T H E L AT I N

AMERICAN
(COUNTER-)
ROAD MOVI E
AND
A M B I VA L E N T
MODERNIT Y

NADIA LIE

[NEW DIRECTIONS IN LATINO AMERICAN CULTURES]

New Directions in Latino American Cultures

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Latin American and Puerto Rican Studies
Lehman College
Bronx, New York, USA

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Emory University
Atlanta, Georgia, USA
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 Nadia Lie

The Latin American

(Counter-) Road
Movie and Ambivalent
Modernity
Nadia Lie
KU Leuven
Leuven, Belgium

New Directions in Latino American Cultures

ISBN 978-3-319-43553-4 ISBN 978-3-319-45138-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-45138-1

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In memory of my parents, who wanted me to drive
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

In many ways, writing a book is like embarking on a journey. You meet new
people along the road, while remaining in touch with old friends. You travel
with maps, yet often end up somewhere you didn’t expect. Sometimes, you
get lost or stuck, and you need the support of friends and families to get
back on the road. Having arrived at the end of this journey, I want to
express my sincere thanks to all those who accompanied me in one way or
another.
First of all, I am grateful to the Flemish Council for Scientific Research
(FWO) for having granted me a sabbatical leave and funded several research
visits in the context of this book. Without their generous support, this
book would not have existed. The international research project on
transnationality, TRANSIT, funded by the European Union and the Uni-
versity of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), provided me with interesting
new discussants in the past few years and facilitated a three-week research
stay at UCLA.
Several academic hosts also kindly received me at their universities
abroad. I am deeply indebted to Isabel Santaolalla (Roehampton Univer-
sity, London), Joanna Page (Cambridge University), and David Oubi~na
(Universidad de Buenos Aires/Universidad del Cine) for having enriched
my project with illuminating thoughts from the very beginning. Enrique
Camacho Navarro—my host and friend at the National Autonomous Uni-
versity of Mexico (UNAM) in Mexico—allowed me to present and publish
my early ideas on the Cuban road movie at UNAM’s Center of Interdisci-
plinary Research on the Caribbean and Latin America (CIALC). Another

vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

long-time friend and colleague, Maarten van Delden (UCLA), was vital in
helping me obtain the FWO grant for the sabbatical leave, as were his astute
comments on the outlines of my project. Pablo Gasparini allowed me to
teach a postgraduate course on mobility and road movies at the
Universidade S~ao Paulo in Brazil. During these research stays, many more
scholars made time, despite their busy schedules, to exchange ideas on this
project. González Aguilar (Universidad de Buenos Aires/CONICET)
encouraged me to write a chapter on Patagonian road movies; Geoffrey
Kantaris (Cambridge University) answered questions about road movies in
Colombia; Ismael Xavier (Universidade S~ao Paulo) and Randall Johnson
(UCLA) gave me clues for understanding Brazilian road movies; and Efraín
Kristal (UCLA) helped me see more clearly in the question of modernity.
With Michael Chanan (Roehampton University), I had an unforgettable
chat about Cuban cinema on a bench in a London park. Peter Verstraten
(Leiden University) and Sophie Dufays (Université Catholique de Louvain-
la Neuve) offered important inputs for this book, and Sara Brandellero
generously invited me to her conference on road movies at Leiden Univer-
sity. The comments and suggestions of all of these scholars made this book
much better than it would have been otherwise, but for the many flaws it
still contains, I am the only one to blame.
It goes without saying that a book based on more than one hundred road
movies greatly benefited from the help of documentalists, cinephiles, and
befriended colleagues from all over the world. Special thanks go to Julie
Coimbra (Cambridge University), Vanesa Gutiérrez Toca (IMCINE, Mex-
ico), Lygia Bagdanovich (UCLA Film & Television Archive), Felipe
Bonacina (Liberarte, Buenos Aires), Geovanny Walter Narváez Narváez
(Universidad de Cuenca, Ecuador/KU Leuven), my Argentine film
buddy Pablo Piedras (Universidad de Buenos Aires/CONICET), and
Benny Heyselbergs (FNAC, Leuven). Several directors sent me early ver-
sions of their films and allowed me to reproduce stills. For reasons of space, I
limit myself to a few names among the many upon whose work this book
builds: Jorge Bodanzky, Silvio Canihuante, Alberto Fuguet, Carlos Gaviria,
Ilse Hughan, Macarena López, Andrea Martínez Crowther, Jeanine
Meerapfel, María Paz González, Digna Sinke, Dominga Sotomayor, Marité
Ugás, and Mauricio Varela.
Closer to home, I am indebted to my university, KU Leuven, for having
provided me with a stimulating intellectual environment for many years
now. For their continuing support, their brightness and intelligence, and
their invaluable practical help, I thank my colleagues and friends Dagmar
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix

Vandebosch, Silvana Mandolessi, and Liesbeth François. Fred Truyen was

always there for me when I needed technical advice or a short break to chat
about academic life. Reindert Dhondt, María Paz Gómez Oliver, and
Brigitte Adriaensen, who are now working at other universities, remained
in touch even after my role as their PhD supervisor had ended, encouraging
me in turn to complete this work in time. Tijl Nuyts’s help was vital in the
final days of the preparation of the manuscript. Most precious were the
comments and practical recommendations of the many students who took
my course on Latin American road movies in the past few years, as well as
the excellent services of the library personnel, in particular Stefan Derouck
and Rudi De Groot.
At Palgrave Macmillan, Shaun Vigil was an impressively efficient editor,
and two anonymous reviewers were generous and insightful in their com-
ments on the book proposal and some of its chapters. As a non-native
speaker of English, I was greatly helped in writing this book by the efficient
services of Iannis Goerlandt and his team, as well as by the careful revisions
of Philippa Page (Newcastle University), who has become a driving force
behind this book and an indispensable intellectual companion since we met.
Finally, I thank my family for their warm support in the past few years.
Simon, my youngest son, whose disciplined behavior I admire, helped me
keep my Internet use under control, so that I could finish this book in time.
Michiel, my eldest son and film buddy at home, tracked down numerous
road movies for me and saved me from technical calamities. My practically
minded sister Ingrid regularly enquired on the phone if “there was any
progress yet.” Whenever there wasn’t any, I had the tremendous luck of
finding by my side a bright and gifted husband, who understood how one
can become desperate over such trivialities as structures and outlines. Thank
you, Peter, for devoting so many hours to my project that you could have
spent on your own writings instead. This book is yours as much as it is mine.
May we keep on traveling long and far as buddies on the road of life.
 CONTENTS

1 Introduction 1

2 Traveling Across Latin America 31

3 Nations in Crisis 63

4 The Patagonian Pull 95

5 Heading North: Migrants and the US–Mexican Border 123

6 Internally Displaced People Roaming the Roads 155

7 Gazing at Tourists 179

Epilogue 209

Filmography 213

xi
xii CONTENTS

Bibliography 221

Index 237
 LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 2.1 Ernesto Guevara writing down his thoughts on the Machu Picchu
in Walter Salles’s Diarios de motocicleta (2004) 39
Fig. 2.2 Martín Nunca writing down his thoughts on the Machu Picchu in
Fernando Solanas’s El viaje (1992) 48
Fig. 2.3 Carlos L€ owenthal and his son on a Bolivian bus in Jeanine
Meerapfel’s Amigomío (1995) 52
Fig. 3.1 The charolastras warn Julia Cortés not to look at a group of military
along the road in Alfonso Cuarón’s Y tu mam a también (2001) 70
Fig. 3.2 At the beginning of the journey, the taxi crosses a young girl, who
leans against the slogan “Socialism or Death” in Tomás Gutiérrez
Alea and Juan Carlos Tabío’s Guantanamera (1995) 78
Fig. 3.3 El Rulo has to sell his car in Pablo Trapero’s Mundo Grúa (1999) 83
Fig. 4.1 Soledad’s taxi drives off an unfinished bridge in Patagonia in
o lo que (1998)
Alejandro Agresti’s El viento se llev 99
Fig. 4.2 María Flores is waiting for a bus back home in Carlos Sorín’s
Historias mínimas (2002) 109
Fig. 4.3 The Danish father disappears in a grey landscape in Lisandro
Alonso’s Jauja (2014) 113
Fig. 5.1 Sheriff Belmont drives his car into a ditch in Tommy Lee Jones’s
Los tres entierros de Melquiades Estrada (2005) 132
Fig. 5.2 Hidden in a chair, Andrés García attempts to cross the US–
Mexican border in Rigoberto Perezcano’s Norteado (2009).
(Courtesy of Edgar San Juan) 135
Fig. 5.3 Juan poses as gunfighter Shane in Diego Quemada-Díez’s La jaula
de oro (2013) 145

xiii
xiv LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 6.1 Iracema and Ti~ao Brasil Grande meet again at the end of Jorge
Bodanzky & Orlando Senna’s Iracema. Uma transa amazônia
(1975) 162
Fig. 6.2 The town where Ramiro Orellano is taken to in Ricardo Larraín’s
La frontera (1991) cannot be reached by car 165
Fig. 6.3 The protagonists in Marité Ugás’s El chico que miente (2010) keep
on living in a devastated place after the Tragedy of Vargas in 1999 168
Fig. 6.4 Marina remembers how her family’s house was destroyed in Carlos
Gaviria’s Retratos en un mar de mentiras (2010). (Photography:
Alberto Sierra) 173
Fig. 7.1 Esperanza proudly shows Teresa images of her previous journeys in
Tania Hermida’s Qué tan lejos (2006) 186
Fig. 7.2 The tourist picture of Carla Gutiérrez and her husband is out of
focus in Alicia Scherson’s Turistas (2006) 191
Fig. 7.3 Alejandro Tazo looks at himself, wearing a cowboy hat, in Alberto
Fuguet’s Música campesina (2011) 198
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

In the past two decades, Latin American cinema has witnessed a boom in
road movies. Whereas hardly any films in that genre are mentioned through
the 1990s in the classic surveys of the continent’s cinema,1 this book
includes a filmography of nearly 160 road movies, no fewer than 139 of
which have appeared since 1990. Without a doubt, the breakthrough of the
Latin American road movie came with the international success of two films
in that vein: Y tu mam
a también (2001), by Mexican film director Alfonso
Cuarón, and Diarios de motocicleta (2004), by Brazilian filmmaker Walter
Salles. Salles even went on to earn the honor of directing the world’s first
film version of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road (1957), often considered to be
the seminal novel of the genre. These two films, however, are only the tip of
the iceberg. From the 1990s onwards, well-known Latin American directors
such as Tomás Gutiérrez Alea (Guantanamera, 1995, Cuba), Fernando
Solanas (El viaje, 1992, Argentina), and Arturo Ripstein (Profundo carmesí,
1996, Mexico) turned to the genre, and several of today’s most prominent
filmmakers have also engaged in it: Pablo Trapero (Familia rodante, 2004,
Argentina), Carlos Sorín (Historias mínimas, 2002, Argentina), and Carlos
Reygadas (Jap
on, 2002, Mexico)–to name but a few. That being said, the
bulk of contemporary road movies have been made by young directors,
from all parts of Latin America, for whom the road movie has the added
attraction of low production costs (Eyerman and L€ofgren 1995, 67). Road
movies then also direct us to the heart of what is currently being made in
Latin America by a new, promising generation of filmmakers.

© The Author(s) 2017 1

N. Lie, The Latin American (Counter-) Road Movie and Ambivalent
Modernity, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-45138-1_1
2 N. LIE

This book presents the first cross-national monographic survey of the

genre as it is practiced in Latin America.2 It centers on road movies from the
1990s and later, for the simple reason that the genre only started to flourish
then, but when appropriate, examples of older road movies are included and
analyzed. Films from different national cinemas are brought together in
each chapter to bring to the fore the transnational dimension of the issues
this genre addresses. While proposing a systematic mapping of the diverse
landscape of the Latin American road movie, my book also transcends a
merely encyclopedic account of the genre. It does this in two ways. First, the
book proposes a definition of the genre that takes into account the speci-
ficity of the Latin American case, and uses it throughout to grant consis-
tency to the readings. A variant of the road movie, which is remarkably
present in the body of works analyzed here, has been identified and a new
term has been coined for it: the “counter–road movie.” Second, the study
pays specific attention to the genre’s relationship with the issue of moder-
nity and examines how the road movie’s alleged ambivalence in this respect
is to be conceived from a Latin American perspective.

THE REBIRTH OF LATIN AMERICAN CINEMA

The success of the contemporary road movie cannot be detached from
recent evolutions in Latin American cinema. While the 1960s witnessed
the breakthrough of a new generation of Latin American writers, known as
“the boom,”3 the 1990s inaugurated a period in which Latin American
cinema would become a regular presence in European and US movie houses
and festivals. True, there had been an earlier moment of internationalization
in the late 1960s, when filmmakers from several countries in Latin America
became known in Europe and the United States through a new kind of
“revolutionary” cinema, which was designed and promoted under different
labels, the best known of which is “New Latin American Cinema.” In
theoretical works and manifestos, filmmakers Glauber Rocha (Brazil),
Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino (Argentina), Jorge Sanjinés (Bolivia),
Julio García Espinoza and Tomás Gutiérrez Alea (Cuba), and Miguel Littin
(Chile) defined a new aesthetics for a “Third World Cinema” that would
produce “an active cinema for an active spectator” (Martin 1997, 17). But
by the 1970s and 1980s, the hopes for real change on the continent that had
motivated this movement had been dashed. First there were the military
dictatorships (e.g., Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay), which implied censor-
ship and exile; then, there was the economic crisis that hit Latin America in
 INTRODUCTION 3

the 1980s, introducing a period of sharp cuts in state subsidies to national

film industries. The dramatic descent in productivity this caused in some of
the continent’s most established film industries has been documented in
several books.4 What is important, in this context, is that this economic
downfall brought with it a change in the production and distribution
mechanisms for Latin American cinema that would definitively alter the
conditions for filmmaking on the continent. Even if countries such as
Argentina and Brazil voted in new film laws starting in the 1990s to stem
the dramatic decline in production, filmmakers had learned to look for
support beyond their country’s borders and even the continent’s.
John King (2000, 265) explains that “co-production became the domi-
nant viable route for filmmakers from the late eighties onwards,” as dem-
onstrated by the international success of such films as Old Gringo (Luis
Puenzo 1989) and Fresa y chocolate (Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and Juan Carlos
Tabío 1993). Starting in the mid-1990s, a series of alternative foundations
set up to support filmmakers from “emergent economies” increased inter-
national financing opportunities, especially for young filmmakers (Shaw
2007, 2). The most important institutions in this respect are the Sundance
Institute (US, 1985), the Hubert Bals Foundation (the Netherlands, 1989),
and the Ibermedia program (Spain, 1997). These foreign foundations
were less commercial-minded than the parties involved in international
co-productions and gave out grants and loans to talented young filmmakers
without making demands regarding cast and scripts. The new freedom this
gave filmmakers was heightened by the concurrent appearance of more
independent production companies, such as El Deseo, El Anhelo, and the
Tequila Gang. Most of the road movies discussed in this book received
funding from one of the aforementioned foundations, which makes it
plausible to attribute part of the road movie’s current success to its own
“traveling” conditions in terms of financing and production. Of course,
there have also been road movies made without that support, either because
they used the low-budget facilities of digital filmmaking (e.g., Alberto
Fuguet’s Música campesina, 2011) or because they relied exclusively on
national subsidies (e.g., Patricia Riggen’s La Misma Luna, 2007), which
eventually reappeared after a period of extreme austerity. These films are less
easily available on DVD, but they also travel thanks to the new opportuni-
ties afforded by the internet.
An important difference between the cinema currently being made
and the 1960s movement of “New Latin American Cinema” consists in
the positioning towards Hollywood. The ideological program of the
4 N. LIE

revolutionary filmmakers of the 1960s and 1970s had implied a critical

distance with respect to US and European cinema in an effort to carve out
“a third way.” Contemporary film directors, on the contrary, create films
that rely on a more dynamic and flexible concept of international models
and styles. Specialists on “world cinema” have pointed to this phenomenon
and observed an evolution in scholarship towards a new, “decentered” way
of conceiving relationships between different cinemas:

Current scholarship on the transnational scale of cinematic circulation now

takes for granted a geopolitical decentering of the discipline. Areas once
considered peripheral (that is, less developed countries, the so-called Third
World) are now seen as integral to the historical development of cinema. The
assumption that the export of European and US cinema to the rest of the
world, from the silent period onward, inspired only derivative image cultures
has been replaced by a dynamic model of cinematic exchange, where film-
makers around the world are known to have been in dialogue with one
another’s work, and other cultural and political exchanges to form the
dynamic context of these dialogues. (Newman 2010, 4)

This does not mean that power relationships have disappeared from the
cinematic map. US films in movie houses across Europe still largely out-
number ones by Latin American directors, or even European ones. But the
clear-cut distinctions between what counts as a US film and what does not
have become blurred. Thus, Harry Potter’s adventures in The Prisoner of
Azkaban (2004, distributed by Warner Brothers) were filmed by Mexican
director Adolfo Cuarón, and two of his compatriots–Alejandro González
nárritu and Emmanuel Lubezki—figure in the 2016 list of Academy Award
I~
winners (both for The Revenant, 2015), and not in the special category of
“foreign films.”
This new, transnational dynamic explains why genres hitherto identified
with US cinema have started to travel outside that geo-cultural domain. The
road movie is one of them, but even the Western—a genre so strongly tied
to the US landscape—has shown an ability to move into foreign territories
(Higgins et al. 2015). What’s more, the overall view of what a genre is has
changed. Once a basically scholarly notion used to describe the similarities
between different works of art, the concept of “genre” now appears as a key
player in the transnational circulation of films. Thus, Luisela Alvaray notes:
“Filmmakers in Latin America are considering elements of genres–or a
combination thereof–as shortcuts to tell autochthonous stories. And
 INTRODUCTION 5

producers are using crossover genres to appeal to wider audiences” (Alvaray

2013, 69). And Joanna Page contends, more generally:

Reappropriations of genres arising originally at different points in time and

space provide particularly rich pickings for a kind of cultural archaeology that
seeks to mine the complex relationships between text and context. The
mediations between the local and the global at the aesthetic level in these
films (as well as in their narrative content) produce multiple readings:
intersecting, superimposed, and contradictory. (2009, 86)

Focusing on transnationality in Mexican, Argentine, and Brazilian cinema,

Paul Julian Smith (2012) proposes a distinction between “prestige block-
busters,” “genre films,” and “festival films.”5 The first category refers to the
fact that previously established distinctions between “commercial cinema”
and “auteurist cinema” have become blurred since non-US directors, in
particular, need to profile themselves as “auteurs” to get access to the global
market. The Revenant, alluded to above, is a clear example of this: the
Academy Award-winning movie derives part of its prestige from its stars
(Leonardo Di Caprio and Tom Hardy), but much of it also from the
technical virtuosity displayed by the Mexican Emmanuel Lubezki as direc-
tor of photography. Another example is El secreto de sus ojos (Juan José
Campanella, 2009), which combines the use of Argentine celebrities
(in particular, Ricardo Darín) with the auteurist mark of the long take (see
the football stadium sequence). In general, though, the Latin American
directors of road movies lack the means and facilities to aim for a “block-
buster,” which is why nearly all of the films discussed in this book (with the
exception perhaps of Diarios de motocicleta) fall into the other two
categories.
In the case of genre movies, a reliance on well-known formats such as the
thriller, the zombie movie, or—indeed—the road movie makes local stories
more recognizable for international audiences, even if new contexts imply
that the genres need to be adapted. In this respect, the road movie has been
presented as a “traveling genre” (Berger 2016, 172) that adapts particularly
well to new, intercultural contexts (Moser 2008, 26; Everett 2009, 167),
even if scholars long presumed that it was intrinsically North American.6 As
for the festival films, these are closely tied to the circuits of alternative
funding and screening presented above and often marked by characteristics
6 N. LIE

associated with art house cinema. Smith summarizes these characteristics as

follows:

They employ little camera movement and extended takes without edits;
they tell casual or oblique stories, often elliptical and inconclusive and they
often cast non-professionals whose limited range restricts their performance
to a consistently blank or affectless acting style. “Festival films” may well be
shot in black and white, and will certainly lack a conventional musical score.
(Smith 2012, 72)

Smith’s distinction between “genre movies” and “festival films” suggests

that the concept of genre is not relevant to the latter. Festival films, indeed,
tend to profile themselves in opposition to mainstream cinema and its
typical strategies. Nevertheless, many of the films included in this book
belong to the festival circuit and were still explicitly marketed as road
movies. In almost all of these cases, however, the road movie is clearly
appropriated very freely, even ironically, with travelers traveling in canoes
(Lisandro Alonso’s Los muertos, 2004) or on donkeys (Ciro Guerra’s Los
viajes del viento, 2009), or even not traveling at all (Fernando Eimbcke’s
Lake Tahoe, 2008). The road movie, then, cuts across the different catego-
ries identified by Smith, allowing for different forms of appropriation and
even crossovers between the categories. Y tu mam
a también,7 for instance,
was originally a genre film but turned into a “prestige blockbuster”
afterwards.
The transnationalization of Latin American cinema in the past two
decades has not only led to new analytical categories, between which the
road movie navigates, but also coincided with a change in filmic language
generally referred to as “the return of the real” (Aguilar 2008, 24). As
several scholars explain (e.g., Andermann and Fernández Bravo 2013),
this evolution amounts to more than a simple rebirth of realism after a
period in which filmmakers had explored the possibilities of enriching
cinematic language through the allegorical, the fantastic, and the grotesque.
In the context of contemporary Latin American cinema, it demonstrates an
interest in cinema as an “investigative tool” of reality (Aguilar 2008, 17),
which also implies a distancing from the established, industrialized modes of
“realist” filmmaking. Thus, the so-called “return of the real” impacts the
scripts and casts of contemporary films, opening them up to the unexpected
and the coincidental and welcoming non-professional actors (Aguilar 2008,
28). In many cases, fictional films are endowed with documentary
 INTRODUCTION 7

dimensions, producing new synergies between the two modes of filmmak-

ing and storytelling (Haddu and Page 2009). Most importantly, perhaps,
the very idea of “telling” gives way to a method of “showing” that generally
leaves explicitly political, ideological grids of interpretation aside. As David
Oubi~ na explains: “Compared to the solemn and artificial recipes of the old
cinema, one of the great merits of this rejuvenation was the frontal gaze with
which it encountered the real, without any preconceived notion as to what it
would find there” (2013, 31). As we will see in the next section, several
features of the road movie combine particularly well with the new emphasis
on the observational and coincidental in Latin American cinema as a whole.
Given the recent upsurge of the road movie, it even seems legitimate to state
that the road movie fulfilled a key role in this overall return of the real.8

DEFINING THE ROAD MOVIE

The appearance of the road movie in Latin American cinema should not be
understood as the mechanical transference of a previously developed model
into which local stories are injected. New contexts bring with them new
characteristics or change the ones that were already there.9 Even the editors
of The Road Movie Book (1997)—the first volume on the road movie—
emphasize the historic variability of the genre that already existed in the US
context, distinguishing, among other things, between the films that
appeared before Jack Kerouac’s seminal novel On the Road and the ones
released afterwards (Cohan and Rae Hark 1997, 14). Moreover, the genre
is known for its ability to blend with other genres, often manifesting under
hybrid forms (Sargeant and Watson 1999, 6). That being said, any study of
road movies needs a definition of the genre, if only to explain why certain
films are examined and others are not. After a long period during which the
road movie was described as a particularly “elusive” genre that had been
systematically “overlooked” or “bypassed” (Corrigan 1991, 143; Laderman
2002, 2–3), the recent growth in road movie scholarship has led to a great
number of definitions, demonstrating not only the variety within this cate-
gory, but also—more problematically—a lack of consensus on what a road
movie is.
For the purposes of this study, I have compared an extensive list of what
directors, producers, and film critics consider to be Latin American road
movies with the existing definitions in road movie scholarship. Schemati-
cally speaking, we can differentiate between “narrow” and “broad” defini-
tions of the genre. Narrow definitions have the advantage of being clear.
8 N. LIE

A good example is provided by Timothy Corrigan, who published the first

extensive article on the genre in 1991 and gives an actualized, “prescriptive”
definition of the road movie in his standard work, The Film Experience,
co-written with Patricia White.

A prescriptive definition of the road movie would doubtless focus on auto-

mobiles or motorcycles as the center of narratives about wandering or driven
men who are or eventually become buddies. Structurally, the narrative
develops forward, usually along a linear path, as an aimless odyssey toward
an undefined place of freedom. Encounters are episodic and disconnected and
traveling shots of open roads and landscapes are the stylistic heart of the genre.
(2004, 318)

This description applies perfectly to Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper, 1969), a

film inspired by Jack Kerouac’s On the Road and often cited as the proto-
typical road movie in US cinema (e.g., Laderman 2002, 66; Benoliel and
Thoret 2011, 4). Easy Rider depicts how two male characters in their
twenties—nicknamed “Captain America” (Peter Fonda) and Billy Wyatt
(Dennis Hopper)—drive around on their Harley Davidsons through the
Southwest of the United States, until they are shot down by two conserva-
tive drivers for no other reason than their alternative, hippie lifestyle. The
film shares with On the Road the reference to the counter-cultural back-
ground of the main characters (the beat generation in Kerouac’s novel,
hippies in Hopper’s film) and presents two male buddies for whom being on
the road is more important than the place they are heading. Famous Latin
American road movies such as Diarios de motocicleta and Y tu mam
a también
fit this narrow definition rather well.
The vast majority of road movies included in this book, however, fall
outside these prescriptive boundaries. An important reason for this is
that the motorized vehicles referred to are much less common in Latin
American road movies than they are in US and even European examples of
the genre. Characters travel by any means they see fit: buses (María in
Historias mínimas), trains (Diego Quemada-Díez’s La jaula de oro,
2013), trucks (Jorge Bodanzky and Orlando Senna’s Iracema, 1975),
taxis (Guantanamera), bicycles (El viaje), and even—as mentioned
before—canoes (Los muertos), horses (Israel Cárdenas and Laura Amelia
Guzmán’s Cochochi, 2009) and donkeys (Los viajes del viento). Frequently,
they hitchhike (Tania Hermida’s Qué tan lejos, 2006) or walk on foot
(Héctor Ferreiro Dávila’s Pacha, 2009). Another important difference
 INTRODUCTION 9

between the prescriptive definition and the films included in this study
concerns the (un)motivated nature of the movement. While the prescriptive
definition stresses the idea that characters move without any clear direction
or purpose, most characters in Latin American road movies know where
they are going and for which reason: finding a lost relative (Marité Ugás’s El
chico que miente, 2009; Humberto Solás’s Miel para Ochún, 2001), paying
the last respects to a deceased family member (Juan Carlos De Llaca’s Por la
libre, 2000; Hernán Jiménez’s A ojos cerrados, 2010), or bringing oneself to
safety (Jeanine Meerapfel’s Amigomío, 1995; Juan Carlos Cremata’s Viva
Cuba, 2005). In fact, traveling for leisure, as depicted in Easy Rider and On
the Road, is a luxury few characters can afford in the body of works analyzed.
At the same time, the definition by Corrigan and White very clearly sums up
some of the characteristics that often appear in road movies. Part of the
solution, then, will be to consider the different elements of it as character-
istics that may, or may not, appear in a road movie and that seldom appear
all together at the same time.10
At the other end of the spectrum, we find “broad definitions,” such as the
one introduced by Hans Bertelsen in his pioneering book on the genre from
1991. Situating the genre against the background of US cinema, this
German scholar locates the specificity of the genre in its depiction of a
journey:

The central motif of the road movie is the journey. It is used in the same way
the frontier is in the Western: to dramatize the conflict between individual
freedom and society. [. . .] Within the road movie, different statements regard-
ing the problem of freedom can be observed and in all of them the motif of the
journey is used in different ways. (1991, 47)11

By centering on the motif of the journey, Bertelsen enables scholars to

include not only the vast majority of Latin American road movies, but
even earlier US examples, such as the ones cited by Steven Cohan and Ina
Rae Hark, like The Grapes of Wrath (John Ford, 1940—based on the
eponymous novel by John Steinbeck), in which an American family travels
from Oklahoma to California during the Depression in search for a better
life, or It Happened One Night (Frank Capra, 1934), in which a young,
spoiled girl, named Ellie Andrews (Claudette Colbert), flees home and falls
in love with journalist Peter Warne (Clark Gable). The broad definition also
has the advantage of inscribing the road movie in a long and prestigious
tradition of travel literature, the importance of which has been underscored
10 N. LIE

by David Laderman (2002, 6–13). The road movie’s frequent use of the
journey as “a means of cultural critique” (Laderman 2002, 1; Mazierska and
Rascaroli 2006, 4) recalls literary precedents such as the picaresque novel
and Candide (Voltaire, 1759), and the spiritual transformation of many
travelers during their journey has been related to the Bildungsroman
(Corrigan 1991, 144; Tomkins 2013, 39).12 From a structural point of
view, road movies share with travel narratives a loosely articulated, open-
ended plot and episodic way of storytelling—features referred to in
Corrigan and White’s prescriptive definition. Working on literary texts,
Mikhail Bakhtin coined the term “chronotope of the road” for this mode
of storytelling,13 and Burkhard Pohl has proposed that road movies be
considered as actualized versions of this chronotope (2007, 54). In spite
of these interesting aspects, broad definitions of the road movie run the risk
of becoming so loose that the analytical force of the concept is diminished.
If the journey is the central motif of the road movie, in which way can the
genre be delineated from film versions of literary works such as Don Quixote
or The Odyssey, for instance?
In order to avoid the pitfalls of both narrow and broad definitions, I will
adhere to a minimal definition of the genre, to which I will add supplemen-
tary characteristics that, as said, may or may not appear. Thus, I consider a
Latin American road movie to be any story that centers on mobility and
takes place in an era in which automobile transportation exists. Without
these two elements, there is no road movie—end of story. I prefer the term
“mobility” over that of “journey” because a limited number of Latin
American road movies portray characters whose displacements have no
direct destination, for instance because they are homeless (e.g., Iracema;
María Victoria Menis’s El cielito, 2004). Moreover, the term “mobility”
helps us understand why road movies often give way to broader reflections
on issues of social and economic mobility—an aspect that partially explains
their attraction for contemporary filmmakers (Eyerman and L€ofgren 1995,
54; Gott and Schilt 2013, 8). From a theoretical point of view, the term
“mobility” stands for “movement imbued with meaning” (Adey 2010, 34),
which brings to the fore the interest road movie scholars have in tracing the
different meanings of the displacements they study.14 As for the situatedness
of road movie stories in the era of motorized transportation, this solves the
problem of the scarcity of cars and motorcycles as primary means of trans-
portation in Latin American road movies. While many characters do not
possess a car of their own, the fact that they live in a world in which they
might have used one is significant for their positioning with respect to
 INTRODUCTION 11

modernity–an aspect I will return to below. The Colombian film Los viajes
del viento, in which the protagonist displaces himself on a donkey, is a road
movie, then, because the film takes place in the late 1960s (as explicitly
mentioned in the film). A conquest film like Nicolás Echevarría’s Cabeza de
Vaca (1991) is not a road movie, because the whereabouts of this lost
conquistador are situated in the sixteenth century.
These two elements—mobility and being of the automobile era—lie at
the core of my definition of the Latin American road movie. They apply to
films of fiction, as well as documentaries, which is normal for a genre in
which this line is often blurred (Brandellero 2013, xxiii). Nevertheless, for
reasons of consistency, this book centers on fictional road movies.15 An
important remark concerns the degree to which “mobility” should be
present in the film in order for it to be a road movie. Indeed, nearly all
contemporary films contain at least one scene in which a character travels by
a motorized means of transportation, but does this turn them automatically
into a road movie? The answer is no. In order to be a road movie, mobility
should be a central concern of the story, not just an action occasionally
undertaken to take children to school, for instance, or go to work. More-
over, mobility in road movies is not only at the center of the story, but also
leads the characters outside their daily environment, out of their comfort
zone, so to speak—a phenomenon that is referred to by the term “defamil-
iarization” (Laderman 2002, 2). For this reason, a film like Vel
odromo
(Alberto Fuguet, 2010), in which many scenes are devoted to the pro-
tagonist’s cycling around in Santiago de Chile, is not a road movie, because
this form of mobility does not take him out of his natural environment;
Ciclo (Andrea Martínez Crowther, 2013), on the other hand, is a road
movie, because this documentary shows two elderly men leaving their
domicile in Canada to cycle their way back to the Mexico they left in the
1950s.
But what if only a small part of a film contains a road movie element, as
happens in Los ins
olitos peces gato (Claudia Sainte-Luce, 2013), in which the
children and friend of a mother dying of AIDS accompany her on an
impulse trip to the sea in the final part of the movie? Here, Walter Moser’s
distinction between films clearly belonging to the genre of the road movie
(“le road movie”) and others showing only partial kinship (“du road
movie”) is useful (2008, 21). The films analyzed in this book pertain to
the first category, in the sense that at least half of the film takes the form of a
road movie. The book’s filmography, on the contrary, also includes films in
which smaller parts of a film relate to the genre, on the condition that the
12 N. LIE

road movie portion fulfills a significant role in the overall story. Thus, Los
olitos peces gato is included because the final trip represents the growth of
ins

the various characters into a new kind of loving family, as well as the
admirable capacity of the mother-protagonist to hold on to life until the
very end. Sebastián Borensztein’s Un cuento chino (2011), by contrast, is
not included: although the film starts in China and depicts the displacement
of a Chinese man to an Argentine village, the film does not elaborate on the
displacement itself, but zooms in on the intercultural confrontation that
springs from it.
Now that the core definition of the road movie to be used in this book
has been presented, we can complete the picture with a set of characteristics
that—as mentioned before—may or may not appear, but in any event help
identify a film as a road movie when they do. There are a great many
characteristics associated with road movies, but the ones listed below are
the ones most frequently cited and also most applicable to the road movies
discussed in this book.16 The first of these features is the use of a pair of
protagonists, referred to as a “buddy couple.” According to Cohan and Rae
Hark, the road movie’s fondness for this device is due to practical consid-
erations: “Two people in the front seat of a vehicle make for easy classical
framing and keep the dialogue going” (1997, 8). Prototypically, the
buddies are male adolescent characters—as in On the Road (Sal Paradise
and Dean Moriarty) and Easy Rider (Captain America and Billy Wyatt)—
but other variants exist as well, from the already mentioned Ellie and Peter
in It Happened One Night to Bonnie and Clyde and Thelma and Louise in
the eponymous films by Arthur Penn (1969) and Ridley Scott (1991) or
Travis and his 7-year-old son, Hunter, in Paris Texas (Wim
Wenders, 1984).
This buddy structure punctuates many Latin American road movies.
Besides the typical male buddies (Diarios de motocicleta; Jaime Cuesta and
Alfonso Naranjo’s Dos para el camino, 1981), we find a wide variety of
combinations: from father and son (Jaime Sebastián Jácome’s La ruta de la
luna, 2014) to mother and daughter (María Paz González’s Hija, 2011);
from female friends (María Novarro’s Sin dejar huella, 2000) and lesbians
(Diego Lerman’s Tan de repente, 2002) to children (Isthar Yasín’s El
camino, 2007) and family relatives (Gonzalo Tobal’s Villegas, 2012);
from heterosexual couples (Manuel Rombero’s La rubia del camino,
1938) to people who occasionally meet (Charly Braun’s Por el camino,
2010) or are accompanied by animal buddies (the dog in Carlos Sorín’s
Bomb
on: El perro, 2004; the horse in Cochochi). However, several other
 INTRODUCTION 13

Latin American road movies depict a single traveler only (e.g., El viaje;
Lisandro Alonso’s Liverpool, 2008), larger groups of people traveling (e.g.,
Bye Bye Brasil; La jaula de oro; Luis Bu~nuel’s Mexican road movie Subida al
cielo, 1952) or even entire families (e.g., Familia rodante; Nelson Pereira
Dos Santos’s Vidas secas, 1963; Vicente Amorim’s O caminho das nuvens,
2003). The buddy structure provides the film with a different kind of
dynamic than usually ensured by the action in the story or the events:
characters can quarrel or, conversely, befriend one another, and the appear-
ance of a woman often leads to tensions in male friendships (Y tu mam
a
también; Marcelo Gomes’s Cinema, Aspirins, and Vultures, 2006).
A second characteristic is the traveling shot, complemented by a number
of related camera techniques. The traveling shot replaced the “talking heads
framed against a process screen” (Orr 1993, 130), as used in The Grapes of
Wrath or It Happened One Night for instance, and endowed the road movie
with a much more dynamic feel. With the camera placed on or inside a
moving vehicle, “road movie traveling shots attempt to convey a visceral
sense of traveling at a hyperhuman, modernized speed. As such, the point of
view of these traveling shots is usually located with the driver of the car
itself” (Laderman 2002, 15). Instead of looking at the characters in the car,
we now frequently look with them outside of it and participate in their sense
of displacement, a sense which—according to Devin Orgeron—grants road
movie spectators a specific pleasure. He refers to this pleasure as “specta-
torial drift” and defines it as “the ability to let the eyes move freely through
space and cover wide areas of landscape; the sensation, also, of traveling with
the characters, while staying at home” (Orgeron 2008, 105). According to
Laderman, traveling shots sometimes assume the form of “side by side
traveling shots” from a nearby car, and are often complemented by “aerial
shots” centered on the vehicle as they drive through wide open spaces
(2002, 15). Other frequent techniques are the “rearview mirror shot,”
“long panning shots,” “high-angle shots,” and “campfire scenes and
low-key light” (Oropesa 2008, 95). Most importantly, “the road movie
makes use of the formalistic frame-within-a-frame so as to foreground the
crucial act of looking and seeing while driving” (Laderman 2002, 16). As
we will see, looking and seeing are strongly thematized in the road movies
we will analyze, and this connects directly to the overall interest in the
observational of contemporary Latin American cinema. A noteworthy
example in this respect is Karim Ainouz and Marcelo Gomes’s Viajo porque
preciso, volto porque ti amo (2009), in which the truck driver whose voice we
hear throughout the film is never shown, only the views from his vehicle.
14 N. LIE

Seldom mentioned, but equally important for Latin American road

movies, is the “tracking shot,” which Laderman describes as a technique
“usually more ‘grounded’ and slow, related to running or walking” (2002,
15). Since many characters in Latin American road movies must resort to
walking or move rather slowly, these tracking shots are a frequent technique
in them and indicate the Latin American road movie’s tendency to slow
down the speed of the journey. Finally, the use of a “hand-held camera” in
certain parts of the road movie (as when the characters meet indigenous
women in Diarios de motocicleta or people chaotically attempt to find a seat
on an empty truck in Guantanamera) denotes the frequent slippage of the
road movie into a documentary style, enforcing the reality effect of the
story told.
A third characteristic is a specific iconography that relies on wide open
spaces, generally horizontal in structure. American scholarship has empha-
sized the idea that driving through such open areas increases the sense of
freedom, and even provides for a sense of “imaginary conquests” of space
(Laderman 2002, 22; Moser 2008, 8). In this respect, scholars tend to point
to the fact that some emblematic US road movies revisited the open space of
the Far West (Easy Rider, Thelma and Louise). The horizontal aspect is
related to the idea that driving is generally experienced as easy (cf. Easy
Rider), liberating, and pleasurable (Borden 2013, 10). In Latin American
cinema, this has yielded a remarkable productivity of the genre in areas such
as Patagonia and the Sert~ao,17 even if this does not always guarantee
carefree driving. Wide open spaces are certainly present in Latin American
road movies, then, but mountainous areas are also traversed (Diarios de
motocicleta; Carlos Gaviria’s Retratos en un mar de mentiras, 2010), as well
as all kinds of regular highways and routes, sometimes leading through
crowded cities (El cielito; Carlos Bolado’s S
olo Dios sabe, 2006; Sebastián
Cordero’s Pescador, 2011). Once again, there is no obligation for a road
movie director to choose this scenery, but if he does, it facilitates recogni-
tion of the genre. An important remark in this context is that contemporary
road movie scholarship is currently revising the traditional association of the
genre with the idea of free movement. In their study of French-language
road movies, significantly called Open Roads, Closed Borders, Michael Gott
and Thibault Schilt (2013, 3) connect the first idea—that of “open
roads”—with what they call “positive road movies,” while the second—
“closed borders”—dominates “negative road movies.” In the latter case,
displacements are made by “travelers in distress” (refugees, migrants,
 INTRODUCTION 15

asylum seekers, etc.) who bump against the limitations of free movement.
My next section elaborates on this idea.

THE COUNTER–ROAD MOVIE

Gott and Schilt’s “negative road movies” may foreground the difficulties of
reaching a certain point of destination, but they still depict movement. A
more acute form of hampered movement is provided by what I will refer to
as “counter–road movies.” In this variant of the road movie, journeys either
do not materialize, or they become stranded at an early stage in the story.
Whereas road movies reflect on mobility in a straightforward manner,
counter–road movies reflect on it through its opposite: stasis. This topic is
generally overlooked in road movie studies, although Bertelsen paved the
way for its hypothetical inclusion in 1991, when he stated: “The journey
does not have to constitute the main part of the action. The film can also
show just the prospect of a journey or merely the possibility that a journey
will be made.”18 This peculiar set of films belongs to the genre because of its
shared reliance on the road movie imagery (even if paradoxical). Thus,
images of cars, highways, and maps appear in these films, just as they do in
regular road movies, only now cars break down, highways become the sites
of accidents, and maps do not correspond to what they were supposed to
represent. Moreover, regular road movies often include counter–road
movie elements. In Diarios de motocicleta, for instance, accidents and a
faltering motorcycle punctuate the story, and the places of destination in
Y tu mama también (i.e., Boca del Cielo) and Tommy Lee Jones’s Los tres
entierros (i.e., Jiménez, 2005) do not appear on any map. In prototypical
counter–road movies, however, such elements impact the entire story, or at
least the main part of it. Whereas accidents are occasional in Diarios de
motocicleta, the ones in Nacido y criado (Pablo Trapero, 2006), La mujer
sin cabeza (Lucrecia Martel, 2008), and Lake Tahoe take place at the
beginning of the film and determine all subsequent events. And in Daniel
Burman’s El abrazo partido (2004), Juan Carlos Valdivia’s Visa americana
(2005), and Benito Zambrano’s Habana Blues (2005), the prospect of
traveling abroad articulates the entire story, even if the protagonists never
depart.
It is reasonable to assume that counter–road movies exist in all cinemas in
the world. Besides French-language cinema, in which a growing number of
films are drawing on stasis (Gott and Schilt 2013, 8), it is worth mentioning
Palestinian cinema, where political circumstances have caused the
16 N. LIE

appearance of so-called “road block movies” (Gertz and Khleifi 2008,

134–170). Nevertheless, the presence of such movies in contemporary
Latin American cinema is particularly striking, which is why all of the
chapters of this book (with one exception) include examples of this cate-
gory. Thus, Argentina’s economic crisis is symbolically evoked through the
sale of a working man’s car in Pablo Trapero’s Mundo grúa (1999;
Chap. 3); accidents and setbacks result in a great many “stranded journeys”
in Patagonia (Chap. 4); repeatedly unsuccessful attempts at crossing the
border are shown in Rigoberto Perezcano’s Norteado (2009; Chap. 5);
political punishment assumes the form of restricted movement in Ricardo
Larraín’s La frontera (1991; Chap. 6); and a sentimental debacle leaves a
tourist stuck during a visit to the United States in Alberto Fuguet’s Música
campesina (2011; Chap. 7). And as this succinct enumeration of the
counter–road movies being discussed indicates, the obstruction of move-
ment can have different causes, from car crashes to sentimental debacles,
from political repression to financial setbacks.
Similar to normal road movies, counter–road movies are articulated
around the idea of “getting away,” and the obstruction of movement is
often compensated for by “imaginary travels.” Thus, in La frontera, a
former Spanish Republican exiled in Chile is regularly caught with his
suitcase staring at the sea, making an imaginary return journey to Spain,
while the Venezuelan feel-good movie Patas arriba (Alejandro García
Wiedemann, 2011) shows us an old man who, unable to make a real
journey, is tenderly placed by his family in his old boat so as to allow him
to sail away in his imagination over the sea he so dearly loves. Nevertheless,
the emphasis in counter–road movies is clearly on the opposite of move-
ment: standstills and waiting. This also explains the special dialectic in these
films between what Marc Augé (1992) has called “non-places” (or places of
passage) and “places” (or places marked by identity, memory, and relation-
ships). While regular road movies are associated with an iconography of
motels, highways, and gas stations, as temporary places of dwelling and
anonymity, counter–road movies tend to zoom in on characters turning
these non-places into more homely sites. An eloquent example is Juan
Carlos Tabío’s Lista de espera (2000), a Cuban film in which a group of
travelers becomes stranded at a bus station and starts organizing itself into a
community (dreamed or real), but one can also point to Eduardo
Milewicz’s La vida según Muriel (1997) or Alejandro Agresti’s El viento se
o lo que (1998), in which hotels become temporary homes to characters
llev

whose journeys have become stranded. Sometimes, frustrated movement is
 INTRODUCTION 17

evoked as a sterile going back-and-forth (between the garage and the house
in Lake Tahoe; between embassies and consulates in Sandra Kogut’s Um
passaporte húngaro, 2001), as repeated attempts to climb (Norteado), or as
senseless, directionless driving at high speeds (Gregorio Cramer’s Invierno
mala vida, 1998). Finally, roads are often framed in peculiar ways. Whereas
normal road movies generally position us in the driver’s seat, opening up
our view to the horizon through traveling shots, “counter–road movies” are
often marked by diagonal roads which traverse our screen from left to right
(Lake Tahoe), by a focus on the margins of the road, from where we watch
cars passing by (Norteado; Alejandro Fernández Almendras’s Huacho,
2009), or by positioning the protagonist in the midst of traffic, alone and
on foot (Música campesina). In some cases, modern infrastructure is explic-
itly mocked, as when a driver falls off an unfinished bridge in El viento se
llev
o lo que or a man starts urinating in the middle of the road out of
frustration (Invierno mala vida).
It would be incorrect to present counter–road movies as the unhappy flip
side of regular road movies, which provide happy experiences of movement.
First of all, counter–road movies can provide characters with a much needed
(though unplanned) period of meditation and reflection. In this context,
the road often appears under the guise of a “crossroads,” at which the
characters find themselves at a particular moment in life. Thus, the
unforeseen interruption of Laura’s journey in La vida según Muriel allows
her to think about her decision to exclude men (including Muriel’s father)
from her personal life, and in Nacido y criado, the self-chosen exile of the
protagonist in Patagonia ultimately helps him return to his wife in Buenos
Aires. The outcome of counter–road movies can even be very happy, as
when the owner of a crashed car finds her true love in the place she ends up
(El viento se llev
o lo que) or the old father in Patas arriba succeeds, by his
failed attempt at escape, in convincing his children not to take him to
hospital. Finally, movement in road movies can be just as desperate as the
obstruction of it in counter–road movies, as evidenced by the father in
Lisandro Alonso’s Jauja (2014), who keeps dragging himself forward in a
landscape from which every point of orientation has disappeared, or the self-
destructive roaming of Iracema in Senna and Bodanzky’s eponymous road
movie.
Still, stagnation can operate as a visual and diegetic figuration of ham-
pered economic and political development and thus challenge optimistic
views on modernity and modernization. The fact that many counter–road
movies run through Patagonia or on a trajectory toward the US–Mexican
18 N. LIE

border—two areas with a critical relationship to modernity—is indicative of

the counter–road movie’s potential to confront. Car crashes and accidents
also tend to symbolize the fragility of life in general and the ultimately
illusionary character of the grip modern man thinks he has over his destiny
and plans. It is then useful to pass onto a final consideration of the road
movie as a genre: its relationship with modernity.

ROAD MOVIES AND LATIN AMERICAN MODERNITY

Road movie directors are interested in “representing modernity, its histor-
ical achievements as well as its social problems” (Cohan and Rae Hark 1997,
37).19 They do this by foregrounding movement. As I explained before,
mobility not only refers to physical displacement, but also relates to social
and economic phenomena—and through these to modernity in general.
Moser, in fact, observes that “a general characteristic of modernity is its
mobility” (2008, 9), and Orgeron confirms that “mobility in road movies is
metaphorically linked to the experience of modernity” (2008, 48). From a
sociological perspective, Vivien Schelling asserts that there is a link between
the two notions: “[I]n an unprecedented way, the ‘modern’ became asso-
ciated with specific metaphors of movement: revolution, progress, emanci-
pation, development, crisis” (2000, 4). It is not a coincidence that the roots
of the road movie genre lie in the almost simultaneous appearance of
automobiles and cinema, which provided the first, thrilling experiences of
the connectedness between “locomotion” and “mediamotion” (Moser
2008, 15). One of the first Latin American road movies—El autom
ovil
gris (Eduardo Rosas, 1919)—clearly expresses this double fascination with
the new medium of cinema and the object of the car.20 But road movies not
only tap into our desire to be modern; they also shed a critical eye on
“modernity and its social costs” (Orgeron 2008, 2). In this respect, they
assume an ambivalent position towards modernity. They are both an expres-
sion of modernity and a critical meditation on it.
As ambivalent expressions of modernity, road movies first of all celebrate
the film medium itself, often through a modernist and experimental aes-
thetics which—as mentioned—foregrounds the centrality of looking and
seeing (Laderman 2002, 4; Tomkins 2013). The use of traveling and aerial
shots additionally conveys to the viewer the impression of moving freely
 INTRODUCTION 19

through space and being in control. A sense of adventurous excitement

accompanies the incursion into the unknown, activating romantic notions
of travel (see Chap. 7). On the other hand, modernity also refers to the
experience of life as marked by instability and uncertainty, which yields
sensations of fragmentation and uprootedness:

While the speed of change and innovation and the expansion of modernity
across the globe open up apparently infinite possibilities of advancement,
transformation and communication; they are also destructive of the bonds
and communities through which life previously acquired stability and coher-
ence, thus simultaneously plunging human beings into intense experiences of
fragmentation and uprootedness. (Schelling 2000, 3)

The aimless wandering, presented by Corrigan and White as a frequent act

in road movies, has been connected to this other, more tragic interpretation
of modernity: “Driving aimlessly and wandering are late-model cinematic
responses to modernity, a dilemma European films of the 1960s pulled into
focus” (Orgeron 2008, 7).
The question then becomes how Latin American directors frame moder-
nity through this intrinsically ambivalent genre. Interestingly, the upsurge
of the genre takes place shortly after the advent of a new period in the
process of modernity, referred to by sociologist José Maurício Domingues
as the “third phase of modernity” (2008, 121 et pass.). Taking as a criterion
for delimitation the role of the state with respect to its citizens, Domingues
presents as a basic characteristic of this phase the withdrawal of the state
from the public arena after a period in which it had taken center stage and
addressed social issues directly (second phase).21 Two other, related phe-
nomena take place in this period: an accelerated form of globalization,
which puts nation-states under pressure, and the democratization of Latin
American societies after a period of dictatorships, which brings new identi-
ties (women, indigenous people) to the fore. The combination of these
phenomena leads to a new, more complex form of society, which requires—
in Domingues’s view—new forms of solidarity.

In this third phase of modernity, with greater social pluralism and the freedom
of individuals and collectivities augmented by deepened disembedding pro-
cesses, resulting in a much more complex society, in which moreover partic-
ipation has become a vital necessity, only a complex form of solidarity could
yield social integration (that is, a real sense of belonging and practical
20 N. LIE

connections) to an extent comparable to what happened during those former

phases. (2008, 121)

Complexity also affects the perception of globalization itself. As Robert

Gwynne and Cristóbal Kay explain in Latin America Transformed: Global-
ization and Modernity (2004), scholars shifted in this period from a “depen-
dency” model regarding Latin America to a “transformationalist” model, in
which globalization is considered a “massive shake-out of societies,” the
direction of which remains uncertain, since globalization now assumes the
form of “an essentially contingent historical process replete with contradic-
tions” (2004, 7).22
As a genre that tends to “provide a ready space for exploration of the
tensions and crises of the historical moment during which it is produced”
(Cohan and Rae Hark 1997, 2), the road movie appears an appropriate
means for charting the impact of the transformations that accompanied this
evolution. The genre’s specific value for analyzing our contemporary period
has been affirmed by Natália Pinazza. She observes that “[s]ince their
reemergence 20 years ago, films dealing with journey narratives appear to
testify to a postmodern fragmentation of both the self and of narratives of
nationhood” and relates this to “the increasing number of road movies that
use geographical and cultural displacement as a means of self-discovery”
(2013, 3). The question, however, is not only how third-phase modernity is
gleaned through the specific idiom of the road movie, but also, up to which
point this modernity still presents specific features of a supposedly Latin
American identity. Indeed, according to Jorge Larrain:

Latin America has a specific way of being in modernity. Latin American

modernity is not exactly the same as European modernity; it is a mixture, a
hybrid, a product of a process of mediation which has its own trajectory; it is
neither purely endogenous nor entirely imposed from without, and some call
it subordinate or peripheral. (2000, 6)

Latin American scholarship has framed the specific character of modernity

on the continent in many ways—as alternative, hybrid, peripheral,
entangled, etcetera—but the latest addition to the debate proceeds from
Jean Franco. According to this renowned scholar, modernity in Latin
America assumed a particularly cruel aspect from the beginning, which in
her opinion was more pronounced than in other places. In her book,
 INTRODUCTION 21

significantly titled Cruel Modernity, she describes her overall project in the
following words:

I examine under what conditions it [modernity] became the instrument of

armies, governments, and rogue groups and how such conditions might be
different in these cases than in the often-discussed European cases. Why, in
Latin America, did the pressures of modernization and the lure of modernity
lead states to kill? (2013, 2)

The road movies discussed in this book sometimes refer to practices of

“cruel modernity,” but several of the films discussed (particularly in
Chaps. 5 and 6) relate to a new phenomenon (or new variant of the same
phenomenon), for which I propose the term “indifferent” modernity.
Rather than representing the intended targets of state policies, the victims
of “indifferent” modernity suffer from a kind of structural violence, for
which no state assumes direct responsibility. Eloquent symbols of indiffer-
ent modernity are the borders and walls that arise between countries, not
primarily between Latin American countries, but all over the world, sepa-
rating safe from unsafe areas, rich from poor zones. Without entering into
the delicate question of whether or not “cruel modernity” is typical for
Latin America, I would like to present “indifferent” modernity clearly as a
global phenomenon, but one which acquires specific inflections in Latin
America. Suffice it to say, in this context, that the people attempting to
climb the walls are seldom US citizens, but rather Mexicans, Central Amer-
icans, and other migrants from the South.
The very ambivalence of the road movie genre brings with it that moder-
nity is not exclusively framed in a negative light (as “cruelty” and “indiffer-
ence” suggest). Even if the majority of Latin American road movies seems
to linger on this dark side, there are many directors interested in the way
third-phase modernity impacts on a personal level, for instance, by granting
more freedom to women, while burdening them with difficult decisions
(e.g., divorce in La vida según Muriel or abortion in Alicia Scherson’s
Turistas, 2006). An important aspect of this “other” side of modernity
consists in the appearance of new lifestyles that spread more quickly over
the world than before. According to Anthony Giddens, “a lifestyle can be
defined as a more or less integrated set of practices which an individual
embraces, not only because such practices fulfil utilitarian needs, but
because they give material form to a particular narrative of self-identity”
(1996, 81). Tourism is one of those lifestyles, and my last chapter engages
22 N. LIE

with it. In all, the book charts “the costs and the benefits” of third-phase
modernity as it presents itself through the road movie imagination in this
new dialectic between an increasingly global world, on the one hand, and
the specific location of Latin America, on the other.

PRESENTATION OF THE BOOK

This study is organized in two parts. The first part engages with road movies
as related to “space”: I discuss road movies from a continental, national, and
regional point of view. The second part zooms in on “specific forms of
mobility.” These relate to cross-border migration, internally displaced peo-
ple, and tourists. Each chapter centers on a limited number of films, but also
includes references to other road movies, in order to highlight the wider
relevance of the subject discussed. In my selection of case studies, I have
endeavored to include not only different countries, but also films from
different circuits (both mainstream and more alternative) and from both
established and relatively unknown directors.
More concretely, I invite the reader on a journey that departs from
Walter Salles’s Diarios de motocicleta, as the most frequently cited road
movie in Latin American scholarship. I explain how this film negotiates its
position between US models of the road movie and a Latin American
tradition of political cinema, which is subsequently exemplified by Fernando
Solanas’s El viaje. An ironic counterpart to these filmic discourses on Latin
American unity is provided by the lesser known Amigomío, in which Jeanine
Meerapfel evokes a journey across a fragmented continent.
Chapter 3 zooms in on the way road movie directors engage with
situations of crisis and transition on a national level. While Cohan and Rae
Hark presented the genre as an appropriate means to explore situations of
crisis and transition (1997, 2), recent considerations on Latin American
cinema have criticized transnational filmmakers for the supposedly flawed
political dimension of their work. I examine this opinion by analyzing three
road movies that are representative of different forms of transnational film-
making and setting them against a historical background of shifting political
relations: the electoral downfall of the Mexican PRI in 2000 (Alfonso
Cuarón’s Y tu mam
a también), the Special Period in the beginning of the
1990s in Cuba (Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s Guantanamera), and the effects of
neoliberalism on Argentine economy (Pablo Trapero’s Mundo grúa).
In the fourth chapter, I direct my attention to Patagonia as the Latin
American region that has inspired the largest number of road movies.
 INTRODUCTION 23

Similar in this respect to the Far West in US road movies, the historical and
cultural connotations of Patagonia are nevertheless very different from the
ones of that North American region. Whereas the former is associated with
the idea of conquest, Patagonia was long considered the unconquerable
domain par excellence. This explains the large body of counter–road movies
the zone has inspired. Other variants are found in the films by Carlos Sorín
(e.g., Historias mínimas) and Lisandro Alonso (Liverpool and Jauja).
Chapters 5 and 6 engage with different forms of migration. The first
reflects on the cross-border migration by undocumented migrants from
Mexico and Central America to the United States. The intensification of
border surveillance after 9/11 caused daily tragedies that are evoked in a
wide number of recent documentaries and films of fiction. Chapter 5 exam-
ines three films that stand out for their original take on this tragic subject:
the transnational film Los tres entierros de Melquiades Estrada by Tommy
Lee Jones and Guillermo Arriaga, Rigoberto Perezcano’s counter–road
movie Norteado, and Diego Quemada-Díez’s La jaula de oro. Migration
within national borders is discussed in the following chapter, which intro-
duces a new topic in road movie scholarship: internally displaced people.
While cross-border migrants are heading for a new home, the travelers in
these films generally have lost their home. They are the victims of a
country’s infrastructural modernization (Iracema), ecological disasters
(El chico que miente), civil wars (Retratos en un mar de mentiras), and
even dictatorship (La frontera).
In the last chapter, I examine the recent impact of “the tourist gaze”
(Urry and Larsen 2011) on the road movie idiom. I discuss three films that
are representative of new strands in contemporary Latin American cinema:
Tania Hermida’s Qué tan lejos, Alicia Scherson’s Turistas, and Alberto
Fuguet’s Música campesina. In a way, this last part also endows our journey
across the different chapters with a circular dimension. While Walter Salles’s
Diarios de motocicleta invited us to leave home in order to discover Latin
America, departing from the deep South to the upper North, Alejandro
Tazo—the last road movie character appearing in these pages – encourages
us to return home, from the foreign residence where he lived as a tourist in
the United States to the same deep South (Chile, in his case).
In the course of my analyses, I have used some concepts which have not
yet massively entered road movie scholarship. These are Michel Foucault’s
notion of “heterotopia,” Marc Augé’s concept of “non-place,” and Domi-
nique Maingeneau’s notion of “paratopia.” While the first two have gained
wide currency in the humanities more recently, the third is relatively
24 N. LIE

unknown in Anglophone scholarship, and I hope this book will help it gain
more ground in film studies. The meaning of these notions will be recalled
or clarified in the course of the chapters.
Finally, the filmography at the end of this book is meant to encourage
further explorations of the wide and variegated landscape of the Latin
American road movie, so that new, alternative maps can be drawn. Indeed,
while this book aspires to provide the first systematic survey of the genre, no
one realizes better than its author the truth of Michel De Certeau’s famous
words: “Le voyage n’est pas la carte” (The journey is not the map). May the
many areas left unexplored by this study provide future scholars with one of
the most basic motivations why people move: the desire to know the
unknown.

NOTES
1. John King’s Magical Reels (2000), which spans almost a century of
Latin American cinema, includes only two examples of road movies:
Carlos Diegues’s Bye Bye Brasil (1979) and Walter Salles’s Central
do Brasil (1999). Cynthia Tompkins explicitly asserts that the road
movie was “a minor genre” (2013, 39) in Latin American cinema
until the release of Central do Brasil.
2. Latin American scholarship on the genre has centered on Argentine
and Brazilian cinema, key references being Brandellero 2013
(Brazil), Pinazza 2013 (Brazil), and Pinazza 2014 (Argentina and
Brazil). Tomkins (2013) includes a road movie section made up of
three films from the same cinemas. Torres (2014) offers a descriptive
overview of a wide body of Latin American travel films from different
countries. As I write, a volume on the Latin American road movie,
providing case studies by specialists from different countries, is on its
way (Garibotto and Pérez 2016).
3. This word refers to the almost simultaneous appearance of several
highly talented Latin American novelists in the 1960s, whose work
was rapidly and widely translated. That is how Mario Vargas
Llosa (Peru), Gabriel García Márquez (Colombia), Julio Cortázar
(Argentina), and Carlos Fuentes (Mexico) contributed to a new
phenomenon in Latin American literature: its internationalization.
A personal account of this phenomenon was provided by José
Donoso in his Historia personal del boom (1972).
 INTRODUCTION 25

4. See, for instance, for Argentine and Brazilian cinema, Rêgo and
Rocha (2011) and Pinazza (2014), and for Mexican cinema,
González Vargas-Carro-García Tsao (2006) and Sánchez-
Prado (2014).
5. In Smith (2014, 24), another category is mentioned as well: “third
way films.” See Chap. 3 for more on this.
6. See, in particular, Bertelsen (1991), Cohan and Rae Hark (1997),
Laderman (2002) and—for a recent example—Benoliel and Thoret
(2011). An explicit revision of this “unassumed Americanness of the
genre” is offered in Orgeron (2008), as well as in Moser (2008).
7. Names of directors and years are only added to the first mention of
the films referred to in this chapter.
8. That being said, the New Latin American Cinema’s relationship to
Italian neorealism—which directly or indirectly influenced several of
its founding figures—seems to have anticipated this “return of the
real.” King identifies several characteristics of Italian neorealism that
will return in contemporary road movies, such as location shooting,
poor working-class subjects played by non-professionals, and an
unmediated observation of events (2000, 70). However, the
strength of the New Latin American Cinema resided in its docu-
mentaries, whereas contemporary filmmaking infuses these qualities
into the world of fiction.
9. The term “road movie” seems to have become commonly used to
designate the genre in the first half of the 1970s. Before that, other
terms (such as “road picture” and “road film”) were equally com-
mon in the US mass media (see Benoliel and Thoret 2011, 4).
10. In this sense, they are comparable to Wittgenstein’s notion of “fam-
ily resemblances” in his anti-essentialist definition of “games:”
“We tend to think that, for instance, all games should have some-
thing in common, and that this shared quality justifies the applica-
tion of the general concept of ‘game’ to all the different games;
whereas one could state that games constitute a family, of which the
members show a family resemblance. Some have the same nose,
others have the same eyebrows and others again share a similar
way of walking; and all these similarities intersect at unpredictable
points” (Wittgenstein [1953] 1995, 32).
11. “Das zentrale Motiv des Road Movies ist die Reise. Es wird benutzt
wie im Western die frontier, um Konflikte zwischen individueller
Freiheit und Gesellschaft zu dramatisieren. [. . .] Innerhalb des
26 N. LIE

Road Movies wiederum werden unterschiedliche Aussagen zur

Freiheitsproblematik gemacht, indem das Motiv der Reise auf
mehrere Arten benutzt wird” (Bertelsen 1991, 47; my translation).
12. See Pérez (2011) for a comparison between road movies and con-
temporary road novels in Spain.
13. Chronotope: “Literally, ‘time-space.’ A unit of analysis for studying
texts according to the ratio and nature of the temporal and spatial
categories represented. The distinctiveness of this concept as
opposed to most other uses of time and space in literary analysis
lies in the fact that neither category is privileged; they are utterly
interdependent. The chronotope is an optic for reading texts as
X-rays of the forces at work in the culture system from which they
spring.” (Bakthin 1981, 425–426).
14. See Berger (2016) for a well-considered categorization of global
road movies according to the way they present mobility.
15. I have analyzed several Latin American road movie documentaries in
Lie (2014) and Lie and Piedras (2014).
16. In his seminal article on the genre, Corrigan lists as other character-
istics: an initial breakup of the family unit, a narrative structure in
which “events act upon the characters,” a vehicle that tends to
acquire a human or spiritual reality, a self-reflexive dimension cen-
trality, and a thematization of masculinity (1991, 145 et pass.).
Moser (2008, 21–22) adds the idea of a protagonist tearing himself
loose from his environment (a phenomenon he refers to as
“déprise”), a threefold narrative structure—“to hit the road, to be
on the road, to hit the road again”—and a minimal degree of
intermediality, generally implying the radio. Laderman lists more
than a dozen characteristics relating to style, iconography, subject
matter, and themes, including a vigorous soundtrack, a modernist
technique, and an interest in postwar youth culture rebellion (2002,
Chap. 1). Many road movie scholars also refer to an inherently
rebellious spirit in the genre (for Laderman, it even constitutes the
core of the genre [2002, 2]) and a self-reflexive dimension (e.g.,
Brandellero 2013, xxii).
17. For Patagonia, see my Chap. 4. For Brazil, see Pinazza’s observation
that out of nine films discussed in the section on road movies in the
Directory of World Cinema: Brazil, six are set in the Sert~ao (2013,
254).
 INTRODUCTION 27

18. “Dabei muss die Reise nicht unbedingt den Hauptteil der Handlung
einnehmen. Der Film kann z.B. auch nur einen Ausschnitt einer
Reise zeigen oder lediglich die M€oglichkeit einer Reise zugrunde
legen” (Bertelsen 1991, 25).
19. I have anticipated some of the ideas presented in this section in Lie
(2016).
20. It relates how a group of bandits succeeds in gaining access to the
house of some wealthy people, presenting themselves as police
officers and correspondingly disposing of the “new” kind of vehicle,
the car.
21. During the first phase of modernity, roughly coinciding with the
nineteenth century, the state had assumed a rather limited role, “an
overseeing state guaranteed respect of basic rights, but entrusted
responsibility for solidarity to individuals” (Domingues 2008: 121).
22. The decentered view of world cinema, to which I referred in the
beginning of this chapter, runs parallel to this evolution up to a
certain point.

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 CHAPTER 2

Traveling Across Latin America

Most of the road movies in this book depict displacements within a single
country or across a specific border. Journeys through several countries,
or even across an entire continent, are rare. The reason for this is simple:
“continental road movies”—as I will call them—imply a considerable
financial investment, painstaking preparations, and transnational colla-
borations with film crews and actors from different countries.1 Neverthe-
less, two of the most important Latin American road movies ever made
belong to this category: Diarios de motocicleta ([The Motorcycle Diaries],
2004), by Brazilian director Walter Salles, and El viaje ([The Voyage],
1992), by Argentine director Fernando Solanas. They will occupy center
stage in this chapter, together with a lesser known film: Amigomío
(1995) by German-Argentine director Jeanine Meerapfel.2
Diarios de motocicleta was Walter Salles’s third road movie, following
Terra estrangeira (1996; codirected with Daniela Thomas) and Central do
Brasil (1999), and prior to the release of On the Road (2012), the film
version of the eponymous novel by Jack Kerouac published in 1957. Of
these road movies, Diarios de motocicleta is the only one which describes a
journey across a whole continent. The film is based on the historic journey
made by Ernesto “Che” Guevara and his friend Alberto Granado, two men
in their twenties who traveled on their motorcycle across Latin America over
a period of six months in 1951–1952. Their journey led from Argentina to
Venezuela, passing through Chile, Peru, and Colombia along the way.
From Venezuela, Guevara returned to Buenos Aires by plane, making a
brief stop in Miami en route. The travel diaries of Guevara and Granado, on

© The Author(s) 2017 31

N. Lie, The Latin American (Counter-) Road Movie and Ambivalent
Modernity, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-45138-1_2
32 N. LIE

which Diarios de motocicleta is based, have been adapted by Walter Salles

and cowriter José Rivera in such a way that the film fits neatly into the road
movie genre, at least in its first part. A detailed analysis of this emblematic
film shows that Diarios de motocicleta both inscribes and appropriates for its
own purposes road movie conventions. In this respect, it illustrates a new
form of transnational filmmaking in Latin America.
El viaje is an earlier film made by Fernando Solanas, one of the founding
fathers of the New Latin American Cinema in the 1960s. This influential
movement—which brought together film directors from several countries in
Latin America3—aspired to a form of filmmaking distinct from both US and
European cinema. Inspired by the Cuban Revolution of 1959, it pursued a
deliberately political program and considered art a means to instill social
awareness in its viewers. Solanas’s film describes a journey of search by Martín
Nunca, a 17-year-old teenager living with his mother and his stepfather in
Ushuaia—the southernmost city of Argentina. When his girlfriend has an
abortion without consulting him, Martín enters into an emotional crisis and
leaves on his bicycle in search of his biological father, whom he believes to be
living in Brazil. Once he arrives there, after a long journey through Argentina
and Brazil, it turns out that his father has moved on to Mexico. Hence, the
journey continues northwards passing through “indigenous America” (par-
ticularly Peru). Once in Mexico, Martín learns that his father has again moved
elsewhere. Martín does not, however, feel disappointed by his unsuccessful
search. Rather, he is strengthened by his experiences along the road which
include a series of encounters with both real and allegorical characters. He
realizes that his father is not tied to any particular place, but that he is
synonymous with “the road” itself. The mixture of reality and allegory sets
this film apart from Salles’s Diarios de motocicleta, as does Solanas’s deliberate
attempt to provide an anti-Hollywood narrative of a journey, yielding a rather
idiosyncratic form of road movie.
Amigomío, the third film, is made by a director who shows a specific
interest in the theme of “friendship,” which can be seen across her work: La
amiga (1985) and El amigo alem
an (2012) also deal with the issue. In the
case of Amigomío, the friendship somewhat surprisingly grows within the
context of a parental relationship. Carlos L€owenthal is obliged to leave
Argentina with his 9-year-old son Carlitos, after his ex-wife is detained by
the Argentine police and disappears. Their journey of flight during the years
of the Argentine dictatorship (1976–1983) takes us from Buenos Aires to
Ecuador, via Bolivia. Father and son arrive safely in Quito, where they start a
new life. An interesting aspect of this film is its inscription of the cultural
 TRAVELING ACROSS LATIN AMERICA 33

memory of the Holocaust. Carlos L€owenthal is the son of Jewish refugees

from Nazi-Germany—a background which reflects Meerapfel’s own history
as the daughter of German-Jewish refugees, who was brought up in
Argentina.
Depicting different trajectories across Latin America, the three films
coincide in their use of the motif of the continental journey as a means of
meditating on the unity of the continent. In this respect, they all represent
borders as being relatively easy to cross, or “soft” (Eder 2006, 255–256).
Indeed, all of the protagonists succeed in reaching their intended destina-
tion, even if, as in the case of Amigomío, there are moments of risk involved
in the border crossings. The film’s meditation on the unity of the continent
simultaneously involves a critical reflection on Latin America’s modernity,
particularly in the encounter with the indigenous population that was
usurped and marginalized as part of the Spanish-Portuguese colonization
of the continent and its aftermath. It is interesting that the directors’
reflection on this problem is gleaned through the dynamic of the road
movie—a generic model strongly associated with North American moder-
nity, in which the notion of “conquest” is generally filled with positive
connotations. In the following sections, I will start by discussing how the
road movie genre is incorporated into these films in order to trace their
specific takes on modernity. The continental dimension of the journeys in
these road movies inevitably brings to mind a historical legacy of journeys of
voyages of exploration and conquest, which to several scholars defines the
very beginning of the modern period (Dussel 1998, 18; Franco 2013, 6).
The fact that the three continental journeys analyzed in this chapter depart
from Argentina and proceed in a northern direction, thereby inverting the
historical route of the conquest, is an indication of the way in which they
critically reflect upon this aspect of modernity.

JOURNEYS OF (SELF-)DISCOVERY: DIARIOS DE MOTOCICLETA

Previous studies of Diarios de motocicleta have analyzed the film’s medita-

tion on the relativity of national borders through the road movie idiom
(Pinazza 2014, 103–126), as well as the way in which the genre serves the
depiction of “a hero-in-the-making” (Williams 2007, 12), or indeed con-
nects with a more general preference in Salles’s oeuvre for stories of
“dépaysement” (Sadlier 2007). What this chapter adds to the previous
readings is an attention to the different ways in which the genre of the
road movie is used. More specifically, I will argue that Diarios de motocicleta
34 N. LIE

deploys two different attitudes toward the genre: an initial one that can be
called “inclusive” (or “mimetic”), which consists of molding the historic
material according to the road movie format, and another one that could be
termed “transformative,” which implies adapting it to an ideological
agenda. In both cases, the use of the road movie genre is instrumental in
conveying to the audience a sense of actuality in El Che’s historic journey.
The incorporation of certain genre conventions in the first part of the film
transforms this legendary journey into a voyage that might well have been
our own. The biographical nature of the journey and the presence of
Guevara as a historic icon are temporarily wiped out in favor of a more
general kind of travel narrative that is recognizable to spectators due to its
inscription in the road movie genre. As I explained in the introduction, the
prototypical North American road movie is characterized by a set of stock
elements: a motorized vehicle, a pair of male buddies, the leisurely nature of
the trip, the priority of the road over the point of destination, the impro-
vised and episodic nature of the journey, and the interest in the Americas.4
The very title of the film, Diarios de motocicleta, foregrounds the presence of
the motorized vehicle (instead of the historic figure of El Che), and the
opening scenes clearly indicate that the trip will take place during a summer
break at the University of Buenos Aires, where Guevara is about to start his
final last year as a medical student. After a goodbye to their families and
friends, the film zooms in on the two buddies sitting on the motorcycle,
driving happily across the open landscape of the Pampas to the rhythm of
Gustavo Santaolalla’s energizing soundtrack. The voice-over of the young
Guevara simultaneously depicts their purpose in terms similar to those used
in On the Road and Easy Rider: they claim to be exclusively motivated “by
their love for the road,” to strictly adhere to the method of “improvisation,”
and to expect nothing from the road but freedom and adventure. Their
main goal is to “discover an America they only knew from their books”
(quoted from the film). This is, then, clearly a journey of discovery of the
Americas and, in this sense, the film prolongs earlier tales of discovery and
exploration of the continent, only now from the point of view of “domestic”
travelers, who were born in Latin America.
As mentioned before, the persona of El Che is temporarily wiped out, not
only through the film’s title (centering as it does on the vehicle rather than
the author of the diaries5) but also through the film’s casting choices and
the alternative name given to the historic figure of Ernesto Guevara. The
role of the Argentine Che is played by the international Mexican-born star
Gael García Bernal,6 who bears little physical resemblance to Guevara
 TRAVELING ACROSS LATIN AMERICA 35

himself; furthermore, throughout the film, Guevara is referred to by his

nickname of Fuser, a name largely unknown to the global audience, who
only knows the film’s protagonist by his nickname of “El Che.”7 The
reference to the travel journal at the beginning of the film takes the form
of a quotation emphasizing the ordinary, non-heroic spirit of the trip: “This
is not a story of heroic feats, but the story of two lives that ran parallel for a
time.” The quotation is instrumental in temporarily detaching the journey
from the celebrity-persona of El Che, in order to allow the audience to
connect with him.
The images of the voyage in this initial part of the film connect to the way
in which the road appears in Easy Rider and On the Road: as a heterotopic8
world opposed to home and work (or study in this case), as a realm of
freedom and adventure. Though there are already some setbacks in this first
part (their tent is blown away in a storm and their motorcycle occasionally
slips off the road), their journey leads them across the Patagonia and Chile,
and is accompanied by beautiful sceneries and anecdotic encounters with
members of the opposite sex (Guevara’s girlfriend Chichina and the Chilean
wife of a garage owner). On these occasions, Granado takes the lead as an
experienced skirt-chaser, whereas Guevara’s advances are clumsy and shy.
Granado’s lead function in this first part is enforced by two historic points
that the film strategically highlights: it is Granado who comes up with the
idea of traveling across the continent, and it is he who owns the motorcycle.
This first part uses the road movie conventions to make us forget that this
film is about a future hero. It adds to the historic material of the travel
journal the inspiring sensation of moving freely through space and taking
delight in the landscape. The visual pleasure is underscored by the use of a
photographic camera, which Guevara carries along with him as a tourist’s
accessory (cf. Chap. 7). The beautiful landscapes are regularly caught in
colorful postcard-like pictures, evoking the touristic, leisurely nature of the
trip. At the same time, a deviation with respect to the prototypical US road
movie narrative is suggested from the start. The motorcycle used by the two
buddies—nicknamed “The powerful one” [La poderosa]—is in fact a rattle-
trap machine, the limitations of which are humorously thrown into relief
when Guevara and Granado lose a friendly race against two gauchos on
horseback, ending up submerged in a muddy brook. The condition of the
vehicle deteriorates until it definitively breaks down in Chile. As Natália
Pinazza points out: “The self-referential and rather comic treatment of the
motorcycle shows that it has a different agenda in this film from that of
36 N. LIE

traditional Hollywood road movies that present the means of transport as an

object of speed” (2014, 106).
This different agenda emerges most clearly in what I see as the second
part of Diarios de motocicleta. This part sets in about halfway through the
film, after the definitive breakdown of the vehicle. From now on, the
historic material of Guevara’s journey is not only molded into the road
movie idiom, but also consciously appropriated and transformed. This
implies, first and foremost, the slowing down of the pace of the journey.
If at first sight this appears to be a logical consequence of the breakdown of
the motorcycle, it also amounts to a deliberate decision on the part of the
director. As Claire Williams asserts: “From the diaries, we know that
through Chile, Peru, Colombia, and Venezuela they stowed away on
cargo ships and cadged lifts on long-distance trucks carrying a variety of
produce; but few truck scenes appear in the film, perhaps because they are
unnecessary to the plot or aesthetically uninteresting” (Williams 2007, 19).
In my view, the explanation for the scarcity of scenes filmed in these vehicles
resides in a deliberate attempt by the director to slow down the film’s pace
and focus on the main characters as walkers, rather than drivers. The act of
walking—highlighted through low-angle shots that look upward from the
shoes—significantly impacts upon the relationship that Guevara and
Granado cultivate with their surroundings. As Rebecca Solnit explains:
“Walking, ideally, is a state in which the mind, the body and the world are
aligned, as though they were three characters finally in conversation
together, three notes suddenly making a chord” (2001, 5).
Accordingly, the film shows how the buddies’ minds open up to reflec-
tion on what they see. Whereas the first part depicted them having fun or
being involved in picaresque adventures, we now see Guevara walk onward
in silence, thinking about what he sees and hears along the way. In parallel
to this, the relationship between the two buddies begins to change. Whereas
Granado took the lead in the first part, it is now Guevara who insists on
pursuing their journey, contrary to Granado who deems their project to be
“impossible from a human point of view” [humanamente imposible], with-
out the help of a motorized vehicle, that is. The humorous dimension of
their buddy-relationship gives way to a more serious one, in which Guevara
is presented as the strong and determined character whose social awareness
is awakened by the people they meet on the road.9 Most importantly, the
slowing down of the journey leads to a fundamental transformation of the
space of the road: whereas the beginning of the film depicted it as an area of
free exploration and adolescent racing, the second part centers on it as a
 TRAVELING ACROSS LATIN AMERICA 37

space of social encounters—a dimension which Bakhtin drew attention to in

his comments on the “chronotope of the road.”

Encounters in a novel usually take place “on the road.” The road is a particu-
larly good place for random encounters. On the road (“the high road”), the
spatial and temporal paths of the most varied people—representatives of all
social classes, estates, religions, nationalities, ages—intersect at one spatial and
temporal point. People who are normally kept separate by social and spatial
distance can accidentally meet; any contrast may crop up, the most various
fates may collide and interweave with one another. (Bakthin 1981, 243)

This new dimension in the film allows for several important encounters to
take place, the most important one being situated in the Atacama Desert.
Here, the encounter with a Chilean, communist couple leads to an explicitly
self-reflexive moment in the film regarding its own adherence to the road
movie genre, a scene that has surprisingly escaped scholars’ attention.
Suggestively shot as an encounter with people coming from the opposite
direction, this scene begins with the Chilean couple recounting how they
were chased from their homes because of their communist sympathies. They
are now on their way to the Anaconda mining company, where working
conditions are so tough that anyone willing to do the job is likely to be
hired, regardless of his or her political sympathies. Representing the tragic
situation of internal migrants who are forced to travel for political or
economic reasons, the couple enquires about the purpose of the journey
for the two friends. Suddenly ashamed to respond, Guevara explains that
their journey is, in fact, without purpose: “We are traveling for the sake of
it” [Viajamos por viajar], he replies timidly, clearly leaving the couple
perplexed by an answer that acknowledges the privileged nature of Guevara
and Granado’s trip, as conceived in Kerouacian terms.
From this moment on, the episodic structure of the first part of the film—
which includes, besides romantic encounters and picaresque adventures, an
elaborate dancing scene in Chile—gives way to a more teleological narrative
about a man gaining in social and ethical maturity until he finds his vocation
as a revolutionary. Cinematographically, the film slips into a documentary
mode, marked by a handheld camera that captures the tragic testimonies of
the—mostly indigenous—passers-by on the road, who tell of land depriva-
tion, the lack of police protection, illiteracy, and miserable living conditions.
These interviews with people representing what Frantz Fanon once called
“the wretched of the earth” (Les damnés de la terre, 1961) throw into relief
38 N. LIE

the Bakhtinian dimension of the road as a space of encounter with those

whom society might normally prevent us from meeting. Moreover, they
connect to Salles’s allegiance to the road movie as a genre of improvisation:
neither of these interviews was planned—they were all simply recorded
along the road.10 In his “Notes for a Theory of the Road Movie,” the
Brazilian director has underlined the road movie’s intimate relationship to
the non-fiction documentary genre in a more general way, stating that
“the road movie may well be the film genre that lends itself most naturally
to this blurring of boundaries” (2007, 70).
This shift in cinematographic language coincides with a change in geo-
graphic surroundings: having journeyed through Argentina and the Pata-
gonian region of Chile, then heading up through the desert, the buddies
now enter the Northern Andes. From this moment on, they register a
qualitative change both in their surroundings and in themselves. In their
own words (in the film): “Reality started to change—or was it us? Were we
the ones who were changing?” [La realidad empez
o a cambiar. ¿O éramos
abamos?]. In a way, what started as a general journey of
nosotros los que cambi

discovery turns into a more poignant journey of self-discovery that is
mediated by the travelers’ encounters with their ethnic Others: the indige-
nous population. The “discovery” of Indigenous America will return in the
other two continental travels discussed in this chapter, once again bringing
to mind the voyages of those who first discovered the continent.11 Not
surprisingly, they pay a visit to Machu Picchu in Peru (Fig. 2.1): a historic
site which allows for a painful contrast between the former greatness of the
pre-Columbian civilizations and the miserable condition of their descen-
dants in present times, who try to forget their hardships and fatigue by
chewing on coca leaves.12
This focus on the disenfranchised indigenous communities prepares the
ground for criticism of the Spanish Conquest as an act of destruction against
a highly developed civilization, which had acquired notions of mathematics
and arithmetic well before Europe did. The visit to the historic site of
Machu Picchu is marked by a deep silence on the part of both Guevara
and Granado, the intensity of which is heightened by the absence of any
extradiegetic music or sound. The speechlessness of the two buddies con-
veys their profound amazement at the sight of the impressive remains of this
vanquished civilization. According to Stephen Greenblatt, author of the
book Marvelous Possessions (1991), feelings of marvel and admiration are
fixed ingredients in narratives of conquest and, rather paradoxically, precede
acts of possession and destruction.13 In the case of Diarios de motocicleta,
 TRAVELING ACROSS LATIN AMERICA 39

Fig. 2.1 Ernesto Guevara writing down his thoughts on the Machu Picchu in
Walter Salles’s Diarios de motocicleta (2004)

however, this feeling of marvel yields the opposite sensation: one of dismay
at the destruction of what was once an advanced civilization. Here, the
predominant feeling is of loss and dispossession, not only of what “used to
be,” but also of what “might have been” had the “Spanish invaders”
(Guevara in the film) not disembarked in the Americas.14 The film shifts
from a positive focus on modernity, as a process associated with the dis-
covery of a new world, to a negative one that highlights the destructive
force of the Conquest.
After their visit to Machu Picchu, the final part of the film centers on one
specific place in Peru: the San Pablo leper colony. Whereas the prototypical
US road movie tends to give prominence to the sensation of “being-on-the-
road” over and above any idea of “arriving” anywhere, Salles’s film once
again departs from this model—and indeed from the original manuscript of
the diaries—by turning the leper colony into the psychological point of
destination of the buddies’ journey. While Guevara and Granado did ac-
tually visit this place, it hardly received any attention in the travel diary.
Moreover, the two buddies continued their journey afterwards, visiting
Colombia and Venezuela on a trip which had been, after all, originally
headed for North America, according to the travel diary.15 Previous studies
of the film mention this “premature ending” with respect to its literary
counterpart, presuming that financial limitations lie at the basis of it.16
40 N. LIE

While this may be true, the new ending in my view operates more funda-
mentally as the psychological point of culmination in Guevara’s trip. It is
here where answers to fundamental questions about life and social justice
are found, as Dr. Brescani predicts to the buddies in Salles’s film before they
visit the colony.17
The San Pablo leper colony fulfills this function by operating as a het-
erotopic mirror of the surrounding society. Michel Foucault introduced the
notion of “heterotopia” in his famous essay “On Other Places” (1986
[“Des espaces autres,” 1967]). Similar to “utopias,” “heterotopias” refer
to places that are related to all other places of a particular society. In that
sense, they tend to convey a meditative and even critical view on society at
large. The difference between the two concepts resides in the fact that
utopias do not exist, whereas heterotopias correspond to real and existing
places. Foucault’s definition runs as follows:

There are also, probably in every culture, in every civilization, real places—
places that do exist and that are formed in the very founding of society—which
are something like counter-sites, a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which
the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are
simultaneously represented, contested and inverted. Places of this kind are
outside of all places, even though it may be possible to indicate their location
in reality. Because these places are absolutely different from all the sites that
they reflect and speak about, I shall call them, by way of contrast to utopias,
heterotopias. (1986, 24)

Whereas the first part of Diarios de motocicleta centers on the road as a

heterotopic space with respect to home and school—safe but boring
places—the second part of Diarios de motocicleta, with its focus on injustice
and poverty, generates its own need for an alternative place onto which the
ideal of true solidarity can be projected. In the San Pablo community, leper
patients from all over the world receive treatment for their incurable disease,
while living, working, and playing together in peace. Rejected by society
because of their physical deformity, the inhabitants of the San Pablo leper
colony bring to mind the close association between “heterotopia” and
“deviation” in Foucault’s essay (other examples cited by Foucault are the
psychiatric asylum and the brothel) (1986, 25). At the same time, the
French philosopher’s idea that heterotopias may also operate as places of
“crisis” (1986, 25) equally applies to Diarios de motocicleta. The nighttime
and supposedly life-threatening swim across the Amazon is filmed as a
 TRAVELING ACROSS LATIN AMERICA 41

particularly dramatic scene, suggestively signaling Guevara’s transformation

from a tourist into a revolutionary: from now on, he will put his life at the
service of the sick and the excluded.
The action in this dramatic swim also complements the speech Guevara
gives on the occasion of his 24th birthday.18 Presented in the travel diary as
a mere exercise in the rhetoric of gratitude,19 the birthday speech is granted
a strongly programmatic dimension in the film, highlighting the relativity of
national borders and affirming instead the existence of a unified, “mestizo”
America. Contrary to the characters of Easy Rider, who “went out looking
for America but couldn’t find it” (Cohan and Rae Hark 1997, 1), the
buddies of Diarios de motocicleta do indeed (re)discover America. For
Salles, this is the outcome of Guevara’s journey of discovery and self-
discovery, and the ultimate significance of this historic trip in terms of
Guevara’s future evolution. Although the significance of this Latin-
American journey for Guevara’s ideological formation is subject to discus-
sion (Lindsay 2010, 50), Diarios de motocicleta clearly suggests that one
thing led to another: the final scenes transport us to Cuba, where a close-up
of an aged Granado testifies as to the authenticity of the events depicted; a
text block then summarizes the subsequent life of Guevara as a hero of
liberation struggles. The fact that the film ends shortly after the San Pablo
visit indicates that the geographical journey across the continent is at once
configured in the film as a spiritual one, which transforms the relatively
unaware teenager, called “Fuser,” into the socially-committed person who
we know and recognize as “El Che.” It is telling that the initial quotation of
the travel journal in the film (which insisted upon the non-heroic nature of
the journey) is attributed to “Ernesto Guevara,” while the references to his
persona at the end of the movie now allude to him as “Ernesto Che
Guevara” (my emphasis).
The film’s concluding sequences contain a series of picture-portraits that
might be read as an internal reply to the tourist postcards of the first part of
the film. Shot by Guevara during his trip, these pictures start popping up
once Guevara discovers the writings of José Carlos Mariátegui20 in the
second part of the film, although they are most prominent in the final
sequence. When taking a closer look at these portraits, one notices that,
rather than pictures, these are “moving stills”: people are breathing while
looking at us, objects are moving in the background of the image as people
pose in front of the camera. Moreover, these “living pictures” (Williams
2007, 23) are in black and white, so as to grant them a documentary value
which sets them apart from the colorful picturesque postcards. The fact that
42 N. LIE

all of these people are positioned in front of the camera, gazing directly at
the audience, is reminiscent of a tradition of socially-committed photogra-
phy in Latin America.21 At the same time, their positioning produces a
metalepsis: a transgression of the borders between the world within the
film’s diegesis and the (extradiegetic) world outside. In this case, the
transgression also implies the “borders” between past and present. John
Urry (2009) argues that the tourism discourse is mainly visual in nature, and
that tourist pictures imply a certain mastery over the object/person that is
gazed upon (cf. Chap. 7). The moving stills at the end of Diarios de
motocicleta yield souvenirs of another kind of journey, one that centers on
the ongoing struggle for a better life of the Latin American people. Accord-
ingly, Diarios de motocicleta breaks down the traditional relationship
between the gazer and the gazed at: we are now looking at people who
look directly back at us, returning our gaze. Significantly, the last “moving
still” is the one of the miner couple, who remind us that traveling for
pleasure is a luxury that few people in Latin America can afford.
The foregrounding of looking and seeing in Diarios de motocicleta is
indicative of its urge to ground El Che’s vocation, not in an intellectual or
ideological conviction, but in an awareness based on his visual confrontation
with the excluded, and the ethical appeal that can be read in their faces. This
insistence on the visual as a means of conveying feelings of empathy that
might lead to social action, along with the choice of a language of social
commitment that prefers ethical to political consciousness, turns Walter
Salles into a representative of a contemporary form of political cinema in
Latin America, one which grants the road movie a particular importance:
“They [road movies] are about what can be learned from the other, from
those who are different. In a world that increasingly challenges these ideals,
the importance of road movies as a form of resistance can’t be dismissed”
(Salles 2007, 70). The inscription of a sense of resistance into the conven-
tions of the road movie genre connects Diarios de motocicleta to a previous
film, El viaje, by Argentine director Fernando Solanas. Assuming the nar-
rative format of the “search,” this film came out in the symbolic year of
1992, 500 years after the Spanish Conquest. Clearly set in the tradition of
New Latin American Cinema, of which Fernando Solanas, is one of the
founding fathers, El viaje presents another kind of road movie, one which
Salles simultaneously honors and revises.
 TRAVELING ACROSS LATIN AMERICA 43

THE SEARCH: EL VIAJE

Diarios de motocicleta has offered us a tale of discovery. Narratives of
discovery hinge on the idea of the “unknown”—a notion which Salles
believes to have become increasingly problematic since the advent of tele-
vision and the Internet (2007, 1). Perhaps this is why many more Latin
American road movies adopt another narrative format: that of a search. In
fact, with the exception of Diarios de Motocicleta, Salles’s own filmography
favors the format of a journey in terms of a search, particularly in combina-
tion with the motif of a lost parent. In Terra Estrangeira (1996), Brazilian
born Paco travels to Europe to search for the roots of his recently deceased
mother—an economic migrant from Spain. In Central do Brasil (1999),
7-year-old Joshué—the son of an internal migrant to Rio de Janeiro—
travels with an elderly lady to the Sert~ao in order to look for his father.
The search for the lost parent even marks Salles’s version of Jack Kerouac’s
On the Road, released in 2012, demonstrating his own, personal take on the
book. The idea of the lost parent is of course present in Kerouac’s On the
Road (1957) in the form of references to Dean Moriarty’s disappeared
father, but it does not occupy nearly as much space in the book as it does
in Salles’s film. The Brazilian director foregrounds the motif of the missing
father, and enforces it through the inclusion of several scenes shot in a family
environment that do not appear in Kerouac’s novel. Moreover, Salles pro-
poses a new beginning for the book: instead of the opening to the version
published in 1957, in which Sal Paradise refers to the breakup of his
marriage as the psychological point of departure of the story he is about
to tell, Salles opts for the one on the original “scroll,”22 which takes the
recent death of the writer’s father as its point of departure.
El viaje is one of the most famous Latin American examples of a search.
In this film, 17-year-old Martín Nunca sets out on a journey across the
entire continent with the hope of finding his biological father. As mentioned
before, the search is triggered by an experience of frustrated fatherhood:
Martín’s girlfriend in Ushuaia decides to have an abortion after falling
pregnant, without consulting Martín, despite the fact that that he is the
child’s father. His own biological father, moreover, represents the “real”
father, as opposed to Martín’s mother’s second husband, with whom
Martín does not get along. All he knows about his biological father is that
he, Nicolás Nunca, studied history and art, worked for a while as a cartoon-
ist, and remarried in Brazil. Once Martín meets his father’s second wife,
however, he learns that his father has again moved on, probably to Mexico.
44 N. LIE

Nicolás Nunca’s ever-elusive presence prepares for the film’s final lesson:
rather than a fixed point of origin or destination, he is the road itself. This
road takes Martín across a more ethnically diverse Latin America than was
the case in Salles’s film. Besides traveling to Brazil—which does not appear
in Diarios de motocicleta for the simple reason that Guevara and Granado
did not visit Brazil on their journey—there are also references to the
Caribbean through the character of América Inconcluso, who is black and
dances the rumba. There are also references to Chile, through the figure of
exiled Alguien Boga. Most importantly, there are parts of the film spoken in
Guaraní, one of the continent’s many indigenous languages, an official
language in Paraguay and also spoken in neighboring regions of Argentina,
Bolivia, and Brazil.
The discovery of this ethnically diverse Latin America is, then, undoubtedly
an important motif in this film, particularly on the 500th anniversary of
Columbus’s landing and the ensuing five centuries of colonial and post-colonial
discrimination against the indigenous populations. However, the predominant
narrative format remains that of the “search,” a choice that necessarily implies a
different attitude during the displacement. Whereas the traveler of the journey
of discovery adopts an open, exploratory attitude toward the continent, eager
to absorb and learn about “the unknown,” the journey involving a search
departs from the loss of something that had previously been known. The
character’s attitude in this journey in search of something is therefore less
open, and more directed, than that of the discoverer. This is a first element
setting Solanas’s film apart from the prototypical road movie, which tends to
start as a mainly unmotivated journey. What is searched for, through the figure
of the father, is not simply an image of America in Solanas’s film, but a guiding
principle that allows us to understand its specific identity and evolution. The
search for the father symbolizes the search for an identity, as projected on to an
origin which has become lost or diffused.
A second point of divergence with respect to the US model is the
absence of a motorized vehicle in Solanas’s film. Martín Nunca travels by
bicycle, which immediately places him in the position of the Bakhtinian
road traveler, who has the opportunity to meet people of different ethnic
and social backgrounds. The identification of Martín Nunca with the
vehicle is echoed in the film’s soundtrack, with the lyrics: “I am like my
bicycle, wheel after wheel” [Soy como mi bicicleta, rueda sobre rueda]. In
this respect, the pace in this film resembles that of the second part of
Diarios de motocicleta’s, when walking slowed the speed of Guevara’s
travels down quite significantly.
 TRAVELING ACROSS LATIN AMERICA 45

A third point of divergence with respect to the prototypical US road

movie is the absence of buddies. Whereas US road movies celebrate the
virtues of friendship, as indeed does Diarios de motocicleta, El viaje fore-
grounds the protagonist’s solitude during his travels. Many scenes pit the
minuscule figure of the lonely teenager on his bicycle against the immense
surroundings of the landscape he is endeavoring to cross, while the film’s
soundtrack—composed by Astor Piazzolla—asserts that “My [Martín’s]
voyage is solitude” [Mi viaje es soledad]. At the same time, an important
characteristic of this film is the presence of guides who appear fortuitously
along the way. Three allegorical figures accompany Martín and explain to
him the significance of what he sees. These are the already mentioned
Américo Inconcluso and Alguien Boga, as well as Tito el Esperanzador,
who quite literally drums up the spirit of Peronism at the heart of the
Argentine people (Tal 1998, 11). None of these guides knows how to
read, thus they are representative of “the Latin American people,” particu-
larly its lower classes. Their lack of schooling seems, however, to bring them
closer to the truth: the first part of El viaje is dedicated to Martín’s life in
Ushuaia, and contains an incisive critique of Argentina’s high school system
in those years. The role of these guides can best be described as “counter-
didactic,” and their function is to put into words what the images try to
express. Joanna Page has drawn attention to the priority of the verbal over
the visual as a characteristic of Solanas’s filmmaking and the one of members
of his generation (Page 2009, 23). The same characteristic explains the
presence of omniscient narrators in this film. Besides the Guaraní narrator in
the part dealing with Indigenous America, there is the voice of Nicolás
Nunca, who appears not only as the object of Martín’s search, but also as an
external narrator of the story.
In his comments as an external narrator, Nicolás Nunca—who, as I
mentioned before, studied history, besides art—makes frequent use of
illustrations from his own cartoon strip, called rather symbolically “The
Inventor of Roads” [El inventor de caminos]. The inclusion of these car-
toons fractures the visual space of the main story, and produces a distanced
mode on behalf of the spectator, who is invited to reflect critically on what
s/he sees. Whereas identification and empathy were primary strategies in
Diarios de motocicleta, El viaje insists upon the importance of critical
distance.23 Indeed, when documentary fragments are shown in El viaje,
the director draws attention to the fact that they represent another level in
his fictional universe by setting them in a montage studio, where Jacunaima
(Nicolás Nunca’s Brazilian wife) is busy editing them.
46 N. LIE

These different strategies also refer to the more articulate political dimen-
sion of Fernando Solanas’s film with respect to Diarios de motocicleta. As a
director personally involved in his country’s political life, Solanas has never
made a secret of the fact that he endorses a socialist, Peronist program. At
the time of El viaje, president Carlos Menem (1989–1998), who had been
elected on a Peronist basis, had abandoned this ideology in favor of a free
market-policy. Solanas presents a caricatured portrayal of Menem in the film
as “President Frog” on account of his exclusive flipper-shaped feet that
enable him to stay afloat in a country that is quite literally (as the water
level reports on the television warn) up to its neck in excrement-laden water,
which acts as a rather crude metaphor for endemic political corruption.
Solanas’s sharp criticism was not without its personal consequences: the
director was shot six times in the legs while making this film, and had to
continue directing from a wheel chair.24 The critical tone in El viaje is
indeed much more outspoken than the one expounded in Diarios de
motocicleta. It provides several instances in which caricature and sarcasm
produce what Solanas has called the grotético (Tal 2009, s.l.): a grotesque
style used at the service of an ethical message. Whereas Diarios de
motocicleta basically participates in an idea of modernity as (self-)d iscovery,
Solanas’s film directly attacks the so-called Conquest, arguing that it
amounted to nothing more than a real “genocide” (Martín Nunca). It
also evokes the successive and multiple dictatorships inflicted on the popu-
lation, as well as the almost blanket neoliberal policy implemented by Latin
American political leaders under the aegis of the United States and the
World Bank, bearing the collateral burden of an enormous debt to foreign
banks, which the people of Latin America carry again quite literally on their
backs. All these aspects of Jean Franco’s notion of cruel modernity are
directly shown and commented upon in the film, projecting a unified
image of Latin America’s oppression, continuing from the days of the
Conquest to the present. The concrete appearances of the “invaders” may
have changed, but the struggle for liberation still goes on. Hence, the names
of Martín Nunca [Martin Never]—referring to the hero of liberation San
Martín (1787–1850)—and of Américo Inconcluso [Unfinished America]
are symbolic of the continent’s unachieved freedom.
Consequently, a heterotopic place of difference with respect to society is
not easy to find in El viaje. The continent is represented through an
encompassing narrative that opposes the suffering people of Latin America
to a ruling class of politicians, sustained (and manipulated) by foreign
powers. At the same time, a heterotopic aspect can be detected in Solanas’s
 TRAVELING ACROSS LATIN AMERICA 47

obvious appreciation of the world of art. Martín’s best friend in Ushuaia is a

singer-songwriter, and his song “Ushuaia”—personified by a lady dressed in
red who mysteriously appears and disappears in the film without saying a
word—accompanies Martín during his travels, as a sweet memory of his
“homeland.” In the final scenes, Martín discovers a picture of his father and
mother in happy embrace; it is displayed in a studio in which paintings are
exhibited.25 For the same reason, perhaps, the film has two endings: one in
which father and son finally meet, and another in which they do not. The
happy ending is only there in an imaginary way, and contrasts with the
reality of the non-encounter.
In spite of their markedly different ways of dealing with the road movie
conventions, Solanas and Salles both introduce an ethical dimension into
the US format of the genre. Both filmmakers share an interest in documen-
tary and use the continental journey as a narrative device to reflect on the
unity of the continent. It is thus no surprise, then, that Salles’s work
contains an intertextual tribute to Solanas’s earlier film. The sequence
filmed in Machu Picchu in Diarios de motocicleta seems to be almost a literal
remake of a similar scene in El viaje: in both scenes, the main characters are
shot from below while writing down their thoughts in a notebook
(Fig. 2.2).
Likewise, in both renditions the advanced state of the pre-Columbian
civilization is evoked in almost identical terms. In this shared use of the
road movie as a critical revision of the Conquest—a discourse of counter-
conquest—transnational film director Salles acknowledges his debt to the
Latin American tradition of political filmmaking, and implicitly positions
Solanas as his forerunner more specifically within this appropriative conti-
nental vision of the genre. In their affirmative view of Latin America, as a
continent that has the ability to unite (Salles) and pursue the struggle of
liberation (Solanas), they take a very different stance from the one adopted
in Easy Rider. For Dennis Hopper’s film, the advertising campaign ran as
follows: “A man went looking for America and couldn’t find it” (Cohan and
Rae Hark 1997, 1; emphasis mine). In Diarios de motocicleta and El viaje,
the protagonists go looking for America and they do indeed find it.
This being said, there are significant differences between Salles and
Solanas. First, their film poetics are notably different. Solanas deliberately
pursues an anti-Hollywood aesthetic, which he identifies with a naive form
of realism and a conventional plot structure.26 The inclusion of allegorical
figures and poetic images evoking the economic crisis (images of buildings
collapsing, of cities being inundated) illustrates his rejection of conventional
48 N. LIE

Fig. 2.2 Martín Nunca writing down his thoughts on the Machu Picchu in
Fernando Solanas’s El viaje (1992)

realism. The double ending of his film (one depicting a successful reunion
between father and son, the other one missed encounter) clearly under-
mines the traditional plot-structure. These strategies are part of a modernist
aesthetic, intent on stimulating the viewer to adopt a critical attitude toward
what s/he sees and deconstruct the dominant ideology, which—in
El viaje—is neoliberalism. Rather than attempting to inscribe onto his film
the codes of the US road movie, Solanas has pointed to the universality of
the motif of the journey in literature and art, tracing the origins of his film
back to Homer’s Odyssey. In rather contrary fashion, Salles instead seizes
upon the road movie’s stock figures, inherited directly from US cinema, in
order to turn the experience of a legendary hero into a recognizable
journey-experience for each and every one of us. This productive use of
the genre is complemented in the latter by a transformative attitude which,
as I have already argued, refers back to a tradition of political cinema.
Though Salles refrains from providing an articulate ideological message,
 TRAVELING ACROSS LATIN AMERICA 49

the second part of his film clearly manifests a teleological dimension,

describing how the young teenager naturally evolves into the future hero
as he is shaped by the journey. In this sense, Guevara’s road trip takes on an
epic dimension, which directly engages the viewer both visually and emo-
tionally rather than keeping him or her at a distance.
The difference in film poetics between the two directors is linked to a
difference in political outlook. Though both sympathize with the
Left, Solanas departs from a clearly Peronist program, which he tries to
keep alive not only through his activities on the political scene, but also
through his artistic work. Tito el Esperanzador most directly connects
to this program in his film. As a result, emphasis is on the diagnosis
of the evils depicted in the film, and the denunciation of those instances
that are responsible for them. It is significant that the film’s soundtrack
uses the word “truth” [verdad]; the guides and external narrators
in the film give explicit meaning to this notion of truth via their accom-
panying verbal discourse. In contrast, the evildoers in Salles’s film
remain diffuse.27
In this sense, the director’s overall position resembles that identified
by Deborah Shaw in her study on the transnational filmmaking of the
Mexican directors Alejandro González I~nárritu, Guillermo Del Toro and
Alfonso Cuarón (more on this in Chap. 3). She has described this
ideology as “liberal-leftist” (Shaw 2013, 228). In her view, these film-
makers’ softening of radical ideas is a consequence of their aim to reach
a broader, transnational audience, a tendency that has set in after the
heydays of New Latin American Cinema, of which Solanas was a
key-figure. However, one might equally see Diarios de motocicleta as an
attempt to breathe new life into the image of Guevara; to turn him into
an inspiring example for as wide an audience as possible, precisely
by leaving the concrete formulation of political answers and actions to
the initiative of the viewer, once s/he is at home. Salles’s personal
conception of the road movie as a genre favors openness to the unknown
and, in this sense, the improvisation matches his decision to leave the
ideological and political answers open as well.28 His cinema is perhaps
better defined as an ethical variation on the political kind of cinema
offered by El viaje.29 Rather than “preach,” Salles uses film to “reach”
out to the audience.
50 N. LIE

JOURNEYS OF FLIGHT: AMIGOMÍO

Road movies depicting journeys of flight present yet another narrative
structure that differs from the two previous models. While the journey of
discovery depicts the road as a zone of freedom and exploration, and the
search evokes it in a centripetal movement toward a point of arrival, the
flight assumes a negative point of departure and describes the journey as a
movement that is centrifugal in nature. The goal of these voyages is to take
oneself to safety, and the best way to do this is to flee as far as possible from
the threatening place where the journey began.
US cinema has several examples of these road movies of flight, often
involving the figure of the outlaw in American popular culture (Seal 1996).
Noteworthy examples include Bonnie and Clyde (Arthur Penn, 1967),
Natural Born Killers (Oliver Stone, 1994), Wild at Heart (David Lynch,
1990) and Thelma and Louise (Ridley Scott, 1991). Even if these characters
are not always “bad” per se, they have all committed some form of crime
(robbery, murder, albeit in self-defense, for example) according to the legal
system, which explains the fact that they are sought by the police. Moreover,
their journey of flight—though sometimes headed for the Mexican border—
generally takes place on US territory. Amigomío (1995) presents a very
different situation. The immediate context of flight is the Argentine dictator-
ship (1976–1983) and the detention (and subsequent disappearance) of
Carlos L€ owenthal’s wife in Buenos Aires. When explaining to his 9-year-old
son, Carlitos (nicknamed “Amigomío”), why they have to leave Argentina,
the protagonist describes the situation as “a kingdom in reverse” [un reino al
revés]: when the people in power are bad, the people who need to flee the
country are the ones who are good. They are therefore not real criminals, but
victims of a criminal regime.
This film focuses directly on one aspect of “cruel modernity,” as
presented in the introduction to this book: the elimination of people who
disagree with the ideas of a certain regime and their practices. The first part
of the film depicts the daily worries that the change of regime implies for
Carlos and his son. They live separately from the mother, who belongs to an
underground movement of resistance, and their occasional encounters are
wracked with fear: the Ford Falcon belonging to the roving secret police
gangs haunts the city, and every night people are arrested under the vague
accusation of being engaged in some kind of “subversive” or “terrorist”
activities. Once Carlos’s wife is arrested, he himself becomes a target for the
police, and friends advise him to leave the country as swiftly as possible and
 TRAVELING ACROSS LATIN AMERICA 51

travel to Ecuador, where he will supposedly find a safe address for him and
his son.
Contrary to the aforementioned US films, Amigomío describes a journey
of flight that involves border crossing, and in this case, the borders are
represented as being far from “soft” (in the sense of easy to cross) but rather
as “hard”: they are guarded by the police and border patrol, and crossing
them involves the risk of being detained (Eder 2006, 255). This hardness
has a double dimension: on the one hand, it allows father and son to leave a
dangerous country. Indeed, once they are on the other side of the border,
the Argentine police no longer has the power or jurisdiction to detain them.
On the other hand, every crossing implies a checking of documents and, as
Carlos has forgotten his son’s identity card, he cannot legally prove that he
is his father, which makes him a possible suspect of child abduction.
Until they reach Ecuador, Carlos and Carlitos travel as “outlaws.” Their
vulnerability is heightened by the fact that they do not have a vehicle.
Whereas Guevara and Granado initially traveled on a motorcycle, and
Martín Nunca on a bicycle, Amigomío and his father use trains, buses,
and boats and hitchhike. Whatever the mode of transport, Meerapfel’s
film—similar to the previous ones—draws upon the road as a Bakthinian
space of social encounters with very diverse kinds of people. Once again, a
crucial part of the film is dedicated to the pair’s encounter with the in-
digenous population. In Bolivia, Carlos and his son watch a folkloric feast
with indigenous people dressed up in their traditional festive outfits, attend
a religious ceremony in a mine, and experience a healing ritual with
indigenous herbs and formulas when Carlos becomes infected by a local
mountainous disease. However, while the encounter with the indigenous
population makes Guevara and Martín Nunca aware of a different kind of
America, the discovery of which is a major theme in Salles’s and Solanas’s
films, in Amigomío the encounters with the indigenous population have
quite a different effect on Carlos L€owenthal. He does not feel at all related
to these indigenous people, and his behavior is characterized by feelings of
repulsion and estrangement during these ceremonies. When sitting beside a
Bolivian woman on the bus (Fig. 2.3), he even starts an imaginary dialogue
with his parents, accusing them of having turned him into an “international
foreigner” [un gringo internacional] wherever he goes.30 His white skin,
inherited from his European parents, moreover, makes him appear con-
tinuously as a tourist in the countries he visits, as though he had not been
born in Latin America at all.
52 N. LIE

Fig. 2.3 Carlos L€owenthal and his son on a Bolivian bus in Jeanine Meerapfel’s
Amigomío (1995)

This brings out the paratopic quality of Carlos L€owenthal, as a person

whose identity cannot be grounded in a fixed place. The notion of
“paratopia” is proposed by Dominique Maingueneau in his book Le discours
littéraire. Paratopie et scène d’énonciation (2004), where it receives the
following definition:

Paradoxical locality, paratopia, a word that does not refer to the absence of any
place, but to a difficult negotiation between the place and the non-place, a
parasitic way of localizing something , which lives on the very impossibility of
stabilizing itself (2004, 52–53; my translation).31

Maingueneau distinguishes between different forms of paratopia, though all

come down to the idea of a spatial paradox.

Every paratopia expresses in a minimal way the idea of belonging and

not-belonging at the same time, the impossible inclusion in a ‘topia’. Whether
it takes the face of the person who isn’t at home, of the one who goes from
place to place without wanting to settle down, of the one who cannot find a
 TRAVELING ACROSS LATIN AMERICA 53

place of his own, the notion of paratopia averts from the group (paratopia of
identity), from a place (spatial paratopia) or from a particular moment (tem-
poral paratopia). These distinctions are ultimately superficial: as the word itself
indicates, every paratopia can be brought back to a paradox of a spatial nature.
One might add linguistic paratopias which are crucial when it comes to literary
creation. (Maingueneau 2004: 86–87; translation mine).32

This multiple sense of paratopia certainly applies to Carlos L€owenthal. He is

Latin American, but looks like a European person. He is traveling for
personal, security reasons, but is confused for being a tourist. He speaks
Spanish, but also understands German. His troubled identity also reflects on
his fatherhood: his son does not take after him as his skin is darker, and his
personality is more militant and assertive than his father’s more appeasing
demeanor. The final part of the film shows the son perfectly integrated into
his Ecuadorian environment, whereas the father never really even succeeded
in feeling at home in Argentina. The soundtrack to the film expresses this
sense of uprootedness that is so characteristic of Carlos L€owenthal: “A nest
in the sky” [un nido en el cielo]—instead of a home on Mother Earth—is the
only place that he might call his own.
Far from finding a form of consolation in a unified Latin America,
Carlos L€ owenthal travels across a continent fragmented by borders, and
marked by chaos and political unrest. Identification in this film seems to be
possible only with a universal community of displaced people, explicitly
including the Jewish refugees from Nazi-Germany. Indeed, Carlos
L€owenthal’s name refers to his descendence from European immigrants,
and the film makes clear that his journey reenacts the initial journey of
flight undertaken by his own parents. Several scenes in Amigomío recall
the historic background of the main protagonists through the inclusion of
what is supposedly material from a historic family archive. The implicit
comparisons between the Holocaust and the Argentine dictatorship
endow this road movie—made almost 20 years after the period depicted
in Argentina—with a dimension of transnational cultural memory
(Assman 2014).
A last important divergence with respect to the other films discussed in
this chapter resides in its presentation of masculinity. In one of the very few
thorough analyses of this film, Sophie Dufays (2014, 268) has pointed out
the originality of Amigomío with respect to other Latin American films
featuring children.33 While the father is generally absent (never more strik-
ingly than in El viaje), here Carlos L€owenthal is continuously on display.
54 N. LIE

Rather than a figure of authority and stability, however, Carlos appears as an

“anti-hero,”34 in that he refrains from putting his own life at risk for the
political ideals which he shares with his wife, and renounces any search for
her once she is detained. Carlos’s son regularly blames him for having left
his mother behind, and believes they ought to have bought a revolver. Later
on in the film, Carlitos starts wearing a knife—a gift from a passing gaucho.
When they both attend the religious sacrifice in a Bolivian mine, Carlos has
to run away from the place because the sight of an animal being killed makes
him sick; his son, on the contrary, stays and dances to the tunes of the flutes
accompanying the ceremony.
In the light of these examples, Carlos has been described as a “weak”
father, but one could also see him as an alternative model of masculinity,
one that implicitly questions the masculine discourse subtending the previ-
ous films. Rather than being an expression of his “cowardice,” Carlos’s
flight is a way to assume a very concrete form of responsibility out of respect
for one specific human being: his son. It is he who cooks for him, takes him
to a football match, changes the sheets when the boy wets his bed as a result
of a bad dream. Whereas Salles’s Guevara is a hero-in-the-making, whose
dramatic swim across the Amazon can even be read as a typically male
crucible narrative related to stories of adventure,35 Meerapfel’s protagonist
avoids violence and danger in order to save his son’s life. And while
Solanas’s Nicolás Nunca is the forever elusive father, romanticized by his
son, Carlos L€ owenthal is the father who is physically present in his son’s life,
keeping the memory of his wife and grandparents alive through images of
Super 8 films, which he watches together with his son at the beginning and
the end of the movie, in a never-ending process of recognition and
estrangement.

NOTES
1. Cf. “The filming of The Voyage [El Viaje, by Fernando Solanas] was
a marathon. We travelled over 50,000 kilometers, took over
50 planes, boats, carrying over 800 kilos of equipment. In
16 weeks and 5 countries, we visited cities and places from
pre-colonial sites like Machupichu, Maya ruins in Yucatán, and the
Serra Pelada gold mine in Brazil” (Horacio González quoted in
Shaw 2003, 110).
 TRAVELING ACROSS LATIN AMERICA 55

2. For the films submitted to a close reading in this book, I provide an

English translation of the title if an international release of the film is
available.
3. See this book’s Introduction.
4. It is worth noting that the final paragraph of Kerouac’s On the Road
explicitly links the charismatic figure of Dean Moriarty to the beauty
of the American landscape. Likewise, the advertising campaign for
Hopper’s Easy Rider presented the film as a story about “a man
[who] went looking for America” (Cohan and Rae Hark 1997, 1).
5. The diaries were originally published under the title “Notas de viaje”
(travel notes).
6. Gael García Bernal had won international acclaim for his roles in
Amores perros (Alejandro González I~nárritu 2000) and Y tu mam
a
también (Alfonso Cuarón 2001), two films that immediately precede
Diarios de motocicleta in the actor’s filmography.
7. “Fuser” is a contraction of Furibundo and Serna. Furibundo is
related to his activities as a passionate rugby player in his youth—
something shown briefly in the film—and Serna is part of his full
name: Ernesto Guevara de la Serna. As for Granado, he is addressed
as “Mial,” which was “a nickname given to him [Granado] by
Guevara. It is a contraction of Mi Alberto, which is what his grand-
mother used to call him” (Williams 2007, 26). As for “El Che,” it
refers to “che,” an interjection frequently used in the Argentine
variant of Spanish.
8. Cf. infra for this concept.
9. It is significant, in this respect, that a picaresque anecdote
recounted in the travel diary was chronologically shifted forward
in order to appear in the first part of the film. I am referring to the
way in which the buddies succeed in being offered food and wine
by suggesting that they are celebrating the first anniversary of their
trip. See the so-called “brilliant ‘anniversary’ routine” (Guevara
2004, 130–131).
10. “In shooting ‘The Motorcycle Diaries,’ about Ernesto Guevara’s
transformation into Che as he witnesses social and political ineq-
uities on a journey through South America, my crew and I con-
stantly tried to incorporate what reality was offering us, mixing our
actors with the locals we met in the small communities we came
across” (Salles 2007, 68).
56 N. LIE

11. For another example, see Pachamama (2009): a road movie docu-
mentary in which Brazilian filmmaker Eryck Rocha explores the
frontier zone between Brazil, Bolivia, and Peru over the period of
a month, paying specific attention to the indigenous population
(“Pachamama” is the Quechua word for “Mother Earth”).
12. Chewing on coca leaves to combat fatigue is also depicted in the
other films, and contrasts sharply with the hedonistic use of drugs in
US road narratives such as On the Road and Easy Rider.
13. “[T]he still moment of admiration gives way to the Spanish pene-
tration of the city and the horrifying chain of events that leads to its
destruction” (Greenblatt 1991, 133 et seq.).
14. This scene clashes with passages in Guevara’s original diary, in which
the achievements of the Spanish conquerors in Latin America are
praised: “And there is yet another Cuzco, a vibrant city whose
monuments bear witness to the formidable courage of the warriors
who conquered the region in the name of Spain, the Cuzco to be
found in museums and libraries, in the church facades, and in the
clear, sharp features of the white chiefs who even today feel pride in
the conquest” (Guevara 2004, 104) [Pero también hay un Cuzco
vibrante que ense~ na en sus monumentos el valor formidable de los
guerreros que conquistaron la regi
on, el que se expresa en los museos y
bibliotecas, en los decorados de las iglesias y en las facciones claras de
los jefes blancos que aún hoy muestran el orgullo de la conquista]
(Guevara 2007, 100).
15. “‘Why don’t we go to North America?–North America? But how?—
On La Poderosa, man.’ The trip was decided just like that” (Guevara
2004, 33)[“‘¿Y si nos vamos a Norteamérica? ¿A Norteamérica?
¿C
omo? Con la Poderosa, hombre.’ Así qued
o decidido el viaje
[. . .]”] (Guevara 2007, 27).
16. Williams gives a practical and diegetic explanation of this premature
ending: “The last section of the real journey, through Colombia and
Venezuela, does not appear in the film maybe because of difficulties
with filming permission but probably because of time restrictions: It
shows a wide enough selection of adventures and cultural differences
in 126 minutes to make its point” (Williams 2007, 13). Sadlier
believes an ideological element provides an explanation for the
absence of the last chapter: “Significantly, Salles’s adaptation of
The Motorcycle Diaries omits the book’s last chapter; in which
Ernesto has a mysterious visionary encounter with an old man who
 TRAVELING ACROSS LATIN AMERICA 57

tells him that ‘revolution is impersonal’ and who converts him to

using ‘gunpowder and blood’ to achieve ‘his enemy’s death’”
(2007, 159).
17. The difference in tone between the passages in the travel diary on the
leper colony, on the one hand, and Salles’s emphasis on the visit, on
the other, emerges clearly in the following extract: “One of the most
interesting spectacles we have seen thus far: an accordion player who
had no fingers on his right hand, replacing them with some sticks
tied to his wrist; the singer was blind and almost all of them had
monstrous faces due to the nervous form of the disease. . .A spectacle
from a horror movie” (Guevara in Casta~neda 1997, 53). The mix-
ture of repulsion and fascination that the colony inspired in Guevara,
according to his diary, constitutes a marked contrast with the impor-
tance granted to this place in Salles’s film.
18. The film also rewrites this swim: “Ernesto did swim the Amazon, but
according to the diaries, it took him two hours and did not take place
either on his birthday or at night” (Williams 2007, 14–15).
19. “With everyone slightly drunk and in high spirits, the colony’s
director toasted us warmly, and I, ‘piscoed,’ replied with something
elaborate, like the following: [. . .]. My oratory offering was received
with great applause” (Guevara 2004, 148–149) [Ya picaditos todos
los a
nimos, el director de la colonia brind

o por nosotros en una manera
muy simp
atica y yo, ‘pisqueado,’ elaboré m

as o menos lo que sigue [. . .].
Grandes aplausos coronaron mi pieza oratoria.] The banalization of
the speech is also indicated by the self-ironic title of the chapter that
includes it: “San Guevara” (Guevara 2007, 135–136).
20. José Carlos Mariátegui (1894–1930) is a Peruvian philosopher and
essayist, often considered to be a precursor of Marxism in Latin
America.
21. “They are reminiscent of the striking and emotive studies of workers
and the dispossessed by Brazilian photographer Sebasti~ao Salgado,
the eyes of the people not accusing, begging, or smiling but simply
stating their existence. Salles explains that he was influenced by the
work of Martin Chambi, a Peruvian photographer of the 1920s,
‘who was the first to take the camera out of the studio and photo-
graph people in the streets. He treated people you would never have
seen before as citizens, anticipating what the Italian neo-realists did
in the 1940s and 1950s’” (Williams 2007, 23–24).
58 N. LIE

22. The Beat Generation aspired to create a form of spontaneous writing

that would capture the experiences of life as close as possible in their
conversion into literature. In the case of On the Road, this was
attempted by pasting together a large spool of sheets before putting
them into the typewriter on which Kerouac supposedly wrote the
book in a kind of uninterrupted flow of creativity. The way in which
the book was written has added to its mythical aura and is also
evoked in Salles’s film. The original scroll has become the object of
exhibitions. Its slightly divergent text, with respect to the book
version, was also published in 2007 by Viking Press.
23. He uses this almost Brechtian technique in other films too. See, for
instance, El Exilio de Gardel (1958) and El Sur (1988).
24. http://elpais.com/diario/1991/05/24/internacional/675036015_
850215.html (accessed March 21, 2016).
25. In this respect, it is no wonder that the three allegorical figures
punctuating Martín’s voyage are presented as fictional characters
themselves: proceeding from Nicolás Nunca’s creative work, they
shed the illuminating vision of art on the chaotic situations depicted
on the continent itself.
26. “All my cinema is a reaction against Hollywood, in which storyline
and argument are more important than the person. I try to break
from the traditional schemas imposed by television and Hollywood
to make my own cinema in my own way” (Solanas 1992 quoted in
Shaw 2003, 107).
27. Thus, Claire Williams refers to “the simplified politics of the film”
and explains: “Ernesto is the obvious hero, but who are the villains?
They are the invisible landlords, land speculators, and managing
directors of foreign companies who employ foremen to do their
dirty work” (2007, 20). See also Sadlier: “The film has been
criticized in some quarters for being romantic and liberal rather
than a revolutionary work in the true spirit of Che Guevara and of
the old Cinema Novo. Salles does in fact appear to be a left-liberal”
(2013, 159).
28. “[. . .] I believe that a defining aspect of this narrative form is its
unpredictability. You simply cannot (and should not) anticipate
what you will find on the road—even if you scouted a dozen times
the territory you will cross” (Salles 2007, 68).
29. In this respect, my position comes closer to the one assumed by
Darlene Sadlier: “I would argue, however, that the films I’ve been
 TRAVELING ACROSS LATIN AMERICA 59

discussing [Diarios de motocicleta, Central do Brasil and Terra

estrangeira] are fairly straightforward and consistent in their critical
treatment of global capitalism. Equally importantly, these films envi-
sion the possibility of new communities and relationships that break
down conventional boundaries and assumptions—a world in which
humans and not simply money and commodities cross borders and
make discoveries” (2013, 159–160).
30. The dialogue runs as follows: “You turned me into a nobody. [. . .] I
don’t know where to place myself.[. . .] What is there between them
and me? I am a strange insect here. . . And where will I go? To
Europe? There, I am a strange insect as well. To which world do I
belong? I am an international foreigner!” [Ustedes me convirtieron en
un nadie [. . .] No sé d
onde ubicarme. [. . .]¿Qué hay entre ellos y yo?
Soy un bicho ac
a. . . Y ¿ad

onde voy a ir? ¿A Europa? Ahí soy otro bicho.
¿A qué mundo pertenezco, carajo? ¡Soy un gringo internacional!]
(my translation).
31. “Localité paradoxale, paratopie, qui n’est pas l’absence de tout lieu,
mais une difficile négociation entre le lieu et le non-lieu, une
localisation parasitaire, qui vit de l’impossibilité même de se stabi-
liser” (Maingueneau 2004: 52–53).
32. “Toute paratopie, minimalement, dit l’appartenance et la
non-appartenance, l’impossible inclusion dans une ‘topie’. Qu’elle
prenne le visage de celuui qui n’est pas a sa place la ou il est, de celui
qui va de place en place sans vouloir se fixer, de celui qui ne trouve
pas de place, la paratopie écarte d’un groupe (paratopie d’identité),
d’un lieu (paratopie spatiale) ou d’un moment (paratopie
temporelle). Distinctions au demeurant superficielles: comme
l’indique le mot même, toute paratopie peut se ramener a un
paradoxe d’ordre spatial. On y ajoutera les paratopies linguistiques,
cruciales en matière de création littéraire” (Maingueneau 2004,
86–87).
33. Another original aspect of the film commented upon by Dufays is
the racial difference between Amigomío’s parents, something which
she reads from an allegorical point of view with respect to the
Argentine nation–state (2014, 234).
34. Dufays writes that he “descends from his pedestal” [baja de su
pedestal] during the journey (2014, 234).
35. “[T]he paradigmatic figure of the adventurer has become crystal-
lized in what Mark Gallagher calls ‘male crucible narratives,’ where
60 N. LIE

‘the willingness and ability to endure extreme physical hardships’

and to perform heroic deeds of national significance ‘often in soli-
tude, grants men entry into a privileged space of achievement’”
(Lindsay 2010, 58). The frequent allusions to Guevara’s asthma in
Salles’s film can be seen in the same light: they add further obstacle
to the “normal” hardships of the journey.

REFERENCES
Assman, Aleida. 2014. Transnational Memories. In Transnational Memory in the
Hispanic World. With an Afterword by Michael Rothberg, eds. Nadia Lie, Kirsten
Mahlke, and Silvana Mandolessi. In collaboration with Philippa Page. European
Review 22(4): 546–556.
Bakthin, Mikhael. 1981. The Dialogic Imagination. Four Essays, ed. Michael
Holquist. Translated by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: University
of Texas Press.
Casta~neda, Jorge. 1997. Compa~ nero: The Life and Death of Che Guevara. Translated
by Marina Casta~neda. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Cohan, Steven, and Ina Rae Hark (ed). 1997. The Road Movie Book. London &
New York: Routledge.
no en el cine argentino de la postdictadura (1983–2008).
Dufays, Sophie. 2014. El ni~
Alegoría y nostalgia. Woodridge: Tamesis.
Dussel, Enrique. 1998. Beyond Eurocentrism: The World-System and the Limits of
Modernity. In The Cultures of Globalization, ed. Frederic Jameson, and Masao
Miyoshi, 3–31. Durham, London: Duke University Press.
Eder, Klaus. 2006. Europe’s Borders: The Narrative Construction of the Boundaries
of Europe. European Journal of Social Theory 9(2): 255–271.
Fanon, Frantz. 1961. Les damnés de la terre. Préface de Jean-Paul Sartre. Paris:
Maspero.
Foucault, Michel. 1986 (1984). Of other spaces. Translated by Jay Miskowiec.
Diacritics 16(1) (Spring): 22–27.
Franco, Jean. 2013. Cruel Modernity. Durham, London: Duke University Press.
Greenblatt, Stephen. 1991. Marvelous Possessions. The Wonder of the New World.
Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Guevara, Ernesto. ‘Che’. 2004 (2003). The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin
American Journey. Translated by Alexandra Keeble. London: HarperCollins.
Guevara, Ernesto “Che.” 2007 (2004). Notas de viaje. Diario en motocicleta. La
Habana/New York: Ocean Sur.
Lindsay, Claire. 2010. Contemporary Travel Writing of Latin America. New York &
Abingdon: Routledge.
Maingueneau, Dominique. 2004. Le discours littéraire. Paratopie et scène d’énonciation.
Paris: Colin.
 TRAVELING ACROSS LATIN AMERICA 61

Page, Joanna. 2009. Crisis and Capitalism in Contemporary Argentine Cinema.

Durham: Duke University Press.
Pinazza, Natália. 2014. Journeys in Argentine and Brazilian Cinema. Road Films in
a Global Era. New York & Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Sadlier, Darlene. 2013 (2007). Leaving Home in Three Films by Walter Salles. In
The Brazilian Road Movie. Journeys of (Self)Discovery, ed. Sara Brandellero,
145–161. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.
Salles, Walter. 2007. Notes for a Theory of the Road Movie. New York Times,
November 11: 66–70.
Seal, Graham. 1996. The Outlaw Legend: a Cultural Tradition in Britain. America
and Australia: Cambridge University Press.
Shaw, Deborah. 2013. The Three Amigos. The Transnational Filmmaking of
Guillermo del Toro, Alejandro Gonz
na
rritu and Alfonso Cuar

alez I~ on. Manches-
ter, New York: Manchester University Press.
Solnit, Rebecca. 2001. Wanderlust: A History of Walking. London: Penguin.
Tal, Tzvi. 2009. Del cine-guerrilla a lo ‘grotético’—La representación
cinematográfica del latinoamericanismo en dos films de Fernando Solanas: La
hora de los hornos y El viaje. Estudios interdisciplinarios de América Latina y el
Caribe. Accessed September 20, 2012. www.tau.ac.il/eial/IX_1.
Urry, John. 2009. The Tourist Gaze. Second Edition. Los Angeles: London: Sage.
Williams, Claire. 2007. Los diarios de motocicleta as Pan-American Travelogue. In
Contemporary Latin American Cinema: Breaking the Global Market,
ed. Deborah Shaw, 11–27. Plymouth/Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.
 CHAPTER 3

Nations in Crisis

One of the reasons road movies are important is because of their ability to
reveal hidden tensions in society (Cohan and Hark 1997, 2). The societies
in question are generally viewed through the prism of the nation-state: even
if some road movies involve border crossings, most examples of the genre
depict journeys within national borders. What’s more, the landscape the
main characters travel through tends to be an iconic tribute to a nation’s
foundational moments in history. Easy Rider is a good example. The film
was released at a moment when US culture was going through a period of
intense transformation (generally associated with the appearance of a
“counter-culture” in the 1960s) and describes how “two men went looking
for America, but couldn’t find it.”1 The landscape traversed is the Far West,
a region deeply tainted with US mythology.
As a concept implying the idea of community (Anderson 1983), the
“nation” traditionally provided a way of re-embedding individuals as a
mode of compensating for the dis-embedding effect of modernity. The
recent stage of modernity, however, is marked by economic and political
tendencies that run counter to this. As José Domingues asserts, “Overall, a
weakening of national identities [. . .] as well as a willingness to fit, in one
way or another, into the globalizing movement have been two features of
present cultural and political dynamics” (2006, 542). In the early 1990s,
several scholars heralded the advent of a “post-national” era (e.g.,
Habermas 2004), in which new forms of belonging would render the
notion of the nation obsolete. By the turn of the last century, however, it
had become clear that the nation-state was not about to disappear, despite

© The Author(s) 2017 63

N. Lie, The Latin American (Counter-) Road Movie and Ambivalent
Modernity, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-45138-1_3
64 N. LIE

the major changes affecting it. A new paradigm appeared in the humanities:
“transnational studies.” This flourishing new field takes into account the
pressures exerted by accelerated globalization on the nation-state, without
presupposing its disappearance. Rather, it invites scholars to examine how
“the national” is re-articulated or re-imagined in late modernity.
In Latin America, transnational studies have not yet gained much
ground, because of the infelicitous association of the term “transnational”
with “neoliberal.” Many neoliberal governments indeed opened the doors
to transnational corporations in the 1990s, which is why the word soon
became tainted with images of political servitude to foreign powers (such as
the International Monetary Fund) and economic disaster. What indirectly
emerges here is the long-standing association of the idea of the nation with
traditions of leftist thinking in Latin America. As a continent with a
centuries-long past of foreign domination (first by colonial powers, then
by neocolonial ones), Latin America imagined the nation predominantly as
the locus of resistance against foreign powers.2
The association between the nation and leftist thinking is also at stake in
the three films I will discuss in this chapter: Y tu mam a también ([And Your
Mother Too], Alfonso Cuarón, 2002), Guantanamera (Tomás Gutiérrez
Alea and Juan Carlos Tabío, 1995), and Mundo grúa ([Crane World],
Pablo Trapero, 1999). These road movies evoke images of crisis in countries
where classical traditions of nationalist-leftist thinking were born: Mexico,
with the Mexican Revolution (1910); Cuba, with the Cuban Revolution
(1959); and Argentina, with Peronism (1940s–). The economic crisis of the
1980s profoundly impacted the course of the leftist political movements in
all three countries. In Mexico, the Partido Revolucionario Institucional
(PRI) implemented a neoliberal policy under Salinas de Gortari
(1988–1994), which resulted in, among other things, the signing of the
North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994. In Cuba, the disappear-
ance of the socialist bloc plunged the island into a profound economic crisis
in the early 1990s, designated as the Special Period (Período Especial). And
in Argentina, Carlos Menem (1989–1999)—elected on the basis of his
Peronist program—turned to neoliberalism as well, a phenomenon explic-
itly denounced in Fernando Solanas’s El viaje (cf. Chap. 2). The journeys
described in the three films run through territory that is familiar to the
characters, unlike the displacements analyzed in the first chapter. Still, part
of the effect of the road movie resides in the opening of the characters’
(or viewers’) eyes to unfamiliar aspects of their own countries related to the
crises just mentioned.
 NATIONS IN CRISIS 65

My discussion of the road movie dimension in this chapter will be framed

by transnational studies. A central place in the analytical perspective offered
by transnational studies is precisely the idea of the nation. I stress this point
because the sheer use of the term “transnational” all too often makes people
think that the nation perspective is being abandoned in the analysis. In fact,
the opposite is true: the nation becomes an important object of study, but
“one among a range of social phenomena to be studied, rather than the
frame of the study itself” (Seigel 2005, 63). To put it differently: “Nations
are not elided in this transnational perspective but they are symbolically and
politically recast. They are imagined differently as inherently and externally
relational, embedded and contextualized, always implicated in and partak-
ing of larger processes and changes” (Assman 2014, 547). Accordingly,
there is no strict opposition between “the national” and “the transnational,”
but a deeper entanglement between the terms, each being mutually consti-
tutive of the other and taking part in wider processes of negotiations of their
meanings (Higbee and Lim 2010, 12). Thus, it is perfectly possible that
transnational conditions of production generate new “national cinemas.”
Most of the emblematic films of the New Argentine Cinema, for instance,
were funded by foreign foundations (Aguilar 2008, 12). Inversely, figura-
tions of transnationality can perfectly accommodate a new “mise en scène of
the nation” (Page 2009, 135 et seq.).
Elsewhere, I have distinguished three predominant lines of research in
transnational scholarship on Spanish and Latin American cinema (Lie
2016). The first is oriented toward the material conditions of production
and distribution of cinematic works. In this area, much has been written on
the recent upsurge in international co-productions and new funding mech-
anisms that have helped Latin American film enter the global market
(Holmes 2012, 1; Dennison 2013, xiv). The economic crisis of the 1970s
and 1980s, indeed, obliged previously state-sponsored filmmakers to look
for alternative forms of funding. The three films under examination repre-
sent this evolution: Y tu mama también was, together with Amores perros
(Alejandro González I~nárritu, 2000), the first Mexican film to be made
“with private capital outside the old system of protectionism and cronyism”
(Smith 2014, 22); Guantanamera compensated for a lack of national
resources by resorting to international co-production with Spain; and
Mundo grúa’s main subsidies came from the Hubert Bals Fund in the
Netherlands, a foundation that supports young filmmakers in “emergent
economies.” As we will see in this chapter, these new funding mechanisms
not only helped these filmmakers enter the global market, but also opened
66 N. LIE

up new representational spaces “at home,” away from the traditional expec-
tations of nation-based institutions.
A second approach of transnational scholars consists in examining the
forms of identity construction in films and the ways in which they often
propose new forms of belonging. Interesting concepts such as the “His-
panic Atlantic” (D’Lugo 2009) and “affinitive transnationalism” (Hjort
2010) have emerged, pointing at imaginary communities that stretch
beyond national borders. However, international marketing strategies can
also produce the opposite effect: a renewed emphasis on national identities,
particularly in the form of stereotypes (Falicov 2013). The Mexican beach in
Y tu mama también, the international hit “Guantanamera” in the epony-
mous film by Gutiérrez Alea and Tabío, and the closing tango, “Corazón de
oro,” in Mundo Grúa help foreign viewers frame these films as recognizably
set in Mexico, Cuba, and Argentina, respectively. At the same time, film-
makers can “negotiate” the meaning of such markers of national identity
through plot construction and fictional devices, in order to turn them into
sites of critical reflection on the countries referred to.
Finally, scholars in transnationalism pay attention to the aesthetic choices
of directors attempting to appeal simultaneously to a local and a global
audience. In this respect, the notions of “puzzle narratives” and “multi-
protagonist films” have been coined for films such as Babel (Alejandro
González I~ nárritu, 2006) and 360 Degrees (Fernando Meirelles, 2011), in
which different storylines merge in unpredictable ways (Azcona 2010).
These films place emphasis on the transnational dimension of their stories
and are thus “markedly transnational” (Hjort 2010, 14). Our films belong
to the “unmarked” category: they do not focus on aspects of intercultural
traffic or border crossing, but foreground the local, even national, aspects of
the stories they tell. Their way of reaching an international audience consists
of resorting to the genre movie and the festival film—two of the transna-
tional modes of filmmaking which Paul Julian Smith has distinguished in
contemporary Argentine, Mexican, and Brazilian cinemas (2012).3 In Y tu
mama también and Guantanamera, the road movie format is easily recog-
nizable, as we travel with the characters in a car to a certain destination. In
Mundo grúa, the take on this genre is inflected by the film’s dimension as a
“festival film,” yielding a “counter-road movie.”4
This chapter seeks to combine the three approaches. By drawing atten-
tion to the way these transnational films highlight crucial aspects of their
countries’ crises, I simultaneously intend to contribute to the debate on
what has been called “the politics of the transnational.” This expression has
 NATIONS IN CRISIS 67

been proposed by Deborah Shaw as a way of motivating scholars to pay

more attention to the way in which the material conditions of a film and the
kind of audience it is intended for impact its political and ideological
message.5 More particularly, the analyses will show that transnational film-
making does not necessarily imply a toning down of politically critical
messages, as has sometimes been affirmed. The alternative forms of funding
(outside the traditionally nation-based bodies) can open up new sites for
critical reflection on a nation’s course, especially at moments of transition.
Since the notion of “the politics of the transnational” was coined in a study
on “the three amigos” (Shaw 2013)—to whom Alfonso Cuarón belongs—I
will start my discussion with Y tu mam a también (2002).

THE NATION AS CONSTRUCT: Y TU MAMA TAMBIE´N (ALFONSO

CUARÓN, 2002)
Y tu mam a también was Alfonso Cuarón’s fourth film, after S olo con tu
pareja (1991), A Little Princess (1995), and Great Expectations (1998).
While the first film had been a successful film in Mexico but not abroad, the
other two—made by Cuarón as a “director for hire” in Hollywood—
reached a much wider audience, but had limited artistic freedom. Y tu
mama también presents Cuarón’s successful attempt to reach both a local
and a global audience with a commercially viable film that also granted him
the freedom to develop his own style. This was achieved by turning to
private funding: Mexican businessman Jorge Vergara, who co-founded
the production house El Anhelo with Cuarón, financed the film and ensured
Cuarón complete artistic freedom. As a result, Y tu mam a también intro-
duces the long takes that will return in Cuarón’s later films, such as Children
of Men (2006), as a marker of his auteurist status.
Cuarón’s evolution into a transnational director has been described in
detail by Shaw (2013), who studies his work in relation to two other
Mexican transnational directors: Guillermo del Toro and Alejandro
González I~ nárritu. Presenting themselves as “the three amigos” of Mexican
cinema, these filmmakers are characterized by similar strategies for entering
the global market. The cultivation of an auteurist cinema, which at the same
time does not eschew commercial success, is a strategy Cuarón shares with
his colleagues. When analyzed from the point of view of the “politics of the
transnational,” their work is marked by a “leftist-liberal” inspiration (Shaw
2013, 228), which keeps itself at a safe distance from any form of radicalism
68 N. LIE

in order to reach the widest audience possible. In the specific case of Y tu

mam a también, Shaw puts it like this: “I will argue that the film adopts a soft
brand of corporate anti-globalization; that is, it presents a broad, unfocused
critique of the greater evils of globalization, while seeking to become a
global product” (2013, 181).
While it is certainly true that the film’s references to globalization remain
superficial,6 I will revise this interpretation of Y tu mam a también’s political
dimension by showing how the film engages in a more profound way with
Mexico’s national history. This is not to dismiss Shaw’s interpretation as
incorrect, but to complement it with a focus that entails a more direct
consideration of the local conditions this transnational film also embraces.
Whereas the British scholar diminishes the film’s political charge, I will
foreground it by providing a clue hitherto unattended in scholarship on
the movie: the sociopolitical load of the term “charolastra.” My comple-
mentary reading points to the possibility that this transnational film gener-
ates a split reception in its audience, granting more political clues to a local
audience than to its global viewers.7 This being said, I do intend to extend
Shaw’s thematic and sociological approach of “the politics of the transna-
tional” to the use of formal and fictional aspects in the film.8 It is crucial to
include such procedures in the film’s analysis for a director who has openly
distanced himself from a political strand of Latin American cinema that
resorts to explicit statements.9 Once again, I will add an aspect hitherto
left unattended in the overall excellent analyses of the film’s poetics: the
implied author.
The local dimension of the film—its groundedness in Mexican society
and culture—has been amply commented on from the point of view of
allegory. Scholars have pointed to the use of historically significant names
(e.g., Tenoch, Zapata, and Cortés), the incorporation of the figure of La
Malinche as the “soiled” image of the madre patria,10 as well as the class
differences between the main characters (belonging respectively to the
upper and middle class) and their machista behavior.11 What marks the
protagonists more than anything, however, is their self-declared allegiance
to a “charolastra” lifestyle. “Charolastra” is the word they use when greet-
ing each other, and this is also how they present themselves to Luisa Cortés
(Maribel Verdú), a distant relative of Tenoch’s from Spain, who will accom-
pany them on their impromptu road trip to Oaxaca. The diffuse origin of
the word “charolastra” varies from “space-cowboy” (charro for “cowboy”
and astra for “stars” or “space”) to a Mexican hybrid based on an English
rock song (charolau. . .) to a reference to the political background of
 NATIONS IN CRISIS 69

Tenoch. This last reference has not been picked up in scholarly work,
possibly because it was not translated in the subtitles, but it provides a
crucial clue for positioning the boys with respect to the Mexican political
system. It derives from the word used for “card” in the line “your daddy’s
card and the burden we are for his wallet” [la charola de tu jefe y el lastre que
somos pa’ su bolsillo]. The “charola” (literally: “tray”) stands for the metallic
pass that granted members of the PRI (and their relatives) impunity in the
legal system. The explanation of the word is reproduced in the film’s
booklet12 and returns in the added literary portraits of the characters,
when it is said that Tenoch and his girlfriend were caught one night by a
police officer for immoral conduct but immediately released after Tenoch
showed his “charola.”13 The word “charola,” then, contains, for a local
audience, a hidden clue to practices of corruption and abuse linked to the
political class—a clue reinforced by the mention of allegations of corruption
against Tenoch’s father, who is an important politician in the film. Not
surprisingly, the end of the protagonists’ friendship, recounted in the final
scenes, coincides with the downfall of the PRI in the presidential elections of
2000, after it had ruled the country for 71 years.
It is worth mentioning that the boys’ shared identity as “charolastras”
seems to compensate for a problematic identity at the family level. Julio
Zapata (Gael García Bernal) is the son of an abandoned mother, who is
always absent for reasons of work. Tenoch Iturbide (Diego Luna) is the son
of a father who is a corrupt politician, and a mother who entrusts his
upbringing to an indigenous nanny. As members of incomplete families,
Tenoch and Julio are both “paratopic” characters,14 a quality linking them
to Luisa Cortés (Maribel Verdú), who lost her parents in a car accident at
the age of ten and was raised by an aunt. Not surprisingly, the destination of
their trip—“Heaven’s Mouth” (Boca del cielo)—evokes the opposite image,
one of “complete,” organic families, represented by the figures of Chuy
(Silverio Palacios), his wife Mabel (Mayra Serbulo), and their two children.
In this sense, the beautiful beach in Oaxaca that provides the final destina-
tion of the leisure trip once again operates as a heterotopia:15 it counters the
omnipresent allusions to corruption and death in the film (Finnegan 2007)
with images of purity and organic communities. As the anonymous narrator
informs us, however, even this paradisiacal place will disappear in the end
under the impact of international tourism.
Unlike the continental journey films discussed in the first chapter,
Cuarón’s film does not center on the road as the Bakhtinian space of social
encounters with the travelers’ others. Rather, it functions as the opposite: a
70 N. LIE

Fig. 3.1 The charolastras warn Julia Cortés not to look at a group of military along
the road in Alfonso Cuarón’s Y tu mam a también (2001)

place of missed encounters with the Other Mexico (Noble 2005, 123–146).
A poignant, and often quoted, example is the moment when the car passes
the small town of Tepelmeme, where Tenoch’s nanny, Leo (Liboria
Rodríguez), was born. Instead of requesting a brief stop to learn more
about this woman who raised him as her own, Tenoch limits himself to a
brief glance through the window. In general, the film hinges on the contrast
between the boys’ charolastra worldview, encoded in their hedonistic man-
ifesto, and the information visually and verbally adduced by the external
narrator and focalizer. While the 17-year-olds16 are basically immersed in
their sexual escapade, the camera shows scenes of Mexico’s rural and
indigenous life outside the car, which clearly escapes the protagonists’
attention. On one occasion—when a police convoy detains some peasants
for interrogation in the background—the two protagonists even explicitly
tell each other “not to look” (no mires, no mires). (Fig. 3.1) At another
moment, the camera—seemingly annoyed—wanders off to take a look
behind a local restaurant, or lonchería, where the three main characters
are having a cheerful, erotically tinted lunch. Similar filmic digressions are
essential to understanding how the film indirectly criticizes the selective
worldview of two teenagers associated with a corrupt political class.
The motif of “missed encounters” is important given the rhetoric of
inclusion on which the PRI ideology was based. As the only player in a
 NATIONS IN CRISIS 71

mono-party system, the PRI actively fostered the image of a nation in which
different social, ethnic, and racial identities were harmoniously united,
among other things through the promotion of a Mexican “mestizo” iden-
tity (Oropesa 2008, 96). The two boys clearly belong to the white, urban
class, an origin foregrounded by their constant use of chilango expressions.17
The part of Mexico which they ignore (or prefer to ignore) corresponds to its
indigenous component, here identified with the rural countryside they drive
through. The political dimension of the trip is suggestively activated when
the camera zooms in on a wall portrait of Benito Juárez, Mexico’s first
indigenous president, adorned with his dictum: “Respect for the rights of
others is peace” [El respeto al derecho ajeno es la paz].
The foregrounding of the selective view of the charolastras inserts a
critical dimension in the film, which is complemented by another motif:
the class differences that secretly subtend their friendship and sometimes
emerge in subtle ways. Part of the information provided by the external
narrator (Daniel Giménez) brings the unavowed unease regarding these
social differences to the fore, thereby poking holes in the seemingly harmo-
nious charolastra universe in which the two boys like to dwell. In this
context, it is worth mentioning that the end of their friendship not only
coincides with the downfall of the PRI, but also with the end of Tenoch’s
aspirations to become a writer. In the closing scene, we learn he has enrolled
in the Instituto Tecnologico Autonomo de México (ITAM), “the elite school
identified with Mexican neoliberal technocracy” (Sánchez-Prado 2014,
190). Julio, by contrast, will continue living in the much more modest
conditions of the middle class, as a future biology teacher formed in the
public university.
A final way in which the charolastra ideology is criticized is by showing
the boys’ inability to live up to their own manifesto. In two emotional
outbursts of sexual jealousy, they admit to having slept with each other’s
girlfriends, and one of them even with the other’s mother, an idea
foreshadowed by the film’s title (cf. supra: And your mother too). This
implies a transgression of Rule No. 5: “You will not have sex with the
girlfriend of another charolastra” [No te tirar as a la vieja de otro
charolastra]. Moreover, they turn out to be incapable of facing the fact
that their friendship is imbued with homoerotic attraction. In this respect,
the heterotopic place of Boca del Cielo also operates as a heterotopia of crisis.
It is here that Luisa lures the two boys into a night of sex, which does not
run counter to their own manifesto (since homosexuality is acknowledged
in Rule No. 2: “Everyone does with his ass as he likes” [Cada uno hace de su
72 N. LIE

culo un papalote]), but rather shows their inability to live up to it. Playing a
trick on their machista behavior by decoding it as fundamentally homo-
erotic, the film lays bare the purely rhetorical character of their self-
fashioned identity in a most profound way.
I would then like to situate the film’s political dimension in its unmasking
of a self-interested image of homogeneous unity, which can be associated
with the PRI ideology of the time. Salvador Oropesa (2008, 95) has
referred to this ideology as “revolutionary nationalism” (nacionalismo
revolucionario), and I see the charolastra manifesto as a playful, ironic
equivalent of this ideology. In this context, the road—as a place revelatory
of what the two charolastras do not see—fulfills a crucial role in
foregrounding the importance of seeing and looking in a film on a political
system’s ideological blindness and false rhetoric.
While one could say that the film is critical with respect to politics on a
local level, and complicit with globalization on a global level, it is important
to nuance this statement by drawing attention to the way in which Y tu
mam a también negotiates its position between the political and apolitical on
a more general level. It does so through recourse to fictional procedures.
The realist illusion of the film is systematically disrupted by the narrator’s
intrusions in the story, which coincide with a pause in the diegetic sound.
Implying a transgression of the acoustic borders between the diegetic and
the extradiegetic universes, these metaleptic moments point to the fictional
status of the story told. Moreover, the narrator is omniscient, as he not only
provides us with numerous details about the past and the inner worlds of the
main characters, but also foretells the future—a capacity which only fictional
figures possess. The fact that the voice-over belongs to Daniel Giménez, the
main actor in Cuarón’s first film, grants this instance a supplementary ironic
dimension because of its intertextual quality. Finally, the narrator is
“unreliable”: he gradually loses himself in details that are pointless to the
story (such as the fate of the pigs that invade the camp on the paradisiacal
beach), while keeping silent about a crucial element of the plot: Luisa was
dying with cancer, and she knew this before embarking on the journey.18 In
this respect, Boca del cielo is also, quite literally, Luisa’s gateway to heaven.
I insist on these fictional dimensions to distinguish my reading from
Shaw’s interpretation, who likens the narrative voice to the kind of author’s
commentaries that accompany a film on many DVDs.19 By marking this
voice as fictional (and even untrustworthy), Cuarón activates the dimension
of the “implied author” in the film. This literary category, introduced by
Wayne Booth, is not immediately traceable in a story, but its presence is
 NATIONS IN CRISIS 73

sensed in the divergence between what we are told by the narrative voice
and what we interpret to be “true” in the story.20 Since the omniscient
narrator in Y tu mama también starts by adducing information that is
relatively useful for situating the characters sociologically, he initially appears
as an instance of objective truth, clearly different from the colored, subjec-
tive view of the teenagers. Thus, for instance, while they believe the traffic
jam that hampers their trip is caused by a student protest, the anonymous
narrator informs us about the “real” cause of the obstruction: a fatal
accident with an immigrant worker some hundred meters down the high-
way. The very fact that this voice is gradually compromised by the pointless
details he provides, and that he turns out to have remained silent on a crucial
element in the story, unmasks him as fictional, not real.
The playfulness with the borders between fiction and reality is also
present in the way in which Boca del cielo first appears as a pure invention,
and only later as a real place. This strategy is not innocent in a film that
activates, on a local level, so many politically charged signifiers. Hinting at
the fictional quality of what we as viewers considered at first to be an
instance of truth (the “objective, omniscient narrator”), Y tu mam a
también exposes on a more profound level the constructedness of any
discourse that lays claim to aspirations of truth and national inclusiveness.
This is not to say that the film eventually neutralizes its criticism of the
selective, self-serving worldview of the PRI. Rather, it suggests that, in the
ultimate instance, any discourse of national unity is a form of fiction in
the sense that it is constructed, that it is “made,” which does not mean that
it is “made up.” Cuarón’s position as a transnational director—lucidly
described by Shaw from the point of view of his market strategies—should
therefore be related equally to this sensitivity to the constructedness of
national discourses.

THE NATION AS LEGACY: GUANTANAMERA (TOMÁS GUTIÉRREZ

ALEA AND JUAN CARLOS TABÍO, 1995)21
Whereas Y tu mam a también resorted to private funding, Guantanamera
constitutes an example of international co-production. In a country where
the Revolution had turned the development of a national cinema into a
collective goal, the traditional way of receiving funding for a film was
through the Instituto Cubano de Arte e Industria Cinematogr aficos
(ICAIC). The institute was created in 1959—the year of the Cuban
74 N. LIE

Revolution—and Tomás Gutiérrez Alea was one of its co-founders.

Although the principle of international co-production also became a com-
mon strategy from the late 1970s onward, it had mainly involved collabo-
ration with other countries from Latin America (Chanan 2004, 432).
Guantanamera—similar to Gutiérrez Alea’s previous film, Fresa y chocolate
(1993)—exploited the possibility of co-producing with Spain. This new
production strategy seems to have enlarged the director’s intellectual
space and allowed him to take a critical look at his country’s course.
Referring to Fresa y chocolate’s plea for greater ideological (and sexual)
tolerance, Marvin D’Lugo asserts that the film “showed quite unequivocally
that, more than merely a financially expedient to exploit the shared value of
a common language, transnational Hispanic co-productions could be a way
of transforming movie audiences into a virtual community of shared ethical
and cultural values” (2009, 4).
Ideological tolerance, indeed, was not guaranteed at the time of
Guantanamera’s production. In spite of the perestroika of the late 1980s,
hopes for an ideological thaw in Cuba quickly proved deceptive, and the
1990s would turn into “the decade of the greatest political-ideological
intolerance in Cuba” (Schumann 2000, 130; my translation). The unex-
pected withdrawal in 1991 of the satirical film Alicia en el pueblo de
Maravillas (Daniel Díaz Torres) had made it clear that no sharp criticism
would be tolerated during the “Special Period in Times of Peace” (Período
especial en tiempos de paz). This was the name Fidel Castro gave in 1990 to
the period that followed the international collapse of communism, causing a
complete destabilization of the Cuban economy. According to an insider,
“[t]o wake up in the post–Cold War world was for Cubans like waking up to
an endless nightmare” (Rafael Hernández, quoted in Chanan 2004, 47).
Michael Chanan offers the following description of the crisis:

As the supply of everyday goods shriveled and the country spiraled toward
near-bankruptcy, the Special Period became one of electricity blackouts,
severe gasoline rationing, huge cuts in public transport, and bicycles from
China. Dollars, which were illegal tender but came into the country with
tourists and visitors from the exile community in Miami, fueled a growing
black market, as the exchange rate on the street rose to fifty and then
150 pesos to the dollar. (Chanan 2004, 447)

This is the background of the fictional story unfolding in Guantanamera,

which takes its narrative clue from the gasoline rationing in the country.
 NATIONS IN CRISIS 75

Based on a script from April 1989, which was slightly updated (Gutiérrez
Alea, in Ibarra [1994] 2007, 355), the film directly engages with the
country’s disastrous economic situation and indirectly criticizes the leader-
ship’s inability to rethink its economic and political system. In this respect, it
confirms Ambrosio Fornet’s portrayal of the director as “the founding
father of a critical tradition in Cuban revolutionary thinking.”22 Even if
Gutiérrez Alea—affectionately nicknamed “Titón”—always remained loyal
to the Cuban Revolution, and directly participated in his country’s institu-
tions, he also faithfully defended the idea that criticism was essential to the
Revolution. This defense was not always easy, but made possible by Gutiérrez
Alea’s international reputation as a filmmaker—something which provided
him with supplementary protection “at home.” Besides for Fresa y chocolate,
which dealt with the Revolution’s homophobia (and through this theme, with
political intolerance in general), Gutiérrez Alea garnered much international
acclaim for Memorias del subdesarrollo (1968)—a film based on Edmundo
Desnoes’s eponymous novel from 1965, centering on the inner conflicts of a
Cuban “bourgeois” intellectual. The film won the FIPRESCI award in 1968
and was proclaimed “one of the best films screened in the United States in
1973” by the New York Times.
Guantanamera connects with this critical vein running through Gutiérrez
Alea’s oeuvre, but its use of comedy recalls an earlier film by the director called
La muerte de un bur ocrata (1966). In both films, black humor and satire are
used to describe the bureaucratic problems that emerge in Cuba when people
try to bury a corpse. But while La muerte de un bur ocrata is set entirely in the
city of Havana, Guantanamera mixes the comedy with the road movie and
takes us from Guantánamo, in the eastern part of the island, to Cuba’s capital
in the west.
This very trajectory is politically charged, as the film reenacts the Revo-
lution’s historical route from the eastern part of the island where it started,
in the Sierra Maestra, to its conquering of the capital. The road movie
genre—a unique choice in Gutiérrez Alea’s oeuvre—is, moreover, ideally
suited for pointing out the country’s problems with gas rationing, which
dramatically affected public transportation from the late 1980s onward. The
film’s political resonance did not escape the notice of the country’s leader-
ship. In February 1998, Fidel Castro openly criticized “films that, instead of
celebrating the positive achievements of the Revolution, proffered negative
criticisms—or worse, were counterrevolutionary” and he cited as an exam-
ple “a film that he said he’d been told about, in which a corpse was
transported from Guantánamo to Havana” (Chanan 2004, 1). When he
76 N. LIE

learned the film had been made by Gutiérrez Alea, the prestigious Cuban
film director who had passed away two years earlier, Castro sent an apology
note to Gutiérrez Alea’s widow Mirtha Ibarra (who also plays an important
role in the film). Besides providing a concrete example of how Gutiérrez
Alea’s high esteem provided him shelter against ideological criticism, even
after his death, the incident demonstrates that this seemingly innocent
romantic comedy had a clearly political dimension in the local context
where it was produced.
The film focuses on Adolfo (Carlos Cruz) and his wife Georgina (Mirtha
Ibarra), who are traveling by taxi from Guantánamo—where they live—to
Havana to attend a funeral. Following them is a hearse containing the
corpse of the person to be buried: a famous singer named Yoyita (Conchita
Brando), who was Georgina’s aunt and who suddenly passed away during
her visit to her native town of Guantánamo. Besides referring to Yoyita’s
occupation as a singer and to her geographical origins,23 the film’s title
immediately brings to mind the most famous musical icon of Cuban identity
inside and outside its borders: La guantanamera.24 Together with the
initial zoom on the name “Cubana,” painted on the side of the plane that
brings Yoyita to her native town, the metonymical force of the song indi-
cates that the film should be read as “a national allegory, and thus a public,
collective story” (Rodríguez-Mangal 2002, 54). It is interesting that the
song Guantanamera fulfills an important narrative function in the film,
reminiscent of a 1930s Cuban radio program,25 since it provides the versi-
fied and melodious format for an external narrator’s comments on the
major events of the story and eventually on their political implications.
In the opening minutes of the film, even before the story officially takes
off, an anonymous voice jokingly states: “This wasn’t made up, this hap-
pened for real.” This once again encourages an allegorical reading of the
film, complemented by the fact that documentary shots of a country in crisis
provide the visual backdrop to the story.26 Political slogans exhorting the
population to choose between “socialism or death,” empty state restaurants
and bars, and a general shortage of gas and transportation indirectly under-
score the privileged position of the people sitting in the taxi. They owe this
privilege to Adolfo’s high rank in the funerary administration. As it soon
turns out, the hidden agenda of this former apparatchik is to regain his
position of influence in the country’s bureaucratic administration. He
intends to do this by demonstrating the feasibility of a special plan of
transportation, which is supposed to save gas during the Special Period;
his wife’s aunt’s unexpected death provides him with a wonderful occasion
 NATIONS IN CRISIS 77

to prove his point. Adolfo represents opportunism in the face of death, as

well as ideological blindness. When his wife observes that his plan will
ultimately cost the country the same amount, he replies that on paper it
will look different, adding a comment that provocatively underscores the
rhetorical nature of the Cuban revolutionary discourse: “You know how
important figures and appearances are in this country.”27
The film is articulated around the growing tension between Adolfo, who
becomes obsessed with his plan, and his repressed wife Georgina, who
gradually recovers her desire for freedom and autonomy and leaves her
husband. While for her the road is still a space of encounters (noticeably
with Mariano (Jorge Perrugoría), a former student who fell in love with her
when she was still working at the university), co-protagonist Adolfo resem-
bles Cuarón’s charolastras in the sense that for him the road operates as a
place of missed encounters with reality. Occupying the front seat, he keeps
his eyes fixed firmly on his papers, hiding behind his thick glasses and
listening to the radio bulletins that invariably sing the praises of an agricul-
tural policy whose failure is shown dramatically along the road: it is only on
the black market that the travelers can find food and vegetables during their
trip. While dogmatism prevents Adolfo from seeing a reality in crisis and a
population craving for change, taxi driver Tony (Luis Alberto García)
incarnates a new kind of entrepreneurial spirit, filling his car with products
off the black market that he intends to sell for a high price in Havana, but
also generously helping his passengers—who include, besides Alfonso and
Georgina, an old lover of Yoyita’s named Cándido (Raúl Eguren)—get
access to food.
While Adolfo remains blind to what is going on in his country (and in his
relationship), Gutiérrez Alea inserts several allusions to the importance of
looking and seeing—activities that are foregrounded in most road movies
(Laderman 2002, 13). There is, for example, the picture of an old man who
died because he did not see the precipice he was approaching (a likely
allusion to Castro), as well as the fact that Mariano’s truck is adorned with
the letters “for your eyes only.” The director also foregrounds the impor-
tance of seeing with the regular inclusion of a little girl dressed in blue, who
is only visible to some characters, not others. Her artificially curled hair and
old-fashioned clothing grant her a somewhat unreal, anachronistic appear-
ance, which prepares us for her association with the Yoruba goddess of
death—Iku—in the final part of the film. In hindsight, we discover that the
only people capable of seeing the little girl in the film are the ones close to
death: elderly people, such as Georgina and Cándido, who both die in the
78 N. LIE

Fig. 3.2 At the beginning of the journey, the taxi crosses a young girl, who leans
against the slogan “Socialism or Death” in Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and Juan Carlos
Tabío’s Guantanamera (1995)

course of the film, but also people doomed to disappear for other reasons
(i.e., political), such as Adolfo. In one of the last scenes, which takes place at
a Havana cemetery, Adolfo asks the little girl to hand him a small ladder so
he can descend from his pedestal. The fact that he directly addresses the
little girl implies that she is visible to him, which—together with the pouring
rain—announces his imminent disappearance. This idea is simultaneously
expressed by the singing narrator, who refers to Adolfo as “a man without
principles or shame” (un hombre sin principios ni pudor) doomed to “lose
his battle” (tu batalla est a perdida).
The little girl’s association with death is announced right from the
beginning of the journey, when the lights of Adolfo’s taxi suddenly illumi-
nate the slogan “socialism or death” (socialismo o muerte) painted on a wall,
and we glimpse the figure of the small girl suggestively leaning against the
word “muerte”—a scene that can be read as a provocative statement on the
bygone character of socialism (Fig. 3.2). At the end of the film, the associ-
ation between the small girl and the Afro-Cuban deity of death, Iku, is
rendered explicit by an anonymous narrator who recounts the latter’s myth.
 NATIONS IN CRISIS 79

Olofi—the creator of the world—suddenly discovered he was unable to

solve many problems because he had forgotten to create death. He called
upon Iku, who cleansed the world of all of its dying material through a
torrential but beneficial rain, thereby allowing the earth to rejuvenate.28
Representing death as a delightful young girl, and—in the myth—as a
goddess associated with a beneficial and cleansing rain, Guantanamera
conveys a positive image of death (and crisis) as a necessary condition for
change.
This positive outlook also aligns with the much more open-minded
character of Adolfo’s wife Georgina. Fed up with institutional harassment
at the university, she renounced her original occupation as a professor of
economics, but her ex-student Mariano still remembers what she used to
emphasize: “Everything changes; this is what ‘dialectics’ is about.”29 More-
over, her family name is Travieso, a playful hint at the family’s innate
tendency to transgress the rules, something which is given a positive con-
notation in the film.30 By bringing two members of a mischievous family to
the capital, this journey suggests the necessity of re-instilling a sense of
rebelliousness in a Revolution that has become stifled. Not surprisingly,
the final image is one of Georgina hopping onto the backseat of Mariano’s
bicycle and literally “moving on” with her life, while Adolfo remains stuck
on his oratory pedestal at the cemetery.
This seemingly innocent final comedy by Gutiérrez Alea constitutes a
highly intelligent and moving testimony on a country’s course by a director
who remained faithful to the revolutionary project until the end, while
systematically defending the idea of freedom of expression from within.
His imagining of the road as a space of critical confrontation between reality,
on the one hand, and ideological blindness, on the other, even seems to
anticipate Cuarón’s imagining of the road in Y tu mama también. This being
said, it is clear that Guantanamera ends on a much more positive note
than the Mexican film, conveying a belief that change will be for the better
in a revolutionary process that should reconnect with its original inspiration,
stemming from the combined figures of transgression, mobility, and change.
In this sense, the film’s last shots, in which Georgina rides off with Mariano
until they disappear out of sight, also constitute Gutiérrez Alea’s own loving
farewell to a person and a nation he deeply cherished and defended and was
now ready to hand over, both as a revolutionary and as a filmmaker.
The handing over also includes the generic format of the road movie, a
genre until then unexplored in Cuban cinema. Deploying different styles
80 N. LIE

and reflecting divergent ideological positions, Cuba’s legacy in terms of

road movies has since been impressive, certainly when taking into account
the difficult filmmaking circumstances in the country. Struck by insuperable
economic problems, the ICAIC indeed soon ceased to be the principal
purveyor of moving images, and a new generation of Cuban filmmakers
came to the fore, drawing even more strongly than Gutiérrez Alea did on
international funding opportunities, as well as on the new low-budget
possibilities of emergent technologies (Stock 2012: 50). But both old and
young generations followed Gutiérrez Alea’s example by using the road
movie as a forceful idiom to meditate on their country’s difficult path. This
is why Cuban road movies display a particular take on the genre, associating
the journey with personal dilemmas (Benito Zambrano’s Habana Blues
[Spain-Cuba, 2010] and Alejandro Brugues’s Personal Belongings
[2006]); the idea of escape (Juan Carlos Cremata’s Viva Cuba [2005]
and Gerardo Chijona’s Boleto al paraíso [2010]); and the emotional costs
of exile and emigration (Humberto Solás’s Miel para Ochún [2001] and
Susana Barriga’s La ilusi on [2008]). Not surprisingly, the first director to
have picked up Gutiérrez Alea’s suggestion to explore the genre from a
Cuban point of view was Juan Carlos Tabío, Titón’s loyal co-director for
Fresa y chocolate and Guantanamera. His Lista de espera (2000) tells the
story of a group of travelers who remain stranded at the bus station they
wanted to depart from and shows them turning the place (in dream or in
reality) into a kind of utopian community. After the examples of Y tu mama
también and Guantanamera, in which the critical potential of the road
movie resided in the foregrounding of ideological blindness and missed
encounters in times of crises, Lista de espera relates to yet another possibility:
the one of depicting a national crisis through images of stillness and stag-
nation. As we will see in the next section, this yields an important variant of
the genre: the counter-road movie.

THE NATION AS LOSS: MUNDO GRU´ A (PABLO TRAPERO, 1999)

Mundo grúa is a very different kind of film from the previous ones, in the
sense that it is much less recognizable as a road movie. As mentioned before,
it does not belong to the “genre film,” but rather represents the transna-
tional genre of the “festival film,” a kind of movie screened at festivals and
characterized by a series of recurrent characteristics:
 NATIONS IN CRISIS 81

They employ little camera movement and extended takes without edits; they
tell casual or oblique stories, often elliptical and inconclusive; and they often
cast non-professionals whose limited range restricts their performance to a
consistently blank or affectless acting style. “Festival films” may well be shot in
black and white, and will certainly lack a conventional musical score. (Smith
2012, 72)

While this generally yields rather “austere” films, with little or no opportu-
nities for easy identification between viewers and characters, Smith also
points to the existence of a lighter variant of festival films, which attempts
to remain in touch with the local audience by incorporating local elements
into the international format (2014, 24). I believe Mundo grúa belongs to
this lighter variant. While it was shot in black and white and had a
non-professional actor in the lead role (Luis Margani as El Rulo), the film
also uses professional actors (most notably Adriana Aizemberg as Adriana),
is filmed in a highly Argentinized and colloquial kind of Spanish,31 and
contains references to Argentine rock and tango music.32 Moreover, the
cast’s acting style is definitely not “blank or affectless,” but generates
sympathy for El Rulo and his daily whereabouts.
Having received no funding from the INCAA, Argentina’s National Film
Institute, Pablo Trapero made his first feature film on a shoestring budget of
20,000 dollars, acquired through a subsidy from the Hubert Bals Fund in
Rotterdam and private donations from family and friends (Falicov 2007,
122; Campero 2008, 38). Recourse to the Dutch foundation, as well as
other organizations that supported young filmmakers from “emergent
economies,” quickly became a general strategy for the New Argentine
Cinema, with which Trapero would come to be identified. This
“European route,” as scholars refer to it (Bernini et al. 2009, 159), implies
a difference with respect to the previous strategy of international
co-production. Whereas international co-productions expect a return on
investment, and generally interfere with cast and script, films subsidized by
the types of bodies mentioned above are expressly supposed to be non-profit
and filmmakers are granted complete artistic freedom. In spite of the fact
that some recurrent stylistic features point to a certain formulaic character in
festival films, the absence of explicit requirements regarding stories and casts
undoubtedly opened up new discursive spaces for filmmakers.
In the case of the New Argentine Cinema (NCA), the discursive space
was seized upon to critically chart the course of a nation heading toward
(or struggling with) one of the most serious economic crises in the country’s
82 N. LIE

history (Page 2009). Both Mundo grúa and Pizza, birra, faso (Israel Adrián
Caetano and Bruno Stagnari, 1998), the other film which is said to have
introduced the NCA, depict the effects of Carlos Menem’s neoliberal policy
from the mid-1990s onward. Argentina—which had been one of the richest
countries in Latin America in the twentieth century—faced bankruptcy in
2001, its GDP dropping almost 20 % between 1998 and 2002; this was “the
sharpest fall experienced by any capitalist country of some significance at
least since World War II” (Page 2009, 1). Centering on El Rulo (Luis
Margani), a 47-year-old construction worker who becomes unemployed in
Menemist Argentina, Mundo grúa evokes the effects of the national crisis
from the point of view of the working class, the traditional backbone of the
country’s population.
Gonzalo Aguilar has observed a disintegration in the sense of temporality
in Mundo grúa and has interpreted this as a filmic narrative pendant to the
“loss of labor” in Argentine society (2008, 140–142). If labor provided the
structuring sense of identity and life in the working class, its opposite—loss
of labor—leads to a form of narration which is incoherent and marked by
ellipses and “slices of life,” instead of by causally structured events. In my
view, this narrative decomposition also provides a clue to Mundo grúa’s
imagining of the nation. Benedict Anderson has asserted that “[i]t is the
magic of nationalism to turn chance into destiny” ([1983] 2006, 12). Seen
from that perspective, the elliptical, episodic structure of Mundo Grúa
implies that destiny is converted back into chance and contingency again.
As a genre favoring episodic modes of narration over causal ones, the
road movie presents itself as a natural format for such stories. Trapero’s
interest in the road movie has been observed by Jens Andermann, who
adduces two more films in this context: Familia rodante (2004) and Nacido
y criado (2006). While Familia rodante presents itself as a relatively con-
ventional road movie, Andermann asserts that Nacido y criado and Mundo
grúa draw upon the road movie grammar in a more peculiar way, as they use
it “merely for particular segments of their stories, only to then radically
depart from it” (2012, 64). Here, as well as in the following chapters, I will
relate this “peculiar” use of the road movie to the variant of the “counter-
road movie.” Rather than limiting the road movie’s significance in these
films to some scenes only, I argue that Mundo grúa—along with Nacido y
criado—engages in a more profound way with the genre by charging the
road movie’s usual fascination with movement and speed with a sense of
frustration and melancholic loss.
 NATIONS IN CRISIS 83

Fig. 3.3 El Rulo has to sell his car in Pablo Trapero’s Mundo Grúa (1999)

For a film that deliberately plays with the borders between fiction and
reality,33 it is worth mentioning that Trapero’s father had a store in auto
parts—an occupation at the center of Trapero’s short film “The Store”
(Negocios, 1995)—and that Margani (who plays the lead role) had a day
job as a car mechanic. This possibly explains the force of the car as a
symbolic equivalent for El Rulo’s persona in the first part of Mundo grúa,
which is set in Buenos Aires. Shortly after the main protagonist is excluded
from the construction site in the beginning of the film, his car (a Dodge
1500) starts to splutter in the middle of heavy traffic, and he has to stall it at
the side of the road, enduring the nervous honking of irritated drivers trying
to continue on their way. When he succeeds in getting a date with Adriana
(a middle-aged shopkeeper whom he fancies), we see him driving home in
the same car, humming a cheerful tune. On the day of their date, there is an
extended scene of him washing and polishing his car before he washes,
shaves, and dresses up himself. For a while, things go well, and the relation-
ship with Adriana materializes. However, when the construction company
refuses to put him back to work because he has been diagnosed as over-
weight in a medical report, El Rulo falls into a depression and decides to sell
his car. The image of the protagonist leaning against his vehicle in the
parking lot where he hopes to find buyers suggests he now feels obliged
to sell himself to the first buyer, as well (Fig. 3.3). He will do so by moving
84 N. LIE

to Patagonia, 2000 kilometers to the south; nevertheless, the sale of his car
symbolizes his economic and emotional downfall and foretells his definitive
inability to move forward again.
In the second part of the film, set in Commodoro Rivadavia, we see El
Rulo walking up and down a hill to get to the van that will take him to the
oil construction site. But despite working day and night, he will ultimately
lose his job because of organizational problems. During his last conversation
with the local foreman, Sertori (Alfonso Rementeria), he admits to having
lost all his good spirits—significantly, the conversation takes place in a
parked, immobilized car. The final images of El Rulo show him sitting in
the truck that will take him back to Buenos Aires. There is a shot of the
endless, dark road in front of him and then a close-up of El Rulo, gazing
gravely into the void. The music of “Heart of Gold” [Coraz on de oro]—a
melancholic tango waltz composed by Francisco Canaro—accompanies
him, as if to suggest that this man—with a heart of gold—has now lost it
all: his job, his friends, and—most of all—his hopes for a better future.
The association between El Rulo and his car in the film is part of a
man-machine imagery relating Mundo grúa in a more general way to the
road movie idiom. An important recurring theme in the Buenos Aires part
of the film concerns “machines” (engines, devices, etc.) that are constantly
breaking down and in need of repair. Inadequate, worn-out equipment is
the reason why El Rulo is refused work at the construction site, and many
scenes in this first part depict him and his friends attempting to repair things,
not just because they need to, but also because they like it. It brings them
together as friends in El Rulo’s improvised workshop at home; it shows El
Rulo as a loyal son to his mother (Graciana Chironi), helping her out with
small repairs; and it wins him the favors of his love interest Adriana, whose
metal blind he repairs. At the same time, the degradation of machinery is
paralleled by a degradation of bodies: El Rulo’s friend Torres is accused by
the construction engineer of “looking like shit” [Est as una mierda, no tienes
los zapatos], just like his machine, and the medical checkup indicates that El
Rulo’s body is deteriorating. Not surprisingly, one of the machines that the
friends try to repair turns out to be broken because of the many cigarette
butts it contains; in parallel fashion, El Rulo admits to the doctor that he
“only” smokes thirty cigarettes a day, before the latter delivers a health
report that will eventually lead to El Rulo’s exclusion from the company he
wanted to work for.
The image of old, broken machinery returns in the second part of the
film, when two of El Rulo’s best friends—Torres (Daniel Valenzuela) and
 NATIONS IN CRISIS 85

Walter (Roly Serrano)—pay a surprise visit to the protagonist in

Commodoro. They arrive in an old sports car which they have refurbished
themselves, much to the disbelief of El Rulo, who bursts out laughing at the
sight of the unlikely vehicle, adorned with an enormous engine uncovered
by a hood. Their ability to repair what is broken (or at least “make it work”)
is complemented by their relative ease at mastering new machinery. El Rulo
learns to handle a crane in the first part of the film, and in Commodoro he
converts himself into an excavator operator. However, the character’s
dexterity in handling machines is not equaled by a “mastery” of his own
destiny. On the contrary, it tragically highlights his inability to get a grip
over his own economic situation. As I mentioned before, a medical checkup
diagnosing excess weight prevents him from getting back to work as a crane
operator in Buenos Aires. In the second part of the film, systematic prob-
lems with food supply eventually compel the employees to put down their
work. In neither case is there anyone to turn to for filing a complaint about
the situation. This is the world of “indifferent modernity”34: the persons
responsible for interpreting the medical report35 and the organizational
problems affecting the food supply remain out of sight.
A happy community of friends and loved ones still tempers the effects of
indifferent modernity in the Buenos Aires part of the movie, appearing as a
kind of allegorical equivalent of the “nation,” in the sense that this micro-
society provides an affectionate “embedding” of El Rulo in his daily where-
abouts and concerns. In the second part, however, El Rulo’s lonely walks to
the van and his primitive accommodations in the “non-place” of a sparsely
equipped dorm show him deprived of this shelter. When Sertori tries to
cheer him up at the end, telling him that, however bad things are, there are
always friends to hold on to, it is clear that this idea has lost all meaning for
El Rulo. Even if he travels back to Buenos Aires, there is no sense that he will
return “home” anymore. In this respect, the tango music appears as an
acoustic site of remembrance or lieu de mémoire (Pierre Nora) of the tango’s
initial association with a migrant culture. But while the original migrants
lamented the loss of their European homelands, here it is the loss of
Argentina itself that is mourned through the music’s melancholic tones.
Now that the nation-state no longer “embeds” its citizens, it has turned
into an artificial, empty spectacle. This is first shown when El Rulo, just
before moving south, attends a gaucho parade in Buenos Aires as part of a
national holiday. Looking on motionlessly and emotionlessly at the specta-
cle of parading men-on-horses, El Rulo is frowned upon by his friend
Torres, who urges him to cheer up, lest everybody—his old mother
86 N. LIE

included—get affected by his depressed state of mind. The film foregrounds

the emptiness of the nation as spectacle a second time in the Patagonian
section, during a remarkable road movie intermezzo. Initially thrilled about
an opportunity for a more-than-welcome break from his daily routine, El
Rulo takes a seat in the unlikely sports car which Torres and Walter have
fabricated, and which—together with the characters’ preposterous outfits—
hints at the subversive character of the road movie sequence to follow.
Enquiring about local curiosities, the characters rather arbitrarily decide to
head for a place named “The Dry Lagoon” (La Laguna Seca). Once they
arrive, they face a treacherous sand covered swamp in a desert-like land-
scape, surrounded by deadly silence. Despite the ominous toponym, this
was not the sight they expected as a reward for their trip. It doesn’t take
long until El Rulo falls into his depressed state of mind again, his friend
Torres observing him from a distance with clear preoccupation, asking him
if he is all right.
The scene works as a mirror scene or mise en abyme with respect to the
overall counter-road movie format which the film assumes. Just like this
small, unplanned leisure trip ends in a place offering the sinister spectacle of
complete emptiness and desolation, El Rulo’s journey in search for a job as a
crane worker ultimately leads him nowhere in a country of dried-up eco-
nomic resources. Mundo grúa puts an ironic twist here on the way the
Argentine nation-state had been presenting Patagonia from the late nine-
teenth century onward as a land of limitless resources awaiting new, indus-
trious pioneers and evoking—through its majestic, sublime nature—the
unspeakable greatness of the Argentine State (Nouzeilles 1999). In
Trapero’s film, Patagonia turns into an image of dried-up resources and
dried-up hopes, its natural spectacle becoming expressive of the country’s
unspeakable misery. In this respect, Mundo grúa’s road movie sequence
anticipates some of the films that will be analyzed in the next chapter, in
which Patagonia forms the main scenery or point of destination of the
characters’ travels.

NOTES
1. This was the slogan of the advertisement campaign for the film. See
also Chap. 2.
2. “Nationalism may assume aggressive forms and search for domina-
tion over other nations, or at least hold an exclusionary view; this is
often the case of right-wing nationalism. However, it may also
 NATIONS IN CRISIS 87

assume more benign forms, liberating nations against foreign

domination, evincing therefore an anti-colonial and anti-imperialist
character; this has often been the case of left-wing nationalism,
whether or not of a socialist persuasion. Right-wing, fascist and
authoritarian nationalism—petit bourgeois in the 1930s and later
with the military dictatorships that plagued the area from the 1960s
to the 1980s—did appear in Latin America. However, the subcon-
tinent has by and large been prone to the second type, left-wing or
centrist type of nationalism, increasingly incorporating the popular
masses in its promises of development and autonomy” (Domingues
2006: 542).
3. The other category is “the prestige block buster,” which blurs the
distinctions between commercial and art cinema, as happens in
Amores perros. In Mexican Screen Fiction, Smith moreover distin-
guishes an intermediate category between the prestige block buster
and the festival film, referred to as “third way features,” and exem-
plified for instance by Gerardo Naranjo’s I’m gonna explode (Voy a
explotar, 2008). This kind of “glocalized” film is presented as less
“austere” than the typical festival film, but also less commercial than
the “prestige block buster” (Smith 2014, 24). I will relate Mundo
grúa to this category.
4. For the concept of counter-road movie, cf. chap. 1.
5. More precisely, Shaw defines this analytical category as “[needed] to
address the political discourses into which global texts and paratexts
are inserted, and the relationship between these and the production
and distribution companies that provide the finance” (2013, 10).
6. There is a fleeting reference to a conference on globalization in
Canada attended by the Mexican president, and Julio’s sister is
somewhat reluctant to lend him her car, as she was planning to
bring food to the anti-globalist Zapatista movement.
7. At the same time, it is important to note that the “local” reception
may be less homogeneous than we think. In a study on the reception
of Y tu mam a también, for instance, Patricia Torres San Martín
observes a difference between teenagers and young adults: whereas
the first group tends to see it as a mere comedy, the second empha-
sizes its more complex and allegorical quality (quoted in Smith
2014, 104).
8. Shaw pays attention to formal procedures in the film, but its political
dimension derives mainly from the inarticulate nature of the political
allusions it includes. On the other hand, it is worth mentioning that
88 N. LIE

she observes a progressive dimension in the film as regards its gender

politics.
9. “I don’t really like [it] when political statements drive a film. Every-
thing is political. Maybe I’m rejecting a certain type of Latin
American film that is all about making a political statement with
very weak characters and storylines. I believe in the emotional expe-
rience and through the emotional experience you can express a
political view” (Cuarón, in Basoli 2002, 27).
10. Represented by Tenoch’s mother, who, according to Julio, had sex
with him.
11. Besides on Shaw (2013), my analysis draws upon Smith ([2002]
2014), Acevedo-Mu~noz (2004), Noble (2005, 123–146), and
Oropesa (2008). Sánchez Prado’s reference to the artificiality of
the film is also crucial (2014), but I radically diverge from his view
that Cuarón’s film is “thoroughly uninterested in engaging with the
nation as such” (2014, 192).
12. “(Julio): ‘Well, according to Saba it comes from your dad’s charola
and the burden we are for his wallet.’” ([Julio]: Pus según el Saba
viene de la charola de tu pap a y el lastre que somos pa’ su bolsillo.)
(Cuarón and Cuarón 2001, 127; my translation).
13. “Ana surrendered on the spot. Her ‘yes’ was a long kiss, interrupted
by a couple of drunk policemen, who wanted to take them in by
force, accusing them of a lack of morality. Tenoch showed the
‘charola’ which his father had given to him. The policemen apolo-
gized immediately, arguing they had acted out of concern for the
young girl’s safety.” (Ana sucumbi o al instante. Su “sí” fue un largo
beso que fue interrumpido por un par de policías ebrios que quisieron
abajarlos a la fuerza, acusandolos de faltas a la moral. Tenoch ense~ no
la charola que le había dado su padre. Los policías se disculparon al
instante, insistiendo en que era por la seguridad de la jovencita.)
(“Tenoch Iturbide” in Cuarón and Cuarón 2001, 21–33 and 33;
my translation).
14. For the concept of paratopia, cf. chap. 2.
15. Cf. chap. 2 for this concept.
16. Their age is not mentioned in the film but specified in the booklet
accompanying it (Cuarón and Cuarón 2001).
17. The booklet of the film even came with a glossary for understanding
these expressions, which correspond to a kind of slang used in the
capital.
 NATIONS IN CRISIS 89

18. The viewer is only informed about this at the end, when Tenoch tells
Julio. He, too, only learned about Luisa’s terminal disease after the
journey.
19. “This functions much like a filmmaker’s commentary in a DVD
package, and in this way acquires additional resonance and the
weight of ‘truth’ and omniscience. Indeed, the narrator’s voice
comes to be associated with the voice of the director, guiding us
towards what is ‘important’” (Shaw 2013, 190).
20. “As he writes, [the real author] creates not simply an ideal, imper-
sonal ‘man in general,’ but an implied version of ‘himself’ that is
different from the implied authors we meet in other men’s works.
[. . .] The picture the reader gets of his presence is one of the
author’s most important effects. However impersonal he may try
to be, his reader will inevitably construct a picture of the [author]
who writes in this manner.” (Booth [1961] 1983, 70–1); “The
implied author does not actually appear in the text. He does not
have an audible voice, and yet he forms part of the narrative. He
constitutes the source for the aggregate of norms and opinions that
makes up the ideology of the text. In other words, he is responsible
for the world-view emanating from a narrative. [. . .] According to
Booth, the distance between implied author and narrator offers an
excellent criterion to test the latter’s reliability. The closer the
narrator’s statements resemble the implied author’s ideology, the
more reliable he will turn out to be.” (Herman and Vervaeck 2005,
16–17).
21. An early version of the analysis of Guantanamera was published in
Lie 2011. I am grateful to the publishers for the permission to
reproduce parts of the material.
22. See the interview with Fornet included in the extras of the DVD
Tit on: From Havana to Guantanamera, a documentary directed by
Mirtha Ibarra in 2008. Fornet is one of Cuba’s most important
literary critics. He also famously coined the term “Gray Quinquen-
nium” (Quinquenio Gris) for the period of censorship that hit
Cuban intellectual production hard in the 1970s.
23. This reference extends to the character of Georgina, whose name is
the original form of Yoyita and who is also originally from
Guantánamo.
24. The story of the different versions of the popular Cuban song can be
found in Maya Roy (2002, 134–136). For our purpose, the
90 N. LIE

following is especially relevant: “The American folk singer Pete

Seeger liked the song well enough to adapt it to his own style. All
this happened in the period of protests against the Vietnam War and
the heyday of folk ballads. The tune and the lyrics became popular
and their apotheosis occurred one June evening in 1963, at a concert
in New York City’s Carnegie Hall. This is how La guantanamera,
improvised one evening at a party in Guantánamo (by Herminio
García Wilson), became known the world over” (Roy 2002, 136).
25. “Radio CMQ created, in 1939, a broadcast titled El Suceso del Día
(The Events of the Day), in which Joseíto Fernández and another
singer, La Calandria, commented on the news in décimas” (Roy
2002, 136).
26. José Antonio Evora even believes the whole film is a kind of docu-
mentary: “There is a crucial aspect here: the film is, in ultimate
instance, a documentary. The absurd situations depicted in the
film constitute a form of the absurd which does not transgress
reality, but is part of it.” (Hay algo clave aquí: la película es, en el
fondo, un documental. El absurdo contenido en la película es un
absurdo que no est a violentando una realidad, sino que forma parte
de esa realidad.) (1996, 61; my translation)
27. All quotations in this chapter have been translated into English by
the author.
28. The myth is reproduced in its entirety in Otero (1999, 123). Olofi
can be interpreted as an Afro-Cuban equivalent of Castro, who also
“created” the Cuban Revolution but forgot that “death” (or paving
the way for others) is an essential component of creation (Chanan
2004, 478).
29. Todo cambia . . . la dialéctica. “Dialectics” is also the central concept
of Gutiérrez Alea’s theoretical work on cinema, entitled Dialéctica
del espectador (1982).
30. The virtue of transgression as a condition for change is also evoked
in a brief scene in which a tourist guide talks about Bayamo and the
way it freed itself from colonial rule by mocking the official trade
rules.
31. Words like laburar (for trabajar: to work), mango (for dinero:
money), piba (for muchacha: girl), kilombo (for caos: mess).
32. As mentioned before, the tango music also appeals to an interna-
tional audience, as a marker of Argentine identity.
 NATIONS IN CRISIS 91

33. As evidenced by the fact that Margani had a rock band himself in the
1970s called the “Seventh Brigade” (Séptima Brigada), as well as
the deliberate mixing of non-professional actors with professional
ones (such as Adriana Aizemberg in the role of Adriana).
34. Cf. chap. 1 for this concept.
35. The doctor doing the checkup told El Rulo it was up to the com-
pany to decide whether his (relatively small) health problem would
exclude him from employment.

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mam a también. Film and History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Film and
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Azcona, María del Mar. 2010. The Multi-Protagonist Film. Oxford: Wiley-
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Basoli, Anna G. 2002. Sexual Awakenings and Stark Social Realities: An Interview
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Bernini, Emilio, Tomás Binder, and Silvia Schwartzb€ock. 2009. Novísimos, nuevos
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Campero, Agustín. 2008. Nuevo cine argentino. De Rapado a Historias
extraordinarias. Buenos Aires: Biblioteca Nacional.
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nesota Press.
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Cuarón, Carlos & Alfonso Cuarón. 2001. Y tu mam a también. Gui
on y argumento
cinematogr afico. México: Trilce (producciones ANHELO).
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Dennison, Stephanie (ed). 2013. Contemporary Hispanic Cinema: Interrogating the

Transnational in Spanish and Latin American Film. London: Tamesis Books.
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———. 2013. Ibero-Latin American Co-productions. In Contemporary Hispanic
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 CHAPTER 4

The Patagonian Pull

Few regions in the world have stirred the imagination as much as Patagonia.1
Discovered in 1520 by Fernando de Magallanes, this area of 400,000 square
miles, nowadays pertaining to Chile and Argentina, was for a long time
considered to be an unconquerable territory, inhabited by native peoples to
whom Antonio Pigafetta–Magallanes’s log writer—attributed gigantic
dimensions.2 The name Patagonia may well have been derived from the
Portuguese word for a giant’s foot—pat~ao—though other sources relate it
to Patagón: a mythical figure of gigantic dimensions in the popular medieval
romance of chivalry Primale on (1512). After discoverers paved the initial
and difficult ways of access to the region—Fernando Magallanes and Francis
Drake being the most famous among them—the nineteenth century
revisited the mythic travel accounts of Patagonia from a scientific point of
view. Charles Darwin looked for the origin of the world in Patagonia, and
left an enduring image of it as a completely empty, and for this reason a
fascinating, region in his Voyage of the Beagle (1839). William Hudson, an
Argentine country-boy raised in English by his Anglo-American parents, fell
in love with the area, and studied its birds, plants, and beneficial silence in
Idle Days in Patagonia (1893). Somewhat later, another Argentine scien-
tist—Francisco “Perito” Moreno—charted the flora and fauna in the
region,3 and helped conserve the most peculiar things in natural parks and
the Museo de Ciencias Naturales de la Plata. In the twentieth century,
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Bruce Chatwin, and Paul Theroux added a
literary dimension to the travel accounts on Patagonia, enforcing and
adapting existing images of exoticism and desertedness.4

© The Author(s) 2017 95

N. Lie, The Latin American (Counter-) Road Movie and Ambivalent
Modernity, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-45138-1_4
96 N. LIE

Patagonia is then a region heavily charged with images legated by travel

literature, but it has a history as well, which links it with migration. From the
late nineteenth century onward, Argentine and Chilean state politicians
became interested in this once neglected area, and made efforts to attract
European immigrants. The first to settle in the area were the Welsh.
Looking for places where they could preserve their language, culture, and
religion, they arrived in Patagonia in 1875 on a boat named Mimosa.5 The
Welsh entertained good relationships with the natives, as did Orélie Antoine
de Tounens (1825–1878), a French aristocrat who attempted to unite
Patagonia and Araucania under the same flag.6 He established important
connections with the Mapuches, but was thwarted by the Chilean and
Argentine governments. De Tounens was imprisoned and declared
insane, and the Chilean lieutenant Cornelio Saavedra subdued the once
invincible Mapuches in the 1870s and 1880s. A little later, the Argentine
General Julio Argentino Roca—future president of Argentina (1880–1886;
1898–1904)—led a military expedition against natives and gauchos in
Argentine Patagonia during his “Conquista del Desierto” (1878–1879) in
order to eliminate what he saw as “obstacles” to progress. The genocides
(for this is what these military operations were7) divide Patagonia’s history
into a before and an after, as they also changed the image of the terrain as an
unconquerable area. In order to attract more European migrants,8 the
existing image of Patagonia as an arid, deserted land had to be recoded
into a biblical and virginal territory, awaiting new and industrious inhabi-
tants, or—in the mountainous part of Patagonia—a sublime landscape,
representing through its inaccessible beauty the Argentine state (Nouzeilles
1999, 2007). From now on, Patagonia became a region in which
oil-mining, fishing, wool and tourist industries were developed, and indi-
vidualized provinces—Chubut, Río Negro, Santa Clara, and Tierra del
Fuego—replaced the homogenizing name of Patagonia, which remained
as a reference fraught with foreign and exoticist connotations.9
This necessarily brief cultural history of Patagonia illustrates on a more
basic level the region’s complex relation to modernity. On the one hand,
Patagonia is associated with the radical outside of modernity: an uncon-
querable place, marked by harsh winds and arid vegetation, and completely
deserted. On the other hand, the late nineteenth century’s colonization of
the area transformed Patagonia into a domain belonging to the surrounding
states, and even strategically defining it, either as a natural reflection of the
state’s unspeakable greatness, or by providing the nation–state with a
natural borderland (Nouzeilles 1999). This last image also connects to
 THE PATAGONIAN PULL 97

Patagonia’s frequent association with the world’s ultimate frontier: it is the

most southern part of the (Latin) American continent, and it features the
most southern city in the world: Ushuaia. The fascination which Patagonia
has exerted on so many minds may well have to do with the tension that
results from the internally contradictory images of Patagonia as a region
either outside modernity, inside of it, or lying at its borders.
These three basic images also punctuate the set of road movies studied in
this chapter. Nearly a dozen of Patagonian road movies have appeared in the
last two decades, and scholars have started to pay attention to this interest-
ing host of films.10 The specific relationship of the Patagonian road movie to
modernity, however, has not yet been the object of systematic investigation.
In the following, I examine this relationship concentrating on Argentine
cinema, for the simple reason that road movies leading through Chile’s
Patagonian region are practically non-existant.11 This discrepancy might be
explained by the fact that the coastal part of Argentine Patagonia is partic-
ularly appropriate for road movies: it is extended and marked by horizon-
tality—two features that favor the appearance of the genre (Moser 2008,
22).12 Chris Moss even believes that the two extended highways running
through Argentine Patagonia—the Ruta 3 and the Ruta 40—“might have
been made especially for road movies” (2008, 238). At the same time,
Patagonia’s complex relationship with modernity adds new narrative for-
mats to the genre. Three models can be derived from a wide set of Patago-
nian road movies analyzed: stranded journeys, stories of fortune and luck,
and stories of disappearance. The first model reflects Patagonia’s outsider’s
position to modernity and relates to the general category of the “counter-
road movie.”13 Films by three different directors will demonstrate the
pervasive quality of the motif of the stranded journey in road movies
situated in Patagonia. The second group will be exemplified by Carlos
Sorín’s internationally acclaimed Historias mínimas ([Intimate Stories],
2002) and [Bomb on:] El perro ([Bomb on: The Dog], 2004).14 While
transforming Patagonia into an everyday version of modern Argentina,
Sorín simultaneously preserves some features of the region’s distinctiveness
that lead to a configuration of the road as a space of fortune and luck. The
last group depicts journeys of disappearance that take us to the limits of
modernity. In Lisandro Alonso’s Liverpool (2008) and Jauja (2014), we
follow the tracks of characters who are associated with modernity but who
gradually become absorbed by the overwhelming landscape that surrounds
them until they disappear.
98 N. LIE

STRANDED JOURNEYS OUTSIDE MODERNITY: ALEJANDRO

AGRESTI, EDUARDO MILEWICZ, AND PABLO TRAPERO
Stranded journeys are a frequent motif in Latin American cinema,15 but
nowhere do they turn up as often as in Patagonian settings. Reminiscent of
Patagonia’s centuries-long association with an unconquerable place, road
movies leading to or through the South habitually center on frustrated
travelers, car accidents, and standstills. Such images already appear in the
two road movies that occupied center stage in the second chapter: in Diarios
de motocicleta (2004), Guevara and Granado’s tent is blown away by
Patagonia’s harsh wind, and in El Viaje (1994), Martín Nunca has to
push his bicycle onward through a thick carpet of snow, wondering what
on earth took him to leave his native town. Snow and wind are well-known
features of the harsh climate in the area and, together with incessant rain,
they return in the three counter-road movies this section focuses on.16 The
films I will discuss are certainly not the only examples of the category of
stranded journeys, but taken together they demonstrate that Patagonian
counter-road movies appear in different periods, and in different styles of
filmmaking, which indicates they are almost intrinsic to the region. El viento
o lo que ([Wind with the Gone], 1998) was written and directed by
se llev
Alejandro Agresti, who, together with Eliseo Subiela and Fernando Solanas,
represent the “anti-realist” filmmaking of a previous generation of Argen-
tine filmmakers (Page 2009, 18). La vida según Muriel ([Life according to
Muriel], 1997) is a more conventional feel-good movie, whose director—
Eduardo Milewicz—had won esteem in Argentina because of a successful
television series, Desde adentro (1992). Finally, Nacido y criado ([Born and
Bred], 2006) is connected to the New Argentine Cinema through the figure
of Pablo Trapero, whose Mundo grúa (1999; see Chap. 3) arguably
launched this movement (Aguilar 2006, 2011). Occupying different posi-
tions in the cinema circuit, these films share two basic characteristics that
make them appear as counter-road movies: they focus on stillness instead of
movement and they convert “non-places” (hotels, restaurants) into
“places” (Augé 1992). As modernity is linked to mobility,17 these charac-
teristics indirectly portray Patagonia as a territory hostile to modernity.
Though counter-road movies can introduce stillness in journeys in dif-
ferent ways, the three films chosen share a similar narrative pattern that
implies exchanging the classical road movie structure (to hit the road—to be
on the road—to hit the road again18) for the following configuration: to hit
the road—to get stuck on the road—to somehow arrive. In all three,
 THE PATAGONIAN PULL 99

Buenos Aires serves as point of departure for the journey, which is symbolic
for the protagonists’ association with urban modernity: 20-year-old Soledad
(Vera Fogwill) is a female taxi-driver in El viento se llevo lo que, thirty-
something Laura (Soledad Villamil) is a young urban professional and single
mother to her 7-year-old daughter, Muriel (Florencia Camiletti) in La vida
según Muriel, and Santiago (Guillermo Pfening)—the protagonist of
Nacido y criado—is a successful interior designer in the same capital. The
reasons why these characters head South are different, but in the three cases
the original plan is brutally interrupted by a car accident: Soledad comes
across an unfinished bridge (Fig. 4.1), Laura’s car slides off a hilltop into a
lake during a short stop at a panoramic point, and Santiago loses his
daughter in a mortal car accident after a moment of distraction during a
family excursion. The places where the characters end up are situated in
o lo
different parts of Patagonia: the windy, secluded area in El viento se llev
que; the cold, snow-covered deep south in Nacido y criado; and the more

Fig. 4.1 Soledad’s taxi drives off an unfinished bridge in Patagonia in Alejandro
o lo que (1998)
Agresti’s El viento se llev
100 N. LIE

rarely represented mountainous zone in La vida según Muriel. Each one of

these places is, however, characterized by an inhospitable climate, primitive
living circumstances, and the remoteness of its location. These features
clearly set the region apart from life in the capital, and underscore
Patagonia’s dimension as a heterotopia, a notion referring to “places that
are outside all places, even though it might be possible to indicate their
location in reality” (Foucault 1986, 24; cf. Chap. 2). The concept of
heterotopia has been applied before to both nineteenth century and post-
modern discourses on Patagonia (by Nouzeilles [1999] and Lindsay [2010]
respectively), but what is significant about the films under discussion here is
o
that they relate to this notion in two specific ways: whereas El viento se llev
lo que draws on the figure of heterotopia as a place of deviation, the other
two films represent it as a place of crisis.
According to Foucault, “heterotopias of deviation [are] those in which
individuals whose behavior is deviant in relation to the required mean or
norm are placed” (1986, 25). This idea of deviation is immediately con-
veyed by the title of Agresti’s film, more specifically through the inversion of
the word order of the famous movie to which it alludes: Gone with the Wind
(Victor Fleming, 1939). The change of word order is explained later on by
the fact that in this remote part of the world, the very old films that make it
to the local cinema tend to arrive in mutilated form. The cinema owner
repairs them to the best of his ability, but his chaotic cutting and pasting
yields rather distorted images, although this does not prevent the villagers
from watching the films with great enthusiasm, as it is the only form of
amusement in their isolated town.19 Their distorted views are indirectly
announced by the upside-down position in which Soledad’s car lands in
the sand.
Her first contacts with the local inhabitants are puzzling and frightening,
but gradually Soledad feels more at home in the village, which is largely due
to her close friendship with María (Angela Molina), a Spanish ex-patriate
whose primitive hotel La Madrile~na serves as Soledad’s temporary home. La
Madrile~ na originally represents a “non-lieu.” Marc Augé introduced this
notion, translated as “non-place,” to refer to places of anonymity and
transience, which he believes to have become more numerous in contem-
porary society.20 “Non-places” are the exact opposite of an older form of
place, which he calls the “lieu” (“place”). As Augé explains: “These ‘places’
[lieux] have at least three characteristics in common. They want to be—
people want them to be—places of identity, of relations and of history”
(Augé 1995, 43). As a place of temporary residence and strangeness,
 THE PATAGONIAN PULL 101

María’s hotel is, as said, originally a “non-place,” but it does not take long
before it turns into a more homely site, a place of friendship and—via
María—memories. Moreover, Soledad finds a job as a journalist, faithfully
reporting on the strange events that occur in the village, including her own
wedding to a local cinema critic, who is dyslectic and whose perceptions are
permanently affected by a difference in length between his two legs.
The village is, in its entirety, clearly a heterotopic21 place in the sense that
deviation from the norm is constantly thrown into relief. In most scenes,
this deviation is part of the film’s self-reflexive use of comedy, but when the
town’s local genius, Antonio (Ulises Dumont), travels to the capital once
again in order to divulge his most recent findings (this time that “all men are
equal”), the heterotopia takes on a political dimension. As his village has
been cut off from the rest of the country, Antonio is not aware that a military
regime has taken over power. He is arrested and tortured, and returns to
his village traumatized. Though Antonio’s encounter with the dictatorship
constitutes only one episode, it opens up the film—set in the mid-1970s—
to a political reading, turning the town’s heterotopic dimension into a
strategic advantage, as a site of critical reflection on the true madness of
those years, which was located elsewhere.22
In Milewicz’s and Trapero’s films, we find the other form of heterotopia
which Foucault distinguished in his essay “Of Other Places:” the
heterotopia of crisis. Claire Lindsay (2010, 44–46) has identified this kind
of heterotopia in contemporary travel literature on “postmodern Patago-
nia,” which appears in the writings of Luis Sepúlveda and Mempo
Giardinelli as the place where the cracks in the idea of a “coequal globali-
zation” are revealed. In La vida según Muriel and Nacido y criado, the
heterotopia of crisis comes closer to its original Foucauldian sense, evoking a
place “reserved for individuals who are, in relation to society and the human
environment in which they live, in a state of crisis” (1986, 24). In La vida
según Muriel, Laura furiously walks out of a relationship with her boyfriend
and, throwing her suitcases angrily into the car, promises herself never to
share her life with another man again. Instead, she will leave Buenos Aires
and settle down in her native town in Patagonia, together with her daughter
Muriel. In Nacido y criado, the orderly life of Santiago and his wife is
brutally interrupted by the tragic car accident in which they lose their
young daughter José (Victoria Vescio). Unable to cope with his feelings
of grief and guilt, Santiago breaks all contact with his family, and moves to
Patagonia.
102 N. LIE

The stranding of Laura and Muriel’s journey in Patagonia is not a

conscious decision, contrary to what happens in Nacido y criado, where
Santiago chooses Patagonia as a place of shelter against his terrible pain.
However, in both cases the period spent outside of Buenos Aires helps the
characters to come to terms with a rather impulsive decision in the first case,
and a tragic event in the second. This is due in large part to the beneficial
effect of a same-sex friendship, which reminds of the road movie’s typical
buddy-structure. In Agresti’s film, this friendship obtained between
Soledad and María, the Spanish hotel owner. In La vida según Muriel,
Laura becomes friends with Mirta (Inés Estévez), an abandoned wife who
lives with her two children in a deserted house. Together they convert the
place into an attractive hotel, which also serves as a temporary home to
Laura and Muriel. In Nacido y criado, the same-sex friendship flourishes
between Santiago and 29-year-old Roberto (Federico Esquerro), under the
moral guidance of a middle-aged man of indigenous descent, nicknamed El
Cacique (Tomás Lipan). The three men are co-workers with humble jobs at
the local airport, where very few planes land. After work they tend to share
meals and drinks at a simple bar-restaurant called Rogelio’s. Once again, a
non-place transforms into a place of homeliness in which unspoken pains are
alleviated with drinks, company, and occasional sex. Though Santiago
systematically refuses to drive after the car accident (an aspect that under-
scores the counter-road movie dimension of the film), the old car in which
he and Roberto normally go to work also becomes a kind of temporary
home where conversations on life are shared.
This homely aspect of the non-places, in which new friends are found,
does not erase the fact that both protagonists find themselves at a crossroad
in their lives. This aspect becomes acute again when two specific events take
place: the arrival of Muriel’s father in La vida según Muriel, and the death of
El Cacique’s wife in Nacido y criado. In Milewicz’s film, the female utopia
of the hotel (run by two women who get along quite well) is put to the test
when Muriel’s father unexpectedly parks his car in front of the hotel and
demands to see his daughter. Blamed by Laura for not having cared about
Muriel for years, he is not welcome in the hotel, and is forced to use his car
for temporary home. Little Muriel pays him some visits to his stationed car
and the obvious bonding between father and daughter, together with
Muriel’s open desire that her parents should reconcile, makes Laura doubt
her impulsive decision. In the end, however, Laura sticks to her initial
decision, as she realizes her urge to lead a simple and sedentary life is not
compatible with Muriel’s father international career as a successful
 THE PATAGONIAN PULL 103

photographer. Once her car is dragged out of the water, all her savings
intact (they were hidden in a plastic bottle), Laura proceeds on her way
toward the South with her daughter. Though things did not work out as
Muriel hoped they would (cf. the film’s title), there is no resentment in the
end. The temporary standstill near the Patagonian lake has allowed all three
to come to terms with a situation they are now able to accept without anger
or frustration.
In Nacido y criado, Santiago’s frozen grief, which is reflected in the snow-
covered Patagonia as a kind of “mindscape” (Andermann 2012, 70), is
suddenly disrupted by the sight of the inconsolable Cacique, as he finally
loses his wife to a long and agonizing disease. Santiago, who has never
spoken to his buddies about the reason why he suffers from nightly bouts of
vomiting and nightmarish hallucinations, realizes there is no refuge from
inner pain as grief is universal.23 In shock, he runs off into the woods and
attempts to kill himself, but is saved in time by his buddy, Roberto, who
finds him lying down in the snow, as though he were just another fallen
branch of dead wood. At the same time, Santiago’s delirious musing of his
wife and daughter’s names shows that his mental shield has disappeared;
grief is ready to set in. In the end, Santiago returns to Buenos Aires, where
his wife Milli (Martina Gusmán)—no longer living in their spotless white
designer’s house—opens the door. Though their hesitant embrace indicates
that recovery will be slow, the fact that they do not go inside, but start
walking side by side on the street suggests that they will be able to move on
with their lives.
The differences between Milewicz’s and Trapero’s films are considerable:
the first makes use of commercial strategies, such as an international
star (Jorge Perrugoría had become famous after Guantanamera (1995;
cf. Chap. 3) and especially Fresa y chocolate (1993)) and a mellow sound-
track composed and performed by a famous singer (Caetano Veloso),
“¿Cuándo vuelve mi papá?” (When will my father return home?), whereas
the second corresponds to the more demanding film language of a second
wave of New Argentine Cinema, marked by a move away from social
preoccupation to a more psychologized focus (Andermann 2012, 69).
Moreover, whereas Milewicz’s film explicitly shows how the protagonist’s
journey becomes stranded in some lost place in Patagonia, this stranding is
more symbolic in Trapero’s film, as the immediate consequences of the
accident are not shown. The screen simply fades to black when Santiago’s
car is catapulted off the road, then giving way to a nebulous white, which
ensures the chromatic transition to snow-covered Patagonia. It is as though
104 N. LIE

we as viewers are catapulted into Patagonia in the same way in which

Santiago’s orderly life is catapulted into tragedy. However, in both films the
counter-road movie aspects are clear, and the temporary standstill in Patago-
nia helps the protagonists proceed with their “journey of life” afterward.
As explained before, these three films are not the only ones in the
category of “counter road movies.” Other examples related to Patagonia
include Gregorio Cramer’s Invierno mala vida (1998), in which a frus-
trated traveler urinates on the highway in an act of symbolic protest against
the hardships of his mission, as well as Pablo Trapero’s Mundo grúa (1999),
in which the economic stranding of protagonist Rulo (Luis Margani) is
symbolically expressed through a parodic road movie excursion to Laguna
Seca. The category may also include forced journeys related to internal exile,
as depicted in La frontera (Ricardo Larráin, 1991; cf. Chap. 6)—where the
protagonist is confined to an isolated place near Araucania during dictator-
ship—and more briefly in El amigo alem an (Jeanine Meerapfel, 2013),
which depicts the friendship between two Argentine citizens of German
descent, using as its visual framework a visit by train to the Dawson prison in
Patagonia’s Tierra del Fuego. While these films do not include accidents on
the road, they do center equally on stillness and frustrated movement, thus
activating the idea of “stranded journeys” in more symbolic ways.24

INSIDE (HYBRID) MODERNITY: CARLOS SORÍN

The films discussed in the first section all departed from Buenos Aires, to
shed an outsiders’ view on the region. As a result, Patagonia appeared as a
place with distinct and opposite features to the place of departure (Buenos
Aires), which symbolized modern life. These heterotopic dimensions, based
on inverted characteristics with respect to modern life, are indirectly criti-
cized in the films of the most famous exponent of the Patagonian road
movie: Carlos Sorín. His Historias mínimas (2002) and Bomb on: el perro
(2002) almost singlehandedly put Patagonia on the map of road movie
lovers, drawing on the Patagonian landscape for iconic views of highways
and wide, open landscapes. Whereas normal driving was impossible in the
stranded journey-format, Sorín’s films feature characters driving in cars on
the Patagonian roads, though other means of transport (including walking
on foot) are used as well. Emphasis is on the depiction of Patagonia as an
everyday location, where people buy bread, watch television, and withdraw
money at banks. This “homotopic” presentation (as I propose to call it in
dialogic reference to Foucault) is in line with contemporary views on the
 THE PATAGONIAN PULL 105

region by video-filmmakers living in Patagonia (Falicov 2007, 111). At the

same time, something of the peripheral quality of Patagonia’s modernity
regularly passes through, particularly in the way in which the area appears as
a kind of extended village, where people know each other, or quickly
sympathize with each other’s needs, and help out. Exemplifying a form of
communal life that has disappeared elsewhere, these films acquire a softly
political dimension, as an implicit criticism on modern life’s increased
individualism and competitiveness (Rocha 2013).
A political dimension was already present in Sorín’s first road movie, La
película del rey ([A King and His Movie], 1986), though this film still draws
upon the image of Patagonia as heterotopia. Awarded the Goya for best
foreign film of 1986, it earned young film director Sorín—who had been
working mainly in publicity—much esteem from film critics. The film
explores in postmodern fashion the boundaries between reality and fiction,
madness and mental health. At the beginning of the story, a promising
director named David (Julio Chávez) explains in a (fictive) television inter-
view that he is working on a film on Orélie Antoine de Tounens, the French
aristocrat who dreamed of becoming King of Patagonia and Araucania
(cf. supra). Defending his character against depreciatory qualifications by
his interviewers, David pits the Patagonia De Tounens dreamed about—
governed by an illustrated King who wanted to rule by Constitution—
against the Patagonia legated by Chilean and Argentine state politics:
“poverty, alcohol-abuse, syphilis—go to Patagonia today and see the differ-
ence.” This difference, indeed, is what the film highlights through the
evocation of a double journey: the one by David and his crew, who move
from Buenos Aires to Patagonia in order to shoot the film, and the historic
one by Orélie de Tounens, who traveled from France to Patagonia, and
whose whereabouts constitute the film-in-the-film according to a popular
procedure at the time (Sorín, in Heitz 2012, 166). The fact that neither of
the journeys is successfully completed inscribes La película del rey in the
aforementioned category of the stranded journeys, and De Tounens’s and
David’s obsessive character, verging on insanity, associate the region with a
heterotopia of deviation. In this case, the motif of the “stranded journey”
acquires a counter-conquest dimension, as it indirectly revisits General
Roca’s triumphant “conquest of the desert” as a collective loss. Patagonia
is still an inhospitable, wind-beaten area, only now without Indians.
A dimension of social criticism is also present in Sorín’s later road movies,
but now cast in the new setting of a homotopic Patagonia. True to the spirit
of its time, the postmodern self-referential language of La película del rey
106 N. LIE

has given way to a predominantly realist focus, with occasional humoristic

touches. Zooming in on the everyday lives of people living in the area, Sorín
makes use of non-professional actors originating from the region and inserts
scenes shot with a handheld camera. As Joanna Page (2009, 124) argues,
these road movies by Sorín no longer hinge on the traditional opposition
between city and countryside (significantly, the main characters do not
depart from Buenos Aires), but rather produce a “hybrid” image of Pata-
gonia, as an area sufficiently modernized to suffer the same economic
problems as the rest of the country. Instead of crazy kings and obsessed
filmmakers, we find unemployed mechanics and people struggling to make
ends meet, and the homogeneous image of Patagonia is broken down into
separate and individualized towns and villages, between which we travel or
circulate with the protagonists. Interestingly, Sorín’s new cinematographic
agenda—summarized in the title Historias mínimas, which reflects the
move away from kings to ordinary people—draws even more explicitly on
the road movie idiom than his first feature-length film. Whereas the film
crew in La película del rey traveled by train and motorbus—a variation on
the motif of the “traveling circus” that already appears in the Brazilian road
movie Bye Bye Brasil (Carlos Diegues, 1979)—cars and roads occupy an
important place in Historias mínimas and El perro.
In Historias mínimas, the road unifies the trajectories of three characters,
who travel the 300 kilometers from Fitz Roy to Puerto San Julián, in the
Patagonian province of Santa Clara. In each case, a “fateful event” is
implied: an event considered as “highly consequential for a person’s des-
tiny” (Giddens 1996, 112). María Flores (Javiera Bravo)—mother of a baby
girl—has been invited to a television contest, where she might win a fancy
household appliance. Don Justo (Antonio Benedicti)—a 70-something
man—wants to retrieve his dog Malacara,25 onto whom he projects his
feelings of guilt and shame after a hit-and-run accident. Roberto—a travel-
ing salesman, played by a professional actor (Javier Lombardo)—intends to
take a birthday cake to a widow’s son, in the hope of catching her eye. The
prize, the dog, and the birthday all symbolize the deeper values that the
characters are aiming for: a share of middle-class comfort (María), forgive-
ness for a crime never admitted (don Justo), family life (Roberto). Though
things do not turn out exactly as planned, these journeys of hope are at least
partially successful: María wins the first prize in the television contest, don
Justo retrieves a dog which he believes to be Malacara, and Roberto’s
surprise visit to the widow confirms his hope for a new start. These are
 THE PATAGONIAN PULL 107

not stranded journeys, then, but journeys that, to a certain degree, yield
positive results.
The road is also the central image in Bomb on el perro, although this time
the story focuses on a single character. It is on the road that Juan “Coco”
Villegas (Juan Villegas)—still looking for a job—comes across a woman
whose car is broken, a situation which indirectly leads him to a new com-
panion who will change his life. Using his skills as a former mechanic (and
still dressed in his old worker’s outfit), he repairs the car, and receives for
reward—somewhat reluctantly at first—a Dogo Argentino (or Argentine
Mastiff), which had belonged to the French father of the women whose car
he has repaired. Portrayed by his widow and daughter as a man who was
always busy carrying out some crazy plan or other, the Frenchman had
acquired the dog in order to start a breeding kennel, for export, until death
interrupted his plans. In an ironic variation on the buddy motive,
underscored by the fact that the dog generally occupies the front seat in
Villegas’s car, the protagonist’s career rises and falls together with that of
the dog: not only does the dog provide him with an opportunity to work for
a short period as a night watch, but also, and more importantly, Villegas is
introduced into the world of dog trainers and breeders, where his dog
garners important prizes as an exceptional member of his distinguished
pedigree. As Bombón (the dog’s nickname in tribute of his former French
owner) is white and Villegas keeps on wearing his former white worker’s
outfit, the dog appears as a kind of animalistic double of Villegas, with
whom he shares a shy and introverted character. Villegas’ entrance into
the world of dog breeders gives way to several humoristic scenes, but in a
more basic way it opens him up to a new world of chances and opportunities
that he had never suspected to exist. The centrality of the motif of luck and
fortune is rendered explicit through fleeting allusions to the idea of good
fortune in other parts of the film: “This must be my lucky day,” Villegas
asserts when he wins a small prize at a local gas station at the beginning of
the film and, somewhat later, a woman predicts Villegas a rosy future
analyzing the drab of a cup of Turkish coffee. In the end, he drives off
toward the horizon, taking with him not only Bombón, but also two
unemployed young hitchhikers, who want to “probar suerte” (try their
luck) in Buenos Aires.
As Anthony Giddens explains, modernity replaced the old notions of
“fate” and “destiny,” by the ones of “fortune, chance and luck”: whereas
“destiny and fate” referred to a preordained and unchangeable path, the
other notions leave an amount of agency to the individual (Giddens 1999,
108 N. LIE

109–110).26 Fortune and luck endow the road in Sorín’s films with a
positive and modern dimension, clearly different from the scenarios
portrayed in the stranded-journeys format, where the road appeared as a
space of crisis and disaster. The idea that luck can be influenced by one’s
own actions is eminently illustrated in the figure of Roberto, the traveling
salesman in Historias mínimas who claims to deserve a special prize for the
amount of kilometers he makes a year. Strongly identified with the road,
Roberto is also the character who is most convinced of the possibility to
overcome unforeseen adversities by the virtue of improvisation. His birth-
day cake, which assumes different shapes throughout the story, serves as a
practical (and comical) testing ground for his theory. Roberto’s association
with modernity is moreover enforced by his reliance on a self-help manual
for salesmen. Self-help manuals (as well as therapies) are presented by
Anthony Giddens as typical expressions of late modernity’s “self-reflexiv-
ity:” the tendency to see the self as “a reflexive project, for which the self is
responsible” (Giddens 1996, 75).27 Conveying an optimistic view on life,
this image of the road simultaneously connects to the region’s history of
pioneer migration, as is indicated by several allusions, both in Historias
mínimas and Bomb on el perro, to people who came to Patagonia full of
plans: beside the French nationality of the owner to whom Bombón
belonged, there is the deceased husband of an old lady in Historias
mínimas, who wanted to convert Patagonia into a kind of Brazil by planting
palm trees everywhere. This sympathetic layer of craziness hints at a hidden
resource of creativity and entrepreneurialism from which a country in crisis
might tap some welcome energy.
At the same time, Patagonia is certainly not an ideal place where all
problems disappear under the effect of fortune and luck. The storyline
around María makes this crystal clear: she is lucky during the television
contest, but has to exchange the first prize (a food processor) afterward for a
less attractive and valuable one, as her primitive house has no electricity
(Fig. 4.2). Though television is a constant presence in Historias mínimas,
symbolizing the region’s participation in modernity, María’s story simulta-
neously demonstrates that Patagonia remains “firmly on the periphery of
urban televisual societies” (Page 2011, 75). In Bomb on el perro, it is
Villegas’ daughter who, exhausted by the daily care of her children,
depressed husband, and unemployed father, most poignantly evokes the
difficult living circumstances in contemporary Patagonia. All kinds of citi-
zens may make a fleeting appearance in Sorín’s films—from bakers to
bankers, and police agents to dog breeders—the film director shows a
 THE PATAGONIAN PULL 109

Fig. 4.2 María Flores is waiting for a bus back home in Carlos Sorín’s Historias
mínimas (2002)

preference for “humble” people. Significantly, none of the main characters

of his two films possesses a house of his or her own: María lives in an
abandoned railway station from which she might be evicted at any time,
don Justo generally sits in front of his former house—now owned by his son
who treats him like a child—and Villegas has to live at his daughter’s place
until the presence of Bombón makes the already difficult situation
completely untenable. In this sense as well, these are “minimal” stories,
ironically set in a landscape that, ever since Pigafetta, has become associated
with the notion of the gigantesque.28
And yet, the hybrid quality of Sorín’s Patagonia (Page 2009, 124), in
which modern and rural aspects of society are combined, explains why a
certain warmth perspires through the evocations of the cold, daily worries of
the lives portrayed. This warmth proceeds from a kind of pre-modern
communitarian life that apparently lives on in the region, recalling the
classical distinction between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft established by
Ferdinand T€ onnies (1855–1936). “T€onnies charted with some sadness the
gradual loss of what he called Gemeinschaft, or community bonds, which he
characterized as traditional close-knit ties, personal and often life-long
relationships between neighbours and friends, and a sense of duty and
commitment” (Giddens and Sutton 2013, 206). Bomb on el perro’s
110 N. LIE

protagonist, Juan Villegas, is known to everybody as “Coco,” and Historias

mínimas’ old don Justo is easily identified as “the man who moves his ears,”
entertaining young children and sharing “mate”29 with truckers passing
by. He is correct in trusting he will meet helping hands along the way, when
he sets off on foot for a journey of 300 km, and his occasional buddies
invariably promise “not to turn him in to his son” as a form of natural
solidarity with his cause. Most poignantly, perhaps, the idea of Gemeinschaft
is evoked in the scene in which don Justo is granted food and shelter on a
construction site, where the male workers who have migrated from the
north sing and dance. Similar aspects explain the warm, rosy glow of Sorín’s
rendering of the Patagonian landscape, in the background of his stories of
the everyday.

THE BORDERS OF MODERNITY: LISANDRO ALONSO

“To be on the road—to strand—to disappear:” this is a concise summary of
the peculiar narrative pattern one finds in Lisandro Alonso’s Patagonian
road movies. The word “road movie” may even come as a surprise in the
case of this director. Contrary to Carlos Sorín, whose name is faithfully
associated with the genre (Heitz 2012, 73; Tomkins 2013, 106), Lisandro
Alonso is systematically overlooked in studies on the (Patagonian) road
movie (e.g., Haase and Sastringen 2012; Trancini 2010). The fact that
cars and highways are notably absent from his films might explain this lack
of attention. In my view, however, this absence is part of a highly uncon-
ventional road movie idiom, used by a director who has been considered as
one of the most original (but also most uncompromising) talents in New
Argentine Cinema (e.g., Page 2009, 63; Andermann 2012, 85; Quintin
2014a).
As mentioned, Lisandro Alonso’s films do not feature drivers, but solitary
travelers, slowly making their way through an imposing landscape in canoes
(Los Muertos, 2004), on foot (Liverpool, 2008) or on horseback (Jauja,
2015). Movement and displacement are key to his films, not only because
they tend to depict journeys, but also because the professional occupation of
the protagonists in his two Patagonian road movies relates to them: in
Liverpool, Farrel (Juan Fernández) is an Argentine sailor who works on a
container ship that travels the world; in Jauja, the protagonist is a Danish
military engineer—Gunnar Dinesen (Vigo Mortessen)—who is always on
the road for his job. Both characters are profoundly paratopic30 in the sense
that, while already spending much of their lives “on the road,” they engage
 THE PATAGONIAN PULL 111

in an additional journey, this time through a specific part of Patagonia.

Farrel asks for a few days leave when his ship docks in Ushuaia in order to
visit his mother, possibly still alive in one of the neighboring hamlets.
Dinesen, who has taken on a construction job in Patagonia, embarks on a
journey in search of his missing teenage daughter, Ingeborg (Viibjork Malin
Ager), after she elopes with one of the soldiers in the area.
Jauja takes place during the Conquest of the Desert (1878–1879),
which explains the presence of military men in the area.31 Certain features
of the film—an international star (Vigo Mortenssen), a musical score, a
cowriter (Fabián Casas) and a new director of photography (Timo
Salminen)—have led critics to consider Alonso’s first foray into period
film as a major change in his oeuvre (e.g., Foundas 2014; Quintin
2014b). While acknowledging the importance of these shifts, my own
reading instead foregrounds a set of continuities between Jauja and
Alonso’s previous work—Liverpool in particular—which, taken together,
articulate a third variant in the group of Patagonian road movies. Indeed,
instead of representing Patagonia as a place of differences (heterotopia) or
similarities (homotopia), the region appears in Alonso’s films as a zone
where Paul Theroux’s famous words still hold true: “Nowhere is a place”
(1980, 416). In this “atopia,” as I will call it by analogy with the previous
concepts, distinctions fall apart: identities are dissolved, space is obliterated,
and time becomes cyclical. While still departing from places connected to
modernity, Alonso’s journeys take us further and further away from it, until
they push us gently over modernity’s edge, into the atopian void.
In order to do so, both films initially draw on the image of Patagonia as
modernity’s borderland, projected respectively onto Ushuaia and the coast-
line. Ushuaia, where Farrel sets foot ashore, is a liminal city. On the one
hand, it incarnates “the phantasm of the ends of the world” (Baudrillard
1996, 129), surrounded as it is by “nothingness, wasteland, sterile horizons,
infinite vistas” (Ibidem). On the other hand, the city offers the spectacle of
“a chaotic, incoherent cowboy-like modernity: concrete, dust, duty-free,
transistors, petrol, computers and the hubbub of useless traffic—as though
the silence of the ends of the earth had to be obliterated” (Baudrillard 1996,
128). Symbolic for this liminal modernity is the place where Farrel spends
his first night: an old, worn-out bus, sticking out of the desolate landscape as
a strange, lost object. In Jauja, the opening scenes take place on the
Patagonian coast, where the Ocean touches the desert. This is also an
incoherent, liminal place, where military men and European immigrants
live side-by-side, where Spanish and Danish are spoken, and where human
112 N. LIE

language is occasionally interrupted by the far cry of sea lions. Situated near
a military fort (which is mentioned, but never shown), Jauja at first presents
the desert as the place where the (violent) encounter between “civilization”
(the Danish captain and his daughter, the military elite) and “barbarism”
(the natives, the gauchos) takes place. Once Dinesen embarks on his jour-
ney of search, however, the landscape gradually changes from an initially still
green environment to a uniformly grey moon landscape from which all signs
of human life have been erased. Jauja here constructs a spatial continuum
between two different images of the desert as they appear in nineteenth
century writings on the region.

On the one hand, “desierto” coincides with the English world “wilderness” as
a wild, uncultivated region, inhabited by so-called barbarians—nomadic
indians or “gauchos.” It is a land that holds unlimited resources that the
new nation must appropriate, if necessary by force, in order to exploit them
for the sake of progress. On the other hand, “desierto” refers to “desert” as an
arid, barren region that can support only sparse and widely spaced vegetation
or no vegetation at all. Few forms of life can subsist because of lack of water in
this wasteland. If in the first case, immensity represents the promise of an
extraordinary wealth that agriculture, science and technology eventually
deliver; in the second, on the contrary, the excess of space results in a
metaphysical disease that brings on brutality as well as intellectual torpor in
those who dare to go there. (Nouzeilles 2007, 253)

Whereas the initial part of the film connects to the first meaning of the word
“desert,” the captain’s journey will gradually lead him deeper and deeper
into the desert in the second sense distinguished by Nouzeilles. The “bru-
tality” which this desert is said to bring on is evoked through the figure of
Zuluaga, a once much admired soldier, who disappeared into the desert and
now haunts it with his murderous presence as leader of a band of natives,
dressed up as a woman. Switching sides and even gender, Zuluaga is a
Kurtz-like figure (with echoes of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness
[1899]) who illustrates the relativity of the borders between civilization
and barbarism. As for captain Dinesen, his gradually more desperate search
turns into a “metaphysical road movie” (Foundas 2014) in which the
borders between life and death, reality and fiction become blurred. In the
end, he drags himself forward through a monotonously grey landscape,
until he disappears out of sight (Fig. 4.3).
This ending connects to the one of Liverpool, in which Farrel equally
disappears out of sight, after a brief encounter with his mother. In the
 THE PATAGONIAN PULL 113

Fig. 4.3 The Danish father disappears in a grey landscape in Lisandro Alonso’s
Jauja (2014)

preceding hour, we had watched him walk and hitchhike his way from the
liminal city of Ushuaia to the place where his mother is supposed to live: an
inland sawmill, somewhere at the very edge of the end of the world, and
continuously threatened by complete isolation because of the thick carpet of
snow which surrounds it. The visual sameness of the desert where we ended
up in Jauja is ensured in Liverpool by the snow-covered landscape, which
turns everything into sameness, and in which Farrel finally disappears when
he walks off over the horizon. In both films, the journey has been one of
search for a family member (the daughter in Jauja, the mother in Liverpool),
and in neither case has it been successful. The captain’s daughter is not
found and, although Farrel has met his mother, she was unable to recognize
him as her own son. In this sense, both films depict stranded journeys, even
if the protagonists visually continue walking as they gradually disappear out
of sight.
This third component of Alonso’s peculiar road movie narrative—the
one of disappearance—is prefigured cinematographically by a number of
scenes in which the character disappears out of frame—a device which is also
used in other films by Alonso (Andermann 2012, 90). The Patagonian road
movies mark out their singularity by turning the disappearance into an
114 N. LIE

element of the diegesis, as both films continue for another 15 minutes after
the protagonists have left the screen. Charged with an additional autobio-
graphical dimension in Jauja,32 the motif of disappearance receives extra
emphasis through the film’s opening text, which simultaneously relates it to
the title:

The Ancient Ones said that Jauja was a mythological land of abundance and
happiness. Many expeditions tried to find the place to verify this. With time,
the legend grew disproportionately. People were undoubtedly exaggerating,
as they usually do. The only thing that is known for certain is that all who tried
to find this earthly paradise got lost on the way.

Dinesen’s future disappearance into the desert—after Zuluaga and his

daughter were absorbed by it—is then announced from the start, and
takes on the figure of a kind of destiny. Another moment when the motif
of disappearance is self-reflexively thrown into relief, takes place in a cave in
the desert, where captain Dinesen meets an elderly lady, who speaks Danish
and lives alone with her dog. After inquiring about Dinesen’s wife, who is
said to have abandoned her husband shortly after their daughter was born,
she remarks rather philosophically: “All families are destined to disappear.
Which is good.” When she briefly opens an old suitcase, we see a flash of a
yellowish book entitled Patagonia—the only explicit (albeit fleeting) refer-
ence to the area in the film. Reminiscent in several ways of Jorge Luis
Borges’s short story “El Sur” (1944; translated as “The South”), the cave
scene could be read as a hallucination in Dinesen’s mind. By this time he has
become utterly exhausted, and gets caught in a game of identities, which
ultimately leads to the dissolution of the very notion of identity.33
As the old lady indicates, families do not provide a basis for our identity
either. Alonso’s journeys bring out the problematic character of families,
because they assume the form of unsuccessful searches for estranged or lost
family members (a daughter in Jauja and Los muertos, a mother in Liver-
pool). Contrary to Sorín’s road movies, which projected a form of Gemein-
schaft onto the area, the communities one finds in Alonso are formed by
characters whose (mental or physical) illness turn them into “almost people
unable to say ‘I’, reduced to the biological” (Aguilar 2011, 246). In Jauja,
this Alonsian sense of “minimal lives” inspires a play with the borders between
human beings and animals. The lady in the cave asks Dinesen if he is a
man—he hesitantly answers he thinks he is. At the same time, his stubborn
pursuit of the desperate search for Ingeborg produces an eerie resemblance
 THE PATAGONIAN PULL 115

to the dog his daughter so deeply wishes for in the opening scene of the film,
and which he ends up promising her: “a dog that would follow her
everywhere.”
The atopian world in which the journeys become stranded (the lost
hamlet on the margins of “the world’s end,” where we are abandoned by
the protagonist of Liverpool; the uniformly grey landscape where no sense
of orientation is possible) still remains connected in a strange sort of way to
the outside world, which—contrary to the previous groups of road movies
discussed—now appears in a “global” sense. In Alonso’s first Patagonian
road movie, the final scene shows a mentally disabled girl staring at a key
hanger bearing the word “Liverpool.” It was a gift from Farrel, who might
be her father, as the film contains some suggestions that an incestuous
relationship between Farrel and his mother took place. Intrigued by an
object, the meaning of which she cannot understand, the girl squeezes it
into her hand, unaware of the distant world—and the distant person—to
which it secretly connects her. Here again, Jauja seems to quote this
ending, when the young girl who wakes up in twenty-first century Den-
mark, suddenly finds a small toy soldier in a creek during a walk with one of
her dogs.34 She stares at it, intrigued, then throws it away, unaware of the
fact that this object connects her to another person, another place, and
another time. Indeed, Dinesen’s daughter had received the toy as a gift from
her boyfriend (a soldier), and shown it to her father. After her disappear-
ance, the object was found by Dinesen during his search, and cherished by
him as his daughter’s last trace. During the conversation in the cave, he
passed it on to the elderly lady. The fact that this lady kept a small clock in
her suitcase which had belonged to Dinesen’s daughter suggested (to him
and the viewer) that she might be an apparition of his daughter in another
time dimension. To the idea of physical travel, indeed, the film adds one of
time travel, transporting us in the final scenes to contemporary Denmark,
where a girl resembling Dinesen’s daughter wakes up from a dream, thus
giving ground to a conception of cyclical time, which activates the title’s
reference to the mythical land of Jauja.
Despite being set in nineteenth-century Patagonia, then, and containing
several allusions to Argentine writings,35 Jauja ends up eliminating the
distinction between history and myth. This period film, filled with
nineteenth-century figures, is very far from the kind of entrepreneurial
Patagonia which we find in Sorín, and which partially revived a history of
European immigration to the area. Instead, it centers on these figures as
Baudrillardian simulacra: signs without referents, which appear and
116 N. LIE

disappear, surprising us with their games of identity, while we stare at them

in perplexed fascination. In this context, the Patagonian desert is not only a
place on a map, but also a symbolic area where representation touches its
limits. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari, Nouzeilles (2007, 255) reminds
of the fact that deserts, in the human imagination, function as “espaces
lisses” (smooth spaces),36 places where identity dissolves into repetitive
sameness, and sign and referent start to collide. In this respect, Patago-
nia—referred to through its liminal cities and desert landscape—is a place
resisting any form of representation, and so the historic allusions in Jauja
(the Danish migrants, the soldiers, the natives. . .) are not to be taken
seriously, as this film’s metaleptic ending (as well as the rounded corners
of its frame, a remarkable stylistic feature) indicate. Rather, they suggest a
repetitive circle of succeeding images of stereotypical figures of Patagonia—
dogs, migrants, natives (or “cabezas de coco” as they are called by the
military), and puppets, as representations of representations. Converting
everything into sameness, the atopian space of Alonso’s Patagonia is not
only the one where modernity stops, but where all acts of representation are
covered with sand.

NOTES
1. For detailed information on the history and imagery of Patagonia,
see Livon Grosman (2003), Moss (2008), and Canaparo (2011).
2. “But one day (without anyone expecting it) we saw a giant who was
on the shore (. . .) And he was so tall that the tallest of us only came
up to his waist” (Pigafetta quoted in Moss 2008, 30). Moss adds an
explanation: “What were probably oversized garments made of
guanaco skin (. . .) may well have made a ‘giant’ of a man” (Ibidem).
3. See, for example, his Viaje a la Patagonia Austral (1879). “Perito”
is an affectionate epithet, meaning “expert, specialist.”
4. See, for example, Terre des Hommes (1939; translated as Wind, Sand
and Stars) by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, In Patagonia (1977) by
Bruce Chatwin and The Old Patagonian Express: By Train through
the Americas (1979) by Paul Theroux.
5. See the film Patagonia (2011), directed by Marc Evans, which starts
with a brief evocation of this first migration journey.
6. His first name is alternately spelled Orélie or Orllie.
7. The Conquista del Desierto was a set of “acts of ultra-violence
against unprepared, unequal foes and the so-called ‘Pacification of
 THE PATAGONIAN PULL 117

Araucania’ (1870s, 1880s) is referred to by the Mapuches as La

última Matanza (The Last Massacre)” (Moss 2003, 155).
8. According to Moss (2008, 155), the lake district was overrun with
outsiders from 1882 onwards, including around 10,000 English,
French, Swiss, and German settlers.
9. See Borges in an interview with Theroux: “We don’t say Patagonia.
We say Chubut or Santa Clara. We never say Patagonia” (quoted in
Moss 2008, 268).
10. See, for example, Chap. 13 in Moss (2008), Trancini (2010), and
Haase and Sartingen (2012).
11. An exception would be Diarios de motocicleta, which includes scenes
shot in Chilean Patagonia.
12. An observation sustaining this hypothesis is the fact that another
region in Chile which shares the same spatial features as the coastal
part of Patagonia—the Northern desert—does inspire road movies.
See, for instance, Desierto Sur (coproduced with Spain, Shawn
Garry, 2008), De jueves a domingo (Dominga Sotomayor, 2012)
and Crystal Fairy & the Magical Cactus & 2012 (Sebastián
Silva, 2013).
13. For a detailed explanation of this concept, see this book’s
Introduction.
14. Released in Europe as Bomb on: El Perro, and in Argentina as El
Perro.
15. Other counter-road movies not set in Patagonia include the Mexi-
can films Lake Tahoe (Fernando Eimbcke, Mexico) and Norteado
(Rigoberto Perezcano, 2009; cf. Chap. 5), the Cuban films Lista de
espera (Juan Carlos Tabío, 2000) and Habana Blues (Benito
Zambrano, 2004), and the Chilean film Música campesina (Alberto
Fuguet, 2011; cf. Chap. 7).
16. For the concept of counter-road movie, cf. Chap. 1.
17. See Introduction.
18. See Moser (2008, 22).
19. As the end credits reveal, the town is a fictionalized version of Río
Pico, a village in the Patagonian province of Chubut.
20. Some of the examples given by Augé are airports, malls, subways,
and highways.
21. See Chap. 2 for an explanation of this concept.
22. Dictatorship is a recurrent theme in Agresti’s work in the 1990s; for
example, Boda secreta (1989) and Buenos Aires viceversa (1996).
118 N. LIE

23. In this respect it is significant that El Cacique, who seemingly

represents the region’s distinctiveness in ethnic terms, admits at a
given moment that he is not originally from the region, and not even
a Mapuche at all. He was simply called this way by “a gringo,” and
the name stuck on him ever since. At the same time, the fatherly role
of El Cacique with respect to the two buddies might be read as an
ironic comment on the genocide of the Mapuches by the Argentine
state (Pinazza 2014, 145).
24. A road movie not discussed here—as it does not fall into the cate-
gory of the “counter road movie”—is Caballos salvajes, by Marcelo
Pi~neyro (1995). This film shares with the category of the “stranded
journeys” the heterotopic configuration of Patagonia, but uses it in a
utopian sense: Patagonia appears as a land of freedom and purity,
opposite to the country’s capital, which is associated with
corruption.
25. The name Malacara may be an allusion to a famous horse in the
Patagonian region, who saved its rider’s life, by taking a courageous
leap and was buried in a tomb with a gravestone commemorating
the event (Moss 2008, 136). Like this horse, don Justo’s dog is
dearly loved by his owner, and granted “human” characteristics: not
courage and loyalty, in this case, but the ability to distinguish right
from wrong.
26. In fact, Giddens (1999, 128) believes chance and luck are typical
notions of late modernity, because they presuppose the idea of risk,
whereas fortune appeared already in the post-medieval period.
Rather than this distinction, it is the shared rejection of a pre-given
destiny which makes these notions interesting for my study; for this
reason, I use luck, chance, and fortune as synonyms in this chapter.
27. Another way to relate the self-help manual to the current stage of
modernity is by pointing at the importance it gives to “performance”
as a selling technique. Drawing on Baudrillard, Philippa Page has
interpreted this aspect as symptomatic of the postmodern “shift
from the sale of objects with an ‘essential’ value, or specific produc-
tive function, to the sale of objects with an ‘inessential’ value, which
are consumed as much for what they signify as for the function that
they perform” (2011, 72).
28. “The notion of the gigantesque is intimately related to the topic of
the [Patagonian] landscape and is hence not limited to the repre-
sentation of indigenous people.” [El gigantismo est a íntimamente
 THE PATAGONIAN PULL 119

ligado al tema del paisaje [patag onico] y no se limita a la

representacion de los indígenas] (Livon Grosman 2003, 48; my
translation).
29. A caffeine-rich infused drink, particularly popular in Argentina,
where it is drunk from a special cup shared with friends.
30. For the concept of paratopia, cf. Chap. 2.
31. Film critics situate the film in 1882, probably drawing on additional
information provided by the production company, because the year
is not mentioned in the film itself.
32. In an interview for Indiewire, Alonso referred to the sudden news of
a friend’s death as the immediate source of inspiration for Jauja: “I
think it was the main germ of the idea. I heard she’d been murdered
in the Philippines and was shocked and surprised to receive that
news via e-mail. I thought, ‘OK, this is the way it is: You hit enter
and just receive that kind of news.’ I couldn’t stop thinking about
her parents taking a plane to where she was to recover the body. I
started to work on that kind of plot with Fabian and Vigo. We just
decided to develop questions about how it feels to be a complete
foreigner in a strange land—and then we started to think about what
it means if you can’t see the one you love anymore, and how you
need to find the body and take it back someplace. After that, we
started to consider, if you lose a daughter or something, how can
you keep going in your everyday life? Can you recover?” (Alonso in
Kohn 2015).
33. In “El Sur,” a character named Juan Dahlmann travels from Buenos
Aires to the South (more particularly the area of the pampas), and is
addressed in person by a man whom he has never seen. The fact that
Dahlmann was operated on shortly beforehand throws doubt on the
reality of his journey, which might be a hallucination during the
operation. The ending of the story shows Dahlmann about to die
which, similar to Jauja, corresponds to the realization of “a destiny.”
On the influence of Borges’s short story on Argentine road movies
leading toward the South (albeit without reference to Patagonia),
see Trancini (2010).
34. A dog with a bloody mark on his neck provides another connecting
element between the distant worlds of nineteenth-century Patago-
nia and twenty-first century Denmark.
120 N. LIE

35. Quintín (2014a) has identified allusions to Domingo Faustino

Sarmiento’s Civilizaci on y barbarie (1845), y Lucio Mansilla’s An
expedition to the Ranquel Indians (1870).
36. “Returning to the simple opposition, the striated is that which
intertwines fixed and variable elements, produces an order and
succession of distinct forms, and organizes horizontal melodic lines
and vertical harmonic planes. The smooth is the continuous varia-
tion, continuous development of form; it is the fusion of harmony
and melody in favor of the production of properly rythmic values,
the pure act of the drawing of a diagonal across the vertical and the
horizontal” (Deleuze and Guattari 1989, 478).

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Existential Void in Argentinian Director Lisandro Alonso’s Trippy 19th-century
Meta-western. Variety, May 28, 2014.
Giddens, Anthony. 1996 (1990). The Consequences of Modernity. Cambridge: Polity.
———. 1999 (1991). Modernity and Self-Identity: Self & Society in the Late/Modern
Age. Cambridge: Polity.
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Giddens, Anthony, and Philip W. Sutton. 2013 (1998). Sociology. Cambridge,

Malden: Polity Press.
Haase, Jenny, and Kathrin Sartingen. 2012. Filmische Patagonienreisen.
Kontinentale, nationale und regionale Bewegungen durch den argentinischen
Süden. In Filme in Argentinien/Argentine Cinema, ed. Daniela Ingrüber, and
Ursula Prutsch, 123–145. Wien & Berlin: LIT Verlag.
Heitz, Françoise. 2012. Entrevista a Carlos Sorín. In Carlos Sorín: filmer pour rêver,
163–170. Reims: Editions et presses universitaires de Reims (EPURE).
Kohn, Eric. 2015. Interview: Lisandro Alonso on Why Viggo Mortensen Was the
Ideal Partner for ‘Jauja’. Indiewire March 20.
Lindsay, Claire. 2010. Contemporary Travel Writing of Latin America. New York &
Abingdon: Routledge.
Livon-Grosman, Ernesto. 2003. Geografías imaginarias: el relato de viaje y la
construccion del espacio patag
onico. Rosario: Beatriz Viterbo.
Moser, Walter (ed.) 2008. Le road movie: un genre issu d’une constellation
moderne de locomotion et de médiamotion. In “Le road movie interculturel.”
Special issue of Cinéma. Revue d’Etudes Cinématographiques/Journal of Film
Studies 18(2–3)(Spring): 9–30.
Moss, Chris. 2008. Patagonia: A Cultural History. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Nouzeilles, Gabriela. 1999. Patagonia as Borderland: Nature, Culture, and the Idea of
the State. Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies: Travesia 8(1)(June): 35–48.
———. 2007. The Iconography of Desolation: Patagonia and the Ruins of Nature.
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Durham: Duke University Press.
Page, Philippa. 2011. Politics and Performance in Post-Dictatorship Argentine Film
and Theatre. Woodbridge: Tamesis.
Pinazza, Natália. 2014. Journeys in Argentine and Brazilian Cinema. Road Films
in a Global Era. New York & Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Quintin. 2014a. Into the Unknown: Lisandro Alonso Travels Back in Time to Find a
Way Forward with Jauja. Film Comment 50(5)(September–October): 30.
———. 2014b. Cannes 2014. Jauja (Lisandro Alonso, Argentina/Denmark/
France/Germany/USA/Brazil). CS59.
Rocha, Carolina. 2013. Men on the Move: Historias mínimas and Lugares comunes.
Bulletin of Spanish Studies: Hispanic Studies and Researches on Spain, Portugal
and Latin America 90(3): 375–389.
Theroux, Paul. 1980/1979. The Old Patagonian Express. By Train through the
Americas. London: Hamish Hamilton.
Tompkins, Cynthia. 2013. Experimental Latin American Cinema. History and
Aesthetics. Austin: University of Texas Press.
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movie patagónico. Romance Quarterly 57(4)(Fall): 257–272.
 CHAPTER 5

Heading North: Migrants

and the US–Mexican Border

Migration is inextricably linked to modernization. Implying as it does

industrialization, and therefore urbanization, modernization has caused
massive migration from rural to urban areas all over the world. This phe-
nomenon was particularly acute in Latin America, where it accounts for a
high degree of internal migration.1 In the past two decades, migration has
intensified under the forces of accelerated globalization, up to the point that
our period has been referred to as “the Age of Migration” (King 2010, 65).
Putting new pressures on national borders, this has led to a tragically ironic
situation: on the one hand, the ideology of the free market stimulates the
free flow of goods and capital, while on the other, nations and continents are
increasingly shutting down their borders to protect themselves from an
unwanted side effect of modernization: undocumented migrants. As a
process that produces unequal economic development, modernization
causes masses of people to embark on perilous journeys to wealthier parts
of the world. Those who arrive often make real contributions to the local
economies as cheap, flexible, undemanding labor, while remaining deprived
of political rights and therefore being vulnerable to abuse and exploitation.
Many others never arrive but perish during their harrowing journey at sea or
in inhospitable desert areas.
The humanitarian tragedy that has resulted from this situation is cur-
rently one of the major challenges for the “fortress continents” (Bauman
2004, 61) that face it. As the metaphor indicates, Europe, Australia, and the
USA have generally responded by severely policing their borders.2 Pushing
the unstoppable stream of migrants to evermore dangerous zones of

© The Author(s) 2017 123

N. Lie, The Latin American (Counter-) Road Movie and Ambivalent
Modernity, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-45138-1_5
124 N. LIE

passage, the thousands of deaths and casualties that have resulted from this
policy at first bring to mind the notion of “cruel modernity,” introduced by
Jean Franco (2013, 2) to refer to the dark side of modernity. While the
tragic destinies of many undocumented migrants undoubtedly illustrate
modernity’s dark side, their relation to modernity is qualitatively different
from that which characterizes Franco’s victims of “cruel modernity.”
Whereas the latter are considered as antithetical to the ideologies of progress
and modernity of the states and armies they fall prey to (e.g., indigenous
communities, subversive persons), undocumented migrants precisely flee
toward modernity, and hope to integrate as soon as possible in the econo-
mies of the countries of destination. Rather than obstacles to progress, they
form the “unintended and unplanned ‘collateral casualties’ of economic
progress” (Bauman 2004, 39), late capitalism’s “human waste” (Bauman
2004, 5) which is both generated by the system, and denied by it. I propose
to refer to this dark side of modernity through a conceptual complement to
Franco’s book: “indifferent modernity” (cf. also Chap. 1). The walls and
fences that are currently being constructed or fortified along national bor-
ders are poignant symbols of this indifference. Intended to keep the undoc-
umented migrants excluded from Western societies, these walls
simultaneously serve to keep them out of sight. “Waste is the dark, shameful
secret of all production. Preferably, it would remain a secret” (Bauman
2004, 27).
This chapter examines how Latin American road movies turn this invisible
aspect of late capitalism into a visible one, bringing into focus what should
remain hidden in globalization’s economic and political subconscious. These
films thus constitute an important complement to road movies engaging with
border and migration policies in the European context. As Michael Gott and
Thibaut Schilt (2013, 3) argue: “[C]ontemporary road movies stage crucial
discussions on Europe’s so-called open border policies and shifting migration
patterns.” Even before them, Mazierska and Rascaroli (2006) drew attention
to the way in which European road movies linked up with new migration
patterns between East and Western Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall. In
American cinema, the theme of migration appeared in road movies during
the Depression, most notably in John Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath (1940),
based on the John Steinbeck novel from 1939. However, while this early
example depicted an experience of internal migration, contemporary road
movies engage more prominently with the issue of national borders, laying
out the problem on a global, transnational scale.
 HEADING NORTH: MIGRANTS AND THE US–MEXICAN BORDER 125

THE US–MEXICAN BORDER AND THE MIGRATION

ROAD MOVIE
Shifting our perspective to migration in the Latin American context, it is not
difficult to locate the major border involved: that separating Mexico from
the USA.3 According to Ana Cristina Mendes and John Sundholm, this
border constitutes “the paradigm of the embattled frontier between the
north and the south” (2015, 118). Philip Kemp even contends that:

Of all national frontiers in the world, the near-on 2000 mile border between
the US and Mexico is perhaps the most socially, politically and emotionally
fraught.(. . .) Nowhere else are the deprivations of the Third World and the
deceptive affluence of the First juxtaposed more tantalizingly cheek-by-jowl
than along the closely guarded line that divides Tijuana from San Diego, El
Paso from Ciudad Juárez. (Kemp 2014, n.p.)

In recent years, the surveillance of the border has reached unknown levels of
intensity as part of a security plan designed after the terrorist attacks on the
Twin Towers on September 11, 2001. More particularly, a Secure Fence-
Act was approved in 2006 to ensure the definitive fortification of the border
through surveillance and barriers, including among other things the con-
struction of a border-spanning wall.4

Although some stretches of the border are still marked by no more than
barbed wire, these new barriers combined with motion detectors, observation
towers, searchlights, airplane surveillance, and ever-increasing numbers of
Border Patrol Agents, customs and immigration officers, and even National
Guard troops are at the center of an unprecedented level of state surveillance.
(St. John 2011, 205)

The completion of what critics have baptized “the Wall of Shame” in fact
prolongs a policy of securing the border that dates back to at least the
1990s, with several initiatives taken against irregular migration such as
Operation Hold the Line (1994, around El Paso), Operation Gatekeeper
(1994, around San Diego),5 and Operation Safeguard (1995, around
Nogales). The very idea of a strict demarcation between the two countries
is rooted in an even earlier period: in the 1930s, when the asymmetries in
wealth and power between Mexico and the USA started to escalate and the
smuggling of illegal substances (opium, rum) provided the first major
126 N. LIE

border issue, to be later followed by concerns about drugs trafficking

(St. John 2011, 202).
For a while, the gradual hardening of border policies was
counterbalanced by the open migration policies of the Bracero program
(1942–1964), which helped Mexican migrants find temporary jobs in the
USA in a legal way. Paradoxically, it also laid the basis for undocumented
migration. As Toro-Morn and Alicea explain:

During almost two decades, migrants acquired important knowledge about

how to cross the border and where to find jobs, and they developed social
networks that would be of help to plan and carry out the journey. Through
this, they were able to migrate without the support of any program; they were
also able to migrate without documents. (2004, 134)

Indeed, during the Bracero period, some employers tried to save time and
money by having their migrant employees cross the border without going
through the proper channels (Noble 2005, 150). One of the first films
which famously highlighted discriminatory practices suffered by undocu-
mented Mexican migrants was Espaldas mojadas (Alejandro Galindo,
1955), the title of which also refers to a derogatory term used by North
Americans to refer to undocumented migrants (“wetback”). Many more
films exist on this topic, up to the point of providing Mexican cinema with a
genre of its own: the migration film (Deveny 2012, 190).
According to Thomas Deveny, migration films—in Mexico and else-
where—are marked by three elements: “the premigration context that
triggers the decision to depart one’s homeland; the journey or crossing,
and the life of the immigrant in the new land” (2012, ix). When the
migration film is combined with the road movie, the motif of travel starts
dominating the other elements of the migration film, up to the point of
supplanting them altogether. Migration road movies generally depict the
journey as difficult and dangerous and the point of destination as all impor-
tant. In this respect, they fundamentally diverge from seminal road narra-
tives such as the book On the Road (Jack Kerouac, 1957) and the film Easy
Rider (Dennis Hopper, 1969), in which being-on-the-road is more impor-
tant than arriving.
From the many examples of migration road films that have appeared
recently, we will discuss three that stand out because of their original take
on the subject: Los tres entierros de Melquiades Estrada / The three burials
of Melquiades Estrada (Tommy Lee Jones/Guillermo Arriaga, 2008),
 HEADING NORTH: MIGRANTS AND THE US–MEXICAN BORDER 127

Norteado ([Northless], Rigoberto Perezcano, 2009), and La jaula de oro

([The Golden Cage], Diego Quemada-Díez, 2013). Each of these films
relates a journey to or across the US–Mexican border and has one or
more key scenes that take place in the desert area where so many people
perish.6 All three center on the dynamic relationship between the characters
during their journey, taking advantage of the road movie’s potential to
examine human relationships through the buddy structure. Ideologically,
the films assess the hardships suffered by undocumented migrants, without
reducing them to passive victims. By focusing on aspects of agency7 during
the migrants’ journeys, these films implicitly question the distinction made
by Gott and Schilt between “positive” examples of road movies (depicting
open roads and valuing mobility) and “negative” ones (showing the painful
implications of closed borders) (2013, 3). Instead of a clear-cut opposition
between denunciatory and celebratory road movies, we find ambivalent
portrayals of migrants’ journeys, showing hardships as well as (moral)
rewards. Finally, the three films are inspired by real-life events, which
approximates them to the many documentaries that have appeared on
the US–Mexican border (cf. infra). Our analysis will show that the three
films add to the documentary’s portrayal of modernity’s indifference, the
imaginative worlds to which fiction grants access.

BETWEEN THE WESTERN AND THE ROAD MOVIE: LOS TRES

ENTIERROS DE MELQUIADES ESTRADA/THE T HREE BURIALS
OF MELQUIADES E STRADA (TOMMY LEE J ONES /GUILLERMO
ARRIAGA, 2005)
Los tres entierros de Melquiades Estrada is a truly transnational film: directed
by the North American actor Tommy Lee Jones, who also plays one of the
protagonists, the film was based on a scenario by the Mexican scriptwriter
Guillermo Arriaga. Though mainly shot in English, the film is partly bilin-
gual, as the double title indicates, and when English is used, Spanish sub-
titles are provided as part of its multilingual commitment (O’Sullivan 2007,
84). The story is set in the border zone between Mexico and the USA, more
precisely in South Texas and Cohuila, and its cast includes both Mexican
and North American actors. Even the musical score by Marco Beltrami,
filled with American, Mexican, and Native American sounds, contributes to
the film’s multicultural dimension (Gorbman 2012, 210).
The explicitly transnational character of this film can already be read as a
critical statement on the anti-immigration sentiments that built up after the
128 N. LIE

events of 9/11 and the intensification of border security previously set in

motion in the 1990s. One of the visible effects of this policy was the increase
in Border Patrol officers in the region, the number of which rose from 3965
in 1993 to 11,106 in 2005, while the total budget spent on US Customs
and Border Protection grew sixfold in the same period (Isbell 2011, 63).
The story centers on the fictional character of Mike Norton (Barry Pepper),
a newly arrived Border Patrol agent from Cincinnati, who accidentally
shoots Melquiades Estrada (Julio César Cedillo) and hastily buries him in
the desert sand. When two hunters happen across the corpse, it is brought to
town and buried again in a semi-anonymous grave by the local police, who
refuse to investigate the murder once the involvement of the local Border
Patrol comes to light. Disgusted by this lack of respect for his dead
employee and close friend, foreman Pete Perkins (Tommy Lee Jones)
takes the law into his own hands: he kidnaps Mike and obliges him to
disinter Melquiades’ body and take it on horseback to his presumed home-
town in Mexico—Jiménez—where the body is laid to rest.
Centering on the relationships between a Border Patrol agent and an
undocumented migrant, with Pete acting as mediator, this story ultimately
relativizes the differences between them, up to the point of making them
appear as doubles. The ironic identification between agent and migrant sets
in from the moment Pete forces Mike at gunpoint to visit Melquiades’
cabin, sit at his table and drink from his cup. After having been instructed
to dress up Melquiades’ dead body, Mike is obliged to put on some of the
migrant’s clothes himself, which gives him an eerie resemblance to the dead
body throughout the trip. Treated with affection by Pete, the deceased
Melquiades fulfills the role of a third buddy (and body) during the journey,
whose main function seems to consist of confronting Mike with his mate-
riality, his real presence. Not only does Melquiades’ body almost crush
Mike’s with his weight when he lifts it out of the grave, it also imbues
Mike with feelings of horror and disgust because of its gradually decaying
state. Besides granting the film a touch of black humor prompting compar-
isons with Sam Peckingpah’s Bring Me the Head of Alfredo García (1973)
(Kitses 2006, 16),8 the corpse can also be associated on a deeper level with
Kristeva’s notion of “the abyect” outlined in Powers of Horror (Les pouvoirs
de l’horreur, 1980), standing for what is excluded from the self but in fact
belongs to it. In this respect, Melquiades’ dead body symbolizes the
excluded part of US society’s inner self, and the fundamental interrelated-
ness between Border Patrol agent—as a representative of that society—and
Mexican migrant.
 HEADING NORTH: MIGRANTS AND THE US–MEXICAN BORDER 129

The identification between agent and migrant also occurs through the
device of the journey itself. Though the crossing ironically inverts the
normal migration trajectory (to the North), the conditions of the journey
are equally brutal, and Mike suffers so much from the harsh conditions in
the desert that a group of trekking migrants mistakenly takes him for one of
their own: “He looks too fucked up to be a gringo.” Mike’s passage to the
Mexican side of the border not only completes his resemblance to the
migrant turning him into an undocumented citizen himself, but also sets
in motion a process of therapeutic healing: first he is cured of a venomous
snake bite by a curandera [healer], who is ironically a former victim of one
of his border raids; then he is cured of his repressed feelings of guilt at the
Jiménez graveyard, where he puts Melquiades’ body (and his own mind) to
rest. His last words addressed to Pete as his kidnapper/mentor rides off are a
sign of his new concern for others: “Are you going to be all right?” The
journey of redemption for Mike Norton has been a journey into otherness.
As Tommy Lee Jones explained in an interview, Los tres entierros was
“based on a true story about a West Texas teenager of Mexican descent who
was shot dead by US Marines on a border anti-drug patrol as he tended his
family’s goats” (in Gray 2006, 18). The senseless killing of Esequiel
Hernandez, the victim’s name, never resulted in a trial, though the victim’s
family received financial compensation for his death. Los tres entierros pro-
vides a form of poetic justice for what remained unpunished in reality,
adding an even wider dimension by turning the victim into an undocu-
mented worker. Providing a form of imaginary closure to the real-life
incident, the film has been interpreted as a denunciation of anti-
immigration policies (Kolker 2009, 14) because of not only its overall
multicultural ideology, but also its “depiction of the brutalisation of ‘border
jumpers’ at the hands of the Border Patrol, combined with the establish-
ment’s callous attitude toward the eponymous Melquiades ‘Mel’ Estrada’s
(Julio Cesar Cedillo) death” (Carter 2012, 13). Called a “wetback”
(espaldas mojadas) by the local sheriff, Melquiades is deemed unworthy of
a decent burial. “Present but not integrated” (Sisk 2014, 43), his body is
“disposable” once it ceases to be useful to the economy it secretly upholds.
It is this attitude which enrages his friend Pete, as much as the cowardice of
the local authorities in refusing to investigate a crime possibly committed by
one of their own. It is also this attitude which illustrates the notion of
“indifferent modernity” in the story, connecting it to the real-life events
on which it was based.
130 N. LIE

Pete’s initiative in deciding to make Mike pay for his mistakes on his own
points to an important intertextual dimension of the film: its relationship to
the Western. As Matthew Carter has explained, several elements connect Los
tres entierros to this classic genre: “the hero’s Code, the revenge motif, the
shootout, the cowboy, horses, guns, the physical location of the Southwest
desert and the Rio Grande, and a journey into a Mexico of the North-
American imaginary” (2012, 26). The word “code” refers in this context to
a vow Pete once made to Melquiades: if the latter would die before him, he
would personally notify Melquiades’ family and return the body to his
hometown. By then, Pete and Melquiades had become close friends, and
this intimacy was curiously based on their mutual identification with the
figure of the cowboy. Melquiades’ first appearance in Pete’s life, in fact,
closely associates him with this image: Melquiades is seated on a horse,
wearing a cowboy hat, and explains to Pete that he is a looking for a job on
his ranch. At Pete’s question as to what kind of job he has in mind,
Melquiades replies: “Soy vaquero, no más” (I’m a cowboy. It’s as simple
as that).
The use of the image of the cowboy as a transnational figure of identity
corresponds to a “return of the repressed Mexican vaquero” in frontier
mythology and therefore to a revision of the traditionally Anglo-American
subtext of the Western genre “from the perspective of the South” (Fojas
2011, 94). More importantly, the shared identification with the figure of
the cowboy—sealed by Melquiades’ personal gift to Pete, a horse—associ-
ates these two characters with a notion of freedom and free movement that
deconstructs the geopolitical division of the border zone into two separate
entities. As mentioned in the introduction to this chapter, the idea of the
border as a geopolitical barrier between Mexico and the USA did not exist
until the 1930s (St. John 2011, 202). Before then, the area was a zone of
free movement and crossing. While critically revising the Anglo-American
subtext of the Western through the figure of the Mexican cowboy, Los tres
entierros also productively taps from the genre by indirectly pitting the
former “frontier,” referring to the open space of the Western prior to the
1930s, against the actual “border,” enclosing people in clearly delineated
spaces and preventing them passage.
Here we touch upon the most interesting aspect of this film for the
purposes of our study: the way it combines the Western and the road
movie into a generic hybrid. Most analyses of the film have singled out its
self-conscious relationship with the Western (Kitses 2006; Gorbman 2012;
Strange 2015), but Los tres entierros also constitutes an example of the road
 HEADING NORTH: MIGRANTS AND THE US–MEXICAN BORDER 131

movie. “[W]hereas The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada diverges from

the typical modern road movie in many respects, it nevertheless embodies
three of its most central themes: the journey, the quest for home, and the
search for identity.” (Brandell 2012, 183) The divergence with respect to
the road movie is situated by Brandell in the fact that the main journey is
made on horseback, and not in motorized vehicles. However, cars do play
an important role in this movie, especially in the first part of the film. This
part presents the prehistory to the actual journey (i.e., the friendship
between Pete and Melquiades, the accidental shooting, the juridical
neglect), adopting a complex narrative structure reminiscent of Arriaga’s
previous scripts for Amores perros (Alejandro González I~nárritu, 1999), 21
grams (Id., 2003), and Babel (Id., 2006).9 Blurring chronology, the film
does not start with Melquiades’ arrival at Pete’s ranch but with the image of
a car driving on an open road, steered by the two men who will accidentally
discover Melquiades’ corpse in the sand. In this way, the film visually
inscribes onto itself the genre of the road movie from the very beginning,
but it also subverts the conventional road movie idiom in subsequent
scenes: whereas the typical road movie presents the road as a place of
freedom, and many drivers as likeable “outlaws,”10 the first part of Los tres
entierros turns the road into a place of strict regimentation, guarded by
border agents as representatives of the law. Even the two hunters who
appear in the beginning of the film are wearing camouflage—a possible
allusion to the fact that Esequiel Hernandez was killed by members of the
National Guard (Isbell 2011)—and all of the representatives of the law are
associated with cars, not only during their job, but also in their spare time
(for instance, there is a scene of Mike taking his wife to the mall at her
request, and waiting in the car while she goes shopping). The road and the
car thus become associated with the opposite of what they have traditionally
stood for in road movies—freedom. Indeed, a close-up of a billboard at the
beginning of the movie evokes the semantic corrosion of this word under
the effect of neoliberal ideology: “Liberty is freedom from high taxes.”11
Many scholars have pointed to the kinship between road movies and
Westerns in their shared fascination with freedom, arguing that road
movies, in a way, compensate for the disappearance of the Western in the
1960s. Martin Bertelsen, however, points out a basic difference between the
two genres: whereas the Western presupposes a society in a process of self-
definition, the road movie sheds a critical eye on what has come out of that
society (1991, 44). Western dilemmas are typically of a moral kind,
confronting individuals with choices between good and bad; the road
132 N. LIE

movie, by contrast, takes place after an elaborate legal and social system has
come into being, and the search for individual freedom, rather than an
ethical concern, is at the center of the story.12 Los tres entierros makes a
productive use of the differences between these two genres. It uses road
movie imagery in the first part to criticize contemporary society, with its lack
of true freedom and failing judicial system; then, in the second part, it
compensates for the legal and moral void denounced in the first half by
foregrounding a moral concern, injected into the story in the form of the
Western motif. It is significant that in this latter part, horses take over from
cars, as symbolized by the fact that the local sheriff drives his car into a ditch
during a brief attempt to track the awkward trio down (Fig. 5.1). Even the
Border Patrol, with its impressive deployment of squads and helicopters,
remains powerless in this desert zone, which obeys a logic of its own. As a
true Western hero, Pete feels at home in this wilderness, effortlessly finding
his way without any map and avoiding all the dangers Mike falls prey to.13 In
the end, he restores justice at gunpoint, obliging the at-first-reluctant Mike
to ask the dead Melquiades for forgiveness after his third burial. The
restorative justice that is achieved at the end of the film is the outcome of
the combination between road movie and Western, the road movie reveal-
ing the failure of the legal system of which Mike is part, and the Western
hero Pete having Mike do what is morally right.
The journey of redemption for Mike is also a journey of identity for
Melquiades (Brandell 2012, 183), a symbolic attempt to “document the

Fig. 5.1 Sheriff Belmont drives his car into a ditch in Tommy Lee Jones’s Los tres
entierros de Melquiades Estrada (2005)
 HEADING NORTH: MIGRANTS AND THE US–MEXICAN BORDER 133

undocumented worker” (Kitses 2006, 17) and this is yet another crucial
dimension of the film. Once Pete and Mike arrive on the other side of the
border, they pursue their journey with the help of a picture of Melquiades’
family and a hand-drawn map of Jiménez in their attempt to locate their
buddy’s hometown and family. However, nobody has heard of Jiménez,
and the woman in the picture (whose real name turns out to be Rosa, not
Elevia, as Melquiades had claimed) denies any connection to her putative
husband. This important “twist” 14 in the storyline grants the final part truly
quixotic dimensions, prefigured by several allusions to Pete’s possible mad-
ness earlier in the film. Even visually, Pete and Melquiades are now cast as
ironic equivalents of Cervantes’ characters, with Pete looking for Jiménez
on his horse, sketched map in hand, and Mike sitting like Sancho Panza on a
mule, shouting out in frustration that “there is no fucking Jiménez, man!”
The peculiar status of Jiménez in the film—which Pete believes to have
located in the end, in spite of Mike’s serious doubts—has given rise to
different interpretations. To some it symbolizes the condition of homeless-
ness that now fundamentally marks our borderless world (Brandell 2012,
173); to others it illustrates the anachronistic quality of the Western in
modern times (Strange 2015, 241), revealing Pete’s naivety and ultimate
dependence on romanticized versions of otherness (Sisk 2014, 49); and to
yet others it illustrates Pete’s final descent into madness, after grief had set in
his gradual separation from reality (Fojas 2011, 97). In my view, these
interpretations ignore the fundamental meaning of this particular twist,
which consists in relativizing the borders between fiction and reality, after
the ones between the USA and Mexico have been relativized by the rest of
the film. The story does not stop after the problematic nature of the clues
given by Melquiades is discovered; it only ends after Mike has found
redemption in a place both characters have posited to be Jiménez, in an
act of simulation, which doubles the one performed earlier on by
Melquiades. As Baudrillard explains, simulation entertains a special relation-
ship to reality:

To dissimulate is to feign not to have what one has. To simulate is to feign to

have what one hasn’t. One implies a presence, the other an absence. But the
matter is more complicated, since to simulate is not simply to feign: “Someone
who feigns an illness can simply go to bed and pretend he is ill. Someone who
simulates an illness produces in himself some of the symptoms” (Dictionary
Littré). Thus, feigning or dissimulating leaves the reality principle intact: the
difference is always clear, it is only masked; whereas simulation threatens the
134 N. LIE

difference between “true” and “false,” between “real” and “imaginary.”

(Baudrillard 1988, 167)

This relativization of the limits between reality and imagination, between

truth and lie, also connects the ending to other scenes in the film that
convey a fascination with places of happiness and homecoming, most
poignantly in the recurrent references to the “River Valley,” that emerge
during an episode of a television soap watched on both sides of the border.
Both this “River Valley” and the putative Jiménez reference a valley tra-
versed by a river—typical attributes of the locus amoenus, a basic literary
trope for a place of happiness since antiquity. On a deeper level, the status of
Jiménez points to the transformative power of the imaginative mind with
respect to reality, to man’s ability to supplement reality’s shortcomings
through a game of simulation that defines not only Melquiades, but fiction
itself.

A ROMANTIC COUNTER-ROAD MOVIE: NORTEADO (RIGOBERTO

PEREZCANO, 2009)
The film Norteado was greeted on both sides of the border as a remarkably
fresh take on the much-explored subject of Mexican migration (e.g.,
Weissberg 2009; Moreno Suárez 2009; Radan 2009). The film relates the
frustrated attempts by Andrés García, a 20-something man from Oaxaca, to
make it to the USA in order to ensure himself and his family (a wife and two
children) a better life. The first 15 minutes of the film depict, in documen-
tary style, how Andrés travels by bus and on foot to the border town of
Tijuana, where he meets with a “coyote” who is supposed to help him cross
the desert zone into the USA. During a short nap, Andrés is subsequently
abandoned by his guide in the middle of the desert, and after some hours of
desperate roaming, with no direction to cling to (and so “norteado” in the
sense of “northless, lost”), he is deported by the Border Patrol back to
Tijuana. This practice, known as “catch and release,” consisted of deporting
undocumented migrants to the nearest town in Mexico. After the Security
Border Intensification (SBI) was introduced, it was replaced by a “catch and
return” strategy, which involves identifying the migrant as a criminal, and
returning him to his place of origin (Dear 2013, 108).
The film centers on the relationship that develops between Andrés and
three inhabitants of Tijuana (Ela, Cata, and Asencio), whom he meets while
 HEADING NORTH: MIGRANTS AND THE US–MEXICAN BORDER 135

Fig. 5.2 Hidden in a chair, Andrés García attempts to cross the US–Mexican
border in Rigoberto Perezcano’s Norteado (2009). (Courtesy of Edgar San Juan)

waiting in Tijuana for a new opportunity to cross. Misled by Asencio who

initially resents Andrés’ presence and shows him a supposedly easy passage
through the border fence, Andrés is deported again. At the end of the film
we see him about to cross the official border for a third time, now hidden in
a chair (or rather dressed up as one) being transported in a truck driven by
Asencio (Fig. 5.2). Though Norteado does not reveal whether this third
attempt will be successful or not, the whole atmosphere of the film suggests
that it will be: the disguise is nearly perfect, and Andrés is now actively
helped by his friends from Tijuana.
This counter-road movie15 about frustrated journeys to the North which
include waiting for new chances highlights one of the reasons adduced by
Michael Dear to argue that “walls won’t work:” “Because people always
find ways under, over, through and around walls” (2013, 173). Interested
in the imaginative dimension of the migrant’s mind, Perezcano and pro-
ducer and cowriter Edgar San Juan found their inspiration in a newspaper
article:

The film is based on a real story. One day I was sitting in a cafe with Edgar
[San Juan, NL] and we were reading in the newspaper the story of a man who
tried to cross the border hidden inside a sofa. We thought the story was very
136 N. LIE

sad, but also funny, so we decided to make a movie about it. (Perezcano
quoted in Radan 2009)

While providing them with the main idea for the storyline, the article
triggered a desire in Perezcano to “tell an immigration story from a new
point of view,” which implied adding a humorous touch to the migration
drama (Radan 2009). This original take on migration secured the film
important financial support for its post-production in 2008, when it won
the three major awards at the San Sebastián film festival, and its innovative
perspective was later confirmed by reviewers’ praise of the film’s avoidance
of didactic or sensationalist passages (Moreno Suárez 2009, 94), as well as
its capacity to infuse the characters with credibility and human warmth
(Weissberg 2009, 27). At the same time, the film aligns with a documentary
such as Los que se quedan (Juan Carlos Rulfo/Carlos Hagerman, 2008) by
paying attention to the effects of migration on the population of Mexico
itself. Though other, more commercial fictional films in Mexican cinema
have dealt with this aspect, mostly through the motif of the transnational
family and the emotional cost of migration (e.g., 7 Soles (Pedro Utreras,
2008), La misma luna (Patricia Riggen, 2007) and El viaje de Teo (Walter
Doehner, 2008)), Norteado differs from these previous—and sometimes
particularly melodramatic—road movies by centering on the new, tempo-
rary kind of community that results from Andrés’ unexpected stay in
Tijuana. It does, however, share with these films an evocation of the figure
of the human smuggler—a sad side-effect of the official policy of intensify-
ing border security, which indicates that modernity’s indifference connects
both sides of the border. As Bender points out:

One irony of the borderlands gauntlet created by fortifying the border is that
some smugglers previously trafficking drugs found even greater fortunes (with
lesser potential jail sentences if caught) in human smuggling as “coyotes” or
“polleros,” with fees for passage running between 2000 dollars and 6000
dollars per “pollo” (migrant). (Bender 2012, 132)

In addition to profiting from migrants’ hopes as a lucrative commercial

affair, human smugglers frequently turn out to be untrustworthy, coldly
abandoning many of their clients on the road as soon as the situation
becomes difficult, which results in casualties and deaths. In the case of
Norteado, this is illustrated in a scene in which Andrés discovers that he
has been abandoned by his coyote and slowly succumbs to the heat of the
 HEADING NORTH: MIGRANTS AND THE US–MEXICAN BORDER 137

desert, while a Border Patrol agent watches him from a close distance. The
camera zooms in on the emotionless face of the officer, accustomed to this
daily human tragedy.
The depiction of a modernity indifferent to the suffering of those who try
to get a share of human wealth dominates the early part of the film. It also
grants Andrés’ story a metonymical dimension, as explicitly suggested
during a scene at a US police station, where a series of close-ups of other
migrants, visibly tired after their failed crossing, shows Andrés to be one
among many. A little later, however, the film’s dynamic changes and starts
evoking the resilience and inventiveness of these migrants through the
anecdotic encounter of Andrés with the three inhabitants of Tijuana: Ela,
Cata, and Asencio. Ela has a small grocery store in Tijuana and accepts
Andrés’ offer to carry in vegetables from the outside. After a while, she also
offers him food and accommodation, which turns him into a temporary
companion to her employee Cata, as well as to Asencio, a personal friend of
Ela’s who occasionally dines at the grocery. Andrés’ temporary residence in
Tijuana provides the main material for the film and is accompanied by a
change in the film’s tonality:

The first fifteen minutes seem to fall well within the familiar aesthetic of
austere festival favorites pioneered in Mexico by Reygadas [and characterized
by] lengthy takes with no music or dialogue. (. . .) [However, ] what began as
observational pseudo-documentary evolves into a delicate and touching
romance, with humorous touches. (Smith 2010, 10)

The documentary feel of the first 15 minutes connects the movie to the
tragic reality that inspired it and from which it derives some of its force.
Besides pictures of Bush and Schwarzenegger hanging in the police station
where Andrés is detained, the film contains close-ups of posters showing
people who have disappeared in the area. If Haddu and Page have argued
that the use of documentary techniques is linked both to the rise and the
demise of revolutionary sentiments in Latin America (2009, 5), one may
continue that thought and say that it has also accompanied the rise of
neoliberalism, with all of its disastrous effects, through minute observations.
The documentary instances remain throughout the rest of the film, and
Norteado contains several fragments with distant images of people
attempting to climb the wall erected within walking distance from Ela’s
house. At the same time, the use of Clair de lune, Claude Debussy’s classical
138 N. LIE

piano piece, grants these scenes a somewhat surreal and poetic quality that
underscores the film’s personalized, original take on migration.
However, the main strategy used in Norteado to turn the migration
drama into an alternative story is to convert Andrés’ body from a typical
migrant body—associated with labor—into an object of female desire. As
explained above, Mexican migration received its major impulse from the
so-called Bracero program (1942–1964), which derived its name from the
way in which these temporary agricultural workers earned their living in the
USA: by working with their arms (“brazos”) (Toro-Morn and Alicea 2004,
143). A similar image can be found in several other migration films, for
instance El Norte (Gregory Nava, 1983), in which the father of one of the
migrants complains about the fact that he and his companions are consid-
ered to be just “arms,” instruments of labor, and nothing more. Los tres
entierros refers to this as well, for instance, when a Border Patrol agent,
failing to detain all the migrants of a trekking group, cynically states that
“someone has to pick strawberries anyway.” Locating the migrant’s essence
in his physical capacities, Norteado clearly taps from this imagery (e.g.,
Andrés hauling vegetables for Ela) but recodes it into an eroticized version.
As gradually becomes apparent, both Ela and Cata have helped their hus-
bands make it to the other side—and both were left without further notice.
Abandoned by their loved ones, they have mixed feelings about men trying
to cross the border, while at the same time craving affection and physical
attention. This explains the weighty silences during meals, the long glances
and the unspoken rivalry between the two women, which characterizes
several scenes in the film and gives it a puzzling and mysterious dimension
for both Andrés—who ignores the women’s background—and the viewer.
Moreover, tension arises from the fact that Ela is Cata’s superior in profes-
sional terms (since she owns the shop), while Cata is younger and therefore
more attractive to Andrés.
The originality of the film is accentuated by the use of humorous repe-
tition, having Andrés sleep with each of the two women. After Ela invites
him on a Saturday to share a drink in a local bar, she makes her intentions
clear, asking him to put on his favorite song on the jukebox, and dance with
her. This amorous foreplay is followed by a peculiar scene in which Ela and
Andrés pose in front of a camera, holding each other’s hands, and smiling
like newly-weds. The similarity to a wedding picture functions as an elliptic
rendering of the sexual consequences of the night in the bar and draws
attention to the film’s fictional quality by implying metalepsis: a transgres-
sion of fictional borders between the world of the characters, to which Ela
 HEADING NORTH: MIGRANTS AND THE US–MEXICAN BORDER 139

and Andrés belong—and the world of the viewer—who is directly gazed at

by these characters. Whereas Ela takes the initiative for this night off, it is
Andrés who, during a temporary absence on the part of Ela, invites Cata for
a night out in an identical scheme. They chat and drink in the same bar,
dance to the same music, and assume a similar position in front of the
camera, as a young married couple. This repetition corresponds to a con-
stant device in the film, and affects all levels of the story (diegetic, musical,
visual). Thus, the personal present Andrés gives each of the two women
contains the same dress, and when they try it on, each in her own room, the
camera not only highlights the resemblance between the two women in
terms of dress, but also their own reflections in the mirrors hanging in their
rooms. The film is characterized by structural repetition as well, not only
because Andrés makes two failed attempts to cross the border—which leads
to nearly identical scenes in the US custody—but also because an initial
scene shows Andrés watching a truck with a piece of furniture in it, which in
retrospect is an ironic foreshadowing of the way in which he will cross the
border himself.
Andrés’ dressing up as a chair—the realization of a plan Cata’s former
husband had, which she hid for years—provides another humorous scene,
but it also illustrates the limitless imagination of the migrant’s mind and the
opportunities for human solidarity. Moreover, it transforms the women’s
situation as passive victims of their husbands’ abandonment into one of
deliberate and conscious decision-makers, participating in an act of solidar-
ity with someone who has brought warmth and affection into their lives.
This ironic reversal is implicitly announced by the popular Norte~no song to
which the characters dance in the bar, which contains the very figure of
reversal in its title and recurrent refrain: “Que me desprecies es un bien que
me haces” [That you despise me is a good thing you do to me]. This
optimistic side, where solidarity and warmth find their place in the migra-
tion drama, counterbalances the dramatic undertone of the documentary
parts. In a humorous way, it plays out and debunks the stereotypical images
of migrants and returns to those migrants the agency that saves them from
reductionist images as passive victims. Inviting the viewer to look at the
migrant with new eyes, the film opens the way for a more ambivalent
appraisal of the migration experience. Not surprisingly, the title itself alludes
to this ambivalence since in addition to signifying “northless” or “lost,”
“norteado” signifies “aimed at the North.” In terms of the genre,
Perezcano’s counter-road movie reminds us that migration implies both
movement and stillness, both journeys and temporary stops.
140 N. LIE

BETWEEN FICTION AND DOCUMENTARY: LA JAULA DE ORO

(DIEGO QUEMADA-DÍEZ, 2013)
La jaula de oro was Diego Quemada-Díez’s first feature film. This Spanish-
born director, who immigrated to Mexico in 2008, first studied cinematog-
raphy in the USA, and acquired significant filmmaking experience during his
collaboration with Ken Loach on three productions (Land and Freedom,
1995; Carla’s Song, 1996; and Bread and Roses, 2000). According to Philip
Kemp, Loach’s influence is clearly noticeable in La jaula de oro, and
accounts for the film’s authentic feel on its viewers as a generic cross
between documentary and fiction. A typical festival film, which received
wide international acclaim, the production received significant financial
backing from Mexican institutions, which is remarkable given that it
addresses a sore spot in Mexico’s relationship with migration: its status as
a transit country for immigrants from other Latin American countries. This
aspect was previously famously covered in El Norte (Gregory Nava, 1983;
cf. supra), which depicts the journey of two Guatemalan young adults of
Mayan descent—a brother and a sister—from their home town in Guate-
mala to the USA. At the time, the civil war, especially the violent seizure of
lands from indigenous communities by the military, drove many Mayan
inhabitants from their country on journeys filled with difficulties and hard-
ships (such as the crawling at night through a rat-infested tunnel in El
Norte).
In the case of La jaula de oro, Central American migration is no longer
the direct effect of state policies, since democracy has returned in Guate-
mala, but of the long-lasting consequences of that civil war, as well as the
natural disasters that have hit the region—such as Hurricane Mitch—leav-
ing many people homeless or confined to squatter encampments. This
explains why, in spite of the return to democracy, migration from Central
America to the USA has continued unabated. Most of these migrants use
Mexico’s cargo railway system, which transports goods from its southern to
its northern regions across more than 2000 kilometers. Nicknamed “La
Bestia” [The Beast], this system of trains forms one of the only forms of
transportation for the thousands of undocumented migrants, but it is a life-
threatening journey under difficult conditions, without shelter from sun or
rain, or any protection against gangs or abusive migration officers. In
addition to casualties and deaths, it is important to note the specific violence
against women: 6 out of every 10 migrant women and girls are raped
(Bhabha 2014, 292).
 HEADING NORTH: MIGRANTS AND THE US–MEXICAN BORDER 141

The harrowing journey on La Bestia has attracted the attention of several

film and documentary makers in recent years.16 Quemada-Díez has
underscored the sadly symbolic dimension of the train in this context:
“The train is a metaphor for progress, a fundamental part in the assembly
line in a structure; it carries all the raw materials needed to feed the great
machine and, in the most dehumanising way possible, brings cheap and
utterly disposable labour” (as quoted in Kemp 2014, n.p.). This “dispos-
able” quality, reminiscent of Bauman’s notion of “human waste,” also
results from the transients’ condition as undocumented foreigners passing
through Mexico, and so journeying outside the legal system. As Bauman has
observed, that system acts as much through application as through exemp-
tion: “Law acts [. . .] by proclaiming the exempted to be not its concern.
There is no law for the excluded. The condition of being excluded consists
in the absence of law that applies to its others, who then are not its concern”
(2004, 32). This has given rise to a new category of “disappeared” people in
the Latin American context. Originally used to refer to the victims of
dictatorships that made subversive elements disappear, the term
“disappeared” is now equally used to refer to migrants who have fallen
prey to gangs,17 but who are almost impossible to track by their relatives
because of their “illegal” status in the countries through which they have
passed. This phenomenon was tragically revealed in 2010 and 2011 with the
discovery of the mass graves of 72, initially and later on 198, disappeared
Central American migrants in North-eastern Mexico’s Tamaulipas—a place
through which the train passes; the migrants were allegedly murdered after
having refused to collaborate with drug gangs (Farah Gebara 2012, 41–42).
In the overall drama of Central American migration, La jaula de oro
focuses on the tragedy of the “disappeared” and simultaneously brings into
focus two other, less-known aspects of the migratory flow. The first is child
migration. According to Russell King, “Children almost certainly make up a
significant proportion of migrants worldwide, yet studies of contemporary
migration are often focused on adults, either ignoring the movement of
children, or assuming that it is subsidiary to that of adults. Children do
move with their parents, but they also move independently, in search of
work or education” (2010, 82). In the case of La jaula de oro, four young
adolescents, about 13 to 14 years old, are followed on their journey on La
Bestia, and they are unaccompanied by parents or other relatives. According
to Jacqueline Bhabha, minors under the age of 20 currently constitute
between 11 and 15 % of all migrants to developed countries worldwide
(2014, 2; 286). In the case of the US–Mexican border alone, 15,949
142 N. LIE

unaccompanied children were detained in 2011 “and it is reasonable to

assume that tens of thousands escaped detection” (Bhabha 2014, 291). As
for the minors’ motives, they are multiple:

Some travel to join families that have already migrated. Others leave home to
flee war, civil unrest, natural disaster, or persecution. Some migrate in search
of work, education, opportunity, adventure. Others travel separated from
their families but not actually alone, in the company of traffickers or smug-
glers, risking exploitation and abuse. The majority, perhaps, travel for a
combination of reasons, part of the growing trend toward mixed migration.
And yet, the complexity of child migration is a largely untold and unanalyzed
story. (2014, 3)

In general, experts cite the similarity of motives between adult migrants and
unaccompanied minors (Orgocka and Clark-Kazak 2012). In La jaula de
oro, no motives are given, though we are led to believe, from the evocation
of the youngsters’ living circumstances at the beginning of the film, that
escape from poverty is probably one of them.
Another largely untold story that La jaula de oro brings to attention is
that of indigenous migration. Here, as well, scholarship has only recently
started to investigate this aspect of international migration, though it is
known that, in the case of Mexico, indigenous people have been migrating
to the North since the beginning of the Bracero program (Angeles Trujano
2008, 7; 21). Indigenous migrants are often subjected to discrimination
during their work as well as their journey, among other things because
of language issues. Although the earlier film El Norte already portrayed
two indigenous travelers from a Mayan community, their condition as
indigenous people was relativized by their ability to speak Spanish. In
the case of Chauk—the indigenous character in La jaula de oro—the
indigenous background is emphasized by the fact that he only knows how
to speak Totzil, a language the other migrants are not familiar with. All in
all, La jaula de oro brings into focus a specifically vulnerable group of
migrants as it infuses the issues of child and indigenous migration into the
greater issue of Central American migration.
As mentioned before, La jaula de oro focuses on three Guatemalan
minors who decide to leave their hometown, plus another minor they
meet up with. One of them is a girl (Sara), who dresses as a boy to protect
herself from possible sexual assaults; another (Samuel) is a collector of
garbage. No explanations of their motives for departure are given, nor are
 HEADING NORTH: MIGRANTS AND THE US–MEXICAN BORDER 143

any references made to their families: they basically appear as minors acting
independently of adults. After a while, they are joined by Chauk, an
indigenous boy their age, who seems to emerge from the woods and is
originally from the southern Mexican state of Chiapas. He is initially greeted
with hostility by Juan, the informal leader of the Guatemalan trio, but Sara
adopts a more friendly attitude toward Chauk, and the bond between them
quickly grows. When the travelers are attacked by a gang, Sara is unmasked
as a girl and kidnapped. During the fight, Juan gets wounded, and Chauk
takes care of him. This lays the foundation of a strong friendship, and later
on Juan repays his debt to Chauk by offering to take his place when Chauk is
kidnapped by other bandits.
The film is based on 600 detailed testimonies of real migrants, all of
whom are explicitly thanked in the end credits. The cast consists of
non-professional actors (the actor playing Chauk is a “real” indigenous
inhabitant of Chiapas, for instance), and the story was shot in narrative-
chronological order, which shows Ken Loach’s indirect influence (Kemp
2014, 2). Such elements grant the film its authentic feel and set it apart from
other, more fictionalized accounts of the Bestia-journey, particularly as
shown in Sin Nombre (2009). In that film, by Cary Joji Fukunaga, La Bestia
is the setting for an encounter between a Honduran adolescent and a former
Mara gang member, who develop a romantic relationship until one of them
dies. Sin Nombre merges the road movie format with the gangster film and a
coming-of-age theme. La jaula de oro is closer to a documentary, with
scarce, mostly improvised, dialogues. Practically all of the dangers of the
traveling along this particular train route are shown during the plot (the
abuse by Mexican border police, the attacks and kidnapping by gangs, the
difficult passage through the US–Mexican border), but there are also
instances of solidarity experienced by the travelers (e.g., when they are
helped by a cane-planter, who hides them from the police) and moments
of true friendship, particularly when Juan offers to take Chauk’s place as
hostage to a criminal gang.
This ambivalent image also plays out in terms of the film’s genre, which
adopts a documentary style but infuses it with fictional and narrative devices.
First of all, compared to the previous films discussed, La jaula de oro
constitutes a purer form of road movie, depicting the journey in chrono-
logical order and eliminating any preliminary or subsequent elements. As
Laura Senio Blair (2014) has suggested with respect to other road movies
featuring migrant minors, the relationship with the genre can also be
established through the motif of the “outlaw.” Indeed, some of the most
144 N. LIE

famous North American road movies depict protagonists being pursued by

the police.18 In the case of La jaula de oro, however, the condition of
“outlaw” more closely resembles that of a “no-law”: a person excluded
from the law, and therefore “not its concern” (Bauman 2004, 32). At first
sight, the migrants traveling on the train recall Agamben’s homo sacer or
“sacred man” (1988): he who is completely unprotected by the law, and
therefore lives in conditions of extreme vulnerability. However, whereas the
homo sacer is explicitly included in the legal system as an exemption and
“out-laws” are actively sought by the police, the “no-laws” traveling on La
Bestia represent another form of vulnerability: “Unlike homini sacri, the
‘lives unworthy of living,’ the victims of order-building designs, they are not
‘legitimate targets’ exempted from the protection of law at the sovereign’s
behest. They are rather unintended and unplanned ‘collateral casualties’ of
economic power” (Bauman 2004, 39).
The film evokes this condition most poignantly once Juan and Chauk
make it to the other side. Having served as temporary “mules” for drug
traffickers, the two boys are abruptly abandoned as they have become
“useless” or “disposable” for the smugglers. As they pursue their journey
by themselves, Chauk is suddenly killed by an anonymous shot in the
middle of the desert, and Juan is obliged to leave his friend behind in
order to protect himself from further attacks (Fig. 5.3). The minimalist
rendering of this scene, without music or dramatic build-up, suggests that
Chauk’s death will be erased from history as a “non-event,” once again
illustrative of modernity’s indifference to its victims. Something similar
occurs when Sara is kidnapped by local bandits half way through the film
and—to the viewers’ surprise—no further information is provided in the
rest of the film on her whereabouts. The narrative ellipse caused by Sara’s
disappearance reproduces, on a diegetic and affective level, the frustrating
and painful experience in cases of disappearance for friends and relatives,
who are left without notice and obviously imagine the worst.19 Evoking the
human losses that occur during migratory journeys, La jaula de oro capital-
izes on the buddy-structure of the road movie. Though we hardly know
anything at all about the characters, we travel with them for a prolonged
period of viewing time and become accustomed to them; when they disap-
pear from the screen, we tend to experience this as a personal loss.
Besides relying on the format of the road movie, the film departs from a
strictly realist narration through its use of internal focalization. A series of
scenes assumes the form of “inserts,” showing snow-flakes falling out of a
dark, open sky. At first these random images break down the realist illusion
 HEADING NORTH: MIGRANTS AND THE US–MEXICAN BORDER 145

Fig. 5.3 Juan poses as gunfighter Shane in Diego Quemada-Díez’s La jaula de oro
(2013)

of linearity, but after a while their systematic appearance following close-ups

of a sleeping Chauk indicates that they correspond to his dreams. They
provide the visual equivalent of the enigmatic word “taif,” which Chauk
tries in vain to communicate to Sara in an elementary Totzil lesson. The
fascination with snow grants the socioeconomic problem of migration a
poetic dimension, making the country of destination appear in a heterotopic
way, through a dream landscape.20 It also provides the final shot of the film,
when Juan—who is the only one to make it to the USA—leaves the factory
where he has found his first job and looks up into the sky as snow is falling.
In a particularly long take, zooming in on hundreds of snow-flakes,
Quemada-Díez seems to be juxtaposing the continuous free movement of
these flakes to the “golden cage” his migrant character finds himself in. Juan
has reached the other side, but he has lost all of his friends, and the
degrading nature of his job—which consists of collecting the remains of
slaughtered animals in a meat processing factory—directly associates him
with Bauman’s sociological notion of “waste.” It even implies a tragic
circularity with respect to Samuel, who appeared as a garbage collector in
the beginning of the film.21
The fascination with snow also refers to the imaginary quality of the
North for these migrants, a dimension elicited in another instance, as well,
when the youngsters take a break and have pictures taken of themselves in
front of canvasses painted with stereotypical images of the North. As
Michael Chanan (2016) has explained, the USA is not only a geographical
destination for these migrants, linked to economic opportunities, but also
146 N. LIE

an imaginary one, in which fantasy merges with reality. Besides the climatic
differences envisioned, the fantasy element includes a notion of mass-
culture, in particular the Western. While posing in front of the camera,
Chauk dresses up as Indian (in a snow landscape) and Juan as a cowboy.
Juan’s suit reminds his onlookers in the film of Shane (Georges Stevens,
1953), a Western about the famous gunfighter. Once again, we find an
allusion to the genre of the Western, but whereas in Los tres entierros de
Melquiades Estrada, the Western provided an ethical complement to the
road movie, infusing it with typical concepts of “good” and “bad,” La jaula
de oro alludes to the Western in a more tragic and ironic way. Chauk’s
dressing up as a North American Apache in front of the camera foreshadows
his death on American territory, as yet another “Indian” killed by an
anonymous “cowboy.” And whereas the gunfighter Shane brought peace
and justice, putting an end to a period of lawlessness, the anonymous shot
fired in La jaula de oro is an act of cowardice, neither claimed nor punished
and therefore deprived of any sense. Most ironically, perhaps, the explicit
reference to Shane in La jaula de oro reminds the viewer of the fact that US
citizens are descendants from pioneer families who were European migrants
themselves, in search of a better life in the New World. Gunfighter Shane
defended their rights, but for those who travel undocumented nowadays,
lawlessness seems to have returned at the border.

EPILOGUE
It is perhaps no coincidence that the three films discussed all contain playful
allusions to the North as a point of destination for the migrants featured in
them: Arriaga’s Border Patrol agent is called Norton; Perezcano’s film is
titled “Northless;” and the title La jaula de oro refers to the Golden Dream
and its perversion. The three films, ironically or tragically, underscore the
power of fiction with respect to reality and thereby transcend their referen-
tial quality as works derived from a tragic reality or containing documentary
fragments. They also share the ironic reversal of opposites, the Border Patrol
agent turning into an undocumented migrant as a symbol of otherness; the
migrant heading North finding himself “northless;” the youngsters
embarking on a journey to the land of the Golden Dream, only to find
themselves entrapped in a Golden Cage. Whereas literature on the subject
unilaterally underscores modernity’s tragic side, these films adopt a more
ambivalent attitude, showing how odds can change. Such sudden reversals
are, without a doubt, the property of fiction, but they also lie at the heart of
 HEADING NORTH: MIGRANTS AND THE US–MEXICAN BORDER 147

the migration tale as such—people living in poverty trying to carve out their
path to wealth, travels of hope turning into despair and the other way
around. The dramatic irony in these films frequently finds an analogy in
the dramatic irony of life itself, and therefore of modernity as a wider
process, which tragically engenders “human waste,” but also connects to
the typically modern desire to change one’s life.

NOTES
1. “Between 1950 and 1980, over 27 million people in Latin America
left the countryside for the cities of the continent” (Toro-Morn and
Alicea 2004, xxii); “Latin America is one of the most highly urban-
ized parts of the world. With 77 % of its population classified as
urban in mid-2007, the region is dominated by internal migration
from and to the largest cities” (King 2010, 48).
2. This chapter will focus on the US–Mexican border, but the shutting
down of national borders is a global phenomenon. In Australia,
undocumented migrants are isolated on remote islands in Papua
New Guinea—a situation which has been denounced by Human
Rights organizations. In Europe, a continent where walls came
down at the close of the Cold War, Hungary has finished a fence
along its 175 km border with Serbia to keep out vehicles ferrying
migrants to a new life.
3. Transborder migration between Latin American countries concerns
particularly Argentina (see Las Acacias by Pablo Giorgelli, 2011),
and Costa Rica (see El camino by Isthar Yasín, 2007), two relatively
prosperous countries that attract migration from respectively Bolivia
and Paraguay, and Nicaragua.
4. In fact, construction of this border defense began in the 1990s, but
the Security Fence-Act added an additional 850 miles of fencing
(Dear 2013, 147).
5. The following description of Operation Gatekeeper by Rachel
St. John (2011, 204) illustrates the types of measures taken as part
of these operations: “Under Gatekeeper, by June 1998 the total
length of border fences and walls within the San Diego sector
increased from 19 to over 45 miles, the number of Border Patrol
agents rose from 980 to 2264, 766 underground sensors were
installed, and the number of infrared scopes in use increased from
12 to 59. A ten-foot-high metal wall replaced the chain-link fence
148 N. LIE

along the boundary line between San Isidro and Tijuana. By the late
1990s, not only San Diego but also large stretches of the border
(including El Paso) featured what one author has called ‘blockade-
style operations’ and high-tech militarization typical of ‘low-intensity
conflict’ doctrine” (St. John 2011, 204). Images of the border fence
appear in María Novaro’s border film El jardín del Edén (1993),
which has a subplot in which a Tijuana resident attempts to cross
the border, first on foot and later hidden in a car driven by his North
American girlfriend.
6. “Tragically, deaths became a common occurrence in desert zones,
mountainous terrain, and treacherous stretches of the Rio Grande.
Between 1993 and 2003 nearly three thousand border crossers lost
their lives as a result of drownings, accidents, exposure, and homi-
cide” (Martínez 2006, 136).
7. “Defined as the ability to exert one’s will and to act in the world
through setting goals, agency includes aspects of independence and
autonomy” (Orgocka 2012, 2). This aspect will be of special impor-
tance in the case of children, who are often considered as mere
attributes of their parents. As we will see, however, many children
migrate alone, motivated by the same kinds of dreams and desires as
adults.
8. The allusion seems most clear when Melquiades’ head almost gets
eaten by ants; in Peckinpah’s film something similar occurs when
flies cover the bloody bag in which García’s head is being
transported.
9. Arriaga’s narrative language in this first part strongly resembles the
“high continuity” and “post-classical” modes of storytelling which
he had used in these three previous films and which contributed to
the transnational dimension of these films (Shaw 2013, 98–100).
10. Some examples of road movie heroes chased by the police are
Bonnie and Clyde (in Bonnie & Clyde by Arthur Penn, 1967), Sailor
and Lula (in Wild at Heart by David Lynch, 1990), and Thelma and
Louise (in Thelma and Louise by Ridley Scott, 1991).
11. An exception to the association between cars and regimentation is
the scene in the parking lot, where Mike’s wife—Lou-Ann—and her
friend Rachel have an amorous encounter with Melquiades and Pete
Perkins. They sing and dance in the car, turning it into a happy,
transcultural place.
 HEADING NORTH: MIGRANTS AND THE US–MEXICAN BORDER 149

12. “Westerns depict a society that is just coming into formation, while
at the same time focusing on the place of the individual in that
society. Because this society still has no rules and its laws are only
just being created, the individual must weigh his or her actions
against moral benchmarks. Where lawlessness reigns, each person
must decide for him- or herself whether those actions are good and
right or not. The conflicts in Westerns are not between what is just
and unjust, but between good and evil” [Der Western schildert eine
Gesellschaft, die erst im Begriff ist, sich zu formen, und thematisiert
dabei die Stellung des einzelnen in der Gesellschaft. Da diese Gesell-
schaft noch nicht reglementiert ist, Gesetze sich erst bilden, muss der
einzelne seine Handlungen an moralischen Massst€ aben messen. Wo
Gesetze nicht bestehen, muss jeder selbst entscheiden, ob seine
Handlungen gut und richtig sind. Die Konflikte im Western bestehen
nicht zwischen Recht und Unrecht, sondern zwischen Gut und B€ ose]
(Bertelsen 1991, 26–27; translation mine). “The road movie is an
updated version of the Western, similarly championing the American
nation. But whereas Westerns explore a time when the nation
was being established, road movies explore what became of it”
[Der Road Movie ist die Aktualisierung des Westerns, da er ebenfalls
der amerikanischen Nation huldigt. W€ ahrend der Western sich mit
aftigt, in der diese Nation gegr€
der Zeit besch€ undet wurde, untersucht
der Road Movie, was aus ihr geworden ist] (Bertelsen 1991, 44;
translation mine).
13. “A Westerner possesses the skills needed to forge an existence in the
wild and live in harmony with nature, but for the hero of a road
movie, nature remains a foreign concept.” [Der Westerner besitzt
genug K€ onnen, um in der Wildnis zu existieren und in Einklang mit
der Natur zu leben, w€ ahrend dem Road-Movie-Helden die Natur
fremd beliegt.] (Bertelsen 1991, 39; translation mine).
14. A twist is “any moment in a script that redirects the course of a
story’s events. Though the third act twist is one of the most crucial
twists in the film—a twist can occur at any time, and usually acts as a
pivot-point that poses new challenges and throws unexpected sce-
narios at the characters, who then must overcome the obstacles or
face the ramifications should they fail” (Schilf et al. 2012, 174).
15. For the concept of the counter-road movie, cf. Chap. 1.
16. Cf. De nadie (Tin Dirdamal, 2005), Which Way Home? (Rebecca
Cammisa, 2009), Los invisibles (Marc Silver/ Gael García Bernal,
2010), Who is Dyani Cristal (Marc Silver/Gael García Bernal,
150 N. LIE

2014), 389 Miles Living the Border (Luis Carlos Romero Davis,
2014). Films dealings with Central American-Mexican-US migra-
tion even seem to constitute a new group in the wider category of
migration films. For an in-depth discussion of this “sub-genre” and
the marketing strategies involved, see Shaw 2012.
17. Besides robbing migrants—who tend to carry considerable amounts
of money in order to pay the human traffickers (or “coyotes”) that
help them pass—gangs take migrants as hostages in order to extort
money from relatives in the USA, or use them as domestic slaves or
drugs mules. If they appear to be useless or refuse to collaborate,
they are killed (Bender 2012, 132). For the use of the term
“disappeared” in a Mexican context, see e.g. Mastrogiovanni
2014, which includes a chapter on migrants.
18. See note 10.
19. The importance of the theme of the disappeared is thrown into relief
by an initial close-up of a wall with pictures of Guatemalan citizens
who have disappeared, as well as in a later scene in which Chauk
mistakenly believes he recognizes Sara in one of the migrants with
whom they share a temporary shelter; significantly, the memory flash
is reproduced alongside a picture of a disappeared migrant.
20. It is interesting that Sin Nombre also opens with a dream landscape
evoking the heterotopic quality of the country of destination in
seasonal terms: instead of a winter landscape, though, we are
shown a beautiful forest in autumn, with all its trees changing colors
in bright reds and browns. For the concept of heterotopia, cf.
Chap. 2.
21. A second sequence of internal focalization appears when Juan and
Chauk are about to cross the heavily guarded border zone, and are
waiting side-by-side in a tunnel until their coyote signals that the
passage is safe. While showing us their tense faces, the director
renders Juan’s feelings of excitement through his inner voice, in a
voiceover. Immediately afterward, we listen to Chauk’s inner
thoughts, rendered in Totzil, without subtitles. The juxtaposition
of sequences suggests a strong affinity of emotions between two
migrants of different cultural and racial descent about to reach the
destination they have longed for. At the same time, though, the
Totzil language remains ultimately impenetrable and preserves the
unknowable quality of Chauk’s thoughts.
 HEADING NORTH: MIGRANTS AND THE US–MEXICAN BORDER 151

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Farah Gebara, Mauricio. 2012. Cuando la vida est a en otra parte. La migracion
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Gorbman, Christina. 2012. Musical Worlds of the Millenial Western. Dead Man and
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 CHAPTER 6

Internally Displaced People Roaming

the Roads

When it comes to the issue of migration, road movie scholarship has focused
predominantly on international migration. However, in Latin America,
internal migrants (within national borders) represent 3.5 times the group
of international migrants (King 2010, 14). Early road movies on internal
migration, such as the Brazilian film Vidas secas (1963) by Nelson Pereira
dos Santos, generally deal with the phenomenon as a form of displacement
from rural to urban areas for economic reasons. In late modernity, however,
the movement has become more diversified, and new categories of analysis
have been proposed. One of them is the category of “internally displaced
persons” (IDPs), defined by the United Nations in the following terms:

Internally displaced persons are persons or groups of persons who have been
forced or obliged to flee or to leave their homes or places of habitual residence,
in particular as a result of or in order to avoid the effects of armed conflict,
situations of generalized violence, violations of human rights or natural or
human made disasters, and who have not crossed an internationally recog-
nized State border. (OCHA 2004, 1)

Though estimated to be 2.5 times larger than the group of worldwide

refugees,1 IDPs constitute a particularly elusive group within the interna-
tional community. Statistical data on their presence are scarce, as figures are
usually provided by local governments, who lack either the means or the
motivation to chart how many IDPs there are in their territories. On an
international level, IDPs remain almost invisible: hardly any laws or

© The Author(s) 2017 155

N. Lie, The Latin American (Counter-) Road Movie and Ambivalent
Modernity, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-45138-1_6
156 N. LIE

strategies exist for rescuing these extremely vulnerable people, which is why
the issue has become “one of the most pressing humanitarian challenges of
our time” (Hampton 2014, 466).
This chapter examines how Latin American road movies bring into focus
this forgotten group of wanderers. It analyzes films depicting displacements
by different types of IDP in four countries. In accordance with the United
Nations’ definition, the internally displaced people in this chapter are vic-
tims of large development projects (Brazil), human rights violations (Chile),
environmental disasters (Venezuela), and civil wars (Colombia). I will
discuss the road movies in chronological order and start with Iracema.
Uma transa amazônica ([Iracema], Jorge Bodanzky & Orlando Senna—
Brazil—1975). This film on the construction of the Trans-Amazonian
Highway was banned in Brazil during the years of military dictatorship
and is currently being rediscovered as an early example of the road movie
genre (Brandellero 2013; Pinazza 2013a, b). Next in line is Ricardo
Larraín’s La frontera ([The Exile], 1991), a key film of Chile’s post-
dictatorial cinema which adopts the form of a counter-road movie.2 While
most IDPs flee the areas in which their rights are violated, the forced
displacement shown in La frontera is actually part of the violation itself, as
it is carried out as a punitive measure under Pinochet’s dictatorship. El chico
que miente ([The Kid Who Lies], Marité Ugás, 2010)—the third road movie
discussed here—traces the fictional search of a 13-year-old son for his
mother; both fell victim to the gigantic mudslide that took place in Vene-
zuela in December 1999 and left thousands of citizens homeless. Finally, we
move on to Colombia, which counts the highest number of “desplazados”
(displaced) in the world after Sudan (Hampton 2014, 87–92). Retratos en
un mar de mentiras ([Portraits in a Sea of Lies], Carlos Gaviria, 2010)
engages with this sad record by describing a young woman and her cousin’s
return journey to their native village. They will find themselves entrapped in
the same circle of violence that drove them away from their homes several
years before. This is why, in reality, most IDPs prefer not to undertake a
return journey (González 2011, 127), even if some governments force
them to do so (e.g., Peru, see Lienhard 2011, 19).
As specialists explain (Lienhard 2011, 17; Pastor Ortega 2011, 28), the
victims of internal displacements represent the most vulnerable segments of
society: women, children, and members of ethnic minorities.3 With the
exception of the Chilean film, in which the person arrested is a professor
of mathematics, all of the protagonists in the films discussed here belong to
the lower strata of society, and three of them are minors. This explains why
 INTERNALLY DISPLACED PEOPLE ROAMING THE ROADS 157

the characters travel on foot, rely on others for motorized transport, or

displace themselves in worn-out vehicles, which, not surprisingly, break
down during the journey (Retratos en un mar de mentiras). Only one of
the protagonists comes directly from an ethnic minority (Iracema), but
references to popular, ethnic culture abound in the films discussed, so as
to clearly indicate that the internally displaced originally come from regions
where ethnic minorities are dominant. All of the protagonists have lost their
houses or habitats, which explains the prominence of the “non-place”
(Augé 1995) in these stories: having no place to return to (other than a
ruined one) and living in precarious conditions without secure shelter, they
roam or are portrayed as “moving” between temporary dwellings. Home-
less, they exemplify the many persons driven away from their houses or lands
in Latin American road movies. Besides Diarios de motocicleta, in which the
famous buddies meet people in this situation, one can think of other films
that broach this topic and also draw, at least in part, on the road-movie
idiom, such as María Victoria Menis’s El cielito (2004), Juan Diego
Solanas’s Nordeste (2005), and Ulises Rossell’s El etn
ografo (2012). The
lack of a stable home also explains the prominence of paratopical features4 in
several characters of the films discussed, living not only between different
places, but also different temporalities and realities.
Another characteristic of IDPs is their relative dismissal by their national
governments. As Pastor Ortega observes: “It is a cause of great concern
that, in most cases, the national governments, which should be the first ones
responsible for dealing with the situation, in terms of providing both
protection and humanitarian assistance, are absent and not even proactive
when it comes to seeking lasting solutions. Some explicitly distance them-
selves from the issue or simply pretend to be ‘incapable for internal reasons’
to attend to and solve the humanitarian tragedy affecting their domestic
population, and, through them, millions of displaced people in dozens of
countries in the world.”5 Even in La frontera, where two representatives of
the military escort the “relegado” to his place of exile, the protagonist is left
abandoned to his own care in the place he arrives, and in the other films, as
well, characters are on their own, receiving help from civilians but not—or
scarcely—from government agencies. This chapter thus relates to what I
termed “indifferent modernity” in chap. 1. Unattended by their govern-
ments, these victims set out on meaningful fictional journeys that bring to
the screen a generally invisible group of tragic wanderers in society.
158 N. LIE

DISPLACED AMAZONIANS: IRACEMA. UMA TRANSA AMAZÔNICA

(JORGE BODANZKY & ORLANDO SENNA, 1975)
The name in this film’s title refers to an eponymous Brazilian literary classic
from 1865 that provided the country with one of its first foundational
myths. The author, José de Alencar, framed the encounter between a
virginal indigenous girl, named Iracema, and a Portuguese nobleman as a
“Pocahontas-like story of romance” (Stam 2013, 216), which produced a
baby. Filmmakers Bodanzky and Senna revisit this love story in a clearly
dystopian key: in their version, Iracema (Edna de Cássia) is a 15-year-old
Amazonian girl who meets a truck driver (Paulo César Pereiro) on the
Trans-Amazonian Highway. After some days of shared company and sex,
Iracema is cynically abandoned by him and condemned to a life of prosti-
tution and ever-present risk.
The relationship between the book and the film has been described as
“far from faithful” (Gonçalves da Silva 2013, 167), but the very presence of
an allegorical dimension, involving a meditation on national identity,
inscribes Iracema in the tradition of Cinema Novo. This influential film
movement, which brought together key figures such as Glauber Rocha,
Carlos Diegues, and Nelson Santos Pereira, represented the Brazilian ver-
sion of what this book’s introduction referred as The New Latin American
Cinema of the 1960s and 1970s. In the case of Brazil, “the cinemanovistas
were committed to cultural projects that sought to promote reflections on
national identities. The proposal to create a unity—or Latin American
identity—in the midst of diversity would arise from consideration of the
following common factors: hunger (in the context of social inequality),
violence (and forms of authoritarianism), and the need for cultural decolo-
nization (to be performed by the artist-intellectual)” (Altman 2013,
59–60). Iracema follows such a denunciatory program. Shot in 1974,
during the years of Brazil’s military dictatorship (1964–1985), the film
includes scenes showing illegal timber trade, occupation of untitled lands,
both apparent and hidden slave labor, and deforestation. Not surprisingly,
this German-Brazilian production was censored by the military regime.
While the film’s allegorical and political dimensions connect it to the
1960s film movement, it is crucial to note that Iracema also “widens and
reshapes the legacy of Cine Novo” (Gonçalves Da Silva 2013, 166). Its
hybrid character as a docudrama predates the self-reflexive “return to the
real,” which Jens Andermann and Alvaro Fernández situate in the
mid-1990s but into which they incorporate Bodanzky and Senna’s 1975
 INTERNALLY DISPLACED PEOPLE ROAMING THE ROADS 159

film (Andermann and Alvaro Fernández 2013, 1; 7). Jo~ao Luiz Vieira even
believes Iracema develops “a new genre of semi-documentary,” which went
on to become very productive in Brazilian cinema (2013, 202). Bodanzky
and Senna were inspired by French director Jean Rouch (a founding figure
of cinema vérité) and American filmmaker John Cassavetes (who started the
independent film movement in the United States), as evident from their
film’s reliance on “the transformation of dialogues in interviews, filming in
actual locations and drawing on the neo-realist lessons of combining real
people with professional (or semi-professional) actors [in combination with]
non-invasive film sets” (ibid.).6 The foregrounding of looking and seeing to
which this gives rise connects the film to not only contemporary Latin
American filmmaking, but also the genre of the road movie in particular.
Few films in the history of Latin American cinema draw as heavily as
Iracema upon the central figure of the road. This is due, in the first place, to
a contextual element. The military regime invested heavily in roads as tools
for economic growth and national security (Campbell 2012, 485). The
most prestigious construction work was the Trans-Amazonian Highway,
which implied adding some 3000 kilometers of roadway to the existing
infrastructure, connecting the east with the west sometime after the Belém–
Brasília highway had opened up the Amazon on a north–south axis. The
highway was a prestige project of the military dictatorship, endorsed by
developmentalist rhetoric: “Military planners imagined a series of modern,
paved highways that would finally fulfill the Amazon’s promise as a major
source of national wealth and pride. Economic development would follow
the Trans-Amazonian Highway, providing opportunities to migrants who
would settle on small plots and larger agrobusinesses that would be able to
more efficiently exploit the land” (Wolfe 2010, 153).
The economic background of this huge construction project was the
so-called “Brazilian economic miracle” (1969–1974), which relied on a
combination of strong incentives for economic growth and a warranting
of political stability to foreign investors through severe censorship and
political repression. However, “[a]gainst this scenario of economic growth
[. . .], a situation of great social inequalities arose, mainly due to a lack of a
cohesive program for social improvement” (Vieira 2013, 210). With respect
to the Trans-Amazonian Highway, in particular, scholars have asserted its
“profound impact on the social structures and the ecosystems of the
nation’s interior” (Wolfe 2010, 153) and its “unintended and often disas-
trous effects on native populations” (Campbell 2012, 486).
160 N. LIE

Released just three years after the inauguration of the Trans-Amazonian

Highway on August 30, 1972, Iracema impressively brings to the fore the
contrast between the dictatorship’s rhetoric, on the one hand, and the
highway’s concrete impact, on the other. The second part of the film’s
title is an acoustic evocation of the Trans-Amazonian project that subverts
its meaning: “uma transa amazônica” literally means “an Amazonian affair”
and refers to the relationship between the two main characters. Drawing
upon Alencar’s original pairing of two characters in a romantic context, the
Brazilian film recodes this relationship into a variant of the road movie’s
buddy couple. Ti~ao Brasil Grande is a cynical truck driver who takes on
Iracema as his buddy for a considerable portion of the film, before
abandoning her at a roadside brothel. His self-chosen nickname refers to a
key term of the regime’s patriotic discourse. As has been noted:

For Brazil’s military government, size mattered. Concerned with a form of

greatness linked to physical size, the regime patriotically described the country
as Brasil Grande “Big Brazil.” Construction projects and the propaganda
surrounding them were instrumental to developing the dictatorship’s desired
self-image. [. . .] A government-sponsored book about the Transamazonian
Highway, published in 1972, described the highway as “the most gigantic
pioneer highway in construction, in the world.” (Beal 2013, 100)

Besides by his name, Ti~ao Brasil Grande is associated with this national
image because of his experience as a truck driver on the highways that link
Belém to S~ao Paulo, which means he crosses the country from north to
south. It is worth mentioning that the investment in road infrastructure had
started in the 1950s under developmentalist president Kubitschek, whose
campaign slogan was “More Energy, More Roads!” (Wolfe 2010, 115).
While Kubitschek had been democratically elected, however, the military
came into power by force, and huge construction works such as the Trans-
Amazonian Highway served a supplementary political function: “to legiti-
mate the illegitimate” (Beal 2013, 101). This is also what Ti~ao Brasil
Grande does throughout the film. Even when he comes across people
claiming that they have been crudely displaced from their lands, since “the
land is now only for the road, not for the people,” he maintains his belief in
the regime’s policy. Wearing a T-shirt with letters spelling
“Transamazônica” and driving a truck carrying the sign “No one deters
destiny,” he tells everybody who wants to hear it that roads are the key to
development, because products are meant to “move, not to lie in the
 INTERNALLY DISPLACED PEOPLE ROAMING THE ROADS 161

backyards,” they will bring “riches to poor people,” and the country is
“moving forward.” This last expression once again directly connects to
the military regime, which invariably proclaimed: “This is a country that
moves forward” (Este é um país que vai para a frente).
Another famous slogan of the period defined the goal of the Trans-
Amazonian Highway as “to bring land-without-people to people-without-
land” (Wolfe 2010, 153). Iracema represents the people who—contrary to
what the first part of the slogan suggests—were already living on the land.
She symbolically emerges out of the Amazon River at the beginning of the
film, sitting on a boat taking her, along with others, to the city of Belém to
attend some religious festivities. Before meeting Ti~ao Brasil Grande, we see
her walking amidst the masses, visiting a popular market and some of its
curiosities, taking part in religious festivities, and almost unnoticeably slip-
ping into the world of prostitution. Framed as an integral part of “the
people” inhabiting the area, she shares in their popular culture and moves
at their rhythm, representing a collective, rather than an individualized
actor, as befits a film related to the Cinema Novo (Pinazza 2013b, 253).
Only gradually does the camera zoom in on what at first seems to be just
one person among many, in order to trace her tragic path along the Trans-
Amazonian Highway. As said, she does not counter Ti~ao’s propagandistic
discourse with words—he frequently confronts her with her ignorance,
telling her she’s “stupid”—but her sheer presence provides this spokesman
of the regime’s ideology with a counter-buddy who implicitly contextual-
izes his discourse, as do the traveling shots that accompany them during
their journey. At a given moment, a minutes-long traveling shot of burning
forests and thick clouds of gray smoke provides an almost hellish evocation
of the ecological disaster that accompanies the road construction project.
Perhaps the most important way in which Bodanzky and Senna’s film
provides a critical, oppositional discourse to the regime’s rhetoric is by
introducing an alternative figure of mobility. Whereas Ti~ao strongly iden-
tifies with the road (“I am a man of the road. I was born for it. It is in my
blood.”), and his truck evokes the image of unstoppable, forward mobility,
Iracema declares at a certain moment: “My fate is different. I must roam
without direction. I must roam around.” Moving without direction, she is
reminiscent of the road movie’s frequent portrayal of “aimless wanderers”
(see Introduction). But whereas road movie scholarship generally associates
this figure with existential unrest, Iracema’s wanderings assume a more
tragic dimension. Frequently chased away from where she thinks to have
found shelter, she roams and wanders because she has no home, no place to
162 N. LIE

Fig. 6.1 Iracema and Ti~ao Brasil Grande meet again at the end of Jorge Bodanzky
& Orlando Senna’s Iracema. Uma transa amazônia (1975)

stay. Rather than the road, she represents the land that is used and exploited,
painfully incrusted with lines and paths in order to make it accessible for new
colonizers. Condemned to selling her body for a few coins, she
metonymically represents the destructive exploitation of the Amazonian
territory at large. Whereas the road symbolizes progress for Ti~ao Brasil
Grande, it sets Iracema on a “trajectory of self-destruction” (Vieira 2013,
204) that leaves her dirty and almost toothless at a roadside brothel. “You
are very different,” Ti~ao cruelly tells her when they unexpectedly meet again
in the end of the film (Fig. 6.1). Repelled by her bad condition, he drives off
in his truck, disappearing on the horizon, while the spectator is left behind
with Iracema, standing alone on the road that was supposed to bring “riches
to the poor” but that has deprived her of her innocence and her beauty.

RELEGADOS: LA FRONTERA (RICARDO LARRAÍN, 1991)

Similar to Iracema, La frontera is set in a period of dictatorship. But whereas
the Brazilian road movie zoomed in on a displaced person during her
directionless roaming, La frontera centers on a victim of Pinochet’s system
 INTERNALLY DISPLACED PEOPLE ROAMING THE ROADS 163

of political repression, who is punished with restricted movement in an

isolated area. Rosemary Barbera provides the following definition of this
phenomenon, called “relegación”:

on, or internal exile, was the practice used by the military regime in
Relegaci

Chile of sending someone, usually a well-known community leader, to a
remote part of the country, effectively cutting him/her off from their natural
systems of support. At the same time, relegaci
on left many opposition orga-
nizations without their leaders, thereby weakening the opposition to the
Pinochet regime. [. . .] In Chile, internal exiles were sent to all different
parts of the country, usually to isolated small towns that were difficult to
reach and far from public transportation. It was as if the dictatorship used the
geography of Chile as a form of exile. (2008, 69)

It is largely thanks to La Frontera—which won a Silver Bear and a Goya for

best foreign Spanish-language film in 1992—that people elsewhere became
aware of these internal exile practices, but the phenomenon of relegaci
on is
basically understudied in academic circles (Barbera 2008, 69). The most
important source of documentation is Nancy Nicholls Lopeandía and
Eduardo Díaz’s dissertation Relegaci
on administrativa en Chile en el
periodo 1980–1985 (2014). The researchers explain that, while there are
cases throughout the entire dictatorship, relegaci
on only became a system-
atic and frequently applied practice in the first half of the 1980s, when more
than 2000 people suffered the punishment (2014, 16 et pass.). In the wake
of a supposed “state of emergence” in Chile, people were arrested and often
tortured before being transported to another place without trial. Lack of
information created extra stress for both the relegated persons and their
families and friends. Generally limited to a period of three months, the
relegaci
on could last longer in periods in which repression accrued, as in
1985, the year in which La frontera is set. “Deprived of their homes, their
communities and their means of livelihood” (Babera 2008, 71), the
relegados had to see for themselves how to make ends meet, which was
not easy in these places of limited economic resources. Most of them
survived thanks to the solidarity of the villagers, or the local priest’s charity,
and many of them also tried to help out and take on menial jobs. Medical
assistance was not ensured in these remote places, which was another
problematic aspect of this punishment. Obviously, relegaci
on implied a
violation of basic human rights, in particular Article 13 of the Universal
Declaration of the Human Rights, which asserts that “everyone has the
164 N. LIE

right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of

each State.”
Featuring two actors marked by a personal experience of exile after
Pinochet’s coup in 1973,7 La frontera assumes the form of a counter-road
movie to evoke the experiences of one particular victim of this “forced
displacement.” The displacement itself is shown at the beginning of the
film. Ramiro Orellana (Patricio Contreras), a 30-something professor of
mathematics, who signed a petition in support of a disappeared colleague, is
escorted by two representatives of Pinochet’s military regime to the place
where he will have to stay for an indefinite period of time. He is handcuffed
during their travel by car.8 This initial part highlights the identification of
the representatives of the military regime with modernization: their car has a
cassette player (a novelty at the time), on which they listen to tapes to learn
English; they talk about computers and informatics; and they even take
pictures of tourist locations along the road with their trendy Polaroid
camera.
The place Ramiro is to reside represents the opposite of modernity: it
cannot be reached by cars, because there are literally no roads leading to it
(Fig. 6.2). Only a raft allows Ramiro and his guards to reach the other side
of the lake where the local authorities—the mayor (or delegado) and his
assistant—sign a “receipt” for their visitor. The worn-out state of their car,
their ignorance about what a relegado really is, and the dystopian setting
upon arrival (including, besides a drunken man on the raft, continuous rain
and harsh winds) indicate that we have left the modern world to enter a very
different one. Besides the local authorities, only the priest and the healing
woman of the village possess a car, but in the latter case, the vehicle is a
strange mixture of modern and pre-modern elements. The film was shot in
several places in Araucania,9 the mythical borderland between the Mapuche
inhabitants and the former Spanish empire, and the healing woman Hilda
(Griselda Nú~ nez) is of Mapuche descent. The lack of medical assistance in
the kinds of villages where relegados were sent is compensated in La frontera
by the healing woman’s wisdom. She not only cures Ramiro of a severe
fever, but also takes care of his wound, which suggests that he has been
tortured before coming to the village.
Rather than depicting violence directly, this landmark film of post-
dictatorial Chile10 centers on the psychological effects of the relegaci
on,
reducing its criticism of the regime to a humorous caricature of the people
in charge of the relegado’s custody. The delegado and his assistant team up
like Laurel and Hardy (Hart 2004, 148) to make sure the relegado doesn’t
 INTERNALLY DISPLACED PEOPLE ROAMING THE ROADS 165

Fig. 6.2 The town where Ramiro Orellano is taken to in Ricardo Larraín’s La
frontera (1991) cannot be reached by car

escape.11 Their main tactic—based on historical facts (Nicholls Lopeandía

and Díaz Azua 2014, 65)—consists of making the relegado sign a book
several times a day, so as to make sure he cannot travel far from the village.
Several scenes zoom in on the relegado’s bandaged hand as he writes his
signature next to his name in the book. Emphasizing in this way that he is
deprived of freedom of movement, La frontera also contains other typical
features of the counter-road movie. More particularly, there is the
thematization of the non-place and its conversion into a temporary home.
In Larraín’s film, this place is the church, where Ramiro looks for shelter on
his first night and will remain for the rest of his stay. As he is an atheist, this
increases his sense of displacement.
Figurations of displacement are also there through other characters: the
town’s priest is of English descent, and two survivors of the Spanish Civil
War still live in the village: Maite (Gloria Laso) and her old father. They all
speak Spanish with an accent, which grants an acoustic dimension to the
166 N. LIE

idea of displacement. Triggering a process of “transnational memory”

(Assman 2014), these characters help inscribe the figure of the relegado
onto a wider history of displacements, political (the Spanish Civil War) and
otherwise (the migration of the priest), possibly even extending to the
Mapuches. Land deprivation for this ethnic minority continued and wors-
ened under the military regime, which caused “the largest internal and
external migration of the Mapuches in modern times” (Carrasco Mu~noz
2011, 115). Moreover, when Ramiro’s ex-wife and son come to pay him an
unexpected visit, we learn they have been living in the Netherlands for the
past seven years as a result of the coup. Geographical displacement is thus
evoked in various ways in the film, and the village appears as a dystopic hub
of displaced people. This is a truly paratopical location, a place constantly
referring to other, distant places. Paratopical, as well, is Ramiro’s condition
as a political prisoner, since he is, in fact, not really interested in politics—
unlike his ex-wife—but rather in the abstract world of mathematics. He just
signed the petition in support of his colleague.
It is interesting that the film compensates for the restricted movement
implied by the relegaci
on in other ways. First of all, there are the daily travels
by Maite’s father to Spain, at least in his imagination. Every day he bids his
daughter goodbye and walks with his suitcase to the shore, where he gazes
meditatively over the water. Another daily travel is made by the village’s
diver. Traumatized by a tremendous seaquake that hit the village during his
childhood (a reference to a historical seaquake in the area in 1960), he keeps
on looking for its secret cause, which he believes to reside at the bottom of
the sea, in some secret hole. When his assistant dies, the diver asks Ramiro to
help him during these sea incursions. This turns them into buddies—as
befits both the road movie and counter-road-movie structure. Another
significant relationship develops between Maite and Ramiro. Realizing his
ex-wife has found herself a new partner (who accompanies her during her
visit), Ramiro sympathizes with Maite as another displaced person and falls
in love with her.
These new relationships turn the dystopic experience of Ramiro in the
village into a more ambivalent one. When news reaches him that his period
of relegaci
on has officially come to an end, he first walks defiantly in between
the delegado and his assistant, proclaiming he is now free to walk wherever
he likes, but also states that he may decide to remain in the village, whether
they like it or not. The film nevertheless maintains the motif of displacement
until the end by having Ramiro’s “new” home erased from the map by
another seaquake, taking Maite and her father with it. When a television
 INTERNALLY DISPLACED PEOPLE ROAMING THE ROADS 167

crew arrives to interview the survivors, they recognize Ramiro Orellano as a

former “relegado” and ask him for some comments. The only words he
pronounces, in a sort of vacuous trance, repeat his support for the colleague
who disappeared. This leaves the spectator with an ambivalent impression:
on the one hand, the act of solidarity which led to his relegaci
on is not
forgotten and is even reaffirmed; on the other, the zombie-like state in
which Ramiro is found demonstrates he is no longer the man who signed
the declaration. The forced displacement has changed him forever.

DAMNIFICADOS: EL CHICO QUE MIENTE (MARITÉ UGÁS, 2010)

In December 1999, after several days of torrential rains, a massive mudslide
occurred in the mountainous part of Venezuela, where 75 % of the nation’s
population lived; the land advanced toward the sea, taking with it every-
thing in its way. This natural catastrophe, called “deslave” in Spanish, wiped
out hundreds of kilometers of highly populated coastline in the state of
Vargas, which is why these events are generally referred to as the “Vargas
Mudslide” or “Vargas Tragedy,” even though other states were affected.
According to Gott (2005, 152), between 15,000 and 20,000 people died,
though only 1000 bodies were recovered, and some 100,000 people were
left homeless. Ten years after the event, the mudslide “remains a national
issue” (Revet 2011, 212) that divides opponents and defenders of the
government on the efficiency of the actions taken to help the victims and
is kept alive in the press by annual testimonies from survivors and relatives of
the deceased.
In addition to inspiring numerous literary works (Gomes 2012), the
event has also inspired films. El chico que miente (Marité Ugás, 2010)
zooms in on one of its survivors: a 13-year-old unnamed boy (played by
Iker Fernández), who continues to live in what is left of their big apartment
block with his father and some former inhabitants (Fig. 6.3). After finding
out that his mother is still alive, he runs away from home, furious about the
fact that his father had kept this information from him and hoping to find his
mother somewhere in the country. His only clue is provided by a “survivor’s
story” in a magazine hidden in his father’s drawer, in which she poses as an
oyster vendor.
The twisted memory of the mother figure connects to a historical fact
already mentioned: many of the bodies were never found. Moreover, official
body counts varied greatly, so that the exact number of casualties remained
clouded in uncertainty (Revet 2011, 211). Another historical element in the
168 N. LIE

Fig. 6.3 The protagonists in Marité Ugás’s El chico que miente (2010) keep on
living in a devastated place after the Tragedy of Vargas in 1999

film is the unwillingness of many victims to leave what remained of their

former homes, arguing they simply had no other place to go or did not want
to start all over again elsewhere (Rudenstine and Galea 2012, 34). The
boy’s father clearly represents this group of people. The boy’s mother only
appears at the end of the film, and—having assumed her husband and son
were dead12—she seems to have moved on with her life and started a new
family. The boy’s vagabond-like trajectory in search of his mother, then,
basically evolves between two responses to the drama: one that fails to
accept what has happened (the father) and one that has moved on (the
mother).
One of the boy’s remarkable characteristics, alluded to in the film’s title,
is his ability to come up with several alternate versions of what has happened
to his mother. Oscillating between a truth he ignores and the many fantasies
he makes up, he appears as yet another character marked by paratopia. His
tendency to lose himself in daydreams is highlighted early on in the film,
when the director juxtaposes a scene in which he is playing with his dog in
the sea with another one that shows him crying and staring at the water, his
dog presumably having died in the mudslide. Moreover, while the narration
centers on his search, his previous life is recalled through regular flashbacks,
which increase the shifting, paratopical feel of the film. Rather than focusing
on a traumatized mind, however, the director zooms in on the child’s
 INTERNALLY DISPLACED PEOPLE ROAMING THE ROADS 169

imagination with respect to a disappeared person, and even on a certain

need the child has to make himself “interesting” to other people. His self-
portrayal as a victim of the tragedy, indeed, generally earns him sympathy
from the people he meets, resulting in free meals and other small benefits.
There is a picaresque dimension to the way the boy uses his tragic back-
ground as an actual survival strategy during his journey.
Picaresque, as well, are the many episodic encounters he has during his
journey, which show him touring around parts of the country he had
probably ignored previously. It is obvious that he belongs to the Venezu-
elan middle class (as evidenced by the ruins of his apartment block), but his
journey along the coast takes him through the colorful, ethnically diverse
parts of the Afro-Caribbean. As a process causing homelessness and internal
displacement, Venezuela’s natural catastrophe differs from other situations
that triggered movements of IDPs because of the fact that the Vargas
Mudslide caused losses across all of the region’s social and ethnic groups
(Fassin and Vasquez 2005, 389), instead of only affecting the weakest and
most deprived parts of the population. The cultural and ethnic differences
between the 13-year-old boy and most of the people he meets along his way
are also evident in one of his nicknames: “blondie,” a word referring to the
lighter color of his skin.
Indirectly countering the dystopic images of the region after the cata-
strophic events of 1999, El chico que miente draws upon the motif of the
journey to introduce the spectator to a considerable part of Venezuelan
popular culture, set against the colorful background of a changing natural
environment (sea, rivers, mangroves) and including fleeting denunciations
of the recessing oyster industry under the influence of ecological changes.
As the boy travels on foot and hitchhikes some five hundred kilometers away
from his dilapidated apartment, we experience different aspects of this
popular culture through him: he is offered the national dish (“pabellón,”
consisting of shredded beef, or “carne mechada,” black beans, fried
bananas, and rice) by an elderly woman, whom he helps to carry wood; he
attends the funeral of a recently deceased aunt, carrying her coffin on his
shoulders; he speaks with fishermen and climbs around in the mangrove
area; he takes part in the festivities for a local saint, painting and decorating
some boats in the saint’s honor; and he even witnesses some Santería
rituals—the Yoruba religion practiced by the descendants of black slaves in
the Caribbean.
At the same time, the film does not lose track of the motif of the
damnificados. This term is explicitly used by one of the survivors in the film.13
170 N. LIE

On two occasions, the boy crosses a place where “refugios” (literally: places of
refuge) were built to provide the victims of the tragedy with temporary
housing. However, as we learn in the first scene, only persons with families
are entitled to such houses, which is why a woman—who has just tragically
lost her only son—attempts to present the 13-year-old boy to envious
neighbors as a relative of hers. The film thus stresses the lack of true solidarity
in these artificially constructed communities. In another scene, the boy
crosses a particularly large settlement of refugio houses, but the place is
deserted and appears as a “ghost town,” lacking basic facilities and being
visited only at night by some people with obscure intentions. These are clearly
“non-places,” where starting a new life is as difficult as in the depressing
remains of the original homes. People directly in charge of dealing with the
tragedy on a political, social level are strikingly absent. This can be read as a
critical comment on the inability of the government to adequately address the
problem of the homeless survivors of the Tragedy.14
That being said, El chico que miente also highlights the need to let go
of the past and literally move on with life. Indeed, when the boy finally
meets his mother, recognizing her from the magazine cover, he prefers
not to reveal his true identity to her, but to leave her new life—with new
children—intact. While this could be interpreted as a tragic dénouement,
the boy’s subsequent running up a sandy hill after having energetically
walked across a wide open space, suggests he has freed himself from the
burden of the past and is now ready to follow his mother’s example.
Whereas the initial scenes showed him from the back, staring at the sea,
he now walks directly into the direction of the spectator, his back
straightened, his face covered in sunlight and a smile.

DESPLAZADOS: RETRATOS EN UN MAR DE MENTIRAS

(CARLOS GAVIRIA, 2010)
With 3.6 million displaced people, Colombia carries the sad distinction of
having the highest number of IDPs in Latin America and the second highest
(after Sudan) in the world (Vidal 2015, 147). The cause of this tragic
situation is the permanent state of violence the country has experienced
for the past sixty years. This phenomenon started with a civil war between
liberals and conservatives in the 1950s, changed into a war between state-
armed groups and leftist guerrilla fighters (the National Liberation Army,
ELN, and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, FARC) in the
1960s and 1970s, and expanded under the influence of drug trafficking and
 INTERNALLY DISPLACED PEOPLE ROAMING THE ROADS 171

countermeasures from the 1980s onward, which brought paramilitary

groups into play, in addition to all kinds of criminal gangs. One running
thread through these confrontations is the issue of land. According to Janie
Hampton, “[d]isplacement in Colombia is a deliberate strategy of war
wielded to establish control over strategic territories, to expand the cultiva-
tion of illicit crops and to take possession of land and private properties”
(2014, 88).
Armed groups seldom clash directly but, rather, threaten and attack
ordinary civilians, killing off supposed sympathizers of an opposing party
and appropriating or destroying their land. This drives hundreds of thou-
sands of victims out of their rural areas into urban zones, where they attempt
to establish themselves in the generally deplorable conditions of the city
slums. Most of the victims are women and children, the men often being
murdered in the assault, and many of these people also belong to ethnic
minorities, principally the Afro-Colombian community (González 2011,
127). In the past few years, peace negotiations have brought more safety to
the country—the FARC signing an agreement with the government to
open up peace negotiations in August 2012—but some zones in Colombia
remain no-go territory for travelers and tourists. Moreover, 60 years of
violence have left a deep mark in Colombian society: many victims are afraid
to talk about what happened and recovery of lost lands is often impossible
because of a lack of identity papers (Hampton 2014, 88).
This is where Retratos en un mar de mentiras sets off. After a mudslide
takes away half of the shack where she lives in Bogotá, Marina (Paola
Baldoin)—a teenage survivor of rural displacement—travels with her
30-something cousin Jairo (Julio Román) to the northern state of Córdoba
to reclaim the land once owned by her family. She had lost her entire family,
with the exception of her grandfather, who then died in the mudslide, several
years earlier in a violent confrontation with armed men (military or paramil-
itary—they are not clearly shown), which she witnessed as a child and which
left her traumatized. Contrary to Jairo, who is always in good spirits and a
renowned womanizer, Marina is unable to smile or even look people in the
eyes. She hardly speaks, avoids contact, and suffers from apparitions of dead
people—one of the reasons people think she is mad, or at least developmen-
tally disabled. While Jairo (an ambulant photographer) regularly draws
attention to the nice things Colombia has to offer (beautiful scenery, deli-
cious food, indigenous popular music. . .), using his camera to seize the
picturesque moment, Marina indirectly operates as an additional internal
camera, her heightened sensitivity to violence and danger bringing to the
172 N. LIE

fore other aspects of Colombian life. Her semi-muteness, indeed, increases

the importance of her visual abilities, and on several occasions, a tracking
camera follows her across markets or crowded places until something omi-
nous catches her attention. Thus, for example, she becomes deeply affected
while witnessing the violent beating of a young thief by insensitive
bystanders in the center of Bogotá and faints. On another occasion, she is
terrified as armed men stop Jairo’s car (in which they are traveling), and she
refuses to get out, while Jairo tries to save the situation by offering to take a
free picture of their girlfriends for the men—an offer they accept. Their
preposterous posing in front of the camera, decked out in a Mexican som-
brero hat, introduces a humorous dimension in the film, particularly with
respect to the military. Later on, an ordinary civilian asks Jairo to take a
picture of him at the spot where an armed confrontation has just taken place,
in memory of “his first ambush”—as though these kinds of violent confron-
tations had become tourist attractions.
The contrast between frightened Marina and cheerful Jairo is also notice-
able during the trip. On the one hand, this trip takes them through the
beautiful scenery of the Andes and the Caribbean, including an impressive
waterfall and a natural brook where they take a swim. The foregrounding of
Colombian identity through its natural beauty is complemented by their
means of transportation: a Renault 4, popularly known as “the Colombian
car” (“el carro de Colombia”) and an iconic vehicle in the country. Local
music and dances (the fandango), rituals (the cumbia), and dishes (the
sancocho) immerge the viewer in a significant part of Colombia’s popular
culture. Similar to what happened in El chico que miente, we explore the
Caribbean, and several references to Afro-Colombian culture and practices
are included.15 While Jairo tries to convince his cousin that life can be
beautiful and that Colombia is “an awesome country” (“un país muy
chévere”), Marina’s fearful and traumatized eyes zoom in on the vertiginous
depths beneath the ever-winding roads, the reckless passing by other vehi-
cles, the abandoned houses destroyed by violence, and the deprived families
begging for money.
During the initial part of the trip, the director makes use of radio
messages, countering Jairo’s idyllic praise of Colombia with references to
recent political events that draw attention to a number of problems the
country continues to struggle with (such as the spraying of fields of illicit
crops as part of the anti-drugs campaign). Once again, this road movie
derives its critical charge from exploiting the margins of the road, to
which it directs the spectators’ attention using Marina’s silent but anguished
 INTERNALLY DISPLACED PEOPLE ROAMING THE ROADS 173

look. This look also provides some scenes of magical realism, during which
she sees deceased people walking by or staring at her like zombies—some-
thing which situates her in between reality and non-reality. In a parallel way,
the regular inclusion of memory flashes indicates that Marina weaves
between the present and the past. In her return journey, Marina travels
not only forward to the Caribbean coastline, but also backward in time, to
the traumatic events that took place some years before. The flashbacks
double Marina’s paratopical in-betweenness—caught as she is between
reality and non-reality (the apparitions), between consciousness and uncon-
sciousness (she faints three times in the film), between the present and
the past.
The paratopical quality of her gaze reaches its height at the end of the
film, when Marina returns to where she once lived with her family in a
primitive, wooden, straw-covered house. In a particularly dramatic scene,
she simultaneously walks over the leaves that cover what remains of their
house and relives the traumatic last moments with her family (Fig. 6.4). We
see her, a child hidden under her bed, listening as armed men drag the male

Fig. 6.4 Marina remembers how her family’s house was destroyed in Carlos
Gaviria’s Retratos en un mar de mentiras (2010). (Photography: Alberto Sierra)
174 N. LIE

members of her family outside and brutally shoot them down one by one,
while others set the house on fire. Fleeing from under the bed, young
Marina seeks shelter in the arms of her widowed mother, until the latter
runs into the flames, perishing in a desperate attempt to save some posses-
sions from the fire. Marina faints, then recovers a small box from a hidden
place underground, while burying the only thing she had saved as a child
from the assault and secretly taken along during her journey: a small statue
of baby Jesus—a symbol of the childhood she lost in the massacre.
When Marina returns to Jairo with the documents, he is in agony, having
been wounded while trying to escape from people who were after their land
documents, and eventually dies. Inconsolable, Marina delivers his dead
body to the sea—a sea he so dearly loved because it reminded him of his
childhood; a sea, also, that is resonant in Marina’s name (meaning “woman
from the sea”) as an onomastic reminder of her original provenance from
this coastal region in the Caribbean. The film closes with a text block
inscribing the story onto the wider drama of internally displaced persons
in Colombia. Contrary to the previous film, then, Retratos en un mar de
mentiras does not end on a positive note. It suggests, rather, that even after
being displaced, the IDPs remain vulnerable to new violence and losses. It is
not surprising, in this respect, that the film begins with the disappearance of
half of Marina’s shack in the mudslide and ends with the sight of her
dragging the dead body of her cousin to the sea. While this seems an
unjustly depressing film in a country that now legally recognizes the exis-
tence of IDPs and has progressed toward peace, it is clear that Gaviria’s film
contributes to bringing Colombia’s problem to international attention,
while also opening up new discursive spaces in the country itself. If it is
true, as Roberto Vidal claims, that decades of violent intimidation and
silence have created “a wide-spread demand for respect for the right to
truth about the violations” (Vidal 2015, 148), then Gaviria’s film no doubt
constitutes an important achievement in Colombia’s truth-seeking path by
bringing the victims’ suffering and trauma to the screen.

NOTES
1. In 2011, the group of IDPs worldwide was estimated to represent
25 million people; the group of refugees consisted of 9 million
people (Lienhard 2011, 16).
2. For the concept of the counter-road movie, cf. chap. 1.
 INTERNALLY DISPLACED PEOPLE ROAMING THE ROADS 175

3. The strong, male members of these affected groups are generally

killed in massacres, and the killings tend to take place in rural areas,
where ethnic minorities live.
4. For the concept or paratopia, cf. chap. 2.
5. “[E]s preocupante que en la mayoría de los casos de desplazamiento
interno, los gobiernos nacionales, que deberían ser los primeros
responsables en el manejo de una situación semejante, tanto a nivel
de la protección como de la asistencia humanitaria, no están
presentes, y más aún , no son proactivos en buscar soluciones dura-
bles. Algunos se han desentendido del tema, o simplemente se
muestran ‘incapaces por razones internas’ de atender y resolver
esta tragedia humanitaria que afecta a la población nacional y, por
consiguiente, a millones de personas desplazadas en decenas de
países en el mundo” (Pastor Ortega 2011, 30; translation mine).
6. Playing with the borders between fiction and reality, “non-invasive
film sets” rest on the unobtrusive presence of actors and film crews in
natural locations. A good example is the scene in which Ti~ao Brasil
Grande is eating at a popular restaurant with several ordinary people
in the background watching his conversations. For a more detailed
analysis of this staged scene and its “inscription of the real,” see
Guimar~aes (2013).
7. “Patricio Contreras [the protagonist] had emigrated to Argentina,
where he still lived; Gloria Laso [his lover in the film] had been
forced into exile in Europe, returning to Chile in the 1980s”
(Thakkar 2013, 438).
8. Whereas relegación originally occurred by plane, the high number of
relegados in the 1980s made the regime decide to cut transportation
costs by switching to ground travel: cars or trains (Nicholls
Lopeandía and Díaz Azua 2014, 63).
9. According to Deborah Shaw (2003, 103), “The Frontier was filmed
in Puerto Saavedra, an isolated town cut off from land by the tidal
wave of 1961, and Nueva Imperial, a neighboring town, both in the
Ninth Region. The region is known as ‘The Frontier,’ as it borders
the Mapuche lands, which were not incorporated into the national
territory until 1882.”
10. For a more extensive comment on the film’s relationship to post-
dictatorial cinema in Chile, see Shaw (2003, 71–104).
11. Interestingly, the film grants the custody of the relegado to ordinary
civilians instead of to Carabineros, as used to be the case (Nicholls
176 N. LIE

Lopeandía and Díaz Azua 2014, 66). Briefly mentioned in the film
itself as an exceptional situation, the director possibly did not want
to take excessive risks by confronting the protagonist with Carabi-
neros at a moment when democracy in Chile was still young and
Pinochet remained commander in chief of the military forces.
12. In the end, the father suggests that the mother deliberately left, but a
vendor in the region to which she moved describes her as having lost
her husband and son in the mudslide.
13. Apparently, some of the damnificados became stigmatized because
of their precarious living situation, which is why Hugo Chávez at a
certain moment proposed the term “dignificados” (“dignified,”
instead of “injured,” or even “doomed”) (Fassin and Vasquez
2005, 11).
14. Gomes states that most of the victims remained “without adequate
government response” (2012, 109) and that some of the writers
who denounced this situation received death threats (2012, 131).
15. A central figure in this respect is Marina’s former schoolteacher, who
was a friend of the family and who witnessed their violent land
dispossession. Playing an even more prominent role in Marina’s
memory flashes than the teenager’s own mother, she represents
the Afro-Caribbean component of the region, from which a con-
siderable part of Colombia’s IDPs emanate (not including Marina
and her cousin).

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New York: Oxford University Press.
 CHAPTER 7

Gazing at Tourists

Do tourist road movies exist? One would expect the answer to be an

unequivocal “yes”: tourism and road movies both imply displacements
and journeys, and both take place in modern times in which motorized
vehicles exist. For a long time, however, relations between tourism and
road movies were strained. For tourists, the place of destination tends to
be all-important, the journey itself being reduced to a mere means to an
end. Road movies, on the contrary, give prominence to the experience of
being-on-the-road itself over and above the point of arrival. Of course,
tourism has now become a diversified activity, and some forms do attribute
importance to the journey as well: touring and backpacking are good
examples of this. Nevertheless, road movies originally fit into a rather
anti-touristic tradition, which harks back to the nineteenth century oppo-
sition between “tourism” and “travel” (Verstraete 2010, 47). In this
opposition, tourism was associated with a massive and organized form of
transportation coming in safety-packages. Travel, on the contrary, recalled
the romantic search for authenticity as projected onto other places (and
other times), as well as an adventurous dimension, experienced in relative
solitude. Clearly, the improvised character of road movie journeys and the
preference for characters who travel either alone or with a buddy approx-
imate the genre to this romantic notion of travel.
This being said, several specialists argue that anti-tourism is an integral
part of tourism. According to James Buzard, for instance, tourist discourse
produces “the desire to distinguish between tourists and (real) travelers”
(1993, 4–5). Chris Ryan even asserts: “the irony of tourism is that for many

© The Author(s) 2017 179

N. Lie, The Latin American (Counter-) Road Movie and Ambivalent
Modernity, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-45138-1_7
180 N. LIE

tourists they achieve the highest level of satisfaction when they feel they
have ceased to be a ‘tourist’. . .” (1991, 35). To complicate things further,
the tourist industry has started to capitalize on anti-tourist sentiments: new
formats of “independent travel” and so-called Lonely Planet Guides take
individuals to places that are supposed to be free of them. Thanks to ever
cheaper and faster means of transportation, tourism has grown to an extent
that it now forms one of the largest industries in the world: one out of every
seven people is a tourist (Jackiewicz and Klak 2012, 9) and one out of every
eleven jobs belongs to that sector (UNWTO 2015, 3). Thus, in today’s
world, there seems to be no outside of tourism anymore. In a way, we are all
tourists now.
Besides a social and economic activity, tourism is also conceived as a set of
experiences that are dominated by vision. This idea was first put forward by
John Urry, generally considered as the founding father of tourism studies
because of his book The tourist gaze (1990). Updated and expanded in
2002 and 2011 (with Jonas Larsen), Urry’s seminal work hinges on the idea
that, among the five senses, vision is the basic structuring sense in tourist
activities. Taking lead from Michel Foucault’s notion of the medical gaze in
Naissance de la Clinique (1963), Urry first explains that, within vision, there
is a difference between seeing and gazing: “The concept of the gaze
highlights that looking is a learned ability and that the pure and innocent
eye is a myth. [. . .] Seeing is what the human eye does. Gazing refers to ‘the
discursive determinations’ of socially constructed seeing or ‘scopic
regimes’” (Urry and Larsen 2011, 1–2). Pointing to the almost simulta-
neous appearance of tourism and photography in the nineteenth century,
Urry situates the birth of the “tourist gaze” around 1840,1 and describes it,
in more general terms, as a “peculiar combining together of the means of
collective travel, the desire for travel and the techniques of photographic
reproduction [as] a core component of western modernity” (2011, 14). An
important characteristic of the tourist gaze hinges upon the distinction
between “extraordinary” and “ordinary” aspects of reality: “Potential
objects of the tourist gaze must be different in some way or other. They
must be out of the ordinary” (2011, 15). Subtending the more basic
opposition between “home” and “away” (or “work” and “leisure”) which
tourism presupposes as a practice directly related to modernity (2011, 4),
Urry points out that there are several ways in which the visual experience of
the extraordinary can be achieved. One of them consists of seeing unique
objects, such as the Eiffel Tower. Another one consists of seeing familiar
things in an unfamiliar environment, such as a museum. What is important is
 GAZING AT TOURISTS 181

that the idea of the “extraordinary” helps frame the place of (temporal)
residence in terms of its difference with respect to the place of departure.
Using the terminology of this book, one can say that the tourist gaze turns
the tourist destination into a “heterotopic” place.2 This heterotopic place is
meant to be pleasurable, which is why the reality perceived appears under an
“aestheticized” form (Urry 2009, 3). Another characteristic of the tourist
gaze is its relation with photography, as the once flourishing industry of
postcard pictures demonstrates. Tourists still have a preference for “land-
scapes” and “townscapes,” panoramic images that suggest the empowering
position of the photographer as a person who visually masters his or her
surroundings. In reality, however, most tourists are simply registering what
they have seen before in brochures, television programs, and on Web sites.
They are entrapped in a “hermeneutic circle” which directs their eyes toward
certain aspects in the tourist reality, granting these a significance according to
a pre-given code induced by the tourist industry (2011, 178–79).
Shifting our perspective to Latin America, it can be said that, there too
“tourism has turned into a booming sector: while in 1950 some 1.3 million
tourists visited Latin America and Caribbean, by 1980 this figure was 18 million
and in 2006 it reached more than 45 million” (Baud and Ypeij 2009, 3). At the
moment of writing, tourism to South America notably shows the strongest
average growth worldwide, with a yearly increase of 5 % (UNWTO 2015, 4).
But even prior to this, mass tourism to Latin America offered those desirous of
sun and sea a plethora of attractive, tropical beaches, while from the 1970s
onward backpackers and hippies discovered Latin America as an ideal location
for adventurous journeys off the proverbial beaten track (Baud and Ypeij 2009,
3). In a way, Ernesto Guevara and Alberto Granada prefigured these back-
packers in their 1952-journey across the continent, and the panoramic views
and touristic sites included in Diarios de motocicleta inspired many students
and young adults to follow their example.3
In fact, tourism is a phenomenon frequently alluded to in Latin American
road movies, either because the trip passes through holiday resorts (Juan
Carlos de Llaca’s Por la libre [2000], Diego Lerman’s Tan de repente
[2002], Ana Katz’s Una novia errante [2007]), implies a visit to a museum
(Pablo Trapero’s Familia rodante [2004]) or an archeological site (Machu
Picchu in Walter Salles’s Diarios de motocicleta [2004] and Fernando
Solanas’s El viaje [1992]), or because it leads to the beach as the iconic
tourist location par excellence (Alfonso Cuarón’s Y tu mam a también
[2001], Guillermo Casanova’s El viaje hacia el mar [2003]). Some charac-
ters earn their living in the tourist industry (the widow in Carlos Sorín’s
182 N. LIE

Historias mínimas [2002], the female hotel-owners in Eduardo Milewicz’s

La vida según Muriel [1997] and Alejandro Agresti’s El viento se llevo lo que
[1998], Chuy in Alfonso Cuarón’s Y tu mama también [2001]), while
others carry with them objects left behind by tourists passing through the
area (the keepsake “Liverpool” in Lisandro Alonso’s eponymous film
[2008], Don Justo’s hiking shoes, donated by Dutch tourists in Carlos
Sorín’s Historias mínimas [2002]). At the same time, tourism in Latin
America is certainly not a neutral activity. Many more people visit Latin
America than happens the other way around: in 2014, only Brazil squeezed
into the 10 World Top Spenders for Tourism, in 10th position (UNWTO
2015, 13). Moreover, tourists in Latin American road movies do not always
behave correctly. Forms of abuse and exploitation by tourists range from the
stealing of a rare and hallucinogenic cactus in Sebastián Silva’s Crystal Fairy
& The Magical Cactus & 2012 (2013) to sex-tourism in Yasín Ishtar’s
El camino (2007) and illegal child adoption in Juan Diego Solanas’s
Nordeste (2005). In Paraíso Travel (Simon Brand, 2008), a group of
undocumented migrants is lured into a mortally dangerous passage to the
USA by a Colombian pseudo-travel agency. Similar examples prove Caren
Kaplan right when she affirms that the tourist, rather than a universal
concept, is “a specifically Euro-American construct who marks shifting
peripheries through travel in a world of structured economic asymmetries”
(1996, 63).
Notwithstanding these frequent allusions to tourism, it remains a rela-
tively new subject in Latin American road movies and films entirely dedi-
cated to it are indeed rare. Not surprisingly, the directors studied in this
chapter have been associated with new directions in Latin American film.
Tania Hermida is connected to “New Ecuadorian Cinema” (Dillon 2014),
a label used to refer to the emergence of a remarkably productive national
film industry in Ecuador since the 2006 launch of a National Film Council
and a 700,000 dollar annual film fund (De la Fuente 2013, 4). Hermida’s
Spanish-Ecuadorian coproduction Qué tan lejos (How Much Further) was
screened in 2006 as an early manifestation of this phenomenon and depicts
the experiences of Spanish backpacker, Esperanza, in Ecuador during her
trip from Quito to Cuenca. The other two directors are representative of the
so-called Novísimos, a group of Chilean directors that emerged at the 2005
Valdivia film festival in Chile and became identified with a move away from
politics and an increased interest in the personal and the private (Cavallo and
Maza 2010). In Alicia Scherson’s Turistas (2009), we follow Carla Gutiér-
rez, a 37-year-old urban professional living in Santiago de Chile, who
 GAZING AT TOURISTS 183

decides to take a few days off—from life, her husband and arguably herself—
in a national park in Chile. Música campesina (Country Music, 2011), by
Alberto Fuguet, presents us with a touristic counter-road movie, portraying
Alejandro Tazo’s difficult stay as a tourist in Nashville (USA), the capital of
country music. Taken together, these three films portray tourism in its
varied relationship to Latin America: as a movement toward it (Qué tan
lejos), away from it (Música campesina), and inside national borders
(Turistas).4
Although the films chosen approach tourism from different perspectives,
they share two characteristics. First, in none of the films do the characters
possess a car or a motorcycle of their own; rather, the films slow down
movement by having the protagonists walk, hike, or even rest. Besides the
fact that one of the films is a counter-road movie5 (Música campesina), and
therefore “naturally” oriented toward stillness, the slowing down of the move-
ment can be considered an effect of the intrusion of tourism in the road movie
idiom. Tourism, indeed, implies both movement and stillness (Urry and Larsen
2011, 4), both traveling and resting, and in some cases the latter is even more
important than the former. Second, in all films the normally predictable
character of the tourist trip is disrupted from the start: in Qué tan lejos, a strike
prevents Esperanza from traveling to Cuenca along the “normal” route; in
Turistas, Carla’s original holiday destination is exchanged for another one after
a fight with her husband; in Música campesina, the protagonist has to severely
adjust his tourist plans after being mugged on the bus that takes him to
Nashville. While tourism seems to slow down the pace in the road movie
genre, the road movie in turn injects the notion of the unexpected into the
safely packaged journey of the tourist. Tourist road movies are, then, hybrid
variants of the genre. Moreover, their interest resides in the way in which they
actively engage with Urry’s notion of the tourist gaze.

COUNTERING THE TOURIST GAZE: QUÉ TAN LEJOS

(TANIA HERMIDA, 2006)
As the country’s most successful film to date,6 Qué tan lejos can be consid-
ered the film that signaled the start of a new era in Ecuadorian filmmaking.
Its road movie dimension even seems to have inspired other works of the
Ecuadorian film boom that ensued in the years after (e.g., Sebastián
Cordero’s Pescador [2011] and Jaime Sebastián Jácome’s La ruta de la
luna [2013, coproduced with Panama]). On the other hand, an early road
184 N. LIE

movie of the 1980s—Dos para el camino (Jaime Cuesta and Alfonso

Naranjo, 1981)—has been presented as Qué tan lejos’ most direct forerun-
ner in national cinema (Serrano 2008, 182–183). Similar to Hermida’s film,
Dos para el camino depicts a journey by two buddies from Quito to Cuenca,
which takes us through the country’s Andean region. Sharing a light,
humorous tone with Cuesta and Naranjo’s film (which was a romantic
comedy throughout), Qué tan lejos deliberately took its distance from the
“miserabilist” focus on violence and drugs, which Hermida felt was domi-
nating the Latin American film market at the time she shot her first feature
film.7 At the same time, the film transcends the lighthearted tone of Cuesta
and Naranjo’s comical picture by including references to Ecuadorian poli-
tics and economics in the background of the story. The film appeared at a
turning point in Ecuadorian politics, with Rafael Correa winning the elec-
tions in 2006 and introducing the Revolución Ciudadana—a movement
considered part of the anti-neoliberal “pink tide” which marked Latin
American politics from the 2000s onward (Bull 2013). Tania Hermida
actively supported Correa’s movement.8 She was one of the representatives
for his party in the constitutional assembly of 2007, which yielded a new
constitution and, according to the opening credits of Qué tan lejos, the film
was made “under the aegis of the National Campaign for Civic Education/
Positive Ecuador and politically committed citizens [con el auspicio de la
Campa~ na Nacional de Educaci on Ciudadana/Ecuador positivo and
ciudadanos comprometidos].” Hermida’s openly avowed political sympa-
thies somewhat set her apart from the other two directors discussed in this
chapter, as does the fact that she has presented herself as a very Ecuadorian
filmmaker, who will only shoot films in her own country (Hermida 2012),
while Scherson and Fuguet have also filmed abroad.9
Hermida’s interest in tourism is, then, first and foremost an interest in
her own country, and the way in which it is framed by the tourist gaze. The
carrier of this gaze is Spanish backpacker Esperanza (Tania Martínez), a
27-year-old woman from Barcelona who works in a travel agency and is on
her yearly free trip to an exotic location, in this case Ecuador. Her profile
matches Urry’s definition of the tourist as an agent of modernity, under-
pinning the work-leisure economy, perfectly: she is both on a holiday, and
works as a professional organizer of leisure journeys for others. Originally
traveling alone, she is kept company after a while by Teresa (Cecilia Vallejo),
a student at the university of Quito who quite unexpectedly embarks on
her journey to Cuenca as she learns that her part-time boyfriend is about
to get married there. The Spanish-Ecuadorian association, which the
 GAZING AT TOURISTS 185

buddy-relationship implies, resonates rather ironically with the economic

context at the time the film was made. In the mid to late 1990s, many
thousands of Ecuadorians from throughout the country migrated to Europe
to flee the political and economic crisis. Whereas previous migratory flows
had been directed toward the USA, the “new migration”—as this phenom-
enon was called—now headed in the most part for Spain10 and consisted
primarily of women (Brad and Pribilsky 2002, 75). Replacing the male
buddies of Dos para el camino with a female couple, Qué tan lejos not
surprisingly became very successful in Spain as well, principally due to the
many Ecuadorian migrant workers in Madrid (Santos 2007, 159). The film
thus derives part of its appeal from the implicit tension between two forms
of displacement that connect Spain and Ecuador: tourism, on the one hand,
and emigration, on the other. As a young village girl wisely tells Esperanza
in Hermida’s film: “All foreigners like Ecuador. But to live in a country, and
to visit it, are two different things.”
The buddy-structure of the film helps bring this difference between an
external and an internal perspective to the fore. Esperanza is the foreign
visitor, whose “tourist gaze” is foregrounded right from the very start: when
the two characters happen to sit side by side on the bus, Esperanza some-
what imposingly requests to exchange seats so that she can sit near the
window and film interesting locations from the bus. Later on, she proudly
shows Teresa images of her previous journeys, stored and carried along in
her camera (Fig. 7.1). She remains poised with all eyes on the country she is
discovering, ready to capture exciting snapshots through the bus window.
Teresa, on the contrary, is the “local” visitor, who has her eyes (hidden
behind glasses) firmly fixed on a book by Octavio Paz. Rather, she is
fascinated by the uneasy relationship between “things” and “words”
described in it. Annoyed by the nosy European backpacker and inspired
by her reading, she presents herself on an impulse as “Tristeza” (sadness)
instead of Teresa: a hidden reference to her gloom about her duplicitous
boyfriend. Throughout the film, Esperanza remains keen on recording
video shots of volcanoes and indigenous people. These are the two markers
of Ecuador’s “extraordinary” character, as distinct from Spain, and are
therefore focal points in the constitution of Esperanza’s tourist gaze.
When she learns she accidentally missed filming a particular volcano, she is
devastated. Teresa’s suggestion that she buy a postcard picture falls on deaf
ears: clearly entrapped in the “hermeneutic circle,” Esperanza needs to
shoot what she has seen herself in order to take the image with her and
show it to her mother.
186 N. LIE

Fig. 7.1 Esperanza proudly shows Teresa images of her previous journeys in Tania
Hermida’s Qué tan lejos (2006)

Besides her visual obsession, Teresa is also most put off by Esperanza’s
permanent state of excitement. It is with irritation that she remarks to
Esperanza that “indigenous people and volcanoes are awesome” (or, quot-
ing Esperanza, that they “molan” or “flipan”), whereas the country has
some serious problems that she clearly ignores. Teresa’s words are given
credence by the film’s allusions to Ecuador’s economic and political prob-
lems: their bus trip is hampered by road blocks caused by an indigenous
uprising against the “Plan Colombia”11; a president steps down under the
pressure of the military (one out of many, according to the characters); a
village girl has not seen her parents in three years because of their emigration
to Murcia; a university professor briefly evokes Ecuador’s difficult path to
democracy at the beginning of the film, to cite just a few examples. Though
remaining in the background of the story, these allusions clearly draw
attention to the blinkered nature of Esperanza’s tourist gaze, revealing
that it focuses principally on the pleasurable heterotopic aspects of the
country.
The buddy-structure of the road movie not only allows Hermida to
contrast Esperanza’s aestheticized view of the country with an “endogenous”
one, but also to intervene and redirect its focus. First of all, Teresa directs
Esperanza’s vision to “ordinary” aspects of Ecuadorian life that may just
as well be considered part of its heterotopic quality. A significant moment
occurs when Teresa takes the camera out of Esperanza’s hands in order
to shoot the backward sign of a truck, saying “Don’t stick to me—this is
not a bolero” [No te pegues, que no es bolero]; the sentence is a humorous
 GAZING AT TOURISTS 187

exhortation to other drivers to keep their distance and so an example of

popular culture. Another character temporarily joining the two buddies—
Jesús—performs a similar function when he complements the dull informa-
tion from Esperanza’s tourist guide by an anecdote: a dictator who was born
in the region and who built Ecuador’s first railway system, was later taken to
the place of his execution by a train on that very same railway. And when
Esperanza attempts to shoot her friends at the beach, stating that she wants
to keep a memory of them, bartender, El Iguana, prevents her from doing so:
“true friendship is kept in the heart,” he remarks, “not in the camera.”
The comments by Teresa and the secondary characters then serve to
“counter” Esperanza’s tourist gaze: they reveal its embellishing view and
open it up to other, more “ordinary” aspects of Ecuador that equally define
the country’s specificity. A recurrent sentence in the film—“That’s Ecua-
dor, girl, get used to it”—constitutes an ironic reply to the colorful welcome
board greeting Esperanza at the airport: “Welcome to Ecuador!” At the
same time, the word “countering” does not imply that Qué tan lejos pits an
“incorrect” (touristic) vision of the country against a “correct” (endogen-
ous) one. For one thing, Teresa’s inability to speak Quechua (highlighted in
the town of Zhud) underscores the fact that she is certainly not represen-
tative of all people living in Ecuador. Rather than producing a dichotomous
discourse, the tourist gaze in Qué tan lejos is seized upon to trigger a broader
reflection on Ecuador’s identity. This becomes clear during another scene
filmed at the beach in which the characters—instead of partying and
sunbathing—quarrel about each other’s country, and Teresa warns
Esperanza “not to dare compare her country to Ecuador.” While postulat-
ing its distinctiveness, the exact nature of this identity is a matter of debate.
As bartender, Iguana, declares during the same scene: “What are we, after
all? Those of us who think we are black, aren’t black, those of us who think
we are Indians, might turn out to be white, and those of us who think we are
white, might be black after all.” Instead of providing clear-cut answers, the
film throws into relief the elusive character of Ecuador’s uniqueness,
suggesting Ecuadorian identity is perhaps most of all composed of collec-
tive, performative acts, such as football and song.
Much attention is also paid to linguistic differences between Ecuadorian
Spanish and Castilian Spanish: “jalar dedo” is “hacer autostop” in Spain,
the Ecuadorians son “unos verracos”—a word that cannot be translated
according to El Iguana, but apparently refers to people who are
“awesome”—and a key-word in a cheerful song about Quito sung by a
driver and Jesús—“la guaragua”—turns out to be as enigmatic for the
188 N. LIE

singers, who have known it for years, as it is for Esperanza, who listens to it
for the first time. The attention to linguistic differences in the film aligns
with Hermida’s personal interest in the role of language as a mediator (and
constructor) of reality, to which Teresa’s reading on the bus playfully
alludes. In a public lecture, Hermida (2015) declared herself to be particularly
sensitive to the question of naming, as naming in her view implies a particular
way of “framing.”12 Naming is foregrounded in Qué tan lejos through the
Teresa/Tristeza-motif and the use of an anonymous voice-over narrator who,
systematically, introduces each character (and by extension each city and river)
under different names. The rest of the information is mainly of a medical kind
(the date of the female travelers’ first menstruation, the mention of family
diseases), and really rather redundant to the story.13 On the other hand, the
detailed and superfluous nature of most of the information provided can be
read as yet another mockery of tourist discourse, with its tendency to provide all
kinds of informative, but ultimately useless, data on the places visited. The
subversive aspect of the voice is heightened by the fact that the narrator is
female. There is, indeed, a feminist dimension in Qué tan lejos, not only
through the narrative voice, but also through the motif of the female friend-
ship, which relativizes the opposition between a “foreign” traveler, and an
“endogenous” one. While Teresa opens up Esperanza’s eyes to the ordinary
things that make up the uniqueness of her country, Esperanza helps the
somewhat younger Teresa realize (and accept) that she has been cheated
upon by her boyfriend.14 In the end, Teresa appears on screen no longer
wearing her glasses.
Interestingly, Teresa’s temporary blindness to her boyfriend’s infidelity is
not unrelated to tourism. They had met during their summer holidays, and
traveled across the country as backpackers. Tainted with the aura of a
holiday romance, this relationship is likewise characterized by rose-tinted,
touristic images. Much of Teresa’s initial anti-tourist attitude toward
Esperanza might even be explained by the typical need to differentiate
oneself from other, more superficial tourists (cf. supra). This remark points
toward a certain complexity in the relationship between the film and the
phenomenon of tourism. Hermida’s film not only counters the tourist gaze,
even if this indeed remains the principal effect, but also partially draws upon
it. This occurs more particularly through the inclusion of several panoramic
views of sublime landscapes which the film features. Contrary to Dos para el
camino, which focuses on the characters’ interaction with other characters
and their visits to crowded towns and marketplaces, Qué tan lejos zooms in
on empty landscapes. In interviews, the director has presented this aspect of
 GAZING AT TOURISTS 189

her film as a deliberate decision to turn the landscape into an open, almost
metaphorical representation of a country awaiting new interpretations.15
While this may be Hermida’s intention, it also contributes to the participa-
tion of the film in a specific kind of tourist gaze, which Urry refers to as the
“romantic gaze,” and in which “the emphasis is upon solitude, privacy and a
personal, semi-spiritual relationship with the object of the gaze” (2009, 43).
The romantic gaze of tourism presupposes sublime landscapes, enjoyed in
solitude or in the company of only one or two friends, and in Qué tan lejos
these kind of images abound. Seen in this light, the success of the film was
probably not only due to its ironic resonance with Spanish-Ecuadorian
migration, but also to its ability to convey a visually pleasurable image of
the country as a tourist destination.16 Not surprisingly, the Mixed Fund for
Tourist Promotion (Fondo Mixto de Promoción Turística) is listed among
the subsidizing organisms of the film in the opening credits.

BLURRING THE TOURIST GAZE: TURISTAS

(ALICIA SCHERSON, 2009)
Turistas was Alicia Scherson’s second feature film, after Play (2005) and
before Il futuro17 (2013). Play caused a sensation at the 2005 Valdivia Film
Festival and was chosen as the Chilean entry to the Oscars 2006. The name
Novísimo Cine Chileno was coined to distinguish films like Play from the
Nuevo Cine Chileno—Chile’s prestigious film movement that had
appeared in the 1960s and 1970s in clear resonance with the broader
wave of Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano.18 Though recognizing the merits
of this generation, the Novísimos focus on “the space of intimacy as a
territory of conflict [el espacio íntimo como territorio de conflictos]” rather
than on the political (which had been key to the Nuevo Cine Chileno)
(Cavallo and Maza 2010, 15).19 Other characteristics mentioned by
Ascanio Cavallo and Gonzalo Maza are the belief in the virtue of artistic
autonomy, the knowledge of other, international film traditions, and the
university background of most of the filmmakers. Before studying film at
the Escuela de Cine de San Antonio de los Ba~nos (Cuba) and fine arts at the
University of Illinois, Scherson graduated in biology at the Catholic Uni-
versity of Chile (Urrutia 2010, 50)—a trajectory that clearly leaves its mark
in Turistas. The filmmakers’ academic background is said to account for a
self-reflexive dimension in their work (Cavallo and Maza 2010, 14–15). In
the case of Scherson and Fuguet (cf. infra), this self-reflexivity can be
190 N. LIE

detected in the specific way in which they both draw on tourism: on one
level, as a means to meditate on personal, rather than national, identity; on
another, as a prism revealing inner complexities, rather than external
differences.
Consequently, the tourist gaze in Turistas is not highlighted and coun-
tered, but rendered more complex from the inside. This “blurring,” as I will
call it, is cinematographically foregrounded in the opening sequence, in
which point-of-view camera work adopts the blurry vision of passenger Carla
Gutiérrez as she gazes out of the car window at the environment through
which her husband Joel is driving. The passengers are Carla Gutiérrez (Aline
Küppenheim), a 37-year-old biochemist, and her husband, who is the driver.
Exemplifying “domestic tourism,” a sector which thanks to a rising middle
class has grown at the pace of inbound tourism in Latin America (Baud and
Ypeij 2009, 4),20 Carla and her husband are on their way to a holiday resort
near a lake, for a short break. The unclear view is due to the fact that Carla has
taken off her glasses, which rather contradicts the normally increased visual
curiosity one might expect of the tourist. A little further along en route, they
have their picture taken by a fruit vendor, posing as tourists (the title of the
film appears at the same time). The framing of this snapshot is, however,
awkward, leaving the husband’s head out of focus (Fig. 7.2). This can be
interpreted as an ironic foreshadowing of the husband’s disappearance from
the storyline, once he learns that Carla has had an abortion without consulting
him. While she is making a sanitary stop, he drops off her luggage at the
roadside and drives off in anger. She reconnects with him via her cell phone,
but (almost deliberately) misses the bus home and decides to take a few days
off with a traveler she coincidentally meets on the road. He introduces himself
as Ulrik Skakkebak (Diego Noguera), a 21-year-old medical student living in
Santiago, and of Norwegian origin. Ulrik is on his way to Las Siete Tazas—a
natural park in the South of Chile, especially suited to camping. Carla accepts
his offer to join him on his journey to the resort, but warns him that she is
married. “Don’t worry”—he replies—“I’m gay.”
As a new destination for her now unplanned journey, the natural park of
Las Siete Tazas will provide Carla with a temporary shelter from her marital
crisis. She becomes friends with Ulrik, walks and hitchhikes with him and
even becomes emotionally involved. This form of tourism implicitly revises
Urry’s description of tourism as an activity based on the desire to see exotic
destinations. As Jennie Germann Molz writes: sometimes, “tourism is less
about travelling to exotic places in search of difference than it is about being
together and reconnecting with loved ones” (2012, 158). This alternative
 GAZING AT TOURISTS 191

Fig. 7.2 The tourist picture of Carla Gutiérrez and her husband is out of focus in
Alicia Scherson’s Turistas (2006)

view of tourism, inspired by performance studies, approaches tourism as a

socially informed way of doing things with others: from planning a tourist
escape with her spouse, to camping with friends met along the road. When
Carla’s husband picks her up some days later, he notices she looks much
better. The healing effect which the resort has exerted on Carla’s psyche is
due to the temporary relief it has given her from her marital problems, as
well as the interaction with other people in the resort.
Equally important is the fact that it has allowed her to reconnect with her
body after the abortion: she walks, sunbathes, swims, and soaks herself in
the natural springs of the resort. Here as well, the film takes its distance from
Urry’s predominantly visual approach to tourism by opening it up to the
entire sensorium. Carolina Urrutia has underscored the multi-sensory
dimension of Scherson’s work: “As if Scherson wanted to position her
192 N. LIE

narrative beyond the purely audio-visual and inscribe in it both smells and
textures, sensory logics that offer a reality that is without doubt much
broader than that which we can see or hear, for what is ambiguous, absurd
and contradictory and, above all, because it exceeds the individual catego-
ries via which the world is understood.”21 Of particular significance in this
respect is the scene in which a Pollito-spider—first presented conserved in a
goblet in the museum—is filmed calmly walking up Ulrik’s arm. The
frightening sight of the giant hairy spider in the museum is exchanged for
a calm evocation of its tactile qualities in its natural environment.
On the other hand, the image of the Pollito-spider visually aligns with the
regular close-ups of small insects in the film, silently making their way across
the nature resort. The microscopic quality of these close-ups implicitly
revises the tourist’s preference for panoramic views. The gaze is almost
zoological and relates to the detailed observations of the environment
exemplified by park guide Orlando. Originally an inhabitant of Santiago
de Chile, Orlando admits he first considered all trees in the park as just “one
green mass.” Now, however, he is able to distinguish the different kinds of
trees that grow around his house with precision, as well as the different
species of bird nesting in their branches. Together with the multi-sensory
quality of the film, the microscopic close-ups and the “analytical” eye of the
park guide suggest a relationship between Turistas and “the environmental
gaze.” Presented as a gaze that “involves a scholarly or NGO-authorized
discourse of scanning various tourist parties to determine their footprint
upon the environment” in one of the more recent editions of his book
(2009, 150), Urry does not really explain how this gaze can be concretely
identified, nor how it differs from the average tourist gaze. Seeing nature as
a multi-sensuous world inhabited by many different species, and bringing
this variety into focus, may very well be an important aspect of it.
Another transformation of the tourist gaze can be found in the way
photography appears in the film. Even if the camera remains a tourist prop
in Turistas, it is not constantly on display (contrary to what the case was in
Qué tan lejos), and when it is used, it does not exert an “empowering” effect
on the one who handles it. Rather, it suggests the opposite idea: a loss of
control. Besides the awkward framing of the initial holiday snapshot taken
by the street vendor, there is a scene in which Carla attempts to take a group
picture of some guests at an improvised party in the woods. While focusing
in on the group, Carla stumbles over a little chick, treading on it. In a new
attempt, the dead chick is incorporated into the picture (one of the children
holds it up for the camera), as an ironic reference of the “gazees” to the
 GAZING AT TOURISTS 193

clumsy “gazer” who handles the camera. In fact, falling is a recurrent motif
in Turistas,22 even when pictures are not taken: both Carla and Ulrik
stumble and fall, and park guide Orlando is found lying on the ground. A
tourist sign, warning against the risk of falling, is briefly brought into focus.
Rather than as an agent of modernity, Scherson’s tourist appears as a
figure marked by “late modernity,” torn between different options and
identities. Modernity’s complex character constitutes an object of reflection
and fascination for Scherson. The epigraph of her first film Play—“Times
were difficult, but modern” [Los tiempos eran difíciles, pero modernos]—
almost literally resounds in the one of Turistas—“Everything was fucking
difficult, but beautiful” [Todo era putamente difícil, pero hermoso]. In the
case of Carla, modernity grants her the possibility of refusing an unplanned
motherhood, but she is not sure she really wants this and neither is she
prepared for the emotional response of her husband. In general, she
describes herself as “torpe” [clumsy], a word referring to “a complicated
person, who tends to do things the wrong way” [que hago mal las cosas, que
las hago al revés, que soy complicada]. She often and quite unexpectedly
changes her mind, whether her decisions concern important matters (the
abortion) or banal ones (running half-heartedly after the bus she just
missed). On various occasions, “yes” and “no” rapidly succeed each
other in her answers, as though they were interchangeable. Her tendency
to act on contradictory impulses reflects in her gait (hesitant and uncertain,
very “un-Chilean” according to Orlando) and her eyes are described as
“nervously moving upwards and downwards, undecided [indecisos].” One
wonders if she is capable of “gazing” at all.
Whereas tourism in Qué tan lejos activates heterotopic images of a par-
ticular country, Turistas connects to Dominique Maingueneau’s notion of
“paratopia.” As I explained in Chap. 2, Maingueneau’s concept of paratopia
stands for a “paradoxical locality [. . .], a word that does not refer to the
absence of any place, but to a difficult negotiation between the place and the
non-place, a parasitic way of localizing something, which lives on the very
impossibility of localizing oneself” (2004, 52–53; my translation). It is,
then, in the first instance a spatial notion but, by extension, it symbolizes
in-betweenness in other respects as well.23 The clearest example of a
paratopic personality in Turistas is Ulrik, Carla’s buddy in the resort.
Whereas Qué tan lejos uses the buddy-structure to draw out the differences
between the two travel companions, Turistas rests on the psychological
analogies between Ulrik and Carla. Similar to Carla (who has doubts
about motherhood), Ulrik is struggling to make sense of his sexual identity
194 N. LIE

(though he claims to be gay, he admits that he has never had any experi-
ences with men, and even sleeps with Carla at a given moment). Similar to
Carla, who wonders if 37 is a good age to be a mother, Ulrik seems lost in
time, not knowing when someone is “mature” or still a child. The main
indication of Ulrik’s paratopia, however, concerns his very identity as a
tourist. When Carla secretly goes through his belongings after they have
slept together, she discovers his real name is Miguel Casta~neda, and that he
resides in the same area of Santiago where she lives: Ñu~noa.
Though he feels ashamed when his true identity is revealed, Ulrik claims
that not everything he said and did during their stay at the resort was a lie: “I
like being Ulrik,” he says, and Carla—who is infuriated at first—slowly
realizes that he is as complicated a person as she is. The film ironically
shows this more basic affinity when, during a campfire scene, Ulrik pro-
nounces some words in Norwegian, and Carla suddenly replies to him in
fluent Norwegian as well. Neither of them actually speaks the language, but
Norwegian seems to function on a more symbolical level, as a language
meant for people who want to make themselves understood, even if they do
not understand themselves. While Hermida articulates regional and cultural
differences through language and presents them as “untranslatable,”
Scherson draws on language in a more abstract way, as a universal bridge
between people, beyond dictionaries and grammars.
In line with this Universalist view, the distinction between “home” and
“away,” on which Urry’s notion of tourism rests, becomes blurred, similar
to what happened with the tourist’s gaze in the opening traveling shot. Seen
in this light, Turistas connects to a more general feeling expressed by
Zygmunt Bauman in his essay “From Pilgrim to Tourist:” “As life itself
turns into an extended tourist escapade [. . .] it is less and less clear which
one of the visiting places is the home. The opposition ‘here I am but
visiting, there is my home’ stays clear-cut as before, but it is not easy to
point out where the ‘there’ is” (1996, 30). Ulrik personifies this problem-
atical character of the concept of “home” in late modernity in the clearest of
ways. Albeit indirectly, Carla’s hesitant gait, her nervous, mobile gaze, and
contradictory answers also point in the same direction: “Homesickness, as it
were, is not the sole tourist’s sentiment: the other is the fear of home-
boundedness, of being tied to a place and barred from exit” (Bauman 1996,
31). Ulrik and Carla both incarnate this “fear of home-boundedness” of the
late modern tourist. And for the same reason, their friendship has no future
outside the resort. While Carla searches for a notebook to write down
Miguel’s address in Santiago, he suddenly disappears in the crowd after
 GAZING AT TOURISTS 195

their arrival in Santiago. In late modern times, human relationships “require

less time and effort to be entered and less time and effort to be broken.
Distance is no obstacle to getting in touch—but getting in touch is no
obstacle to staying apart” (Bauman 2004, 62). Not surprisingly, the title of
the song that made park guide Orlando famous when he was still living in
Santiago is Vanidad (Vanity)—a reference to the ephemeral character of
things. The song—a one-hit wonder—has already fallen in oblivion.
Although Carla vaguely recognizes Orlando’s face when she first sees him
prompting her to ask him if they have met before, she cannot recall either his
name, or even a single lyric of the song.

REVERSING THE TOURIST GAZE: MÚSICA CAMPESINA

(ALBERTO FUGUET, 2011)
Alberto Fuguet’s first feature film, Se arrienda (2005), was screened at the
2005 Valdivia International Film Festival, where it inaugurated, together
with Scherson’s Play and other films,24 the generation of the Novísimos.
Some ten years older than the other representatives of this group, Fuguet
had already gained notoriety as a writer, and his literary career still continues
alongside his cinematic work. His breakthrough as a filmmaker came at the
2011 Valdivia Festival, where his third feature film, Música campesina, was
awarded the first prize. The film, shot in the USA but focusing on a Chilean
man, has been related to Missing (Una investigaci on) (2009), a novel in
which Fuguet follows the tracks of an uncle who broke with his family, and
lived in the USA (Vilches 2010, 69). At the same time, Música campesina
resonates with Fuguet’s own experience of deterritorialization: he was
brought up in English in the USA before moving with his parents to
Chile. Besides his literary and bicultural background, Fuguet’s allegiance
to the “cine-garage” (2012, 331) grants him a special place among the
Novísimos. This term refers to the non-industrial, digital way of filmmaking
to which Fuguet converted after making Se arrienda. His short film, Dos
horas (2008), and his second feature film, Vel odromo (2010), introduced
the techniques of production and distribution that also define Música
campesina: they are entirely shot with a single light, handheld camera, and
the films are distributed for free on Fuguet’s own Web site Cinépata once
they have done the rounds on the festival-circuit. This low-cost way of
filming does not earn Fuguet any money, but it does guarantee him a
maximum amount of artistic freedom (Vilches 2010, 65).25
196 N. LIE

When occasional sponsors appear, Fuguet accepts their offer on condi-

tion that his freedom as a filmmaker is respected. This was the case with
Música campesina. The film was financed by the Centre for Latin American
Studies at Vanderbilt University, which invited Fuguet to shoot a film in
Nashville without any further instructions or conditions. Fuguet’s book of
essays, entitled Cinépata (named after his Web site), describes how the film
was made: in a very spontaneous way, with a mostly inexperienced film crew
who shot the film in just one week (2012, 302). The movie features Pablo
Cerda in the role of Alejandro Tazo,26 a 30-something Chilean bachelor
who temporarily resides in the USA on a tourist visa. Madly in love with a
US-student he met in Chile and with whom he traveled the whole country,
he decides to follow “the love of his life” after she returns to the USA and
spend some time in California. The relationship does not, however, last.
Ashamed about his sentimental debacle, Tazo decides not to return to Chile
yet, but to sit through the rest of his tourist stay on the other side of the
country. This is where Música campesina commences. What began as a
romantic buddy-road movie in Chile, continues as a lonesome counter-
road movie in the USA.
The counter-road movie aspect of the film can immediately be derived
from the film’s poster image: Tazo is dragging his suitcase along the road in
the middle of heavy traffic, which he is facing in the opposite direction to its
flow, and on foot. Adversity increases when he discovers that he has been
mugged on the bus to Nashville, and for the rest of his stay has to live on a
very tight budget. This turns Tazo into a different kind of tourist from the
ones featuring in Qué tan lejos and Turistas. Having come to the USA to
visit his girlfriend and do some sightseeing at the same time, he represents
the so-called VFR-tourist, who engages in international tourism while
“visiting friends and relatives”—only now, without the friend. 27 Moreover,
his financial situation obliges him to take on all kinds of menial jobs in order
to ensure his survival in Nashville; this turns him into a combination of a
tourist and an illegal migrant worker, something which aligns with the
increasingly hybrid nature of tourism, particularly with respect to migrancy
(Gott 2015, 187). Finally, his digital tourism in the local library, in search of
cheap accommodation, enables him to engage in a very contemporary form
of tourism: “Couch-surfing is an online hospitality exchange network that
connects travelers in need of a couch to crash on with people willing to host
them for a night or two” (Germann Molz 2012, 4). In the last part of the
film Tazo no longer stays in cheap hotels, but in a typically American house,
 GAZING AT TOURISTS 197

provided with a porch, where he gets to know James and Cole, two laid-
back musicians in their twenties.
Besides offering a rather alternative view on tourism, the interest of
Música campesina resides in the fact that it presents a third variant of
tourism’s configuration of the idea of home. Whereas Qué tan lejos relied
on the modern distinction between home and away, and Turistas blurred
this distinction, Fuguet’s film reclaims the notion of home on the basis of an
experience of estrangement in the “away-zone,” during which tourism
starts to resemble the experience of exile. As Caren Kaplan (1996, 27)
explains, the figure of the exiled person normally evokes the idea of a forced
displacement and estrangement from local culture; the tourist, by contrast,
is supposed to travel out of free will and engage in consumer culture.
However, in late twentieth century’s discourses of displacement, she
observes a conflation of the two categories: the exiled individual starts
taking an interest in his surroundings and behaves as a tourist, whereas
tourists can start feeling so lost in their new environment, that their
experience resembles that of exile. The last situation applies to Tazo during
the main part of his stay in Nashville. His financial problems and insufficient
language proficiency put him in conditions of isolation that are reminiscent
of those experienced in exile. At one point, he breaks down in front of a
waitress, telling her in Spanish about his hardships: how his girlfriend
dumped him; how much he has missed eating a real meal (instead of
hamburgers); how he hates his daily struggle with the English language.
Though she does not understand Spanish (something of which he is fully
aware), she seizes his hand to comfort him, but he quickly withdraws it,
ashamed about how depressed he must look.
His exiled quality explains Tazo’s tense relationship with the tourist gaze.
Contrary to the previously discussed films, Música campesina does not
contain a single scene in which a photography camera is used. Rather than
gazing at others, Tazo gazes at himself in the mirror, as he attempts to
acquire “a country-look:” he tries on a cowboy hat in a souvenir shop
(Fig. 7.3), buys himself a pair of boots with his last remaining savings,
wears side-burns, and has tattoos marked on his upper-arms (which he
hides under his sleeves). The “extraordinary” features which his tourist
gaze retrieves from his environment here become the object of a process
of interiorization and self-fashioning.28 On some occasions, he himself is
gazed at, but the looks make him uncomfortable as they betray either a
sexual interest or prejudices toward migrant workers. Most of the time, he
remains invisible to others and, with the exception of a brief conversation
198 N. LIE

Fig. 7.3 Alejandro Tazo looks at himself, wearing a cowboy hat, in Alberto
Fuguet’s Música campesina (2011)

with an Argentine student (in Spanish), he fails in all efforts at making new
friends. When he is not sitting listlessly on his bed in his ever-cheaper hotel
rooms (there is an emphasis on stillness, as befits the counter-road movie
variant), he walks around as a kind of fl^ aneur, a figure that is not uncommon
in the work of the Novísimos (Barraza 2015). However, in a city in which
everybody drives and public transportation is rare, walking represents a clear
sign of Tazo’s marginality. Furthermore, any humiliating attempt to get a
free ride risks being coldly rejected, as happens one night at a billiard table.
Likewise, the windows through which Tazo gazes or peeps during his strolls
mostly appear as material barriers separating him from what he would like to
see, touch, or hear. Nashville is not just a city, but also the capital of country
music, and, in this sense, it is a “soundscape” as much as a “cityscape.” But
once more, financial worries prevent him from really enjoying what the city
has to offer. In this first part of the film, the tourist gaze is, therefore, not so
much a gaze directed outward, as one that is turned inward. Not surpris-
ingly, the words that most intrigue Tazo while working on his bad English
are composed of the prefix “self”: self-sufficient, self-employed, self-made.
 GAZING AT TOURISTS 199

A change occurs when he receives a telephone call from an address where

he has enquired about couch-surfing. Thrilled, he leans backwards on the
bars on which he is sitting, and the camera zooms out, showing us
the cityscape of Nashville as observed by Tazo from a distance, as though
he finally grasps the dystopian city he has been walking through. This single
instance of a cityscape signals the transition to the second part of the film, in
which Tazo’s solitude is temporarily suspended by his stay at James and
Cole’s place, two musicians who play in a punk rock band and spend their
days drinking beer and scoring weed. After a somewhat surreal interview,
during which clichés about Chile and the USA abound, Tazo is accepted to
“sleep on the couch.” Living with James and Cole (and their occasional
friends) enables him to get an inside view of American culture. He enquires
about his look (“You look as though you were trying too hard to get the
country look,” James tells him), and even engages, playfully, in the compo-
sition of songs. Besides music, films are an important topic of conversation.
James and Cole advise him on his tastes and conclude that there is “much
work to be done,” as he lags behind recent trends in cinema. At the same
time, the constant references to music and film in Música campesina reveal
that the “tourist gaze” appears in Fuguet’s film also as a “mediatized gaze”:
a variant proposed to refer to “movie-induced tourism” (Urry and Larsen
2011, 20). Not only does Tazo use references to US music and films in his
attempts to connect to the locals but, more importantly, Fuguet has stated,
as a director himself, that he wanted to portray Nashville as a typical US city
in films from the seventies.29 At a certain moment, Tazo even learns that
“Nashville has a film, called Nashville”—a piece of information which leaves
him baffled. Though Fuguet (2012: 304) declared that Robert Altman’s
Nashville (1975) did not influence the aesthetics of Música campesina,
contrary to other films from the 1970s, the fact that it is mentioned
underscores the more general importance of US cinema as a mediator of
the director’s gaze.
Tazo’s more pleasant stay at James and Cole’s house prepares for an
important evolution regarding the tourist gaze: its reversal. By this, I mean
that Tazo turns from a dysfunctional tourist gazer into a tourist gazee. At
one particular moment, the film disrupts the predominantly internal focal-
ization on Tazo and shows how Tazo is being observed from a distance by
his hosts, while he is chatting with one of their friends in the porch. As it
turns out, they secretly admire him and find him “cool.” In the end, they
even take him to a discotheque and present him to their friends. Here, Tazo
is definitely introduced into Nashville as a soundscape, but the music in the
200 N. LIE

discotheque does not resemble the Johnny Cash style of country music with
which he had identified Nashville back in Chile. Watching the crowd dance,
and his friends move in ecstasy to a type of music that he simply does not
understand, he suddenly and discretely walks out of the nightclub,
whereupon he returns to the anonymous cheap hotels he had claimed
to abhor. Just before leaving, an excited party-dancer shows him a card
saying: “Keep being awesome” (translated in the Spanish subtitles as:
“no cambies nunca”).
The stay in the American house has taught Tazo that, for all of his efforts,
he remains an outsider in US culture, but that there is nothing wrong with
this. As Jonatán Martín Gómez explains, “lostness” in Fuguet’s stories
sometimes precedes the opposite feeling: that of finding oneself.30 This is,
indeed, the dynamic in Música campesina. Whereas the concept of “home”
was dissolved in the ending of Turistas, Fuguet’s film reclaims it from an
experience of tourism as exile and deterritorialization. If displacement is a
form of loss, it is through displacement that one realizes what exactly it is
that is lost. This also explains the film’s bilingual title: Música campesina
(Country Music). The title is a translation which brings to the fore what is
lost when something is (linguistically) displaced.

Música campesina means literally, perhaps too literally, country music. It is a

concept that gets lost in translation, since in most Latin American countries
“música campesina” has more to do with folklore or folk, or the music that is
heard at the farms, and has nothing to do with the rhythms, lyrics or anything
related to the Nashville scene. What Chilean cowboys listen to is, actually, more
Latin American music, both modern (like cumbia electrónica) to old and
modern rancheras or norte~ nas from Mexico. (Fuguet 2012, 305; his emphasis)

The ending of the film also connects to this idea, and simultaneously takes
the reversal of the tourist gaze to a climax. After making a telephone call in
order to arrange his return flight to Chile, Tazo grabs a guitar and goes to a
musical bar, where he requests a moment of attention. He presents himself
as “someone from the South, the real South, South American Chile,” who
will perform a song “about his country, about me, about mi campo.” He
then sings, in Spanish, a traditional folk song, inscribing this very different
form of “country-music” into the globalized tradition of US country music.
Implicitly, he thereby alters the meaning of the word “country music,”
which turns a specific kind of US music, associated with the countryside
(el campo), into a universal genre at the disposal of anyone who wants to
 GAZING AT TOURISTS 201

express love for his or her country. Tazo’s self-staging moreover implies
that, rather than looking at others or feeling uncomfortable under their
gaze, he deliberately accepts to be gazed at as a representative of this other
tradition. He thus transforms himself from a tourist gazer, attentive to the
“exoticism” of his environment, into a performer of his own exotic other-
ness before a local audience, granting them a fleeting acoustic souvenir of
his passing. The song he chooses—“Campo bueno, campo lindo”—not
only insists on what he has and now reclaims (the repetitive word in the
verses being “tengo” [I have]), but also on what he does not have: a woman
with whom to share his life.31 Indeed, his “campo bueno” [good field] will
only turn into a “campo lindo” [beautiful field] when he finds true love.
According to Caren Kaplan, the late modern tourist not only resembles the
exiled person through his or her feelings of lostness and estrangement, but
also through the motif of the search: “Both figures, when mystified into
primary subject positions, represent melancholic seekers after a lost substance
or unity that can never be attained” (1996, 27). The search for authenticity is
projected on to other places (the homeland for the exiled, the exotic desti-
nation for the tourist), or even other times. Tazo’s desire to find true,
authentic love on US soil,32 however, has now come to a conclusion. His
final song implicitly presents country music not only as the music of a country
to which he can now return, but also as the heterotopic soundscape where
place, love, and authenticity coincide.

NOTES
1. The appearance of the train as a means of transportation inspired
Thomas Cook to offer the first all-inclusive “package tour” in
England in 1841—an event often referred to as the birth of tourism.
Shortly beforehand, Daguerre in France (1839) and Fox Talbot in
England (1840) had shown the world the first versions of the
photographic picture (Urry 2007, 14).
2. For the concept of heterotopia, cf. chapter 2.
3. According to Claire Williams, “the film has undoubtedly inspired
tourism to South America and even motorcycle journeys” (2007,
23) and she supports her claim with the following evidence: “[. . .] in
the same week that the film went on general release in the United
Kingdom, a special Los diarios de motocicleta tour offered by Journey
Latin America was advertised in the Observer magazine. The twenty-
three-day tour, ‘aiming to be as faithful as possible’ to the original
trip, includes visits to ‘the places that had the most impact on Che’ as
202 N. LIE

well as ‘some of the region’s highlights,’ and promises reassuringly

‘the travel infrastructure of 2004 not the 1950s’” (2007, 23).
4. The technical terms used for these categories are, respectively,
“inbound tourism,” “outbound tourism,” and “domestic tourism”
(Glossary UNWTO 2015).
5. For the concept of the counter-road movie, cf. chapter 1.
6. “Writer-director Tania Hermida’s 2006 road movie Qué tan lejos
(How much further) has drawn the nation’s all-time best local
admissions total: 220,000. (A local pic is considered a hit if it reaches
the 100,000 admission-mark; a typical Hollywood blockbuster
draws no more than 1 million admissions nationally)” (De la Fuente
2013, 4).
7. “In the years before the making of my first film, Latin American
cinema had gained an important place in the market of independent
cinema with films that explored what I would like to call the
‘folklorization of misery:’ by this I refer to a kind of exploitation of
the photogenic or spectacular aspects of the violence and the
marginality of the continent. Apart from the quality of these films
(some are very good, others not so much), the themes had become
repetitive. Latin American cinema (especially when it came from a
country like Ecuador, so near Colombia or Peru) had to show wars
between gangs, drug trafficking, tough men and voluptuous women
who got themselves into trouble because of tough men, and it was
hard to make people realize that there were stories in this region that
did not imply drugs; and I say this was the case at that particular
moment because afterwards the expectations became more diverse”
(En los a~ nos previos al desarrollo de mi primera película el cine
latinoamericano había logrado un lugar importante en el mercado
del cine independiente con filmes que incursionaban en lo que yo
on de la misera, es decir una cierta explotaci
llamaría la folclorizaci on
de las cualidades fotogénicas o espectaculares de la violencia y la
marginalidad del continente. Al margen de la calidad de las películas
(hay algunas muy buenas y otras no tanto), los temas se repetían. El
cine latinoamericano, sobre todo si venía de un país como el Ecuador
tan cercano a Colombia o al Perú debía mostrar entonces guerras de
pandillas, narcotr afico, hombres duros y mujeres voluptuosas
involucradas en problemas de hombres duros, y no se comprendía
acilmente que hubiese historias de la regi
f on sin revolver esas drogas y
digo específicamente en ese momento porque luego las expectativas se
han diversificado) (Hermida 2015; translation mine). Before making
 GAZING AT TOURISTS 203

her own films, Hermida collaborated with Cr onicas (Sebastián

Cordero, 2004) and María llena de gracia (Joshua Marston,
2004), two international coproductions with Ecuador focusing on
violence and drugs.
8. Hermida appears to have inherited her leftist sympathies from her
father, who was a supporter of the Cuban Revolution. This back-
ground is indirectly evoked in Hermida’s second feature film, En el
nombre de la hija (2011). In this context, it is worth mentioning that
Hermida studied at Cuba’s renowned film school San Antonio de los
Ba~nos.
9. Respectively in Italy (Il futuro, Alicia Scherson, 2013) and the USA
(Música campesina, Alberto Fuguet, 2013).
10. In recent years, the direction of Ecuadorian-Spanish migration
seems to have been inverted due to Spain’s economic crisis.
11. The “plan Colombia” was originally conceived between 1998 and
1999 by the administrations of Colombian President, Andrés
Pastrana Arango, and US President, Bill Clinton, with the goals of
ending the Colombian armed conflict and creating an anti-cocaine
strategy. In the film, it is the target of the indigenous uprising, which
paralyzes normal traffic and obliges the main characters to adapt
their travel plans.
12. In an interview about the film, Tania Hermida testifies to her deep
interest in “[W]hat they have called us, what they continue to call us,
and how a different name also changes the way we see reality. The
name is something which is imposed upon us, but it is also an
option” ([C] omo nos han llamado, c omo nos llaman a nosotros, y
omo el modificar el nombre de las cosas modifica también la realidad
c
El nombre es una cosa impuesta pero al mismo tiempo es una opci on)
(Hermida 2007). See also the title of her second feature film: En el
nombre de la hija (2011).
13. In this respect, the narrative voice of Qué tan lejos resembles that of
Y tu mam a también.
14. Teresa’s boyfriend justifies his sudden marriage by saying he was
tricked into it by a girl whom he got pregnant. However, as it turns
out, the girl had been his fiancée in Cuenca for many years.
15. “From the moment the characters leave the city, they enter a uni-
verse that is not unreal, but that is metaphorical. Ecuador is not an
empty place, but I emptied it. Because I wanted to give the impres-
sion of an abandoned and desolate place, of a place emptied out of
204 N. LIE

people and meaning” (Desde el momento en que salen de la ciudad, los

orico.
personajes entran en un universo que no es irreal, pero sí es metaf
El Ecuador no es un lugar vacío, y yo lo vacié. Porque yo quería crear
la impresion de un lugar abandonado, desolado, de un lugar que
pareciera estar vaciado de gente y de sentido) (Hermida en
Youtube 2007).
16. The colorful shots of the landscape were praised in a review of the
film published in Variety, an influential film magazine (Harvey
2006, 73), whereas the Ecuadorian film scholar, Galo Alfredo
Torres, precisely criticizes the film for its “couleur locale-kind of
tourism” [turismo costumbrista] (2014, 170).
17. The film, based on Roberto Bola~no’s last novel, was shot in Rome
and uses Italian as its main language.
18. Some representatives of this influential film movement are: Miguel
Littin, Raúl Ruiz, and Patricio Guzmán.
19. On the other hand, the withdrawal from the political sphere is
sometimes read as a political statement in its own right, and
inscribed in a so-called post-dictatorial phase in Chilean cinema
(see Wright 2013 and Barraza 2015).
20. What applies to Latin America seems also to account for the rest of
the world: the United Nations World Tourism Organization notes
in its most recent report that “most tourists visit destinations within
their own region” (UNWTO 2015, 12).
21. “Como si Scherson quisiera instalar su relato más allá de lo
puramente visual y sonoro, imprimirle también olores y texturas,
lógicas sensoriales para proponer una realidad que sin duda es más
amplia que aquella que podemos ver o escuchar, por ambigua,
absurda, contradictoria y, sobre todo, porque excede las categorías
individuales de comprensión del mundo” (Urrutia 2010, 52; my
translation).
22. The same observation applies to Play. See Page and Lie (2016).
23. “Every paratopia expresses, in a minimal way, the idea of belonging
and not-belonging at the same time, the impossible inclusion in a
‘topia.’ Whether it takes the face of the person who is not at home,
of the one who goes from place to place without wanting to settle
down, of the one who cannot find a place of his own, the notion of
paratopia averts from the group (paratopia of identity), from a place
(spatial paratopia), or from a particular moment (temporal
paratopia). These distinctions are ultimately superficial: as the word
 GAZING AT TOURISTS 205

itself indicates, every paratopia can be brought back to a paradox of a

spatial nature. One might add linguistic paratopias, crucial when it
comes to literary creation” (Maingueneau 2004, 86–87; my
translation).
24. Other films at the festival, which were associated with the renewal
are: En la cama, by Matías Bize, La sagrada familia, by Sebastián
Lelio (as Sebastián Lelio at that time), and Mi mejor enemigo, by
Alex Bowen (Barraza 2015, 443).
25. Contrary to Alicia Scherson, for instance, Fuguet does not apply for
European funding from organizations such as Hubert Bals or Fonds
Sud, because he feels that they indirectly limit the stylistic and
thematic range of Latin American cinema. See his observations on
the Hubert Bals Foundation—referred to as “the Rotterdam syn-
drome” (el síndrome Rotterdam)—in Cinépata (2012, 139–140).
26. The same actor features in Vel odromo and Fuguet’s most recent film,
Invierno (2015).
27. In 2014, travel for holidays, recreation, and other leisure activities
accounted for just over half of all international tourist arrivals (53 %);
the other half traveled for a diversity of reasons (business, health,
religion. . .), including paying a visit to friends or relatives living in
another country (the so-called VFR-tourists) (UNWTO 2015, 14).
28. Tazo’s inclination for self-fashioning also appears during an initial
phone call to his brother in Chile; he pretends he is having the time
of his life in a five-star hotel filled with cowboys, but the camera
shows reality is quite different.
29. “That would be my Nashville: a city that looked like the set of a US
movie from the nineteen seventies” (Ese sería mi Nashville: una
ciudad que parece ser el set de una cinta americana de los setenta)
(Fuguet 2012, 304).
30. “To lose oneself is the necessary step which has to be taken before
one can take the leap to imagine, find and ultimately save oneself.
For Fuguet, saving and finding oneself and personal growth are
nothing else than understanding where one belongs and learning
how to live there” (Perderse es también el paso previo necesario antes
de dar el salto que supone inventarse o encontrarse a sí mismo y
salvarse. Para Fuguet, salvarse, encontrarse y crecer es entender a
donde se pertenece y aprender a vivir allí) (Martín Gómez 2014,
97; my translation).
206 N. LIE

31. The song was composed by Francisco Flores del Campo

(1907–1993) as part of La Pérgola de las Flores (1960), a theatrical
work by the Chilean writer Isidora Aguirre. The song’s lyrics read as
follows: Beautiful field. “I have a field on a hill/Between a willow
and a rose bush/I have a dog called Good Luck/And a horse which
makes random strolls/I have a stream which sings/When I water
the fields/But I’m not happy/As I don’t have anyone to love/Good
field, good field/My work is my soil/But only when I’ll have a girl/
Will my field be beautiful.” (Tengo mi rancho en el cerro/ entre un
sauce y un rosal./Tengo mi perro el fortuna/ y mi caballo al azar./
Tengo un arroyo que canta/ cuando me riega el trigal./Pero no estoy
muy contento/porque no tengo a quien amar./Campo bueno, campo
bueno,/es mi tierra el trabajar/pero cuando tenga due~na/campo
lindo lo voy allamar.) [My Translation].
32. The link with the idea of authenticity is indicated by Tazo’s insis-
tence that he believed that he had found “the woman of his life.”

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 EPILOGUE

Two friends meet a miner couple on their journey across Latin America.
On their motorcycles, they are celebrating youth, life, and freedom. But
the encounter with the couple changes their perspective on their journey
and their outlook on life. One becomes a revolutionary; the other—a
biochemist—will follow him to Cuba to help build a new society. It is
tempting to see this key scene from Diarios de motocicleta, analyzed in the
first chapter of this book, as the meeting ground between two variants of the
road movie from which “the Latin American road movie” departs. One
(in the first part of the movie) is a liberal or individualistic variant, celebrat-
ing the freedom of the individual, the openness of the road, and the ability
of technology to make us move faster. The other (after the encounter) is a
social or communitarian variant, which describes how individuals discover
the other(s) along this same road or bump against obstacles that slow down
their journey. Drawing upon the analysis offered in the first chapter, one
could say that the first variant roughly corresponds to the US model of the
genre, as exemplified by Easy Rider, whereas the second would then repre-
sent the Latin American version of it.
The diversity of the road movies discussed in this book might suggest,
at first sight, that there is no such thing as “the” Latin American road
movie, but rather a rich, variegated body of works. Nevertheless, in hind-
sight, pure examples of the “liberal” variant are few in number. Road movies
centering on individuals and their problems are included in Chap. 4 (La
vida según Muriel, Nacido y criado, Liverpool) and Chap. 7 (Turistas, Música

© The Author(s) 2017 209

N. Lie, The Latin American (Counter-) Road Movie and Ambivalent
Modernity, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-45138-1
210 EPILOGUE

campesina). In all of these cases, however, the individuals are portrayed as

struggling with their identities, often finding themselves stranded in
counter-road movies. Another considerable group of road movies blends a
communitarian with a more individualistic outlook. Qué tan lejos and Jauja
are eloquent examples of this category, evoking sociopolitical issues (the
rising “pink tide” in Ecuador, the nineteenth century “Campaign of the
Desert” against the natives in Argentina) alongside individual ones
(a treacherous boyfriend, the disappearance of a daughter).
The majority of the road movies discussed in this book, however, clearly
privilege the genre’s potential to shed a critical light on modern society, and
thus relate to the so-called communitarian variant of the genre. This pre-
dominance of socially inspired road movies recalls a leftist tradition of
political filmmaking that these filmmakers both honor and revise. On the
one hand, they share with their precursors in the New Latin American
Cinema movement a special sensitivity toward the excluded persons of
modern society, thus focusing on the margins of the road, or even inviting
us to embark on perilous journeys with the poor and the homeless. On the
other hand, contemporary road movie directors prefer an “open, frontal
gaze” on today’s society over ideological grids, thereby diverging from the
earlier models of Latin American filmmaking. This explains their attraction
to the road movie as a genre privileging seeing and observing over judging
and telling—a genre, also, providing sufficient space for the “unforeseen.”
In their focus on the socially deprived, the works I have analyzed manifest
a clear divide between films of the 1990s and films after 2000. Whereas the
films of the 1990s brought into focus forms of “cruel modernity”—crimes
committed in the name of progress by state-based instances (exile, enforced
disappearances, genocide), the films released after 2000 draw the viewers’
attention to modernity’s indifference toward the ones it excludes by a form
of anonymous, structural violence. These films evoke the lives of the
“human waste of modernization,” the people waiting on the other side of
the walls which are being constructed by nations in order to safeguard their
prosperous territories. Road movies take us across these zones of “indiffer-
ent modernity,” which seem to have become more prominent in third-stage
modernity. At the same time, the films under discussion often run counter
to the victimization of these people, turning them into agentic protagonists
of fictional stories, in which they deploy a talent for overcoming obstacles,
sometimes with the help of others with whom they form a Gemeinschaft.
In their ambivalent relationship with modernity, then, Latin American
road movies linger on the dark (cruel, indifferent) side of modernity.
 EPILOGUE 211

Another insight after this book is that road movies in Latin America cannot
be mapped according to national criteria anymore. Rather, commonalities
appear along lines of shared mechanisms of production and distribution,
binding together road movies pertaining to “commercial art cinema” across
national boundaries and distinguishing them, for instance, from a cross-
national family of festival films. A film like Diarios de motocicleta by Brazilian
filmmaker Walter Salles has much more in common with The Three Burials
of Melquiades Estrada, by US filmmaker Tommy Lee Jones and Mexican
scriptwriter Guillermo Arriaga, than it has with Jorge Bodanzky’s Iracema,
another road movie by a Brazilian filmmaker, which is more related to
Mexican festival films such as La jaula de oro.
And if national cinemas have become more internally diversified than
before, deploying transnational relationships in terms of aesthetics and
genres rather than nationally inflected characteristics, then Latin American
cinema itself is also to be conceived in a much more open and dynamic way
with respect to other cinemas. Contemporary Latin American filmmakers
are increasingly influenced by an international family of road movie direc-
tors, including Abbas Kiarostami, Wong Kar Wai, and Bouli Lanners. To
situate the diverse forms of the Latin American road movie described here
with respect to road movies from other parts in the world, and to thus assess
their truly “global” dimension, seems to me the most pressing task for
future travelers across this diverse landscape. But then, as well: road movies
teach us that, rather than bringing us where we planned to go guided by our
maps, roads take us where we never expected to end up.
 FILMOGRAPHY

This filmography contains feature films and documentaries. Neither short

films nor television series have been included.
(D): road movie documentary
(CR): counter-road movie
(P): only partially a road movie

ARGENTINA
abrazo partido, El (CR) Burman, Daniel Argentina 2004
acacias, Las Giorgelli, Pablo Argentina-Paraguay 2011
ambulante, El (D) De la Serna, Eduardo & Argentina 2009
Marcheggiano, Lucas
an, El (P)
amigo alem
Meerapfel, Jeanine Argentina-Germany 2012
Amigomío Meerapfel, Jeanine Argentina-Germany 1995
Arizona Sur Pensa, Daniel & Rocca, Argentina 2007
Miguel Angel
Bomb
on, el perro See El perro
Caballos salvajes neyro, Marcelo
Pi~ Argentina 1995
camino de San Diego, El Sorín, Carlos Argentina 2006
camino, El Olivera, Javier Argentina 2000
cielito, El (P) Menis, María Victoria Argentina 2004
Cleopatra Mignogna, Eduardo Argentina 2003
Diarios de motocicleta Salles, Walter Argentina-UK-USA 2004
etn
ografo, El (D) Rosell, Ulises Argentina 2012
Eversmile New Jersey Sorín, Carlos Argentina-USA 1989
(continued )

© The Author(s) 2017 213

N. Lie, The Latin American (Counter-) Road Movie and Ambivalent
Modernity, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-45138-1
214 FILMOGRAPHY

Familia rodante Trapero, Pablo Argentina 2004

Familia tipo (D) Priego, Cecilia Argentina 2009
Fotografías (D) Di Tello, Andrés Argentina 2007
Historias mínimas Sorín, Carlos Argentina 2002
Invierno, mala vida Cramer, Gregorio Argentina 1998
Jauja Alonso, Lisandro Argentina-Holanda-USA 2014
Liverpool Alonso, Lisandro Argentina 2008
lugar lejano, Un See Venezuela
muerto y ser feliz, El Rebollo, Javier Spain-Argentina 2013
muertos, Los Alonso, Lisandro Argentina 2004
mujer sin cabeza, La Martel, Lucrecia Argentina-Spain-France-Italy 2008
(P, CR)
Mundo grúa Trapero, Pablo Argentina 1999
Nacido y criado (CR) Trapero, Pablo Argentina 2006
noche con Sabrina Love, Agresti, Alejandro Argentina 2000
Una
Nordeste Solanas, Juan Diego Argentina-Spain-France- 2005
Belgium
novia errante, Una (CR) Katz, Ana Argentina 2007
Patagonia Evans, Marc UK-Argentina 2011
película del rey, La Sorín, Carlos Argentina 1986
perro [Bomb
on, el perro], Sorín, Carlos Argentina 2004
El
Road July Gómez, Gaspar Argentina 2011
rubia del camino, La Romero, Manuel Argentina 1938
Sur Solanas, Fernando Argentina-France 1988
Tan de repente Lerman, Diego Argentina 2002
Tatuado Eduardo Raspo Argentina 2005
Todas las azafatas van al Burman, Daniel Argentina-Spain 2002
cielo
viaje, El Solanas, Fernando Argentina-France-Spain- 1992
Mexico
vida según Muriel, Milewicz, Eduardo Argentina 1997
La (CR)
o lo que, El
viento se llev
Agresti, Alejandro Argentina-Holanda 1998
(CR)
Villegas Tobal, Gonzalo Argentina 2012

BOLIVIA
o a la llamita blanca?
¿Quién mat
Bellott, Rodrigo Bolivia 2006
on de fe
Cuesti
Loayza, Marco Bolivia 1995
Érase una vez en Bolivia Cordova, Patrick Bolivia-UK 2012
(continued )
 FILMOGRAPHY 215

Mi socio Agazzi, Paolo Bolivia 1983

Pacha Ferreiro Dávila, Héctor Bolivia-Mexico 2009
Visa Americana (CR) Valdivia, Juan Carlos Bolivia-Mexico 2005

BRAZIL
Alem da Strada See Uruguay (Por el camino)
Anjos do Sol (P) Lagemann, Rudi Brazil 2006
Arido Movie Ferreira, Lírio Brazil 2005
beira do caminho, A Silveira, Breno Brazil 2012
busca (A Cadeira do Pai), A Moura, Luciano Brazil 2012
Bye Bye Brasil Diegues, Carlos Brazil 1979
caminho das nuvens, O Amorim, Vicente Brazil 2003
Central do Brasil Salles, Walter Brazil 1999
céu de Suely, O Ainouz, Karim Brazil 2007
Cinema, aspirinas e urubus Gomes, Marcelo Brazil 2005
Dois filhos de Francisco Silveira, Breno Brazil 2005
Iracema. Uma transa Bodanzky, Jorge & Senna, Orlando Brazil- 1975
Amazônica Germany
Pachamama (D) Rocha, Eryck Brazil 2009
passaporte húngaro, Kogut, Sandra Brazil-France- 2001
Um (D) Belgium
Raps
odia Armênia (D) Gananian, Cesar & Gary; Der Brazil 2012
Haroutiounian, Cassiana
olo Dios sabe
S
See Mexico
Terra estrangeira Salles, Walter & Thomas, Daniela Brazil-Portugal 1996
Viajo porque preciso, volto Ainouz, Karim & Gomes, Marcelo Brazil 2009
porque ti amo
Vidas secas Pereira dos Santos, Nelson Brazil 1963

CHILE
Crystal Fairy & The Magical Silva, Sebastián Chile 2013
Cactus and 2012
De jueves a domingo Sotomayor, Dominga Chile 2012
Desierto sur Garry, Shawn Chile-Spain 2008
frontera, La (CR) Larraín, Ricardo Chile-Spain 1991
Hija (D) González, María Paz Chile 2011
Huacho (D) Fernández Almendras, Alejandro Chile 2009
(continued )
216 FILMOGRAPHY

Música Campesina (CR) Fuguet, Alberto Chile-USA 2011

Sin Norte Lavanderos, Fernando Chile 2015
Turistas Scherson, Alicia Chile 2006

COLOMBIA
Apocalípsur Mejía, Javier Colombia 2006
María, llena eres de gracia Marston, Joshua Colombia-USA 2004
Paraíso travel Brand, Simón Colombia-USA 2008
Retratos en un mar de mentiras Gaviria, Carlos Colombia 2010
viajes del viento, Los Guerra, Ciro Colombia 2009

COSTA RICA
camino, El Yasín, Ishtar Costa Rica-Nicaragua 2007
ojos cerrados, A Jiménez, Hernán Costa Rica 2010

CUBA
Boleto al paraíso Chijona, Gerardo Cuba 2010
Guantanamera Gutiérrez Alea, Tomás Cuba-Spain 1995
Habana Blues (CR) Zambrano, Benito Spain-Cuba 2005
on, La (D)
ilusi
Barriga, Susana Cuba 2008
Lista de espera (CR) Tabío, Juan Carlos Cuba-Spain-Germany-Mexico 2000
Miel para Ochún Solás, Humberto Cuba 2001
otro lado, Al See Mexico
Personal Belongings (CR) Brugués, Alejandro Cuba-Spain 2006
Viva Cuba Cremata, Juan Carlos Cuba-France 2005

ECUADOR
Dos para el camino Cuesta, Jaime & Naranjo, Alfonso Ecuador 1981
Pescador Cordero, Sebastián Ecuador 2011
Qué tan lejos Hermida, Tania Ecuador-Spain 2006
ruta de la luna, La Jácome, Jaime Sebastián Ecuador-Panamá 2012
 FILMOGRAPHY 217

GUATEMALA
camioneta, La: The Journey of one Kendall, Marc USA 2012
American Schoolbus (D)
C
apsulas Riedel, Verónica Guatemala 2011
Ixcanul (CR) Bustamante, Jayro Guatemala-Francia 2015
viaje, El Sodeju (colectivo) Guatemala 2013

HONDURAS
Sin Nombre See Mexico
Who is Dyani Cristal? (D) García Bernal, Gael & Silver, Marc USA 2014

MEXICO
7 Soles Utreras, Pedro Mexico 2008
Alamar González Rubio, Pedro Mexico 2009
autom
ovil gris, El Rosas, Eduardo Mexico 1919
Bajo California Bolado, Carlos Mexico 1998
Burros Salazar, Odín Mexico 2011
cebra, La León R., Fernando J. Mexico 2011
Ciclo (D) Martínez Crowther , Andrea Mexico-Canada- 2013
USA
Cochochi Cárdenas, Israel & Guzmán, Mexico-UK-Canada 2009
Laura Amelia
Crossing Arizona (D) De Vivo, Dan USA 2006
De nadie (D) Dirdamal, Tin Mexico 2005
Fando y lis Jodorowsky, Alejandro Mexico 1968
olitos peces gato, Los (P)
ins
Sainte-Luce, Claudia Mexico 2013
on (CR)
Jap
Reygadas, Carlos Mexico 2002
jardín del Edén, El Novaro, María Mexico-Canada- 1994
France
jaula de oro, La Quemada-Díez, Diego Mexico-Spain-USA 2013
Lake Tahoe Eimbcke, Fernando Mexico 2008
misma luna, La Riggen, Patricia Mexico-USA 2007
monta~ na sagrada, La Jodorowsky, Alejandro Mexico-USA 1972
Norte, El Navas, Gregory USA-UK 1984
Norteado Perezcano, Rigoberto Mexico 2009
otro lado, Al Loza, Gustavo Mexico 2004
Pancho Villa aquí y allí (D) Geilburt, Matías & Taibo II, Mexico 2008
Paco Ignacio
(continued )
218 FILMOGRAPHY

Por la libre Llaca, Juan Carlos de Mexico 2000

Profundo carmesí Ripstein, Arturo Mexico 1996
Santitos Springall, Alejandro Mexico 1999
Sin dejar huella Novaro, María Mexico-Spain 2000
Sin Nombre Fukunaga, Cary Mexico-USA 2009
olo Dios sabe
S
Bolado, Carlos Mexico-Brazil 2006
Subida al cielo Bu~nuel, Luis Mexico 1952
topo, El Jodorowsky, Alejandro Mexico 1970
tres entierros de Melquiades Lee Jones, Tommy & Arriaga, USA-Francia 2005
Estrada, Los Guillermo
viaje de Teo, El Doehner, Walter Mexico 2008
Viaje redondo Novaro, María & Stavenhagen, Mexico 2009
Marina
Vidas errantes De la Riva, Juan Antonio Mexico 1985
Voy a explotar Gerardo Naranjo Mexico 2008
Which way home? (D) Cammisa, Rebecca USA-Mexico 2009
Y tu mam
a también Cuarón, Alfonso Mexico (USA: 2001
distribution)

NICARAGUA
camino, El See Costa Rica
Carla’s Song Loach, Ken UK-Spain-Germany 1994

PARAGUAY
acacias, Las See Argentina

PERU
M
ancora Montreuil, Ricardo de Peru-Spain 2008
prueba, La Vélez, Judith Peru-Cuba-Spain 2006
Y si te vi, no me acuerdo Barreda Delgado, Miguel Peru-Germany 1999
 FILMOGRAPHY 219

PUERTO RICO
200 cartas Irizarry, Bruno Puerto Rico-USA 2013

URUGUAY
Por el camino Braun, Charly Uruguay-Brazil 2010
último tren, El Ursuaga, Diego Uruguay-Argentina-Spain 2002
viaje hacia el mar, El Casanova, Guillermo Uruguay-Argentina 2003

VENEZUELA
chico que miente, El Ugás, Marité Venezuela 2010
distancia m
as larga, La Pinto Emperador, Claudia Venezuela-Spain 2014
Domingo de resurrecci
on Bolívar, César Venezuela 1982
lugar lejano, Un Novoa, José Ramón Argentina-Spain- 2009
Venezuela
Manoa Hoogesteijn, Solveig Venezuela-Germany 1980
Patas arriba (CR) García Wiedemann, Alejandro Venezuela 2011
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 INDEX

A Amorim, Vicente, 13, 215

abrazo partido, El (Burman, Daniel,
2004), 14, 213
acacias, Las (Giorgelli, Pablo, 2011),
147, 213, 218
Agamben, Giorgio, 144
Agresti, Alejandro, 16, 98–104,
117n21, 182, 214
Ainouz, Karim, 13, 215
Alencar, José de (1829–1877), 158,
160
Alicia en el pueblo de Maravillas (Díaz
Torres, Daniel, 1990), 74
Alonso, Lisandro, 6, 13, 17, 23, 97,
110–16, 119n30, 182, 214
amiga, La (Meerapfel, Jeanine, 1985), 32
amigo alem
an, El (Meerapfel, Jeanine,
2012), 32, 104, 213
Amigomío (Meerapfel, Jeanine, 1995),
9, 22, 31–3, 50–4, 59n32, 213
Amores perros (González I~nárritu,
Alejandro, 2000), 55n6, 65, 87n3,
131
Anderson, Benedict, 63, 82
A ojos cerrados (Jiménez, Hernán,
2010), 9
Arriaga, Guillermo, 23, 126–34, 146,
148n9, 211, 218
Augé, Marc, 16, 23, 98, 100, 117n19,
157
autom
ovil gris, El (Rosas, Eduardo,
1919), 18, 217
B
Babel (González I~ nárritu, Alejandro,
2006), 66, 131
Bakhtin, Mikhail, 10, 37
Baudrillard, Jean, 111, 115, 118n26,
133, 134
Bauman, Zygmunt, 123, 124, 141, 144,
145, 194, 195
Beltrami, Marco, 127
Bertelsen, Martin, 15, 25n6, 25n11,
27n18, 131, 149n12, 149n13

Note: Page numbers followed by “n” denote notes.

© The Author(s) 2017 237

N. Lie, The Latin American (Counter-) Road Movie and Ambivalent
Modernity, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-45138-1
238 INDEX
Bodanzky, Jorge, 8, 17, 156, 158, 159,
161, 162, 211
Boda Secreta (Agresti, Alejandro, 1989),
117n21
Bolado, Carlos, 14, 217, 218
Bola~no, Roberto, 204n15
Boleto al paraíso (Chijona, Gerardo,
2010), 80, 216
Bomb
on el perro (Sorín, Carlos, 2004),
12, 97, 104, 107–9, 117n14, 213,
214
Bonnie & Clyde (Penn, Arthur, 1967),
12, 50, 148n10
Booth, Wayne C., 72, 89n17
Borensztein, Sebastián, 12
Brand, Simon, 182, 216
Bread and Roses (Loach, Ken &
Quemada-Díez, Diego, 2000), 140
Brecht, Bertold, 58n22
Bring Me the Head of Alfredo García
(Peckingpah, Sam, 1973), 128
Brugues, Alejandro, 80, 216
Buenos Aires viceversa (Agresti,
Alejandro, 1996), 117n21
Bu~nuel, Luis, 13, 218
Burman, Daniel, 15, 213, 214
Bush, George, 137
Buzard, James, 179
Bye Bye Brasil (Diegues, Carlos, 1979),
13, 24n1, 106, 215
C Cochochi (Cárdenas, Israel & Guzmán,
Caballos salvajes (Pi~neyro, Marcelo,
1995), 118n23, 213
Cabeza de Vaca (Echevarría, Nicolás,
1991), 11
Caetano, Adrián Israel, 82, 103
caminho das nuvens, O (Amorim,
Vicente, 2003), 13, 215
camino, El (Ishtar, Yasín, 2007), 12,
147n3, 182, 216
Canaro, Francisco, 84
Candide (Voltaire, 1759), 10
Capra, Frank, 9
Cárdenas, Israel, 8, 217
Carla’s Song (Loach, Ken, 1996), 140,
218
Casanova, Guillermo, 181, 219
Casas, Fabián, 111
Cassavetes, John, 159
Castro, Fidel, 74–7, 90n25
Central do Brasil (Salles, Walter, 1999),
24n1, 31, 43, 58n28, 215
Chambi, Martin, 57n20
Chatwin, Bruce, 95, 116n4
Chávez, Hugo, 176n11
chico que miente, El (Ugás, Marité,
2010), 9, 23, 167–70, 172, 219
Chijona, Gerardo, 80, 216
Children of Men (Cuarón, Alfonso,
2006), 67
Ciclo (Martínez Crowther, Andrea,
2013), 11, 217
cielito, El (Menis, María Victoria, 2004),
10, 14, 157, 213
Cinema, Aspirins, and Vultures
(Gomes, Marcelo, 2006), 13
Cine
pata (Fuguet, Alberto, 2012),
196, 205n23
Civilizaci
on y barbarie (Sarmiento,
Domingo Faustino, 1845), 119n33
Clair de lune (Debussy, Claude), 137
Clinton, Bill, 203n9
Laura Amelia, 2009), 8, 217
Conrad, Joseph, 112
Cook, Thomas, 201n1
Coraz
on de oro (Canaro, Francisco
(canción)), 66, 84
Cordero, Sebastián, 14, 183, 202n5,
216
Correa, Rafael, 184
Cortázar, Julio, 24n3

Cramer, Gregorio, 17, 104, 214
Cremata, Juan Carlos, 9, 80, 216
Cruel Modernity (Franco, Jean, 2013),
21
Crystal Fairy & The Magical Cactus &
2012 (Silva, Sebastián, 2013),
117n12, 182, 215
Cuarón, Alfonso, 1, 4, 22, 49, 55n6, 64,
67–73, 77, 79, 88n8, 88n10–13,
181, 182, 218
cuento chino, Un (Borensztein,
Sebastían, 2011), 12
Cuesta, Jaime, 12, 184, 216
D
Daguerre, 201n1
Darwin, Charles, 95
Debussy, Claude, 137
de Certeau, Michel, 24
de Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel, 133
de Gortari, Salinas, 64
De jueves a domingo (Sotomayor,
Dominga, 2012), 117n12, 215
Deleuze, Gilles, 116, 120n34
de Llaca, Juan Carlos, 9, 181, 218
de Magallanes, Fernando (1480–1521),
95
De nadie (Dirdamal, Tin, 2005),
149n15, 217
de Saint-Exupéry, Antoine, 95, 116n4
de San Martín, José, 87n6
de Tounens, Orélie Antoine (1825–
1878), 96, 105, 116n6
Desde adentro (Milewicz, Eduardo,
1992), 98
Desierto Sur (Garry, Shawn, 2008),
117n12, 215
Desnoes, Edmund, 75
Diale
ctica del espectador (Gutiérrez
Alea, Tomás, 1982), 90n26
INDEX 239
Diarios de motocicleta (Salles, Walter,
2004), 1, 5, 8, 12, 14, 15, 22, 23,
31–47, 49, 55n6, 58n28, 117n11,
181, 209, 211, 213
Diegues, Carlos, 24n1, 106, 158,
215
Donoso, José, 24n3
Don Quixote (de Cervantes Saavedra,
Miguel, 1605; 1615), 10
Dos horas (Fuguet, Alberto, 2008),
195
Dos para el camino (Cuesta, Jaime &
Naranjo, Alfonso, 1981), 12, 184,
185, 188, 216
Drake, Francis (1540–1596), 95
E
Easy Rider (Hopper, Dennis, 1969), 8,
9, 12, 14, 34, 35, 41, 47, 55n4,
56n11, 63, 209
Echevarría, Nicolás, 11
Eimbcke, Fernando, 6, 117n15, 217
Espaldas mojadas (Galindo, Alejandro,
1955), 126
ografo, El (Rossell, Ulises, 2012),
etn

157, 213
expedition to the Ranquel Indians, An
(Mansilla, Lucio, 1870), 119n33
F
Familia rodante (Trapero, Pablo,
2004), 1, 13, 82, 181, 214
Fanon, Frantz, 37
Ferreiro Dávila, Héctor, 8, 215
Ford, John, 9
Fornet, Ambrosio, 75, 89n19
Foucault, Michel, 23, 40, 100, 101,
104, 180
Franco, Jean, 20, 33, 46, 124
240 INDEX
Fresa y Chocolate (Guitérrez Alea,
Tomás & Carlos Tabío, Juan,
1993), 3, 74, 75, 80, 103
frontera, La (Larraín, Ricardo, 1991),
16, 23, 104, 156–7, 162–7, 215
Fuentes, Carlos, 24n3
Fuguet, Alberto, 3, 11, 16, 23, 117n15,
183, 184, 189, 195–201, 203n7,
205n23, 205n24, 205n27,
205n28, 216
Fukunaga, Cary Joji, 143
G Hagerman, Carlos, 136
Galindo, Alejandro, 126
García Espinoza, Julio, 2
García Márquez, Gabriel, 24n3
García Wiedemann, Alejandro, 16, 219
General Roca, 96, 105
Getino, Octavio, 2
Giddens, Anthony, 21, 106–9, 118n25
Giorgelli, Pablo, 147n3, 213
Gomes, Marcelo, 13, 167, 215
Gone with the wind (Fleming, Victor,
1939), 100
González I~nárritu, Alejandro, 4, 49,
55n6, 65–7, 131
Granado, Alberto, 31, 35–9, 41, 44, 51,
55n7, 98
Grapes of Wrath, The (Ford, John,
1940), 9, 124
Grapes of Wrath, The (Steinbeck, John,
1939), 124
Great Expectations (Cuarón, Alfonso,
1998), 67
Greenblatt, Stephen, 38, 56n12
Guantanamera (Gutiérrez Alea,
Tomás & Tabío, Juan Carlos,
1995), 1, 8, 14, 22, 64–6, 73–80,
103, 216
Guerra, Ciro, 6, 216
Guevara, Ernesto “Che”, 31, 34–41,
44, 49, 51, 55n7–55n9, 56n13,
56n14, 57n16, 57n18, 58n26,
59n28, 98, 181
Gutiérrez Alea, Tomás, 1–3, 22, 66,
74–80, 90n26, 216
Guzmán, Patricio, 204n16
H
Habana Blues (Zambrano, Benito,
2005), 15, 80, 117n15, 216
Habermas, Jürgen, 63
Heart of Darkness (Conrad, Joseph,
1899), 112
Hermida, Tania, 8, 23, 182–9, 194,
202n4, 202n5, 203n6, 203n10,
203n13, 216
Hija (González, María Paz, 2011), 12,
215
Historias mínimas (Sorín, Carlos,
2002), 1, 8, 23, 97, 104, 106, 108,
109, 182, 214
Homer, 48
Hudson, William, 95
I
Idle Days in Patagonia (Hudson,
William, 1839), 95
Il futuro (Scherson, Alicia, 2013), 189,
203n7
on, La (Barriga, Susana, 2008), 80,
ilusi

216
Imagined Communities (Anderson,
Benedict, 1983), 65
ins
olitos peces gato, Los (Sainte-Luce,
Claudia, 2013), 11, 12, 217
Invierno (Fuguet, Alberto, 2015),
205n24

Invierno mala vida (Cramer, Gregorio,
1998), 17, 104, 214
invisibles, Los (Silver, Marc/ García
Bernal, Gael, 2010), 149n15
Iracema. Uma transa amaz
onica
(Bodanzky, Jorge & Senna,
Orlando, 1975), 156, 158–62, 215
Ishtar, Yasín, 182, 216
It Happened One Night (Capra, Frank,
1934), 9, 12
J Luis Borges, Jorge, 114, 117n9, 119n31
Jackiewicz-Klak, Edward, 180
Jácome, Jaime Sebastián, 12, 183
on (Reygadas, Carlos, 2002), 1, 217
Jap

jardín del Ede
n, El (Novaro, María,
1993), 147n5, 217
Jauja (Alonso, Lisandro, 2014), 17, 23,
97, 110–16, 119n30, 119n31,
210, 214
jaula de oro, La (Quemada-Díez, Diego,
2013), 8, 13, 23, 127, 140–6, 211,
217
Jiménez, Hernán, 9, 15, 128, 129, 133,
134, 216
Juárez, Benito (1806–1872), 71
K Memorias del subdesarrollo (Gutiérrez
Kaplan, Caren, 182, 197, 201
Katz, Ana, 181, 214
King, John, 3, 24n1
King, Russell, 141, 155
Kogut, Sandra, 17, 215
L Missing (Una inverstigaci
on) (Fuguet,
Lake Tahoe (Eimbcke, Fernando), 6, 15,
17, 117n15, 217
Land and Freedom (Loach, Ken, 1995),
140
INDEX 241
Larraín, Ricardo, 16, 104, 156, 162–7,
215
Lee Jones, Tommy, 15, 23, 126–34, 211
Lerman, Diego, 12, 181, 214
Lista de espera (Carlos Tabío, Juan,
2000), 16, 80, 117n15, 216
Littin, Miguel, 2, 204
Little Princess, A (Cuarón, Alfonso,
1995), 67
Liverpool (Alonso, Lisandro, 2008), 13,
23, 97, 110–13, 209, 214
Lubezki, Emmanuel, 4, 5
M
Maingueneau, Dominique, 52, 53,
59n30, 59n31, 193, 204n21
Mansilla, Lucio V. (1831–1931),
119n33
Martel, Lucrecia, 15, 214
Martínez Crowther, Andrea, 11, 217
Martín Gómez, Jonatán, 200, 205n28
Marvelous Possessions (Greenblatt,
Stephen, 1991), 38
Meerapfel, Jeanine, 9, 22, 31, 33, 51,
52, 54, 104, 213
Memorias del subdesarrollo (Desnoes,
Edmundo, 1965), 75
Alea, Tomás, 1968), 75
Menem, Carlos, 46, 64, 82
Menis, María Victoria, 10, 157
Miel para Ochu
n (Solás, Humberto,
2001), 9, 80, 216
misma luna, La (Riggen, Patricia,
2007), 3, 136, 217
Alberto, 2009), 195
Moreno, Francisco ‘Perito’, 95
muerte de un bur
ocrata, La (Gutiérrez
Alea, Tomás, 1966), 75
242 INDEX
muertos, Los (Alonso, Lisandro, 2004),
6, 8, 110, 114, 214
mujer sin cabeza, La (Martel, Lucrecia,
2008), 15, 214
Mundo grúa (Trapero, Pablo, 1999),
16, 22, 64–6, 80–6, 98, 104, 214
Mu
sica campesina (Fuguet, Alberto,
2011), 3, 16, 17, 23, 117n15, 183,
195–201, 203n7, 209, 210, 216
N Paraíso Travel (Brand, Simon, 2008),
Nacido y criado (Trapero, Pablo, 2006),
15, 17, 82, 98, 99, 101–3, 209,
214
Naissance de la Clinique (Foucault,
Michel, 1963), 180
Naranjo, Alfonso, 12, 184, 216
Nashville (Altman, Robert, 1975), 183,
196–200, 205n27
Natural Born Killers (Stone, Oliver,
1994), 50
Nava, Gregory, 138, 140, 217
Nicholls Lopeandía, Nancy, 163, 165
Nora, Pierre, 85
Nordeste ( Solanas, Juan Diego, 2005),
157, 182, 214
Norteado (Perezcano, Rigoberto,
2009), 16, 17, 23, 126, 134–9, 217
Norte, El (Nava, Gregory, 1983), 138,
140, 142, 217
Nouzeilles, Maria Gabriela, 86, 96, 100,
112, 116
novia errante, Una (2007), 181, 214
O 175n9
Odyssey, The (Homer), 10, 48
Old Gringo (Puenzo, Luis, 1989)
On the Road (Kerouac, Jack, 1957), 1,
7, 8, 12, 43, 55n4, 57n21, 126
On the Road (Salles, Walter, 2012), 31,
43
Orélie Antoine de Tounens (1825–1878).
See de Tounens, Orélie Antoine
P
Pacha (Ferreiro Dávila, Héctor, 2009),
8, 215
Pachamama (Rocha, Eryck, 2009),
55n10, 215
182, 216
passaporte hu
ngaro, Um (Kogut,
Sandra, 2001), 17, 215
Pastrana Arango, Andrés, 203n9
Patagón, 95
Patagonia (Evans, Marc, 2011),
116n5
Patas arriba (García Wiedemann,
Alejandro, 2011), 16, 17, 219
Paz González, María, 12
Paz, Octavio, 185
película del rey, La (Sorín, Carlos,
1986), 106, 214
Pereira dos Santos, Nelson, 13, 215
Perezcano, Rigoberto, 16, 23, 126,
134–9, 146, 217
Personal Belongings (Brugues,
Alejandro, 2006), 80, 216
Pescador (Cordero, Sebastián, 2011),
14, 183, 216
Piazzolla, Astor, 45
Pigafetta, Antonio, 95, 109, 116n2
Pi~neyro, Marcelo, 118n23, 213
Pinochet, Augusto, 156, 162–4,
Pizza, birra, faso (Caetano, Israel Adrián
& Stagnari, Bruno, 1998), 82
Play (Scherson, Alicia, 2005), 189, 193,
195, 204n20

Por la libre (de Llaca, Juan Carlos,
2000), 181, 218
Powers of Horror, The (Kristeva, Julia,
1980), 128
Prisoner of Azkaban, The (Cuarón,
Alfonso, 2004), 4
Profundo carmesí (Ripstein, Arturo,
1996), 1, 218
Puenzo, Luis, 3
Q Sarmiento, Domingo Faustino
Quemada-Díez, Diego, 127, 140–6
que se quedan, Los (Rulfo, Juan Carlos &
Hagerman, Carlos, 2008), 136
Qué tan lejos (Hermida, Tania, 2006), 8,
23, 182–9, 192, 193, 196, 197,
202n4, 203n11, 210, 216
Quintin, 110, 111, 119n33
R 215
Retratos en un mar de mentiras (Gaviria,
Carlos, 2010), 14, 23, 157, 170–4,
216
Revenant, The (González I~nárritu,
Alejandro, 2015), 4, 5
Reygadas, Carlos, 1, 137, 217
Ripstein, Arturo, 1, 218
Rocha, Eryck, 55n10, 215
Rocha, Glauber, 2, 25n4, 105, 158
Roca, Julio Argentino (1843–1914),
96
Rosas, Eduardo, 18, 217
Rossell, Ulises, 157
Rouch, Jean, 159
Ruiz, Raœl, 204n16
Rulfo, Juan, 136
ruta de la luna, La (Jácome, Jaime
Sebastián, 2013), 12, 183, 216
INDEX 243
S
Saavedra, Cornelio, 96
Sainte-Luce, Claudia, 11, 217
Salgado, Sebasti~ao, 57n20
Salles, Walter, 1, 22, 23, 24n1, 31–3,
38–44, 47–9, 51, 54, 55n9, 56n15,
57n16, 57n20, 57n21, 58n26–8,
181, 211, 213, 215
Sanjinés, Jorge, 2
San Juan, Edgar, 135
Santos Pereira, Nelson, 158
(1811–1888), 119n33
Scherson, Alicia, 21, 23, 182, 184,
189–95, 203n7, 205n23, 216
Schwarzenegger, Arnold, 137
Se arrienda (Fuguet, Alberto, 2005),
195
secreto de sus ojos, El (Campanella, Juan
José, 2009), 5
Senna, Orlando, 8, 17, 156, 158–62,
7 Soles (Uteras, Pedro, 2008), 136, 217
Shane (Stevens, Georges, 1953), 145,
146
Sin dejar huella (Novaro, María, 2000),
12, 218
Sin Nombre (Fukunaga, Cary Joji,
2009), 143, 150n19, 217, 218
Solanas, Fernando, 1, 2, 22, 31, 32, 42,
44–9, 51, 54n1, 58n25, 64, 98,
181, 214
Solanas, Juan Diego, 157, 182
Solás, Humberto, 9, 80, 216
S
olo con tu pareja (Cuarón, Alfonso,
1991), 67
S
olo Dios sabe (Bolado, Carlos, 2006),
14, 215, 218
Sorín, Carlos, 1, 12, 23, 97, 104–10,
114, 115, 181, 182, 213, 214
244 INDEX
Stagnari, Bruno, 82
Stone, Oliver, 50
Subida al cielo (Bu~nuel, Luis, 1952), 13,
218
Subiela, Eliseo, 98
Sur, El (Borges, Jorge Luis, 1944),
114
T odromo (Fuguet, Alberto, 2010), 11,
Tabío, Juan Carlos, 3, 16, 64, 66, 73–80,
117n15, 216
Tan de repente (Lerman, Diego, 2002),
12, 181, 214
Terra estrangeira (Salles, Walter &
Thomas, Daniela, 1996), 31, 43,
215
Thelma & Louise (Scott, Ridley, 1991),
12, 14, 50, 148n10
Theroux, Paul, 95, 111, 116n4,
117n9
389 miles Living the Border (Romero
Davis, Luis Carlos, 2014),
149n15
360 Degrees (Meirelles, Fernando,
2011), 66
Tit
on: From Havana to Guantanamera
(Ibarra, Mirtha, 2008), 89n19
Tobal, Gonzalo, 12, 214
T€onnies, Ferdinand (1855–1936), 109
Toro, Guillermo del, 49, 67
tourist gaze, The (Urry, John, 1990),
180
tres entierros de Melquiades Estrada, Los/
The Three Burials of Melquiades
Estrada (Lee Jones, Tommy/
Arriaga, Guillermo, 2005), 127–34
Turistas (Scherson, Alicia, 2009), 21,
23, 182, 183, 189–97, 200, 216
21 grams (González I~nárritu, Alejandro,
2003), 131
U
Ugás, Marité, 9, 156, 167–70, 219
Urry, John, 23, 42, 180, 181, 183, 184,
189–92, 194, 199, 201n1
V
Valdivia, Juan Carlos, 15, 215
Vargas Llosa, Mario, 24n3
Vel

195, 205n24
Vergara, Jorge, 67
viaje de Teo, El (Doehner, Walter,
2008), 136, 218
Viaje, El (1994), 98
viaje hacia el mar, El (Casanova,
Guillermo, 2003), 181, 219
viajes del viento, Los (Guerra, Ciro,
2009), 6, 8, 216
Viajo porque preciso, volto porque ti amo
(Ainouz, Karim & Gomes,
Marcelo, 2009), 13, 215
vida segu
n Muriel, La (Milewicz,
Eduardo, 1997), 16, 17, 21, 98,
100–2, 182, 209, 214
Vidas secas (Pereira dos Santos, Nelson,
1963), 13, 155
o lo que, El (Agresti, Alejandro,
viento se llev

1998), 16, 17, 99, 100, 182, 214
Villegas (Tobal, Gonzalo, 2012), 12, 214
Visa americana (Valdivia, Juan Carlos,
2005), 15, 215
Viva Cuba (Cremata, Juan Carlos,
2005), 80, 216
Voltaire (1694–1778), 10
Voyage of the Beagle (1839), 95
W
Which Way Home? (Camissa, Rebecca,
2011), 149n15, 218
 INDEX 245

Who is Dyani Cristal? (Silver, Marc/ Y

García Bernal, Gael, 2013),
149n15, 217
Wild at Heart (Lynch, David, 1990),
50, 148n10
wretched of the earth, the (Les damne
s
de la terre) (Fanon, Frantz, 1961),
37
Y tu mam
a tambie
n (Cuarón, Alfonso,
2001), 1, 13, 15, 55n6, 65–73, 80,
87n6, 181, 182, 203n11
Z
Zambrano, Benito, 15, 80, 117n15, 216