Documentary Length: 75 minutes

Format: Shot in DV (Canon XL-1 cameras), edited on Media-100, digitally transferred to 35 mm by DVFilm (www.dvfilm.com)

Locations: Chicago, Austin, New York, Delicias (Chihuahua), Mexico City, San Miguel de Allende

Timeframe: Shot in 1998 and 1999; editing completed February 2000

Richard Lord’s boxing gym had become a popular place for workouts – professionals, blue-collar workers, and students all gathered for the challenging classes and one-on-one training sessions with the small stable of professionals. Through mutual friends that worked out there, we started hearing about Jesus Chavez, his unexpectedly soaring boxing career, his gentle and mischievous personality. We met him around the time his deportation was nearing. The seriousness of the situation had not sunk in… his friends and supporters were so confident of his right to be in the U.S. that they were convinced he would return within months.

A group of us met Jesus in Michoacán two weeks after his departure, to celebrate Día de Los Muertos. Jesus found the elaborately decorated cemeteries and towns as fascinating as we did – it was his first exposure to this fundamental Mexican tradition. His Spanish was a lot better than ours, but he had to repeat himself occasionally to be understood. When we said goodbye, we assumed the next time we would see him would be back in Austin.

Six months later, with apparently no progress in his status with the INS, Jesus’ promoter scheduled his debut fight in Mexico. By this time we had decided to tell his story. We now understood that he was one of many U.S. non-citizens with criminal records being deported without appeal, and we wanted to document his fight for redemption and his re-adjustment to the country he had left as a child.

We arrived in Mexico City a few days before his fight with Moy Rodriguez, an unranked local fighter. We were joined by other friends of Jesus, including Jan Reid, who had published an article about Jesus’ situation in the April 1998 issue of Texas Monthly. Jesus was confident but cautious, noting that though he was favored, "boxing is different from other sports – one punch can take you out." He won the fight easily, and we headed to Delicias with Jesus and Richard Lord to meet Jesus’ grandparents.

Jan almost didn’t make it back. The night after we left, he and his colleagues were robbed by a Mexico City "taxi driver"; Jan was shot and almost killed. He wrote about his experiences for GQ in October 1999, and will publish a book about Jesus’ story and the shooting ("The Bullet Meant For Me") next year. 

In the meantime, we had a lot of other places to visit. Since we wanted to provide the full back-story in the documentary, we wanted to experience and film the places where key events took place – a Mexican mine near the one where three generations of Jesus’ family worked, the two prisons where Jesus spent time, his old Chicago neighborhood. We scheduled various trips over the course of two years to document key places, talk to the people who knew Jesus best, and of course follow the course of the events that took place after his deportation.

The most intense filmmaking experience over the two years took place during the final fight covered in the documentary, against the favored national champion, Julio Alvarez, in Mexico City. We knew that Jesus’ entire career was at stake (and by extension, one of his potential paths back to the U.S., the O-visa.) We knew that he was not in top training condition. We knew that he was fighting in the national champion’s "hometown" – and that the judges were possibly biased against him. We knew how badly he needed this victory. When the bell rang to start the fight, time seemed to warp completely – simultaneously passing extremely slowly, and extremely quickly. Every round he survived was a relief; during the breaks we quickly wiped the fighters’ sweat from the lenses, and wiped our own nervous hands to keep them dry. I think it will not diminish the film’s suspense to say that we had to shoot through our tears when the decision was finally announced.