05 · 09 · 22

VAGABUNDA: the ordeal of Nonoalco

Rafael Aviña

As well as films such as: Víctimas del pecado (1950), by Emilio Fernández, or Del brazo y por la calle (1955), by Juan Bustillo Oro, another masterpiece that talks about the border zone of Nonoalco as a setting of suffering or purgatory is Vagabunda (1950), by Miguel Morayta, a filmmaker of Spanish origin, underrated at the time and who, nevertheless, managed to convey with great accuracy the social restlessness of the time, and the cultural and public point of view on a problem that had acquired mythical proportions. The opening is a documentary prologue in which Victor Herrera's effective camera penetrates these areas of misery, accompanied by a moralistic text: "In Mexico City there is a neighborhood that everyone calls the red zone, which is the poorest, most miserable and meanest of all. Unimaginable is the overcrowding of shacks, of slums inhabited by people who watch with indifference how life is consumed, overwhelmed by a single problem that occupies their minds: having to eat...".

And later, with images of the Nonoalco train yard and its surroundings, Vagabunda exposes the situation of that territory: "The railroad tracks separate the barriers from the rest of the city, fulfilling the mission that fate, it seems, has entrusted to them: to delimit the area, to separate the social classes, to serve as a wall to separate the souls. Over the slum stretches the Nonoalco bridge, a strange structure full of symbols and promises that, like a rainbow of hope and freedom, dominates everything. On the upper part run the insultingly shiny, silent cars. Below, those disinherited who do not even care about the rain of dust sent by those above cross the bridge...".

Inspired by the play Zona roja, by Mane Sierra, adapted by Jesús Cárdenas, Vagabunda does not avoid its theatrical condition as shown by its stiff and sometimes cheesy but disturbing dialogues. The story focuses on a curious drama with noir touches that plays with sacrilege but ends up being a faithful document of the social conditions of the Nonoalco area. Luis Beristáin, as Father Miguel, arrives from Apizaco to the Buenavista station to go to his parish, carrying a large amount of money for charity and a young man offers to accompany him. The boy hits him on the head, exchanges his clothes for his own and runs away but one of his feet gets stuck on the track and is torn to pieces by the train. The father is then believed to be dead.

Meanwhile, Leticia Palma dances in the El Tropical cabaret, full of low-life bums and dominated by the corrupt judge El Gato (Antonio Badú), who plans a 150,000 pesos heist that rest at the train station. Leticia walks under the Nonoalco bridge and runs into the amnesiac father Miguel, saves him and hides him in an abandoned carriage, later she is humiliated by the cabaret audience when she tries to choreograph the classic “Goyescas” (by Enrique Granados) and only receives mockery and beer in the face.

Here, the bridge becomes not only a sort of metaphor, but an inseparable element of the plot. Miguel comments to Leticia: “You have the destiny of martyrs written on your forehead: to suffer for others”, while the train whistle of the Buenavista station is heard in the background and the concrete footbridge that separates crime and poverty from decent life is observed. El Gato denounces his accomplice Marcial (Alberto Mariscal) to the police: “Tonight at twelve o'clock, Marcial will be under the Nonoalco bridge”; there, under its structure, Marcial and his girlfriend Cuca (Irma Dorantes), Leticia's sister, kiss and from the top of the bridge, the police shoot them and Cuca dies under a sign of Coca Cola.

A gossipy woman (Lupe Carriles), snitches on Leticia to El Gato, who has abused her: “The neighbor is leaving, she's going to the bridge” she says. Palma and Beristáin escape to start a life together as a couple and Beristáin, observing the construction, comments: “From down here it looks like a tomb, it has a strange shape, it looks like an arch that jumps over human miseries, like a rainbow of hope and light that leads to another life, freer and more beautiful...”. However, he recovers his memory in extremis when he hears the church bells and is recognized. She, horrified, cries, climbs the stairs and walks across the upper deck of the Nonoalco bridge on her way to a life worthy of redemption, in one of the most anomalous and rapturous stories of our cinema. It is a sort of feverish and demented slum film noir, as an emotional continuation of the misfortunes of Palma herself, a disfigured young woman in Hipócrita (1949) also starring Antonio Badú as Pepe “El Suave”, directed by the same Miguel Morayta.

Translated by Adrik Díaz