“I decided I would take to the streets to seek funding for a people’s insurrection in the United States: a guerrilla war,” is the stated mission of Gringotón, the protagonist of the latest short film by Gregory Berger. Using heavily accented Spanish and clad in shorts, a Hawaiian shirt and straw hat, Gringotón (Berger) appeals to the unsuspecting passengers of a Mexico City bus for donations to his revolutionary cause. “It’s the ‘gringo-thon 2003’ to take out Bush from the White House! We’re gonna take out that mother!” he yells as he boards the bus.
The film Gringotón (17 mins. 2003; freely available online for viewing in its entirety at www.salonchingon.com) is set in Mexico City during the initial stages of the invasion of Iraq. It is a hilarious commentary on Latin American perspectives on the United States and its citizens in this imperial age. “I wanted to create a comic gringo character to mock Americans in Latin America,” says Berger, “while at the same time articulating the very real possibilities for constructing greater mutual understanding and solidarity among forward thinking and post-nationalist citizens from across North and South America.”
The film begins with Gringotón watching the graphic images of the occupation of Iraq in horror. He later observes the daily plight of Mexico City street vendors fighting for their survival. Then, as he munches on a taco, he notices a TV commercial for a fundraising telethon and, struck by the synergy of the ideas, he takes to the streets with a collection can, hence gringotón, or gringo-thon.
Gringotón washes windshields, sells gum and becomes a street musician to earn a few meager pesos for his guerrilla movement. Despite his atrocious Spanish; his misused Mexico City slang; and his personification of the loud, larger-than-life gringo stereotype, he receives enthusiastic support from amused and bewildered Mexicans alike. As he approaches passengers on the bus, an elderly man says, “We will give you moral and economic support so that he falls from power.” And one woman happily exclaims, “Of course we support your cause! Don’t give up!”
After spending five years making documentaries about radical social movements in Mexico, Berger says he realized he had “essentially become an ethnographer of third world protest.” Although his work was deservedly celebrated, he had his qualms. “Mexican struggle and protest had become a marketable commodity for me, and I didn’t like it. Therefore, I decided to turn the lens of my camera 180 degrees around, at myself as a misplaced gringo living in Mexico.”
“I found this task to be an urgent one, because in this age of empire, gringos are perceived to have very little capacity for self-criticism or healthy self-doubt, especially in Latin America.” Another dimension of the Gringotón character, according to Berger, is his embodiment of the guilt complex of what is sometimes called “revolution tourism” and his sincere, if paternalistic, belief that his actions can change the world. “I wanted the character to have good intentions and to be likeable, but I wanted the character to not quite be fully attuned to the subtleties of the Mexican people with whom he was interacting.”
The film has been well received on both sides of the border, and the intrepid filmmaker is planning new adventures for the Gringotón character in Bolivia and Brazil. Berger believes the film’s success up to this point stems from the real need for Latin Americans to see representatives of the United States publicly humbled. “Not to denigrate ourselves,” insists Berger, “but simply to trash the figure of Tío Sam and replace it with a more human archetype of the United States.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Teo Ballvé is NACLA’s associate editor and contributing news editor for the Resource Center of the Americas http://www.americas.org.
