"As I Walk Through the Valley" and My Walk Back in Time

The new documentary As I Walk Through the Valley (AIWTTV) struck some deep chords in me—so deep, in fact, I watched most of it twice. I watched once for the pleasure of the music and stories, the second time taking notes on what people were saying, since they so perfectly captured the experience of growing up in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas in the 1960s and 1970s.

Just added to Amazon Prime, AIWTTV comes from first-time directors Charlie Vela and Ronnie Garza. They set out to depict the underground music scene in the Valley. The first third of the film covers the rock and Tejano sounds that I grew up with, then shifts to the punk/hardcore scene that emerged after I left for college and career in the Northeast. The film's website features an invaluable selection of group biographies and links to their songs.

Mission, June 2011

The music provides the thematic structure upon which Vela and Garza build a heartfelt and ruthlessly revealing look at the area I called home during my formative years in Mission, Texas. In less than two hours, AIWTTV touches on the social dynamics of the Valley, down at the pointy end of Texas and the United States, hemmed in by the Gulf of Mexico to the east, Mexico to the south, and a lot of brush country and farms to the north and west. Interviewees, mostly musicians, capture both the pride in being in and from the Valley—and the restless urge to get the hell out and see the rest of the world. After all, said one musician, "If you could make it in McAllen all the way to the McAllen Civic Center, you were topped out." There was no place to go but north, to San Antonio and beyond.

The Whitewing Band, Mission's Chimney Park, 4th of July weekend 1977

One speaker said, "There's this general attitude, I don't really like being here. I want to be those kids from California. I want to be like somebody else, you know? " I felt exactly like that in elementary school, when I obsessively drew pictures of snow-capped mountain ranges, which in my mind represented the "real America," not the flat, hot, windy, palm tree-studded Valley.

AIWTTV early on acknowledges the parts of the Valley as much of the world sees it, with drugs, poverty and political corruption, now further inflamed with the border immigration crisis. That's one reality, but the film makes the point that the Valley has a lot more going for it. One observer says, "It's very ripe for international art, cooking and culture, so there are beautiful things about the place." The film looks through the lens of the music scene to show those "beautiful things" as part of the Valley's reality.

KRIO Top 40 list, 1974

The film brought back long-forgotten memories from growing up in Mission. It touches on groups like the Innkeepers and the Playboys of Edinburg, Freddy Fender (a/k/a Baldemar Huerta of San Benito), dances at the Mission Civic Center and the McAllen Civic Center, the illicit thrills across the Rio Grande in Reynosa, Mexico (quote: "Mexico was really taboo—our parents didn't like us going over there," very much my mother's attitude), and the huge popularity and impact of McAllen's Top 40 station KRIO. I was one of those teens packed into the Mission Civic Center, for example, for those dances held after the Friday Night Lights football games of the Mission Eagles. And if I slow-danced with a lissome classmate or two while listening to dreamy songs like Chicago's "Color My World," I considered the night a blazing success.

AIWTTV deservedly discussed the career and impact of Arnaldo Ramirez, Sr., who founded Falcon Records in McAllen after World War II and built it into a powerhouse of conjunto/Tex-Mex music recording. Ramirez was as influential in his musical niche as, say, Owen Bradley was as a producer of country music in Nashville. I remember Ramirez from his years as the Mayor of Mission, when I covered City Council meetings as a teenage reporter for the Upper Valley Progress newspaper.

 Beyond the music, Vela and Garza give viewers a sense of the Valley as a specific place with its own history on the edge of Texas and Mexico. The next time somebody asks me about growing up in the Valley, I'll tell them, "This documentary hits all the high points." Woven into the musical parts are segments on the difficult lives of migrant farm workers, historical revolts like the La Casita Farms strike in Starr County in 1966, and student protests decrying police brutality and school education policies.

The directors look at the sharp social divisions based on the Anglo "redneck" ruling class on the north side of the railroad tracks and the Mexican-American population on the south side of the tracks. The political tensions find their way into the music, as one man mused, "Since we couldn't take up arms, we did rock and roll."

Mission, looking north across the tracks, 1977

AIWTTV touches on the interchange between the Valley and Mexico, which back then was more benign and visitor-friendly than the hyper-violent drug cartel-dominated Mexico of the last decade. The bars and music scene of Reynosa and Matamoros earn a respectful discussion, along with details about something I'd never heard of: The "Mexican Woodstock" called Festival Rock y Ruedas de Avándaro in 1971.

If anything in AIWTTV moved me the most, it would be the insights into the Mexican-American population, a large majority of the Valley population. Growing up Anglo, I didn't think much about their experiences and attitudes, given I had my own identity issues to thrash out (as in, coming to grips with my Jewish heritage in high school). Everybody got along as far as I could tell and people were friendly with each other. Mostly I knew about a lot of broken teenage hearts caused by parents who wouldn't let their kids date outside their own ethnic group.

Still, as with the history and culture, a lot went down in the Valley I couldn't or wouldn't notice; I've always said the Valley has a secret history you never heard about in school or through the chamber of commerce. Fortunately, the Internet and films like AIWTTV drag more of that history into the light.

Roy Treviño, guitarist with the group Kingpin, especially made me think when he said, "This speaks to the state that the Chicano people find themselves in. We're not Mexican enough for the Mexicans and we're not American enough for Americans. We're in this strange place."

That strange place should brace itself for more investigations by Vela and Garza. Their production company, One Scene Studios, is working on two more documentaries. One is a five-part history of the Valley. The other is Pansy Pachanga, which "explores the roots of the LGBTQ+ community of the Rio Grande Valley and the unique social, historical, religious, political, and cultural forces that led to the repression of many of these identities." I can't think of a more blazingly transgressive topic than gay life in the Valley.

Based on the raw content of AIWTTV, I expect both of these projects will hit with the force of a punk band blowing the doors off the McAllen Civic Center.

 Mission, South Conway Avenue