1 Letter from the Confederación de Sociedades Mexicanas de Los Angeles, California to Chief of the Central Department (Mexico City), J. M. Puig Casauranc, May 26, 1930. Reprinted in “Continuan en su labor de denigrarnos,” El Nacional Revolucionario, June 3, 1930, p. 8.

2 This type of discussion continues to rage in contemporary Mexico. Nationally produced films constitute only a miniscule fraction of the films screened yearly in Mexico; in 2003 they comprised a mere/ 4.5% of ticket sales across the republic. See Alvarado, Eduardo, “Ya no ven mexicanas,” Reforma, December 14, 2003, p. 9E Google Scholar.

3 Following José Limón, who makes use of the work of folklorist Americo Paredes, I use the term Greater Mexico to refer to Mexico as an “imagined” national community that stretched across the borders of the republic and into the political limits of the United States. Limon, defines the term as “referring to all Mexicans, beyond Laredo and from either side, with all their commonalities and differences.” American Encounters: Greater Mexico, the United States, and the Erotics of Culture (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1998), p. 3 Google Scholar. I use Hollywood as a shorthand for the film industry although it was only during this period that film production companies beginning to consolidate operations in Southern California.

4 In film studies, much of the literature on spectatorship makes use of psychoanalytic approaches. The famous debate generated by Laura Mulvey’s 1975 essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” exemplifies work that uses the analytic tools of psychoanalysis to assess the subject positions engendered by cinema. Other scholars, such as Jackie Stacey, seek to place the production of both subject positions and reactions in particular historical and social contexts. In addition to Stacey’s, work Star Gazing: Hollywood Cinema and Female Spectatorship (New York: Routledge, 1994)Google Scholar see Ross’s, Steven Working-Class Hollywood: Silent Film and the Shaping of Class in America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Michel de Certeau’s theoretical insights into the workings of power and the experiences of the “weak” in everyday life have been critical to my understanding of the way historical actors negotiate their everyday experiences of mass culture. See Certeau, Michel de, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984)Google Scholar. On new understandings of the cultural history of the Americas see Joseph, Gilbert M., “Close Encounters: Toward a New Cultural History of U.S.-Latin American Relations,” in Close Encounters of Empire: American Encounters: Writing the Cultural History of U.S.-Latin American Relations (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998), pp. 3–46 Google Scholar.

6 Amador, María Luisa and Blanco, Jorge Ayala have compiled a comprehensive list of the films screened in Mexico City during this period and generated the statistic cited above. Cartelera cinematográfica, 1920-1929 (Mexico, DF: Centro Universitario de Estudios Cinematográficos, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1999), pp. 465–469 Google Scholar.

7 Riera, Emilio García, México Visto por el Cine Extranjero, Vol. 1, 1895-1930 (Guadalajara, Jalisco: Ediciones Era/Universidad de Guadalajara, 1987), p. 1 Google Scholar. He notes that each national production was her alded as the “first” resulting in a silent cinema that lacked a sense of “history.”

8 A survey of Spanish language newspapers from the era indicates that, when feasible, Mexican films were shown in theaters frequented by immigrant communities, but this was relatively rare, if only because there was so little film produced in Mexico. It was more typical that exhibitions would be sponsored by community groups or, as mentioned above, local consulates. For example, Fernando Cabello, a local music teacher, sponsored a showing of The Divine Narcissus as part of a program that also featured a documentary of the 1926 Eucharistic Congress held in Mexico City. See AHSRE, 18-7-219, Letter from J.E. Anchondo to the Secretary of Exterior Relations (hereafter SRE), April 7, 1925.

9 The postrevolutionary period brought massive waves of migration to the United States, which began during the revolution and continued unabated until the Great Depression. For general historical accounts of the first great wave of Mexican migration see González, Gilbert G. and Fernández, Raul A., A Century of Chicano History: Empire, Nations and Migration (New York: Routledge, 2003)Google Scholar; Martinez, Oscar J., Mexican-Origin People in the United States: A Topical History (Tucson, University of Arizona Press, 2001)Google Scholar; and Monroy, Douglas, Rebirth: Mexican Los Angeles from the Great Migration to the Great Depression (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999)Google Scholar. Sánchez, George offers a nuanced argument about the formation of ethnic identity during this period in Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993)Google Scholar.

10 Vasey, Ruth, The World According to Hollywood (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1999)Google Scholar. Delpar, Helen, “‘Goodbye to the Greaser’: Mexico, the MPPDA, and Derogatory Films, 1922-1926,” Journal of Popular Film and Television 12:1 (1984), pp. 34–41 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Reyes, Aurelio de los, Cine y Sociedad en Mexico 1896-1930, Bajo el Cielo de México: Volumen II (1920–1924) (México, DF: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1993), pp. 173–206 Google Scholar.

11 Reyes, De los, Cine y Sociedad en México 1896-1930, p. 199 Google Scholar. De los Reyes effectively dismisses the reports of consular staff as insincere and possibly as attempts to appear to be working under the guise of denouncing denigrating films. He quotes the “ultraconservative” Victoriano Salado Álvarez recalls an unnamed diplomat telling him that he only made noise about denigrating films to keep his superiors at the SRE happy.

12 Letter from Miguel Castillo to the Ministry of the Interior, December 1, 1922, Archivo General de la Nación (hereafter AGN), Dirección General de Gobernación (hereafter DGG), Box 15, folder 1. The film Castillo refers to does not appear on any list of films produced between 1920 and 1922. It is unclear whether he had remembered the title incorrectly or was referring to a film that had been pirated and exhibited under a different name.

13 Agreement, President Álvaro Obregón to the Secretariat of Exterior Relations (hereafter SRE), June 5, 1922, AGN, C.2.00.5.3, Box 28, Folder 3.

14 These films participated in a long history of the representation of Mexico in North American visual arts, historiography, and the cinema that has been explored by scholars such as Alarcón, Daniel Cooper, The Aztec Palimpsest: Mexico in the Modern Imagination (Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Johannsen, Robert To the Halls of the Montezumas: The Mexican War in the American Imagination (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985)Google Scholar; and most recently in relationship to film by Berg, Charles Ramirez, Latino Images in Film: Stereotypes, Subversion, and Resistance (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 For an analysis of the extensive history of depictions of Mexico in both early documentary and fiction film, see Riera, Emilio García, México visto por el cine extranjero, Vol. 1, 1894-1940 (Guadala jara: Ediciones Era, Universidad de Guadalajara, Centro de Investigaciones y Enseñanzas Cinematográficas, 1987), pp. 15–104 Google Scholar, and the accompanying filmography also compiled by García, , México visto por el cine extranjero, Vol. 2, 1906-1940 (Guadalajara: Ediciones Era, Universidad de Guadalajara, Centro de Investigaciones y Enseñanzas Cinematográficas, 1987)Google Scholar.

16 For example, “Decreto,” Boletín de la Secretaria de Hacienda, August 1919, p. 52.

17 The text of this agreement is reproduced in de los Reyes, p. 187 and can be found in the US State Department Reports, Internal Affairs of Mexico, 1910-1929, 812, 4061/28.

18 Mexico, though not the industry’s largest single market, was considered a gateway to the rest of Latin America. What’s more, Latin American countries expressed solidarity with each other by banning films that denigrated “friendly” nations.

19 The fact that the 1922 release of Douglas Fairbanks’ Robin Hood was in the running for “Película del año” (Film of the year) at the end of 1923 gives some indication of the lag.

20 Letter from Mexican legation in Cuba to SRE, June 23, 1917, Archivo Histórico de la Secretaria de Relaciones Exteriores (hereafter AHSRE), 17-8-53.

21 Letter from Minister of the Interior to SRE, August 29, 1922, quoting a communiqué from the Mexico’s commercial agent in Toronto, Canada, AHSRE, 19-10-8 (I).

22 Letter from Lazaro Basch, Consul in Denmark to SRE, January 27, 1923; Letter from Adolfo B, Consul General in Berlin to SRE, August 18, 1922, AHSRE, 19-10-8 (II).

23 Manuel Telléz to William A. Orr (MGM Pictures), October 21, 1929, AHSRE, 491-19 B/830(73-0)/2.

24 Sub-secretary of the SRE to the Ministry of the Interior, June 6, 1922, AHSRE, 19-10-8 (II), Note 382.

25 J. Garza Zertuche, Consul in San Francisco to SRE, May 27, 1922, AHSRE, Expediente E-44-A.

26 Manuel Téllez to Mssrs. Courdet, November 16, 1923, AHSRE, 19-10-8 (I).

27 See Thomas, Benjamin. La Revolución: Mexico’s Great Revolution as Memory, Myth, and History (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000)Google Scholar.

28 Helen Delpar discusses this cultural nationalism and the sudden popularity and standardization of folk culture in The Enormous Vogue of Things Mexican: Cultural Relations between the United Sates and Mexico, 1920-1935 (Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 1992). See particularly pp. 12-14. Saragoza, Alex discusses the use of this visual lexicon in the development of both domestic and international tourism in his essay, “The Selling of Mexico: Tourism and the State, 1929–1952,” in Fragments of a Golden Age: The Politics of Culture in Mexico Since 1940, ed. Gilbert Joseph et al. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001), pp. 91–115 Google Scholar.

29 Note attached to report, September 9, 1923, AHSRE, 19-10-8 (I).

30 Report from Consul, M. Esparza in El Paso, TX to Consul General, El Paso, TX, August 23, 1923, AHSRE, 19-10-8 (IV).

31 Letter from J.E. Anchondo, Consul in Salt Lake City to SRE, September 29, 1923, AHSRE, 19-10-(8).

32 Sub-secretary of the Ministry of the Interior to SRE, July 20, 1922. (Excerpt of letter from E.G. García, Luis S. Berenguer, and others, July 14, 1922.), AHSRE, 19-10-8 (III), and Letter from Luis Lezama to Gobernación, September 23, 1923, AGN, DGG, D.2.03.10, Box 16, Folder 10.

33 Alfonso Villegas, Secretary General, Sindicato de Empleados Cinematografistas de DF, to Álvaro Obregón, October 4, 1924, AGN, Ramo Obregón-Calles, 104-P-79.

34 Telegram from В. Trasvina, Tampico, Tamaulipas, to Sub-secretary of the Ministry of the Interior, September 26, 1922, AGN, DGG.

35 Letter from Luis Lezama to Ministry of the Interior, September 24, 1923, AGN, DGG, D.2.03.10, Box 16, Folder 10.

36 Transcription of letter from E.G. García, Luis S. Berenguer, and others, July 14, 1922, AHSRE, 19-10-8 (III).

37 Communication from Marquez, Consul in Laredo, TX to SRE, July 31, 1923, AHSRE, 19-10-8 (1).

38 Letter from Vice-Consul Farrell to John L. Bacon, Mayor of San Diego, February 22, 1923, AHSRE, 19-10-8 (III).

39 Letter from Dionisio Torres, Galveston, TX to President Álvaro Obregón, June 4, 1924, AHSRE, 19-10-8 (VI).

40 While San Antonio had a significant Mexican population, upwards of 41,000 in 1920, its proximity to the border and political and social characteristics make is somewhat different from either Los Angeles or Chicago. See Romo, Ricardo, “The Urbanization of Southwestern Chicanos in the Early Twentieth Century” New Scholar 5 (1977), pp. 183–208 Google Scholar.

41 Census figures, as others have noted, have been and continue to be unreliable when estimating the Mexican population in the United States. The figures I use are drawn from Sánchez, Becoming Mexican American, pp. 90.

42 Ibid., pp. 17-37.

43 Ibid., p. 173. While Sánchez asserts that Mexican produced films found their way to barrio movie theaters in the late 1920s very few films were actually produced in Mexico during this period. In fact, Mexican theaters themselves were dominated by American productions. In 1926, for example, Mexico produced a mere five feature films, another two were in production that year, but appear to have never been screened and two others appear in press announcements in regional newspapers but not those of Mexico City.

44 Mexican immigrants worked as construction hands, waitresses, seamstresses and, as I discuss, extras. On seamstresses see Nielsen, Elizabeth, “Handmaidens of the Glamour Culture: Costumers in the Hollywood Studio System” in Gaines, Jane and Herzog, Charlotte, eds., Fabrications: Costume and the Female Body, (New York: Routledge, 1990), pp. XX Google Scholar.

45 I discuss the politics of language in silent film in the final chapter of my dissertation, ‘“We’re Going Yankee’: American Movies, Mexican Nationalism, Transnational Cinema, 1917–1935” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 2006), pp. 370–419 Google Scholar.

46 Sid Grauman was quickly becoming famous for the lavish entertainments he arranged before film screenings at his theaters. Typically the impresario would mount a vaudeville or musical show connected thematically to the content of the film. Scholars of the history of cinema have argued that these types of shows represented a transitional step between actual vaudeville shows that incorporated film in their program and the exhibition of films with no live entertainment whatsoever. Early, filmed musicals repre sented a creative way of incorporating live entertainment into new conventions of representation, namely sound. For a discussion of the role of live entertainment in changing exhibition and viewing practices and Sid Grauman in particular see Beardsley, Charles, Hollywood’s Master Showman: the Legendary Sid Grauman (New York: Cornwall Press, 1983)Google Scholar; “En el Teatro ‘Grauman’ se esta exhibiendo una película que lastima el sentimiento mexicano,” La Prensa, May 21, 1922, p. 1.

47 Ibid.

48 “El exito de ‘El Circo’ en el Teatro Chino,” La Opinión, March 8, 1928, p. 4.

49 Advertisement for El Gaucho, La Opinión, December 5, 1927, p. 4.

50 “Gran Función de Gala en el Teatro Chino: será en honor de la colonia mexicana,” La Opinión, January 8, 1928, p. 4.

51 Ibid.

52 Ibid.

53 Ibid.

54 “Los jingoistas del cine,” La Opinión, October 19, 1926, p. 5.

55 “Los ‘extras’ mexicanos de los ‘studios’ cinematográficos en una promisoria bonanza,” La Opinión, February 27, 1928.

56 Letter from the Confederación, p. 8.

57 The Bad Man/El Hombre Malo (1930, dir. William McGann; Paramount). The 1923 version of the film directed by Edwin Carewe and the sound version, produced in both English and Spanish, were based on a work by Porter Emerson Browne that had won wide acclaim on the American stage. The 1923 version, despite its portrayal of what Arthur G. Pettit has called the brown buffoon was released with average success in Mexico. See Emilio García Riera’s discussion of the film in Mexico Visto por el Cine Extranjero, pp. 34-36. A French version was also made in 1931.

58 Letter from the Confederación, p. 8.

59 Ibid.

60 Ibid.