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'Bisbee ’17:' New Film Reenacts The 1917 Bisbee Deportation

Photo still from Bisbee '17
Robert Greene
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handout
Fernando Serrano is a Bisbee resident featured in the film "Bisbee '17."

The term “roundup” has become part of our current vernacular — primarily in relation to U.S. immigration authorities detaining undocumented immigrants in the workplace or local communities.

But it’s not a new approach.

The town of Bisbee, Arizona, was the site of its own roundup 101 years ago this week. Nearly 1,200 men were loaded onto boxcars and abandoned in New Mexico in an event now known as the Bisbee Deportation. At its core was a labor dispute between miners and the mining company owners and managers.

A new non-fiction feature set in 2017 Bisbee brings together current town residents to reenact what happened in 1917, and capture the emotion and atmosphere that divided the town that, in some sense, tore it apart.

The film is called "Bisbee ’17," and The Show spoke with its director, Robert Greene.

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Steve Goldstein was a host at KJZZ from 1997 to 2022.