Independent film shines a light in the dark canyons of immigration

The owners of these mansions employ the undocumented workers for substandard wages to prune their gardens and to do maintenance work on their estates. The Mexican laborers each day make the trek by foot from their humble shacks, made of plastic-tarps and discarded wood, to the sprawling estates that overlook the canyons. Their sole purpose is to make a little money to send back to their families in Mexico, since their ability to make a living off the land south of the border has been destroyed by the price-deflating realities of free trade.

But even in the midst of the dire poverty that marks their lives in the rugged canyons, the Mexican workers maintain a sense of community and in one section of the canyons have even constructed a small chapel where they gather for Sunday church services.

But as housing development pushes ever-nearer the San Diego canyons, the Mexican worker are being displaced (run out by the very same people that employ them) because their shantytowns are deemed unsightly blights from the window views of the mansion dwellers.

These facts are brought to light by Los Angeles independent filmmaker John Carlos Frey, himself the son of Mexican immigrants and a native of San Diego. Frey decided to document this human tragedy on film to expose the plight of these people with the hope that it might prompt changes that lead to a better life for the workers. Maybe, he hoped, his film would open the eyes of the mansion dwellers to the price the Mexican workers are paying to tend to the rich man’s gardens.

Last November, Frey released his documentary, called “The Invisible Mexicans of Deer Canyon.” The DVD jacket for the documentary includes this description:

Mr. Frey spent a year documenting Mexican immigrants living in the clandestine shacks and shantytowns within eyesight of multi-million dollar mansions. Over two thousand individuals live outdoors in the secluded canyons of San Diego, CA — invisible to the local population. Their shacks have no electricity, running water or sanitation. The migrants live within several yards of some of the most expensive real estate in America and work in the local landscape, construction, agriculture and tourism industries.

The film is definitely worth seeing because it does tell the truth, which is a rare happening in the context of the highly charged debate over immigration in this country.

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http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2007/2/11/144326/265