**2. The construction of a National Mexican Identity**

For Stuart Hall, identity is the sense of a common world that is shared between the members of a group through "systems of representation" ([4], p. 4). These systems of representation are cognitive mechanisms that let people situate in the world and react to it. Hall explains that these are "signifying practices", signs and symbols (sounds, language, written words, electronically produced images, musical notes, objects) "that stand for or represent, in our mental life, things which are or may be out there in the world" (p. 4) and that people use to signify concepts, ideas, and feelings and to communicate and exchange meanings (p. 5). According to him, the meanings shared by a group help organize and regulate daily social practices, what is accepted and what must be rejected, since "they help to set the rules, norms, and conventions by which social life is ordered and governed" (p. 5). This is how their culture is shaped. The exchange of meanings in a community creates a sense of identity, "a sense of who we are and with whom we belong" (p. 3), a sense of fitting based on the common.

However, identity is not static or uniform, it changes and evolves with the vicissitudes of societies and the exchanges that exist with the "others". For Hall and Du Gay [5], identity is related with the sense of identification, with "a construction, a neverfinished process: always in 'process'. It is not determined [because it] is always possible to 'win' or 'lose' it, sustain it or abandon it" (p. 15, my translation). So, identity "is an articulation process", where identification occurs "to a greater or lesser extent"

#### *Sueño en Otro Idioma: Queer Identities in Contemporary Mexican Melodrama DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.105162*

but "never in totality" (p. 15, my translation). For the authors, it works by means of difference. It points out the limits that separate us from others, and, although it recognizes "stable" elements that unify a group, identities react to context and otherness, so that they "are fragmented and are never singular" (p. 17). Hall and Du Gay establish that identities are "constructed in many ways through different discourses, practices and positions, often crossed and antagonistic. They are subject to radical historicization, and in a constant process of change and transformation" ([5], pp. 16–17, my translation). It means that we can find a historical time that has defined our identity with an idea close to reality but, at the same time, has experienced different transformations related to all the systems of representation that configure cultures in time, just like it has been revealed in cinema.

In Mexico, cinema has contributed to forging the idea of Nation, a system of representation that has established a series of conceptions about what is mexicaness. Most of them had been determined by patriarchal, heteronormative, and racist codes of behavior inherited from a sociopolitical process of national transformation through the Conquest, the Revolution, and the arrival of modern capitalism. Those struggles have also been fought in the realm of representation, where all the social sectors (men, women, indigenous people, *mestizos*, rich, poor, queer) and their subjectivities have been looking forward to being part of the national imaginary, in order to transform the stereotypical system that has long organized the idea of being Mexican. De la Garza [6] explores the changes that national Mexican identity across time: "In 1810, the main external other was 'Spain'", "in 1847 this other became 'the United States'" (p. 414). With the revolution, "Mexicans were all mestizos" (p. 416) and the others became the *criollos*, remaining "indigenous minority" (p. 415). Later, with the "regional economic integration" (p. 419) promoted by the North American Free Trade Area, narratives were then related to the idea of "partnership and complementarity" (p. 419). Today, most conflicts are focused on the city, economic and political crises, drug trafficking and understanding new queer identities.

For Koper [1], through siècle XX, the idea of Mexican national identity was grounded "in racial and class-based notions of 'Mexicanity'" (p. 98). She explains that the public policies implemented by the state after the Revolution "reinforcing cultural and racial whitening of the Mexican nation" (p. 98) in a kind of "internal colonialism" (p. 98) that intended to make all indigenous communities uniform under the concept of *mestizaje*. The result of these policies was the apparent incorporation of the indigenous with society, but at the same time, their exclusion. What was valued about indigenous people was the past: narratives that praised an imaginary pre-Columbian culture, but that excluded its legal and current conditions of existence. The concept of *indigenismo* was a myth, an attempt to build a homogeneous nation where "their concern over the pluri-ethnic composition of the fractured nation, reshaped the image of the indigenous in order to forge one national identity" ([1], p. 100). The ideological idea of *mestizaje* hid racism at the discursive level, and *indigenista* policies categorize indigenous people as "passive recipients of governmental aid" (p. 102), associating them with poverty and in need of education to become better integrated with a developed society.

Film productions portraying indigenous people supported government policies that "glorify pre-Columbian heritage […] historical epics depicting the Spanish conquest and mestizaje" ([1], p. 104). Also, the great number of movies of the *comedia ranchera* genre produced during the Golden Age of Mexican cinema embraced religious syncretism, *mestizo* identity, and "valorized Mexican pueblo as joyful yet coarse drunks" (p. 110). In contrast, Koper claims that the cinema of Emilio "El

Indio" Fernández exalted an indigenous heritage and showed the marginal side of government policies. Nevertheless, his stories reproduced the patriarchal regime, the importance of the Mexican man and the submission of women. Besides, the film director was criticized because his casting choices reproduced *mestizo* identity over "indigenous somatic features" ([1], p. 109). The characters in Fernández's films work in oppositional concepts: "nature vs civilization" (p. 108), victims vs. perpetrators, naïve vs. abusive, pure vs. impure, corrupted vs. uncorrupted; they all represent the stereotypical identities discussed so far.

For Hall and Du Gay [5], the basis of identities is "difference". They claim, based under the readings of Derrida, Laclau and Butler, that "the radically disturbing admission that the 'positive' meaning of any term -and with it its 'identity'- can only be constructed through the relationship with the other, the relationship with what he is not, with precisely what he lacks, with what has been called its constitutive outside" (p. 18, my translation). Hall argues that this is related to cultural meanings and how these are frequently organized as binaries or opposites, when one of them is considered abnormal, wrong, or unacceptable. Once the "normal" has been "established or fixed", all that falls around it is dismissed or rejected. This "difference" is represented as "the other", and to be reduced into this relation of opposed meanings, gives rise to stereotypes. People who are in any way significantly different from the majority are frequently exposed to this binary-opposite form of representation ([4], pp. 225–229). Thus, racial, ethnic, sexual, class and disabilities foreground the dimension of difference. Hall also claims that "the whole repertoire of imaginary and visual effects through which 'difference' is represented at one historical moment is a 'regime of representation'" ([4], p. 232). In it, difference is significant in a very simplistic way, losing the richness that this difference itself entails, failing to capture the diversity of the world. There is always a power relationship in signifying practices because it is the dominant representation system which imposes a classificatory system over the "others".

However, the meanings that we share in culture are not "straightforward, rational or instrumental" or finally fixed because "they mobilize powerful feelings and emotions of both a positive and negative kind" ([4], p. 10). Interpretation depends on the context and on personal history in a community. Concepts and categories that classify the elements of reality for a mutual understanding are changing (Types), and just as types change, stereotypes do too, despite the power relationships that try to maintain a fixed meaning that allows classifying, evaluating, and discriminating difference. Regimes of representation are constantly undermined, "as representations interact with one another, substituting for each other, displacing one another along unending chain" ([4], p. 10). Meanings can be struggled over, challenging, negotiating and transforming the very cultural identities in resonance with new contexts and situations. This is the reason why identity allows a general cultural recognition, but, at the same time, accepts changes with time.

*Sueño en otro idioma* presents, in Mexican culture, a fragmented identity. The first part of this identity are the indigenous *Zikril* people. Only three of them are still alive: Jacinta (Mónica Miguel), Evaristo (Eligio Meléndez/Juan Pablo de Santiago), and Isauro (José Manuel Poncelis/Hoze Meléndez). They still speak their ancient language. In their cosmogony, *zikriles* can speak with animals and understand the world. The second fragment of identity in the film are the *mestizos*, descendants of both *zikriles* and Spaniards who established themselves in this region long ago. All of them had forgotten their indigenous roots and, facing an economic crisis, are trying to learn English and travel to the United States in order to have a better life. This group

### *Sueño en Otro Idioma: Queer Identities in Contemporary Mexican Melodrama DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.105162*

is represented by Lluvia (Fátima Molina) and her friends. The third identity are the *criollos*, who represent the purest heritage of the Spaniards, hold power and symbolize the progress of the country. The *criollos* in the film are Martín (Fernando Álvarez Reveil), a young linguist that has come to the village with the intention of preserving the *Zikril* language*,* and María (Nicolasa Ortíz Monasterio), a woman that forces the main characters to confront their past and their present.

The film represents both types and stereotypes in relation to indigenous people, gender roles and even professional practices. The western, educated, modern, and superior white man is represented by Martin and his honorable aspiration of saving the language with an apparently moral superiority. Jacinta is the wise, old, indigenous woman dressed in traditional attire who embodies *Zikril* cosmogony. María is the young religious woman of European origins who considers herself superior to the indigenous people and whose accomplishment is to marry a man to fulfill her marital obligations. Lluvia is to the opposite of María: a *Malinche* figure who betrays her past because she wants to be part of the global world. Conversely, the protagonists, Evaristo and Isauro, break their stereotype. They are two indigenous homosexual men that in their youth fall in love with each other. They represent a different idea about indigenous subjectivities. Their emotional world embodies the syncretism of their identity, while their beliefs and cultural traditions enter in conflict.

The previous descriptions adhere to cinema as a "system of representation" through which people make sense of the world. It feeds and configures representations, offers sources of knowledge and provides behavior guidelines. Meanings shown on the screen share values, behavior patterns and attitudes over types and stereotypes, working as devices that project social conventions to recognize, build and rebuild our identities. But, just like identity is an ongoing process, its representation in cinema can also demonstrate nuances and challenges. Throughout the years, while some types and stereotypes have remained stable, others have evolved, evidencing different sociopolitical and socioeconomic crises that Mexico has faced, as well as the changing processes that shape identity.
