The pristine nostalgia and the vulnerability of domestic workers in Roma, by Alfonso Cuarón
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.26439/en.lineas.generales2021.n6.5591Keywords:
memory, social classes, esthetics and politics, domination, indigenous communitiesAbstract
Alfonso Cuarón described Roma (2018) as “his first film”. Filmed in black and white, it tells the story of Cleo, a domestic worker in a house in the “Roma” neighborhood where she works for a middle-class family that is going through the divorce of their parents. Cleo becomes pregnant with a man who despises her. The family also witnesses the government’s repression in the so-called “Halconazo” of 1971. I am interested in the film not only for the aesthetic beauty in the careful reconstruction of a memory, but also for exhibiting the class hierarchy and the structures of domination towards indigenous female employees fleeing poverty and rural backwardness as a result of a disinterested Mexican government in their own minority communities.
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References
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