A Documentary Film by Red Envelope Entertainment

2009

For decades I have stocked frozen broccoli into commercial freezers knowing that my livelihood was, at least in this small sense, partially supported by corporate terrorism. To understand that American corporations have, with the aid of our military, exported terror to the small corners of this hemisphere in order to make a buck off of us with some little brown guys’ sweat and blood, all you need to do is read about the history of the U.S. Marine Corp.

I have always had a keen interest in dirty little commercial wars, particularly since I have known military men who fought in them, and janitors that have fled from them. However, this documentary is not about the Latin American terror networks supported by American stockholders. This is a really passive, small scale effort to document the struggles of one small town Ecuadorian lawyer to represent the indigenous people of his country against American profiteers past and present.

With a film like this I use the camera as my spy. For me, the most telling scene was when the lawyer visited his brother’s grave. His brother had been mistaken for him by oil company enforcers who dealt out a gruesome death. This and all of the brutal intricacies of terrorizing little brown people with our big American dollars in the process of acquiring fruit, oil and drugs, is completely glossed over. The film focuses on the legal, environmental and personal issues. The filmmaker should have at least interviewed a paramilitary source.

The film falls short of investigation and activism, and, I think, carves out a central place for itself in the debate unheard. To my White Supremacist friends—and I have a few—those Hispanic construction workers flooding into our local economies are not invaders. They are owned by the same entities that own us. They are the field hands of this worldwide plantation, and we are just jealous because Master is allowing them up into this Big House…