Stay updated with breaking news from Valente. Get real-time updates on events, politics, business, and more. Visit us for reliable news and exclusive interviews.
day people fight to live. all too often they lose that battle. the magnificent, heartbreakingly beautiful country. music and food. any uniquely mexican darkly funny, deeply felt worldview. right down there. cuddled up beneath us, our brother from another mother. while it is beautiful. felt the cool rain noma show love. holy mother of santa muerta. please protect my stash of cocaine. let it not be interfered with by the cops. where the competition let any who would mess with me. be killed. my enemies destroyed. please forgive us our sins for they are many. so it s business . good i mean, is there are there more murders, particularly in article murders? commercial? droga already. barbara. he s there having last permissible. every day, mexico wakes up to count the dead. they are, after all, left out to be seen. often with a helpful note identifying who done what and generally speaking why. there is a language to the never ending violence coded message in the twists and mar ....
Most upset. you get the most male the most. my god, you know what? what kind of world that we live in. this was probably the most new picture from different media around the world. 80,000 mexicans have died in the last seven what? seven years in narco violence. and this is the most important picture. front crew gets ready to crawl back to our hotel. valente gets the call. we thought we d been waiting for. one dead male shot in head. a note pinned to his chest. in mexico people fight to live every day. one man stands alone facing another man. his intent to beat his opponent with his fists until he can resist no more. a match. yes, but more accurately. a fighter. ....
And as it turned out, they were correct. they told me a mind-blowing story that was just so incredible, i had difficulty believing. tell me why that was. why did you have difficulty believing it? because i you know, they told me this were combat veterans who were horribly discharged and had served in vietnam, suffered from ptsd, and valente was awarded the bronze star, and here they were being deported. and i thought, come on. the united states does not deport honorably discharged u.s. military veterans who have seen combat. that s never happened. and yet that began a long process of research and discovery where i found out actually it does happen. it happens it s happened thousands, maybe tens of thousands of times, and it kind of it s kind of heartbreaking actually. i want to bring in retired marine corporal manuel ....
Served in vietnam. and in 2009, decades after coming home, both american heroes received deportation notices. the threat of deportation is on pause for now. their story is far from isolated, which is the focus of a new pbs documentary called american exile. it follows the brothers in their unified fight for justice not just for themselves but for thousands of fellow vet who s have either been deported or faced deportation. joining us now, writer, director, and producer of american exile, john valadez. thank you so much for being with us. did you find this story, or did this story find you? this story found me. you know, i wish i could claim credit, but i was actually in colorado a number of years ago doing a screening of another film, and manuel and valente came up to me and told me, you know, that they knew what my next film ought to be. and i was like, oh, really? ....