Prayers for the Stolen follows a group of young girls, their families, and their community, as they struggle against poverty and oppressive evil. The movie takes place almost exclusively in a rural village in the mountainous jungles an hour’s drive from Acapulco.
The movie focuses on a poor rural Mexican Indian girl, Ana (Ladydi (or “Lady Di”) in the book), her friends, and her relationship with her mother Rita, and the omnipresent cloud of evil from the cartels, police, and military.
The movie is set in a mountainous jungle region in Guerrero, Mexico.
Koyaanisqatsi / Powaqqatsi Connection
In the opening scenes, we see a line of ominous black SUVs snaking through a mountain road. A mountain in the distance is half eaten away, being quarried for limestone. As the SUVs pass, a huge block of the mountain is dynamited in a huge explosion.
The rock quarry scenes are reminicent of the movies Koyaanisqatsi and Powaqqatsi. The laborers have to trade their authentic humanity for meaningless and exploitative labor, simply to survive. Economic survival is the only means of survival for them.
The Book
Prayers for the Stolen is a 2014 novel by Jennifer Clement. [Amazon link]
In Prayers for the Stolen, the cartel members drive large, intimidating SUVs and Escalades – black with dark tinted windows. These vehicles symbolize both power and danger in the story, creating an atmosphere of dread for the townspeople as they hear them approaching.
The SUV’s presence is a signal for the villagers, especially the women and girls, to hide or disguise themselves to avoid being taken. The ominous sound of these vehicles serves as a reminder of the pervasive fear that the cartel instills in the community.
When she’d thought of narcos coming, she always imagined the black SUVs with tinted windows, which were supposed to be illegal but everyone had them fixed so the cops could not look inside. Those black Cadillac Escalades with four doors and black windows filled with narcos and machine guns were like the Trojan Horse, or so my mother used to say.
Prayers for the Stolen by Jennifer Clement Chapter 1 > Page 7
The book opens with….
Now we make you ugly, my mother said. She whistled. Her mouth was so close she sprayed my neck with her whistle- spit. I could smell beer. In the mirror I watched her move the piece of charcoal across my face. It’s a nasty life, she whispered. It’s my first memory. She held an old cracked mirror to my face. I must have been about five years old. The crack made my face look as if it had been broken into two pieces. The best thing you can be in Mexico is an ugly girl.
My name is Ladydi[1] Garcia Martinez and I have brown skin, brown eyes and brown frizzy hair, and look like everyone else I know. As a child my mother used to dress me up as a boy and call me Boy. I told everyone a boy was born, she said.
If I were a girl then I would be stolen. All the drug traffickers had to do was hear there was a pretty girl around and they’d sweep onto our lands in black Escalades and carry the girl off.”
Prayers for the Stolen by Jennifer Clement Chapter 1
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[M]y mother named me Ladydi because she hated what Prince Charles had done to Diana. Thanks to our television, my mother knew the whole story inside out. She loved any woman to whom a man had been unfaithful. It was a special sisterhood of pain and hatred.
She used to say that, if there were a saint for betrayed women, that saint would be Lady Diana. One day, on the Biography Channel, my mother learned that Prince Charles claimed he had never loved her. Why didn’t he just lie? my mother said. Why didn’t he just lie? I was not named Ladydi after Diana’s beauty and fame. I was named Ladydi because of her shame.
My mother said that Lady Diana had lived the true Cinderella story: closets full of broken glass slippers, betrayal, and death. For one birthday I was given a plastic Princess Diana doll wearing a tiara. My father had brought it for me from the United States. In fact, over the years he bought me several Princess Diana dolls. My name was my mother’s revenge. It was a kind of philosophy to her. She did not value forgiveness. In her revenge philosophy there were all kinds of scenarios. For example, the person you were avenging did not need to know about the acts of revenge as in the case of my father and my name.
Prayers for the Stolen by Jennifer Clement [1] Chapter 13 > Page 112
The Dark Cloud of Evil
“Poor Mexico, goes the local saying. So close to heaven, and so close to the United States.”
The United States creates the demand; Mexico provides the supply. The US government provides the helicopters and paraquat, the Mexican government sprays the poison on the villages to keep from damaging the poppy fields.
The cartels, Mexican government, military and police are all members of the same chamber of commerce. At the end of the day, they all go out for a beer together.
Maria [Ana’s friend with the cleft pallet] looked at me fiercely because everyone around here is fierce. In fact, all over Mexico it is known that the people who come from the state of Guerrero are full of anger and as dangerous as a white, transparent scorpion that’s hidden in bed, under a pillow.
In Guerrero the heat, iguanas, spiders, and scorpions ruled. Life was not worth anything. My mother used to say that all the time, Life is not worth anything. She also quoted the old famous song as if it were a prayer, If you’re going to kill me tomorrow you might as well kill me today.
Prayers for the Stolen by Jennifer Clement Chapter 2 > Page 17
Julio wanted me to see the bronze statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe that was in the water, drowned in the sea. She was called the Virgin of the Sea. Now you will see the mother of the water, he said. She protects the shipwrecked and fishermen. The drowned too. The boat sat low in the water as if it were a wide canoe. Julio and I leaned over and looked through the glass that allowed us to see everything that moved under the boat. After a while we saw her shape beneath the waves.
Prayers for the Stolen by Jennifer Clement Chapter 15 > Page 133
