In the film El Norte (Gregory Nava, 1983), the di

In the film El Norte (Gregory Nava, 1983), the disparity in economic strength between two regions contributes to an ongoing flow of immigrants from Guatemala to the north, with Los Angeles being a preferred destination for those seeking economic advantage and a degree of political freedom. The people making this journey also find themselves moving from a traditional society, closely-knit and centered on community, to a major industrial city with different values and a shifting community structure. These immigrants leave Guatemala because of exploitation and find a different sort of exploitation in their new home.

There is a great contrast between the world from which these Guatemalan peasants come and the world to which they aspire. They come from villages in Guatemala where people pursue a subsistence economy. The region is rural and largely untilled. The region is feudal, with a feudal lord in the form of Don Rodrigo. He holds sway over the region like a feudal lord with military powers, and the peasants have little they can do to stop him. If they try to have a meeting and decide what to do about his treatment of them, he uses his goons to break it up. The people are tied to the land, and the land is owned by Don Rodrigo. One man note that the rich, men like Don rodrigo, treat their animals better than they do their peasant workers on the plantations. The North is held up always as a better place, a dream image of what life could be like that becomes more ap

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ure than their new home will be. This is emphasized before they leave when the sister waits for her brother in the woods, picks a flower, and pets a goat. Her dreams are made clear when she goes home and looks at the wonders of America in a magazine, specifically kitchens that look wonderful to this young woman who has cooked over an open fire in the middle of her more primitive kitchen. As she and her brother leave their village, she looks back and sees the village behind her. They move away from their home and into a wilderness area, up a mountain and onward to the north. The second section of the film is labeled "El Coyote," and here the two are in Mexico and seeking a way to get across the border to the United States. In their homeland they had to deal with exploiters who owned the land; here they deal with an exploiter who owns a truck and who smuggles immigrants across the border. In this film, the landscape changes as the two leave the village and move north. The human landscape does not change that much, however and repeated again and again is the image of the innocent being exploited by those with more power. The first part of the journey was undertaken on foot, and the young people were on their own. The secon

Category: Film - I