Table Of Content

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