C H A P T ER

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Latino Sci-Fi: Cognition and Narrative

Design in Alex Riveras Sleep Dealer
Christopher Gonzlez

Sleep Dealer is my first film. Its not anything like a Star Wars or a
Blade Runner. In many ways its a humble film. But its also an honest attempt to use science-fiction to say something new, and something
true, about our world today.
Alex Rivera, press kit for Sleep Dealer

What is science fiction (sci-fi), and why are there so few such works created by Latinos in the United States? While the first part of my question has already been explored in excellent detail by pioneering scholars
such as Darko Suvin, Fredric Jameson, and Brooks Landon, the second
part both taunts and tantalizes. The most direct answer suggests the
mystery surrounding the relative absence of sci-fi in Latino/a fiction.
Eric Garcias The Repossession Mambo (2009) and Junot Dazs tentatively
titled Monstro indicate that despite the significant forays into sci-fi worlds
by Latinos, their numbers remain remarkably low.
This state of Latino/a sci-fi is made all the more curious because, as
Philippe Mather has argued, the genres distinctive traits are not tied to
formal, aesthetic, or stylistic criteria but rather to thematic and contextual
factors (186). While Mather specifically explores the sci-fi film genre,
he situates his claim within the larger assertion that narrative devices and
formal aspects that authors use to construct sci-fi storyworlds are in general not inherently unique to the genre. As this observation applies to my
own exploration of Latino/a sci-fi, the implication is that the narratology

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behind the design of sci-fi storyworlds (either in literature or on film)

the blueprinting techniques that orient audience reconstruction of the
narrative discoursecan be found in other forms of storytelling. Thus,
the lack of a Latino/a sci-fi tradition is not a matter of narrative technique or design; it is a matter of thematics.
Gregory E. Rutledge has explored a similar issue in the African
American literary tradition. As he remarks, [d]espite the growing number of Black FFF [futurist fiction and fantasy] writers, the proportion of
Black FFF authors to White FFF authors is dismal. This disproportion
means that Black FFF authors have a limited presence in the industry
(236). Though my essay does not seek to excavate a complete accounting
for the lack of a Latino/a tradition of sci-fi in the United States the way
Rutledges essay does, the matter nevertheless provides significant impetus for my study of how Latino/a sci-fiand specifically through the
medium of filmcan invite audiences to reframe current sociopolitical
issues that have traditionally been articulated in ways that seek to document the experiences of Latinos. Indeed, the dominant commonality
shared by the majority of Latino/a literature and film is a cultural didacticism that strives to represent Latino/a experience in both fiction and
nonfiction. The Latino imagination is now poised to take up the sci-fi
genre in earnest as never before.
Accordingly, as Latinos continue to venture into varied forms of multimedia, as this collection of essays demonstrates, one thing that strikes
me as fascinating is how much time has passed before Latinos began creating storyworlds rooted in sci-fi. After all, the elements of worldmaking,
in the form of narrative devices, all are generated in the imagination of
the human mind. This assertion helps keep in sight a crucial aspect of my
essay: namely, that the narratological components of sci-fi (or any basic
ingredient of storytelling, for that matter) can be used by any writer or
director, regardless of their racial, ethnic, or cultural background.
Moreover, a storytelling genre such as science fiction can be used as a
means of emphasizing those unsalable characteristics of a society, as writers such as George Orwell demonstrated so well in his classic dystopian
novel Nineteen Eighty-Four and his enduring portrayal of totalitarian
power in the ubiquitous Big Brother. In my essay, I argue that the sci-fi
mode of storytelling has particular relevance to many issues faced by
Latinos today, such as immigration, employment, and both political and
economic clout. These issues rest on a foundation of human designation.
That is to say, once it becomes perfectly acceptable to speak of humans (in
this case, Latinos) as if they were not human, the easier it is to deny them
of basic civil and human rights. Alex Riveras (2007) film Sleep Dealer is
an excellent case study that reminds its audience that Latinos must resist

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Figure 13.1 Luis Fernando Pea as Memo Cruz working as virtual laborer in
Sleep Dealer.

adopting a mechanized consciousness that makes it all too easy to see

oneself as exploitable and expendable as a machine (Figure 13.1).

Sci-fi Worlds and Reality

Creators of sci-fi are often touted for their ability to somehow predict
societal or technological trends. For instance, the Science Channels
Prophets of Science Fiction, hosted by director Ridley Scott, examines the
visionary qualities of such sci-fi luminaries such as H. G. Wells, Isaac
Asimov, Philip K. Dick, and others, and how their imagined storyworlds
somehow presaged many of the technologies enjoyed today. But sci-fi
fills another important role in society, one that highlights either actual
or potential ethical concerns that manifest in society. Asimov, as but one
example, is often credited with implicitly stating certain ethical rules with
which all of the robots in his storyworlds must comply. These so-called
three laws of robotics outline robot behaviorwhat they can and cannot
doreflect ethical concerns in our actual society. The robot laws remind
us of the myriad difficult situations humans must negotiate, and often
violate, every day. Dominic Idier, bringing together Asimovs work with
William Gibsons, reminds us of the unique relationship between technology and society, [t]echnology and society cannot be easily separated,
especially when the consequences of technology are studied. Too many
people confuse technical feasibility with actual technology. Technology
itself results from socio-political choices and usually reflects faithfully a

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society and its culture (256). Advances and developments in technology invariably affect society at large in significant ways, as the advent of
the Internet, Facebook, Twitter, and so-called smartphones has revealed.
Idier continues:
Scenario technique is a tool for helping one to think about the consequences
of present decisions and to prepare for a changing environment. But doesnt
a serious science fiction (SF) story have the same purpose? In fact, the SF
story can go further, not only because of its environment or breadth of plot
but because an SF author is not afraid to break norms and established paradigms or cultures in order to explore human motivations and creations. In
addition, characters are used in SF stories so that readers can project themselves into the stories. Such emotional involvement is absent from scenarios.
It is certainly more difficult to control but probably more rewarding with
respect to the future of actual human organisations and societies. (259)

Idier aims to demonstrate how sci-fi stories can yield insights into future
sequences that the technique of positing certain scenarios cannot. Though
the scenario technique is used to think about how a particular situation and
its consequences may occur and how they can be handled (258), Idier sees
the value in creating a fully realized storyworld where technology advances
play out in a far richer environment than the rather sterile scenario.
I agree with Idiers argument that sci-fi stories can help us think about
and anticipate trends and trajectories of technological development as
they relate to sociopolitical environments. However, I would add that
one of the strengths of science fiction is to not only reflect how imagined societies have developed certain technologies but also how these
technologies have impacted the fictional societies in which they reside.
Moreover, audiences must necessarily draw comparisons between the
society of the sci-fi story and the social environment that serves as a basis
for comparison. Such comparisons are continuous when reading sci-fi
literature or viewing sci-fi films, thanks in large part to what MarieLaure Ryan identifies as the principle of minimal departure, which states
that audiences will assume the fictional world in question is the same as
the actual world until they have reason to believe otherwise. Because a
sci-fi world is a possible world where certain aspects generally taken for
granted must now be monitored by the audience, one of the outcomes of
reconstructing the sci-fi storyworld is its heightened level of comparison
to the actual world. This assertion is relevant to my examination of Sleep
Dealer, a film that compels its audience to go back and forth between the
sci-fi storyworld and early twenty-first-century United States.
This interaction among audience, the fictional world, and the actual
world is of particular interest, especially when we think of the immersive

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quality of narrative fiction and film. In Experiencing Narrative Worlds

(1993), Richard Gerrig theorizes how narrative has the ability to transport readers and how this function of reading narrative impacts readers
own conception of the world. The so-called real-world effect of experiencing narrative worlds, for Gerrig, emerges as an experiential category not
through a passive wholesale suspension of disbelief but, rather, through
active scrutiny of the particular information proffered in fictions (207).
As sci-fi worlds emanate from an understanding of the actual world,
audiences often are led to consider some aspects of the real world in a
new light. In fact, Darko Suvin, building on Viktor Shklovskys concept
of ostranenie (translated as the neologism, enstrangement), has argued
that science fictions most potent property is its ability to make familiar
concepts new once more to audiences (Fitting, paraphrase 135136).
If fictional worlds enable audiences to see their own realities in new
ways, with sci-fi world being particularly vested with the potential to
make strange habituated experiences and worldviews among the audiences, what can we make of the union of Latino/a literature and sci-fi
hold in twenty-first-century US fiction? Specifically, what can Riveras
Sleep Dealer tell us about sci-fi and current political debates surrounding
issues of Latinidad?

Latino/a Engagements with Sci-fi

First of all, it is a misconception to think that Latinos are uninterested in
genre fiction. Just as Latino/a authors and filmmakers are influenced by
their counterparts in United States and Latin American narrative traditions, the same might be said of those working in the sci-fi genre of storytelling. The sci-fi tradition in the United States is well documented, and
the Latin American sci-fi tradition is in the process of being recovered,
thanks in large measure to Andrea L. Bell and Yolanda Molina-Gavilns
anthology of Latin American sci-fi, Cosmos Latinos (2003). What allows
this falsity, that is, that Latinos dont engage with science fiction, to persist is the relatively miniscule corpus of works. Yet as I mentioned earlier,
the powers-that-be in the publishing industry play a large role in this as
well. Even rarer is the Latino sci-fi film. In this case, just as in the production of Latino/a sci-fi literature, US sci-fi cinema dominates other nations
in the sheer size and scope of the industry. But there has also been a flourishing Latin American sci-fi industry, as Mariano Paz explains:
Sf cinema is undeniably dominated by the American film industry, at least
in Western countries and since the end of World War II. Not only are the
majority of sf films released each year produced in the US, but many of

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them are Hollywood blockbusters made with the biggest of budgets, while
nations with very rich cinematic histories, such as France and Italy, have
made comparatively few contributions to the genre. There is, however, a
not-insignificant corpus of sf cinema produced in Latin America. These
films have mostly been ignored by critics and academics, both nationally
and internationally, and only in the past few years have they begun to show
signs of being rediscovered. (81)

Like Latin American sci-fi writings, Latin American sci-fi cinema is also
undergoing the process of recovery and reconsideration.
My point here is to emphasize, or rather dispel the notion that Latino
authors and filmmakers do not see sci-fi as an interesting and useful mode
of storytelling. As Latinos continue to grow as a subset of the US population, and as more and more Latinos signal a more divergent appetite for
popular culture, there can only be an increased production of Latino sci-fi
works of fiction and films in the United States. Filmmakers such as Rivera
and Robert Rodriguez, and even Mexican director Guillermo del Toro,
have helped carve out a space for Latinos in the cinematic sci-fi landscape.
To be sure, Latino literature and film, by and large, also concentrate
on societal concerns as they impact and relate to the Latino community. Indeed, Latino literature seeks to document or represent the Latino
experience in the United States by telling barrio bildungsroman, so much
so that such narratives have become heavy-handed tropes. That is why I
find the dearth of storytelling that unites issues of Latinidad and sci-fi so
striking; the two are overwhelmingly complementary. This lack of Latino
sci-fi narratives is steadily being addressed, as Samuel Saldivars essay on
the short-lived television show The Event and also Caprica in this volume indicates. As a welcomed addition to the corpus of Latino/a sci-fi,
Riveras Sleep Dealer effectively brings together the often-technologically
deprived environs of the barrio with the high-tech world of drone warfare and virtual experience.
Rivera, a New York-based director, received positive recognition for
Sleep Dealer s premiere at the Sundance Festival in 2008. His short but
impressive body of films shows that Rivera has often sought to unite
cutting-edge and near-future technology with issues of concern to the
Latino community. Papapap (1995) and Why Cyberbraceros? (1997) are
short works that both graft virtual technologies onto matters of immigration and labor. Ostensibly, these works led to the fruition of Sleep
Dealer. As an independent filmmaker with limited resources with which
to build the mega-dollar special effects that most audiences have come to
expect from Hollywood blockbusters, Rivera must rely on the ingenuity
of his creativity to design a rich, immersive storyworld for his audience.

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In short, Sleep Dealer rises above its budgetary constraints, in large measure because of Riveras design and what Frederick Luis Aldama terms
will to stylea commitment to willfully designing narrative worlds
that seek to move audiences while eschewing simplistic conventions of
storytelling (13840).

Narrative Design in S LEEP D E ALER

As with many sci-fi narratives, Sleep Dealer is ultimately concerned with
underscoring the precious nature of our humanity by urging its ideal
audience to recognize how memories, virtual experience, and proxy
experience are very much tethered to a Latinos position in societynot
only in Riveras storyworld but in our own actual world. Sleep Dealer
opens with a shot of Memo Cruz (Luis Fernando Pea) at work as a
sleep dealera unskilled laborer who performs the work of a machine
both remotely and virtually for so many hours on end that he or she falls
asleep from exhaustion. As Memo begins his voice-over narration, the
audience sees him with a mask over half of his face and fluorescent-blue
tubes connected directly onto several sites on his body. As Memo struggles to stay awake, snatches of his memories flash quickly on the screen.
The juxtaposition of those images of him as a sleep dealer with those
that show him outside of this context is a powerful thesis that the rest of
the film articulates. As a sleep dealer, Memo becomes a virtual machine,
complete with a dehumanizing mask, clouded eyes, and connected to the
workercomputer interface. He is free of volition while he performs the
unskilled work of a machine in another country. Yet his memories show
him in his most human contexts: as son and as brother. The balance
between machine and human is at the heart of Memos story.
One of the key choices in Riveras narrative blueprint for Sleep Dealer,
other than the important decision to locate the majority of his films setting in Mexican spaces, is his avoidance of showing virtual technology
as a means of escapist entertainment. Memo, Luz, and Ramirez all use
virtual technology for economic and materialistic outcomes. In other
words, though it is implied that American consumers have an appetite for
so-identified Third World experiences (as demonstrated via Luzs sale of
her experiences with Memo, unbeknownst to him), the Latinos in Sleep
Dealer use such technology as just another means of profiting from their
own labor. Unlike both versions of Total Recall (1990, 2012) based on
Philip K. Dicks short story We Can Remember It for You Wholesale
where virtual technology enables an escape from the tedium of reality,
Sleep Dealer has much more in common with William Gibsons 1983
novel Neuromancer.

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Engaging with a virtual environment often suggest the manipulation

of simulated objects. Yet, in Sleep Dealer, as in Neuromancer, both the
minds and bodies of the characters are very much affected as a consequence of virtual technology. As Delgado et al. note:
In the imaginary future world of Neuromancer, the central image of body
enhancement is the body as information. [ . . . ] Within the imagined world
of Neuromancer, future visions of body, mind, and technology were presented raising a number of questions about what it means to be human
[ . . . ]. The image of the body as information encompassed in Neuromancer
opens up for ethical questioning about the body-technology relation in a
way that is accessible and possibly appealing for large parts of the public.
(202203)

Delgado et al. use Neuromancer as a case study in order to examine

the ethical dimensions of bodily enhancement technologies. In Gibsons
book, they claim, [b]odies and minds are information. This view we
also find in more speculative proposals, such as that of uploading
human consciousness to computers (219).
Yet in Sleep Dealer the meeting of human body and virtual environment
is not rendered as information but rather as distilled labor. In essence,
from an American nationalistic and capitalistic view, Rivera solves the
undocumented worker problem by conjuring a technology that extracts
the labor potential (and thus, value) without the hassle of allowing brown
bodies to earn wages on US soil. But rather than depicting such a technology as a utopia or solution to an exacerbated immigration situation, as
some in the United States might, Rivera allows audiences to grapple with
the ethical concerns of such a technology by making Memo the protagonist of the film. Instead of the implicit utopia that is being enjoyed on the
US side of the militarized border, the audience experiences the film from
the dystopian Mexican borderlands.
Much of the film shows via analepsis Memos life before he became a
sleep dealer. The USMexico border is militarized in Memos storyworld
of the near future, and the United States has positioned itself as a defender
of the natural world (depicted as a defense of water resources from aquaterrorists) by essentially cordoning itself off from the rest of the world.
Thanks to virtual technology, pilots can man drones remotely and rid the
world from terrorists. This same virtual technology enables other capital
enterprises such as the exportation of unskilled labor and the sale of
so-called Third World experiences that suggests there is always a market
for slumming. In Santa Ana Del Rio, Oaxaca, Mexico, Memo is fixated
on the world beyond his home as he, too, is caught up in eavesdropping

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on peoples conversations regarding ndos, the nodes or ports on the

body where humans can connect to virtual worlds. Like most youths his
age, Memo wishes to leave home and enter into the world more than
anything else.
As the name of his hometown indicates, there is a life-sustaining river
near Memos home. But the river has been dammed by the United States,
and is protected by weaponized drones and remote firearms. Water can
only be purchased at an ever-escalating price. The one source of entertainment, besides Memos homemade radio that intercepts voice transmissions, is an outrageous reality show titled Drones! that puts military
operations featuring drones and their remote pilots at the front and center. The shows premise is to deliver audiences the dehumanizing murder
of terrorists as ratings-driven entertainment. This show literally merges
with Memos world, as his radio interceptions, due to their proximity to
the heavily fortified dam, is interpreted by the US military as a terrorist
threat. Memo and his brother watch live on television the drone strike
that culminates in the destruction of their home and the cold-blooded
murder of their father.
This scene launches the two main character arcs in Sleep Dealer :
Memos pursuit of wage-earning work in the aftermath of the drone
attack that killed his father, and Rudy Ramirez, the US pilot of the very
drone strike that murdered Memos father. Both Memo and Ramirez
must deal with the dehumanizing technology that enables virtual control
of machines. Memo begins as a human character that is forced to take up
work as a machine (and, in essence, struggles to maintain his humanity),
while Ramirez is introduced as a pilot in a darkened room with a pilots
mask and helmet that completely obscures his face. At the culmination
of the incursion that leads to Memos fathers death, Ramirez immediately senses the wrongness of his act, and as the film later reveals, works
to atone for his inhuman act. Memo, as a sleep dealer, and Ramirez,
as a drone pilot, are both robbed of volition and free will. Both must
resist their emotion systems (Ramirez especially) and act in the same
cold manner as the machines they essentially become. But, ironically, the
machines actually control (or suppress) the emotions of these two men.

Dehumanized Brown Bodies

Of course, the issue of labor practices is evident in the characters of Memo
and Ramirez. One of the most salient problems in the immigration
debate has to do with the difficult work undocumented workers often
perform in the United States. Make no mistake, undocumented workers
and immigrants are often led to such labor-intensive work because it is so

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strenuous and pays so little. The migrant workers who perform such difficult labor in the United States do not have benefits or health insurance,
nor do they enjoy the otherwise-standard hiring and firing practices. As
Angela C. Stuesse explains:
For migrants seeking employment, the passage of IRCA made it illegal to
be hired without papers, bolstering ever-growing black markets in the
realms of document falsification, identity theft, and under-the-table third
party labor contracting. Undocumented migrants in the United States
are more vulnerable today than ever before: paying hundreds of dollars
for jobs, promotions, and sick leave so that management will continue
choosing to look the other way; enduring low wages and poor working
conditions due to the uncertainty of being hired elsewhere; and suffering
crippling workplace injuries without adequate medical care or compensation because employers refuse to report the injuries to appropriate agencies
and their insurance carriers, just to name a few. (27)

Such workers do not have paid time off or vacation days. They are often
paid in cash while they move from state to state as the crops dictate. The
United States, as a result, is in the untenable position of decrying the
influx of undocumented workers while exploiting them strictly for their
ability to perform hard labor. Rivera pounces on this fact in order to create a storyworld in which technology has enabled the United States to
make full use of a Mexicans capacity to do work while using the same
technology to keep those workers bodies off of US soil. As all good
sci-fi demonstrates, the advanced technology depicted is not of central
concern to the story; it is the consequences of such technology on our
humanity that should make audiences sit up and take notice.
As I have argued elsewhere, one of the dangers of exploitative labor
practicesparticularly as they affect undocumented workersis that they
may inculcate the acceptance of the dehumanization of unskilled laborers
(Resisting). Of course, labor unions have helped ameliorate this deplorable situation in the United States, and Csar Chavez is celebrated for
his efforts in unionizing the farm workers of the United States in the
1960s and 1970s. But, in the ever-escalating debate on illegal immigration, increased deportations under the Obama Administration, and passage of anti-illegal immigration laws in states such as Alabamas HB 56
and Arizonas SB 1070, undocumented workers shrink into unobtrusive
silence as a result. There is a tacit agreement that is ongoing in the United
States regarding its undocumented workers that suggests the United
States wants, and arguably needs the labor of these workers but does not
wish to acknowledge the workers humanity. Many in the United States
desire machines that do not require legal status, living wages, or human

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dignity. Unfortunately, it is all too easy for undocumented workers to

adopt a mechanized consciousness where they see themselves as machinelike without human rights and dignity.
Rivera highlights the fault line where human consciousness and mechanized consciousness meet in two key scenes. I have already mentioned in
one of these scenesthe scene in which Rivera is compelled to disregard
his human instinct to preserve human life and fire upon Memos father.
In this scene, Ramirezs personal narrative (his human story) takes central position in the reality show of which he is the focus. The shows
fictional audience, as well as the films audience, comes to understand
Ramirez at a personal level. As the pilot of a drone, the show casts him
in the role of the hero who purpose is to kill the hell out of the bad
guys. Ramirezs brief backstory, while functioning as nationalist propaganda intended to justify murder and imperialism for the fictional shows
creators, works as a humanizing device for Riveras audience that complicates his mission as a drone pilot. Ramirez, depicted as a patriot and
good son, is given a justification for the hesitation he experiences when
he completes his mission. His emotions are just barely held in check by
the urging of the faceless voice of a commanding officer that convinces
Ramirez that the target is a terrorist. Ramirez, in having to disregard the
humanity of his target, must himself undergo a dehumanizing deformation, if only temporarily. Further, because Rivera has already introduced
Memos father as a man whose livelihood as a farmer has been destroyed
by US imperialist policies and a fight against terrorism, Sleep Dealer s
ideal audience is primed to see him as a human whose right to exist
have been violated. And for a moment, we see Memos father through
Ramirezs eyes just before he fires. We empathize, then, when Ramirez
makes his sincere attempt to seek out Memo in an effort to make amends.
Despite the orders of his superiors, Ramirez resists completely crossing
over into mechanized consciousness by attempting to atone for his error
in ethical judgment.
The second scene is a brief but stunning set piece in Sleep Dealer. In
it, Memo works as a sleep dealer performing high-rise construction work
as a welding robot. Throughout the scene, Rivera allows the audience
to see what Memo sees as he does his work via remote. He is able to
use his body, via his nodal connections, to manipulate the construction
machine as if he were the machine. As a mirrored window is set into
place, Memo is able to see himself as the machine. Rivera cuts back and
forth between the shot of Memo and the shot of the machine. In this
moment, the human-as-machine metonym becomes literal. Memo works
23-hour shifts, often to the point of exhaustion. And in a later scene,
another sleep dealer is seriously injured on the job. Memos first reaction

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is to try to help his co-worker, but the shift supervisor quickly whisks
the fallen worker out of the area and out of sight. Rivera reinforces in
his audience the idea that the sleep dealers are expendable. That is to say,
their bodies are expendable. Once a workers body can no longer expend
the energy to power and control the remote machines, they are promptly
dispatched. Memo comes to understand that, like the river that once provided life and sustenance to Santa Ana Del Rio before it was harnessed by
the United States, his own body is being sapped of its energy in order to
feed the appetites of the nation to his north. In short, his corporeal self
and its kinetic potential is just another national export.
Rivera poses an interesting proposition in his film that comes in the
form of a sci-fi technology: the nodal interface. The promise of economic gain is one benefit to having the nodes, but the nodes are not
easily attained. In Sleep Dealer, the nodes function similarly to the typical
trope of border crossing that is often seen in narratives that depict the
USMexico border. In these traditional border narratives, as in the actual
world, those who wish to make the dangerous crossing often enlist the
aid of the often-dubious coyotes individuals who generally exploit and
violate the vulnerable border crossers. Similarly, those who are able to
provide people like Memo with nodes are labeled coyoteks. Once the nodes
are attained, people may use them as a delivery system not only for drugs
and alcohol, but also for monetary gain. Luz, Memos love interest in the
film, not only performs the procedure that gives Memo his nodes but also
betrays him by selling the memories of her experiences with him.
While Memo feels used by Luzs sale of their shared experiences, the
audience sees this as yet another manifestation of the dehumanizing
potential inherent in the nodal technology. Memos very existence, like
the reality television show mentioned earlier, can be purchased as a form
of entertainment by people nations away. Consistently throughout Sleep
Dealer, Memo is exposed to situations that erode at the edifice of his
humanity. And, as Ramirez is the impetus that begins Memos steady
loss of humanity, and vice versa, Rivera inevitably has the two characters
join forces in the final third of the film. Indeed, Memo and Rivera are
like two sides of the same coin: They are both devoted Latino sons, they
are both dutiful and hardworking, yet they reside on opposite sides of
the border. And while their small victory restores the flow of the river to
Santa Ana Del Rio, Rivera resists a neat ending. The nodal technology
that enabled many of the problems introduced in the film still exist by
its close, and there is no indication that Memo will do anything but continue his work as a sleep dealer. Ramirez, traitor to the US fight against
aqua-terrorism, must continue south, moving ever farther away from the
family he left behind.

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In this essay, I have attempted to demonstrate how sci-fi can be used

to reframe issues of concern to the Latino/a community in the United
States. Despite of the small number of examples of sci-fi films by and
about Latinos, the time is ripe for a burgeoning for storytelling of this
kind. Directors such as Robert Rodriguez and Alex Rivera are poised to
continue the momentum they have already achieved by continuing to
delve into all forms of filmic narrative. There is no type of storytelling
genre that cannot be taken up by Latinos, and the result of such ambitions and endeavors will yield an audience that is receptive to all manners of storytelling engaged by Latinos. Riveras Sleep Dealer, despite the
seeming constraint of the independent filmmakers budget, takes virtual
technology and body-to-computer interfacesnow traditional tropes of
sci-fiand recasts it to highlight ethical concerns of the undocumented
and immigrant labor force in the United States. The erasure of a willful
body and the preeminence of a machine-like mentalitya mechanized
consciousness that places the labor value of ones self above all elseis
not simply a sci-fi device. Rather, Riveras narrative blueprint embosses
this often-unacknowledged worldview necessarily adopted by undocumented workers in the United States. In this instance, it is Sleep Dealer,
a creative work of sci-fi, which invites audiences to inhabit its storyworld
and pay heed to the silent exploitation of actual brown bodies.

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