Not Your Average Immigration Story: “Ya No Estoy Aqui” & the Different Faces of Exile
I’m Not Here (2020) Production Still. © Netflix
(Note: This article contains spoilers.)
I’m No Longer Here (Ya no Estoy Aquí) (2019), written and directed by Fernando Frías de la Parra, is welcoming Oscar buzz as Mexico’s candidate for best international feature. However, what The New York Times review by Natalia Winkleman describes as an “authentic portrait of a boy adrift from home” is missing the big picture. It’s not just the story of “being adrift,” but rather rather a story of exile.
Unlike other Latin-America-to-Queens films like Maria Full of Grace (2004) and Paraiso Travel (2008), I’m No Longer Here explores the alienation that happens in forced migration and the fight for holding on to one’s culture when surrounded by assimilation. The film opens with Ulises (Juan Daniel García) in the beginning of his journey. After being nearly killed in a drive-by, Ulises is mistaken for a police informant and threatened by a local gang member. With the help of a contact in the smuggling business, his mother is able to send him to Queens, NY. Even before he is transported, he is forbidden to communicate with anyone, including his close friends and dance crew Los Terkos. Despite this gag order, his friend and dance crew member Chaparra, finds him for a final goodbye. The last thing she gives him is the mp3 player they all bought together.
Music is a form of connection and communication plays a huge role in this film as it is both his connection to Ulises’ home and his people. Forbidden to speak to anyone back home about his whereabouts, Ulises tries to communicate with them through the local radio via the shout out hotline. Before his message can even be aired, it is interrupted by the political ads. This type of juxtaposition happens throughout the film showing the encroaching politicians that are soon to take over, changing the landscape of his hometown, preventing him from communicating with his people. Besides his physical exile in the U.S., he is now emotionally exiled from his people.
I’m Not Here (2020) Production Still. © Netflix
Setting this film in Jackson Heights, Queens in particular, is very symbolic. Jackson Heights has been named “the world’s most diverse neighborhood,”
but what is explored in the film is much less the diversity of the people themselves. It is the exploration of different groups all experiencing exile. The first way this is achieved is through the visual representation of Ulises. His look is put forth front and center throughout the entire film, primarily because of his extreme dedication to maintaining his look that makes him a part of his group, whether or not he is far away from them. People take notice and one man even stops to take his picture. This hairstyle resembles Mexican indigenous headdresses with side decor and large feathers on top. Ulises’ hair mirrors this look with gelled bangs, side locks and spiked hair on top, all dip-bleached to stand out. He is adamant about maintaining his look, even when he no longer uses it to show belonging in a group. We are reminded that he is not from here.
The use of hair as symbolic of exile comes out even stronger later when Ulises visits a Queens bar. In a pan, we see a Hasidic man, noticeably categorized as such by his covered head, side locks (peyot) and a black suit. He looks just as out of place in a Queens bar as Ulises. This parallel between them revisited later. In his final acceptance of his exile, Ulises sits on a stairwell and cuts off his side locks. This is a direct reference to the removal of hair as both humiliation and a sign of exile. During the Holocaust, Nazis cut off Jews’ peyot and beards. According to Vice, in Mexico, “the army and police cut the sideburns of many Colombians.” The history of hair removal goes back even further with the Pigtail Ordinance of 1878, in which Chinese prisoners had their hair cut to within one inch of their scalp, therefore “disgracing” them. And lest we forget the cutting of Native American’s hair in Indian boarding schools. However, here we see Ulises cutting his hair himself. He has resigned himself to his exile.
I’m Not Here (2020) Production Still. © Netflix
The dancing in the film also is a nod to other groups that have experienced exile. The dance itself is a mixture of Mexican indigenous dance with that of hip-hop and the duck-walk of the vogue balls in the gay community, all groups that have been oppressed and systematically eradicated. Seeing this dance in New York is a nod to the ongoing gentrification of New York ethnic neighborhoods, quickly being filled up with milk bars and cupcake shops. In the middle of the scene of Ulises dancing under the 7 train in Sunnyside, there is a cut to Chaparra in Monterrey, looking on as the narcos from the F Cartel hand out bags of groceries to locals saying, “Ni el gobierno, ni la policía hacen nada para ustedes. Ayudamos y damos dispensas a todos. [The government doesn’t help you out, but we do. Everyone gets groceries.]” Chaparra’s face of disappointment holds as she has been exiled from her own neighborhoods by thugs of a new name. Similar to the scene of Ulises dancing in front of mostly white onlookers at the 46th Street outdoor dining, where a policeman asks for his 3-1-1 permit, because in NYC even street performance is surveilled. Exile can occur even while we are still present in our land.
I’m Not Here (2020) Production Still. © Netflix
Later, when Ulises is deported back to Mexico, he returns to a land in which he still feels exiled from his home. Los Terkos have been dispersed—some dead, others have given their lives to the church and others have simply disappeared into the background. The last scene shows a caravan of police cars heading towards rioters. Ulises puts on his headphones, plays a slow cumbia and begins to dance. The audience hears nothing but the music and the chaos of sirens fade away. Both the audience and Ulises are shocked back into reality as his battery dies and the loud reminder of reality returns. Ulises cannot find solace in his music. His exile continues in his own homeland.
Yollotl Lopez is a new member to the Intervenxions team, joining in September 2020. She is a doctoral candidate at NYU English Department, finishing her dissertation “Dream On: Undocumented Youth Immigrant Narratives and the Rhetoric of Immigration.” She is also an educator, editor, and creative writer in the New York area. Native of the Mojave Desert of California, she is the proud daughter of Mexican immigrants.