Reframing Latin America: A Cultural Theory Reading ... - BGSU Blogs

film foray: MI FAMILIA 307
story of my family, I have to begin where millions of stories have begun. In
a small village in Mexico a long, long time ago.” This assertion explicitly
connects his family’s struggle with that of all Mexican Americans, not to
mention that of millions of Mexicans.
The fi lm highlights the roles that Mexican Americans have played in
various eras in U.S. history—no small feat in a two-hour fi lm. José Sánchez
crosses over into California and settles in Los Angeles with the help of a
distant relative. On the job he meets María, the woman he will marry. (She
is played by Jennifer López in her fi rst signifi cant fi lm role.) They grow into
a large family with six children, Francisco (nicknamed Paco), Irene, Jesus
(nicknamed Chucho), Toni, Ernesto (nicknamed Memo), and Jimmy. Paco
becomes a writer after his tour of duty with the U.S. Navy; Irene gets married,
and she and her husband establish a Mexican restaurant; Chucho gets
involved with a gang and is gunned down by police; Toni joins a convent
and then leaves her order to marry a former priest and become a human
rights activist; Memo studies constantly, becomes a lawyer, and gets engaged
to an Anglo; and Jimmy ends up as a father after serving time for petty
thievery.
Paco begins the story of his family by recounting how his father left his
small village in Mexico and walked for months before crossing the border
to enter Nuestra Señora de Los Angeles, California. “In those days, the
border was just a line in the dirt,” says Paco, laying bare the political discourses
that create nations. From the outset, he establishes that his dad,
José, is a storyteller with a vivid imagination so as to prepare the viewer
for a movie fi lled with attempts to destabilize official versions of history
in favor of multiple unsanctioned histories. Paco and the fi lm make clear
from the opening moment that one must distinguish fact from fi ction.
To this end the fi lm begins with a semicomical sequence that resembles a
telenovela or soap opera to explain the reason José left the village. Paco says
that his uncle Roberto had been caught in an adulterous relationship, and
Trini, Roberto’s wife, took out her revenge by shooting him with her doublebarrel.
A shot is heard but not shown. Says Paco, “Actually nothing like that
ever really happened. That’s just the way my father used to tell the story.”
Paco goes on to explain that his uncle Roberto died of a ruptured appendix
and that economic hardship in the aftermath of the Mexican Revolution
was the impetus for his father’s departure. Thus, from the start, the
fi lm encourages the enjoyment of sensational stories but rejects the notion
that all versions of a story are equally valid. The spectator is made aware
that we must question what we only presume to have witnessed in order to
investigate other possibilities, however mundane they may be.