Abstract

RODRIGUEZ, Israel. The Third World Adventure of Mexican Cinema. Film Production and Latin American Diplomacy, 1971-1976. Secuencia [online]. 2021, n.111, e1951.  Epub Nov 16, 2021. ISSN 2395-8464.  https://doi.org/10.18234/secuencia.v0i111.1951.

During the first half of the 1970s, the Mexican film industry, together with the Mexican regime, set out to conquer the main forums and spaces of the Third World. Whereas in the political field, the fulfillment of this objective entailed strenuous diplomatic efforts, Mexico’s rapid incursion into cinematographic Third Worldism also required a complex strategy of promotion and negotiation with representatives of the various types of cinematography in the tricontinental movement. The article presents a first approach to this history of Mexican cinematographic Third Worldism promoted by the Luis Echeverría regime. Through the analysis of a range of sources (hemerographic, documentary, oral, and cinematographic), and based on the study of two specific cases of cinematographic collaboration (Chile and Cuba), the text attempts to assess and show what this stage meant for Mexican cinema, the contents of its films, its markets, and the international projection of their works. As a result, the text shows, on the one hand, the vicissitudes and debates Mexican cinema faced in its efforts to insert itself in a political space that was alien to it and, on the other, that the hard work undertaken since 1971 at the end of the Echeverría administration by Mexican officials and filmmakers translated into political rather than economic gains for the regime that sponsored those efforts.

Keywords : Mexican cinema; Third World cinema; third worldism; Miguel Littin; Chile; Cuba; Rodolfo Echeverría; Pésaro.

        · abstract in Spanish     · text in Spanish     · Spanish ( pdf )