The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada is a politically charged re-telling of the American myth of the Western. Through the use of film, director and star Tommy Lee Jones, and screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga comment upon social aspects of American culture, while using catharsis as a means to mediate across ideological and cultural borders, and to do justice for the victim of a discriminatory crime and its cover-up. The U.S and Mexican borders appear as both a character and a metaphor in the film. Lee and Arriga de-construct the frontier myth by means of casting a dark eye on social, racial and sexual scripts and schemas. Elements of earlier films that have attempted to do so, such as Pekinpah’s Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia are evident as their narrative journey unfolds.
The Crime
Jones became interested in making Three Burials when he became outraged over the shooting of a Texas youth by three U.S. marines on border patrol duty. The three marines had tracked him while in full camouflage for over a half an hour. The young man, Esekiel Hernandez, was shot dead a few hundred yards from his home while herding the family goats. He and his family are U.S. citizens. A federal investigation ensued, but no one was found guilty. Eventually, the U.S. military paid a $ 1.9 million settlement to the boy’s surviving family members, but no one was ever tried or found guilty (O’Keefe, 1997, 1998).
The Characters
Main Characters
The three main characters of Three Burials are Pete Perkins, a Texas rancher and friend of Melquiades Estrada, Mike Norton, a Texas border patrolman, and Melquiades Estrada, illegal Mexican immigrant and hired hand on Pete Perkins’ ranch.
Pete Perkins, played by Tommy Lee Jones, is a quiet, down-to-earth rancher who befriends Melquiades and hires him to work on his ranch. Pete seems to be free of the racial bias that others in the film display. He speaks fluent Spanish, and quickly befriends Melquiades. The implication is that he is one of only a few people in the border area who has either worked through, or not been tainted by the racial bias of the region. Throughout the film, Pete interacts amicably with Mexicans, and treats them as equals. He shows respect and understanding for their culture.
Melquiades Estrada, played by Julio Cesar Cedillo, appears in the film in flashback to the characters of Pete and Mike. For Pete, he is a good friend, almost a brother. For Mike, he is his victim, and an image of guilt that haunts him after the murder. Very little is known of Melquiades. Pete has promised to bury him in his Mexican village should he die before he returns to his homeland. Pete sets out to do that, and Melquiades’ body is a sort of Deus ex Machina for the film.
Mike North (Barry Pepper) is a particularly savage and bigoted individual. He and his wife are originally from Ohio. He seems to fit into the racist atmosphere of the Texas/Mexican border, and thrives off of his job. He is more bigoted than his peers. He treats the immigrants he encounters with complete disdain and loathing. His relationship with women is sexist. He has little regard for the emotions of his wife, and lacks communication with her. She is little more than a convenient sexual toy to him. When his wife is not available, he idles his time with pornographic magazines and masturbation. Xenophobia, racism, and extreme objectification of women seem to be his main personality traits. After one raid, his supervisor berates him for viciously attacking illegal aliens.
Supporting Characters and the Town
Lou Ann Norton (January Jones) is the wife of Mike Norton. Her character is bored, and in a distant relationship with her husband. She eventually leaves Texas and her husband. She is the neglected and abused woman in American society. In the one scene where intimacy is portrayed, Mike subjects her to an acquaintance rape in their kitchen. The only conversations in the home are those blaring from television sets tuned in to soap operas.
Lou Ann’s predicament is reflected in the region itself. Jones and Arriga portray the Midland, Texas area as a place of quiet desperation for most of the townspeople. Only Pete, Melquiades, and a local waitress (Melissa Leo) who idles her time with numerous extramarital affairs seem to have any human connection.
Institutional Racism and Sexism in Three Burials
An operational definition of institutionalized prejudice is given by Aronson, Wilson and Akert as:
…Simply by living in a society where stereotypical information abounds and where discriminatory behavior is the norm, the vast majority of us will unwittingly develop prejudiced attitudes and discriminatory behavior to some extent. (This is called) institutional discrimination, or more specifically, as institutional racism and institutional sexism (2005, p. 461).
Institutionalized racism and sexism can explain Mike Norton’s behavior toward both Mexicans and his wife. His is a case of extreme prejudices, and he is a very unlikable character. Lesser forms are displayed by other characters. The town sheriff refers to Melquiades as a “wetback,” whose death deserves no justice from the local government. During a border raid two Mexicans escape the border patrol. Mike’s supervisor exclaims, “Oh well, somebody’s gotta’ pick strawberries.”
Institutionalized sexism can be seen in the Mike’s dominating attitude toward Lou Ann and his incessant objectification of her as a sex object. She is a stay-at-home wife, with a lesser role in the household and society. The other female in the film in the Texas setting is a waitress. The females in general seem to occupy a lower social status in the film, another indication of societal sexism.
In contrast, Jones’ character and Melquiades seem to respect women. Pete is one of several men in the film who sleep with the waitress. In a surprising plot turn, Melquiades is set up on a date with the bored Lou Ann. Perhaps this is to show her as more likeable and more open to other people than her husband or to show her as desperate for real human communication and interaction.
Plot and Catharsis
The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada is driven by the friendship and promise between Pete and Melquiades. Pete eventually finds out that Mike is the killer. Melquiades has been buried twice already—once by his killer to dispose of the evidence, the second time by the town law enforcement. To achieve justice for his sin, Pete kidnaps Mike, forces him to dig up Melquiades’ body, and they both journey with it back to Mexico for burial in his village. Melquiades’ rotting corpse is a symbolic presence to both men—to Pete, as a lost friend, almost a brother, and to Mike as the onus of his guilt.
Their journey is beset by much travail. Through his turmoil, Mike begins to appreciate Mexicans as humans, starts to elicit real feelings for his wife and, by the journey’s end, shows concern for someone other than himself. Pete finds his own reconciliation by finding a dilapidated house that he thinks may have been Melquiades’ home, and burying his body as promised.
By telling the story of Three Burials, Jones and Arriga manage to attack systemic and institutionalized racism (that of the injustice toward Esekiel Hernandez) and show a means to reconciliation and reform of the perpetrator.
Current Immigration Laws
It is probably more than coincidence that Jones and Arriga have specifically chosen to film and release Three Burials in a period of immigration reforms and xenophobia used for political grandstanding (CQ Weekly, 2006).
The character of Mike is not that drastic a depiction of some of the activities of law enforcement officers. A current study of Salvadoran deportees suggests that rather than being a myth, incidents of violence are quite frequent (Phillips, Hagen and Rodriguez, 2006). Since the changes in immigration laws of 1996, the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of the same year, and the Patriot Act of 2001, more powers have been given to law enforcement to detain and deport immigrants, “but limited judicial review of the process” is apparent (p. 94). Detentions rose from 9,011 in 1996 to 21,133 in 2003. Deportations were up from 69,680 in 1996 to 202,842 in 2004 (2006).
In their study, Phillips et al collected date from 300 deportees on their treatment at the hands of U.S. law enforcement officials. Though it is only one study, and is based on self-report, the results suggest that violence against immigrants is statistically higher than against U.S. residents. Verbal abuse and excessive physical force were indicated as being used upon arrest and during detention. Some of those surveyed were naturalized citizens who were arrested on suspicion of immigration violations. Statistically, illegal immigrants were 2.3 times more likely to be subject to force during arrest, and 2.5 times more likely during detention than naturalized citizens.
Phillips et al lament the fact there are not enough studies done in this area. Most similar studies are done only with U.S.-born citizens. However, they point to this as a pilot attempt and it is their hope that it sparks further research (Phillips, Hagen and Rodriguez, 2006).
The Setting as Political Landscape and Character
Screenwriter Arriga has said that the setting of Three Burials is just as important to the film as Melquiades himself. “I wanted this huge, lonely landscape to be as much a character as anybody else” (Mongrel Films, 2005).
U.S.-Mexican Border in Film
The politically charged border between the United States and Mexico has been the setting for many stories since Hollywood began telling them. Various faces of the border have been portrayed as American culture has changed as a multicultural landscape. However, it has always been seen as a place where Self meets the Other (Dell’Agnese, 2005). Dell’Agnese studied over thirty films, from the beginning of American cinema to the present, and concluded that all the films “make their own geopolitical assumptions,” of representations of that border, but that there is a resounding theme throughout.
In this representation, the dual nature of the U.S.-Mexico border as a closed boundary for the Mexicans and an open frontier for the Americans that highlights the United States’ double standard in its relations with the rest of the world, in which the United States does not see itself as an equal among equals, but as the champion of the geopolitical mission of civilizing and democratizing the less developed Other, on the one hand, and as the more powerful neighbour that can decide who is and is not allowed to enter its territory, on the other… From this second perspective, the border between the United States and Mexico can also be used as a geopolitical metaphor, symbolizing not only the political separation between two sovereign states, but also, on a different scale, the fundamental divide between the Haves and the Have-Nots—that is, between a first world, which is easy to leave, but inaccessible from outside, and the rest of the world, which is extraordinarily difficult to leave but easy to enter… (Dell’Agnese, p. 219)
The Three Burials is certainly enmeshed in this metaphor. The notion of separation is largely transcended at the end of the film. Justice is fairly doled out on Mike Norton, and, more importantly, his redemption as a human being is evident as he begins to show concern for his fellow human beings, and some sense of camaraderie among Mexicans. The notion of Haves and Have-Nots is touched upon. The scenes shot in Mexico show most Mexicans, besides a wealthy landowner, as being impoverished.
It is interesting to note that it is an American doling out the justice, not a Mexican. However, the American has similarities with his friend Melquiades, and has a different relationship to the border.
Fair Depiction of Ethnicity?
One could argue that Jones and Arriga are unfair in their depiction of whites in Three Burials, and depict Mexicans as almost noble savages. The community and culture in the Texas setting is shown as materialistic. People are shown as disconnected from each other, and racism is the norm. Mexicans, on the other hand, are shown as being social, gregarious, and often compassionate. In one scene a woman whom Mike had violently attacked in a border raid saves him from a snake bite through the use of folk medicines. She does it more as a favor to Pete, and also extracts revenge from Mike after the healing sets in. Nonetheless, it shows her as a sort of medicine woman or curandera, and playing a social role in her village. Perhaps Jones and Arriga have embellished the cultural differences too much.
A study of the differences in inter-social difference of Latins and Anglos suggest the depiction is not that far off (Sanchez-Burks, Nisbett, Ybarra, 2000). Sanchez-Burks et al studied the workplace relational styles of Latins (Mexicans and Mexican- Americans) and Anglo-Americans. They discovered evidence that Latins “are guided by a concern with socioemotional considerations to a far greater degree than are Anglo-Americans,” who are more concerned with task-related social goals (p. 174). Sanchez-Burks et al propose a relational schema rather than an ethnic or racial one as the reason for the matter. Their general conclusions were that relational schemas and not ethnic or racial schemas is the determining factor in an individual’s preferred social group at work.
These results constitute “existence proofs” that the match or mismatch in relational schemas can be more important than the match or mismatch in ethnicity in determining how people evaluate others and decide whether to interact with them… In most psychological literature on these topics, membership in an in-group versus an out-group is confounded with relational styles that match versus ones that do not match one’s relational schemas. In the present research two sources may exert an independent influence on peoples’ evaluations of out-group members and their decisions to interact with them. Thus, they should be examined as distinct factors underlying intergroup processes. (Sanchez-Burks, Nisbett, Ybarra, p. 186)
Sanchez-Burks et al’s findings, though needing more research to generalize across populations, could be applied to The Three Burials to explain relationships between characters. Though socioemotional concerns at work are considered more prized by Latins than Anglos-American, it does not exclude some Anglo-Americans from having a high concern for them also. Thus, Pete, who hires Melquiades, and displays socioemotional qualities while working with him, could be said to be more like to Latins than Anglo-Americans. Mike North, with his lack of social interaction and empathy, and task-driven attitude, is an example of the extreme opposite of someone who views life with relational schema. The same could be applied to the generalization that the film makes about Mexican and American culture.
American culture has been described as individualistic, whereas Mexican culture has been labeled a collectivist culture (Novinger, 2001). As Novinger states:
Mexico is a collectivist society that is interdependently and affectively organized around the extended family. The group cooperation that holds this organization together is a strong factor in decision-making and in motivation. In comparison, North Americans tend to be self-motivated and distant in personal interaction. Their individual loyalty is often more to institutions or government than to extended family….(p. 92-93).
The character of Pete makes a decision to side with his friend and his promise to him. He disobeys the local and federal government in kidnapping a federal officer, and dragging him across the border to Mexico. In doing so, he leaves behind his apathetic existence, in a land of isolated television viewers, and transcends it by finding his integrity as a human.
Constructing America—The Isolated Self
As shown above, American cinema has done its fair share of depicting the U.S. and Mexican border. The myths that are depicted by Hollywood are often culled from popular American culture.
Frontier Myths
Psychologist Philip Cushman states that the Self in western terms is mythologized as an isolated self, having a separate life from others in a community (Cushman, 1995). This certainly follows the same logic of Novinger’s ideas regarding the formulation of American culture as individualist. Cultural ideas or myths, says Cushman, can explain much of the formulation of this style of interacting based on the idea of separation from the community (1995). It is the myth of the frontier in America that can be seen as the source of many films that fall into the Western genre. This myth included the idea of settling a wild and savage frontier. Native Americans were seen as bound to a tribal self. In order for bourgeois, Western society to fully civilize the land, Native Americans were to be subject to severalty—training them to think less as a tribe, and to consider ideas such as individual ownership of land to inculcate values of “civilization” (Cushman).
Mike is the ugly shadow of the frontier myth, perhaps currently at its nadir in acceptance. He arrives on the borderland of the Other, and is there to tame it by keeping the savages off U.S. territory. It is through the friendship that transcends that border and the actions of Pete that he is transformed.
Pekinpah, Eastwood and Jones
Jones and Arriga are not the first to craft a revisionist Western. Clint Eastwood has largely succeeded in doing so with Unforgiven (1992). From the period of 1965-1976, Sam Pekinpah recreated the Western as a raw, visceral story that focused on the greed and violence that humanity can often do to itself. In essence, Pekinpah was the first to take the genre on as an art form, though he was often lambasted or even parodied for the ultra-violent qualities of his films (Seydor, 1995). The film that most closely resembles and seems to have influenced Jones and Arriga is Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974).
Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia is about a down-on-his-luck piano player named Benny, played by Warren Oates. Benny is hired by two hit men and is after a bounty for the head of Alfredo—a gigolo who has impregnated a wealthy landholder’s daughter. It starts with a pastoral setting that could be from a period western, but it is quickly apparent that it is set in the modern, mechanized world, populated with gangsters and conmen. The film showcases human isolation, greed, and violence. Benny loses everything because of his greed.
There are similarities and contrasts between Bring Me The Head and Three Burials. Both are set in the modern era, though follow obvious western plots and settings. Benny is engaged to a prostitute. Similarly, in Three Burials Mike is in an extramarital relationship with a waitress, who also sleeps with the town sheriff. Benny befriends Alfredo’s head, and often holds more meaningful conversations with it than with his fiancé. Pete too holds conversations with his dead friend’s body. Bring Me the Head is set entirely in Mexico, which Benny sees as a place to escape. Three Burials portrays the U.S. as someplace that appears worth leaving, if not to escape from, and half of it is set in Mexico. (Pekinpah, Dawson, 1974; Jones, Arriga, 2005)
Ultimately, both films enter into the cultural conversation that cinema creates. They revise the traditional Western by casting a cold eye on human nature and turning the American myth of taming the frontier on its head. Both are journeys. Bring Me the Head is a journey with a tragic savage ending. Three Burials, on the other hand, offers redemption at its conclusion.
Conclusion
Whether through its depiction of American culture, race, immigration or sexual issues, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada triumphs as a morality tale and a western. One could also see many comparisons to the hero’s journey in comparative mythology (Campbell, 1971). Pete Perkins is a lone hero that must travel somewhere on a quest to do the seemingly impossible. It is through this journey that he transcends custom, and redeems Mike Norton’s character, breaking his spirit at times, but in the process, giving him insight into his boorishness. To its credit, Jones and Arriga never point fingers during the film—they allow the characters to be who they are because of their circumstances, as we look on in the third person. In so doing, we can all live through those parts of ourselves that might be like Pete or Mike, or by extension, those who killed Esekiel Hernandez while he herded his family’s goats. The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada gives us all a chance for personal insight and redemption.
References
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David Godot