Latino Studies

A gentle, loving portrait of Santiago de Cuba and its people.

This documentary follows farmworkers from California's Salinas Valley back to their roots in the fields of rural Mexico, where they recount their everyday struggle to cope in the midst of the globalization of agriculture and the impact of NAFTA.

This video chronicles the 1998 return to Cuba of an American college professor, Dr. Magaly Lavendenz, forced as a child to leave Cuba in 1962, and who grew up in the U.S., but with a distinct Cuban identity.

Puerto Rico has the highest incidence of female sterilization in the world. Over one-third of all Puerto Rican women of childbearing age have been sterilized. So common is the operation that it is simply known as ‘la operacion.' Using newsreels and excerpts from government propaganda films, plus interviews with Puerto Rican women, doctors, birth control specialists and politicians, this film explores the controversial use of sterilization as a means of population control.

Each year, an estimated 30 to 55 million women throughout the world obtain induced abortions. More than half of these abortions are illegal and an estimated 84,000 of them result in death. This cross-cultural survey shows how abortion transcends race, religion and social class, and how differences in the practice and perception of abortion are mainly in the degree of secrecy and danger accompanying it.

Dramatizes the life and work of Luisa Capetillo (1879-1922), a Puerto Rican journalist, writer, suffragist, and labor organizer.

Five teen-aged Latinas living in San Francisco's Mission District-most of them recent immigrants from Mexico or other Central American countries-talk frankly about their lives, from discrimination and school , to friends and family relationships, experiences with gang activity and violence, and plans for the future. Their comments are blended with footage of neighborhood life and other activities to provide meaningful insights into the everyday lives of young Hispanic women in the U.S. today.

Depicts the efforts of Latino residents of New York's Lower East Side who have taken over their own buildings abandoned by landlords. Organizing themselves into Tenants' Associations, they undertake the repair and renovation of their decaying tenements and provide their own services.

During the Sixties and early Seventies, banks, insurance companies, the City of New York, and many landlords drew a red-line around the Bronx and abandoned its neighborhoods. More than 12,000 fires burned each year, 300,000 people fled, and in the South Bronx 40% of the homes were destroyed.

Examines the Santa Fe Fiesta, America's oldest continuous community celebration, which commemorates the Spaniards' "bloodless reconquest" of the Pueblo Indians in New Mexico in 1692.

Examines the centuries-old tradition in Puerto Rico of using hand-carved santos in Catholic religious practices. The film visits an elderly santero (carver) and his teenage apprentice, revealing the skill and artistry of this ancient craft as well as the importance of the saints in the lives of the faithful.

Surveys the activities of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party in the 1950s, including the background to the shooting incident in the U.S. Congress by four Puerto Rican nationalists in March 1954, and the contributions of the movement's leading figure, Don Pedro Albizu Campos.