Growing Up in Twin Cities
In Border Documents, writer and photographer Arturo Soto narrates the youth of his father on the border of the United States and Mexico. Despite all the challenges, his life was very colourful.
Inequality, migration, the war on drugs: when we think about the border between the United States and Mexico, we mostly associate it with its infamies. The violence and troubles that surround that border can be shocking, the most telling results of drawing a hard line between two countries. Trump’s powerplay and rhetoric of the last decade make the picture even more grim.
A lot has been written about this border, both by journalists. Documentary photographers have set out to capture the atmosphere and films have been made. One body of work that stood out for us at De Facto is the Border Film Project (2007), which presents both the perspective of the migrants and the citizens on the other side who voluntarily patrol the border in an effort to stop them. The documentary makers provided disposable cameras to both sides and their unfiltered pictures reveal the harsh realities on the ground.
Having read and watched numerous books and films about this border region, we thought we were familiar with the story. How surprised we were when Border Documents by Mexican photographer and writer Arturo Soto fell on our doormat: a book about life in the twin cities of Juárez (Mexico) and El Paso (United States). Nicely designed and not much wider than a postcard, it combines pictures with text – however in quite an original way.
The black-and-white pictures capture abandoned streets – throughout the book, there is almost no living creature to be found. The contrast with the texts is huge: mostly consisting of just one paragraph, the anecdotes open a world of their own and stir the reader’s imagination. In these miniature stories, photographer Arturo Soto narrates the youth of his father, also called Arturo Soto. The stories can be read independently, but combined, they tell the story of an ordinary kid in the fifties and sixties, who happens to be growing up on the border between the United States and Mexico.
The book starts in 1954 when Soto Senior is still a young boy and ends in 1981, when he becomes a father. Growing up in Ciudad Juárez is not easy for him, with financial problems in the family and a father who drinks too much, has affairs and has to go to jail a couple of times. All the problems of the border area trickle down into his life at some point or the other. However, Soto Junior chooses to capture the life of his father by writing down his anecdotes and jokes – and therefore, the stories become universal and very human. We all went to school, did sports, made friends, fell in love, were jealous – just like Soto Senior. The fact that his life is situated in a border town seems to be almost of secondary importance: especially in the beginning it is only mentioned occasionally, in such a subtle way that it only makes it more powerful.
Only when he grows older does the border start to play a larger role in Soto Senior’s life. In 1967, president Lyndon Johnson meets with President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz on the border to return the long-disputed lands of the Chamizal. Soto Senior is fifteen, and his school is selected to represent the youth of Juárez at this important ceremony. Instead of giving an account of this historical event or of the impact it had on the local community, Soto Senior tells his son the anecdote of trying to shake hands with the American president. This brave effort seems to fail, until in the end he meets him eye to eye. Soto: ‘Johnson said something I didn’t understand – I spoke no English – and pointed towards his bandaged hand. I took this as an apology for refusing my greeting a moment earlier.’
The perspective of this young boy on this historical event and his bravado is refreshing and heartwarming at the same time. Several years later, Soto Senior does speak some English and starts to move more regularly across the bridge between Juarez and El Paso for work. The anecdote he tells to his son about this is such a nice example of the miniature stories in this book that we will cite it as a whole:
‘I always carried my schoolbooks when taking the trolley to my job at Burger Chef, confident that they would appease any possible suspicion from the immigration officers at Stanton Bridge. The route was short, about ten blocks in each country. When I worked the late shift, I hoped nobody ordered at the last minute. Otherwise, the delay in cleaning and locking down the restaurant often made me miss the last trolley. At the time, walking alone late at night in La Mariscal – the infamous red-light district – was asking for trouble. Over time, I befriended one of the trolley drivers. He sometimes did me the favor of lingering at the stop for a few minutes, risking the passenger’s objections. But since most of them were workers, I could sense their solidarity once I hopped on, usually after a vigorous sprint.’
Reading these stories in Border Documents, you feel present in this life of a young kid growing older, understanding more and more about the world around him. His son, the photographer, now living in Los Angeles, became fascinated by how much the twin cities had changed in just one generation. ‘The passage of time, I learned, doesn’t always yield progress’, he writes. He took the pictures in 2016, with his father by his side, over sixty years after his father’s first memories of these border towns.
Soto thought that it might have been painful for his dad to bring up these episodes, but it was quite the contrary: thinking about these places had brought him ‘a rare kind of joy’. After reading the book, this sounds convincing: despite all the hardships, there was also a big sense of community in his life. His brother, mother, grandmother, the ice cream vendor and the bus driver: they were all part of the story of his youth, which obviously had challenges but was also very colourful.
Border Documents (2025) by Arturo Soto is published by The Eriskay Connection.
Jorie Horsthuis is a Dutch journalist and co-founder of De Facto. She writes about borders and organises Off the Map, the live events of De Facto.
