Mexico

This is the land that colonized your ancestors, I said to myself early this morning as I walked through the streets of Paris, the least you can do is find yourself a bowl of Pho. I wait at the St. Paul stop for the 1 train, which I take one stop down to Bastille where […]

How was Mexico? As if the country just sat there waiting for me to experience it, as if it was not a place all its own, with a people and history connected by a language I can’t speak, which will exist and move on with our without my stupid pseudo-tourist ass trying to learn in […]

So ultimately, what do Mexicans think of America? After a week blessed with the good fortune of talking with Luis, local arts organizer Karen Alamo, many local families, business owners, and folks from the hard side of Jaurez, one thing seems clear. Most Mexicans we talked with speak with a fondness for the US and […]

This border, not a line
but brown skin, jigsawed by chainlink fences
families turned into paper work, long lines
and appointments,
barbed wire rings like falling haloes
biting into blue skies.
In Juarez, in El Paso, there are people
constantly crossing .
The border is not what is in-between,
but what is on the other side –
what language tells the story of your birth,
what […]

It’s late and I’m tired but it was good first day on the ground. We started out the day at the US consulate, the local gatekeepers of the American dream. We started shooting film at 7 am of the hundreds of people waiting across the street for visas. Within 2 minutes, security was […]

It’s day one of the expedition. We’ve decided to start referring to this as an “expedition” because the word “film” doesn’t quite do justice to what’s about to go down. We’re in Juarez to meet up with Luis, an old friend who has lived in Minneapolis for the last few years. Luis is from Mexico, […]

Bao, a poet and spoken-word artist from Minneapolis, traveled with The Listening Project to China, France, and Mexico…