La jaula de oro: The Border Crossing Journey as Dream and Reality

Abstract

Diego Quemada-Díez's La jaula de oro (2013) follows undocumented young migrants on their way from their native Guatemala through Mexico with the intention to cross into the United States. The picture belongs to a large corpus of border-crossing films which explore reasons and desires that make people risk their lives for a place that they know only from hearsay. This article undertakes an intersectional analysis of La jaula de oro, while probing its connection to Latin American socio-critical film and the road movie genre. Images that document complex social and historical realities and which determine power relations along the axis of age, gender and race, are juxtaposed by a visual terminology that has utopian quality. Picturing conditions and limitations of female and Indigenous protagonists who are subject to repression from within the migration group, border authorities, and organized crime groups, La jaula de oro presents the border crossing journey to be lined with danger and violence where the wide horizon keeps holding the promise of a dignified life.