Bardo, a US relationship with Mexico

If Mexico were located in Colombian territory, we would lose an identity trait with respect to the United States.

Plan Colombia has been supported by a majority of Colombians, in part, because they do not have a border with the United States. In Mexico, the Mérida Initiative was considered by the left as a plan for the cession of sovereignty, and since the symbol is god in Mexican times, they have renamed it the Bicentennial Understanding.

González Iñárritu’s splendid film, Bardo, is a recognition of the cultural exceptionality of what some have called the Third Nation, made up of the conglomerate of Mexican-Americans whose cultural traits are varied, but not easy to analyze under the vision of the own Mexican and American cultures.

Tomorrow there will be midterm elections in the United States. For those affiliated with the Republican Party registered to vote, immigration is the second most important issue (76%) after the economy (92%); (Pew Research survey, November 3).

For Democrats, immigration seems “very important” to only 36 percent.

There are currently 62.5 million Latinos registered in the United States census; first minority (52%), followed by the Asian (19%) and the black (7%).

Six out of 10 Latinos are Mexican (37.5 million). One of them is Alejandro González Iñárritu.

Bardo is an autobiography aided by oneiric components; the best resource for dissecting Third Nation culture.

“False chronicle of a few truths”: a legitimate statement by González Iñárritu to baptize his cinematographic work. He confronts the accumulation of social myths with personal realities; hateful stigmas and magnificent experiences. González Iñárritu approaches the conflicts that have left their mark on the bilateral relationship: the sale of Mexican territory, the US invasion, overflowing classism mixed with a nationalism typical of magical realism.

There is a deep void between the Mexican and US political classes on how to approach Mexican-Americans; AMLO missed the opportunity to do so in Los Angeles, at the Summit of the Americas. Joe Biden hasn’t either.

Silvero Gama, the protagonist of Bardo, González Iñárritu’s alter ego, responds to a journalist who asks him the question: What nationality do you have? “I have no nationality.”

González Iñárritu captures with enormous realism the official caricature about the child heroes and their defense in the Castle of Chapultepec: the soldiers of both sides look like figures of cloth or cake. A semi-comic chapter that has little to do with the official study programs.

This is how cultural contradictions are understood.

@faustopretelin