Editor’s Note: The Mexican town of Manuel Benavides, Chihuahua, is often referred to as San Carlos.
LAJITAS — Last Saturday, over a hundred locals gathered by the river for Voices from Both Sides. Every year there are dueling bands, copious amounts of barbecue and well-stocked coolers — and few dry eyes as people from South Brewster County and the Mexican side of the Big Bend join hands across the river.
The Voices from Both Sides festival is also sometimes called the “fiesta protesta,” or “protest party.” Since the river became a border, there were numerous informal crossings along the Rio Grande in the Big Bend that allowed people to go back and forth for work, school and basic supplies. After 9/11, the American government cracked down, closing every local crossing point except for the Presidio Port of Entry.
The policy was devastating for towns like Paso Lajitas, where locals found themselves suddenly unable to cross for groceries and fuel at the trading post within eyesight of the little village. People with jobs that were once a bumpy truck ride across the river had to hand in their notices, now faced with an eight-hour commute through Presidio. The Terlingua CSD baseball team — whose main rival was San Carlos — had to hang up their uniforms.
Collie Ryan, one of the people who brought Voices to life, remembers the days before drones, game cameras and hefty criminal charges came to the border. She used to spend time with friends on a ranch south of Paso Lajitas, and found it difficult to keep connected after the crossing closed. “It was heartbreaking for everybody,” she said.
Around 14 years ago, Ryan brought beloved Terlingua musician Jeff Haislip to San Carlos, where they visited with then-presidente, or mayor, Ramon García.
García had an idea. What about reuniting San Carlos, Paso Lajitas and Terlingua to do what these communities do best — namely, making music and having fun?
Ryan, Haislip and a dedicated band of locals from both sides of the border joined forces to throw the first Voices festival, which followed roughly the format it does today: small stages on each side of the river traded musical performances while people hung out in the water, freely crossing back and forth for food, drinks and catching up with long-lost friends.
During Ryan’s latest Voices performance, she addressed the crowd in a mix of English and Spanish, capping off with a song that repeats its chorus in both languages.
The song follows her own experiences on the border. “All of my life I’ve been living a dream … the movies don’t even come close,” the bilingual chorus goes. “There’s always one last frontier where dreamers go.”
Word of the dream spread, and the festival made headlines around the globe. Voices even got the Comedy Central treatment, with a correspondent from Full Frontal with Samantha Bee stopping by Lajitas to mock conservative hand-wringing over the state of the border.
Ryan said she understood why people were so taken aback by the spectacle: two communities coming together peacefully, defusing popular media narratives of a tense and unruly border with laughter, song and prayer. “The world is starving for something real,” she said.
But all the publicity started to make the organizers worry. They wanted the celebration to remain small and local, with no space for either end of the political bell curve to take the message out of context — at its heart, the event was about reuniting South Brewster County families, not about flipping the metaphorical bird at U.S. border policy.
To this day, the festival does relatively little advertising beyond Facebook posts and word of mouth. There were few tourists in Saturday’s crowd; most came from within the greater tri-county area and a small handful came from the village of Boquillas in Coahuila.
Presidio High School junior Mario Leyva joined the festival from the Mexican side of the river. He and his family were visiting a rancho outside of Paso Lajitas for Mother’s Day, and decided to stop by the party to see what it was all about.
The family had a leftover Mother’s Day cake that they decided to bring over to the American side to share. Leyva was tasked with carrying the cake, and carefully maneuvered down the riverbank with a rope that had been put up to help people keep their footing in the mud. At the end of the rope, he fell. “But I saved the cake,” he said.
Getting a little wet and muddy didn’t spoil the fun. Leyva felt moved by the end of the celebration, where everyone in attendance joined hands in a giant circle linking the two countries. “It was a really nice experience,” he said. “People should go not just for the party, but because it feels good to reunite, to get along.”