Revolutionary Visions by Stephanie M. Pridgeon

Author:Stephanie M. Pridgeon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Motion pictures – Latin America – History, Jews in motion pictures, Jews – Latin America – History – 20th century, Revolutions – Latin America – History – 20th century, Latin America – History – 20th century
Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Figure 3.1. MAPAM flag at Hanukkah meeting in Novia que te vea.

It is necessary to consider Vasconcelos’s image of “Jewish striae” in Castilian blood in order to inscribe Jewish ethnicity within cultural and critical models of Mexican ethnic identities. In this way, Jews are not entirely outsiders to the ethnic categories that have configured existing understandings of Mexican identities. Upon learning that everyone in Mexico immigrated from somewhere else, Rifke develops a deep interest in archaeology. Yet, there is a problematic model of national ethnic identity that takes Jewishness into account but in a way that does not recognize or allow for Jewish difference, as Vasconcelos does with other categories of ethnic difference. Furthermore, the Judaic striae of which Vasconcelos speaks are Sephardic, not Ashkenazi, such that the consideration of Jews within his model is not wholly inclusive of Jews. Yet, there is a degree to which, albeit partially and problematically, the Jewish body has been included within hegemonic cultural models of Mexican national identity. My reading of Novia que te vea in dialogue with Vasconcelos sheds light on elements that have “hidden themselves” in the Castilian blood that forms part of mestizo identity, just as Jewishness has remained largely “hidden” in critical understandings of the construction of race and nationalism. In turn, I contest prevailing conceptualizations of centre and periphery by bringing Jewishness to the fore in discussions on national identities.

Israel, Zionism, and 1960s Student Movements

In her efforts to reconfigure national identity in Novia que te vea, Guita Schyfter foregrounds national, regional, and local politics in Mexico. The director has asserted her deliberate choice in setting the film in the 1960s so as to explore the characters’ involvement in revolutionary groups that were largely inspired by the success of the Cuban Revolution in 1959. As in other Latin American countries, Mexico’s progressive young people found themselves swept up in the revolutionary and socialist fervour of political movements in the 1960s. Rifke is shown in the courtyard of her university helping to paint signs that say, “Yes to Cuba, No to Yankees,” in solidarity with Castro’s regime and in opposition to US imperialist forces. To repress dissent, the Mexican government sought out communist youths and arrested them in the days leading up to President Kennedy’s 1962 visit to Mexico City. Saavedra is one of these young Communist Party members who are arrested. As Ilene S. Goldman has noted, Novia que te vea “uses Kennedy’s visit and the Mexican government’s show of anti-Cuba, pro-U.S. behavior to highlight the tumultuous historical circumstances in which Rifke and Oshi must reconcile their identities” (loc. 2457–60). The film’s representation of political struggles may be understood as both uniquely Jewish and as facilitating solidarity between Jews and non-Jews. In the case of Mexico, the 1960s have a poignant meaning for student movements in light of the 2 October 1968 Tlatelolco massacre. On the heels of months of ever larger demonstrations protesting the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, just days before they were to start, armed forces

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