Films about Latin America

A number of photographs are scattered throughout the chapters. One of note is that of Josefina Fierro de Bright, a leading Mexican American civil rights activist who helped organize the Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee in the 1940s. Her mother, Josefa Fierro, was a vital member of La Junta. Among other things, she smuggled guns into Mexico in support of insurgent actions. This, along with a long and tangled cast of characters and events, compels careful and engaged reading. Those who undertake it are rewarded by sentences like “Corral hung a cloak of falsehoods over the raids” (246) and “It was the Twitter feed of the printing press era” (255).