10 · 09 · 05 For Tommy Lee Jones, borders are a question of praxis Share with twitter Share with facebook Share with mail Copy to clipboard Clara Sánchez/ 9 Octubre 2005 Arriaga commented that borders are a political concept that was imposed some 200 years ago: “200 or 250 years ago, Mexico and the US didn’t know what it meant to be a nation. I have faith that this concept will evolve and eventually dissolve.” Ignacio Guadalupe was asked to talk about his vision of “polleros” (human traffickers): “As a kid I used to hang out with them quite a lot, and I realized that they where not necessarily bad people: they had friends, a family, and where dedicated to their jobs. Sure, I guess there are some really evil polleros, but, in the film, I wanted to act like the ones I remembered from my childhood, and I think, in the end, it gave it a different meaning.” Arriaga agreed with Guadalupe: “If there’s something I’ve always tried to get away from its clichés; I didn’t want to portray the typical pollero, but the one that Ignacio played, who is not bad but very astute.” When asked about the importance of the landscape in the film, Jones answered: “You need to be an idiot not to recognize the land as one of the main characters in the movie. Here, people survive according to God’s geographical decisions; they have to live between the rocks, in the extreme heat and aridness. Mexico and the US have a lot of similar and a lot of different emotional and social politics, that’s why it’s contradictory for there to be a border dividing this culture.” Arriaga, who has shown his liking for rural themes in films such as Un dulce olor a muerte, added: “I recently saw an Australian film where one of the characters said, this land is mine’, while the other replied, no, I am the land’. I think it’s impossible for the landscape not to affect you, between the cutting rocs and the spiky cactus.” Los tres entierros de Melquíades Estrada, winner of the Best Screenplay Award and Best Actor Award at Cannes, tells the story of Pete, a ranch foreman who befriends a “wetback” and gives him a job. After Melquiades is murdered, Pete must find the killer and fulfill his promise of burying his friend in his native Coahuila.
