El Mundo Gira

"El Mundo Gira"
The X-Files episode
Episode no.	Season 4 Episode 11
Directed by	Tucker Gates
Written by	John Shiban
Production code	4X11
Original air date	January 12, 1997
Guest stars
Mitch Pileggi as Assistant Director Walter Skinner Rubén Blades as Conrad Lozano Raymond Cruz as Eladio Buente Jose Yenque as Soledad Buente Simi as Gabriel Buente Lillian Hurst as Flakita Susan Bain as County Coroner Robert Thurston as Dr. Larry Steen Michael Kopsa as Rick Culver Markus Hondro as The Barber Janeth Munoz as Village Woman Pamela Diaz as Maria Dorante Fabricio Santin as Migrant Worker Jose Vargas as INS Worker Tito Mata as INS Guard Tony Dean Smith as Store Clerk
Episode chronology
← Previous "Paper Hearts" Next → "Leonard Betts"
List of season 4 episodes List of The X-Files episodes

"El Mundo Gira" is the eleventh episode of the fourth season of the science fiction television series The X-Files. The episode first aired in the United States on January 12, 1997 on the Fox Network, and features the agents' investigation of a bizarre fungal growth affecting some illegal immigrants.

Plot

Agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) investigate the death of Maria Dorantes, an illegal immigrant who was found dead with her face partially eaten away after yellow rain fell from the sky. Maria was the object of the love of two brothers, Eladio Buente (Raymond Cruz) and Soledad Buente, and Soledad blames his brother for her death. The illegal aliens believe that the "Chupacabra", the Latin American Goatsucker, was responsible for her death. Mulder is assisted on the case by local INS agent Conrad Lozano and the two are able to interrogate Eladio, who frightens the other immigrants. Scully meanwhile discovers that Maria was killed by a fungal growth known as Aspergillus.

Eladio, who is a carrier of the Aspergillus, escapes when a truck attempts to transport him to the Mexican border. The truck driver is found dead, and a clinical exam shows it was a growth of Trichophyton - the Athlete's foot fungus - caused by an immunodeficency-causing enzyme. Eladio seeks to return to Mexico, but needs money to do so. As such he meets with his cousin Gabrielle, who tells him to meet her at her job at the local grocery store later that night. Eladio works with a construction foreman for the day to make the money. Soledad comes after him, seeking to kill him, but finds the foreman dead. Eladio escapes in the foreman's truck and heads to the grocery store, spreading the fungal growth. The agents later confront Soledad at the supermarket, discovering another dead victim of the fungus.

Eladio returns to see Gabrielle, but by now has grown deformed from the fungus. Gabrielle, afraid of him, gives him her money and lies to the agents about his location when they come to see her. In actuality, Eladio has returned to the camp where Maria died, where Lozano tries to spur Soledad on in killing his brother. Soledad finds he can't do it and Lozano struggles with him, being accidentally killed when the gun goes off. Soledad becomes a carrier of the fungal growth himself and flees with Eladio towards Mexico.

Production

Writer John Shiban was inspired to write the episode based on the long lines of migrant workers he would see when working as a computer programmer in the Los Angeles area. He combined it with an idea he had about a contagious fungus. Shiban originally intended to have it be spread by a schoolkid, then changed it to a trucker before changing it to Eladio once the storylines were combined. Executive producer Chris Carter was attracted to the soap opera-like aspects of the episode, and the title of the episode means "The World Turns" in Spanish. The Chupacabra is a Latin American folk myth that Shiban originally heard about in an article in the The Los Angeles Times about a year prior. To research for the episode, Shiban spent time observing illegal aliens being processed at an INS facility in San Pedro, California. The usage of fake names by the detained immigrants in the episode was inspired by this. Actor Ruben Blades, who portrayed Lozano, was a Spanish-language musician and ran for President of Panama back in 1989. Chris Carter had been looking to use him in an episode for a while. The actors who portrayed Eladio and Gabrielle were a couple at the time.

The migrant camp used in the episode was built from scratch in a waste ground near Boundary Bay Airport in Vancouver. This site was later used again in the episode "Tempus Fugit". It snowed the night before filming occurred, requiring the production crew to use hot water and blow dryers to melt it. Composer Mark Snow was required to replace his entire score for the episode based on Chris Carter's view that the original score was too serious.

Reception

The episode earned a Nielsen rating of 13.3, with a 19 share. It was viewed by 22.37 million people.

The A.V. Club's Zack Handlen reviewed the episode positively, rating it an B. He considered the episode "entertaining to watch" with "nifty direction from Tucker Gates", despite being formulaic and with the same problems he found in the previous episode penned by John Shiban, season three's "Teso de Bichos". Handlen had much praise to the second half, which he described as filled with dark humor, as well as a "bizarre ending". Author Keith Topping criticized the episode in his book X-Treme Possibilities, calling it an "awful episode with a heavy-handed, clod-hopping attempt at social comment that hardly sits well with the themes on display in the rest of the episode." He called it the worst episode of the fourth season.

External links

• "El Mundo Gira" on The X-Files Wiki, an external wiki
• "El Mundo Gira" at the Internet Movie Database
• "El Mundo Gira" at TV.com