Border Narratives: Amalia (English)

[@RootedinRights]

[Narrator] “Border Narratives”, stories of people with disabilities living at the US Mexico border. [Audio Description] A montage of arid landscapes and cities. Next, a person with long hair, streaked with blonde and wearing an orange knit hat is interviewed remotely against a map background. They are dubbed in Spanish by a voice actor [Amalia] My name is Amalia Mondragon and I am from the border of Ciudad Juarez, El Paso, Texas and La Nueva, New Mexico. [Audio Description] A monochromatic map of North America zooms in to show a red borderline between El Paso and neighboring Juarez. [Amalia] El Paso's still very connected to being from the earth. There's not like super high skyscrapers and there's a lot of open area, the mountains are in your face, they're not all built on. [Audio Description] An aerial shot of low lying Juarez at the US Mexico border. [Amalia] Juarez, you know, it's my other half, my family, my friends, it's the same desert. The only difference is that wall. [Audio Description] An aerial shot of a rusted iron wall cutting through the desert and receding into the distance. [Amalia] People that live there have been there for generations and the border crossed them. The people who are gentrifying obviously don't have a connection to El Paso and so they want to bring New York here, they want to bring LA, they want to bring Austin and they're not understanding that El Paso and Juarez are its own historical beauty. [Audio Description] El Paso at sunset, shadowed mountains loom in the distance. [Amalia] El Paso likes to blame Juarez. It's like that blame it on the little sister kind of thing. So Juarez always takes the blame for a lot of things that happen in El Paso. People go to Juarez to do their dirty business and then come back to El Paso and they just wash their hands and then say, Oh it was Juarez, it's Juarez's fault. [Audio Description] A selfie of Amalia smiling in soft, warm light. Next, a photo of them in cowboy boots and a multicolored skirt, arms raised in a V and looking upwards. [Amalia] I identify as Transfronterizx. A Transfronterizx person is a person who navigates both sides of the border. The X is non-binary, and it's kind of a play on words as well, because I'm in the trans world, just transiting the world of genders. [Audio Description] Amalia sings and plays guitar for a small seated group. [Amalia] I was diagnosed with ADHD in first grade. My whole life, even though English was shoved down my throat I had a really hard time retaining anything I read. I was the first person in my family to ever go to college so there was absolutely no information. I was swimming in the dark by myself. [Audio Description] Photo of Amalia tuning their guitar. [Amalia] The department that I was in, which was music, was very insensitive. They were trying to weed people out. So if you can't handle this, then you need to get out. So I failed. [Audio Description] An aerial shot of downtown El Paso. [Amalia] I moved to El Paso eventually to go to school at El Paso Community College and I came across the most amazing center for students with disabilities. They were really helpful with the part of raising your self-esteem to know that you can do it. That maybe it might take extra time, whatever amount of time it takes, that's your process. Later on, once I got better at note taking a tutor position opened up and they offered it to me, and eventually I became the highest paid tutor, which was really cool. [Audio Description] Aerial view of a bridge hovering above the US Mexico border. [Amalia] There are people with disabilities on the border, migrants with disabilities. There's people that have disabilities beforehand and then there's people that suffer accidents on their way through their journey to migrate. Where they lose a leg or they become paralyzed when they jump, they go through a lot of things. Human trafficking is real and a lot of horrible, horrible, horrible things happen. [Audio Description] A wall of reinforced chain and barbed wire, a border patrol SUV guards an entrance. [Amalia] People are left with mental health issues and traumas and PTSD. Unfortunately, ICE and MPP and a lot of the border customs people, they don't talk about the disabled people and the disabilities that live among people who cross. [Audio Description] Crowds of people crossing a fenced in bridge. [Amalia] Because that would be a way of seeing the migrants in a compassionate light. I mean, I haven't seen people or the media view migrants as people, as humans. [Audio Description] Amalia performing outside; a small child swings gently in a hammock. [Amalia] I grew up in a time period where it was very discriminatory to be disabled in any shape or form. And it has taken a lot of work, a lot of work, to change the tape in my head from I can't do this to there's a way to do this and you just gotta find it. [Audio Description] The rusted metal border wall cutting through the desert. [Amalia] And if we're able to understand where we tend to struggle or have trouble, then we can really grow from that. [Narrator] Border Narratives, produced by Arizona Disability Law Center and Rooted in Rights. Funding by Borealis Philanthropy. END OF TRANSCRIPT