All of Me

In 1995, two sisters stood by the railroad tracks with their shopping bags, waiting for the train to pass by. “Madre, we are hungry,” they heard from the roof of La Bestia (the Beast), the train on which many illegal migrants from neighboring countries try to reach the border between Mexico and the United States. In reply, the two young women threw milk and bread up to the travelers. This was the beginning of Las Patronas, a group of women from the village of La Patrona in central Mexico, who ever since that day in 1995 have thrown packages of food and bottles of water up to many thousands of migrants on the railway line. Every day they cook a simple lunch in big, blackened pots on charcoal fires, the ingredients for which are donated by sympathizers and local small businesses. They haven’t missed a single day in all these years. While the camera records the preparation and distribution of the food, the women talk about what motivates them. How they understand, from their own personal experience of human suffering, great and small, that people are willing to undertake the hazardous train journey out of a desire for a better life. Fairly regularly people fall from the train, or discord among the migrants erupts. Las Patronas help out in these cases as well.