Those Next to Us

On July 22, 2017, San Antonio, Texas, police found a truck in a Wallmart parking lot with 39 illegal immigrants in its bed. A tractor had been transporting them undetected from the border town of Laredo to San Antonio. Because the cooling system inside the truck failed, resulting in extreme heat, eight people died during the transport, and two others succumbed to dehydration in the hospital. The essayThose Next to Ustraces the journey of one of the survivors of the transport, Germán López Rosales, from Mexico to San Antonio. In the process, Germán＇s off-camera voice vividly describes the course of the harrowing events. The vast landscapes of the film images accompanying the narrative in the border region of Tamaulipas/Texas form a stark contrast to Germán＇s descriptions.