Strong Mexican Women Demand Answers
In 2015, six women from La Cantera, a community in the municipality of Guanajuato, established a civil association called MAYOYE. They discovered that the water in their area was radioactive and joined forces to investigate the cause of several girls suffering from a particularly aggressive form of cancer. Their efforts led them to uncover the radioactive contamination of their water supply, which they believed contributed to the deaths of three girls within just one year. This experience transformed them from leading ordinary lives into dedicated activists.
Brother and sister filmmakers Alfredo and Isabel Alcántara chronicle the long, determined, and inspiring struggle of these Mexican women as they confront the patriarchal bureaucracy in their quest for answers in the PBS documentary Age of Water.
The film, shot in the classic cinema verité style, features no celebrity voiceover, narration, or musical score to enhance the dramatic narrative. The story is told simply through the eyes, voices, and faces of all the characters involved, moving the narrative from one act to the next, employing basic storytelling structures and minimal editing.
The collective efforts of the women of La Cantera underscore a long tradition of Mexican women in the vanguard of social justice movements dating back to the 19th century in their fight for education and political participation, their valiant efforts in the Mexican Revolution, events for women’s suffrage, and Chicana feminism and against gender violence.
Mexico now has the distinction of electing its first woman president, Claudia Shinebaum, who has implemented policies to address some of the environmental issues facing Mexico.
Clean water, climate change, and other pressing environmental issues continue to be topics of interest for Alfredo and Isabel.
Unfortunately, our current US administration has gutted the EPA standards for clean water and cleaning up the pollution that contaminates our water system.
Pity, they could learn much from the resolute Mexican women of Lan Cantera and the Age of Water documentary directed by Alfredo and Isabel Cantarra.
The Age of Water is streaming on PBS.org until December.