TAKING UP THE WHITE MAN'S BURDEN 115














 Fig. 2. Depiction of the Cuban Family
 Under the Wing of U.S. Paternalism c.
 1898, from Greater America: Heroes,
 Battles, Camps; Dewey Islands, Cuba,
 Porto Rico. Caption reads: "This scene
 is taken in the suburbs of Havana.
 These are two bachelors, with a retinue
 of servants jumbled around them.
 Clearly a strong, supreme, female ruling
 hand is lacking."



 The film is loaded with the usual ethnic representational misconceptions.
Dress and manner of the Paragonians, as well as the usual incursion into
'tropical' music and dance, is a strange amalgam of Spain, Mexico, and
Argentina, and has little to do with the Caribbean. Particularly interesting is
the total absence of blacks in Paragonia. There is one black-faced character,
an American employee of the mining company. His antics, the rolling eyes and
his complete subservience to his white colleague, recreate the 'black'
characters of Griffith's racially charged Birth of a Nation. Along with
Paragonians, he is set as a butt for laughter and demeaning entertainment,
against the hero's swash-buckling dexterity and amazing talents. The film ends
with a parallel sequence of fast-paced juxtaposing shots that again remind
one of Griffith's style. The last minutes of the film cover the Americano's
uncanny scaling of prison and castle walls, the liberation of a frail but
appreciative President, and his thwarting of Espada's evil plot. As he stands
on the balcony of the presidential palace, the soldiers and the people of
Paragonia, finally liberated from hunger and the impending doom of corrupt
and inefficient officials (the mines have not opened because natives can't run
the machinery), chant "We want the Americano!" The very last shot opens on
the church steps, and the camera closes in on the "regular American" decked-
up in military garb, now as the "Head of the Army," and happily wed to Juana-