"There Are Always Chickens Everywhere": Latinos Are Sharing The 23 Things Hollywood Gets Wrong About Latin America In Movies, And My Neck Is Aching From Nodding In Agreement
by Bella Arnold · BuzzFeedPosted 3 minutes ago
I don't know if you guys know this, but...Latin America is BIG. Like, really big. It spans multiple continents and makes up over 30 countries, each with different cultural and lived experiences.
You might be like, "Well...duh? Everyone knows that." Well, I'll tell you one group of people who don't! HOLLYWOOD EXECUTIVES!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The people of r/AskLatinAmerica have been talking about the weirdest, most annoying stereotypes about Latin America that exist in movies and TV shows, and I was both seething and laughing reading the comments because, MY GOD, they are so true. Here are some of the best responses:
Note: Responses have been edited for length/clarity.
1. "Flies to Mexico. This looks nothing like the movi— Oh wait, I almost forgot. Puts yellow-tinted sunglasses on. Much better."
"Don't forget, as soon as you are near the Mexican border, everything becomes more sand-colored yellow."
"Oh yeah, the old third-world sepia filter."
—nosg
2. "That all of Latin America is a Northern Mexican village with drug lords or the Amazon rainforest."
3. "Every girl is curvy, sexy, and oversexualized."
4. "I think this is nitpicky of me, but the accents bother me, like someone clearly being from South America, but the character is Mexican. Or when the Latin person barely speaks Spanish. Also, the maid, gardener, drug lord, etc., stereotype."
5. "That women are easy sluts. I'm Brazilian and live in the US. When I used to go to bars and whatnot, I would be having a conversation with a guy, and everything would be fine. Then, as soon as he found out I was Brazilian, it was like a switch flipped. They would become more pushy and less respectful. It happened way too many times."
6. "An egregious example of this is the movie Marathon Man with young Dustin Hoffman. The villain of the movie is a Nazi doctor who took refuge in Uruguay. 'Uruguay' is shown as a jungle, where people travel by canoes and speak with a Mexican accent."
(Just to clarify — there are no "jungles" or rainforests in Uruguay. It's a grassland region.)
7. "Everybody is brown."
8. "I remember there was a TV show where they briefly presented the full name of some Latino character in a nameplate, and the last name was Verga."
(Dear Reader, verga means dick in Spanish. <3)
9. "That Brazil speaks Spanish."
10. "Central America doesn't exist. It's Mexico or people planning to go to Costa Rica."
11. "In Jurassic Park, they show San José, Costa Rica, as a beachside town. San José is in a mountain valley."
12. "Not very stereotypical, but they always seem to get our names wrong. There are so many examples, but now I can only remember two from two shitty movies: one Brazilian guy in Anaconda was called Mateo. OK. Plausible but unlikely. Another one I remember, the villain was a Brazilian guy called Zamora. Who the hell in Brazil has a name like that?!"
—factotum-
13. "I always like how they always blend Mexican and Spanish culture to create this weird stereotype that doesn't make sense, and it's equally annoying for both parties."
14. "Jungle villages that use telegrams to communicate. We're not that technologically underdeveloped. We are portrayed as unsophisticated."
15. "That Latin America is 100% jungle/rainforest, and that most people look and speak exactly like Mexicans."
16. "Waiting for someone to say that they always portray your countries as poor shitholes, without any culture or intelligence. It doesn't matter the time period, in Hollywood, Latin America never changes."
—Anonymous
"Hollywood shows the best places in the US and the worst places in Latin America (one after the other). Come on, we know you guys have unhoused people and shitty neighborhoods there as well, you are not fooling anyone..."
—Anonymous
17. "This is specifically a Mexican stereotype, but Cinco de Mayo. I hate it when any American movie makes any reference to Cinco de Mayo. We don't care about it! We absolutely don't make parties with ponchos and sombreros!"
18. "That all Latinos listen to reggaeton, corridos, or merengue. Some of us Latinos also listen to classic rock and heavy metal."
19. "For Haiti, voodoo is mentioned EVERY. SINGLE. TIME."
20. "That all Latinx people are maids/janitors. In The Big Bang Theory, the only episode that ever has a Latina is in Season 10, Episode 8. They made her a maid, and the character Raj likes her, but he is ashamed of her because of what she is, so he lies about it. I was very disappointed and sad to have to see that."
21. "That everybody from Latin America likes salsa and samba..."
—Anonymous