Building the American Dream is set to premiere on Tuesday, September 15th on PBS.
By Ana Perez
Chelsea Hernandez grew up surrounded by two things: media and the ever growing Texas skyline. The Mexican-American filmmaker entered the world of media at a young age. At just nine years old, Hernandez co-hosted and co-produced a children’s educational show with her mother. Since then, Hernandez continued to pursue media attending the University of Texas at Austin where she was the first in her family to receive a degree, a Bachelor of Arts in Radio and Television.
Hernandez experienced Texas’s boom by watching the skyline change dramatically, but what she was initially unaware of was the amount of people dying to make those buildings a reality. Throughout her school years, Hernandez met other filmmakers and began experimenting and finding her style of storytelling as well as ideas for future projects, including the idea for her film Building the American Dream.
Building the American Dream follows undocumented construction workers in Texas as they fight the injustices of wage theft and unsafe working conditions. “When I was going to school in 2009 there was a pretty bad construction accident,” Hernandez said. “Three construction workers fell to their death building a luxury condominium.”
The experience was a wake up call for Hernandez, but she didn’t jump on the project right away because she felt that she wasn’t ready to take on a project of that magnitude. “The accident was eye opening,” Hernandez said. “I had become numb to the growth, people were dying to build my hometown.”
After the incident, Hernandez found the Workers Defense Project, an organization that helps and defends low-income workers.
“It was the only worker center potentially in the state at the time to help,” Hernandez said. Though there were advocates for change, no one broke the story.
“I thought to myself ‘oh surely someone is going to make this movie,’” Hernandez recalled. “But, a couple of more years passed, more accidents, but no one had done a film yet. I got tired of hearing about accidents, so I thought ‘How can I make a film that uncovers this story?’”
Hernandez began filming in 2013. Though the undocumented workers faced the harsh realities of wage theft and hazardous working conditions, Hernandez wanted her film to show the power behind them as well.
“Overall, we see films that show Latinos as victims,” Hernandez said. “As much as that helps in lending to why the audience should have empathy, my goal was to show that there was solidarity, a fight, they were standing up and they weren’t scared.”
Building the American Dream gave undocumented workers such as Claudia Golinelli and her husband Alex an opportunity to walk others through their story as they fought to recover thousands of dollars in unpaid wages.
However, unfair labor practices aren’t all there is to fear. During the production of Building the American Dream, Claudia was pulled over and detained by ICE. The documentary follows Claudia’s experience of having to check in with ICE regularly with the potential of being deported each time she goes in.
As Claudia prepares for her check in, she walks her husband Alex with what needs to be done in case she is deported. She reminds him to spend time with their children if the worst happens because she knows the pain it will cause them.
Even through the insurmountable pain, Hernandez beautifully captures the strength and bravery within each of the individuals she features, especially with the Granillo family.
Randy Granillo died after trying to power through and work in the unforgivable Texas heat without a break. Since his death, the Granillo family has advocated for a new law that would provide workers with a 10-minute break for every four hours of work.
The Granillo family’s fight was not easily won. There was push back by groups that believed imposing the rule would make Texas unappealing to contractors who were helping the state expand. Tensions and emotions were at an all-time high during production, but Hernandez offered a safe environment.
“I think right off the bat there was just a cultural understanding of each other,” Hernandez said. “My co-producer is of Mexican descent and we had a largely predominant Latino crew which allowed people to be honest on camera to share their story.”
“It has been an interesting time for this film to come out to the national audience considering the pandemic that we’re in,” Hernandez said. “Now construction workers are deemed essential workers, if they didn’t have proper safety precautions before, it’s not surprising they’re one of the COVID clusters now.”
Although Hernandez’s documentary is just about to hit the national audience, the Emmy-award winning filmmaker is already developing her new documentary film that will be about student loan debt in which she will also utilize a new form of storytelling.
Hernandez has officially tackled podcasting. This time, Hernandez will be sharing her own experience with her podcast Deferred Dreams which is produced by Make Every Media. Hernandez is simultaneously working on the documentary.
“I realized talking about student loan debt with others, we would find so many similarities [with each other],” Hernandez said. “There was almost a sense of relief between us.”
The podcast will feature other people’s student loan debt stories as well as provide solutions for paying off the debt. “It’s such a giant issue,” Hernandez said. “The thought of cancelling debt is being brought up in national conversations.”
Hernandez’s projects continue to highlight prominent topics that affect the Latino community tremendously.
Mark your calendars and get ready for Hernandez’s national debut. Hernandez will introduce you to a gut-wrenching reality through her lens.
Deferred Dreams is now available to stream on iTunes, Spotify, Soundcloud and Stitcher.
Building the American Dream will be available on PBS, pbs.org and the PBS video app beginning on September 15th.