Citizenship and Immigration in the comedy film “Born in East L.A.(1987)” by Cheech Marin

Cheech Marin´s comedy film "Born in East L.A." (1987), endures after thirty- four years of its production not only for its cinematographic elements but also for the way the film uses humor and irony to represent the south of the border as the setting for complex issues such as citizenship and immigration. In 1987, Richard Anthony “Cheech” Marin, an American comedian, writer, and filmmaker, wrote the script for "Born in East L.A.", based on a true story of an American citizen of Mexican origin deported to Mexico while listening to Bruce Springsteen´s song “Born in the U.S.A.” (Noriega 190). The film´s main character, Rudy Robles, an American citizen born but of Mexican origin, lives with his mother in East Los Angeles, California. Rudy goes into a toy factory to pick up his cousin who recently emigrated from Mexico, and is caught in an immigration raid. During the raid, Rudy realized he had left his wallet with his identity document at home. Unable to reach his family by telephone and with out documentation, Rudy cannot prove to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer that he is a U.S. Citizen, and he is deported to Tijuana, Mexico. Suzanne Oboler explains “ … regardless of citizenship status, non-white- European racial minorities born in the United States could continue to be conceived in the popular as outside of the ´boundaries´ of the ´American community´” (19).Although Rudy Robles is fluent in English and attempts to explain his citizenship rights as an American Citizen, the ICE officer denies his legal rights because of his appearance or origin. Lauren Berlant, one of the leading scholars writing about U.S. Citizenship in the past decade, notes that “ … the promise of US citizenship to deliver sovereignity to all its citizens has always been practiced unevenly in contradiction with most understandings of democratic ideals” (44). In other words, "Born in East L.A." places the main character in situations in which citizenship and immigration signifies the historical conditions of legal status and social belonging along the southern border. For example, at the Immigration office ( see figure 1), Rudy tells the U.S. border services officer that he is an American citizen and that he is mistakenly deported to Tijuana, Mexico. Initially, Rudy feels relieved to speak to a fellow American citizen, but he realizes that the officer does not accept him as an equal. Although Rudy is framed in the center of the shot, it is entirely clear who has the power here. The U.S. border officer is framed on the left side of the shot creating a distance between himself and Rudy. Additionally, the camera moves to reproduce the separation and difference by depth-field from the extreme foreground to the extreme background (see figure 2). The space created in both shots reinforces Rudy´s distance from his goal of returning home to East L.A. because of his non-Americaness stereotype.

"Born in East L.A.", approaches the theme of immigration portraying the border as a contact area to explain the relationship of the protagonist with the other characters in the film. In Tijuana, Rudy Robles meets an American who has a bar which is the place where the main characters meet to find a way to cross the Mexican – American border. In the bar, Rudy meets a refugee waitress from Central America and a group of Indians and Chinese workers that are in this space, as in a waiting room hoping soon to cross the border to the United States. Here, one can observe that the bar in "Born in East L.A." is a transitional place for many, but on the other hand, it is the space where those who live there coexist with those that have been involuntarily stranded and prevented from crossing the border. According to Martinez-Zalce and Velasco “[t]he Tijuana in Born in East L.A., is a place of souls”(“La Tijuana de ésta película es un limbo”; 43; my trans.). That is, Rudy´s border crossing changes his reality as an American citizen into living the experience of an undocumented immigrant. As Eithne Luibhéid notes,

Immigrants have regularly been accused of deliberately attempting to “(re)colonize” parts of the United States through birthing children who were legal citizens but were considered racially and culturally “unassimilable” … [excluding them from] health care, education, social welfare, immigration and citizenship law … (129).


Therefore, it can be seen throughout the film´s narrative how Rudy Robles becomes aware of the figure of the undocumented immigrant in terms of political consciousness. Martinez-Zalce and Velasco explain that “[t]he subject who forcibly crossed the southern border is not the same person who makes the journey back north of the border”(“El sujeto que viajó a la fuerza […] no es el mismo que hace el viaje de regreso al otro lado de la frontera”; 44;my trans.). A good example is a final scene in which Rudy Robles, the refugee waitress, and other immigrants are going to cross the border from Mexico to the United States in front of two border patrol officers. The scene starts when the border officers see Rudy alone on a hilltop. First, Rudy is positioned in the center of a viewfinder of an observation camera while the camera moves to a close-up of Rudy´s face. The camera movement reproduces Rudy´s Americanness through depth-field from the extreme background to the extreme foreground (see figure 3). As a result, it may be inferred that Cheech Marin uses deep focus to emphasize Rudy´s American character. Then, Rudy raises his hands and invites thousands of undocumented immigrants across the border. Here, Marin uses a low-angle camera movement to show Rudy´s sympathy for the undocumented immigrants. The picture of Rudy standing at the top of a hill surrounded by thousands of immigrants conveys an overall collective power as a whole, identifying himself with the immigrants (see figure 4).

One can infer that the purpose of Cheech Marin in filming "Born in East L.A.", was to make a film that explores the political meaning of U.S. citizenship and immigration laws, in particular to U.S. Citizens of Mexican origin. In the Los Angeles Times article “How a U.S. Citizen Was Mistakenly Targeted For Deportation. He´s Not Alone”  Joel Rubin notes that “ […]since 2002 Immigration and Customs Enforcement has wrongly identified at least 2,840 United States Citizens, and at least 214 of them were taken into custody …”. That is, the United States continues to wrongly deport its own citizens. One of the reasons is the violation of an ICE policy that requires officers a thorough investigation to find out if a person is an American citizen. The policy instructs not to arrest [or deport] the person until the situation is resolved (latimes.com). Another significant point is how a non-white European individual is treated differently or like the others in America because they are categorized. In the case of Mexican Americans “ … many scholars suggest that Mexicans have become the paradigmatic undocumented immigrants through historical, legal, political, and economic processes that derive from enduring neocolonial relationships between the United States and Mexico”(Nevins and Ngai qtd in Luibhéid 126). Evoking this special status, "Born in East L.A.", gives voice to those who survive the trauma of deportation, which will probably haunt them forever.



Works Cited


Berlant, Lauren. "Citizenship".Keywords for American Cultural Studies, 3rd edition, edited by Bruce Burgett and Glenn Hendler, New York, USA: New York UP, 2020, pp. 44- 48.

Luibhéid, Eithne. “Immigration”.Keywords for American Cultural Studies, 3rd edition, edited by Bruce Burgett and Glenn Hendler, New York, USA: New York UP, 2020, pp. 44-48.

Marin, Richard Anthony “Cheech”. Born in East L.A. 1987.https://movies2watch.tv/watch- movie/watch-born-in-east-la-hd-2595.2522577. Accessed 8 July 2021.

Martínez-Zalce, Graciela and Astrid Velasco Montante. "Fronteras (y géneros) que se cruzan (sin dejar huella, Baja California, Born in East L.A., Highway 61, Blue State, Niagara, Ciclo)." Instrucciones para salir del limbo, arbitrario de representaciones audiovisuales de las fronteras en América del Norte. Ciudad de México : Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México,2016, pp. 31-74.

Noriega, Chon A., et al. “Part II: New Constellations: Stars: Chapter 10: ‘Waas Sappening?’”Keyframes: Popular Cinema & Cultural Studies, May 2001, pp. 187– 202. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx? direct=true&db=f3h&AN=17442333&site=ehost-live.

Oboler, Suzanne. Ethnic Labels, Latino Lives. Identity and Politics of (re) Presentation in the United States.Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.,1995.

Rubin, Joel. “How a U.S. Citizen Was Mistakenly Targeted For Deportation. He´s Not Alone.” Los Angeles Times. 2017. Web 8 July 2021 https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ice-citizen-arrest-20171129- story.html

Fig.1, 1987, Born in East L.A.

Fig. 2,1987, Born in East L.A.


Fig. 3, 1987, Born In East L.A.



Fig. 4. 1987, Born In East L.A.