gang violence

The ongoing ICE sweeps taking place across Los Angeles and the country have underscored the many challenges faced by immigrant communities. For decades, migrants across Latin America have traversed rugged terrain and seas in search of a better life in the United States, often risking their lives in the process. Various films have captured the complexities of the Latino immigrant experience. Here are five of them.

“El Norte” (1983) directed by Gregory Nava

Siblings Rosa and Enrique Xuncax (played by Zaide Silvia Gutiérrez and David Villalpando, respectively) decide to flee to the U.S. after their family is killed in the Guatemalan Civil War, a government-issued massacre that decimated the country’s Maya population. After a dangerous trek through Mexico, Rosa and Enrique find themselves in Los Angeles, the land of hopes and dreams — or so they think. The 1983 narrative is the first independent film to be nominated for an Academy Award for original screenplay; it was later added to the National Film Registry in 1995.

Decades later, “El Norte” still feels prescient.

“[Everything] that the film is about is once again here with us,” Nava told The Times in January. “All of the issues that you see in the film haven’t gone away. The story of Rosa and Enrique is still the story of all these refugees that are still coming here, seeking a better life in the United States.”

“Under the Same Moon” (2007) directed by Patricia Riggen

Separated by borders, 9-year-old Carlitos (Adrián Alonso) yearns to reunite with his mother, Rosario (Kate del Castillo), who left him behind in Mexico with his ailing grandmother. After his grandmother passes, Carlitos unexpectedly flees alone to find his mother in Los Angeles, encountering harrowing scenarios as he pieces together details of her exact location. Directed by Patricia Riggen as her first full-length feature, it made its debut at Sundance Film Festival in 2007, where it received a standing ovation.

“All these people risked their lives crossing the border, leaving everything behind, for love,” says Riggen. “For love of their families who they’re going to go reach, for love of their families who they leave behind and send money to. But it always has to do with love and family.”

“Una Noche” (2012) directed by Lucy Mulloy

There is no other option but the sea for the three Cuban youths in “Una Noche” who attempt to flee their impoverished island on a raft after one of them, Raúl, is falsely accused of assaulting a tourist. Lila follows her twin brother Elio, who is best friends with Raúl, but all is tested in the 90 miles it takes to get to Miami. The 2012 drama-thriller premiered in the U.S. at the Tribeca Film Festival, where it won three top awards; its real-life actors Anailín de la Rúa de la Torre (Lila) and Javier Nuñez Florián (Elio) disappeared during the screening while in a stopover in Miami, later indicating that they were defecting.

By this time, it was not uncommon to hear of Cuban actors and sports stars defecting to the U.S.

“[Anailín and Javier] are quite whimsical and I can see how they’d decide to do something like this,” said director Lucy Mulloy when the news broke in 2012. “But this is also an important life decision, and no one in Cuba takes it lightly.”

“I’m No Longer Here” (2019) directed by Fernando Frías de la Parra

Ulises (Juan Daniel García Treviño) shines as the leader of Los Terkos, a Cholombiano subculture group in Monterrey known for their eclectic fashion and affinity for dancing and listening to slowed down cumbias. But after a misunderstanding makes him and his family the target of gang violence, he flees to New York City, where he must learn to navigate the unknown world as an individual at its fringes. The 2019 film swept Mexico’s Ariel awards upon its release and was shortlisted in the international feature film category to represent Mexico at the 93rd Academy Awards.

The contemporary film provided a nuanced perspective on the topic of migration that did not always hinge on violence.

“The idea was to have a film that is more open and has more air so that you can, as an audience, maybe see that yes, violence is part of that environment,” said director Fernando Frías de la Parra to The Times in 2021. “But so is joy and growth and other things.”

“I Carry You With Me” (2020) directed by Heidi Ewing

Iván’s (Armando Espitia) life appears at a standstill — he’s a busboy with aspirations of becoming a chef, and a single dad to his 5-year-old son who lives with his estranged ex. But his monotonous life changes when he meets Gerardo (Christian Vázquez) at a gay bar, which shifts his journey into a blooming love story that traverses borders and decades. The story is inspired by the real-life love story of New York restaurateurs Iván García and Gerardo Zabaleta, strangers-turned-friends of director Heidi Ewing, a documentary filmmaker by training. The 2020 film first premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, where it won the NEXT Innovator and Audience Awards.

Nostalgia was a crucial element for the film, a poignant feeling for those unable to return.

“Sometimes I dream about when I was a kid in Mexico and that makes my day,” said García to The Times in 2021. “That’s all we have left, to live off our memories and our dreams.”

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — A video showing dozens of people marching toward the office of Haiti’s prime minister elicited gasps from some viewers as it circulated recently on social media. The protesters, who are HIV-positive, did not conceal their faces — a rare occurrence in a country where the virus is still heavily stigmatized.

“Call the minister of health! We are dying!” the group chanted.

The protesters risked being shunned by society to warn that Haiti is running out of HIV medication just months after the Trump administration slashed more than 90% of the United States Agency for International Development’s foreign aid contracts and $60 billion in overall aid across the globe.

At a hospital near the northern city of Cap-Haitien, Dr. Eugene Maklin said he struggles to share that reality with his more than 550 HIV patients.

“It’s hard to explain to them, to tell them that they’re not going to find medication,” he said. “It’s like a suicide.”

‘We can’t stay silent’

More than 150,000 people in Haiti have HIV or AIDS, according to official estimates, although nonprofits believe the number is much higher.

David Jeune, a 46-year-old hospital community worker, is among them. He became infected 19 years ago after having unprotected sex.

“I was scared to let people know because they would point their finger at you, saying you are infecting others with AIDS,” he said.

His fear was so great that he didn’t tell anyone, not even his mother. But that fear dissipated with the support Jeune said he received from nonprofit groups. His confidence grew to the point where he participated in last week’s protest.

“I hope Trump will change his mind,” he said, noting that his medication will run out in November. “Let the poor people get the medication they need.”

Patrick Jean Noel, a representative of Haiti’s Federation of Assns. of HIV, said that at least five clinics, including one that served 2,500 patients, were forced to close after the USAID funding cuts.

“We can’t stay silent,” he said. “More people need to come out.”

But most people with HIV in Haiti are reluctant to do so, said Dr. Sabine Lustin, executive director of the Haiti-based nonprofit Promoters of Zero AIDS Goal.

The stigma is so strong that many patients are reluctant to pick up their medication in person. Instead, it is sent in packages wrapped as gifts so as to not arouse suspicion, she said.

Lustin’s organization, which helps some 2,000 people across Haiti, receives funding from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Though its funding hasn’t been cut, she said that shortly after President Trump took office in January, the agency banned HIV prevention activities because they targeted a group that is not a priority — which she understood to be referring to gay men.

That means the organization can no longer distribute up to 200,000 free condoms a year or educate people about the disease.

“You risk an increase in infections,” she said. “You have a young population who is sexually active who can’t receive the prevention message and don’t have access to condoms.”

‘That can’t be silenced’

On the sunny morning of May 19, a chorus of voices drowned out the din of traffic in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, growing louder as protesters with HIV marched defiantly toward the prime minister’s office.

“We are here to tell the government that we exist, and we are people like any other person,” one woman told reporters.

Another marching alongside her said, “Without medication, we are dying. This needs to change.”

Three days after the protest, the leader of Haiti’s transitional presidential council, Louis Gérald Gilles, announced that he had met with activists and would try to secure funding.

Meanwhile, nonprofit organizations across Haiti are fretting.

“I don’t know what we’re going to do,” said Marie Denis-Luque, founder and executive director of CHOAIDS, a nonprofit that cares for Haitian orphans with HIV/AIDS. “We only have medication until July.”

Her voice broke as she described her frantic search for donations for the orphans, who are cared for by HIV-positive women in Cap-Haitien after gang violence forced them to leave Port-au-Prince.

Denis-Luque said she has long advocated for the orphans’ visibility.

“We can’t keep hiding these children. They are part of society,” she said, adding that she smiled when she saw the video of last week’s protest. “I was like, whoa, things have changed tremendously. The stigma is real, but I think what I saw … was very encouraging to me. They can’t be silenced.”

A dangerous combination

Experts say Haiti could see a rise in HIV infections because medications are dwindling at a time that gang violence and poverty are surging.

Dr. Alain Casseus, infectious-disease division chief at Zanmi Lasante, the largest nongovernmental healthcare provider in Haiti, said he expected to see a surge in patients given the funding cuts, but that hasn’t happened because traveling by land in Haiti is dangerous since violent gangs control main roads and randomly open fire on vehicles.

He warned that abruptly stopping medication is dangerous, especially because many Haitians do not have access or cannot afford nutritious food to strengthen their immune system.

“It wouldn’t take long, especially given the situation in Haiti, to enter a very bad phase,” he said of HIV infections. And even if some funding becomes available, a lapse in medication could cause resistance to it, he said.

Casseus said gang violence also could accelerate the rates of infection by rapes or other physical violence as medication runs out.

At the New Hope Hospital run by Maklin in Haiti’s northern region, shelves are running empty. He used to receive more than $165,000 a year to help HIV/AIDS patients. But that funding has dried up.

“Those people are going to die,” he said. “We don’t know how or where we’re going to get more medication.”

The medication controls the infection and allows many to have an average life expectancy. Without it, the virus attacks a person’s immune system and they develop AIDS, the late stage of an HIV infection.

Reaction is swift when Maklin tells his patients that in two months, the hospital won’t have any HIV medication left.

“They say, ‘No, no, no, no!’” he said. “They want to keep living.”

Coto and Sanon write for the Associated Press and reported from San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Port-au-Prince, respectively.