This article is an autoethnography about the 2019 Latin American film tour of Eternos Indocumentados: Central American Refugees in the United States (English translation, Cárcamo 2018), a documentary about the forced migration and incarceration of asylum seekers from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala in the United States. Inspired by cine imperfecto (‘imperfect cinema’), a Latin American theoretical approach to filmmaking started in the 1960s defined by revolutionary Cuban filmmaker Julio García Espinosa, the author/filmmaker argues that this documentary was a conscious attempt as a researcher to document the everyday stories and struggles of Central American refugees in a complex historical, transnational and geopolitical context. Written as an autoethnography, the author/filmmaker reflects on the critical dialogues that emerged from each film screening during its premiere tour across Latin America, including México, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Cuba. The author/filmmaker also briefly discusses the production of the film leading up to the tour, which began in July 2014 when mainstream media was flooded with images of what they termed ‘unaccompanied Central American children’.
Jennifer A. Cárcamo (Sat,) studied this question.