The Americas 63:2 October 2006, 261-280 Copyright by the Academy of American Franciscan History

REELIZING1 ARAB AND JEWISH ETHNICITY IN MEXICAN FILM*

s a historian of Mexican history who studies Middle Eastern immigrants to Mexico in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, I have approached the topic of ethnic film with both trepidation and great interest. Attuned to the historiography of what and who is Mexican, I view the films El baisano Jalil and Novia que te vea for their representations of ethnic difference and suggestions of a multicultural Mexico. Here, I wish to explore how these films not only show the presence of immigrant groups in the cultural fabric of Mexico, but also how the films demonstrate that public discourses (via film) can enhance scholarly understanding of multiculturalism. My purpose is to make a discrete intervention in Mexican historiography by underscoring the importance of film in conceptualizing the dimensions of ethnic identity. I suggest that these films are rooted in a particular Mexican social context in which both Arab and Jewish immigrants2 have been able to manipulate the ambiguities of what it means to be Mexican.
* I would like to thank Bill Beezley for introducing me to Chris Ehrick. Chris Ehrick was instrumental in organizing the March 2004 Rocky Mountain Council for Latin American Studies panel Film and Nation in Latin America 1910s-1940s which led to this issue. At Sonoma State University, Elizabeth Martnez and John Muller were helpful in locating film material and suggesting various sources. Rosa Rojas Montes, as always, has been a great research assistant tracking down the film El Baisano Jalil. Misha Klein and Ana Lpez took their editing pens to various versions of this paper and helped make needed changes. Filmmaker Jonathan LeMond helped me see the power of filmmakers techniques to influence audiences, and Robert H. McLaughlin continues to make me a better scholar. 1 I borrow the term reelized from Jack G. Shaheens work, Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People (New York: Olive Branch Press, 2001). 2 Defining appropriate categories of personhood to describe these immigrants has sparked considerable debate. After World War II (and the founding of the State of Israel), and more recently, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the term Arab has become politically charged. Scholars, such as Zidane Zraoui and Roberto Marn-Guzmn, however, refer to immigrants to Mexico from the Middle East as Arabs, employing an ethno-cultural construct. I use the term Middle Eastern immigrants to refer to peoples from the region that comprises the contemporary nation-states of Syria, Lebanon, Palestine (West Bank, Gaza, and British mandated territory), Israel, Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Egypt, and the Arabian

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Drawing on these two films and Mexican history, this paper will argue that mexicanidad is a flexible, dynamic concept that allows ethnically other individuals to join the Mexican nation. Arab and Jewish immigrants who migrated from the Middle East and from Eastern Europe to Mexico exemplify such individuals. LOCATING ETHNIC IDENTITY Discourses on Mexican ethnicity tend to point to a tripartite scheme that refers to constructions of the indigenous, the Spanish, and the mestizo. Recently, however, social scientists have begun to challenge these constructions by describing the role of immigrants and other ethnic groups settling in Mexico. This new scholarship on ethnicity not only complements traditional historiographies, but also expands the monolithic notion of mexicanidad and who comprises the Mexican nation. Yet, prior to this inclusion of immigrants in Mexican historiography, Mexican cinemathrough the pioneering efforts of producers and directorsopened questions of ethnicity and belonging to the public discourse in Mexico. Through the medium of film, Mexicans appear to explore what contemporary scholars regard as ethnic consciousness and its relationship to mexicanidad. As John and Jean Comaroff describe it, ethnic consciousness . . . has its origins in encounters between peoples who signify their differences and inequalitiesin power, economic position, political ambitions, and historical imaginingsby cultural means. Typically, it is the subordinate, not the dominant, who are first marked and named.3 Ethnic identity, similar to
Peninsula and their predecessors. Although Armenia and Turkey are not Arab states, peoples from these nation-states are often considered part of this migration. I have chosen to use Middle Eastern, preferring its geographic connotations in examining the history of peoples who emigrated from the Ottoman Empire at the end of the nineteenth century, and those who have migrated from the region in the twentieth century. However, I sometimes use the term Arabs to distinguish between Arabs and Jews in accordance with Mexican discourse. The Lebanese immigrants represent another subgroup within this larger Middle Eastern/Arab migration. Lebanon and Syria were not nation-states until the 1940s and therefore immigrants to Mexico from these regions often declared cities and regions as their place of origin. It should also be noted that many historical documents in Latin America indicate that these peoples hailed from the Ottoman Empire, therefore the term turco (Turk) is still used occasionally to describe Middle Easterners. Although the term Middle Eastern can be reductionist, similar to the use of Latin American, it offers the most comprehensive nomenclature based on my examination of 8,240 Middle Eastern immigrant registration cards compiled by the Mexican government between 1926 and 1951. 3 John L. and Jean Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution: The Dialectics of Modernity on a South African Frontier, Volume II (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1997), p. 388. The Comaroffs also note that, . . . ethnic identity, which always assumes both an experiential and a practical salience for those who bear it, entails the complementary assertion of the collective self and the negation of the collective other; it may call into question shared humanity; and its substance is likely to reflect the ten-

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other social identities, is relational, distinguishing us and them, and rooted in complex historical processes. Arabs and Jews who came to Mexico in the late nineteenth century were marked as others, yet later joined the Mexican nation as citizens. After the Mexican Revolution in the 1920s and 1930s, Arabs and Jews were seen as foreigners, threatening new constructions of indigenismo4 and mexicanidad. By the 1940s, however, as with Hollywoods interest in Latin America and immigrant groups more generally, Mexican cinema began to incorporate immigrant themes though on a comparatively smaller scale. Through well-known actors such as Joaquin Pardav, Sara Garca, Emilio Tuero (in El baisano Jalil), and Claudette Maille and Maya Mishalska (in Novia que te vea), producer Gregorio Wallerstein (in El baisano Jalil) and filmmaker Guita Schyfter (in Novia que te vea) cast culturally familiar Mexicans to play characters of other ethnicities.5 These actors drew Mexican audiences to sympathize with immigrant characters on-screen, and perhaps with immigrants in Mexico as well. The immigrant themes of these films may suggest tolerance and even acceptance of otherness in Mexican society decades before scholarly work began to critique the tripartite notion of mexicanidad. Although both Arab and Jewish ethnic groups faced discrimination and inequality of opportunity during twentieth-century Mexico, they prevail in these two discrete films as idealized Mexicans in the first and as Jewish-Mexican women maintaining their cultural ties to Judaism in the second. In 1942, Joaqun Pardav and Gregorio Wallerstein produced the film El baisano Jalil that tells the story of Jalil Farad and of his sons interest in a young Mexican aristocratic woman. Although members of the Middle Eastern (and more specifically the Lebanese) community did not produce El baisano Jalil, the inter-ethnic, comedic narrative culminates in a romance between Jalils son and the young Mexican woman. More recently, Guita
sions embodied in relations of inequality. John and Jean Comaroff, Ethnography and the Historical Imagination (Boulder: Westview Press, 1992), p. 53. 4 Indigenismo, as an official policy, aimed to encourage those indigenous activities and attitudes that would best engender a sense of Mexican nationalism. It targeted for eradication certain practices, such as languages and other related to other core aspects of indigenous culture (such as medicine and agricultural techniques), in the interests of turning Mexicos indigenous people into mestizos and establishing Mexico as a nation. Susanna Rostas argues that mexicanidad is an invented tradition. Susanna Rostas, Performing Mexicanidad; Popular Indigenismo in Mexico City, in Encuentros Antropolgicos: Power, Identity and Mobility in Mexican Society, edited by Valentina Napolitano and Xochitl Leyva Solano (London: University of London, Institute of Latin American Studies, 1998), pp. 60-61. Although this definition highlights the policy aims of indigenismo, it neglects indigenismo as an aesthetic movement linked to indigenous arts. 5 However, as filmmaker Jonathan LeMond suggests, it is possible that the directors may have just selected the most available actors to get the respective movies made.

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Schyfter and Hugo Hiriart produced Novia que te vea, an adaptation of Rosa Nissns 1992 novel. Departing from the novel, the film illustrates how Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews situate themselves in post World War II Mexican society. Through the eyes of the protagonist, Oshinica Mataraso, the audience witnesses divisions within the Jewish community in Mexico, yet observes a collective struggle against being labeled as killers of Christ. Although these two films reflect different time periods and cultural shifts in Mexico, both films expand notions of Mexican national identity and who is Mexican by asserting that encounters of difference and inequality in Mexico produce a society of varied ethnic consciousness.6 What makes these encounters with otherness distinctive is that the audience empathizes with the immigrant characters through the filmmakers use of Mexican actors and visual techniques that humanize the characters. Seth Fein has suggested that filmmakers might have made films using ethnic others to stand in for what they, as ethnic filmmakers, might have been experiencing in everyday life.7 We can only speculate that some Mexican filmmakers were Jewish, such as Gregorio Wallerstein and Costa Rican Guita Shifter, or that their Jewishness influenced their choices in film topics and use of visual techniques to engage their audiences. In the cases of El baisano Jalil and Novia que te vea, the filmmakers show how immigrants to Mexico and their children have chosen to embrace elements of their ethnicity while simultaneously trying to fit in. The producers and directors thereby open questions about who is Mexican beyond the post-revolutionary construction of mexicanidad. In doing so, these filmmakers were rooted in a particular Mexican social context and their work is both a product of and an intervention in that very same context. IMMIGRANTS TO MEXICO To place El baisano Jalil and Novia que te vea in context requires an accounting of migration from the Middle East to Mexico. During the late nineteenth century, immigrants from the Middle East (Christians, Muslims, Druzes and Jews) and Eastern Europe (especially Jews) came to Mexico often intending to improve their economic situation and/or to migrate to the United States. Many also hoped to return to their home countries. At the turn of the century, however, events in Mexico, the Middle East, Europe, and the United States delayed their returns indefinitely. Consequently, many immiI would like to thank Rob McLaughlin for helping me articulate this idea. Seth Feins comments from the March 2004 Rocky Mountain Council for Latin American Studies panel Film and Nation in Latin America 1910s-1940s.
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grants settled permanently in Mexico and brought over other family members. According to census data, between 1895 and 1940, approximately 36,000 people of Middle Eastern background, Armenians and Turks included, lived in Mexico.8 These immigrants held various religious beliefs and included Sunnis, Shiites, Druzes, Jews, and Christians. The Christian community that immigrated to Mexico was predominantly composed of Maronites, followed by Greek Orthodox, and a few Melkites (Greek Catholics).9 According to the Centro Libans website, roughly 380,000 out of Mexicos present population of 97 million people have Lebanese ancestry.10 Jewish immigration to Mexico included migrations from both the Middle East and Eastern Europe. According to Deborah Roitman, the Mexican Jewish community is a community of communities, a subethnicity community whereby there are four main ethnicities grouped by country of origin: 1) the Monte Sinai Alliance founded in 1912 who incorporate immigrants from Damascus and northern Syria; 2) the Maguen David community who include those immigrants from Aleppo, and who spoke Ladino, (a language dating back to the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 and was often spoken among Sephardic communities of the Ottoman Empire), and were influenced by French culture; 3) the Sephardic community who were from Spain, Turkey, the Balkans, and Greece, areas formerly occupied by Muslims; and 4) the Ashkenazy community who include immigrants from Eastern Europe and Germany. Paulette Kershenovich suggests that 39.5% of the Jewish Mexican community is Ashkenazi, and 47.4% is Sephardic and Arabic sectors combined, with 13.1% unknown or indifferent to their origins.11 A 1989 publication on Jews from Aleppo, Syria indicates that
Delia Salazar Anaya, La poblacin extranjera en Mxico (1895-1990): Un recuento con base en los Censos Generales de Poblacin (Mexico: Instituto Nacional de Antropologa e Historia, 1996), p. 105. 9 Bill Crowley provides the following description: The Christian community had (and has) three main components: (1) the Maronites, a Catholic rite that developed independently from Rome until the twelfth century when union was achieved as a result of the Crusades; (2) the Greek Orthodox; and (3) the Greek Catholics, also known as Melchites, [sic] an offshoot of the Greek Orthodox that joined Rome in 1724. William K. Crowley, The Levantine Arabs: Diaspora in the New World, 1984 Yearbook Conference of Latin Americanist Geographers, edited by Katherine M. Kvale (Conference of Latin American Geographers, Volume 10), p. 138. 10 Centro Libans website: http://www.centrolibanes.org/centro_alt.php?secc=mapa_sitio (August 18, 2004). Also see Sam Dagher, Nations Lebanese Distant from Arab Conflicts but Hold Close Ties to Those in Power, The News Mexico (Thursday, October 25, 2001), p. 4. Dagher claims 400,000 people of Lebanese Christian descent reside in Mexico. 11 Deborah Roitman, Jewish identification among young Mexican Jews, (Thesis, Bar Ilan University, May 1996), p. 20; Paulette Kershenovich, Jewish Women in Mexico, in Jewish Women 2000: Conference Papers from the Hadassah Research Institute on Jewish Women International Scholarly Exchanges 19971998, edited by Helen Epstein (Boston: Brandeis University, November 1999), p. 98, n13.
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between 1907 and 1930, only 540 Sephardic Jews migrated to Mexico.12 This same study suggested that 8,914 Jews from Eastern Europe migrated to Mexico between 1921 and 1929.13 According to Sergio Della Pergola, there were roughly 41,000 Jews living in Mexico in 1996.14 In 2000, the total foreign-born population living in Mexico represented only 0.5 percent of the total Mexican population of over 97 million people.15 Although historically speaking foreigners have not had a large demographic profile in Mexico, their presence can be seen and felt in the economy, politics and social mores and explicitly in the films El baisano Jalil and Novia que te vea. MEXICAN CINEMA AND HOLLYWOOD DIPLOMACY The presence of foreign ethnicities or the ethnically other in the social landscape caused concern among Mexicans, that led the Mexican government to systematically register foreigners starting in 1926. The U.S. government followed with the Alien Registration Act in 1940. Robert Brent Toplin notes that Hollywood constructed . . . outsiders [ those] who had been present in the society for centuries but had still not achieved substantial integration or acceptance as equals. . . .16 Cinematic representations of outsiders or ethnic others caused audiences to re-examine who is American and who is Mexican, respectively, often hinting that the other could ultimately join the nation and nationalist discourses. Ana Lpez has compellingly argued that, thinking of Hollywood as ethnographeras co-producer in power of cultural textsallows us to reformulate its relationship to ethnicity.17 Hollywoods cinematic representations of ethnic groups participate in the creation and identification of these groups and pro-

12 Liz Hamui de Halabe, coordinator, Los Judos de Alepo en Mxico (Mexico: Magun David, A.C., 1989), p. 101. Also see Corinne Azen Krause, The Jews in Mexico: A History with Special Emphasis on the Period from 1857 to 1930, (Ph.D. diss., University of Pittsburgh, 1970), p. 65. 13 Liz Hamui de Halabe, Los Judos de Alepo en Mxico, p. 101; Corinne Azen Krause, The Jews in Mexico, p. 65. 14 Sergio Della Pergola, World Jewry: Beyond 2000. The Demographic Prospects. (Occasional Papers 2, The Third Frank Green Lecture), (Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, 1999), Table 5, p. 24. 15 http://ww.inegi.gob.mc/est/contenidos/espanol/tematicos/mediano/med.asp?t=mpob63&c (April 6, 2004). 16 Robert Brent Toplin, ed., Hollywood as Mirror: Changing Views of Outsiders and Enemies in American Movies (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1993), p. viii. 17 Ana M. Lpez, Are All Latins from Manhattan? Hollywood, Ethnography, and Cultural Colonialism, in Unspeakable Images: Ethnicity and the American Cinema, edited by Lester D. Friedman (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991), p. 405.

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vide audiences with an experience of encounters of ethnic difference. This experience translates into identifying with the ethnically other characters and a certain level of tolerance for multiculturalism. The representations of ethnic groups also occurred in a historical context. With the specter of war looming in Europe during the late 1930s, Hollywood executives searched for alternative markets and deemed Latin America a lucrative option. By early 1939, many major studios began actively producing Latin-themed good neighborly films with the aim to please Latin American audiences.18 As the U.S. government became increasingly concerned with the perceived Nazi presence in Brazil and Argentina, President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (CIAA), and appointed Nelson Rockefeller as coordinator. The CIAA was to harmonize all official relations with Latin America and thwart Nazi influence in the region through effective propaganda campaigns on all fronts. In particular, Rockefeller considered the medium of film so important that he created a special Motion Picture Division and selected his old friend John Hay (Jock) Whitney to direct it.19 Jock even asked Orson Welles to go to Brazil to make a film about Carnival, which was never released.20 As Hollywood sought ways to produce Good Neighbor policy films in the late 1930s, the Mexican film industry found their own government interested in the diffusion of national integration values across popular social sectors. Furthermore, Mexicos pro-Allies position during the Second World War resulted in . . . unlimited quantities of raw film from the United States.21 Hollywoods support led to the Mexican film industrys symbiotic relationship with various Mexican presidential administrations that provided funding and leadership. As Seth Fein has argued,
. . . by 1945 Mexican elite aspirations were so bound up with U.S. ideological initiatives and transnationalized mass media that the two national projects cannot be easily extricated from one another for analytic purposes. That is, together they

18 Brian ONeil, The Demands of Authenticity: Addison Durland and Hollywoods Latin Images during World War II, in Classic Hollywood, Classic Whiteness, edited by Daniel Bernardi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), p. 360. 19 ONeil, The Demands of Authenticity, p. 360. 20 Its All True (Paramount Pictures, 1994). I would like to thank John Muller for lending me his copy. 21 Jorge A. Schnitman, Film Industries in Latin America: Dependency and Development (Norwood: ABLEX Publishing, 1984), p. 29. Also see Ana M. Lpez, Are All Latins from Manhattan?, pp. 408409.

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forged a cultural offensive vis--vis the Mexican masses, one which matured during the cold war and continues during the contemporary neoliberal epoch.22

Beginning with President Lzaro Crdenas (1934-1940), the state provided protections for the Mexican film industry through tax exemptions and special financing for film production and the construction of studios. Crdenas also decreed that all Mexican theatres show at least one domestic film each month.23 Following Crdenas, President Manuel vila Camacho (19401946) continued the protectionist system and enforced the mandatory exhibition of Mexican films.24 In addition, the Mexican government in April 1942 created the Banco Cinematogrfico to organize the film industry on a more financially sound basis. Although the Banco began as a private institution, Banco de Mxico and the Nacional Financiera held 10 percent of its stock. The board of directors consisted of six bankers and two cineasts Mauricio de la Serna and Jess Grovas.25 By 1943, Banco Cinematogrfico began backing locally produced films to reflect the contemporary Mexican reality on the screen; by 1947, the Banco came under full state control.26 One such nationalist film was El baisano Jalil that focuses on the issue of immigrant economic prowess and assimilation, and probably took cues from Hollywood on exoticizing ethnic otherness.27 ARABS AND MEXICANIDAD Released in 1942, the film, El baisano Jalil, addresses how Arabs wove their presence into the cultural fabric of Mexico. The film depicts the con-

22 Seth Fein, Myths of Cultural Imperialism and Nationalism in Golden Age Mexican Cinema, in Fragments of a Golden Age: The Politics of Culture in Mexico Since 1940, edited by Gilbert Joseph, Anne Rubenstein, and Eric Zolov (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001), p. 189; Also see, Seth Fein, Everyday Forms of Transnational Collaboration: U.S. Film Propaganda in Cold War Mexico, in Close Encounters of Empire: Writing the Cultural History of U.S.-Latin American Relations, edited by Gilbert M. Joseph, Catherine C. LeGrand, and Ricardo D. Salvatore (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998). 23 Schnitman, Film Industries, p. 41. 24 Schnitman, Film Industries, p. 42. 25 Carl J. Mora, Mexican Cinema: Reflections of a Society 1896-1960 (Berkeley: University of California, 1982), p. 59. 26 Mora, Mexican Cinema, p. 62, note 38; Schnitman, Film Industries, p. 42. 27 Examples of Hollywoods exoticizing ethnic otherness can be seen in The Sheik (1921), The Son of the Sheik (1926), The Jazz Singer (1927), and Gentlemens Agreement (1947). Also see Miriam Hansen, Babel and Babylon: Spectatorship in American Silent Film (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991); Gina Marchetti, Romance and the Yellow Peril: Race, Sex, and Discursive Strategies in Hollywood Fiction (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993); Mathew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998); and Lester Friedman, ed., Unspeakable Images: Ethnicity and the American Cinema (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991).

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cern of elite Mexicans over the economic success of immigrants from the Middle East, and it shows how some Middle Eastern immigrants have been able to prevail in Mexico as idealized Mexicans. In addition to El baisano Jalil, Gregorio Wallerstein produced another film about Middle Eastern peddlers in 1945 entitled, El barchante Neguib with Pardav as director.28 (Unfortunately, I have not been able to view this film.) Filmex financed both and actor Joaqun Pardav directed the films and played the protagonists. The character Jalil Farad, played by Joaqun Pardav in El baisano Jalil, and his economic success comes to symbolize the anxiety about foreigners in Mexico.29 This tension between Mexicans and foreigners stems from the perceived ability of foreigners to make money in Mexico, and to do so at the expense of Mexicans. Interestingly, El baisano Jalil shows that to climb the Mexican economic ladder, the foreigner needs to have enough Mexicanness to work within the system. Indeed, Middle Eastern immigrants historically worked within the ambiguities of what it means to be Mexican by being Mexican in business transactions while maintaining their Arab culture. Imbued with melodramatic flare, El baisano Jalil tells the story of a courtship between the son of an immigrant family from the Middle East and the daughter of an aristocratic Mexican family that has fallen on hard times. The narrative tacks between these young adults and the confused interventions of their families. In one memorable scene, the daughter of this Mexican aristocratic family rejects Selim Farad (Jalils son). Overcome by emotion, Jalil cries: Have I not worked as if I was Mexican? Have I not made more for this country than all that family? Dont I love Mexico as if it were my own country? The son of my soul is not Mexican?30 Although the director shows the Farad family lives in a large, spacious home, full of mosaics and arches to accentuate their money, Jalil, his wife Suad (played by Sara Garca), and son Selim (played by Emilio Tuero) still face painful discrimination in their new home country. This narrative of Farad becoming an owner of a large fabric shop in Mexico City (28 de Correo Mayor) illustrates the common perception among Mexicans that Middle Eastern immigrants, through their economic prowess, quickly came to dominate the Mexican economy. However,
28 Josefina Estrada, Joaqun Pardav: El seor del espectculo, Volume II (Mexico: Editorial Clo, Libros y Videos, S.A. de C.V., 1996), pp. 35-36. 29 Joaqun Pardav (1900-1955) acted in seven films in 1942 and four films in 1945. Paulo Antonio Paranagu, ed., Mexican Cinema, translated by Ana M. Lpez (London: British Film Institute, IMCINE, and Consejo Nacional Para la Cultura y las Artes de Mxico, 1995), p. 292. 30 Yo no he trabajado como si fuera majacano? No he hecho por esta patria ms que toda esa familia? No quiero a Mxico como si fuera mi propia madre? El hijo de mi alma no es majacano?

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the ability of the Middle Eastern immigrants to climb the economic ladder has not always corresponded to acceptance in Mexican society. As the character Farad experiences flashbacks to his peddling days, he both fears losing his new status as a storeowner and celebrates his new home in modern Mexico. In one scene, Jalil and Suad visit the home of Guillermo de la Rada, the Mexican aristocratic family that has lost most of its wealth and fiercely clings to its social status. Needing money to maintain the familys social position, don Guillermo invites the Farads to the family hacienda. Jalil and Suad encourage a relationship between Selim (their son) and don Guillermos daughter (Marta), played by Manolita Saval, and hope to be accepted by Mexican elite society. Meanwhile, Martas aunt and uncle scheme to have her marry Billy, a member of their own social class. Encouraged by Don Guillermos invitation, Jalil desperately wants to impress this aristocratic family. However, throughout the visit, Jalil and Suad break societal rules creating comic relief by making fun of the rigidity of Mexican aristocracy for the audience. For example, they wear over-the-top clothing: Jalil appears in a tuxedo with coattails while the other men are in open shirts and blazers, and Suad wears dangling earrings and heavy eye make-up. Although the actors look attractive, director Pardav shows that the characters of Jalil and Suad are isolated from Mexican aristocracy and from Mexican society more generally.31 In their down-to-earth comments (Suad admits to preparing meals for her husband), Selim becomes embarrassed by his parents, and suggests that his father has perhaps overdressed compared to the other guests, to which Jalil replies, it is because they have no money. Jalils comment suggests that immigrants, whatever their origin, are not above their own prejudices, and can make disdainful references to their host countrys inhabitants. During this comical yet uncomfortable visit to the hacienda, Jalil and Suad wear charro outfits (which typically include a sombrero, a silver-trimmed bolero jacket, and tight trousers) trying to ride horses, and entertaining their hosts by singing and dancing to an Arabic-sounding song.32 Selim, meanwhile, realizes that his hosts are laughing at his parents, and says, my parents, as all simple and good people, have wanted to win you over. The music of our land that you have just finished listening to is not an odd thing. Then, with the camera sweeping on Selims face and the sound of a full orchestra, Selim begins to play the piano while singing Rimski Krsakovs Scheherazade in Spanish, capturing the hearts of the young women guests,
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By using long lens shots, Pardav is able to capture the marginalization of the characters. Pardav uses medium and full shots to focus on Jalil and Suad.

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and in particular, Marta.33 Billy realizes Selims romantic gesture and makes a snide comment about the young Sheik (el joven sheik). Meanwhile, Jalil and Suad are proud of their son and the sacrifices they have made for him. As the romantic tension rises between Selim and Marta, he fumbles in expressing himself. Assuming that Selim is uninterested in her, she returns to Billy. Selim becomes withdrawn and Jalil decides that he must act on his sons behalf. Unbeknownst to Selim, Jalil goes to Don Guillermos home to ask for Martas hand for Selim. Martas mother, aunt, and uncle respond that she cannot marry a poor abonero (referring to the system of a customer paying for goods in installment, abonos), a foreigner, a son of an Arab! Jalil, feeling rejected, begins to experience flashbacks to his peddling days. When Jalil returns to his home, he finds Suad and Selim eating dinner. Director Pardav captures the family dynamics of separation by beginning with a three shot and shifting with the dialogue between double and single shots. In a close-up, Jalil begins to sob and tells them about what happened. At first, angry at his father for acting on his behalf and without permission, Selim denies any interest in Marta calling her a frivolous woman and is confused by his fathers emotions. Suad responds, your pain is that of your fathers and my pain . . . we are alone in the world and have each other to help one another. The scene not only culminates with the three actors in one shot, bringing them together, but it also touches on a common theme of Mexican cinema in the 1940s and post-revolutionary Mexico that families must be strong and united.34 How much does the Farad family belong to this postrevolutionary Mexico? Are they in fact the new ideal Mexican family? Suad decides that after Selims lack of self-awareness and Jalils meddling, it is time for her to save her familys happiness. She tells Jalil, my heart of a mother tells me that something has happened to Selim and my heart never makes a mistake. In the scene that follows, Suad and Marta chat in a restaurant. Suad asks Marta to help her stop Selim from traveling to Europe. Initially, Marta says she cannot do anything, but soon admits to her feelings for Selim. Sara Garca, often described as the mother of Mexico35
33 Emilio Garca Riera, Historia Documental del Cine Mexicano 2, 1938-1942 (Jalisco: Universidad de Guadalajara and Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, 1993), p. 264. 34 For a more in-depth discussion of Mexican cinema in the 1940s, see Seth Fein, Myths of Cultural Imperialism, pp. 159-198; and Joanne Hershfield, Race and Ethnicity in the Classical Cinema, in Mexicos Cinema: A Century of Film and Filmmakers, edited by Joanne Hershfield and David R Maciel (Wilmington: Scholarly Resources,1999), pp. 81-100. 35 Among the star fixtures of the cinema, was the mother of Mexico, Sara Garca. Carl Mora, Mexican Cinema: Reflections of a Society 1896-1980 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), p. 57. Also see, Carl J. Mora, Feminine Images in Mexican Cinema: The Family Melodrama; Sara

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and the . . . perfect incarnation of the Latin mother, transcends cultural boundaries and becomes the mother of all mothers, determined to keep her family happy and together.36 Despite being a foreign, Arab character, Suad embodies the mother spirit associated with the ideal Mexican family and does indeed save her family and those connected to the family. Although members of the Middle Eastern community did not produce El baisano Jalil, the film signals that Middle Easterners composed a visible part of the Mexican cultural fabric in the 1940s.37 Director Pardav and producer Wallerstein also seem to suggest that immigrants have been a part of Mexicos economic development and that the immigrants work ethic complemented the modernizing Mexican nation. By the last year of President Miguel Alemns sexenio (six-year term) (1952), Wallerstein was considered one of the more powerful film producers in Mexico. He, along with other well-known producers, consolidated an oligopoly in Mexican cinema through family ties in the 1960s.38 Jorge Schnitman notes that: . . . from 1945 on the high levels of state protection and the close doors policy followed by the Film Production Workers Union (that included film directors) seems to have had a stultifying effect on creativity, thematic diversity, and film directors eagerness to include critical views in their films.39 Therefore, before 1945, Pardav and Wallerstein had
Garca, The Mother of Mxico; and the Prostitute, Studies in Latin American Popular Culture 4 (1985), pp. 228-235. 36 Paulo Antonio Paranagu, Mexican Cinema, p. 4. 37 While many second and third generation Middle Easterners pursued careers in medicine, law, and engineering, a few went into producing and directing movies. Miguel Zacaras and his brother Mario Zacaras produced many films. Miguel made such films as Rosario, El peon de las nimas and many more. Martha Daz de Kuri and Lourdes Macluf, De Lbano a Mxico: crnica de un pueblo emigrante (Mexico: Grfica, Creatividad y Diseo, 1995), pp. 213-216. 38 . . . By far the largest part of Mexican cinema produced in the 1950s and early 60s was financed by a few companies and filmed by a few directors. And to further consolidate this sort of monopoly, the sons of Ren Cardona, Ral de Anda, Miguel Zacaras, Valentn Gazcn, Gregario Wallerstein, and so on, became part of the industry as producers and directors in the 60s. Eduardo de la Vega Alfaro, Origins, Development and Crisis of the Sound Cinema (1929-64), in Mexican Cinema, edited by Paulo Antonio Paranagu, p. 91. Film critic de la Vega Alfaro also notes that several of the most powerful producers (Gregorio Wallerstein, Ral de Anda) ended up becoming partners with the fictitious associates [these associates were Mexican nationals who were paid for the use of their names in business interests to comply with Mexican laws concerning business ownership]of [William] Jenkins [an American] in order to supply theater owners with the kinds of films destined not so much for the ever-widening internal market, but exclusively for the mass populace. Eduardo de la Vega Alfaro, The Decline of the Golden Age and the Making of the Crisis, in Mexicos Cinema, edited by Joanne Hershfield and David R. Maciel, pp. 175-176. 39 Schnitman, Film Industries, p. 42; Also see Emilio Garca Riera, Historia Documental del Cine Mexicano, 3, 1943-1945 (Jalisco: Universidad de Guadalajara, Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, 1993).

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an opportunity to create a film showing that although some Middle Eastern families had economic resources in Mexico, the immigrants and their children faced painful discrimination and sometimes drew on tight family bonds to overcome prejudice. Perhaps most instructive about the film is that Middle Eastern immigrants and their families better represented the spirit of mexicanidad than the Mexican characters. For instance, none of the Mexicans in El baisano Jalil act with the same compassion for their fellow citizens as Jalil, and many of the de la Rada family are not interested in working as Selim is. Thus, Mexican values of family and work appear to create the success of the Farads. These same values result in similar success for the Jewish families in the film Novia que te vea. JEWS AND MEXICANIDAD Unlike El baisano Jalil and El barchante Neguib, filmmaker Guita Schyfter, a Costa Rican-born Jew of Polish and Ukrainian descent, chose to adapt Rosa Nissns 1992 novel Novia que te vea as her first feature film.40 The film opens in a modern setting with the adult protagonists, Oshinica (Oshi hereafter) Mataraso (Claudette Maille), and Rifke Groman (Maya Mishalska) looking at Oshis family album of photos showing her familys arrival in Mexico from the Middle East in the 1920s. The film then returns to this scene and the two friends are reflecting on their lives as women, Jews, mothers, and Mexicans in the early 1990s for the ending. The narrative begins by telling of Oshis family and their clothing store in La Lagunilla, a common marketplace of Arabs and Jews in Mexico City.41 As part of the Sephardic culture, Oshis preordained trajectory is toward marriage and domesticity, to which the title refers I hope to see you a bride.42 Her friend, Rifke, who is not a character
40 Rosa Nissn, Novia que te vea (Mexico: Planeta, 1992); For additional information on the Jewish communities in Mexico, see Corinne Azen Krause, The Jews in Mexico: A History with Special Emphasis on the Period From 1857-1930 (Ph.D. diss, University of Pittsburgh, 1970); Alicia Gojman de Backal y Gloria Carreo, Comunidad Ashkenazi de Mxico (Mexico: Comunidad Ashkenazi de Mxico, 1993); and Adina Cimet, Ashkenazi in Mexico: Ideologies in the Structuring of a Community (New York: State University of New York Press, 1997). 41 Toward the end of the 1920s, a legislative order to the Mexican Migration Department published in Diario Oficial on July 15, 1927 stated that, . . . the immigration of persons of Syrian, Lebanese, Palestinian, Arabic and Turkish origin has reached a limit that makes itself felt in the national economy in an unfavorable manner on account of the conglomeration in urban centers. This legislative order implied that while Mexican peddlers and merchants were acceptable, Middle Eastern immigrants and their descendents in the commercial sectors caused economic and social instability. 42 Elissa J. Rashkin, Women Filmmakers in Mexico: The Country of Which We Dream (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001), p. 145. In the novel, Oshi says, Querer parecerme a mi mam, a mi abuela, a mi ta? No, mejor a mi abuelo, a mi pap, o hasta a mi hermano. Qu aburridas son las mujeres y adems tontas!; bueno, mi mam no es tonta, pero no es nada divertida; mi abuelita no puede ir sola ni siquiera a Sears, que est a dos cuadras. Pero a escondidas se va con Uba. Las mujeres siempre en casa, no se les ocurre ni irse a remar. Nissn, Novia que te vea, pp. 25-26.

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in Nissns novel but a creation for the film, is the daughter of an upper-middle class Ashkenazi family. Much of Rifkes family has been killed in Europe and those who have survived rarely speak of the holocaust, the Nazi genocide of the Jews. Rifkes father supports Israel, while her uncle Meyer is strongly antiZionist and grateful to be in Mexico. Every year, her uncle Meyer is seen placing a wreath with a star of David at the feet of Angel of Independence monument located in central Mexico City to show his appreciation for Mexican receptivity. The film depicts the two young Jewish women of immigrant backgrounds in their struggles to understand Catholicism, Zionism, socialism, and their feelings of otherness. In one of the early scenes, a young Oshi visits a Catholic Church with her nanny and wants to have a foot in both worlds. In the novel, Nissn writes in Oshis voice: I go to catechism secretly, because I want to have a first communion, and theyre the only ones who can help save me at the Last Judgement; maybe, just maybe, by saving me, God will forgive my family.43 As a child, Oshi is clearly ashamed of her ethnicity and fears reprisals for being different. When the daughter of the cleaning lady, Cata, asks Oshi if it is true that she is Jewish, Cata then says: That cant be . . . Jews are bad and they killed Christ.44 Oshi replies, Yes, I am Jewish, but I dont believe what you say. The Romans killed him, and that was a long time ago.45 Oshi reflects, Why doesnt anyone believe it? . . . Why doesnt anyone like Jews?46 She even states: Honestly, Id rather be Jewish than a black person. But even I get upset and sad! Look how they nailed him to a cross! Can you believe it? What monsters they were!47 Through the voice of a child, Nissn gives her readers the sense of confusion and isolation, for an ethnically other child growing up in Mexico, as well as how immigrants and their children were aware of discrimination and prejudice. What it means to be Jewish amidst Mexican Catholicism is further complicated by the differences within the Jewish community.48 For instance, when Oshis aunt marries, her new husband tells Oshis family that his Judaism is superior to ours because . . . we dont practice the religion the way we are supposed to. . . . When Oshi asks her new uncle about the differences among the regions in Syria, he responds with a laugh: There arent
Nissn, Novia que te vea, p. 14. Nissn, Novia que te vea, p. 46. 45 Nissn, Novia que te vea, p. 46. 46 Nissn, Novia que te vea, p. 46. 47 Nissn, Novia que te vea, p. 14. 48 Adina Cimet explores the complexities of Jewish identity in Mexico as well as the cleavages within the Jewish community. See Adina Cimet, Ashkenazi in Mexico.
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any. Just consider the people from Guadalajara who think they are better than the people from Monterrey. Its that simple. In Syria theres a city called Damascus and another one called Halab [Aleppo]. But you know how Jews can be.49 This conversation reflects how the members of an ethnic community in Mexico were often divided amongst themselves. Readers gain insights into how different Jewish families in Mexico can be. While in the film, as Oshi strives to take painting classes against her mothers wishes, Rifke attends university studying anthropology and becomes politically active. Although both women are Jewish, they face different family cultures yet experience a similar Mexico. In the film, Shomer (short for the Zionist youth movement Hashomer Hatzair) celebrates Israel and encourages spending time on a kibbutz uniting Mexican Jews. This group allows Oshi and Rifke to explore their Jewishness with other Jewish Mexicans. However, in the novel, an adolescent Oshi is confronted by her Hebrew teacher for eating candy and misbehaving. The teacher says: We have had to place restrictions on ourselves, which is why we cannot assimilate; we are not superior, but we have to make sure that the Jewish people do not perish. . . . Do you understand what it means to have a land where we can go and be welcomed?50 Both in the film and the novel, the emergence of Israel and its importance for the Jewish diaspora is explored. For Oshis family, it is barely discussed, but for Rifkes family, Israel is part of their daily experience. Ignacio Klich has argued that until the first Arab-Israeli war, Middle Eastern Jews had very limited affinity with Zionism, a creation of Central and Eastern European Jews.51 Again, Schyfter carefully demonstrates how being Jewish is not a monolithic experience. As the story unfolds, Rifke falls in love with Saavedra, a communist who is not Jewish. At a family dinner, Saavedras father, an official in the Jos Lpez Mateos government (1976-1982), says that he has some very close friends who are Israelis. His comment reflects an undifferentiated conception of Israelis and Jews. A conservative journalist, who is not Jewish and is also a guest at the dinner, then asks Rifke how many Jews are in Mexico and rhetorically responds: . . . I thought there were about two million. . . . They seem like a lot because theyre everywhere, but they dont integrate. With the camera then framing Rifke and Saavedras faces, Saavedra responds:
Nissn, Novia que te vea, pp. 36-37. Nissn, Novia que te vea, pp. 65-66. 51 Ignacio Klich, Arab-Jewish Coexistence in the First Half of 1900s Argentina: Overcoming SelfImposed Amnesia, in Arab and Jewish Immigrants in Latin America: Images and Realities, edited by Ignacio Klich and Jeffrey Lesser (London: Frank Cass, 1998), p. 3.
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Integrate into what? The gran familia mexicana? There are few ideas that disgust me as much as that of the gran familia. Because it presumes that we all want the same thing, and its not true. Some want to exploit and others want not to be exploited. In a single shot, Rifke then interjects that minorities are the salt of a country . . . and Im still seen as a foreigner. As Elissa Rashkin suggests, the conversation ends with a vision of progressive idealism as the leveler of differences.52 This may indeed reflect Schyfters own ideology, yet I would suggest the most important message is that ethnic others are part of mexicanidad. Families, even la gran familia, are complex, highly differentiated groups that do not necessarily share the strong solidarity Saavedra ascribes to them. As Rashkin notes, Mexicos Jewish population has been largely invisible and overwhelmingly excluded from the foundational ideology of Mexico as a mestizo nation, part indigenous and part Spanish.53 Through this dinner scene, Schyfter has broadened the meaning of mexicanidad and who can join the Mexican nation.54 Although the film and novel show the young women developing a sense of belonging in Mexico, Oshi and Rifke also experience a sense of alienation. Similar to Nissn and Schyfters attempts to bridge Jewishness with constructions of Mexicanness, their characters, Oshi and Rifke, marry and struggle to maintain their ethnic consciousness. In the film, Oshi becomes engaged to a Jewish medical student, Leon Levy, who turns out to be more authoritarian than her own family. In a comical scene, they are at a drive-in theatre ordering food and she orders an additional hot dog. He responds that she cannot have an additional hot dog because he does not want her to get fat. Oshi soon realizes that she does not want to marry Leon, even at the risk of alienating her family. With encouragement from her Shomer friend Ari (who later becomes her husband), she confronts her father, who is sympathetic, but also paralyzed by community marriage customs. Oshi runs away with Rifke to Oshis grandmothers house to escape the impending marriage with Leon. While she is away, an angry Leon confronts Oshis father asking for Oshis whereabouts. Her father accuses Leon for being cheap for not even buying his daughter a second hot dog and of telling bad jokes, thereby terminating the engagement. Meanwhile Rifke, who has escaped from her relationship with Saavedra by running away with Oshi, decides to reunite with him. The film ends with Oshi married to Ari, with children, and painting. Rifke is married to Saavedra and raising her children to be Jewish. The
Rashkin, Women Filmmakers, p. 151. Rashkin, Women Filmmakers, p. 142. 54 Similar to the dinner scene in El baisano Jalil, Schyfter uses double and single shots to accentuate tensions among family members.
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audience witnesses Rifke and Saavedras first sons bar mitzvah. As the film closes, both protagonists appear together, reflective and happy for having found a balance between their Jewishness and Mexicanness. THE DISCOURSE OF MEXICANIDAD Through both narrative and cinematic techniques, these two films give viewers a feeling of vulnerability, more specifically that sense of being a foreigner in a place where ones first language is not being spoken.55 The viewer feels these Middle Eastern immigrant characters liminality of having left their homeland and arriving to Mexico. By placing one foot in the homeland Lebanon and Turkey, and Eastern Europe, respectivelythe viewer experiences ethnic difference in Mexico by inhabiting the characters of Jalil Farad, Oshi, and Rifke. Despite the instances of economic hardship and discrimination, the viewer discovers and becomes seduced by Mexico as a place for economic and social advancement, and ethnic tolerance. To this day, when I mention the topic of rabes or turcos in Mexico, many Mexicans ask me if I know about the film El baisano Jalil because they have seen it. The popularity of the actors Sara Garca and Joaqun Pardav, both individually and as an ensemble, also illustrates that Mexican filmmakers and Filmex, believed that the films themes would resonate with Mexican audiences. The ability of Arab and Jewish immigrants to position themselves can be partially explained by the flexibility of the concept of mexicanidad and by varying interpretations of what it means to be Mexican. Henry Schmidt suggests that the allied terms, mexicanidad, mexicanismo, and lo mexicano all refer to the Mexican ethos as well as to its study and therefore become a driving principle for the growth of knowledge related to Mexico.56 But what is the Mexican ethos? Roger Bartra aptly points out that, studies on Mexicanness constitute an expression of the dominant political culture. This hegemonic political culture is bound by the set of imaginary power-networks that define socially accepted forms of subjectivity and that are customarily considered as the fullest expression of national culture.57 Accordingly, the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) has been creating a type of metadiscourse that many Mexicans and non-Mexicans use to explain national identity. Jeffrey Lesser explains that, unlike the case of
Sofia Coppolas Lost in Translation (2003) also conveys this sensation. Henry C. Schmidt, The Roots of Lo Mexicano: Self and Society in Mexican Thought, 1900-1934 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1978). 57 Roger Bartra, The Cage of Melancholy: Identity and Metamorphosis in the Mexican Character, Translated by Christopher J. Hall (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1992), pp. 2-3.
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Brazil where . . . members of a growing immigrant elite . . . engaged actively in a public discourse about what it meant to be Brazilian. . . , Mexicans have remained attached to constructions of the mestizo.58 This discourse is premised on what Barta terms commonalities of the Mexican character and founding myths of the Mexican Revolution. It can accommodate and integrate difference, tolerate difference, and alternately suppress, disregard, and obscure difference such that the terms mexicanidad, mexicanismo, and lo mexicano promote unified, homogenous meanings. The mythical accounts of the Mexican Revolution that inform this discourse tend to pertain to Pancho Villa, and Emiliano Zapata.59 Public officials and intellectuals have drawn on carefully selected cultural symbolssuch as Bnito Jurez and Emiliano Zapatato describe what and who is Mexican.60 These constructions, however, neglect the rich cultural mosaic of Mexican society. Their symbols promulgate only a tripartite ethnic and racial description of Mexico as being either Spanish, indigenous or mestizo. It is within this discourse that we must begin to explore the impact of Mexican cinema and where its products like El baisano Jalil and Novia que te vea configure Mexican history differently. In El baisano Jalil, Pardav adopts an Arabic accent and confuses his letters so that mexicano becomes majacano. The films title baisano is an Arabic-accented reference to the term paisano (countryman). Many Middle Eastern immigrants have been known to mispronounce the Spanish letters p and b because the Arabic language does not have distinct, comparable phonemes for these sounds. Yet despite Jalils mispronunciations, he still declares his love for Mexico. In Novia que te vea, both Nissn and Schyfter cleverly capture the cadence of speech and the various Spanish dialects of the Ladino-speaking Sephardic immigrants and Eastern European Ashkenazi immigrants. Oshis family speaks Mexican Spanish and Ladino.61 For instance, in the novel, Oshis mother tells her in Ladino that,
58 Jeffrey Lesser, Negotiating National Identity: Immigrants, Minorities, and the Struggle for Ethnicity in Brazil (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999), p. 2. 59 For a more detailed discussion of the revolutionary leaders, see Friedrich Katz, The Life and Times of Pancho Villa (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998); Alan Knight, The Mexican Revolution (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986); John Womack, Jr., Zapata and the Mexican Revolution (New York: Vintage Books, 1968); and Samuel Brunk, Emiliano Zapata!: Revolution & Betrayal in Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 1995). 60 See Ilene O. Malley, The Myth of the Revolution: Hero Cults and the Institutionalization of the Mexican State, 1920-1940 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986); and Thomas Benjamin, La Revolucin: Mexicos Great Revolution as Memory, Myth, and History (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000). 61 Denah Lida, Language of the Sephardim in Anglo-America, in Sephardim in the Americas: Studies in Culture and History, edited by Martin A. Cohen and Abraham J. Peck (Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 1993), p. 316.

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Because of Queen Esther, we Jews were saved, (Achaques de la reina Esther, mos salvimos todos los yudos, . . .62 Similar to El baisano Jalil, the characters in both the novel and film Novia que te vea overcome language barriers to acculturate into Mexican society. As immigration increased after the Mexican Revolution, some post-revolutionary ideologues suggested that the lack of ethnic integration was at the root of many of Mexicos problems. According to Porfirian intellectual Justo Sierra, the fusion of races would guarantee the substratum, which would in turn assure the existence of liberalism, and he advocated a type of ethnic homogeneity to integrate the divided Mexico.63 By encouraging individual groups to lose their distinctive characteristics and become mestizo, they could become part of the Mexican nation. Sierras ideas resonated with many revolutionary ideologists who advocated that the mestizaje was the foundation of what it is to be Mexican. This mestizo construction aimed to temper the influence of foreigners and the visibility of the indigenous populations, thereby limiting plurality. Despite the intellectuals and states attempts to construct a monolithic Mexican identity, the Mexican populace has come to reflect the diversity of immigrants in a multicultural society in which there are many ways of being Mexican. The ambiguities of what it means to be Mexican (beyond the mestizo construction) have allowed immigrants from the Middle East and Eastern Europe to both position their status in the Mexican metadiscourse and to simultaneously create their own immigrant and ethnic discourses.64 El baisano Jalil and Novia que te vea reflect this duality. CONCLUDING THOUGHTS El baisano Jalil and Novia que te vea present Arabs and Jews as part of the cultural fabric of Mexico since the 1940s. Director Pardav and producer Wallerstein, and filmmaker Guita Schyfter and novelist Rosa Nissn, all show that immigrants have been a part of Mexican economic and social development. Yet, despite Arab and Jewish immigrant economic successes in Mexico, they faced painful discrimination. In turn, they formed tight family bonds, becoming idealized families in accordance with mexicanidad.
Nissn, Novia que te vea, p. 27. Liz Hamui-Halabe, Re-creating Community: Christians from Lebanon and Jews from Syria in Mexico, 1900-1938, in Ignacio Klich and Jeffrey Lesser, eds. Arab and Jewish Immigrants in Latin America: Images and Realities (London: Frank Cass, 1998), p. 128. 64 For a more in-depth discussion on how the Lebanese discourse largely excludes Arabs; see Theresa Alfaro-Velcamp, Mexican Muslims in the Twentieth Century: Challenging Stereotypes and Negotiating Space, in Muslims in the West: Sojourners to Citizens, ed. Yvonne Haddad (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 278-292.
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In the film El baisano Jalil, the Farad family reflects more Mexican attitudes than does the de la Rada family, for the Farads show compassion to those with lesser resources (such as the de la Rada family) and demonstrate an ethic of hard work. The Farad family, like other Arab and Jewish immigrants generally, manipulate the ambiguities of what it means to be Mexican. They are able to maintain their ethnic consciousness while the second-generation grows up as Mexican, and as Mexican citizens. In Novia que te vea, Oshinica Mataraso and Rifke Groman similarly operate in a liminal space between being Jewish and becoming Mexican. They embrace Mexico as a homeland and find places as women and mothers. Like the Farads, both young women maintain their ethnic consciousness while participating in mexicanidad. Lastly, returning to the Comaroffs on the meaning of ethnicity:
It goes without saying that the content of any ethnic identity is a product of complex, drawn out historical processes: being a heterogeneous, fluid ensemble of signs and practices, a living culture is forged not merely in conversations, but also in the minutiae of everyday action, in the inscription of linguistic forms and material relations, in the course of struggle, contestation, and creative self assertion.65

Although the films reflect different time periods and cultural shifts in Mexico, both films expand notions of Mexican national identity and who is Mexican by asserting a diversity of ethnic consciousness in Mexico and suggesting that mexicanidad is a flexible, dynamic concept that allows ethnic others to join the Mexican nation. As Rodolfo Stavenhagen and Tania Carraso write, Mexico is essentially a multicultural country not only for its indigenous and Iberian culture, but also for the contribution of the immigrant cultures.66 Sonoma State University Rohnert Park, California THERESA ALFARO-VELCAMP

John L. and Jean Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution, p. 389. Rodolfo Stavenhagen y Tania Carrasco, La diversidad tnica y cultural, en El Patrimonio Nacional de Mxico, Enrique Florescano, coordinator (Mexico: Consejo Nacional Para la Cultura y Las Artes and Fondo de Cultura Econmica, 1997), p. 259.
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