Adriana Estrada Álvarez, Nicolás Défossé and Diego Zavala Scherer (eds), Cine Político en México (1968–2017)

Abstract

This is the second book in the Transamerican Film and Literature series published by Peter Lang. The first, Mexican Transnational Cinema and Literature, reveals the series’ primary focus on Mexican culture,1 while Cine Político en México (1968–2017) is an insight into the breadth of research that is being undertaken in Mexico on film. Its publication by a European-based editorial provides a welcome opportunity to access such scholarship on this side of the Atlantic. ‘Politics’ is included in the title of the book because it is relevant to all the films under consideration. Another primary focus for most of the essays is violence, whether in the still open case of the students killed by government forces in the days leading up the Olympic Games in 1968, examined by Adriana Estrada Álvarez, or the structural violence of migration and displacement explored by Nicolás Défossé. The dates in the title are significant in this regard: 1968 was a moment of social rupture around the world, marked in Mexico by student and worker protests. After a summer of activism by students in Mexico City, the government killed an unspecified number in the run-up to the Olympic Games, hosted by the city in October that year. Using borrowed cameras from the film school, the protests were well documented by students and bystanders. In their introduction the editors posit this as a moment that established the urgency and responsibility of cinema to document and represent events, whilst acknowledging film’s limitations as a vehicle for truth-telling. They share with others the understanding that 1968 is pivotal; where they differ is in their level of optimism over its long-term effect. While others may suggest that 1968, despite culminating in violence, inspired social and political change, the editors question the consensus that this was a foundational moment of rebellion, and argue instead that it could be read as a moment when dissent was silenced. Their pessimism may well be influenced by the absence of justice for those who were killed in 1968 and the long history of subsequent violence and injustice in Mexico, right up the state’s complicity with the drug violence in recent decades.