by: Dr. Clarence Spigner | Back to Blog index...

Not even United States Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor was able to avoid the Hollywood generated stereotype of the hot-tempered Latina.  Republicans challenged Sotomayor, a woman of Puerto Rican heritage, to cool her alleged temper in service to the Court during her confirmation hearing in summer 2009.   These staunch believers of rugged American individualism could well have been channeling the image of early movie actress Lupe Velez (1908-1944) known as the Mexican spitfire.  The tragic and assertive Velez was reduced to drug and alcohol dependency and committed suicide at age 36.  

Velez cashed-in on the industry’s one-dimensional mentality which gave only limited opportunities to all actresses-of-color.  Similar to the era of black buffoonery, Velez rose to fame in several low-budget comedies depicting a hot-tempered Latina in films such as Hot Pepper (1933), Mexican Spitfire (1939) and The Mexican Spitfire Out-West (1940).  Such a screen persona provided unneeded fodder to Velez’s real-life embattled marriage to Romanian-born Johnny Weissmuller (1904-1984) of the early Tarzan movies.   Love indeed knows no color-line, but Velez’s obsession with Weissmuller and later with Austrian actor Harald Maresch (1916-1986) fostered a sexually racist message of Latin women needing to be tamed by a white male authority.  Velez was reportedly pregnant with Maresch’s child when she killed herself because he refused to marry her.

The 1960’s Civil Rights Movement did little to change this one-dimensional image of the Latin women.  Velez’s real-life tragedy was bad enough, yet the stereotype of the volatile Hispanic female was exacerbated.  The multi-ethnic western, Rio Conchos (1964) for example, featured two hot-blooded, impoverished, South-of-the-Border women who gleefully made themselves available to dirty outlaws.  Similarly, The Wild Bunch (1969), arguably one of Hollywood’s greatest westerns (Once Upon a Time in the West [1968] is my favorite) featured several Mexican women as macho-loving prostitutes.  Modern-day movies are no better. Urban gangster films such as Scarface (1983) and Carlito’s Way (1993), for examples, added insult to injury by depicting non-Hispanic actresses as Latinas and then contrasted their depictions with that of Anglo women who were presented as being more desired and respected.    

At the turn of the 21st Century, there is little evidence that Hollywood is moving beyond such racist/sexist stereotypes.  For examples; the assertive Cuban–born actress Maria Conchita Alonzo appeared as a mere sexual plaything of two white macho-men (Nick Nolte and Powers Booth) in the modern-day Tex-Mex western, Extreme Prejudice (1987).  Central American actress Elpidia Carrillo was put on topless display as the peasant girl-friend of James Woods in the left-wing Salvador (1982). Carrillo portrayed a defiant South American jungle-rebel in the science-fiction thriller, Predator (1987).  Her resilient character stood up to black muscle-man Carl Weathers but easily succumbed to steroid-induced Arnold Schwarzenegger.  Even the tough, no-nonsense Michelle Rodriguez, an actress with roots in the Dominican Republic, was cast as hopelessly in love (and resign to) a white male in Fast and Furious (2001).  The cinematic message being delivered has less to do with depicting interracial romance than propagandizing a need to control Latin women.

Within Hollywood’s 100-year history, actresses of Latin American heritage such as Rita Hayworth (1918-1987), Raquel Welch, and Jennifer Lopez, for examples, have had to counter such sexual racism by passing for white (on-screen and off).  Others have faced the contradiction head-on; such as Nicaraguan-born Barbara Carrera and Brazilian-born Sonia Braga.  These actresses, known more for their bodies than brains, have literally displayed themselves on screen. Braga however, is among the more competent (Eva Mendez has also proven to be exceptional) who was nonetheless reduced to portraying a kinky criminal with a freakish “attraction” to conflicted liberal/conservative Clint Eastwood in The Rookie (1990).  

Hollywood will likely continue with these rude images until moviegoers demand fuller range of the Latina experience.  Meanwhile, Hispanic actresses might take a history lesson from Delores del Rio (1905-1983) and Katy Jurado (1924-2002), two earlier Latin actresses who maintained their dignity and their ethnicity in spite of the sexual racism they encountered in society and in film.

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