ABSTRACT
The emergence of “latsploitation” however, as a new and discrete field of study, has not been completely without antecedents. Latsploitation as it is outlined emphasizes Latin American cinema’s historical and economic exceptionality and how this creates a different kind of exploitation cinema. The term also acknowledges the different criteria which determine a Latin American exploitation film and which set it apart from exploitation as it is understood in primarily United States (US) terms. With respect to exploitation cinemas, Latsploitation filled a gap in the then burgeoning field of exploitation cinema studies, bringing the hitherto largely ignored diverse exploitation cinemas of Latin American into its frame of reference. During the late 1960s, 1970s, and the 1980s a number of exploitation cinemas could be consumed by Latinx audiences attending theatres in Spanish language circuits in different areas and metropolitan centres of the US.
