“Performing Pocha Belonging: Representations of Feminized U.S. Cultural Assimilation in Mexican Film of the 1970s and 80s”

“Performing Pocha Belonging” explores how “pocha” and Chicana identities were represented cinematically in Mexican independent border films within the genres of musical romance or comedy during the 1960s and 70s. How did audiences on both sides of the U.S. Mexico border respond to representations of Mexican American women, or feminized Americanized Mexican nationals of both genders, during these decades? In what ways did gender, race, sexuality, and urban geography influence cinematic representations in this time period, and how did the Chicano/a movement result in shifts for such depictions?

Drawing on two specific filmic examples, “Performing Pocha Belonging” currently focuses on films that feature the well-known Mexican singers Lucha Villa, Lola Beltran, and Juan Gabriel: México de mi corazón (dir. Miguel M. Delgado, 1964) and Del otro lado del puente (dir. Gonzalo Martinez Ortega, 1979). Both films share Los Angeles as a setting and both feature popular Mexican ranchera singer Lucha Villa. Portraying a young vibrant pocha singer in the earlier film, Villa has a more circumscribed role in Del otro lado del puente as the mother of Alberto, played by flamboyant Mexican musical icon Juan Gabriel. Villa’s performance in Del otro lado del puente can be read as a critical reinterpretation of earlier optimistic portrayals of Mexican American identity possible for films released nearer to the Golden Age of Mexican cinema, evidenced in a film like México de mi corazón. Del otro lado del puente, on the other hand, shifts the focus to Gabriel as the fictional Chicano son of Lucha Villa’s character.

What is at stake in this shift from romanticism to political and social activism between these two films, and what does it reveal about changing attitudes about diasporic Mexican American identities for U.S.-Mexican filmmakers and audiences of the period?