Moroccan immigrants flood Spain’s Almeira region seeking a better life; instead they find inescapable poverty, blatant racism, and back-breaking labour. The village of El Ejido exports one third of Europe’s fresh fruit, yet Europeans remain oblivious to the slave-like conditions endured by the immigrants whose labour they rely on.
One of the workers remarks that in his homeland he never experienced such deplorable living conditions (he and his friends are forced to construct their own ramshackle homes out of plastic and cardboard, and trek long distances for drinking water). El Ejido, The Law of Profit seeks out the roots of the injustice it depicts, showing government and industry’s role in perpetuating the problem, and the indifference of most locals to the living conditions of the workers; but ultimately it is the plight of these men, toiling in anonymity and striving for little more than a decent wage and a place to live, that rightly takes centre stage in this haunting expose.
Program notes by George Kaltsounakis
