This film should be re-released in theatres RIGHT NOW.
It's 23 years old and yet more timely than it has ever been. Everyone with any opinion on the current nationwide immigration debate needs to see this film NOW.
shareAbsolutely. If there was another film, better than this one to tell the Central American illegal (sorry if this term isn't PC, but I don't care) immigration story, I don't know of it. There is a whole generation of viewers who need to see this beautiful film. El Norte absolutely needs to be released on DVD. Heck, I can barely find it on VHS.
shareAt least it's still a staple of high school Spanish classes. I wonder if there's some way to suggest releasing it on DVD to whomever holds the rights.
shareThe great thing about El Norte is that it involves a central american story. The issue with Mexican immigrants is too tied up in the international politics of neighbors with a long and complicated history. Sort of like one of those chronic co-dependency relationships you wish your younger brother would figure out.
The central american keeps the themes more clear and can represent the larger themes of alienation and exile that most immigrants face. For many Mexicans crossing over from Juarez to El paso is nothing more than a work commute. For others, it's a dramatic rebirth and disconnection from a former life, land, and culture.
While many Latino immigrants have tough cultural issues to confront in the United States, for many the ultimate offense is that they have to pretend to be Mexican in order to fit into the strange racist dichotomy that we have to deal with in American society.
Cold War issues played a part in the story of Central American (versus Mexican) immigration too. The various Central American civil wars going on in the 1980s were quite neatly and conveniently framed in the dualistic "free world versus the commies" struggle.
It's interesting to note that anyone who could make it on a makeshift raft onto the shores of Florida from Cuba was automatically accepted into the United States--certainly a perilous journey as well, but note there were no real legal hoops to jump through, no questions asked, no "getting in line" as we expect from other border crossers. But of course, it is politically correct to flee from a communist country, and was especially so during the Cold War. Now if you were fleeing from one of "our" tyrants (anti-communist, or at least they took great lengths to frame themselves that way for our benefit, rather than good old-fashioned dictatorial thugs of the kind that have existed for ages), well that's more problematic.... Potentially embarrassing for us I guess.
I see both sets of migrants as poor schmucks screwed over (or worse) by powerful overlords and seeking to escape, a story older than dirt, with the ideology of their particular overlords one of the last things really on their minds--as if it would or should be relevant to them anyway. They are all "poor huddled masses teeming to our shores", regardless.
I noted the immigration officials' concern over whether they were really run-of-the-mill Mexicans like they deal with all the time, or Central Americans. I think Central American illegal crossing was even less "tolerated" (in relative terms) than Mexican at that time. Certainly a lot more "looking the other way" (as the useful cheap labor source no one wanted to talk about) regarding the latter.
"No more half-measures."