Calavera Highway: The Story of an All-American Mexican Family

By Kyle Hussein de Beausset, AlterNet. Posted September 16, 2008.

A new documentary reveals the realities faced by millions of people in
trans-national communities.

"As a Mexican, I like the idea of living with my ghosts. In which
case, you might as well have a nice place for them to dance." --
Armando Peña, "Calavera Highway" (2008)

Armando Peña's ghosts dance angelically across the television screen
in "Calavera Highway," an award-winning documentary scheduled for its
broadcast premier on Sept. 16 on PBS (See here for local listings).
"Calavera Highway," or skeleton highway in English, follows Armando on
a journey in which he tries to penetrate the mysteries that his
mother, Rosa Peña, left behind with her death six years earlier.

With the ashes of his mother in tow, Armando visits the remnants of
his dissipating family. Scattered across the United States, the
testimony of the seven sons of the late Rosa Peña paint a portrait of
an inspiring woman. Depicted through the lens of Academy
Award-nominated filmmaker Renee Tajima-Peña, Armando's wife, the life
of protagonist Rosa Peña is not idealized. The hard truth is told
about what Rosa Peña had to do to survive, making the pride she
instills in her seven sons all the more admirable.

The deepest mysteries of the film surround Rosa Peña's first husband,
Pedro Peña. Pedro fits the typical mold of a Mexican migrant,
traveling back and forth across the border at a whim. The exact reason
Pedro Peña disappeared is one of the major mysteries of the film. Was
he deported during the infamous "Operation Wetback" of 1954, or did he
leave to take care of a second family on the other side of the border?
Armando Peña's questions about his father just touch the surface of
the complex legacy Rosa Peña left her sons.

It is tempting to categorize this documentary as a film about
immigration or the experience of many Latinos whose lives transcend
the U.S.-Mexican border. In actuality, "Calavera Highway" is as
American as apple pie. It is American not in the farcical white bread
sense that has been typical of the recent iteration of "American"
culture; it is American in a far older tradition -- with diverse
peoples with rich cultures making the United States their home, and
the nation a better place for it.

Denying this would play into the conceptions many of the people
involved in this documentary are fighting against. Producer Evangeline
Griego's ancestors resided in New Mexico as early as 1611, long before
the United States was even a nation. Still, she is often seen as a
stranger in her own land. She told me: "I always get the question,
'Oh, where are you from?' The supposition is that I've come here from
somewhere else. There's such a lack of education, and I think you
combat that by making films, by making media that reaches people."

Armando Peña and his wife, who is of Japanese descent, have both had
family in the United States for at least 100 years, but they still
grapple with this conception of being outsiders, the "others."
Tajima-Peña, whose work "Who Killed Vincent Chin?" was nominated for
an Academy Award, expressed her thoughts to me on how best to deal
with being seen as an "other" in your own home: "I'm not sure it's so
much assimilating to America, but just shaping America," she said. " I
think that's the way to look at it. It used to be we always looked at
the experience of people of color as being on the margins and on the
peripheries. But if you really look at history, I think our experience
has been real central to shaping this culture."

I probed deep for some hidden desire for the development of a global
citizenship in my interviews, but what I found were people content to
identify as Americans, and to make the United States, their home, a
better place for everyone.

So when Armando says, "as a Mexican, I like the idea of living with my
ghosts," he says so not as someone from Mexico, but as an American who
is proud of his own rich cultural tradition within the United States.
He is proud of a tradition that honors the departed with celebrations
like El Dia de Los Muertos (The Day of the Dead). I highlight
Armando's quote because that's what "Calavera Highway" is about. It is
about living with Armando's ghosts: his mother, his father, his past
and his future.

There is a macabre undertone to "Calavera Highway." Told differently,
the story of Armando and his brother Carlos carrying their mother's
remains all across the United States might seem a little strange. For
instance, take this exchange in Angleton, Texas, between Armando, his
oldest brother Roberto, and his youngest brother Junior, when Armando
takes out a container with his mother's ashes:

"It looks heavy," says Roberto.

"You want to hold it?" says Armando as he hands it off to Junior.

"We had to seal it."

"About thirty pounds?" says Junior.

"Twenty-five to thirty pounds," says Armando. "About as much as Gabe."
Gabe is Armando's son.

Still, the film is portrayed in a way that makes the macabre
beautiful. Perhaps it also helps the viewer internalize the wisdom in
a tradition that celebrates the dead, while others fear them.

Consider how Armando describes the birthplace of Roberto, in the
Mexican state of San Luis Potosí: "(Rosa Peña) gave birth to her
firstborn, Roberto, in a place full of witches and spirits."

San Luis Potosí is where the story of the Peña family begins. As it's
told by her sons, Rosa Peña was estranged from her family at a young
age, perhaps because she was born of a different father. Her family
married her off to a man, Pedro Peña, whose first reaction to Rosa was
essentially to kidnap her when she had run away.

From then on, Armando Peña describes his mother's experience as a life
"in movement." In fact, in another macabre reference, he says it's a
major reason why he decided to cremate her:

"You know when people pass away they tend to be forgotten. She thought
that maybe being cremated would make it easier. If I moved, I could
take the ashes with me. She didn't think that when she came to L.A.
That that was going to be the end of the road, but I knew.

"She wanted to be able to be moved around, basically. It seemed that
she was always in movement. One kind of movement or another, whether
it was jobs or relationships. And I told her that if we ever moved or
whatever, that we would always be able to take her with us wherever we
went."

Some might interpret Rosa's life in movement as a reason to consider
her someone from another land, but, despite her family ties to Mexico,
Rosa was born in the United States. Rosa Peña was a U.S. citizen. Like
so many people on Earth, she was a migrant who crossed back and forth
between the arbitrary lines that divide the world up into
nation-states.

In a way, we are all migrants, migrating every day to and from school
or work, or moving off to a new city to seek work or go to college.
When Armando says in the film, "I used to think of our family as a
family of tumbleweeds, kind of like blown in the wind," in many ways
he's describing most of our families.

But the color of the Peñas' skin, and the poor community they grew up
in, exposed them to the wrath of a system hell-bent making them feel
like they didn't belong. Renee Tajima-Peña explained, "They had a
tough childhood for many reasons. Armando always talks about growing
up Mexican in the Rio Grande Valley during that time as being like
African-Americans in the Deep South during Jim Crow. Because they were
just at the bottom of the barrel, because of racism, you know, they
were poor, they were migrant workers, because of what was going on in
the educational system, because of voting, because of everything."

When the Peña brothers talk about their work in the fields, the
discussion often turns to run-ins with the Border Patrol. When Rosa
Peña would regularly cross the border to get her hair done with her
youngest son, Junior, officials would hassle her every time.

What is perhaps most inspiring about "Calavera Highway" is that the
Peñas did not take this oppression lying down. Rosa inspired a
walk-off on the job when employers tried to take advantage of her
sons. Armando took part in the 1968 Edcouch-Elsa High School Walkout
-- the first major Chicano student protest in South Texas, which
sought to better the education of students in the area. Rosa Peña
supported Armando all the way. In 1973, Rosa Peña was a major force
behind the election of Eddie Gonzalez the city manager of Elsa, Texas.

The Peñas are not a meek family; they are a strong family. "My mother
comes from a long line of very strong women in the family," Armando
says in the film. The fact that Rosa Peña was able to instill this
pride in her sons, even as she raised all seven on her own, is one of
the most inspiring things about the documentary. It also adds further
to the Americanness of the film.

"Calavera Highway" is an American film, told from the perspective of
Americans who have been marginalized too often in U.S. history.
Portraying it as anything else is an insult to those involved in its
creation. It is not an idealized Americanness; it is the hard truth.
Not all of Armando's brothers lived the American Dream. Some were
victims to the American nightmare: Lupe and Raul Peña go to prison
just days after their mother dies. All of the Peña brothers are U.S.
citizens, but even today they are treated as strangers in their
homeland.

"Calavera Highway" makes ghosts of the past dance across the
television screen. It's a story of family, survival, resistance to
oppression, and joy. The film takes you on a journey from the freezing
cold of Washington State to the small, dusty towns of San Luis Potosí,
Mexico. It's a window into the American experience.

Kyle de Beausset is the founder of Citizen Orange and a co-founder of
The Sanctuary.