ABSTRACT

Every day, thousands of Moroccan women cross the Spain-Morocco border on foot. They are the so-called porteadoras, women who travel from the border towns of Morocco to Ceuta and Melilla (Spain) to pick up goods in Spanish industrial warehouses, carry them on their own backs as they walk back to Morocco, and receive a small amount for their labor. They are one of the most, if not the most, marginalized constituencies of the borderland, and the invisibility of their existence coincides with the lack of historical visibility of the area they inhabit. Newspaper articles and news reports make visible the reality of this border exchange at the Spanish periphery, depicting the transborder figures of the porteadoras as a shapeless mass of individuals carrying large bundles on their backs. A series of Spanish documentaries have proposed a different narrative. Although they share, along with articles and news reports, the narrative of the porteadora as part of a social and economic fabric, they also create a more complex framework, enabling the viewer to see this invisible figure through three main perspectives: the voice of the porteadoras themselves (making visible their existence as individuals); the diversity of voices and contexts that they present (fracturing the sense of homogeneity); and the hitherto unexplored space of the border itself, which is revealed through highly intentional camerawork as a space of connection. Even though documentary films are produced independently, their common approach allows us to perceive an organic dialogue among the stories they tell. The resulting dialogue manages to make the invisible visible by weaving a narrative that makes porteadoras an integral part of the border.