{"id":40044,"date":"2025-09-22T10:00:48","date_gmt":"2025-09-22T16:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/encartes.mx\/?p=40044"},"modified":"2025-09-19T14:57:37","modified_gmt":"2025-09-19T20:57:37","slug":"leon-amare-migracion-costa-chica-oaxaca","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/encartes.mx\/en\/leon-amare-migracion-costa-chica-oaxaca\/","title":{"rendered":"Amare: a look at migration in the Costa Chica of Oaxaca from an ethnofiction perspective."},"content":{"rendered":"

Amare<\/em> (2024) is a short fiction film by the Afro-Mexican filmmaker, native of the Oaxacan coast, Balam Benjam\u00edn Nieto Toscano, known for works such as Romina and Ivan <\/em>(2021) y Mutsk Wu\u00e4jxt\u00eb\u2019<\/em> (Peque\u00f1os zorros<\/em>) (2024). Recently, Amare<\/em> has been selected for the 28th edition of the Guanajuato International Film Festival.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His opera prima Soy Yuy\u00e9 <\/em>has just finished the post-production stage, so we will soon be able to enjoy it on screens. At the moment, the filmmaker is working on a new fiction film about the lives of seven teenage Afro-Costa Rican women who will show their yearnings and challenges in a territory marked by machismo and carnival.1<\/a> Toscano is a graduate of the Centro de Capacitaci\u00f3n Cinematogr\u00e1fica (Centro de Capacitaci\u00f3n Cinematogr\u00e1fica).ccc<\/span>) and has received several awards and support.2<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This review is focused on reflecting on the importance of ethnofiction cinema, made from within the communities.3<\/a> to make visible the issues and problems that concern them, such as, in this case, migration to the United States. My intention in recognizing Amare <\/em>(2024) as a work of ethnofiction is to invite the public to see the film from different sensibilities offered by this work that navigates between the thin lines of documentary and fiction, bringing us closer to one of the realities of the Afro-descendant communities of the Oaxacan coast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Without revealing too much of the plot, since the film is just beginning its exhibition route, the film tells us a story about women, art, migration and feelings narrated from the community of El Tamal, Santiago Pinotepa Nacional, Oaxaca. The main character is Amare, a woman from a coastal community in Oaxaca; the characters are mainly women, as the co-protagonist is her sister Cielo, followed by her mother and father, who is the figure on which the story is based, but not as the main character. Childhood is also present in the film. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The director opens and closes the film in a rounded manner, recovering real testimonies, first from the point of view of a mother and, at the end, from the point of view of a migrant woman. In the story, we see Cielo, a drawing teacher, who works enthusiastically with her students. Subsequently, we are presented with the conflict in the story: Cielo's father is very ill and asks for someone he wants to see; Cielo replies that he has not yet arrived, because he is far away. After the father's abrupt death, the protagonist of the story arrives in the community: Amare. Her arrival causes notable surprise, excitement and movement among the villagers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is after Amare's arrival when the themes that concern the characters are developed through the conversations between the sisters. The neuralgic point that Toscano presents us with is the constant migration of the inhabitants of the towns of the Costa Chica to the United States, mostly. Although in the film the motives are apparently economic, in reality the displacements can have other types of mitigating factors: persecution due to violence, social or ethnic stigmas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The movie Amare<\/em> has several virtues that are found at different levels that I would like to mention in order to propose some axes of reflection to the viewers, with the purpose of collaborating in the discussions and explorations after the viewing. First of all, it is remarkable the cultural belonging of the filmmaker Balam Toscano, who manages to reflect, with a look from the inside, not only the landscape characteristics of these towns with the great general shots he offers us, but also the slang, the daily customs, the rites and a kind of aesthetic experience of the life of the Costa Chiquense. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The film was shot in the community of El Tamal, Santiago Pinotepa Nacional, Oaxaca; an Afro-Mexican community with approximately 233 inhabitants. The cast of the film are not professional actors and actresses, but people from the same community who, in the words of the filmmaker, played themselves. Thus, the narrative of Amare<\/em> has an authenticity that gives it an anthropological touch that can place it within the genre of ethnofiction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amare<\/em>From the very first frame, it surprises those eyes accustomed to films shot with digital equipment. Being shot with a 35 mm camera, it offers another aspect on the screen, endowed with a beauty typical of the analog format. The director's decision to shoot in 35 mm can also be read as a kind of resistance to the technological demands of contemporary film production. It is enough to imagine the labor involved in transporting and caring for the rolls of film to the locations on the Costa Chica, because the weather conditions are hot and the distances are very long.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It seems pertinent to me to take into account, in the same way, the little access to this type of cinematographic equipment that Afro-Mexican peoples have had. In a more optimistic present, it seems that more and more young people who assume themselves as Afro-descendants are encouraged to pick up a camera and tell their own stories, although the digital format is the prevailing one in audiovisual works. Therefore, shooting a 35 mm film today can be seen as a symbolic reparation for those worthy and well-told stories that were never recorded for decades, due to the structural inequalities experienced by Afro-Mexican peoples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Balam Benjam\u00edn Toscano is one of the few young people from his community who managed to emigrate to Mexico City to pursue higher education. This may seem an irrelevant fact, but for Afro-Mexican cinema it is not, since not many people from Afro-descendant communities in Mexico manage to get involved and develop in some area of the film circuit. The low presence of people from these territories is mostly due to structural factors: mainly the economic backwardness that has made it difficult for people to complete their high school education and to enroll in learning filmmaking. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although Toscano always had a certain sensitivity for photography, he considers that the key moment in his career as an audiovisual filmmaker happened in 2016, when he was part of \"Ambulante m\u00e1s all\u00e1\".4<\/a> In a personal interview, he mentions how in that experience he learned, in an incipient way, to direct and photograph, but, above all, to \"look\" with greater sensitivity at what he wanted to tell. The Costa Rican filmmaker also emphasizes that most of his stories are based on Afro-descent and that this is perceived in the films in different \"layers\", ranging from the most obvious, such as the phenotype of the people, to other deeper layers such as socio-cultural or political issues.5<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

From my perspective, I consider Amare<\/em> a work of ethnofiction, for let us remember that, on the one hand, ethnography is in charge of examining and recording specific and\/or concrete sociocultural issues of peoples. In the audiovisual field, Paul Henley (2001) points out that ethnographic cinema has been a tool for anthropology, which, although it was born from the hand of the same discipline, regains strength from the eighties onwards when the interpretative twists enter a boom. In other words, the link between the interpretative paradigm and the capacity of ethnographic cinema to show \"the particular\" in cultures is reinforced (Henley, 2001: 25). Although ethnographic cinema is closely linked to anthropological work, and in this case we are not talking about a purely ethnographic work, but a cinematographic one, I highlight the film's capacity to show a reality with its social, cultural and territorial particularities, as well as the figure of the director Balam Toscano who, being a native of the place, \"replaces\" the figure of the anthropologist, who would need to do field work to make ethnographic cinema.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The imaginative component of the work that makes it an ethnofiction can be traced back to the cinema inaugurated by Jean Rouch and the current of the cinema-verit\u00e9<\/em>. Rouch's cinema managed to challenge the limits of the camera's place among the communities, as well as the lines between reality and fiction by presenting fictional stories, but with native people from the villages reflecting their longings, desires and subjectivities in the films (Salvetti, 2012).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amare <\/em>also dialogues with other films whose directors have dared to challenge the symbolic frontier between documentary (as a paradigm of the \"real\" in cinema) and fiction. Although it seems to me that the debate about the non-existent division between the two genres is a discussion that has already been overcome and I consider that Amare <\/em>falls more into the category of ethnofiction.,<\/em> I would like to recover one of the most outstanding cases in the genealogy of the docufiction genre.6<\/a> in order to broaden the picture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was from video art that the first attempts to make films that amalgamate fiction with the everyday reality of people appeared. Such was the case of Sarah Minter, a pioneer of video art in Mexico in the 1980s. In the 1980s, the growth of the then Federal District and the poverty in its marginal neighborhoods became tangible. During this period, youth gangs were born in the peripheries, many of them made up of young people from indigenous peoples and impoverished peasant families. The most stereotyped group, because of their brazenness, were the punks. In this context, Minter ventured into the experimentation that amalgamates documentary and fiction, in his works No one is innocent<\/em> (1985) y Punk soul<\/em> (1991). His attempt was a personal narrative framed in the audiovisual language; he hoped for a playful complicity with the actors and to give an independent character to his production (Minter, 2008: 5).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It seems that for some social groups that have been more affected by the stereotypes created by hegemonic cinema, it is more important to break the reality-fiction dichotomy: breaking this binomial is a strategy to deepen their own representations in a more respectful and less prejudiced way. As a negatively stereotyped group, the punk youth of the 1980s serve as an example. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maite Garbayo points out that in No one is innocent<\/em> portrays the band Mierdas Punks from Ciudad Nezahualc\u00f3yotl. There, Minter met a member of the band and became interested in the life of the marginal groups of the city, far from the privileged and upper class youth. The neighborhood youths had a subaltern aesthetic. Their look reflects what it means to be chavo-banda. Minter, contrary to the media's belief, patents an image of chavo-banda away from drug use and criminal issues. Minter humanizes the punks, shows their links and their future. He embeds them in the framework of their marginalized conditions, although he does not make them part of it, but a consequence. Garbayo suggests that Minter \"pacifies\" the chavos-banda, since they were an object of repudiation and meant a threat to the government and the press (Garbayo, 2016: 83-84).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the case of Sarah Minter and No one is innocent <\/em>seems far removed from Amare, <\/em>Since filmmaker Minter had an outside view of the community she represented on screen, the intention of evoking her in this review is also to situate a genealogy of the docufiction genre in cinema and its impact on the search to eliminate stereotypes and negative representations of certain population groups. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Again, the narrative of the films made from within the communities of the Costa Chica, the narrative of Amare <\/em>is also reminiscent of the case of the feature film They made us overnight <\/em>(2021)7<\/a> by Antonio Hern\u00e1ndez. This film, officially classified as a documentary, shows part of the daily life of the Afro-Mestizo Salinas Tello family. In its narrative we see part of their customs and traditions in the coastal town of San Marquitos, founded in 1974, when Cyclone Dolores flooded the town of Charco Redondo and, displaced by the natural disaster, some of its inhabitants founded the community of San Marquitos. The \"documentary\" genre of They made us overnight<\/em> seems more a formalism than something that defines the style of the film. While it is true that we see the daily life of the Salinas Tello family reflected in the script, there are fictional scenes that add other touches: either of freshness or \"magical realism\"; this does not detract from the veracity of its documentary style.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They made us overnight <\/em>shows us part of the worldview of the Afro-Costa Rican peoples, such as the belief in the \"tona\", the \"empacho\" cures and the dance of the Diablos, which connects this existence with other planes on the days of the dead. He moves away from stereotypes coming from racism, recurrent in cinema, to tell, from his own point of view, who are the Salinas Tello and, therefore, who are the Afro-Mexican peoples of the Costa Chica. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In line with the above, it seems to me that Amare <\/em>is inserted not only in the growing production of Afro-Mexican cinema, but also in a narrative of ethnofiction that finds its functionality in representing the peoples of Costa Rica from their realities, such as their customs and traditions, as well as their problems, such as the constant migration to the United States of America. It would seem that the resistance and the \"cimarronaje\" (the \"cimarronaje\")8<\/a> in cinema are also practiced in defiance of the formalisms of the film genres imposed by the industry. In this sense, Amare <\/em>has a double anthropological value: on the one hand, the ethnographic merit of the film that somehow refers us \"to an encounter with otherness that provokes in us, directly or indirectly, the fundamental concern that gives rise to the ethnographic experience\" (Ziri\u00f3n, 2015: 13); and on the other hand, the genuine curiosity it awakens in specialists on the subject to follow the steps of these young Afro-Mexican filmmakers, such as Balam Toscano, and the expressive resources they make use of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As an anthropologist working on the audiovisual theme in Costa Chica, I consider the relevance of Amare <\/em>is, to say the least, outstanding. Beyond the plot and the knots that sustain the narrative, there are several issues worth mentioning that, in my opinion, give anthropological value to the fiction that the director has shown. In my fieldwork, I have witnessed that the problems addressed by Balam Toscano are of an everyday nature in the Afro-Mexican communities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first of these concerns education. In the peripheral populations of Pinotepa Nacional (specifically, but also in the entire Costa Chica, in general) there is a palpable governmental abandonment of education. Children tend to be abandoned by the Ministry of Public Education. As shown in Amare<\/em>The children are taught by people from the communities themselves. Such is the case of Corralero, where the filming took place. The negrada<\/em>9<\/a> (2018) by Jorge P\u00e9rez Solano. In Corralero I was able to witness the initiative of a workshop leader to support the education of infants, who were neglected by their assigned teachers. And, in a case very similar to the one presented at Amare<\/em>The workshop leader, an expert in engraving, encouraged the creativity and imagination of her adopted students through the arts (in this case, painting). Balam Toscano brings us closer to a reality that is often minimized: students do not have the right tools to develop their individual talents; it is the intervention of third parties that manages to alleviate the educational lag.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The issue of children abandoned by their parents (as mentioned by Cielo and Amare in their final conversation) is also one of the social setbacks experienced in Costa Chica. In multiple interviews conducted for my research, my interlocutors were concerned about the phenomenon of youth homelessness. Due to migration issues, children are often neglected: parents who travel, often illegally, to the United States, leave their children behind, who, in the best of cases, are left in the care of their grandparents. However, many grow up unprotected and sometimes fall into a spiral that Balam Toscano briefly mentions in his film: drug trafficking and its derivatives. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Insecurity in Costa Chica is not something that can be ignored. Regardless of the situations that are common to all regions of the country (neighborhood conflicts, accidents, domestic violence, etc.), the Afro-descendant communities suffer the incidence of drug trafficking. Organized crime takes advantage of abandoned children for its lucrative purposes: whether as clients or as members of their organization, recruited by force or out of necessity, the cartels pervert the young people of the area. In an interview with an activist from Jos\u00e9 Mar\u00eda Morelos, she pointed out to me the growing number of adolescents integrated into the criminal spirals: from an early age they are induced to consume narcotics; later they are forced to be part of drug trafficking, with dangerous and poorly paid jobs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The central issue, addressed by Balam Toscano, is undoubtedly migration. Amare is not only a traveler in search of better opportunities who returns and breaks with the family economy (as she can no longer provide money), but she becomes a fundamental agent in the dialogue about what it means to be a woman, black and immigrant. This triad of conditions tends to make people in Costa Chica vulnerable: women, in a socially machista country, are undervalued and delegated to domestic work; Afro-descendants have historically suffered from a racism that makes them invisible and disregards them from the Mexican State's national project; migrants and the population in transit are also undervalued and their rights are questioned. A combination of these factors occurs in cases where Afro-Mexicans are confused with South American migrants and are foreignized through the racist premise that there are no Afro-descendants in Mexico.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Minor, but equally important, are those concerning the cosmovision of the peoples of African origin. Talking to the Ceiba tree is an ancestral tradition, even among the Maya, that allows the living to connect with their deceased relatives. The funeral rites of the father of Cielo and Amare are well represented. I make this assessment because one of my field incursions took place on the Day of the Dead. Based on participatory ethnography, I find that Balam Toscano's production contains vast real elements of the everyday life of Afro-Mexican communities. This is the strongest point of Amare<\/em>Despite being a fiction, his filmic exposition is well-documented and reflects concrete realities in the Costa Chica, as are all the problems mentioned so far. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, I would not want to leave aside the technical aspects of Amare<\/em>. Visually, the cinematography is beautiful and well done. The pinnacle of it is the final shot, when the sisters Cielo and Amare talk on the shores of a small lake. The greenness of the surrounding nature contrasts with the arid landscapes of the Costa Chica at a certain time of the year. Perhaps Balam Toscano gave us this shot with the intention of demonstrating that the interlocution of the sisters was extremely natural: both gave opinions and spoke to each other with the truth that each one possessed. Cielo's recrimination to Amare for her estrangement, on the one hand; and Amare's desire to convince Cielo to migrate with her, on the other. The narrative, though short, is concise and allows viewers to reflect on what is exposed on screen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In sum, Amare<\/em> is an important product for Mexican cinematography for two crucial reasons: it gives an account of a concrete reality in towns forgotten by the majority of the inhabitants (in this case, the Afro-Mexican communities of the Costa Chica); and it is a continuation of the work of ethnofiction, with anthropological overtones, which is why I suggest categorizing Balam Toscano's film as ethnofiction. This proposal is due to the fact that it takes into account the daily life of the communities, which is narrated by one of its members. Undoubtedly, the ethnofiction genre is capable of bringing viewers closer to realities alien to them, with a powerful sensitivity and depth that would be worth rethinking if it is comparable to other film genres, as well as its scope and limitations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bibliography<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Garbayo Maeztu, Maite (2016). \u201cIntersubjetividad y transferencia: apuntes para la construcci\u00f3n de un caso de estudio\u201d, Nierika. Revista de Estudios de Arte, <\/em>a\u00f1o 5, n\u00fam. 9.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Henley, Paul (2001). \u201cCine etnogr\u00e1fico: tecnolog\u00eda, pr\u00e1ctica y teor\u00eda antropol\u00f3gica\u201d, Desacatos. Revista de Antropolog\u00eda Social<\/em>. M\u00e9xico: Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropolog\u00eda Social, n\u00fam. 8, invierno, pp. 17-36.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Minter, Sarah (2008). \u201cA vuelo de p\u00e1jaro, el video en M\u00e9xico: sus inicios y su contexto\u201d, en Laura Baigorri (ed.). Video en Latinoam\u00e9rica. Una historia cr\u00edtica. <\/em>Madrid: Agencia Espa\u00f1ola de Cooperaci\u00f3n Internacional para el Desarrollo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Miranda Robles, Franklin (2011). \u201cCimarronaje cultural e identidad afrolatinoamericana. Reflexiones acerca de un proceso de autoidentificaci\u00f3n heterog\u00e9neo\u201d, Revista de la Casa de las Am\u00e9ricas,<\/em> n\u00fam. 264, pp. 39-56.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Salvetti, Vivina Perla (2017). \u201cIdentidad nativa en los filmes de Jean Rouch: \u00bfetno-ficci\u00f3n o etnon fiction?\u201d. Buenos Aires: Facultad de Filosof\u00eda y Letras. Disponible en: https:\/\/www.academia.edu\/32888324\/Identidad_Nativa_en_los_filmes_de_Jean_Rouch_Etno_Ficci%C3%B3n_o_Etnon_fiction<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Walker, Sheila S. (comp.) (2013). Conocimiento desde adentro. Los afrosudamericanos hablan de sus pueblos y sus historias. <\/em>Fundaci\u00f3n Pedro Andav\u00e9rez Peralta\/Afrodi\u00e1spora\/Fundaci\u00f3n Interamericana\/Organizaci\u00f3n Cat\u00f3lica Canadiense para el Desarrollo y la Paz.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ziri\u00f3n, Antonio (2015). \u201cMiradas c\u00f3mplices: cine etnogr\u00e1fico, estrategias colaborativas y antropolog\u00eda visual aplicada\u201d, Revista Iztapalapa<\/em>. M\u00e9xico: Universidad Aut\u00f3noma Metropolitana-Iztapalapa, vol. 36, n\u00fam. 78, pp. 45-56.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Filmography<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Guzm\u00e1n, Ximena y Balam Toscano (2024). Mutsk Wu\u00e4jxt\u00eb\u2019<\/em> (Peque\u00f1os zorros<\/em>). Cimarr\u00f3n Audiovisual.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hern\u00e1ndez, Antonio (2021). Nos hicieron noche. <\/em>Tangram Films, Ambulante, Detona.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Minter, Sarah (1985). Nadie es inocente. <\/em>Independiente.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014 (1991). Alma punk. <\/em>Independiente.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

P\u00e9rez Solano, Jorge (2018) La negrada. <\/em>Tirisia Cine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toscano, Balam (2021). Romina e Iv\u00e1n. <\/em>Cimarr\u00f3n Audiovisual.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014 (actualmente en etapa de posproducci\u00f3n). Soy Yuy\u00e9<\/em>. Cimarr\u00f3n Audiovisual.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Technical data sheet of Amare<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

T\u00edtulo: Amare<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A\u00f1o: 2024<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pa\u00eds: M\u00e9xico<\/p>\n\n\n\n

G\u00e9nero: ficci\u00f3n; drama<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Duraci\u00f3n: 23 minutos<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Formato: dcp<\/span>, Color<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Direcci\u00f3n: Balam Toscano<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Direcci\u00f3n de Producci\u00f3n: Magnolia Orozco Osegueda, Carla Ascencio Barahona<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fotograf\u00eda: Constanza Moctezuma<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Guion: Balam Toscano<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Edici\u00f3n: Balam Toscano<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sonido: Emanuel Gerardo Guerrero, Francisco G\u00f3mez Guevara<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dise\u00f1o Sonoro: Francisco G\u00f3mez Guevara<\/p>\n\n\n\n

M\u00fasica original: Francisco G\u00f3mez Guevara, Constanza Moctezuma, Balam N. Toscano<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Direcci\u00f3n de Arte: Ariana P\u00e9rez Mart\u00ednez<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Compa\u00f1\u00eda productora: Centro de Capacitaci\u00f3n Cinematogr\u00e1fica, A.C.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reparto: Nancy Bail\u00f3n, Patricia Loranca, Nidia Ramos Hernandez, Heriberto \u00c1ngel Hern\u00e1ndez, Isabel Dominga Hern\u00e1ndez Ramos<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Formato de Captura: 35 mm<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Colorista: Constanza Moctezuma<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fecha de rodaje: febrero de 2023<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Velocidad de proyecci\u00f3n: 24 fps<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tema: Migraci\u00f3n, identidad<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Locaciones: El Tamal, Oaxaca<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Ana Isabel Le\u00f3n Fern\u00e1ndez<\/em> is a historical anthropologist from the Universidad Veracruzana; master's degree in Anthropological Sciences from the Universidad Veracruzana. uam<\/span>-Iztapalapa. Her research topics include film audiences; film representations and identities in Mexico and Afro-Mexican peoples. She is also a cultural manager in the area of film exhibition with the Colectivo Cinema Colecta (Veracruz) since 2014; she collaborates in the programming area of the Festival Art\u00edstico Audiovisual Afrodescendencias. She is currently pursuing her doctoral studies at the Graduate Program in Anthropological Sciences at the University of Mexico. uam<\/span>-Iztapalapa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
1 In the filmmaker's own words.<\/div>\n
2 Balam Toscano was part of the fourth generation of the \"Ambulante m\u00e1s all\u00e1\" program; beneficiary of the Programa J\u00f3venes Creadores del Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes (National Fund for Culture and the Arts).fonca<\/span>); of the audiovisual narrative development project organized by Netflix and Fondo Miradas, Ambulante; and of the ii<\/span> Film Project Development Laboratory for Indigenous and Afro-descendant Filmmakers of Latin America, Morelia International Film Festival (ficm<\/span>). He was the winner of the Oaxaca Docs Festival, Oaxacan Fragments section (2024) for Mutsk Wu\u00e4jxt\u00eb'<\/em> (Peque\u00f1os zorros<\/em>) (2024) and winner of the Silver Deer Award at the Anthropological Film Festival of the National Institute of Anthropology and History for the same film.<\/div>\n
3 With the expression cinema \"from within\", I refer to audiovisual productions made about and by people belonging to an Afro-Mestizo, Afro-Mexican or Afro-Indigenous community. We have embraced this term as part of the work we do in the programming team of the Afrodescendencias Audiovisual Arts Festival, directed by anthropologist Claudia Lora, of which I have been a part since 2023. The term was coined by Afrodescendant researchers Sheila S. Walker and Jes\u00fas Garc\u00eda in a collective work in Venezuela, in which they \"assumed the responsibility of telling their own story, from their own perspective, to serve the interests of their own community and also those of other people, who want to have a more complex, complete and correct vision of what the Americas are\" (Walker, 2013: 14).<\/div>\n
4 \"Ambulante m\u00e1s all\u00e1\" is an initiative that is part of Ambulante, A. C. It functions as an itinerant film teaching school, dedicated to bringing tools to learn how to make audiovisuals to people in territories without access to formal film schools, mainly in indigenous and Afro-descendant communities.<\/div>\n
5 Personal interview to Balam Benjam\u00edn Toscano on June 15, 2023.<\/div>\n
6 Antonio Ziri\u00f3n (2015) reminds us that trying to define notions such as \"ethnographic cinema\", besides being difficult, can be fruitless. In this sense, I do not intend to give a definition of \"docufiction\" either. I use the word to refer specifically to the work of Sarah Minter, which, because of its urban character, has been more difficult to associate with the ethnographic. However, with the rise of urban anthropology, it may be more understandable that Minter's video art is also seen as film with ethnographic overtones.<\/div>\n
7 They made us overnight<\/em> is a film financed with support from \"Ambulante M\u00e1s all\u00e1\" and the W. K. Kellogg Foundation.<\/div>\n
8 I make an analogy with the term \"cimarronaje\", understood as the process of rebellion and escape carried out by enslaved people of African origin during the period of the conquest of America. These people who escaped from slavery have been called \"cimarronas\". Their resistance led to groupings such as palenques, quilombos and communities that ensured the physical, social and cultural survival of people of African descent (Miranda, 2011: 42). Currently, the term \"cimarr\u00f3n\" is redefined within activist movements with adaptations such as \"cimarronear\", referring mainly to acts of resistance in everyday life. Here I make a possible analogy of what we could imagine as the act of cimarronaje in cinematography; that is, a resistance to hegemonic canons from Afro-Mexican perspectives and aesthetics.<\/div>\n
9 I mention the movie The negrada<\/em> about fiction films shot in Afro-Mexican populations of the Costa Chica of Oaxaca. However, I do not seek to make any kind of relationship between the work of filmmaker Jorge P\u00e9rez Solano and the work of Balam Toscano and Antonio Hern\u00e1ndez. The film The negrada<\/em> caused a great debate at the time of its release in 2018. For those who wish to delve deeper into the impact of this film, please refer to my master's thesis \"El cine mexicano como espacio de configuraci\u00f3n para la afrodescendencia: el caso de la pel\u00edcula\". The negrada<\/em> and their audiences\". Available at: https:\/\/bindani.izt.uam.mx\/concern\/tesiuams\/zc77sq39x?locale=es<\/a> Accessed February 24, 2025.<\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This review is focused on reflecting on the importance of ethnofiction cinema, made from within the communities to make visible the issues and problems that concern them as, in this case, migration to the United States. My intention in recognizing Amare (2024) as a work of ethnofiction is to invite the public to see the film from different sensibilities offered by this work that navigates between the thin lines of documentary and fiction, bringing us closer to one of the realities of the Afro-descendant communities of the Oaxacan coast.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":40045,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[1485,1486,1484,609,500],"coauthors":[551],"class_list":["post-40044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-10","tag-cine-afromexicano","tag-comunidades-afrodescendientes","tag-costa-chica","tag-etnoficcion","tag-migracion","personas-leon-fernandez-ana-isabel","numeros-1405"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nAmare: una mirada a la migraci\u00f3n en la Costa Chica de Oaxaca desde una etnoficci\u00f3n – 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