Calexico looks at specific examples of the border crises and humanizes them by showing, through experiential reporting and intimate interviewing, how they affect our body politic.  These vignettes create the backbone for the series, a skeleton that is filled in with historical and policy narrative.  Peter Laufer and Markos Kounalakis journey to Calexico and experience its people, learn about their lives.  The Calexico conversations recounted in the series are those of lives lived in a sleepy crossroads that exists at a global flashpoint: America’s southern border.  Consequently, the stories collected are both of human interest and of international concern.  Chronicled in the series is one intensive interview after another with its stoic citizens. 

•Waitress Bonnie Peterson introduces many of her neighbors to Calexico.  “The slow pace, the people, the friendly atmosphere.  They’re different,” she said about those who live in big cities.  “It’s not that they’re bad people, it’s just that the city has a different kind of people.”

•Political consultant Frank Salazar came home to Calexico from a stint in Washington working for the Clinton administration, “because I love my Valley.  It’s me.  It’s different.  It’s not the same hobnob like at the Capital Grille in D.C.  You focus on your family, you work hard, you sweat hard.”

•Radio station owner Carroll Buckley thrives in the melting pot of Imperial County.  “You will be sitting in the Owl Café and see two people sitting, one eating ham and eggs, the other eating chorizo y huevos.  One speaking in English and the other in Spanish, the two of them conversing.”

•Ninety-something-year-old Virginia Munger shared her memories of pioneer Calexico days.  “I can’t figure out why we were all so happy.  We didn’t have air conditioning and we didn’t have a fan.  At the library they had a big tub of water and a fan that would hit the water to cool things out.  But I can’t remember ever really being uncomfortable.”

•Dual national Gustavo Yee, busy trying to sell Calexico tract houses in a down market, and taking advantage of the best of both worlds, explained, “I always joke that if I’m flying and the plane gets kidnapped, I’ll just throw away my U.S. passport and keep the Mexican, because they always take the U.S. citizens as hostages.” 

These Calexico conversations led Laufer and Kounalakis to adjacent Imperial Valley communities and characters, both of which help listeners understand and enjoy the quiet richness of this little-known scene, and motivated the two reporters to connect with relevant personalities who were far from Calexico, yet intimately involved in Calexican affairs, from the famous and infamous to the previously unknown to them.  CNN commentator Lou Dobbs and his jingoist nativism became a running theme during the investigations in Calexico.  Celebrities ranging in style and influence from Rod McKuen to Geraldo Rivera played critical cameo roles.  Laufer and Kounalakis talked with a Texas property owner whose family has lived directly on the border for generations; she put the border wall into perspective as she described the scene from her kitchen window.  Their chat with a Canadian border city mayor made it clear that the problems the Washington was causing Calexico are the same ones it was causing from sea to shining sea and on both the northern and southern U.S. frontiers.

The series is funded in part by the California Council for the Humanities.  The link is:  www.calhum.org.