Rivera's writing brought to life
Friday, April 21, 1995
by Russel W. Smith
An indelible memory of my rural Texas childhood is the dim night glow
of lantern light coming from two-room shacks parked in the back of remote pastures.
The migrant Hispanic farm workers who lived for two or three weeks a
year in those dismal termite nests were figures of great mystery to me, and I often tried
to imagine what their lives were like.
Director Severo Perez has removed some of that mystery with a fine,
evocative adaptation of Tomas Rivera's classic of Chicano literature, and the earth
did not swallow him.
Rivera, who died in 1984, grew up in a migrant family similar to that
of his book's sensitive, pensive 12-year-old protagonist, Marcos Rodriguez (Jose Alcala).
Like Marcos, Rivera knew the life of episodic toil in which road-weary
workers were "...always looking ahead to the next arrival, but never really arriving
anywhere."
Also like Marcos, Rivera was self-educated (on his way to a Ph.D. in
Literature he briefly attended many colleges, including Southwest Texas State University)
and found his calling in telling the stories of people whose lives touched his.
The tale opens in 1952 with Marcos sitting under a neighbor's razed
house in the South Texas town of Crystal City. Alone in the dust and gloom, he slips into
a trance in which fragmented but powerful images of events from his recent past stream
through his head.
These memories are united by themes of injustice, futility and
randomness that directly refute the religious optimism of his culture and his virtuous,
hard-working family.
In flashback episodes, Marcos recounts the evil deeds of adults he's
known, the loss of his big brother in Korea, and the cruelty of the white men his people
work for.
Set against these dark realities, his mother's belief in a tidy
spiritual universe in which God and the saints square off daily against the devil and his
minions seems more pathetic than inspiring.
These interwoven episodes are rich, thematically varied and blessed
with fine, naturalistic acting by Alcala, Marco Rodriguez (Zoot Suit) as his father and
Lupe Ontiveros as a wily bootlegger and prostitute with whom Marcos briefly lives.
Though Marcos comes to believe human beings are the only real angels
and devils, and that we're often both at once, he also flnds a way to assure himself that
some interested (if mortal and fallible) party is watching him. That observer is the
unseen audience for his memories for his art.
With this exemplary independent film, Perez reminds us that by sharing
the stories of our lives, we validate each other's worth and obey the command Marcos reads
on a cemetery gate- No me olvide (Don't forget me).