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

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

"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.

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

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