Spine 609: ¡Alambrista!

Lost in Criterion

In 1973 Robert M. Young made Children of the Fields, a short documentary about a family of Polo Galindo, migrant farm workers in the Southwest US including his young children living, a transient life as exploited laborers. Galindo opened Young's eyes not only to his and his family's plight, but to the struggles of an even lower rung: undocumented migrant workers. With Galindo as guide and translator, Young turned his documentarian eye to a narrative film, ¡Alambrista! (1977), showing us the life of a subsistence farmer who leaves Mexico to head north, desperate to make a living to care for his newborn baby as an undocumented migrant farm worker, taking a human look at the instability and exploitation faced in such a precarious life.