Jobs, Labor, and Financial Empowerment
I remember seeing Salt of the Earth with my mother. My mom and I went to Chinatown; it was being shown in Chinatown at this school. And we went to see it and then we had Chinese food. Let's go eat! For us that were young radicals, like myself, who was a community organizer-- I just started getting involved in grassroots organizing-- it was really important to see this. And also that tie with Mexico and the labor history, the border history. -Diana Solís
Central to the Festival’s vision of what women can do was a wide-ranging understanding of labor, job discrimination, and financial empowerment for Latinas, Latinos, and other women.
With screenings alternating between films for women and children, Salt of the Earth (1954) was shown at 2:15PM. Directed by blacklisted filmmaker Herbert Biberman at the height of U.S. McCarthyism and the Red Scare, this dramatic film was based on the 1951 strike against the Empire Mining Company in New Mexico and was an early film focused on the rights struggles of women. With actual miners from the strike and their families acting in the film, Salt of the Earth was denounced by the U.S. House of Representatives, investigated by the FBI, and went unscreened for ten years after opening night.
One of Its stars, Mexican immigrant Rosaura Revueltas, poignantly played the wife of a mine worker who maintains the picket line with other community women when the all-male miners are barred from legally picketing by the Taft-Hartley Act. With much harassment during filming, Revueltas was arrested by immigration officials and deported towards the end of film production.
For more information about Salt of the Earth (Biberman, 1954), see the University of Montana Library’s Salt of the Earth Research Guide.
The film Salt of the Earth (Biberman, 1954) was selected for the National Film Registry in 1992 by the Library of Congress. Stream it for free!
Here's an interview with the granddaughter of performer Rosaura Revueltas, Eva Bodenstedt, about her grandmother and other family members prominent in the arts in Mexico (in Spanish).
SOURCES
Biberman, Herbert, director. Salt of the Earth. The International Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers, 1954. 1 hr., 34 min. https://vimeo.com/510459760