Salt of the Earth (1954)

Esperanza Quintero: [opening narration] How shall I begin my story that has no beginning? My name is Esperanza, Esperanza Quintero. I am a miner's wife. This is our home. The house is not ours. But the flowers... the flowers are ours. This is my village. When I was a child, it was called San Marcos. The Anglos changed the name to Zinc Town. Zinc Town, New Mexico, U.S.A. Our roots go deep in this place, deeper than the pines, deeper than the mine shaft. In these arroyos my great grandfather raised cattle before the Anglos ever came. The land where the mine stands - that was owned by my husband's own grandfather. Now it belongs to the company. Eighteen years my husband has given to that mine. Living half his life with dynamite and darkness. Who can say where it began, my story? I do not know. But this day I remember as the beginning of an end. It was my Saint's Day. I was thirty-five years old. A day of celebration. And Iwas seven months gone with my third child. And on that day - I remember I had a wish... a thought so sinful...... a thought so evil that I prayed God to forgive me for it. I wished... I wished that my child would never be born. No. Not into this world.

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Because blacklisted people were among those who made the movie, the production was fraught with outside interference. The entire cast and crew were met by a citizens' committee in Central, New Mexico, where they had planned to film, and were ordered to leave town. The following day they moved the production to Silver City, NM, and were warned to "get out of town... or go out in black boxes."
Rosaura Revueltas, who played Esperanza Quintero, was a noted screen actress in her native Mexico. After this film was distributed, she was accused of being a Communist and deported. While she continued to appear in Mexican cinema, she never made another film in the US.
This movie was the only blacklisted film ever in American film history. It was blacklisted during the 1950s during the height of the Cold War scare.
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