So, I’m back from the movie at the VIFF, “La Frontera Infinita” created in Mexico. It was, well, astounding.I highly recommend it to you all, but I believe I caught the last, and only showing. The documentary follows Mexicans, Salvadorians, Hondurans, and other Central Americans through their journeys and quests from their origins to their destinations (including shelters being built by those whose limbs had been severed by the trek on trains). However, there was no conclusive ending to the documentary, as there was no conclusive ending to Rivera’s novel. And the documentary was at times scattered and scrambled as well, following different people and groups and different times. Perhaps it is because these problems are not clear or resolved, nor will they ever be.

Like one of the men said in the beginning of the movie (this isn’t a direct quote, just what I remember…”there are a thousand mishaps in going north, and one hope. It is that one hope that keeps us going”.

I feel bad for the poor man sitting next to me, because every once and awhile somebody would say something in the film, and I would think “Shit! I-should-write -that-down-so-I-don’t-forget-so-I-can-write-that-in-my-blog”, so I would scramble in my purse to find a pen and paper, substituted with eyeliner and Safeway receipts.

One of the things I scratched onto the receipt was something an middle-aged woman attempting to migrate again to the north said. It was something to the extent of “arm yourself with sticks and stones, because they will try to get you in the north.” Personally, this made me upset and brought up the passage in Rivera’s book in the first half of the novel about the boy being harassed by the gringos. It just made me agree with what another man said in “La Frontera Infinita”…

“Who are the migrants? Who are NOT the migrants?”

That is a question to think about.