Perry Films: Valley Press

Valley of Tears Reviews

VARIETY Review

A Seventh Art Releasing release of a David Sandoval & Perry Films presentation. Produced by Hart Perry. Executive producer, David Sandoval. Co-producer, Richard Lowe. Directed by Hart Perry. Screenplay, Juan Gonzalez.

With: Juanita Valdez, Jesus Moya, Juan Guerra, Marcial Silva, Oscar Correa, Winnie Wetegrove, Paul Whitworth, Tocho Almendarez, Barbara Savage, Norris McGee, Mike Crowell, Larry Spence, Othal Brand, Adriana Flores, Pete Moreno, Fred Klosterman, Quina Flores, Peter Flores, Joe Herrod.

(English, Spanish dialogue)

By ROBERT KOEHLER

Years as Barbara Kopple's cinematographer serve documaker Hart Perry wellwith his magnificent cinema verite epic of campesino struggle in a small south Texas town, "Valley of Tears." Fascinating assemblage combines strike footage first shot in 1979 by Perry when he was working for the Texas Farm Workers Union with film and video lensed over the ensuing 20-plus years. Result reps expansive study of a community riven by race and feudal economics. Major fests have mysteriously ignored Perry's film, but smart ones like L.A. Latino fest have given it a decent profile preceding solid international tube life.

Perry jumps right into the action as onion field workers in Raymondville, Texas, rallied by United Farm Workers organizers like Jesus Moya strike against landowner Charles Wetegrove & Co. Their basic complaint -- that the wage of 25¢ for filling one bag of onions hadn't changed over nearly 20 years -- gathers force in the broader Latino section of town.

Anglo farmers and landowners reflect nostalgically on happier times (encapsulated in choice archive footage of Raymondville's annual Onion Parade), but quickly realize the conflict is setting up a racial divide neither side quite knows how to contend with.

The town's bloody early 20th century history is presented to explain the arrogant and threatening behavior of white power brokers, who ultimately manage to break the strike. But as title cards indicate, this is only Part One of the tale. Part Two's dramatically tells of the Latino community's efforts after the strike to reform the historically white dominated county school board.

Pic draws telling links between the overtly feudal nature of the local industry and the treatment of farm workers' kids in schools as second-class citizens. The school board election shows a dramatic spike in Latino voter turnout, but results in the re-election of the "good ol' boys."

Real change appears impossible in Raymondville, whose agricultural production declines so much that by the '90s, the forlorn town looks like it belongs in a Larry McMurtry novel. In conditions of grinding poverty and stubborn racism, county district attorney Juan Guerra is seen as a real hero in Part Three, as he continues to press for school reforms and generally angers the local power elite. Guerra's fortunes rise and fall like up and down harvest years, and though pic's final thoughts are optimistic, the setting's general sadness is hard to ignore.

Some Anglos come off none too well in front of Perry's stealthy, probing camera, and the good-guy-bad-guy lines seem drawn more cleanly than reality would allow, which can be a flaw of politically committed filmmaking.

Pic blends film and vid-shot footage nicely, firmly in Kopple's docu style, free of visual devices or trickery.

Camera (DuArt color, DV), Perry; editor, Richard Lowe; music, Phil Marsh; sound, Pamela Yates; associate producer, Audrey Costadina; consulting producer, Hector Galan. Reviewed on videotape, L.A., July 28, 2003. (In L.A. Latino and South by Southwest film festivals.) Running time: 80 MIN.

Time Out New York

Valley of Tears
Dir. Hart Perry. 2003. N/R. 82 mins.
Documentary

As gripping as fiction, this examination of race, class and corruption in Raymondville, a small town in south Texas, starts with a 1979 farmworker's strike and chronicles its bitter aftermath, still festering
nearly 25 years later.

Commissioned by the Texas Farm Workers Union to document its efforts, Hart Perry (who shot Barbara Kopple's Harlan County, USA) arrived in Raymondville as local Mexican -American onion pickers, frustrated with low wages and harsh working conditions, went on strike against farm owner
Charles Wetegrove. Within a week, the largest grower in the region bought Wetegrove's crop and broke the strike.

TFWU members stayed and involved themselves in other community issues, notably the second-class treatment of Mexican-American students. They also helped put a sympathetic candidate on the school-board ballot, only to see him defeated amid bitter accusations of election fraud.

After a falling out with the TFWU Perry continued the project on his own, following the shifting fortunes of Mexican-American district attorney Juan Guerra in the '90's and interviewing everyone from strikers an TFWU activists to Raymondsville farmers and business owners. The gulf between the recollections of white Texans and those of their Mexican-American counterparts is so wide, it begs comparison to Rashomon. The former recall a racially harmonious community of Onion Queen pageants and farmworkers who were happy until outside agitators riled them up. The latter remember the strike as springing from decades of entrenched inequality.

Though, Hart refrains from overt editorializing, his desolate contemporary footage of Raymondville suggests that the town is doomed by its poisonous history. (opens Fri; Pioneer)

--- Maitland McDonagh

Other Reviews:

"VALLEY OF TEARS is a powerful moral and political statement, as well as a beautiful work of art. It belongs beside other honored documentaries such as HOOP DREAMS or ENDURANCE because it tells a story of the struggle for survival and for human dignity that you will not easily forget."

--- John Nichols, author of The Milagro Beanfield War

'Valley of Tears'
Mexican-Americans Struggle for Equality in a Small South Texas Town

Austin360
Fri., March 7, 2003

When most people hear the phrase "civil rights movement" they tend to think of the struggle by blacks for an end to segregation. Seldom do they think of the struggle by Mexican-Americans to break free of their own social prisons.

"Valley of Tears" documents one such struggle in the small South Texas town of Raymondville. From the onion strikes of 1979 to the present day, we are shown the stark contrasts in the way it was then to the way it is now. We learn of the fight for decent wages; the battle to get the town's Spanish-speaking children through school, despite a school system that seemed hell-bent on driving them out; the push to elect Mexican-Americans to local government.

We learn about the struggle from both sides -- brown and white -- from footage and interviews at the time events were unfolding, and from interviews shot today. And although the film is presented from the Mexican-Americans' standpoint, we are given enough information from both sides to be able to draw pretty concrete conclusions about who has the cleaner hands.

Thoroughly uplifting, often shocking, "Valley of Tears" is well worth your time. Perry can pat himself on the back for this one. His attempts to capture the frailties of modern relationships has been achieved.

--- Grant

"Documentary Brings Back Bitter-Sweet Memories"
By Steve Taylor, The Brownsville Herald

AUSTIN, March 15, 2003 - "Valley of Tears," directed by Hart Perry, centers on the Raymondville onion strike of 1979, when farm workers stopped working over a pay dispute. The film, being shown as part of Austin's South by Southwest Film Festival, also records the struggle of Hispanic families through the 1980s to get representation on the board of Raymondville ISD.

Willacy County District Attorney Juan Guerra is featured heavily in the film, as he leads a community effort to get a better education for Raymondville students that have dropped out of school.
"I thought the movie was great, very powerful," said Guerra. "It showed the history of Raymondville and Willacy County and how, back then, we lagged behind other Rio Grande Valley communities. While they were moving forward and being inclusive, we were stuck in the early 1900s, with Hispanics struggling to make their voices heard."

Perry, a New Yorker, recorded the onion strike by accident. He had been commissioned by the Texas Farm Workers Union to do a documentary on the union. He got to the Valley just as the 1979 onion strike was starting and soon fell out with the union."We did have a disagreement," said Perry, who introduced the film at a SXSW showing last Monday. "I thought the story of the town was far more interesting. It was not a black and white story of migrant farm workers being exploited. It was more complex than that. I thought it was about a community that was out of touch with each other."

At one point, a Raymondville man is seen brandishing a handgun at the strikers. Then sheriff's deputy and now Willacy County Sheriff Larry Spence had to rush in stop the man from shooting. Spence hasn't seen the film but probably will when it reaches the Valley. He hopes it does not stir up bad memories in the community. "A lot of things were being said and tossed around that were not actually going on," Spence said. "The strikers would set fire to onions and punch radiators. It just left a bad taste in everybody's mouth." The strike was effectively ended when former McAllen mayor and farmer Othal Brand struck a deal with the Wetegrove family and brought his own farm workers in to harvest the crops.