La India Marma Mexploitation And The Films Of Marma Elena Velasco [Hardcover]

La India Mar?aa humble and stubborn indigenous Mexican womanis one of the most popular characters of the Mexican stage, television, and film. Created and portrayed by Mar?a Elena Velasco, La India Mar?a has delighted audiences since the late 1960s with slapstick humor that slyly critiques discrimination and the powerful. At the same time, however, many critics have derided the iconic figure as a racist depiction of a negative stereotype and dismissed the India Mar?a films as exploitation cinema unworthy of serious attention. By contrast, La India Mar?a builds a convincing case for Mar?a Elena Velasco as an artist whose work as a director and producerrare for women in Mexican cinemahas been widely and unjustly overlooked.

Drawing on extensive interviews with Velasco, her family, and film industry professionals, as well as on archival research, Seraina Rohrer offers the first full account of Velasco's life; her portrayal of La India Mar?a in vaudeville, television, and sixteen feature film comedies, including Ni de aqu?, ni de all? [Neither here, nor there]; and her controversial reception in Mexico and the United States. Rohrer traces the films' financing, production, and distribution, as well as censorship practices of the period, and compares them to other Mexploitation films produced at the same time. Adding a new chapter to the history of a much-understudied period of Mexican cinema commonly referred to as la crisis, this pioneering research enriches our appreciation of Mexploitation films.