ONE OF cinema’s leading Latin American actors has attacked Hollywood for perpetuating derogatory stereotypes of Hispanic people.

Gael García Bernal, the Mexican star of Amores Perros, Y Tu Mama Tambien and The Motorcycle Diaries, in which he played a young Che Guevara, was speaking on stage at the National Film Theatre in The Times Screen Talk, part of The Times bfi London Film Festival.

He said that the problem of stereotyping ran deeper than Hollywood’s age-old insistence on casting Hispanic actors as the “bad guy”.

“There’s also the Good Latino stereotype. They always come from the slums with dogs playing in the dirt and people everywhere and a room full of kids. To be the Good Latino they then have to get away, to go to university and then marry the white girl.

“I have a real problem with that. It’s important not to compromise your identity, not to become someone else in order to be accepted.

“Why do you have to whitewash your identity to become part of (American) society?” Bernal, 26, has just played his first major English-language role in The King, a dark Gothic parable set in small-town Texas, which had its British premiere in the festival.

He plays an intense MexicanAmerican whose search for his father culminates in incest and stomach-churning violence.

He said that he hoped viewers would not see the character as another “bad Mexican”.

One in eight Americans is now of Hispanic origin and there are cities in Texas that are 80 or 90 per cent Hispanic.

From Jennifer Lopez and Salma Hayek to baseball’s most expensive player Alex Rodriguez, Latino actors, musicians and sportsmen have a higher profile than ever before.

But surging immigration has fuelled an increasingly bitter debate, with some commentators referring to “the Hispanic menace” — the fear that Latinos could swamp parts of the US with their culture and language.

“These are scary times,” Bernal said. “This kind of thing is allowed now after September 11. As if the US wasn’t made rich by all the people that came and brought their culture with them.”

Bernal refused to name films with stereotyped Latin characters. Instead he picked out a well-regarded film that he felt had perpetuated a more general stereotype.

“I have a bit of a problem with Traffic. The film is really good and I loved it but disagreed with its point of view.

“It came out with all this hype that it throws new light on the drugs trade but they don’t show how once the drugs cross the border (into the US) who distributes them and they don’t point out how it’s beneficial for arms-selling countries like the US to keep selling arms to Latin America.”

With Diego Luna, his childhood friend and co-star in Y Tu Mama Tambien, he has set up a film production company in Mexico to help local film-makers to work without commercial constraints.

“What we want to do is give the opportunity for directors (in Mexico) to put their own point of view. At the moment many films have to compromise their point of view to be funded.”

Bernal learnt his craft at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London.

www.timesonline.co.uk/lff
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