Immigration movie ‘El Norte’ celebrates 25th anniversary
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When Gregory Nava‘s ‘El Norte’ opened in U.S. theaters 25 years ago, immigration was less of a political hot-button issue than it is today, Reed Johnson reports.
Back then, the mass exodus of refugees from Central American countries such as El Salvador and Guatemala was driven as much by civil war as by economics. California’s Proposition 187 in 1994 and the pro-immigration marches of May 2006 still were years away. But in recent months, until the global economic swoon took center stage, immigration became one of the most pressing and polarizing issues on the national agenda. That gives a renewed potency to Nava’s $750,000 independent movie about a Guatemalan brother and sister’s harrowing odyssey to the United States -- including a memorably grueling crawl through a rat-infested tunnel -- and their struggles in adapting to their new life in Los Angeles.
-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City