Forget the Alamo:
The Convergence of Border Cultures in John Sayles’ Lone Star

By Eric Enders
Previously unpublished (1999)

At first glance, Lone Star might appear to be a tale of murder and romance, but the film is really much more than that. It is a stunningly complex narrative that weaves issues of history, race, sexuality, and power into a unique tapestry. In short, it is the history of Texas and the United States condensed into two hours.

A central theme of the film is the uneasy interaction of racial groups along the Texas-Mexico border. As Sheriff Sam Deeds says in one of the film’s opening scenes, “This country’s seen a good number of disagreements over the years.” The fictional town of Frontera is inhabited by Anglos, African Americans, Mexican Americans, and a few Native Americans, each of whom have contributed significantly to the unique border culture. Director John Sayles, though he is painting on a broad canvas, gives vitality to this theme by treating his characters — even the minor ones — as individuals rather than representatives of a particular group. From the film’s opening credits it is evident that this is not a film where minor characters will be relegated to the margins: Instead of one or two stars, the names of no less than 18 cast members appear before the title of the film is shown. Amazingly, Sayles is able to give each of the many characters his or her own voice, avoiding stereotyping altogether. Lone Star is effective because its screenplay achieves the near-impossible: It introduces us to people who speak mostly in symbolism and metaphor, yet are somehow still wholly believable as human beings.

One of the film’s great achievements is that it illustrates the diversity of the Mexican-American community along the border. Too often, Mexican Americans have been portrayed one-dimensionally on screen, but Frontera contains Latinos of all kinds — from Danny, the Chicano activist reporter, to Ray, the sheriff’s deputy who willingly serves as a puppet for wealthy Anglos. There are many Latino characters in the film; though we meet many of them only briefly, they are all memorable and unique: the teenage rebel, angry at growing up without a father; the young immigrant who helps his fiancee cross illegally into the United States; the cheerful, marijuana-growing janitor. The two most complex Mexican-American characters in Lone Star are Pilar Cruz and her mother, Mercedes. Pilar, the film’s female lead, is something rarely found in a Hollywood film: an independent, intelligent, Mexican-American woman. As writer José Limón put it, Pilar’s characterization “effectively negates the traditional iconographic image that placed the Mexican woman at the sexual and social margins of society.” In her relationship with Sam, Pilar is his equal in every way; in fact, Limón argues, “it is she, the college-educated intellectual, who has greater social status.” This is probably an overstatement because Sam is an elected public official; however, it is clear that Pilar is one of the strongest characters in the film. Her mother Mercedes, on the other hand, is more difficult to interpret. Completely assimilated, she is by far the wealthiest character in the film. She is shown driving a luxury sedan and lounging poolside at her mansion along the river. However, these are clearly the fruits of her own labor; she is also shown directing traffic in the kitchen of her restaurant. Mercedes has prospered because of hard work, and she thinks everyone else should have the same sense of self-reliance. Politically and socially, Mercedes is almost the opposite of her daughter, and she is unsympathetic to the plight of lower-class Mexican-Americans. She treats her kitchen help cruelly, scolding them when they speak Spanish rather than English. Though she was once an illegal immigrant herself, she complains that the town is “up to our ears” in “wetbacks.” “Either they get on welfare or they become criminals,” she says as she eagerly turns them in to the Border Patrol. In a twisted sort of way, Mercedes is the most stereotypical character in the film — she embodies the stereotype of the conservative angry white male. She is Pat Buchanan in a dress.

Like the Mexican Americans in Lone Star, the film’s African Americans are carefully drawn characters rather than stereotypes. Blacks comprise a smaller percentage of the town’s population than Anglos or Latinos; most of them live in Frontera because of the military base located there. Still, we meet a wide variety of characters, including Chet Payne, the colonel’s son who would rather draw tanks than drive them; and Minnie Bledsoe, the widow who has become addicted to Nintendo games in her old age. Knowing that at least part of the film’s audience will watch the film expecting to see familiar stereotypes of African Americans, Sayles uses their preconceptions to make subtle points about stereotyping. In one of the film’s early scenes, for example, we are introduced to Chet, a young black man peering through a nightclub window from outside. He then enters the club, looks around carefully, and slowly reaches his hand into his jacket pocket. In another film, Chet probably would have drawn a gun, but this is a John Sayles film, so he pulls out a barbecue sauce label instead. In a later scene, a young black soldier is being interviewed by two officers about her role in a nightclub altercation. Again contrary to audience expectations, it is the white male officer who is understanding and lenient, while the black female officer recommends a harsher punishment. In addition, perhaps the film’s most touching human story is the relationship between three generations of the African-American Payne family: Chet, his strict father Delmore, and Delmore’s estranged father, Otis.

 The Anglo characters in the film realize that they can no longer dominate Frontera politically and economically, and they have different reactions to this reality. Sam Deeds seems to think it’s about time, pointing out to Mayor Hollis Pogue that 95 percent of Frontera’s citizens are Mexican Americans, so why shouldn’t they be running things? Meanwhile, the film’s main villain, Charlie Wade, seems to have no particular racial or political views. He simply gets sadistic enjoyment from exercising power over those weaker than himself, and in the Rio County of the 1950s, his victims happened to be mostly blacks and Latinos. His successor as sheriff, Buddy Deeds, was hardly a crusader for equality, but he impressed everyone with his impeccable sense of justice. As Otis Payne, the black saloonkeeper, says, “I don’t recall a man in this county — black, white, Mexican — who’d hesitate for a minute before they’d call on Buddy Deeds to solve a problem.” However, Frontera also has its share of full-fledged racists unwilling to accept the Mexican-Americans’ rise to power. One bartender claims to be “as liberal as the next guy,” but rails against interracial marriage and proclaims his bar to be “the last stand” for white supremacy. Meanwhile, the film’s lone Native American character, Wesley Birdsong, has long since accepted the fact that his people carry no political clout in the town. He has resigned himself to making his living by economically exploiting white tourists: He sells useless souvenir trinkets at a roadside stand.

One major theme running through Lone Star’s narrative is the significance — or lack thereof — of social and political boundaries. The white bartender is upset that the racial “lines of demarcation are getting fuzzy,” but as Otis Payne’s historical exhibit on black Seminoles proves, these racial lines have always been fuzzy. Indeed, one of the film’s main characters, Pilar, does not find out until the film’s final scene that she has a biracial background. By continuing their sexual relationship after discovering they are half-siblings, Pilar and Sam are crossing a social boundary that is still very much intact. But as Otis tells his grandson earlier in the film, “Blood only means what you let it.” It is no accident that this story takes place on the international border, a random boundary that Sayles clearly sees as unnatural. Sayles’ attitude toward the border is encapsulated in a speech by one of the film’s memorable minor characters, Chuchu Montoya, who draws a line in the dirt and tells Sheriff Deeds:

“Step across this line. You’re not the sheriff of nothing anymore. Just some Tejano with a lot of questions I don’t have to answer. The bird flying south, you think he sees this line? … You think halfway across that line they start thinking different? Why should a man?”

Sayles uses several filmmaking techniques, including associative editing, to emphasize the permeability of boundaries. When the film flashes back to the 1950s, most of the time no cut is made. Rather, the time transition is usually accomplished by simply panning from a present-day character to a character from the 1950s (or vice versa). When cuts are made between time periods, they are slow lap dissolves. These fluid transitions can have a confusing effect on the viewer, who sometimes finds it difficult to tell what time period the film is in at any given moment — but that is exactly Sayles’ point. For the people of Frontera, the line between the past and present is unclear and ever-changing. The same is true of racial distinctions, an idea which is subtly emphasized through the use of music. For example, the song “Since I Met You Baby” is played during two key scenes in the film. First it is heard in Big O’s nightclub, performed by the black singer Ivory Joe Hunter. Later it is heard again on the jukebox in the Mexican cafe, this time sung in Spanish by Freddy Fender. Even lines between good and evil are intentionally unclear in Lone Star, especially in the ambiguous characterization of Buddy Deeds. “It’s not like there’s a borderline between the good people and the bad people,” Otis says. “You’re not on either one side or the other.”

Another important theme in Lone Star is that, whether we like it or not, we must discover and come to terms with our past. In Texas, as in the greater United States, that past is too often marked by racial conflict and violence. Sayles suggests that in order live in the present, one must confront the past — not necessarily to accept or reject it, but to learn from it. In several instances Sayles draws clear parallels between the past and the present, especially in the case of the black “Buffalo Soldiers” and their African-American counterparts in the modern-day Army. As young Pvt. Athena Johnson says, “It’s their country, and this is one of the best deals they offer. … If they got people to fight — Arabs, yellow people, whatever — they might as well use us.” This statement was made about the current Army, but of course it applies just as well to the Buffalo Soldiers of a century ago. Metaphorically, Sam Deeds’ struggle with his family’s history is symbolic of the struggle of contemporary Texans to come to terms with the less-than-admirable history of their state. Sam rejects his father’s values, complaining that “people have worked this whole big thing up around my father, and if it’s built on a crime, they deserve to know.” Likewise, Sayles feels that Anglo dominance in Texas has been built on a series of crimes, and people deserve to know about them. He believes, as one character says in the film’s opening sequence, that if “you live in a place, you should learn something about it.” Throughout the film Sayles seems to be saying that there’s nothing we can do about the past, and since different races are still stuck together in Texas, we might as well try to get along. This idea is present throughout the film, even in the movie that is shown playing briefly on a drive-in screen. It is Black Mama, White Mama, a remake of The Defiant Ones as a female exploitation film. Like Lone Star, that film is a tale of different races chained together who must eventually come to terms with their differences. If rejecting the past is necessary to function in the present, then so be it. As Pilar says in Lone Star’s poignant final line, “We’ll start from scratch. All that other stuff, all that history — the hell with it, right? Forget the Alamo.”  

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