Review: Decade of Fire Is a Testament to the Resistance of the Oppressed

“I wanna pass this history onto my kids, and all kids in places like the South Bronx. They should know where they come from.” These words, spoken earnestly by Decade of Fire co-director Vivian Vázquez, are heard near the end of her documentary. They’re shortly preceded by a scene in which she leads a discussion with high school students about the challenges they face as Bronx natives. One girl shares her thoughts: “We’re proving other people wrong—that aren’t from the Bronx—that we are better and we deserve better.”

Vázquez spends her days working with public schools in the New York City borough, helping young people graduate high school and get into college. Essential to this is educating them about the history of where they live and recognizing what they can do to succeed. Decade of Fire can thus be seen as extension of her work: a clear labor of love that strives to teach people about the institutional racism that fueled the South Bronx fires of the 1970s.

If Decade of Fire feels like a film fit for classrooms, it’s because its roots are in education: as a curriculum intended for ninth graders at a social justice-focused high school. Producer Julia Steele Allen developed the project in 2002 in order to help students recognize the links between the Bronx fires, cultural resistance through graffiti and hip-hop, and the community organizing that saved the borough. But the school deemed it too radical, rejecting it from ever being taught. In 2008, Allen and Vázquez, who had previously worked together, teamed up with filmmaker Gretchen Hildebran to start working extensively on Decade of Fire. The film has finally arrived a decade later, not only as an invaluable resource for teachers, but also as an informative documentary for anyone who wasn’t privy to the ugly truths it excavates.

During the ’70s, nearly 80% of housing in the Bronx was lost to fires, with a quarter of a million people losing their homes. The narrative that the news pushed was that the fires were the sole result of people in the community. They were called “vandals,” “addicts,” and “derelicts.” Decade of Fire aims to set the record straight, and does so through a careful detailing of the events and decisions that led to the fires. Vázquez narrates the film, her presence adding a real and personal dimension to these stories. Like many others, her father immigrated to New York from Puerto Rico in the ’50s. Vázquez highlights the diversity of the borough and the tight-knit quality of its community. In showcasing the energy and joy of this time, she contrasts it with the external forces that were trying to squash people’s livelihood.

She begins with redlining, a systemic denial of governmental services. This federal policy considered predominantly black and Puerto Rican neighborhoods to be in decline, and those who lived in these “high-risk” areas were subsequently denied everything from loans to homeowners insurance. Then came urban renewal, which demolished numerous homes throughout New York City and pushed approximately 100,000 black and Puerto Rican inhabitants into the Bronx. Fearmongering by news publications had spread racist beliefs about them, and they would eventually become a scapegoat for the South Bronx fires.

One of the film’s successes is its profound understanding of the neglect these communities experienced. There’s dread in the depiction of how racism informed that neglect, as well as in its deleterious effects. The filmmakers astutely reveal the ignorance of people who had considered the Bronx to simply be a home to criminals and the hopeless. When we see rioting on screen, it’s obvious that it’s a sign of protest and not an indicator of people’s inherent criminality. Later, we see how the Rand Corporation utilized computer models to reduce the cost of fire protection and eliminated numerous fire companies in poorer neighborhoods with higher fire incidences. Many of these actions are unknown and unconsidered by the general public, and Decade of Fire makes concerted efforts to enlighten us on those matters.

While the film spends ample time examining the South Bronx fires, it’s what comes after that gives it its greatest power. We witness Jimmy Carter failing to follow up on promises to help the borough, then Ronald Reagan shouting at a crowd of people that government couldn’t possibly restore the Bronx. When we eventually see people in the Bronx rebuilding their homes, we understand that this was the only way the borough could be saved, as everyone else either refused to step in and help or actively tried to destroy the Bronx. The film concludes with a depiction of gentrification first creeping upon the borough, and how people have actively protested against any decisions that would lead to the displacement of those who’ve lived there for their whole lives. Decade of Fire’s purpose, then, is to make known how those in the Bronx—and other places around the United States in similar circumstances—must continue to fight even today against those forces hellbent on their erasure.