Benicio Del Toro Addresses U.S. Election Immigration Debate: “Politics Is A Dirty Game” – Lumière Film Festival
Sicario and Traffic star Benicio Del Toro has spoken out against the dehumanizing aspect of the debate around immigration in the lead-up to the U.S. presidential elections.
The actor was pressed on the topic during a masterclass on his career at France’s classic film-focused Lumiere Film Festival.
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“You can’t group people and say they’re all bad people. For the most part, what I know is that most of the people that are trying to get to America, they’re trying to improve their lives, because there’s problems in their hometowns, or wherever they come from, they’re trying to better their lives,” he said.
“That said, I think that borders have to be respected, but when you group people and you put them in a position where they become subhuman, then that’s really scary. I don’t subscribe to treating anyone like they’re less than human because of the color of their skin, because of their religion, because of their origin or whatever.”
Del Toro’s comments come as the debate on how to control U.S. borders hits fever pitch in the lead up to the presidential elections, with former President Donald Trump repeatedly declaring debunked blanket claims around migrant groups.
These include his assertion in his televized debate with rival presidential candidate Kamala Harris that immigrants were eating household pets in Springfield, Ohio. The claim was immediately fact-checked and debunked during the debate, but Trump’s words have continued to resonate through the Springfield community.
“Politics is a dirty game,” said Del Toro. “It’s a tough situation right now, and there’s a lot of people that suffer because of it and it has to be put in check. So, hopefully, there’s going to be an election, and let’s see what happens. But I trust in the younger people.”
The masterclass veered into the topic of U.S. immigration debate, following a conversation about Del Toro’s appearances in a raft of films tackling the U.S. drug wars and the cross-border battles with the Mexican cartels, with the moderator asking if this struggle was being instrumentalized by politicians.
Del Toro was asked about the fact that he has appeared in several drugs war dramas, with the moderator citing an article describing him as the “the James Cagney of the drugs war movie.”
The actor put this down to the era in which he working, suggesting that just as Cagney’s career had coincided with prohibition and gangsters such Al Capone, his career had coincided with the drugs wars.
“I happen to become an actor at a time when the war on drugs is an issue that is in every newspaper in America and has going on now for 40 years, maybe more than that,” he said.
He suggested that Easy Rider and Scarface were early films in the sub-genre and also cited the 1990 mini series Drug Wars: The Camarena Story, in which he played a real-life undercover DEA who was abducted by the Guadalajara Cartel in 1985.
“I happen to be born and be an actor during this time and those stories explore the human condition. Greed, love, you can explore almost everything in that genre, just like you could in a gangster movie,” he added.
“I happen to be one of many actors who can participate in those movies just by origin, meaning being a Latino. I can play on both sides, because it’s part of that war that has been going on now for so long.”
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