An understanding of art as it pertains to the modern immigration and the social justice debate in both North and Central America.
Art is a testament to life and the people in it throughout history whether it begins with da Vinci painting the Mona Lisa with her light smile and peaceful back ground or Pablo Picasso’s “Charnel House” which shows the terror of the violence of the events during World War II. Art can bring events from far away in time or distance to the average person. Those events could even be current ones happening right over the border like with the immigration problem that has been going on, in not only the United States, but in Mexico and all through-out Central America. Immigration has been covered by every form of media from CNN to the New York Times but they’re always a click or page away from just one of a dozen stories that are begin covered at that time. Art, however, cannot be turned or clicked away. Sure, it can be burned or painted over but art can never be removed so easily form our minds.
The issue of immigration has always been a thing in America, a nation founded by immigrants, but to varying degrees from the hostility that the Chinese were met since the 1850’s, or the contempt the Irish were met with. Lately, it is the Hispanics turn, well it’s actually been their turn since the 1990’s. Most Hispanic immigrants come to America or even now Mexico looking for work in whatever jobs they can find from construction, landscaping, to cooking and house keeping mostly doing work that pays the minimal and usually does not have the protections that other jobs would have. Some come legally but the number of illegal immigrants coming into the US and now Mexico has been on the rise from Mexico’s neighbors to the south and most are not even adults. Most are from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, "Salvadoran and Honduran children ... come from extremely violent regions where they probably perceive the risk of traveling alone to the U.S. preferable to remaining at home."[1] Most of these people seek a ride to the north on freight trains known as the “La Bestia or the Beast” a well-deserved nickname to this means of transportation that is only meant to carry freight not people. “The migrants must ride atop the moving trains facing physical dangers from amputation to death if they fall off or are pushed. Beyond the dangers from the trains themselves, Central American immigrants are subjected to violence and extortion at the hands of gangs and organized crime groups that operate along these routes”[2].
This has become the new face of the immigration crisis and it has been largely ignored to a point, however there is movement that wants to bring immigration and this crisis that preys on them to light and its thru art. A group of artists have taken to the US Mexico border from both sides to describe that what cannot be quantified with one word. The first three people that will be looked at are Guillermo Gomez-Pena, Emily Hicks, and Richard Lou Et Al. They formed a group called “The Boarder Art Workshop/ Taller de Arte Fronterizo”. This group began in the 1980s, at a time when the border region began receiving media attention due to the initial NAFTA debates. This organization focused on “the social tensions the Mexican-American border creates, while asking us to imagine a world in which this international boundary has been erased”[3].
Like many others, the Border Wall and what it represents has been and will continue to be the focal point of many art pieces throughout the years. For example, Griselda San Martian’s piece a “family portrait, taken in 2016”. It shows a woman on one side of the border and her family on the other separated by a metal fence. These pieces of art detail how and what is happening to the people and their families that are affected by immigration. The wall to many Latin Americans is a literal showing of the growing xenophobia in America. It was not always there, “until the Reagan, Bush and Clinton admiration drastically increased boarder security in response to public opinion”[4], according to Douglas S. Massey a professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University. Along with the border there is another thing that comes to mind about Mexico’s exports to the US particularly produce, pottery and of course drugs. This is well shown by a piece by Eduardo Sarabia’s. “Desert dreams” is a white vase with blue inscriptions; the most notable are two Ak-47’s painted on it. The vase sits on top of box with a picture of tomatoes on it, saying it’s from Culiacan, Sinaloa Mexico. By looking closer, “the modern hieroglyphs of Mexican and Norteño drug culture reveal themselves. (Drugs are often smuggled in Mexican exports such as ceramic vessels). With Humor and whit, Sarabia explores the “entrepreneurial” culture inherited in the border region”[5].
Art can say things that words can say but it cannot show you what they mean. Art is a powerful tool in fight for expression, history and social justice. It can be erased but never so easily from the mind. Especially with most of us, all we have to do is look at our ancestors and see within ourselves that these new immigrants are not so different from our own ancestors and thus see our neighbors to the south in a different more sympathetic light.
[1]. Abrams, Loney, “Make America Mexico Again: 10 Artworks About Immigration and the Border,”Art Space,(2017), http://www.artspace.com/magazine/interviews_features/art-politics/make-america-mexico-again-10-artworks-about-immigration-and-the-border-54812.
[2] Villegas, Dominguez Rodrigo, “Central American Migrants and “La Bestia”: The Route, Dangers, and Government Responses”, Last modified September 10, 2014, http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/central-american-migrants-and-%E2%80%9Cla-bestia%E2%80%9D-route-dangers-and-government-responses.
[3] Abrams, Loney, “Make America Mexico Again: 10 Artworks About Immigration and the Border,”Art Space,(2017), http://www.artspace.com/magazine/interviews_features/art-politics/make-america-mexico-again-10-artworks-about-immigration-and-the-border-54812.
[4]Douglas S. Massey, interview by Adam Conover, Adam Ruins Everything, truTv, Oct 1, 2016.
[5]Abrams, Loney, “Make America Mexico Again: 10 Artworks About Immigration and the Border,”Art Space,(2017), http://www.artspace.com/magazine/interviews_features/art-politics/make-america-mexico-again-10-artworks-about-immigration-and-the-border-54812.