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Abstract:
Since the 1970s "La India María" has become Mexico's most popular indigenous female media character. María Elena Velasco played La India María as the starring role in 15 comedies, had her appearances on different TV-Shows, and in the theater. Until today, her films continue to be popular with Mexican audiences and immigrants living in the United States. On the other hand, her films have tended to be dismissed by film critics as reactionary and ethnically discriminating. This contribution sketches out different aspects of the indigenous woman as a filmic stereotype focusing on character traits, performance, dialogues, and embodiment. The films will be examined and four story formulas will be proposed. Other determinations besides the filmic text will be taken into consideration in order to raise the question of how different spectators might read the established stereotype. I insist on the mode of "ironic" or "counter" reading, which results in a shift of meaning. La India María as a stereotype no longer just affirms the predominant mode of representation of the indigenous woman, but offers self-reflexive counter-images to certain spectators.
María Elena Velasco originally invented the character of La India María, an indigenous woman of the Mazahua people for the theater. She portrayed one of the many Mazahuas who came to Mexico City in the 1960s in order to make a living by selling fruit, candy, trinkets, and requesting alms on the streets of the capital.1 María Elena Velasco has declared on different occasions that the primary goal of her character was to entertain. She wanted to point out social injustices in Mexican society only on a subtle level (Rohrer 2008).2 In 1972, La India María had her first appearance on a TV show called Siempre en domingo. She won the hearts of the TV audience with her comic performance and her naive admiration for the host of the show, Raúl Velasco.3 During the same year, she also appeared in a TV program called Revista musical Nescafe as one of the main features of the show.
Between 1972 and 1999, María Elena Velasco played La India María as the starring role in 15 feature films. After restricting her contribution to acting in the early films, she later wished to be fully in control...