Salt of the Earth

"These changes come with pain." "Salt of the Earth" (1953) by Michael Wilson is a social drama about Mexican-American miners (and their wives) who strike against unsafe working conditions and inequality with their Anglo-American counterparts in Zinc Town, New Mexico. Esperanza Quintero (Rosaura Revueltas), the determined wife of frustrated zinc miner Ramon (Juan Chacon), takes over the picket line along with the other wives of the miners in their community and surrounding communities--after the men are contractually removed--for the sake of showing solidarity and pressuring the bosses into treating the men with dignity and respect for their labor and welfare. Themes of working together as a community, female empowerment, and resilience dominate this linear narrative that arcs from a group of people being disenfranchised--to those same people fighting for their rights to safety, better pay, and sanitation-to enduring the hardship of stubborn resistance--to seeing the first signs of victory. These mining families soldiered forward with the mantra that "We shall not be moved"--and they persevered.