On Tuesday, June 25th in Berkeley, California John Carlos Frey read from his book, “Sand and Blood: America’s Stealth War on the Mexico Border” and discuss America’s immigration policies, the militarization of the border and American Racism. Today’s program will feature his talk and the film Harvest of Empire.
John Carlos Frey
“Sand and Blood America’s Stealth War on the Mexico Border”
“Sand and Blood: America’s Stealth War on the Mexico Border” is a damning portrait of the southern border, where militaristic fantasies are being unleashed and violent technologies are being tested, always targeting impoverished immigrants.
The groundwork for our current situation began in the 1980s and 1990s. But after 9/11, while Americans’ attention was trained on the Middle East, a War on Terror was ramping up on our own soil—aimed not at terrorists but at economic migrants, refugees, and families from South and Central America seeking jobs, safety, and freedom in the US. The Border Patrol grew exponentially, ICE detention centers cropped up across the country, and the southern border has become more militarized than ever before. But we are no safer. Instead, families are being ripped apart, undocumented people are living in fear, and thousands of migrants have died in detention or crossing the border.
John Carlos Frey is an investigative reporter and documentary filmmaker based in Los Angeles. A five-time Emmy Award winner, he is a special correspondent for PBS NewsHour, a former correspondent for The Marshall Project, and a longtime Type Investigations journalist at the Type Media Center. His investigative work has been featured on 60 Minutes, PBS, and Dan Rather Reports, and in the Los Angeles Times, the Huffington Post, Salon, Need to Know online, the Washington Monthly, and El Diario. His documentary films include “The Invisible Mexicans of Deer Canyon”, “The Invisible Chapel”, “The 800 Mile Wall”, and “The Real Death Valley.” He is the 2012 recipient of the Scripps Howard Award, the Sigma Delta Chi award, the IRE Medal, and the Polk Award, among others, for his investigative work.
Harvest of Empire
The Untold Story of Latinos in America
“We are all Americans of the New World, and our most dangerous enemies
are not each other, but the great wall of ignorance between us.”
Juan González, Harvest of Empire
At a time of heated and divisive debate over immigration, Onyx Films is proud to present Harvest of Empire, a feature-length documentary that reveals the direct connection between the long history of U.S. intervention in Latin America and the immigration crisis we face today.
Based on the groundbreaking book by award-winning journalist and Democracy Now! Co-host Juan González, Harvest of Empire takes an unflinching look at the role that U.S. economic and military interests played in triggering an unprecedented wave of migration that is transforming our nation’s cultural and economic landscape.
From the wars for territorial expansion that gave the U.S. control of Puerto Rico, Cuba and more than half of Mexico, to the covert operations that imposed oppressive military regimes in the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador, Harvest of Empire unveils a moving human story that is largely unknown to the great majority of citizens in the U.S.
As Juan González says at the beginning of the film “They never teach us in school that the huge Latino presence here is a direct result of our own government’s actions in Mexico, the Caribbean and Central America over many decades — actions that forced millions from that region to leave their homeland and journey north.”
Harvest of Empire provides a rare and powerful glimpse into the enormous sacrifices and rarely-noted triumphs of our nation’s growing Latino community. The film features present day immigrant stories, rarely seen archival material, as well as interviews with such respected figures as Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Rigoberta Menchú, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Junot Díaz, Mexican historian Dr. Lorenzo Meyer, journalists María Hinojosa and Geraldo Rivera, Grammy award-winning singer Luis Enrique, and poet Martín Espada.