Indios y burros: Rethinking “la India María” as Ethnographic Cinema

Abstract

This article traces the origins of María Elena Velasco’s comic character “la India María” through what Fatimah Tobing Rony has labeled ethnographic film. It explores how Velasco’s first film, Tonta, tonta, pero no tanto (dir. Fernando Cortés, Mexico, 1972), borrows conventional linguistic and performative representations from the so-called Indigenista films of Emilio “Indio” Fernández and Benito Alazraki. The essay also studies how popular discourses regarding Indigenous intelligence and the trope of illiterate Natives as “burros” coincide with the state ideologies behind comic representations of Indigenous characters.