Seasonal Workers: Media
There are films, video and audio commentaries -- fiction and non-fiction -- that touch on the themes of farm labor. We'll be collecting them here. Let us know if you have suggestions!
La Bamba (1987, directed by Luis Valdez), about Chicano rock 'n' roll star Ritchie Valens, was in the news recently because of the death of Elizabeth Peña, a co-star in the film. But what has always stood out for me is the warm portrayal of farmworker families. “Valens was a 15-year-old migrant worker who worked with his mother Connie (Rosana De Soto),” noted Janet Maslin in her 1987 review in the New York Times. And Roger Ebert described it as “a good small movie, sweet and sentimental, about a kid who never really got a chance to show his stuff. The best things in it are the most unexpected things: the portraits of everyday life, of a loving mother…”
The photograph here shows Elizabeth Peña as a farm worker in a scene from La Bamba. |