Writer as Witness Fall 2008:
AU Library video holdings on topics addressed in The Devil's Highway
Created April 2008

The selections included here are tailored to the topics raised in the book The Devil's Highway by Luis Urrea.

Documentary

Beyond the Border. 2001. 1 videocassette. Beyond the Border, with tenderness and beauty, follows the immigrant experience with Marcelo Ayala, who leaves his family on a risky journey to the United States. We begin to understand his decision to leave Mexico with the insights of his brothers, who before him, have each made the same journey. Beyond the Border rounds out the immigration's effect on family in Marcelo's home town of Michoacan, Mexico. VHS 7620

Borderless: Lives of Undocumented Workers. 2006. 1 videodisc (27 min.). A docu-poem about the lives of undocumented worker. Gives voice to the dreams and struggles of undocumented workers, Geraldo, a Costa Rican construction worker, and Angela, a second-generation Caribbean domestic worker, bring to life problems of labour exploitation and family separation. DVD 2362
Streaming web video. Available to AU community:
Click here to access Borderless - part 1 [00:00 - 12:23].
Click here to access Borderless - part 2 [12:24 - 27:29].

Crossing Arizona. 2006. 1 videodisc (77 min.). Examines the border crisis as seen through the eyes of Arizona ranchers, border patrol agents, politicans, farmers, humanitarians, and Mexican migrants. DVD 2659

Dying to Leave: The Dark Business of Human Trafficking. 2006. 1 videodisc (60 min.). Explores the current worldwide boom in illicit migration and looks at the dire circumstances that drive desperate people from their homes. DVD 2363
Streaming web video. Available to AU community:
Click here to access Dying to leave - part 1 [00:00 - 19:28].
Click here to access Dying to leave - part 2 [19:29 - 37:54].
Click here to access Dying to leave - part 3 [37:55 - 57:09].

Go Back to Mexico! 1994. 1 videocassette (57 min.). The story of one woman's attempt illegally to emigrate from Mexico to the United States amidst the background of growing public opposition to illegal immigration, particularly in California. VHS 3108

El Inmigrante. 2005. [2007]. 1 videodisc (90 min.). Examines the Mexican and American border crisis through the story of Eusebio de Haro, a young Mexican migrant who was shot and killed during one of his journeys north. DVD 3325

Letters from the Other Side. 2006. 1 videodisc (73 min.). Heather Courtney's film interweaves video letters carried across the U.S.-Mexico border by the film's director with the personal stories of women left behind in post-NAFTA Mexico. The video letters provides a way for these women to communicate with both loved ones and strangers on the other side of the border, and illustrates an unjust truth - as an American Courtney can carry these video letters back and forth across a border that these women are not legally allowed to cross. Focusing on a side of the immigration story rarely told by the media or touched upon in the national debate, the film offers a fresh perspective, painting a complex portrait of families torn apart by economics, communities dying at the hands of globalization, and governments incapable or unwilling to do anything about it. DVD 3166

Mojados: Through the Night. 2004. [2005]. 1 videodisc (39 min.). Filmed over the course of ten days, this follows four men into the world of illegal border-crossing from Mexico to the United States. Guapo, Oso, Tigre, Viejo take the 120 mile cross-desert journey that has been traveled innumerable times by nameless immigrants who - like these four from Michoacan, Mexico - all had a simple dream for a better life. Fighting dehydration and exhaustion while evading the U.S. Border Patrol through sub-zero temperature darkness of night, filled with barbed wire, brutal storms and the ever-present confrontation with death, they endure unimaginable hardship that is the reality for tens of thousands of illegals who have made this similar journey. DVD 1545

My House Is On Fire. [1997]. 1 videocassette (ca. 19 min.). A look at U.S. immigration policy as seen from the view of two children: Pablo, age 9, and his sister, Maria-Victoria, age 6, children of illegal Latin American immigrants living somewhere in the Southern United States. VHS 5107

New World Border. 2001. 1 videocassette (28 min.). Documents the rise in human rights abuses along the U.S./Mexico border since the implementation of border blockades (Operation Gatekeeper), which have been erected in populated areas throughout the border region during the last decade. Includes interviews with immigrant rights organizers, testimony from immigrants, analysis of "free trade" policies and current efforts to build a vibrant movement for immigrant rights. VHS 7317

The Other side = El otro lado. 2001. 1 videocassette (27 min.). Examines the devastating impact of Mexican-United States migration. The families and communities left behind are disabled, and their languages and cultures are being destroyed. This program looks at villagers who strive to ensure that their children will no longer have to migrate to have a better life. VHS 7189

Narrative/Feature Film

The Border. 1982. 1 videocassette (107 min.). Directed by Tony Richardson and starring Jack Nicholson and Harvey Keitel. A border guard along the Rio Grande has to choose between loyalties to his job, country, wife, and his compassion for human suffering. VHS 473

Border Incident. 1949. [2006]. 1 videodisc (95 min.). Directed by Anthony Mann. To penetrate a gang exploiting illegal Mexican farmworkers smuggled into California (and leaving no live witnesses), Mexican federal agent Pablo Rodriguez poses as an ignorant bracero, while his American counterpart Jack Bearnes works from outside. DVD 2408

Bread & Roses. 2000. [2001]. 1 videodisc (110 min.). Directed by Ken Loach. Maya is an illegal alien who has crossed the U.S. border from Mexico to search for her sister Rosa, and to begin a new life. After being reunited, Rosa gets Maya a job with a janitorial service in a large office building. While working, Maya happens upon Sam Shapiro, a muckraking lawyer and union agitator whom the service-workers' union has assigned to bring its "justice for janitors" campaign to the building. Appalled at the work conditions and unfair labor practices, Maya and Sam team up to fight her employer. DVD 2619

The Garden of Eden = El Jardín del Edén. 1994. [2001]. Directed by María Novaro. Three border-crossing stories are intertwined on the contemporary U.S.-Mexican border at Tijuana: those of a young Mexican mother with three children, seeking to start a new life after her husband's death; of a gringa adventurer looking for her whale-watching brother and for a Chicana friend in search of her roots; and of a campesino seeking to cross the border for better living conditions. DVD 416

The Gatekeeper. 2002. [2004]. 1 videodisc (103 min.). A racist, bitter U.S. Border Patrol Agent, moonlighting with a vigilante group, goes undercover posing as a Mexican migrant worker in an effort to expose an illegal alien smuggling operation. When the plan blows up, he is trapped with the aliens, in a web of desperation and tyranny that forces him to confront his secret past. DVD 1895

El Norte. 1983. [1984]. 1 videocassette (141 min.). Film looks at the plight of illegal aliens in the U.S. Beginning in the remote mountain jungles of Guatemala, this highly-acclaimed drama about a brother and sister seeking a better life centers on two young Indians. When their father is killed by government soldiers and their mother taken away, they set out for the "promised land" to the north--El Norte. VHS 154

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