The Museo de Arte de Zapopan has a weekly series of free movies, so Jenny and I have been going to practice our Spanish and take in a bit of high culture (not easy to do since Guadalajara is basically an overgrown village with some factories and urban sprawl tossed in). Last night we saw Los herederos (The Heirs), a film about child laborers in Mexico. It's a Frederick Wiseman-like documentary, with no narration at all. For the most part the camera just follows children as they make bricks, carry water, pick green beans, weave, make tortillas, and so on.
As the title ironically implies, they are the victims of generational poverty. The children depicted were all working in the countryside, but in different situations and areas of Mexico. On one hand, it was engrossing to watch kids who could do pretty intense work at an early age. How many 7 years olds do you know that can hitch up a mule? Or use jungle vines to tie fast a heavy bundle of firewood? Or use a machete? Many of the rich 18-20 year olds I teach probably couldn't even make a cup of coffee. In this sense there is something admirable about everyone from the 4 year old son to the 90 year old grandmother working together without complaint. Watching them follow a path through a cornfield to fetch water and plant seeds and feed the turkeys (a bird first domesticated by the ancient mesoamericans), you realize all of their ancestors did the same thing stretching back literally thousands of years.
The thing I enjoy about this style of documentary with no narration is that it invites you to daydream as you watch. I started to wonder if in all societies it has been normal for children to work just like everyone else at some point in history, and to imagine myself in the same situation.
Well, there is child labor and there is child labor. Other children in the film worked with their families picking produce on giant industrial farms. Both Jenny and I came to the same conclusion, that it seemed little better than slavery. The families were herded in and out of semi-trailers to do the same repetitive thing all day in the hot sun. It's outside, but its basically a factory from the 1800's. The thing that seems so horrible about children doing this kind of work is that they're not learning anything. They're being used as farm animals at a time when they should be playing, learning, growing, etc. Maybe the little girl helping her mother weave should be in school instead, but at least she's like an apprentice. Picking cucumbers all day on someone else's land there is nothing to learn, not much to be proud of, no way of improving yourself. And I'm sure they're paid so little that even with the whole family working they can't save a penny. Who owns this farm? How did they acquire it? The film doesn't tell us, but the history of Mexico is filled with examples of people forced to work for next to nothing on land they used to own before some culero took it away from them. I think if folks really wanted to stop illegal immigration, they would have to stop paying attention to America's toughest sheriff and start looking for solutions on this farm.
Here is a link to the trailer. There isn't much dialogue, so the language isn't important.
This film made me think of the importance of education and social assistance. The class difference here in Mexico is SO apparent, as is the lack of child labor laws. On the other hand, the film is beautifully made and I am glad the preview shows the baby in the bucket and the boy running with the water... I love those 2.
ReplyDeleteOn a sad note, probably their children will be doing the same thing in 15 to 20 years. But who's to say, they look happy and healthy. Kids deserve a childhood. My students better quit their whinin'!!