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I often wondered why my family had such a difficult time when we migrated to this country from Mexico. As a child, my siblings and I were spat on and called "spics." Later in my teenage years, my brother joined a gang and was killed. Why do people do the things they do? Why was life in the United States so rough? Ironically, it was only when I returned to Mexico as an adult that I found some answers.
While on vacation in Mexico, I came across a group of parachutists. These were not the kind that daringly free fall from the sky, but instead paracaidistas: those displaced from their homes and forced to find refuge with hundreds of others in empty lots overnight. During the 1990s, NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) had major repercussions. Mexican farmers lost their land and so whole farming communities were displaced and migrated to Mexico City in search for a means to survive. Having to start over, these paracaidistas built makeshift shantytowns overnight on empty lots.
I decided to stay and help these communities fight for their right to live in Mexico City. We fought off police who tried bulldozing them out and built infrastructure so that they could survive with water, electricity and a functional sewage system.
During this time I came across many different kinds of people. I met hardworking people, spiritual people, and people who inspired me, but I also met drug addicts, prostitutes, and criminals. There were a group of kids who came to our shantytown looking for food. They snorted glue most of the day and robbed passengers on buses in order to survive without a job. They had lost their families and had been living in the streets since they were 5-6 years old. At first, I avoided them because they were the type of people we had been taught to avoid. However, as I learned more about them I began to see them for who they were: human beings who had been pushed to the edge and had fallen into a life that they didn't choose for themselves. This does not excuse their actions, but it gave me a different perspective.
People are not criminals or drug addicts because they choose to be. People are humans, affected by the world around them. We don't live in a vacuum; our actions may be partially determined by who we are but are also decided by the forces around us. You'd be surprised of what a person is capable of doing when one has nothing.
In the paracaidistas' struggle to establish a new life in Mexico City, I saw my own family’s struggle to build a new life in the United States. Although I didn't get clear answers to my questions, I gained a new understanding of how external forces can dictate so much of our lives. The farming communities did not choose to uproot and migrate to a city hundreds of miles away, but with limited choices they were forced to make that decision and hope for the best. The kids I met weren’t inherently criminals, but with such limited opportunities had little other choice. The racist kids who spat on us weren’t born racist. I don’t excuse their actions and condemn them, but wonder what life circumstances made them capable to so readily insult a stranger based on the color of their skin.
In my films I paint portraits of people, showing the internal and external forces that effect the choices one makes. I believe that if we are able to understand what drives people to make certain decisions, we can make more sense of the world. We can understand others and ourselves better and make better decisions in our own lives.
And isn't that what all of us want: to make wiser life choices for ourselves and those around us?
Let us move you, engage you, entertain you, open up your mind by giving a glimpse into the hearts and souls of people that had before been unknown to you.
While on vacation in Mexico, I came across a group of parachutists. These were not the kind that daringly free fall from the sky, but instead paracaidistas: those displaced from their homes and forced to find refuge with hundreds of others in empty lots overnight. During the 1990s, NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) had major repercussions. Mexican farmers lost their land and so whole farming communities were displaced and migrated to Mexico City in search for a means to survive. Having to start over, these paracaidistas built makeshift shantytowns overnight on empty lots.
I decided to stay and help these communities fight for their right to live in Mexico City. We fought off police who tried bulldozing them out and built infrastructure so that they could survive with water, electricity and a functional sewage system.
During this time I came across many different kinds of people. I met hardworking people, spiritual people, and people who inspired me, but I also met drug addicts, prostitutes, and criminals. There were a group of kids who came to our shantytown looking for food. They snorted glue most of the day and robbed passengers on buses in order to survive without a job. They had lost their families and had been living in the streets since they were 5-6 years old. At first, I avoided them because they were the type of people we had been taught to avoid. However, as I learned more about them I began to see them for who they were: human beings who had been pushed to the edge and had fallen into a life that they didn't choose for themselves. This does not excuse their actions, but it gave me a different perspective.
People are not criminals or drug addicts because they choose to be. People are humans, affected by the world around them. We don't live in a vacuum; our actions may be partially determined by who we are but are also decided by the forces around us. You'd be surprised of what a person is capable of doing when one has nothing.
In the paracaidistas' struggle to establish a new life in Mexico City, I saw my own family’s struggle to build a new life in the United States. Although I didn't get clear answers to my questions, I gained a new understanding of how external forces can dictate so much of our lives. The farming communities did not choose to uproot and migrate to a city hundreds of miles away, but with limited choices they were forced to make that decision and hope for the best. The kids I met weren’t inherently criminals, but with such limited opportunities had little other choice. The racist kids who spat on us weren’t born racist. I don’t excuse their actions and condemn them, but wonder what life circumstances made them capable to so readily insult a stranger based on the color of their skin.
In my films I paint portraits of people, showing the internal and external forces that effect the choices one makes. I believe that if we are able to understand what drives people to make certain decisions, we can make more sense of the world. We can understand others and ourselves better and make better decisions in our own lives.
And isn't that what all of us want: to make wiser life choices for ourselves and those around us?
Let us move you, engage you, entertain you, open up your mind by giving a glimpse into the hearts and souls of people that had before been unknown to you.