This article originally appeared in Southern Exposure Vol. 7 No. 1, "Behind Closed Doors." Find more from that issue here.
We lived for 10 weeks with a working-class family and their nine children in Cuernevaca — the land of “eternal springtime.” Cuernevaca is wedged into a valley at the foothills of mountains that lead up to Mexico City. Here, nine centuries ago, lived the Aztec people; here was the summer home of Montezuma and later the victorious “conquistador” Cortez. Just to the south of Cuernevaca lie some of the richest sugar cane fields in the state of Morelos — and all of Mexico.
Today, Cuernevaca is the home of another invader — Burlington Industries, the multinational textile company based in North Carolina. As with previous conquerors and oppressive regimes, the presence of Burlington and its harsh treatment of the 1,500 employees in the area’s four mills has brought considerable conflict to the town. This is a region with a long history of struggle.
In the sugar refineries, the blackened bodies of the “caneros” covered with dust evoke memories of the revolution. Sixty years ago, Emiliano Zapata marched at the head of thousands of “campesinos” under the banner Tierra y Libertad: Land and Freedom. On these same communal lands, or “ejidos,” the father of the family with which we were living was born. And his father still works the same sugar fields, still plows the land with horses, still remembers the revolution in which more than one million people — out of a...
[OSEN=Jang Woo-young reporter] Guk Dong-ho, a cast member of ‘Solo Hell 4,’ has been engulfed in bullying allegations following earlier gay rumors. While he clarified the gay rumors, his rebuttal ...