Borderland (AJAM)
| Borderland | |
|---|---|
| File:Borderland (AJAM) title card.jpg Title Card | |
| Narrated by | Gil Bellows |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Original language(s) | English |
| Production | |
| Executive producer(s) | Nial Fulton, Ivan O'Mahoney |
| Production location(s) | United States, Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador |
| Release | |
| Original network | Al Jazeera America |
| Picture format | 480i (SDTV) 1080i (HDTV) |
| Original release | April 13, 2014 |
| External links | |
| Website | |
Search Borderland (AJAM) on Amazon.
Borderland is a critically acclaimed four part American documentary television series created, written and produced by Ivan O'Mahoney and Nial Fulton through their production company In Films. The series was produced in association with Los Angeles-based production company Muck Media, Inc. and directed by Muck co-founders Darren Foster, Alex Simmons and Jeffrey Plunkett. Filmed on location in Arizona, Mexico, El Salvador and Guatemala, the series follows six Americans as they retrace the fatal journey of three undocumented migrants who died attempting to cross into the United States.
The series begins and ends in Pima County morgue, where Medical Examiner Dr. Greg Hess provides the group with the case files of three migrants who perished crossing into the United States from Mexico.
Borderland is the first original factual commission for US television network Al Jazeera America.
Season 1: 2014
| No. | Title | Original air date |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | "The Morgue" | April 13, 2014 |
| 2 | "Country of Origin" | April 20, 2014 |
| 3 | "La Bestia" | April 27, 2014 |
| 4 | "Crossing The Desert" | May 4, 2014 |
| 5 | "Beyond Borderland (Reunion Studio Show)" | May 11, 2014 |
Synopsis
Six Americans are tasked by a frontier medical examiner with retracing the final journey of three migrants — three of the nearly 6,000 illegal immigrants who perished in the desert in the last 15 years while crossing from Mexico. Gathered at the Pima County morgue in Arizona, the participants are handed three case files and told, “We’ve given them a name. You must give them a story.”
The six volunteers first explore the border crisis on the U.S. side, embedding with law enforcement and Arizona ranchers, angry at the cartels that now control not just the drug trade but the migrant routes as well. Then, split into three groups, they head for Mexico and Central America, learning about the lives of the migrants they’ve been asked to follow. In a twist, the medical examiner instructs the six to work their way back to the United States alongside real migrants by whatever means necessary - on river rafts, trekking through gang-controlled jungle and once regrouped, riding on the infamous cargo train known as La Bestia. Finally, from cartel-held Sinaloa state, they attempt the desert crossing that proved fatal to their assigned migrants — a dangerous trek through the notorious Sonoran Desert.
The Cast
Six Americans volunteered to spend more than a month retracing the final journey of three migrants who perished in the Sonoran Desert, Arizona. They begin their journey in Pima County Morgue, surrounded by the unidentified remains of would-be immigrants. None of the six Americans had ever been to America's southern border before production.
Alison Melder
- Age: 28
- Hometown: Little Rock, Ark.
- Occupation: Republican state Senate aide
- Starting position: Says illegal immigrants take American jobs and should be deported
A former beautician and bikini model who had never traveled outside the United States, Alison works as a Republican state Senate aide in Little Rock and is “angry and frustrated with our system and our government” when it comes to immigration. “I can’t understand how there could be 11 million–plus undocumented people in the U.S. and that we don’t know who they are,” she says, adding that many are “welfare projects” who undercut the “legal” workforce.
Gary Larsen
- Age: 54
- Hometown: Pasco, Wash.
- Occupation: Farmer
- Starting position: Says he is “the most neutral of the group” but leans toward letting everyone in for what he calls “a selfish reason”
A third-generation farmer, Gary grows potatoes and asparagus on his family’s 1,000-acre Washington state farm. All his 180 employees are Hispanic, and while he says they all have paperwork showing they are eligible to work, he admits he has no idea who is here legally and who is not. He is certain that his workers aren’t taking the jobs of native-born Americans, who he says reject the hard stoop labor required to bring in the harvest. “Without all these people coming in, these menial jobs would not get done,” he says. Married and the father of two, Gary says he applied to “Borderland” for the adventure. “Whatever happens, I am going to embrace it.”
Lis-Marie Alvarado
- Age: mid-20s
- Hometown: Homestead, Fla.
- Occupation: Community organizer with social justice organization WeCount!
- Starting position: Believes undocumented immigrants should not be subject to deportation and should be offered a pathway to citizenship.
Lis-Marie arrived in the United States as a legal immigrant from Nicaragua when she was 12. “Growing up in a developing country that was devastated by U.S. intervention and civil war was very formative for me,” she says, noting it instilled in her a passion for justice and a determination to fight inequality. Lis-Marie signed on for “Borderland” after its producers contacted the Student/Farmworker Alliance, where she is a member of the Steering Committee and which advocates for better wages and conditions for workers in the fields.
As the sole Latina and native Spanish speaker in the cast, Lis-Marie says she sometimes felt removed from the group. Still, “the U.S. is a country we all share. Whether we like it or not, here we are,” she says. “I am hopeful for the future and think we can change for the better.”
Kishana Holland
- Age: 36
- Hometown: Las Vegas
- Occupation: Fashion blogger
- Starting position: Would deport all illegal immigrants
Kishana Holland was on the 97th floor of the south tower of the World Trade Center when the plane hit on 9/11. Although all the hijackers had entered the country legally, she says the terrorist attack turned her into “a xenophobe” and helped prompt her family’s move to Las Vegas.
While Kishana admired the legal immigrants she grew up around in Brooklyn, for those without papers, she is uncompromising. “If I knew I had a neighbor that was an illegal immigrant for a fact, I will call INS and turn them in,” she says.
Randy Stufflebeam
- Age: 53
- Hometown: Belleville, Ill.
- Occupation: Retired Marine, radio talk show host
- Starting position: Calls illegal immigrants “moochers” who don’t deserve a path to citizenship
A former write-in candidate for governor of Illinois for the religiously conservative Constitution Party, Randy ran on a platform that included cutting off health care, education and other government benefits to those who are here illegally.
“I am unequivocally opposed to amnesty. I don’t think that is the answer,” he says of President Barack Obama’s push to offer a path to citizenship to 11 million undocumented immigrants.
Although immigration was a centerpiece of his campaign, Randy says he joined “Borderland” because “I’ve never been to the border and I wanted to see it with my own eyes.”
Alex Seel
- Age: 31
- Hometown: Brooklyn, N.Y.
- Occupation: Street photographer and artist
- Starting position: Believes borders shouldn’t exist
A skateboarding New Yorker who lives in a loft with 10 other artists in a city of immigrants, Alex rejects the very idea of borders and says his friends include many who are undocumented. “There’s no such thing as illegal,” he says, noting that we are all human. “There are just humans.”
Although the former Paris art student heard “horror stories” from immigrant friends who described their journeys, he says he was unprepared for what he actually saw during the filming of “Borderland.”
“The hardest part was, everyone we met had the same story,” Alex says. “When I met the mother [of a dead migrant], it was as if I was speaking to my own mother.” Like other participants, he was struck by a desire to break the gridlock on immigration. “The really big question is, can we disagree but still move forward?”
Migrant Case Files
Nelson Omar Chilel López
Omar grew up amid the coffee farms of El Porvenir, Guatemala, a poverty-stricken area located about an hour south of the Mexican border. In search of higher-paying work, his mother, Fermina, left the family behind in 2006, crossing illegally into the United States and settling in Phoenix, Arizona. Omar’s older brother and older sister soon followed. Crushed by their separation, Omar persuaded his mother in 2010 to pay a "coyote" to lead him and an older family friend, Doña Teresa, through the Arizona desert. Omar was 13 at the time. They crossed the desert in early July, the height of summer. Several days later, the "coyote" called Fermina to explain that on the first day, Doña Teresa fell behind and Omar chose to stay with her. The "coyote" told Fermina not to worry. He said that Border Patrol would pick them up and they would be fine. That summer, Arizona passed S.B. 1070, the strictest anti-immigration law in recent U.S. history. Fermina was afraid to report her missing son to the authorities because she was scared they might deport her. Almost two years later, the partial skeletal remains of an older woman and a young boy were found in southern Arizona. Through the work of Greg Hess’ team at the Pima County Medical Examiner’s office and the Guatemalan Consulate, Fermina was finally reunited with her son. Omar’s story is representative of a new trend on the border. In 2013 authorities apprehended nearly 14,000 minors, twice as many as in the previous year.
Claudeth Sanchez
Claudeth was the only daughter out of six siblings and her mom’s favorite. She was a bright, ambitious young woman who grew up near Tapachula in southern Mexico, the main gateway for Central Americans heading for the United States. The siblings grew up seeing people return to town from the U.S. loaded with money. Relatives say she was always restless at home, and after graduating from high school (and seeing many of her schoolmates leaving for the north), she decided to contact a local "pollero", or smuggler, to take her into the U.S. She wanted to make money to send back to the family. None of them had ever ventured north before. Her mother begged her not to go, but to no avail. After her departure, she made a last call home. She spoke with her brother Sami, on his birthday. She sang him “Happy Birthday.” She crossed into the U.S. from Altar, in northern Mexico. She and the smuggler both died in Pima County, where her dental records, her clothes and DNA tests confirmed that bones that had been found were hers. She was 21 when she died. Sami, who helped her prepare for her trip, finds it hard to come to terms with her death. He now volunteers at a women’s shelter and talks to groups of young locals about the perils of the journey, hoping to encourage them to try to make a life for themselves in Mexico.
Maira Zelaya
Whereas the other two migrants were crossing into the United States for the first time when they died, Maira had crossed before — nine years before — and spent the intervening years living among other undocumented Salvadorans in a quintessential American locale, Des Moines, Iowa. Her story is all too common under Barack Obama’s administration, which has deported a record 400,000 people each year. Maira’s mother emigrated from Usulutan, El Salvador, to Iowa in the 1980s to escape the violence of their country’s bloody civil war. Maira was a young girl at the time and stayed behind to take care of her aging grandmother. After her grandmother's death, Maira, then 30, decided to head for Iowa too, where she lived in the shadows, making minimum wage (if she was lucky) on after-hour cleaning crews at banks and office buildings. With her mother, Maira attended a Spanish-speaking Methodist church where nearly all the parishioners were Salvadoran. Then one morning in 2009, nine years after she arrived in Des Moines, immigration agents did a sweep of her apartment complex. They were looking for somebody else but they found Maira. Within weeks, she was deported back to El Salvador, where gang violence was terrorizing the country. Against her mother’s wishes, she decided to make the treacherous journey again, paying a smuggler to guide her through the Arizona desert. She never made it. Despite the efforts of a fellow traveler who risked his life carrying her to Border Patrol agents, Maira died at age 39.
The Journey
For Omar, Claudeth, and Maira, the journey to the United States ended tragically while crossing the Sonoran Desert in Arizona. Before they reached that point, they passed through a number of major locations in Central America commonly used by other migrants traveling to cross the U.S. border.
In Borderland, the cast visit three countries and numerous locations within those countries.
- Gary and Alison - El Porvenir, Guatemala
- Lis-Marie and Kishana - Chiapas, Mexico
- Randy and Alex - San Salvador, El Salvador
When the six reunite at the railyward in Arriaga, southern Mexico, they take a cargo train known as La Bestia (The Beast) to Ixtepec. From Ixtepec, they travel to Culiacan, a city in the state of Sinaloa. From Sinaloa, the travel north to Altar.
From Altar, they cross the US/Mexico border and trekked into the Sonoran desert. After completing their trek, the group returned to Pima County Morgue.
See also
Reviews
- Variety Magazine
- Columbia Journalism Review
- New York Times
- Huffington Post
- Entertainment Weekly
- Latino Rebels (Juan Escalante, Immigration blogger)
- Mexico's Drug War, Sylvia Longmire
- Media Matters
- Newswire
- The Gate News
- Women and Gender Studies
External links
This article "Borderland (AJAM)" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.
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