Sundance Winner ‘American Pachuco: The Legend of Luis Valdez’ Is the Affirming Doc Our Community Needs

Everyone was crying at the premiere of “American Pachuco: The Legend of Luis Valdez.” Me. Edward James Olmos. Lou Diamond Phillips. The girl behind me. The dudes a few rows up.

Tears are pretty normal at Sundance, the indie film festival known for devastating documentaries and artful tragedies. But the largely Latino crowd that gathered on the first afternoon of the festival to see this PBS documentary was crying tears of happiness.

“This is a film about belonging. And what an incredible time to release it, because America, for some reason, is asking themselves again, who belongs here?” director David Alvarado explained. We spoke in Park City, Utah, after he finished a panel with another largely Latino crowd, this time at the Latino Filmmakers Network event, “Our Road to the Sundance Film Festival.”

Following the inspiring life of playwright and filmmaker Luis Valdez, the film resonates because it dramatizes Latinos’ fight to be seen and valued. And it embodies its values, making this Chicana feel affirmed and part of a longer, righteous struggle in a way that is particularly needed in Trump’s United States.

Of course, PBS was the institution that supported it. “Their client is the entertainment and education of their viewers,” Alvarado notes of his patron. “The Trump administration has targeted it. From their perspective, it's a great target to hit because why would they want an educated, enlightened, informed, happy population?”

Cuts from the federal government notwithstanding, PBS is still accomplishing that mission with the Valdez biography. Valdez is the guy who wrote and directed “La Bamba” and “Zoot Suit,” making stars out of both Olmos and Phillips.

But Valdez’s resume doesn’t start or end in Hollywood. Born in Delano, California, he was the second-eldest son of a migrant farmworking family. As a young man, he put his San José State University English degree to use, returning to California’s Central Valley to help Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta earn better labor conditions for farmworkers.

Valdez did it by founding and running El Teatro Campesino, which still runs today. On the picket lines, they ran rasquache shows, using what they had to dramatize the workers’ struggles, making their audience laugh and nod in agreement. It’s the same work the documentary did to those of us at the premiere — reflecting a portion of the Chicano community back to itself, so we see our struggle and our style, but mostly our humanity.

It was so deeply healing. And yes, a film about a filmmaker playing at a festival full of filmmakers may seem like a special case. But I’d argue otherwise. We have so many storytellers in our community, so while Valdez clearly had a particular genius for portraying our community, he’s hardly the only one. 

“Stories are the operating system of the human brain,” Alvarado asserts. “The stories we tell ourselves mean everything to how we see ourselves, where we are in the world, and how others see us.”

But too often, our stories don’t make it, if you’ve read any articles about Latino representation in Hollywood in the last 25 years. Or “So few stories are told about Chicanos, by Chicanos themselves. You will never have a great situation if your story isn't told authentically and by your own community,” as Alvarado puts it.

And that’s certainly the situation we find ourselves in — defined by a political narrative that sees us as inherently foreign and dangerous, when we’re so clearly neither. But if Valdez shows us anything, it’s that our community has a different vision for ourselves. His story is one of struggle, yes, but also joy and family.

Watching it, I came away with a strong sense of his community. How his siblings joined him at the theater company and in film (his younger brother, Daniel Valdez, plays the central character, Henry Reyna, in “Zoot Suit”). How he met his wife, Lupe Trujillo, while a member of the company, and how the two collaborated to build El Teatro Campesino over the decades. How Valdez’s work was always about meeting the needs of the community, whether that’s striking farmworkers or Angelenos hungry to see their history from their point of view, or now, Latino PBS viewers who will benefit from the nourishing nature of his life story as told through Alvarado’s thoughtful and provocative lens (the film is narrated by Olmos, reprising his role as El Pachuco from “Zoot Suit.”)

“American Pachuco: The Legend of Luis Valdez” shows us that if we organize and work together, we can create a better story about ourselves. One that honors our past, gets us ready for the fight ahead, and holds space for the joys, celebrations, and artmaking to come.

That’s why we were all crying. That’s how this film about a migrant farmworker turned playwright and filmmaker won the Festival Favorite Award.

It was a sight to behold.

And when you see it, you’ll be crying too.

Editor-in-Chief of LatinaMedia.Co, TEDx speaker, and Latino Entertainment Journalist Association (LEJA) board member, Cristina Escobar works at the intersection of race, gender, and pop culture with a special interest in Latina representation in movies and TV.

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