I was asked to watch the film Mauilapolis and write a review on what I thought was important about it and also what I found to be shocking or interesting. I just wanted to start out by saying that watching this film made me a little emotional because I have very close friends who are Hispanic and they have told me of struggles that their family has had that are very similar to this. With that being said, the film is about Hispanic workers along the border of the United States and Mexico who work in sweatshops trying to make ends meet. One of the very first things that surprised me was in the intro of the film. Carmen said that she had worked in 9 assembly plants in her life. This really surprised me because it shows that not only do these poor people have to work in these terrible factories, they also are tossed around to different plants throughout their lives when one of them closes or gets shipped off to another country like what happened to the Sanyo plant. At the Sanyo plant, I was horrified to find out that one of the workers said that her nose used to bleed from the chemicals that she was inhaling and that she wasn’t allowed to drink water or go to the bathroom so she had kidney problems. I found this absolutely terrible that these factories could get away with treating their employees so badly. When Sanyo left, they took off without even giving their employees severance. One of the workers quoted this as saying, “they departed with their hands full and left us with our hands empty”. In Chilpancingo, it was really sad to hear how the river had turned disgusting. The lady said that it used to be crystal clear but now since the factories had been there it turns red, green, and foamy. She even said that it gave her niece hives and other problems for her relatives. I think that this is a very sad reality that these women face because there isn’t much they can do about their situation. Even though there wasn’t much they could do, some of the women who got sick and tired of the river actually banded together and voiced their opinions about wanting the river cleaned up and eventually, after far too long in my opinion, there was somewhat of a move to clean up the area. I think it’s sickening, however, that even though the women in Mexico get treated badly and get paid little to nothing, the women in Asia are even worse off. This film really showcases that the women in Mexico who work in these sweatshops get treated horribly and get paid little but despite all of that, they still go to work because they have to. It was a really empowering film to watch but it was also heartbreaking at times to see just what these poor people have to go through on an everyday basis just to live the life they have, which isn’t much.
