El Norte

Plot synopsis:
Part 1: Arturo XuncaxThe first part takes place in a small rural Guatemalan village called San Pedro and introduces the Xuncax family, a group of indigenous Mayans. Arturo is a coffee picker and his wife a homemaker. Arturo explains to his son, Enrique, his world view and how the indio fares in Guatemalan life, noting that, "to the rich, the peasant is just a pair of strong arms". Arturo and his family then discuss the possibility of going to the United States where "all the people, even the poor, own their own cars". Because of his attempts to form a labor union among the workers, Arturo and the other organizers are attacked and murdered by government troops when a co-worker is bribed to betray them... Arturo's severed head is seen hanging from a tree. When Enrique attempts to climb the tree that displays his father's head, a soldier attacks him. Enrique fights and kills the attacker, only to learn that many of their fellow villagers have been rounded up by soldiers. The children's mother too "disappears": abducted by soldiers. So, using money given to them by their godmother, Enrique and his sister Rosa decide to flee Guatemala, the land of their birth, and head north.Part 2: CoyoteDuring the second part of the film the two teenagers flee Guatemala, travel through Mexico, and meet a Mexican coyote who guides them across the border. This section includes various comic scenes relating to mutual stereotyping among different ethnic groups in Mexico. Enrique and Rosa attempt to pass themselves off as indigenous Mexicans, failing to convince one Mexican truck driver after naming the wrong destination. After their first failed attempt to cross the "frontera", where a man posing as a coyote deceives and attempts to rob them, but they succeed in convincing a U.S. Border Patrol officer by copiously peppering their responses with the Mexican word for "fuck", which a neighbor had suggested was how all Mexicans speak.In the second attempt to cross the border, they have a horrific experience when they finally cross the U.S.-Mexican border through a sewer pipe laden with rats.Part 3: El NorteIn the final part of the film Rosa and Enrique discover the difficulties of living in the U.S. without official documentation. After staying for the night in a cheap motel in San Diego, they move further north and settle in Los Angeles. The brother and sister team find work and a place to live and initially feel good about their decision. However, Rosa nearly is captured during an immigration raid and must find a new job. Working as a domestic, she is puzzled when her Anglo employer shows her a washing machine.Enrique becomes a busboy and, as his English classes begin to improve his command of the language, he is promoted to a position as a waiter's assistant. He is later approached by a wealthy businesswoman who has a better-paying job for him in Chicago as a foreman, which he initially declines. He tells the woman that he does not want to leave his sister behind in L.A. Enrique soon encounters problems when a jealous Chicano co-worker reports him to immigration, causing him to flee the restaurant and seek out the businesswoman.When Enrique finally decides to take the position, Rosa becomes gravely ill with typhus contracted from the rat bites she received during their border crossing. When this happens, Enrique must make the tough decision of moving to Chicago, or to be by her side. Enrique chooses the later option and thus loses the position. As Enrique visits the hospital, Rosa laments that she will not live to enjoy the fruits of their harrowing journey to the U.S. Rosa sums up the film's major theme when she says to Enrique: "In our own land, we have no home. They want to kill us. In Mexico, there is only poverty. We can't make a home there either. And here in the north, we aren't accepted. When will we find a home, Enrique? Maybe when we die, we'll find a home."After Rosa dies peacefully, Enrique is shown once again waiting with the other day-labor hopefuls in a parking lot, offering his services to a man looking for "strong arms". In a bitter realization, Enrique finally learns that from his late father's words about the poor being nothing but arms for the rich holds true... even in El Norte.Although Enrique is temporarily employed once again, he is distracted by haunting daydreams about his dead sister's lost desires for a better life. The final shot shows a severed head hanging from a rope, which may be the same image used in Part 1.

Tags: tragedy

Review:
Gregory Nava's drama, "El Norte," is hands-down the best film ever made about the Latin American immigrant experience in the US.
It's also one of the best films of the 80's.Wonderfully acted and expertly directed, this film will make you think twice about the "invisible" people who clean your house, watch your kids, make your food, garden your yard, wash your car, etc.
It covers the very basic quest story of a brother and a sister who flee Guatemala (where the indigenous population was being exterminated) through Mexico to try and find a new life in the US.
Its creative team (Gregory Nava and his wife Anna Thomas) are also responsible for the movies Selena and Mi Familia (among others), both excellent films.
Fifteen years ago, the indigenous people in Guatemala, were living a cruel extermination that forced them to flee toward Mexico and the United States.
This exodus lasted a decade and half a million Guatemalans made the journey to America seeking for asylum and refuge.In that time, a young Chicano film maker, full of noble idealism,honesty,and with no more resources but his immense talent to tell stories, put his eyes in this tragedy and made the most beautiful epic poem ever filmed about our indigenous nations: El Norte, a picture that gave voice to those that don´t have it.With El Norte, the spectators of that time, became aware, in slambang, of a reality that have been communicated to them mostly through the press, but wich they had never confronted in such hard and frontal manner.And in some way, El Norte became a powerfull fighting element.
Got into the schools, universities, into film festivals, and in every forum that wanted to hear it, and it´s message was founding echo in the spectators identifyed with the story of the lost paradise of all the poor of the world in which, Rosa and Enrique represent millions of young people of any color and continent, starving for security and freedom, those that every day start the search of the lost paradise through hell.Fifteen years had gone by since the time we made this film, and unfortunately, the story that has been told in El Norte, will have to be told for a long time.
have less than an eighth grade education and most work long hours in jobs on the low end of the pay scale and their situation makes it nearly impossible to advance or make long term plans.Gregory Nava's 1983 Indie film El Norte describes the plight of two young Guatemalans, Enrique (David Villalpando) and his sister Rosa (Zaide Silvia Gutierrez) who face reprisals from the military after participating in a protest meeting and undertake a hazardous journey to "the north" to find a better life.
The film is divided into three parts: "Arturo Xuncax", describing the circumstances that caused the family to leave Guatemala "El Coyote", detailing their hazardous journey to reach the U.S., and "El Norte", telling the story of their life in Los Angeles.
While El Norte does have a strong political message, the core of the film is the relationship between Enrique and Rosa.The hardships of the journey are told in graphic detail, especially the last test of crossing the border by crawling on their hands and knees through an abandoned sewer line populated by hordes of rats.
El Norte wears its heart on its sleeve and the film tends toward the melodramatic, but it faithfully mirrors the fear and uncertainty that illegal immigrants face each day and I can forgive its flaws and applaud the loving bond between brother and sister and the strength it produces in their lives..
They struggle through many hardships in their travels from Guatemala through the rough and wild terrain of Mexico and the sleazy "Coyotes" who always try to make a buck on the blood and sweat of these immigrant workers who want a chance at the American way of life.Politics aside (people who have read my reviews know which side I stand on) you have to feel for these people who are willing to work for little just so they could have useless things.
Like Ruben Martinez's recent nonfiction work on Latino emigrants, "Crossing Over," Gregory Nava's film, "El Norte," begins with a re-working of the Passion Play--only this time the Christ figure is Arturo Xuncax, a Guatemalan Indian and guerilla leader, who's betrayed to the landowner/elites by one of his own followers.
As a result, Xuncax and his "disciples" are killed in a bloody nocturnal raid staged by the elites' enforcers--members of the Guatemalan military--and Arturo's severed head is suspended by rope from a tree limb to serve as a warning to others who may conspire against the Oppressor.Viewers are forgiven, therefore, if they expect a story of political martyrdom and vengeance, since it is Arturo's son, Enrique, who takes up the machete that his murdered father (a "Man of Peace") refused to bring along with him to his fate.
Instead, Enrique is advised by a friend to strike out to "el Norte." And since the military has vowed to de- populate Arturo's village, this would appear to be sound advice.Thus begins one of the best "journey" films ever made.
Enrique and his sister, Rosa (presumably, both are still in their teens), make the long trek from their once-idyllic Central American mountain village to what they mistakenly believe will be a comfortable, material existence in California, US of A.While the Guatemalan scenes in "El Norte" are dark, foggy, murky, and formally paced, the second section of the film (subtitled "El Coyote") begins with a blast of mariachi music and we see the pair of young travelers on a bright, sunlit, modern Mexican highway.
But Rosa insists; and in the end, she wins this minor argument.Brother and sister do manage to make it across the borderline--but at a terrible price that doesn't become evident until the film's conclusion."El Norte" was made on a shoestring; but Nava's direction is clever, sometimes in a style reminiscent of late-50's French New Wave, but more often as naturalistic as an Upton Sinclair novel.
I first saw this movie in 1989 or so and, being in high school and rather naive at the time, was blown away by unromantic portrayal of the lives of two Guatemalan refugees living as illegal immigrants in California.
I still find it a moving film.Siblings Arturo and Rosa flee their mountain village after their father is killed and trek across Mexico with dreams of living in the United States -- "El Norte."  The story is sprinkled with humor, but the overall theme is tragedy.
Do expect to get a glimpse into the lives of millions of people who now live in the United States, and what it took to get here.PS--Much of this movie is in the Spanish and South American Indian language (with subtitles).
The movie tells you the story of a brother and sister and the awful reality of the trip they had to make to cross the southern border of the United States of America.The comment below mine says that the characters speak a "SOUTH American NATIVE LANGUAGE", but this information is incorrect (despite the fact that the person that wrote this comment apparently is educated enough, and gives classes in some university that i gladly do not attend to).Guatemala is part of Central America ...
The language spoken by the characters has vocabulary from two Mayan languages: MAM & CAKCHIQUEL spoken by more than a million Guatemalans.Overall the movie is crude but a true statement of what illegal immigrants have to go through when they decide to make the trip to the USA.
As a Spanish teacher and film buff, I have seen this movie too many times to count.
Bearing in mind the problems in the United States with immigration at the moment I feel that El Norte should be watched again and reflected upon.
This really helped the film, as the people seemed so real--like you are really watching Guatemalan refugees.
This movie is a touching story of a brother and sister trying to escape oppression in their native Guatemala and escape to 'El Norte' after the rest of their family has been taken by the army.
There is a lot of magical realism in the movie (which I'm not a fan of) and the ending is ambiguous but it is a great film that the viewer gets involved in emotionally..
Two young and completely naive Guatemalan Indians are forced to flea their small village after their father is shot by government soldiers in a raid and their mother taken away.They make the trip north through Mexico to El Norte, the land of promise.This is a heartrending and unforgettable film, with occasional hilarity, of their journey and their life.
Starting out simply you are soon completely drawn into their story, from the journey to their new life in San Diego as they attempt to adapt to El Norte, set in the larger context of the Latino and Mexican immigrant experience.I saw this film in its initial theatrical release in 1983, and a recent viewing reveals it has not dimmed.
El Norte is a tragic story of the struggle to escape  the throws of migrant labor in Guatemala to a better life in the US.
Mayan Indian peasant siblings Enrique and Rosa live in the small mountain village of San Pedro, Guatemala.
Rosa insists on joining Enrique who journeys north to El Norte or United States.This is an early crossing the border film.
Peasants escaping mindless labor and a murderous Guatemalan government head to America in hopes for something better.I am not super knowledgeable about immigration and I cannot say it is a topic I am very passionate about one way or the other.
After one more hideous obstacle (difficult to film convincingly with such slender resources), they're in El Norte Interesting that the native-born "pochos" (English-speaking Chicanos, including Trinidad Silva, the dude that played Jesus Rodriguez on "Hill Street Blues") tend to be portrayed as shifty and treacherous; the final scenes in SoCal alternate gentle social satire and melodrama in a kind of Dickensian way that I found quite involving.
Aside from magic realism (a very popular genre in post-modernistic Latin American literature and film – see NOTE below), the characters of brother and sister have very few real hardships - in comparison with what Central Americans actually have to endure on their very difficult and torturous trip to the north.
I don't know if i would rent it on a Friday night, but if anyone ever wants to learn about how the indians try to sneak into the country and what their lives are like this is the movie for them..
It has been one of the few good movies made in the 1980s not just for the historical context but for the awareness of and endless issue such as "immigrants" and their ordeal from the moment they leave their hometown until their arrival to a new country.
El Norte is the best portrayal of undocumented immigrant life in California that I have ever seen.
and it turns out this is from the same director who gave us La Bamba and Selena...and it featured the adorable lady from AS GOOD AS IT GETS....It also got a nomination for Best Original Screenplay..This is a great movie..It works so well on many levels..
The story about two youths from Guatemala trying to start a new life and overcoming huge obstacles is powerful..The scenes with the soldiers in their village was something out of a really good horror movie...the tunnel scene had the sense of adventure like any Spielberg movie with Harrison Ford...The movie works very well as it sprinkles light humor into the dialogue....the two young leads are very good in their roles...and we care about them...We root for them throughout the whole movie as they try so hard to assimilate and better themselves.
But besides its new value as relevant testimony of a historical fact, El Norte continues to be one of the best films ever to come from Latin America and a great cinematic work which deserves the many awards it has received, like the 1985 Oscar nomination as Best Script, the honors received at the Montreal Film Festival and, above all, the honor of having been selected for preservation by the National Film Preservation Board in 1995..
Ultimately when they reached North, life was not so cinematic as they imagined.Nominated for the best Screenplay Oscar, one of best films, that will remain in your heart for a long time.
They would write about the struggles people have to face coming to America and how they would get exploited, having to work hard jobs for very little pay just to get by because they are hoping for the "American Dream." These men write history book about these stories everyday lives of immigrants trying to come to America.
It has no really crazy effects, it doesn't focus too long on the acting, it doesn't do a lot of what films do to try to illicit a response from the audience, it just sets the camera exactly where the audience doesn't want it to be.Enricque and Rosa are two Native Guatamalans whose family is killed for their rich farmland.
The movie takes them along through Mexico and into California, exploring the issue of immigration from all the facets between their homeland and their destination.The exposition of their journey and the effect it has on the viewer is so simple it makes regular cinema "language" seem almost superfluous.
We don't have the filmmakers constantly saying, "Oh, how horrible it is for immigrants!", we only have the immigrants saying, "Oh, this is difficult, what else should I do?" Because of this method of storytelling, this film is actually comparable to such films as Lord of the Rings, among other things.In fact, humorously enough, I couldn't help but expect some burly warrior to appear for no good reason and just say, "One does not just simply walk into America..." Yeah, I know, I'm a geek, but a geek with a point: what better way to make the audience relate to the situation than to paint it in a way that is reflective of the actual humanistic experience rather than some sort of, "I know you're an American, but let's try to see it from 'their perspective.'" Saying that line is admitting their inherent difference to us by saying it's a different perspective at all.
This movie responds to the many of my fellow citizens in the United States that want to send the immigrants (legal and illegal) back to their native lands.
A pretty good foreign film, "El Norte" (meaning "The North" for all gringoes to know) is a nicely made drama about the flight of two Guatamalen kids who journey from their homeland to the U.S. of A.
A little hard to watch sometimes, "El Norte" is still a good, quaint foreign film to see.
This is probably one of the best films made yet about illegal immigration from Latin America because it tells of the hardships experienced at home, on the journey, and of life in America as illegal residents.
Rosa and Enrique are Mayan peasants who are orphaned in the beginning of the movie by soldiers.
They flee Guatemala for "El Norte," the place where their dreams can finally be realized, where wealth comes easily, and where they can leave their life of poverty.
Once in the United States, they live their lives so as to go undetected by society and live just to "get by." The real tragedy lies in the fact that after a life threatening journey across the boarder, Rosa and Enrique still do not escape living in constant fear.
This movie illustrates just what these immigrants endure and risk to go to El Norte (The North).
El Norte takes place during a difficult time in Guatemala – there is a civil war that will take the lives of 200,000 Indians.This motion picture is about two Mayan Indian teenagers – a brother and sister – who attempt to flee persecution in their native Guatemala to get to the promised land – "El Norte" (The North), the USA.
After the loss of their parents and aware that their lives are in danger, Rosa and her brother Enrique decide to flee San Pedro and go to the USA via Mexico.In Part II the travails of the two Indian teens are manifested as they pretend to appear as Mexicans (who fiercely protect their border with Guatemala).
Enrique learns that many villagers have been rounded up by soldiers, so he and his sister Rosa (Zaide Silvia Gutiérrez) decide to flee Guatemala and head to the north.
As the sister Rosita says in "Gauntemala you get killed, in Mexico it is poverty and in America you are not free." Gregory Nava, who made one of the most poignant movies like "Selena" is better director than this over-hyped Spielberg and this movie should have won awards.
up to and including the employers in the USA who exploit the illegal immigrants who, for the most part, want little more than a chance to have a better life.The biggest issue for me with EL NORTE was the time line.
as the scene at the motel with Enrique and the "arranger?" There are many good and great movies out there about the perils of immigration, oppression and so forth--and THIS one got the Oscar nomination?
The made it to Los Angeles, California.In a way this movie can, in many sense, can be seen in a way, that of, Enrique and Rosa being the Quixote figures for the film; turned away, different, and a dream so enormous that even a motel attendant states they will not survive-Enrique and rose.
Five months after watching this film I still think about its message, that we are all people and united we stand.
Nothing ruins a potentially breathtaking scene like music that comes straight out of a commercial.Now, I realize the whole point behind the story; that illegal immigrants suffer a lot of trauma when trying to cross the border.