What We Inherit: Silence and Myth in the Texas-Mexico Borderlands

“What We Inherit: Silence and Myth in the Texas-Mexico Borderlands” is an oral history and documentary project that explores how Mexican American families remember migration and how certain stories are passed down while others are left unspoken. The film centers on the Chávez family’s migration from Mexico to Texas in 1928, long remembered within the family as escape during the Mexican Revolution. Archival research, however, reveals that the family crossed the border during the Cristero War, a period of religious persecution and political unrest in Mexico. Rather than correcting the family narrative, the project asks why the original story endured and what it protected. By tracing the family’s journey from Jalisco and Coahuila to Del Rio and Sonora, Texas, the project situates their experiences within broader histories of revolution, border enforcement, segregation and anti-Mexican discrimination in the U.S. Southwest. Through interviews with living relatives, archival research and filming at key historical sites, “What We Inherit” examines how grief, religious fear and racial exclusion were transformed into stories of perseverance and respectability. In doing so, the project reveals how silence can function not as absence, but as a form of survival, shaping how families understand belonging, identity and opportunity across generations.