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Wetback Essay

Wetback is another movie about illegal immigration. A wetback is defined as someone who enters the United States illegally. Immigrants in this film are traveling north from countries like Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua. The reasons for their immigration is to make a better life for their families. They are running out of work with no money. These immigrants are traveling North to the United States and Canada. One of the interesting facts that I have learned from this movie is that every day more than 300,000 people immigrate to better their lives, and less than 300 actually make it to their destination.

This is actually a huge number that does not make it. Most of these people are coming to America to better their lives and make futures for their children or even for themselves if they are young. The vocabulary word that I feel goes well with this is ethnocentrism and this word is found on page 37 in our book. Ethnocentrism is the use of one’s own culture as a yardstick for judging the ways of other individuals or societies, generally leading to a negative evaluation of their values, norms, and behaviors.

I feel that this word goes well because most of these immigrants are trying to help out their families, and make a better life for them. They do not intend to cause any harm or anything. They go through hell getting to America or Canada or wherever they are going, and when they get here they have to deal with people talking down to them and discriminating against them because of the color of their skin, or the way they talk, or the clothes that they are wearing. Another fact that I found very interesting is that there are approximately 1,000 missing immigrants today.

Part of the reason is because when these people are leaving their countries they use different names and switch identities. If Mexican police catches you they want 200 pesos in order to let you go. They will also beat you up, and take all of your money. They took the one guy’s ID and passport and ripped it up. You have to be very cautious while migrating through Mexico because not only are the police crooked, but you have to look out for bandits also. You have to hide your money and important documents very well because the police will find it and the bandits definitely will find it.

When you are, in Mexico trying to reach America most people try to catch the train that takes you to the edge of Texas. This is very dangerous due to the fact that the train is moving at a fast speed and people try jumping on while it is moving. You risk getting limbs cut off or even death. The word I think fits with this is taboo. Taboo is on page 49 and it is a norm, so strong that it brings extreme sanctions, even revulsions, if violated. This goes well because these immigrants know that have a chance of getting caught and they are putting it all on the line.

If they get caught, they know that they are going to face jail time, get everything taken from them, and they have to eventually redo the whole process if they want a better life. The Cells that they are put in are very inhumane. They are extremely dirty. Mexican Police are very brutal people. This is another fact that I have learned. 75% of abuse of immigrants are from police in Mexico. Like I said in the paragraph before this, they will beat you up and take all of your money, and they will take your documents and rip them up and leave you with nothing.

The American border control officers are very respectful, and understand what these immigrant’s intentions are but they have to do their job. American border control speaks Spanish. Culture relativism is on page 38 and it goes to the American border control. Cultural relativism is not judging a culture, but trying to understand it on its own terms. This occurred when an American border control officer let a girl go when she got caught. She told the officer she wanted to go to America so bad and if she got sent back, she wanted him to just shoot her on the spot.

This officer understood her circumstances and I feel that he wanted her to have a better life. There are migrant safe houses. One in particular that they mentioned is in a Catholic church. There a lot of facts about this that all goes hand in hand. The migrants stop there and they get food and shelter. They are able to stay at the safe house for up to three days. At one point the safe house wasn’t very opular and they had to actually go out and find people to stay there. Now there are forty plus families staying there, and at one point there were 9,000 people.

Nonverbal interaction on page 30 is the communication without words through gestures, use of space, silence and so on. This relates to the safe house because they are using the space available to help these migrants out, and give them food, shelter, and rest for three days while they are trying to make a better life for their families. A fact that I thought was pretty cool was that these immigrants eat sardines to stay nourished. Sardines are small fish that are packed with protein. A single serving has about 23 grams of protein, and loaded with omega-3 fatty acid, calcium, iron, and potassium.

These nutrients help keep you nourished and energized. For this fact, I used the definition of cultural universal on page 56. This is a value, norm, or other cultural trait that is found in every group. Eating the proper food in order to stay nourished and energized is ideal for any culture. You need to eat to stay alive and keep living. There were a couple issues that I had with this film. The first issue is the vigilantes. These people need to just let the border patrol do what they do. They don’t need to be out hunting other uman beings, that are just trying to make a better life for their family.

If they like doing that then I feel that they should apply for a job with the border control. It is ridiculous to me that they are trying to take it into their own hands to try to stop illegal immigrants. The guy who was talking also was very rude and arrogant and disrespectful about the way he talked about immigrants. I think ego on page 73 goes well with this issue. Ego is Freud’s term for a balancing force between the id and the demands of society. I feel like these vigilantes have big egos and think that just because they’re an American they can call the hots and do whatever they want when they want. That’s not how it works.

They are still under the law and need to come back down to reality. My second issue is that the US created the Mara 13, which is a gang that is all over the united states now and very dangerous. The Mara 13 specializes in raping and beating. The United States created this gang due to a war that we were in. This is when the US got people from El Salvador to fight this war. The agents of socialization on page 83 goes well with this. This is people or groups that affect our self-concept, attitudes, behaviors, or other orientations toward life. Every time people alk outside, they have to worry about these gangs.

Its mostly in the big cities, but now a day these gang members can be lurking anywhere, and people are on their toes worrying about what might happen. The migration from Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Mexico is a long and brutal struggle for these migrants. They go through the worst of the worst conditions. They will do whatever they have to do for their families to have a better life. They risk losing it all every second that ticks on the clock. These migrants have great courage and strength to get them through, but only a very few actually make it to their final destination.

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