‘Crossing Columbus’ presents the uneasy relationship of bordering cities
Cathy Lee Crane directed “Crossing Columbus,” a documentary about the relationship and history between border towns Columbus and Palomas. Nabeeha Anwar | Illustration Editor
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Over the weekend, the Syracuse International Film Festival returned for its 18th year. With the return to in-person screenings, The Daily Orange sent two of our screentime columnists to the festival to watch and review the documentary “Crossing Columbus” by director Cathy Lee Crane.
Madison Tyler
In the first few frames of the documentary “Crossing Columbus,” a subversive message lies unassuming in the composition of a shot — a group of men work together to put their horses in a trailer. The phrase “Viva Villa” is painted on the side of the trailer. Long live Villa.
Director Cathy Lee Crane’s documentary chronicles the annual cultural tradition between the border towns of Columbus, New Mexico, and Palomas, Mexico, in which they commemorate General Pancho Villa’s raid on Columbus during the Mexican Revolution in 1916. Couched within that story, however, is a critical look at the liminality of border towns, exposing the absurdity of geographical barriers separating people.
While the central focus of the film seems to be Villa’s grandson delivering his grandfather’s death mask to Columbus in 2018 as an act of goodwill and binational friendship, far more striking is the narrative the film tells about the impacts of the Mexico-U.S. border itself in everyday life.
Throughout the film, Crane links past and present, mixing archival footage of the raid with shots driving past miles of the border wall, which looks less like a wall and more like the metal bars of a jail cell interrupting the natural landscape of Mexico’s Chihuahuan Desert.
The film shows Mexican children with U.S. citizenship, whose parents have been deported, being bused to a school in Palomas where they learn English but focus on Spanish. It’s the closest school for them even though they live in New Mexico. In an interview, one older American man says it’s situations such as these that make him think it’s time to rethink citizenship laws.
Another man living in Palomas expressed thanks that he was deported back to Mexico because he wasn’t so sure he wanted to stay in the U.S. Someone else recalled playing “immigration” as a child, where he and his friends would dig holes into the ground and watch for patrol guards.
While some of the film’s subjects are critical of the border because the movement of people and goods between the two spaces is inevitable, the film doesn’t seem to take any explicit political stance. “Crossing Columbus” doesn’t end with the act of goodwill between Villa’s grandson and the American citizens living in Columbus, but with the Mexican horseback riders returning home behind the gates of the border. Music reminiscent of a circus plays as the gate closes. Is the director ridiculing its existence?
The history of the raid looms over the border town of Columbus, but there’s a history that comes before that, one of conquest and war. There is also the more recent history of an American president openly hostile to immigrants passing through the border. With this unacknowledged context as an undercurrent running through “Crossing Columbus,” the film finds subtle ways through its images and interviews to be subversive. “Viva Villa,” it winks.
Samuel Rivo
When the Battle of Columbus commenced in 1916 on the border town of Columbus, New Mexico, General Pancho Villa led a raid into the American town from Mexico. The documentary “Crossing Columbus” is set a little more than 100 years after the attack, in Columbus and the neighboring Mexican city of Palomas.
The raid still looms in the minds of the people of the two neighboring towns as the two sides view Villa quite differently. Palomas annually honors Villa by marching to the streets with bombastic drums, with numerous men on horseback nearby. But across the border in Columbus, many residents treat the history of Villa and the raid like a museum, with remnants of the raid used as a teaching ground to learn about the Battle of Columbus.
While many people in Mexico view Villa as a hero, many in Columbus see him as a terrorist. One interviewee from Columbus even compared him to Osama bin Laden. While both communities are forever linked because of the raid, their members have contradictory perspectives on the raid’s leader and significance. Cathy Lee Crane’s documentary about the two towns is very much about the idea of perspective and the effect one outcome can have on two sides of the same coin.
Crane goes in-depth into the surroundings and thoughts of the people on both sides of the border. Despite cultural differences between the two communities, we uncover that both communities share similar customs and values. Many on the American side, however, still use the events of the raid in 1916 as an excuse to not connect with the people of the bordering city of Palomas.
Maya Goosmann | Digital Design Director
This detachment is present for most of the film, as Crane uses different filmmaking techniques to depict the differences between each side of the border. Circle cams and ominous background music are most notably used when filming Palomas, while footage of Columbus relies on mostly handheld shots. It is near the end of the film — during the reenactment of the battle — when the audience sees the two communities become one. At the reenactment, we see that the two unions are very much alike, with many on both sides sporting flannel button-ups, straight-legged jeans with either baseball caps or cowboy hats sitting on the top of their heads.
Crane’s documentary reflects the division of the Trump era, as the film highlights the raised tension between two communities on opposite ends of the border. The concept of a stronger border was the backbone of former President Donald Trump’s initial campaign, and his message spread across to many who live by the border. In the film, we see an example of his message from a Columbus resident who questions the legitimacy of naturalized citizenship in response to many American-born Mexican children being bused over the border to Mexico to receive schooling in Spanish. Crane subtly illustrates her disdain for this unnecessary border, which is used as a centralizing theme in the film, symbolizing the disconnect many Americans have with Mexico.
Crane uses the horse rides from the two countries as a connector for the two countries to co-exist. But as the film commences, we see that the two different communities can come together and bond as one. Many residents within Columbus still feel discontent towards Villa, however, the two towns are forever linked and share the same world with one another.
