“During the silent [film] era, roughly from the turn of the century until about 1930, Chicanas usually served as passive adjuncts to the main action of [a] film…from about 1930 to the end of World War II, Chicana and other United States Latina characters began to move into center screen, but with limited diversity and little depth of characterization” (Cortés 126).

In his essay, Chicanas in Film: History of an Image, Carlos E. Cortés defines four broad eras of Chicana women in American film. The first film in our series, The Girl from Mexico, falls under the category of the second era: “Sensuality and Frivolity” (Cortés 128). Actresses portraying Mexicana or Chicana characters could embody frivolity, like “high-voltage Brazillian actress Carmen Miranda, “ or sensuality, like Dolores Del Rio (Cortés 130). Or, one could go “striding …show more content…
As a seductress, Carmelita is “heavily made-up,” and is costumed in clothes that show off her figure, definitely connoting Laura Mulvey’s “to-be-looked-at-ness” (Williams 215). She is very loud and passionate, speaks with a heavy accent, and she actively and purposefully seduces a white man away from a white woman. All of these elements combined create a factor of racialized gender, where “ethnic markings and her gendered performativity,” make Carmelita a representation of “sexuality and embodiment,” when compared to white women (Garcia 70; Modleski 330).

Some cite 1933’s Hot Pepper, also starring Lupe Vélez, as the first “Mexican Spitfire” film (Treviño). However, it was The Girl From Mexico that coined the term for the stereotype, along with its seven sequels, referred to as the “Mexican Spitfire Movies.” While the film should not be entirely vilified, especially as Carmelita is a very likeable character, it cemented the image of the Mexican Spitfire in popular culture, and created a negative stereotype for Anglo audiences to latch on