[TV static drones]
[bright tone]
[wind whistling]
[soft music]
♪ ♪
- When people ask me where I'm from...
♪ ♪
I say I'm a "fronteriza."
[indistinct chatter]
I'm from la frontera,
the border between El Paso and Ciudad Juarez.
♪ ♪
These are two sister cities with one heart,
un corazón...
separated by a metal barrier.
It carves its way between two countries--
the U.S. and México.
♪ ♪
For some, the ebb and flow of this region
feels like a threat to be contained.
A barbed-wire fence feels like an answer.
♪ ♪
Sometimes I imagine standing on top of that fence,
walking it like a tightrope, suspended in between.
♪ ♪
That's what it feels like coming home to El Paso.
[upbeat music]
♪ ♪
[garage door whirring]
[all speaking Spanish]
[light music]
♪ ♪
- As a kid, I'd come home from school
and translate the mail for my dad.
When I was 10, I helped my mom study
for her citizenship exam,
quizzing her on flash cards about American history.
I'd often compare my working-class immigrant family
to American families I saw on TV.
Our lives seemed so different from theirs.
[both speaking Spanish]
both: Mm-hmm.
[indistinct chatter]
[traditional Mexican music playing]
[people singing in Spanish]
♪ ♪
- Growing up in El Paso, on my parents' days off,
we'd drive to Juarez for haircuts and groceries,
visiting with family friends
and filling bags with ripe papayas.
♪ ♪
The edges between the two cities
were crisscrossed, mixed.
I felt like I lived between two worlds
and yet belonged to neither.
[dramatic music]
It wasn't until I left for college
that I began to appreciate how unique that feeling is.
Coming home now, I want to understand it better,
to explore the complexities of El Paso
with those that know its blurred edges.
♪ ♪
- So where did you do your quinceañera pictures?
- I actually didn't have a quinceañera.
- You did not. - I didn't.
I didn't want one. - Oh, you're a rebel.
- I was very lucky. I got a trip instead, so...
- Uh-huh. - It was like a school trip.
They did do, like-- you know Glamour Shots?
- Yeah, yeah.
- They had me in a quinceañera dress,
but I never actually had the quinceañera.
- Ah, so there is evidence of it.
- There is evidence.
I'm gonna take you where you see--
you see how close.
Like, it feels like Juarez
and El Paso are just one big city.
But they just happen to be separated
by the fence.
- It's so weird that the main street of El Paso
is the main street of Juarez.
It just goes right across the bridge.
- Yeah, my dad has a coworker who lives in Juarez.
Her whole family lives there,
but she works at the restaurant here in El Paso.
And actually, we're passing by--
so Leo's, that is where my dad works.
- That's your dad's restaurant?
- Yeah, that's where he works
and has worked there for over 20 years.
You know, my mom has always worked in factories,
like at Levi's and Hoover.
And during-- was it early 2000s?
Like, they shut a lot of these factories down.
- Well, El Paso was bereft.
You know, NAFTA crushed the city
and also the agricultural industry in Mexico.
♪ ♪
- Have you been out here?
- Yeah, when I was working on my book,
I came out in this direction and went with a border guard.
And I remember the atmosphere of this place.
I often marvel over how different
all of the cities in Texas are.
The culture of each city is distinct.
The idea of El Paso...
you know, the pass,
the name has been so resonant with me.
People came across to have a better life,
and they still do.
So the pass, I think, is a very important concept,
not just theoretical.
It also works as something to think about in our lives.
I guess the fact that I'm old
and I feel my days are numbered
and there is a passage ahead.
[helicopter rotors whirring]
There's the Border Patrol. both: Yeah.
- You always see them. They're really everywhere.
We're always under surveillance.
Growing up, I'd always hear helicopters, the train.
I mean, but it's just something
that as, like, border people, you're just used to.
And we're really close.
Like, part of this mountain,
Cristo Rey, goes into Juarez, right?
So we're not very far at all.
- Item number four is discussion and action
to approve a resolution
recognizing Dr. Guillermina Núñez-Mchiri
and honoring her contributions to her community.
[indistinct chatter]
- Oh, yes.
[laughter, person speaking Spanish]
- As an ethnographer of the borderlands,
my role is to tell the story of our community.
There's always something new to study
or something to document.
I think El Paso is the ombligo.
You know, it's like the belly button of the border.
We have people from all over the world come study us.
So it's a very special place.
It's not like the rest of Mexico.
It's not like the rest of the nation.
- [speaking Spanish]
- People here are bilingual,
switch back and forth between Spanish and English
or perhaps a third language.
They're fluid in their identities.
Things are not always well-defined.
Things are always in the process of transforming.
For a lot of people, that ambivalence
is riddled with anxiety and fear, right?
But for a lot of us, you embrace that wave, right?
A hybridity--I am both.
I'm not one or the other. I'm both.
Or I can be one or the other.
It's to be very much accepting
of this hybridity and flexibility.
♪ ♪
- Historically, this fluidity has been part of it
since its inception.
And so now you have all these things happening
where there's always been, like, trying to stop
a natural flow of this place.
- When you understand that this nation is built
from immigrants,
then you understand there's a constant flow of migration.
You close the border, it truncates everyday life.
It really strangles our convivencia,
our ability to live with one another.
It just gets truncated.
The idea is that the border needs to be contained,
the Brown body needs to be contained and held back,
that we should be left out,
where this has been our land forever.
There's three- or four-generation tejanos
and old mexicanos.
They still know the land and the ranch they come from.
They still know their ancestors
and still call on them.
We're not the other.
[percussive music playing]
♪ ♪
[traditional Mexican music]
- One of my earliest memories is taking the bus downtown
with my mom,
watching people from all walks of life shop at the tienditas
and buy pan dulce at Bowie Bakery.
♪ ♪
I remember how alive those communities felt.
Nestled within them was Duranguito...
one of the oldest neighborhoods in El Paso.
♪ ♪
Apache people once lived here.
And later, it served as a plotting ground
for Mexican revolutionaries.
♪ ♪
Known as the Ellis Island of the Southwest,
over the years,
it grew into a vibrant community...
A place where Mexican families could stay close to the border
and live together
in the in-between.
- So this is a photo from almost 100 years ago.
- Uh-huh.
- So this part right here would have been
the first ward, Duranguito.
So it was known by the residents as Duranguito,
but the city called it officially the first ward.
So in 2016,
the city declared on a Thursday
that it was going to knock down
approximately 11 acres of Duranguito
to build a sports stadium.
On Tuesday, they voted to use eminent domain
to kick people out, take away their properties,
appropriate them.
This is gentrification on steroids.
So part of what's going on is that these group of developers
that want to destroy Duranguito
are from both sides of the border.
Dozens of people were kicked out from this street alone.
Most of them were elderly.
And now there's only two-- I call them guerrilleras,
just fierce fronteriza warriors
that are saying, no way are you gonna destroy my home.
I'm not gonna leave.
[all chanting in Spanish]
Eso es todo. [cheers and applause]
[soft music]
♪ ♪
[saxophone music playing]
♪ ♪
- So the city hired an outside consultant
from California to rebrand El Paso.
And we know that the city council at that time
voted unanimously to approve this presentation,
to modernize "the image" of El Paso.
These are a couple slides that show,
if El Paso was a person today, who would it be?
- It's an old cowboy, male,
50 to 60 years old,
gritty, dirty,
lazy, speak Spanish, uneducated.
That could be my grandfather.
I mean, he really looks like--
my grandfather would wear his hat all the time.
And so yeah, that could be anybody's abuelito. Wow.
- Yeah, and so this is who they would replace us with.
- The New West.
- The New West, not the Old West.
- Male, female, 30 to 40 years old,
educated, entrepreneurial.
So is that why they include McConaughey
and Penelope Cruz? - Matthew McConaughey...
- 'Cause they "enjoy entertain"--
- And Penelope Cruz. - Oh, my God.
- The history of erasure here on the border
has always been somehow connected
to the idea of cleansing
and, I would say, ethnic cleansing.
Back then, whenever you would cross
from Juarez to El Paso,
you had to take off your clothes,
strip naked, and put your shoes and clothes
in a big steam dryer.
This is the floor plan from 1917.
You can see where they go in, through the undressing room,
and then here would have been the steam dryer.
- Between Juarez and El Paso, there was this facility there.
- It was called a quarantine plant.
And that's where they would have to be deloused
and fumigated-- Mexican border crossers.
And here is the gas room.
And so, obviously, the natural question is, like,
what kind of gas is being used
against Mexican border crossers?
They were using this gas right here--
Giftgas, Zyklon B. - Oh, wow.
- And this is 1936, like, before Zyklon B is being used
in concentrated doses in concentration camps
to kill not pests, insects, but human--
people that they considered human pests.
- So before the Holocaust, Zyklon B was here
in the border and being used to "disinfect"...
- Disinfect.
- Mexican immigrants and people.
- Yeah.
Here are some of the photographs.
That's the DDT.
It was banned in the United States
because of its potential to cause cancer.
- How long did this go on for?
- So it begins in 1917.
More than 100,000 people,
according to the records... - Went through this process.
- Went through this process just that year.
So it goes on at different degrees of intensity,
until, like, the mid-'30s,
and then it kind of stops for a while.
And then beginning in 1942,
it's going to be used--
all these, you know, very harmful pesticides
are gonna be used against the braceros.
And remember that the braceros--
The whole bracero guest worker program was created--
an agreement between Mexico and the United States--
because the United States desperately needed...
- Yeah. - Their help.
- Well, wasn't it the first legal guest-worker program?
My grandfather was a bracero.
- So more than 4 million people, you know,
went through these just totally degrading...
- Mm-hmm. - Experiences.
And a lot of this is just erased, you know,
from the consciousness. - Yeah, that's crazy.
[indistinct chatter]
[players shouting in Spanish]
[all chattering indistinctly in Spanish]
[door clicks open]
- [laughs, speaking Spanish]
I got involved in Duranguito, and that started in 2016.
I met Antonia Morales, who we know as Toñita,
and it was really when we found out
that Duranguito was the target for the city's sports arena.
And Toñita very much reminds me of my great-grandparents,
my grandparents, my mom,
because she knows her worth.
And she's not going to let anyone define that for her.
[soft dramatic music]
On my grandfather's side, my great-grandparents
immigrated to El Paso in the 1920s.
They were both teenagers, both undocumented.
♪ ♪
My great-grandfather Patano, he had a job with the railroad
in El Paso for over 40 years.
But even though it was a good-paying job,
no one would show him a nice house.
No one would help him borrow money to buy a nice house.
And so they lived next to the railroad
in different tenements for a few years.
And because now they had legal status,
they could go to Mexico.
And so they bought a house in Juarez,
and then he commuted,
and then his son commuted, my grandpa,
and then my mom commuted.
And it took us four generations
for me to be able to live in this neighborhood.
My grandfather should have been raised
in this neighborhood. - Yeah.
- Why not?
There were working-class families here, too,
but they were white.
I was born in El Paso and raised in Ciudad Juarez.
I grew up having to declare my citizenship
every single day for school.
And I saw my mom doing that so she could go to work.
My ability to speak Spanish
when I started school in El Paso
was not seen as an asset.
It was a deficiency.
And that in-betweenness
always felt like a really hard choice.
It felt like a betrayal,
like you're saying no to Mexico
and yes to the U.S. and opportunities.
You were supposed to melt into something
that didn't really look like you anymore, right?
The outcome was a product
that spoke perfect English,
that wore certain clothing,
that presented in a certain way.
And it was very white.
Why should you lose your accent?
Why shouldn't you say that you live in Juarez
and grew up there?
Why should you be ashamed?
As I've grown older,
I've created my own sense of belonging.
I belong to both countries.
But my heart's always broken by one or the other.
[melancholy music]
Both of our countries
have really failed to put people at the center,
and they, you know, have exploited this narrative
that we're sister cities, sister countries,
when we're really not.
♪ ♪
Our land has been used to implement
such terrible, inhumane immigration policies.
♪ ♪
We do have freshly arrived immigrants who are here,
the vast majority of them, to work and contribute
and continue building on what other people of color
have built in this country.
I don't want people to think history is in the past.
Unless we address the systemic changes,
we are just perpetuating the same thing.
♪ ♪
[train horn blowing]
♪ ♪
- So often I've seen my hometown
at the center of national debate...
♪ ♪
A perception of fear and the word "crisis"
on repeat in the daily news cycle.
♪ ♪
But for those that are from here,
the comings and goings of this region
are part of its fabric.
♪ ♪
Up close, locals open their arms
to those who have left their home,
just as my parents once had to.
♪ ♪
Here, that fluidity isn't something to be feared.
It's a way of life.
♪ ♪
[both speaking Spanish]
♪ ♪
- So the Casa del Refugiado
is a place that provides hospitality for the migrant.
So we're not here to provide social services
or legal services,
but we're here to make sure that people
are able to get safely to their final destination.
So we make sure that they have beds, that they have food,
that they have showers, that they feel respected
and safe while they're here and are able to connect
with their families and get the tickets that they need
to go where they're headed in the United States.
[indistinct chatter]
- [shouting in Spanish]
- As we have more people crossing,
we're hoping that the city of El Paso
will really step up and provide a space
for people as they cross.
[trolley bell dinging]
[line trills]
- Do you have a minute to edit the Annunciation House story?
Oh, okay, perfect,
'cause Sam says he's still on another story.
So can I drop the ID?
[keyboard keys clacking]
Immigration reporting, I think,
is a natural extension of reporting
on the U.S.-Mexico relationship.
And so, because I started my career at the border,
that I sort of fell into.
It was just the first job that I got was in El Paso.
- You're now, I mean,
reporting a lot on all of this stuff all the time
and also living it, given that your partner,
you know, lives in Juarez.
- Immigration has become a bigger and bigger theme
in American politics.
My partner and I, he used to come to El Paso,
and I used to go to Juarez,
but the restrictions basically forced me
to do all of the crossing.
When we first met, we both had
very nearly the same privileges at the border.
He had been crossing since he was a kid.
And I had the right to go back and forth.
He had the right to go back and forth legally.
And we lived our lives on both sides of the border.
[person speaking Spanish]
- [speaking Spanish] - Okay.
- [speaking Spanish]
Bye. Te amo mucho. - Okay.
When the pandemic hit and the border restrictions
went into effect,
my partner could no longer cross the border.
No Mexican nationals with a tourist visa could.
So it cut off a part of their lives
that they had never lived without.
Okay, turn around.
- Since you live on both sides of the border,
how do you understand
the border in your life?
- Not everyone has the same experience crossing the border
as a white woman
with, you know, a lot of privilege
to be able to go back and forth.
As a U.S. citizen,
I experience the border in one way,
whereas someone who is from México or who has a visa
experiences it in an entirely different way.
A lot of people are in this situation
and not just with a romantic partner
but with their own children or with their parents.
And, you know, it's very painful
for a lot of people.
- Lauren, what accounts for this immense increase
in the numbers?
- It used to be, as we know,
that the majority of people crossing the U.S. border
were Mexican nationals... - Mm-hmm.
- Often looking for work or to reunite with family here.
That has changed dramatically.
I mean, now there are people from all over the world
who are crossing through México
to reach the Southwest border
with hopes of something in the U.S.,
whether it's asylum, an opportunity to work,
an opportunity to reunite with family.
- Has the wall made a difference?
- Border Patrol says that a physical barrier
at the border that funnels people through small openings
makes it easier for them to track
those who would try to evade capture, okay?
Immigrant advocates would say the wall pushes people
into extremely dangerous terrain,
where they are more likely to die.
So whether--
- Dozens die every month, right?
- Here in El Paso, we have had numerous deaths
just in the summer-- people drowning
in the Rio Grande or the Rio Bravo Canal,
falling off the wall.
- I don't know. Are we using antiquated systems
to keep people out?
And is that causing more harm and more violence
than there needs to be?
- I've been doing this a long, long time,
looking at the border, writing about the border,
you know, talking to Border Patrol,
talking to people who are migrating themselves.
So often the conversation around immigration
and around the border gets boiled down to rhetoric.
When we focus solely on the border,
kind of miss the point. - Mm-hmm.
- The border should be, like, the last place
that we're dealing with an issue.
[train horn blowing]
[soft guitar music]
♪ ♪
- Yeah, so from this vantage point,
what I love about these two cities
is that, from up above,
when you look out, it's seamless.
- Yeah. - You can't see the border.
It looks like one big city.
And so if you look out from here,
you can't tell where one country begins
and the other ends.
- Monica, where is the wall?
- The wall is hiding, tucked behind this highway
that you see, which is relatively new.
- Uh-huh. - It's just below there.
We can't see it from up here.
When you have two countries, two cities side by side
that are vastly unequal in terms of wealth,
in terms of safety,
the more militarized the division zone
between the two of them are.
The United States, I think, has used Mexico
to its economic advantage.
You can manufacture a flat-screen TV
for far less money on that side of the border
than you can on this side.
A kid growing up
in a low-income neighborhood in Juarez,
you know, can choose to work at a factory for $11 a day
or work for a drug cartel,
which is gonna pay far more.
When I started out reporting 16 years ago,
I think I felt a lot safer on this side of the border.
I'd cross back from Juarez and breathe a sigh of relief,
thinking, yeah, I'm now in one of the safest cities
in America. - Yeah.
- And I don't feel that way so much anymore.
The drug violence in Juarez, it's all about business.
The violence on the American side of the border
has a more nebulous origin.
It's more ideological.
And so that's harder to--
- That's an interesting distinction, yeah.
- To protect yourself from. - Yeah, yeah.
Well, the Walmart massacre is a perfect example
of what you're saying, is, you know, the threat didn't--
you know, the massacre didn't come from across the river.
It came from our side.
- The threat is coming from within,
and it's a very real and deadly threat
with severe consequences.
[dramatic music]
- Were you here during the massacre?
- Yes. - What was your experience?
- Ay. [sighs] Well...
it was a Saturday morning.
I was driving into town and...
got a cell phone call.
Actually, I looked at my cell phone
and saw that I had many calls, many messages.
And that's typically not a good thing
when you're a journalist. - Yeah, right. Yeah.
- And so reading through them,
I recognized that the shooting--
there had been a mass shooting in my hometown.
So I pulled off the interstate,
called the editor at NPR.
And I remember the conversation.
I was saying, this is gonna be very difficult for me,
the significance of this place and who lives here
and how we were being targeted and harmed by rhetoric.
♪ ♪
- Joining us now is reporter Mónica Ortiz Uribe.
- We know a gunman with a rifle entered the store
wearing earmuffs and began shooting at random.
A suspect is in custody.
He's a 21-year-old male from a suburb outside Dallas.
So I spoke with a family of three,
a mother and her two teenage children,
who were shopping in the Walmart this morning.
They told me they were approaching the cash register
when the mother heard shots fired.
They described the scene inside as chaotic,
lots of people screaming, small children lost,
crying for their mothers.
There's a manifesto circulating online
possibly linked to the suspect
that reflects an anti-immigrant sentiment
and mentions a "Hispanic invasion of Texas."
[distant sirens wailing]
♪ ♪
- I remember being in the car with my sister
as the news came in that day...
♪ ♪
The pit in my stomach
as we realized that if she hadn't been driving me
to the airport that morning...
she would have been shopping at that Walmart.
Together we tried to process what was happening--
one of the deadliest mass shootings
in American history.
The targets were Mexican and Mexican-American families
like ours.
♪ ♪
[indistinct chatter]
♪ ♪
[indistinct chatter]
- This is three years...
three very difficult years for our community.
We are being in the process of trying to heal
what happened that day.
But I think it's important to understand something.
What happened that day
was a racist terrorist attack
motivated by white supremacy.
I'm not the one saying it.
It's the manifesto of the killer,
of the terrorist.
[indistinct chatter]
[soft guitar music]
♪ ♪
[melancholy music]
♪ ♪
- What's it been like for you to come back
and look at your hometown
as a kind of disinterested professional?
- [chuckles] That's a good way to put it.
You know, I--
it just seems it's--
it's hard to be a Texan right now...
- Yeah. - And to still, you know,
firmly believe that this is your state.
I don't know.
- Basically, you know, there are things
about Texas that are great,
and that's one reason people come here.
- Mm-hmm.
- What's killing us is the culture war.
And that is a totally unnecessary battle to have.
- Where do you feel we need to go as a state?
- The situation we have now is that people come over,
they can't retain their dignity.
You know, they're treated like criminals.
And, you know, their motives for coming
are often very noble and--
or, you know, perfectly understandable,
fleeing violence and so on. - Yeah.
- The further you get away from the border,
the less you understand it.
You know, I guess everybody thinks of the border
being a line,
the line being the river. - Yeah.
- And it's not. It's a region and a culture.
Even though we're not on the river right now, we're close.
- Yeah.
- But we're still on the border,
and we'll still be on the border
if we went over the mountain.
It's all border.
- Yeah, well, and the border itself--
the fence and what divides-- is man-made.
- Yeah.
[all chanting in native language]
- But, you know, no matter how many fences
they try to shut us in with, we're still here.
[applause]
- Let's talk about this place that we're in right now.
You're attempting to make it a historic spot.
- We want it
to be a living historical center
for people all over the world to come, like today.
But we want it to be based on the real culture,
the authentic culture. - Yeah.
Going through downtown,
you see a lot of empty storefronts.
Building an arena might be something
that would help the city.
- But I don't think the kinds of jobs
that will come from an arena--
you know, what, selling hot dogs in stands--
are the kinds of jobs that are gonna keep people here.
I think they're gonna come here
because we're creating
a truly vibrant culture
based on who we are.
Our feet have been cut from underneath us.
And we've always been trying to pretend
we're something we're not... - Yeah.
- Always trying to imitate somebody else's vision
of what it means to be an American.
[soft music]
And the thing about the wall is beyond the politics.
It's a barbed-wire fence.
And the whole point is to, like, cut a barbed-wire fence
right down the middle of your brain,
to say, those people over there, us over here.
That's horrible, you know, that division,
that internal division.
- [singing in native language]
♪ ♪
[light music]
♪ ♪
- Once a year, loved ones separated by the border
are granted a fleeting moment to reunite.
♪ ♪
Here, in the middle of the Rio Grande,
with the fence temporarily parted,
Border Patrol heavily surveils the five-minute hugs
of families.
♪ ♪
It is a surreal experience to witness,
and I never quite know where to place it.
♪ ♪
- We started in 2016.
At that time...
we saw the consequences of mass deportation.
Unfortunately, this has been an issue that is bipartisan.
I mean, both parties are responsible
of the separation of families.
So we try to find a way to elevate
the face of those families that were being destroyed
by immigration policy.
Children separated from their parents--
very dramatic.
I mean, usually the parents are being deported,
and the children are in the United States,
and they cannot see each other,
because either the children
are in some kind of limbo status or no status,
and the parents were deported,
and they just can't come back.
- Yeah, it was kind of, like, a shock once my parents left.
We had to rely on each other a lot.
- It's about to be five years in January
the last time we saw them.
And they took away their visa.
And we're part of the DACA Program,
the Dreamer Program, if you're not familiar with it.
We're not allowed to cross to Mexico,
and they're not allowed to come here.
So we haven't seen them in that amount of time.
So we decided to come to give it a try
and, you know, at least for those five minutes
being able to give them a hug.
- I just didn't come
'cause I felt like it was gonna leave a heaviness
in my heart.
It was gonna leave me with a lot of pain
rather than, you know, a positive feeling.
But today I realized that I come
with a feeling of gratefulness to be able to do this.
And, yeah, I just had to realize that with time.
[melancholy music]
♪ ♪
- These two sisters
are separated from their family indefinitely...
a fate shared by so many here.
♪ ♪
I can't help but imagine
what my own sister and I might have endured
in this situation, and that leaves me numb.
♪ ♪
Hugs Not Walls may offer these families
a fleeting embrace...
but it also feels like I'm witnessing
a spectacle of human pain
in lieu of any real solution.
♪ ♪
You're a beautiful fish.
- Mm-hmm.
[uplifting guitar music]
♪ ♪
- El Paso, la frontera,
my home.
I've spent years trying to make sense
of my identity here...
the American daughter of Mexican immigrants
who crossed the border before she was even born...
a fronteriza trying to bridge both sides of a divide.
♪ ♪
This feeling that I could never quite put my finger on
now brings me comfort.
♪ ♪
There's magic in the multiplicity
that defines this region
in being not one but many in the in-between.
♪ ♪
I didn't always have a word for it,
but the Aztecs did.
They called it "Nepantla."
[bright tone]