El Norte (film)

Plot

The story is divided into three parts. The first part is set in the rural Guatemalan village of San Pedro, where the Xuncax family, indigenous Mayans, live. Arturo, a coffee picker, tells his son Enrique that to the rich, the peasant is just a pair of strong arms. Enrique fights and kills a soldier who attacks him, then escapes with his sister Rosa. Their mother is abducted by soldiers, and the siblings use money from their godmother to flee Guatemala. In the second part, Enrique and Rosa travel through Mexico, meeting a coyote who guides them toward the border. They attempt to pass as indigenous Mexicans, and after a failed crossing attempt in which a fake coyote tries to rob them, they finally cross the U.S.-Mexico border through a rat-infested sewer pipe. The third part follows their arrival in Los Angeles, where they face the challenges of undocumented life.

Background

Director Gregory Nava grew up in San Diego, California, near the border with Tijuana, and crossed the border frequently as a youth. The film's research involved years of study of the plight of indigenous Guatemalans, much of it conducted among exiles in Southern California. Nava noted that hundreds of thousands of refugees from Central America lived in Los Angeles alone, including a community of 5,000 Mayans from one Guatemalan village. Nava described the U.S.-Mexico border as unique—the only place where a first-world nation shares a border with a third-world country.

The film has become a staple in high school Spanish and Human Geography classes and in college multiculturalism studies. Nava and Anna Thomas spent two years raising money, avoiding major studios to preserve the film's integrity. Financing came from PBS's American Playhouse (50%) and pre-sales, including one to the United Kingdom's Channel 4.

Themes

The film employs magical realism, blending the magical and real worlds through pre-Columbian mythic structures represented by sacred animals, flowers, and insects such as butterflies. Flowers in the film connect to those who have departed, a concept found in Aztec and Mayan cosmology. The journey of Enrique and Rosa follows a hero's journey structure with three phases: departure, initiation, and return, with the departure phase being most prominent as they cross the border.

The narrative addresses the trials of immigration and the experience of Spanish-speaking individuals. The film portrays an Amerindian point of view, exemplified by Rosa singing a eulogy at her father's funeral with a Native American-Maya religious theme reflecting the Maya belief in life's cyclical nature. The characters face epithets and bigotry due to their indigenous heritage, as when a ladino screams after Arturo inadvertently kills a soldier, and when a passenger screams at Rosa and Enrique in Mexico.

Reception

Variety staff described the film as the first United American independent epic. Roger Ebert gave it a four-star review, calling it a Grapes of Wrath for our time. Commonweal critic Tom O'Brien praised a scene where the characters emerge from a rat-infested sewer tunnel to a view of San Diego. Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat of Spirituality and Practice noted Nava's attention to the aesthetic and religious beauty of Indian culture.

Vincent Canby of The New York Times objected to what he considered an arbitrarily tragic ending but praised the acting of Zaide Silvia Gutierrez and David Villalpando. Rotten Tomatoes reported that 92% of critics gave the film a positive review, based on 60 reviews. The film won the Grand Prix des Amériques at the Montréal World Film Festival in 1984 and received Academy Award and Writers Guild of America nominations for Best Original Screenplay. In 1995, it was selected for preservation by the United States National Film Registry.