Portrayals of Mexicans in Hollywood

[buddy]

I don't know about you guys, but have you noticed that in many Westerns and other such movies (especially older ones) which include characters of Mexican origin, the Mexicans are quite often depicted as southern European-looking.

I certainly realize that many Mexicans have an Iberian component to their ancestry, but half the time it looks like they just pulled the most unshaven Spaniards or Italians they could find and dressed them in stereotypical Mexican dress as banditos ;D. If you look at Spaghetti Westerns with Clint Eastwood, the Mexicans are usually played by Italians (sometimes even with blue eyes lol). Of course we all know that Spaniards such as Antonio Banderas have played Mexicans a number of times as well, but I'm referring to smaller bit parts as well.

However, in more recent Westerns, I have noticed that portrayals of Mexicans have been more accurate, displaying people who are obviously mestizo or primarily Amerindian. What do you guys think?

[Miguel Antunes]

It could be from ignorance or from lack of available mestizos actors..
Besides Mexicans in Westerns are usually from the North, where, from what I have heard, the European influence is bigger...

[anodyne]

Many Westerns were filmed in southern Spain so that could be a reason why people who played Mexicans tended to be Italians or Spaniards.

I believe all of the Western films made by Sergio Leone were shot in Spain.

[eufrenio]

Spaghetti Westerns (Sergio Leone, etc) were mostly shot in Spain, with Spanish extras.

[buddy]

^That's true, in the north the Amerindian population was less numerous, and additionally, more Spaniards settled in the north because of the climatic similarity to certain regions of Spain, but even there, I'm sure one could notice Amerindian admixture in many of the individuals. In any case, the actors in Mexican roles often look overly European in Hollywood. I have nothing against it, it's just rather funny to see someone who looks basically like me in a mestizo role lol.

[buddy]

eufrenio said:

Spaghetti Westerns (Sergio Leone, etc) were mostly shot in Spain, with Spanish extras.

I thought some were also shot in Sardinia, which contains landscapes which are somewhat similar to the American Southwest (along with southern Spain).

[Toasty]

You're right buddy. In the Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Eli Wallach played a mexican outlaw, and he's jewish. But yeah, modern westerns now feature real mestizos.

[asdf]

As far as I know, casting pred. Amerindid people for the typical N. Mexican/southern American "Mexican" is going to be more of an error than casting Southern Europeans. Up until this day, most of the pred. Amerindid people in N. Mexico are recent immigrants. Go to places like Magdelena, etc, Indians did not much exist there 20 years ago. The situation was similar presumably in the former Mexican and Spanish United States.

[maxell]

There was a time, though, when the Spanish film industry was less buoyant, but the country itself was much in demand for locations - Lawrence of Arabia, Cleopatra, Doctor Zhivago... The golden age of film-set Spain was the sixties and its capital was Almería. The nearby Tabernas desert, the only true desert in Europe, was a magnet to film producers, and a number of the sets that were used at the time can now be visited.

went to Mini-Hollywood, the longest established of three theme parks existing in the area. The other two, Western Leone and Texas Hollywood, are still working locations, at least some of the time, but Mini-Hollywood is now entirely given over to the theme-park business. Its heart is a Wild-West set, what one critic calls "your standard Spaghetti-Western town." And most of it is deliciously, authentically false - real, phoney buildings that were actually used in films.

Some of the movies that were shot here are legendary: Sergio Leone's 'Dollars' trilogy ('A Fistful of Dollars', 'For a Few Dollars More' and 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly') starring Clint Eastwood as the Man with No Name, 'Django' with Franco Nero, the sequels to which never seemed to end... over a hundred titles were at least partially filmed in these dusty streets. Almería was also used as a location for other film genres after the sixties (Patton, The Wind and the Lion, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade...) but it was the spaghetti-western that really defined the relationship between the province and the film industry.



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