A stereotypical global culture

In traditional Hollywood films you could (you can) see many characters that prevailed in the global collective imagination, the adventures of the pirates of the Caribbean, tough cowboys, gloomy vampires or amiable, Roman gladiators and different episodes characteristic of scripts considered " entertained. "

They also included numerous scenes showing home and social situations of the "American way of life" on the screen, exhibiting the consumption habits of middle and upper class families in the United States.

The cinematographic and television arguments also developed a unilateral vision of the conquest of the country by the European colonizers. The native communities that inhabited the territory in times before the invasion were "uncivilized" and therefore justified the violent actions and extermination, as well as the occupation of native lands in the name of progress.

For a long time Hollywood spread, stereotypically and worldwide, the historical vicissitudes of the advance of the foreign occupation front in aboriginal lands. It was posed as a struggle between the barbarian Indians, who resisted civilization, and the United States army that defended the good settlers who only looked for new lands to build a more prosperous and productive future with their honest work.

One of the native peoples most directly affected by the colonization was the Chumash nation, which lived precisely in the region of Los Angeles and Hollywood.

During Spanish and Mexican rule the area remained sparsely populated and sporadically attended by distant authorities, the Chumash communities lost part of their land but managed to subsist precariously in the Californian coastal region.

In 1845, California was invaded and annexed to the United States. In the last decades of the nineteenth century, and throughout the twentieth century, the area was populated and intensely urbanized and today there are more than 20 million people living in the southern coastal counties of California.

In addition to their physical elimination due to repression, the chumash lost all their territories until they were confined in marginal places. Faced with this demographic flood, which still continues, it was little credible that a Chumash community could have survived with an awareness of its historical identity. And yet, that's how it happened.

In 1901, with the survivors of the Chumash nation, the Chumash Santa Ynez Reserve, made up of a few families, was constituted.

It was a century later, at the dawn of the 21st century, that tribal members achieved economic self-sufficiency through the construction and operation of a Hotel-Casino. Currently (2012) the reserve is composed of 97 families with a population of 249 residents.

Although little of the old Chumash culture remains, its survival in the vicinity of the great Californian metropolitan areas is an exceptional case of historical resilience.

Despite its closeness and relevance, it seems that the film industry in Los Angeles has not yet learned that the Chumash people managed to survive the genocide in the very jaws of the beast of capitalism and frivolity ...

It would be a nice argument for a Hollywood dramatic movie.

From the book "Chronicles of the Human Peripecie". D.Anton, Piriguazu Ediciones