Objective/Context:

In the contemporary world film landscape (the 1990s to the 21st century), the film media allude to a new great “Latino” furor in Hollywood. This article proposes to stimulate reflection and debate on how Hollywood has cultivated this Latino “rage” from the 1920s to the present.

Methodology:

Based on the historiography of the process of building, industrializing and exporting “Latino-ness,” combined with diplomatic documentation and recent press information, and from a political economy of cinema point of view in particular, this article establishes the correlation between the supposed “Latinization” of Hollywood and the historical-economic reasons for the inclusion of Ibero-American artistic elements in “the Mecca of cinema.”

Originality:

Most studies on Hollywood’s “Latinization” emphasize the industry’s racialization, stereotypes and biases in its view of the “others” it has incorporated. The originality of this study lies in drawing on the less usual theoretical perspectives of the political economy of cinema (in conjunction with information on strategies and economic data currently circulating in the press) to explain more clearly the reasons for the myth of the “Latinization” of American cinema and its ultimate ends. The article posits a “Latinization” of economic, and not just ideological, causation and its explanation from theoretical perspectives on otherness and its implications.

Conclusions:

The analysis of this phenomenon evidences that the Ibero-American artistic elements incorporated by Hollywood are estimated by their “market value” as necessary and attractive “inputs” in front of Ibero-American audiences rather than by the reality of their talent. Additionally, incorporating Ibero-American talent is helpful to avoid eventual competition with other cinematographies in an industry that, like Hollywood, is, above all, an economic institution and a business.

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