Vaquitas 🐮💛🐮

vacas mexicanas

guadalajara, jalisco — Nov 2022

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Cow 5126 Urús, Catalonia, Spain

Kaixo gals!! Have you seen the new Sorogoyen movie, "As Bestas"? I'm not Galician nor am I from Galiza, but I've read many Galicians say that even though they agree it was quite good with good acting (and based on a real event), it's kind of tiring having you being portrait as an outsider-hating xenophobe, especially when using the local native language to convey it.

Kaixo!! I'm wodnering if you have seen the movie Vacas? I'm told it's a pretty iconic movie about a generation of a Basque family from the 2nd Carlist Wars until the beggining of the Civil War, and was curious if you ever watched it and liked it :o

Kaixo anons!

Neither one nor the other. I've read what both movies are about and that's why I decided to answer at the same time, because I think they are quite related: both are rural dramas set in minoritized nations - one in Galiza and the other in EH - whose people are perceived by a large sector of Spaniards as distrustful, closed, and inbred.

Regarding As Bestas: the movie is based on real events. Apparently a Dutch couple was looking for an unspoiled place to live in contact with nature and ended up in a small village in Galiza. As the years went by, quarrels and arguments started to arise with the neighboring family, whose father of the family was mentally ill. The situation escalated until this man killed the Dutchman and his son covered it up. All very sad. What bothers me a bit - and I speak without having seen the movie - is that this crime (whose perpetrator was not charged because of his disability) is not used to reflect the problem of undiagnosed mental illnesses, the shame they still provoke in rural areas, the problem of expatriates looking for wilderness to settle in impoverished areas outside their own countries, etc. No. It is used as a representation of all Galician people. If this story were set in Madrid nobody would say, "of course, they are very closed-minded there and in the end bad things happen", but it would be taken as the story of an individual who happened to be from Madrid. If that makes sense.

And as for Vacas: it bores me to death that EH is only used to make movies about ETA or the civil war. How unoriginal. Apart from the fact that none of the main characters are played by Basque actors (only the supporting actors are Basque), it's a bit more of the same: two Basque families become enemies after the last Carlist war and this enmity lasts for decades and generations. As in Patria. Because we Basques are spiteful and perpetuate our hatreds in our children. Again, if Vacas or Patria were located elsewhere, it would be understood as two extreme families corrupted by hatred and not representative of the entire population of the place. By locating it in EH - with the stereotypes about the Basques roaming around the collective imaginary - the thing changes.

Una vaquita 🐮🖤

Friends cows

“Seguro que vaca-ber ahí”

Cow 6109 Urús, Catalonia, Spain

Vacas marihuaneras🤠