Harvest of Empire -- Film Review

Harvest of Empire

Directed by Peter Getzels & Eduardo López 

 

 

This is an informative, well-presented story of the Latino migration to the United States throughout the twentieth century and continuing into the present.  It makes clear the relationship between the Latin migration to the United States and the economic and political policies of the United States government, examining numerous specific cases in great detail:  Puerto Rico, Mexico, Cuba, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala.  Each case is somewhat different, but the basic pattern is consistent:  the United States destabilizes popular governments, engineers coups, promotes civil wars, and supports repressive dictatorial regimes that promote the economic interests of large U.S. corporations who exploit the citizenry of these countries, extract their resources, pervert the local economy, and corrupt the government and the judicial system.  The citizenry then flee poverty, repression, war, hopelessness, and despair, and where do they come?  The United States.  People do not leave their homes, their cultures, their languages, and their national identity easily.  They do so reluctantly and often at great risk.  In a great many cases they are not coming to seek work or to make money, but to flee terror and genocide.  The United States trains, arms, and supports the repressive governments that brutalize the civilian population and create the intolerable conditions that promote large scale migration.  This film documents this pattern with many vivid examples.  It is based on the book Harvest of Empire, by Juan Gonzalez, who is featured as a commentator throughout the film.  Anyone who is Latino should see it.  Anyone who isn't Latino should also see it, because it might help to discredit some of the paranoid nonsense being promoted in politics and the media -- which is also portrayed in the film -- about securing the borders with fences and drones and armed patrols and criminalizing undocumented immigrants and deporting them by the thousands and millions, which is not feasible and not in our interest in any case.  It is a powerful and important story that will have lasting implications for the future of our nation.  There are about 51 million Latin immigrants in the United States right now, with about two thirds of them from Mexico.  According to the Pew Research Center, by 2050 the Latino population in the United States will triple in size and make up 29% of the population compared to 14% in 2005.  Nearly one in five Americans will be an immigrant in 2050, compared to one in eight in 2005.  It is a major long term demographic and cultural shift underway in the United States: an inadvertent, unforeseen consequence of short-sighted, misguided economic and political policies carried out by our government over many years.  This film provides a clearheaded, historically informed, constructive look at the issue that is interesting and rich in examples of the many varied impacts it has on individual human lives.