New PBS Documentary on Immigrants: Letters from the Other Side

What happens to the women left behind by husbands and sons who leave to work arduously and illegally in the United States? Director Heather Courtney set out to answer the question using video letters exchanged between people living on separate sides of the border. The result was her documentary, “Letters from the Other Side,” which airs Tuesday on Public Broadcasting Service stations in Austin and Dallas and nationally in October. “These video letters illustrate the true tragedy of our immigration policy,” she said. Part of the documentary details the circumstances of Eugenia Gonzalez, whose husband left for the U.S., eventually lost contact and stopped sending money. Her sons also have left to look for work. She and her two daughters remain behind, trying to get by selling cactus products in local markets.  Click here for a news story on the documentary.

Here is the PBS website’s description of LETTERS FROM THE OTHER SIDE:

This documentary follows the lives of four Mexican women and their families, all of them affected by immigration in different ways. Filmed over two years in the state of Guanajuato, Mexico, the program interweaves their stories with cross-border video letters between loved ones and strangers. Eugenia Gonzalez’ husband left some eight years ago and has never been back, and has stopped calling and sending money. As her sons have left for the U.S. one by one, Eugenia has tried to make a new life for herself and her two daughters by selling cactus products in local markets. Carmela Rico and Laura Masacruz both lost their husbands in the biggest immigrant smuggling case in U.S. history. In May 2003, 19 immigrants suffocated in the back of a truck while being smuggled into the U.S. Maria Yañez is a farmer in rural central Mexico. While she and her husband try to eke out a living from their small parcel of land, a son leaves for the U.S. each year, leaving them to worry that their land will be abandoned without anyone to inherit it, while Maria tries to earn a little extra money by embroidering pillows.

KJ