Emilio Fernández

Emilio "El Indio" Fernández Romo, who was born on March 26, 1904, in the state of Coahuila, Mexico, is the most famous person in the history of Mexican movies. For an era he symbolized Mexico due to his violent machismo, rooted in the Revolution of 1910-17, and because of his staunch commitment to Mexican cultural nationalism. Sired by an ethnic Caucasian father and born to an Indian mother, Emilio was himself the "mestizaje" (mestizo) that his films would later glorify. The teenaged Fernández abandoned his studies to serve as an officer in the Huertista rebellion, which broke out on December 4, 1923, led by Gen. Adolfo de la Huerta. On July 20th of that year, Pancho Villa had been ambushed and murdered; one theory was that the killing was done by agents of Mexican President Álvaro Obregón. Obregón, when he served as a general during the revolution, had defeated Villa in four successive battles collectively known as the Battle of Celaya, which was the largest military confrontation in Latin American history before the 1982 Falklands War. Under the Constitution of 1917 that Obregón himself helped write, Mexican presidents could not succeed themselves (Obregón would later have the constitution amended so he could serve a second, non-consecutive term; after winning the presidential election of 1928, he was assassinated before his inauguration). Obregón had won the presidency in 1920 after inciting a successful military revolt against President Venustiano Carranza, who had planned on naming Ignacio Bonillas as his successor instead of Obregón, who believed that he deserved it. The revolt began when the governor of the state of Sonora, Gen. Huerta, broke with President Carranza and declared the secession of Sonora. This was a signal for the beginning of the successful uprising against Carranza, led by Obregón and supported by Gen. 'Plutarco Elías Calles' (qav). After Carranza was killed in an ambush, Huerta served as provisional president of Mexico from June 1 to December 1, 1920, until elections could be held. When Obregón won the federal election, Huerta became Minister of Finance in the new government. Huerta considered himself the natural successor to President Obregón, just as Obregón had considered himself Carranza's natural successor. The murdered Villa was seen as an ally of Huerta, who had publicly announced his candidacy for the presidency. Obregón, however, planned to remain in power by handpicking his successor, a tradition that lasted throughout 20th-century Mexican politics. When he named his anti-clerical Minister of the Interior, the former Gen. Calles, as his heir, Huerta rose up in a rebellion that eventually affected half of the Mexican army. Like Huerta a native of Sonora and a former general in the Mexican army, Calles had preceded him as governor and military ruler of their home state from 1915-16. Huerta thought his service and loyalty to Obregón should have brought him the presidency, but Mexican presidents, not allowed to succeed themselves and limited (mostly) to one term, tried to extend their power by naming political puppets as successors (Calles would outdo Obregón by controlling the Mexican presidency outright or through puppets from 1924 to 1934). The rebellion was a series threat to Obregon, but he was able to quash it by using loyal army units, battalions of workers and farmers and intervention by the US. By the time ended in March 1924, 54 generals and 7,000 soldiers were gone, either killed in battle, executed, exiled or dismissed. Obregón banished Huerta to exile in the US (where he lived in Los Angeles, supporting himself as a music teacher). This was the cauldron of violence and nationalism in which the young Fernandez came into his manhood. He received a 20-year prison sentence for his participation in the rebellion on the losing side. Escaping prison by following Huerta into exile in Los Angeles, Fernández absorbed the rudiments of filmmaking as a bit player and extra working in Hollywood in the 1920s and early 1930s. With the election of Lázaro Cárdenas as president in 1934, the Huertista rebels were granted an amnesty (Huerta himself was recalled from exile by Cárdenas in 1935 and served in several posts, including Inspector General of Foreign Consulates and Director General of Civil Pensions). Fernández returned to Mexico in 1934 and began working in the Mexican movie industry as a screenwriter and actor. His Indian looks, which gave him his nickname "El Indio," also brought him his first lead role, playing an Indian in Janitzio (1935). Due to his imposing physical presence and Indian countenance, El Indio was cast as bandits, charros (cowboys) and revolutionaries. The Cárdenas government of 1934-40 established the framework in which the "Golden Age of Mexican Cinema" could be realized. The political system that dominated Mexico for over half a century was consolidated during his regime. The government incorporated trade unions, campesino (peasant) organizations and middle-class professionals and office workers into the ruling Party of the Mexican Revolution (later the Party of the Institutional Revolution, or PRI). Cárdenas oversaw the redistribution of millions of acres of land to peasants and the expansion of collective bargaining rights and wage increases to workers. Cárdenas and all subsequent PRM/PRI presidents (all presidents of Mexico in the 20th century beginning with Calles were PRM/PRI members; Vicente Fox was the first from outside the party in three-quarters of a century) maintained political control of Mexico by granting favors and concessions to their constituencies inside the corporatist party structure in exchange for worker and campesino organizations delivering votes and suppressing discontent among their constituencies. The PRM/PRI itself created an organizational structure for the government that allowed citizens access to the political realm, in the sense that they could interface with government agencies. Once inside the…