Seguin: the movie, its director and its critics
In this episode, Linda Fregoso examines the upcoming film Seguin, based on the life of Juan Seguin, and explores its implications for Chicanos with the film’s director, Jesus Trevino, and Rosaura Sanchez and Juan Rodriguez, two scholars of Chicano Studies. Trevino explains that he made the film because he wanted to highlight Chicano contributions to U.S. history, a subject textbooks have largely ignored. Moreover, he believes that Seguin’s life contains many of the conflicts Chicanos face today. However, Sanchez sees Seguin as a sell-out, manipulated by Anglos to work for U.S. expansion. She believes that focusing on his story obscures the atrocities Mexicans experienced during and after the Texas Revolution.
Throughout the episode, Fregoso and the various guests explain some of the context of the Texas Revolution and Seguin’s history. Trevino believes that the prejudice that forced Seguin, a wealthy landowner, to flee Texas can reveal some of the problems poorer Mexicans encountered—problems, which, he argues, originated in a cultural conflict that exists to this day. Sanchez counters that Chicanos cannot identify with Seguin or his problems because they stem from his class background. Rodriguez agrees and argues that focusing on Seguin’s life is an attempt to create heroes, patterned after Anglo role models, for the Chicano community. Rodriguez believes that the Chicano community does not need historical heroes because they look to the everyday heroes in their own families. Sanchez concludes that she hopes future films will offer more realistic portrayals of Mexican Americans. (The movie is scheduled to air on PBS Jan. 1982)
KEYWORDS
AlamoAmerican Expansionism
Anglo
Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna
Border
Boulevard Nights
Catholicism
Chicano History
Conflict between Anglos and Mexicans
Corporation for Public Broadcasting
Cuba
Cultural Conflict
Danny de la Paz
Erasmo Seguin
Ethnic Identity
French Intervention
Gregorio Cortez
Henry Darrow
Heroes
High Chapparal
Historiography
History
Jesus Trevino
John Wayne
Juan Rodriguez
Juan Seguin
La Historia
Lone Star Republic
Media Portrayals of Chicanos
Mexican American Studies Center
Mexican American War
Mexico
Minority representations in the media
Moses Austin
Myths
National Endowment for the Humanities
National identity
PBS
Post-Colonialism
Rosa Linda Fregoso
Rosaura Sanchez
San Antonio
Seguin, Texas
Slavery
Spain
Stephen F. Austin
Texas History
Texas Independence
Texas Lutheran College
Texas Revolution
Textbooks
Transnationalism
Uncle Tom
Working Class