While President Trump and Congress continue to wrestle over the $5 billion the administration wants to build a wall along the Mexican border, filmmaker
David Freid noticed something was missing: no one was talking to the people who actually live there. So, Freid went to Big Bend National Park, which contains 13 percent of the US-Mexico border. Once there, he talked to Mike Davidson, the captain of the only international ferry operating on the Rio Grande river. According to
The Atlantic:
Freid’s short documentary Ferryman at the Wall is the story of two countries that, for the most part, peacefully coexist where it matters most: at the dividing line. “When there’s a fire in Big Bend National Park, residents from Boquillas, Mexico, come up to help fight it,” Freid said. Davidson, an American, has homes in both Texas and Mexico; he speaks Spanish and English fluently. Freid found that this cultural melding was commonplace in the towns adjacent to Big Bend.
“There isn’t just a straight line where one country ends and the other begins,” Freid said. “People’s family and friends extend in both directions. The land on either side of the Rio Grande is identical, and the people are close to identical as well. The two countries bleed into each other.”
Thanks to
The Atlantic for making this video available.
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President Trump says he’s considering inflating what he claims is a crisis into a national emergency so he can find a way to build a wall at the US-Mexico border that Congress has so far refused to fund. The federal government remains in a partial shutdown over the $5 billion the Trump administration is holding out for to fund construction of the wall. Reuters has more on the twin legal challenges the Trump administration is likely to face if it decides to declare the situation a national emergency to circumvent congressional funding.