Back in May 2008, U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials rounded up 389 undocumented workers in the Agriprocessors Inc. kosher meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa. The raid was the largest in U.S history.

Two weeks later, filmmakers Jennifer Szymaszek and Greg Brosnan started filming “In the Shadow of the Raid,” a documentary film showing at the Morelia International Film Festival in Mexico. A 15-minute edit of the film was recently broadcast on PBS “Frontline’s” website.

“In the Shadow of the Raid” delves into the consequences of the ICE raid for Postville and for some of the the migrants who were arrested and deported back to their homes in two rural villages in Guatemala.

Following the closure of the meatpacking plant, Postville businesses failed and livelihoods were destroyed.

In Guatemala, migrant Willian Toj returned to his wife and parents. Awaiting him was a massive debt that he accrued from his trip to the U.S. He had been working in the Postville plant for 20 minutes before the ICE raid.

Toj can barely earn enough to pay the monthly interest on the $7,000 debt, let alone get the funds to treat his mother’s worsening cancer.

The tone of the documentary is observational rather than preachy, in the same vein as other recent works such as “Los Que Se Quedan / Those Who Remain.” The filmmakers try to reflect some of the realities that contribute to why so many Central Americans and Mexicans head to the United States. But there are no ICE officials interviewed, no legal redresses sought. Brosnan and Szymaszek focus on the people affected by the raid, and the resulting film is a photographic testament to a sad reality.

Watch the video for more.

– Deborah Bonello in Mexico City for the Los Angeles Times.

Video: An interview with Jennifer Szymaszek and Greg Brosnan, directors of “In the Shadow of the Raid.” All non-interview material courtesy of Szymaszek and Brosnan. Video interview by Deborah Bonello.

The first, last and only time that I met the French-born filmmaker and photographer Christian Poveda was on 1 April of this year, when I interviewed him in an apartment he was renting in Mexico City while doing promotion for his film, La Vida Loca.

I’d seen the documentary the night before at a screening attended by Poveda, who fielded questions on why he chose to spend 16 months following members of El Salvador’s notoriously violent 18th Street gang with a video camera. It is a film that could well have brought him to his violent end.

Poveda was shot dead on Wednesday 4 September just outside San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador, where he lived. Sources say that the night before he was killed, Poveda confessed to being afraid and worried that the gangs were taking a turn for the worse, with a new crop of ever-more vicious leaders coming to the fore.

La Vida Loca is a groundbreaking documentary that shines a light onto the bleak lives of El Salvador’s Mara gangs. Poveda achieved unprecedented, long-term access to certain branches of the gangs and their daily lives in the capital.

I’m not one to speculate on who might be responsible for his death — the disorder, impunity and lawlessness in El Salvador means we might never know. But his murder is a terrible loss, not only to his friends, family and colleagues, but to the journalistic community in Latin America, which already suffers some of the highest rates of aggression and intimidation against members of the trade.

To Poveda, the young people who join las Maras were “victims of society”. He approached the gangs as a documentary filmmaker with an open mind and a lack of moral judgment.

As he said to me during our interview, he was of the opinion that “the majority are young boys that were abandoned at a very young age, and the fact that someone would come from another continent to spend time with them on a daily basis, filming and listening to them, for them that was something very important, that someone was paying attention.”

Many would disagree with Poveda’s assessment of the gangs that stretch across Central America to the United States. Poveda worked as a photojournalist in El Salvador during and after the 12-year-long civil war, which began in 1980. But the gangs really took on their current strength and size in the United States.

Gangs were formed by Salvadorans living on the streets of Los Angeles in the 1980s, many of who went to the US to escape the civil war ravaging El Salvador. When the peace accords that ended the war were signed in El Salvador in the early 1990s, huge numbers of gang members returned to the country, some of them by choice but most of them through deportation by US authorities. Many were sent back after completing prison sentences.

Although gangs did exist on a small scale in El Salvador before the mass return of migrants from the US, they only grew into the super-gangs they are today after the end of the civil war. The brutally violent groups have been connected with organized crime and other illegal activities across the Americas.

But however you view the gangs, Poveda did what good journalists do — he broadened the discussion, taking a new visual and journalistic angle on an issue that has become so black and white. As the United States continues to sweep the issue of immigration reform under the carpet and turn a blind eye to the repercussions of some of its policies on its smaller, poorer, weaker neighbours, Poveda put some of those realities up on cinema screens on both sides of the Atlantic for all to see.

Tragically, he paid the highest price for doing so.

La Vida Loca, which has been showing on the international film festival circuit, is coming up for commercial release in Mexico and France over the next two months. But the day after Poveda’s death, his producer Gustavo Angel was still trying to negotiate a US release for the film.

I can’t help feeling that if La Vida Loca isn’t seen by audiences within the United States, many of whom have never traveled south of the border, let alone as far south as Central America, we will miss an opportunity to advance the discussion surrounding America’s gang and immigration problems — issues that are inextricably linked.

Deborah Bonello is a blogger and video journalist MexicoReporter.com

www.MexicoReporter.com

This article was written for Index on Censorship.

Reuters reports:

Suspected Salvadorean gang members killed French filmmaker Christian Poveda, whose 2008 film “La Vida Loca” crudely depicts the hopeless lives of members of the infamous Mara 18 street gang, local police said on Wednesday.

Poveda, 53, was shot on a road 10 miles north of the capital of San Salvador, as he drove back from filming in La Campanera, a poor, overcrowded suburb and a Mara 18 stronghold.

President Mauricio Funes said in a statement on Wednesday night that he was “shocked” by Poveda’s murder and ordered a thorough investigation.

“La Vida Loca” (The Crazy Life) closely followed the lives of several heavily tattooed gang members, some of whom were jailed or killed during the shooting of the film.

We’ll have more tomorrow, but you can see Poveda talking about his work filming the gangs in an interview I did with him earlier this year.

A T-shirt for sale outside Mexico City’s Stadium Azteca yesterday afternoon, during a World Cup qualifying match between the U.S and Mexico, which Mexico won 2:1.

“Toma” means “take”, or in this instance, “take this”.

More photos here on Flickr.

Mexico’s second annual human rights film festival, supported by a number of organizations here including the Mexico branch of Amnesty International, the Ambulante documentary film project and Mexico City’s Human Rights Commission, opens at the end of the week.

The series of documentary and fiction features, as well as short films, come from 23 countries and will run on screens Aug. 14-20 in two of the city’s Cinepolis cinemas. The cinema chain’s Fundacion Cinepolis is the event organizer.

Unlike last year, this year’s festival will have two competitive sections: best Mexican documentary and best Mexican short.

Mexico has no shortage of human rights issues for documentarians to tackle, and among the fare at this year’s festival are themes such as migration, global warming, freedom of expression, child prostitution and the slayings of women in Ciudad Juarez.

Productions included in the program range from films such as “Los Que Se Quedan” (“Those Who Remain”), “Voces Silenciadas” (“Silenced Voices”) and “Sin Nombre” (“Nameless”), which have already made the film festival rounds, to less prominent documentaries.

Last year’s event attracted fewer than 4,000 visitors, and about 1,000 of those attended an open-air film broadcast in Mexico City’s Zocalo. In a city of more than 20 million people, that’s not a great turnout.

This year, organizers are going to charge 20 pesos per ticket, unlike last year, when screenings were free.

It’s hoped that charging for tickets might encourage more people to come and see the films. Lorena Guille, executive director of Fundacion Cinepolis, said, “There is a cultural perception here that what’s free isn’t of good quality.”

– Deborah Bonello in Mexico City for the Los Angeles Times.

Mexican photographer Carlos Cazalis was one of the winners in this year’s World Press Photo contest. The photographer was given first prize in the Contemporary Issues section for this image he took in São Paulo, Brazil, last year.

The photo shows a man sleeping, wrapped in a blanket against the cold, outside São Paulo’s elite Jockey Club.

More than 10,000 people in the Brazilian metropolis are homeless. The city’s authorities maintain 35 shelters for overnight stays, with capacity for 8,000 people. But many of those who sleep on the streets resist the rules and social conventions enforced in the shelters, according to the World Press Photo site.

Cazalis took questions about the photo at a press launch of the World Press Photo exhibition at the Franz Mayer Museum in downtown Mexico City Wednesday. He said that he is fascinated by today’s modern cities and the lack of contact inhabitants have with nature.

“We live beneath concrete in an unnatural state,” he said.

Speaking about homeless people who live on the streets of Brazil, Cazalis said: “Many of them are happy to be homeless – what pains them is the treatment they receive from people.

“Sleeping on the street isn’t comfortable for anyone, but deciding where in a city you’re going to spend the night is a freedom few of us have.”

The winning photo was distributed by the photo agency Corbis.

The exhibition, which will visit more than 45 cities as part of its world tour, includes work from 62 photographers from 27 countries. Here in Mexico City, the show will open its doors to the public on Friday and run until Sept. 6.

Other winners from Latin America included Lissette Lemus of El Salvador, who won first prize for daily life with this image about gang violence in her country, and Luiz Vasconcelos of Brazil, who impressed the judges with this shot of a woman resisting a police eviction of squatters from private land near the city of Manaus, in the Brazilian state of Amazonas.

The photo of the year prize went to American photographer Anthony Suau. His winning image shows detective Robert Kole of the Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Office entering a home in Cleveland, Ohio, on March 26, 2008, following a mortgage foreclosure and eviction.

“He needs to check that the owners have vacated the premises, and that no weapons have been left lying around. Officers go in at gunpoint as a precaution, as many houses have been vandalized or occupied by squatters or drug addicts,” says the World Press caption on the image.

Click here for a full list of winners.

– Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Images: Top: A man sleeps, wrapped against the cold outside São Paulo’s elite Jockey Club. Credit: Carlos Cazalis.

Middle: Photographer Carlos Cazalis. Credit: Victor Romero.

Bottom: Detective Robert Kole of the Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Office entering a home in Cleveland, Ohio, following mortgage foreclosure and eviction. Credit: Anthony Suau.

* This post was edited at 12:26 pm Mexico City time. The winning photo was distributed, not bought, by Corbis, the photo agency that represents Cazalis.

The Dart Center, a Columbia University project for journalists who cover violence, got in touch with me after I published a video report on survival training for journalists in Mexico earlier this year.

The Dart Center’s reason for being is laid out on its site:

The Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, a project of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, is dedicated to informed, innovative and ethical news reporting on violence, conflict and tragedy.

Whether the topic is street crime, family violence, natural disaster, war or human rights, effective news reporting on traumatic events demands knowledge, skill and support. The Dart Center provides journalists around the world with the resources necessary to meet this challenge, drawing on a global, interdisciplinary network of news professionals, mental health experts, educators and researchers.

With that in mind, it’s not surprising that the situation for journalists in Mexico, which has now been in decline for some years, caught their attention. Read the article here.

– Deborah Bonello in Mexico City for MexicoReporter.com

Daniel is currently in Los Angeles where he is going to be speaking at MOCA as part of the Zocalo Public Lecture Series. He suggests you book ahead.

On Tuesday, Daniel was in with Gustavo Arellano – creator of Ask a Mexican – on 90.7 KPFK-FM talking about Mexico City, Los Angeles, multi-media storytelling and more. Check it out here or below.

For more recent posts on the working conditions for journalists in Mexico go here.