May 31, 2008: If a night at the theater begins with checking your coat in the cloakroom, then a documentary film shoot begins with passing border patrol.

At 10 p.m., I landed in the Damascus airport from Paris. The airport is rather small and our flight from Paris is the only one passing the border control.

Though my tourist visa is still valid, I was told by the Syrian Embassy that I needed a special one for my shoot. Before I left France, the Syrian Ministry of Information provided me with a letter to confirm that the “extension” of my already valid passport would be issued when I arrive in Syria.

I went directly to the officer at the border to show him the letter and my passport. He gives me a hearty grin and stamps my passport, but is perplexed by the letter. In five minutes I am surrounded by immigration officers, who are all looking at my visa and the letter (which is written in English). They don’t seem to understand, nor are they interested that I’m a journalist. Perhaps they don’t see journalists often.

I can’t do much here, so I take my passport and with great relief, I enter into Syria.

I was often told that Syrian security system and military were trained by the Russians. I don’t know. I can hardly imagine a Russian military smiling to a foreign journalist bidding him, “Welcome to Russia.” If I tried to argue with the Russian security at the border I would be escorted into their office, searched and questioned and then probably let into the country. Here in Damascus the rules are strict but people are very nice and welcoming.

The next day at the Information Ministry they reassured me that my visa is not a problem, I can make my film as long as I have permission to film and one of their employees accompanies me during the shoot.

Tania Rahkmanova has made dozens of documentary films on historical and political themes. Iraqi Exodus is her second WIDE ANGLE film — the first was the award-winning Greetings from Grozny. She holds a Ph.D. in applied statistics and has worked as a print and documentary journalist.

Remittances also play a role in easing poverty and reconfiguring social norms in recipient countries. In the Philippines, eight million migrant workers are celebrated patriots back home, where their monies provide a crutch to the economy. In their absence, the Filipino government works to protect migrant rights against exploitation overseas. At home, the cycle continues and former migrant grandparents rear their grandchildren.

There is speculation that a downturn in the U.S. economy could diminish the cash flows migrant workers send home. While Mexico reins in the bulk of U.S. remittances with over $25 billion in 2007, a recent study by the Inter-American Development Bank found that during the first half of 2007, remittances from the U.S. to Mexico remained relatively flat, whereas they had climbed 20 percent over the same period the previous year.

The charts below illustrate the top remittance recipients. Monies are sourced from the U.S. and on the basis of remittances received from around the world. For example, India tops the global remittance recipient list with $27 billion sent home, but only a third stems from the U.S., while other flows come from various countries in the Middle East, the United Kingdom, Canada, as well as neighboring countries.

Remittances from the United States: Top 15 Recipient Countries in U.S. Dollars (2007)

Sources: Manuel Orozco, Estimating Global Remittance Flows: A Methodology, 2007 and International Fund for Agricultural Development, Sending Money Home: Worldwide Remittance Flows to Developing and Transition Countries, 2007.

Remittances from Around the World: Top 15 Recipient Countries in U.S. Dollars (2007)

Sources: World Bank, Migration and Remittances Factbook, 2007.

The day we met, Vilma picked me up at the hotel in her red SUV and said that she still did not quite understand what I was doing there. We ate lunch at a Marie Callender’s and spoke for a long time. She was in tears for much of it; she was in tears before we even got out of the car. She couldn’t utter her son Diego’s name without breaking down. She has never seen WIDE ANGLE’s 18 with a Bullet and has no desire to see it. She wondered aloud why WIDE ANGLE, or anyone for that matter, would care about anything she had to say.

I am a second generation Salvadoran-American, the daughter of Salvadoran immigrants. My parents were bright and educated young people; my father was an engineering student and my mother was a teacher. They came to the U.S. for the promise of bigger and better things. They would come, work in their craft and learn, and go home to help make their country a better place. That was the plan.

When they arrived, my mother worked as a nanny and housekeeper. She received room and board and $100 per month. On her time off, Friday afternoons and Saturdays, she worked in a beauty salon in the Bronx. My aunt Dolores left five kids behind, only to care for and clean up after someone else’s kids in New Jersey. She also worked in a factory and she and my mom pulled all-nighters washing and styling wigs.

My mother and her sister also left behind three younger siblings. In the early 1980’s, amid El Salvador’s bloody civil war, it was nearly impossible to get into the U.S. While the U.S. government financed the conflict, it refused to recognize the victims or provide them political refuge. My mother, who had originally intended to return to her beloved El Salvador, became a US citizen instead and worked relentlessly for almost four years to bring her little sisters and brother to safety. They arrived in 1984.

In 1992, the Salvadoran government and guerilla groups signed a peace accord. Despite great hopes, post-war El Salvador has failed to bring peace, democracy and economic prosperity for all. In fact, only five years after the war ended, El Salvador was the most violent country in the western hemisphere, according to the World Health Organization. Many demobilized young former combatants had few opportunities to change or improve their lives. Small arms were readily available. Furthermore, the U.S. increased its deportation of violent gang members who violated immigration laws. Put these elements together, and you have a social and economic minefield.

This is the world in which Vilma raised her sons, alone. Then a fire destroyed the San Salvador market where she sold her baked goods. Her dwindling resources soon made it impossible to pay for housing, the car, and food. Vilma decided to leave for the United States with the hope of earning more money. For Diego, the very act of his mother leaving to make his life better had the opposite impact. He sought family and found it with the gang. For Vilma, it was an ironic and cruel consequence that nearly invalidated her sacrifices in the United States.

One thing has remained constant across the generations of immigration. It is never easy to be far from home. And yet immigrants make Americans’ lives easier on a daily basis: cleaning our homes, caring for our children, parking our cars, or cooking our meals (if you eat out in New York City, I bet you have at least one meal per week prepared by an immigrant). Free of these burdens, everyone else has the time to be professionals, doctors, entrepreneurs, and even filmmakers.

Vilma works hard: sweeping, mopping, wiping; stovetops, venetians, under the sink, behind the fridge, inside the vase, on top of the bookshelf where no one even looks…it is backbreaking work. And I know that now. One day when we were filming, a homeowner asked that I not film in their house. I wanted to be helpful, so Vilma agreed to let me clean. Let me tell you, I was exhausted after about an hour. Vilma took one look at my work and suggested that I stick to making TV.

It has been eight years since she left El Salvador. Vilma did not think she would be here this long and does not know when she might go back; she very much wants to see her son and family. I sensed a streak of resentment in Vilma because she feels forced to stay in the U.S. Despite the accusations she sees on the evening news that illegal immigrants steal our public services, Vilma contributes here and pays taxes like everyone else. She has no health insurance and despite my own observation of her less than optimum health, she says she has never gone to the hospital. “Whenever I feel ill,” she says, “the cure is thinking about the bill!”

Vilma is a fighter with a heart of gold. She is keen about helping the immigrant cause. After evading the idea of being on TV, she concluded that she was in a better position to do this than others who do not have legal status. She has a heart, a conscience and admirable empathy.

Diego’s mom inspires me and devastates me. She makes me proud of her, of my mother, my aunts and all the women who have left entire lives behind to make life a little better for their families back home and especially us, their children. I hope Vilma’s future and that of her family are more like my own. I hope Vilma can not only improve the lot of her family, but also improve her own life and be happy. My own mother survived 35 years of racism, classism, and xenophobia, but never wasted an opportunity. Today she is a public school teacher and a PhD candidate in Education. She is and has always been an asset to this country, and so is Vilma and millions like them. Perhaps the acknowledgment of this fact is a necessary step in improving U.S. immigration policy.

Photo credit: Simon Vanquaethem

For the summer 2008 re-broadcast, WIDE ANGLE follows the film with an update that tells another side of this transnational story. Like many Salvadoran gang members, Travieso was separated from his mother when she went north to find work in the United States. Today, she runs a successful cleaning business in the U.S. and holds a temporarily legal immigration status, but her sacrifices and the remittances sent home have not managed to give Travieso the better life she had dreamed for him. This mother’s story paints a nuanced portrait of one immigrant’s experience and the sometimes heartbreaking difficulties of life stretched across borders.

In this lesson, students will look at the harsh realities of gang life, the impact of gang life on El Salvador society, and what is and isn’t being done to resolve the issue of gang violence in this Central American nation. They will use this information to write “letters home” to describe what gang life will be like, or what steps are being taken to curb gangs and gang violence.

Grade Level: 9-12

Subject Matter: Sociology, Social Problems, Global Affairs, Comparative Politics and Government

Time Allotment: : 3-4 days (based on a 50-minute class period)

Learning Objectives

As a result of completing the lesson, the students will be able to:

• Identify causes and results of gang development and violence
• Investigate the sociological, economic, and political implications of gang violence in El Salvador
• Understand concerns, fears, and personalities of gang members
• Consider solutions to solve political and social instability in El Salvador

Standards:

This lesson meets the following standards set by the Mid-Continent Research for Education and Learning (http://www.mcrel.org/standards-benchmarks/)

Behavioral Studies:

Benchmark 1.
Understands that conflict between people or groups may arise from competition over ideas, resources, power, and/or status

Benchmark 2.
Understands that social change, or the prospect of it, promotes conflict because social, economic, and political changes usually benefit some groups more than others (which is also true of the status quo)

Benchmark 3.
Understands that conflicts are especially difficult to resolve in situations in which there are few choices and little room for compromise

Benchmark 5.
Understands that conflict within a group may be reduced by conflict between it and other groups

Civics:

Benchmark 2.
Knows alternative ideas about the purposes and functions of law (e.g., regulating relationships among people and between people and their government; providing order, predictability, security, and established procedures for the management of conflict; regulating social and economic relationships in civil society)

Benchmark 4.
Understands the argument that poverty, unemployment, and urban decay serve to limit both political and economic rights

Language Arts:

Benchmark 8.
Writes fictional, biographical, autobiographical, and observational narrative compositions (e.g., narrates a sequence of events; evaluates the significance of the incident; provides a specific setting for scenes and incidents; provides supporting descriptive detail [specific names for people, objects, and places; visual details of scenes, objects, and places; descriptions of sounds, smells, specific actions, movements, and gestures; the interior monologue or feelings of the characters]; paces the actions to accommodate time or mood changes; creates a unifying theme or tone; uses literary devices to enhance style and tone)

Benchmark 9.
Writes persuasive compositions that address problems/solutions or causes/effects (e.g., articulates a position through a thesis statement; anticipates and addresses counter arguments; backs up assertions using specific rhetorical devices [appeals to logic, appeals to emotion, uses personal anecdotes]; develops arguments using a variety of methods such as examples and details, commonly accepted beliefs, expert opinion, cause-and-effect reasoning, comparison-contrast reasoning)

Benchmark 11.
Writes reflective compositions (e.g., uses personal experience as a basis for reflection on some aspect of life, draws abstract comparisons between specific incidents and abstract concepts, maintains a balance between describing incidents and relating them to more general abstract ideas that illustrate personal beliefs, moves from specific examples to generalizations about life)

Standard 2, Benchmark 1.
Uses precise and descriptive language that clarifies and enhances ideas and supports different purposes (e.g., to stimulate the imagination of the reader, to translate concepts into simpler or more easily understood terms, to achieve a specific tone, to explain concepts in literature)

In San Salvador, El Salvador, 2,000 miles from Los Angeles’s Eighteenth Street, a gang known as “18″ governs its territory like an armed militia. In the mid 1990s, thousands of Salvadoran nationals living illegally in the U.S. were deported to their homeland. Some brought L.A. gang culture back with them to a country beset by poverty and awash in arms. Organizing support for gang members in need, meting out justice to those who would defy the gang’s code and waging an endless vendetta against its enemies, 18 is helping to make El Salvador one of the most violent and crime-ridden countries in the world.

ABOUT THE FILM

WIDE ANGLE’s film, 18 with a Bullet, follows the life of this notorious Central American gang for six months. By the end of the film, most of the gang members profiled – Slappy, Sochi, and 18-year old Travieso – are in jail serving long sentences for their crimes.

For the summer 2008 re-broadcast, WIDE ANGLE follows the film with an update that tells another side of this transnational story. Like many Salvadoran gang members, Travieso was separated from his mother when she went north to find work in the United States.

Today, she runs a successful cleaning business in the U.S. and holds a temporarily legal immigration status, but her sacrifices and the remittances sent home have not managed to give Travieso the better life she had dreamed for him. This mother’s story paints a nuanced portrait of one immigrant’s experience and the sometimes heartbreaking difficulties of life stretched across borders.