Foreigners in Their Own Land

The film evidently shows the idea of individuals being strangers in their own land and being taken as un-American or as second-class inhabitant because of their Mexican ancestry.

For instance, Rudy is deported to Mexico even though he is a US legal citizen. When he attempts to tell the immigration officers about his legality as a citizen including the actuality that he was raised in Los Angeles, no one believes his story and he is accused of being an illegal immigrant. To make matters even worse, he is locked up. This is clearly an indication that the local people were highly discriminated against in their own land and treated as if they are inhuman and aliens. The film is seen to criticize such deeds as racial discrimination (PBS 10).

Additionally, White Anglo-settlers immigrated to the locals land in New Mexico, Texas and California during Manifest Destiny period, possessing land that never belonged to them along with seizing material goods from Mexican families whose families had resided on this ground for centuries. With discrimination along with abusive handling from forces comprising of the Texas Rangers, the locals found themselves without an alternative except to abscond their territory and shift southwards. The locals through this act of forceful eviction shows just how much the settlers perceived them and mistreated them (PBS 17).

This film forms a political declaration in that it recognizes the locals who are being unjustly handled by the US government. For the duration of the time of this film, the US was undertaking extensive immigration raids, extensively targeting the central-city barrios along with hunting Indian-Americans. Numerous ‘immigrants’ were extradited, dividing families and destroying hopes along with dreams regarding the locals’ future.

Works Cited

PBS. “Watch Videos | Latino Americans | PBS.” LATINO AMERICANS. N.p., 2014. Web. 29 Aug. 2014. <http://www.pbs.org/latino-americans/en/watch-videos/#2365075996>.