ReVista :: Flora and Fauna :: Book Talk

Flora and Fauna

Nature in Latin America
Winter 2005

You Can Dance to this Book!

Edited by Nicholas J. Cull and David Carrasco, Alambrista and the U.S.- Mexico Border: Film, Music, and Stories of Undocumented Immigrants, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, NM; 2004, 225 pp.
A review by Cecilia Owen

Whether it's the traditional Mexican corrido that accompanies the birth of a baby girl in Michoacan, Mexico, or the "Okie-Dokie Shuffle" which underscores the diversity of cultures brought together within the migrant farmworker communities in California, the soundtrack that accompanies the recently released film Alambrista: The Director's Cut will keep you moving. The multi-media production that is Alambrista and the US-Mexico Border; Film, Music and Stories of Undocumented Immigrants, co-edited by Nicholas Cull, American Studies professor at the University of Leicester, and David Carrasco, historian of religion and anthropology at Harvard University, demands the attention of students, scholars, and activists alike. Thirty years after Robert Young, AB '49 released the original version of the film Alambrista, this new combination of film, book and soundtrack invites us view the re-release of Alambrista: The Director's Cut, explore the themes that intersect immigrant lives through a superb collection of essays, and dance a little along the way to the soundtrack by Dr. Loco & Sus Tiburones Del Norte.

Carrasco comments, "A group of experienced scholars and activists, largely but not exclusively Chicanos from different universities came together to create a new educational resource that would allow people to read, see and hear the stories of the alambristas." By bringing the original film back to life, these scholars intended "to heighten and stimulate dialogue in university classrooms and community centers alike, in order to enlarge the public discourse on undocumented workers in arenas such as public policy and the creative arts," Carrasco adds. True to the collaborative spirit of this volume, the editors took the new version of the film Alambrista: The Director's Cut to immigrant communities for their feedback. Of a group of farmworkers gathered at a community center near Palm Springs, Cull remarks, "Their overwhelming response to the film was to embrace it not as a window on the present situation but a piece of community history: a way of understanding their parents' experience?For the children of the people who lived through such conditions, it fills a silence."

Alambrista: The Director's Cut portrays Roberto's poignant journey of discovery and hardship in California in the 1970s. The viewer tastes both the sweetness of Roberto's tender friendships, as well as the bitterness of his unjust exploitation as an undocumented immigrant worker. The film treats the viewer to gorgeous shots of lush fields and California produce-grapes, tomatoes, strawberries, and watermelon-only to contrast this bounty with the meagerness of the wages paid by landowners to farm workers picking their crops. The spirit of generosity and clever humor that defines the relationship between Roberto and his comrade Joe stands in contrast to the inhumane treatment of the Colorado patron who just wants to recruit enough "bodies" to pick the melons in fields where farm workers are striking to protest unfair working conditions. Roberto experiences the wonder of sudden immersion within a new cultural setting: his wide-eyed innocence prompts Joe to give him his first English lessons in ordering ham, eggs and coffee. Their risky adventures continue as they "cruise" in a Cadillac parked aboard a car carrier on a freight train bound for Stockton, California. Narrowly escaping the police, they abandon the vehicle only to continue their journey, this time lying on strips of plywood just inches above the tracks whizzing by beneath the freight train. Their jovial friendship ends in tragedy, leaving Roberto to wander alone into the next town, right into the arms of a budding romance with Sharon, an Anglo waitress in the diner where he orders his first meal. Roberto and Sharon's intimacy and mutual dependence provide a temporary oasis of affection for them both. But when Sharon finds herself helping Roberto to send a money order home to his wife, the painful reality of remaining loyal to family members in Mexico is called into question. After experiencing the death of his father in the fields and disappointment over what his father's life has amounted to in the States, Roberto's sense of pride and human dignity have been assailed one time too many. Pouring out his frustrations in a junkyard scene where canned beans and packaged tortillas spark his unquenchable outburst of rage, Roberto crosses back over the border to Mexico, only to witness joy and sorrow simultaneously in seeing a Mexican woman giving birth to a future American citizen, an infant "with papers," just yards over the national boundary line.

The collection of essays that make up the book Alambrista and the US-Mexico Border present the "marriage between the academic perspective and the experience of culture," according to Stanford University historian Albert Camarillo. Commenting upon Roberto's fictional journey to the US as well as the real-life narratives of many other immigrants who came north in the mid-70s, Camarillo states: "Despite the constant threat of deportation, Mexicans in great numbers have shared a familiar general experience of departing from their home town or village, crossing the border typically with the assistance of a paid smuggler, and finding work on the other side." Just as essays such as Camarillo's work to increase the viewer's broader understanding of Mexico-US immigration issues, a series of videotaped interviews follow the footage of Alambrista; The Director's Cut, providing students with essential information about the contemporary realities of immigration in the new millennium. In one interview, for example, Latino Studies scholar Nancy Mirabal highlights the contemporary roles of increasing numbers of undocumented women who emigrate from Mexico to the U.S. Mirabal's interview provides an excellent counterbalance to the film which provides a snapshot of immigration in the 1970s when most immigrants from Mexico were still male agricultural workers. Many more women are immigrating to the U.S. under current economic situations to fill jobs within the service sector, working in restaurants, fast food chains and retail stores, as well as in private homes providing child care and cleaning services. The role of undocumented immigrant women in creating informal social networks spanning the U.S.-Mexico border has become increasingly apparent to feminist scholars such as Mirabal. Women play a critical role in the contemporary immigration process by sustaining ties to children, spouses and family that remain in Mexico. Undocumented female workers are even more likely to faithfully send remissions back to family members in Mexico than male workers. As Dr. Theresa Carrillo emphasizes in her article entitled, "Watching Over Greater Mexico: Recent Mexican Initiatives on Migration and the Alambristas of the New Millennium," the face of immigration thirty years after the making of the film Alambrista looks much different.

Along with providing up-to-date facts on the contemporary face of immigration from Mexico to the US, the essays found in Alambrista and the US-Mexico Border also illuminate various aspects of the production of the film and soundtrack. For example, Jose Cuellar, professor of Raza Studies at San Francisco State University (aka Dr. Loco), provides us his "notes" on creating the original music for the film. According to Carrasco, "It's really Dr. Loco's music that makes a new version of the film. Dr. Loco's music tells the Alambrista story in a new way with new nuances and new power." In describing the "bilingual country love ballad" he calls "Right Before My Very Eyes," Dr. Loco explains, "For me, the most powerful love scene in Alambrista follows on the heels of the evangelical church scene, when Sharon looks at Roberto with delightful surprise and wide-open smiling eyes, and he responds in kind." The lyrics to "Esta Noche," Dr. Loco's "country-norteno-style waltz," express the tender adoration of Sharon and Roberto's last embrace before he is swept up by la migra:

Esta noche te bano con besos
Cada estrella te voy a bajar
Te decorare todita con ellas
De pies a cabeza te voy a adorer

The complexities of Dr. Loco's musical creations are also expressed in his description of the "Okie Dokie Shuffle," the "musical glue" overlaying the scenes where Joe and Roberto help a migrant "Okie" family get their broken-down station wagon moving again. Dr. Loco states, "This seemed to be the perfect film moment for a musical transculturation bringing together the mojados or 'wetbacks' and the gringos or 'okies'?to instrumentally represent the musical merging of the Anglo and Mexican American traditions along the US-Mexican border." When their car won't start up at the gas station, the "Okie" father jumps out of the car and gives the driver's side door a kick while Roberto turns the key in the ignition. As the car responds and they drive away, the song plays:

Alambrista and the US-Mexico Border; Film, Music and Stories of Undocumented Immigrants is already playing a major role in new collaborative efforts within the field of Latino Studies. For example, the newly formed Latino Studies Consortium, supported by the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS) and the Inter-Faculty Committee on Latino Studies at Harvard came together in response to the need for further collaboration in the area of Latino Studies. According to Deborah Pacini Hernandez, Tufts University anthropology professor, faculty from both private and public institutions in the Boston area, including Salem State, Brandeis, Tufts, University of Massachusetts Boston, and Harvard Universities, met "to strengthen Latino scholarship within their institutions, get to know other Latino Studies faculty, and to create opportunities to connect in meaningful ways with the larger Latino community." Recognizing the Alambrista multimedia ensemble as a powerful tool to launch a new collaborative teaching initiative, the Consortium developed the project "A Book and a Film." Over the course of the fall, 2004 semester, students from participating universities will screen Alambrista: The Director's Cut, view the accompanying interviews prominent Latino Studies scholars, and read a selection of essays from Alambrista and the US-Mexico Border. In response to the range of discussion questions posed at the beginning of the book, students will interact with one another through the use of a virtual discussion board. In their virtual classroom, students will have the opportunity "to dialogue and respond to their peers who are of different socio-economic backgrounds, who are engaged in the pursuit of various educational degrees, and who possess varying levels of expertise within the field of Latino Studies," states Pacini.

Students will also be able to gain feedback from participating faculty members across these institutions through these virtual discussions. For example, a masters degree candidate in education at Salem State, who is already well-versed in Latino Studies and grounded in concrete classroom teaching experience, will have the chance to interact with undergraduate students entering their first Latino Studies course at Tufts University.

"In a political moment when Latin America is not part of the foreign policy debate and discussions of immigration issues have fallen by the wayside, this volume provides an opportunity for students to question this 'silence'" remarks Neida Jimenez, DRCLAS Program Manager and coordinator of the Latino Studies Consortium. "Though a pilot project at the moment, the "Book and a Film Project" also helps faculty using these multi-media tools to engage in a pedagogical discussion about what it means to teach Latino Studies," emphasizes Jimenez. "We know that music speaks to students; and stories move and stir the imagination: these too can be transformative tools." Within this new collaborative teaching project, students will tackle the themes and questions raised by Alambrista and the US-Mexico Border in virtual conversation with one another; university faculty will have the chance to dialogue about pedagogical aspects of teaching Latino Studies, all with an eye towards sharing this learning with K-12 educators

The new multi-media presentation of Alambrista has already begun to spark reactions from the wider community, just as the Latino Studies Consortium has planned. Roberto Mata, a second year Masters of Divinity student at Harvard Divinity School, comments upon the film in relation to his first-hand experience as an undocumented immigrant farmworker in the fields of California in the 1980s. Mata emphasizes the "journey of faith," or the role religion plays in creating a new sense of community for undocumented workers immigrating to the U.S. He speaks of the "state of disorientation, cultural shock and abandonment that immigrants often feel in their faith" upon crossing the border. "They need to make the new land where they find themselves sacred, for they are strangers to this land. Religion plays a major role in helping people find their orientation and survive spiritually." The closing verse of Dr. Loco's classic corrido "El Venadito" in the film sums up the ultimate hand the divine may play in the undocumented immigrant's "journey of faith":

Yo con esta me despido, con un solo hasta la vista
Si con el favor de Dios dejo de ser alambrista
Cuando cruce otra vez ya sera como turista

Alambrista and the US-Mexico Border; Film, Music and Stories of Undocumented Immigrants as a multi-media package becomes a point of departure for study in many different areas: the changing face of Mexican immigration to the US, the development of new pedagogies for Latino Studies, and the use of the creative arts, especially music and film, in the struggle to enact social change.

All proceeds from the sale of this multi-media package benefit children of migrant farmworkers.

Cecilia Owen is an MDiv student at Harvard Divinity School studying art as ministry for social change. She is the coordinator of the "Book and a Film" project of the Latino Studies Consortium. A longer version of this article can be found on http://drclas.fas. harvard.edu/publications.