Valley Of Tears

This sobering documentary by Barbara Koppel's cameraman Hart Perry begins as a fairly straightforward look at a farm-workers strike that once divided a small South Texas town, but ends as a profound investigation of how racism and a long legacy of unfair labor practices turned a thriving farm community into a virtual ghost town. Since its founding, Raymondville, Texas, was always dependent on two things: onions and the predominantly Mexican-American migrant laborer force required to harvest them by hand. But in April, 1979, a crisis shattered the ordinarily stable relations between onion growers and their hired pickers: Laborers for Charles Wetegrove & Co. realized t...