VivirLatino

Last week Amnesty International, in conjunction with Mexican actor/director/producer Gael Garcia Bernal released Los Invisibles, The Invisible Ones, a series of four short documentaries about the trip thousands of Central Americans make traveling across Mexico in an attempt to reach the U.S.

I really wanted to highlight this series because of how accessible it is to many. I can imagine people in my neighborhood accessing the four films via their cell phones. In light of the anti-immigrant rhetoric in the U.S. combined with the revealed horrors Latinos from Central and South America face when traveling through Mexico al rumbo a los E.U., this film coming in part from a Mexican seems really important. There seems to be a new market for reality tv focusing on the border. Using buzzwords like “war”, outlets like National Geographic Channel and Current TV each have their own series about those who cross the frontera for a better life. But those series feel like exploitation films to me, with an U.S. gaze framing the crisis not so much in terms of the inherent human rights of the migrants, but rather the fear of invasion.

Tomorrow we will feature part I of the film.