The San Diego Union-Tribune
Migrant tale resonates with power
Tuesday, June 4, 1998
by John Freeman
Quietly, effectively and with a palpable empathy, "... and the earth did not swallow him" traces one year in the troubled childhood of Marcos Gonzales, an immigrant's son who grew up in rural South Texas of the 1940s and '50s.
Produced by San Diego filmmaker Paul Espinosa, the award-winning film receives a national airing tomorrow night on PBS' "American Playhouse." Released to U.S. art-house theaters two years ago. The drama has since won numerous awards at film festivals around the world. Tomorrow marks its first showing on PBS.
"This has been a long labor of love," said Espinosa, who first began researching the project seven years ago with director/writer Severo Perez, an independent filmmaker based in Los Angeles.
"...and the earth" is based on a 1971 Spanish-language novel (" ...y no se lo trago la tierra") by the late writer/educator Tomas Rivera. An immigrant's son who went on to earn a Ph.D., he later became chancellor of the University of California Riverside. When named to that post, Rivera - who died in 1984 - was one of few Latinos to hold a top role at a major U.S. university.
Rivera's work has often been described as a Latino version of "The Grapes of Wrath." It's an apt comparison because, like the Joads of John Steinbeck's classic novel, Marcos' parents and their fellow migrants have their faith in the American dream shaken by tragedy.
At various times, 12-year-old Marcos (Jose Alcala, who brings understated tenderness to the role, supported by a strong cast) is exposed to incidents that trouble him deeply:
• He sees a 10-year-old boy, who's forced to drink fouled water, shot to death by a cruel field boss.
• He sees his trusting parents pay a Latino swindler to emboss a photo of their once-promising 25- year-old son, Julian, who was killed in Korea.
• He sees how long hours of agonizing work - earning not respect but hateful disdain from employers - break his family's spirit and physically sickens his father and others.
"One of the messages here is that of basic survival," said Espinosa. "Despite some very difficult experiences, he's able to survive and escape. Another message is the importance of family, his belief in himself and his drive to ultimately educate himself."
Each summer, Marcos' penniless but eternally optimistic family would head north to pick crops in Minnesota. There, they worked long hours for little pay - sometimes no pay living in shamefully primitive housing.
Marcos, a shy boy who doesn't know how to express his anger, is exposed to greed, thievery, bigotry, cruelty and injustice, which confuses him and causes him to doubt his religious faith.
All his life, Marcos' deeply religious parents instilled in him a fear of God. He's also been taught to dread el diablo (the devil), a very real presence who appears to have taken the upper hand in his family's life.
"God doesn't care about us!" Marcos tells his mother. "Look at how we're living!"
Aghast to hear such blasphemy, his mother rebukes him: "It's like you have a devil in your heart!"
To Marcos, his family's prayers and pleas for God's mercy seem not to bring relief, only more suffering. The devil he's been taught to fear does not even answer his profane cries in the middle of the night. And the earth, to his confused relief, does not swallow him - not even after he has cursed el diablo.
To produce the $1.8 million film, Espinosa and Perez relied in large measure on grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, as well as from KPBS/Channel 15, the local PBS affiliate.
"What this film does is humanize the experience of migrants, put a human face on them and what they do," said Espinosa, speaking from Guadalajara, Mexico, where he's researching his latest project. The upcoming film is a three-hour documentary for PBS on the 1846-48 war between the United States and Mexico. PBS has scheduled to air the documentary sometime next year A longtime San Diegan, Espinosa, 45, has produced and written nearly a dozen documentaries on Mexican history and the Latino experience for PBS, most notably "The Lemon Grove Incident" and "The American Experience: The Hunt for Pancho Villa." This is his first full-length feature film, as well as the first such film produced by KPBS.
To Espinosa, while "...and the earth" is set in the 1950s, conditions for many Latino migrant workers have improved little over the years, And he's been alarmed at recent political rhetoric aimed at Latino migrant workers.
"It's ridiculous to blame migrant workers for all these ills in our society," said Espinosa. "Because, if anything, they're a beacon of hope for the attitudes they have about work and improving their lives. They are, really, at the heart of what the American dream is all about."