6 Essential Latin American Movies That Center Indigenous People & Realities

Indigenous people, folk tales, and culture are abundant throughout what is now called Latin America and the Caribbean; however, Indigeneity is rarely depicted in movies and TV in the region. And when Indigenous representation does come through, depictions are, unfortunately, flawed and//or violently racist, rooted in centuries of colonization, Indigenous genocide, and the continuous and undeniable centering of whiteness in media and entertainment. 

Despite these obstacles, in the last few decades, Indigenous people from across Latin America have used movies and TV as mediums to deconstruct racist stereotypes and tell their own stories, on their own terms. By making their own productions, or by taking on roles that could otherwise be whitened, Indigenous filmmakers and actors challenge current socio-political paradigms in Latin America and beyond. 

This month, La Nota will be uplifting and grading six films that engage with Latin American Indigeneity, rather than covering a new TV show or movie. The usual La Nota grading system has been slightly adapted for the purpose of engaging with the films below. For example, we’ve opted to omit regional diversity as it isn’t as relevant here. 

This kind of audiovisual engagement with Indigeneity is rarely talked about, and often, these films suffer from distribution obstacles because they are not sponsored by corporations or big studios that can make sure they are accessible across the world. Still, these films, actors, directors and stories exist, and they are important perspectives that must be widely circulated. We hope this is a nudge for our readers, so that they look for films that deal with Indigeneity in Latin America — and that more films and TV shows are produced to express these invaluable perspectives.

In The Fever, Justino (Regis Myrupu), a 45-year-old Indigenous man from the Amazonian Desana tribe, works as a security guard in the city of Manaus, in the state of Amazônia in Brazil. As his daughter gets ready to move to Brasilia to study medicine, Justino is overtaken by a mysterious fever. Inspired by the phrase “the white man is only able to see what is in front of him,” director Maya Da-Rin develops a story that plays with the physical aspects of everyday life and Indigenous metaphysical cosmologies. 

Despite the fact this is a Brazilian production, much of it takes place in the native Desana language. Previous to watching this film, I had never seen anyone on screen speaking this language. Efforts of showcasing Indigenous languages aren’t only important in terms of representation but also because these languages are spoken by small percentages of the population. 

Though there isn’t much racial diversity in this film, it depicts an Indigenous story by a minority ethnic group in Brazil. I loved seeing the routines of an Indigenous Desana man who has lived in an urban setting for most of his life.

Indigeneity is so misunderstood that some people think Indigenous people don’t live in the city. Justino, as a character, defies this, showing how Indigenous people do live in the modern world and also maintain their relationship to their culture, ethnicity, and spiritual beliefs. 

This has been one of my favorite movies since I saw it upon its release in 2019. Justino’s story is a reclamation of Indigenous representations in Brazilian cinema and beyond.

We all know the tale of La Llorona, the ghost of a woman who lures and steals children from their mothers. In this film, Jayro Bustamante rewrites the well-known tale to center a decolonial perspective that explains la llorona’s haunting within the context of colonialism and imperialism. The weeping woman, Alma (María Mercedes Coroy), is murdered with her children during a military attack in Guatemala in the 1980s that is now widely recognized as Mayan genocide. Thirty years after Alma’s violent murder, former Guatemalan dictator Enrique Monteverde — based on the real dictator Efraín Ríos Montt who oversaw a bloody era of Guatemalan politics — is being tried for orchestrating the genocide, and when he is found not guilty, Alma comes back to the world of the living to torment the man. 

I loved the use of Indigenous languages in this film, and I could not imagine Bustamante delivering this story without it. Going from Spanish to Mayan-Caqchickel to Mayan-Ixil, this film showcases how language diversity is still alive and well in Guatemala, despite attempts to erase and exterminate Indigeneity in the territory.

The curse of La Llorona is a tale that has Indigenous roots across Central America, so it was important to see Indigenous women as the central characters of this movie. 

I could go on for so long about how this movie subverts the sexist and anti-Indigenous sentiments that run through the La Llorona tale. The original tale hinges on the idea that the weeping woman is “crazy,” that she could only be so cruel as to kill her own children because she is inherently evil. Bustamante brings a different perspective to the tale, suggesting that La Llorona has the right to become insane and revengeful because of the genocide she and her children experienced it. In this sense, Bustamante suggests that perhaps women “go crazy” because of the violence that is enacted against them, and that Indigenous people are within their rights to retaliate at the face of their own genocide. 

Absolutely, I would recommend it in a heartbeat. Bustamante’s approach here is humanizing and essential.

In the movie Roma, Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio) is a Mixtec, live-in domestic worker who helps Antonio and Sofía take care of their four children in 1970s Mexico City. To Sofía’s despair, Antonio suddenly runs away with his mistress, while Cleo finds out that she is pregnant by her boyfriend Fermín, who is not supportive of the pregnancy. Saddled with an unwanted pregnancy and not much more, Cleo continues to work for Sofía, who becomes increasingly unhinged about her husband’s alleged infidelity. To cope with her situation, Sofía takes the kids on vacation and brings Cleo along to take care of them.

I loved that this movie is in both Spanish and Mixtec. 

This film is quite a realistic depiction of an Indigenous woman in 1970s Mexico City, but it’s not very diverse beyond that. I love Aparicio, and the very fact that she was featured in this film garnered her a lot of racist harassment online. Simply existing as a Mixtec woman, in a film that was world renowned, made people so mad at Aparicio — and it proves how much roles like Cleo are needed in Latin America. 

Roma is an essential depiction of the class and racial divides that are still present in modern day Mexico City. It’s a great movie that is humane about its characters, and I don’t believe it stereotypes anybody. Cleo, despite being “the help,” isn’t only depicted as such; she has her own life and her own problems away from her upper-middle-class employer. The tensions between Cleo’s own life and the kids she is tasked with looking after portray the everyday lives of many Mixtec women. Still, the film is made from an upper-middle-class perspective, not necessarily looking down on people like Cleo, but definitely humanizing inter-class relationships that are ultimately maintained by oppressive forces.

YES! I love this movie. Bask in the glow of Aparicio and her incredible performance.

Birds of Passage tells the story of a Wayuu man who rose up the ranks of drug trafficking in Colombia during the marijuana bonanza years in the 1960s, and what walking away from his culture to chase the wealth of the colonizers cost him. When Zaida (Natalia Reyes) comes of age, she marries Rapayet (José Acosta), who notices that marijuana is a way to provide for his new family. Along with his cousin Gabriel, Rapayet starts growing the flower and impresses some white American Peace Corps volunteers who propose that he starts exporting the drug. As Rapayet becomes wealthier, he also becomes more cruel, and abandons the beliefs and practices of the Wayuu people.

The film is in Wayuu, Spanish, English, and Wiwa. 

There wasn’t a lot of racial diversity, but I think it’s an important depiction of how Indigenous people are often stuck between a rock and a hard place and must negotiate within the white man’s world.

It’s very common to come across Colombian movies about drug trafficking, and I think this was a worthy attempt at demonstrating what else — beyond lives and families — is lost when nations in the Global South cater to the needs of markets in the Global North. I had never watched a movie that was so frank about how this violence affects Indigenous people specifically. Still, it sucks that drug trafficking movies are the most marketable kind of media about Colombia.

I liked it, but as a Colombian, I would love to see more movies about Colombia that are not centered on the drug trade.

In the film Ixcanul, the parents of 17-year-old Maria arrange a marriage with Ignacio, the foreman of the coffee plantation where they live and work. The village where they live contains a large Maya population that practices Catholicism but also believes in Maya spiritual practices. Despite her arranged marriage, Maria is actually in love with Pepe, a young man who dreams of moving to North America but is uncertain about taking her with him. As Maria waits to wed Ignacio, who travels to another village, she becomes curious about sex with Pepe and falls pregnant by him. Maria’s parents are desperate when they hear about her pregnancy, as Ignacio could easily evict them from the land, so they try to fix the problem through Maya spiritual practices.

Most of the movie is in Kaqchikel, an Indigenous Mesoamerican language that is hardly hard in film, but that is still very common in Guatemala. Though most people think of Spanish as Guatemala’s main language, this film depicts a different reality.

This film depicts a realistic story of oppression, where Indigenous people across several ethnicities are forced to work in the fields and answer to the whims of their employers. 

Much like Roma, I enjoyed the depiction of Maria’s life outside the duties of her work. Maria is a chaotic yet relatable character, a young woman who is curious, full of passion, and rightfully rebels against her condition. I also really love that most of the actors weren’t acting professionals at the time, but Bustamante recruited them into the film so the depictions could be as accurate as possible.

This is Bustamante’s first full-length feature film so it has some pacing issues, but I definitely recommend it.

The Invention of the Other is a documentary about an attempt to contact the isolated Indigenous tribe of the Korubo within the depths of the Amazonian rainforest. The Korubo have never connected to the outside world, and director Bruno Jorge accompanies government officials in their attempts to contact them to warn them of the danger of poaching, illicit logging, and oil smuggling, which have become increasing threats to Indigenous ways of life in the Amazon. Oscillating between ethnography and poetry, Jorge’s work is a reflection on how people who are non-white become othered by the white majority.

The officials who travel to the Korubo tribe are accompanied by Indigenous people, and the long journey allows them to get to know each other. Going back and forth between Portuguese and Amazonian Indigenous languages, the journeying men try to bridge the gap created by colonialism and Indigenous genocide. An impossible gap to bridge, perhaps, but it’s important to see the exchange in cultures and languages.

Frankly, I think the perspective of the white explorer seeped into the fabric of the documentary. I didn’t love the premise of the documentary itself, and though I know the title of the work owns up to it — this is, after all, how the idea of the Other is manufactured — I often wondered if the first contact between Brazilian government officials and the Korubo tribe should have been documented at all.

I think this documentary tried to subvert the trope of the conquistador, but ultimately, it failed. Yes, the reasons for contacting the Korubo tribe are different than that of Portuguese and Spanish colonizers, but I was still viewing the Korubo culture from a white perspective. I think this is something that is, unfortunately, inescapable when it comes to documentaries like this. Indeed, the interesting aspect of the documentary is that this is a tribe that has never been contacted — but again, I wonder whether this should have been made at all.

With all these caveats, I still believe this is a documentary worth watching, as it depicts Amazonian Indigenous lives very honestly. There are also moments where the Indigenous explorers are able to express themselves within the rainforest, practicing their culture rawly, in a way that is only possible when away from white urban spaces.