The Guestworker tells the story of Don Candelario Gonzalez Moreno, a 66-year old Mexican farmer who has been coming to the U.S. since the 1960s as a farm laborer. He is some twenty to forty years older than all the thousands of Mexican men who work in today’s United States’ H2A Guest Worker program started in 1986. Despite his age, he continues to work long hours in tobacco, cucumber, and pepper fields, sweating and worrying – all for his family, particularly his ailing wife. He says he still wants to work “harder than all the others” as he did when he was a younger man, but now knows he just can’t. Yet he is asked back, year after year, because of his commitment to hard work, his “good attitude,” and his long-term service to Wester Farms in North Carolina. With revealing insight, filmmakers Cynthia Hill and Charles Thompson embark on an intimate exploration of Cande during one particularly grueling season while delving into this little-known guest worker program now already twenty years in existence.

The Guestworker paints a personal portrait of Don Cande, himself a cattle farmer forced annually by a deteriorating Mexican economy to endure a 2-day bus ride to Wester Farms. More poignant still are the unpredictable conditions under which Cande and his co-laborers work. The film chronicles a year ambushed by oppressive heat where Wester struggles to maintain his farm in the midst of a severe drought. As Wester waits and worries, so does his hired help. The Guestworker delicately archives this waiting game waged between nature, the farmer, and his hands; the men’s struggle for survival a communal one as they weigh their stakes against the milieu of a waterless sky.

A visually articulate juxtaposition of Carolina’s achromatic landscape and Mexico’s citrusy terrain transports the guestworkers and the viewers to Durango at the close of the growing season. Amidst the backdrop of his native land and a statue of Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa, Cande’s true devotion is unmasked, his energy renewed. As he entertains his grandson’s eager inquisitions, he reflects upon his people’s hero and his eyes swell. His grandchild has grown and his herd of cattle has dwindled since he’s been away.

The Guestworker comes at a time in American history where immigration policies are as relevant a discussion as they’ve ever been. As the U.S. engages in deliberations of who will do our farm work and how they will be employed, phrases such as “illegal aliens,” “closing the gate,” and “guest worker” have become essential to our national lexicon. Immigrants Rights marches organized throughout the U.S. in spring 2006 opposed border enforcement laws and, more importantly, outlined the tremendous divisions between border patrolling, the right to work and how these issues spill into larger concerns of class, race, and access. The Guestworker offers some humanity to a debate that could otherwise be callous and bureaucratic.

Shot over a two-year period in North Carolina and Mexico, The Guestworker was directed and produced by independent filmmaker Cynthia Hill (“Tobacco Money Feeds My Family” and “February One”) and Dr. Charles Thompson, Education and Curriculum Director at the Center For Documentary Studies at Duke University. 

The Guestworker is currently screening in film festivals around the globe. The film premiered on PBS in November 2006 as part of Latino Public Broadcasting’s “Voces,” a 13-week series on public television stations across the country. The Guestworker is a fiscally sponsored project of the Southern Documentary Fund and recieved major support from Latino Public Broadcasting, Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, Triangle Community Foundation, NC Humanities Council, Mary Duke Biddle Foundation and the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University.