Filmmakers Renee Tajima-Peña and Evangeline Griego. Photo by J.K. Yamamoto

Renee Tajima-Peña tells the saga of a Mexican American family in her latest documentary, "Calavera Highway," which will have its broadcast premiere on PBS as part of the "P.O.V." series on Tuesday, Sept. 16, at 10 p.m.

The seven sons of Rosa Peña, a migrant worker and single mother, were raised in the Texas border towns of Hidalgo County, the poorest county in America. She worked hard, had two husbands — she chased off the second one with a knife when he beat one of the boys — and instilled in her sons a strong sense of family and ethnic pride.

With Rosa’s death, her grown sons were left adrift. As recounted in the award-winning new documentary by filmmakers Tajima-Peña (“Who Killed Vincent Chin?” P.O.V., 1989) and Evangeline Griego, Rosa’s funeral and cremation brought the boys together — and tore them apart again.

Six years after their mother’s death, a road trip undertaken by brothers Armando (the filmmaker’s husband and the film’s narrator) and Carlos to reunite their siblings and return her ashes to the Rio Grande Valley reveals just how complex Rosa’s legacy is for each of her sons. Their journey takes them across the American west and central Mexico, into a murky past and into questions that probe not only Rosa’s life, but their own struggles to find identities as men and as fathers.

Armando and Carlos, accompanied by Armando’s son, Gabe, make an unlikely if oddly complementary pair for this quixotic road trip. Armando cared for Rosa in her last days and kept her ashes at his home in Los Angeles. The family bookworm, he is anxious to answer questions that nag all the brothers, but consume him in particular.

What really happened to Pedro, the first five boys’ father? Was he swept up in the notorious 1954 government deportation program, “Operation Wetback?” Why had Rosa’s own family so cruelly rejected her, leaving her and her sons to fend for themselves?

Carlos, the funny and volatile brother, hides the pain of a childhood bereft of a father, behind a jovial manner. A migrant counselor who still lives in the Rio Grande Valley where the boys grew up, he thinks it is best to leave some memories alone. In fact, "Calavera (Skeleton) Highway" uncovers more hard truth than even Armando could expect.

In a circuitous route, up from L.A. to Washington state, back down to the Rio Grande with a side trip into Mexico, the brothers retrace some of the same highways they had traveled in their youth as migrant farm workers. They remember the brutal days working in the fields as children, even on weekends and holidays, but also the camaraderie they shared. They recall their lives as fatherless street urchins, anchored by their mother’s love, hard work and pride.

Armando and Carlos also seek out their mother’s oldest friend, Rosa Morales; Armando’s college friend Cynthia Orozco, whose own father had run-ins with immigration and who researched the period of Operation Wetback, when Pedro Peña disappeared; members of the extended Peña clan who had rejected them as children; their maiden aunt, Adela; Rosa’s sister; and even Eddie Gonzalez, a local politico in Elsa, Texas, who attests to Rosa’s feisty defiance.

Along the way, the brothers sift through evidence about Rosa, about Pedro, about the Peña clan – and about their own choices. Armando and Carlos’s first stop is the San Joaquin Valley, where brother Luis has risen from picking beets to running the water treatment plant in Wasco. No one has spoken with Luis since the funeral, which he refused to attend because Rosa had been cremated against his Christian values.

A thousand miles away, in Moses Lake, Wash., Lupe and Raul pursue far different lives. Though a warm family man in his own way, Lupe has never lost his love of the fast life and is just out of prison when Armando and Carlos show up. Raul lives down the road and seems inclined to follow the elder Lupe’s lead. A talented painter as a youth who turned down a university scholarship, Raul was arrested on a drug charge with Lupe just a week after Rosa’s death.

Back on the Gulf Coast of Texas, Junior, the baby of the family, works as a pipe fitter for Dow Chemical. He is, perhaps, the least troubled. The eldest brother, Robert, who lives nearby, is the one who has vivid memories of Pedro Peña, and who remembers with the greatest bitterness Pedro’s sudden disappearance and Rosa’s subsequent years struggling as a barmaid or working in canneries and fields with her sons.

What, after all, happened to Pedro Peña? Had he settled in the mountains of Mexico and drunk himself to death? Or had he prospered as a stonemason and started a second family And most importantly, how had this legacy of migration, poverty and family skeletons shaped the lives of the seven brothers?

The answers to these questions accumulate over stages of the journey with "Rashômon"-like effect, painting an ever-more complex picture of Rosa, the hard choices she faced and the determination with which she faced them. For Armando and Carlos, there are more answers, and plenty of surprises. But the most astounding surprise of all is reserved for the restless and curious Armando — when he uncovers a secret that he could never have imagined.

About the Filmmaker
Tajima-Peña is a Japanese American whose previous work has explored the Asian American identity. “My Japanese grandfather migrated to work on the sugar plantations in Hawaii in the early 1900s,” she says, “at the same time that Armando's grandparents began crossing over from Mexico to work in Texas. I always wondered what forces in history and culture shaped the different trajectories the families took. 

“I felt I had completed my search for my Asian roots when I finished ‘My America…Or Honk If You Love Buddha,’ the time when I married Armando Peña,” she continues, “so when I felt an urge to traverse different landscapes of race, culture and family, it seemed only right to follow him on his journey to understand his past.”

Tajima-Peña was nominated for the documentary Academy Award for “Who Killed Vincent Chin?,” which examines a slaying in Detroit that became a national symbol of anti-Asian violence. Her 1997 film “My America...Or Honk If You Love Buddha” was an award-winner at the Sundance Film Festival.

Her other directing credits include “The Mexico Story” for Kartemquin Films' collaborative series on immigration; "The New Americans" (IDA Award winner); “Labor Women”; “The Last Beat Movie” (Sundance Channel); and “The Best Hotel On Skid Row” (premiered at Cannes, aired on HBO).

Tajima-Peña has been awarded the Alpert Award for film/video, two Rockefeller Fellowships in documentary film, a Peabody Award, a duPont-Columbia Award, and other honors. She began her filmmaking career at Third World Newsreel and Asian Cine-Vision in New York, and has been a film critic for The Village Voice and cultural commentator for NPR.

She is the graduate director of the Masters Program in Social Documentation at UC Santa Cruz. She lives in Los Angeles.

"Calavera Highway" was produced by Evangeline “Vangie” Griego, an award-winning independent producer/director of the documentaries “Paño Arte: Images from Inside” and “Border Visions/Visiones Fronterizo.”

She collaborated with Tajima-Peña on “The New Americans,” a multi-part series, and the special “My Journey Home,” both for PBS. More recently, Griego co-produced the new documentary “Chevolution” (Red Envelope Entertainment/Netflix and Arte) and produced “Sir! No Sir!” (Sundance Channel).

She is the co-founder of the Silver Lake Film Festival in Los Angeles. She serves on the board of the National Association of Latino Independent Producers and the OUTFEST (Los Angeles gay and lesbian film festival). She is currently in production on “God Willing,” a feature documentary bout a Bible-based nomadic cult. She lives in Los Angeles.

For more information, visit www.pbs.org/pov/calaverahighway/.