Anthropologist | Filmmaker |Photographer |Musician
Anthropology
First as a musician and now as an anthropologist, traveling and meeting people around the world for the last 20+ years has made an enormous impact on Raul’s life. His anthropology work explores political and social issues like; colonization, immigration, indigenous, and women's rights. By learning from peoples cultures and their stories, he’s always in search of impactful and beautiful moving and still images. Through anthropology, film, photography or music Raul always seeks to explore the beauty and struggle of mother nature and humankind.
Documentary Film Work
Raul’s inspiration for his documentary work came from being exposed to political corruption, corporate globalization, migration, and organized crime at an early age while living in Ciudad Juárez, México.
His documentary work has allowed him to tell stories of injustice from which many people around the world suffer in the hands of political and corporate systems that crush their dreams and consider them disposable.
Forward to May 2010 and now living in Berkeley, California, he sets up to travel to the southeast state of Chiapas, México to begin filming a documentary about the struggles and achievements of the EZLN (Zapatista Army of National Liberation). “The First PostModern Guerilla Movement” as the New York Times called it. "Not Everything Started in 1994" is a film about a Mayan indigenous insurrection that declared war against the Mexican Government and the Armed Forces to stop the 500+ years of indigenous oppression.
Because of his work on this film, in August of 2010, he was invited to be the Director of Photography of the documentary film "Landscape of Change," which exposes the way women had been marginalized and controlled by an Irish patriarchy system that to this day has not changed much.
Funded by the 2018-2019 Haas Scholar program at UC Berkeley, Raul started production in June 2018 for the film “Fighting Not to Be Forgotten.” A film that takes place back home and tells the stories of Norma Laguna and Silvia Banda - whose daughters are feminicide victims. Their daughters murderers share unique physical and socioeconomic characteristics that fit a pattern of disappearances, abuse, and murders of thousands of young women in the border city of Ciudad Juárez, México. This is a documentary that explores a broken society divided by the apathy of civilian life, religious backlash, organized crime, and government corruption. Most importantly, the film shows the pain that mothers like Norma Laguna and Silvia Banda endure while fighting for justice and keeping their daughters’ memories alive.