A Day Without a Mexican

Run, don't walk, to your nearest video store and rent A Day Without a Mexican, a very moving and yet very funny movie by Sergio Arau.

The premise, if you're not familiar with it, is that all of the Latin Americans in California suddenly disappear for one day. (Part of the joke is that many Californians refer to all Latin Americans as "Mexican".) Of course, farms are suddenly left without agricultural workers, restaurants are left without staff, etc. -- all the cliches you would expect. But there is so much more, because the contributions of Latin Americans in California, and in this country as a whole, are so far-reaching. And this movie, for all of its broad strokes, paints much of this very subtly, but very, very effectively.

It was interesting to see on film the very border -- and the fence into the sea -- that I had just read about in Héctor Tobar's Translation Nation (see my previous post on Libros).

I highly recommend the DVD version of A Day Without a Mexican, in which you can watch the interviews with the director, cast and crew. Here is where the real emotions and the real opinions come out, without the filter of the movie.

And I just want to mention that I can very much identify with a main character, who disappears at a crucial point in this film. What a powerful moment, and it says so much.