Folds of a Revolution
an essay on Gueros

Güeros is the love child of two of my favorite films — La Haine and Y Tú Mamá También. Maybe that’s a naive thing to say after my first watch, but I say it with deep respect. Set in 1999 Ciudad de México, Güeros unfolds during the UNAM student strike — a pivotal moment in Mexican student activism, and admittedly, a moment in history I know little about. Still, despite my limited historical knowledge, what struck me was how Güeros explores protest not through bold confrontation, but through stillness, disillusionment, and irony. Rather than focusing on the mechanics of student activism, the film centers on a group of young people who are drifting — politically, emotionally, and existentially. Through its self-aware storytelling, experimental structure, and layered commentary on disengagement, Güeros questions what it really means to resist — both in society and in art — and whether rebellion can exist even in silence.

Despite not knowing much about the 1999 Mexico City student protests, I’ve had quite a fascinating experience this semester in my “Life in the 60s” class. It’s the first lecture-based class I’ve taken. I’m in art school — my typical classes consist of round-table discussions on craft, technicals, and critiques from peers my own age defining what it is that I meant through my own piece. I hate that. I hate when someone raises their hand, probably just trying to get participation points with the professor, and starts their sentence with the phrase, “I think this means…” Like shut the fuck up! No one cares what you think this means. If you think the artist didn’t get their point across, there’s a way to verbalize that observation. But if you’re simply an observer of someone else's work, why are you creating the definition, the meaning, or the logline of something that is not yours and that you had no involvement in creating? Why don’t you focus on making your own bullshit better, rather than twirling your fingers in the hair of someone else’s business without them asking you, “what does my work mean?”

Anyways, back to my class. I like sitting in the third row. I wonder why? Maybe it’s because I like to see my professor’s wrinkles when he talks about life in the 60s — never looking down at his notes throughout the hour and fifteen-minute lecture. I think he’s brilliant. Through this class, I’ve gotten an in-depth understanding of student protests in the United States during the 60s — the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), among others (that I didn’t study as much). My professor showed us photos of the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley — black-and-white faces (literally and photographically) gathered in the thousands on the UC Berkeley campus, protesting their right to free speech regarding the civil rights movement. We saw images from the SNCC-led Freedom Summer of 1964, lined with hand-held signs carrying political messages in bold black letters, and Freedom Riders on buses, peacefully protesting racial discrimination on public transportation. These images touched some bone inside of me — I’m not sure where and I’m not sure which one — but that’s the same feeling I got when I watched Güeros (2014), directed by Mexican director Alonso Ruizpalacios.

I don’t think Güeros is necessarily about student protest — or more specifically, the 1999 student strike and shutdown at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), around which the film is centered — but “centered” is not the word. Either way, the student strike is what is happening in the background, but it is not what drives the story.

1,500 × 1,200

We land in a coastal part of Mexico, where we meet Tomás — a young teen, rebellious in his mother’s sense — who is sent to live with his older brother in Mexico City, or Distrito Federal (DF). There’s a sense that the two, despite being blood-related, have no real brotherly connection — at least since the beginnings of their mature years. When Tomás reunites with his brother, Sombra, they are seen sitting around a stale, unkempt dining table. The house is filthy and decorated with empty liquor bottles, ashtrays, and the desolate and expired objects you might expect to find in a male college student’s apartment. Tomás accuses Sombra of forgetting to pick him up from the bus station because he believes Sombra was busy at the student march happening at the same time — but the march is a surprise to Sombra. We later find out that Sombra has positioned himself as a protester to the protest. He’s proclaimed himself a deserter to the storm brewing on his own college campus — students protesting UNAM’s January 1999 announcement that tuition would increase significantly and graduation requirements would become more restrictive.

In this scene, Sombra’s snappy rebuttal to Tomás calling him by name — “Sombra” — confused me on my initial watch. The word “güero,” a derogatory slang term meaning something like “paleface” or “whitey,” applies to fair-skinned Tomás. Meanwhile, his brother Sombra (a nickname meaning “shade”) is dark. Practically everyone they meet throughout the film remarks on this difference, though the tension is never explicitly explained. But think about it — black and white — güero. The entire film follows this theme both theoretically and literally in a beautiful way. This somehow makes the dynamic even droller. Either way, we see Tomás, Sombra, and Sombra’s roommate, Santos (a fellow student at the university and a fellow protester to the protest), “on strike from the strike,” as they explain. In other words, they’re completely inert and disengaged — living on fumes and not interested in doing otherwise. The two are folding the revolution — looking it in the eyes and disengaging from the conversation.

The story of Güeros begins when Tomás arrives at the apartment. He gives a new meaning of life to his brother. When the boys find out that their favorite singer — introduced to them by their father — Epigmenio Cruz, has been recently admitted to a nearby hospital and could potentially die, they set off in search of him. But in the process, they discover something much different. Cruz’s music holds so much meaning and history for the brothers — and in turn, makes me desperately want to hear the tune that connects the two. It’s said that Epigmenio Cruz once made Bob Dylan cry — and even though you never really hear what his music sounds like, you know it’s beautiful. We’re all chasing our inspirations, hoping they’re exactly the way the legend portrays them. I love the idea of legend — becoming something more than you actually are is a comforting thought in this pointless world. I felt Epigmenio Cruz’s fictional ghost surging through me when I watched this — I could place my own tunes in the soundtrack as Sombra inserted the cassette or Tomás put on his headphones. This, I believe, is what made the film so much more powerful. Despite being just an observer (a fascinated one), I still had a say in the story. I could follow along with Tomás and Sombra in their journey to find the artist I desperately seek.

The boys set out to find Cruz in a beat-up old 1971 Lincoln Continental Mark III. They run into a series of twists and turns and eventually decide to venture to the university grounds, primarily out of Tomás’ curiosity. As they drive onto campus, they run into an old friend of Sombra’s, Oso, who asks for a lift to the school. In the car, Oso explains a powerful demonstration of what activism is and why they do it:

“You think that organizations are the leaders of revolution and the revolution is only in big events, but the event of washing a bathroom, or cooking for your companion is a revolutionary event.” (0:47:50)

This quote breaks apart the grandiose image of revolution as something only found in protest banners, megaphones, or news cameras. It suggests that real revolution begins in the quiet, overlooked acts of care — the maintenance of daily life, the small gestures that sustain a community. Oso reframes revolution not as spectacle, but as responsibility. Washing a bathroom for your comrade is no less radical than a march — because both reject apathy and affirm connection. Oso, a participant in the campus sit-in, argues that true revolutionary change also happens in the mundane, everyday acts of care and solidarity. He exposes the hypocrisy in Sombra’s resistance to the revolution in this scene. Oso continues — until CUT TO — a new layer unfolds before our eyes.

We see a clapperboard through the car window. The actors transform into people — aware of the camera and aware that we are watching them. The man behind the camera speaks to Oso, who has now become the man who plays Oso — Sergio Peris-Mencheta. This is a moment where the folding takes effect — a fold in a narrative film that turns to documentary, where the characters in the picture look at the audience. In a short two-minute scene, Güeros takes shape from narrative to documentary — from a liquid to a solid state of storytelling.

This image of one folding onto oneself — similar to the way that Sombra and his colleagues fold onto the revolutionary motives of the youth in DF — is mirrored in how director Alonso Ruizpalacios folds onto the art of filmmaking. There is so much hypocrisy and dishonesty in making a film: layers and layers of editing, dialogue created from thin air, and acting through the portrayal of a made-up character. In this scene, we see a comedic element delivered with an extremely unique approach — it literally made me pause the film, rewind fifteen seconds, and watch again. This begs the question: how can one make something about revolution, but not portray it? In this moment, Güeros is doing what I want to do when the idiot film student sitting next to me raises their hand: say, “Shut the fuck up — because I’m going to make what I make and I don’t need to follow your expectations of what I should be making.”

When asked about this element of the film, Ruizpalacios responded:

“I love those moments that are non-narrative. I’m a huge poetry fan as well. So, it was important to me to let the film breathe outside of the story. They are the moments that I sometimes respond to the most in films that I like. I think that film now tends to be so plot-driven that there is little space for these moments of otherness.”

Here, Ruizpalacios revolts against typical filmmaking the same way Sombra revolts against the revolution. I think I could feel this element lingering in my mind after watching the 1995 French “film-bro” film La Haine, and the 2001 Mexican (underrated) film Y Tú Mamá También. These are all films that encourage both a sense of vulnerability and fragility — while also having the confidence to say “fuck-all” and pursue innovation that probably received criticism at the time.

From a meandering journey, two brothers and their lost legend, and almost perfect cinematography in my sense — to a heated, one-sided encounter with Cruz and the melody and credit rolling for “The End.” Each image a choir ascending. This was my church, and I left with renewed faith for what art could be.