The Haunting of the Mexican Border: A Woman's Journey

by Kathryn Ferguson

Overview

The Haunting of the Mexican Border is a woman’s view of the violence and generosity of the border. For fifteen years beginning in the 1980s, Kathryn Ferguson made documentary films in Mexico’s Sierra Madre. As she traveled south, she encountered people who were traveling north, and she learned that the border at which they converged was deadly. Drawing on her own experiences, this book explores how US immigration policies erode the lives of ordinary citizens on both sides of the border.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780826340818
Publisher:	University of New Mexico Press
Publication date:	08/15/2015
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
File size:	7 MB

About the Author

A writer, filmmaker, and dancer, Kathryn Ferguson lives in Tucson, Arizona. She is a coauthor of the award-winning book Crossing with the Virgin: Stories from the Migrant Trail.

Table of Contents

To Begin… xi

I Sierra Madre Trails: Hunting

1 Guns and. Gershwin 3

2 Job 7

3 Into Mexico 13

4 Movies 21

5 Mexican Navy 31

6 Trails 43

7 Norogachic 53

8 In a Handshake 69

9 Scouting 79

10 Filming the Festival 87

11 Ventura's Home 95

12 The Unholy Tarahuinara 103

II Arizona Trails: Hunted

13 Al Otro Lado 107

14 Water 115

15 Spider Web 131

16 Chasing Rita 141

17 'International 157

18 Phone Call 167

19 Detained 175

20 Three Times a Charm 191

21 Crossing 201

22 Moat 211

23 And Now… 219

In Memoriam: Santiago Jim Barnaby 225

Acknowledgments 227

Editorial Reviews

The Haunting of the Mexican Border is a breathtaking work of art. Ferguson's artistry shines in her prose, polished and raw in a perfect combination, and her ability to convey the beauty and power of humanity.
—Story Circle Book Reviews

An important account of how the [Mexican borderlands] region continues to serve as a 'haunting' presence as well as a space whose history, stories, and art need to be more deeply appreciated and understood on the other side of the border.
—Southwestern American Literature

An important account of how the [Mexican borderlands] region continues to serve as a 'haunting' presence as well as a space whose history, stories, and art need to be more deeply appreciated and understood on the other side of the border.
—Southwestern American Literature

[Ferguson's] prose is marked by a deep kinetic awareness of how her physical presence as an American, a woman, and a traveler affects the migrants and indigenous tribal members she encounters during her filming expeditions.
—Pasatiempo

As a documentarian, Ferguson brings a journalistic approach to the material, providing context for the in-the-moment situations she describes, and the book itself provides useful context for the border as a whole.
—Foreword Reviews

Ferguson's book is more than a memoir. It is an adventure story toughened by sore feet from walking and walking and walking steep, narrow paths.
—Albuquerque Journal

A wise and humane account that draws on a lifetime of exploring the border country and pondering its meaning.
—Kirkus Reviews

This is an important book at the right time. We need to read this story and understand its vision. Recommended.—Luis Alberto Urrea, author of The Devil's Highway: A True Story

An unforgettable memoir that takes readers south to Rarámuri country then north into Arizona's militarized culture of terrorized immigrants and the people who stand up for them. The writing is exquisite, descriptive, action packed, and deeply meditative. The book reads like a novel; I couldn't put it down.—Demetria Martínez, author of Mother Tongue

With a rare woman's perspective, Kathryn Ferguson masterfully guides us through treacherous, hardscrabble geography and psychology where two different worlds both clash and meld. This is a must-read for anyone intending to live in and understand twenty-first-century America.—Marc Cooper, author of Pinochet and Me: A Chilean Anti-Memoir

From the Publisher

2015-06-01
A memoir that grapples with life, death, and documentary filmmaking on the United States-Mexico border. Ferguson (co-author: Crossing with the Virgin: Stories from the Migrant Trail, 2010) grew up in Tucson, Arizona, and lived much of her life in the gorgeous yet dangerous terrain of the border country. A dance instructor who developed a passion for documentary filmmaking, she devoted seven years to creating a film about the indigenous Rarámuri people of Mexico. In the subtle first half of her memoir, the author recounts the tumultuous process that led to The Unholy Tarahumara (another name for the Rarámuri), which premiered in 1998. Ferguson is a sensitive writer, wary of excessively exoticizing the land and the people she meets, but she beautifully conveys the sense of wonder she feels with every trip across the border. That wonder turns to barely controlled rage, however, in the book's second half, as Ferguson looks in the other direction, at migration from Mexico to the U.S. She describes how migrant deaths surged in the mid-1990s, from an annual average of 14 to several hundred—the equivalent, she writes, of a large passenger plane crashing into the desert every year. Outraged by the unfolding humanitarian crisis and the increasing militarization of the border, she joined groups that provide aid to migrants and began work on her next documentary, about a Rarámuri migrant woman who spent years held unjustly in an American psychiatric hospital. Meanwhile, she suspected that, due to her activism, the government was watching her. She was detained and arrested by mysterious federal agents in the desert, and she began a relationship with a Mexican man who, despite his visa, lives in constant fear of deportation. A wise and humane account that draws on a lifetime of exploring the border country and pondering its meaning.

Kirkus Reviews