ives the ultimate test, a woman.
The heroine in the film, if she can be called such, is a spunky rebel named Chel, voiced by Rosie Perez, who is described by producer Bonne Radford as “remarkable, because in many ways, she’s a contemporary woman.” Chel is actually a thief, like Miguel and Tulio, and when she comes on the scene, she is running from the law after stealing a golden artifact from the temple. Chel, eager to leave El Dorado, agrees to help the two Spaniards by coaching them on the local etiquette, that is, how to be convincing gods. She ends up seducing Tulio and coming between him and his buddy so that she and Tulio can sail off with the mountain of gold on their boat. Why, I wonder, is a woman who uses her sexual power to solicit power and wealth from a man “contemporary”? What the filmmakers may have conceived as a progressive female character ends up falling into the same traditional mold of a scantily-clad object of desire who uses her body to obtain what are deemed (within the culture) male possessions.
Perez herself comments on the character, saying, “What they [the filmmakers] did was deal with her human side first, before dealing with her outward appearance.” It is, though, Chel’s outward appearance that is constituted as her appeal, for both the protagonists and the audience. Her every advent on screen was followed by whistles and catcalls from the pre-pubescent audience, which drowned out most of the character’s verbal expressions of her “human side.” Although Chel is a strong character, she is the embodiment of exotic sexuality, and her instant alliance with the white intruders makes her less than admirable. Coincidentally, the historical Cortes also purportedly had a female native companion as an aide and interpreter in his conquest of the Aztecs. Her name was Malinsi, the Spanish baptized her “Marina,” Cortes called her “Mi Lengua” (my tongue), but the Aztecs called her something else, “la Malinche” the traitoress. While it is doubtful that this historical person had any bearing on the construction of Chel, and her alliance with Tulio and Miguel against her own people, the story might raise questions about what passes for a “human side,” past or present.
Perez has also observed that the filmmakers did a “wonderful job in being sensitive to the portrayal of Chel and other characters as Latinos.” This is perhaps the greatest instance in the film of “turning myth into truth,” and one that supposes that Latin American culture arose spontaneously from Native American culture, without the unwelcome intervention of colonial Spaniards. Though Perez and Olmos both bring tremendous life and subtlety to their vocal performances, the decision to characterize members of a pre-Hispanic Central American culture as Latinos is a strange one, considering that the Native American culture portrayed in the film did not become “Latin” until it was wholly conquered by the Spanish.
One wonders why the makers of The Road to El Dorado chose to resurrect the 500-year-old myth of a city of gold for audiences in a “New World” long since conquered and colonized. Perhaps The Road to El Dorado attempts to redeem the ruthless conquest of the Americas by Europeans by creating characters who befriend the native people, instead of enslaving and exploiting them. But the two Spaniards (played by Anglos Branagh and Kline) still occupy a position of superiority in that only they can liberate El Dorado from its oppressively “primitive” religion, and only they can (at least temporarily) stave off the city’s destruction. Behind the facade of goofy humor and simple sentimentality is an attempt to turn the myth of Miguel and Tulio’s “adventure” into an alternate, bloodless history in which insecure whites renounce their lust for gold and charitably show the natives a more humane, “Enlightened” perspective, pausing to pick up one of the native women along the way.