- So it turns out JD Vance and I have something in common.

We both paid a visit to my hometown on the Texas Mexico border earlier this year.

Surprise Now, the VP was an Eagle Pass for a couple hours back in March doing the same kind of political parade that my neighbors and I have seen for years.

Because regardless of party affiliation, elected officials like to do these kinds of things when they make border stops, first it starts with a tour, which now mostly centers on the incomplete border fence.

Then they deliver some passionate remarks chock full of buzz words tied to border security or immigration just in case the base is listening.

And at some point there's a photo op with border patrol or local law enforcement because y'all, these DC folks didn't put on their good jeans and belt buckles for nothing.

Now, if you don't believe me, just comb through the hours of cable news footage that exists.

Fox News, M-S-N-B-C-C-N-N, all of these news outlets have practically set up shop in Eagle Pass these past couple of years as my hometown has become more politicized.

And honestly it feels like they're playing out this National Geographic Wildlife documentary fantasy look, migrant caravans, undocumented immigrants, drug and human trafficking.

Okay, given that we are talking about an international border, some of that is true, but I can only speak for what I know and what I see.

And most of that is me just going to Kohl's department store with my mother or grabbing a mango with my sister at our local paleteria.

Not exactly a ratings draw, but which of these is the more accurate representation of the border?

I'm Xorje Olivares and today I'm asking is the border we see on TV real life?

This is where conversation and now talking about the border, I'm getting very homesick and the best way for me to address homesickness is to listen to music.

So I'm going to ask each of my guests what song reminds them of the border, because for me it is a song by Tejano artist Gary Hobbs, and it's called Las Miradas, please look it up, added to your playlist.

It is fantastic.

But excited to first welcome to the program Natalia Ventura, who is a community organizer and an artist outta San Diego, California who uses her art to show that it can be used as a tool for social change.

So Natalia, thank you so much for joining us today.

And I wanna ask you about what song reminds you of Home or the Border?

- Thanks so much for having me.

My song is not a traditional borderland song, but I think this kind of speaks to, you know, the many cultures that exist here.

For me growing up, my mom is from Tijuana, but she was like an eighties new wave fanatic.

Love it with the short hair and the like leather jackets when everyone around her in Tijuana was not that way.

And so she very much embraced like, you know, the music on the other side and loved New Wave.

And so a song that really reminds me of Home is Our House by Madness, because I grew up on a cul-de-sac and just like the lyrics just really remind me of her.

She always played that one growing up.

- Thank you so much for joining us and for sharing that.

Also excited to welcome to the show Robie Flores, who is a filmmaker.

Her latest film called The In-Between, is now available for you to watch.

And I highly recommend it, especially because it showcases my hometown of Eagle Pass because Robie is a classmate of mine and we've known each other for quite some time.

So excited to have her and excited to see her and to know what her answer is to the song that reminds her of the border.

- Oh my God, I'm so excited to say this because I think it's gonna take us all back to like morning pep rallies and cake walks.

Baila Esta Cumbia.

Like always like the, hmm.

Baila Esta Cumbia would just be like the, and then it was just like, we're all just kind of like doing the cake walk, like, or pep rallies or whatever.

And I think, is it Fito Olivares, La Vibora... - Yes, it's called La Cobra it starts with it like resembles a rattlesnake.

- It's so classic, to me, and when I hear that it just makes me so happy.

It so sorry.

I I cheated.

- I did too.

No, that's great.

And I, it makes me happy being around other border people.

I, I feel like we speak a special language and I'm happy for us to share that language with everybody right now.

Especially because the border is such an expansive place.

Right.

We are talking about two specific areas right now, Eagle Pass, south Texas in San Diego, but it spans miles upon miles.

So I wanna start with you Natalia, about what your specific border experience was like, has been like, just so folks can get a sense as to, to how you're approaching today's topic.

- Yeah, so I think something that people who aren't from the border don't realize is that even within this border identity, there's so many layers of privilege and experiences and intersections.

I feel I grew up very privileged in my border crossing experience.

I was born on this side as a US citizen.

I grew up visiting my grandparents every weekend, just being able to cross the border to enjoy like food and culture and life on the weekends over there.

And then I would, you know, do my schooling during the week on this side and grew up on this side.

So that's my personal experience.

- I wanna ask you, Robie, because Natalia hits it at a point that a lot of us understand, which is sometimes families on the other side.

There's a lot of cultural activities that happen on the other side that we want to show ourselves, especially if we don't have those on the American side of things.

So what was your border experience like growing up?

- I mean, similar to Natalia that it was, you know, it was like very lucky to be born on the American side, but it's just, it's such a, like on the border, it's just there's resources that everybody on both sides that can cross back and forth use and do, you know, people on either side go to school or work or you know, the doctor or like afterschool activities every day.

And so, like for me it was like I went to school in Eagle Pass, but every day after school I went to dance class and piano class and I'd like change on the way, like my mom would pick me up and I'd change in the car and like put my on and like, as we're going over the bridge and, and it felt like I was just kind of like getting into this like different identity of like now I'm a la bailarina and stuff and so I'd like go to dance class every day after school and then like to my ELAs house and I'd wake for my parents to be done with their errands 'cause they'd be like, you know, going to visit the Tios or like going to buy groceries and stuff and, and then we'd like take the bridge back home.

And that was like every day.

And then on the weekends we'd go to, you know, the ELAs house and then we'd do the carne asadas and stuff and, and that that, you know, that was my border life experience.

But with everybody that I was around it was pretty typical.

And so I assumed that if you lived on the border you could just do that - Growing up, even though we didn't necessarily have immediate family relatives that lived in Piedras that's where I would go to the dentist.

I didn't start going to the dentist in the United States until I was in my late twenties, which kind of shows something there.

And then you would always go for dinner.

It was just a quick trip over.

It would maybe take 20 minutes to get to a restaurant and then come back.

It was just that quick.

The one thing I have not had a chance to do on the border and is not part of my border experience just yet is to do work that showcases the border or pretty much highlights what it's like to be there.

And each of you are doing such great work that highlights the fronteriza experience.

So I wanna start with you Natalia, about your navigation of art on the border and some of the stuff that you get a chance to do today.

- Yeah, so for me it really started like once I left the Borderlands for college, I went up to Orange County for my undergrad and kind of like Robie was saying, like I didn't realize how much the border was a part of my life until I left and how, 'cause it was so normal for me, everyone around me was like very similar background and experiences with family on the other side.

And so once I graduated, I came back home with the intention of like really rooting myself even deeper in the borderlands and to do art that was focused on uplifting my community, which is what I felt called to do.

And so I started doing a lot of work around Friendship Park, which is right where the border wall meets the Pacific Ocean.

It's like the westernmost point of the border.

And it's also home to a place called Friendship Park where families traditionally are able, are supposed to be able to come together and meet each other families and friends who aren't able to cross the border because of their citizenship status.

And this is a place that has been under attack over the last few decades because of, you know, our government's opinions and stances on border crossers and migration.

And so when I started working with them, the construction of 30 foot walls was beginning at the park under the Biden administration, but it was a project started by the Trump administration and I did a lot of organizing work with them, bringing art to their activism work and using art as like a tactic of non-violence to fight against militarization at the park.

'cause this is supposed to be a place that symbolizes cross-border unity and friendship.

And it was very much not that anymore.

And so some of the interventions that I've done with others include hanging banners on the border wall.

"Parque si, muro no" is one of our slogans that we use to say we wanna park here, not a wall.

And I climbed up on the border wall to hang that.

And then there's also a planter that holds white sage, which is a native plant here in Southern California and northern Baja.

And we hung it on top of the border fence to kind of signify the power of this, you know, native plant, native species and how it overcomes borders.

And there's two sculptural hands that are coming from on top of those planters touching each other to kind of symbolize the human connection that we hope will win over these borders.

So it's really about reconnecting to our humanity, reconnecting to the land, and reconnecting to a very human thing, which is to create rituals to care for each other through all of those processes.

So that's kind of what my practice is focused on right now.

- Nice.

Thank you for sharing.

I wanna pull this word that Natalia just used, reconnecting because it feels like that was at the, the focus, it was a focus point for you in this film.

The in-between Robie, which I, I wanna share a, a trailer for listeners so they can see exactly what they can expect with the in-between.

- I must have crossed this bridge a million times, but the first time I remember was when my brothers are twins, Mars and Alex were born, but Mars is gone now and all I'm left with is his camera.

Now that I'm back here, can I find my memories of us?

Can I find you?

- So Robie, tell us about the in-between.

- I wait now Well now you're making me cry.

This is just so surreal because yeah, I, I I wanted to go back and make this movie in 2016.

I was, I was in New York working at Bloomberg at the time, and I was, you know, in the newsroom and it was just cons, you know, these constant like sound bites about the border and you know, how dangerous it is and how we need walls and, you know, all these things.

And, and it just sounded so foreign to me and I was just like, what?

It's like, it's really chill.

I mean, at least the one that I know, like, it's like, it's really not like they were making it sound like an action movie.

And I was like, you know, we wish we saw some action.

It was like very quite boring and you know, not that boring, but like, you know, we were just trying to like find things to do and it was, it was a beautiful idyllic childhood.

Like I, I feel we actually like grew up in such a bubble and it's, and like what a privilege to like have, you know, my childhood's so protected that I didn't like know anything about what people were saying about our home until 2016, you know?

And so, so it was just like really jarring.

And, and, and as you know, as, as you guys know, it's like when, when people talk about your home, because it's like never really talked about, we always like have a hard time explaining it, but then it's finally being talked about and it's being talked about in this like really ridiculous way that we're like, what?

And then it's just like had the like very visceral, visceral reaction of like, no, let me, let me show you.

Like I'll invite you, like come with me and I'll show you the cool parts.

Like if you look up a border on IMDB and all the movies that come out with border are always like the same stories.

And I looked it up, they all are like, you know, like trauma and you know, violence and, and like, you know, whatever, all the same shit.

And like we, we know that, but I'm like, no, but for us that are from the border, like we know that border frontera, means like carne asada means cumbia means like, you know, like hanging out with our tios and tias and like the identity crisis of not being ni de aquí, ni de alla.

It's just like, that's the real border crisis in my mind, you know?

And it's like no one's talking about that.

And so - Yeah, being from like two different worlds, you know, and not really seeing that in the media around you.

I think maybe Hannah Montana was like the closest like thing that I felt, - The duality, like - The duality she said the best of both worlds, which we are.

Yeah, totally.

And and then I went to college and I realized, oh yeah, like when I tell people, you know, I'm meeting people, a lot of people for the first time and I'm telling them where I'm from.

I'm grew up 10 minutes north of the border and they kind of gave me this like, and I started college in 2017 or like right after Trump came into office and they would gimme this look of like, is there even people who live there?

Like, I thought it was just this like arid landscape with like, I don't even know what they pictured, but they thought it was dangerous, you know, even though even the more liberal people who like disagreed with Trump, like he had successfully gotten into the mines, you know, and also all the media of like what the border looks like and is like.

- Robie, can you talk about the production company that, that you are now, that you've created that that is helping show the border and, and show other people what we might have missed growing up?

- Yeah, so it's called Ambiente Films.

I loved it being Spanglish.

'cause then, you know, we just have to teach people, they're like ambient and I'm like, "ambiente".

And then it is just like, you know, like slowly just making everybody be more like pocho.

'cause it's great.

Why not?

But this is, this is something that I've been like realizing, slowly realizing and, and, and is what our mission is with like this production company and like this movie and like the work that we do is that there isn't, like if you think about like, for example, New York and New Yorkers and stuff, like there's a culture and everybody knows it.

Everybody around the world knows it.

Like we know the accents, like we know the baseball hats.

Like I have my Yankees hat.

Like we know, like, you know, we know all the nuances of it.

And like yet when someone makes like a movie or writes a book about New York or like a song, no one's like, but what about the crime?

Like, why, why isn't, you know, like, but isn't New York dangerous?

You know, but like we do that about the border all the time.

Like you don't talk about like, you know, LA and you're like, and we all, again, we all know the, we all know like all the nuances of the culture and people are always claiming it and so proud.

But all of us will all speak for myself from the border.

I couldn't wait to leave and move to New York and call myself a New Yorker because I didn't have an identity to cling to.

I thought I didn't.

But then I realized I'm like my identity, I, I'm like, okay, I'm not Mexican enough.

I'm not American enough.

I'm not Texan enough, but I'm, all of these things were the best of all, both worlds and all these worlds.

And so that combination, like the sum of those many parts is our culture.

- Which is funny 'cause sometimes I feel like I, I visit the culture that I grew up in because I don't live there and I haven't lived there for quite some time.

But yet when I do go, I put my skin back on.

I feel, oh, I feel comfortable, I feel nice.

I, I I know this feeling.

And I feel like that's been something that has changed.

I feel like I, I more proudly wear my border self - 'cause - I have been separated from that region for so long, even though I still feel like super.

So I wanna ask you Natalia about have, what has changed for you about the border?

Whether, you know, physically, things that you emotionally, how you feel about it.

Have you gone through a, a bit of a journey there?

- Hmm.

Yeah, I think that returning back home to the border after college was a very spiritual awakening for me.

And I feel that I was able to tap in to also kind of the more mystical unseen elements of living at the border.

It's a place where like so much tension exists, you know, between life and death, histories of colonization and the colonizer versus the indigenous and the native.

And just really tapping into like also how the land feels because of this militarization, because of this border.

Like really understanding that wound that God Salu talks about, like for example, the border walls at Friendship Park in the seventies when the park got inaugurated by the first lady Pat Nixon, it was just a string of barbed wire and she had her secret service cut it so she could greet the people on the Tijuana side.

And she said, I hope there won't be fence too long here.

And over the decades it's become a 30 foot galvanized steel double wall.

And how did that happen so quickly and how are we so quick to accept that?

So I really feel a call to help us move away from that and move towards a borderless society.

And that requires like really starting from the internal level transforming and like abolishing those within our mind.

- So I still get a chance to go home maybe two to three times a year, which is by choice.

I, I love going back to visit family and just to experience all my old haunts.

And a couple years ago I went home for Thanksgiving and we celebrated at my Primo's ranch.

He owns quite a bit of land, literally about maybe a few yards away from the Rio Grande.

So we were pretty much at what you would call ground zero.

And while we were there, my Primo's wife said, Hey, would you like a tour just since you haven't seen it?

We said, sure.

And what do you know?

I saw some of the things that have been shown on TV, but because I never would be right there upfront, I wasn't exposed to it.

So saw the barbed wire, saw the dozens of National Guardsmen show, saw the mounds of clothing and the artifacts that have been left behind by folks making their migratory journey here into the United States.

And even though I was a little bit taken aback, like, oh my God, I wasn't expecting to see all of this.

That was just like saying hi to all the national Guardsmen that she sees every day and passing by all of these things that have now become, I don't wanna say white noise, but just part of her day to day.

So it does get into this notion of the normalization of what we do see on the border.

And so I'm curious for you, Natalia, since you do live still on the border, what has become normalized for you of what you see?

- Yeah, as you just said, it's very normal to see barbed wire to see construction projects constantly at the border, border, patrolers, DHS even multiple like law enforcement agencies.

It's normal to see people making their journeys and all of it.

It's very much a part of our culture here.

And I think that most people are just used to seeing it at this point, which is sad because it shouldn't be that way.

And I think that our border is like, it's a place where so much of the world just kind of comes together because migrants who come here are coming from all over the world, not just Latin America.

And so we have like a real opportunity to have kinship with people from all over the world.

The way that people who live here really care for the people on their migratory journeys is so inspiring to me.

And it's something that I've tried to like embody more and more when I'm driving around near the border and I see someone walking on the street, I know they're, they're probably on their journey and I will stop and offer them water or food, you know, it's just something that we need to ingrain more in if you are living near the border because this is a part of that life and really practicing like treating somebody like they are your kin.

- Yeah.

I wanna focus in on this word kinship because there is an international friendship parade and day that happens in Eagle Pass where we do meet up with folks in Piedras and there's this huge celebration.

And Robie, I love that the in-between starts and ends with imagery that is at least to me 'cause I know it happens for Friendship day and also for 4th of July.

But tell me about your reasoning for showcasing this particular moment and and day that we celebrate on the border.

- It was the first thing I shot when I went home.

It was so funny because everybody like back in New York and like this, like the center of news is like freaking out about everything that's going out on the border.

And like, and so I'm like, so like living in that for so long that I go home and I am being like, oh my God, how is everybody gonna be like, you know, is everybody gonna be like, will the Abrazo Festival happen?

It's called the Abrazo you know, ceremony that it's like, that's actually a whole week, it's a friendship week and it's like a whole week of like events and they have like a, a, you know, a carnival under the bridge and all this stuff.

And so like that I, I came back and they were still doing it, you know, and it's like, and they still do it now with all this going on, you know, like they're still doing all the binational celebrations because it's, nothing's gonna stop that.

This is like the culture of this place.

And so - I, I do wanna just quickly say I do every time I bring someone home for a visit, whether that's, you know, my partner's gone many times.

Whenever I bring my best friends, I always take 'em during Friendship week because of the Noches Mexicanas festival that you're talking about.

Which interestingly enough, it's called Noches Mexicanas on the American side.

But just to further paint this picture that Robie was showing, it all takes place in a park that is beyond the border fence.

So it is in this like weird purgatory section where it's in between the border fence and the Rio Grande, but it is always been there.

So it's everybody with their puestecitos selling the funnel cakes, the espiropapas, the raspas like aguas frescas, it all happens right there.

And that hasn't changed in all this time.

And it is such a beautiful reflection of community and just everything that we have, again, this culture that we have to offer on the border.

Which I do want to end with this one question to each of you, which is, what is your favorite part about being from the border?

And I'll say to give y'all some time, I'll say that for me it is every time I go home, every time I go to the border, I'm always, I'm always and, you know, the kid who went to this school and did all the, and had the piano lessons.

Like I, I'm allowed to remember the core of who I am and like what I'm bringing to you today.

It is all because of that.

So I, I feel like I, I'll never be able to, to lose that joy and pride of, of border identity.

I wanna start with you Natalia.

What is, what is your favorite part?

- Yeah, very similar, just being able to go to Tijuana, get the world's best tacos, eat some Nevis and just like really tap into those childhood memories, you know, just being a kid, visiting my family, enjoying life.

There's so much beauty in color in Tijuana and it's hustling and bustling and I love it so much and it's such a privilege to be able to just go enjoy that.

- Nice.

And what about you Robie?

- I love just like the, the remix that like, we create, like we're like the hybridity the ion, you know, like I like for us, like, I think that we're like so beautifully defined.

Like, I love food, I'm, I love to cook and stuff.

I grew up with, you know, family with restaurants and you know, my first job was in Piedras where the nacho was invented and like the beauty of the nacho is that it's a border food and this is what happens at the border.

That's like one example of all these amazing things that happen at the border when these like two like beautiful cultures like collide and influence each other.

And you know, from there we have margaritas and like Caesar salad and like burritos and like so many more things, you know, and, and, and like that's the beauty of the fluidity and like, and, and that I'm so proud of.

And I just like want to like bottle all of that up, like bottle your work up and your talks Xorje with everybody because that's, you know, you bring the border and like you Natalia with your work and like, you know, the, the literature that we've discovered and like the songs and the music and like, you know, Grupo Fontera, I was like, yeah, you know, like it's just like all of this together is our culture and we should be able to pinpoint it because we export so much of this all over the world and like we should really make it a tourist destination.

And I think that that would fix all of our problems.

So, - And so I feel like the, the, the greatest takeaway is that the, there's four great exports from the border, each of us in the natural, so exactly both better that are represent well.

I wanna thank each of you for, for joining me for this wonderful conversation about home because at the center of it, it really is about home for, for all three of us and for a lot of people who are watching.

So I wanna thank you each for your time and thank you for your work, especially because it, it does center this wonderful, beautiful existence that more people should know about.

So thank you both for joining me today.

- Thank you.

Thank you for having us Xorje.

- And I do wanna let folks know if you want to look at each of their works, just go to our show notes.

You will have links to Natalia's work, to how you can find and watch the in-between Robie's film and how you can support them in the efforts that they do.

And if you are a border person or if you have a question for us to address on Hyphenación all you have to do is email us at hyp@kqed.org.

But until next time, listen to all the songs that we provided you and take care.