Authentic Latinos: Oscars Edition

This has been a less than inspiring year for Hispanics in film and their presence at the Academy Awards, or lack thereof, is indicative of that. Voxxi has given a rundown of Latinos who were up for awards. The list it mustered includes those in some of the less high profile categories, like cinematography and short documentary (not to undercut the two winners of the short and feature length documentary awards, “Inocente” and “Searching for Sugarman,” respectively).  In order to fill out the lack of a Hispanic presence, the article reaches to the foreign film category, namely the Chilean film “No,” starring Mexican actor Gael García Bernal; this although most would agree that Latin Americans living in their home countries are not Latino at all as Hispanic and Latino are categories that only have meaning in the United States. The Academy could not even muster a brief acknowledgment for Lupe Ontiveros, the Latina character actress, who passed away this year.

The one possibility for a Latino presence in a major award category was the acclaimed film Argo, which is based on the life of former CIA agent Antonio “Tony” Mendez. Rather than having a Latino actor play the Mexican-descent Mendez, Ben Affleck chose to cast himself in the lead role. This was to the chagrin of journalist and polemicist Ruben Navarrette, who argued a few weeks ago that Affleck rewarded himself at the expense of many qualified Latino actors. Navarrette offered a compelling opinion that it is time for Hollywood to place Latinos in lead roles, especially when the characters are Latinos.

There was an interesting twist to Navarrette’s appeal, however; Jack Rico, a writer with NBC Latino, sat down with the real Tony Mendez to see if he had taken umbrage with Affleck, an Irish-American, playing him in the film. Mendez said he had no problem at all with Affleck portraying him. It wasn’t because Affleck speaks Spanish and could pass as an authentic Latino, it was because Mendez doesn’t identify as Hispanic. As he stated in the interview, “I think of myself as a person who grew up in the desert. If I had been in a different family circumstance, I might have felt that way.” He reveals again that lumping a really diverse group of people into one category is a difficult thing to do, and given the artifice that is involved, many people may just opt out. Many “Hispanics” and “Latinos” do just that, as they typically prefer to be categorized by their countries of origin. Mendez takes it a step further, as probably a significant number of Hispanics have done, by simply melting into the American pot and giving up the minority ethnic identity. Richard Alba, a sociologist has argued this very point and has numbers to back up the idea that Latinos are assimilating into the mainstream, just as generations of immigrant descendants have before.

Even though there was not large Latino presence in terms of films and actors this year, perhaps Hispanics can take solace in the fact that in one way they have always been present at the award ceremony and always will be. After all, the Oscar statue was modeled after Emilio Fernández, a Mexican-born screenwriter, actor, and director who worked on both American and Mexican films.