Both La Ciudad (1998) and El Norte (1983) show the lives of immigrants in the United States and how they face poverty and destitution. While La Ciudad shows the perspective of various different immigrants already in the United States through vignettes, El Norte follows a brother and sister on their journey to the United States and shows what their life is like once they arrive. Both films, however, have common themes of poverty and destitution for immigrants. For instance, both films show the disappointing reality they face once they actually make it o the US. In addition, both films explore how immigrants are pressured to only looking out for themselves and how they stand up to that pressure. In La Ciudad, there are two vignettes that deal …show more content…
Before they go to the US, they have an idealized image of the US in their minds. They are pushed out of their own country due to systemic violence and have seen images of the US in magazines that make life there look glamorous. They risk everything they have—including their own lives—to get to “The North” because they view it as a land of wealth and opportunity. However, when they actually make it to LA, things aren’t quite as they imagined. They struggle to find and keep jobs, they live in constant worry of being caught, …show more content…
This illustrates how immigrants think they’re going to have a much better life in the US than they actually end up having. Rosa and her brother both escape death in their home country, but Rosa is still not able to avoid death brought on by the destitution of an immigrant’s life. Another theme found in both films is the idea of resisting the urge to only look out for yourself. In the last vignette of La Ciudad, a woman working a sweatshop needs money for her sick daughter, but has not been paid for weeks. At the end of the vignette, she stops working in protest and all her coworkers stop working as well in solidarity. By doing this, her coworkers are risking their jobs and income, which is a huge deal because they are already living in poverty. However, they take this risk and resist the pressure to look out for only themselves because they understand the woman’s
The Europeans who claimed what was to become America chose to integrate the land's present inhabitants and future immigrants in order to become the dominating race and, consequently, made other cultures feel inferior to their own. The Angel family, Mexican-Indian immigrants and the subject of Arturo Islas' Migrant Souls, becomes victim to the Americans' forceful demands for conformity. While Sancho, the father, never complains about assimilation, yet never becomes fully "assimilated," his wife, Eduviges, strives to be a part of the American culture. These conflicting reactions and the existing prejudice in the community leave their daughter, Josie, uncertain of her true identity.
Afterwards, in the 1990s films portraying Latinos would take a somehow new direction, one of the most famous filmmakers would be Gregory Navas, he directed the movie My Family/Mi Familia, a film that portrays the lives of a Mexican-American family and the difficulty that the couple faced in order to establish in the U.S. “by passing as immigrants and all the struggle to integrate their family in another country” (Peña Acuña, 2010). The film let the audience see a potential reality that most immigrants went through when they first moved to the United States and how the system worked differently and the way immigrants had to adapt not only to the system, but also to the language and culture.
The book “The distance between us” is the story of immigration written by Reyna Grande. The book recounts her true personal story before and after entering the United States. The story shows how poverty and parenting impacts the family. Grande was 2years old when her dad left her, 4 years old when her mom (Juana) left her and her two siblings (Mago and Carlos) with her grandmother in the Mexico. Since, then she was seeking her parents either her dad or mom in the story. Her illegal and undocumented entry in the United States depicits the struggles and challenges she faced while crossing the border. After she arrived in the United States she found that living in the U.S was not that easy what she has dreamed for and “The man behind the glass” was not like that what she had met before. Her siblings were angry because of their not supportive mother and abusive father which weaken their intimacy in the family. Instead, Mago her elder
Mexico, once home to ancient cultures like the Maya and Aztec which ruled vast territory expanding from present day South America all the way up north to present day western United States now reduced to roughly half its size. The cause of this dramatic loss of land was contributed to the expansion of the United States and secession of southern provinces, now Central America. The loss of land not only affected Mexico’s presence of power but also affected hundreds of thousands of native people. This was just the beginning of what would come to be known as the land struggle and the fight for land grants, something the United States government would not acknowledge nor recognize.
Los Angeles, California is often seen as the city of dreams. Hollywood paints the picture of Los Angeles as a place of endless possibilities. Los Angeles is also thought as the city where dreamers can come with nothing in their pocket and become an over night success story. Many Americans and immigrants come to Los Angeles with the same dream of success. In The Tattooed Soldier Tobar describes how this fictionalized “American dream” version of the Los Angeles affects immigrants. In the novel Tobar followed two Guatemalan immigrants Antonio and Longeria who live very different lifestyles in their home country and in America. Los Angeles seemed to be the land of dreams and promise to both characters, however; Los Angeles becomes a place of harsh reality for Antonio and Longeria. In the novel we watch how Antonio and Longeria adjust to the struggles of being immigrants in Los Angeles, , and what makes man a man.
Los Angeles was the place to find work if laboring was all you knew. Not speaking a word of English, but able to labor in the fields of California's various crops, Mexican immigrants flocked to Los Angeles. Los Angeles quickly became a Mecca for Mexicans wishing to partake of the American dream establishing themselves and creating families. The American dream, however, became just a dream as harsh unequal assessments by white Americans placed Mexican-Americans at the bottom of the social, economic, and political ladders. Whites believed that Mexican immigrants and Mexican-Americans had no place in their society: a place shared by many minorities (Del Castillo 7). Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans in Los Angeles were at a great disadvantage despite their great numbers. No representation existed for the minorities.
...s appealing it is not without consequence. Clare, and those who choose to pass, are not free to embrace their whole identity and will always remain a threat to those they come in contact. Clare exemplified the archetypal character of the tragic mulatto, as she bought tragedy to her own life and all those she came in contact. Clare’s presence forced Irene to contend with feelings of internalized racism, and thus feelings of inferiority. Through diction, tone, and imagery Larsen makes it luminous to readers that "passing" may seem glamorous, however, the sacrifice one makes to do so is not without consequences for themselves and those they care about. Larsen does not allow her readers to perch on the belief that once a member of the dominate group ones life is not without pain and suffering. Every action, even those that seem to make life easier, have consequences.
The novel is an exposé of the harsh and vicious reality of the American Dream'. George and Lennie are poor homeless migrant workers doomed to a life of wandering and toil. They will be abused and exploited; they are in fact a model for all the marginalized poor of the world. Injustice has become so much of their world that they rarely mention it. It is part of their psyche. They do not expect to be treated any different no matter where they go.
For many Mexican immigrants, crossing the border into the land of freedom and the American dream is no easy task. Some immigrants come over illegally by means of hiding in cars to cross borders, using visitor visas to stay longer, marrying to become citizens, and having babies as ‘anchors’ to grant automatic citizenship. Other immigrants gain green cards and work visas and work their way into becoming US citizens legally and subsequently gaining citizenship through paperwork for their families back home. After escaping harsh living and working conditions in Mexico, immigrants come to America prepared to gain education, opportunity, and work. This American dream unfortunately does not come to pass for most.
This agency creates a complex self-realization that readers find in both of the characters, however both shows different approach that differentiate their character from one another. As a result, both characters manifest a sense of victimization, but somehow in their hope for upward mobility, negate that. The power of this purpose is retrospective to all migrant workers because that is all they have---it’s rather success or failure.
Another foundations that I can add is effect social change, this reflect the type of movement that the workers create based on the fact that they were being discriminated in the company, affecting the lives. Last foundations that connect on this film it is Chicano film language, we can see how the combination of languages, between Spanish and English and cultural codes that the people from the film shows as part of the Mexican American culture. For example these three techniques foundations create a strong image to this film in the way that we can see the scene where the woman’s are in prison because of the movement. The whole scene creates an atmosphere of anger, and desperation, referring to the woman’s expressions “queremos la formula, queremos camas, queremos baño”. I can connect this great scene for a moment of expressing the support from each other by forcing the sheriff to give them their needs and
Estrella and Cleofilas have come to accept that they don’t get much for their hard labor. They both learned how society looks at immigrants from other countries. They both were looked down upon. Estrella works hard in the hot heat. She comes to realize that picking grapes doesn’t earn enough money, and it all depended on the piece rate of the grapes. Society turns around, eats the grapes and doesn’t think twice about how the grapes came to their mouths. When the society doesn’t think of the age or person that has picked the grapes.
Life for some immigrants isn’t easy, but for some, it is it was easy for my family. My family used to live in Egypt but we came to America when I was about 10 months old. We didn’t really have anything, but we had some family to help support us although my family and I had it easy there are other immigrants that have it tough.“It's terrible to lose somebody,” I said, “I mean, I don’t know firsthand, but I can imagine it must be. But it's also true that some people never have anybody to lose, and I think that's got to be so much worse.” In a novel called “The Bean Trees,” there are two characters Estevan and Esperanza who are illegal
Despite having to battle discrimination and poor neighborhoods, second and third generation Mexican-Americans have made a great strife to overcome large obstacles. Mexican-Americans are finally gaining representation in city government representing the 9.6 million Mexican residents of Los Angeles. White politicians can no longer ignore Mexicans in Los Angeles, as former mayor Richard Riordan saw in the elections of 1997, in which his re-election was largely in part to the high turnout of Mexican voters in his favor. Although Capitalism still exists in the greater Los Angeles, its influence is not as great as it was fifty years ago. Los Angeles continues to serve as the breeding grounds for new cultures, ideologies, and alternative lifestyles. The pursuit of the American Dream becomes a reality for most immigrants in LA. LA is a great place to live, party, and be from. I knew little about the history of Los Angeles prior to this course, but now I am well prepared to answer the question of, “What makes Los Angeles, Los Angeles?”
The journey to the United States signifies dreams, hopes and opportunities for many Centro Americans. This harsh journey is portrayed through many stories, films and books. Books such as One Day of Life by Manilo Arguera and Odyssey to the North by Mario Bencastro shine the light on the struggles that Centro Americans face on a daily basis. In this essay, I will demonstrate that both have similar/recurring themes of overcoming the odds and war. Nevertheless, they are quite different because Odyssey to the North focuses on the struggles that a man who exiles to United States faces while One Day of Life centralizes on issues surrounding the daily life. In other words, both capture the different perspectives of Central American life.