Film : Port Triumph (Puerto el Triunfo) 2017 (62 min.)

FilmWorks United International Working Class Film & Video Festival

Directed by Jeffrey Gould

This film by Jeffrey Gould, a history professor at the University of Indiana, looks at an important labor struggle of shrimp workers at Port Triumph in El Salvador. El Salvador had a large shrimp industry, which mostly exported to the United States. More than 1,500 shrimp packinghouse workers, who were mostly women, organized and won important gains at Puerto el Triunfo (Port Triumph). As a result of the growing murderous repression, the union collapsed and the industry as well was decimated by the 1990s. The U.S.-supported civil war in El Salvador not only led the death of thousands of workers and their families but also forced many of these workers to escape to the United States This film provides a personal view of why workers from Central America have been forced to immigrate and their struggle for survival.