Family Matters

            I think that we can all agree that the movie this week, El Norte, was extremely intense, but I definitely enjoyed watching it.  I just figured I would do my best to share some of the points that stuck out to me the most for various reasons.  The first thing that struck me was the age of Rosa and Enrique.  While we never learned their specific ages it is evident that they are both young, especially Rosa.  I don’t think that her character could have been that much older than I am, if at all.  It is so incredibly astonishing to consider how much she had to go through at such a young age.  I barely think about anything beyond food and my schoolwork, yet they had to deal with so much just in order to survive.

            This movie also made me think so much about family.  There was one part where they were talking about how mothers got caught by La Migra and their babies were left in El Norte, where they were taken to orphanages.  This was just one example of the many ways that families are split and torn apart by our broken immigration system.  Rosa and Enrique are a perfect example of this.  First, their father was killed.  Next, their mother was taken from them and her fate unknown.  This happened to basically all of the other villagers as well, including Rosa’s boyfriend.  Finally, Rosa and Enrique were forced to leave the home of their Godparents, who were the closest thing they had left to family, because they knew that if they stayed they would be killed.  I hesitate to even say “they were lucky they at least had each other,” because losing everyone you know and love except for one person doesn’t sound very lucky to me.

            Family is such an important aspect of my own personal life, and I wish it were possible for everyone to have the same wonderful support system that I have.  It makes me so angry that the immigration system causes so many families to be wrenched apart.  These aren’t families that break apart due to internal conflicts or personal faults, but are literally torn apart by outside forces.  I don’t understand how we (the collective we, referring to the American people as a whole,) can sit by while our government destroys families.  So many children, parents, spouses, siblings and more have been brutally separated, and so many people just don’t care.  Even when people make the choice to leave their family behind in the hopes of being able to provide a better life for them, they are forced to make that choice due to the dire situations that they are put in.  To me, there is nothing more important than family, and I know that I couldn’t be where I am today if it weren’t for all the love and support that I have received from mine.  That gives me the mindset of family as essentially a basic human right.  No one should be forcibly separated from their family for any reason, and we as humans should refuse to stand for it anymore.