Evil an Analysis of Mestizo

¶ … Evil

An Analysis of Mestizo and Mestizaje in Touch of Evil

As Luz Calvo states, Touch of Evil from the very beginning establishes itself as a film which, with its "famous opening sequence…sets up interlocking anxieties about crossing the border, racial mixture, and (hetero)sexuality" (76). The very essence of the border town evokes ambiguity -- because it is populated by inhabitants who are of two worlds: one local and indigenous and the other European and foreign. Not only do these two populations coexist, they also co-habitate and produce a new breed of offspring known as the mestizo -- a cross of indigenous and European blood. Crossing these two elements becomes known as mestizaje -- a concept which "expresses the tensions, contradictions, and ambiguities of its birth in the New World" ("Lecture Notes: Touch of Evil"). This paper will analyze the film Touch of Evil from the aspect of the mestizo and mestizaje, and show how the film presents these concepts throughout the unfolding of its plot.

Touch of Evil, as Calvo, insists, "is structured by a primal scene fantasy that signals ambivalence…[and implies] the question of origin: 'Where did I come from?'" (74). The most literal expression of this question of origin is found in the mestizo -- the case of Mexican identity in the border town riddled by corruption and run by an overweight and corrupt police chief who has no problem framing the Mexican element which he despises. Here, the mestizo in the form of Vargas (played by Charlton Heston) steps in to set things right and restore order in a world where ambiguity has given way to license and corruption.

Yet mestizaje as a rule is not depicted with glowing lights. Vargas' wife, for example, played by Janet Leigh, becomes an object of desire for the Mexican gangs employed by Quinlan (the corrupt chief) to harass the mestizo couple. The gangs hint at rape and use scare tactics to compel the woman to flee the border town with her husband before he stirs up too many clues and shuts down Quinlan. The ambiguity that is a result of the mixing of cultures and races is "demystified" as the lecture notes imply mainly because the film refuses to stereotype. Right and wrong are not virtues obtained by any race in particular -- but by men and women who prefer not to be overcome by the strictures of profiles: Vargas, for example, pursues justice not because he is mestizo but because he is a just man.

Quinlan, on the other hand, is a white man with a past (implicitly filled with dalliances and minglings within the Mexican community). Quinlan's obsession with the Mexicans seems to stem from some kind of guilt -- which he himself barely acknowledges. Although he admits to planting evidence and framing the Mexicans, he asserts bitterly that they are nonetheless "guilty, guilty." Quinlan himself escapes judgment even though he is killed and all we know of him in the end is that he was "some kind of man." Here is the ultimate ambiguity expressed in the film: identity and race and even gender are hardly comforting bases. The real worth of the individual is somewhere in the heart -- which, of course, is inscrutable to the last.