A new performance project in Texas hopes to challenge the horrific image of the southern border: a no-man's land of poor immigrants, barbed wire and men with guns.

Postcards from the border are three critically acclaimed new works Latino artists use music, photography and spoken word to present a more organic representation of this often misunderstood region.

Oscar Casares conceived the work as a series of postcards Written to my daughter Elena, who was 10 years old at the time. He is an author, an English professor at the University of Texas at Austin, and a native of the South Texas borderland. Casares and his photographer friend Joel Salcido followed the international river as it snaked down from El Paso to the Gulf of Mexico, stopping along the way.

Casares wrote on a postcard: "Hi Elena. In the small town of Los Albanos, there are no bridges to reach the other side of the river."

In this vignette from the production, Casares and Salcido cross the Rio Grande on a hand-pulled ferry. Attendants pushed the small barge across the river using ropes anchored to both sides of the river. It was there long before the U.S. border was blanketed with electronic sensors and surveillance cameras.

"The ferry had no engine, so it only moved across the water when people started pulling on the thick ropes above. Two steel cables hung from the top of the ship and to either side of the Rio Grande. This is the last time a hand-drawn ferry was made along the The whole river is driven along, so when you're up there it feels like people are pulling you back in time..."

During opening rehearsals, Casares stood on stage reciting his postcard as a picture of Salcido appeared on the screen and a hot Austin Tejano band waited to accompany him. .

"I think I've been following this story for a number of years, and in a sense there's something very special about the border that's just not being reported in the media," Casares said in an interview.

this postcard Production Documenting various lifestyles across the international divide: a Mexican family playing in a river under the suspicious eye of U.S. immigration agents, a transgender singer in El Paso "crossing the boundaries of her heart," and a couple from American father and son. Clean windshields in Africa for tips on surviving in a Mexican border town. Another miracle seeker traveled long distances to a Catholic shrine in Texas with a 3-foot-tall wooden statue of Jesus and visited the graves of Casares' grandparents with his cousin Eddie.

"I think when we went on this trip we had a very clear idea of ​​the story we were looking for," Casares said. "We understand the story the Trump administration is telling about the border. Our mission is to go out and find another story because we've lived it."

In 2019, during President Trump's first term, Casares and Salcido made the journey downstream and made headlines about the wall, immigration detention and family separations. Now, the border is heating up again as the new president proposes new measures to close the border and initiate mass deportations.

“If there’s an agenda, it’s to humanize what they politicized,” said Salcido, who worked as a photojournalist in El Paso before turning to art photography.

"I mean, when we were on the ground, we encountered what the news media focused on, but our agenda was to show the humanity of the border through these images."

Casares, who grew up in the Rio Grande Valley, was tired of seeing his home country defined by encounters between immigrants and Border Patrol agents.

"I think people who are not from there can only think of it as a wasteland without any civilization or any of the things that make the area incredibly wealthy - families, culture, language."

His musical collaborator is Carrie Rodriguez, a nationally renowned singer, songwriter and violinist based in Austin. She describes her music as Chicana America.

She has written original songs for a new album, which will be released to coincide with the premiere of the stage production. Like her life, the songs switch back and forth between English and Spanish. They invite listeners to see the two border towns as places of joy and resilience rather than centers of chaos.

Presidio/Ojinaga dances cumbia,

Dance the cumbia in Reynosa/McAllen,

Brownsville/Matamoros Dance Cumbia,

All the way to Boca Chica (river mouth) bailan la cumbia.

“I really didn’t know anything about the border,” Rodriguez said. "As soon as I got there, I felt like I was in..." she searched for the right words, "...like it was my own country."

As it happens, Rodriguez grew up in an affluent, predominantly white neighborhood in Austin.

"Honestly, when I was younger, I was even afraid of being seen as Mexican-American because of everything I witnessed around my neighborhood. I saw very ugly racism at such a young age."

Some of her music - including postcard project – is an exploration of this dual cultural identity. The first time she came to the border was at a picnic with the Casares family, including tortillas, piñatas and cold beer.

“I absolutely fell in love with the lifestyle,” she continued, “and the people, and the way English and Spanish flowed back and forth like water.”

"I think part of me also feels a little sad because I've gotten to know Oscar's family and I've seen a lot of families who are able to hold on to their culture like so many Mexican Americans in Texas don't have, including my own family ”

"Hello Elena, this is my last postcard," Casares intoned during the show at the McCullough Theater in Austin. "Today we reached the end where the river meets the bay. On the other side, men catch fish with large nets while women prevent children from sinking into too deep water. The mothers' voices were so close that it didn't feel like another country. "

Casares told his daughter that when he reached the mouth of the Rio Grande, he accidentally slipped into the warm river. He then decided to swim to the Mexican side.

“I stayed just long enough to feel the sand between my toes,” he said. “Then I swam out again, but this time I let the current push me closer, and it was no longer a river, but an ocean, where suddenly there were no edges and there was just me floating on my back under the sky for all of us.

See you soon, Dad. "

Premiere Postcards from the border, This weekend in Austin, it's sold out. Oscar, Carrie and Joel plan to bring their stage production to Texas border cities and then hope to expand across the country. During the program, they were artists-in-residence at the Texas Performing Arts Center at the University of Texas.

atmosphere postcard The best way to express it is Thousands of miles away, Most memorable songs from her album:

Let's turn on the radio and play a new Corrido song,

Tell me a story - besides today's news,

Let us feel our roots growing beyond the banks of the Rio Grande, even if we are thousands of miles away.