The American Work Ethic

Day 3

It's a slow morning. After a leisurely breakfast of tasajo and frijoles, I make my way out to the station, meeting up with an interview subject along the way. I met this guy a few weeks ago in a collective taxi returning from a recording trip to San Juan Mixtepec. A last-minute text yesterday finds us sitting in the studio at the station recording his experience across the border. After talking through a few points of the contest, we begin recording.

His story is totally distinct than the ones I've already recorded the day before. It's less about the twists and turns of crossing the desert, and more about a shift in looking at what it means to devote years of non-stop work towards a goal way down the road. I can't help but wonder after recording all of these migration stories if I could do that. Am I made of enough to weather the pitfalls of the journey, the obvious challenges of living in a country where you don't speak the language, but where you are also in danger of being deported every day? I doubt it.

Rene working hard.

I spend the rest of the day at the station working on a script for a small documentary (cápsula) I'm making about San Juan Mixtepec. Daniel and Cornelio are holed up in the studio working diligently on a station diagnostic that they have to turn into the CDI (the federal body that governs their station). So when I finally leave at 9:30 PM they still hunched over lap tops and mountains of paper.