Alfonso Cuaron’s movie, Roma, which came out in 2018, is situated in the colony of Roma in Mexico City and it’s set in the year 1970 to 1971. It follows the daily lives of an upper-class Mexican mestizo family and focuses specially on Cleo, their maid. Although it is classified as a drama movie, Cuaron explores crucial themes such as race, social class, and political turbulence in Mexico at the time. One of the present themes in this movie is gender. Cuaron explores the traditional gender roles in Mexico’s upper-class society by portraying the husband as the bread winner and the wife, Sofia, as a stay-at-home mom who doesn’t know how to drive properly and depends on her husband entirely. Cleo and her sister, both maids of the family, are Oaxacan indigenous and migrated from their hometown to the city. Cleo character’s expression of gender roles is situated in her nurturing nature to the children even though they aren’t her own. During the course of the movie certain events happen that alter the balance of the household and force both women, Cleo and Sofia into non-traditional gender roles. Sofia’s husband leaves the house to go with another woman and Sofia is compelled into adapting the role of breadwinner for the family, parallel to Cleo getting pregnant from Fermin, a member of a Mexican gang who wants nothing to do with her or the baby and ends ups losing her baby. Both traumatic events are heavily criticized. There is a division where certain critics support the interaction between Cleo and Sofia through these events and acknowledge them both as women supporting each other, while others state the contrary. Ignacio Sanchez Prado, a professor of Spanish and Latin American studies at Washington University in St Louis and Richard Brody, a journalist at The New Yorker state the contrary.
Ignacio Sanchez Prado in his critic of Alfonso Cuaron’s movie Roma, writes about how Cleo’s loss is needed for the family to survive. Sofia thrives thanks to Cleo’s loss, and this is mainly because of the class and racial position. Cleo representing indigenous working-class women and Sofia the latter. He fails to see any sort of women empowerment during their interaction and instead argues it is a matter of economic class (Sanchez Prado 2). He states “(…) there is a nod to the idea that feminism of the middle class is permitted by the domestic labor or women like Cleo. Sofia’s new career and her ability to support the children require Cleo’s loss.” (Sanchez Prado 2). This phrase which states that women from the middle class can only rise if and through the domestic labor of women like Cleo, leads to the generalization of what a middle-class woman looks like. The generalization of this creates the limiting thought of only mestizo women being middle class, only mestizo women going through education and being professionalized enough to achieve the middle class status and while this is common, the stereotypical idea forces private and governmental institutions, companies, and other employers to limit their expectations to mestizo women which results in an underrepresentation of indigenous women in the workplace and forces indigenous women into having to constantly prove themselves. It also establishes a certain Eurocentric meaning of feminism that is constantly applied to Latin America and that Latin America constantly fails to pass. The statement announces feminism of the middle class, but it never even acknowledges the possibility of feminism of an indigenous woman and because of this Eurocentric definition, feminism seems to only apply to white women and in the case of Latin American, to mestizo women of a certain kind of white descent.
Richard Brody’s article There’s a Voice Missing in Alfonso Cuarón’s “Roma” published in The New Yorker in 2018 further emphasizes this. He starts by concentrating in class rather than in gender and attributes the character of Cleo to “(…) a stereotype that’s all too common in movies made by upper-middle-class and intellectual filmmakers about working people: a strong, silent, long-enduring, and all-tolerating type, deprived of discourse, a silent angel whose inability or unwillingness to express herself is held up as a mark of her stoic virtue.” (Brody 2018). A white man’s view on Cleo that totally neglects the cultural and societal factors influencing Cleo’s life and expects her to fit in the Eurocentric feminism box. Rural to urban migration from indigenous population is one of the hardest decisions they have to take, much more for a young woman such as Cleo who is leaving the warmth and security of her home, her family and even her language in hope for broader opportunities in the city. Furthermore, through the midst of Fermin denying any parentage or help to Cleo’s baby, Cleo decides to tell Sofia instead of going back to her hometown and is prepared and determined to take care of her child on her own without any male figure. The definition of what a strong woman looks like is commonly decided by a white man and designed for a white woman and so indigenous women rarely fit the description, which then leads to a complete disregard for the strength and the courage of indigenous population, especially women, which has happened all throughout Latin America’s history.
It was when the Spaniard men came that indigenous women were told and taught ‘how to be feminine’ and it is nowadays that indigenous women are told and taught ‘how to be strong’. Both critics place Cleo in a perspective where she is a symbol of oppression and a ladder for someone else to thrive and although it is important to acknowledge the racial inequalities that indigenous women face it is equally important to acknowledge the courage it takes for them to get to where they are at. For indigenous women, the starting point was much lower and therefore took double the effort than for white women. Both critics analyze Cleo’s perspective from a class view and do not take a gender approach. Sanchez Prado views Cleo’s domestic labor as a tool for Sofia to persevere but fails to view Cleo’s labor as for herself. Richard Brody views Cleo as a ‘silent angel’ (Brody 2018). A stereotype of working-class people, not even mentioning her indigenous ethnicity and placing her in the same category as mestizo working class people which would be highly inaccurate. As both critics seem to approach Cleo’s analysis without considering race or gender, their analysis of her seems fall once again into a generalization commonly seen and commonly applied to indigenous women where they must constantly prove their strength and self-worth through the Eurocentric definition of it. It also perpetuates the ideology that the indigenous population are not allowed to do anything for themselves. In Latin America only mestizos are allowed to search for their own needs and wants.
When applying class themes to this discussion we go back to the independence of Latin America. In Chapter 4 “Independence” in the book Born in Blood & Fire by John Charles Chasteen published in 2016, he talks about the independence movement in Latin America being orchestrated mainly by the Creoles which were Spanish descendants born in Latin America (Chasteen 101). This independence movement did not include indigenous or black population in the sense that after being liberated from the Spaniards the indigenous and black people’s situation did not change much (Chasteen 116). This links back to our discussion previously, by demonstrating that indigenous and black women did not have the same opportunities as mestizo women at the same time mestizo women did. Much time had to pass for them to gain opportunities and until this day they still do not have equal opportunities in comparison to mestizo women. It is unfair and unrealistic to expect indigenous women to fit in the same definition of feminism that was created for and by white women. Even in the Latin American context, mestizo women had a different starting point than indigenous women did. Therefore, it is of the upmost importance to consider context because when discussing feminism, one size does not fit all.
Sources
Brody, Richard. “There’s a Voice Missing in Alfonso Cuarón’s ‘Roma.’” The New Yorker, 18 Dec. 2018
Chasteen, John Charles. “Independence.” Born in Blood and Fire: A Concise History of Latin America, 4th ed., W. W. Norton & Company, 2016, pp. 95–120.