Demonstrates how transhistorical myths of masculinity are both perpetuated and challenged in recent Mexican cinema.Iconic images of machismo in Mexicos classic cinema affirm the national film industrys historical alignment with the patriarchal ideology intrinsic to the postrevolutionary states political culture. Filmmakers gradually turned away from the cultural nationalism of mexicanidad but has the underlying gender paradigm been similarly abandoned Films made in the past two decades clearly reflect transformations instituted by a neoliberal regime of cultural politics yet significant elements of macho mythology continue to be rearticulated. Mexico Unmanned examines these structural continuities in recent commercial and auteur films directed by Alfonso Cuarn Carlos Cuarn Carlos Reygadas Amat Escalante and Julio Hernndez Cordn among others. Informed by cinemas role in Mexicos moderncolonial gender system Samanta Ordez draws out recurrent patterns of signification that reproduce racialized categories of masculinity and bolster a larger network of social hierarchies. In so doing Ordez dialogues with current intersectional gender theory fresh scholarship on violence in the neoliberal state and the latest research on Mexican cinema.