Editor’s Note
Represent Justice Journalism Project: SANSÓN AND ME, directed by Rodrigo Reyes, premiered at the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival and subsequently won best film award at the Sheffield Doc/Fest June 23-28, 2022. The film is a portrait of a young man, Sansón Noe Andrade, serving a life sentence in prison; he was sentenced when he was just 19. The film raises essential questions about ethnic communities and People of Color impacted by incarceration and the mistreatment of undocumented immigrants. It also raises questions about ethics and consent in storytelling as well as other matters and issues of significant importance.
The editor for this publication is an assistant journalism professor who believes students enrolled in one of his advanced journalism reporting classes could benefit from writing opinion pieces to be published about issues raised in this film and at the very least what touched them – thus the project in system impact storytelling that combines data, evidence, and personal stories, making them potent tools for advocating positive shifts and motivating others to champion a cause.
Mayerli Rumaldo
Director Rodrigo Reyes’ SANSÓN AND ME made me think of the immigration problem happening right now in New York City where it’s been declared a State of Emergency by NYC Hizzoner Eric Adams. The film experience also made me reflect, deeply, on the immigrating experiences of me and my family.
People are immigrating here hoping for a better life and that might sound like a bit of a cliché, but I know firsthand that it is true. Much like Sansón Noe Andrade, the lead character in the movie, my parents migrated to New York from the Dominican Republic in hope of putting behind them the potential risks of a never ending cycle of poverty. My parents knew that their children could have a better education and more opportunities in the States than if they had stayed.
Sansón’s freedom was short lived in the California town where he eventually moved to from Tecoman, Mexico. He believed he and his family could be better off. I always disagree when people say that undocumented immigrants bring crime into neighborhoods that already have high crime rates because I know undocumented immigrants are not criminals no matter how misportrayed they are in America.
Sansón Noe Andrade was not and is not a criminal, and his story should be seen if not shouted from the mountain tops.
Director Rodrigo Reyes. Picture by Jennifer Durán
For the film, Reyes chose to cast Sansón’s family members as characters. He did that because the prison warden, who considered Sansón a convicted criminal, believed people seeing a movie about Sansón that they believed would be idolizing a criminal so Reyes was prohibited filming on prison grounds. Thus, Reyes had to come up with an imaginative approach to making his nonfiction movie. He cast Sansón’s sister to play his mother, cast her son to play the young Sansón, and cast other family members to play people important as well as informative about Sansón’s life.
Reyes and Sansón communicated through letters and those are an important part of the film. I appreciate that Reyes did not give up making this film though there were times he admitted that he doubted that the film would ever be made.
During the first part of the film the audience is introduced to young Sansón and right from the beginning we see the seeds of his misfortune. He lived in poverty with his family. His father was a fisherman and an alcoholic who died when Sansón was only a child. Sansón expressed hatred for his father, blaming him for everything that had gone wrong in their family.
Shortly after his dad’s death, his mom couldn’t keep a job and moved from place to place and later got sick and was hospitalized. Sansón would take the bus to visit her, but he was not allowed in the hospital because he was a kid.
One day, two hours after he had gone to visit his mother, she passed away. Sansón and his siblings began to live with their grandmother after aunts and uncles who had sometimes taken them in. Sadly, their grandmother had a bad temper and would hit the kids for no good reason.
Sansón eventually ran away and ended up in a shelter where he could sleep and have meals. Sometimes he would go and work in the fields whenever he could. At the age of 12, Sansón came to the United States in a car. Once in, he lived in California where he attended high school.
Due to his troubling past, Sansón always knew it was important for him to be cautious. He didn’t care to be in any gangs or do anything that could cause him harm. But he didn’t live far enough from that life, with his friends being in gangs. At the age of 18 he fell in love with his wife. He had a life, a job, a family.
On his son’s first birthday, he offered his brother-in-law a ride to a store. That car ride he would regret for the rest of his life. In a split second Sansón’s brother-in-law got out of the car and killed two men, leading to Sansón’s arrest, indictment and trial – where he would meet Director Reyes who at the time was a Mexican American court-appointed translator for Spanish-speaking defendants. That was his gig that brought in extra money need to support his family and his emerging film career.
Throughout the movie I felt bad for Sansón and by the end of it, I didn’t consider him a criminal. From a young age he had been suffering and experiences beyond his control. I remember the first scene that made me think that I had something in common with Sansón. It was the scene where his grandmother was smacking him viciously. As a Dominican immigrant, a Latina, I know that hitting is used as a form of discipline and is something very prevalent in our community.
I almost cried watching the scene because it reminded me of me. It is something that I also went through and am healing from as well. I don’t agree with that form of “discipline” because we are taught that even adults make mistakes, that there is no reason to hit a child for making a mistake. Unlike me, I don’t think Sansón had the chance to heal from that, but I did, breaking away from that harming cycle.
Throughout the whole film I couldn’t help but think about a major theme that was being repeated – suffering from generational trauma. While communicating with Sansón, Reyes told him that his sister is slowly following the steps of their mother. She was slowly dying. Sansón himself hated his father for not being present in his life, but he did the same thing to his son. It is something that is hard to break away from.
It made me think about my relationship with my parents which isn’t the best. I know that they have their own trauma, but I cannot allow them to be passed onto me and I have enough knowledge not to let that happen, but Sansón and his sister didn’t. They never had the chance to grow and become better. They were not given the opportunity.
Sansón got life in prison, his brother-in-law didn’t. Sansón didn’t take a plea deal, unlike his brother-in-law who had. At first, I didn’t understand why he didn’t take the deal, but now I understand. Sansón had said that in prison he always had a roof over his head, a meal every day and protection of a sort.
Although prison life is not the best way to live, he felt a sense of stability, something he did not have before. In his trial, an alternative was to take the plea deal, get out of prison in a couple of years, and get deported back to Mexico. However his home was in California. All he had in Mexico was his past and hardships.
I moved to New York at the age of five from the Dominican Republic and although I love my culture, I know that the only thing there for me is family. I don’t have a home there; my home is here. Much like Sansón knew that he could not live in Mexico again, I know I can’t live in the Dominican Republic and that my life is in New York.
Link to other SANSÓM articles in this project.
Mayerli Rumaldo can be reached at MAYERLI.RUMALDO52@myhunter.cuny.edu