All of Me

For 20 years they have been at the ready, these women, perched dangerously close to the railroad tracks, awaiting “The Beast.” That is the name for the massive train that daily carries hundreds of hopeful or desperate or impossibly naive Central American migrants through Mexico toward the US border. As it approaches the town of Guadalupe (also known as La Patrona), in southeastern Mexico, young men know to hang off the sides, arms outstretched, to grab at bags filled with rice, beans, tuna. Their smiles and thumbs-ups are the women’s reward as the Beast speeds by, hurtling its human cargo to an uncertain fate. The women of Guadalupe, known as “Las Patronas,” have achieved humanitarian acclaim, and Arturo González Villaseñor’s immersive documentary profiles them with grace. Here, they tell their stories, reluctantly at first, then eloquently and finally magnetically. They speak of misery and forbearance and sometimes of startling transformation. Like so many rural towns, La Patrona is a matriarchy by default, a story individuated as each woman explores the perils and rewards of the activist project this impoverished community has collectively undertaken. “Our future depends on these migrants,” one Patrona says. But the film leads us to consider that our future depends on such women, facing down the beast, one day at a time. —Judy Bloch