Framing indigeneity in early ethnographic Mexican film: An analysis of Peregrinación a Chalma/Pilgrimage to Chalma (Díaz Ordaz 1922)

This article approaches the exhibition of indigeneity in the early Mexican ethnographic film Peregrinación a Chalma/Pilgrimage to Chalma (Díaz Ordaz 1922) as a simultaneous display of criollo/mestizo hegemonic culture and institutions. As a product of the Mexican anthropological establishment at an early moment of the discipline's investment in post-revolutionary indigenismo and mestizaje, the film participates in the endeavour to document and disseminate aspects of indigenous culture and the will to affirm the existence of a modern, non-indigenous Mexican identity. Through filmic analysis, the article illustrates how the film's use of the stylistic conventions of the classical ethnographic mode creates a distanced rendering of Indigenous people that elevates the criollo/mestizo perspective and casts its representatives as the official curators of and modern foils to indigeneity. Furthermore, through its textual and stylistic conventions, Peregrinación a Chalma positions the spectator to view indigeneity from the position of hegemonic criollo/mestizo culture, aligning the spectator with the cultural perspective that presents itself as dominant and authoritative. The spectatorial positionality crafted by the film is in tune with the modernizing and homogenizing aims of indigenismo and mestizaje in the early post-revolutionary period.