This movie touched on the financial challenges that families with a child with a disability can face. They remorgaged their home to pay off some debt and cover the cost of the trip to India for Lucca’s treatment. Andrés says “It’s not just that we don’t have money, we owe money…”(Chenillo, 2024, 20:18). While they prepare for their trip we see their living room filled with supplies for Lucca (Chenillo, 2024, 30:37). Some may argue that this family had the privilege of owning a home and therefore the ability to access the funding for the treatment. Others may feel that the requirement for a family to mortgage their home to pay for treatment and supplies is hardship. I feel that this film shows the practical challenges that a family faces in providing the social labour/capital for caregiving while navigating work, the supplies needed such as formula and medicine, and the expense of medical bills. In Canada “From 2013 to 2022, the poverty rate for people with disabilities was on average twice as high than the poverty rate for people without disabilities” (Campaign 2000 and disability without poverty, 2023, p.4). In Mexico 45% of the disabled population lives in poverty compared to 11.3 of the population (MISUA, n.d.), which is nearly double the ratio.
Return to main post: [https://ginajohnson.ca/luccas-world-analysis/].
References
Campaign 2000 and Disability Without Poverty. (2024). Disability without poverty. https://campaign2000.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Disability-Poverty-Report-Card-2024-English.pdf
Chenillo, M. (Director). 2024). Lucca’s World. (Netflix). https://www.netflix.com/ca/title/81436662
MISUA. (n.d.). Disability in Mexico. https://miusa.globaldisabilityrightsnow.org/infographic/disability-mexico/
