westernjournal | While most documentaries now are either about serial killers or social justice movements, the Daily Caller’s “Cartelville, USA” brings fresh investigative journalism to the table.
The film, clocking in at a brief but impactful 36 minutes, features reporter Jorge Ventura as he delves into a troubling trend in the high desert of Los Angeles County: illegal cannabis farms.
Ventura was the perfect person to produce and narrate the documentary, as he is one of the few journalists who have covered the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border on location.
Ventura uses his own experience growing up in Palmdale, California, to explain that many families move to the desert to get out of the hustle and bustle of Los Angeles. Now, they’re starting to flee what used to be their sanctuary.
Using testimonies from local residents and law enforcement, the documentary reveals how cartels are buying up poor-quality houses with vast amounts of land in order to start pot farms without proper state licensing.
Property prices in the area have skyrocketed, ruining the region’s reputation for being more affordable. The high desert is now overrun by criminal enterprises wasting precious resources, including water, with no regard for the communities around them.
These cartels staff their operations with migrants smuggled across the southern border, many of whom are working as indentured servants.
Ventura does a fantastic job drawing distinctions between the people running the farms and the ones laboring on them.
He tells a far more nuanced story about the average person coming across the border than the hyper-partisan narrative coming from both sides of the aisle.
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