Who is Yalitza Aparicio? The Roma star and Oscar nominee’s unlikely road from mountains of Mexico to Hollywood
- Aparicio didn’t see a film on the big screen until she was 15 and went on a school trip – now she is in line for an Oscar for best actress
- Her unlikely success has come at a cost, with the indigenous actress enduring racist barbs since her starring role in Alfonso Cuaron’s film
Yalitza Aparicio once was a newly qualified preschool teacher living in a dusty mountain town in Mexico.
Now the 25-year-old is the star of Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma and an Oscar nominee – a fairy tale marred by racist barbs the indigenous actress has encountered along the way. Aparicio – who is part Mixtec and part Triqui – grew up in Tlaxiaco in the southern state of Oaxaca, home to about 40,000 people.
She had never even seen a movie on the big screen until she was 15 years old and went on a school trip to Puebla, a city some 350 kilometres (220 miles) away.
Tlaxiaco closed its only cinema years ago, explains Miguel Angel Martinez, who runs the small city’s tiny cultural centre. Even then, it had only shown films that had screened everywhere else years before. The theatre’s demise was hastened by the advent of pirated DVDs, a flourishing black market that at least brought more up-to-date movies to Tlaxiaco.
Now, in an open-air market next to the church and clock tower, a stall advertises Roma on sale for 20 pesos (US$1).