Elisa Larvego

In parallel with her photography exhibition at the Centre culturel Saint-Cyprien, Elisa Larvego presents two videos from her project Salt Cedar at MATOU :

"Candelaria (USA), is a village where the road ends, in the Chihuahua desert. It is a neighbour of San Antonio del Bravo, on the other side of the Rio Grande, in Mexico. For the schooling of their children, families are divided on either side of the border, the men on the Mexican side, the women and children on the American side. At the end of the week, Candelaria is emptied of its inhabitants and the families reunite in Mexico.

Since there is no legal road linking the two villages directly, the inhabitants banded together to build a pedestrian bridge in the early 1990s. The bridge provided permanent access for the families, even during periods of flooding of the Rio Grande. Although the passage between the two countries remained illegal, it was tolerated by the American government until 2008, when the bridge was destroyed by the authorities. Today, residents wishing to cross the border legally must drive five hours to reach a village two kilometres away as the crow flies.

The US government closed the school in Candelaria in the late 1990s, officially for financial reasons. On the Mexican side there is no school or school transport, because the dirt road from the village to the only town in the area, Ojinaga, is too bad. The only possibility for the children to get an education in Mexico would be to move to a town in the region. But most families own land in San Antonio del Bravo and do not want to leave the village.

So the parents decided to send their children to school in Presidio (USA), although this choice obliges them to travel three and a half hours daily by school bus. "

– Elisa Larvego 

The film was made during a residency at Fieldwork: Marfa and with the support of the Gandur Foundation for the Arts.