The widening
of the gap between rich and poor is a global problem but none more so than at
the border between the USA and it's neighbouring Latin American countries. Marc
Silver and Gael Garcia Bernal’s documentary does not deal with the economic
migrants that manage to get into one of the worlds riches countries but these
that die in the attempt. It's in the Sonora Desert, Arizona, which borders
Mexico, that we find the 'The corridor of death' where it is alleged hundreds
of bodies lie undiscovered and 700 of the 2000 of those that were found over
the last ten years have never been identified - lost to their families and
friends for ever.
This
documentary is the story one such ‘body’, how the remains were found in the
desert, like most of the other unfortunates, with no paperwork or form of identity,
only in this case a tattoo spread across his chest which included two words ‘Dayani
Cristal’, the investigators had no idea if this was the mans name or some other
form of identification? It was on the 3rd August 2013 that the body
was found, the only certainty was that this man was an ‘illegal’. The Search
and Rescue Unit of the County Sheriffs Department took the body to the Tucson
mortuary in a body bag; various dedicated professionals are tasked to
investigate this poor souls identity with only the tattoo to go by. They
include the County’s Medical Examiner, the Missing Persons Investigator and the
forensic team as well as many hard working public servants from both sides of
the border.
Sometimes the journey does not end well! |
We find out
who this man is and were he comes from, but I’ll only reveal what you have probably
already guessed. Our John Doe is a poverty level Farmer trying to eke out a
living to support his wife and two children. The film goes into detail about
the journey this man has to undertake to reach his goal of the ‘promised land’
and the chance of a better living to allow him to send back money to his
impoverished family.
No one knows
how many people actually manage to cross into the USA because only the failures
are recorded. In the year 2000 there were 19 migrant deaths per year, since
then the death toll has increased ten fold! Who Is
Dayani Cristal? (2013) is the story of
people that progress from a dream to a statistic tempted by a capitalism
society that if they should succeed to reach will only exploit them! This is a
story of people that are invisible in life as well as death. Unbelievable our
victim was found just a twenty minutes car journey from the centre of Tucson! A
moving, unsentimental documentary, about the tragedy that befalls many economic
migrants.
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