Cartel Land Reflection

 Cartel Land Reflection

     

    The documentary I watched was called Cartel Land(2015) dir. by Matthew Heineman. A scene in the documentary that got to me was when they were showing a funeral. The cartel members killed 15 workers. They died because their boss couldn't pay the cartel, so they punished him by attacking his workers. The filmmakers do a good job of capturing the emotions of the community attending the funeral. The filmmakers show them grieving as a community. The filmmakers interview a member of the community who is describing the event. She goes into greater detail about the tragedy, the why, and how it occurs. I think the scene does a good job of showing the impact the cartel and the violence that comes along with it has on a community. It gives the numbers a face and helps to visualize the pain that this violence is causing. This scene affected me by giving insight into the aftermath of cartel violence and the impact it has on its community.

A part of the documentary that caught me off guard was the sudden hospitalization of Dr. Mireles after he got into a plane crash. I think it caught me off guard because of the way the filmmakers presented it. You get one scene with Mireles looking happy and healthy, and then the very next scene Mireles was in a plane crash. They start showing news footage of him in a stretcher going into the hospital in bad condition. That contrast was very effective in causing a reaction. 

A question that I still have after viewing the film is just how much of an impact did the Autodefensas have on the drug trade and crime rates after they left a town. Dr. Mireles mentioned how they stayed in the town 3-4 days after "liberating" it from the cartels, but what happens to the town and the townspeople after the group left. Feelings of distraught or hopelessness stayed with me after watching the film, it doesn't end on a great note. The people they interview pretty much say that they are in a cycle and that the cartel always wins. A majority of the Autodefensas became a part of a cartel and Dr. Mireles ended up in jail. 

I believe that we avoid research in our summaries to avoid overloading the summary with information. The point of a summary is to get across the information needed to understand what the film is about, you don't need them to understand every little thing. It may end up turning the summary into more of an analysis of the information in it, rather than a summarization of events in the film.