Valeria Luiselli on Reënacting the Border

Summary

Podcast Summary: “Valeria Luiselli on Reënacting the Border”
The New Yorker Radio Hour | July 2, 2019 | Hosted by David Remnick

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Episode Overview

This episode delves into the intersection of historical myth and modern reality along the US-Mexico border, as experienced and reported by Mexican author Valeria Luiselli. Accompanied by producer Pike Malinowski and former Border Patrol agent Francisco Cantú, Luiselli travels through Tombstone, Arizona, and Shakespeare, New Mexico, exploring how Wild West reenactments and frontier legends shape contemporary attitudes toward the border, immigration, and national identity. Through interviews with local reenactors, historians, vigilantes, and borderland residents, the episode exposes a complex tapestry of nostalgia, myth-making, vigilantism, and prejudice—contrasted by moments of hope and resilience.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting the Scene: The Border as Myth and Battleground

[00:10]

• The border crisis is centrally located in US politics, inflamed by divisive narratives.
• Luiselli seeks to investigate how the stories told in Wild West reenactments inform our ongoing border perceptions.
• "The debate over the border with Mexico and the whole vexed question of immigration is at the very center of American politics...The president continues to stoke the fear of immigration and as an existential threat to the country." — David Remnick [00:10]

2. Arrival in Tombstone: Meeting Locals and Reenactors

[03:39-08:18]

• Francisco Cantú, former Border Patrol agent, critiques the prevailing law enforcement narrative:

  "The most harmful part of the narrative is this narrative that the people that you're encountering are criminals...the vast majority are humanitarian encounters, right? Like these are encounters with refugees, not criminals most of the time." — Francisco Cantú [02:43]

• Luiselli and Pike observe Tombstone’s transformation into a living western stage, its streets bustling with saloons, stagecoaches, and actors.
• Reenactors, such as Zach Eder (Frank McLaury), embrace the spectacle and its moral simplicity:

  "There's nothing quite like getting to shoot guns at your friends all day and then getting up and going to have a beer after you're done." — Zach Eder [05:32]

• The shows traffic in simple binaries—good lawmen (Earps) vs. bad outlaws (Clantons), with audiences instructed to boo and cheer accordingly.

3. Conversations on Historical Narratives and Exclusion

[09:40-13:51]

• Visit to Ben Tredwick, 93-year-old former town historian and Tombstone’s original reenactment scriptwriter.
• Tredwick’s views highlight selective memory and overt racism:
  • He admires Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest, acknowledges writing a book defending the KKK, and supports a border wall:

    "Those who understand the KKK view it as a beloved symbol of all that is holy and beautiful." — Ben Tredwick (paraphrased by Luiselli) [11:51]
    "We have gotten so many criminals and so many people with diseases that we need to protect ourselves." — Ben Tredwick [13:40]

• Luiselli questions the erasure of Mexican and Native characters from the town’s pageantry.

4. Vigilantism: Past and Present

[14:17-15:59 | 18:33-22:36]

• Tombstone is both the original mythic frontier and the birthplace of real-life vigilante groups, such as the Minutemen.
• Cantú reflects on the blurred lines between law enforcement and reenactment, the “performance” of patrolling the border:

  "As I'm in this place... what separates that kind of a performance, you know, in the context of law enforcement from like these people dressing up as cowboys. Like, I see less and less that separates them..." — Francisco Cantú [18:33]

• In Shakespeare, Rod Linkus recounts the persistent narrative of danger:

  "Everything in the southwest either sticks, bites, scratches, stings or poisons you." — Rod Linkus [19:47]

  • Modern fears of drug mules echo older tales of Apache attacks; communities have always organized vigilante groups to "defend" civilization.

5. Life on the Border: Residents’ Perspectives

[24:24-27:46]

• Interview at Twin Buttes RV park: Residents recall mass journeys of migrants and support for civilian militia activities.
• Roger Kircher, RV park owner, boasts his “sheriff” role and embraces the frontier’s law-and-order ethos:

  "I'm like the local sheriff for Twin Buttes RV Park...I make the rules." — Roger Kircher [28:17]

• Views on migration are unapologetically hardline, laced with humor and hostility toward outsiders:

  "Solid wall all the way and would be a good start...Change the laws and...get the right documentation and we'll welcome you into our United States of America. But don't break in. You don't break into anybody's house." — Roger Kircher [27:46]

6. Contrasts and Closing Reflections

[28:50-30:49]

• Luiselli feels uneasy and wonders about the limits of dialogue when views are so polarized:

  "...I feel uneasy and maybe a little hopeless. What possibility of dialogue is there when people's opinions are so divided?" — Valeria Luiselli [28:50]

• The episode ends on a brighter note with Uber driver Pablo Martinez, who embodies hope for coexistence:

  "We cannot be fighting like animals, you know, or hating. Hating is from evil, you know, we cannot have that. We can, you know, put the love in front." — Pablo Martinez [30:05-30:17]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Francisco Cantú on Law Enforcement Narratives [02:43]:

  "...the huge gulf in that narrative is that most of these encounters, like, they're not criminal encounters...the vast majority are humanitarian encounters, right? Like these are encounters with refugees, not criminals most of the time."

• Zach Eder on Reenactor Life [05:32]:

  "There's nothing quite like getting to shoot guns at your friends all day and then getting up and going to have a beer after you're done."

• Doug Holliday’s Gunfight Instructions (Reenactment Humor) [07:36]:

  "Do not attempt to pull them from our holsters at any time. Do not ask us to hold them to your spouse's head for pictures. It's not gonna happen."

• Discussion on the Exclusion of Mexicans from Reenactments [12:00]:

  In the reenactments, "there are no Mexican or Native American characters..."

• Ben Tredwick’s (Disturbing) Posterity [11:51]:

  "Those who understand the KKK view it as a beloved symbol of all that is holy and beautiful." (Paraphrased by Luiselli)

• Francisco Cantú on the Performativity of Border Policing [18:33]:

  "The performance element of it, right?...as representatives of this civilization that has to be asserted against the other...What separates that kind of a performance from people dressing up as cowboys?"

• Roger Kircher, ‘Sheriff’ of Twin Buttes, on Law & Order [28:17]:

  "They make me the sheriff around here because I' law and order. I make the rules."

• Pablo Martinez on Resilience and Hope [30:05-30:17]:

  "We cannot be fighting like animals, you know, or hating. Hating is from evil...We can, you know, put the love in front."

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Important Segment Timestamps

• [00:10] Setting the context — US politics and the border
• [02:43] Francisco Cantú discusses harmful border narratives
• [05:32] Zach Eder on the attraction of reenactment life
• [09:40-13:51] Interview with Ben Tredwick — racial memory, revising history, and bias
• [14:17] Discussion of Tombstone, Minutemen, and vigilante culture
• [18:33] Francisco Cantú on pervasiveness of frontier mythology in law enforcement
• [19:47-22:36] Rod Linkus on Shakespeare’s history and dangers
• [24:24-28:28] Twin Buttes RV park residents on living at the border and modern militias
• [30:05-30:17] Pablo Martinez on love versus hate and the possibility of reconciliation

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Tone and Language

The episode’s language alternates between journalistic curiosity, empathy, and critical scrutiny. Through Luiselli’s narrative and Remnick’s framing, listeners are invited to grapple with uncomfortable truths—prejudice, nostalgia, denial, and the seductive simplicity of myth—while also encountering warmth, openness, and persistent hope from those on both sides of the border divide.

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Takeaway:
This episode richly illustrates how the American border is less a line than a stage—one where history, mythmaking, fear, and aspiration are performed daily. The stories we tell, the characters we cast, and the myths we perpetuate still powerfully shape who’s seen as hero, villain, or excluded altogether. Confronting these stories is an uneasy but necessary step toward understanding and perhaps changing the realities of border life.

Transcript

[Valeria Luiselli]

From one World Trade center in Manhattan. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co production of the New Yorker and WNYC Studios.

[David Remnick]

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. The debate over the border with Mexico and the whole vexed question of immigration is at the very center of American politics, and it has been ever since the election of Donald Trump. The president continues to stoke the fear of immigration and as an existential threat to the country. Meanwhile, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez recently used the term concentration camp to describe the conditions that some migrants are kept in, causing a furor in both parties. Valeria Luiselli is a writer who was born in Mexico and now lives in the U.S. both her fiction and nonfiction are concerned with the border. And recently she traveled to the region and visited two former mining towns, Tombstone, Arizona, and Shakespeare, New Mexico. Both have had a strange kind of afterlife. As stage sets for reenactments of the old Wild west, scenes like the famous Gunfight at the O.K. corral. Louis Celley wanted to explore how the stories that we tell about the Old west shape our perception of the border even now.

[Valeria Luiselli]

So the first time I visited Shakespeare in Tombstone was in 2014, right when the immigration crisis started. I returned to both towns this year with my friend Pyke Milanowski, a writer and audio documentarian.

[Pike Malinowski]

1, 2, 1, 2, testing, testing.

[Valeria Luiselli]

Since my last trip to the Southwest, things have gotten really bad. The national fixation on the border crisis has reached a fever pitch, and the way that undocumented migrants are treated at the border has hit record lows. It's a good moment to return to the borderlands and think about the ways that the legends of the Wild west and their reenactments coexist or clash with the actual reality surrounding these towns. Pike and I meet in Tucson in late April. Our first stop is with our two local friends, Francisco Cantu and Karima Walker. Oh, there's Karima. Hey, Karima. We want to pick their brains a bit about the towns we're going to visit the next day.

[Pike Malinowski]

Hello. Hey.

[Francisco Cantu]

How are you?

[Ben Tredwick]

Very good.

[Pike Malinowski]

Welcome. Thank you.

[Francisco Cantu]

Does anybody want a beer?

[Valeria Luiselli]

I would love a Mescalito. They live in a small adobe house full of books and plants. You sit around the kitchen table. Francisco was a Border Patrol agent for a few years, and he wrote a book about the experience called the Line Becomes a River.

[Francisco Cantu]

Yeah, I was. I worked for the border patrol for three and a half years, from 2008 until 2012. I think the most harmful part of the narrative is this narrative that the people that you're encountering are criminals, right? It's this narrative of criminality. When you're at the academy, you're like, all these encounters that you have, like, pose a danger to you. And like the first primary preoccupation from the beginning of an interaction until the end of an interaction is like your safety as a good guy versus this bad guy, you know? But I think like, the huge gulf in that narrative is that most of these encounters, like, they're not criminal encounters. I mean, the vast majority are humanitarian encounters, right? Like these are encounters with refugees, not criminals most of the time.

[Valeria Luiselli]

We're grateful and somewhat relieved that Francisco has agreed to come with us to Tombstone tomorrow. As a Mexican and as a woman, I'm a bit nervous about driving into these towns and being so close to the border. Early next morning, the sun is already strong.

[Francisco Cantu]

Valeria, do you want like a baseball hat or like a little fedora hat or a cowboy hat? The Stetson.

[Pike Malinowski]

You.

[Francisco Cantu]

You want to wear a fucking Stetson?

[Valeria Luiselli]

Yeah, I see it. You think I'll pass? We set out for Tombstone. Francisco at the wheel and pike recording in the back. Seats in the back. We're going to talk to reenactors at the OK Corral. It's the most famous reenactment in town and features some legendary wild west characters like Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earper.

[Francisco Cantu]

I don't know if it's still around. I doubt it.

[Valeria Luiselli]

We're driving deeper into the desert. Outside the car window, saguaros, creosote, Docotillo and mesquite, the jagged peaks of the Dragoon Mountains to the east, and further than that, the tall peaks of the mighty Tiricawa mountains. Driving into Tombstone feels like entering the set of an old western. The streets are lined with saloons, little museums. There's an old brothel and many souvenir shops. Horse drawn stagecoaches pass by constantly. Here comes a reenactor.

[Pike Malinowski]

Can we talk to you for real quick though? Because I'm on my way into work. So today I'm playing Frank McLaury. Very, very bad man. The only one who really knew what he was doing on the cowboy side in the gunfight.

[Valeria Luiselli]

His name is Zach Eder. He's spaghetti bodied, walks with a joyful kind of skip, and is visibly enjoying every one of the deep puffs he takes of his cigarettes.

[Pike Malinowski]

There's nothing quite like getting to shoot guns at your friends all day and then getting up and going to have a beer after you're done.

[Valeria Luiselli]

You know, like the OK Corral reenactment recreates a dispute leading to a 30 second shootout between outlaw cowboys and lawmen.

[Pike Malinowski]

My name is Virgil Earp. I am town marshal of Tombstone. I lay down the law.

[Valeria Luiselli]

The reenactor's name is David Moore. And he has a major in history.

[Pike Malinowski]

Recently there was an ordinance passed that prohibits carrying a gun in town. Now, I heard those cowboys are carrying guns in town today. And if they don't render those guns peacefully, we will take those guns away by force if necessary. And the rest will be history.

[Valeria Luiselli]

The line that divides performance and reality seems a little thin in Tombstone. We ask him what it is that draws so many people to these old Wild west shows.

[Pike Malinowski]

I think deep down a lot of people, you know, they search and wish for a simpler time. Yeah, I think that's why. First show of the day, folks. Right here at the OK Corral here. 11am Come get your tickets. Now, right to these red doors.

[Valeria Luiselli]

We walk into a walled rectangular area. Dirt floor, some barrels, haystacks, A recreation of old storefronts on one end and metal bleachers on the other end.

[Pike Malinowski]

Darling.

[Valeria Luiselli]

Hi, darling.

[Pike Malinowski]

Here's how it's gonna work. I'm gonna let you get in there. I'm gonna let you have a seat. But don't get up. Give me no trouble. You give me trouble. I might have to use this guy for target practice. I don't know. But I need lots of practice. I've had a lot of drink today.

[Valeria Luiselli]

All right, but don't worry.

[Pike Malinowski]

It's always safety first at the O.K. corral. That's right. I left my bottle at the bar. You'll be safe.

[Valeria Luiselli]

All right, get in there.

[Pike Malinowski]

Thank you.

[Valeria Luiselli]

We find a seat among 20 or 30 spectators.

[Pike Malinowski]

Are you folks ready for a gunfight? Now I say, are you folks ready for a gunfight? All right. Now, before we get started today, I do have to talk to you about a couple things. First things first, folks, these are not toys. They are real firearms.

[Valeria Luiselli]

Doug Holliday gives us instructions.

[Pike Malinowski]

Do not attempt to pull them from our holsters at any time. Do not ask us to hold them to your spouse's head for pictures. It's not gonna happen.

[Valeria Luiselli]

They're. There's a good versus bad logic in the reenactment.

[Pike Malinowski]

The good guys are the gentlemen dressed like me, wearing ties around their necks.

[Valeria Luiselli]

The Earps are the good guys.

[Pike Malinowski]

I want you to cheer them.

[Valeria Luiselli]

The Clantons, part of the group called the Cowboys, are the bad guys.

[Pike Malinowski]

Likewise, when you see those dirty, smelly cowboys walk through those doors, I want you to boo them.

[Valeria Luiselli]

Not much room here for nuance or ambiguity.

[Pike Malinowski]

Let's give it a try right now. Good guys. Bad guys. Good guys. Are you folks ready for a gunfight?

[Valeria Luiselli]

Yeah.

[Pike Malinowski]

Are you ready for a killing? Clap your hands, boys. We're here for your guns. Oh, I don't want that. Wait, wait, wait, wait. I don't got a gun. All right, Mummer.

[Valeria Luiselli]

One of the narratives in the OK Corral reenactment is that of vigilante justice. Civilians who deputize themselves in order to perform the tasks normally reserved for law enforcement.

[Pike Malinowski]

I got one left for you. You get away. Let me die. Well, that was it. Over before it ever started.

[Valeria Luiselli]

After the show, we walk around town for a while, talking to people, trying to learn more about the history, who are interesting people to talk to in town, who are like people that have a memory of town.

[Pike Malinowski]

Good stories about if you can get a hold of them. That's the hard part. The best person to talk to about town is a fellow by the name of Ben Trewik.

[Valeria Luiselli]

Ben Trewyck.

[Pike Malinowski]

Go down two streets, you turn left at the Crystal Palace. Across from the Epitaph Newspaper Museum is a two story adobe. The man who lives there is Ben Trewick. And he has a bookstore downstairs that he opens when he feels like it because he's 93 years old, but he's still clear in his head. And he got here back in the 60s and he loves the town.

[Valeria Luiselli]

We find Ben Tredwick's bookstore in a side street. Hi.

[Ben Tredwick]

Hello there.

[Pike Malinowski]

Hi.

[Valeria Luiselli]

Are you Mr. Ben Tredwick? And we enter a cluttered, dark space.

[Ben Tredwick]

Ben Tredwick.

[Valeria Luiselli]

Oh, I'm sorry. We were just talking to someone that told us that you were a town historian. There's boy books, magazines, and documents all piled up in columns. For a long time, you acted as a town historian. And in the left hand corner of the shop, there's this old man with a snowy mustache and some strands of white hair.

[Ben Tredwick]

Yeah, 42 years, but I retired three years ago.

[Valeria Luiselli]

He's bending over a manuscript. We were wondering if we could speak to you like a brief interview.

[Ben Tredwick]

What are you going to do with it?

[Valeria Luiselli]

We ask him about the history of the reenactment scene in Tombstone, and it turns out he's kind of like a local wizard of Oz.

[Ben Tredwick]

Well, when I came here in 1968, I saw that Tombstone was not being advertised. That's the key right there. Advertisement. So I wrote a script and we decided to do historical acts.

[Valeria Luiselli]

Trewick apparently wrote the original OK Corral reenactment. And played Wyatt Earp for 20 years.

[Ben Tredwick]

The women did hanging groups, comic things, you know, and we did serious things.

[Valeria Luiselli]

His bookstore is full of objects. There's a Confederate flag in the back, some Mayan masks and relics behind his desk. A few dusty mariachi hats. Many framed pictures of admirals and generals. He points to the door.

[Ben Tredwick]

Move that door to a little bit and look at the picture behind it on the wall. That's Nathan Bedford Forrest. He's the greatest cavalry leader ever been.

[Valeria Luiselli]

Nathan Bedford Forrest was a Confederate army general during the American Civil War and was elected the first grand wizard of the kkk.

[Ben Tredwick]

Now, I had two great grandfathers who was in his second cavalry unit. One was a sergeant, the other got killed in Kentucky.

[Valeria Luiselli]

And you have a book about the Ku Klux Klan as well?

[Ben Tredwick]

I wrote that in self defense. They lied so much about that, I got sick of hearing it.

[Pike Malinowski]

What were some of the lies about the clan that you took care of?

[Ben Tredwick]

Well, one of them was about how they treated slaves.

[Valeria Luiselli]

In the book he says that those who understand the KKK view it as a beloved symbol of all that is holy and beautiful.

[Ben Tredwick]

I hate to see something wrong in history.

[Valeria Luiselli]

I went to ask him about historical accuracy. Seems like there are no Mexican or Native American characters in any of the reenactments.

[Ben Tredwick]

Mexicans were part of the civilization we had here.

[Valeria Luiselli]

Yeah, but are they like, you know, we have like a lot of Doc, Holidays, Wyatt Earp, the Clantons in the reenactments. Are there any reenactments in town where there is a role that a Mexican, not a Mexican actor, but that the character is Mexican?

[Ben Tredwick]

Well, it's hard to say. You have to take them as a whole. You know, in our show we had Mexican in our group. He cooked the best beef in the.

[Valeria Luiselli]

World, but the guy was Mexican. Yeah, I'm talking about people that are now part of a reenactment show.

[Ben Tredwick]

Some of them are politicians. A lot of them own stores.

[Valeria Luiselli]

I'm curious to ask him about his views on Mexico, US relations more generally. Do you think there should be a wall dividing Mexico and the U.S. i.

[Ben Tredwick]

Think that they made a big mistake when they got Santa Ana and had a chance to. They should have annexed Mexico and let them keep all the states they had. Let them run them. But be under United States or with the United States, part of the United States. That would solidify the whole continent in.

[Valeria Luiselli]

North America, including Central America.

[Ben Tredwick]

Yeah, we can get them too.

[Valeria Luiselli]

And now. Well, okay. That said, but that didn't happen. So do you think there should Be a wall between Mexico and the U.S. yeah, I do.

[Ben Tredwick]

I do. Because we have gotten so many criminals and so many people with diseases that we need to protect ourselves.

[Pike Malinowski]

Have you had any real life experience with what you're talking about now, like criminals or people with diseases here?

[Ben Tredwick]

Well, when people come to town here, they're illegal. They know that the people in town know they're illegal. It's a small town. They get a cold drink and hit for the big city where they can disappear. None of them stay here. We don't have any in town right now that I know of. They also know that everybody in town's got a gun.

[Valeria Luiselli]

Vigilantism in Tombstone goes beyond everyone carrying guns, though. The organized vigilante group the Minutemen was created in Tombstone in 2002. Chris Simcox, then the editor of the Tombstone Tumbleweed, put out a call to citizens. Border Patrol militia now forming concerned citizens. Join together to protect your country in a time of war.

[Pike Malinowski]

Well, I also heard about, you know.

[Francisco Cantu]

That the Minutemen started here and there was kind of.

[Pike Malinowski]

Do you know anything about that?

[Ben Tredwick]

No, no.

[Valeria Luiselli]

Tretwick is hesitant to talk about the relationship between Tombstone, the Minuteman and Chris Simcox. But I push a little further. The owner of the newspaper, the Tumbleweed, he was part of the Minuteman, right?

[Ben Tredwick]

Yeah, he was. But it had nothing to do with the rest of the people. That was his own project.

[Valeria Luiselli]

A few years after his call to arms, simcox had about 900 armed volunteers patrolling the border. And he was praised by people like Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

[Ben Tredwick]

Well, he was a good historian and he was a good newspaper man. When he started that, it looked like a good thing, but he let it take over his life and he got all out of bounds. I think he finally went to jail, didn't he?

[Valeria Luiselli]

He did. Chris Simcox is serving a 19 year sentence for child molestation. So perhaps it's understandable that people in Tombstone prefer to dissociate themselves. We say goodbye and step back out into the afternoon sun.

[David Remnick]

Valeria Luiselli in Tombstone, Arizona. Her reporting from the border continues in a minute. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour and stick around. We're traveling in the border region of the Southwest today revisiting the idea of the Wild west with the writer Valeria Luiselli. Luiselli wanted to explore how the history of militias and vigilantes affects how people think about the border even today. She was accompanied by the producer Pike Malinowski, and their first stop was in Tombstone, Arizona.

[Valeria Luiselli]

The junior ROTC from the local High school is parading down the main street. There's a sense of military preparedness in the air. We walk into a souvenir store that sells T shirts. There's one with two guns forming an X and the words Second Amendment. The original Homeland Security. The original Homeland Security, Tombstone, Arizona. What does it mean? Who was the original Homeland Security? Guns. Oh, okay. Because it's the two guns. Yeah, right, the two guns. Yeah. That was our security back in the day.

[Pike Malinowski]

That's all they had.

[Valeria Luiselli]

There was not a lot of law and order around. Right. It's confusing and hard for us to process all of this. The laughters and fun driven entertainment of the reenactments.

[Pike Malinowski]

Are you folks ready for gunfight? Are you ready for a killing?

[Valeria Luiselli]

The love of guns. The beauty of the surrounding desert, the welcoming smiles and openness to conversation of many of the Tombstone residents and then their feelings about immigrants. There are many questions spinning in our heads as we drive out. Which founding myths are being placed played out here and what sentiments do they activate in people? Back in the car, our friend Francisco tells us about the relationship between the institution of the Border patrol and the myth of the frontier. That is the idea of a place at the very edge of civilization which needs to be conquered and tamed.

[Francisco Cantu]

The performance element of it, right? You know, like, you know, you're in the border patrol and yes, it's a very. It's like a serious job and there are times when it means life or death, but like it's also at the same time like a performance, right? And people are joining and they're imagining that they're on this frontier outpost, you know, like as this, you know, as representatives of this civilization that is sort of in conflict or that has to be asserted against the other, right? And it's just to me, as I'm in this place, like the. What separates that kind of a performance, you know, in the context of law enforcement from like these people dressing up as cowboys. Like, I see less and less that separates them, you know, like the separation is sort of like dissolving as I'm like walking through this space.

[Valeria Luiselli]

Our next stop is Shakespeare, a ghost of a ghost town in southern New Mexico.

[Pike Malinowski]

I'm Rod Linkus, by the way.

[Valeria Luiselli]

Rod Linkes is a retired reenactor from El Paso and now gives tours of Shakespeare.

[Pike Malinowski]

Just watch where you step. Everything in the southwest either sticks, bites, scratches, stings or poisons you.

[Valeria Luiselli]

The town was once a mining town, then it became a ghost town. And for a while there were reenactments and rehearsals of Gunfights and hangings there. But now it's only open for walking tours. The town consists only of a few abandoned buildings and a spindly aluminum windmill.

[Pike Malinowski]

Well, the only water we got is the windmill there.

[Valeria Luiselli]

The Shakespeare webpage warns visitors of rattlesnakes, mine borings and shafts, as well as the current danger of drug mules walking from the cell.

[Pike Malinowski]

Southern border There have been reports of drug mules coming from over that way, up across the cemetery, down and in the arroyo back behind here and down to the highway.

[Valeria Luiselli]

How do we know there are drug.

[Pike Malinowski]

Mules or evidence, things left behind, tracks, stuff like that.

[Valeria Luiselli]

But they could also be migrants.

[Pike Malinowski]

Well, there's both here. Yeah, coyotes and the mules. Just depends on what day and what time. Matter of fact, a couple of months ago they stopped 360 illegals crossing the border and an hour later captured 140, bringing marijuana across about five miles away.

[Valeria Luiselli]

And who, who caught them? Border patrol.

[Pike Malinowski]

Border patrol? Yeah, Border patrol.

[Valeria Luiselli]

Because sometimes there's also, what are they called, like organized, the militias.

[Pike Malinowski]

They've been kicked out because I, you know, politics basically. But they've never threatened anybody. All they can do is detain them until the border patrol gets there. So they're doing a job any one day. There's 4,000 Border Patrol agents to cover 6,000 miles of territory, Canadian and Mexican border. So that's not a whole lot. So I can see them trying to help some way.

[Valeria Luiselli]

Civilian border militia or vigilantes are not a new trend in the borderlands. They emerged in the late 19th century after the war between Mexico and the US when Mexico lost half its territory and the new border between the two countries was being drawn. Shakespeare had its own vigilantes.

[Pike Malinowski]

Shakespeare, little town of anywhere from 2 or 300 up to 3,000 people was never attacked by the Apaches. We did have a guard here called the Shakespeare Guard, I guess you would call it a vigilante group. And they actually did chase Victorio at one time. Didn't capture him. They were lucky probably. They were given surplus military weapons and ammunition and they actually trained like a military unit.

[Valeria Luiselli]

Vigilantes fought native peoples like the Apaches as enemies. Today, militia perceive undocumented immigrants, many of them also native people, as enemies to be fought. An enemy who is not fighting back, who just wants a better life. When we leave Shakespeare, we decide to drive down to the border in Douglas, Arizona. We reach the wall, a part of the wall that was constructed during the Obama administration. There are two walls in fact, one painted creamy white on the American side. The Other, copper colored on the Mexican side with a strip of land the width of about 10 long strides. Between the two of them, we meet a Mexican man, Guadalupe, who's walking back into Mexico from a long day's work. He's carrying a big hammer in his hand. I ask him what he thinks about the wall. Whatever they do, people are going to find a way around. Guadalupe got a green card years ago and he works in the US because he makes 10 times more working here than he would in Mexico. We drive west along the wall until we see a sign for an RV park called Twin Buttes. We're curious to talk to people who live so close to the border. You can see the wall from here. Oh, there's someone. A woman named Beverly greets. Usually a neighborly smile.

[Pike Malinowski]

Hi. How's it going?

[Valeria Luiselli]

Good.

[Pike Malinowski]

Hey, do you.

[Francisco Cantu]

We're working on a story, a documentary about the border.

[Pike Malinowski]

And. And we were wondering if you wanted.

[Valeria Luiselli]

To talk to us. I can. Yeah, sure.

[Pike Malinowski]

Yeah.

[Valeria Luiselli]

My husband might. Went to also.

[Pike Malinowski]

Okay. Yeah.

[Francisco Cantu]

Why does he.

[Valeria Luiselli]

He really keeps up on all that stuff. Yeah. Is he around too? Yeah, he is. If you want to walk, walk around that way. I'll meet you out the back door.

[Pike Malinowski]

Okay. Thank you.

[Valeria Luiselli]

Out back there are four men and one woman sitting at a long wooden picnic table. They're sipping beers.

[Pike Malinowski]

Hi, kids.

[Francisco Cantu]

Hello.

[Pike Malinowski]

How y' all doing?

[Ben Tredwick]

Very good.

[Pike Malinowski]

What can we do for you? You guys aren't from America? Oh, not originally. I'm a US citizen, but I'm originally from Denmark. Okay. The accent okay? Yeah, I recognized it right off.

[Valeria Luiselli]

That's Roger Kircher, definitely the alpha male of the group. He bought the RV park in 2002.

[Pike Malinowski]

From 02 until 08, in the middle of the night, we would have 20 people at our front door at 2 o' clock in the morning looking for.

[Valeria Luiselli]

Help and a ride to Phoenix. Everybody wanted a ride to Phoenix.

[Pike Malinowski]

Drinking out of the cattle tank and filling up their water jugs to go on through the desert.

[Valeria Luiselli]

Roger has firsthand experience in helping deport people. He tells us about a Guatemalan man that had already been deported three times and tried to cross once more.

[Pike Malinowski]

And I sent him back to fourth time because I have a Border patrol agent lives in that trailer. And I have a very good friend that's a customs agent.

[Francisco Cantu]

Do you see militias here?

[Pike Malinowski]

I was here during the Minutemen militia and I used to drive by to make sure that they had plenty of water. Now they had guns. They can't pull a gun on anybody or they go to jail. That's our law. But they can sit in their truck in the back end with binoculars and spotty illegals coming across and then radio call in to the border patrol.

[Valeria Luiselli]

The sun is setting and the sky above the RV park is vast and cloudless.

[Pike Malinowski]

Whatever possessed you guys to start this little documentary thing about the border? Well, it's a big issue right now.

[Valeria Luiselli]

He also wants to know where we live. And we tell him we're both based in New York.

[Pike Malinowski]

Is that in the US we're not sure it still exists. We're gonna annex that one. You know what I mean? When the wall comes up, we're gonna go right on the east coast and the west coast, just leave the middle as the United States because we seem to have more common sense than the east coast and the west coast people do. So a solid wall all the way and would be a good start. Change the laws and like the Guatemalan that's been set back, I sent him back the fourth time. Then he's going to go to prison and he's going to spend some time because we took him back to Mexico and he came back and he got caught. And then he came back and he got caught and then I caught him and he went. There's no penalty for breaking our laws. All right, well, you know, let's go with gir piles. Let's put them on a chain gang and let them cut the road ditches and teach you a lesson that. Listen, we're seriously. Get the right documentation and we'll welcome you into our United States of America. But don't break in. You don't break into anybody's house.

[Valeria Luiselli]

Pike and I look at each other, we take a deep breath. And without really saying anything to each other, we know it's maybe time to go.

[Pike Malinowski]

Thank you so much. No, no, no. You gotta come and follow me for five minutes. I know you're hurrying.

[Francisco Cantu]

Yeah.

[Pike Malinowski]

We have to go to Bisbee before sunset. Really? Why?

[Francisco Cantu]

Because we're excited to see it.

[Valeria Luiselli]

Then Roger shows us his golf cart. It has a blue siren light stuck to the top and a bumper sticker that says Tombstone, Arizona, justice is coming.

[Pike Malinowski]

I'm like the local sheriff for Twin Buttes RV Park. I got the blue light and it lights up. And people, they make me the sheriff around here because I' law and order. I make the rules.

[Valeria Luiselli]

He reaches into the glove box of the golf cart and takes out a pistol.

[Pike Malinowski]

I never leave home without one. We live in a dangerous area. One of my cars, one of my golf carts. Are you folks ready for a gunfight Are you ready for a killing?

[Valeria Luiselli]

Yeah, I. I came to Tombstone in Shakespeare trying to step outside my usual dynamics, trying to understand the current crisis from a different angle. Wild west reenactments and the myths that fuel them, like the frontier myth and the idea of vigilante justice did shed some light on the emotions driving the responses to the border crisis. And the other way around, too. Thinking about civilian border patrolling explained some of the myths behind reenactment culture. As we drive away further from the border, I feel uneasy and maybe a little hopeless. What possibility of dialogue is there when people's opinions are so divided? But back in Tucson late that night, we meet someone with a much more optimistic outlook. I love my work because that's the.

[Pike Malinowski]

Way to promote Tucson, the city, my country, the United States and Mexico also.

[Valeria Luiselli]

His name is Pablo Martinez, and he's an Uber driver.

[Pike Malinowski]

I have a lot of happiness serving everybody.

[Valeria Luiselli]

When we ask Pablo Martinez where he's from, he smiles really wide and says, I'm from Tucson, Mexico.

[Francisco Cantu]

We cannot be fighting like animals, you know, or hating.

[Pike Malinowski]

Hating is from evil, you know, we cannot have that. We can, you know, put the love in front.

[Valeria Luiselli]

That's the values that God give us.

[Pike Malinowski]

And if they say that this is land from, you know, the respect God. Okay, let's build it up. We are here to build. We're not here to destroy.

[David Remnick]

Valeria Luiselli, traveling in the southwest, along with Pike Malinowski, who produced our story. You can find Valeria's article the Wild west meets the southern [e-mail].

[Valeria Luiselli]

I'm David.

[David Remnick]

Remnick and that's it for today. Next week we'll hear from Aaron Sorkin, whose new play based on To Kill a Mockingbird is one of Broadway's biggest hits this year. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. Thanks for listening.

[Valeria Luiselli]

The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Meryl Garbus of Tune Yards, with additional music by Alexis Quadrado. This episode was produced by Alex Barron, Emily Botin, Ave Carrillo, Rhiannon Corby, Jill Duboff, Karen Frillman, Kalalea, David Krasnow, Louis Mitchell, Sarah Nix, Andres o' Hara and Steven Valentino, with help from Meng Fei Chen and Emily Mann. Karima Walker contributed additional sound design. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Turin Endowment Fund.