El Norte

El Norte tells the life of two Guatemalan siblings Enrique and Rosa who are moving to the United States hoping a better life and a better future. The setting of the movie is in the country side of Guatemala, Mexico and United States. Life in Guatemala is very rough for Enrique’s family. The father of Enrique and Rosa worked in a coffee bean for a rich person. The political power and military enforcement made the poor to work for rich people. “To the rich the peasant is just a pair of arms”, Enrique’s father told him this it means that the bosses cared nothing for a man, only for his strong arms. Since the lives were miserable for the Guatemala people Enrique’s father organized a revolutionary meeting against the military to over throw them. When the military force finds the secret meeting they killed Enrique father and taken away their mother, end up never to be seen again. When the lives of the Enrique and Rosa became danger they decided to travel to the Promise Land (United States).

Even though the journey is tough and hard, by hoping the luxury of United States that will come to them they decided to travel to America. They took their journey towards America via Mexico. Mexico turned out to be worse than Guatemala where they got treated as ignorant and unsuspected peasants. A Guatemalan fellow citizen helps them to cross the border of Tijuana in to the USA. They decided to cross the border by crawling for miles through an abandoned sewer tunnel which is filled with typhoid ridden-rats.

Through the unimaginable path they came to California as illegal immigrants and started their new life. The new life wasn’t as promised as they were thought. They had to overcome the language and the cultural problems. In Los Angels they both entered the job market. Enrique started working as a dishwasher and a bus boy. Rosa first started working in a garment factory and then as a maid. In the last part Rosa and Enrique discover the difficulties of living in America without documentation.