Mockumentary as postnationalism: national identity in 'A Day Without a Mexican' by Sergio Arau

The turn to neoliberalism in the 1990s proved decisive for Mexico, as the NAFTA project embraced by the Salinas administration entailed a re-definition of national identity, defined since the revolution as mestizo, Catholic and especially as the Other to the United States. And just as cinema was in those days a crucial discourse for this particular construction of the identity, it was in the 1990s equally instrumental to its redefinition, which largely focused on the role of migrants to the US, presented even as supplementary in the Derridean sense. In 1992, as part of these efforts, Sergio Arau directed a mockumentary which in 2004 became a feature film, ‘A Day Without a Mexican’. As would befit more the seriousness of a documentary than the excess and parody of mockumentary, the stated aim in both was to advance a social agenda, arguing the case for immigrant labour and for Mexican presence in the US more generally. The film charts what would happen in California were all Latino immigrants to suddenly disappear, arguing chaos would ensue. Given the link between cinema and modernity and the relevance of cinema for the nation as an alternative public sphere, this chapter looks at the implications of choosing mockumentary, taken by many to be a paradigmatic postmodern and hybrid form, to discuss the hybridisation of national identity in a transnational film, in the present age of globalisation.

Pro-inflammatory flagellin proteins of prevalent motile commensal bacteria are variably abundant in the intestinal microbiome of elderly humans

Some Eubacterium and Roseburia species are among the most prevalent motile bacteria present in the intestinal microbiota of healthy adults. These flagellate species contribute "cell motility" category genes to the intestinal microbiome and flagellin proteins to the intestinal proteome. We reviewed and revised the annotation of motility genes in the genomes of six Eubacterium and Roseburia species that occur in the human intestinal microbiota and examined their respective locus organization by comparative genomics. Motility gene order was generally conserved across these loci. Five of these species harbored multiple genes for predicted flagellins. Flagellin proteins were isolated from R. inulinivorans strain A2-194 and from E. rectale strains A1-86 and M104/1. The amino-termini sequences of the R. inulinivorans and E. rectale A1-86 proteins were almost identical. These protein preparations stimulated secretion of interleukin-8 (IL-8) from human intestinal epithelial cell lines, suggesting that these flagellins were pro-inflammatory. Flagellins from the other four species were predicted to be pro-inflammatory on the basis of alignment to the consensus sequence of pro-inflammatory flagellins from the beta- and gamma-proteobacteria. Many fliC genes were deduced to be under the control of sigma(28). The relative abundance of the target Eubacterium and Roseburia species varied across shotgun metagenomes from 27 elderly individuals. Genes involved in the flagellum biogenesis pathways of these species were variably abundant in these metagenomes, suggesting that the current depth of coverage used for metagenomic sequencing (3.13-4.79 Gb total sequence in our study) insufficiently captures the functional diversity of genomes present at low (<= 1%) relative abundance. E. rectale and R. inulinivorans thus appear to synthesize complex flagella composed of flagellin proteins that stimulate IL-8 production. A greater depth of sequencing, improved evenness of sequencing and improved metagenome assembly from short reads will be required to facilitate in silico analyses of complete complex biochemical pathways for low-abundance target species from shotgun metagenomes.