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Decolonizing Maya Border Crossings in El Norte and La Jaula de Oro

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The Latin American Road Movie

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Abstract

This chapter analyzes the road movies El Norte (Gregory Nava, 1983) and La jaula de oro (Diego Quemada-Díez, 2013) to argue that while both films are effective in documenting the hard conditions of Central American migrants, they simultaneously reproduce dominant racial discourses on Maya youth. These movies, Estrada asserts, incorporate and situate Maya voices at the center yet maintain a ladino Latino/American frame—that is, an ideology of racial superiority that makes mestizos view themselves closer to an ideal of progress and decency than indigenous peoples.

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Estrada, A.I. (2016). Decolonizing Maya Border Crossings in El Norte and La Jaula de Oro . In: Garibotto, V., Pérez, J. (eds) The Latin American Road Movie. Global Cinema. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58093-1_9

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