“Reelizing” Arab and Jewish Ethnicity in Mexican Film

Abstract

As 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 filmsEl baisano JalilandNovia que te veafor 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 immigrants have been able to manipulate the ambiguities of what it means to be Mexican.