How shall I begin my story that has no beginning?

This is Esperanza Quintero.

She's a housewife in New Mexico living in a small town.

When I was a child, it was called San Marcos.

The Anglos changed the name to Zinktown.

Zinc Town, New Mexico, U.S.A.

The image is black and white.

Dusty roads, clothes swaying on laundry lines in the desert wind,

shacks with corrugated tin roofs. Our roots go deep in this place. Deeper than the pines. Deeper than the mine shacks.

Zinc Town is owned by a mining company. All the land, all the houses, it all belongs to the company.

I am a miner's wife.

18 years my husband has given to that mine,

living half his life with dynamite and darkness.

This is how the film, Salt of the Earth, begins.

It's a portrait of a desolate place dominated by mining and by injustice.

Mexican Americans in town don't have running water in their homes,

while Anglos, as the Mexicans call them, do.

Mexicans are more likely to be killed in the mines

because they're required to work alone,

but Anglos are allowed to work in pairs.

And Mexicans are constantly put down by their bosses and treated like dirt.

On this day, Ramon, Esperanza's husband, is considering whether to go on strike with the other Mexican-American miners. They want to

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