old VHS of her aging, ailing parents urging her to make enough money
before they pass away, for the sake of her toddlers: “Maura, start working.
We need your help. Because if any of us die, who will take care of these
kids?” (00:07:26; translation in the original).
The parallel between all three of these accounts is that when the
women talk about coming aquí (“here”), they are referring to Los
Angeles—not the United States. Their past may be set in the nation-
states of Mexico and El Salvador, but their present is very much confined
to their current city of residence. Their movements are limited between
home and work, all within the periphery of LA. Over the course of
Carracedo and Bahar’s film, it becomes clear that their illegality regulates
their mobility: they are only safe within the borders of their sanctuary
city (cf. Chauvin & Garcés-Mascareñas, 2014). However, this urban
confinement also offers them a grassroots network that provides them
with just enough agency to sue Forever 21, for example.
A similar grassroots activism empowers undocumented New Yorker
Angy Rivera, Shwer’s protagonist in Don’t Tell Anyone. For a long time,
Angy’s life largely consisted of an imposed house arrest, as the opening
scene of Don’t Tell Anyone seems to suggest. Moving around the different
rooms of her family’s condo, Angy appears sandwiched between the
rooms where we find her mother Maria, her little sister Gaby, and her
two younger brothers Luis and Saul. Angy provides us with a heartfelt
voice-over—in General American English—as the camera hovers over
her bedroom, focusing every so often on one of her colorful drawings,
handmade bracelets, or meaningful objects, such as her yellow, blue, and
red handbag, imprinted with the word COLOMBIA:
134 A. J. Sanchez
Being undocumented isn’t something we can put in the back of our heads.
When I wake up, it’s the first thing I think about. Sometimes, in my
dreams, I’m undocumented too. This is more than a legalization struggle,
but a psychological war that measures character and patience. They want
to see who will break down first. My mom raised me in an environment
where speaking out about your status is wrong. She taught me the same
fear. No le digas a nadie, she would say. Don’t tell anyone. But I started
seeing things differently. (00:01:51)
Next, Shwer cuts to a room where nearly all members of this single-
parent family unit are gathered. For the first time, they are pictured
together—not out of necessity or lack of space, but because they actually
seem to want to spend time with each other. As Angy’s sister is eating her
breakfast, Angy is sharing something funny on her smartphone with her
mother, while one of her brothers is typing away on a laptop. When some
Latin music starts playing in the background, mother and daughter begin
dancing with each other, joking around on what appears to be another
slow morning (00:03:31).
Like Made in LA, whose Spanish-speaking cast finds itself moored
in an English-speaking environment, Don’t Tell Anyone centers on a
hyphenated protagonist, as implied by the consistently bilingual inter-
actions between the members of her household. With the help of
photographs, Angy explains in English that she was born in Colombia.
At the age of three, her mother sold everything that she owned to finance
a one-way trip, not to the United States but “to New York” (00:04:13).
As it turns out, Angy belongs to a mixed-status family: the three chil-
dren Maria had after Angy were all born in the United States and are,
therefore, US citizens—unlike their foreign-born mother and older sister.
Hence, the threat of deportation hangs over this family like the sword
of Damocles. As Angy explains:
In New York, we don’t have to drive, so none of us have ever had to

drive without a license. But in other states, you have mixed-status families
where parents work and they need to drive without a license and their
children are citizens. So a routine traffic stop could be deportation for the
undocumented people. The children are put in foster care or are deported
with the parents. So I think, for a mixed-status family, the biggest fear
is always deportation. My siblings are citizens but my mom and I could

still be deported. (00:05:10)
Like the Angelenos of Made in LA, Angy also makes a clear distinction
between the United States, a country with which she has little affiliation,
and the city of New York—the space in which she dwells because of the
sanctuary it offers. In this case, New York City’s well-connected trans-
portation system saves Angy from having to drive without a license and
possibly be deported for that offense. Her kind of “transnational urban
citizenship” takes place between the urban nodes of her transnational,
global city network (cf. Varsanyi, 2006).
Despite their cross-cultural ties and their transborder membership to
their sending and receiving countries, all these women are citizens of Los
Angeles and New York first, and noncitizens of the United States second.
When the protagonists of No le digas a nadie and Made in LA are forced
to travel to other places in the United States for their activism, they are
forced to do so illegally. Only in their cities of residence can they find
relative safety because of the freedom they are given to roam around,
undocumented, in search of schooling, jobs, housing, entertainment, and
socialization. Hence, they are living proof that de facto citizenship can be
conducted on both a trans- and subnational level. One can be mentally
torn between countries but physically anchored in an urban center.
Cultural Citizenship and Bare Life

Transnational discourses often encounter skepticism because a prereq-
uisite sine qua non for political, democratic participation is social soli-
darity fostered within a particular affective community (cf. Calhoun,
2007; Turner, 1993). Historically, “citizenship romanticism” imagined
the bordered nation-state as the only propitious fosterer of social soli-
darity, premising its “state of democratic belonging or inclusion […] on
a conception of community that is bounded and exclusive” (Bosniak,
2008, p. 6). However, when citizenship is understood as a set of insti-
tutionally embedded social practices, the affective community does not
have to be provided by borders that include some and exclude others:
136 A. J. Sanchez
Rather than a body of rights granted “ready-made” by the state and

attached to individual persons, however, citizenship rights are only one
potential outcome of a configuration of national membership rules. These
rules are normalized and transmitted via national laws and institutions
(common law and statutory law, courts and judicial offices). Whether or
not these rules are converted into actual universal rights depends fully
on the local contexts—the social and political place—in which they are
activated. (Somers, 1993, p. 589)
In this sense, Made in LA and Don’t Tell Anyone can be seen as

their protagonists’ journey of discovery of the transformative potential
of associational citizenship. The films abound with examples of how
the rights-claiming potential of collective action lies dormant until their
protagonists “speak up” and stand up for themselves, thus proving that
“collective action can enable marginalized communities to make claims
on the state and society which can then expand the boundaries of the
political community” (Zimmerman, 2010, p. 45).
As a matter of fact, over the course of Don’t Tell Anyone, Angy trans-
forms into one of the most well-known spokespeople of the New York
State Youth Leadership Council—an “undocumented youth led organi-
zation” that strives “to give undocumented youth the tools and space to
organize and create change in [their] communities” (About Us, n.d.). By
contrast, Made in LA captures how Maura, María, and Lupe become
more and more actively involved in their local Centro de trabajadoras
de costura (Garment Worker Center) once they realize, as Lupe puts it,
that “when people start to organize, they stop being victims” (00:16:50;
In both films, organizations such as the New York State Youth Lead-
ership Council and the Centro de trabajadoras de costura are presented as
platforms for a plethora of associational activities (e.g. meetings, rallies,
protest marches, boycotts) that transform the noncitizenship of their
protagonists into cultural citizenship. Especially common in the Latinx
community, cultural citizenship refers to cultural practices that create
social spaces where all kinds of anti-hegemonic, oppositional, and redres-
sive social movements are active (cf. Flores & Benmayor, 1998). In Don’t
Tell Anyone, Angy’s involvement in the Council and her viral success on
Youtube brings much-needed public attention to the DREAMers move-

ment and to the plight of undocumented, noncitizen college students
like herself. In Made in LA, the social space and affective community
created by the Centro de trabajadoras de costura allows the seamstresses of
Forever 21 to bring their former employer to trial, based on the belief
that even noncitizens have inalienable, supranational human rights.
Indeed, Carracedo and Bahar present the Centro and its rallies, protest
marches, and meetings as the only social space where undocumented,
solitary nobodies can become oppositional, unified somebodies. As Lupe
explains:
Most immigrants come to this country and we think that there are many
jobs. Well, there are many jobs, but they’re jobs of exploitation. They do
all the jobs like domestic work, garment work, day laborers, janitors. All
the jobs that are badly paid and strenuous and that other people won’t
do. But if you’re undocumented and don’t know English, you can’t do
anything else. You basically don’t exist. And I tell you, because for me it
was 13 years. (00:09:01; translation in the original)
Walking through the streets of Los Angeles, Maura reveals that she
too ended up as a seamstress “because they don’t ask for papers or
experience” (00:10:09; translation in the original). Passing by a random
wire fence, she draws the camera’s attention to pieces of paper hanging
from the fence: job offers whose mediocre pay and substandard working
conditions are obvious from the sloppy and irregular handwriting of the
ads.
After showing the camera in which buildings these continually hiring,
semi-clandestine sweatshops are located across LA’s Fashion District,
Maura bumps into a couple of former co-workers, who corroborate
Maura and Lupe’s stories of low wages, insecure working conditions,
verbal abuse by their employers, and so on (00:10:30). In a reflective
voice-over, Maura reveals that, like her former co-workers, for a long
time she also “put up with it” until she was fired without any notice or
pay (00:11:24; translation in the original). Thinking “That’s enough! I
am not stealing! I am working!” (00:11:35; translation in the original),
138 A. J. Sanchez
she “armed [herself ] with courage” and “found help” at the Centro de
trabajadoras de costura (00:11:41; translation in the original).
María also feels that, at the Centro, “all [her] problems go away”
because it brings her “peace, calm” to be able to “[share] with others
everything you experience at the factories and at home” (00:24:58; trans-
lation in the original). Lupe adds: “At protests, no one sees you as inferior
because you are a simple worker. They make you feel like, for the first
time, you are important” (00:25:26; translation in the original; Fig. 7.1).
Carracedo juxtaposes her protagonists’ accounts with that of Joann Lo,
the lead organizer of the Centro. As a second-generation Asian Amer-
ican whose immigrant parents did not speak English either, she sees
“a connection to the workers here” and knows “the difficulties that
they face” (00:13:12). To illustrate the urgency and necessity of Joann’s
activism, Carracedo and Bahar splice in a meeting at the Centro, where
Joann is pictured eagerly listening to harrowing testimonies: stories of
people earning less than $200 a week for 12-hour work days, bosses
who unexpectedly lower wages, rats and cockroaches crawling around
the factories, and so on (00:13:30). Using the Centro to teach “undocu-
mented workers” that the policy of the State of California is to “protect
the rights of all workers, documented or undocumented” (00:12:51),
Joann and her co-workers encourage the attendees of the Centro to
stand up for themselves. Eventually, they even manage to convince 19
ex-employees to testify against Forever 21 in a collective lawsuit—the
culminating event of Carracedo and Bahar’s film.
Particularly interested in Lupe’s political awakening, Carracedo and
Bahar follow her during an educational trip to New York City. Walking
around the reconstruction of a nineteenth-century sweatshop, Lupe
catches sight of a historical black-and-white picture of a crowd of
exploited workers picketing in the streets. Exclaiming: “This crap
continues the same!” (00:37:23; translation in the original), she grabs
pen and paper to write down “what the banners [on the photograph] say”
for the Centro’s upcoming rallies: “UNITY IS STRENGTH,” “ORGA-
NIZE,” and “WE CONDEMN CHILD LABOR” (00:37:29). Indeed,
the Centro’s rallying cries and mottos are reminiscent of their predeces-
sors’ Marxist chants: “United we will win!” (00:16:41), “SI SE PUEDE ”
(00:16:54), “Pay Your Workers” (00:18:38), and “el pueblo unido jamás
Fig. 7.1 Made in LA (Carracedo & Bahar, 2007; screenshots by the author)
140 A. J. Sanchez
será vencido” (00:27:11). Curiously, the approach that Lupe and the
other members of the Centro adopt in their journey to cultural citizen-
ship is very different from that of the youth activists of the Council. In
Shwer’s documentary, filmed about a decade after Carracedo and Bahar’s,
cultural citizenship is no longer about claiming one’s rights by daring to
become visible but about becoming publicly visible in order to trigger a
rights-claiming debate.
Like Carracedo and Bahar, Shwer chronicles how her protagonist
learns to overcome her fear of speaking out and drawing attention to
herself. As it turns out, prior to joining the New York State Youth
Leadership Council, Angy had appeared in the New York Daily News
for creating a fundraising webpage where she sold “education bracelets”
(00:10:32): handmade friendship bracelets meant to pay for her college
tuition. The article was read by a “random stranger” who offered to
cover Angy’s tuition for an entire semester (00:11:20). Thanks to the
stranger’s act of kindness, Angy had an epiphany: “That action reaffirmed
that saying your story and sharing it with people does make an impact,
because if I wouldn’t have spoken out, if I wouldn’t have said anything,
this wouldn’t have happened” (00:11:31). She then started gathering
information about organizations, attending events, and eventually joined
the New York State Youth Leadership Council, where she met “other
people [her] age, who were also undocumented, who understood what it
was like to be rejected from these opportunities” (00:12:08). Shwer goes
on to rely on a wide range of audiovisual material—from Angy’s viral
Youtube videos about her plight as an undocumented college student
(00:13:39; 00:18:28) to handheld, low-quality recordings of her protest
rallies with the Council (00:30:20), and animations of her drawings
(00:35:30)—so as to supplement her own footage of Angy’s growing
assertiveness.
Unlike Carracedo and Bahar’s protagonists, Angy and her fellow
DREAMers seem to be relying on “re-articulatory practices” (cf. Negrón-
Gonzales, 2014): to critique the structural exclusions imposed on them
because of the metric of citizenship, they recast their apparent “insider”
status when they disclose during rallies that they are actually—in the eyes
of the law—outsiders. Whereas the Centro insists on its separation from
the rest of society by presenting itself as a modern-day proletariat, the
members of the Council organize “coming out events” where they reveal
publicly that they are undocumented, thus proving their resemblance
and closeness to the—presumably documented—crowd. This queering
of immigrant rights (cf. Beltrán, 2014) has, in recent years, become
an established discursive method to denounce the state’s criminalization
of undocumented youths and promote a queer democracy—a political
model that rejects secrecy in favor of more aggressive forms of noncon-
formist visibility, voice, and protest. As Angy explains, “like you have
coming out of the closet for LGBTQ, you have coming out of the
shadows with your immigration status” (00:12:58).
Shwer uses older footage to disclose that the Council’s members first
“came out” in 2010 in front of the Immigration and Customs Enforce-
ment Office in Manhattan (00:12:38). Wearing a white T-shirt with the
word “UNDOCUMENTED” spray-painted in red block letters, Angy
can be seen standing in the street, mic in hand, addressing the people
inside the ICE building with the following words:
What does coming out mean? Coming out means to publicly reveal or
acknowledge something about yourself that nobody knows. […] Undoc-
umented is just a label, but it doesn’t define me. I know what it feels like
to not go to school, to feel like you can’t even afford it, I know what it
feels like to be stuck between two cultures where none of them is yours.
So for all those reasons, I stand here today and tell everybody that my
name is Angy and I’m undocumented. (00:13:50)
Angy reveals to us that her coming out was a personal affair; it was
about exposing all the hidden truths in her life. On the day of her
public coming out, she managed to “be real” and finally be able to
free herself from the shame of her “big secret” (00:14:39)—which she
discloses shortly hereafter.
Although the linkages that connect sexuality and migration and that
are typical of today’s queering immigrant discourse (cf. Beltrán, 2014)
were not yet part of the picture in the early 2000s, the liberating power
of speaking out is also a central concern in Carracedo and Bahar’s film.
In intimate exchanges with Carracedo and Bahar’s camera, all three of
their protagonists make deeply personal confessions in an effort to speak
142 A. J. Sanchez
up—albeit not too loudly. Lupe, it turns out, did not leave Mexico right
after her mother’s passing: she suffered years of abuse at the hands of
her father and six brothers before attempting suicide, surviving, and
eventually fleeing to the United States (00:20:51).
Maura, in turn, discloses that she could have died while crossing the
border: her coyote hid her in the trunk of his car and, throughout the
entire journey, Maura feared she might suffocate (00:41:09). Shockingly,
she admits having just hired a coyote herself so as to facilitate her sons’
impending crossing (00:41:33). Shortly after her confession, we learn
that the coyote in question has disappeared, along with her children.
Maura is shown spending more than two weeks fretting, not knowing
whether her sons are dead or alive, before finally receiving a phone call
from El Salvador. It turns out the boys were arrested and detained in
Mexico, long before reaching the US–Mexico border, and were deported
back to their country of origin, where they were able to notify their
mother (00:46:53).
Finally, Carracedo and Bahar turn to María, who explains that the
husband to whom she lovingly referred at the beginning of the film has,
in fact, been consistently drinking up his paychecks, thus putting addi-
tional financial and emotional strain on his wife. One day, María decided
to stand up for herself, partly thanks to the assertiveness training she
received at the Centro: “He didn’t have any right to keep me at home
obeying him. I also have rights. At least I can defend myself now […].
So we’re separating. We’re not living together. It’s better to be alone with
my children than to be with him. So now I’m taking action, not crying!”
(00:52:20; translation in the original).
However, most of the other members of the Centro are depicted as
struggling to speak up. Lupe, whose exceptional dedication is rewarded
with the paid position of “Latino organizer” at the Centro, even has to
reprimand them at a meeting:
[Lupe] Since no one wants to take the megaphone, and we are all plain-
tiffs against Forever 21, we’re going to ask for 5 volunteers. If no one
wants to do it, we’ll pick from the sheet. [Woman 1] That’s just a way to
pressure us! [Woman 2] Some of us shout, and others don’t. [Man] Why
don’t we look for those who can shout? [Lupe] You won’t lose your voice
if you shout for 5 minutes. [Man] You’re saying that now with a little bit
of arrogance, right? There are leaders among us with that ability. [Lupe]
It’s easy for you to say because you haven’t spent years shouting over the
megaphone, and when we lose our voices, no one wants to take it on.
What seems to be at stake here is the “politicization of bare life”—

a state-imposed public revelation of that part of human life that should
remain private (cf. Agamben, 1998). For legal citizens, bare life is “peren-
nially and incessantly banned from the political and legal order” (De
Genova, 2010, p. 37; emphasis in the original). State power roots itself
in the production of a distinction between outside and inside, exclusion
and inclusion, so as to produce and then safeguard the privacy of the
bare lives of documented citizens, as opposed to the forced exposition
and therefore politicization of the bare lives of deportable noncitizens.
Seen in this light, Made in LA appears ambiguous as to the validity of the
Centro’s insistence on the rewards of speaking out. After all, the Centro’s
case was initially dismissed and Forever 21 countersued the 19 plain-
tiffs for defamation. However, they appealed and waited for 26 months
before the court revived their appeal. Forever 21 agreed to an out-of-
court settlement, but because the case did not go to trial, the plaintiffs
never managed to set a precedent in US law; they failed to have the
court admit that “the systematic use of sweatshops by somebody who
calls themselves a retailer is a violation of the law,” as per the Centro’s
attorney Julie Su (00:19:40).
Carracedo and Bahar do imply, however, that the lives of their protag-
onists improved after the lawsuit, despite its disappointing outcome.
María, now a single mother, is still working as a seamstress, but she never
puts in more than eight hours a day (01:04:26). After the lawsuit, Maura
had a hard time finding work in the garment industry, so she decided to
focus on improving her English: “I’m studying to get my citizenship to
bring over my sons, who are still there” (01:05:28; translation in the
original). Finally, Lupe is revealed to have become a full-time activist.
She has been traveling all over the United States to speak at events and
was even flown out to Hong Kong to protest against the World Trade
Organization. However, the documentary closes with Lupe’s ambiguous
144 A. J. Sanchez
confession: “The more I learn, the lonelier I feel. Ignorance somehow

protects you… But then I realize I’ve come this far, and no one can take
that away from me” (01:07:12; translation in the original).
If Made in LA’s ending still seems to hold some hope for the future,
Don’t Tell Anyone does not share the same level of enthusiasm. Thanks
to her associational activities, Angy succeeds in enrolling in college for
another semester after she learns that DREAMers are eligible for in-state
college tuition and financial aid within the state of New York (00:38:00).
However, this optimism is short-lived when we learn of the sexual abuse
that she suffered at the hands of her mother’s ex-boyfriend. The only
reason for which we are made privy to this information—which Shwer
illustrates with a stop-motion animation of Angy’s childhood drawings
(00:35:30)—is because Angy discovers that it is her abuse rather than
her achievements that nominates her for a U-visa, a document that could
lead to the legalization of her status (00:40:00). Since this visa is only
issued to “victims of certain crimes who have suffered mental or physical
abuse and are helpful to law enforcement or government officials in the
investigation or prosecution of criminal activity” (Victims of Criminal
Activity, 2018), it essentially rewards Angy for having been raped, as she
is filmed telling her counselor Aditi. In the comfort of Aditi’s office, Angy
lets her emotions loose:
[To Aditi] I knew from the beginning that I was gonna feel angry. And
sad. And hurt. Like, I have to look at this and think about everything.
That’s the only way they’re gonna recognize me? [To the camera] It kind
of feels like it didn’t really matter how much you worked or gave back
or contributed. It makes me mad that being abused makes you eligible.
Being raped makes you eligible but not just living here and having a
family and giving back. Like that doesn’t matter, you know? (01:05:46)
In this scene, Angy seems to become fully aware of the falla-

ciousness of her activism so far—and, by, extension, her entire belief
system. By rehashing typically American culture codes that emphasize
hard work, academic achievement, and self-determination, Angy and
her fellow DREAMers have actually been endorsing the notion that
being Latinx and undocumented is a “deficit” (cf. Chuang & Roemer,
2015) that needs to be surmounted. With this “rhetoric of deserving-

ness” (cf. Chauvin & Garcés-Mascareñas, 2014), they have only been
confirming that there is indeed a moral gradation in illegality between
migrant noncitizens who somehow deserve legalization and those who do
not. Yet, when push comes to shove, nothing comes of this deservingness,
as Angy’s story demonstrates.
Mitigating Activism
Even though Made in LA and Don’t Tell Anyone subtly flesh out the ambi-
guity surrounding the act of speaking out, they both seem to end on
a rebellious, and therefore somewhat positive, note. Lupe concludes by
comparing her fate with her late mother’s cooking: “It’s like when we
didn’t have any food in Mexico, if my mom had any scraps of food, she’d
make a yummy omelet. So you take what you have, and from something
bad you can create a masterpiece” (01:07:36). Angy follows suit and,
instead of focusing on the seeming uselessness of her activism, rejoices at
her mother’s decision to publicly come out as well:
My daughter who is among you today, Angy. You came out in public
three years ago. I personally refused to support her coming out. I was
more than scared; I was terrified that we would be deported. Thank God
I am no longer scared. She did not listen to me, but rather found the
courage to come out. That courage has helped many people today. If
she had the courage, why couldn’t I? Undocumented and unafraid, I am
Maria Yolanda Rivera. (01:10:43; translation in the original)
Maria’s deeply personal yet public declaration of love and support for
her daughter is, first and foremost, a declaration of self-acceptance. In
this sense, both films succeed in underlining how fine the line between
civic life and bare life, the public and the private, the political and the
personal is for their protagonists.
In both films, documentary makers Carracedo, Bahar, and Shwer
emphasize the importance of speaking out—not for rights-claiming
146 A. J. Sanchez
purposes but rather to undo their protagonists’ “epidermalization of infe-

riority” (cf. Fanon, 2000). Made in LA and Don’t Tell Anyone actively
participate in tearing down their protagonists’ oppression by creating a
supportive atmosphere in which dialogue helps them overcome their feel-
ings of shame and guilt and acquire an enhanced critical understanding
of their experiences (cf. Irizarry & Raible, 2014). In the end, all four
protagonists seem to come out stronger after their ordeals, not as much
thanks to their somewhat successful rebellions, as to the faith they have
gained in themselves throughout their process of political, legal, and
mental emancipation.
References
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8
The Group Experience of Bicultural
Migrants
In La Boda (Weyer, 2000) and Escuela (Weyer, 2002), documentary

maker Hannah Weyer follows the Mexican-American Luis family as they
migrate back and forth between their home in Texas and the labor camps
in California. Delving into the Luises’ attempts to integrate into US
society, Weyer chronicles their struggle to acculturate to an environment
that looks down on their “barbarism” (cf. Nail, 2015)—their supposed
ethnic and linguistic inferiority. In La Boda, the focus is on Eliazar
and Juanita’s twenty-two-year-old daughter Elizabeth and her upcoming
wedding to Artemio—a Mexican bracero she met while working in the
fields. The first of her siblings to graduate from high school, Eliza-
beth is nevertheless quite down-to-earth about her perspectives, needs,
and wishes: all she wants is to get married, find decent housing, and
make sure Artemio’s papers for legal residence come through. Her little
sister Liliana takes over in Escuela and follows in Elizabeth’s footsteps to
become the second Luis sibling to study beyond the 8th grade. For the
This chapter was originally published as an article in Cadernos de Tradução (cf. Sanchez,
2020).

Switzerland AG 2022
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-06539-2_8
150 A. J. Sanchez
duration of an entire schoolyear, Weyer shadows buoyant and cheeky

Liliana as she makes her debut as a high-school freshman. Since her
migrant family follows the harvests across state borders and moves several
times a year, Liliana has to experience the novelty and anxiety of being
“the new kid” over and over.
In both documentaries, Weyer seems to use her protagonists’ angst as
an entry point for a discussion of how receiving countries tend to equate
the process of immigration with that of reaching adulthood. With her
unobtrusive camera work, Weyer invites the viewer to gain awareness
of the disturbing parallel between the coming-of-age of the Luis sisters
and the assimilation process imposed on them as second-generation
immigrants in the United States. Navigating through different stages
of adolescence, Liliana and Elizabeth struggle as much with the tran-
sition from childhood to adulthood as they do with the unspoken
cultural expectation that, in order to climb the socioeconomic ladder,
they have to leave their Mexican roots behind. Being real-life exam-
ples of the “immigrant paradox” (Coll & Marks, 2012), “the second
generation revolt” (Gans, 1992), or “the second generation decline”
(Perlmann & Waldinger, 1997), the sisters do not seem to achieve
complete, straight-line assimilation.
Predicting upward mobility for each generation that issues from immi-
gration, this “straight-line assimilation theory” is based on the expecta-
tion that descendants of immigrants will attest to an increase in their
patterns of intermarriage with mainstream society and a decrease of their
ethnic distinctiveness in terms of language use (cf. Waters et al., 2010).
However, as Weyers’s protagonists Elizabeth and Liliana go through
financial, legal, and educational turmoil, they do not simply poke holes
in this overly enthusiastic theory. They demonstrate that minority demo-
graphics like theirs are destined to be marginalized in today’s societal
setup (cf. Marks et al., 2014).
Mexican–American Biculturalism
Being a documentary tandem, La Boda and Escuela play Elizabeth and
Liliana’s sisterly characters off against each other by commenting on their
lives, highs and lows, dreams, and fears. If Elizabeth’s marriage func-
tions as the catalyst of La Boda (00:47:16), Escuela builds on La Boda’s
momentum by means of Liliana’s narrative. Hence, it could be argued
that Escuela serves as a sequel to the older sister’s nuptials, turning La
Boda into a prediction of the younger sister’s future.
Essentially a frenzied build-up to Elizabeth and Artemio’s wedding
ceremony, La Boda places Elizabeth firmly at the heart of the plot.
Her family members are cast by Weyer in the role of Elizabeth’s unsus-
pecting Greek chorus, interviewed and highlighted only to enhance the
bride’s actions, words, and cogitations. In Escuela, however, Weyer takes
a different approach by regularly digressing from Liliana’s storyline. Her
cumbersome high-school experience echoes Elizabeth’s, who often makes
guest appearances in Liliana’s film, interrupting her little sister’s teenage
life with dramatic glimpses of what Lili’s future might hold. The mood
in Escuela is therefore more somber than in La Boda, as Elizabeth’s
outdrawn struggle to legalize her husband’s status, find decent housing,
and hold on to a job outside of seasonal fieldwork underpins Liliana’s
bleak prospects.
La Boda begins by setting a distinctly ambiguous, neither-here-nor-
there tone that is carried through in both films. For an uncomfortably
long while, Weyer only focuses on the actions of her cast, not on their
words. For as long as possible, she delays the moment that her charac-
ters speak and give away who they are. In doing so, she seems to be
implying that language and identity will be inextricably intertwined in
her storyworld—a motif that runs through both documentaries.
The first images of La Boda are almost voyeuristic (00:02:20–
00:05:50). As the captions announce, it is 4.30 a.m. in a migrant labor
camp in Shafter, California. Meanwhile, the camera mimics the shaky
movements of a Peeping Tom lurking from behind the bushes, eyeing a
one-story house that seems to glow in the dark, its indoor lights beaming
through the windows. Still hiding outside, the camera catches a glimpse
152 A. J. Sanchez
of a middle-aged woman slowly turning on her feet—the only inhabi-

tant of the house who seems to be awake at such an ungodly hour. The
camera then cuts to the woman’s hands and hovers over them as they
swiftly turn over tortilla after tortilla on a scorching hot griddle. Again,
the camera cuts abruptly to the other members of this sleepy house-
hold: apparently, the woman is not alone. Now filling the tortillas with
a nondescript mixture, the woman is left in the kitchen as the camera
explores the tiny house. An older man is struggling with his wristwatch
in one corner. In another, a young woman is getting dressed, while a
second is still fast asleep on a bunkbed. Back in the kitchen, a young
man is filling up an ice box as he tiptoes around a third sleeping girl,
whose bed is placed in the middle of a room that seems to serve as a
kitchen, bedroom, dining room, and living room.
By withholding all commentary in these first few moments, Weyer
disarms her viewers before unleashing a sensory overload of sounds
and images meant to confuse and disorientate them further, inviting
them to look for contextual clues in this sea of conflicting signals.
With the car radio on full blast, the groggy group hops into a large
van and starts driving into the sunrise. Even though the radio host
can be heard reading the weather forecast in Mexican Spanish, the van
appears to be driving on a US highway, following an all-American,
green signpost that reads County Line Road . On arrival, with traditional
Mexican music still blaring in the background, the passengers descend,
put on hats and gloves, swaddle their faces in colorful neckerchiefs,
and walk out into miles and miles of grape vines, which they nimbly
begin picking. Suddenly, everything turns dark. With the title “La Boda
(The Wedding)” popping out of the screen, Weyer makes the surprise
announcement that this film will be about something quite different
from what has been shown so far. Or will it?
In the introductory sequence of Escuela (00:00:07–00:02:16), Weyer
more directly evokes the bilingual and bicultural limbo that has become
standard living for the Luis family. Sitting in an empty row at the back
of a yellow, typically North American school bus, Liliana drives by the
camera, seemingly oblivious to her surroundings. In the meantime, her
family is shown at home, frantically packing, folding, and stacking all
kinds of clothes, small furniture, and lightweight items. The Luises are on
the move again. This time around, from the very beginning of the film,
the cast is not only heard talking to themselves—the parents in Spanish
and the children in Spanglish or English—but also to the camera.
As in La Boda, Weyer’s audiovisual juxtapositions evoke a sense of
vacillation and equivocation. By contrasting Liliana’s peaceful school bus
scene with the family’s hustle and bustle, Weyer seems to suggest that,
despite their attempts at a sedentary lifestyle, the Luises are moored
in a mental and physical no man’s land whose territory is perpetually
shifting. Their home has no anchor point. In the first few minutes of
Escuela, reading between the lines of mother Juanita’s short interaction
with Weyer, it becomes clear that she is very much aware of how her
nomadic existence ties in with her migrant identity. As uncomfortable as
it may be, migrancy is the Luises’ baseline and their lifeline, but one
that they would happily swap for something more secure and stable.
Still tirelessly sorting through clothes, Juanita describes her unease with
her family’s hybridity—and the limitations it imposes—to the camera as
follows:
Every year it’s the same thing. Every year we have to pack our bags
because I can’t get work just anywhere here in Texas because I don’t know
English. I need to speak English for them to give me work. That’s why I
need to go to California to do field work. Over there, in the cotton fields,
in the grapes… I have to work where I can. It’s a compromise we have
to make to live better. […] I say to my kids – I want them to stick with
school so they don’t end up like me. If I had an education, I would stay
right here. (00:00:44; translation in the original)
In La Boda, Juanita and her husband Eliazar also allude to how the
family’s migrant background forces them into permanent migration—a
way of life that is so precarious and undesirable that it is usually asso-
ciated with undocumented Mexicans, as Elizabeth implies (00:08:08).
Put together, Elizabeth’s irritation with people who assume that she is
not American, Eliazar’s concern with making enough money to support
his wife and children, and Juanita’s lament about her lack of English
154 A. J. Sanchez
proficiency testify to the Luises’ unconscious incorporation of the age-

old saying upon which the United States were built: “one country, one
language” (Adams, 1856).
This all-American motto began gaining ground in the colonial and
early independence period when, on the one hand, growing American
nationalism popularized the idea that “American English both reflected
and constituted the democratic and rational nature of the country” and,
on the other, the acquisition of English began to be seen as “the litmus
test of citizenship” (Portes & Schauffler, 1994, p. 642). The use and
knowledge of English became an essential part of Americanism because
it went hand in hand with the idea that a melting pot nation like America
could only truly come together and become one if a single language was
used consistently throughout the country (cf. Gramling, 2018). That
language had to be English, since “the ability to think logically, seen as
necessary for democracy, was only possible on the basis of fluency in
English” (Portes & Schauffler, 1994, p. 642).
Slowly but surely, the American expectation of English-only monolin-
gualism began seeping into classrooms. In the first half of the twentieth
century, bilingualism was either frowned upon or banned entirely. In
certain areas, school children who were considered to be at risk of
acquiring another mother tongue than English were even made to take
“language loyalty oaths” (cf. Dillard, 2015). Starting from the 1960s,
however, a plethora of studies began disproving the folkloric assump-
tion that bilingualism went hand in hand with intellectual failure. Yet,
the United States were slow to recognize the benefits of multilingualism,
mainly because of their tendency to equate monolingualism with democ-
racy, national unity, and allegiance to the country (Portes & Schauffler,
1994).
Up until the 1970s, the US were quite dedicated to their “lin-
guistic intrusion” in private homes (cf. Lieberson et al., 1975). No
other nation was so successful in eradicating non-native mother tongues
among its immigrant population. Additionally, around the time of
Eliazar and Juanita’s crossover to the United States, the nature and
the reception of incoming immigrants rapidly started to change, which
affected the language skills and ethnic-racial identity of their offspring
(cf. Christophe et al., 2019). The immigrants who began arriving from
the 1960s onward were mostly non-European nationals from divergent

socioeconomic backgrounds, who settled in large enclaves across the
West of the United States (cf. Portes, 2010). Moreover, the economic
conditions that these new migrants encountered were nothing like what
their European predecessors had known. Owing to America’s emerging
hourglass economy—in which opportunities for social mobility were
consistently shrinking, even among born Americans—and to a welfare
state that was increasingly being contested by the general public, the
adaptation of these newcomers and their children became much more
troublesome than that of previous generations (cf. Zhou, 1997a). In this
sense, Weyer’s portrayal of the Luis family could be interpreted as a text-
book example of these “new” immigrants. Trying their best to adapt to
a nation that abounds with subliminal messages relating the American
dream to monolingual-cum-monocultural integration, the family is very
much aware of their failure to achieve straight-line assimilation.
Hence, in Weyer’s films, the Luises are depicted as Sisyphean laborers,
stuck in a vicious cycle that withholds them from climbing the social
ladder. In Escuela, for example, Eliazar and Juanita explain that they were
so worried about not being able to make ends meet on two wages alone,
that they felt they had no other choice but to pull their oldest children
from school after the 8th grade (00:04:17). The camera then turns to
Liliana, who announces that she is nervous and curious about entering
9th grade (00:05:40). Her young enthusiasm is palpable and contagious:
for a short while, the optimism that characterizes a large part of La Boda
appears to sneak into Escuela. Yet, by interweaving Liliana’s teenage life
with short segments of Elizabeth’s adult worries post-La Boda, Weyer
subtly raises the question of whether Liliana’s future really will be all
that better, now that she has been given the opportunity to finish high
school. After all, her older sister Elizabeth did so too. However, when
Elizabeth’s job at a bra factory falls through, she and her husband—who
is still trying to legalize his status (00:33:15)—are forced to migrate with
her parents in search of seasonal fieldwork (00:42:50). It would seem
that for these non-European immigrants, who already belonged to the
lower socioeconomic classes of their sending country and who ended
up settling in ethnic enclaves in the receiving country, education and
English proficiency is no guarantee for upward mobility after all (cf.
Zhou & Gonzales, 2019).
156 A. J. Sanchez
Adulthood as Assimilation
For decades, the default position on assimilation in the United States was
that for immigrants to gain equal access to “the opportunity structure of
society” a gradual desertion of their “old cultural and behavioral patterns
in favor of new ones” was imperative (Zhou, 1997b, p. 976). This
“painful bipolar process” (ibid.) is reminiscent of the kind of language
that is often applied when referring to adolescence. Essentially an identity
synthesis, adolescence is usually defined as the internal organization of
certain drives, abilities, and beliefs that are acquired by exploring a variety
of options and committing to only a number of them (cf. Marcia, 2001).
Consequently, adulthood corresponds to a consistent reliance on a set
number of drives, abilities, and beliefs that remain after the elimination
of other choices during the transitional, experimental stage of adoles-
cence—a phase during which certain behavioral and identitarian options
(all hypothetically available during childhood) are considered, explored,
and either discarded or maintained (cf. Bogaerts et al., 2019). Simi-
larly, according to classical assimilationists (e.g. Warner & Srole, 1945),
distinctive ethnic traits (e.g. culture, language, geographical concentra-
tion) are perceived as sources of disadvantage that have to be eliminated
for the attainment of sane, fully fledged assimilation. Like adolescents
who must discard childlike traits in order to reach adulthood, so must
immigrants lose their ethnic characteristics in order to attain “true”
assimilation (cf. Gordon, 1964). In this framework, immigrants are
expected to “free themselves from their old cultures in order to begin
rising up from marginal positions” (Zhou, 1997b, p. 977)—a path
similar to the coming-of-age process of adolescence.
However, from the 1960s onward, the classical assimilation perspec-
tive upon which America’s belief in the “one language, one culture”
axiom was based no longer added up. An oppositional culture started
gaining terrain among hyphenated US Americans, especially among
those who felt generationally oppressed by and excluded from the Amer-
ican mainstream (cf. Zhou, 1997a). The Luis sisters can easily be
classified as belonging to that demographic, judging from their portrayal
in Weyer’s documentary tandem. For example, Elizabeth disavows the
assimilationist ideal of intermarriage with the majority population (cf.
Gordon, 1964) when she explains how important it was for her that
Artemio was from Nuevo León—the Mexican home state of her parents:
[Elizabeth] As soon as I found out he was from Chivo Leon, I was like,
“Sit down!”
[Artemio] I sat down and from that moment I didn’t let go. I got to know
her and we started to go out. And thanks to God…
[Elizabeth] But was it important for you…?
[Artemio] Yeah.
[Elizabeth] …That we were both from Nuevo Leon?
[Artemio] No, not really. For me it’d be fine to meet a woman from
another place as long as she understood me. (00:33:52; translation in the
original)
Interestingly, Mexican-American Elizabeth’s origins were trivial for

Mexican Artemio—who, within the confines of Mexico, barely had to
think about his identity. Therefore, background and self-labeling seem
to matter much less to him than to Elizabeth, whose entire life is built
around the ambiguity of who she is (cf. Rodriguez et al., 2010).
In Escuela, it could be argued that her little sister Lili testifies to the
same need to construct a hyphenated identity that allows her to main-
tain self-esteem and value her Mexicanness, almost in resistance to the
dominant, Anglo society (cf. Zhou, 1997a). Eating a hotdog in the back
of a car, playfully joking around with her younger sister Yesenia and
her cousin Janet, fourteen-year-old Liliana declares that Mexican men
“know how to treat a girl”—unlike “white boys” (00:11:47). What in
another instance could have passed for harmless teenage banter, becomes
quite a grave matter in Weyer’s film. Despite their marginality in a
cultural context that equates Whiteness with Americanness, the Luis
sisters refuse to aspire to the American “one language, one culture” ideal
(cf. Devos & Mohamed, 2014). In cases where they are tempted to “act
white” (cf. Zhou, 1997a), for example by listening to English music
158 A. J. Sanchez
and dating white boys in Escuela (00:11:47) or by toying with the idea
of birth control in La Boda (00:23:00), they end up proclaiming their
preference for Mexican men, music, and morals.
Here, Weyer gives proof of the fact that the insidious parallel estab-
lished between adolescence and assimilation by the “one culture, one
language” credo does not hold up for her protagonists. Their adoles-
cence might be a matter of leaving unconstructive behaviors and beliefs
behind, but their assimilation is not. Rather than a “zero-sum experi-
ence” that forces them to lose one cultural identity to acquire another
(cf. West et al., 2017), the individuation that the sisters undergo in
front of Weyer’s lens is a transformative and dynamic moment because
it results not only from the direct influences of each of their cultures but
also from the processes they use to negotiate these cultures.
Thus, Weyer’s protagonists confirm that the second generation of
the post-1960s immigration wave—and its offspring—acculturates selec-
tively (cf. Portes & Rumbaut, 2001). In less than favorable receptive
circumstances, these newer immigrants hold on to their ethnic networks
and identities in order to establish a certain amount of social capital and
group solidarity in an otherwise hostile societal environment (cf. Zhou,
1997b). Their segmented assimilation has therefore been dubbed a
“second generation revolt” (Perlmann & Waldinger, 1997), because of
their demographic’s reluctance to work for the same wages and in the
same conditions as their parents. It has also been called a “second gener-
ation decline” (Gans, 1992), owing to their inability to do better than
their parents in terms of job opportunities, skills, and connections.
Tellingly, Weyer’s framing of the Luis family does not point fingers at
their attachment to Mexico or at the Mexican Spanish accent of their
English. On the contrary, the camera seems to celebrate their bicul-
turalism and bilingualism by capturing the refreshing ways in which
they respond to situations where their Mexican and American worlds
collide. That being said, as much as Escuela and La Boda mitigate the
demonizing accounts of barbaric Latinxs that have entered the Amer-
ican collective unconscious (cf. Huntington, 2004), they also refrain
from romanticizing the counterhegemonic notion according to which
juggling two languages and two cultures results in a balanced mestizaje
(cf. Moreman, 2005).
For the Luises, their segmented assimilation is part and parcel of

their imbalanced mestizaje. In La Boda, Juanita explains that the family’s
strong ties to Mexico have proven to be a necessary relief in the face of
the adversity they experienced in the United States (00:50:34). Although
she is aware of the fact that her family is far from attaining the ideal
straight-line assimilation so emphatically advertised in American society,
Juanita nevertheless remains unrepentant. Within their means, they have
achieved as much as they possibly could. Their receiving country may
never fully accept them as one of theirs because of their continued sense
of belonging to Mexico, but it is precisely thanks to their Mexican-
American social capital that they are empowered to keep striving for a
better quality of life, if not for themselves, then for the generations to
come.
Assimilation as Resignification
Weyer’s documentary tandem gives the floor to a Mexican-American
family who, from an assimilationist perspective, appears to confirm all
the immigrant clichés: they look, act, talk, and think differently to what
is perceived as the US standard. However, over the course of La Boda and
Escuela, Weyer demonstrates that her protagonists’ realities do not coin-
cide with the stereotype of the barbaric immigrant (cf. Nail, 2015). With
the help of evocative images, heartfelt interviews, and clever editing, she
conveys a sense of awareness within the Luis family that they are expected
to excel in a society that marginalizes them on account of their supposed
ethnic and linguistic inferiority. The Luises remain undeterred and unde-
feated, despite everything. Across the US–Mexico border, their bicultural
family is their fortress, and their assimilation into American society
happens on their own terms, in their own time: not out of stubborn-
ness, unwillingness, or incapability, but out of a pragmatism imposed on
them by the dire socioeconomic circumstances of their reception.
Interestingly, Weyer never romanticizes the Luises’ hybrid existence. In
doing so, she follows a growing desire among Latinxs to cease presenting
liminality as a desirable state of mind and a celebratory expression of self-
acceptance. Rather than promoting the bicultural borderland existence of
160 A. J. Sanchez
Anzaldúa (1987) and Gómez-Peña (1996), Weyer stresses its pitfalls—a

perspective that echoes the dissatisfaction of younger Latinxs with their
marginal place in US society (cf. Vila, 2003). In Weyer’s films, hybridity
is no longer a playful space, conveniently stripped of its marginal-
izing character and its capability to deconstruct and reconstruct racism
(cf. Valdivia, 2004). Rather, she presents her protagonists’ segmented
assimilation as being energized by their continuous resignification (cf.
Moreman, 2008).
As a matter of fact, because of this need to resignify her liminality and
mold it to her own liking, Liliana exteriorizes her internalized marginality
by donning goth outfits in the final scenes of Escuela:
[Liliana] Si Dios quiere, I’m gonna do my hair all blonde. Every single
inch of my hair is gonna be blonde with red or black streaks. Or black
hair, all my hair black, with blue or red streaks.
[Weyer] And why did you… How did you come up with the idea?
[Liliana] I came up with the idea coz I wanna become a civilized freak.
They’re giving like this big clue that I’m a freak, just because of my make-
up and my skull but I don’t care what they think. At least I know that
I’m a smart, integ… intennigen… person! (00:41:04)
Who are “they”? Is Liliana truly referring to her peers? Or is she

perhaps addressing the world at large? Whatever the answer may be,
her attitude is illustrative of her unwillingness to be swallowed up by
a bulldozing, homogenizing culture—be that in high school or in US
society. In this sense, Weyer’s protagonists can be seen as epitomes of the
“second generation revolt” (Perlmann & Waldinger, 1997) rather than
the “second generation decline” (Gans, 1992). Their refusal to “drop
their hyphen” (cf. Portes & Schauffler, 1994) is more an act of conscious
defiance and resistance than it is the consequence of their supposed
helplessness and defeat in a matrix that only applauds straight-line
assimilation.
References
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Life of John Adams (C. F. Adams, Ed.). Little, Brown.
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9
The Group Experience of Migrant
Criminals
In Al otro lado (Almada, 2006) and The Ballad of Esequiel Hernández

(Fitzgerald, 2008), documentary makers Natalia Almada and Kieran
Fitzgerald delve into the criminalization of the US–Mexico border.
Through Mexican corridista (balladeer) Magdiel and defunct Mexican-
American high-school student Esequiel, both documentary makers point
out how life-threatening today’s militarized border can be for those who
come to cross it—whether legally, like Esequiel, or illegally, like Magdiel.
As Magdiel and Esequiel’s transnational narratives unfold according
to the classic corrido formula of risking it all in search of a brighter
tomorrow, their portrayal becomes increasingly paradoxical. Criminals
to some, martyrs to others, the young men appear as contradictory as
the US–Mexico fault line that dictates their lives.
Societal Ambiguities at the Border

Documentary maker Kieran Fitzgerald frames the first few moments
of The Ballad of Esequiel Hernández by exploring the parallels between
his film’s storyline and that of traditional corridos—ballads that began
Switzerland AG 2022
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-06539-2_9
166 A. J. Sanchez
as tributes to the heroes of the Mexican Revolution before they were

appropriated by the antiheroes of Mexico’s underbelly. Underlining his
protagonist’s cultural, moral, and legal liminality, Fitzgerald introduces
Esequiel Hernández as neither hero nor antihero by stringing together
a collection of news footage about “an American […] killed by US
Marines” (00:01:54). Additionally, he ushers in voice-over narration to
point out the ambiguous accounts that circulate surrounding Esequiel’s
suspicious killing. Tellingly, his narrator is actor Tommy Lee Jones,
whose signature voice evokes the intricacies of the US–Mexico border
(cf. Moerk, 2005).
Jones’s initial description of the event at the heart of this documen-
tary seems clear enough: “In 1997, an American high school student was
shot and killed near his home in West Texas by a team of United States
Marines. After the shooting, all armed military operations were immedi-
ately suspended” (00:02:26). However, this apparently straightforward
case of military overreach soon muddles when the victim’s Mexican-
American identity is revealed. Overlapping with B-roll of a norteña music
band, Fitzgerald gives the floor to local historian Enrique Madrid, who
explains that the corrido is a “musical form like the ballads of the English
and of the Scots” used “on the border, in Mexican-American culture” as
a “method of telling history, of remembering events” (00:02:55). Perhaps
in an effort to allude to Esequiel’s dubious death, Madrid also mentions
that a happening can be made into a corrido when it runs the risk of
being “covered up” or “buried” (00:03:16). To lend weight to Madrid’s
words, the camera switches back to footage of the band, right when the
lead singer embarks on a corrido that sets the scene for the documentary:
“Voy a cantar un corrido / No se les vaya a olvidar / Esto pasó en Redford,
Texas / Quién se lo iba a imaginar ”1 (00:03:26). Using this vocalization
to draw us into the corrido storyworld, Fitzgerald embarks on his own—
audiovisual rather than lyrical—rendition of what happened in Redford,
Texas.
Fitzgerald’s inclusion of norteña music is not coincidental. Unlike
historical corridos written for Mexican freedom fighters or modern-day
1 “I’m going to sing a ballad / Not to be forgotten / It happened in Redford, Texas / Who
would have thought?” (00:03:26; my translation).
narcocorridos paying tribute to the realities of narcos, the focus of the

border community’s corrido norteño is on the experience of border-
crossing, migration, work, and marginalization. Developed alongside
the Tejano and Chicano border identity, this kind of music builds on
the Mexican ballad’s premise of glorifying the underdog by singing the
praises of “the border hero (who was also the first migrant worker)”
(Ragland, 2009, p. 99). The corrido norteño preserves the basic senti-
ment of the historical corrido: disdain for outside authority based on the
belief that mal gobierno (abusive or absent authority) turns good people
into social bandits who, contrary to the government, uphold a code of
honor and display a heroic ethos (McDowell, 2015).
In Al otro lado, the corrido formula plays an even greater role.
More specifically, Natalia Almada’s documentary deals with the narco-
corrido, which evidences a twist on the traditional theme of rebellion by
presenting drug smugglers, human traffickers, and other outlaw personas
as a new kind of “social bandit” (cf. Edberg, 2009). Like Fitzgerald,
Almada starts off by framing what a corrido is but, contrary to Fitzgerald,
she relies on a collage of definitions given by Mexican and Mexican-
American interviewees—a treatment which appears to suggest that this
musical form is transnational and varied:
[Woman 1] It’s a story. It’s a story being told in a song, that’s what a
corrido is.
[Man 1] Since the Mexican Revolution corridos have been the way to
explain… of translating to… one person to another, you know what I
mean?
[Man 2] Rap tells stories about things that happen on the streets and so
do corridos. They talk about things that really happen. It is a form of
street communication.
[Man 3] It’s a chronicle. You’re spreading the news.
[Man 4] Well it can be real or imaginary as long as it has a nice

arrangement.
168 A. J. Sanchez
[Man 5] For the first time, the voice of the drug traffickers was being
heard indirectly through the corrido.
[Man 6] It’s a protest. It’s a very direct expression of the people.
[Man 7] In 15 minutes, you come to me and say, “Write me a corrido.

My name is… I like women, I like to drink now and then… I go to
this and that place…” In 15 minutes I can get $1,500 out of you, in
15 minutes. If you’re a friend $1000, but no less. (00:03:00; translation
in the original)
Having summoned an image of corridistas as Latinx, trigger-happy

gangsta rappers, the camera cuts to Sinaloa, the birthplace of the
narcocorrido. Here, Almada introduces us to her protagonist: corridista
Magdiel, whose youthful naivety and bright-eyed cheekiness implicitly
contradict what we have just been told about people like him. Far
removed from the “blingy” hip-hop lifestyle evoked by the previous
segment, Magdiel’s lyrics testify to a harsh reality: “La pobreza que traigo
en mi sangre / Todo esto ya quiero que cambie / Somos pobre, no puedo
negarle…” (00:04:45).2
What follows is a poignant portrait of Magdiel’s dilapidated present
contrasted with the glitz and glam emanating from narcocorridistas who
became superstars al otro lado after crossing the border3 or who were
born al otro lado 4 and “made it big” by adapting the corrido to American
2 “The poverty that runs in my blood / I wish all of this would change / We are poor, I can’t
deny it…” (00:04:45; translation in the original).
3 In the film, there is mention of Chalino Sánchez (00.22.20) and Jorge Hernández (00:09:21),
among others. The latter is the lead singer of Los Tigres del Norte , one of the most successful
norteño bands in the United States. The former gave shape to the most violent style of narco-
corrido, merging the figure of the narco with that of the corridista. Chalino was known for his
tumultuous lifestyle, which led to his murder in 1992. He is generally considered to be at the
root of the artistic movement in the United States that would liken the corrido to gangsta rap.
4 In the film, there is mention of Jenni Rivera (00:26:16), a.k.a. Jenny from the Barrio, and
Jessie Morales (00:29:15), a.k.a. El Original de la Sierra, among others. The former was one
of the first Mexican-American women narcocorridistas. She died in a private jet crash in 2012,
about six years after the release of this documentary. The latter is an LA-based corridista. He
belongs to a wave of Mexican-American artists who, following the death of Chalino Sánchez,
popularized the narcocorrido among their peers by complementing it with hip hop aesthetics
and sensibilities.
tastes. The effect achieved by opposing the haves with the have-nots of
the narcocorrido scene is less one of reassurance that success and wealth
are, potentially, within everyone’s reach and rather one of sympathy for
those who, like Magdiel, are in such dire straits that they are willing to
risk their lives by crossing the border. To further emphasize this point,
the camera shows flashes of Magdiel hauling a meager catch into his
father’s ramshackle fishing boat (00:05:40), Magdiel’s mother defeatedly
admitting that her son has to leave their fishing village because “there
is no future here” (00:06:29), and Magdiel’s fellow fishermen joking
about how selling drugs has become the “only option” to earn a decent
wage (00:06:41). Finally, the camera circles back to Magdiel himself.
First shown working on a song that was, most likely, commissioned by
a narcotraficante (00:07:03) and then chatting with his mother about an
old flame who got married to one of those drug traffickers (00:07:42),
Magdiel eventually turns to the camera to explain matter-of-factly that
the only way for him to make an honest living and stay away from drugs
is “running away” (00:08:01; translation in the original)—to the United
States, illegally.
Magdiel’s plans to combat illegality with illegality might have sounded
naïve had it not been for Almada’s choice of following his confession
up with a fragment on how the illegal entry into the United States
of Los Tigres del Norte allowed them, many years later, to sell out
entire stadiums (00:09:19). Hiding among the crowd, Almada’s camera
captures a snippet of the Tigres’ live performance of their legendary
corrido “Somos Más Americanos,” which she pairs with B-roll of the
US–Mexico border:
Ya me gritaron mil veces que me regrese a mi tierra, / Porque aquí no

quepo yo / Quiero recordarle al gringo: Yo no cruce la frontera, la fron-
tera me cruzo. / América nació libre, el hombre la dividió. / […] Ellos
pintaron la raya, para que yo la brincara / Y me llaman invasor / Es un
error bien marcado nos quitaron ocho estados / Quién es aquí el invasor.
/ Soy extranjero en mi tierra, / Y no vengo a darles guerra, soy hombre
trabajador.5 (00:11:25)
5 “They’ve yelled a 1000 times that I return to my country, / because there is no room for
me here. / I’d like to remind the Gringos, I didn’t cross the border, the border crossed me. /
170 A. J. Sanchez
Expanding on the corrido tradition of questioning good and bad by

opposing “the mythic original and authentic ‘cowboy’ or settler that we
find in Westerns” with “the mythic Mexican revolutionary and valiant
farmer” (Muniz, 2013, p. 64), Almada echoes this reversal of morals
by delving deeper into Magdiel’s drug ties. Having given the Tigres the
opportunity to play one of their tunes, she now allows Magdiel—who
aspires to attain the grandeur of artists like the Tigres—to show off his
singing abilities:
Yo soy un lobo marino porque navego en el mar. / Manejo bien los

motores, se lo puedo asegurar / […] Conozco bien el camino, de Sinaloa
to La Paz, / De Acapulco a San Felipe, y nunca me ha de fallar / y si
algún día algo me pasa, en la cárcel me hallarán / […] Si mi patrón me
responde, otro gallo cantará, / ay me verán mis amigos por El Guamuchil
pasar / con mis motores 200 con hierba, polvo y cristal.6 (00:14:21;
Fig. 9.1)
As Magdiel is vocalizing, Almada weaves in fragments of interviews

on the topic of the corrido. These snapshots seem to serve as indirect
commentary on Magdiel’s explicit lyrics, corroborating his earlier claim
that his songs are about “the truth, never fiction” (00:14:13; translation
in the original). From corridista Jorge Hernández, we learn that “the
economy of certain parts of our Mexico moves because of the traffick-
ers” (00:14:37; translation in the original). According to historian Luis
Astorga, struggling sinaloenses seek salvation in drug trafficking in order
to access “what other sectors of society have, for example, a refrigerator,
a washing machine, a stove…” (00:15:32; translation in the original).
Finally, novelist Elmer Mendoza mentions the corridistas’ adoration of
America was born free, man divided it. / […] They painted the line for me to jump over it,
and now they call me an invader / It is a well-known mistake, they took 8 states from us, /
Who here is the invader? / I’m a stranger in my country, I didn’t come to cause trouble, I’m a
working man” (00:11:25; translation in the original).
6 I’m a “lobo marino [sea lion/drug smuggler] because I navigate the ocean. / I’m good at
driving the motors, I can assure you. / […] I know the way well, from Sinaloa to La Paz, /
From Acapulco to San Felipe, and I’ll never go wrong/and if one day something happens to
me, you will find me in jail. / […] If my boss pays me, another rooster will sing, / and all
my friends will see me passing by El Guamuchil [a nearby island] / with my 200 horsepower
engine with pot, coke, and crystal” (00:14:21; translation in the original).
Fig. 9.1 Al otro lado (Almada, 2006; screenshots by the author)
the figure of Jesús Malverde. Like Robin Hood, he stole from the rich
to give to the poor and, therefore, became a saint-like “protector of
those who work in illicit activities” (00:20:13; translation in the original).
Almada emphasizes this paradoxical pairing of crime and religion with
footage of sinaloenses praying to pseudo-religious effigies of Malverde
(00:19:35), followed by images of impressive tombstones at a sinaloense
cemetery that appears to be popular with the families of defunct narcos 7
(00:20:50). All of these constatations crystallize in Magdiel’s narcocor-
rido, which resounds in the streets of his village (00:18:40) as well as
7 After Al otro lado, Almada completed El Velador (The Night Watchman). There, she further
explored the symbolism behind Sinaloa’s campy cemeteries reserved for narcotraficantes. El
Velador was also picked up by POV and premiered nationally on PBS in 2012.
172 A. J. Sanchez
in nearby jails (00:18:29). His seemingly farcical ballad reveals grave

matters: mal gobierno creates structural poverty, which is countered by
a makeshift sub-society at the helm of crooked drug lords, whose “par-
adise persists […] in the hell of those on whose backs that paradise [was]
built” (Stanger, 2016, p. 73).
To collapse the drug-trafficking narco and the border-crossing
mojado, two figures that often appear as each other’s alter egos in
narcocorridos (cf. Ragland, 2009), Almada relies on the testimonies of
corridistas to suggest that it is “a Sinaloan custom” to take risks, such
as selling drugs or pursuing unauthorized entry into the United States,
because there is “no other path to take” (00:16:16; translation in the orig-
inal). This blurring of the boundaries between right and wrong echoes a
dialectical strategy often used by illegal immigrants to contest their crim-
inality: pointing out the “societal ambiguities” of their supposed crime
(cf. Coutin, 2005). In Al otro lado, neither the narcos nor the mojados are
portrayed as morally reprehensible criminals. Rather, they are portrayed
as being forced to engage in above board as well as illegal activities out
of necessity, such that their legal and illegal practices are not always as
distinct as they might seem.
Spatial Ambiguities at the Border

Another strategy used in illegal immigration debates to contradict the
offenders’ criminality is to point out the “spatial ambiguity” of their
social exclusion (cf. Coutin, 2005). Indeed, since the “punitive turn”
(cf. McDowell et al., 2013) in Western legal thinking, criminality has
come to be seen as a condition of personhood rather than the product
of particular actions. In his film, Fitzgerald dismantles the mechanisms
behind these punitive logics of social exclusion and demonstrates how
they caused an innocent US citizen—who happened to live at the
border—to be shot and killed by patrolling Marines.
To emphasize the constructedness of the concept of (il)legality,
Fitzgerald begins by signifying the rigidity of certain social and ethnic
stereotypes that are deeply ingrained in American society and that assign
illegality to bodies “based not on legal documents but on ascribed or
achieved characteristics, such as national origin or occupation” (Flores &

Schachter, 2018, p. 840). Having already hinted at the enigma behind
the death of “an American high-school student” (00:02:28) in his
introductory segment, Fitzgerald now deconstructs the clichés that go
hand in hand with such a description by sketching the outline of the
said student: Esequiel.
Esequiel’s friend David Marquez, donning a ranchero outfit and
joyfully interacting with his farm animals, tells us that his parents once
bought him and Esequiel horses, which they used to ride “all day, till it
got dark” (00:04:12). David confesses he cannot believe that his friend,
who was “like a brother to [him]” (00:04:20), is gone: “I still feel like he’s
still somewhere around here, herding his goats or up on his horse some-
where, that’s how I feel” (00:04:30). Over slow norteña music, Fitzgerald
adds footage of horse-riding teenagers wildly galloping through vast
prairies, young boys playing soccer between some boulders, and lanky
high schoolers congregating on their sandy campus squad (00:04:35). As
home footage of Esequiel performing a traditional Mexican folk dance
begins rolling, his former school teacher Christine Manriquez is heard
describing him as a shy student who loved dance class so much that he
used to stay behind to help her “carry the tape-recorder and the… the
costumes that the girls had to wear” (00:05:05).
At his Texan home residence, which according to the captions is “200
yards from the US–Mexico border” (00:05:37), we find Esequiel’s family
gathered for a BBQ meal: while Margarito—one of his brothers—is
cooking some sausages and tortillas over hot coals, his father is play-
fully teaching his grandchildren how to throw a lasso, surrounded by his
remaining children (00:05:43). Hereafter, Margarito is shown guiding
the camera around a nearby derelict building, introduced to us by the
captions as the “Old Redford Cavalry Fort” (00:05:54). As it turns out,
Margarito’s goal in bringing the camera there is to show off a drawing of
a horse, traced by Esequiel in the chipping paint of one of the crumbling
walls. Suddenly, the horse on the wall transforms into a pencil drawing of
a campesino with his mule, signed by Esequiel Hernández (00:06:29). As
the camera zooms in on Esequiel’s handwriting, the image changes again
to show some more handwriting but, now, in a small notepad held by
an unknown hand. The camera then reveals the face of this new person,
174 A. J. Sanchez
who is hesitantly heard saying “That’s what we scribed out there, that’s…
this is the book we had out there with the… the log” (00:06:51).
What follows is a segment that runs parallel to what was just shown
in terms of content, look, and feel: a suggestive sequence of mood shots,
archival footage, and on-camera exchanges meant to give a human face
to the people involved in this tragedy. This time around, however, the
protagonists are those who were previously intimated to be the antago-
nists: the team of (currently retired) Marines who ended Esequiel’s life.
Among them we find Corporal Roy Torrez, who reveals his field activity
log to the outside world for the first time (00:07:02), Lance Corporal
James Blood, who admits that neither he nor his fellow Marines were
honest with each other as to their feelings about the shooting (00:07:31),
and Lance Corporal Ronald Wieler, who confesses that the event gave
him nightmares (00:07:43).
Notoriously absent from the documentary is the triggerman: Corporal
Clemente Bañuelos, leader of the Marine team who—as we learn later—
declined to participate in this film. Bañuelos’s face is only shown in
photographs (00:08:36; 00:57:32; 00:01:48) and his disembodied voice
is only heard in military recordings of the team’s radio-to-radio exchange
with the Marine Command leading up to Esequiel’s shooting (00:27:01–
00:29:45). Hence, neither Esequiel nor Clemente has agency in this
documentary: they are channeled through their friends and foes as,
interchangeably, the victims and culprits of what happened.
Like Al otro lado, The Ballad of Esequiel Hernández is also carried by a
corrido-like subversion of norms and expectations. The “good guys” and
the “bad guys” are at odds with each other. Both contend they have been
wronged when they were doing everything right and yet both rely on
a communicative method reminiscent of “corpse messaging” (cf. Lantz,
2016): cartels displaying their victims’ bodies to appropriate their agency
by figuratively—and, at times, literally—putting words in their mouths.
This sense of moral confusion is echoed early on in the film when it
becomes clear that Esequiel’s demise comes down to nothing other than
a case of mistaken identity. As Tommy Lee Jones explains:
In May of 1997, a Marine Corps mission based in Presidio County, Texas,

sent Marine teams to various locations along the Rio Grande as part of a
covert operation to watch for drug traffickers coming across from Mexico.
(00:07:53)
The Marines confirm that, when they arrived in Texas, they were
“excited” (00:11:00) and expecting “an adventure” (00:11:03) where they
would catch “someone drug trafficking” (00:11:09). However, as Lance
Cpl. Wieler admits, “that never happened” (00:11:14). Resorting to the
legend of Robin Hood to describe the nature of their mission, an allusion
that also comes up in narcocorridos to signify that the social bandit is, in
fact, a noble robber (cf. Hobsbawm, 2010), Cpl. Torrez reveals that the
team referred to “the hole” where they were on the lookout for drug traf-
fickers as “Sherwood Forest” (00:12:40). Coming from an official, the
reference is mystifying: in which role did the Marines cast themselves?
Did they see themselves as representatives of Robin Hood, the noble
outlaw, or rather the Sheriff of Nottingham, the devious lawmaker?
Additionally, Lance Cpl. Blood recounts that in order to remain moti-
vated despite the heat, the bugs, and the boredom, the team members
would boast to each other about how they would be the ones to “catch
a mule with 200 pounds of coke on his back” (00:16:50). Historian
Enrique Madrid also suggests that the Marines were fed overdrawn
clichés: they were briefed that “Redford was an unfriendly area where
70 to 75% of the local population was involved in drug trafficking”
(00:17:21). Finally, Danny Dominguez, the current Presidio County
Sheriff, crowns this sequence of testimonies by divulging that his prede-
cessor is currently serving time in prison—for drug trafficking. Over
news footage of the man’s arrest, Tommy Lee Jones adds to Dominguez’s
diplomatically worded description:
In 1992, Presidio County Sheriff Rick Thompson was caught at the port
of entry in Presidio with 1.2 tons of cocaine – an estimated street value
of $1 billion. Thompson had been using the County trailer for years to
smuggle his loads through Customs until he was turned in by his own
Deputies. During the eight years that the military patrolled the deserts
and farming towns along the border, Thompson’s arrest was by far the
largest drug bust in Presidio County. He was sentenced to life in prison,
without parole. (00:18:25)
176 A. J. Sanchez
To further highlight Redford’s liminal ambiguity, Fitzgerald juxta-

poses images of Thompson with footage of Esequiel’s home front. As
it turns out, the American boy who was mistaken for a Mexican narco
by US Marines—whose peer was convicted for drug smuggling—is
remembered by his relatives as pious (00:14:01) and studious (00:15:15).
Building on the symbolic imagery evoked by these memories, Fitzgerald
collages fragments in which people who knew (of ) Esequiel talk of
his legal status, civic integration, and youthful vulnerability—frames
of deservingness that are regularly used to prove a migrant’s “good
citizenship” (cf. Chauvin & Garcés-Mascareñas, 2014).
Earlier on, historian Enrique Madrid had already indicated Esequiel’s
vulnerability by mentioning that he came from the poorest part of one of
the poorest counties in the nation: a county in dire need of educators and
doctors instead of the Marines and border patrol officers that the govern-
ment was sending there (00:08:47). Then, Fitzgerald gives the floor to
Esequiel’s father. Addressing us for the first time, Esequiel Hernández
Senior reminds us that he may have “worked all [his] life as a laborer
in the fields and with livestock on ranches” but “all of [his] children
were born in the United States” (00:14:26). With this seemingly odd
pairing of thoughts, father Hernández testifies to a common occurrence
within the community of migrants whose legal status is questionable—
or often comes into question. Latinxs for whom fear, exclusion, and
vulnerability have been defining presences tend to “exhibit extremely low
self-reporting of discrimination” and have lower “expectations of accep-
tance” based on their awareness of their perceived lack of acculturation
(Macia, 2016, p. 112). Thus, Esequiel’s foreign-born father seems to
suggest that, unlike himself, his American-born son deserved reverence
and protection.
To further emphasize Esequiel’s deservingness, but this time based on
his economic performance (cf. Chauvin et al., 2013), his former teacher
Randall Cater testifies:
I don’t have any reason whatsoever to believe that Esequiel was involved
in the… in the drug trade at all. What Esequiel was into was his… his
goats because he was… He was a capitalist. He wanted… was a small
businessman. He wanted to invest his time and effort and money into his
goats. And he wanted to develop a… an outstanding goat heard and…
and make cheese and… and profit. Uh. He was just the kind of kid that,
uh, you want in America. (00:20:04)
However, in the footage that follows—a press conference given

by Bañuelos’s lawyer Jack Zimmerman—we discover that Esequiel’s
economic integration, like his legal status, did not matter. As
Zimmerman explains to the press, because Esequiel was carrying a
rifle while herding his goats at the border, he fit the profile of a
smuggler, causing the Marines to see him as “an armed man, on
foot, walking behind a herd of goats” (00:20:35). Fitzgerald counters
Zimmerman’s statement with a comment by Esequiel’s teacher Christine
Manriquez, in which she reminds us of her student’s “cultural deserv-
ingness” (cf. Chauvin et al., 2013) by stressing that, contrary to the
“goat-herder” he was made out to be in the press, Esequiel was in fact “a
student… that had goats – there is a difference” (00:21:06). Finally, in an
effort to definitively prove the boy’s integration into the Texan cultural
matrix, Fitzgerald has David Castañeda—a retired US border patrol
chief—disclose two facts about Esequiel that are highly symbolical in US
culture (00:21:17). Firstly, the boy was going to take his driver’s test—an
all-American rite of passage—the day after he was killed. Secondly, the
reason why Esequiel had decided to take a rifle with him was to protect
his goats from predators, in accordance with the Second Amendment of
the United States. “This is Texas,” Castañeda adds (00:25:36)—a place
where, as Presidio County Judge Jake Brisbin explains, “guns are part of
life” (00:25:34).
Later on in the documentary, Brisbin appears again. This time around,
however, he shares his surprise at the public’s reaction to Esequiel’s death.
Despite his understanding—as a judge—of the obviousness of the young
man’s wrongful death, he was “shocked” to discover during a talk show
to which he was invited that “the tone of the talk show and the callings
that night […] were pro-military” (00:50:14). Fitzgerald accentuates the
inherent contradiction in the public’s attitude by juxtaposing Brisbin’s
TV appearance with Zimmerman’s on-camera exposure of how, the day
after the abovementioned press conference, he “took a lot of the wind
out of the sails of people who were saying that this dashedly guy from…
from California came in here and murdered this young, innocent kid”
178 A. J. Sanchez
(00:57:50). Apparently, as Presidio County Attorney Teresa Todd states,

Zimmerman decided to be “extremely affective with the media” when he
realized that his defendant was “also a young man, that also had his whole
life ahead of him” (00:57:10). Zimmerman never directly acknowledges
that, contrary to the other Marines on the team, Esequiel Hernández
and Cpl. Bañuelos shared the same phenotype. Instead, he implies their
ethnic resemblance by remarking that “they looked like they’re broth-
ers” (00:57:45). By giving out photos to the media of Bañuelos “in his
Marine Corps dress uniform” and “in a golf polo overshirt” (00:57:32),
he hoped to exploit that similarity to exonerate his client in the public’s
eye. Sure enough, the press took the bait and printed Clemente’s informal
picture side by side with Esequiel’s high-school portrait (00:57:42), visu-
ally undoing Clemente’s suspicion of guilt by implying that both parties
could have suffered the same fate.
To confirm this fact, Fitzgerald adds in a snippet of Enrique Madrid’s
interview, in which he mentions that “one of Esequiel’s dreams was to
join the Marine Corps and become a Marine” (01:01:45). Holding up
a photograph taken of Esequiel’s bedroom shortly after his death, he
reveals that there is one telltale item missing in that photo: a Marine
Corps recruiting poster that Esequiel’s younger brother had ripped off
the wall when he heard of his passing (01:12:10). Placing the blame
on the government rather than on powerless pawns such as Clemente
or Esequiel, Madrid alludes here to the paradox of the US immigra-
tion policies. Because of their presupposition of a hierarchy between
the very deserving and the undeserving, they produce a moral gradation
in illegality (cf. Chauvin & Garcés-Mascareñas, 2014). As Brisbin’s TV
experience proves, the gradual criminalization of federal immigration law
has, on the one hand, shifted the public discourse from one of empathy
to indifference—or possibly disgust—and, on the other, allowed for the
condoning of cases where law enforcement is tempted to overreach and
offend constitutional safeguards of individual liberty (cf. Romero, 2010).
Additionally, the slow but steady evolution of the United States into a
“crimmigration nation” (Stumpf, 2006) brought about “social illegality”
(Flores & Schachter, 2018)—a condition written upon the bodies of
individuals who are believed to be “illegal” based on social stereotypes
and not on legal realities.
This, in turn, explains why the Marines mistook Esequiel for a narco.
Since the punitive turn in Western legal thinking, criminality has been
approached as a condition of personhood that should be punished by
the offender’s social exclusion. Such a stance implies that, since society
itself is supposed to be criminal-free because of its punitive treatment
of criminal behavior, there must be some kind of “mythical, and natu-
rally closed off world outside of society where the criminals reside”
(Schinkel, 2002, p. 139)—such as whatever lies beyond the US–Mexico
border. However, on the border itself, the boundary between crimi-
nality and social illegality has blurred, resulting in spatial ambiguity.
Rick Thompson’s smuggling and Esequiel Hernández’s killing are prime
examples of crimes that, in a space like Redford, have become indis-
tinguishable from law and order. The border as understood by the US
“crimmigration policy” (cf. Stumpf, 2006) made it possible for Esequiel
Hernández to be mistaken for a criminal because of the social illegality
written on his body, while enabling a criminal like Rick Thompson to
use his social standing as a façade to conceal his illegal activities for years
on end.
Consequently, as Tommy Lee Jones narrates, the Texas State Grand
Jury refused to indict Cpl. Bañuelos, thus forcing the Department of
Justice to drop its federal investigation (01:04:05). In other words, the
authorities treated Esequiel’s death as collateral damage that, according to
US Congressman Tom Tancred, “you have to bounce […] off against the
security of the nation” (01:15:23). In archival news footage, an unnamed
reporter explains the logic behind this decision in a nutshell: in a legal
framework that considers the social exclusion of criminals to be a non-
negotiable necessity, “accidents will happen” (01:15:14).
In the end, thanks to its corrido-inspired alternative rearrangement of
supposed facts, The Ballad of Esequiel Hernández proves that Clemente
and Esequiel could have indeed suffered the same fate, not because
of their perceived undeservingness but, rather, despite their factual
deservingness. Increasingly restrictive migration control has turned the
“right to deserve” effectively into “a civic privilege” (Chauvin & Garcés-
Mascareñas, 2014, p. 429), which Clemente was lucky enough to access
because, as Lance Cpl. Wieler states, “the military was behind [the
180 A. J. Sanchez
team]” (00:56:15). Behind Esequiel, on the other hand, there was

nobody—nobody powerful enough to stand up to the military, that is.
Legal Ambiguities at the Border

Contrary to Al otro lado, where the focus is on interrogating the morality
of illegal border activities, in The Ballad of Esequiel Hernández it is the
immorality of supposed legal border activities that is put to the test.
However, even in Al otro lado, the legal ambiguities of the border come
to the fore.
In one particular scene, Almada films a confrontation between
perceived legality and illegality, when US minutemen—that is, civil-
ians who voluntarily patrol the border—come across Mexican border
crossers in the Arizona desert and denounce them to the authorities
(00:43:48–00:47:07). Leading up to this somewhat anticlimactic—
because blatantly unjust—showdown is a contradictory amalgam of
testimonies from, on the one hand, Mexican traffickers boasting about
their exploits and, on the other, US border patrol agents scouting the
border for illegal activity. What triggers this sequence is Magdiel’s joyous
on-camera revelation—one year after filming began—of his impending
crossover al otro lado. It would seem that a coyote liked a song Magdiel
wrote for him so much that he promised the corridista he would “cross
[him] for free” (00:36:09; translation in the original).
Here, by means of her editing, Almada resorts to a tactic generally
used to signalize the legal ambiguities of illegal immigration: drawing on
resemblances or interconnections between law and illegality to suggest
that laws themselves are illegitimate (cf. Coutin, 2005). In order to
deduce who it is that truly has “the common good” (cf. Diggs, 1973)—
that is, a political philosophy concept that designates the well-being of
the people as the core motivation of the law—at heart, she pits the moti-
vations of the coyotes against those of border patrol officers. Somebody
introduced in the captions as “head coyote” admits, with his back to the
camera, that he doesn’t like to be called a coyote because “it implicates
[him]” (00:36:25; translation in the original). He would rather be seen
as “the one who helps people cross over” (00:36:35; translation in the
original) since, from his perspective, he is a small cog in a large wheel—a

“chain of people” who pick migrants up, cross them over, and drop them
off (00:36:42; translation in the original).
Giving off a very different vibe than the calm and collected head
coyote is the man who will be in charge of Magdiel’s crossing. Swinging
in a rocking chair, surrounded by some of his fellow coyotes, he is filmed
laughingly sharing his trade secrets, seemingly undeterred by the pres-
ence of Almada’s camera. He confidently tells Magdiel that his chances
of making it al otro lado are 100% because, as a coyote, he knows “dif-
ferent ways” and “many places to cross” (00:37:03; translation in the
original). Contrary to the head coyote, who goes by the corrido-like
philosophy that he is not committing “a crime” but “helping people”
(00:41:28; translation in the original) while outwitting the American
authorities who “think they’re so smart” (00:37:52; translation in the
original), Magdiel’s coyote seems more of a loose cannon. From his
boastful interactions with the other coyotes, it becomes clear that his
incentive for undertaking such a dangerous endeavor is economic rather
than altruistic: in one journey across the border, he can make up to
$800—the equivalent of two monthly salaries (00:38:10). Nevertheless,
Magdiel’s coyote also mentions a “cute” three-year-old girl he recently
crossed over. He assures the group that, as a father himself, he would
not “leave [border crossers of that kind] behind” because he “feels sorry”
for them (00:39:27; translation in the original). Shortly after, however,
he jokingly threatens Magdiel: “You better treat me well or I’ll leave you
in the desert. I left a guy the other day” (00:42:25; translation in the
original).
Almada further accentuates how thin the coyotes’ line is between
helping and using border crossers by interspersing the abovementioned
footage with images of the border patrol’s experience on the terrain.
Driving around in a hefty vehicle, an officer tells Almada’s camera
that human trafficking has become “a numbers game” where “there is
always more of them than there are of us” (00:37:40). This statement
confirms the head coyote’s earlier allegation that, on average, he guides
up to 15 people across the border in one go (00:37:32). From another
border patrol officer, we then learn that the “loads are very profitable”
182 A. J. Sanchez
(00:39:32). As it turns out, the officer is not referring to loads of drugs

but loads of humans:
[The coyotes] can make more money out of smuggling people than out
of smuggling drugs. […] They even abandon people that can’t keep up
with the pace. They will basically go by a mathematical calculation of
how many people they can get through and not they… and what they
can get paid for. They’ll just drop ‘em behind and leave ‘em in the middle
of desert. And after that, it’s just… pure endurance of how long you can
take it. (00:39:09)
However, just as Almada’s audiovisual argumentation is about to sway

in favor of the law, she gives the floor to a border crosser who was recently
apprehended by border patrol, along with many others. His stance is
one of resentment and disbelief at the unfairness and illogicality of the
law. Along with footage of rescuers tending to the group of exhausted
migrants, he is filmed saying:
We came here to work for you. To pick your crops – pick tomato,
eggplant, oranges… All the work we do stays here and the taxes we pay do
too. Who are they for? The government. In Mexico, there is no work. In
Mexico, the government just steals. (00:40:05; translation in the original)
A faceless border crosser, of whom we only get to see the blistered feet,
chimes in by purporting that despite his arrest or the injuries he incurred
during this crossing, he will “try again” because he is driven by necessity
and has “no other option” (00:41:07; translation in the original). Almada
bottles these people’s determination by setting them off against images
of, on the one hand, a third border patrol officer sharing with us that
he comes across about two casualties a month (00:41:25) and, on the
other hand, the head coyote alleging that people like him are needed at
the border because “[if ] we don’t cross [these people], they cross alone,
and they […] die” (00:41:34; translation in the original). This sequence
begs the question: who is the true villain? The border patrol officer—the
law—who is paid to make border crossing so difficult that it forces people
to take increasingly dangerous routes? Or the coyote—the outlaw—who
is paid to protect these people from the harm that the law inflicts on
them?
With this query, Almada summons the image of a US–Mexico border
that is far vaster than its physical avatar. In her documentary, the border
begins in Sinaloa and ends somewhere in Arizona. To the people who
pay or are paid to either have or block access al otro lado, the border
is a mental fault line created by the violent logic of neoliberalism (cf.
Pugliese, 2009). As one of the Tigres puts it, this migratory flow is
“convenient” to “the governments on both sides” because one wants
the “cheap labor” that the other is trying to “get rid of ” (00:42:03;
In fact, during the group conversation between Magdiel and the
coyotes, the latter do indeed blame “the crisis” for their unemploy-
ment and their subsequent pursuit of human trafficking (00:38:30).
Their ruminations about the economic considerations that come with
legal versus illegal activity culminate in footage Almada shoots in the
Arizona desert, about “30 miles north of the border,” as per the captions
(00:42:39). Tagging along with a Civil Homeland Defense Group that,
in their leader Chris Simcox’s words, is “a neighborhood watch group
[…] reporting suspicious, illegal activity to the proper authorities”
(00:42:55), Almada highlights an entirely different and much more
controversial side of the immigration debate. Oblivious to Arizona’s
historical attachment to Mexico or America’s relatively recent annexa-
tion of the territory, Simcox refers to the border zone as a “war zone”
(00:43:02) and the site of “an all-out invasion” (00:42:07). Pointing
out the impressive amount of “human waste” left behind by border
crossers, he openly acknowledges the “absolute disgust” he feels when he
is confronted with tangible signs that “this many people have broken into
[his] country” (00:42:40). Continuing his tour of the desert for the sake
of Almada’s camera, Simcox suddenly comes across a group of Spanish-
speaking people hiding behind a bush, whom he proceeds to verbally
coax out of their hideout and round up—with the help of the other
minutemen—before calling border patrol on them (00:44:09–00:46:49).
Although private civilians have the right to make a citizen’s arrest,
they can only do so in case they can catch an offender red-handed.
However, a private civilian has no right to ask for identification, let alone
184 A. J. Sanchez
make a presumption of guilt of any crime based on racial profiling,

as is the case here. To go about apprehending people—30 miles away
from the border, no less—based on the assumption that they may have
crossed illegally is in itself illegal. Judging by the footage, no force
was used to hold the people hiding in the desert. That being said,
the border crossers—who appear not to speak any English—are never
made aware that they are dealing with armed vigilantes rather than
law enforcement officers. Even though they have every right to get up
and walk away, they stay put because of the powerful aura of authority
emanating from the minutemen. As such, contrary to the people who
are presumed to be border crossers and who do nothing wrong by hiding
in the desert, the Americans apprehending them could be accused of a
number of serious offenses, ranging from police impersonation to false
imprisonment. However, as Almada’s footage suggests, the latter remains
unpunished.
It could be argued that this is the most iconic scene of the documen-
tary, as it enacts the corrido’s clash between the forces of malevolent good
and benevolent evil. However, Almada seems to insinuate that injustice
prevails in real life, as shown by the supposed outlaws’ helplessness in
the face of the self-righteous minutemen, who do not hesitate to take
the law into their own hands. Hence, once more, the border is portrayed
as turning norms, laws, and morals topsy-turvy. To the Civil Homeland
Defense Group, these individuals are not people; they are undistinguish-
able from the waste their predecessors left behind. To the Group, the
border crossers’ “trash” (00:43:28) does not belong in the Arizona desert
any more than they do. As undocumented migrants, they are perceived
as deviations from the documented norm—unlawful, illegal, and unau-
thorized because they have failed to go through the proper institutional
channels (cf. Pugliese, 2009).
To flesh out this notion, Almada asks the people apprehended by
Simcox why they did not “try to get visas” (00:45:38; translation in the
original). One of them answers with a meaningful question: “If I had
all [the prerequisites necessary for a visa application], why would I come
here?” (00:45:41; translation in the original). Somewhat aware of the
conversation Almada is having in Spanish, Simcox draws her attention
with a statement that befits his stance, leaning confidently on the car
door of his impressive truck as he is looking over the group of border

crossers, who are hunching on the side of the road: “Same story, can’t find
work in Mexico, right? Looking for work here. And I wish we had a way
for them to come legally. And work. But… no más illegal” (00:46:03).
His body language gives proof of his disdain for these outlaw “bodies”
(cf. Pugliese, 2009), who—in his eyes—do not possess any proper claim
to the category of “human” subject. Simcox’s cowboylike demeanor also
betrays his incorporation of a deep-rooted nostalgia for the Old West—
a physical place that runs parallel with the corridista’s Old Mexico and
that functions as a void onto which the dreams and desires of any would-
be settler can be projected. In Simcox’s post-Western era, however, this
romantic vision of the past only ends up Disneyfying the Far West,
turning it into a Baudrillardian hyperreality filled with caricatures rather
than characters—“a fantastical world that intrudes on the real one until
it becomes established as reality itself ” (Muniz, 2013, p. 65).
Attesting to the same caricaturesque behavior and discourse are the
Marines from The Ballad of Esequiel Hernández . Although toward the
end of the documentary they appear to be hinting at their partial
acknowledgment of (their involvement in) Esequiel’s unlawful death
(01:07:00–01:13:19), they remain immutable in their defense of team
leader Bañuelos. However, their words sound hollow as they keep
resorting to clichés that have no place in the context of a documentary
that makes a point of exposing the bare bones of what truly happened.
Despite having ended up with PTSD-like symptoms (00:07:43) or
having developed an addiction to crystal meth (01:08:34) as a result
of their tour of duty, the retired Marines are still adamant they “loved
every minute of it” (01:10:01). Notwithstanding their admittance of
having been “trained […] for warfare” rather than for the reconnais-
sance with which they were tasked in Texas (00:26:10), they still refuse to
accept criticism of anybody belonging to the military institution—their
“brothers” (01:10:09). In Torrez’s words:
Talk to me. Tell… tell him, while he’s sitting next to me, tell my team
leader that he’s a murderer… and he did this… and… I’m a murderer
and I did that. And then the other two guys… the same thing. You can
say that, say all you want, go ahead, talk to me, tell me that. And then
186 A. J. Sanchez
when you’re done, Imma tell you to take a nice, deep breath and say “You
enjoyed that deep breath, right? Cos that’s the freedom that we give you.
That we gave you. That the Marines that are out there and the… soldiers
and the Navy… the guys out there that are dying right now… give you
to do. That’s your right because we do our job. Do all you want! It means
two squirts of piss to me right now what you frickin’ think about what I
did. Until you man up, earn that EGA [Eagle, Globe, and Anchor – the
Marines’ official emblem], put that uniform on, and go lay in the dirt
with me. Then you come talk to me. Until that day comes around, enjoy
all that air you’re breathing into your lungs right now. Cos there’s a guy
out there dying for you. (00:49:49)
Torrez is also eager to display the values he supposedly took away from
his time in the Marine Corps by revealing an “eagle globe tattoo” on
his arm (01:10:50). He assures the camera that he is also “raising [his]
son the right way” (01:10:40) because he is basing the boy’s upbringing
on the ideals behind that symbol. The child even has a music box
featuring the Marines’ Eagle, Globe, and Anchor in his bedroom, as
Torrez proudly shows the camera. When he asks the toddler whether
he knows what the words printed on the music box are saying, the
boy blindly replies: “Honor, courage, commitment” (01:11:10). With
these images, Fitzgerald begins dropping the curtain on his documen-
tary. Building on the little boy’s innocence toward his father’s nostalgia
for a lost referential (cf. Baudrillard, 1994), Fitzgerald goes on to chal-
lenge the very grounds on which the likes of Torrez distinguish legality
and illegality.
Following this interview, Fitzgerald comes back to Enrique Madrid,
who is shown holding up old photos of Noel, Esequiel’s little brother,
who appears to be of a similar age as Torrez’s son. Over home footage
of young Noel staring at his brother’s open casket, Madrid is heard
commenting: “You do not abuse uh… the liberty of Americans with your
own soldiers, because we pay for those soldiers and those soldiers are
our children and our brothers and our fathers” (01:12:27). Suggesting
that Torrez’s belief in the righteousness of his acts is flirting with the
roguery of the bandits he sees as his nemeses, Fitzgerald opens up Torrez’s
sophism by making it apply to the entire US government. By means of
a string of archival news reports featuring, among others, the Secretary
of Defense Kenneth Bacon, his Deputy Assistant Capt. Mike Doubleday,

and President George Bush Sr. (01:13:19–01:16:17), Fitzgerald intimates
how rapidly the employment of the military on US soil has grown in
recent years. As Tommy Lee Jones explains in another voice-over, Presi-
dent Bush Sr. started the current trend of trying to “find ways around”
the Posse Comitatus (00:16:34)—a law dating back to the end of the
Civil War that prohibited the military to “act as law enforcement within
the United States” (00:16:14). After 9/11, however, the precedent set by
President Bush Sr. allowed the military to expand its mission and “use
[its] counter-drug expertise to deal with all transnational threats trying
to enter [the] country, particularly terrorists” (01:17:10).
Fitzgerald’s exposition of these “legal double standards” (cf. Coutin,
2005) reaches its climax thanks to yet another photo that Enrique
Madrid shows the camera, this time of Madrid’s own mother giving
reading proficiency classes to young Esequiel and his sister Becky. With
the help of 1992 footage of a White House Awards Ceremony during
which Madrid’s mother was given a medal for her services to the nation
as a librarian (01:18:00), Fitzgerald uses Enrique’s photo to allude to
the hypocrisy of the US government. He films the historian describing
the picture in the following way: “[…] in the center, […] Esequiel
Hernández Jr., who was to be killed in… 5 years by American Combat
Marines brought to the border under the authority of the legal frame-
work that the same president set up” (01:19:44). As Madrid’s photo
proves, the US government will applaud the same people it murders,
depending on what is more convenient.
Equally invested in showing how distinctions between legal and illegal
actions are sometimes arbitrary is Almada. She, too, finishes her docu-
mentary on a note very similar to Fitzgerald’s. As Simcox’s watch group is
filmed acting on their “civic duty” by rounding up the Mexican migrants
that they found during their “neighborhood watch sweep” (00:45:18),
she indirectly comments on the event by splicing in footage of Magdiel
writing another corrido, which she laces with haunting images of the
Arizona Pauper’s Cemetery:
Unos luchan brincando fronteras, / y los gringos matan mexicanos, /

caminando, nadando si pueden / pa’ lograr el pan de los hermanos. /
En mi mente traigo mi familia, mi esperanza no se ha terminado. / […]
188 A. J. Sanchez
Mucha gente ha ido y no ha vuelto, unos llegan y otros quedan muertos.

/ La desgracia, el maldito desierto. / Dicen que el otro lado es bonito,
mucha gente ha ido y no ha vuelto, unos llegan y otros quedan muertos.
/ La desgracia, el maldito desierto. / Las esposas se quedan sufriendo, / y
sus madres quieren su regreso.8 (00:44:46)
After a black screen (00:47:51), the documentary makes a time jump

and reveals a nervous Magdiel, bustling around his room while stuffing
a large gym bag with items he presumes he will need on his journey al
otro lado. In front of Almada’s camera, spurred on by her questions, he
comes to the realization that he has not put aside any money for after “the
trip”—nothing “for when [he gets] there” (00:48:21). However, Magdiel
is quick to shrug off Almada’s inquiries with a swift reply: “No, that
would be too difficult. No one does that” (00:48:28). After bidding an
emotional farewell to his parents, who make sure to warn him that
the people “over there” are “not the same” (00:48:50), he jumps in a
car—driven, presumably, by his coyotes—and sets off into the sunset
(00:50:55)
Contrary to his mother, who is left looking at Magdiel’s car disap-
pearing into the distance, we do catch one more glimpse of him
(Fig. 9.2). In the dead of the night, without any sign of the oversized
bag he loaded into the car earlier, carrying a bottle of water in one hand
and holding onto a pendant of the Virgin Mary in the other, Magdiel
is filmed walking behind a number of other migrants. Trailing him until
the actual border, Almada captures Magdiel’s final words before crossing
over: “God willing and the Virgin, we’ll make it” (00:53:02; transla-
tion in the original). As the credits begin rolling, footage of the Tigres
performing another corrido plays in the background, their lyrics hinting
at Magdiel’s fate: “That’s how the story ends, there is nothing left to
tell. / Another brother risks his life and dies an illegal. And Jose who
8 Some struggle jumping the border, / and the Gringos kill Mexicans, / walking, swimming,
however they can, / To make enough to feed our brothers. / My family is in my mind, I haven’t
lost hope. / […] Many people have gone and not returned, some make it and others are left
dead. / Their disgrace the terrible desert. / They say the other side is nice, / Many have gone
and not returned, some make it and others are left dead. / Their disgrace the terrible desert. /
Their wives are left suffering, / And their mothers are left longing for their return. (00:44:46;
Fig. 9.2 Al otro lado (Almada, 2006; screenshots by the author)
had a million dreams, / will never return home” (00:53:25).9 Echoing

Fitzgerald’s insinuation that Esequiel’s border experience went awry
because of Disneyfied “frontier fantasies” (cf. Muniz, 2013), Almada
seems to conclude that Magdiel’s crossover will also be marked by
the uncertainty and violence of which his—and the Tigres’—hyperreal
corridos are replete.
9 Natalia Almada disclosed bits and pieces of Magdiel’s fate in a number of interviews. He did,
in fact, make it to the United States but returned to Mexico shortly after, once he secured a
number of small recording deals.
190 A. J. Sanchez
Criminalizing the Nation-State

Funneled through Magdiel’s ambitions and Esequiel’s memory, the
border in Al otro lado and The Ballad of Esequiel Hernández manifests
itself as beyond good and evil, like the people who (aim to) cross it.
Laying bare the societal, spatial, and legal ambiguities of the border
zone, the documentary makers of both films seem to suggest that liminal
figures like Magdiel and Esequiel are not the villainous masterminds they
are made out to be in the popular imaginary. Rather, they are victims
of the US-Mexican “crimmigration crisis” (cf. Stumpf, 2006)—criminal-
ized by both nation-states to diverge the public’s attention from these
nation-states’ own deviousness.
Both the border and the corrido, then, are to be seen as repositories of
“an unfolding mythos that attempts to bury its ghosts as well as resurrect
a historical period where the struggle of life and death was imagined to
have a level of meaning and importance not conferred in current transna-
tional discourse” (Muniz, 2013, p. 67). Thanks to the parallel Almada
and Fitzgerald draw between the border and the corrido, they reveal “the
‘real’ scandal that the system conspires to mask” (ibid.), namely that the
system itself is immoral and unscrupulous.
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10
The Individual Experience of Migrant
Queers
In The Transformation (Aiken & Aparicio, 1996) and Memories of a

Penitent Heart (Aldarondo, 2017), documentary makers Susana Aiken,
Juan Aparicio, and Cecilia Aldarondo deal with the “queer trauma”
(cf. Cvetkovich, 2003) that the AIDS crisis brought about in the United
States. They focus specifically on Latinx queer trauma by pointing their
cameras at two HIV-positive Caribbeans: in The Transformation, Cuban
Ricardo/Sara, a former drag queen, and in Memories of a Penitent Heart,
Puerto Rican Miguel/Michael, a perfectly bilingual stage actor.
Set in the early nineties, Aiken and Aparicio’s film follows Ricardo’s
journey as he goes on a soul-searching mission to find God before passing
away from AIDS. Two decades later, Aldarondo attempts to resuscitate
her late uncle Miguel with the help of photos, testimonials by friends
and family, and voice-overs of his letters. Along the way, Aldarondo
exposes her pious family’s cover-up of Miguel’s queer life and AIDS-
related death. As her film morphs from a tribute into a whodunnit,
she confirms the cliché that in the Latinx community “there are always
‘coming out’ stories about recognizing the late queer uncle” (Roque
Ramírez, 2010, p. 109). These ambiguous “naming practices” (cf. Howe,

Switzerland AG 2022
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-06539-2_10
194 A. J. Sanchez
2015) are inextricably intertwined with the problematic process of recog-

nizing Ricardo and Miguel for who they are. They testify to how—in the
United States—there is a tendency to think of “life as we know it” as “a
social ideal” that is necessarily “threatened by the existence of others:
immigrants, queers, other others” (Ahmed, 2015, p. 144).
It should not come as a surprise, then, that once Ricardo is diagnosed
with HIV, he is offered help by a church of Born Again Christians on
the condition he renounces the supposedly ungodly life he led as Sara.
On the other hand, Miguel is desperate to reconcile his Puerto Rican
mother’s strict Catholicism with the libertarian values of those who know
him as Michael in NYC—two parties who are equally convinced of the
other’s supposed barbarism. From lucky Caribbeans who have escaped
from their homophobic countries of origin to live happily ever after in
the United States, Ricardo and Miguel steadily transform into figures of
hate at the hands of the supposedly freethinking society that lured them
in with its promise of freedom, equality, and democracy.
Naming Practices
In The Transformation, Aiken and Aparicio open their film not with their
queer protagonist, but with somebody who tells us about them.1 Terry,
as the captions introduce him, is a mustached man whose Southern
accent accentuates his cowboylike, hypermasculine demeanor. Facing
the camera, sitting comfortably on a white couch, he begins a lengthy
monologue:
When I met Ricardo, he was Sara. He was the gang leader, the… mentor
of all the drag queens out there. He got most of ’em into drag, onto crack,
showed’em how to work… the streets… and everything else. […] The
thing that makes him unusual… is that he is enormously… uh… charis-
matic. […] But there was something missing. And what was missing…
is that he never knew what it was to be a man. (00:00:07)
1 Ricardo/Sara’s correct pronouns are either misused or confused throughout the documentary.
In instances where it is unclear how Ricardo/Sara would have preferred to be addressed, the
pronouns they/them are used.
In a voice-over accompanying archival footage of a group of people

living in squalid conditions in New York City, Terry reveals that he
was watching TV one day when he heard of “Salt Mine kids” who
“were living in a garbage dump where they stored the salt for winter”
(00:01:20). As he lived only a few blocks away from them, he decided to
see for himself whether he could be of any help to “these drag queens”
(00:01:41).
Among the first people Terry met there was a Cuban immigrant who,
in a flashback snippet, tells the camera: “Yo soy cubana, cubano. Me
llamo Ricardo, me titulo Sara”2 (00:02:20). Since then, Terry announces,
Ricardo has “made the change and come off the street” (00:02:04). To
clarify what this change entails, the camera cuts to a scene where we are
introduced to a seemingly new character somewhere in Dallas, Texas.
Stripped of Sara’s cheekiness, her feminine haircut, her skillfully applied
make-up, Ricardo—who is filmed praying in English, standing in a circle
of devotees (00:02:50)—emerges as serious and demure. This person
who now, judging by his external appearance, identifies as a man bears
no resemblance to the blonde Latinx woman who cheerfully told the
camera in Spanish that she was imprisoned in Cuba before defecting
to the United States in the hope of finding “el país de las maravillas”
(00:02:30).3 However, she quickly came to realize that “here, if you have
no money you are nothing” (00:02:40; translation in the original)—espe-
cially when you belong to an already marginalized demographic with no
secure network on which to fall back. The prayer circle elucidates that the
change to which Terry alluded earlier does not so much refer to Ricardo’s
altered gender expression as to a transformation of a different kind:
Father, we just thank you for the change in Ricardo and in his life. Father,
we thank you that you have brought him from such a… from such a deep
and a dark hole, Lord, but that you have lifted him out of that place.
Father, you have set him up, Lord. You have stuck him in the Devil’s face
and you’ve said “Look what I can do with one who has a heart” […].
We see the transformation taking place even now. Thank you for that
transformation in his mind and in his heart […]. (00:02:58)
2 “I am a Cuban woman… man. My name is Ricardo, I go by Sara” (00:01:20; my translation).

3 “wonderland” (00:02:30; my translation).
196 A. J. Sanchez
As it turns out, Ricardo’s change seems to be more than skin-deep.

In finding God, Ricardo rediscovered the “true”—masculine and hetero-
sexual—version of who he once was. At least, that is what both he and
his entourage of Born Again Christians seem to be implying on camera
(00:28:03). Yet, as the documentary advances, Aiken and Aparicio keep
surprising us with suspicious conversations that Ricardo has with his
friends and ambiguous confessions that he makes to their camera,
which surreptitiously invites us to question the authenticity of Ricardo’s
newfound identity and faith.
Similarly, Aldarondo begins Memories of a Penitent Heart by casting
a shadow of doubt over her uncle’s faith and identity. She, however, lets
her protagonist speak directly to us rather than through a spokesperson.
In a recording of what seems to be an audition for an unnamed role,
Aldorondo’s uncle Miguel is heard telling the casting agent in impec-
cable General American English that he comes from the “lush” and
“very lovely” island of Puerto Rico where he has parents, siblings, nieces,
and nephews (00:02:27). Aldarondo follows this up with a succession of
family photos. She tells us in a voice-over of a “surprise visit” Miguel paid
the family six months before his unexpected death in 1987 (00:02:51).
This, as it turns out, would be Aldarondo’s only memory of the “fun,
charming, seductive guy” her uncle was (00:03:00). As the colorful
family photos start making way for black-and-white shots of Miguel in a
hospital ward, Aldarondo splices in a phone call with her mother Nylda
about Miguel’s suspicious passing.
Their mother Carmen, who features extensively in those final pictures,
was seemingly more upset about her son’s unwillingness to “repent”
for his as-yet-undefined “relationship with Robert” (00:04:44) than
she was about Miguel’s cancer—a diagnosis of which Nylda does not
seem convinced when she mentions “some spots he had on his legs”
(00:04:23). Yet, according to Carmen, Miguel eventually “went to
confession before he died” and “was received in heaven” (00:04:50)—
to his mother’s great relief. Nylda also mentions that she recalls the said
Robert being present at Miguel’s funeral. However, because she never
“saw or heard from Robert again” (00:06:05), she claims she forgot all
about him, including his last name. Yet, in the phone call, Aldarondo
seems dubious about the authenticity of her mother’s oblivion. The
documentary gains momentum hereafter, when she begins digging up

her uncle’s past and, in doing so, slowly undoes the image Carmen had
manufactured of “the son she wanted, not the one she had” (00:03:38).
This desire to fill in the blanks left by their protagonist drives Aiken
and Aparicio as well. Initially, all three documentary makers seem to
premise their films on the idea that queer identities are essentially codi-
fied mysteries that can be cracked with the necessary detective work.
Such an understanding of identity falls in line with “descriptive repre-
sentation” (Duong, 2012)—a paradigm that approaches the multiple
dimensions of identity as a puzzle to be disentangled and solved. The
primary idea behind this approach is that by describing those who are
nameless and marginalized, they can be “hailed” (Butler, 2011) into exis-
tence and their stories can supposedly serve as a corrective to our vision
of society. The notion of queerness itself testifies to how empowering
naming can be. Originally an insult, the term “queer” became a category
of belonging and a designation for many alternative configurations of
sexuality, gender, and desire when it was reclaimed by organizations such
as Queer Nation (Howe, 2015). However, both Ricardo’s and Miguel’s
life stories predate the emergence of queerness as a celebratory concept.
Ricardo, in particular, is depicted throughout The Transformation as pres-
sured by US society—embodied by the figure of Terry—to conceal his
ambiguous (“queer”) sense of self.
Lost in a whirlwind of words that fail to cover him, Ricardo begins
his process of self-discovery and self-affirmation by relinquishing the
moniker “Sara” and reverting to the name he was given at birth. As
images flash by of his wedding to Betty, their first dance, and their
wedding night, Ricardo tells Aiken and Aparicio in a talking head inter-
view that what caused him to “come off the street” was his AIDS
diagnosis (00:06:10; translation in the original). Shockingly, he admits
he is thankful for the disease because it triggered him to devote himself
to God. It made him realize that “it doesn’t matter if you are a hooker or
a crook” (00:06:35; translation in the original) as long as you celebrate
who God made you to be:
I’m not a homosexual anymore. It’s hard to understand… but from what
I’ve learned you are not born gay… It’s the environment in which you
198 A. J. Sanchez
develop. I was always told I was a faggot and that’s what I grew up like.
As a kid I liked women. But I always lived a gay life. Which, by the way,
I enjoyed very much. (00:07:08; translation in the original)
Interestingly, Ricardo seems to collapse his previous criminal deviance,

transgender identity, and homosexual4 orientation into one by opposing
it to his current pious homeliness, cisgender identity, and heterosexual
orientation, which he also considers to be inextricably intertwined. As
he explains: “I have lived a life of homosexuality, I lived as a woman
for a long time, I still have breasts and I also have AIDS” (00:11:00;
translation in the original). His “transvestite” alter-ego Sara may have
been lauded for being “beautiful,” but nobody knew “how hurt [she]
was inside” and “how much [she] wanted to have a home” (00:09:00;
translation in the original). He admits he “tried it with men” but “it never
worked” (00:09:05; translation in the original). However, with Betty—a
fellow Born Again Christian—he admittedly found true love:
The difference between the love I feel for my wife and the love I felt for
my gay lovers, specially for Mantilla who was one of my deepest loves,
the difference is that gay love was more carnal, there was a lot of sex and
fighting. It was very passionate love that I enjoyed immensely but I also
suffered immensely. Now I don’t suffer with my wife, it’s very sweet and
affectionate. It’s very different… (00:18:52; translation in the original)
Ricardo seems to imply here that cisgender heterosexuality is a neces-

sary condition for the stability he currently enjoys with Betty, but his
words are replete with nostalgia for his past—supposedly unstable—life.
The underlying reason for his current conviction becomes clear when his
friend Hugo, formerly known as Gina, stops by for dinner.
To the camera, Hugo confesses that Gina spiraled out of control when
her boyfriend “started wanting a family” (00:15:54; translation in the
original) and left her “for a real woman” (00:16:10; translation in the
original). Like Sara, Gina was approached by Terry when she was home-
less in New York City and selling her body for drugs (00:16:40). When
4 It goes without saying that Ricardo’s self-labeling here as “homosexual” draws on his
entourage’s transphobic refusal to acknowledge Sara as a woman.
they met, she “didn’t care anymore” (00:16:28; translation in the orig-
inal)—until Terry took out a Bible and showed her Isaiah, Chapter 56
(00:16:48). The camera then cuts to a previously recorded interview of
Terry, in which he explains the passage further:
“Let no eunuch say that I am a dry tree,” in other words I can’t have kids.
It says “to those eunuchs who keep my covenant and do what I ask, to
them I will give an everlasting reward within my walls in his temple. A
reward better than the sons and daughters.” So to Christians, when you
die and go to heaven, your name may be in the Book of Life but Hugo
Rafael Rodriguez, his name is going to be on the very walls of the temple.
For all eternity. (00:16:57)
Focusing on Hugo’s plotline again, the camera brings us back to

Ricardo’s home, where we find him comfortably chatting to Hugo on
a double bed. Backed up by Ricardo’s approving silence, Hugo explains
to the camera that going to “a regular rehab” was not as enticing as
“the Christian proposition,” which promised him “an eternal future”
(00:17:50; translation in the original).
In this short sequence lies the answer to why Ricardo and Hugo
renounce who they once were. Terry’s fundamentalist teachings are so
polarizing that they offer a sense of belonging and security to which
neither Ricardo nor Hugo has ever had access before. Terry’s line of
faith also underlines how descriptive representation can be a double-
edged sword. As much as naming all the different ways in which gender
and sexuality deviate from normativity can serve to hail, perform, and
celebrate queerness, it can also be used by the same token to insert it
into heteronormative discourse (Butler, 2004). Rather than acknowl-
edging and accepting Sara and Gina’s difference from the Biblical ideal,
Terry relies on the practice of naming to incorporate them in “church
history” (00:13:50) and reinvent them as “eunuchs”—beatific figures
who, according to the Bible, are “born without the desire for the oppo-
site sex” (00:14:20). Terry’s take on visibility colludes with his policing
of Ricardo’s and Hugo’s identities; his effort to include them in the Bible
functions as a pretense for sustaining the operative system of discipline
200 A. J. Sanchez
that classified their sexual identity as ‘deviant’ (cf. Duong, 2012) in the
first place.
However, in The Transformation, nothing is what it seems. Aiken and
Aparicio suggest that Hugo and Richard may be willing participants
in Terry’s rhetorical game when they capture a shred of conversation
between them, seemingly questioning Terry’s true motivations:
[Ricardo] Don’t you think Terry is obsessed with drag queens and faggots?
[Hugo] Yes, a little too much.
[Ricardo] He must have a special calling for drag queens because there
are many other people who are not gay and need help. There are many
homeless in Dallas, you know. (00:18:03; translation in the original)
Suddenly, the tables turn and it is Terry’s identity that is under

scrutiny—a man whose interest in so-called sexual deviance is so far-
reaching that it calls his own sexuality into question. Ricardo’s exchange
with Hugo seems to point at his suspicion that Terry—who is consis-
tently pictured as physically, mentally, and emotionally intrusive of his
disciples—is struggling with his own sexual (and possibly gender) iden-
tity. His rigid religious beliefs make him so intent on keeping his own
possible ‘deviance’ under lock and key that he sublimates his suppos-
edly ‘unnatural’ desires by suppressing them in the likes of Hugo and
Ricardo.
It becomes undeniable that Ricardo is aware of Terry’s charade—and
his own participation in it—when he is summoned by him to return to
New York City and convert more of his Salt Mines friends. There, he is
accused himself of denying who he truly is when he reunites with Gigi.
Unwilling to follow in his footsteps and give up her life as a woman, she
reproaches Ricardo for suppressing his gender identity—“something so
strong” (00:34:00; translation in the original). Taken by surprise, Ricardo
breaks character for a split second and says “Gigi, I couldn’t take it any
more… I was lonely… I had no help…” (00:34:20; translation in the
original) before getting ahold of himself again.
Jovanna, another Salt Mines friend he revisits in New York, is not
fooled by his and Hugo’s transformation either. She even suggests
to the camera that they should take “a lie-detector test or some-

thing” (00:46:12). However, separating right from wrong, victim from
oppressor, truth from lie is not what motivates Ricardo’s terminal pursuit
of happiness, as Aiken and Aparicio appear to suggest toward the end of
their film.
With some clever editing, they juxtapose a scene where a still healthy-
looking Ricardo openly rejects his life as Sara (00:46:23) with a contra-
dictory declaration that he gives in the last throes of his disease. Clearly
struggling with his health, a weak and pale Ricardo is filmed climbing
into a minivan to visit “friends in New York” (00:49:12). During the
car ride, Ricardo reveals “the real truth” to the camera: had he not been
destined to die so soon, he would have chosen “to be a woman” after
all (00:50:39; translation in the original). Echoing Gigi’s words from an
earlier interview (00:23:24), Ricardo confirms what his longtime friend
knew all along. Terry’s church was “the only way out… the only chance
[Ricardo] had to take care of himself… because in the street it would
have been impossible” (00:23:40; translation in the original).
In their closing scene, Aiken and Aparicio circumvent the tempta-
tion to assign a conclusive label to Ricardo. Although Ricardo’s nostalgia
toward his life as Sara points at a certain level of regret for having been
forced to pretend to be someone he was not, in this last interview he is
also given the opportunity by Aiken and Aparicio to pay homage to Sara
and, thus, triumph over those who pressured her to become Ricardo—
which is the narratological opposite of the documentary’s first scene.
Hence, Aiken and Aparicio’s final depiction of their protagonist is not
one of a victim or a martyr but rather a survivor who, within the limited
range of identities available to him/her/them, simply shapeshifted into
the form that made the most of a desperate situation.
Structures of Injustice
If The Transformation centers on the description of queerness, Memories
of a Penitent Heart seems more concerned with the dialectical options
that were available to its protagonist rather than with his particular
labeling. The description of Miguel’s queerness is, in and of itself, never
202 A. J. Sanchez
a point of contention in Aldarondo’s film. What is contentious, however,

is the Catholic guilt with which his environment saddled him for being
gay. Aldarondo’s representation of her uncle’s life could be considered
critical rather than descriptive (cf. Duong, 2012) in that she explains his
marginalization by pointing out the underlying, historical structures of
injustice that patterned out the limited identity expressions to which he
had access.
Initially, Memories of a Penitent Heart seems quite decided on which
structure of injustice is to blame for Miguel’s marginalization. In the
introductory sequence of the film, Catholicism appears to be the obvious
culprit—in the figure of Miguel’s mother Carmen. Using super 8 camera
footage and old family photos to introduce her grandmother, Aldarondo
has us travel back in time to an age where religious fervor and motherly
love were indistinguishable. Accompanying these images is a phone call
between Aldarondo and her mother Nylda in which Carmen emerges as a
concerned—rather than bigoted—parent who was simply worried about
her son’s afterlife (00:05:00). In their follow-up interview, however, the
righteousness of Carmen’s affection toward Miguel becomes questionable
when Nylda discloses her mother’s treatment of Miguel’s lover:
It was sad to know that Robert was there [at the funeral]. My mom wasn’t
too happy about it, but… But papi insisted that… that it was the right
thing for Robert to be there. […] But he kept off, to one side. […] I
don’t remember him being part of our group, for some reason. So that
was it. (00:05:30)
Unhappy with the sparse information that Nylda provides, Aldarondo

launches a search for the elusive Robert—her most direct link to Miguel,
outside the family.
After a slew of emails, Facebook posts, and online chats, Bob comes
forward and contacts Aldarondo himself. In the email he sends her,
he mysteriously signs off with “Robert or Father Aquin” (00:07:52).
Aldarondo does not give us much time to dwell on this new piece
of information, however. Immediately hereafter, she edits in her first
phone call with Robert as she leaves her camera to hover over polaroids
of Miguel, undeveloped negatives, and framed pictures (Fig. 10.1). It
becomes clear from this brief conversation that Robert has been craving
for somebody to ask for his side of the story:
I was always the outcast, you know? I was the devil, I was the person who
made him turn gay, and all this kind of stuff, you know? Miguel was my
best friend. The best friend I ever had in my life. And when he died,
it punched a hole in my heart. Oh my god, I can’t believe this. This is
too much, there is so much to talk about. What did you want to know?
(00:08:02)
Eager to find out more, Aldarondo travels to Pasadena, California,

which is where Robert appears to reside. There, she adds a new layer of
complexity to Miguel’s story by her particular framing of their meeting.
Before allowing us to catch our first glimpse of Robert, Aldarondo
splices in some telltale audio recordings. While the camera’s panoramic
shots of the Hollywoodesque outside and inside of Robert’s condo-
minium ooze wealth and decadence, Robert himself is the picture of
modesty as he is heard soberly answering his intercom as “Father Aquin”
(00:08:58). To Aldarondo’s quirky “Hi! It’s Cecilia, I’m downstairs,” he
calmy replies “I’ll be right down” (00:09:00). Yet, when they meet off
camera, it is as if they switch roles. Cecilia sounds aloof and expectant
in contrast to Robert’s buoyancy and his unexpected code-switching to
Spanish:
[Robert] ¡Hola!
[Cecilia] Hi.
[Robert] ¿Qué tal?
[Cecilia] It’s really great to meet you.
[Robert] Oh my God.
[Cecilia] You alright?
[Robert] Yeah. (00:09:05)

204 A. J. Sanchez
Caught off guard by Robert, Aldarondo continues conversing in

English. Once again, she does not allow her viewer to process the
meaning behind this verbal trade-off just yet. Instead, she cuts to the
next scene, which stands in stark contrast to the footage of the look and
location of Robert’s palatial residence.
As the camera switches to a new shot, the interviewer and interviewee
are still heard fidgeting somewhere off camera. All we see is a sparsely
decorated bedroom: magnolia walls, a wooden wall bed, demure bed
linen. One spot, however, stands out in this Spartan place: hanging on
the righthand wall is an impressive collection of crucifixes (Fig. 10.1). As
the camera remains immobile, Robert finally appears from behind the
lens. His outfit exudes Christianity, from the large religious medallion
around his neck to his clerical blouse and dog collar. Sitting down in
front of Aldarondo’s camera to talk about his relationship with Miguel,
it becomes obvious he will not be telling her a story but his side of the
story of Miguel’s life and death.
Every now and again Robert drops hints of his suspicion that what
he is sharing with Cecilia does not correspond with what she was told
at home. He reveals that, unbeknownst to Miguel’s relatives, he attended
Miguel’s graduation: “What they don’t know didn’t hurt ’em” (00:11:06).
The family also did not know that Miguel and Robert had been in
a relationship from 1975 to 1987—“a long time, longer than people
thought” (00:10:48). Most importantly, he discloses that the “last time
[Miguel] went to the island, right before he died,” was “the only time
[they] did not spend Christmas together” (00:11:14). With this seem-
ingly innocuous piece of information, Robert suggests that Miguel was
torn between “the island” and “the mainland” (00:15:18).
Expanding on the idea that Miguel was torn between two countries,
Aldarondo mentions a box containing some of Miguel’s stuff that Robert
owned. Filming the trinkets that she found in there, Aldarondo pauses
on the contents of Miguel’s wallet. In it, she comes across the identifica-
tion cards of a certain Michael Dieppa—not Miguel. Bringing us back to
Robert’s interview, Aldarondo asks him about Miguel’s name change:
He didn’t wanna be called Miguel . He wanted to be called Michael […]

because he didn’t wanna be associated with his parents. At that point,
when he first moved, when I first met him, he was really angry at his
parents. Really angry at his parents. (00:12:15; Fig. 10.1)
After this claim, a voice-over of a monologue follows, which appears

to have been written by Miguel for a play entitled Island Fever. Over
B-roll footage of the colorful streets of an unnamed Caribbean town, a
voice actor impersonating Miguel is heard reciting:
Island Fever. I guess that’s a diagnosis for my case. It’s that feeling that
creeps up on those who have known wider spaces or long to do so. It
is a fear that one’s brain will be surrounded by water if one stays here
too long. Those who are not natives and catch Island Fever either leave
and return to the mainland or they stay and become alcoholics. Those
who are, can expect a fate worse than death. They move to New York.
(00:12:48)
Agreeing with Miguel’s words, Aldarondo admits in a voice-over that

Puerto Rico is a “schizophrenic place” that drives its natives insane
(00:14:05). Miguel tried to flee from it but, as Aldarondo suggests, the
island’s schizophrenia simply followed him to New York. Once there, he
kept struggling with the same questions: “Who did Miguel want to be? A
straight guy? The Puerto Rican with no discernible accent?” (00:14:50).
Suddenly, Miguel’s identity crisis mutates from a generational
conflict between mother and son to a cultural issue. Now, Robert’s
earlier addressal of Aldarondo in Spanish becomes emblematic of the
schizophrenia mentioned in Miguel’s monologue, a state of mind quite
reminiscent of W.E.B. Du Bois’ double consciousness: “this sense of
always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring
one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt
and pity” (2005, p. 8). Off camera, when Robert first saw Cecilia, he
hailed her—in Butler’s sense of the term—as a Spanish-speaking Puerto
Rican rather than a bilingual, bicultural Puerto Rican-American. On
camera, when Robert speaks of Miguel, he summons the image of a
man who belonged to a community whose morals, values, and language
were alien to him. Even Miguel and Carmen’s supposedly “Puerto Rican”
Catholicism is something from which this American man of the cloth
dissociates. In a way, the paradox in Robert’s attitude toward Miguel and
206 A. J. Sanchez
Fig. 10.1 Memories of a Penitent Heart (Aldarondo, 2017; screenshots by the

author)
his family echoes the contradiction between the earlier-shown frugality

of his apartment and the decadence of his apartment block’s exterior.
To further explore this paradox, Aldarondo goes on to sketch a vivid
outline of Miguel’s “gay” life in New York with Robert. By means of
a selection of interviews with his former clique, she reveals that Miguel
was “a creature of the night” (00:18:32) who complemented his domestic
relationship with Robert with visits to gay bars where he explored his
“dark side” (00:18:42). In the public eye, however, Miguel pretended he
was “a bachelor” (00:19:20). According to Robert, Miguel was “homo-
phobic about himself ” and intent on playing a “straight role during the
day” (00:19:30). This seems to have amused Robert, because he could
relate: he had been a Catholic priest prior to working in a gay bar and,
eventually, meeting Miguel on one of his nights out.
The mention of Robert’s faith allows Aldarondo to circle back to
Carmen. When Robert tells her that “he found comfort in prayer,”
Cecilia replies without missing a beat “So did my grandmother”
(00:20:27). Robert, however, disagrees: “[…] she took it to another level.
[…] She had such a twisted, contorted view of gay people and what God
is. And hatred. God doesn’t hate. God is the god of love” (00:21:40).
Hereafter, Aldarondo splices in archival B-roll of Puerto Rico in accom-
paniment to an old recording of a religious radio show, which Carmen
seemed to host. In this way, Aldarondo appears to suggest once more
that Carmen’s conflict with Miguel should perhaps better be ascribed to
the times, rather than the country, in which Carmen was brought up.
Assuring us that Carmen was “the spiritual center of [her] family” and
the person who taught her “how to be good” (00:22:30), Aldarondo adds
in an interview with Nylda in which the latter explains that, in her eyes,
Carmen simply wanted “all souls to be saved for Jesus Christ” (00:26:25).
Interestingly, after Aldarondo presents strong evidence to Nylda that
her father Jorge—Carmen’s husband—had also secretly frequented gay
bars (00:32:50), she initially—like Robert—seems to blame this Janus-
faced attitude on Puerto Rican culture:
You could say that [my father] was a hypocrite. But then again, look
where he’s coming from. In his culture, he would have never had the
success he did in life, if he had come out. He would have never become
208 A. J. Sanchez
the Director of College Board. He would have never been received as well
as he did […]. (00:33:04)
In response to her mother’s claim that homophobia was a Puerto Rican

commonality, Aldarondo suggests that the fear and hatred of homosex-
uals was, at the time, very much present on “the mainland” as well.
She does so by putting together an audiovisual collage of black-and-
white images of anti-gay demonstrations and shreds of her conversations
with different people on the subject. As historical footage begins rolling
of protesters waving American flags and holding banners in support of
Jesus and the cardinal, and against the myth of safe sex and the sin of
homosexuality, an avalanche of voices provides commentary:
[Voice 1] … at the time that Miguel came under my care was, really, the
dawn of the AIDS epidemic, both in the country but certainly here, in
New York City. And, of course, nobody knew what it was. One of the
names of this new disease was “wrath of God syndrome”…
[Voice 2] … it was interpreted by the church that… this was, you know,
this was God’s punishment. I think there was a big… period of time that
that was… what we deserved…
[Voice 3] … homosexuals say AIDS victims are being discriminated

against, evicted by landlords, and feared by health workers…
[Voice 4] … more controversial are proposals to find and segregate those

exposed to AIDS.
[Voice 5] … ambulance drivers have refused to take AIDS patients…
[Voice 6] … hospital workers have refused to take care of AIDS

patients…
[Voice 7] … every year, for 15 years, the New York City Council has
considered a Homosexual Rights Bill and then rejected it…
[Voice 8] … Catholic leaders have gotten involved…

[Voice 9]… we strongly believe that such a result would seriously under-
mine the moral education and values of our youth and the stability of
family in our society… (00:34:19)
What Aldarondo seems to be intimating here is the sophism behind

the common assumption that immigrant queers are victims of the
supposed backwardness of their country of origin. In a settler state such
as the United States, modern-day immigration tends to be thought of
as illegitimate unless the receiving country can frame itself as a knight
in shining armor that protects the marginalized and oppressed from the
barbarism—in this case, homophobia—of the global South (cf. Nail,
2015). However, such victimization and essentialization of immigrants’
identities and experiences tend to produce a discursive erasure of the very
real forms of heterosexism, racism, and hate crimes toward all Others that
can occur in the receiving country as well (cf. Fobear, 2014).
This fallacy of Western moral superiority is also evident in The Trans-
formation. There, the elephant in the room is the ethnicity of all its
transgender characters. They are all Latinx: Ricardo is Cuban (00:02:22),
Hugo is Colombian (00:14:46), and Gigi and Jovanna’s Spanish sounds
Caribbean—possibly Puerto Rican. They have all traveled from else-
where to the US mainland in the hopes of finding, as Ricardo says,
“wonderland” (00:02:30; my translation). However, once there, they
inadvertently began to turn into embodiments of the “Northern fantasy”
(cf. Schramm, 2012) of Latin America as a feminized, sexualized, and
exotic Other. In the context of Terry’s church, both campness and
hispanism appear interchangeable and equally unworthy attributes of
the kind of God-fearing man Sara is expected to become. Consequently,
Cuban immigrant Sara is not only encouraged by Terry to relinquish her
femininity but also her Latinidad .
Hence, it is not surprising that when Terry asks Ricardo to join him
on his travels “to raise money for the buildings” (00:29:32), he cannot
help but chortle at Ricardo’s faulty English (00:31:00). Moreover, instead
of thanking Ricardo for agreeing to preach with him, he admonishes
him by demanding that he “practice [his] English” before their departure
(00:30:30). In this instance, it becomes painfully obvious that, to the
likes of Terry, “figures of hate” (cf. Ahmed, 2015) such as queers and
210 A. J. Sanchez
immigrants are a common threat that needs to be acculturated in order

to safeguard their social ideal of life.
However, Terry’s inherently discriminatory attitude is not something
for which he is criticized by the Salt Mines group. They all seem to
accept his self-proclaimed pre-eminence, as if his disdain for them were
not unfamiliar to them. Of course, it is not. The same forced invisi-
bility and expectation to adhere to a codified set of norms pushed them
into a perverse subject position in their country of origin as well (cf.
Massaquoi, 2015). Paradoxically, back home, only their queerness was
problematic. In the United States, however, it is their “queer foreignness”
(cf. Chávez, 2009) that seems to be the issue. As a matter of fact, so-called
“queer liberation” (cf. Valdes, 2002)—the freedom to lead an openly
queer life—was already possible back then, but only for those who also
had access to male privilege, class privilege, and white privilege—unlike
queer, Latinx sex workers Sara, Gina, Gigi, and Jovanna.
In Memories of a Penitent Heart , Aldarondo seems to come to the
same conclusion. Having carefully listened to Robert’s version of the
facts, she confronts her mother Nylda with his depiction of Carmen
as a fanatic and a “fool” (00:40:26). Through a collage of Aldarondo’s
own memories of Miguel’s funeral, Robert’s recollections of Carmen
covering Miguel’s dead body with a man-sized cross, and B-roll of oil
paintings and stained glass depicting Jesus’ crucifixion, the documen-
tary maker audiovisually evokes the mounting evidence against Carmen
(00:41:00–00:45:15). Her demonization is so convincing that, eventu-
ally, Nylda ends up admitting that her mother “made so many people
suffer” (00:46:37). Interestingly, Nylda suggests that Carmen’s conduct
may indeed have been backward rather than outdated—as Robert has
been claiming all along—when she refers to her mentality in evolutionary
terms: “I would like to think that her thinking would have evolved but I
don’t know if it would have, ever” (00:46:40). Taking the blame for her
Puerto Rican mother’s alleged barbarism regarding Miguel’s relationship
with Robert, Nylda even proposes that she and Robert attempt to recon-
cile (00:47:04). However, their reunion does not result in the bilateral
catharsis for which both parties had been hoping.
Robert, who on meeting Nylda exclaims “It is like seeing Carmen!”
(00:47:43), seems to equate Nylda’s public acceptance of him with
Carmen’s expiation from beyond the grave. To Aldarondo’s camera, he

reveals that meeting Nylda gave him “lots of happiness” (00:48:45) and
allowed him to finally forgive his lover—to whom he still refers as
Michael (00:49:01). However, in a phone call that Aldarondo adds in
after her final conversation with Robert, Nylda and her daughter discuss
“how ridiculous” and “staged” that encounter felt to them (00:50:55).
Over silent footage of their get-together, Nylda confesses that she did
not feel that she benefitted from seeing Robert again. Instead, she implies
that the meeting left her feeling as overlooked as during Miguel’s lifetime:
“Why didn’t [Miguel] take care of me? Why did I have to take care of
him?” (00:52:00).
Expanding on Nylda’s insinuation that Miguel was no victim
(00:50:02), Aldarondo steps away from her previous portrayal of her
uncle. Instead of framing him, like Robert does, as some kind of tragic
byproduct of his mother’s supposedly primitive religiosity, she concludes
her film with a voice-over of one of Miguel’s writings:
I guess I’ll never really know how things would have turned out for me.
That’s the road never taken. I only wish I could share in this with others.
Although I know it is impossible to transfer the whole of my experi-
ence, I feel that I have somehow seen the face of God. And having stared
at Death, I must admit, I much prefer his to Death’s – whatever and
whoever God turns out to be. Sincerely, Miguel. (00:52:55)
In choosing this excerpt, Aldarondo seems to imply that Miguel was

religious on his own account. Thus, she evokes the futility of the “family
war” (00:39:10) that sought to appropriate his legacy—only to realize,
over time, that this endeavor was as impossible as it was unjustifiable.
Sadly, Miguel’s ongoing feud with both Carmen and Robert over the
meaning of love is not unheard of in the queer community. For queers,
this kind of “battling over the relations between signifiers and signifieds”
is a common dialectical turf war—one that always turns out to be point-
less because it leaves “the structures of [discriminatory] signification itself
intact” (Halberstam, 2018, p. 16).
212 A. J. Sanchez
Acknowledging Queer Otherness

Like Cecilia in Memories of a Penitent Heart , in The Transformation it is
Jovanna who seems to have understood the uselessness of battling over
these signifiers and signifieds. Her dream, as she tells the camera in a
flashback segment, is “not the American Dream” but “to one day, have
a job and a home that [she] can go to, to be looked and be treated like
a regular human being” (00:48:00). Years later, it turns out that Jovanna
is the only one of the Salt Mines group to have realized that dream.
She is the only one who managed to kick off the drugs, find a stable
home, and gain acceptance from her family. As her sister explains to the
camera, this metamorphosis only crystallized when Jovanna “suddenly
found herself in charge of [their brother’s] two daughters” (00:42:20)
and “got completely involved with the two little girls” (00:42:29). Her
life seems to be a successful example of queer culture as a “world-making
project” (cf. Berlant & Warner, 1998), one that can create not just a safe
zone for queers but also change the possibilities of identity, intelligibility,
culture, and sex that appear when the heterosexual couple is no longer
the reference or the privileged example of sexual culture.
In the end, what Aiken, Aparicio, and Aldarondo seem to be implying
is that it does not matter what the underlying structures were that
patterned out the injustice Miguel, Ricardo, and their peers faced during
their lifetime. Whether it was overbearing motherly love, fanatic reli-
giosity, cultural backwardness, or Western chauvinism, it does not change
anything about the fact that these structures did saddle the queer
community with tremendous injustices. However, what does matter, as
Aldarondo implies in the final moments of her film, is what remains of
the memory of those people. Using B-roll of a dead but still majestic-
looking crane as a symbolic reference to Miguel’s untimely passing,
Aldarondo splices in audio of a phone call that she made to her mother:
I’ve, I’ve been feeling all along like you were a bystander to this… conflict
and that you, you didn’t do enough for your brother. And, and I’m, I’m
realizing that I’m, I’m here telling this story about all these people and
I’ve been struggling all along to figure out… How do I… How do I
forgive everyone? And how do I forgive my grandmother for the choices
she made? How do I forgive [Robert] for the horrible things he said about
her? And I’ve never… And I’ve never forgiven you! (00:49:54)
Here, Aldarondo seems to reinterpret Robert’s assertion from their last

interview that “life is for the living” because they are “the people who
suffer” (00:49:29). It is not those who—like Robert or Carmen in Memo-
ries of a Penitent Heart or Terry in The Transformation—lay claim to a
particular version of the facts who carry the heaviest burden; rather, it is
Aiken, Aparicio, Aldarondo, and everybody else who try to make sense
of the past in its entirety—us, viewers, included. It is up to the latter to
acknowledge the immigrants, queers, and other Others who suffer from
their Otherness and turn their struggle into a corrective of “life as we
know it” (cf. Ahmed, 2015).
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Butler, J. (2004). Undoing gender. Psychology Press.
Butler, J. (2011). Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity.
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Chávez, K. R. (2009). Exploring the defeat of Arizona’s marriage amendment
and the specter of the immigrant as queer. Southern Communication Journal,
74 (3), 314–324.
Cvetkovich, A. (2003). An archive of feelings: Trauma, sexuality, and lesbian
public cultures. Duke University Press.
Dubois, W. E. B. (2005). The souls of black folk. Simon and Schuster.
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Fobear, K. (2014). Queer settlers: Questioning settler colonialism in LGBT

asylum processes in Canada. Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees, 30 (1),
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(Ed.), International encyclopedia of the social and behavioral sciences (2nd ed.,
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life in Latina/o America (pp. 103–126). NYU Press.
Schramm, C. (2012). Queering Latin American coloniality and the cross-
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11
Adoptees
In The Double Life of Ernesto Gomez Gomez (Ryan & Weimberg, 1999)
and Discovering Dominga (Flynn & McConohay, 2003), documen-
tary makers Catherin Ryan, Gary Weimberg, Patricia Flynn, and Mary
Jo McConohay follow Mexican adoptee Ernesto (né Guillermo) from
Puerto Rico and US adoptee Denese (née Dominga) from Guatemala in
their search for transnational belonging. As they return to their countries
of origin, the adoptees are pictured undergoing a gradual “disidentifica-
tion” (cf. Kim, 2003) with adoption paradigms that cast them as “ideal
immigrants” (cf. De Graeve, 2015). By capturing their protagonists’
complex process of “cultural fusion” (cf. Croucher & Kramer, 2017)
between their sending and receiving matrices, the documentary makers
end up exposing the phenomenon of adoption as an imperfect model
for migrant integration (cf. Leinaweaver, 2013) on account of its taxing
expectation of acculturation to one mother/country and deculturation
from the other.

Switzerland AG 2022
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-06539-2_11
216 A. J. Sanchez
Rooted and Freestanding Adoptees

The Double Life of Ernesto Gomez Gomez and Discovering Dominga are
coming-of-age narratives that begin with the “coming out” of their
protagonists—not as queer but as transnational adoptees (cf. Eng, 2010).
However, as the titles of both documentaries imply by means of the
names they feature, there is a significant difference in the point of
departure of these films. Ernesto Gomez Gomez is Ryan and Weim-
berg’s protagonist’s adoptive name, whereas Dominga is the birth name
of Flynn and McConohay’s main character. Hence, The Double Life of
Ernesto Gomez Gomez deals with how a “healthy young man, strong,
intelligent… cultured” (00:46:45) learns to incorporate “two mothers,
two fathers, two countries” in order to become “one boy” with “two
souls” (00:13:44). The film follows how the previously carefree adoptee
Ernesto Gomez Gomez—who was only told about his adoption as
a teenager—tries to “grow into” his birth name Guillermo Sebastián
Morales Pagan, which comes with quite a political legacy. On the other
hand, in Discovering Dominga, Flynn and McConohay focus on how
Dominga Sic Ruiz, adopted at the age of 11, slowly emerges from the
repressed memories of adoptee Denese Becker, whose goal had been to
“cover things up, and try to live a normal life, and walk around like
[she was] this perfect person” (00:02:50). Here too, Denese’s acknowl-
edgment of her birth name results in her discovery of an overwhelming
political heritage.
Ryan and Weimberg start their film by cutting to a blank screen,
punctured by the words: “This is a true story about a mother and son”
(00:00:24). Having emphasized the centrality in their film of this partic-
ular relationship, they continue with a flashforward of the scene with
which they will conclude their film, namely that of a crying young man
being covered in hugs and kisses by a middle-aged woman, who is heard
saying: “What a glorious moment this is. Oh my. Oh my god. Look at
me. Come look at my face. Let me look at that beautiful face. Oh, the
love of my life. Oh, oh, oh, oh my…” (00:26:00). Overlapping with
this scene are captions that somewhat contextualize the reunion. Over
B-roll of President Clinton giving a televised speech (00:01:02) and a
jubilant crowd rushing through the street toward the mother-and-son
duo (00:01:09), a series of captions informs us that this woman is Dylcia

Pagan (00:00:47). She and 10 of her co-defendants were given execu-
tive clemency in 1999 by President Clinton after having spent almost
20 years in prison (00:00:58). However, this film’s narrative actually starts
“5 years before [Dylcia’s] release,” when her son “came to prison to meet
the mother he had never known” (00:01:25).
Before we can make sense of this avalanche of information, the screen
grows darker and the crowd’s joyful chanting (“Dylcia! Dylcia! …”)
makes way for more sinister music. Segueing into a new section of the
story, the captions transport us to 1994, when a 15-year-old Ernesto
“moves from Mexico to the US on a journey to discover the secret
truth about his own life” (00:01:32). With his back to the Golden Gate
Bridge, sitting on the beach, a younger version of the man we saw earlier
begins sharing his story with the camera. Filmed talking in Spanish, his
voice is also heard repeating his interview in dubbed English. The echo
effect created by this mix of audio tracks enhances the message conveyed
by Ernesto’s interview, in which he hints at how the revelation of his
adoption added a second, unrequested layer to what already was a full
life:
No sabía que era adoptado, yo creía que… For ten years, I didn’t know I
was adopted. I thought my parents were my parents. Pero que tengo otra
madre y otro padre, que uno está exilado en Cuba y que […] mi madre está
en prisión… But I have another mother and father, one in exile, and the
other in prison. (00:01:54)
Briefly interrupted by Dylcia Pagan’s talking head interview, in which

she describes herself as “Guillermo’s mother” (00:02:20) and a “Puerto
Rican prisoner of war” (00:02:42), our now double-monikered as well as
bilingual and bicultural protagonist expounds:
Como la… la vida, a veces, de… de injusta o de loca… Life is sometimes

so unfair, so crazy. Viviendo con diferentes familias… Living with different
families. Con otro nombre… With another name. Viviendo clandestino…
I lived in secret. Como muy poca gente sabe la… mi verdadera historia…
Almost no one knows my real story. (00:02:48)
218 A. J. Sanchez
Here, he employs the language of the closet and the vocabulary of

shame with which transnational adoptees come out in order to stop
feeling invisible (cf. Eng, 2010). Inspired by “queer performativity”
(Sedgwick, 1993), this dialectical strategy allows adoptees to confront
“the social stigma of adoption” (March, 1995).
There is a discrepancy, however, between Ernesto’s fragility in this
fragment and the sturdy voice-over by Piri Thomas that succeeds his
musings. Regularly making an appearance as a narrator in The Double
Life of Ernesto Gomez Gomez , the acclaimed writer, poet, and activist
is somewhat of a legend in the Nuyorican community. His involve-
ment in this seemingly private event between mother and son stresses
the activistic undertone of Ryan and Weimberg’s film, thus undoing the
feeling of intimacy that was fostered so far. The theatricality of Thomas’s
voice-over reflects the politicalness of his public persona, his formulaic
words underlining the staged nature of his account:
He thought he was Mexican. He thought his name was Ernesto, but by

age 10 he learned that he was really somebody else. At the age of 15, he
left his home in México to come to the United States to get to know his
mother in prison—a mother that he had never even known. (00:03:27)
Through the juxtaposition of Thomas’s narration with minimally

manipulated images of Ernesto’s search for a sense of rootedness, Ryan
and Weimberg seem to hint in these first few moments of their film
at the rhetorical direction they wish to take. Abstract idées reçues
surrounding the story of the adoptee as a “rooted child” (cf. Yngvesson,
2003), symbolized by Piri Thomas’s formal voice-over, will be regularly
measured up against the real-life experiences of an adoptee in search of
rootedness, symbolized by Ernesto’s personal confession on the beach.
More focused on the recovery of the past than The Double Life
of Ernesto Gomez Gomez , Discovering Dominga starts with a dramati-
zation of one of Denese’s memories prior to her adoption. In what
looks like a rainforest, villagers in Maya clothing are pictured crossing
a river with baskets on their heads, cooking over an open fire, chop-
ping wood (00:00:26–00:01:08). Coinciding with menacing background
music, the voice of our yet-to-be-revealed protagonist emerges to provide

commentary.
Dating back to “about a month before Rio Negro was attacked by
the military soldiers” (00:00:55), this particular recollection involves
Denese’s father, evoked by the silhouette of a man swinging in a rocking
chair (00:01:10), and herself, played by a young girl in traditional dress
playing by the riverside (00:01:12–00:01:46). Only briefly interrupting
this scene with a cut to Denese’s headshot to signalize that this ethno-
graphic footage is in fact a scripted flashback (00:01:48), Flynn and
McConohay rely on Denese’s disembodied voice to frame the events
leading up to her adoption. Her father had left for the market, promising
to be back very soon. The next day, however, only a woman returned,
bloodied and with torn clothes. She told the villagers that “the men
of the Rio Negro have been killed” (00:01:40). From her devastating
message, little Dominga derived that she no longer had a father. That
day, as grown-up Denese explains, that girl “died […] inside” (00:01:50).
After making their film title Discovering Dominga briefly appear in
the muddy reflection of the little girl’s face in the Rio Negro, Flynn and
McConohay cut to “Algona, Iowa” (00:02:03), as per the captions, where
they give us a quick impression of who this girl grew up to be.
There seems to be very little left of the colorful Guatemalan childhood
described in the earlier memory sequence (00:00:25–00:02:00) when we
discover that the little girl is a woman now, who goes by the name of
“Denese Becker” (00:02:43) and works as a beautician somewhere along
the Bible Belt (00:02:02–00:03:02). This contrast foreshadows the kind
of narrative Flynn and McConohay have chosen to tell. Contrary to Ryan
and Weimberg, who are set on exploring the veracity of the paradigm
of the rooted child, Flynn and McConohay will put the story of “the
freestanding child” (cf. Yngvesson, 2003) to the test—another prevailing
paradigm of transnational adoption. This second narrative is about inter-
national adoptees’ loss and the transformation of that loss into “a clean
break” (cf. Duncan, 1993) with their past. The paradigm of the free-
standing child presupposes that adoptees can only transfer their previous
sense of belonging onto a new family and nation if they do away with
old identity. By way of their editing, Flynn and McConohay seem to
imply that their film will be centered on exploring this logic—that is,
220 A. J. Sanchez
that adoption should call for a total separation of the child from its
origins, only so that it can be connected to a new family, a new name, a
new nation.
To paint a clear picture of this discourse of complete absorption of the
adopted child into its new matrix, Flynn and McConohay rely on tell-
tale interview excerpts of Denese as well as her adoptive mother, Linda
Burch, and husband, Blane Becker. Over a slideshow of Denese’s child-
hood photos, Linda recalls the first time she saw her daughter at the
airport in Guatemala: “She was real excited to have a family again. But
many times she would get quiet and she would cry. And so, all I could
do was put my arms around her. That was the only thing I could do”
(00:03:02). Linda’s seemingly innocent reminiscence turns into a facile,
preemptive absolution from her involvement in Denese’s trauma when
Flynn and McConohay follow it up with a scene in which Linda shows
Denese and Blane the photos that she was sent of her daughter-to-be
in Guatemala. Smilingly, Denese proceeds to read the text under one of
the photos, a deceivingly lighthearted description of herself as “sweet,
helpful, and affectionate” but not one to “verbalize [her] feelings easily”
(00:03:45), before being interrupted by the menacing music from the
flashback sequence. Sure enough, Flynn and McConohay bring us back
to Denese’s memories, thus symbolically giving her the opportunity to
finally verbalize her feelings—a need of which her adoptive mother had
seemingly been neglectful.
Adoptive Traumas
In her testimony, which is yet again accompanied by a dramatic reen-
actment, Denese picks up where she left off. About a month after her
father’s death, a group of soldiers appeared in her village. Her mother
quickly strapped Denese’s newborn sister onto her back and told her to
run: “I hid and I watched them round up the women and the children.
They tied their hands behind their backs and they marched them up
this mountain. And then, after a couple of hours, I could hear these
gunshots. Just… lots of gunshots” (00:04:48). Denese’s trembling voice
dies off and the heart-wrenching images that illustrate her words slowly
fade to black (00:05:10). Then, the most unexpected sound appears

out of the blue: children’s laughter (00:05:11). To symbolize the “clean
break” (cf. Duncan, 1993) that Denese’s adoption entailed, Flynn and
McConohay now supplement her talking head interview—the audio of
which they used as a voice-over in the dramatization—with present-day
footage of an all-American school that could not be further removed
from Denese’s past. By using the same interview of Denese throughout
her tale but having it overlap with diametrically opposite B-roll, Flynn
and McConohay visually evoke the absurdity of the paradigm of the free-
standing child—namely, that adoptees should be encouraged to switch
off who they were before their adoption.
Moving on to Denese’s post-adoption story, the documentary makers
recur to a photographic time-lapse to insinuate the deception behind
their protagonist’s seemingly seamless acculturation. On the surface, as
exemplified by her photos, Denese effortlessly reached every milestone
that typifies the American Dream: she finished elementary school, then
high school, fell in love with an all-American man, got married, and
had two sons (00:05:52). In reality, she had been struggling all along.
After attempting to “tell [her] story” and having others dismiss her as
being “crazy” and having a “vivid imagination” (00:05:32), she decided
to “close up” and abstain from saying “anything to anybody, even the
people [she] knew” (00:05:45). Being forced, at the age of 11, to go back
to second grade and interact with children who “called [her] Chink,” she
decided to “[try] really hard to fit in” (00:05:18). From then on, she
organically aligned herself with the story of the freestanding child by
trying very hard to re-embed herself in her new home. For a while, she
thought she had reached that goal in high school, where she began to
“feel like a typical American teenager” (00:06:00).
Her husband, on the other hand, gives us an insight into a different
facet of Denese. To the camera, he discloses that Denese was “very slow
to open up” but that, eventually, he became the first person with whom
she shared “her real name, Dominga” (00:06:20). After their marriage,
when she truly began letting him in, she also started having nightmares
(00:06:38). In reality, as Blane explains, these were repressed memories:
“A lot of these things that she was remembering, she thought that she
had to be making up. They were so terrible that they couldn’t have really
222 A. J. Sanchez
happened” (00:06:39). Finally, Denese reached a breaking point when

her oldest son began asking about her life at his age, forcing her to
realize that she couldn’t tell him that, when she was nine, her parents
were “massacred” (00:07:36). That is when she became determined to
“step on [Guatemalan] land, to complete [her] memories, to make sure
that [she] was not insane” (00:09:08).
Ryan and Weimberg also rely on interviews with Ernesto’s adop-
tive parents to clarify the circumstances that led to his “roots trip”
(cf. Homans, 2006), a common practice in transnational adoption, refer-
ring to the adoptee’s journey to the places where their origin might be
reconstructed. Dividing their film into three chapters, they dedicate the
first to “his mother in prison,” as per the captions (00:03:53). Using a
mixture of old news reports on Dylcia’s sentencing, excerpts of a recent
interview with her in prison, and faded photos of her son prior to his
adoption, Ryan and Weimberg sketch the outline of a figure that turns
out to be just as controversial as enigmatic. We find out that, at the
time of her arrest, Dylcia belonged to the FALN (Fuerzas Armadas de
Liberación Nacional )—a “clandestine organization seeking Puerto Rico’s
independence” whose members were “to the government, […] terrorists
but to others, […] heroes who were willing to give up their lives to see
Puerto Rico free, independent, and sovereign” (00:03:58).
As we learn throughout the documentary, the Spanish-American War
of 1898 led to the US acquisition of—among others—the former
Spanish colonies of Puerto Rico and Cuba, which “did not arise from
any great economic or military necessity” but “from the desires of some
US leaders to win a war, build a larger empire, and prove to the Euro-
pean powers that Americans, too, were one of ‘the great masterful races,’
as Teddy Roosevelt put it” (Smith, 2001, p. 375). After Cuba’s Revo-
lution of 1959, only Puerto Rico remained under US control, which
is why it became a symbol of American supremacy in that geopolit-
ical region. Consequently, in the 70s and 80s, there was a resurgence
of pro-independence political action by resistance groups such as the
FALN, whose “anti-colonial struggle” (cf. LeBrón, 2019) the United
States stifled by sentencing them to an excessive amount of time in
maximum security federal penitentiaries. This being said, throughout the
90s, most Puerto Rican political prisoners—among whom was Dylcia—

received presidential pardons in an effort to appease the tensions between
Puerto Rico and the United States. Nevertheless, President Clinton’s key
advisor on Puerto Rican affairs, Jeffrey Farrow, took advantage of this
temporary meltdown to reiterate their official position: Puerto Rico was
not a nation but a territory of the United States (cf. Duany, 2003).
Because of this legal paradox, the relationship between Puerto Rico
and the United States remains fraught. After more than one hundred
years of US presence on the island and over half a century of being an
American Commonwealth, Puerto Rico is still less developed and poorer
than any state of the Union. Famously described by Congress as “foreign
in a domestic sense” (cf. Burnett et al., 2001), Puerto Rico has never
been represented in Congress and has, consequently, evolved into a state-
less nation that has not assimilated into the US mainstream (cf. Duany,
2003). Despite a number of efforts to relaunch discussions about Puerto
Rico’s status during subsequent presidential administrations, the unof-
ficial 51st state of the United States is still in legal limbo (cf. Fonseca,
2019).
Right at the heart of this ongoing political feud, we find Ryan
and Weimberg’s characters. As it turns out, for having attempted to
liberate her home country from what she perceives as an invasion,
Dylcia was accused of a slew of crimes ranging from “seditious conspir-
acy” and “trying to overthrow the United States government by use of
force” to “stealing cars and making bombs” (00:04:20). Eventually, she
was sentenced to 55 years in prison, along with 11 other “comrades”
(00:02:32), as she refers to them. Leaving out how she managed to hide
her 13-month-old son Guillermo from Child Protective Services, Dylcia
tells the camera that she and her son were separated in the hope that
“someone would arise that would raise him” (00:05:10).
Similar to the way Flynn and McConohay visually alluded to the
abruptness of Dominga’s “clean break” adoption (cf. Duncan, 1993),
Ryan and Weimberg abruptly cut away from Dylcia’s interview—filmed
indoors against a darkened background—to an oxymoronic visual: the
mountainous and sunny outdoors of “Chihuahua, Mexico” (00:06:18).
Gearing up for the second “chapter” of their film, dedicated to “La
Familia Gomez-Gomez” (00:07:40), Ryan and Weimberg give the floor
224 A. J. Sanchez
to Alma and Gabino, the people who became Guillermo’s adoptive

parents. From their account, it becomes clear that the little boy’s “clean
break” with his past had been an unavoidable necessity, meant to protect
him from possible harm. Staying just as tight-lipped as Dylcia about the
details of their son’s adoption, Alma explains that “they” came, one night,
with the request to take care of “a child who needed parents” (00:06:24;
translation in the original). She and her husband allowed the boy to
“join” them because they had “wanted children but were having prob-
lems” (00:06:28; translation in the original). According to Gabino, they
understood that—for some reason—the boy’s identity had to remain “a
secret for many years” (00:09:08; translation in the original). They only
found out much later that their son was “the child of two fighters for
Puerto Rican independence… that his parents were in hiding, wanted
by the US police… and that the US police were looking for the child”
(00:06:36; translation in the original). However, they do testify to a
certain affinity with Dylcia’s left-wing ideals, as demonstrated by their
willingness to “work,” from Mexico, “for the freedom of the Puerto Rican
POWs” (00:09:14; translation in the original). This is further confirmed
by the name that they chose for the baby: Ernesto, in honor of Ernesto
“Che” Guevara, whom “[they’ve] always admired” (00:08:50; translation
in the original).
Here too, like in Discovering Dominga, Ryan and Weimberg perform
a time-lapse by having baby Ernesto’s passport picture fade into present-
day footage of him as a young adult, goofing around in front of the
camera (00:09:30). Like Flynn and McConohay, they use this technique
to imply the absurdity of their protagonist’s adoption story—in this case,
“the story of the rooted child” (cf. Yngvesson, 2003). After a video in
which Ernesto, without much ado, introduces himself as “Guillermo
Sebastian Morales Pagan” (00:09:55) and explains that he came to San
Francisco “to get to know [his] mother better” and “develop a real rela-
tionship between mother and son” (00:10:10), Ryan and Weimberg
splice in shots of him in “McAteer High School” (00:10:25). In those
images, Ernesto appears sullen and unbothered, even during a conver-
sation with a student counselor about “what [he’s] gonna do after high
school” (00:10:36). This high school—sequence eventually culminates in
previously unseen footage of Ernesto’s beach confession. Looking forlorn,

he is pictured stating in a downtrodden manner:
I almost always have to lie because no one believes me… that I’m Puerto
Rican, born in New York, raised in Mexico… now living in the US…
and my mother is in prison, my father is in exile… It’s difficult because
people never believe me. (00:11:14; translation in the original)
In the next “chapter” of their film, titled “Ana Maria” (00:11:44),

Ryan and Weimberg give their protagonist the opportunity to
unpack these words. Contrary to transnational and transracial adoptee
Denese/Dominga, who confessed that her adoption was marred by inci-
dents such as people thinking “[she] was Chinese” (00:05:30), Ernesto
was brought up in an “as if family” (cf. Hearst, 2012): a home in which
he passed for the biological offspring of the adoptive parents as well as
a national of his adoptive country. However, in the United States, he
received a baptism of fire, where he not only had to learn how to be
an adoptee but also a minority. Consequently, like Denese, he prefers to
mitigate people’s reactions to his identity—in his case, by lying about
it. In Mexico, he blended so easily into his adoptive family as well as
country that he never had to question his belonging to either. Now, in
the United States, he is doubly estranged, at a loss about his national as
well as biological ties, and incapable of using his roots trip as a corrective
to his feelings of loss, which is usually the primary goal of such journey
(cf. Hearst, 2012).
On the one hand, having been made aware of the reason why his
birth mother gave him up for adoption, Ernesto is saddled from the
beginning of his trip with the understanding that he is to develop a
sense of belonging to Puerto Rico—not to the United States—while
being in San Francisco. This ambiguity becomes even more obvious
when he is recorded ridiculing the arrival of his US passport, screaming
“Yeah! Arriba Clinton!” while holding up the V-sign (00:38:13) and
sarcastically thanking “the gringos” (00:38:22) before adding—in a more
serious tone—that “he is not proud of [his passport], but proud that
[he] could get it” (00:38:35). On the other hand, as the film advances,
it becomes clear that he is also expected to “develop a real relationship”
226 A. J. Sanchez
(00:10:10) with his imprisoned mother by proxy—via Ana Maria, his ad

hoc guardian in San Francisco.
Having presented herself to the camera as an ally of the Puerto
Rican independentistas and as somebody who is willing to “do what-
ever [she] can do to make the prisoners’ of war life… easier,” such
as relocating from New York City to San Francisco in order to “take
care of [Dylcia’s] son” (00:12:52), Ana Maria then subtly expresses
her doubts about the odd relationship that she is developing with
Ernesto/Guillermo. As her protégé is giving the camera a tour of the
apartment they share, Ana Maria is seen trailing behind, approvingly
watching over him as he shows off a painting of “Puerto Rican hero”
Pedro Albizu Campos (00:13:27) as well as a large Puerto Rican flag
hanging above his bed (00:13:42). However, in an aside, she states:
“I’m always telling Guillermo: ‘You don’t need another mother, you
don’t need another grandmother, maybe you need a friend?’ I’m… I’m
the friend” (00:12:15). Her ambivalent attitude, which wavers between
nurture and friendship, may be ascribed to her instinctive questioning of
the idea of “national substance” (cf. Leinaweaver, 2013) that Ernesto,
in imitation of Dylcia, is attempting to authenticate. Just like some
immigrants, adoptees can conceptualize themselves as being part of and
constantly pulled back to their birth mother/nation1 (cf. Yngvesson,
2003). This is due to their understanding of (national) identity as an
essence that is almost biologically inheritable and intricately bound up
with a wide range of other, often less palpable identity markers, such
as race and culture (cf. De Graeve, 2015). Such a stance invariably posi-
tions immigrants/adoptees in a double bind, eternally oscillating between
complying with the cultural identity that derives from their roots and
refusing to be positioned as an outsider in their new matrix.
To signify the turmoil that comes from approaching adoption as a
veneer covering the adoptee’s “authentic self ” (cf. Yngvesson & Mahoney,
2000), Ryan and Weimberg conclude this third chapter with a haunting
intermezzo, in which their protagonist is filmed overlooking a cemetery
1 In studies on adoption in the West, father figures—be they adoptive or biological—are rarely
mentioned because affective responsibility is still highly gendered (cf. Eng, 2010).
and, later, disappearing and reappearing in different parts of a deserted

house, as he is heard saying:
I was named Ernesto, not Guillermo, but Guillermo is not Ernesto.

Ernesto Gomez is a Mexican teenager, Gabino and Alma’s son. He
died when he was fifteen years old. Ernesto decided to commit suicide
and… Guillermo Sebastián is the reincarnation of Ernesto but, now, with
different parents. He’s very confused now. He would like to be Ernesto
again, but now it’s too late. When Ernesto died, he had the most beau-
tiful family in the world, best parents in the world. And now, Guillermo
was… alone. With a… stranger woman in prison, that the people say
that… she is his… mother. (00:14:08)
From this point onwards, the adoptee’s—and their entourage’s—

growing awareness of how double-edged “return trips” (cf. Yngvesson,
2003) and other efforts at recovering or confronting the past can be will
be routinely highlighted in The Double Life of Ernesto Gomez Gomez .
Disidentification
In Discovering Dominga, the protagonist also comes to the conclusion
that possible moments of clarity during the abovementioned return/roots
trips typically turn out to be no more than blips—moments in a process
of self-constitution that is ongoing, painful, and challenging of the
adoptee’s sense of belonging (cf. Yngvesson, 2003). It could be argued
that, like the protagonist of The Double Life of Ernesto Gomez Gomez ,
Denese approaches her roots trip as a journey toward wholeness (cf.
Lifton, 2008): an attempt to regain immanence. Her expectation echoes
the “myth of return” (cf. Yngvesson, 2003): the promise that one’s true
self can be found by returning to a specific place or point of fusion.
However, once in Guatemala, Denese—like Ernesto—begins doubting
the veracity of this myth.
Dominga’s journey back “home”—as she refers to Guatemala—seems,
initially, to fulfill her desire to be reunited with her origins (00:10:21).
Fresh off the plane, she is whisked away—together with her husband
228 A. J. Sanchez
Blane and cousin Mary—to the small town of Rabinal, where a sea
of people ceremoniously welcomes her back to “the land of her birth”
(00:10:38). Admitting in a voice-over that she had never been “so disori-
ented but yet […] so excited” (00:10:42), Dominga is filmed heading
toward a smaller group of visibly distraught people, introduced to her as
her aunts and uncles by a disembodied, Spanish-speaking voice. At that
moment, she explains, she began “floating” because “joy, sadness… it
was all going through [her], all at the same time” (00:11:32). The inten-
sity of her emotions only increases when, sometime later, she is brought
to the memorial site of the massacre in which her mother perished,
along with many others. This happening causes a particularly disturbing
memory to “come rushing back” (00:13:06): her flight from the village
with her newborn sister, her aimless wandering, her starvation, and her
sister’s death (00:13:07–00:14:30). Flynn and McConohay follow this
dramatized flashback scene up with archival footage of Guatemala’s civil
war (1960–1996), which they accompany with captions explaining that,
when Denese was orphaned in 1981–1982, “Guatemala’s military regime
launched an all-out war against leftist rebels” during which “the army
systematically massacred tens of thousands of unarmed civilians, most of
them Maya Indians,” such as Dominga’s parents (00:14:45).
After a fade-to-black, Flynn and McConohay transition into the next
scene: a visit that Denese pays to her closest living relatives. Interestingly,
Denese’s voice-over narration clashes with the seemingly joyous inter-
actions caught on camera: “I have forgotten my language. I wish one
day I would wake up and remember all the Q’eqchi’ and totally surprise
my relatives here” (00:16:31). From the images that follow, it becomes
obvious that Denese’s family is communicating with her in Spanish
rather than Q’eqchi’ and this via her adoptive cousin Mary, who—as we
were told earlier—played a major role in locating Denese’s birth family
and followed her to Guatemala to serve “as an interpreter and as her
cousin and… as a friend” (00:09:05). This distance between Denese and
her kin is exacerbated in the next scene, in which Denese meets Father
Roberto Avalos, the Spanish community priest of, formerly, her parents’
Rio Negro settlement and, currently, the Rabinal resettlement. It is he,
and not her family, who turns out to hold the key to the mystery of her
parents’ murder. Paging through a photo album of Rio Negro villagers,
he informs Denese—through Mary—of the very simple reason why her

parents were slaughtered. The Rio Negro was targeted by the military
because its community “resisted” the Guatemalan government’s plans to
resettle them to Rabinal in order to build a dam on their land (00:19:53).
Now aware that the government succeeded in flooding Rio Negro and
that her parental home is no more, Denese is filmed wandering around
Rabinal and remembering her early childhood, trying to come to terms
with the notion that a “true” return to her origins will be impossible
(00:20:44–00:00:22:31).
Despite her efforts to try “thinking about Rio Negro before this all
happened” (00:21:16) and become “a normal Q’eqchi’, Mayan woman”
(00:22:15), Denese does not manage to come into being at the end of her
roots trip after all. Her identitarian dénouement remains forever delayed
precisely because of the complex circumstances that led to her adop-
tion—the embodiments of which are the people who, in their attempts
to help her, only alienate her further from her own history. Among
these people are Father Roberto—a mirage of the Spanish conquistadores
whose hubris lies at the source of the marginalization of indigenes—
and cousin Mary—a national of a country whose imperial ambitions
first contributed to the Guatemalan conflict (cf. Hochmüller & Müller,
2016) and were then reinvented as liberal benevolence (cf. Eng, 2010)
toward the resulting wave of adoptable war babies (cf. Mookherjee, 2007;
Posocco, 2011). Hence, unable to reconnect physically with her home
and linguistically with her relatives, Denese concludes her journey by
delivering a speech—with Mary’s help—at the dedication of the Rabinal
Survivors’ Community Museum, during which she expresses her wish for
“a lot of answers to as to what happened” (00:24:28).
Cutting to Algona, Iowa, “four months later” (00:24:00), Flynn and
McConohay now switch focus by allowing Blane to elaborate on a state-
ment that he made earlier about how Denese’s voyage to Guatemala
“opened up a whole can of worms” (00:18:03). Picking up on his wife’s
budding “disidentification” (cf. Kim, 2003) with the official narrative of
her adoption, he admits:
230 A. J. Sanchez
I’ve never seen myself as a political activist. I mean, I… I was pretty

happy with the status quo, you know, but… Denese is constantly asking
me questions. About the government as it was and as… about the govern-
ment now, in Guatemala, and so… I’m trying to figure these things out.
(00:24:59)
To illustrate his words, Flynn and McConohay overlap Blane’s voice-

over with B-roll of how he is trying to incorporate his wife’s quest for
answers into his everyday life. First, we are shown footage in which
he appears to be a carefree employee, husband, and father (00:24:47–
00:25:20). Then, these peaceful images are replaced by uncanny stills and
videos of Guatemala’s civil war in tandem with images of Blane looking
sternly at a computer screen in search of “information about how […]
the CIA had basically overthrown the [Guatemalan] government that
was in power” (00:25:20).
Interestingly, Denese abstains from direct commentary in this part
of the documentary—even in the next scene, set in the “First Baptist
Church” (00:26:16). Wearing a traditional Q’eqchi’ attire, she is shown
serving food at the church’s potluck and giving a testimony to the
churchgoers about the horrors that led to her adoption. Yet it is Blane
who provides the voice-over in this sequence, containing commentary
which is just as moralizing as the speech he is filmed giving in church:
[Blane’s speech in church] Just… a little bit of history. And I guess

this whole story goes to the power of the United States… uhm… good
and bad. [Blane’s voice-over] I don’t know if people here will ever fully
understand what happened. I still find it hard to believe what happened.
(00:26:55)
Depicted standing quietly next to Blane, Denese seems to remain a

passive bystander while her husband is actively denouncing the involve-
ment of the United States in the genocide that led to his wife’s adoption.
However, when a member of the church intervenes to ask for more “edu-
cation like this” and share his astonishment at the idea that “something
like this [happened] in North Iowa” (00:27:10), it becomes clear that
Denese’s audience has caught on to her distancing from the story of
the freestanding child. With her Q’eqchi’ clothing, she is denouncing
the fact that her new matrix made her adoption look like a merciful
act when it was partly responsible for the tragedy that led to it. In that
moment, we are made privy to the way Denese is slowly transforming
her previously private struggle into a societal debate. Hence, what may
come across as passivity is in fact an incipient act of rebellion against “the
racialization of intimacy” (cf. Eng, 2010) that had been imposed on her:
the displacement to the intimate sphere of all public discussions about
delicate subjects such as race, sex, or class.
This being said, it is only when Denese returns to Guatemala for the
second time that the tone and pace of Discovering Dominga truly begins
shifting. Filmed traveling in a speedboat across the lake that formed as a
consequence of the flooding of Rio Negro, Denese displays a combative
attitude in the voice-over that accompanies these images: “This time,
I think I’m here as an adult. Last time, I was just a lost child. After
18 years, I’m really ready… to… go back” (00:27:55–00:28:05). Coming
into her own as an active agent of change (cf. Lee, 2003), Denese
consciously begins to engage in a variety of cultural socialization strate-
gies to manage the complexities of her transracial adoption. For example,
she is pictured participating in a traditional Maya commemoration ritual
(00:29:20), talking to a direct eyewitness of the massacre in which her
mother perished (00:31:55), starting legal proceedings to demand the
exhumation of the mass grave in which her father was buried (00:36:30),
and testifying in a genocide case filed against the generals who led the
massacre (00:37:14).
A similar shift in tone and pace also occurs in The Double Life of
Ernesto Gomez Gomez , when Ernesto begins to test the waters of polit-
ical activism. Right after confessing that he was unsure how to develop
a relationship with “a… stranger woman in prison, that the people say
that… she is his… mother” (00:16:00), he is filmed silently marching
through the streets of an unnamed city while holding up a Puerto
Rican flag inscribed with the words “LIBERTAD PARA LOS PRESOS
POLITICOS PUERTORRIQUEÑOS”2 (00:16:14). The footage of this
march becomes B-roll when Ryan and Weimberg switch to an excerpt of
2 “FREEDOM FOR PUERTO RICAN POLITICAL PRISONERS” (00:16:14; my transla-

tion).
232 A. J. Sanchez
Dylcia’s interview—filmed in prison—in which she explains what she

hopes for her son:
I want Guillermo to know that Puerto Rico is a… paradise invaded. I

want him to understand… that… we believe in the self-sovereignty of
our country. And… when you believe in something, then you have to be
prepared to defend that. I’ve been incarcerated now for… April 4th … it
will be 16 years. (00:16:20)
Most importantly, as the B-roll changes from the march to a quote

by Pedro Albizu Campos (“The homeland is honor and sacrifice”) that
appears over the image of a Puerto Rican flag waving behind barbed wires
(00:17:14), Ryan and Weimberg splice in another tell-tale fragment of
that interview. As it turns out, Dylcia’s insistence on her son’s under-
standing of the US-Puerto Rico relationship is not entirely idealistic. She
wants him to comprehend that this issue transcended and engulfed her
and, eventually, forced her to give him up: “I didn’t abandon him. Sepa-
ration wasn’t something that I wanted. It’s not abandonment as we know
it. It is… I think it’s… it’s part and parcel of a political… history of…
of… of struggle” (00:17:15).
Interestingly, Ryan and Weimberg follow this heartfelt testimonial
up with a lengthy sequence on the Puerto Rican independence move-
ment, which they piece together by means of archival footage, theatrical
narration, newspaper clippings, newsflashes, and even graphs (00:17:35–
00:27:05). By juxtaposing Puerto Rico’s history with testimonials by
Alma, Gabino, and Ernesto in which they discuss the very real impact
that these intangible textbook facts have had on their lives (00:27:05–
00:38:36), the documentary makers seem to point out how fundamen-
tally different the vantage points are of the parties involved in Ernesto’s
adoption. Thus, the issue underlying Ryan and Weimberg’s documen-
tary appears to be the same adoption paradox that plagues Discovering
Dominga. Whereas Denese/Dominga—who was brought up with the
story of the freestanding child—seems to struggle with how her adop-
tive, supposedly color-blind environment treated her adoption as a form
of “passing” (cf. Eng, 2010), Ernesto/Guillermo—whose life reflects the
story of the rooted child—seems to grapple with his birth mother’s
dismissal of the consequences of adoption on his identity (cf. Yngvesson,

2003). Ultimately, what both stories of adoption come down to is the
same Western myth about identity as a matter of exclusive belonging,
which involves the same denial of adoptees as involuntary immigrants
performing ideological labor (cf. Eng, 2010). As it turns out, both stories
result in the same contradiction: the refusal, either by the adoptive or the
birth environments, to fully acknowledge an adoption that undeniably
took place, simply in order to claim the child’s exclusive belonging to
themselves.
Consequently, prompted by this myth, both adoptees initially seem
to take an assimilationist approach to their roots trip—a perspective
that equates functional fitness in society with complete assimilation (cf.
Kim, 2000). Long considered to be the ultimate goal of immigrants,
complete assimilation suggests that newcomers are to acculturate by
means of a deculturation process whereby they unlearn their nonassim-
ilated minority identities for the sake of adopting the dominant culture
(cf. Croucher & Kramer, 2017). As The Double Life of Ernesto Gomez
Gomez and Discovering Dominga demonstrate, this is also the unrealistic
expectation directed at international adoptees vis-à-vis both their birth
and adoptive parents/countries.
To prove that adoption is an imperfect model for migrant integration
(cf. Leinaweaver, 2013), the documentaries display how, in their quest
for assimilation, their protagonists confront the same feelings of melan-
cholia and loss as immigrants, who are forced to assimilate. However,
immigrant parents and their children often manage to depathologize
these feelings by working through them as intergenerational and inter-
subjective conflicts. Adoptees, on the other hand, are forced to deal with
these issues in social and psychic isolation, which turns their mourning
into a profoundly unconscious and intrasubjective affair (Eng, 2010).
Hence, when our protagonist—adoptees’ support systems fail to offer
them an intersubjective negotiation of loss and, unwillingly, patholo-
gize rather than depathologize their feelings, both Denese and Ernesto
reach a breaking point. They mark that moment by ostentatiously step-
ping away from those who, despite their best efforts, emphasize their
in-betweennesses: Blane and Dylcia—two people who, in their inability
234 A. J. Sanchez
to identify (with) the adoptees’ grief, only end up redoubling their

melancholia.
Negotiation of Loss
With the arrival of his US passport, to which Ana Maria refers as “a
one-way ticket” that sets his birth name in stone (00:39:00), it dawns
on Ernesto that “Guillermo cannot be Ernesto anymore” (00:39:29).
Surprisingly, Ryan and Weimberg then cut to a Cinco de Mayo—
parade, complete with camply decorated floats, mariachi bands, and
folkloric dancers, which they use as B-roll for another significant on-
camera confession of Ernesto: “[…] today I realized that my family is
in Mexico… I miss them more than I knew” (00:40:20; translation in
the original). After a succession of images that underscore the increasing
discrepancy between imprisoned Dylcia and her waiting son, Ryan and
Weimberg circle back to Dylcia’s interview. Here, she reveals that her son
“broke [her] heart” because he ended up deciding that he “didn’t want to
stay” (00:49:13).
Similarly, Blane seems to be caught off guard by Denese’s wish to sepa-
rate from him. He obliquely alludes to their separation in a voice-over
that Flynn and McConohay accompany with footage of the couple in
Guatemala, presumably when they were still together:
I think Denese is… not sure where she belongs. She desperately wants a
home and… she still doesn’t have that. Even though she found where she
came from, I don’t think she felt comfortable being married to a typical,
white American. I didn’t fit in and she desperately wanted to fit in. I don’t
know what the resolution will be. (00:38:39)
Flynn and McConohay hint at that resolution with the next set of
images, in which Denese is seen attending a family reunion in Algona,
without Blane. To her cousin Mary, Denese confesses: “I feel like I’m
falling apart slowly. And every time I go back, I just want to stay. But
yet I’m torn because my family is here. And I want… I wanna raise my
kids here. […] It’s like I want the answers right now and I can’t have
it” (00:39:55). Denese and Ernesto’s physical separation from, respec-

tively, Blane and Dylcia mimics their mental disidentification with the
stories of the freestanding and the rooted child with which they are
invariably entangled. Having disproven, through their own experience,
the desirability of complete assimilation, both adoptees are now intent
on doing away with their intrasubjective mourning and transforming
it into intersubjective negotiation (cf. Eng, 2010) by creating sites of
collective articulation (cf. Kim, 2003). In doing so, they are also striving
to achieve a certain level of “cultural fusion” (cf. Croucher & Kramer,
2017) between their adoptive and birth identities.
In Discovering Dominga, after succeeding in having her father’s
bones exhumed during another trip to Guatemala (00:40:25–00:51:35),
Denese acknowledges that “what [she has] started here, it’s going to
be a lifetime… work” (00:52:52). Right before the closing titles begin
rolling, she adds: “I have not come to terms with the American Denese
and the Guatemalan Dominga. I don’t have an answer for that. I just
know that I want to be a part of both countries. I need Guatemala
to survive” (00:55:13). Similarly, in The Double Life of Ernesto Gomez
Gomez , we discover that—just like Dominga/Denese, who turned her
“quest for justice” (00:55:52) in Guatemala into a site of collective articu-
lation—Ernesto/Guillermo kept “[returning] regularly to visit his mother
in prison” and became “active in the international, grassroots campaign
to free all the Puerto Rican Political Prisoners” (00:51:02). Ending on
a seemingly more positive note than Discovering Dominga, Ryan and
Weimberg caption Dylcia’s eventual presidential pardon, release, and
reunion with Ernesto with the words “We began making this program
when Ernesto asked ‘Could we make a video that would help free my
mom?’ This happy ending was our hope, our goal, and our dream come
true” (00:52:30). However, their final images of Ernesto give mixed
signals. He is not heard in any of those final shots, drowned out by
Dylcia’s exclamations, and the cries of the crowd that cheers her on
(00:51:36–00:53:00). Dutifully walking next to his mother, encouraging
her to march on, his face is overwrought with an emotion that is neither
sadness nor joy. As the camera zooms in on Ernesto before freezing on
his profile, we are left to wonder what this young man must be going
through (00:52:53).
236 A. J. Sanchez
Ryan and Weimberg’s final frame is significant, however, because it

freezes a moment in time, which clashes with the seemingly never-
ending tale, full of twists and turns, that we have just come to witness.
Flynn and McConohay, on the other hand, choose to end their film
with images featuring the hustle and bustle of Mayas who are relent-
lessly burying their dead, carrying coffins, digging graves, placing flowers,
and praying (00:55:40). Both sets of documentary makers allude, albeit
in opposite ways, to how their film is the only true transitional third
space (cf. Eng, 2010) for their protagonists’ plight—not one of obsta-
cles and fixity, but one of psychic movement and possibility. The task
of reality-acceptance of their protagonists may never be complete, but in
their film—arguably one of “those privileged zones of transitional space
whereby the recurring burdens of reality are negotiated,” such as “play,
artistic creativity, religious feeling, and dreaming” (Winnicott as cited
in Eng, 2010, p. 159)—they are provided with an interstitial plane of
experience that sets them free from the strain of relating inner to outer
reality.
By relieving Denese and Ernesto from their otherwise relentless
burden of reality-acceptance for the duration of their films, documen-
tary makers Flynn and McConohay and Ryan and Weimberg implicitly
nudge their protagonists toward a new milestone in their process of
transnational belonging: one of visibility and, therefore, validation in
their own eyes as well as in the eyes of their sending and receiving
matrices. Hence, both sets of documentary makers hint at the antici-
pated ripple effect of their films on the Puerto Rican and Guatemalan
communities, their diverse diasporas, and whoever feels addressed by
the universal story of self-discovery and self-affirmation that they just
brought to life. Ryan and Weimberg dedicate their film to “all those who
seek an end to injustice” (00:53:06) before giving their protagonist extra
agency by mentioning “Guillermo Morales Pagán” as their fellow film-
maker in the final credits (00:53:10). Flynn and McConohay, on the
other hand, use their closing credits to inform us that, despite many
obstacles, Denese did eventually bury her father next to her mother,
turning her own “quest for justice” into that of all “Maya people”
(00:57:13).
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12
Celebrities
In Corpus: A Home Movie for Selena (Portillo, 1999) and Carmen

Miranda: Bananas Is My Business (Solberg, 1995), stardom and fandom
are central themes. Documentary maker Lourdes Portillo explores the
ongoing debate surrounding late Selena Quintanilla, a 23-year-old
Tejano singer who, at the height of her fame, was shot and killed by
the president of her fan club. Documentary maker Helena Solberg,
on the other hand, illustrates the impact that late recording artist and
movie star Carmen Miranda has had on her transnational audience—
including Brazilians like Solberg. Both documentary makers collapse the
boundaries between death life and death as they give shape to their
“thanatological imagination” (cf. Penfold-Mounce, 2019) of who Selena
and Carmen were. By homing in on second-hand, posthumous accounts
of these Latinx performers’ lives, Portillo and Solberg seem to suggest
that their untimely deaths mythologized their personas and catapulted
them to their current legendary status.

Switzerland AG 2022
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-06539-2_12
240 A. J. Sanchez
Carmen’s Strategic Exoticism and Ascribed

Celebrity
Previously described as a “mockumentary” (McDonald, 2015) and a “fic-
tional documentary” on Carmen Miranda’s life (Rohter, 2001), Carmen
Miranda: Bananas Is My Business is undoubtedly an unorthodox docu-
mentary, largely on account of its cynical nature. Helena Solberg’s
film combines documentation, dramatization, and derision by layering
Carmen Miranda’s films, photos, and songs with talking head inter-
views of her friends, fans, and family as well as enactments of—among
others—the star’s life before her breakthrough (00:12:41–00:19:36), her
arrival in New York in 1939 (00:29:11–00:32:23), and the broadcasts of
fictional “radio commentator” Louella Hopper1 (00:33:06; 01:08:33).
The common thread running through this audiovisual collage is docu-
mentary maker Helena Solberg herself; in her voice-overs, she positions
herself as a spokesperson for the Brazilian people who witnessed Carmen
Miranda’s stellar career. Hence, rather than mocking the documentary
form itself, Solberg seems to mock the matrix that precipitated Carmen’s
rise and fall while profiting from her legacy. What fuels Solberg’s cyni-
cism is her—implied but unacknowledged—awareness of the hypocrisy
underlying her own work, which also profits from Carmen’s tragic
story, as exemplified by the song with which she opens the documen-
tary. The Soul of Carmen Miranda by John Cale (1989) decries the
irony behind Carmen’s career and, thus, foreshadows the documentary’s
sardonic treatment of her life and death:
Since the soul of Carmen Miranda had captured the mind of man /
Dismissed with her generation for the price of a can-can / Consigned
to the sideshows of history, with the patronized orphans of film / She
seeded the bait and offered the faint hope of chance to innocent men /
In love with the trance of her dances / And abandoned by them / And
abandoned by them. (00:00:49)
1This is presumably a portmanteau reference to Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper, two gossip
columnists of Hollywood’s Golden Age who were known for their rivalry.
Overriding Cale’s dreamy ballad are flashes of images that will be

repeated at the end of the film, predicting the star’s tragic end: a fictional
Carmen collapsing in a dark bedroom, the blue skies and palm-lined
avenues of Los Angeles, the Hollywood sign, Carmen’s star on the Holly-
wood Walk of Fame, newspaper headlines announcing her death, and so
on (00:00:01–00:01:23). The sequence then slowly fades, aurally, into
Solberg’s first voice-over of her reminiscences of Carmen and, visually,
into black-and-white footage of Carmen Miranda’s coffin being carried
by a sea of people through the streets of Rio de Janeiro. Yet, despite
this seeming mass of Brazilian Carmen Miranda fans, we find out from
Solberg’s voice-over that the star’s “relationship with [the] Brazilians” was
“complicated” (00:02:32). As it turns out, when Miranda left for the
United States in 1939, some Brazilians began resenting her for “leaving
them with all her fruits on her head” while others started spreading
rumors that “she was a tool for US imperialism” (00:02:30) who will-
ingly glorified the supposed North American superiority by ridiculing
her “South American Way”—as one of her songs is titled.
Rather than confirming or disavowing these notions, Solberg
empowers Carmen by reminding us that in the United States—the
haven of capitalism—Carmen had no other choice but to sell her
Brazilian persona and rebrand herself as a savvy businesswoman. In
fact, Carmen openly talked about her business acumen in interviews
(01:04:49; 01:10:50) and in songs, such as I Make My Money with
Bananas (01:05:00–01:05:50), which Solberg references in the title of
her documentary. Although not explicated in Solberg’s film, Carmen did
indeed play a major role in turning bananas—previously thought of as
weird and tropical—into a major consumable fruit in the United States
(cf. McDonald, 2015). In the Americas, the banana had long been associ-
ated with slavery because slave traders had been using this cheap African
food to feed their chattel. It was only in the nineteenth century that the
banana would be reinvented as an exotic delicacy that was suited for the
palates of the wealthy (cf. Enloe, 2000). When popular Carmen made
banana-filled fruit baskets a commonality, the United Fruit Company
jumped on the occasion and rode on Carmen’s wave by creating a bright
logo in her honor: the Chiquita Banana.
242 A. J. Sanchez
Contrary to Carmen, Solberg does explicitly draw attention to the

star’s indebtedness to Brazil’s African heritage. By contrasting footage
“shot by an uncle of [Solberg’s] in the late twenties in Brazil” of “a day at
the races” with historical photos of Afro-Brazilian women selling fruit in
the Baiana attire that would become Carmen’s trademark, Solberg posits
that “the Miranda family’s world” was closer to the latter than the former
(00:11:03). As opposed to the upper classes who “modeled [themselves]
mostly on Europe, where they also shopped for their clothes and gath-
ered most of their opinions” (00:11:09), Carmen’s modest upbringing
exposed her to “the samba that was […] coming down from the slums to
invade Rio” (00:11:20), organically allowing her to develop an affinity
with Brazil’s African ancestry. This willingness, as a white woman, to
explore black culture made her rapidly into “an emblem of Brazil”
(00:22:11).
Yet, Solberg does not condone Carmen’s whitewashing of Afro-
Brazilian music (cf. Vargas, 2016). Over black-and-white footage of
elated crowds brandishing the Brazilian flag, Solberg explains that
Carmen became a favorite of President Vargas because both the political
agenda of the “controversial populist leader” and “so many of Carmen’s
songs” were premised on a “nationalist vision” of Brazil (00:22:25).
Rather than explicitly stating what this vision entailed, Solberg relies on
her editing to imply that both the president and the songstress aimed
for a whitened representation of exotic blackness (cf. Schramm, 2012).
She then follows her revelation of Carmen’s then-novel appropriation of
blackness up with the story of how the songstress was discovered by
Lee Shubert, “a very powerful Broadway impresario” (00:26:20). Over
Carmen Miranda’s rendition of the Afro-Brazilian samba O que é que a
baiana tem, Solberg uses stills to visualize what the “sharp-eyed Ameri-
can” must have seen when he laid eyes on Carmen performing in Rio,
dressed like a Baiana—“an image pregnant with promise” that would be
a “special attraction for his new Broadway show” (00:26:26–00:27:16).
Prior to her narration of this event, Solberg included an interview with
Sylvan Silva, one of Carmen’s Afro-Brazilian songwriters, in which he
seemed so focused on the honor of having been the recipient of the
songstress’s attention that he appeared oblivious to her usurpation of
his music (00:21:10). After Solberg’s divulgation of Carmen’s encounter
with Shubert, Silva’s intervention changes into a prediction of events

to come. As we are yet to discover, Carmen will suffer the same fate
in the United States that she had imposed on Afro-Brazilian musi-
cians like Silva. Blinded by the honor bestowed on her by Shubert
for inviting her to perform on Broadway, and by Vargas for suggesting
that her “trip to the United States could be a Public Relations scoop
that would promote Brazil’s image and music in the world” (00:28:00),
Carmen began fancying herself as a “goodwill ambassador” whose Amer-
ican crossover was “almost […] a mission” (00:28:16). Hence, when she
landed in New York, she failed to recognize the inherently degrading
nature of the “Miranda fever” that was “sweeping the nation” (00:33:00).
Via a kaleidoscope of audiovisual flashes of Carmen Miranda’s debut
in the US media, Solberg reconstructs the first impression that Carmen
left on the North American public. Trying to ignore the patronizing and
implicitly sexual questions of the reporters, Carmen “[threw] around a
few words [she’d] learned,” only to end up sounding like a “bimbo”
(00:30:18)—an image that would stick with her until the very end.
However, like Sylvan Silva who had been either unaware or avoidant of
the ulterior motives behind Carmen’s interest in him (00:21:10), Carmen
also appeared to have been so flattered by the media frenzy that she did
not read much into it. Thanks to a voice-over actress, Solberg brings a
letter to our attention that Carmen wrote to a Brazilian friend, in which
the star’s naivety is palpable:
My dearest […], here is a little note to let you know that, according to
the newspapers, I’m the biggest hit on Broadway. My opening was really
indescribable. They don’t understand the slightest thing I sing, but they
say that I’m the most sensational foreign performer to ever appear here.
(00:30:40; dubbed translation in the original)
Coinciding with footage of Carmen’s high-energy performance of

Tico-tico no fubá, a fast-paced song replete with humorous tongue-
twisters, the letter gives evidence of how unsuspecting the star had been
of what truly drove her transatlantic success. Rather than her artistry,
it was her caricaturesque portrayal of Latinidad that was applauded
244 A. J. Sanchez
because it did not challenge the status quo of the US, neither in terms of
its hegemonic whiteness nor its national identity (cf. Schramm, 2012).
Carmen would only realize her equivocation after her return to Brazil,
18 months later. Having shown us a series of clips of Carmen’s on-
screen incarnation in the United States of characters who were somewhat
Brazilian, sometimes Argentinian, but South American through and
through, Solberg has us travel back to Rio with Carmen. Mixing stills of
people attending Carmen’s post-US debut, talking head interviews with
her Brazilian contemporaries, and a dramatized re-enactment of Carmen
performing in a deserted music hall, Solberg makes it clear that Carmen
was not welcome in her homeland anymore. As journalist Caribé da
Rocha explains in an interview:
Naturally, like good Brazilians, we didn’t believe in her success despite all
the reports that she was an amazing hit. No one accepted it because in
those days in Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil, samba was “negro music” from
the slums. […] The papers attacked her […] saying she was no longer
our Carmen Miranda… She was Americanised. (00:36:27; translation in
the original)
Once more, rather than confirming or disavowing such claims, Solberg

empowers Carmen by sharing the anthem that Carmen recorded for her
Brazilian listeners in response to their rejection. While an impersonator
is filmed mouthing the lyrics that the real Carmen is heard singing some-
where in the background, Solberg gives us a poetic English translation of
the song’s message before allowing a Carmen impersonator to continue:
[Solberg] They say I came back Americanised, full of money, riches, hell.
And they say I can’t stand to hear tambourine and the cuíca just makes me
yell. They say, now, I am to worry about my hands. There is a rumor that
I would like to take up chess. They say I’ve lost my spice, my rhythm, my
tone. And all the bangles that I used to wear. [Carmen Miranda imper-
sonator] Why so much bitterness? / How could I ever be Americanised?
/ I was born with the samba / I spend the nights singing the old songs
/ I hang out with the hustlers / I say “Eu te amo.” / Never “I love you”
/ For so long there’s a Brazil… / …my heart is with my homeland still.
Implacable after the Brazilians’ disregard for her talent, the songstress
was quick to accept a new contract with 20th Century Fox. Via a succes-
sion of interviews of Carmen’s Hollywood entourage, photo and video
images of the star’s box office hits, and footage of Carmen’s unveiling
of her own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Solberg implies that
Carmen’s second crossover to the United States started off as a monu-
mental success (00:41:49–00:48:56). Additionally, this time around, she
was not hailed as a bimbo anymore, but as the face of the Good Neighbor
Policy.
To introduce this new plot element, Solberg displays the headlines
of a couple of newspapers that seem to allude to how Carmen mone-
tized her marginal status, such as “Carmen Miranda Attractive Product
Of Good Neighbor Policy” (00:50:44) or “Carmen Miranda Is Good
Neighbor Policy in Person” (00:50:45). Solberg’s choice of paratextual
material is not random, as it relates to the idea of “postcolonial exoti-
cism” (cf. Huggan, 1994): a condition shared by those at the periphery
of world capitalism who, like Miranda, build their careers on the trade of
their cultural difference. To stress how vast the unfamiliar metropolitan
audience was that succumbed to Carmen’s exotic appeal, Solberg has
a Carmen impersonator climb in an open-cockpit plane and fly over
London to symbolize how the star began to ‘fly high’ when she was
“drafted into service on behalf of the Allied Forces” to “[bring] joy to
one more continent” and “[win] the hearts of more and more devoted
followers” (00:52:04).
By comparing the star to one of the “raw materials” (00:54:03) that
the Allies needed from the South to stay afloat during the war, Solberg
suggests that Miranda was the first Latinx artist to reinvent herself as a
synecdoche of Latin America and, as such, make room for the—as-yet-
inexistent—Latinx community in the Western common unconscious.
Additionally, Carmen was among the first public figures to synonymize
Brazil with Latin America—a claim that remains contentious (cf.
Marrow, 2003). Her Hollywood version of Latin America may have
contained “a lot of mistakes” but, as former Brazilian cultural attaché
Raul Smandek explains in a voice-over coinciding with B-roll of
Miranda’s Aquarela do Brasil , her portrayal was never meant to be real-
istic: it was just another “part of the war effort” (00:54:06). Solberg seems
246 A. J. Sanchez
to toy here with the idea that Miranda’s fame was ascribed rather than
attributed or achieved (cf. Rojek, 2004). Outside of Latin America, she
was famous because of her biological descent—her Latinidad .
However, the ambiguities surrounding Carmen’s fame go beyond the
North–South binary. Delving into the star’s transatlantic routes/roots,
Solberg tells us of a bizarre dream that she had. She illustrates it with
fictional footage of Carmen’s effigy escaping from a museum “where
they had made her a prisoner” to return to Portugal, “where she was
born” (00:04:40–00:08:30). She intersperses this fantasy scene with the
interview of Carmen’s Portuguese cousin, who confirms that Carmen was
born in Portugal2 and sailed off to Brazil as a toddler (00:07:50).
Symbolically placing Carmen at the heart of the transatlantic triangle,
Solberg uses evocative B-roll of a Portuguese dock, the open sea, and
Brazil’s Guanabara Bay to visualize what Carmen must have seen from
the ship that brought her to Brazil, as she muses: “A woman carrying
fruits in her arms and with a turban on her head was one of the
first images of America to spring from the European imagination.
Maybe it was predestined that she would surface again, one day in
our lives” (00:08:42). Without missing a beat, Solberg quickly shatters
any straightforward identifications of Carmen with the first European
colonizers with the help of a retro clip of the MGM show Fitzpatrick’s
Traveltalks on “The Splendorous City” of Rio de Janeiro (00:08:59). This
clip foreshadows how Portuguese-Brazilian Carmen would be colonized
herself by her US audience:
Over 400 years ago, the adventurous Portuguese explorers who discovered
and claimed Brazil for the crown of Portugal sailed into this picturesque
harbor and called it Rio de Janeiro. We wonder at the white men who
first saw it and could have dreamed that it was destined to become the
mighty sentinel of an enchanted metropolis. (00:08:59)
To make her point clear, Solberg addresses the audience with the
following tongue-in-cheek commentary, as she purposefully drowns out
Fitzpatrick and the nondescript tune accompanying his clip:
2 In fact, Carmen Miranda never even became a Brazilian citizen.

A splendorous city indeed. My city and Carmen’s city, of course. Do I

have to tell you that the music playing in the background has nothing
to do with us? I always wonder what gets lost when you’re seen through
the eyes of a foreigner. Would that have anything to do with what would
happen to Carmen? (00:09:18)
When defining Miranda within the context of the United States,

Solberg’s vision of the star is closer to that of a Brazilian immigrant than
a transnational superstar. A trailblazer, Carmen made space in the US
imaginary for her fellow Latinx coethnics—concepts that were yet to be
invented (cf. Balieiro, 2017).
In this sense, Helena Solberg’s documentary runs parallel to Lourdes
Portillo’s. Both films explore the ways in which their protagonists’ line of
biological descent triggered an automatic respect and veneration of their
persona (cf. Rojek, 2004). One crucial difference separates the singers,
however. Contrary to Carmen, whose marketing was aimed at main-
stream audiences, Selena catered to the margins of US society (cf. Abreu,
2007).
Selena’s Decolonial Imaginary and Attributed

Celebrity
Whereas Solberg began her circular documentary by stressing Carmen
Miranda’s complicated relationship with the United States and Brazil,
Portillo dives right into her protagonist’s perceived relatability by in-
group as well as out-group members of the Mexican–American commu-
nity. Portillo starts with a simple question, which she directs at Renée
Tajima-Peña3 :
[Portillo] Have you ever heard of Selena?

[Tajima-Peña] Selena? Oh yeah, absolutely. I saw her perform… What?
Back in ’93 in San Antonio at the fairgrounds. She was great. (00:03:47)
3Renée Tajima-Peña’s documentary Who Killed Vincent Chin? was nominated for an Academy
Award in 1989 and aired on POV the same year. In 2008, Calavera Highway—Tajima-
Peña’s documentary about her Mexican–American husband—also aired on POV.
248 A. J. Sanchez
To initiates of the world of independent documentary making,

Japanese-American documentary maker Tajima-Peña is a household
name. That being said, name-dropping does not seem to be Portillo’s
primary objective: the documentary maker is more interested in Renée’s
ethnicity and how it reflects on her opinion of Selena.
In fact, when Portillo is heard asking about the Tejano singer, the
camera is not focused on her interviewee but rather on a graffiti painting
of a samurai. Only when Renée replies does the camera’s gaze slide from
the samurai’s face to Renée’s, thus revealing that the graffiti is actually a
house-sized mural against which Renée is leaning. This visual pairing of
two Asian icons—one pictorial, one human—could have been brushed
aside as coincidental or insignificant had it not been for the scene with
which Portillo follows it up. In the blink of an eye, Renée’s face is
replaced by another, with similar black hair and red lips. Immediately, the
new visage—more heavily made-up than Renée’s, brandishing a formal
updo and glittering earrings—begins to sing:
No me queda más / Que aguantar bien mi derrota / Y brindarte felicidad

/ No me queda más / Si tu regreso hoy sería / Una imposibilidad / Y esto
que no era amor / Lo que hoy niegas / Lo que dices / Que nunca pasó /
Es el más dulce recuerdo / De mi vida.4 (00:03:58)
Halfway through this seemingly scripted a capella performance, the

camera zooms out to reveal that the woman, introduced by the captions
as “Selena Quintanilla 1971–1995” (00:04:22), was probably caught off
guard; she is pictured holding a Styrofoam cup in her hand while her
musicians are shown sitting idly in the back, barely aware of the camera.
In these first few minutes lies the entire premise of Corpus: A Home
Movie for Selena. Via Renée, Portillo foreshadows that ethnicity and
representations thereof will be of major importance in her film. From the
unscripted scene of Selena and her band, we can gather that the totality
of the singer’s life will be scrutinized—her performances as well as what
4 I have no other choice / But to graciously accept my defeat / And to toast to your happiness
/ I have no other choice / Since your return today would be / An impossibility / And what was
not love / What you deny / What you say / Never happened / That is the sweetest memory /
Of my life (00:03:58; my translation).
happened behind the scenes. The title of the documentary is also reflec-
tive of these themes. On the one hand, it references Selena’s hometown
of Corpus Christi, Texas and Selena’s own corpus: her mediatized, racial-
ized, and exoticized body. On the other, it reinforces the idea that we
will be offered a backstage experience of Selena’s life: not only of the city
where she grew up and the family unit in which she was raised, but also
of the facets of her existence that did not involve performing.
Renée reappears halfway through the documentary, her intervention
fleshing out the point of Portillo’s specific framing of her. Still standing
under the samurai mural, Renée stresses how important Selena had been
in ushering in a new normal to the US entertainment industry:
Selena, I really liked also because she looked normal. She was gorgeous
but she had a normal look. She was just beautiful, you know. I… When
I was growing up, I wish I had somebody like Selena to look up to.
Somebody that looked like me, that looked normal. (00:26:00)
Portillo’s inclusion of this Asian American documentary maker voicing

her identification with Selena’s Latinidad is sandwiched between two
other significant scenes. Prior to Renée’s confession, Portillo showcased
the talents of young Selena fans who, inspired by the star, have enrolled
in the Tejano Fine Arts Academy to improve their singing skills—in
English and Spanish, as the mother of one of the girls gleefully shares
with Portillo (00:21:22). They too, like Renée, designate Selena’s looks
as a defining feature of their admiration of her. After having individu-
ally performed Selena’s hit songs in front of the camera—a sequence that
Portillo intertwines with Selena’s music videos (00:21:39–00:25:11)—
the girls gather to discuss their fandom with Portillo:
[Fan] From Selena, I realized that… you don’t have to be just… You
don’t have to have a certain look or anything. You just got to try your
best and…
[Portillo] A certain look, meaning… what?
[Fan] You don’t have to have blond hair. (00:25:11)
250 A. J. Sanchez
Portillo further explores the complex sentiment that this young fan is
trying to convey by giving the floor to Corpus Christi locals, who give
Portillo an insight into how Selena was perceived by her peers:
[Interviewee 1] Well, here, she was more… She was more Mexican than
American. And over there, in Mexico, she was more American than
Mexican. [Interviewee 2] You see, the majority of the stars from Mexico
and Latin America are all real light complected. Blue eyes, green eyes,
blonde hair. And all the… la’ telenovelas, all the stars are… look… they
look more like Anglo than Hispanic. And… she had… you know the…
bigger lips, big hips, the whole works. And people related to her cos she
looked more like us. (00:26:12)
Put together, these testimonies suggest that Selena was understood as

a concrete, real-life example of “the decolonial imaginary” (cf. Aparicio,
2003): shared, but often unspoken knowledge that allows Latinxs from
various national groups to understand the conditions and experiences of
their coethnics as well as all other (post)colonial communities. Whereas
Solberg deplored that “the Doritas, Chiquitas, and Rositas that Carmen
was playing” caused her to grow up without seeing “women on the
screen that [she] could identify with” (01:00:42), Portillo emphasizes
how uplifting Selena’s brand of Latinidad had been for those at the
ethno-racial margins of US society—including Asian Americans like
Renée. Unlike Carmen, whose trademark had been “[to make] fun of
herself ” (00:59:43), Selena had made ethnic pride into her brand. Thus,
she provided many Latinxs with a compelling discursive space in which
to decry nativist hysteria and imagine a future wherein Latinxs could gain
significant political, economic, and representational ground (cf. Paredez,
2002).
This being said, Portillo is quick to mitigate the optimism of Selena’s
fans by including a number of less favorable opinions of the singer.
In a scene5 fittingly captioned “Intellectuals” (00:22:50), a group of
5This dinner scene is actually an excerpt from Conversations with Intellectuals About Selena,
an hourlong companion piece to Corpus: A Home Movie for Selena that POV did not air.
As described on Portillo’s website, it is an “examination of the life and mythology of Selena”
by Sandra Cisneros, Ruby Rich, Cherríe Moraga, Yvonne Yarbro-Bejarano, and Rosa-Linda
notable Latinxs are filmed having dinner as they discuss Selena’s legacy.
At regular intervals, Portillo punctuates her film with some of the most
noteworthy interactions between these intellectuals, presumably in the
hope of achieving a nuanced depiction of the Tejano singer. In partic-
ular, author Sandra Cisneros’s comments stand out because of their
vehemence:
Agh! I’m not a Selena fan! I’m not a Selena fan, but I have a Selena…
keychain. Because I […] I went to the… the stop-and-shop here at the
little gas station there and… It’s the first time I ever saw a Chicana on
a key chain… that wasn’t the Virgen de Guadalupe. And I had to buy
it but… I don’t have any Selena records. And when they… asked for
commentary when she died, I never listened to her songs. But I have
to say, I have her here. And there are some things she stands for that, I
think, is very dangerous. […] Like she dropped outta school. Her father
had her working […]. He made her quit school! (00:31:40)
In a later fragment, Cisneros also decries that Selena’s success did

nothing but confirm to her young fans that the only “outlet” for them
was to “be [a] twelve-year old sexy child, […] this sexual being, singing”
(00:33:07). Her criticism is loaded and multilayered. Not only does she
reject hegemonic constructions of Latin American identity that envi-
sion the Latinx community as a homogeneous mass of Selena fans
(cf. Aparicio, 2003), but she also disavows the whore-virgin-dichotomy
embedded in the Latinx cultural legacy (cf. Arrizón, 2008). Cisneros
seems to suggest that Selena’s celebrity was largely “attributed” (cf. Rojek,
2004) because it derived from her cultural intermediaries, who consid-
ered her concentrated representation of them to be noteworthy and
exceptional. It is precisely the nature of Selena’s attributed exceptionality
that Cisneros calls into question here, together with the motivations of
the Latinx cultural intermediaries who catapulted her to stardom.
Cisneros’ critique, aimed at Selena’s questionable upbringing,
schooling, and understanding of girlhood versus womanhood, adds
Fregoso—five prominent Latinx feminists (“A Conversation with Academics about Selena,”
n.d.).
252 A. J. Sanchez
shock value to Portillo’s homage to the singer. It offers a striking coun-

terpoint to the praise with which Selena’s fans, friends, and family have
been showering her so far; so much so that, after Cisneros’s comments,
all further efforts to glorify the singer in the documentary will sound
tone-deaf, thanks to the sobering effect of Cisneros’s alternative reading
of Selena.
Prior to the writer’s intervention, Portillo’s posthumous portrayal of
Selena had been wholesome. Selena was, according to her entourage and
devotees, “great” (00:03:57), “a perfect person” (00:06:25), “so popu-
lar” (00:07:24), “very talented” (00:14:09), “part of our soul” (00:16:36),
“beautiful” (00:18:49), “so humble” (00:18:54), and “a good daughter”
(00:18:59). It is precisely Cisneros’s undermining of this cliché of ‘the
ideal daughter’ that serves as a turning point in Portillo’s documentary.
Right after Cisneros’s questioning of the righteousness of (the
parenting of ) Selena’s father, Portillo splices in an excerpt of a talking
head interview with Abraham Quintanilla himself, in which he asserts:
[Selena and her siblings] were with their father and their mother, they
were outta trouble. You know. And they weren’t hanging around with
the wrong crowd, getting into… problems. They became successful, they
enjoyed what they were doing. So… they made something outta their
life. (00:32:18)
Portillo hints at her skepticism of Abraham’s account by overlapping

his interview with footage of a fully made-up Selena in a short skirt and
bustier, performing in a nightclublike venue. The captions reveal that, in
this footage, Selena was only 15 years old (00:32:23) and still completing
“High School ([sic ] through correspondence” (00:32:28)—important
details of his daughter’s childhood that Abraham fails to mention in the
interview.
Before Cisneros’s appearance, Portillo had already introduced
Abraham—a former musician—by means of a disconcerting video
excerpt in which he admitted that he had seen Selena’s “talent to sing”
as “a way to get back into the music world” (00:11:45). After Cisneros’s
critique, the fragments that Portillo includes of Abraham’s abovemen-
tioned interview only raise further questions about the man, framing him
as a liminal figure at the intersection between nurturing manager and

self-serving father. His ambiguity culminates in his explanation of why
the president of Selena’s fan club, Yolanda Saldivar, killed his daughter:
“Here you have a person that… that’s not popular at school, don’t have
friends, physically is not a good-looking person. All of a sudden, she get
put in the limelight. She can make checks. She got a sense of power now”
(00:41:34). What, in other circumstances, may have been interpreted as
a grieving parent’s innocuous musing acquires a much more sinister tone
because of the order in which certain facts are revealed to the viewer.
Prior to this statement, Portillo had given us conflicting accounts
of what may have led to Selena’s death. According to Chicana intel-
lectual Cherríe Moraga, Selena—a Jehovah’s Witness—had lived in a
“circumscribed world” held in check by “the dad” who had “very strict
controls on her” and whose parenting forced her into the arms of
Yolanda—the only confidante she had outside of her stifling family
circle (00:39:18). Suzette, Selena’s sister, seems to confirm this line of
thought when she admits that Selena was “very trusting” of other people
because “[they] had always had somebody to protect [them]” (00:39:45).
Radio host Vincente Carranza, on the other hand, directly blames the
father: “negative energies and things like that happened” when Selena
began transitioning into the fashion industry, against her father’s will
(00:40:18).
Cleverly, Portillo alternates these testimonials with Abraham’s inter-
view, selecting fragments in which he seems to contradict all charges laid
against him. His children may have been “naïve about a lot of things”
but that was only because he “grew up with this thing in [his] mind of
protecting [his] family” (00:39:55). In fact, he claims that when they
became adults and “started their own thing,” he never “meddled into
[his children’s] business”—a freedom which, in hindsight, he considers
to have been misplaced because that is why “Yolanda didn’t see [him]
going in there and helping Selena” (00:40:31–00:41:05). Consequently,
when Abraham tries to rationalize Yolanda’s murderous obsession with
Selena, he misses the mark. More consistent with his own behavior
than Yolanda’s, his simplistic argumentation only reasserts his failure to
acknowledge his own involvement in Selena’s demise.
254 A. J. Sanchez
Portillo does not stop there, however. She opens up Abraham’s

reasoning and implicitly has it apply to the entire Latinx community
by following it up with outdrawn images of Selena’s massive funeral
service, a slew of memorial sites and ceremonies set up by her fans, and
an anonymous fangirl bursting into tears at Selena’s imposing grave—
a sea of people who are just as unaware as Abraham of their role in
the star’s death (00:44:58–00:47:12). Closing her film with footage of
how, at Selena’s funeral, a precocious toddler is egged on to dance to
Selena’s Como la flor (00:47:13), Portillo indicates that Selena’s legacy
lives on. However, knowing what we know now, the little girl’s enthu-
siasm appears unnerving rather than endearing. Do we want another
innocent soul to follow in Selena’s footsteps?
With this ending, Portillo seems to imply that, over time, Yolanda was
turned into more than a murderer. After Selena’s passing, she became an
essential character of the “compensatory spectacle” (cf. Hurtado, 2018)
set up by Selena’s father and the Latinx community at large. Their
goal had been to hide the inferiority of their own existence by means
of Selena’s spotless perfection—a common occurrence among Latinx
women, who are often held to impossible standards of beauty in order
to redress the perceived underperformance of their matrix of origin.
As it turns out, Selena’s tragic end was mere collateral damage of her
community’s quest to combat its inferiority complex.
Carmen and Selena’s Posthumous Celebrity

Interested in the social potential of their protagonists’ deaths, Solberg
and Portillo delve into the significance behind Carmen’s and Selena’s
soaring posthumous careers. They give the passing of their epony-
mous protagonists a particular treatment. Rather than approaching their
protagonists’ deaths as an end, they make it into a catalyst that trig-
gers “the thanatological imagination” (cf. Penfold-Mounce, 2019) of the
culture that enshrined them.
In Carmen Miranda: Bananas Is My Business, Solberg’s biograph-
ical account of Carmen Miranda becomes increasingly bleak, revealing
disturbing details of the star’s abusive marriage, her excessive drug
intake, and her mental breakdown (01:08:32–01:22:47), before reaching

a climax with the dramatization of Carmen’s final moments (01:22:48–
01:23:22)—footage with which Solberg started the documentary.
Having come full circle with her audiovisual narrative, Solberg tells us: “I
end my tale here, a tale of joy and sadness, like life itself. A tale of recon-
ciliation between Carmen and ourselves” (01:25:50). Solberg’s choice
of words is significant, considering she preceded them with footage of
Carmen’s gigantic funeral procession in Rio de Janeiro, which she accom-
panied with a statement that verbalized what Lourdes Portillo would, a
couple of years later, imply in the conclusion of her documentary on
Selena:
Carmen had finally come back home. Her coffin was dragged with our
flag. The streets of our city filled with the uncounted thousands who had
always loved her and who now came out to welcome her back, even as
they mourned her loss. As I learned about her life, it became clear to me
that she could never possibly meet all the different expectations people
had for her. She couldn’t be the perfect symbol of our national hopes and
aspirations. After all, she was an artist. An artist with an incandescent
craft, whose talents were used by many to further many different ends.
(01:24:42)
Solberg’s understanding of Carmen’s death as a moment of “reconcil-

iation” suggests that with the disappearance of Carmen, the controversy
surrounding her physical person also disappeared. All that was left was
a safe, depersonalized space that people could reimagine, rearrange, and
relive however they wished (cf. Penfold-Mounce, 2019).
Audiovisually recreating Carmen’s afterlife, Solberg keeps delaying
the conclusion of her documentary. Having announced at the funeral
scene that she would be ending her tale there (01:25:50), she keeps
the camera rolling and transitions to a sequence in which she has a
Carmen impersonator re-enact another dream that Solberg had, in which
“[Carmen] came back to stay, to reassert her power once and for all, so
her followers would perpetuate her cult all over the universe, and she
would become forever part of our mythology” (01:26:28). Following
this dream sequence, we are shown disorientating images of a Brazilian
carnival celebration accompanied by ceremonial choir chants, which
256 A. J. Sanchez
are interrupted by glimpses of carnival performers—some of whom are

eerily reminiscent of the star—as well as video fragments of the original
Carmen Miranda (01:26:34–01:27:13).
Now seemingly intent on concluding her documentary, Solberg edits
in a black-and-white freeze-frame of a quote by Brazilian composer
Heitor Villa-Lobos: “Carmen Miranda carried her country in her
luggage, and taught people who had no idea of our existence to adore
our music and our rhythm. Brazil will always have an unpayable debt to
Carmen Miranda” (01:27:18). However, the documentary does not end
there. Solberg surprises us once more by adding another “afterthought”
(01:27:31). Overwriting Villa-Lobos’s quote with the photo of an elderly
woman posing with yet another Carmen impersonator, Solberg reas-
sures us that although her mother—presumably the elderly woman on
the photo—once “forbade [her] to go to Carmen’s funeral,” she eventu-
ally also “reconciled herself with Carmen” (01:27:32). Only then do the
closing titles begin to roll, overlapping with archival footage of Carmen
waving to the camera one last time, as her song Adeus Batucada resounds
in the background (01:27:43–01:31:47).
The lightheartedness of this finale, especially in light of a storyline
that had grown increasingly alarming, implies Solberg’s optimism about
“the morbid space” that Carmen’s passing ended up creating (cf. Penfold-
Mounce, 2019). In the flesh, Carmen’s body had been fragmented and
cut into eroticized pieces, which transformed it into an object of desire
(cf. Arrizón, 2008). In fact, in the interviews and archival audio descrip-
tions included in Solberg’s documentary, Carmen had been regularly
referred to with pars pro toto descriptions: her eyes (00:17:45), her
torso (00:32:27), her mouth (01:02:38), her hair (01:01:30; 01:04:45;
01:07:39; 01:10:30). In Portillo’s documentary, Selena’s fans also focused
on her anatomy: “bigger lips, big hips” (00:23:36), “her skin” (00:28:19),
“perfect, white, big teeth” (00:28:32). By alluding to their protago-
nists with pars pro toto descriptions, Portillo and Solberg seek to reflect
the dehumanization and exoticization of Selena and Carmen in the
“gaze/language” of others (cf. Mulvey, 1975).
Posthumously, however, Carmen and Selena’s lamentable exoticization
was euphemized and reinvented as “autoexoticism” (cf. Arrizón, 2008): a
strategy of cultural survival by which the exoticized use symbolic norms
for themselves as a way to bring about performative agency. As Heitor

Villa-Lobos’s quote about Brazil’s “unpayable debt” to Carmen illustrates
(01:27:18), the star’s previously ridiculed exoticism was reinterpreted as
strategic and intentional after her death, thus transforming her tropi-
calization of the South into an orchestrated master plan to educate the
world about her origins (cf. Huggan, 2001). After her death, she was
given “considerable agency over the supposed commodification of her
[artistry]” and made into a visionary with “a well-oiled little brain” under
her “basket of fruit and vegetables” (00:48:20)—a fact that is consistent
with Solberg’s own empowering approach to Carmen’s life story. In other
words, Solberg seems to conclude her film with the suggestion that her
protagonist’s self-caricature of Latinidad was an unfortunate but, in the
end, necessary step in the affirmation of the interconnectedness between
Latin America and North America.
The same could be said of Portillo’s take on Selena. However, Portillo
goes a step further in her thanatological imagination of Selena. Like
Solberg, she explores the “achieved celebrity” (cf. Rojek, 2004) of her
protagonist by focusing on her perceived accomplishments, which define
Selena’s legacy in terms of her representation of “embodied ambiguity”
(cf. Schramm, 2012).
Although Solberg does show several drag performances of Carmen
Miranda’s act (01:15:02–01:16:07), she does not discuss the star’s
posthumous evolution into a gay and drag icon. Portillo, on the other
hand, dedicates an entire scene of her documentary to Franco Ruiz
Mondini—also known as Malissa Mychaels, a drag alter ego of Selena
(00:36:22–00:37:55). Disregarding the fact that, as a devout Jehova’s
Witness, Selena may not have approved of Franco’s “gender creativity”
(cf. Halberstam, 1998), Franco tells the camera in a talking head inter-
view that he chooses to remember Selena as a role model nevertheless.
Helped by images of him applying make-up, adding cushioning to his
hips and buttocks, and performing Selena’s Como la flor as Malissa in
front of an enthusiastic crowd, Franco explains his admiration for Selena:
In San Antonio or in South-Texas, other than our mothers or that certain

tía we had who gave people hell, we didn’t really have strong… We didn’t
really have role models at all, from our own culture. […] You would never
258 A. J. Sanchez
see drag queens speaking in Spanish, you would never hear them joking
around in Spanish. All of that was a world that was invisible and was not
talked about, did not exist, was kept in the closet. Maybe your sexuality
wasn’t in the closet anymore but still… Your basic roots were still in the
closet. And Selena had a very, very big part of it, where people were just
like “I am… someone. I’m… This area I come from. I’m… I can be just
as glamorous as anyone else.” (00:36:22)
His use of the word “glamorous” appears to allude to the idea that
glamor is something that one assumes—a mask that changes how we
appear to others (cf. Stevens et al., 2015). Posthumously, Selena came to
blur the boundaries between genuine womanliness and its masquerade
and, mutatis mutandis, between genuine North Americanness and its
Latinx masquerade. Selena’s brand of posthumous strategic exoticism is
one that transforms ethnicity, gender, and sexuality into a kind of drag
for subaltern subjects—a masquerade that helps them grow into powerful
actors.
What both celebrities share in their portrayals by documentary makers
Solberg and Portillo is their legendary transgression of all kinds of norms
and conventions. Whether this was consciously done or not is secondary,
as Solberg and Portillo seem to suggest. It is inconsequential because their
protagonists remain the first Latinxs to have been so (in)famous during
their lifetimes that, after their deaths, generations upon generations of
Latinxs continued to imprint on them. In doing so, they each interpreted
the glamor of their idols in ways that offered them a powerful rhetoric
of escape—one that also held within it the alluring promise of their own
transformation (cf. Stevens et al., 2015).
References
A Conversation with Academics about Selena. (n.d.). Lourdes Portillo. Retrieved
January 21, 2021, from https://www.lourdesportillo.com/a-conversation-
with-academics-about-selena
Abreu, C. D. (2007). Celebrity, “Crossover,” and Cubanidad: Celia Cruz as

“La Reina de Salsa,” 1971–2003. Revista de Música Latinoamericana; Austin,
28(1), 94–124,178.
Aparicio, F. R. (2003). Jennifer as Selena: Rethinking Latinidad in media and
popular culture. Latino Studies; London, 1(1), 90.
Arrizón, A. (2008). Latina subjectivity, sexuality and sensuality. Women and
Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory, 18(3), 189–198.
Balieiro, F. (2017). Consuming Carmen Miranda: Dislocations and dissonances
in the reception of an icon. Revista Estudos Feministas, 25 (1), 269–290.
Cale, J. (1989). The Soul of Carmen Miranda: Vol. Words for the Dying.
Opal and Warner Bros. https://genius.com/John-cale-the-soul-of-carmen-
miranda-lyrics
Enloe, C. (2000). Bananas, beaches and bases: Making feminist sense of interna-
tional politics. University of California Press.
Halberstam, J. (1998). Female masculinity. Duke University Press.
Huggan, G. (1994). The postcolonial exotic. Transition, 64, 22–29.
Huggan, G. (2001). The postcolonial exotic: Marketing the Margins. Routledge.
Hurtado, S. (2018). Obsesión por la belleza femenina en Venezuela. Espacio
Abierto, 27 (2), 191–208.
Marrow, H. (2003). To be or not to be (Hispanic or Latino): Brazilian Racial
and Ethnic Identity in the United States. Ethnicities, 3(4), 427–464.
McDonald, S. N. (2015, May 11). How Sofia Vergara picked up Carmen
Miranda’s legacy—and Ran with It. Washington Post. https://www.washin
gtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2015/05/11/how-sofia-ver
gara-picked-up-carmen-mirandas-legacy-and-ran-with-it/
Mulvey, L. (1975). Visual pleasure and narrative cinema. Screen, 16 (3), 6–18.
Paredez, D. (2002). Remembering Selena, Re-membering “latinidad.” Theatre
Journal, 54 (1), 63–84.
Penfold-Mounce, R. (2019). Celebrity deaths and the Thanatological imagi-
nation. In A. Teodorescu & M. H. Jacobsen (Eds.), Death in contemporary
popular culture (pp. 115–129). Routledge.
Portillo, L. (1999, July 13). Corpus: A home movie for Selena. In POV Season
12. PBS.
Rohter, L. (2001, December 13). The real Carmen Miranda under the crown of
fruit. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/13/theater/
arts-abroad-the-real-carmen-miranda-under-the-crown-of-fruit.html
Rojek, C. (2004). Celebrity. Reaktion Books.
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Schramm, C. (2012). Queering Latin American coloniality and the cross-

cultural production of racialised sexualities. Journal of Intercultural Studies,
33(3), 347–362.
Solberg, H. (1995, October 6). Carmen Miranda: Bananas is my business. In
POV Season 08. PBS.
Stevens, L., Cappellini, B., & Smith, G. (2015). Nigellissima: A study of
glamour, performativity and embodiment. Journal of Marketing Manage-
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Vargas, A. (2016, December 9). Stereotype or Samba pioneer? A look back
at the controversial legacy of Carmen Miranda. Remezcla. https://remezcla.
com/film/tbt-carmen-miranda-brazil-actress-singer/
13
Conclusion
As US immigration policy grew increasingly restrictive over the course

of the twentieth and twenty-first century, public discourse became more
antagonizing toward migrants. This is especially true of Latinx migrants
(cf. Chavez, 2013), to whom Donald Trump even famously referred as
“bad hombres” during the 2016 elections (Blake, 2016). Since, in the
United States, the default media portrayal of (Latin American) migration
has been largely negative, there is a wealth of literature on stereotyping
and antagonizing media frames and discourses of migration. There is
little information, however, on attempts by the media to approach the
social issue of migration from a less prejudiced angle. The present
book attempted to address this knowledge gap by focusing on positive
discourses in documentary film on Latin American migration to the
United States.
The link between sympathetic storytelling on migration and the docu-
mentary form has been made before. For example, Demos revealed how
documentaries, as performances of artivism, intervene in the politics of
immigration and globalization (2013). Loustaunau and Shaw (2018) as
well as Demo (2012) investigated the documentary as an act of resis-
tance against mainstream media’s exclusionary discourse on migration
Switzerland AG 2022
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-06539-2_13
262 A. J. Sanchez
from Latin America. Schreiber covered the media strategies with which
documentaries respond to the racialization and criminalization of undoc-
umented Latinxs (2018). Finally, Köhn demonstrated the ways in which
the documentary, as a disciple of visual anthropology, captures the bodily,
spatial, and temporal dimensions of the experience of migration (2016).
A systematic analysis of the different kinds of discourses of migration
present in these counterhegemonic documentaries is missing, however.
By relying on translation theory as a heuristic tool, this book not only
gave an overview of the positive discourses of migration of its corpus,
but it also explained why these films lent themselves to such a popularly
unpopular topic as migration, and how this inclination impacted their
message.
More precisely, the book drew on Translation Studies to map out
the transfer of real-life stories on migration to the documentary reel.
By positing that documentaries and translations were prompted by the
same “oscillation between the recognition of historical reality and the
recognition of a representation about it” (Nichols, 2010, p. 39), the
book proposed to view documentaries as “post-translations” (Gentzler,
2016), “*translations” (Tymoczko, 2014), or “translations2 ” (Hermans,
1995). Moreover, rather than amalgamating a loosely related selection of
counterdiscursive documentary narratives on migration, the book took a
systemic approach. It addressed 18 Latinx-oriented documentaries that
were produced by independent documentary makers, and that had been
broadcast over the last thirty years on the PBS series POV—the first
and longest-running showcase of independent nonfiction films in the
United States. Looking at these documentaries as intersemiotic transla-
tions (cf. Jakobson, 1959) and therefore as facts of their target culture
(cf. Toury, 2012), the book zoned in on their contexts, agents, prac-
tices, and discourses—“basic factors relating to translation, each with
its own set of methodological implications […] separated out from the
messy reality of translation for methodological purposes only” (Flynn
& Gambier, 2011, p. 90). Defined in function of the book’s aim to
chart how independent documentary makers translate stories on migra-
tion from the real to the reel, “context” alluded to the properties of the
target structure in which the documentaries (“target texts”) were meant
13 Conclusion 263
to circulate; the “agents” were understood to be nonfiction filmmakers-

cum-translators with an agency defined by their habitus; the “practices”
were the concrete translation decisions that these agents made in the said
texts; and their “discourses” were the ideological choices that the said
documentarists-cum-translators made in their target texts.
Having established POV’s “public television ecology” (cf. Aufderheide,
2019) as a context that endorses agents who are either representative
of or committed to representing “subaltern counterpublics” (cf. Fraser,
1990), the book moved on to establish a taxonomy of the most common
practices (“translation decisions”) of its corpus, according to Nichols’
documentary modes of representation (2010). Thanks to this overview,
it became clear that some documentaries of the corpus hovered toward
explorations of universal aspects of migrancy, such as motherhood,
fatherhood, childhood. There were also documentaries that dwelled on
topics such as criminality, biculturalism, (non)citizenship: questionings
that emerge from migrants’ group experience. Finally, a number of
documentaries dealt with themes such as queerness, adoption, celebrity:
identitarian issues to which only certain individuals of a migrant commu-
nity can relate. These “natural meaning units” (cf. Greer et al., 2013) fit
in neatly with the “tripartite framework of personal identity” (cf. Sue,
2001), which contends that all individuals belong to three concentric
circles: only they belong to the first (“individual level”), only some others
belong to the second (“group level”), and everybody belongs to the third
(“universal level”). These universal, group, and individual themes were
then used to structure the positive discourse analysis (PDA) of the 18
documentaries of the corpus.
In Our House in Havana (Olsson, 2000) and My American Girls: A
Dominican Story (Matthews, 2001), two mothers are filmed grappling
with the meaning of their American present and their Latin American
past. Both films focus on the psychological make-up of their transna-
tional and transient Latinx protagonists as they undergo the “double
transition” (cf. Challinor, 2018) of being a mother in an alien environ-
ment. Cuban-American mother Silvia and Dominican-American mother
Sandra are initially depicted as nostalgic Caribbean immigrants who
idealize the life that they left behind in their countries of origin. As the
events unfold, however, it becomes increasingly clear that their need to
264 A. J. Sanchez
romanticize the past is actually a coping mechanism through which they

deal with the trauma of their forced emigration.
In 90 Miles (Zaldívar, 2003) and Voices of the Sea (Hopkins, 2018),
the documentary makers make a strong case for the arbitrariness of
Cuban exceptionalism. Instead of delving into the moot point of whether
Cuban émigrés deserve special treatment, the documentaries make a
broader point about how deeply the rhetoric on migration in receiving
and sending countries can affect the mental and physical well-being of
their migrants. Trapped between the anachronistic Cuban Adjustment
Act of the United States and Cuba’s own anachronistic and repressive
emigration policies (cf. Henken, 2005), the casts of 90 Miles and Voices
of the Sea are portrayed as unwilling participants in a mosaic of push–
pull factors driving Cuban emigration (cf. Argüellová, 2017). These films
are not about lone wolves dreaming of an easier life abroad, but about
caballero rather than machista—that is, chivalrous rather than macho—
fathers carefully considering which environment best guarantees the
sanctity and sanity of their family units.
In Fear and Learning at Hoover Elementary (Simón, 1997) and Sin País
(Rigby, 2012), the documentary makers draw attention to the discourses
of deservedness that surround their protagonists, who are both immi-
grants and children. Throughout their films, Simón and Rigby give
real-life examples of immigrant children who are regarded as undeserving
of protection, resources, and care despite their best efforts to fit the
“childhood innocence ideal” (cf. Bennett et al., 2017). In doing so, they
expose the different ways in which migrant children are tasked with the
societal responsibility of tackling inequality and disadvantage. In one fell
swoop, they also demonstrate that the dominant narrative of how immi-
grants can overcome adversity through hard work and perseverance is
inadequate because of its dismissal of a range of obstacles that are simply
beyond the migrants’ control (cf. Abo-Zena, 2018).
Made in LA (Carracedo & Bahar, 2007) and Don’t Tell Anyone
(Shwer, 2015) subtly flesh out the ambiguity surrounding the act of
speaking out and coming out, when it is performed by migrant nonciti-
zens. Both films actively participate in tearing down their undocumented
protagonists’ oppression by creating a supportive atmospheres in which
dialogue helps them overcome their shame and guilt and develop an
13 Conclusion 265
enhanced critical understanding of their experiences (cf. Irizarry &

Raible, 2014). In the end, the protagonists of both films seem to come
out stronger after their battles with the system, not as much thanks to
their somewhat successful rebellions, as to the faith they have gained in
themselves throughout their political, legal, and mental emancipation.
Hannah Weyer’s documentary tandem La Boda (2000) and Escuela
(2002) gives the floor to the bicultural, Mexican-American Luis family.
From an assimilationist perspective, the family appears to confirm all the
immigrant clichés: they look, act, talk, and think differently to what is
perceived as the US standard. However, over the course of both films,
Weyer demonstrates that her protagonists’ realities do not coincide with
the stereotype of the “barbaric immigrant” (cf. Nail, 2015). With the
help of evocative images, heartfelt interviews, and clever editing, Weyer
conveys a sense of awareness within the Luis family that they are expected
to excel in a society that marginalizes them on account of their supposed
ethnic and linguistic inferiority. The Luises remain undeterred and unde-
feated, despite everything. Across both sides of the US–Mexico border,
their bicultural family is their fortress, and their assimilation into Amer-
ican society happens on their own terms, in their own time: not out
of stubbornness, unwillingness, or incapability, but out of a pragma-
tism imposed on them by the dire socioeconomic circumstances of their
reception in the United States.
In Al otro lado (Almada, 2006) and The Ballad of Esequiel Hernández
(Fitzgerald, 2008), the US–Mexico border is funneled through corridista
(balladeer) Magdiel and high-school student Esequiel. The films begin
when the first is about to cross the border illegally and after the latter
was shot dead by US Marines while herding his goats on the border—
where he lived legally. In both films, this ominous border seems to
manifest itself as beyond good and evil, like the people who (aim to)
cross it. By laying bare the societal, spatial, and legal ambiguities of the
border zone, the documentary makers of both films seem to suggest
that liminal figures like Magdiel and Esequiel are not the villainous,
criminal masterminds that they are made out to be in the popular imag-
inary. Rather, they are victims of the US-Mexican “crimmigration crisis”
(cf. Stumpf, 2006)—criminalized by both nation-states to diverge the
public’s attention from their own deviousness.
266 A. J. Sanchez
In The Transformation (Aiken & Aparicio, 1996) and Memories of a

Penitent Heart (Aldarondo, 2017), the documentary makers initially set
out to identify the underlying societal structures that patterned out the
injustices, which their queer, Latinx protagonists faced during their life-
time. However, both films conclude on a similar note: the pursuit of such
“logic of trial” (cf. Wacquant, 1997) is meaningless. Whether it was over-
bearing motherly love, fanatic religiosity, cultural backwardness, and/or
Western chauvinism that caused so much hurt to Aldarondo’s protago-
nist Miguel/Michael or Aiken and Aparicio’s protagonist Ricardo/Sara, it
does not change anything about the fact that these structures did create
historical injustices for all queers. However, what does matter is what
remains of the memory of those people. Subtly, the documentary makers
task everybody—their viewers included—with the duty to acknowledge
the immigrants, queers, and all other Others who suffer from that Other-
ness and turn their struggle into a corrective of “life as we know it”
(cf. Ahmed, 2015).
In The Double Life of Ernesto Gomez Gomez (Ryan & Weimberg,
1999) and Discovering Dominga (Flynn & McConohay, 2003), the
documentary makers follow Mexican adoptee Ernesto (né Guillermo)
from Puerto Rico and US adoptee Denese (née Dominga) from
Guatemala in their search for transnational belonging. As they return
to their countries of origin, the adoptees are pictured undergoing a
gradual “disidentification” (cf. Kim, 2003) with adoption paradigms that
cast them as “ideal immigrants” (cf. De Graeve, 2015). By capturing
their protagonists’ complex process of “cultural fusion” (cf. Croucher &
Kramer, 2017) between their sending and receiving matrices, the docu-
mentary makers end up exposing the phenomenon of adoption as “an
imperfect model for migrant integration” (cf. Leinaweaver, 2013) on
account of its taxing expectation of acculturation to one mother/country
and deculturation from the other.
Finally, in Corpus: A Home Movie for Selena (Portillo, 1999) and
Carmen Miranda: Bananas Is My Business (Solberg, 1995) stardom and
fandom are central themes. In her film, Portillo explores the ongoing
debate surrounding late Selena Quintanilla, a 23-year-old Tejano singer
who, at the height of her fame, was shot and killed by the president
of her fan club. Helena Solberg, on the other hand, illustrates the
13 Conclusion 267
impact that late recording artist and movie star Carmen Miranda has had
on her transnational audience—including Brazilians like Solberg. What
both celebrities share in their portrayals by Solberg and Portillo is their
legendary transgression of all kinds of norms and conventions. Whether
this was consciously done or not is secondary, as Solberg and Portillo
seem to suggest. It is inconsequential because their migrant protagonists
remain the first Latinxs to have been so (in)famous during their life-
times that, after their deaths, generations upon generations of Latinxs
continued to imprint on them.
In conclusion, the Positive Discourse Analysis of the corpus reveals
that, in their attempts at translating the lived experience of migration
(“the real”) to the documentary film form (“the reel”), the documen-
tary makers tend to zone in primarily on how their migrant protagonists
conceive of their personal identity. Migration is never portrayed as a
constitutive aspect of that personality: rather, the documentary makers
use their protagonists’ migration to add just another layer of complexity
to their universal (e.g. motherhood, fatherhood, childhood), group (e.g.
biculturalism, (non)citizenship, criminality), and individual (e.g. queer-
ness, adoption, fame) planes of experience. As they do so, they make
a point of using a plethora of audiovisual means to poke holes in their
protagonists’ worldviews or “matrices of intelligibility” (cf. Butler, 2011),
thus instinctively harking back to the “constative fallacy” (cf. Yoshino,
2002) that characterizes US immigration policy: the misperception that
actions are describing an identity that they are actually creating.
As a rule, the documentary films of the corpus depart from the premise
that their migrant protagonists view their identity as an immutable and
real essence. This perspective then sets the stage for these migrants’ “iden-
tity failure” (cf. Ruffolo, 2009): their incapacity to live up to their own
definitions of what a migrant mother, queer, criminal, etc. should or
should not be. Initially setting out to document the search for such
identity cores, the filmmakers consistently end up capturing their protag-
onists’ gradual understanding of migrant identity as a vessel of ever-
changing meaning that no collective identity category can adequately
describe.
By adhering to this logic, these documentary makers stay true to
the post-identitarian refusal to romanticize alternative identities (cf.
268 A. J. Sanchez
Downey & Fenton, 2003). It should therefore not come as a surprise

that the documentary makers’ discourses of migration end up pointing
out that there are no quintessential mothers, fathers, children, crim-
inals, bicultural people, citizens, queers, adoptees, celebrities. Neither
are there quintessential migrants. In other words, the counterhegemonic
nature of the POV documentaries of the corpus seems to lie in their
intention to prove that migration is not an identity marker in and of
itself but rather an experiential phenomenon that influences the identi-
ties of their migrant protagonists. Interestingly, the documentary makers
never follow these deconstructions of personal identity up with some
kind of new definition. This is striking, as it goes against the documen-
tary’s traditional promise of enlightening the viewer on “the more general
processes at work in society” (Nichols, 2010, p. 201). Hence, it could be
argued that the documentary makers’ mooring of their protagonists in a
perpetual state of identitarian equivocation is conscious and deliberate.
As posited by Halberstam, in the North American matrix of intelligi-
bility, the pursuit of happiness—and, by extension, success—is not only
desirable but also mandatory. So is the pursuit of clear-cut answers as
well as well-defined “formulations of self ” (2011, p. 140). All of these
pursuits neatly interlock in a system of thought that combines unbri-
dled exceptionalism with a desire to believe that success happens to good
people and failure is just a consequence of bad attitude. However, there
is also an increasing endorsement of what Halberstam refers to as “the
queer art of failure”:
[…] failure can be a style, to cite Quentin Crisp, or a way of life, to cite
Foucault, and it can stand in contrast to the grim scenarios of success
that depend upon “trying and trying again.” In fact if success requires
so much effort, then maybe failure is easier in the long run and offers
different rewards. (2011, p. 3)
This rejection of the cult of positive thinking is a matrix of intelligi-

bility that is particularly popular among academics, activists, artists, and
arguably POV’s independent documentary makers on account of their
shared quest to articulate an alternative vision of life, love, and labor. In
this vein, it could be claimed that, in their intersemiotic translations from
13 Conclusion 269
the real to the reel of their migrant protagonists’ experience of identity

failure, the documentary makers of the corpus consistently reject their
expected position of ‘good teacher’ in favor of that of ‘ignorant school-
master.’ Having understood that the PBS audience must be led to learn
rather than taught to follow (see Chapter 3), they purposefully create an
experience of confusion, in the hope that it will incite their viewers to
find their own way out, or back, or around (cf. Halberstam, 2011).
By making their intersemiotic translations culminate in their migrant
protagonists’ seeming failure to live up to their original worldviews,
the documentary makers seem to subscribe to “post-subjectivity”
(cf. Ruffolo, 2009): a paradigm that strives to transcend the endless
cycle of significations repositioning subjects on fixed planes. Thanks
to their tactical applications of Nichols’s 6 documentary modes (that
is, poetic, expository, observational, participatory, reflexive, and perfor-
mative), they illustrate how their protagonists reach different levels of
awareness of the constative fallacy of their identities. In the end, it
would seem that the documentary makers of the corpus deliver transla-
tions of migration from the real to the reel that celebrate “the possibility
that alternatives dwell in the murky waters of a counterintuitive, often
impossibly dark and negative realm of critique and refusal” (Halberstam,
2011, pp. 1–2). That is essentially what the positive discourses of migra-
tion seem to come down to in this book: a discursive refusal to hover
between cynical resignation and naïve optimism regarding the reality of
migration, based on the expectation of the migrant protagonists’, the
documentary makers’, and the viewers’ failure to adequately relate (to),
translate, or interpret any reality—including that of migration.
In the same vein, the book’s own identity journey, which started with
a transversal application of translation theory on documentary films,
does not pretend to offer a revolutionary solution to the many gaps and
pitfalls of either Translation or Documentary Studies. Instead, it encour-
ages both fields to venture outside their already-porous boundaries in
search of queer failure—an escape from “punishing norms that disci-
pline behavior” (Halberstam, 2011, p. 3). Like the documentary makers
it discusses, this book defies the Gramscian hegemony of all interlocking
systems of thought that pass for common sense. Mirroring its documen-
tary makers’ commitment to find freedom in the failure of common
270 A. J. Sanchez
sense, this book pleads for what Halberstam (2011) refers to as “antidis-
ciplinarity”: ways of acquiring knowledge that lead to unbounded forms
of speculation, and modes of thinking that ally not with rigor and order,
but with inspiration and unpredictability.
With this plea, the book opens countless new avenues. It invites trans-
lation scholars to welcome Bassnett and Johnson’s call for an “outward
turn” (2019)—a new paradigmatic shift in Translation Studies—and be
more adventurous in their use of the toolbox of translation. It also moti-
vates documentary film scholars to become aware that their struggle to
retain the political purchase of claiming the real while acknowledging the
postmodern recognition that truth is socially constructed (cf. Gershon &
Malitsky, 2010) is not stand-alone. Venturing out into other academic
disciplines allows for the application of methodologies that bring forth
new queries and therefore redirect what otherwise may have remained an
unsurmountable dilemma.
This book demonstrated how liberating such an approach can be.
Rather than depending on a particular discipline as “an overtrained pied
piper leading obedient children out of the darkness and into the light”
(Halberstam, 2011, p. 14), the book attempted to amplify Translation
Studies’ framework by approaching documentary films as a form of
“assumed transfer” (cf. D’hulst, 2012). It even took the liberty of comple-
menting the said framework with Nichols’s taxonomy of documentary
modes.
As it turns out, D’hulst was right in suggesting that when the
“source/target” thinking of translation is used as an “umbrella concept
that encompasses more techniques” (D’hulst, 2012, p. 141), it trans-
forms into a toolbox that enables the description of all kinds of transfer
processes. By redefining the contexts, agents, practices, and discourses
of translation to chart how documentary makers translate stories on
migration from the real to the reel, the book revealed that the target
structure (“context”) of the documentary makers tasked them with a
considerable amount of expectations in terms of their content. It also laid
bare the dynamics between the documentary makers’ habitus (“agents”)
and their modes of representation (“practices”), which in turn facilitated
the mapping of their ideological narratives (“discourses”). Such a modus
13 Conclusion 271
operandi can be replicated again and again, as it is applicable to all acts

of communication that operate according to source/target thinking.
This being said, the aforementioned four pillars of translation were
arbitrarily “separated out from the messy reality of translation” and
adapted in function of this specific book “for methodological purposes
only” (Flynn & Gambier, 2011, p. 90). In other words, the book does
not only advocate for the transversal application of these particular
notions of translation theory but of all conceptual tools that can “describe
transfer processes to the same extent as source/target translational rela-
tions” within a given setting (D’hulst, 2012, pp. 141–142).
Finally, in terms of its corpus, the book opens a plethora of lines of
investigation that future researchers may want to explore. To what extent
did the documentary makers of the corpus impact public discourse on
the social issue of migration? Did they influence the lives of their protag-
onists? Has their diversity behind the lens increased the variety of their
perspectives? Should the documentary makers be called ‘independent’
when their work is largely defined by a particular ecology? These are
only a handful of the many questions that can be raised thanks to this
book. I leave them unanswered in the hope that they will lead to more
undisciplined knowledge.
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Index
A Aldarondo, C. 7, 45, 46, 49, 51, 52,

acculturation 176, 215, 221, 266 54, 55, 62, 66, 193, 196,
achieved celebrity 257 202–213, 266
acto de repudio 99 Almada, N. 7, 47, 60, 66, 165,
Adams, J. 154 167–172, 180–184, 187–190,
adolescence/adolescent 150, 156, 265
158 Al otro lado 7, 60, 66, 165, 167,
adoption 51, 56, 66, 215–226, 168, 171, 172, 174, 180, 181,
229–233, 263, 266, 267 183, 188–190, 265
adoptive matrix 220, 231 American Dream 122
Africa 113, 241 American Dream 91, 102, 155, 212,
Afro-Brazilian 242, 243 221
AIDS 193, 197, 198 antidisciplinarity 7, 270
Aiken, S. and Aparicio, J. 46, 58, antihero 166
193, 194, 196, 197, 200, 201, Anzaldúa, G. 160
212, 213, 266 Apollonian model of childhood 117
ajiaco 91 Arizona 91, 103, 180, 183, 184, 187
Albizu Campos, P. 226, 232 ascribed celebrity 240
as if family 225
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive 275
licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-06539-2
276 Index
assimilation 150, 156, 158–160, Bracero Program 4

233, 235, 265 Brazil 242–247, 256, 257
associational citizenship 136 Bush Jr., G. 5
assumed transfer 14, 15, 270 Butler, J. 197, 199, 205, 267
Athenian model of childhood 117
attributed celebrity 247
authentic knowledge 54
authentic self 226
autoexoticism 256 C
autonomized field 45 caballerismo 98
caballero 98, 103, 104, 264
California 54, 110, 111, 130, 138,
B 149, 151, 153, 177, 203
backward(ness) 62, 209, 212, 266 capitalism/capitalist 95, 130, 176,
bad hombre 2, 3, 5, 261 241, 245
Baiana 242 careship 81, 86
ballad 165–167, 172, 241 Caribbean 85, 91, 205, 209, 263
balladeer 165, 265 Carmen Miranda: Bananas Is My
bandido 3 Business 7, 53, 63, 65, 239,
barbaric 158, 159 240, 254, 266
barbarism 194, 209, 210 Carracedo, A. and Bahar, R. 7, 49,
bare life 135, 143, 145 50, 66, 129, 131–133,
Baudrillard, J. 185, 186 137–143, 145, 264
beyond-objectivity (storytelling) 42, Castro, F. 49, 73, 74, 76, 77, 92–94,
54, 55 104
bicultural(ism) 51, 56, 66, 132, 151, Castro, F. “ 4
152, 158, 159, 205, 217, 263, categorical flux 54
265, 267, 268 Catholicism 194, 202, 205
bigot(ry)/bigoted 202 celebrity 51, 251, 254, 258, 263,
bilingual 131, 134, 152, 193, 205, 267, 268
217 Central America 5
bilingualism 154, 158 Chicano 18, 167
birth matrix 226 childhood 51, 56, 66, 115, 116,
border-crosser 60, 180–185 120, 144, 150, 156, 219, 220,
borderland 159 229, 252, 263, 267
border zone 183, 190, 265 childhood innocence 116, 121
Born Again Christian 194, 196, 198 children-citizens 117
Bourdieu, P. 21, 22 cinema of attractions 55, 56
bracero 149 citizen’s arrest 183
Index 277
citizenship 51, 56, 66, 120, 131, crimmigration (nation, policy, crisis)
135, 136, 140, 143, 154, 176, 178, 179, 190, 265
263, 267 Critical Discourse Studies (CDS) 28,
civil war 187, 228, 230 29
clean break 219, 221, 223, 224 Cuba 73–78, 81, 82, 86, 89–95, 97,
Clinton, B. 4, 40, 49, 73, 94, 216, 99–104, 195, 217, 222, 264
217, 223 Cuban Adjustment Act (CAA) 4,
Clinton, H. 2 93, 94, 104, 264
code-switching 203 Cuban exceptionalism 93, 104, 264
Colombia 49, 134, 209 cubanidad 90
colonies/colonialism/colonial 6, 80, Cuban Revolution 73, 76, 92, 94,
119, 154 222
come out/coming out 56, 141, 145, cultural citizenship 135, 136, 140
146, 193, 207, 216, 218, 264, cultural fusion 215, 235, 266
265 cultural transfer 14
coming-of-age 129, 150, 156, 216 cultural turn 14, 20–22, 26
committed (approaches of ) curiosity gap 56, 58
translation 16, 18, 26
communism/communist 82, 93, 95,
100 D
compensatory spectacle 254 de Certeau, M. 25
conquistador 229 decolonial imaginary 247, 250
constative fallacy 3, 267, 269 deculturation 215, 233, 266
convergence (culture) 41 defection 99, 103
corpse messaging 174 deportation 3–5, 59, 110, 111, 115,
Corpus: A Home Movie for Selena 7, 134
61, 62, 66, 239, 248, 266 deportation crisis 110, 111
Corpus Christi 249, 250 deportation regime era 109
corridista 165, 168, 170, 172, 180, deregulation 41, 43, 44
185, 265 Descriptive Translation Studies 197
corrido 165–168, 170, 174, 179, deserving/deservingness 116, 145,
181, 184, 187–190 176, 178, 179
corrido norteño 167 Development, Relief, and Education
counter-publicity 44 for Alien Minors Act
counterpublic sphere 44 (DREAM Act) 129
cowboy 170, 185, 194 D’hulst, L. 14, 19, 24, 270, 271
coyote 142, 180–183, 188 diaspora 18, 74, 236
criminality 51, 56, 66, 172, 179, difficult knowledge 116, 121, 122
263, 267 Dionysian model of childhood 117
278 Index
Discovering Dominga 7, 66, 215, F

216, 218, 219, 224, 227, fame 56, 65, 66, 239, 246, 266, 267
231–233, 235, 266 familismo 75, 83, 98, 100, 101, 103
disidentification 215, 227, 229, 235, fandom 239, 249, 266
266 fatherhood 51, 56, 66, 89, 98, 99,
domesticating translation 27 101, 263, 267
domestication 26, 63, 81 Fear and Learning at Hoover
double consciousness 205 Elementary 7, 49, 53, 56, 66,
drag queen 58, 193–195, 200, 258 109–111, 121–124, 264
DREAMer 129, 137, 140, 144 femininity 209
drug smuggling/smuggler 167, 170, figure of hate 194, 209
176 Fitzgerald, K. 7, 45, 54, 62, 66,
drug trafficking/trafficker 5, 165–167, 172, 173, 176–178,
168–170, 175 186, 187, 189, 190, 265
Dusty Feet 93, 95, 104 Florida 91, 103
Flynn, P. 8, 13, 17, 19, 20, 24, 27,
262, 271
Flynn, P. and McConohay, M.J. 7,
E
45, 66, 215, 216, 219–221,
Eagle, Globe, and Anchor (EGA)
223, 224, 228–230, 234, 236,
186
266
El Salvador 114, 117, 124, 133, 142
foreignization 61, 63
Embargo 73, 74, 82, 93
foreignizing translation 26, 27
embodied identity 54
Foucault, M. 25, 29, 268
embodied knowledge 48, 54, 64
freestanding child 219, 221, 230,
empathy 60, 178
232
enclave 155
Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación
entextualization 17, 18, 24
Nacional (FALN) 222
Ernesto “Che” Guevara 224
Escuela 66, 149, 151–153, 155,
157–160, 265
Escuela 7 G
Espagne, M. 14 Gambier, Y. 8, 13, 20, 24, 25, 27,
eunuch 199 262, 271
exile 73–75, 77, 78, 81, 82, 84, 93, gender creativity 257
217, 225 genocide 230
expository mode 53–55, 59, 60 Giddens, A. 21
glamor(ous) 258
Good Neighbor Policy 245
goodwill 4, 243
Index 279
gringo 225 Immigration and Customs

Guatemala 111, 114, 117, 119, 120, Enforcement (ICE) 111, 130,
215, 220, 227–231, 234, 235, 141
266 Immigration and Nationality Act
(INA) 3
Immigration Reform and Control
H Act (IIRAIRA) 4, 111
hailing/hailed/hail 5, 85, 197, 199, imperialism/imperialist 77, 92, 241
205, 245 independentista 226
Halberstam, J. 7–9, 211, 268–270 Independent Television Service
heteronormative 199 (ITVS) 23, 42, 44
homophobia/homophobic 62, 194, inferiority (complex) 254
207–209 integration 155, 176, 177, 215, 233,
homosexuality 100, 198, 208 266
Hopkins, K. 7, 45–47, 56, 66, 89, intersemiotic translation 8, 17, 24,
90, 96–98, 102–104, 121, 264 27, 262, 268, 269
human trafficking/trafficker 167, intersubjective negotiation of loss
181, 183 233
hypermasculinity 98 invasion 223
hyperreal(ity) 185, 189 invisibility of the translator 26
hyphenated (identity) 48, 157 involuntary immigrant 233
hyphenation 131
J
I Jehova’s Witness 257
ideal immigrant 215, 266 journalator 17, 18
identity failure 267, 269
ideological labor 233
illegal alien 4, 94, 110, 120 L
illegal immigrant 120, 172 La Boda 7, 66, 149, 151–153, 155,
Illegal Immigration Reform and 158, 159, 265
Immigrant Responsibility Act labor camp 149, 151
(IIRAIRA) 4 La Raza 112
illegality 133, 145, 169, 172, Latinidad 209, 243, 246, 249, 250,
178–180, 186 257
illegal migration 109 lawful permanent resident (LPR) 93,
illusio 26, 60 94
imagology 17, 20 legal status 4, 109, 129, 176, 177
immigrant paradox 150 liminality 159, 160, 166
280 Index
logic of trial 54, 55, 266 175, 182, 183, 185, 189, 217,
Los Angeles 49, 111, 113, 117, 120, 223–225, 234, 250
123, 130, 131, 133, 135, 137, Meylaerts, R. 17, 21–24, 45
241 Miami 76, 89, 95, 97
Los Tigres del Norte 168, 169 militarized border 165
love ethic 86 minutemen 180, 183, 184
Miranda, Carmen 239–247, 254,
256, 257, 267
modes of documentary
M representation 27
machismo 75, 98–100, 102 mojado 172
Made in LA 7, 49, 50, 66, 129–132, monocultural 155
134–137, 139, 143–146, 264 monolingual/monolingualism 154
madre abnegada 81, 83 morbid space 256
mal gobierno 167, 172 motherhood 51, 56, 66, 74, 80–82,
Manifest Destiny 2, 92 84–86, 263, 267
marianismo 75, 79, 80, 82, 83, 85, multipositionality 22, 45
86, 99 My American Girls: A Dominican
Mariel boatlift 93 Story 7, 59, 66, 74, 85, 263
Marielitos 93, 94, 104
Marxism/Marxist 76, 77
masculinity 98, 99 N
masked interview 59 Nail, T. 149, 159, 265
matrix/matrices of intelligibility 267, naming (practices) 193, 194, 199
268 narcocorrido 167–169, 171, 172,
Matthews, A. 7, 45, 66, 74, 79, 80, 175
83–85, 263 narco(traficante) 169, 171
Maya(n) 218, 228, 229, 231, 236 national substance 226
media activism 46 natural meaning units 51, 65, 263
media ecology 60, 62 New York City 80, 84, 130,
Memories of a Penitent Heart 7, 49, 134–136, 138, 140, 144, 195,
51, 52, 54, 62, 66, 193, 196, 198, 200, 201, 205, 207, 225,
201, 202, 206, 210, 212, 213, 226, 240, 243
266 Nichols, B. 15, 16, 19, 20, 27, 48,
mestizaje 158, 159 53, 55, 59–62, 64, 262, 263,
Mexican bandit 2, 3 268–270
Mexican Revolution 166, 167, 170 9/11 5, 130, 187
Mexico 4, 5, 112, 113, 117, 133, 90 Miles 7, 53, 56, 57, 66, 89, 92,
142, 145, 157–159, 166, 170, 94, 95, 97–101, 104, 264
Index 281
No le digas a nadie 1, 5–7, 49, 59, Posse Comitatus 187

66, 134, 135 postcolonial exoticism 245
noncitizen 110, 119, 135, 137, 143, post-identity 5, 42, 44
145, 264 poststructuralism 5
noncitizenship 136 post-subjectivity/post-subjective 269
norteña music (band) 166, 173 POV 8, 13, 21–24, 41–45, 47, 48,
nostalgia 77, 85, 185, 186, 198, 201 59, 64, 247, 250, 262, 263,
268
prisoner of war (POW) 217, 224
O Proposition 187 49, 110–114, 122
Obama, B. 4, 5, 89, 94 Public broadcasting 23, 24, 30, 39,
observational mode 55, 58–60 40, 43, 44, 47, 48, 55, 60, 65
Old Mexico 185 Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) 7,
Old West 185 13, 21–23, 40–44, 48, 60, 62,
Olsson, S. 7, 45, 49, 66, 73, 74, 76, 64, 65, 171, 262, 269
77, 80, 81, 85, 263 public interest 39, 40, 44, 47
one language, one culture 158 public sphere 8, 23, 44, 47, 48, 53,
Ortiz, F. 91 64
Our House in Havana 7, 49, 59, 66, public television 40, 42, 43, 47
73, 75, 77, 81–83, 85, 263 public television ecology 42, 47, 48,
outlaw 167, 175, 182, 184, 185 53, 60, 62, 64, 263
outward turn 270 Puerto Rico 92, 196, 205, 207, 215,
222, 223, 225, 232, 266
punitive turn 172, 179
P
parens patriae 109, 119
pars pro toto 256 Q
participatory mode 58, 59, 61 Q’eqchi’ 228–230
paterfamilias principle 119 queer/queering 58, 63, 141, 193,
PATRIOT Act 5, 130 194, 197, 209–213, 216,
Pérez Firmat, G. 131 266–268
performative foreignization 63 queer (art of ) failure 268
performative mode 64 queer culture 212
poetic mode 48, 53, 55, 59, 60 queer failure 269
Portillo, L. 7, 46, 47, 61, 62, 66, queerness 51, 56, 58, 62, 65, 66,
239, 247–258, 266, 267 197, 199, 201, 210, 263, 267
Portugal/Portuguese 6, 246 queer performativity 218
Positive Discourse Analysis (PDA) queer trauma 193
29, 30, 65, 263, 267 Quintanilla, Selena 239, 248, 266
282 Index
R Shwer, M. 1, 5–7, 45, 49, 59, 66,

racialization of intimacy 231 129, 133, 134, 140, 141, 144,
rafters 93, 100 145, 264
Reagan, R. 41, 44, 94 signification 211, 269
reality-acceptance 236 Simón, L. 7, 45, 47, 49, 53, 54, 56,
receiving country 155, 159, 209 58, 66, 109–118, 120–125,
reflexive mode 61, 63 264
religion/religious 75, 78, 85, 90, Sinaloa 168, 170, 171, 183
102, 171, 200, 202, 204, 207, sinaloense 170, 171
211 Sin País 7, 59, 66, 109–111, 114,
resignification 159, 160 118, 121, 124, 264
Rigby, T. 7, 45, 66, 109–111, social stigma 123
114–116, 118–121, 124, 125, Solberg, H. 7, 53, 54, 65, 239–247,
264 250, 254–258, 266, 267
Robin Hood 171, 175 source/target thinking 271
rooted child 218, 219, 224, 232, South America 241
235 Spain/Spanish 2, 3, 6, 47, 92, 114,
roots trip 222, 225, 227, 229, 233 118, 123, 131, 132, 134, 152,
Ryan, C. and Weimberg, G 7, 45, 153, 158, 183, 184, 195, 203,
49, 54, 66, 215, 216, 218, 205, 209, 217, 222, 228, 229,
219, 222–226, 231, 232, 249, 258
234–236, 266 speak up/speaking up 136, 142
stardom 239, 251, 266
straight-line assimilation 150, 155,
159, 160
S strategic exoticism 240, 258
safe depersonalized space 255 suspension of disbelief 26, 60
sanctuary city 133
sanctuary jurisdiction 130
seasonal fieldwork 151, 155
Second Amendment 177 T
second generation decline 150, 158, talking head interview 59, 62, 76,
160 80, 197, 217, 221, 240, 244,
second-generation immigrant 150 252, 257
second generation revolt 150, 158, target text’s partiality 27, 62
160 Tejano 167, 239, 248, 251, 266
self-erasure 60 Texas 149, 153, 166, 174, 175, 177,
sending country 155 179, 185, 195, 249
shared knowledge 56 Tex-Mex 61
Index 283
thanatological imagination 239, 254, US Coast Guard 91, 102, 103

257 US Marines 166, 176, 265
The Ballad of Esequiel Hernández 7, US–Mexico border 47, 54, 142,
53, 62, 66, 165, 174, 179, 159, 165, 166, 169, 173, 179,
180, 185, 190, 265 183, 265
The Double Life of Ernesto Gomez
Gomez 7, 49, 53, 63, 66, 215,
216, 218, 227, 231, 233, 235, V
266 van Doorslaer, L. 13, 17, 18
the South 245, 257 Venuti, L. 15, 17, 26, 27, 63
The Transformation 7, 58, 65, 193, voice-of-authority 53, 54
194, 197, 200, 201, 209, 212, voice-of-God 53, 54
213, 266 Voices of the sea 7, 56, 66, 89, 91,
transitional space 236 92, 94, 95, 98, 101, 102, 104,
transitional third space 236 264
translation decision 22, 24, 26, 61,
62, 263
translation strategy 24 W
translation tactic 24 war on drugs 5
translator’s reflexivity 62 Western 2, 6, 116, 119, 120, 170,
transnational community 81 172, 179, 209, 212, 245, 266
transnational urban citizenship 131, wet foot, dry foot policy 94
135 Weyer, H. 7, 47, 66, 149–153,
transracial adoption paradox 231 155–160, 265
tripartite framework of personal white knight 209
identity 51, 65, 263 whitewashing 242
Trump, D. 2, 3, 5, 261 whore-virgin dichotomy 251
Wild West 2, 3
U
undeserving/undeservingness 119, Z
124, 178, 179, 264 Zaldívar, J.C. 7, 45–47, 54, 56, 57,
undisciplined knowledge 8, 9, 271 66, 89, 90, 95, 97–101, 104,
undocumented migrant 4, 5, 109, 264
130 Zimmerman, P.R. 8, 13, 16, 18, 19,
US Border Patrol 177, 180 26, 41, 42, 44, 53, 136

Sanchez A Discourses of Migration in Documentary Film Translating The Real To The Reel

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Discourses of

ISBN 978-3-031-06538-5 ISBN 978-3-031-06539-2 (eBook)

Cover illustration: Doug Steley B/Alamy Stock Photo

—E. H. Gombrich (1984)

(Tatiana Ruíz, Luis Diego Ramírez, Lehna Cohen, Crystal Cisneros-

12 The Individual Experience of Migrant Celebrities 239

Alexandra Jorgevna Sanchez is a Research Fellow at KU Leuven

Fig. 3.1 Made in LA (Carracedo & Bahar, 2007; screenshots

Table 1.1 Corpus (documentary, documentary maker, PBS

On June 21, 2015, the 74th Annual Peabody Awards Ceremony

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Roughly a year later, another (inter)nationally broadcast speech would

dirty and unkempt, usually displaying an unshaven face, missing teeth,

or his speaking English with a heavy Spanish accent is Hollywood’s way

From Bandido to Bad Hombre

on immigration from Latin America, a region whose historical migra-

Aim of the Book

Table 1.1 Corpus (documentary, documentary maker, PBS premier)

(2011). Rather than depending on a particular discipline as “an over-

Finally, Chapter 13 offers a conclusive overview of the “undisciplined

Guerrero, M. (2021, February). Our next deporter-in-chief? These Times,

Romero, V. C. (2010). Decriminalizing border crossings. Fordham Urban Law

There is a wealth of scholarship on Latinx tropes and typifications in

of translation (D’hulst, 2012) to comprehend what kind of discourses

“assumed transfer” of real-life discourses of migration to the documen-

Style in fiction derives primarily from the director’s translation of a story

style or voice reveals a distinct form of engagement with the historical

Bruzzi, another preeminent scholar of the field, also makes reference

2010). The goal was to nuance previous, dichotomous stances whereby

Doorslaer’s journalators, Gershon and Malitsky’s documentary makers

more holistic approach. By rooting its conceptual framework in Trans-

(Nichols, 2010, p. 39). Moreover, following Bassnett and Lefevere’s “cul-

documentaries on Latin American migration to the United States (“target

tendency exists in Translation Studies and is based on two common,

in order to explain the documentary makers’ discourses in the following

The interaction between different levels of intervention that is implied

the myriad ways in which people constantly and creatively manipulate

the inherently domesticating nature of the endeavor, Venuti takes satis-

for CDS’ transcendence of their previous binarism, eternally vacillating

Bassnett, S. (2005). Bringing the news back home: Strategies of acculturation

Flynn, P. (2013). Author and translator. Handbook of Translation Studies Online,

Hughes, J. M. F. (2018). Progressing positive discourse analysis and/in critical

(Eds.), Beyond descriptive translation studies: Investigations in homage to

Roof, J. (2003). Thinking post-identity. The Journal of the Midwest Modern

Venuti, L. (2008). The translator’s invisibility: A history of translation. Routledge.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 39

defined and codified from 1934 on. By then, an awarded broadcast

Our thesis is that broadcasters as community trustees should be replaced

In other words, it was thought that by removing the limit on broad-

diversity” (Carnegie Commission on Educational Television, 1967)—

Corporate convergence coexists with grassroots convergence. Media

It could be argued that PBS fed into this combination of deregulation

in order to maintain control over all phases of production, public tele-

In conclusion, prior to POV’s inception, public broadcasting was

A field that is not autonomized cannot guarantee its agents of trans-

of a documentary department in a Cuban film college. Some also allude

The poetic mode dates back to the early beginnings of documentary

Although all the documentary makers of the corpus hold on to a

a sensory overload on the part of the viewer in tactical instances. For

just a toddler (00:04:13). In Memories of a Penitent Heart , on the other

Fig. 3.2 Memories of a Penitent Heart (Aldarondo, 2017; screenshots by the

Assembling fragments of the historical world into a rhetorical frame, the

As was mentioned earlier, the modern-day independent documentary