Imagine being confined in a crowded room without proper ventilation with hundreds of other people. The last time you saw daylight was over 10 hours ago. Frantically, you feed the fabric through a sewing machine as if you were competing for Olympic gold. Only in these close fights there is no gold to be won. You can smell and almost smell the sweat of the worker next to you. And day after day, your hard work only earns a few dollars, or even a few cents. Welcome to a modern-day sweatshop. This sad truth is happening all over the world, including the United States. The 2002 film, Real Women Have Curves, starring America Ferrera, while not as extreme as the example above, gives an excellent interpretation of what workers at a Los Angeles clothing store felt like . Ana Garcia (America Ferrera) and the women in her family work in her aunt's clothing workshop, located in Los Angeles. But the Garcias are not the only Latino workers in the United States to endure difficult and difficult work experiences, negatively impacting their lives. In fact, there is a long history of the use and recruitment of Mexican-American labor in the United States that can be interpreted from this film. Various Latino groups, such as Mexican Americans, Cubans, and Dominicans, have unique national, gender, political, legal, and environmental experiences that have impacted their lives as workers in the United States. Say no to plagiarism. Get a custom essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay The United States and Mexican Americans have a long history dating back to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 and onwards. 'to the Second World War. . As the United States fought on two fronts and rationed its country, cheap labor to support the war efforts was in high demand. The federal government turned to its southern neighbor and adopted the Bracero program which allowed thousands of Mexicans to enter the United States to work as laborers. However, those who decided to take advantage of this attractive program experienced horrible working conditions. Soon, Mexican-American workers grew tired of this mistreatment, and several Mexican-American worker groups were formed to advocate for safer working conditions, fair wages, and more. People Organized in Defense of the Earth and Her Resources (PODER), South West Organizing Project (SWOP), the South West Network for Environmental and Economic Justice (SNEEJ) (Marquez 2012, 164-168) are just a few one of many labor groups organized to fight for underrepresented Mexican-American workers. Among these newly created groups, political action leaders emerged, such as Cesar Chavez, who began to lead the fight for equality in the workforce. Chavez believed that the problem with labor inequality was that Latino workers were narcotized by the environmental conditions they experienced. He said: “We have adapted, as human beings will, to working conditions that few other Americans would accept. We work in open-air factories where temperatures rise up to 115 degrees. We had to accept the great humiliations of the labor camps and being considered “stupid Mexicans” (Oboler 1995, 60). In the film, Ana makes several commentsabout the conditions of the tailoring workshop, such as: "it's so hot in here, seriously, I feel like I'm in hell... all this steam is making me sweat like a pig" (Real Women Have Curves). After Ana makes these comments and takes off her shirt, the other women in the factory seem to accept these conditions, because it's all they know. The real-life “sweatshop” environment seen in the film is an excellent interpretation of the scenarios in which the Latino workforce experienced. While Mexican Americans have faced hardships as workers in the United States, immigrants from the Dominican Republic have faced hardships as well. Since the late 1880s, the United States has exerted significant influence over the Dominican Republic. Levitt explains: “As the Dominican state became increasingly indebted to its American creditors during the first half of the 1900s, the American government literally ran the country or managed its affairs from a distance” (Levitt 2005, 230). . By the mid-1920s, American sugar companies and investors controlled nearly a quarter of the country's farmland. In 1930, the Republic elected a new president, Rafael Trujillo, who changed the direction of the agricultural economy, mainly sugar, to an industrial economy. This change caused large-scale unemployment throughout the country. Starting in the 1960s, more than 10,000 Dominicans left the Republic for the United States and this continued every year, while the country's economy was in disarray. New immigrants to America have had difficulty graduating from high school and college, like many other Latino groups. Compared to Puerto Ricans and Cubans, Dominicans earned less money per year on average (Levitt 2005, 238-240). But when Dominicans began working in the United States, much of the money they earned was sent home to help their families still in the Dominican Republic. While many Latino groups send money back to their home countries, Dominican American communities do so more than any other group. A term called "transnational actor" describes the practice of continuing to help and maintaining a close connection with their homeland. There is a strong correlation between the Mexican-American textile workers depicted in the film and the Dominicans. Each group has struggled to find quality employment in the United States with fair wages. Dominican women, like the workers in the film, work in low-wage jobs and in poor conditions. Dominican Republicans and Mexican Americans have both had difficult times as workers in the United States, and Cuban Americans are no exception. Cuban immigration to the United States began in a series of waves beginning around the 1950s. The first wave consisted of wealthier, upper-class Cubans who saw the signs of the revolution and left before becoming too dangerous. Since this group could afford the expenses necessary to leave, they intended to return once it was safe. Unfortunately, Castro rose to power and adopted Marxist-Leninist policies that prevented the first group from returning to their home country. The second wave to leave Cuba, “Those who Seek,” sought better economic opportunities than those offered by Cuban socialist society. In response “to President Lyndon Johnson’s “open door” policy of welcoming refugees from communism…for eight.