Film Analysis: The Tijuana Project

Tijuana dump workers living in Mexico wake up on a mountain side of trash, and work in the Dump picking up scraps of metal and plastic to sell and recycle. They have the opportunity to work in a shopping mall on the other side of Tijuana. But do not accept the change to work in the mall. Working in the dump is what everyone does so why change and work in the mall. The mexicans in the movie The Tijuana Project became frightened with a rumor of the “Dump” moving locations. And in the book By the Lake of Sleeping Children when the gringos came to help the Mexicans, they didn’t want it because it felt like change to them. Mexicans despise change from occurring in their lives. Citizens of Tijuana wake up everyday, to a backyard full of trash, the local dump where trash is disposed from the neighboring United States city of San Diego and the “factories, streets and neighboring cities around Tijuana” (Tijuana Project). They work in the dump cleaning up pieces of scrap metal and plastic to sell to companies as raw material. The workers would rather work in the dump then go elsewhere to work in a shopping mall on the opposite side of Tijuana because they’d make less working in the shopping Mall than the …show more content…
The dump workers got word that the dump would be moving elsewhere, and when being interviewed they stated “This can’t happen, we live off the dump. It’s our way of life” (Tijuana Project), and “If the dump moves, we’re all going to have to move with it. I hope this will not happen” (Tijuana Project). They feared if the dump moves it would mean staying in the city of Tijuana and working in the shopping mall. Or move with the dump, leaving everything behind they cannot carry. Which would mean building a new house at the new dump. As well as finding a way to be transported to wherever the dump would move