Mexico's 'Black Panther' Star Fights Racism At Home

Mexico City, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 20th Nov, 2022 ) :In Hollywood, he's the rising star of the sequel to "Black Panther," the first major Black superhero movie. In his homeland Mexico, Tenoch Huerta is leading a fight against racism on the screen.

The 41-year-old aims to use his growing fame to break the tradition of Mexican actors of Indigenous origin being cast in the roles of thieves and villains.

Playing the character of Namor the Sub-Mariner in Marvel Studios' "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever," Huerta joins a small club of international Mexican stars such as Salma Hayek, Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna.

The path to Hollywood was strewn with pitfalls for Huerta, who hails from a working-class suburb of Mexico City.

"Like thousands of dark-skinned people, I've been called Names" such as "dirty Indian," he wrote in his new book "Orgullo Prieto" (Brown Pride).

"Mexico is a country that's racist and denies it," he added.

Huerta said it is a myth that Mexico today is a mixed-race country where skin color is unimportant.

"This is how we deny the cultural and linguistic diversity of all Indigenous nations, Afro-descendant communities, Asians," he wrote.

Huerta, who also played infamous drug trafficker Rafael Caro Quintero in the Netflix hit "Narcos: Mexico," criticized the way of thinking "that places white, modern, Western, on a higher level."