Y tu Luna también: Pan y circo: Season 1, Episode 7 – “Looking Ourselves in the Mirror: Identity and Racism” (2020)

The last episode of season 1. Like episode 6, it was particularly interesting to look at this topic from a Mexican perspective. However, I do think they could’ve covered certain aspects of it in greater depth. Onto the dinner conversation!

• I love this analogy from the coordinator of a non-profit group – “Identity is like a garment that carries Mexicanness. Then you take it off and you realize that everybody can have a different one.”
• A linguist explores the concept of identity by pointing out that everyone at the table—everyone in the world—is an Earthling, “however, that isn’t part of our identity. Because there’s no contrast” – She goes on to say that Earthling identity, Earth culture/books/food/etc. would take on a much greater meaning if we were invaded and oppressed by an alien race.
• I really like this remark from a journalist – “It makes a lot of sense to me to have an identity associated with the land. Because culture has a lot to do with geography, with climate, with the things you eat, with the produce that comes out of your garden. On the other hand, national identities, to me, as an indigenous person, generate conflict. I have a Chilean passport because of a historical accident.”
• A researcher discusses some of the reasons behind the denial of racism in Mexico – “They say, ‘How can we as Mexicans be racist if we are the product of two races? We can’t be racist.’ That’s one. The other argument is, ‘In Mexico there are no people of African descent.’ There is a very strong Afro presence which was erased to build a national identity based on the indigenous and the Spanish, but also in a hierarchical position.”
• This is where I think the episode drops the ball – While immediately following these comments, there’s a montage of footage, news clips, and snippets of interviews involving Afro-Latinos, no one at the table is speaking to that experience on a personal level. We see people talking about Afro-Latinos, but no one really talking as an Afro-Latino, which is especially stark when they’re brought up in the context of erasure.
• An architect for the controversial Mayan Train project, which is planned to go through indigenous communities, winds up being the unofficial “heel” of the table – Multiple other guests take him to task over the project, and at one point, he accuses the indigenous journalist of being “racist” against him because the journalist doesn’t include him, a mixed-race man, in his observations about indigenous folks around the table.
• This is a good quote from the linguist – “The call for integration to us has always been an alarm. Because it means precisely to disenfranchise the population under a brutal racist system with public resources from the state to reach this point.”
• I like this detail that the chef shares with Diego Luna, talking about his process when he cooks in different places – “I never take anything prepared, I never take anything from my place. I go to the place where I’m going to cook with what’s there.”
• A renowned soprano from an indigenous community talks about how much it means to her to sing songs in various indigenous languages (six languages, as Luna points out!) – “Those of us who have and speak a language say to you, ‘Speak your language, learn a language.’ Because we are losing them, because we have to rescue what our ancestors spoke, right?”
• This is an excellent quote from the linguist about projects like the Mayan Train – “It seems to me there’s a ‘we think this is good for you’ kind of idea here. I find the directionality quite disturbing. Let’s assume good faith. But even if there were good faith, we have been an impoverished population, but there are also other forms of validation that go beyond paper money.”

This is another episode where Diego Luna takes a lighter role during the discussion, making room for other voices. He introduces some topics, like the Mayan Train, but he mostly just reacts to what the guests say. As usual, he has some nice interactions with the chef before the meal.

I also like his introductory voiceover here. I’m going to quote it in full:

“Sometimes we are all those who were born in the territory we call Mexico. Although sometimes, we are the inhabitants of a region or simply a city or an indigenous town. Other times we are the ones who share certain physical traits, because ‘we’ always implies an outsider, an ‘other. And that can lead to racism, a disease with terrible consequences, consequences that we can see all over the world.”