[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SW0RiGCzDFY[/youtube]
El Ejido is today the third richest town in Spain with an estimated 40,000 legal migrants and about the same number of undocumented ones. Most have no work contract and live in conditions so intolerable they sparked riots in 2000 and again in 2004. El Ejido produces millions of tons of vegetables a year, much of which is exported to the rest of Europe, mostly to Germany, France and the UK.
Filmed along a strip of the former desert coastline not far from the tourist resorts of the Costa del Sol, El Ejido, The Law of Profit reveals kilometer after kilometer of undulating white plastic greenhouse tents as far as the eye can see. Under these white-hot roofs, migrants from Morocco, Romania, Mali and Senegal pick tomatoes, fruit and vegetables in temperatures soaring above 40 degrees.
El Ejido, The Law of Profit documents the workers’ daily lives and points out the mechanism of an industrial system that exploits human beings and the environment. It’s the story of degradation of human rights, environment and ethic values in Europe that are being imposed by globalization.
El Ejido, The Law of Profit screens February 29, 2008, 7:30 PM at Jackman Hall, Art Gallery of Ontario.
