RP3: A wheel turns forever

I had a lot of thoughts after watching El Norte. Even though I’ve seen the film before and knew what to expect, it caused emotions. For this post, I tried to write about something directly related to the texts we’ve been reading or to the ideas we've talked about recently, but before I can do that I need to work through my thoughts from the film.

Part of the film that really got to me was the inability to escape—the inability to be free. All Rosa wants is a home with her family, and she ends up cleaning other people’s homes—large houses with beautiful furniture and a beautiful family—and is constantly reminded she has neither. As she is dying, she expresses this. She talks of her fear of Enrique (her only family left in the world) leaving her. She exposes their homelessness: they have no home in their pueblo (there, people want to kill them), they have no home in Mexico (it is full of poverty), and they have no home en el norte (they are not accepted in the US). She cannot escape this homelessness, no matter how hard she works or how far she travels. She says to Enrique, “Maybe only dead will we find a home.” For Rosa, death is the only escape, so she allows herself to pass on to a place where she hopes to find home.

Enrique is then completely alone and without work. The moment Dr. Gómez mentioned in class, where Enrique holds his arms up asking for work, was the hardest moment of the film for me. His goal throughout the entire story was to fulfill his father’s desire: to not be seen as strong arms for the rich to exploit, but to be seen as a man with a heart and soul. During the scene when Enrique looked at the men around him begging for work, holding up an arm and exclaiming they had strong arms, and then Enrique himself held up two arms and pushed his way into the truck, I closed my eyes for a moment. For a brief second I had to close my eyes and retreat into myself because it was proof that he could not escape. During the next (and final) scene in the film, however, I did not close my eyes. I had to watch it. The images of the scene moved between his work en el norte and his work en su pueblo, making a clear comparison between the two. It was a clear framing with the first scene: men doing hard physical labor on a land that is not (or is no longer) their own; men working for survival to please the rich; men being watched and controlled during their work by a man  who looks like them. Enrique knows he is just strong arms once more. He is just part of that cycle of poverty, exploitation, and lack of freedom. Like the turning of the cement mixer of el norte and the water wheel of su pueblo, he is trapped and being pulled in circles.

The reason this part of the film was especially striking to me, however, is not because I was attached to the characters. Yes, I was invested in the story and the success of Rosa and Enrique, but the death and entrapment of the siblings is not what affected me. It was the reality of their story. It was the reality of this cycle. The most emotional I became in the entire film was literally the last three minutes, where I find myself in the exact place I was at the beginning. Where I am not allowed to look away from the cycle that strangles so many people. Where I am not allowed to look away from the cycle my family was privileged enough to escape. I’m not going to lie: I don’t really care about Enrique and Rosa. If I focus solely on the story of these two characters, it simply becomes a sad story. I did not leave that film thinking it was a sad story. I did not leave the film wishing Rosa had lived or that Enrique had gotten a green card or that the siblings had moved into a nice house together. I left the film and wanted to punch a wall because there are so many people—people that could be my family—that are trapped in that cycle. I left the film angry that I allowed myself to be angry about something that I already knew. I left that film and all I could think about was that there are so many that are born into that cycle: they are the water being forever circulated inside the water wheel; they are the cement tumbling and twisting, bruising and blistering in the cement mixer, soon to be the concrete that simultaneously holds the nation together and is walked upon by that same nation.