Hi folks,
Please join us for this special showing of the PBS featured film, The
Guestworker. Film maker, Cynthia Hill will be on hand to lead a discussion
following the film. This should be a great event! Please mark your
calendars for Thursday, July 12th at 5:30pm at the Wayne County Public
Library on 1001 East Ash Street. For more info please contact Kristina in
the Reference Department at (919) 735-1824.
When President Bush and some members of Congress proposed guest worker
programs as part of new immigration reform legislation, it was as though
nothing like this had existed before. Yet since 1986, thousands of Mexican
men have legally entered the United States to work here, because of the
little known H-2A guestworker program, put in effect during the Reagan
years. Filmed on both sides of the border, the documentary chronicles the
life of such farm- workers while looking at the issues surrounding the
program.
The film focuses on a 66-year-old Mexican farmer, Candelario Moreno
Gonzales, who works on the tobacco, cucumber and pepper fields of the
Wester Farms in North Carolina . He has made this annual trip for forty
years, initially as an undocumented immigrant for which he was jailed three
times. Now too old to risk illegal crossings, he has paid as much as a
thousand dollars for his bus fare and other costs of participating in the
program. Although he is twenty years older than most of his fellow workers,
he puts in the same grueling hours with no hope of citizenship and the
benefits that go along with it. The film also shows the troubles of his
employer, Len Wester, who may loose his farm because of drought. Wester,
like many US farmers, is dependent on foreign farm laborers to sustain his
farm.
Candelario loves his home and family but the deteriorating condition of
Mexico's rural economy leave him little choice but to continue his yearly
trek. As he says " I need to go as long as I can work. I'm old. The work
has worn me down and made me tired. My family needs me at home in Mexico,
but I need to be here too."
"The beauty of the film lies in the close attention paid to the voices of
the people who together create a more human alternative to narratives
widely found in U.S. debates about immigration, labor, and the government
guestworker program."
- Journal of American Folklore*
For more information, please contact:
Shorlette Ammons
Community Foods Systems Outreach Coordinator
Center for Environmental Farming Systems
Small Farm Unit, Goldsboro NC
NC A&T State University
Office: 919.731.3440
Cell: 919.288.0192
Fax: 919.731.3273
