Cabeza de Vaca—Reincarnated as a Cactus

A newly available film tells the story of the borderlands' first conquistador from an unexpected point of view.

Still from Opuntia (2017). Courtesy of David Fenster.

“Know that I was born, by the will of heaven, in this our iron age, to revive the one of gold, or the Golden Age, as it is called,” declares Don Quixote in Miguel de Cervantes’s 1605 epic of the same name. “I am he for whom are reserved dangers, great deeds, valiant fears.”

Don Quixote is a collection …