#mexican representation

[krizeros]

The Mexican in me had to draw Skyla after learning shes Hispanic

[mr-owen-burnett]

I think its sad that 20 years ago we seemed to have more Mexican representation on American television than we do now but the rise of maga probably contributed to that

[aroaceconfessions]

i wish i could see myself in media

like, there is so little good rep of aroace people

and then there is also really little good mexican rep in media

so i never see myself anywhere

[butchbruciewayne]

Jack Russell // Werewolf By Night

y pobre del monstruo que se encuentre entre ellos

(this character means so much to me, and I'm really happy with how these came out)

[doodle-empress66]

Mexicans in Animation be like:

[valkoswolf]

imma make a new post to add proper tags but:

i, a white person, am wanting to write a book with the main character that is mexican and native american. what should i avoid while making and writing this character to not fall into stereotypes and such? this takes place in the kid 1800s btw idk if that will apply to this at all.

[quicksilverownsmysoul]

I hope it's ok I ask this, but what are your thoughts on the Disney movie Coco?

It’s totally okay to ask! I’d love it if y’all asked me stuff like this more often!

Personally I love the movie but it’s not without its flaws. When Coco first came out it faced backlash because people had said there was already a day of the dead movie, the book of life. (I don’t know why people were so threatened but they were. They didn’t want it to come out because they said we already had a film.) The book of life was a good movie and had a good story but it was seriously flawed. It only had like a handful of Mexican voice actors and the rest were white or Hispanic (but not Mexican. Hispanic is a wide category of people and if you’re going to do a film about a certain group you can’t just cast voice actors because they’re Hispanic.) Coco did an excellent job of casting an all Mexican cast and had payed homage to Mexican heritage in a beautiful way. The songs were well crafted and blended beautifully in English and Spanish, especially remember me. It also had a lot of famous Mexican people, it was nice to see cameos from frida and el santo. But the thing is Coco didn’t let their characters be Mexican. I’ll explain, Disney has a serious problem with erasing color from their films. Like princess and the frog they made tiana and naveen frogs for the majority of the film and took away their identities. Coco had the same problem. Right from the start the story shifts from having very dark looking Mexicans (they were beautiful I was so happy to see that they weren’t white washed) to being skeletons for like the remainder of the film. In a way this is white washing them, you take away their identities and turn them into something else. A trend that is only really done in films where there are POC.

And a lot of people that worked in the film weren’t Mexican or Hispanic and this is a problem. I don’t know how Disney can justify making a film like Coco without having actual input from Mexican artists and musicians. A lot of the composers and animators were white, they just “researched” instead of letting actual Hispanic workers put their inputs in. Disney does this a lot when it comes to POC films. They visit places and just look at it from an outside view instead of taking the time to find first hand accounts and views.

My one other issue is the reason of the story. Like book of life, Coco deals with day of the dead. Yes it’s an important holiday to Mexican heritage but it makes it feel like that’s all our movies can be about. Like companies need a reason for these Hispanic characters to exist. Like they can’t just exist on their own. I would love to see a Hispanic character in a movie or show that is just themselves, where companies don’t try and prove to you that they’re Hispanic/Latinx.

But the movie as a whole was well written, especially Del La Cruz, he was equally charming and terrifying. He felt like a real life villain and I never saw it coming. I loved the storyline and the way the family was portrayed. (At times it was a little offensive and it dipped into being stereotypical but it wasn’t too bad). The film was beautiful and it is one of my favorite films. I really enjoyed seeing it and seeing myself and my family represented in it. And the fact that the women were the whole reason for the story was genius. I loved that they were the true leaders of their families! I hope we see more movies like coco in the future.

[samnherondale]

Why mexican representation in TSC is actually bad

I really felt that I needed to write about this after reading some posts about what's been going on, specially with @simon-lewis-is-a-skinny-legend 's

I am Mexican, and I actually live in Mexico City, same place where the Rosales family is.

And yes, let me tell you something, when I realize that Cristina's participation was going to be as a main character in TDA, I was really proud and surprised for that representation.

I mean, I will finally be able to read about a hero of my nationality fighting against some demons and being the badass that we, as Mexicans, really are.

But... The representation was dissapointing. Cristina Rosales is the steriotype of what US people still think we are. And hell, I think about her character and it makes me cringe. And, dissapointingly I know that CC needed to do more research about us and our traditions, (this isn't aknowledged for the US fandom but the hispanic fandom actually know quite well that she got help from a Spanish girl to write the Mexican slang and that got really mad reactions from latinx people, because obviously, Mexican slang, and Spanish slang are completely different. Quite as well as every other latinx slang are different from each other. This girl is even mentioned in the aknowledgments of that book).

I'm not going to talk about if she was racist about how we look, because guess what? Mexico is a huge and diverse country, so yeah, there are tall and medium people, brown, black, and white people too. We are diverse. But at the same time, we cannot ask for that representation when we only have three mexican characters and every single one of them are the same steriotype that US people are used to think of ourselves. Which, is something that at this point we are already expected to see, read or hear everywhere.

Cristina Rosales is also the representation of a true catholic believer. That is reflected on how she believes in the Angel and its power, how much she prays to it with the devotion of a blind believer. And don't get me wrong, I'm not against religion, but if CC wanted to do a good representation about MEXICAN religion and how it is represented maybe, and just maybe, she sould have writen about the catholic icons that are showed in Mexico. Going through the Virgen de Guadalupe, to every Saint but no, it was better to put that representation in the eyes of the Angel. Which was kind of annoying at some point.

Places and locations where researched poorly too, I remember reading Qoaad when Cristina is thinking about Mexico City and its iconic places; Palacio de Bellas Artes, el Bosque de Chapultepec (wonderful place btw, it has a real castle of the 19th century), el Ángel de la Independencia, and el Monumento... a la Independencia? Again? Wrong. CC Had mistaken el Monumento a la Revolución (a monument related to a completely different historical moment) and wrote it as "Monumento a la Independencia" in this book.

So I can keep going with the poor representation and research about Mexico that TDA gave it. I didn't saw myself in Cristina's character nor in Diego's or Jaime's, they barely have any sentimental connection with how our country feels like. Foreign people always say that Mexican people are quite sentimental, but I think that the correct word is passionate, we can love things and people so much that we would not be afraid to show how strong our feelings can be if they truly worth them.

Unfortunately, I didn't see that in Cristina's eyes, or in the lack of research of my country, which only made me feel more uncomfortable than happy.

Now that people are talking about this important stuff, I also think that all latinx representation is important. And yes, Mexico isn't the only country of Latin America, and they deserve as much and even better representation than we have nowadays. Because everyone matter and to erase their importance is just other way to invisibilize their existence. Their voice is what you must listen and read about to really know how does it feel being invisibilize from YA representation. Otherwise, errors and problems like this will keep occuring.