>At 10:00 AM -0500 2002/02/20,Harry wrote:
>>Ray,
>>
>>Why do all these great immigrants come to the USA?
>>
>>Harry
>>
Brian's answer:
Because of the Ministry of Truth and its media friends.
An example: I saw a clip of ex prime minister of Israel, Benjamin
Netanyahu on the news about a week ago. He was talking about how to
deal with terrorism. He said that all the U$ needed to do is get some
satellite dishes into Afganistan and show reruns of Beverly Hills
90210. He went on to say that this would get the youth yearning to
live the American dream.
I'm reminded of the movie El Norte. I've used it many times in a
media literacy course I teach. It presents a very different version
of the dream. I highly recommend it.
l El Norte (The North) tells the story of Enrique (David Villalpando)
and Rosa (Zaide Silvia Gutierrez),
Guatemalan siblings fleeing their homeland for the safety and
promise of the United States, after their father
(Ernesto Gomez Cruz) is murdered and their mother (Alicia Del Lago)
vanishes, both at the hands of the ruling
military regime. Nava (who cowrote the film with Anna Thomas) tells
the story in three parts: Part I, "Arturo
Xuncax" takes place in San Pedro, Guatemala. Arturo is a coffee
bean picker and rebel leader, participating in
secret late night meetings with other revolutionaries, speculating
about possible assistance they could get
from the guerillas. As Arturo explains it to Enrique, they seek
political freedom and financial independence:
the Guatemalan military backs the wealthy, landed elite, and the
poor Mayan Indians are forced to scrape a
living by working for the landowners. "To the Rich, the peasant is
just a pair of arms," Arturo tells his son.
While Enrique initially understands his father to mean the Rich of
San Pedro, or maybe the whole of
Guatemala, he soon discovers that the condescending attitudes of
the "haves" towards the "have nots" exist
wherever one goes.
In Part I, Nava captures the breathtaking beauty of the Guatemalan
countryside, with its lush green
mountainsides draped in a bluish mist, the local people in their
brightly colored traditional clothing, and
their simple, beautiful homes warmly lit with candles when extended
families gather for meals and prayers
together. These lovely images and sounds of traditional Mayan music
are ruptured by fear and violence, when
a rebel meeting is broken up by soldiers and everyone in attendance
murdered. The most horrifying assertion
of the ruling class's brutal power (after all, the military is the
force behind their interests) is Arturo's severed
head swinging from a tree.
Following this massacre, the wives of the rebels are rounded up by
soldiers, never to be seen again. Enrique and
Rosa -- remembering the many stories they've heard about El Norte
over the years and recognizing the danger
they now face -- decide to make their way towards the supposed
Promised Land. They are warned that the
journey will be a difficult one, but also encouraged by their
belief that in the United States, even the poorest
people have luxuries, like houses with refrigerators, flush
toilets, and electricity. Their godmother Josefita
(Stella Quan) has longed to go North ever since she was a little
girl and describes it with a what seems to them,
legitimate experience: "I read Good Housekeeping," Josefita
explains, "I know plenty." She gives her
godchildren money for the journey and they take off on foot to
Mexico believing, in Rosa's words, "In the North,
we won't be treated this way."
Part II, "El Coyote," follows Rosa and Enrique through Mexico. They
make their way to the surreal squalor of
Tijuana, where they plan to find a "coyote," or guide. Stepping off
the bus, they are greeting by a group of men,
loudly selling themselves as the best and cheapest coyotes, and
comparing the material comforts of the U.S. to
the desperation in Tijuana. The camera illustrates, with a series
of fast cuts between between images of the
promise of the U.S. (meticulously manicured green lawns, big
houses, new cars) and the reality of Tijuana (tin
shanties, dirt, filth, beggars). Tijuana is, in the words of one of
the coyotes, a "lost city."
Further indicating that the siblings are headed to a new world,
Part II features traditional Mariachi music,
which today sounds nearly stereotypical, at least from a U.S.
perspective, where it plays in every Don Pablo's
and Rio Grande Restaurant. Somehow, though, this music works to the
film's advantage, reinforcing one of its
major themes: Rosa and Enrique have their own stereotyped
conceptions of Mexicans, passed on to them by
their elders in Guatemala ("Mexicans are always saying 'fuck'") and
at the same time are counting on others'
expectations ("Try to pretend to be Mexican . . . most people think
all Indians look alike"). Likewise, the
Mexicans see the Central American refugees as ignorant,
unsuspecting peasants. Nava plays on these
stereotypes comically: The mariachi music is ever present and every
Mexican character Enrique and Rosa
encounter peppers his sentences with "fuck." The two try, with
varying levels of success, to pass as Mexican. In
one of the film's lighter moments, Rosa and Enrique are
interrogated by the U.S. Border patrol and nearly fail
to convince them that they are Mexican until Enrique starts
throwing "fuck" into his sentences. "I guess they
are Mexican," the Border Patrolman shrugs. "Send them back to
Tijuana." These instances add some
much-needed levity to this segment, which also contains what in my
book qualifies as one the most horrifying
moments in any film I've seen. If you have a greater than average
aversion (read: phobia) to rats, you'll want to
brace yourself mentally as Rosa and Enrique are convinced by their
coyote (Abel Franco) to cross into the U.S.
via an abandoned sewer tunnel rather than the riskier mountain route.
Finally, Part III: "El Norte." Rosa and Enrique find themselves
nearly destitute but able to rent a place of their
own. And the North does indeed have the very amenities Josefita
promised: electricity, a refrigerator, running
water, a flush toilet. Of course, reality is a far cry from the
shiny, modern examples in Good Housekeeping
and the irony is not lost on either of them: "Now all we need is to
find a brand new car we can have without any
money," Rosa laughs. It is the first of many disappointments, some
of them easier to swallow than others.
El Norte's rerelease is timely not only because the Guatemalan
civil war finally ended last December, after 36
years, but also because the U.S. market is hot, it seems, for all
things Latin. It is significant, I think, that
seventeen years after El Norte was made, the issues it tackles, the
circumstances the protagonists endure, are
still recognizable in the U.S. to the point of seeming virtually
unchanged. Rosa becomes a housekeeper;
Enrique gets a job as a busboy and back-waiter. Today, Chicanos and
immigrants are forced into the same
"shit-work" as the Central American refugees in Nava's movie. Even
as the mainstream U.S. purports to
embrace "diversity," entire populations find themselves displaced,
dispossessed, and disillusioned by the
empty promise of open-armed prosperity. Rosa and Enrique must face
the sad reality that their father's hopes
for the North have proved hollow: "Life is very hard here," laments
Rosa, "We are not free."
Nava's film reinforces that oppression is cyclical and unending in
its final images. Enrique, after suffering
yet another series of tragedies, stands outside a motel in a crowd
of other Latinos, hoping to be picked up for day
labor. "I need strong arms!", the foreman calls out as he pulls up
in his pickup truck. It is a bitter realization
that Arturo's words about the poor being nothing but arms for the
rich holds true even in El Norte. As the
haunting Mayan traditional music reasserts itself, Enrique jockeys
for a position on the truck, holding up his
arms to show their strength. It is clear in this heartbreaking
moment that in El Norte, they have only traded a
familiar oppression for a foreign one.
Brian McAndrews
--
**************************************************
* Brian McAndrews, Practicum Coordinator *
* Faculty of Education, Queen's University *
* Kingston, Ontario K7L 3N6 *
* FAX:(613) 533-6596 Phone (613) 533-6000x74937*
* e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *
* "Education is not the filling of a pail, *
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