La Bamba (1987)
Asleep in a Santa Clara County labor camp near what is in the process of becoming Silicon Valley, the future inventor of punk rock Ritchie Valens dreams of a prophetic plane crash while Santo and Johnny’s steel-guitar lowrider favorite “Sleep Walker” plays on the dream track. He awakes and soon a new soundtrack revs up, Bo Diddley’s “Who Do You Love?” to accompany the return of Ritchie’s brother Bob through the Valley's rolling hills.
As Bob arrives the filmmakers interpolate a realistic scene recreating a partly mechanized apricot-packing shed, complete with conveyor belt and gendered division of labor, that introduces the Valens matriarch Connie. Bob’s response to his mother’s playful reproach—“I’m lucky I even found this place”--speaks to the extreme spatial segregation of agricultural labor and farm-worker camps.
The most popular Chicano film ever made, La Bamba was directed by Luis Valdez, who began as a UFW activist and organizer for El Teatro Campesino. Shortly after it was released many of the people who made it, including Valdez and the film's stars, were highly visible in the UFW’s late 1980’s grape boycotts.
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