Staff picks
Why Cybraceros?
Alex Rivera
1997
4 Minutes
Staff Picks
Date
January 1–31, 2022
Why Cybraceros? takes the form of a mock promotional film. It is based on a real promotional film produced in the late 1940s by the California Grower’s Council, titled Why Braceros?
This dystopic concept, of a world in which immigrants can labor in America but never live in, or become the responsibility of, American society, is to me not only a bizarre twist on the American Dream; in some ways this is the realization of the American Dream. The United States has always benefited from the low-wage (and sometimes free or coerced) labor of recent immigrants who are drawn to America, in part, by The Dream of economic success. Simultaneously, nearly every wave of new immigrants suffers through several decades of intense discrimination, and usually a combination of verbal and physical attacks. The Cybracero, as a trouble-free, no-commitment, low-cost laborer, is the perfect immigrant. The Cybracero is the hi-tech face of the age-old American Dream.
—Alex Rivera
Why Cybraceros? is one of three shorts by Alex Rivera, alongside Papapapá (1995) and Dia de la Independencia (1997), presented on e-flux Video & Film as the January 2022 edition of Staff picks. Watch the other films here.
For more information, contact program [at] e-flux.com.