The Head of Joaquin Murrieta: A Conversation with John J. Valadez

UNSETTLING JOURNEYS has partnered with The BORDERLESS CULTURES FILM FESTIVAL (tarheels.live/...) to bring you this conversation about the 2016 film The Head of Joaquin Murrieta. John J. Valadez directs this documentary that is both a personal journey and a crash-course on the history of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans before, during and after the establishing of the monumental US-Mexico border. In this conversation, co-curators Annette Rodriguez (UNC-Chapel Hill) and Emmanuel Ramos-Barajas (Unsettling Journeys Producer) are joined by Valadez and discuss the themes of the film, the nature of history and what it takes shift the narratives that have been told about Latinx peoples in the US.
ABOUT THE FILM
For over a decade filmmaker John J. Valadez searched for the remains of Joaquin Murrieta, a legendary Mexican outlaw who blazed a trail of revenge across California until he was reportedly caught and decapitated in the summer of 1853. A hundred and sixty-two years later Valadez embarks on a quixotic, cross-country road trip through history, myth and memory to bury the fabled head of Joaquin Murrieta. Along the way he discovers chilling parallels with his own family story. Using ground breaking scholarship and working with a team of leading historians from across the United States, THE HEAD OF JOAQUIN MURRIETA provides a view of U.S. history from a decidedly Chicano perspective. Deeply personal, irreverent and entertaining, the film tears open a painful and long ignored historical trauma.
ABOUT BORDERLESS CULTURES
Knowing that popular culture constructs, informs, and
reflects, Borderless Cultures brings together filmmakers
and scholars to share films that are otherwise not in wide
release to talk about about Latinx peoples and film. Thus,
we selected films that tell us something about the U.S.
racialization of Latinx peoples.
Conceived between collaborators and colleagues on
opposite coasts, Borderless Cultures is our offering to
gather across space, and share time and ideas. Bringing
his talents as a content creator and art educator, Ramos-
Barajas thinks through narrative and artistic vision, while
Professor Rodríguez fixates on historical context and the
value of scholarly analysis. Our goal is to reframe Latinx
histories- and by extension, the interlaced histories of
Indigenous, Mexican, Black & Anglo peoples- in what
today is the South and West of the United States.
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
JOHN J. VALADEZ is a Peabody Award winning filmmaker who has written, directed and produced many nationally broadcast documentary films. He grew up in Seattle, taught photography in India, and studied filmmaking at New York University. Valadez’s films have tackled such diverse subjects as the false imprisonment of a leader of the Black Panther Party, Latino poets in New York City, gang-involved children in Chicago, the history of affirmative action, segregation in U.S. schools, Latinos in World War II, the evolution of Chicano music, Latino civil rights, and the genocide of Native Americans in the Southwest.
His major works include: The Head of Joaquin Murrieta (2016), Prejudice and Pride (2013 Latino Americans/PBS), War and Peace (2013 Latino Americans/PBS), The Longoria Affair (2010 PBS/Independent Lens), The Chicano Wave (2009 Latin Music USA/PBS), The Last Conquistador (2008 PBS/POV), Arise (2006), High Stakes Testing (2005 CNN), Beyond Brown (2004 PBS), Visiones: Latino Arts and Culture (2004 PBS), The Divide (2003 Matters of Race/PBS), Soul Survivors (1997 Making Peace/PBS) and Passin’ It On (1994 PBS/POV). Valadez is a Rockefeller Fellow and a founding member of the National Association of Latino Independent Producers.

[@BadAssDad101]

I am Obsessed with this story. I live in San Benito Co. I research as much as I can, even though it makes me sound crazy every time I try to tell story.. I'd love to help any way I can.

[@davidsmith1931]

He was real. People were so scared of Joaquin Murrieta they did not cut his head for a trophy they cut it off and brought it to all the towns that he and the Joaquin 5 had terrorized so that the people could see it and go on with there lives without living in fear that he would return. I got this information years ago from an old cowboy that lived in ca in the 1850s.

[@JB-le6zm]

Can someone tell me what the "smoke bomb" that was used is called? Hot pepper 🌶️ wrapped in straw??

[@jackmurrieta8513]

was any murrietas contacted about the head or was it felt or e en. conciddred to on doing it u cuz its kinda a comon things a person would naturay do vi e to his people in that instance e tallow the murrieta families to provide us opertunity to gi e a proper bArial im saying wat happened to that concern about the descendants even tho that not our take on the unfolding. of events .altho tbier are no records birth death certificate altho ther are baptism and court alearence wedding as best man wich im following up o reference and by no mean I'm I credited for any level of history knowledge other than of my own gi e history passed in tho me but I have a unstoppable determination to find this true so many have have actual barried the basic clearity of his with all these stories told added repting none truth s or things thar r misleading information thay takes people father from n is truth and in the pro ess allow others to to say was ther even a joaquin ? he exist to us n real to use he has a spot in our iy tree that give us a sence of atacment to the history of California we r all part of that spirit for our a symbol an example of resistance of leadership against wrongs that society may cast upon society the inspiration of joaqui n has become a comon element of a chicanos up bringing they r told about lik joaquin Pancho zapata as outlaw spirits paving the wat planting the seed for other such a ceasar chavez and the rest that fall under that sanme spirit that wond or wouldn't bend to unfairness dominance or superiority above the next thety stood up

[@schlatterjennifer]

I worked for the man who had joaquins head, in Santa Rosa ca

[@zapataramirez8900]

Hello Jennifer..so you say you know this man ..can I ask you what kind of man , he is?..what did you do for him ?

[@jackmurrieta8513]

Walter Johnson had the head sposidly of joaquin altho the family history says joaquin wasn't decapitated that shoot out was a joaquin valenzuelas crew in charge of that erea n got caught off gard do to ambush ing wa s nt confrontational face off like it was told

[@jackmurrieta8513]

wasn't joaquins

[@bobbybow25]

I also know the family of the man who had the head in Santa Rosa, here in Sonoma County. It’s a small county in terms of connections and knowing people. I can tell you that I went to school with the business owner’s grand daughter, and have friends who saw the head first hand at this place of business and witnessed the burial of the head on the family ranch after the health inspectors said get rid of it. I live 5 minutes from the place where the head was stored, and think of Joaquin every time I drive by.

[@bobbybow25]

If it wasn’t Joaquin’s, it was still the head that had been displayed in San Francisco before the earthquake. The head was one of the few items saved and was handed down to old man Johnson years later, where it was displayed at Johnson Rock.

[@jackmurrieta8513]

My name is Don joaquin murrieta an a direct descendent of the family murrietas of that time that joaquin is a part of joaquin murrieta orozco ...joaquins true name the head the that was said to be joaquin murrieta is not joaquin it is known by the family that joaquin murrieta was not at the cantua creek shoot out altho he came back wen he got word to Barry his fellow gang members who lost there lives in support of joaquin goal to recapture California for his people joaquin live n made it back to Mexico where he lived to be about 70 years old and was buried in cocupe Mexico altho the head was not joaquin murrietas it was a joaquin vallenzuela a cousin of joaquin that served as a captain to one of 5 crews that worked with the others that allowed them to actually conduct his business in with a wider scope of ereas as with the others thus to create u gas confusion e with an element of illusion hiting 3 places at one time on the same day .

[@jackmurrieta8513]

Sangremurrieta.......

[@jackmurrieta8513]

Question why didn't u contact any murrietas that u were in tho posesion of the head thot to be joaquin so they may provide proper barrial pass the remains to us .altho the head isn't joaquins u were not aware of it .that would be something thot a person would contact over remains so that the family would be able to provide an honorable barrier!?