Photo by Aaron Salcido.
Angela Kocherga is a border reporter and southern New Mexico correspondent for the Albuquerque Journal. Kocherga has covered the U.S.-Mexico border, Mexico’s interior, and southern New Mexico for television, newspapers and radio. Before taking part in a November 2019 Zócalo event titled “What Can Life on the U.S.-Mexico Border Teach America?” and held at Cross Campus in downtown Los Angeles, Kocherga spoke in the green room about her favorite restaurant on the border, the best piece of advice her mother gave her, and a recent honor, the 2019 Maria Moors Cabot Prize, which recognizes outstanding reporting in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Congratulations on being named a 2019 Cabot Prize medalist. What did the win mean to you?
Oh, it was such an honor to be recognized with all these wonderful journalists over the years whom I’ve admired. I was especially touched, and thought it was so significant, because it focused on my work along the U.S.-Mexico border, not just my work deep in Mexico and across Latin America. The border work was key, and that meant a lot to me.
Who’s one person, living or dead, you’d most like to meet?
Harriet Tubman. She was a spy. She was a warrior. She risked everything. She was also illiterate, and a very small-statured woman. Especially right now she’s on my mind because of the movie, which I haven’t seen yet.
What’s your favorite pizza topping?
I’m gonna pick two: mushrooms and green chile.
What magazines and newspapers do you currently subscribe to?
A wide variety—of course my local papers, but I also like to read the Washington Post, the New York Times. As far as magazines, that’s tougher. I like the Economist. And I’ll read in both English and Spanish. So, you know, in Mexico, like El Universal newspaper. And I look for websites that are doing interesting work, like Remezcla, and others that have a different take on stories.
Where do you go to be alone?
Home. I live—we call it a ranch, but it’s a really small, little house. But I have an acre of land, so I have dogs, I have a horse, I have one chicken. I really feel at peace when I’m looking out over the pasture with my animals and just solitude.
Who wouldn’t feel at peace with a chicken?
Yes, a chicken. We used to have more, but they died of old age. They can—depending, of course, if they get sick or something—but they can live for multiple years; I think the oldest one I had was maybe 10, 12 years or so.
Where can we find you at nine o’clock on a typical Friday night?
Well, with friends and family we like to go to the movies. So that’s one thing, watching a good movie. Or going out for dinner at our favorite restaurant. There’s a great Italian restaurant right near the border—right near the border fence—that’s kind of historic place, but has wonderful food, great atmosphere. So probably out to dinner, and/or a movie.
What’s the name of the restaurant?
It’s called Ardovino’s Desert Crossing. It’s a historic place, in Sunland Park, New Mexico. I live in a region that’s three states—New Mexico, Texas, and Chihuahua—and, of course, the U.S.-Mexico border, so I love that right in that location you get the best of all worlds.
That leads me to my next question: What’s one thing that the average person should know about the U.S.-Mexico border?
That it is a vibrant place with communities that are full of life. It’s not a wide-open no-man’s-land overrun by criminals. It’s a place where many, many people call home. And for us, it’s not a place of division. There’s a physical border, but there’s really a fascinating cross-border community where people are bilingual, bicultural, binational.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
Probably from my mother: “Be proud of who you are. Hold your head up high, even during times that are difficult.”
What keeps you up at night?
There are a lot of things these days… On the border we’ve become this political piñata that is bashed for points. As the election year approaches, I worry that some of that will lead to more things like what we saw on August 3, [2019], with the mass shooting in El Paso. I worry about the hate on the U.S. side, and I worry about the violence on the Mexico side. But in a more direct way, I really worry about people waiting on the [U.S. immigration] court, especially children. I just happened to be doing a story about this, about people living in these tent cities, in the cold and the rain, waiting for a chance to approach and make an asylum claim.