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  • 2 days ago
When ARMANDO and CARLOS PENA set off to carry their mother's ashes back to South Texas and reunite with their brothers, the road reveals more than they bargained for. Calavera Highway (Skeleton Highway), traces the odyssey of two brothers as they decipher their family's story-why their mother ROSA was outcast by her own family, and what happened to their father PEDRO, who disappeared during the notorious 1954 U.S. government deportation program, "Operation Wetback," in which over a million Mexican and Mexican Americans were forced across the border. A sweeping story of a family of seven men grappling with the meaning of masculinity, fatherhood, and a legacy of rootless beginnings.
Transcript
00:00www.fema.org
00:22Unlike my brothers, I'm not crazy about fishing.
00:26And I don't much enjoy barbecuing.
00:30I come from a family of seven boys.
00:32We all grew up like street urchins without a father.
00:36I had a terrible stutter,
00:39and Carlos repeated the first grade twice.
00:42Hi, there.
00:44Why don't you take Mando with you over there?
00:45You guys are dangerous over here.
00:48Raul was a bed wetter,
00:49which was kind of a drag because we all had to sleep together
00:52in the same stinky bed.
00:56But in the eyes of my mother Rosa,
00:58we were her hijos de oro, her golden boys.
01:03I got something.
01:04Damn!
01:05It's dead.
01:06It's dead, man.
01:07It doesn't count.
01:07It's a snake.
01:11He caught it from the belly.
01:13You see?
01:16Now you guys won't pick on me anymore.
01:19We haven't seen much of each other in six years since Mom's funeral.
01:25When she died, there was a lot of turmoil in the family.
01:30Mom left us with unanswered questions.
01:33Why she was outcast by her own mother?
01:36And why our father Pedro disappeared?
01:40By the time I was born, he had vanished like an apparition.
01:45She was born with a town today.
01:45And, why did she die as the son of a fellow like that?
01:52And what happened was the first time to be in the middle.
01:54The last time I saw the girl was a widow and her family.
01:54If she was born with a mother, she was born with a mother.
01:56And she was born with a daughter.
01:57I didn't think she was born with a father.
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