Crowd shouted “¡Viva Villa!” while approaching border
Video footage, anonymous leaflets, and eyewitness accounts on Tuesday offered some insights into last weekend’s incident that saw more than 100 people rush a heavily patrolled stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border in broad daylight.
But the larger questions remained unanswered: Exactly who instigated the mass action on Sunday afternoon one quarter-mile west of the San Ysidro Port of Entry? And for what purpose?
Bryan Chilian said he was in the Tijuana River channel filming a documentary about homeless deportees when he and his two partners noticed the crowd shouting “¡Viva Villa!” and moving toward the border–and followed with their cameras. “We tried to figure out who was the leader, but we couldn’t,” Chilian said in an interview Tuesday. “We couldn’t see anyone leading or making signs.”
One of the partners, Jesús Guerra Huerta, said they didn’t recognize the participants from their months of documentary work in the area. “None of the people we know in the channel were there,” he said.
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