My Students Had to Remind Me What I Taught Them

I'm very late with this post, so my apologies. At any rate, I wanted to offer a review of a movie that went straight to DVD.

Basically, a few of my students, to whom I had introduced the subject of the femicide on the U.S./Mexico border (in particular in the city of Juarez), implored me to please watch the J-Lo vehicle, Bordertown. To think I had dismissed this very important film because of who was in it! Come to think of it, this movie never made it to either my art film theater or the multiplex, so of course, I smell a conspiracy theory. Regardless of my own dismissals, I am grateful that my students, the ones who thanked me for placing the lives of women of color at the center of my courses, reminded me that this too is about centering women of color.

Please, Professor, they said, you've got to see this movie. It's really really good.

I beg to differ with them that it's "really really good," but damn if it's not an important film to see.

So, I put it on my Netflix queue, and I finally saw it over the weekend. Aside from the histrionics of Jennifer Lopez, there were moments that her melodrama was necessary. Here's one scene.

After putting her life in danger to help a survivor named Eva (played brilliantly by Maya Zapata) track down her rapists and would-be killers, Jennifer Lopez's character, Loren Adrian, an ambitious and anglicized, blond-dyed Chicana journalist, learns the significance of her role to advocate on behalf of the women of Juarez, many of whom work in maquiladoras, assembly plants on the border where many of our digital technology is assembled.

After putting together an intimate portrait of Eva, her American editor (played by Martin Sheen, who seems to have become the stand-in white guy in these kinds of films - half bleeding-heart liberal, half representative of The Man) tells her he can't publish her article since her report implicates NAFTA and the U.S.-owned multinational corporations that have set up these plants while refusing to ensure the safety of their women workers, who are clearly disposable and replaceable. When Loren learns that her article will be quashed, she throws a temper tantrum, toppling many of the computers in the newspaper office while reminding everyone present that these lovely toys of ours are "covered in blood." The point of this scene, as heavy-handed as it is, is one that cannot be repeated enough.

Interestingly, the opening credits begin with a statement concerning NAFTA and what it has done to exacerbate poverty in Mexico. It also lets us know that "every three seconds a TV set is produced, every seven seconds, a computer." To drive the point home further, we are then given the gendered statistics: maquiladoras specifically target women because they "work for lower wages, and complain less about the long hours and harsh working conditions."

Perhaps one of the few films about the Juarez femicide that dares to implicate the northern side of the border, Bordertown is worth viewing just on this point alone. However, it offers more than that. It's a pretty good thriller that relays for us the many economic, cultural, social, and political issues facing both women on different sides of the border.

Soon after presenting this information, the movie begins with Eva, who is brutally attacked by one of the bus drivers, who operates the factory buses, and an accomplice, who turns out to be a powerful man in bed with a number of rich and wealthy folks in Mexico and in the U.S. (surprise surprise). While we can debate whether or not the movie effectively addresses the numerous killings, what I especially appreciate about the film is its message of female empowerment and transnational solidarity.

Eva miraculously crawls out of her own grave in a desert in Lote Bravo and finds her way back to her people. Eva isn't simply a young, poor brown Mexican woman. She's an indigenous Mexican woman, and there are moments when she and her family speak in an indigenous tongue, rather than in Spanish. While Eva bonds with Loren, we get a glimpse of the indigenous struggle over land rights (a little bit of the Zaptista struggle) and how she and her family were displaced and forced to migrate near the border. Her absentee father is an undocumented immigrant working in the U.S. (let's think about that, shall we? Those same immigrant workers who have been targeted by our anti-immigration rhetoric and who work on the grounds of our workplace or who keep our offices clean may have a daughter just south of the border who are prey to some sick and twisted rapists-murders, protected by corporations and governments that only care about the bottom line). Eva, her mother, and her sisters are forced to live in the "ugly city" of Juarez just to make a living.

Loren, we later learn, is the daughter of Mexican migrant workers who both died. We can call her "lucky" because she is eventually adopted by white American parents. Loren's work, which begins with a professional journalistic interest in advancing her own career, soon becomes the stuff of transnational advocacy and feminist resistance. And, together, Eva and Loren work for their own survival and the survival of others.

I'm not going to reveal too much of the plot because I want you to go rent the DVD and see this movie for yourself. Forget anything you've ever thought about J-Lo (whose sexy persona is still very much in use in many of the scenes). What is important is that she and Antonio Banderas, who plays an activist journalist living in Juarez, just for the sake of "truth," felt this movie was important enough to throw their star power behind it. And, even then, the movie got undermined since it went directly to DVD.

Since our movie industry wants to neutralize the message of this film with these tactics, it's time we start getting radical and using the DVD for consciousness-raising and awareness. My students are already planning a public screening on campus next week to commemorate the killings and to participate in the second anniversary of Document the Silence. (Don't forget: WEAR RED on October 30 in solidarity).

Sometimes, I need to be reminded that the theory I teach must be supported by Practice.