Photo by Julián Cardona

We’re so excited! Hearing Voices won a Peabody for the “Crossing Borders” special, which featured our Third Coast Short Doc: “And I Walked…Stories from the Border.” The executive producer was the one and only Barrett Golding.

Here’s what the judges said: “The nighttime desert seems to have a voice of its own in this vivid audio chronicle of illegal immigrants from Mexico, what dangers their journeys can entail, and why they still take the risk.”

The piece features incredible work from Scott Carrier, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Quiet American.org and others. We posted it for you, in two parts.

“Crossing Borders” (Part 1)

“Crossing Borders” (Part 2)

From Mexico to US, a Tale of Two Countries in this (((Hearing
Voices))) Cinco de Mayo special. Your guide Marcos Martinez, of KUNM-
Albuquerque, plays some border radio: Poet Luis Alberto Urrea
delivers his “Hymn to Vatos Who Will Never Appear in a Poem” and
travels “The Devil’s Highway,” from his book about death in the
desert. In “Sasabe,” a Sonora, Mexico border town, Scott Carrier
talks to immigrants along their hazardous, illegal desert crossing,
and to the border patrol waiting for them in Sasabe, Arizona. “And I
walked…” (with Charles Bowden) is a border-crossing sound-portrait
by Ann Heppermann and Kara Oehler, from the Third Coast Festival’s
ShortDocs series. Guillermo Gómez-Peña gives a “Citizenship Lesson,”
from his CD Borderless Radio, and imagines “Maquiladoras of the
Future,” fantasy border factories. And One-minute Vacation podcasts
(QuietAmerican.org) a Saint Jude’s festival in the highlands of
Michoacan recorded by Siamack Sioshansi, and evening mass at the
Church of Carmen Alta in Oaxaca City recorded by Bronwyn Ximm.

“And I Walked…” Stories from the Border
By Ann Heppermann and Kara Oehler
Much of the Sonoran desert between Tucson and Mexico is a haunting
wasteland of discarded shoes, shirts and empty plastic water jugs.
People leave one place for another in search of a dream. Some lose.
They die from dehydration. “And I walked…” is a soundscape of how
the thirst for the American dream translates into a literal thirst
for the scores of illegal immigrants who risk their lives as they
cross the desert from Mexico into the United States in search of
better-paying jobs. (6:06)