Cine y memoria cultural: la ilusión del multiculturalismo a partir de dos películas mexicanas de animación.

This paper discusses how there has been an illusion of multiculturalism in Mexico inspired by a reductionist "assimilationist racism" through the notion that "Mexican" is a mixture of "Hispanic" and "Indigenous". On the basis of a semiohistoric analysis of two Mexican animated children's films: "La leyenda de la Nahuala" (2007), by Ricardo Arnaiz, and "Héroes verdaderos. Episodio: Independencia" (2010), by Carlos Kuri, as well as a discussion about the construction of official narratives in Mexico, this paper identifies a series of reasons and arguments that reflect what has been defined as "Mexican" in historic and media terms, considering the fact that both films reproduce ideas that generate strong imprints on a young audience, perpetuating this illusion of multiculturalism. Finally, this analysis shows how even though since the seventies the Mexican government sought to move towards multi-ethnicity and multiculturalism, the reality has been that Mexico keeps representing the "Indigenous" as passive and traditional, whereas the "Hispanic" is represented as active and modern, limiting the possibility of creating narratives from the indigenous voices and identities in media without connoting a certain slowdown or obsolescence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]