Envisioning Vengeance

Rebellious Indigeneity, Gender and Genre in Jayro Bustamante's <i>La Llorona</i>

Abstract

This essay analyzes the 2019 Guatemalan film La Llorona, directed by Jayro Bustamante, in order to question the representational and affective function of monstrosity in genre cinema, asking, in particular, how it recruits Indigenous epistemology to reorient bodies away from colonial logic. As opposed to classic north American horror films, which often link non-Western spiritual practices to the unleashing of evil forces, La Llorona revises the genre by locating that evil in the character representing the genocidal authoritarian state, the vanquishing of which requires the use of an Indigenous spiritual practice that involves bodily possession. I argue that the film shifts the objectifying gaze from the Indigenous as Other to the white patriarchal state as the true source of monstrosity. In this way, the film stages a cathartic reckoning with a historical trauma as it also interpellates a white and Indigenous female coalition. In addition, by utilizing classic horror genre techniques and rewriting them for a local context, the film encourages an embodied response in the viewer that engages with the uncanny resonances of a national trauma.