Visual Anthropology

Monterey County Herald

Men are absent from the streets. It is often several years before they return from their farmworking, gardening or construction jobs across the border. Sometimes they don’t return at all, leaving their wives and children to live in shame.

The rural Mexican town of Ayutla is like so many other pueblitos (villages) — where economic opportunities are so lacking that men leave their families to try their luck in the United States.

The compelling story of Ayutla’s economic flight has been put to film — a work called simply “Ayutla” — by CSU-Monterey Bay students Annalisa Moore, Jessica Schorer and Jaymee Castillo. The students came across the town while doing ethnographic field research as part of a CSU-Monterey Bay anthropology class last year.

“We wanted to show the human side, the sacrifices people make to be part of the globalized marketplace,” said Moore, who is shopping it around various film festivals. >>continue