In many ways, Hombre is a classic Western film. It begins with a cowboy versus Indian interaction, when an Apache raised white man is confronted by a cowboy with the news that his father has died and he is now the owner of his property. The main character, Russell, embodies the all too familiar mysterious, cocky protagonist that you want to hate even though he is the good guy. At first, Russell is insistent on staying with and protecting his calm, voiceless Apache companions, however he eventually agrees to the cowboy’s wishes and faces his heritage by journeying into the white township. Upon arrival into this run down, almost ghostly town he is greeted by two aggressive, gun wielding, intoxicated cowboys who are just itching to pick a fight with him. This kind of character is present throughout the whole movie, as well as in most stories of the wild west. This becomes even more evident when Russell’s ride to a nearby town is hijacked by bandits, leaving him to bring all the passengers to safety. The antagonist, Russell’s male travel companions, and all the other male characters introduced, aside from the Indians, are the dirty, true grit cowboys the United States has come to iconize. The same goes for the setting. The very first altercation is in a saloon, the majority of the movie takes place in a barren cactus filled wasteland, and all transportation is either by horse or by buggy with only hints of railroads here and there.
These consistencies open up a larger conversation about what truly is the west. This movie describes what I am going to call the “U.S West”. This is what American’s think the west was like just based on the amount of stories, movies, and books that have created a narrative identical to this. Cowboys and Indians are enemies, no issue between two men can be solved without the involvement of a cowboy hat or a gun, and whatever journey was undertaken always involved either perilous roads or equally perilous bandits.
However, a reality of the west that is mentioned minimally in the movie but a lot in Gloria E. Anzaldúa’s work titled Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza is that the wild west was truly as much of a part of Mexican history as is was the U.S. Most of the time, Mexicans are left completely out of this narrative in U.S depictions, focusing mainly on the cowboys and Indians. In Hombre, one of the main characters that accompanies Russell on his journey of revenge is Mexican, and talks openly about it through dialogue about race and through selling popular Mexican alcohol Mescal. In her book, Anzaldúa discusses the fact that Mexico owned a majority of what is considered the west up until the mid 1800s, and the people who lived there had equal contact to the native Indians as white people. In many ways, the Mexican people were treated very similarly to the Indians. After the battle of the Alamo, many who had settled in what was now U.S property were forced to flee their homes through fear of Anglo violence (Anzaldúa, 6-7). In my experience with both pop culture and educational depictions of the west, the violent past with Mexico and the “Wild West” were kept very seperate, except maybe when talking about the infamous Mexican bandits. That is why it was interesting and very unfamiliar to see a Mexican character living and traveling amoung white people as he does in this movie. While this movie does not incorporate most the important part of Mexican- American history into the story line, the inclusion of a Mexican character who breaks the U.S mold of the white male cowboy or white female love interest gives Hombre a new theme that is, in fact, very American.
Anzaldúa, Gloria E. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1987. Print.
1st Hombre Poster is from The Movie Poster Shop website: http://www.moviepostershop.com/hombre-movie-poster-1966
2nd Hombre image is a photo from a scene presented by a website called Go Giles Go
http://www.gogilesgo.com/eleven/hombre/