Cineculture concluded this month with its Friday screening of “La Jaula de Oro” (The Golden Dream,) a Guatemalan film about the harsh realities faced by those who emigrate to the United States.
Presented by club adviser Mary Husain and co-sponsored by the Chicano & Latin American Studies and the Classical Languages & Literature Departments, the film began in the slums of Guatemala where three 15-year-old teens prepared themselves for a risky journey, in hopes of finding a better life in the U.S.
At the beginning of the journey there were comical moments to which the audience laughed along, especially when the three Guatemalan friends encountered a Tzotzil Indian boy who tags along with them. But it shifted to anger as the three protagonists began to face challenges.
Guest speaker Dr. Adán Avalos, Fresno State alumni and professor of Cinematic Arts at the University of New Mexico, talked about how this film accurately depicted the reality of what happens to South and Central Americans who travel on Mexico’s trains heading toward the U.S. border.
“Everything that was showcased in the film ”” that we saw ”” pretty much it’s accounts that, yes, they happened,” Avalos said. “None of it is fiction. I think everything, for the most part, is the reality that these immigrants are facing, especially kids from Guatemala or from Central America.”
One thing depicted in the film was a corrupt cop that stole one of the protagonist’s boots right off of his feet. Another was how some immigrants and two of the teens were held for ransom in Mexico. However, perhaps the harshest thing that was depicted were the bandits whom the teens find along the way.
Avalos talked about how the filmmaker used different techniques in order for the audience to put themselves in the situation of the immigrants. He said that the scenery is a metaphor of a cage. This cage, Avalos said, represents the obstacles that immigrants face.
“…The title in Spanish is called, ‘La Jaula de Oro,’ which if you literally translate it would be “the golden cage,” which I think is a little bit more appropriate,” Avalos said. “But what the filmmaker was trying to go after with the shift of the title, ‘The Golden Dream,’ was based off the American dream and the cruel reality of that particular dream.”