Border Witness: Reimagining the US-Mexico Borderlands through Film

318 Pages·2023·34.376 MB·English

by  Michael Dear

Border Witness
Recovered continuity script from The Pilgrim (1923)
514. MS: The US-Mexico borderline. Reverend Pym, in a state of extreme
indecision, considers the choice between confronting a pursuing lawman
in Texas or crossing over into a lawless Mexico.
515. MLS: Pym walks off, undecided, with one foot on either side of the
international boundary line.
The screen goes black.
Producciones DMQ
Border Witness
Reimagining the US- mexico
BoRdeRlandS thRoUgh Film
Michael Dear
UniveRSity oF c aliF oRnia PReSS
The publisher and the University of California Press Foundation
gratefully acknowledge the generous support of the Kenneth Turan
and Patricia Williams Endowment Fund in American Film.
University of California Press
Oakland, California
© 2023 by Michael Dear
All photographs, diagrams, and screenshots are by Michael Dear.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Dear, M. J. (Michael J.), author.
Title: Border witness : reimagining the US-Mexico borderlands through film /
Michael Dear.
Description: Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2023] |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: lccn 2022025053 (print) | lccn 2022025054 (ebook) |
isbn 9780520391932 (cloth) | isbn 9780520391949 (paperback) |
isbn 9780520391956 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Borderlands in motion pictures. | Mexican-American Border
Region—In motion pictures.
Classification: lcc pn1995.9.m48 d43 2023 (print) | lcc pn1995.9.m48 (ebook)
| ddc 791.43/658721—dc23/eng/20221003
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022025053
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022025054
Manufactured in the United States of America
32 31 30 29 28 27 26 25 24 23
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This book is dedicated
to all borderland peoples,
and to Norma Iglesias Prieto,
who began this whole enterprise.
Este libro está dedicado
a todos los pueblos fronterizos,
y a Norma Iglesias Prieto,
quien inició toda esta empresa.

Contents
Introduction 1
PaRt 1 oRiginS
1. Border Witness: From the Pacific Ocean
to the Gulf of Mexico 11
2. Bisected Bodies: Early Silent Films 34
3. Making Filmscapes 47
4. Using Film as Evidence 60
5. Revolution and Modernization 71
6. The Great Migrations 86
7. Border Film Noir 98
PaRt 2 FUSionS
8. Borderlands before Borders 113
9. From Final Girl to Woman Warrior 129
10. Narco Nations: Men at War 146
11. Lives of the Undocumented 162
12. Moral Tales, Border Law 176
13. Border Walls: Screen Folly and Fantasy 191
14. The Mexican Dream/El Sueño Mexicano 202
PaRt 3 WitneSS
15. A Golden Age for Border Film 217
16. Ways of Seeing the Border (Beyond Film) 232
17. Border Witness of the Future 245
Acknowledgments 253
Appendix 1: Chronological Filmography 257
Appendix 2: Alphabetical Filmography 260
Appendix 3: Map of US- Mexico Borderlands 265
Notes 267
References 283
Index 303
Introduction
I grew up in Wales acquiring an inexplicable childhood attachment to
Mexico. It was nurtured by watching “cowboy flicks” starring the likes
of Tom Mix and the Cisco Kid but—more consequentially—it featured
those majestic landscapes from the American West. It’s how I became
habituated to seeing Mexico through film. I arrived in the US in the
early 1970s and lived along the Canada- US boundary line for more than
a decade, but later became a US citizen. Always I returned to Mexico,
north, south, east, and west. By the early 2000s, I felt ready to travel
along both sides of the entire US- Mexico border, a voyage that took four
years to complete. So in some ways this book is the culmination of a life-
time’s learning about Mexico and the US through direct experience and
representations in film.
My purpose in this book is to explore how the images in border-f ocused
films of the past century reflected cross- border attitudes in each coun-
try, from the early silent films through present-d ay global blockbusters.
Whose stories were being told in border films, and whose ignored or dis-
torted? What kind of plots, narratives, and themes did filmmakers favor,
and how did these choices alter over time? Do onscreen images accurately
1