President Joe Biden, who served under “Deporter-in-Chief” Barack Obama, is now following Donald Trump’s policy of immediate deportation of migrant families without a hearing, even if they claim asylum. Why? Because he, like “everybody,” is paranoid about people with “brown skin,” and how the far-right media stirs up xenophobic voters. Biden in this regard has more in common with South Dakota’s nativist governor Kristi Noem, who has nothing better to do but go to Texas and confront migrants on the border while her state has one of the highest per capita death rates from Covid-19 in the country.
This past January, Six Hispanic workers died and a dozen others hospitalized when a freezer in a Georgia poultry plant malfunctioned and leaked nitrogen into the air, causing oxygen deprivation and severe freezer burns. OSHA issued $1 million in fines and 59 safety violations on the companies involved for failing to inform workers of the danger, and to put proper safety procedures in place if such a leak occurred. More likely the employers simply saw Hispanic workers as replaceable numbers who should be “happy” to work under any circumstances, even dangerous ones. Of course, “progressives” will suggest that the workers are partly to “blame” because if white employees were doing those jobs, the employers would certainly have policies in place to make known the danger.
All of this would have fit in quite well in the 1955 film Espaldas Mojadas—English translation, “Wet Backs”—which is regarded as a Mexican cinema “classic.” Although it is a typical Hollywood-type melodrama, its intent is to be a “cautionary” tale about the pitfalls of not having the proper “papers” to work in the United States, and besides, America is not all that it is cracked-up to be anyways. In this film, the message of whether or not one should stay in his or her own country isn’t exactly subtle; songs sung on the Mexican side of the border are joyful and romantic; on the American side, miserable and pining for missed loved ones.
The introduction and the later monologue by a Mexican border official sound like a government propaganda piece, warning Mexican citizens crossing into the U.S. without proper “papers” isn’t worth the trouble. But the film is just as critical of American bigotry against and abuse of Mexican workers, and points out the “stateless” feeling that many Mexican-Americans (especially those born in the U.S.) have foisted on them by those who just think of them as “Mexican” and leave out the “American” part.
So Espaldas Mojadas begins with a narrator announcing that “Our purpose is to warn our fellow countrymen of the inconvenience of trying to leave the country illegally, running the risk of suffering unpleasant and painful situations that could even result in difficulties in good relations that exist between both nations.” Before anyone jumps to conclusions about the intention of this statement, it must be remembered that in 1955 Mexico was discouraging the emigration of workers to the U.S., especially what qualified as skilled labor. That is not the case today, where there is a surplus of labor that is welcome to go elsewhere, given the lack of government assistance programs for the unemployed.
There is a tracking shot of Ciudad Juarez, which is on the border with the U.S.; once “dedicated to crime,” it is now a city “dedicated to work.”
The narrator warns that “the rhythm of laborious life is altered by continuous international incidents caused by emigrant laborers, Mexican manual laborers, who are attracted to the northern country, dazzled by the brightness of the dollar.” We will see that these “international incidents” include U.S. Border Patrol agents attempting to stop river crossings by shooting at people in the water with the intent to kill, regardless of what direction they are going. They were actually allowed to do that back then?
We are then informed that “On the other side of the river is El Paso, an American border city, once known as El Paso el norte—a port of entry to a country which, through 40 years of cinema, appears before the world as a nation where all its inhabitants are happy and where everything is counted in millions.”
On the Mexican side of the river, people are content to play guitars and sing to the Virgin Mary. On the other side of the river, “there are skyscrapers, the architectural symbol of the most powerful country in the world, where all its inhabitants have a car, radio and television.” Of course, you have to have money for all of that, which the “cinema” tends to neglect to mention—and in the cinema, everyone who has those nice things seems to be a “gringo.”
The narrator drones on, taking on a tone of a pedagogue instructing a student in a civics class: “The international bridge is meant to be crossed by only those who have sworn to tell the truth, only the truth and nothing but the truth, and have a passport with the corresponding consular visa.” Those who cross under the bridge, or try to do so are “those who have not taken any oath, and have also forgotten to get a passport.” There is a name for such recalcitrants: the “wet backs.”
Of course, it is not ignored that there is work north of the border, you just have to do it the “right” way: “There are contractors who pick workers to raise the crops of the rich fields. California oranges, Alabama beets, San Bernardino vines, Seattle apples, the Imperial Valley’s smooth peaches, delicious apricots, juicy pears, giant quince, and red cherries like women’s lips.”
With that “public service” business out of the way, the film follows the travails of Rafael Amendola Campuzano (David Silva), who needs work, but because of some fight with the son of a “headman” who tried to molest a woman, he needs to find work some place where he won’t be under threat of arrest. We find Rafael applying for work in the U.S. with an American contractor. He tells him he can drive a tractor or a bulldozer, but is told that “machines are not for Mexicans, just the harvest.” The only work available is for picking cotton in Alabama; Rafael will go, any work will do. “Eighty cents an hour, bed, three-month contract, round trip.” Now where are his “papers”? “What papers? Which ones? What do you mean?” He must have a passport, visa, or a permit. Rafael thought that they provided the papers. “You don’t have them? I thought you got them. We’re not traffickers, we’re contractors! Next!”
Next we are in a border café, full of workers legally or illegally on their way north. Two of them are speaking to man who is dressed-up like a Southern plantation owner. His name is Frank Mendoza (Jose Elias Moreno). “So you’ve been in the United States? Yes, I worked in the beet fields. Ah, so you have papers? No, Mr. Frank, we crossed illegally. But we were told you could help us cross.” Mendoza asks them if they can swim, because the river is high now. Yes, they can “manage” if they have to. Mendoza agrees to help them across, but on condition they don’t know him if they get caught.
An American named Sterling (Victor Parra) enters the picture; he’s looking for workers, a lot of them, which he can’t get legally. Mendoza tells him that forging documents is “out of the question”; he’d rather just “cross people as they come. If someone has to go to jail, they can go, not me! 1’ll cross them to the other side, and they can work it out for themselves. They’re not my kids.” Sterling is concerned that by hiring them without papers can implicate himself, which Mendoza waves off as “the odds of your business.” He proposes a deal in which they can split the fee 50-50 if Sterling provides the migrant a “secured job,” which they will gladly pay twice the usual crossing fee for. Sterling agrees, and will contact Mendoza when he needs the men.
Some of the workers are talking about their experiences in the north: “Oh brother, you should have seen that. I told the overseer, I asked for this opportunity to make some money, but not like this. That’s why I quit the cotton fields. It’s hard and the weather is unbearable.”
Rafael comes in the café and sits down, clearly dejected by his failure to find work. The waiter comes by, but is not happy when all Rafael asks for is hot coffee. A woman named Margarita who apparently works as a bargirl slips in next him and announces that they both will have beer, of the expensive variety. She asks Rafael if he is a “rookie,” because if he’d been on the “other side,” he would have shortened his name, because “Gringos don’t like long names. They say it’s a waste of time.” So, are you crossing? Yes, but he has no papers. Not to worry, she knows someone who can help.
A song is being sung: “I was born on the border here on this side. Here on this side. Purely Mexican. No matter how much people consider me Texan I assure you that I am Mexican…because I wear the cowboy hat on my side and I carry a gun and a leather jacket, because I smoke leaf cigars and tie the red scarf to my neck, they believe something else. I was one of those Villa’s golden ones. Those who do not value life. Those who leads us to war. Those who die loving and singing. I belong to that side…Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States!”
Is the United States thus the “Devil”? Another worker tells of “How do they treat our people in Chicago?” No appreciation. “Only if you get drunk and get into a fight, then they do. On Saturdays, jails are filled with our people.”
Margarita offers to take Rafael to see Mendoza. Rafael tells him he doesn’t care how dangerous it is, he is desperate for work. It doesn’t matter how high the river is; “If you’re going to die, it’s the same to starve or get a cold.”
It is night. Mendoza leads the migrants to the river. Each man takes hold of a long rope to stay together.
There is a suddenly a searchlight, sirens, and shots are fired.
A few of the men are killed in the water. Most turn back, but Rafael makes it to the other shore. If one is so disposed, it’s a matter of wonderment why Mendoza chose a spot with a search tower directly across from it. Rafael has carried a wounded migrant to the shore, but he is dying, and asks Rafael to put him back in the river so that the current takes him to the other side; he doesn’t want to die in the United States.
That morning Rafael observes what appears to be a Memorial Day parade, mostly comprised of stock footage. He encounters a Mexican-American woman, Maria (Martha Valdes). He looks at her hot dog.
Why doesn’t he buy one from the hot dog stand? He’s already had breakfast, he says. She says she can tell he is a Mexican, because he is too proud to say he hasn’t eaten anything; besides, all the restaurants are closed. Rafael admits he doesn’t know how to ask for it, because he doesn’t speak English. The woman offers to buy some food for him if he gives her some money. She makes the purchases for him and hands him the food, but a rude American knocks them out of his hand, while another steps on it on the ground.
In a train yard where he intends to eat what is left of his meal, Rafael accidentally hits a man in the head with a tin can. His name is Luis (Oscar Pulido) , and he is a hobo making his “living” riding the rails and bumming food and cigarettes, which he proceeds to do from Rafael.
He has “papers,” has been all over the country, and is full of perceptive observations.
No papers, no work—that is Article 1 of the
American Constitution. If Rafael wants to find work here, he has to do work
nobody else wants to do. He’ll take him to him to such a place, if he lets him
eat his food, all of it.
We see Rafael working in a lumberyard; when he’s asked for his papers, he has to make a run for it.
He asks for work washing dishes at a café. Since he has no papers, he gets paid just a little over nothing, and free food. He gets into a tussle with a lazy fellow employee who will only wash utensils, and who also doesn’t have “papers,” so he has to make a run for it again with police sirens blazing.
“Your papers! Your papers!” Everywhere Rafael goes to look for work he is told this. He next stows on a train, and winds-up working on repairing train tracks where Sterling is the foreman.
The workers sleep out in the open; what they have is what they can carry. One man who is drunk sings “I’m alone and I’m miserable.” The men are nostalgic for home, and sing songs pining for home and a girlfriend. On pay day, Rafael is unhappy because he is paid considerably less than expected because of “expenses,” including an expensive leather jacket he was conned into buying, just in case he travels “north.”
Some women are brought from town for “entertainment.” One of them is Maria, and since she is the most attractive of the bunch, Sterling has first digs with her.
One of the women, a fat woman, has agreed to marry one of the men; apparently this makes him “legal.” Otherwise, the men pass the time singing more sad songs. One man runs off because he can’t cope with his homesickness.
A rail falls on a man’s foot. He’s injured. Sterling, who acts like a slave overseer, doesn’t believe it: “Lies. That man wants the company’s money. He’s got it wrong. Not a cent will be paid.” The man insists he is badly hurts. Sterling starts kicking him; “Lies, stop bawling. Come on, get up, get up.”
Rafael confronts Sterling, who contemptuously tells him “Don’t touch me, you Mexican greaser.” Rafael is held back from hitting him, but calls him a “bastard.” Sterling tells Rafael to “shut up, you dirty Mexican,” and spits in his face. Rafael is taken away from and held down to keep from fighting “this gringo.” He is told that if he is let go and kills the “cracker,” as a Mexican and undocumented he won’t live to tell his story. He needs to hop on the next train fast.
Sterling won’t let this go, since he hates Mexicans even though he employs them; he contacts the local Sheriff and he sets off with them to look for Rafael, using as an excuse that he “stole” the jacket. Rafael encounters Luis again riding the rails. Rafael doesn’t lament getting into trouble standing up for people who don’t even know his name; it is having to work far from his home. Always running away and hiding, like a fugitive despite committing no crime. This country is so strange to him. One feels “detached from oneself, alone, in a wheel of solitude. You’re in the center and can’t hear a thing, not a look, nobody sees you, nobody hears you, there are no jokes.”
Luis listens to this sympathetically, but, it is of no use to think about his situation if he wishes to survive here: “All your thoughts burst out and sometimes that is very harmful for people.” Rafael laments about “I know that many wouldn’t believe that in such a big country, with millions of people, you can feel so lonely. It’s true, you live with your countrymen, but not even that helps.” Luis, ever the “optimist” and realist, tells him he is “overthinking.” Rafael is determined to go back to Mexico, but Luis cautions that he wait until nightfall.
In another border café, a fake blonde Latina waitress won’t serve the Mexicans.
She tries to get in with a couple of white guys playing pinball. When one of them “wins” her, and he will marry her for a couple months just to make it easier to cross over into Mexico and have a good time.
Rafael arrives, and sees Maria again, who also works as a
waitress. Then Sterling and the sheriff’s deputies arrive, but they appear to
be looking elsewhere. Rafael wants to leave, but Maria is afraid to be alone,
so he stays. They watch the Americans take away the other waitress to have a "good time."
Maria is Mexican-American, not Mexican, and she laments that there is so much tension among them because of the effect of American prejudice; she observes that “black men are born in America, but don’t know where they come from, nor do they have the idea or temptation of a homeland. Also, they stand up for each other, they group together, they have their dances, their songs, they marry and comfort each other. On the other hand, we…Our own people don’t want us, and crackers, you’ve seen it, they want you for two months.”
Rafael sees that she shares the same sadness as he does, and asks her to come to Mexico with him and marry, for life instead of for two months. He wouldn’t change his mind. “We love people for what we put of ourselves upon them, and I’m putting all my hope in you. You put your hope in me, and that way we’ll love each other more and more. We don’t know each other. People get to know each other when they endure the same suffering together.”
The deputies and Sterling come into the café, and Maria hides Rafael in the kitchen. They find a token with his railroad employee number, but Maria tells them a story to put them on the wrong trail.
Sterling then goes to see the local Mexican consul who tells him that they have no “papers” on Rafael, which means that he has illegally employed him, which convinces Sterling to drop his complaint. The consul tells the sheriff that because such people as Sterling “continue to employ people who have not met the legal requirements, incidents at the border will continue to occur, risking my countrymen’s lives. The government of my country will have to file a new protest.” The sheriff, however, makes the rather self-serving assertion that “Agents of a foreign power could cross the river posing as emigrant laborers. So if Mexican workers want to enjoy the benefits in a country that is not their own, they have to enter legally, otherwise they have to face the consequences.”
Maria is seen crossing the border over a bridge.
Luis reluctantly agrees to send a message to her from Rafael, but he is detained by border agents who think he is a health risk because of his hobo attire.
Rafael manages to cross the river by tricking the border guards (why this same place with the guard tower?)
but is detained by Mexican border agents who claim he may be a dark-skinned American. But this is just to scare him into realizing the trouble of not having the proper “papers,” even to return to his own country. “On the other side, there’s always someone to takes advantage of your situation. They exploit you, they humiliate you! Aren’t you ashamed? At least for dignity!”
Rafael emotionally replies that “Dignity is a luxury for those who are hungry. Everyone who crosses does it because of hunger. Hunger, do you understand? No one leaves their country for pleasure. There is always a reason. I was forced to leave because of a headman, Others too, who knows why, but surely because of someone powerful. And now I’m back to work here in my land, sir. Let me work here. You haven’t seen us, always begging in the dumps of American cities, running crazy in the desert. There are thousands sir, thousands who would like to be here, live with their family, work, be able to work here!” This plea for mercy strongly affects the agents, and they let him go.
Meanwhile, Marie is waiting in a café, unsure if Rafael will show up. Sterling shows up, who agrees with Frank that they can’t do “business” anymore because of the trouble from the American government and the Mexican consulate about bringing over people without papers. They’ll have to lay low for a few months.
Rafael arrives to meet Maria.
He runs into Sterling, who again insults him, and they get into a brawl. Luis manages to show up, finding Maria. After Rafael beats him to a pulp
Sterling is taken to the river crossing by some of the workers who don’t like him either, and is thrown in, where he is killed by border agents shooting into the water.
Maria asks Rafael what has he done. He admits that “You see they think we have taken revenge. But what do we gain with this? There’s still Frank Mendoza and all the Franks on this side who trade with the hunger of their brothers. It’s them who should be drowning in the middle of the river.”
It was all a waste. “Let’s go, far from here.”
Luis plans on spending the summer in Florida, because he won’t feel like himself if he is gone from the States too long; Rafael says he doesn’t want Maria to feel that way in Mexico. Luis wishes them luck as they walk away from the river, but then suddenly he has an idea, and calls for them to wait for him: “I think I’d rather spend the summer in Acapulco!”
As mentioned earlier, there is nothing “subtle” about Espaldas Mojadas. The message is clear and simple: Mexicans should stay home, not because the “gringos” want you to stay there, but because the United States is a soul-destroying place for those who just want to live. Of course this may be exaggerating things a bit, but not by much. Luis the hobo seems to be “happy” in America, but that is because he has found the only way to be “happy” is not to have his life controlled by American employers who would abuse him and make his life miserable just because he was a “Mexican.”
It is entirely possible that director Alejandro Galindo felt political pressure to include the initial monologue, which seems to suit the prevailing attitudes of both the United States and the Mexican government toward migrants. But after that, Galindo is clearly more sympathetic to the plight of Rafael and Mexican migrant workers in general. They go the United States because they need work to make money for food for themselves and their families. As Rafael says, no one leaves their country for “pleasure.”
Of course, things do change. Thanks to this country’s appetite for drugs and guns, for many people, anything seems better than where they live now. Biden claims the “focus” on immigration policy is to attack its “root causes,” but it is far too late for that now. When the U.S. helped Colombia “win” the war against the Colombian cartels, all that did was to transfer the main “business” further north. The MS-13 gang was bred in American prisons as a counter to white supremacist and black prison gangs; those who were “eligible” were deported to Central America, where they are now responsible for various forms of torment of the people there. What is the Biden administration going to do about any of those things? The same as previous administrations: nothing, and continue to use migrants as political footballs for nativists and racists.
People may be “shocked” by scenes in which border guards actually shot to kill migrants in the river. But since 2010, there have been at least 130 migrants who have been killed in encounters with border guards; given greater media “scrutiny” over these killings, the numbers when there was no “accountability” would obviously have been much higher. Yet since the Border Patrol was founded, no border guard has ever been convicted of killing a migrant. It is “lawful” murder, no less so when East German guards shot those attempting to get over the wall.
People don’t know that the 1924 Immigration Act was not applied to Mexicans; there was no quota limit on them because of arguments from states who needed their seasonal labor. But the Border Patrol was created as a sop to nativists. In a 2019 article on the website The Intercept, Greg Grandin writes that white supremacists took control of the Border Patrol, insuring that it would employ white men who came from reliably racist backgrounds, or transfer officers from organizations with their own history of unaccountable abuse and murder, like the Texas Rangers, to serve in it. This new federal organ did then, and continues today, to operate “with near-complete impunity, arguably serving as the most politicized and abusive branch of federal law enforcement.”
Grandin writes that this new agency was permitted “on-the-spot discretion” on who could enter the country or not. “They had the power to turn what had been a routine daily or seasonal event—crossing the border to go to work—into a ritual of abuse. Hygienic inspections became more widespread and even more degrading. Migrants had their heads shaved, and they were subjected to an arbitrary set of requirements at the discretion of patrollers, including literacy tests and entrance fees.” And people wonder why some of these people chose to find another way?
The 1965 Hart-Celler Act officially put “quotas” on migrants from the Western Hemisphere, and suddenly hundreds of thousands of migrant workers who had been coming to the U.S. for years became “illegal” overnight, which obviously had no effect on stopping the abuse. Migrants were still tortured, beaten, shot and lynched, depending on how a border guard happened to be feeling that day, and nothing would happen to them. New York Times reporter John Crewdson wrote an expose on Border Patrol abuses in 1980; he found that children were in particular the subject of abuse; in one case, a 13-year-old girl was detained and tortured into confessing that she was Mexican, even though she was in fact a U.S. citizen. Many of the torture techniques used by the Border Patrol on migrants were “exported” for use by right-wing murder regimes in Latin America, and even eventually to Iraq.
Ultimately, Espaldas Mojadas is a product of its time, but that is not a criticism. Despite the notion that the 1950s were the “good old days” and everything was peaceful and civilized, filmmakers were questioning the political and social problems that lurked underneath the supposedly “tranquil” surface, and Galindo’s film certainly was a part of that movement. It humanizes those who have been dehumanized—and that perhaps has even more relevant today than it was back then.
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