El Camino Real, 2004

A film by Ghafoor Zamani / 30 min.

This film takes you on a journey along the old Camino Real, the royal trade route which the Spanish conquerors once travelled along - from the north of Mexico to California.  The film is about the people and the landscape today, along the stretch of road from San Diego to San Francisco. Many of the old Spanish missions which were built along this road are still intact, they  are now  museums concerned with the history of the west coast of America. The story of the Camino Real is also the history of farming along the west coast. The road leads through California's famous wine regions and past countless fruit and vegetable farms. In the past, native Indians worked the fields, helped build the missions and the road that changed their country and eventually turned them into slaves. Nowadays, the so-called Braceros, Mexican migrant workers,  work for little money in the fields and farms along the Camino Real.