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MIGRATIONS
Migrations: Routes, Dreams and Reality
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This Peruvian movie has won 11 internationals awards, among them the Golden Bear to the best film at the 2009 Berlin International Film Festival. Directed by Claudia Llosa and starred by Magaly Solier, it competed for the Oscar against The White Ribbon (Das Weisse Band) from Germany; A Prophet (Un Prophète) from France; The Secret in Their Eyes (el Secreto de Sus Ojos) from Argentina; and Ajami from Israel. (Photo historiaglobalonline.com / Seinforma Canada)
This film expresses not only the consequences of terrorism in society but also the cultural rootlessness of those people who have been distressed and their new adopted customs as well. This phenomenon is locally known in Peru as huachafería.
***
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The Tamil Protests:
Resistance in the Face of Genocide
Resistance in the Face of Genocide
The Cultural Cringe Exposed
In The Milk of Sorrow
In The Milk of Sorrow
"Immigrants in Europe live in
lowest level of society”
lowest level of society”
03/07/10
By Alberto Pareja*/ Seinforma Canada Correspondent
Lima-. Huachafería is a word-expression originated in the Peruvian local way of speaking. It’s a concept and also a way of life used with variations in all the social layers of Peru and in other culturally vulnerable countries. Huachafería is a form of ideological-cultural alienation.
Basically, huachafería is a crude imitation that stems from the custom of imitating lifestyles, idiomatic uses and daily cultural constructions, rituals and/or ceremonies that come from overseas or from dominant classes. Two elements have to be highlighted: the first one is the thirst for imitation and the second one the corny or tastelessness implied.
The thirst for imitation is sometimes so powerful that dissolves all authenticity. There is no huachafería in the region of Andes, except for those who were influenced by a certain process of acculturation in some cosmopolitan place.
It should be noticed that the dramatic scenes that were filmed in some Andean region are particularly suggestive and set out the guidelines as a whole, particularly the scene of a woman dying in the context of the war unleashed by the so-called terrorist group Sendero Luminoso -Shining Path-, transmitting the fright through the milk of the breast of a woman. The fright is a magical-religious disease which has a certain somatic and psychological source.
The development of huachafería begins with the dominant social groups that foreignize themselves in order to differ from “plebeians”. In general there is a lack of cultural self-esteem that provokes imitation of what they see in the media, because it seems to give them prestige, due to the foreign origin or the lifestyles of rich and famous people.
Middle class individuals are especially huachafos. But this huachafería already took control also of the social rites of immigrants that arrived in Peruvian coastal cities during the last decades and are usually placed among informal groups that live in urban-poor zones with a varied wealth. Some of them have a considerable wealth that is showed off. Others, the majority, can afford certain luxuries only in special occasions such as a wedding day celebration, subject that is put on view in the film.
It is huachafería the fact that the Austrian waltz The Blue Danube from century XIX is set as the official wedding dance nowadays. Today that piece is not only danced by the groom and the bride one time, but over and over again with all her relatives and guests. And the hell of it is that is poorly performed obviously because Peruvian people don’t know the German-Austro-Hungarian culture.
Today the wedding ritual requires that relatives, neighbours and even strangers get the groom and the bride exhausted in the dance floor, while the guests applaud to the Johann Strauss’ waltz, just like the Peruvian national little waltz, in the endless long wait for the feast, which is another exhibition of power and economic effort.
In addition, some wedding celebrations include going down the stairs, colourful balloons, the long train of the wedding gown -the longer, the better- removing the wedding garter with the groom’s teeth and the gifts exhibition.
These huachafos details have been portrayed faithfully in the wedding scene of the film. It’s evident that the director’s lens wanted to show us all those details, like the use of the ladder, which is placed in the middle of nowhere and decorated with full huachafería, despite the fact that in the real scenario there is no place for stairs. That’s a winning scene.
It’s ironic yet comprehensible that the anti-huachafa critical view of the film hasn’t been captured by most of the Peruvian audience, including the critics.
*Alberto Pareja, our Editor of Environment, has got diplomas in Psychology and Human Sciences. He is also a political commentator in different radio stations of Peru.
By Alberto Pareja*/ Seinforma Canada Correspondent
Lima-. Huachafería is a word-expression originated in the Peruvian local way of speaking. It’s a concept and also a way of life used with variations in all the social layers of Peru and in other culturally vulnerable countries. Huachafería is a form of ideological-cultural alienation.
Basically, huachafería is a crude imitation that stems from the custom of imitating lifestyles, idiomatic uses and daily cultural constructions, rituals and/or ceremonies that come from overseas or from dominant classes. Two elements have to be highlighted: the first one is the thirst for imitation and the second one the corny or tastelessness implied.
The thirst for imitation is sometimes so powerful that dissolves all authenticity. There is no huachafería in the region of Andes, except for those who were influenced by a certain process of acculturation in some cosmopolitan place.
It should be noticed that the dramatic scenes that were filmed in some Andean region are particularly suggestive and set out the guidelines as a whole, particularly the scene of a woman dying in the context of the war unleashed by the so-called terrorist group Sendero Luminoso -Shining Path-, transmitting the fright through the milk of the breast of a woman. The fright is a magical-religious disease which has a certain somatic and psychological source.
The development of huachafería begins with the dominant social groups that foreignize themselves in order to differ from “plebeians”. In general there is a lack of cultural self-esteem that provokes imitation of what they see in the media, because it seems to give them prestige, due to the foreign origin or the lifestyles of rich and famous people.
Middle class individuals are especially huachafos. But this huachafería already took control also of the social rites of immigrants that arrived in Peruvian coastal cities during the last decades and are usually placed among informal groups that live in urban-poor zones with a varied wealth. Some of them have a considerable wealth that is showed off. Others, the majority, can afford certain luxuries only in special occasions such as a wedding day celebration, subject that is put on view in the film.
It is huachafería the fact that the Austrian waltz The Blue Danube from century XIX is set as the official wedding dance nowadays. Today that piece is not only danced by the groom and the bride one time, but over and over again with all her relatives and guests. And the hell of it is that is poorly performed obviously because Peruvian people don’t know the German-Austro-Hungarian culture.
Today the wedding ritual requires that relatives, neighbours and even strangers get the groom and the bride exhausted in the dance floor, while the guests applaud to the Johann Strauss’ waltz, just like the Peruvian national little waltz, in the endless long wait for the feast, which is another exhibition of power and economic effort.
In addition, some wedding celebrations include going down the stairs, colourful balloons, the long train of the wedding gown -the longer, the better- removing the wedding garter with the groom’s teeth and the gifts exhibition.
These huachafos details have been portrayed faithfully in the wedding scene of the film. It’s evident that the director’s lens wanted to show us all those details, like the use of the ladder, which is placed in the middle of nowhere and decorated with full huachafería, despite the fact that in the real scenario there is no place for stairs. That’s a winning scene.
It’s ironic yet comprehensible that the anti-huachafa critical view of the film hasn’t been captured by most of the Peruvian audience, including the critics.
*Alberto Pareja, our Editor of Environment, has got diplomas in Psychology and Human Sciences. He is also a political commentator in different radio stations of Peru.
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NOMINATED TO THE 2010 OSCAR FOR BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
