Labor Studies

This video follows the lives of four Mexican women and their families whose undocumented husbands and partners, as workers at the World Trade Center, lost their lives in the tragic events of 9/11.

Documents the first national convention in El Paso, Texas in September 1972 of the La Raza Unida Party, a third political party whose membership consisted primarily of Mexican-American citizens.

Shot during the seven months of the Brazilian sugar cane harvest, this video portrays what may be the last generation of the nation's 800,000 sugar cane cutters (an environmental law approved by the National Congress has ruled that by 2015 practically all cane harvesting must be mechanized).

Against the current political backdrop of attacks on white-owned farms in Zimbabwe, this documentary investigates what life is like on one of these occupied farm estates.

An in-depth look at economic relations between the U.S. and Mexico, including banking, trade and illegal immigration, and the impact of maquiladoras—labor-intensive factories owned by U.S. firms but located in Mexico—and how these "offshore" operations affect American consumers and workers.

Examines the history of Haiti, from the 1804 revolution to the occupation (1915-34) by U.S. Marines, and the repressive Duvalier regimes of `Papa Doc' and `Baby Doc.'

Examines the plight of Guatemalan Indian peasants victimized by the government's counterinsurgency program which has led many Guatemalans to go into exile or to become internal refugees inside the country.

Over half of the Latin American labor force works in the "informal economy," creating their own forms of income and employment through hard work and ingenuity. This documentary celebrates the resourcefulness of impoverished people throughout the developing world for whom economic necessity is truly the mother of invention.

Examines the popular movement for land reform in Brazil. The film shows massive demonstrations, marches and protests throughout Brazil, including the establishment of a large camp of some 1500 landless peasants at an unused private farm in Rio Grande do Sul.

This film autobiography of a Bolivian miner also chronicles the rise and fall of the mining industry and the political history of Bolivia.

Reveals the plight of landless peasants in Guatemala, where property ownership is restricted to a small percentage of the nation's most wealthy citizens.

Portrays the appalling socio-political realities of contemporary Guatemala, where the majority of the population--malnourished and illiterate--are exploited by wealthy landowners and businessmen and brutally repressed by the military.

This classic of the Latin American cinema is based on actual historical events involving the brutal military suppression of a series of strikes during the early Twenties by rural workers in the southernmost province of Argentina.

Profiles the Workers Party (PT) in Brazil, the largest left-wing political party in the world today, and the most important political opposition to emerge in Brazil since the formal return to democratic rule in 1985. Comprised of union activists, environmentalists, peasants, Afro-Brazilian groups, women's organizations, and street children, the PT has been instrumental in the struggle for human rights and political reforms against corruption.

This shocking documentary, produced by the International Labour Organization, reveals the exploitation of child labor in Brazil today, focusing on the daily lives of four children in and around Rio de Janeiro.

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.

A dramatic reenactment of the historic 1967 massacre of 'The Night of San Juan,' when the Bolivian army launched a surprise nighttime attack upon striking tin miners and their families.

Examines the relationship between Francis Mcnam, a black domestic worker in Cape Town, and her white employers, the Silberman family, graphically illustrating the vast difference in the quality of life for blacks and whites in South Africa.

A look at working women in Latin America and their efforts to achieve equality in the home and workplace. Most combine their participation in the labor market with their family functions as mothers and wives, thus working a `double day.'

Examines the lives of several women who actively participated in the social revolution during the Spanish Civil War, women who are as dynamic in their 80s as they were in their youth. All are members of the anarcho-syndicalist trade union, the CNT, the main representative of the working class movement in Spain in 1936.