The San Jose Mercury News
A boy's view of life in a family of migrant workers
October 13, 1995
by Stephen Whitty
WHEN JOHN Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath" first told middle America about the plight of migrant workers, people hung their heads in shame.
Now, it seems, they're more likely to turn away their faces. But although America's sense or outrage may have faded -- or been obscured by other issues, such as immigration -- the lives of migrant workers haven't changed much since the Depression. Parents work hard, children miss school, families are uprooted. And their stories are rarely told.
"...and the earth did not swallow him," however, manages to tell a few. A small, deeply felt version of Tomas Rivera's 1971 novel,"... y no se lo trago la tierra," it's the semi-autobiographical story of 12-year-old Marcos Gonzales, a quiet child growing up in early 1950s America. He'd like to settle in, stay in school, just be a kid.
But to survive, his parents have to follow the crops. In the fall and winter, they work in the orange groves of Crystal City, Texas. In the spring and summer, they head north for the fields of Minnesota and South Dakota, where an adult can make up to $15 a day picking sugar beets.
Once a family's paid for their trip, however, and their food, and their expenses, they're already in debt. And once they're at the farm, hundreds of miles from home, they discover that the $15 salary depends on a few ifs.
They'll get their money, all right, the farmer tells them. But if it doesn't rain. If they don't get sick. If they get the whole crop in.
Somehow, by the time they're home in September, there isn't very much money left. There isn't much left at all, except a chance to go back to work in the orange groves, back to hoping that next summer will be different.
It's a brutal life, but what Marcos eventually rebels against isn't the life itself. It's his parents' acceptance of it, and his mother's religious faith.
Loss of faith
To her, religion is a comfort and a constant companion. To her son, though, it just seems like one more lie, one more promise as empty as that $15 a day. When Marcos turns to the church for help, he finds the priest has used the parishioner's donations to visit cathedrals in Spain. When Marcos finally calls on the devil, and curses God, nothing happens. The devil does not come. The earth, the boy notes with satisfaction, does not swallow him.
Marcos decides that he has to rely on something besides religion. So he finds his faith in memory, and eventually in fiction.
"...and the earth did not swallow him" is the story of the birth of an author, but it's also the story of a family, and a people, told with affection and honesty.
Writer and director Severo Perez was a playwright-in-residence at Luis Valdez's El Teatro Campesino for a time; most of the performers have worked together before, in Valdez's "Zoot Suit." They work together beautifully here.
Marco Rodriguez, who plays Marcos' father, Joaquin, has courage and dignity. It's easy to see why his family adores him, and how proud he is of them. When he rises up at the end to confront a petty thief who has cheated them, it's hard not to think of "The Bicycle Thief" -- the emotion is that strong.
Rose Portillo is just as strong as his wife, Florentina, with her midnight prayers and fierce protection of her family. And the actors who play their friends and fellow laborers add music and joy and tragedy.
Dialogue problems
Jose Alcala' is good in the main role of Marcos, although he has some problems with the dialogue. More problematic are Sam Viahos and Angie Torres as Don Cleto and Dona Coquita, the villains of the story. Their performances are fine, but Torres seems miscast as an appealing whore -- you'd have to go back to mid-period Fellini to find one quite so unappealing -- and their murderous treachery seems like something out of Hansel and Gretel.
But then again, this is a story as seen through the eyes of a child, full of monsters and bullies and sudden, shocking insights. Things are naturally drawn with broad strokes.
Yet perhaps Marcos' most important realization is the quiet one that comes when he attends a funeral, a service held with depressing regularity among the farmworkers. "I could hear the people buried there, saying 'Don't forget me,'" he tells us in a voiceover. "'Don't forget me.'"
Rivera's novel, and this movie, is evidence that he never did.