The Child as Paraguay’s Future: “Calle Última (2010), Mita´í (2011), and 7 cajas (2012)”

Abstract

This Chapter describes the political climate of Paraguay following the 2008 election of Fernando Lugo and his lightning-swift impeachment in 2012, and analyzes representations of the child figure in contemporary Paraguayan film while tying in rhetorical analyses of documents specific to national concerns about the future of the Paraguayan child. In dominant political narratives illustrated in this chapter, the nation is likened to an adolescent in a state of transition, whose choices today could impact her drastically for the rest of her adult life. I argue that the aforementioned films represent concerns about childhood and adolescence in Paraguay that are both literal and figurative.

Lauded as a symbol of hope for the future while scorned as a threat to the existing social order, youth have become objects of ambivalence caught between contradictory discourses and spaces of transition. While pushed to the margins of political power within society, youth nonetheless become a central focus of adult fascination, desire, and authority.

—Henry A. Giroux, Breaking into the Movies (Giroux, Breaking in, 171).