Broken destinies, separate families, the testimonies are poignant in this documentary by Djamel Mazi and Christophe Kenck, who went to the two banks of the Rio Grande.
by Alain Constant
Many naively think that the very concept of wall intended to prevent the passage of a border is a phenomenon of the past. Error: today we estimate at 70 the concrete, electrified or coated works of barbed wire, intended to separate human beings around the world.
For this first issue of the new information magazine “on the line”, Djamel Mazi and Christophe Kenck along a small part of the 3,145 kilometers separating the United States from Mexico, the one that was walled. The famous construction, a welcome historical recall, is not the exclusive work of Donald Trump. He has continued to expand since the first hard work dating from 1948, that the tenant of the White House is republican or democrat.
Passing from one side to the other, the two presenters multiplied the meetings, giving the floor to residents living in the shade of the wall, to American border guards, a Mexican police officer, veterans Mexicans from US Army expelled from the United States, or a repressed Venezuelan family of the American “land” after an exhausting journey.
This trip, from El Paso the American to her Mexican neighbor from Ciudad Juarez via Douglas (Arizona) who faces Agua Prieta, turns out to be instructive but above all very moving. Broken destinies, separate families, the testimonies are poignant. Once in the year, a humanitarian association is organizing an outgoing day, between El Paso and Ciudad Juarez. Separate families can, after registering, meet. Mexican migrants residing in the United States are dressed in an orange T-shirt, family members living in Mexico in a blue t-shirt.
three minutes to see
Exceptionally, border guards stop their controls. That’s good, most participants are undocumented. A door opens in the wall. Participants go to a small pontoon spanning the Rio Grande, a natural border between the two countries. This is where the call of their names and for three minutes, not one more, men, women and children, sometimes separated for many years, find themselves and fall into their arms, often in tears.
This very special day is one of the highlights of this report. Which reserves a few surprises, like these lines at the border to enter Mexico. At the wheel of many vehicles, Americans go to Monterrey, a big city located less than two hours from Texas, to make an abortion, with the help of an association.
Americans living in Douglas and his region come to be treated in one of the many dental clinics of Agua Pieta. Medical tourism that is easily explained: in the United States, a dental implant costs $ 4,000. On the other side of the wall, it is 30 % cheaper. And abortion is now prohibited in many states north of the Rio Grande.