Los Desarraigados The Uprooted

Duration:

Year Published: 1974

Creator: Coatitene Productions

Complete Record: A Spanish-language film shot in San Francisco which dramatizes the plight of illegal Mexican immigrants in the United States. The film opens with a man and woman in bed. She reaches over and wakes him up. They get up and start getting ready for the day. She sends their child off to school and then catches a city bus. The bus takes her to a job in a clothing factory where she sits at a sewing machine with other female immigrant workers. Their boss is a male who comes around and checks their work. The next scene is two white men in an office talking. A lady comes in and gives the man a piece of paper. Then it cuts to a shot of a hand feeding denim material through a machine. Men are seen taking a freight elevator down. Then back to the clothing factory with a shot of a table of women working. The men on the elevator turn out to be cops catching the illegal clothing operation in action. The illegal immigrant worker women run away, but they are caught and hauled onto a bus by the police. The man from the opening shot walks down a street and when he passes by stairs leading to his house he is stopped by a group of women who tell him what happened to his wife. He is seen eating alone with their child. An epilogue title appears explaining the definition of illegal alien and gives context about immigrant raids that occurred in Los Angeles and San Diego during the summer of 1973. The credits roll.