Thread: 'The Wall' accurately depicts a border divided

'The Wall' accurately depicts a border divided

San Antonio Express-News
July 14, 2009 Tuesday
By Carlos Guerra

Until 2006, border residents thought talk of walling it off was a joke. But as congressional approval neared - driven by the supercharged immigration debate - filmmaker Ricardo Martinez headed south in search of people stories.

"I started working on it after the bill passed the Senate in 2006," said the 28-year old filmmaker. And he knew there was more to the tale than what cable news was depicting.

"My dad would take us to Tijuana and Tecate," he recalls. "I had a picture of what it would be like, but I would get there, and there was always much more."

"The Wall," which plays Friday at the Guadalupe Theater, is a richly textured documentary about landowners, border agents, activists, unauthorized immigrants and others whose lives were changed by the boondoggle.

It chronicles what was initially pitched as a 2,000-mile fence, but ended much shorter, along with footage of immigrants scaling, bypassing or burrowing under what is there.

And none of what was built during President Bush's last two years in office is visually appealing.

As senator, President Obama voted for the wall, but later said it should have been built intelligently, and after greater consultation with the locals.

"When we started, everyone said, 'Make a film about illegals and how they're affected by the wall,'" Martinez says. "But for me, the story was the people on the land."

So he spoke with people like Gloria Garza who, like her neighbors along the Rio Grande, "all got our land from our grandparents ... passed down generation to generation."

And she recalls when the "very nice, but pushy gentleman" asked her to give the Department of Homeland Security access to her property. She became an activist after learning that she would lose a good chunk of her homestead. And she ultimately succeeded in getting the wall moved off her land and onto a levee.

Martinez also spoke with rural Arizonans who feel overrun by federal agents and are angered by the experimental "virtual fence" that never worked but did leave 100-foot towers in their backyards.

Retired U.S. Customs agent Rey Anzaldua decries the use of "a national-security excuse to address an immigration problem." And noting that about 30,000 agents patrol the 1,969-mile Mexican border, and only 5,000 guard the 5,225-mile Canadian line, he asks: "If you were a terrorist, which border would you choose?"

The film also details how the original 2,000-mile-long double fence would have done even greater damage, traversing private lots, golf courses, a college campus, wildlife preserves and even historic buildings before it morphed into an ever-changing hodge-podge of barriers less than 700 miles long, that has done little more than make the border a more dangerous place for law enforcement and for migrants.

But overall, "The Wall" is a welcomed and evenhanded depiction of an often-misunderstood area.

"There are realities about the border we must face," Martinez said. "Sure, we're in a drug war, and I'm not against law enforcement or border control. But make it effective."

And he tells it like it is.

cguerra@express-news.net

http://www6.lexisnexis.com/publisher/En ... 45&start=2

Retired U.S. Customs agent Rey Anzaldua decries the use of "a national-security excuse to address an immigration problem." And noting that about 30,000 agents patrol the 1,969-mile Mexican border, and only 5,000 guard the 5,225-mile Canadian line, he asks: "If you were a terrorist, which border would you choose?"

this must be a crack head that wants drugs pouring across the border

or how about the beheadings or throwing bodies in vats of acid to hide the murders

or how about the kidnappings or gang violence

no thank you... go back to your mud hut and 17th century throw back country ... we have had enough of your way of life