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In the late seventies Rodriguez’s father bought a VCR system, complete with a camera and a twelve-foot cable. Robert, the third-eldest child and then eleven years old, went crazy taping the family. A few years later, Robert’s father bought a new VCR, and Robert quickly figured out how to edit by feeding videotape from one machine to the other. That’s when the Rodriguez family video chronicles really began.
While attending St. Anthony, a small private high school in San Antonio, Rodriguez became close friends with Carlos Gallardo, a student whose family lived in Ciudad Acuña, Mexico. In 1982 they began making short action videos together, both in San Antonio and in Acuña, during holiday visits to Gallardo’s family. Over the years, Rodriguez made more than a dozen of these some without Gallardo, none longer than half an hour.