The Complicated Colorism of Latina Actresses in Film

For a century, pop culture has valued lighter-skinned Latinx actresses to the detriment of understanding the complexity of Latinidad

In the spring of 1919, California Motion Picture Corporation released the Western film Just Squaw. The star and co-producer of the film was Beatriz Michelena, one of a small number of Latina actresses who were able to achieve success on the silver screen in its nascent years. Michelena starred in the film as Fawn, a mixed race White and Native American woman who at one point is described by another character as “just a half-breed squaw.” Fawn falls in love with a White man but refuses to marry him because doing so would require them to violate anti-miscegenation laws. “Oh, if only I were White,” she tells her half brother. Her righteousness and duty to social convention are ultimately rewarded when her true racial identity is revealed. At the end of the film Fawn discovers that the Native American woman she thought was her biological mother actually kidnapped her from her White parents in an act of rage after being rejected by the father. Por la gracia de Dios, Fawn was white.

Before it was officially released, an ad in Motion Picture magazine published a short review exalting the feature film for its quality…