Dolores Del Río: return migration and successful entrepreneurship in Mexico, 1904-1983

Esta obra está bajo una Licencia Creative Commons Atribución-SinDerivar 4.0 Internacional.

Return migration to Mexico from the United States is not a new phenomenon. As a low-skilled labor force, Mexicans have been the first victims in periods of economic distress in the United States. When the labor market overflows with workers, Mexicans return home. Different moments in U.S. history attest to this reality. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, Mexicans were the forgotten victims of the huge economic catastrophe.

Most sources estimated that one million Mexicans returned to their country. Mexico’s press increased the figure up to two million (Balderrama and Rodríguez, 2006: 150-151).

This returning process has been repeating itself for decades. The year 2008 witnessed the last great return migration to Mexico, when an economic crisis forced more than one million Mexicans back home.

As always, most of them worked in low-skill sectors (OECD, 2017: 95).

Returned Mexican migrants carry with them significant experiences.

After all, they return from the United States, a country that, since the beginning of the 20th century, has commanded the world in political influence, technology, cultural achievements and economic power (Panitch and Gindin, 2012).

American innovation, competitiveness and entrepreneurship rule the world. The brightest and more diligent Mexican migrants absorb the Anglo-Saxon entrepreneurial vision and take it back to their home country. A returned gardener, for example, adopts new techniques and a renovated business mentality. Until the 1940s, not a single returned Mexican had applied his/her entrepreneurial knowledge with such success as the famous actress[1] Dolores Del Río did. Her life experience is an extraordinary example of the valuable impact of American entrepreneurship acquired through migration.

For decades, Del Río was one of the most famous Mexicans all over the world. In present days, she shines like a legend. Del Río conquered Hollywood and became one its favorite socialites. Her life has been a constant reference in the history of Mexican cinema. Books, articles, films and television shows have narrated her story. However, none of them has focused in her experience as a returned migrant. It is a regrettable omission, since Del Río, like no other migrant, is the perfect case study about the relationship between migration and entrepreneurship. There are multiple reasons behind this assertion. Two shine above all of them. First, besides being the first famous returned migrant in Mexican history, she remains the most successful one. Second, her gender, in times of absolute male dominance, makes her achievement even worthier.

In order to understand Del Río’s success and its impact on Mexico, it is essential to consider her personality, the nature of her migration, the process of adaptation to American society and, of course, her success in Hollywood, both as an actress and as a socialite. By doing so, it is possible to observe how her particular position in the film industry allowed her to acquire amazing entrepreneurial skills that she applied in Mexico. Her success experience was uniquely personal. It provides a strong argument in favor of theoretical concepts that consider the individual experience, and not the macrosocial framework, as the main factor behind migrant entrepreneurship and success.

This article examines how Del Río became a returned migrant and how her personal traits were the key to her achievements. Her presence at the right moment and time was an essential element in the consolidation of the Golden Age of Mexican cinema. Summarizing, the present article offers three main contributions to the academic literature. 1) It presents a biographical narrative about the first successful Mexican returned entrepreneur. 2) It defends the individual experience and the personal merits as major explanations for entrepreneurial success in opposition to macrosocial justifications. 3) It expresses the relevance of imported entrepreneurship in the development of successful business experiences in less developed economies. To achieve its purpose, the present work has six biographical sections that represent turning points in Del Río’s life. By analyzing her life and experience as a returned migrant, her entrepreneurial contribution to the Mexican film industry surfaces in its entire splendor.

In opposition to most return migration studies, this work does not have a sociological or economic nature. Its purpose is to reflect the power of a mere personal experience as an explanation for entrepreneur qualities and, eventually, business success. It does not use quantitative data for its main goal is to emphasize the prominence of the individual in the entrepreneurial realm. Its qualitative orientation relies on a biographical analysis. The review of Del Río’s life reflects particularities inaccessible to macro and quantitative studies. Of course, this position does not dismiss or diminish the cardinal importance of quantitative studies. However, in this particular case, the qualitative-individual perspective provides a valuable deepness to understand Del Río’s distinct approach to life and her strong entrepreneurship skills. This approach appears in entrepreneurship studies that consider the primacy of the personal experience as an explanation for success.

The individual, not the society, creates his/her experience or “set of experiences”, which in turn enrich his/her own experience (Morris, et. al., 2012).

Behind the entrepreneurial mind, there are four basic mechanisms, all of them the result of individual traits: the need for achievement, locus of control, a risktaking propensity, and creativity (Sun, et. al., 2020).

The role of the individual experience in success stories reflects the “migrant paradox”, which attributes to particular migrants a strong desire to succeed and to overcome sociocultural limitations. In the specific case of education, this desire enhances their performance.

Their disadvantage, which is a social condition of any migrant, leads them to individual success. Only a few of them will finally display extraordinary academic results (García Coll and Marks, 2012).

Migrants may use their social networks for success, as it is the case of Hispanics, who through connections improve their entrepreneurial goals. No matter how individualistic they are as persons, many Hispanic entrepreneurs base their success on a sociocultural structure (Pumar, 2012).

However, it is quite interesting to notice that the community is one more of their tools to reach their individual goals. They relate to their ethnic community with the purpose of using its resources to favour their business (Gomez, et. al., 2020).

Numerous academic works emphasize the relevance of the individual for successful entrepreneurship. An ample review of articles about immigrants with entrepreneurial abilities illustrates that, no matter their theoretical frameworks, the concept of the individual and his/her personal characteristics appears regularly as a force to consider (Dabic, et. al., 2020).

Among these articles, the pre-eminence of the individual over macrosocial conditions is a constant topic. Just to consider a single example of the orientation of this kind of works, Cillo and Caggiano (2014) explained the success stories of entrepreneur immigrants in Rome by a wide array of factors, all of them based on individual particularities.

They revealed that successful immigrants were individually proactive, innovative, risk takers, motivated and had personal abilities to solve problems.

The force of the individual experience is quite relevant in the specific field of Mexican entrepreneurs in the United States, an area of study in constant growth since the 2000s.

One of the most relevant works of that decade was the eclectic book published by Purdue University (Butler, Morales and Torres, 2009).

Although the book has a macrosocial perspective, in its articles individual stories shape reality. Gradually, academics have been detailing the field. Salamanca (2017) has studied high-skilled Mexican migrant entrepreneurs, a social sector frequently ignored.

Some works have analyzed particular entrepreneurial success stories and have tried to find common patterns among them (Bringas-Nostti, 2018).

Although studies like these cover several subjects on Mexican entrepreneurship in the United States, works that deal with entrepreneurship among Mexican returned migrants are scarce.

Among the few of them, it is worth mentioning the book edited by Cruz and Cuecuecha (2018).

Returned migrant entrepreneurship studies are the last great frontier of the Mexican migrant experience in the United States.

Now that studies about entrepreneurship among returned migrants are coming to life, the story of Dolores Del Río, the first successful one, acquires a cardinal relevance. The fact that she was a woman makes her story even more valuable.

From a theoretical point of view, her biographical experience may contribute “to stop treating or viewing entrepreneurs as a homogenous group” (Morris, et. al., 2012: xi).

Even in their individuality, they are different among themselves. Del Río’s story as a returned migrant is quite relevant for the two reasons already stated in this discussion. First, her biography upholds the pertinence of qualitative information to explain the personal migrant experience. Second, her condition as a disciplined, hard-working and goal-oriented person solidifies the theoretical narrative that explains successful entrepreneurship as the result of personal characteristics, and not of a macrosocial conditioning.

Dolores Asúnsolo and López-Negrete was born on August 3, 1904, in Durango, Mexico. She belonged to a family defined as “Porfirista”, because of its reverence to the Mexican dictator Porfirio Díaz. This “Mexican aristocrat” child enjoyed all kinds of luxuries and once met the King of Spain, Alfonso XIII (Gyurko, 2015: 175).

Her father, Jesús Leonardo Asúnsolo, was a banker and a prosperous landowner. He became director of the Bank of Durango, a position that gave him a prominent place among the local elite. Nothing seemed to indicate that Dolores would migrate to the United States. Her early life was a fairy tale.

The Mexican Revolution of 1910 obliterated the perfect life of the Asúnsolo family. As a rich and white family, the revolutionaries labeled them enemies of the people. The Asúnsolo family paid the consequences of a privileged life.

Revolutionary forces assassinated one of Dolores’s uncles. General Pancho Villa took possession of their ranch, bank and even the family home (Jenkins, 2007: 144).

Suddenly, a nightmare fell upon the family. Uncertainty loomed in the air. Men were always the first victims of social revenge. To avoid reprisals from Villa’s followers, the father fled to the United States. Dolores and her mother remained in Durango, thinking that the revolutionaries would respect women. However, when Villa’s followers finally attacked the city, they showed no mercy.

Rapes and forced marriages became too frequent. Before it was too late, the mother placed Dolores in a basket and, disguised as a poor woman, took the last train to Mexico City (Hall, 2013: 25).

Mexico City was the ideal sanctuary for rich families. Violence engulfed rural Mexico. The Asúnsolo were among the many rich families that found in the capital a remnant of peace. Dolores’s father returned to rejoin his family there. Provincial rich families established new relationships with the wealthy people of the capital. The Asúnsolo counted themselves among the luckiest ones. When Diaz’s regime fell, they were not defenseless. On the contrary, the new president of Mexico, Francisco I. Madero, came from northern Mexico.

He was the cousin of Dolores’s mother. In the Mexican kinship system, he was Dolores’s uncle. Years later, Dolores would remember how her mother took her to meet the Mexican president, who, affectionately, gave her a red balloon (Taibo, 1999: 23).

Victoriano Huerta, an ambitious general, betrayed Madero in 1913 and became a ruthless dictator. To strengthen his regime, Huerta made alliances with the prerevolutionary elite. For this reason, the Asúnsolo family’s kinship with Madero did not affect them. As members of the former elite, they retained their comfortable life style, surrounded by new wealthy friends. Twice lucky, their position did not change when Huerta’s regime crumbled down. The revolutionaries who deposed him admired former president Madero and knew that the Asúnsolo were his kinship. The family survived the revolutionary storm.

During the days of political chaos, Dolores received an enviable education, which included French lessons. Classical and Spanish dance classes were her favorite activity. At fifteen years old, Dolores had grown into an accomplished dancer. She had been taking lessons since she was seven (Ríos-Bustamante, 1991: 30).

The upper-class circles celebrated her artistic abilities and she frequently performed her dance sets at social gatherings. She gained an unrivaled reputation as one of the finest tango dancers in the country, just in the years when tango reigned as the most popular dance among the elites (Beltrán, 2009: 22).

Performing at affluent parties became Dolores’s favorite activity. In 1921, at a charity party, she met Jaime Martínez del Río y Viñet. He was a wealthy 34-year-old lawyer. He had saved part of his fortune from the swirl of the Mexican Revolution. His wealth, culture and knowledge of the world enticed a young and ambitious Dolores. After only two months of courtship, Dolores accepted his marriage proposal. She was only sixteen.

Based on a controversy related to her day of birth, some authors claim that she was only fifteen (Mora, 1989: 26).

All of them, including her best biographer, agree that she was not an adult yet (Hall, 2013: 8).

With her marriage, Dolores became Dolores Asúnsolo de Del Río. Despite her social position, she did not stop performing as a dancer, even during her two-year European honeymoon. She danced for the Spanish soldiers wounded in the Colonial War of Morocco. After returning to Mexico, the couple resided briefly in their hacienda close to Durango, but, because of a persisting social unrest in the region, they decided to settle down in Mexico City. There, they maintained a very active social life. It seemed that Dolores and Jaime were destined to get older at their nice home.

In 1925, Edwin Carewe, a renowned director and producer of the Hollywood company First National Films, visited Mexico. He attended the Mexican wedding of the Hollywood actors Bert Lytell and Claire Wilson (Arbelaez and Martínez, 2017: 224).

Carewe wanted to experience the way upper class Mexicans lived and longed to visit a nice traditional home. The best option was the splendid property of the Del Río family. A day after the wedding, a friend of Jaime took Carewe to the property.

As they used to do at their meetings, Dolores danced to Spanish music while Jaime played the piano (Hall, 2013: 35).

What Carewe saw profoundly impressed him.

Dolores’s extraordinary beauty and dancing aptitudes seduced Carewe. The director knew right at that moment that he had to take her to Hollywood. She had the potential to be a star. As a woman who loved to perform and display her abilities, Dolores accepted immediately. She had in front of her the opportunity she had been dreaming about for years.

Decades later, she declared that Carewe told her that she could turn into a “female Valentino”, in reference to the Italian star Rodolfo Valentino, the most famous actor of the era (Valdivia, 2008: 33).

Carewe convinced Jaime that there was a great future for him too, because “the film industry boasted much opportunity for young people of style and intelligence” (Parish, 1978: 15).

Jaime pictured himself as a Hollywood tycoon who earned millions by representing his wife. In this unexpected way, two affluent Mexicans became migrants.

Carewe was anxious to have Dolores in Hollywood as soon as possible. On the next day after their meeting, he sent her an enormous flower bouquet. He called her Lolita, an affectionate name only some of her closest friends used. After returning to Hollywood, Carewe kept imploring Dolores to migrate to the United States.

He even sent her a script of her potential first appearance on the silver screen (Hall, 2013: 36).

By then, the famous director had already been “taken by the outgoing and delightfully beautiful young Latina" (Rivera-Viruet y Resto, 2008: 23).

Jaime and Dolores had to confront the opposition of their families. It was socially inconvenient for a well-positioned woman to be an actress (Monsiváis, 1997: 74).

Migration in search for work opportunities was not a tradition among affluent Mexicans. They only migrated as refugees from civil wars or political prosecution. In this sense, the Del Río were innovators.

The couple left Mexico as no other migrants had done it before. They organized an elegant party, attended by some of the most imposing people in Mexico City. The invitations were on high demand and rumors said that some of the guests were selling them. One of the most affluent guests gave Dolores a gift from the Parisian house Cartier. Their journey by train to Los Angeles lasted five days.

They arrived on August 25, 1925 (Hall, 2013: 41-42).

During the trip, the ambitious Jaime wrote a movie script. He thought he could justify the decision to migrate if he succeeded as a writer, an activity enfolded by prestige.

He would try to project the idea of a brilliant mind eager to develop his “literary inclinations” and, by doing so, to escape from an “environment that did not satisfy him” (Monsiváis, 1997: 74).

Because of the negative implications of their migration to their prestige, Dolores and Jaime justified everything they did with intricate arguments. In comparison with the tribulations of generations of Mexicans, their migration process was an easy one. They never suffered hunger or the lack of a decent roof. Since their first days in Los Angeles, they received the constant support of Carewe, who became the force behind the adaptation of Dolores to the American ambiance.

He suggested her to change her name according to the conventions of the English language (Cote, 2004: 163).

Thus, Dolores Asúnsolo got rid of her maiden name and Dolores Del Río was born.

Immediately after her arrival, Del Río had a brief five-minute debut in the film Joanna, directed by Carewe himself. In 1926, she appeared again in another Carewe film, High Steppers. Initially, Del Río immense beauty was the reason behind these coveted opportunities. However, her perseverance became as important as her beauty. Del Río swiftly familiarized herself with the requirements of a very demanding environment. Hollywood synthetized some of the basic features of American capitalism, such as a fierce individualism and an endless competition.

Carewe, who became her “patron” and manager, introduced her to the strict contractual obligations that defined American businesses (Valdivia, 2008: 33).

Just a few months after her arrival, Del Río was perfectly adapted to American society. Her adaptation was admirable because she achieved it without renouncing to her Mexican identity (Sanchez, 1993: 174).

The 1926 film Pals First was Del Río’s first stellar role. She gave life to a woman of French origin who lived in Louisiana. In its review of the film, one of the most influential magazines did not see any artistic qualities in Del Río. Besides, it considered her ethnic type not to be the adequate to interpret a French aristocrat.

It criticized her for having oriental eyes, an affirmation that denounced Indian blood (Hershfield, 2000: 13).

After such a disappointing start, on the same year she filmed What Price Glory? Again, she interpreted a French woman, this time during the First World War. The movie was a great success and became one of the hits of 1926. The director, Raoul Walsh, sensed a promising future for Del Río.

The following year, he directed her again in the film The Loves of Carmen, which some critics consider “the most iconoclastic” and “surprising” version of the literary character Carmen (Powrie, et. al., 2007: 69).

Carewe contemplated how her investment had been an excellent one. He kept using Del Río in his own films and, at the same time, represented her when other directors requested her services. The good results the Mexican actress was delivering were the consequence of her tenacity and hard-working mentality. Besides, her beauty remained an extraordinary asset. Among her multiple starring roles, the one in the film Ramona, of 1928, was the most successful in terms of box-office figures. Her achievements contrasted with her husband’s failures. Jaime did not turn into the great scriptwriter he thought he would be.

He grew tired of being just Dolores Del Río’s husband (Woll, 1978: 33).

The marriage was in crisis and a divorce process ensued. By then, rumors assumed that the actress had a love affair with Carewe, who was divorcing (Hershfield, 2000: 116).

The Del Río’s marriage finally ended in 1928. Jaime left for Europe, where he died six months later. Dolores kept her married name.

With her new freedom, Del Río moved around the film sets with absolute confidence. She did not have to consult her projects with anyone. Her adventurous spirit encouraged her to take new risks. She was one of the most successful artists to adapt her career to the new sound era in the film industry. This difficult process of adaptation destroyed numerous actors. Ramona had a soundtrack, although it did not include dialogue. The Bad One, of 1930, was her first film with dialogue. Del Río’s English was far from perfect.

Even when she sang, a heavy accent betrayed her (Woll, 1978: 32).

Despite this, she was able to survive in the sound era by performing exotic roles, whether as a French woman or the typical Latina. In The Bad One, she gave life to Lita, a Spanish singer who worked in a French brothel and was an honorable woman (Valdivia, 2008: 42).

Del Río expressed her new confidence not only in the film industry, but also in her personal life. She became famous for conquering some of the most coveted men in Hollywood. Sometimes she could be quite cruel with men. The first victim of her magnetism was Carewe himself, who was deeply in love with her. They were planning to get married. Nevertheless, United Artists suggested Del Río to break ties with her protector. By doing so, she would promote her career. She did it. Carewe never recovered from her calculated dismissal.

He tried to sue her, but United Artists protected Del Río and forced him to reach a deal with her (Shipman, 1970: 155).

After repudiating Carewe, in 1930 she married Cedric Gibbons, one of the most influential men in the film industry. In 1928, Gibbons had designed the Oscar, the award that celebrated Hollywood’s achievements. Gibbons himself would receive eleven Academy Awards and would be nominated twenty-nine times.

The Mexican was no other than the wife of the “architect of Hollywood’s Golden Age” (Wilson, 2000: 101).

Thanks to her marriage to one of the most innovative minds of Hollywood, Del Río understood the film industry as very few persons could.

Del Río and Gibbons were married for a decade. Before her divorce to Gibbons, she already had a relationship with one of the greatest geniuses in the history of cinema: the producer and director Orson Welles. This relationship would last four years. As it had happened with Gibbons, Del Río learned from Wells some of the best secrets in film production.

During their relationship, Welles finished his masterpiece, Citizen Kane, considered by many to be the best film in Hollywood’s history (Lebo, 2016: 248).

The film introduced a new film style that combined the immediacy of theater with the most modern production techniques. Citizen Kane was the most “innovative” film in the first half of the 20th century (Schatz, 1999: 90).

Wells demonstrated to Del Río how important it was to develop a powerful and unique film style. In just a few years, this would be a transcendental lesson for her success in the Mexican film industry.

Del Río’s career in the United States was quite successful, but short. She appeared in thirty films. Her best moments went from 1926 to 1932. During the second half of the 1930s, her decline was evident. Although she had been able to make the transition to the sound era, there were not enough stellar exotic roles to keep her at the top of the film industry. At the end of the 1930s, it became clear that her best times in Hollywood were over. In addition, her personal life was not a promising one. She had had faith in her relationship with Welles. Del Río believed that it would relaunch her career. However, by 1942 this love affair was dying. After her divorce to Gibbons, a second failure in her love life was too much in psychological terms. In these circumstances, Mexico began to call her back.

Dolores Del Río had always controlled her men. She had been the dominating voice in all her relationships until Welles appeared in her life. For this reason, the breakup with Welles meant so much for her. Never before a man had hurt her in such a way. Every day, Welles seemed to care less about the Mexican beauty. This fact was a huge blow for her pride. Their marriage ended in the worst-case scenario for a proud and imposing woman.

Wells left her for another Latin beauty:

Rita Hayworth, originally Rita Cansino. Hayworth was the daughter of a Spanish immigrant who had moved to Hollywood with his family and had tried hard to transform Rita into a great star (Sargeant, 1947: 90).

Being Hayworth a woman that shared some traits with Del Río made things worse for the Mexican. A new Latina beauty had replaced the old goddess.

The end of her marriage was not just a sentimental tragedy for Del Río, but also a terrible blow for her career. By 1942, Welles was already one of the most influential men in Hollywood.

She had seen Welles as some kind of “White Knight who would use his extraordinary talents to resurrect her professional life and guide it in a more dignified fashion” (Hall, 2013: 196).

For this reason, the end of her relationship meant the impossibility of a resurrection in Hollywood. Doors were closing right in front of her. It was a sad irony, because Del Río had been the force behind Welles rise to fame. Del Río had used her prominence and influence to help an eleven-year younger Welles to succeed.

He would not have had enough confidence in his daring film projects without Del Río’s support (Benamou, 2007: 153).

By 1942, the roles had inverted. Welles had positioned himself as a Hollywood legend; meanwhile, the perception about Del Río was one of a falling star.

At the beginning of the 1940’s, two additional unfortunate events increased Del Río’s anxiety and became key factors for her return to Mexico. Edwin Carewe, who had been her mentor and the reason for her success in Hollywood, committed suicide. The Mexican actress remembered how she had cancelled her wedding plans just to favor her personal interests. Carewe had been depressed since Del Río’s refusal to marry. She felt she was somewhat guilty of his death.

Although the press talked about a heart attack, Hollywood knew it had been a suicide (New York Times, 1940).

Del Río had not yet recovered from Carewe’s death when she received more bad news, this time from Mexico. Her father died, leaving her mother alone. As the only child of the couple, she felt the obligation to be at her mother’s side. Their parents had imbued in her an aristocratic idea of the sacred unity of a privileged white family of Spanish lineage.

Del Río “was raised as a princess and travelled with alleged official records documenting her aristocratic ancestry” (Arbelaez and Martínez, 2017: 224). A princess had to be at her mother’s side in times of trouble.

Del Río knew that Hollywood would no longer offer her stellar opportunities in high budget films. At the dawn of the sound era, she had been able to survive thanks to her “exotic” accent, which attracted multitudes (Woll, 1978: 40).

However, this very same fact relegated her to Latina roles, which were gradually going out of fashion. Besides her collapsing career, for the first time in years she did not have a love relation that linked her to the United States. In addition, the thought of her grieving mother was a constant call to return. Push and pull factors were tempting her. The most significant pull factor was to relaunch her declining Hollywood career in Mexico.

American film companies were beginning to invest south of the border and the government of the United States had a program to develop the Mexican film industry (Falicov, 2007: 24-25).

In 1942, Del Río sold her home in Hollywood and acquired the ranch La Escondida in Coyoacán, a suburban area in Mexico City. By doing so, she became a returned migrant.

A famous picture, taken by the great photographer Héctor García, captured her posing in front of her beautiful Coyoacán home (Novo, 1946).

Del Río lived there with her mother, relaxing from the tensions of her former Hollywood life and making plans for the rebirth of her filming career. As a returned migrant with an extraordinary insight about the American film industry, she had a valuable advantage over her fellow compatriots. Her entrepreneurial skills would be of great help to the promising Mexican film industry.

Dolores Del Río arrived at the perfect moment. She would be able to apply the vast entrepreneurial skills learned in the United States in her area of expertise. The film industry was in the process of establishing itself as an important sector of the Mexican economy. Thanks to the support of the state, film production would become the third largest economic activity in the country.

In 1932, Mexico had produced only six films; by 1937, it released fifty-seven. Just six years later, seventy films came to life (Hershfield, 2000: 53).

The industry was experimenting the birth of the Golden Age of the Mexican cinema.

The Golden Age was the result of multiple efforts by brilliant and hardworking minds. Since the early 1930s, some Mexican films had demonstrated its quality and had enjoyed domestic popularity. The first one was Santa, released in 1932.

Because of the use of synchronized sound and its box-office success, Santa became “the basis for the development of Mexican cinema” (Alfaro, 2003: 25).

In 1935, the film Vámonos con Pancho Villa expressed the strong commitment of the Mexican government to the development of a film industry. President Lázaro Cárdenas subsidized the film as a way to portrait the Mexican Revolution and its social policies.

He even ordered federal troops to participate in the battle scenes (O'Malley, 1986: 104).

However, like many government sponsored business projects, the film was a boxoffice failure. The producer company Cinematográfica Latino Americana, S.A. went bankrupt.

The box-office failure of Vámonos con Pancho Villa denied it the honor of being the first film of the Golden Age. A 1936 movie, Allá en el Rancho Grande, received this historic distinction. It was the first Mexican international success. It won the prize for best photography at the Venice Film Festival.

Thanks to United Artists, it secured distribution in the United States, with English subtitles (Gunckel, 2015: 141).

The film would epitomize the start of a close relationship between the American and the Mexican film industries. During the first half of the 1940’s, Mexico’s industry received a constant support from Hollywood, out of commercial and political reasons. American expertise was behind the design of the most emblematic Mexican studios. Washington provided tax incentives to companies investing in Mexican films. Donations of American film equipment were common.

The United States government hoped that Mexico would displace pro–fascist Argentina as the center of the Latin American film industry (Falicov, 2007: 24-25).

The expeditious consolidation of the Mexican film industry was the result of American entrepreneurship.

The Golden Age of the Mexican film industry had already begun before Del Río became a returned migrant.

Years after her return, she would declare that one of her main purposes in returning to Mexico had been to share her knowledge to boost the nascent national film industry (Telgen and Kamp, 1993: 131).

This declaration did not match the facts of her life and it seemed to be a calculated effort to increase her reputation as the great force behind the birth of Mexico’s film industry. Personal reasons had been the main motive behind her return. On the other side, her contribution to the development of the film industry in Mexico was crucial, but not essential. The combination of American entrepreneurship with Mexican determination was already producing amazing results by the time she arrived. Del Río’s entrepreneurship would propel those results to a new artistic level. Nevertheless, by 1942, the Mexican industry was already successful.

Del Río was a celebrity in Mexico. The country respected her as the first successful migrant woman. Her Hollywood movies were quite popular, especially Ramona, released in 1928. This film was the first United Artists product to offer synchronized score and sound effects.

It included a very successful song, sung by Del Río herself (MacDonald, 2013: 13).

In this sense, Del Río was among Hollywood’s technological innovators. She had a deep knowledge about the newest film equipment, from cameras to editing devices. Del Río brought to Mexico an openness to innovation unmatched in the local film industry. She was willing to experiment new acting techniques and to defy basic conceptions about what was right or wrong. Del Río had already surprised the American audiences in 1932, with a nude swim sequence in the film Birds of Paradise.

She had presented a “generous” “dorsal exposure” (Doherty, 1999: 119). The actress that returned to Mexico was well above conventionalisms.

Del Río brought to Mexico something even more valuable than innovation: the Anglo-Saxon work ethic. Since her early teens, she had been a perfectionist. Migration to the United States enhanced her natural discipline and diligence. Filming with some of the most demanding figures in Hollywood cemented her love for an impeccable organization and a hard work environment. She spent long hours in the filming set and did not leave it until she was completely satisfied with the product.

Del Río was so involved in her films that, in 1933, RKO Studios gave her the right to approve her scripts (Rodríguez, 2004: 59).

For many years, Mexican directors had been trying to convince Del Río to film in her home country. When they finally had her in the set, they were overwhelmed. She was some sort of dictator. Anglo-Saxon work ethic was the norm when she filmed. All of her directors knew that she did not need supervision. Del Río “was hard-working and professional”.

They accepted her martial discipline, which would give them great prestige (Hall, 2013: 223).

Mexico had prodigious filmmakers, but many of them lacked discipline. The best example was Emilio “El Indio” Fernández, who would be the major figure of the Mexican nationalist cinema (Tierney, 2007).

He had everything to be an outstanding filmmaker. However, Fernández was not reliable in the film set. He abused alcohol and loved fights. Fernández was a returned migrant, who did not bring to Mexico the Anglo-Saxon work ethic. Del Río recognized his crude artistic abilities. She thought that, with some discipline, Fernández could become the great director he would be. Under her strict guidance, he transformed himself into a hard-working professional.

Del Río, who would have a more profound “cinematic vision” than Fernández, was decisive in his consolidation as an excellent filmmaker (Hall, 2013: 223).

On the opposite side, Del Río loved to work with Gabriel Figueroa, an extraordinary photographer who was also a returned migrant. She saw in him a disciplined Mexican familiarized with the value of American entrepreneurship.

Possibly, the most important contribution Del Río made to the Mexican film industry was her conviction on the importance of “Mexicaness”. She romanticized Indian life in small rural communities. The Mexican industry had to create its own mythological identity, based on the political and social conditions of the post-revolutionary era. Mexicans should not be “embarrassed” by what they saw as scarcity or poverty, but proud about their identity.

Del Río became the female figure of “cinematic nationalism” (Arbelaez and Martínez, 2017: 227).

Of course, films like Allá en el Rancho Grande were already rescuing this very same concept. Nevertheless, with her experience in Hollywood, Del Río saw the commercial potential of the concept like no one did. She believed that a refined and artistic version of the Mexican identity could be a success around the world, not only in film festivals, but also at the box office.

As a returned migrant, Del Río brought to Mexico three basic strengths that defined her personality as an entrepreneur: innovation, a solid work ethic and a profound knowledge of the market. She was not a mere actress, who performed in a movie, received a salary and returned home to live a relaxed life. In the Mexican film industry, Del Río became a genuine example of entrepreneurship. She got involved in all the filmmaking process, from the financial constraints to the political obstacles. More than an actress, she was a combination of producer and director. Del Río’s ideas enriched the marvelous cinematic concepts of Fernández and Figueroa. Her presence as one the major Latin legends of Hollywood guaranteed the financing of the film productions. Back in the 1940’s, the New York Times already perceived her decisive influence over the Mexican film industry.

The newspaper affirmed that her fame in the United States was crucial to open the door of the American market to Mexican productions (Hall, 2013: 212-213).

Del Río’s efforts facilitated technical, financial and artistic contacts between the American and Mexican film industries. It is quite possible that many negotiations between Hollywood and the Mexican government, attributed to bureaucrats and politicians, were the result of her persistence (Benamou, 2007: 153).

She changed the aesthetics of Mexican cinema because she was an outsider with new ideas. The highest-paid and most popular Mexican film stars were domestic products. Names such as Sara García, Mario Moreno ‘Cantinflas’, Pedro Infante and Jorge Negrete were virtually unknown in the United States.

Even Del Río’s great domestic rival, María Félix, had no international experience (Hershfield, 2000: 54).

Her films would be immensely popular, but not as innovative as the Del Río’s were. There was a decisive factor behind the originality of Del Río’s films: the American expertise.

Del Río became the innovator that Félix never was. Indeed, Félix would follow her path. Del Río presented, in a polished way, the concepts that were already emerging as the mark of the Golden Age of Mexican cinema. In fact, the most admired films by Félix were mere copies of the artistic conception that Del Río imposed to her film team. Before Del Río’s arrival to Mexico, local filmmakers had tried to emulate American films.

She convinced them to use Hollywood’s techniques and cinematic narrative to represent the Mexican social and historical reality (Woll, 1978: 61).

Del Río was the unifying force behind the production team that would later make Félix famous. She gave Figueroa and Fernández something that Félix, without experience in Hollywood, would never have provide them. The three outstanding Félix’s films, Enamorada (1946), Río Escondido (1947) and Maclovia (1948), repeated the acting formula and aesthetics that Del Río displayed in her first two Mexican productions. Del Río knew what the international market wanted to see from Mexico and how the critics could be seduced. Fernández himself was aware of this. For his great project of 1943, he chose Del Río over Félix.

he former Hollywood star could get him the attention of the international film circles (Mora, 1989: 62).

The amazing results of Del Río’s Hollywood skills were immediate. Never before, Mexican cinema had been among the darlings of international critics. Filming in her mother tongue was a new challenge for Del Río, but she solved the task with ease. Her first Mexican film, Flor Silvestre, produced in 1942 and released the next year, was a major accomplishment. Del Río, Fernández and Figueroa operated as a perfect unity. Flor Silvestre became the first great film of the Golden Age.

It destroyed the old patterns of the Mexican melodramas and superficial comedies (Hershfield, 2000: 57).

Her next film, María Candelaria, produced in 1943, is until today the greatest triumph of Mexican cinema. It depicts the story of a “poor Indian girl” murdered by her community.

Some naive critics considered the movie as an honest representation of the authentic and poetic Mexico (Hedrick, 2003: 178).

In 1946, it won the most prestigious award of the film industry: the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Until today, only two Latin American films boast that recognition; the other one, a Brazilian production. In 1961, the film Viridiana also received the Palme d’Or, an award credited to Mexico for political reasons. However, Viridiana was a Spanish production.

María Candelaria kept conquering audiences and critics alike. In 1947, it obtained multiple awards at the Locarno film festival in Switzerland (Schroeder-Rodríguez, 2016: 103).

Flor Silvestre and María Candelaria were the beginning of a fruitful fifteen-year relationship between Fernández and Figueroa. They produced twenty-four films. Their first years, from 1943 to 1950, were their most successful ones, thanks to Del Río’s market vision. In this precise period, the Mexican cinematic style flourished (Ramírez-Berg, 2015: 91).

The impressive success of María Candelaria was not only the result of artistic merits. It came from a surprising knowledge of the mechanisms of capitalism. The movie received an intense promotional campaign in newspapers, magazines and theaters. It travelled through the commercial film circuit of the United States with its original Spanish dialogues. In 1946, an English version appeared, under the title Portrait of Maria. Mexican intellectuals, who considered the movie to be a false cinematic American vision of rural Mexico, harshly criticized it.

It depicted not the authentic Indians, but a Hollywood version of them (Tuñón, 2003: 49).

Of course, the success of the film rested right there: in its awareness about the market. The entrepreneurial American vision of Del Río and her excellent contacts in Hollywood were making the job.

The Golden Age of the Mexican cinema was brief. During the second half of the 1950’s, its agony began.

Although some nationalist analysts prolong the Golden Age until the 1960’s, the most credible academics do not go beyond the 1950’s (Lahr-Vivaz, 2016: 8-9).

At the end of this last decade, Del Río was filming second-rate movies, most of them melodramatic and commercial works. The artistic style that defined Mexican cinema gradually disappeared. Del Río’s new films were popular in Mexico, but ignored by international critics. Nonetheless, just when her career began to fade away, she surprised the film industry with one great final achievement. As a recognition for her essential artistic and entrepreneurial role in the Golden Age of the Mexican cinema, in 1957 she became the first woman to be part of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival. Under the perspective of women’s empowerment, this accomplishment surpassed everything that she had done.

It expressed her enviable position among the “international intellectual and artistic elite” (Hall, 2013: 269).

Del Río’s old glories never came back, but the United States did not go away from her mind. She longed for a return to Hollywood and made efforts to resurrect there. In the 1960’s, she worked again in the American film industry. In one movie, she interpreted the mother of Elvis Presley, who played a rancher.

Presley mentioned how honored he was to work with one of the “most respected legends” of Hollywood (Neibaur, 2014: 68).

By then, she was just a myth without box-office impact. Although she was unable to revive her career, she kept her affection for the United States. Del Río recognized that Hollywood had given her the skills and mentality that allowed her to improve the Mexican film industry. She was grateful to be a returned migrant. She kept living between Mexico and the United States, where she died in 1983. Her experience demonstrated the possibilities of migration as a source of innovative ideas, ambitious projects and confidence on Mexico’s potential.

Before Dolores Del Río homecoming in 1942, there was not a single case of a successful returned migrant in Mexico. It is possible that some returned migrants had arrived before her with enough energy and disposition to apply the entrepreneurial skills learned in the United States. However, their stories were and are anonymous for two reasons: they did not succeed or, if they did, their impact was quite limited. Del Río’s case is extraordinary. Numerous circumstances convened at the right moment and at the right place, but, above all, they involved the right person. Her story deserves a privileged place in the history of Mexican return migration.

The successful use of Del Río’s entrepreneurial skills was the result of a perfect sequential order, a condition quite difficult to replicate in another returned migrant. Del Río did not have to go through a traumatic adaptation process to American society. Her upper class condition and her perfectly planned journey as a migrant guaranteed her an easy transition. Del Río already had a strong discipline, a hard-work mentality and a robust individualism. These fundamental elements of Anglo-Saxon entrepreneurship were part of her personality. She enhanced them in the United States. Her success in Hollywood and her close relationship with the most influential minds of the era gave her information that would be inaccessible to others. Del Río absorbed the best secrets of the most advanced film industry in the world. Her expertise included technology, artistic notions and marketing strategies, among other concepts. It was like taking a long course on film entrepreneurship.

The perfect sequential order in Del Río’s life continued in Mexico. She became a returned migrant right when the Golden Age of Mexican cinema was just beginning. Her immense first-hand knowledge on the American film industry gave her a vast influence. Everybody respected her as a person with state-of-the-art information. She was able to determine goals, strategies and even stylistic forms. Along with lesser-known returned migrants, she brought Anglo-Saxon discipline and individualism to the Mexican film industry. This fact released the great potential of some cinema figures, such as Emilio Fernández. Del Río’s connections with Hollywood facilitated contacts between Mexican companies and their American counterparts. Del Río’s knowledge about market strategies and audience’s tastes increased the box-office prospects of Mexican movies. It is quite probable that the Golden Age of Mexican cinema would not have been so fruitful without Del Río’s participation.

Del Río summarized some of the most valuable traits that define a successful entrepreneur. Gradually, she incorporated those traits, thanks to her dynamic personality and life experience.

Among the most cherished entrepreneurial personal traits, it is worth mentioning: innovativeness, risk taking, proactiveness, competitiveness, autonomy, selfefficacy and the ability to perceive opportunity (Wathanakom, Khlaisang and Songkram, 2020).

Del Río excelled in all of them. She was always ready to take risks with remarkable autonomy and self-efficacy. This individual confidence propelled her proactiveness, which in turn reinforced her competitiveness, mostly based on her innovativeness. In this feedback process, the result was her talent to perceive opportunity, possibly the most valuable trait of a successful entrepreneur. Opportunities came to her through an amazing sense of timing. Her presence at the right time and place reflects this ability. She attempted a career during the silent film era in the United States and opted for a return when the first sparks of opportunity surfaced in Mexico.

Although the Golden Age of Mexican cinema was brief, it secured a significant chapter in the history of movies. Del Río’s role in the Golden Age has a cardinal importance not only for cinema, but also for migration studies. She deserves an outstanding place as a successful case study in any academic work about Mexican return migration. The unique sequential order of her professional life in the United States and Mexico, together with her personal traits, is a strong argument in favor of theoretical concepts that place the individual experience as the central argument for successful entrepreneurship. Besides this, Del Río represents the origin of the fruitful relationship between return migration and entrepreneurship in Mexico. With great talent, she applied the concepts and mindset of Anglo-Saxon entrepreneurship in the nascent Mexican industry. With her understanding of American cinema, she gave Mexico the best moments of the Golden Age.