Latinopia mourns the passing of renowned film director, producer, and writer Lourdes Portillo ( November 11, 1943 – April 20, 2024).
Born in Mexico, Lourdes moved with her family to the United States when she was thirteen years old. After attending UCLA, Lourdes moved to San Francisco where she became involved with the Cine Manifest film collective in the early 1970s. After working with Cine Manifest for several years, she apprenticed with the National Association of Broadcast Engineers and Technicians in San Francisco, and graduated with an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1985.
Portillo’s first major documentary was The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo (1986) which she co-produced and co-directed with Susana Blaustein. The film documents the resistance by a group of Argentine women who gather weekly at the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires to demand the return of their children who had been “disappeared” by the Argentine military. The film, a searing indictment of the flagrant abuse of power by the Argentine junta, won twenty international awards and received an Academy Award nomination in 1987 for Best Documentary.
Her other films include La Ofrenda: The Days of the Dead (1988), Columbus on Trial (1992), The Devil Never Sleeps (1994) and Corpus: A Home Movie about Selena (1997).
Another landmark film that reflected her activist approach to film making was Senorita Extraviada (Young Woman Missing), The film chronicles the unsolved kidnapping and murder of several hundred young women in the city of Juarez, Mexico. Lourdes spent two years in Juarez investigating the disappearances and the lack of governmental response to the murders. The drew attention to the inability or lack of desire by city, state and federal authorities to seriously pursue the murders of the young women, many of whom worked in the maquiladora labor intensive factories along the border. The film has garnered widespread appreciation for exposing the horrific deaths.
Throughout her life, Lourdes Portillo pursued justice, equality for all and the well being of Latinos in the United States. Her activist voice will be missed but not forgotten.
Latinopia salutes Lourdes Portillo, a true Latinopia Hero!
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The information in his article is based on Lourdes Portillo’s Wikipedia page and has been written by Latinopia staff under the “fair use” proviso of the copyright law. The photo of Lourdes Portillo is copyrighted by Rosalinda Fregoso and is used in this posting with her permission.