David CruzLecturer in Spanish, University of Washington

From Bracero to Cybracero: Remote Labor, Border Regimes, and Extractive Capital in Sleep Dealer

This article examines Alex Rivera’s Sleep Dealer (2008) as a speculative reconfiguration of migrant labor under digital capitalism. It argues that the film transforms the historical figure of the bracero into the cybracero, a worker whose body remains immobilized south of the U.S.–Mexico border while labor power is extracted remotely through digital networks.