Purgatorio: Week One

It’s Thursday morning again, which means we’ve been on the road for an entire week. We’re sitting in the Oasis deli in Ajo. The guys are looking at me a little weird because I’m the only one having beer with my coffee, but it’s the kind of moment when that’s exactly what must be done.

A lot has changed. Since Saturday we’ve averaged about 5 hours of sleep per day. Last night was the first time any of us has slept in, and I’m sure that the rest of the crew woke up with the same feeling of gratitude and disbelief I felt this morning when I saw the sun seeping through the curtain and I was still in bed. We’ve shot hours and hours of footage—Merced, Tijuana, Pine Valley, Mexicali, Yuma and Ajo—intertwined by over a thousand miles of road, epic landscapes, unique characters and sweltering heat.

I finally had enough time to sit down and write about the last few days. Here is a bit of the footage we have shot so far:

My name is Dan, Gadget Dan. I’m a native San Diegan, Native American non-tribal.

In retrospect, it seems fitting that our first day of shooting as a team was both humiliating and exhausting. Last Saturday we hung out with Gadget Dan, a wonderful 68-year-old minuteman/ environmentalist who kicked our ass hiking along the highways of the Pine Valley desert.

Gadget is a lone wolf. Instead of spending his time watching the border and reporting illegal immigrants to Homeland Security like most of his buddies, he’s out on the freeways and country highways picking up trash. He targets pickup spots where migrants wait for their ride to a big city. Gadget is a retired firefighter and he’s been at this for years, almost always alone, slowly honing his self-taught detective skills. Broken beer bottles, cigarette butts, Mexican candy wrappers, everything is a clue, everything a potential marker for some unseen illegal activity:

“This is the greatest cat and mouse game ever. You know what they say, man is the hardest prey to hunt.”

We met on around 10 AM near Pine Valley and spent the whole day hustling to try and document his kinetic activity. Gadget made us feel pretty pathetic. For 6 hours we did not see him take a single drop of water while we were panting and groaning in the boiling heat. He would run into a thick patch of bushes following a trail and the team would start to fall apart. Justin would fumble with the camera, José would get the boom stuck on a thorny branch, while I would despair trying to figure out how the hell to slow Gadget down long enough to get some usable footage. Imagine trying to shoot a situation that you cannot predict and you’re caught in a maze of tunnels, except add some merciless sun, thorns and a clear lack of physical fitness.

Finally, Dan made his way to a dead-end created fence and I managed to get him to sit down under a bush for a proper interview. We talked for over an hour. His dedication is amazing. Think about it, try picking up trash single-handedly in southern California. It’s an unending battle, and compounded with the border issue, its dimensions are truly daunting. And that’s what interested me the most, the seeming futility of his efforts. It’s hard for me to conceive of having a goal with such an open ending. Yet Dan does not despair. If no one else cares, he does. He spoke with simple gratitude for the little things he has achieved, from reporting suspects to the authorities to cleaning up entire ravines swamped with trash. I guess these small victories add up to some sort of meaning in the end.

Of the three of us, José was most impressed by Gadget’s story. He still talks about him every day. You see, José is from Zaragoza, Spain, but he has lived and worked in Tijuana for several years, often with immigrants who are suffering on the border. He had never met a minuteman but a lot of his documentary work is related to the border, so he had formed a somewhat negative idea of them in his mind. Regardless, he couldn’t help getting caught up with Dan’s energy. The truth is that our conversation was not really about the politics of the border; rather, at the heart of it was a great conviction and dedication to a goal. Maybe that’s the best way to confront a reality that is nearly impossible to comprehend.

We ended up grabbing dinner at Dan’s favorite deli in Pine Valley which makes a famous “minuteman sandwhich” upon request. Sitting in a park and watching little kids playing catch, we talked about all sorts of things but no more of the border, the three of us fascinated and happy. I guess there’s only so much that you can film, only so much that can be captured. In this sense, making a documentary is also an endless effort in search of a dream.

The Narvaez Expedition

At some point during my research for this film I ran into an article in Esquire about a journalist walking along the entire border. What caught my attention was a photo of the wall running through a sea of dunes. Vast and primeval, I knew immediately that this image had to be in my film.

I made the usual mundane phone calls required to prepare most things in a film, and to my understanding I had it all worked out: the permit, the route and most importantly, 4x4 transportation. But everything went to hell pretty quickly once we got there.

First of all, there’s a big difference between All-Wheel-Drive and true 4x4. The rental car got stuck as soon as we got close enough to read the Border Patrol signs on the fence warning “Stay 100 feet away at all times.” The good thing was that we were shooting at sundown and it was still 4 o’clock; the bad thing was that it was really hot at 4 o’ clock. Marco Vera was with us, he runs the cultural center Mexicali Rose. The four of us tried our best to not look pathetic as we attempted to rock our Ford Edge out of the sand, to no success. Finally, it dawned on us that we had brought a tarp, supposedly to set up a quaint little camp in the dunes. Soon, I was using it to drive out of the sand as the other guys pushed awkwardly.

A couple minutes later, as we were basking in the glory of sweat and frustration and shaking the sand from the shredded tarp, we got our first visit from a Border Patrol agent. She looked at us like you would at a homeless person at the gas station. I shamelessly tried my best to elicit as much pity as possible and it seemed to work. She called her supervisor who in turned called his supervisor and we got cleared. The funny thing was that we were cleared only for another 100 yards since it just so happened that we were on the edge of two operating sectors, and the one we were in apparently could not call the other to let them know of our presence. I asked the agent if we could drive to reach the area where the dunes are big and the fence bobs ups and down along the top:

“You head over there and you’re going to get stuck. That’s for sure. As for me, I talked to my supervisor and I’m off the hook. And that’s good because I’m going home right now.”

We were left in that special road-trip despair that combines too much lack of sleep, too much sweat and too many failed hopes and expectations. I saw the sea of dunes rising before me like a huge and epic speed bump, otherwise known to us as a Mexican “tope.” Those few minutes we were stuck in the dunes revealed all my plans to be for naught. I was about to declare the we should come back the next day, maybe in a dune buggy, when José woke me up to the truth of documentary filmmaking:

“Listen, we’re already here. Let’s put all the meat on the grill and walk out there. This is what it’s all about. What’s the worst that can happen?”

Sure enough, we were soon trudging along the dunes, using muscles that usually go ignored. José and Marco held up the rear, telling dirty jokes to avoid thinking about the trek, Justin and I would discuss shots, and I would constantly reassure everybody that “we were only going just a little further.”

Its amazing how slow time passes when you’re walking on giant sand dunes. My watch was like a smirk on my wrist. The amount of heat radiating from the environment was criminal. We couldn’t take big steps, it was like pretending to be a senior citizen without all the perks of using a walker or the comfort of having nothing better to do. When we would stop to get water, the ceremony was preceded by a round of hearty cursing that somehow helped us all feel better. True to form, I would get asked often if we were there yet, and I would see in their faces the crushing look of disappointment and weariness when I would answer: “it’s just a little further.”

Let it suffice to say that I had a lot of time to think about the results of a mutiny. Just how far can you push people based on a shared idea? How long before they turn on you, and rightfully so, for literally leading them into the desert? When will they start feeling that it’s pointless? Maybe I’m giving the experience too much credit and the crew too little, but I figured that we were right on the edge of a serious moment. In my naïve mind, I likened us to legendary expeditions. Less then an hour had gone by and we were already like Cabeza de Vaca, wandering along the edges of the unknown, this time with the advantage of a camera. It was only a matter of time before we would each other and be enslaved by the local tribes.

My fantasies were frustrated when we arrived at a good location. Justin has this cool app on his phone that determines the trajectory of the sun in the sky as well as the time and place for sunset. I’ll always remember that the sun set at 6:39. Everyone was focused, we worked together with that special pride and strength that come from knowing that you suffered for some sort of a purpose.

As dusk set in we were approached by another Border Patrol agent. He was a young guy who couldn’t help gawking at the camera. He let us continue shooting and Justin got right up against the massive pillars of the fence. The agent stopped us, he was obviously worried.

“I wouldn’t get so close if I was you. That over there is Mexico. You never know what can happen.”

There was nothing but a field of dunes on the other side.

Riding with the last cowboys

It might seem odd to include dog-catching in a film about the border, but a while ago I realized that there is a strange connection between the dog-pound and the war on drugs. I was busy pondering this allegory as we sat in the darkness just before dawn outside the Mexicali pound.

It was still dark when the crews of dog-catchers began to arrive, and I soon found myself chatting away with Dr. Cruz, the director of the Animal Control Center. He’s a bombastic man who obviously loves the attention. He looks me right in the eye with a smirk as he shakes your hand and tells you that he’s the proud founder of the Animal Control Center. In the middle of our conversation, we see a small puppy fumbling about next to the main building. He squeals pathetically as a catcher swiftly scoops him up and returns him to his cage. The director shakes his head, a little too grave and solemn:

“Let me tell you, those are the ones that hurt me the most. But ni modo, what can you do?

The dog-catchers begin to start up their Ford Rangers and stretch in the parking lot while blasting an exquisitely filthy banda song we had just heard at a pharmacy the night before (my translation):

I’m cheating on you with another broad,

She’s here with me at the hotel,

I’ve already taken her pants off,

And her underwear as well,

Just to let you know how shameless I am…

The three of us looked at each other and right then and there we knew we were up for something special. By the end of the day, even José, who’s a true dog lover, acknowledged that dog-catching is tantamount to an art form.

Crews are made up of 3 catchers. Their Rangers are equipped with a big cage covering the whole bed and a smaller one pressed against the window to hold puppies and chipmunk dogs such as Chihuahuas. Once they get to their route, two of the guys ride standing on the rear bumper, hanging on to a bar at the top of the cage. The crazy thing is the tools of their trade are leather gloves and a lasso. That’s it.

So there we were, José and I crammed on top of the bumper, holding on as best we could, while Justin was inside filming the driver, named Rigo, as he sped through a middle-class neighborhood. Obviously, the director had put us on light duty with his most veteran crew. Even so, this neighborhood had more dogs than you would ever see anywhere in the States. We would come across a potential catch and the guys in the back would jump off the moving vehicle with so much skill that José and I would often not even notice. The strategy was simple: basically, the guys in the back jump off and the driver would get out up ahead, in order to form a triangle around the dog.

The first catch was a brown mutt who fought as hard as she could before getting the rope caught in her mouth and right around the neck. The catchers were incredibly quick, yanking her against the truck, throwing her in the cage and releasing the lasso in a matter of seconds. We were flabbergasted.

Maybe it’s a male thing, I can’t say for sure. But pretty soon we were caught up in the adrenaline rush of the chase. Every street held promise and every dog was different. We chased one particular greyhound in circles over and over without success. He was that one dog that got away. Others were sneaky and cowardly, running behind fences where they barked at us in defiance from the safety of private property. Some of them tried their best and failed. Of the 3 crew members, Rigo was specially impressive. Many dogs ran directly away from the two guys who jumped off first and Rigo would get right in the dog’s path and catch it on the run with a skillful side swipe. The dog would fly up into the air with a short yelp and a graceful curve before slamming down onto the pavement and getting tossed in the cage with the others.

In the hour and half we were there, the dog crew caught about 7 or 8 strays of all sorts, including several dogs who obviously had owners. The rules of the game are simple and straightforward: on the street with no leash equals a trip to the pound. There you go. All of the guys we were with had been on the job for many years, even though the pay is very low and they’re exposed to a lot of danger and injuries. I couldn’t help but wonder about the powerful attraction of it all, the purity of the chase. Their world is clearly defined, from the house door to the street. There is something about their job that is very honest and basic, I would even say dignified.

The hard truth is that there really are too many dogs on the streets of Mexico. Apparently, there are places in Mexicali with more dogs than people, and that’s after several years of the pound sacrificing over 20 thousands dogs annually. It’s not like any of us were happy that these dogs are getting caught and sacrificed. I would compare it to looking at the work of soldiers. It’s superficial to condemn them just because we believe that war or killing is bad. Rejecting them outright misses the real heart of things. What seemed to be really cruel was hearing that many owners do not bother to pick up their pets. They have no commitment to their animals whatsoever. And in some way, this grotesque selfishness is magnified, looming large and ominous over the entire border.

Arizona

There’s a lot I’m leaving out. For instance, at some point between Tijuana and Mexicali we saw a boat in the middle of a vacant lot in the desert—a boat on a trailer and nothing else. There was an ungodly wind beating down the nearby mountains. It was so intense that after 5 minutes my nostrils hurt. José described it as if we were being repeatedly punched by a weak but determined senior citizen. We stood there for an hour getting footage of this stranded dream that someone once held. Everybody complained, me most of all, but no one complained seriously. I mean to say that nobody quit. After a week I know in my heart that this is the spirit of this crew.

Lastly, I don’t know if it comes through in this diary, but there’s been a lot of really funny moments on this shoot. We spend much of our spare time re-living them and laughing heartily. There’s not enough space to tell them all, or rather to be honest, I would probably kill the joke by telling them. But we do laugh constantly. Imagine us chuckling and grinning on the roads of the black volcanic deserts of northern Sonora, driving at 55 mph, with the ac off, the windows down, all of us sweating like pigs because we’re running out of gas and have an hour to go before we reach the next gas station. Picture us roaring with laughter as we joke around with elementary school kids in terribly poor villages of southern Mexicali. Think of us laughing and making the best of this trip.