El Norte

In the 1980s, military repression and civil warfare intensified in both Guatemala and El Salvador, resulting in massacres, forced displacement, and political assassinations. Thousands left Central America to come to America, most of them illegally. Those who entered the U.S. filed for political asylum but despite the reports of murders and disappearances, barely three percent of applicants received asylum. Today, approximately half of Salvadorans and Guatemalans living in the U.S. have less than an eighth grade education and most work long hours in jobs on the low end of the pay scale and their situation makes it nearly impossible to advance or make long term plans.

Gregory Nava's 1983 Indie film El Norte describes the plight of two young Guatemalans, Enrique (David Villalpando) and his sister Rosa (Zaide Silvia Gutierrez) who face reprisals from the military after participating in a protest meeting and undertake a hazardous journey to "the north" to find a better life. The film is divided into three parts: "Arturo Xuncax", describing the circumstances that caused the family to leave Guatemala "El Coyote", detailing their hazardous journey to reach the U.S., and "El Norte", telling the story of their life in Los Angeles. While El Norte does have a strong political message, the core of the film is the relationship between Enrique and Rosa.

The hardships of the journey are told in graphic detail, especially the last test of crossing the border by crawling on their hands and knees through an abandoned sewer line populated by hordes of rats. Things seem to be bright, however, when they arrive in Los Angeles. He becomes a busboy in an upscale restaurant, she finds work as a maid in Beverly Hills, and both try to learn English in their free time. They soon find, however, that life in the U.S. is not all that it appears and their situation unravels when Enrique is reported to INS officials by a jealous employee. El Norte wears its heart on its sleeve and the film tends toward the melodramatic, but it faithfully mirrors the fear and uncertainty that illegal immigrants face each day and I can forgive its flaws and applaud the loving bond between brother and sister and the strength it produces in their lives.

Fifteen years ago, the indigenous people in Guatemala, were living a cruel extermination that forced them to flee toward Mexico and the United States. This exodus lasted a decade and half a million Guatemalans made the journey to America seeking for asylum and refuge.

In that time, a young Chicano film maker, full of noble idealism,honesty,and with no more resources but his immense talent to tell stories, put his eyes in this tragedy and made the most beautiful epic poem ever filmed about our indigenous nations: El Norte, a picture that gave voice to those that don´t have it.

With El Norte, the spectators of that time, became aware, in slambang, of a reality that have been communicated to them mostly through the press, but wich they had never confronted in such hard and frontal manner.

And in some way, El Norte became a powerfull fighting element. Grew an audience, searched audiences, left the theatres to tell its truth. Got into the schools, universities, into film festivals, and in every forum that wanted to hear it, and it´s message was founding echo in the spectators identifyed with the story of the lost paradise of all the poor of the world in which, Rosa and Enrique represent millions of young people of any color and continent, starving for security and freedom, those that every day start the search of the lost paradise through hell.

Fifteen years had gone by since the time we made this film, and unfortunately, the story that has been told in El Norte, will have to be told for a long time. We, the latinamericans, are in deep debt with Anna Thomas and Gregory Nava. Thank you for making, from this tragedy a masterpice.

Some say that a poem never won a workers strike; this may be true, but it is also true that some poems had helped us to keep the faith, and as long as you have faith, you have not been defeated.

And if you don´t belive me, ask via internet to subcomandante Marcos, who has been fighting five years in Chiapas, México, for the indigenous rigths, with no weapon other than his word. And by the way, in many of the towns El Norte was filmed. We thank the people who are helping preserve today our story in order to be shown to the future generations.

This movie is a touching story of a brother and sister trying to escape oppression in their native Guatemala and escape to 'El Norte' after the rest of their family has been taken by the army. We experience their hardships with them and see their fears and are constantly rooting for them to cross the border safely and hoping that they will find their place in the United States. They quickly realize that in 'El Norte' not everyone has a car and tons of money like their father had said. They bounce from city to city looking for work and avoiding deportation and realize that there is no place for them – not in Guatemala, Mexico or the United states. There is a lot of magical realism in the movie (which I'm not a fan of) and the ending is ambiguous but it is a great film that the viewer gets involved in emotionally.

Having taught illegal immigrants for decades, this movie intrigued me. From what I have been told by the parents of my students, this movie correctly depicts the lives of many of people who struggle to get to this country. I also know from working with older students, that the life shown in the movie in Southern California is also accurate.

When I taught college sociology classes, I made this movie mandatory viewing (along with "Emerald Forest" and "Belzaire the Cajun." Don't expect a 'feel-good' movie--it's not this one. Do expect to get a glimpse into the lives of millions of people who now live in the United States, and what it took to get here.

PS--Much of this movie is in the Spanish and South American Indian language (with subtitles). Block out the bottom of the screen if you want to practice your español. ¡Qué bueno! (Si, yo hablo español.)

Like Ruben Martinez's recent nonfiction work on Latino emigrants, "Crossing Over," Gregory Nava's film, "El Norte," begins with a re-working of the Passion Play--only this time the Christ figure is Arturo Xuncax, a Guatemalan Indian and guerilla leader, who's betrayed to the landowner/elites by one of his own followers. As a result, Xuncax and his "disciples" are killed in a bloody nocturnal raid staged by the elites' enforcers--members of the Guatemalan military--and Arturo's severed head is suspended by rope from a tree limb to serve as a warning to others who may conspire against the Oppressor.

Viewers are forgiven, therefore, if they expect a story of political martyrdom and vengeance, since it is Arturo's son, Enrique, who takes up the machete that his murdered father (a "Man of Peace") refused to bring along with him to his fate. Instead, Enrique is advised by a friend to strike out to "el Norte." And since the military has vowed to de- populate Arturo's village, this would appear to be sound advice.

Thus begins one of the best "journey" films ever made. Enrique and his sister, Rosa (presumably, both are still in their teens), make the long trek from their once-idyllic Central American mountain village to what they mistakenly believe will be a comfortable, material existence in California, US of A.

While the Guatemalan scenes in "El Norte" are dark, foggy, murky, and formally paced, the second section of the film (subtitled "El Coyote") begins with a blast of mariachi music and we see the pair of young travelers on a bright, sunlit, modern Mexican highway. Most of this section deals with Rosa and Enrique's efforts to cross the Mexi-Cali border, yet this portion also gives the director a chance to delineate the personalities of his hero and heroine.

Enrique is characterized as an idealist, a dreamer, eternally kind at heart to everyone. No less kinder is Rosa. But as Enrique explains to a retired smuggler, "I think she is stronger than the two of us put together." He's right. Rosa possesses a harder edge than Enrique--an inner strength, in fact, that makes her the emotional and spiritual center of the film. On a bus ride through the Mexican countryside, she refuses to close the window next to her seat, despite the protests of a man sitting behind her; she refuses to be prevented from embracing and observing life as it truly is. Rosa is a realist. While in Tijuana, she explains to Enrique that the sale or pawning of their mother's jewelry is the only practical way they can finance their crossing over to America. Enrique, ever the sentimentalist, objects. But Rosa insists; and in the end, she wins this minor argument.

Brother and sister do manage to make it across the borderline--but at a terrible price that doesn't become evident until the film's conclusion.

"El Norte" was made on a shoestring; but Nava's direction is clever, sometimes in a style reminiscent of late-50's French New Wave, but more often as naturalistic as an Upton Sinclair novel. Indeed, a scene showing Enrique flexing his muscles while begging for work with a construction crew seems an obvious reference to Sinclair's "The Jungle."

The film is very well-cast, every scene directed economically but effectively. There is no waste-motion in this movie. Its rhythm is lyrical without being needlessly reflective. The acting is first-rate, especially the performances of two of the minor players: Lupe Ontiveros (as Nacha, Rosa's friend in Los Angeles) and Trinidad Silva (as Monte, the cynical, opportunistic baseball fanatic).