Book Review: meXicana Encounters

In Rosa Linda Fregoso’s own terms, the aim of meXicana Encounters is to explore “the symbolic role of Mexicanas and Chicanas in culture” (1). In other words, she analyzes how the influences of heteronormativity, patriarchy, and Eurocentrism have determined representations of Mexicana and Chicana women in both films and books. These representations eroticize and other these women, portraying them as sexual deviants and non-Americans, as examples throughout her book show. Fregoso deconstructs a range or representations, primarily in films, criticizing some for perpetuating these images and commending others for providing a more nuanced understanding.

Her first topic, the “feminicide” rife in Ciudad Juárez, censures the documentary films Maquila: A Tale of Two Mexicos and Performing the Border for “linking feminicide to globalization” without further “associating the murders of the women in Juárez with their nonnormative practices” (13). Fregoso sees this as accepting the state-sponsored implication that these women brought their own fate upon them by not fulfilling the traditional, homemaker gender roles. Fregoso resumes the same strand in her discussion of miscegenation, connecting the image of Mexicans as morally depraved (127) to eugenics in general to eroticized visions of Mexicana women, such as in Griffith’s film Mexican Sweethearts (133, 147). Fregoso writes that “zealous motion picture produces… readily revived the trope of radicalized sexuality” (144). As in Ciudad Juárez, women are caught in the virgin/whore dichotomy, for the only positive representations of mixed-race relationships occurred when the woman accepts a white, Victorian conception of femininity (140). However, Fregoso is careful to point out that there are those who do break the silence, protesting these representations. In her discussion of “Familia Matters,” she cites the novel Maravillia as an example of “pachuca” rebellion which breaks “the silences around female sexuality, which are so ingrained in traditional Chicano familias, del Fuego deliberately subverts its dominant heterosexual norms” (96). Similarly, the film Paulina gives a multicultural, transnational feminist perspective. By exposing the violence experienced by Paulina Cruz Suárez, this film “gives visibility to new gendered subjects within the nation-state” (47).

The films Fregoso analyzes in chapter seven also reinforce the otherness of Mexicans. Beyond simply undermining the white settler’s strict notions of sexuality, Mexicanas and Chicanas subverted Manifest Destiny’s definition of “americanness.” Fregoso contends that these films “reflect the formulation of a U.S. national identity predicated not just on racial subordination of the other, but also on the disavowal of the Mexicanist presence” (127). The film Red Girl, for example, portrays the Mexicana character as alienated from the Native American and white characters, definitively non-American (130). Fregoso sees the same othering process even in films that purport to be multi-cultural, such as Lone Star. Rather than recognizing the complexity of mixing identities, Lone Star positions the non-white characters as subordinate to the benevolent patronage of the white male characters (58). Fregoso claims that “the point of view of whiteness and masculinity” is “privileged in the narrative,” positioning anything else as inferior and less American.

Although Fregoso cites both relatively modern and older films, she limits her sources to rather esoteric films and novels, leaving out a range of more modern and perhaps less scholarly examples. I would have liked to see her use even more modern and popular examples, showing how the representations she so carefully analyzes actually influence culture at large. However, I did appreciate the fact that she offered examples of films and books she felt provided a sufficiently nuanced, constructive view of Mexicanas and Chicanas. She showed that it is indeed possible to challenge the entrenched stereotypes, as films like Paulina do.