Marquee Survivals: A Multimodal Historiography of Cinema's Recycled Spaces

La ley inmigratoria Simpson-Rodin es discriminatoria

This scene at a political rally against the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, (also known as the Simpson-Rodino Act and the Simpson-Mazzoli Act) intercuts a professor's speech about mobilization for workers' rights with shots from the lives of the movie's main characters. The characters struggle with the challenges of living in the United States without documented citizenship.

The film is based on a song by Los Tigres del Norte by the same name "La jaula de oro," also the name of the 1984 studio album. In the movie, Los Tigres del Norte perform numerous songs throughout, and band member Hernán Hernández plays Mario Almada's son in the film. They play the award-winning song "América" at the rally before this speech, while the song opens the film. The song also had an interesting accompanying music video.

In Border Matters: Remapping American Cultural Studies, José David Saldívar describes how the song lyrics to "La jaula de oro" captures "a nightmarish culture of surveillance, a profound sense of fear and anxiety, pervades the undocumented worker's everyday life" (6). The film portrays this same imprisonment and hyper-surveillance experienced by the undocumented migrant, though by the end it indulges the fantasy of a return home, with the main character (played by Mario Almada) driving back across the border as the credits roll.

Contents of this annotation:

  1. Rally for workers rights in La jaula de oro

Contents of this tag:

  1. Mexico lindo y querido

This page references: