Film review: "El Norte"

The Choice To Be Illegal

Daniela Perdomo

Each time I drive down the winding mountain highway and into Guatemala City, I am greeted by a cement-and-clay cityscape, hugged by the silhouettes of four dormant volcanoes. If I go downtown, I will see a few men, women, and children dressed in the traditional rainbow-coloured garb of the Mayans but they are always few and far in between in the country’s capital. It is for this reason that Gregory Nava’s 1983 film El norte (The North) struck such a chord in me; it brought to the forefront a civil war that I never witnessed myself and allowed me a deeper understanding of why it is that so many of my compatriots leave Guatemala for seemingly more dangerous, risky lives as illegal immigrants in the United States.

Their decisions are certainly not cut-and-dry ones, and Nava’s film cannot answer every question in its 140-minute running time. What it can do, and does quite well, is address the multi-layered social, political, and economic process immigrants go through; beginning with the conception of the idea of immigration in the sending country to the new living situation in the receiving nation. The film is divided into three cinematic parts: life in Guatemala, the journey to the United States, and finally, immigrant life in Los Angeles.

The movie opens in the countryside of Central America, which comprises a great majority of the Guatemalan landscape and is home to a good number of the country’s residents. Enrique and Rosa, two indigenous young adults, listen to their godmother speak of a better life in “the North”, a place where “even the poorest have toilets like the richest man in town here; they even have cars!” She has never been to the United States, but has received such information from places as varied as return migrants and Buenhogar magazine, the Latin American equivalent of Good Housekeeping. Though such an informational source may seem amusing, it is indicative of what most immigrants—especially those in developing nations who have less access to better sources—base their decision to leave their home country upon. Hearsay, magazine adverts, and imported television programs are sometimes the only contact with American reality such people ever have and these often portray life in the United States as being the embodiment of the poor man’s dream because of the promises of economic prosperity. This sugary vision of America is often perceived as providing solely gains and few sacrifices. For the 75 percent of Guatemalans who are living under the poverty line, sub-human living standards can sometimes only be overcome by leaving the country.

If Enrique had made the decision to migrate right then, it could be said that he and his sister were stereotypical examples of labor migration. It is only after their father is killed by the Guatemalan army and his mother taken away, however, that he and Rosa decide they must leave north. As a result, El norte depicts the story of two migrants who though interested in the economic benefits in the United States do not actually get up and leave until their own lives are threatened. As a result, their story is that of a combination of labor and refugee migration.

Once the two have made up their minds to emigrate, they gather money from their godmother and information from an older friend about a coyote, or border smuggler, in Tijuana who can help them get into the United States illegally. As with nearly every transgression of any law, someone always makes some kind of profit and in El norte it is through the border market. When it comes to illegal migration from Mexico into one of the American border states, it is the coyotes who reap instant economic benefits. As Rosa and Enrique get off their bus in Tijuana, several smugglers offer “el norte” to them for 300 dollars. The first coyote they hire ends up holding them at knifepoint and gladly would have stolen all their money had the U.S. Border Patrol not shown up. It is only with the kindness of a friend-of-a-friend that Enrique and Rosa finally make it into California.

It is probably no coincidence that their final destination is Los Angeles, where one in three is Hispanic, and one-third of those are foreign-born Hispanics. Once in L.A., the kind coyote, Raimundo, helps the siblings find lodging with a Chicano named Monte who provides illegal immigrants with cheap housing and minimum-wage work. The film proceeds to portray Rosa and Enrique’s tribulations as undocumented immigrants living and working illegally in the United States. Run-ins with the American health care system and the DSS play heavily into the plotline.

El norte has great attributes. Not only does it portray individuals’ decision making, the film also brings to light many factors that inevitably play into such arriving at such choices which cannot be accurately presented in a graph or theory due to their subjective and varying nature. Such factors include the psychological, social, physical, and political considerations. Nava’s film is a brilliant choice to open up debate and discussion about why people do or do not migrate, why some stay and others go, why some make it and others just do not, and, certainly, why they make choices that may seem nonsensical to those on the outside—decisions such as willingly choosing to have no rights.