My work at SOMArts Dia De Los Muertos

Loved making art instead of blogging about it. Art is more powerful than we give it credit for. It heals. Check out my work here.

Maize Y Mas: From Mother to Monster?

--> Corn was at the heart of Mesoamerican culture. It was more than a staple food, but a part of the majority of meals and festivals and rituals were organized around its planting and harvest. Similarly, today, corn plays a central role in U.S. farming economy and in U.S. diets, although its role in the food we eat is hidden—we don’t eat the whole food but its processed byproducts, as an ingredient in food we buy or, as the main food for the animals we eat, even when its not good for them, we subsist on it through meat. Whereas corn comes in hundreds of varietals and was represented by deities colored blue, white, red and yellow to honor the wide variety of corn, today in the U.S. we basically eat the same corn cob over and over and over: nearly 100% of corn in the U.S. is GM--and is actually registered as a pesticide with the EPA. The wind doesn’t follow the confines of geopolitical borders and GM pollen has spread into Mexican corn crops. What was once celebrated as both creator and mother has been processed into something terribly unhealthy and dangerous for consumers.Mexico has recognized this threat by  temporarily banning GMO corn.

San Jose's MACLA has also recognized this shift in corn from giver of life to threat in it's current show, Maize Y Mas: From Mother to Monster. In the curated show featuring Yvonne Escalante, Yolanda Guerra, Fernando Mastrangelo, Viva Paredes, and Jorge Rojas, MACLA explores corn's  place in our culture across time.

Mastrangelo presented This Too Shall Pass,a stature of the Virgin Mary made entirely out of corn. Corn kernals form the base and her body and yellow corn meal adds more detail to the top of her. It is a commentary on the blending of Mesoamerican and Catholic ideologies--both corn and the Virgin Mary play an important role in origin myths and are good omens and the two became mythologically linked in some cultures. A subtler layer of meaning in the pieces points to the Spanish Conquest and the contemporary conquest of agribusiness over corn in the making of GM corn.


Paredes made a series of glass vases which suggest the shape of corn and filled each of them with the kernels of different corn varietals. She fills an entire wall with them, and the kernels are of all different shapes, sizes and colors--from red to blue, yellow, white and all shades in between. It makes me realize, that, besides how dangerous GMO corn is, just how bland the corn is which we have access to in this country. Paredes' installation also suggests a seed bank of sorts, a living memory of the long, rich history of corn but also the delicate state that corn is in right now as GMO corn pollen can be contained about as easily as the wind.

Across the room, the flip side to Paredes' heirloom kernels is a series of small jars containing the toxic products of corn--items which are no longer considered food, but ingredients: corn syrup, cornstarch, the kernels of GM corn. Items which are not healthy to ingest yet infiltrate our food system.

Escalante presented a series of pieces which combine the essence of corn and their place in our culture with weapons--bullets, missiles and grenades. With this combination, she comments on the ease of destruction corn now has on our society and culture.

In her popcorn stand, instead of filling it with popcorn, she fills with casts of corn to which he had added the fins a missile has. They are falling out of the popper, much like popcorn does as the kernels puff open and spill over, but these missiles are hitting the floor and exploding. Then, in Kernel of Truth, Escalante makes bullets, filling resin with corn kernels and setting them in metal casings. From a distance, they look just like bullets but up close they contain life. Her combination of life and creation in the corn and destruction and death of the weapons perfectly sums up the state that corn is in--it is still a staple in our food and still a part of our culture but as more and more of it is GMO, it is no longer something which promises health and life, but disease and danger.

De Esperanza Y De Locura/Of Hope and Madness

Migration is beautiful

 
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De Esperanza Y De Locura closed but it has stayed with me: I find myself ruminating over pieces I saw there in the way that I run my thumb over a swatch of cloth, feeling the same small part again and again, for the pleasure of feeling it and, in feeling it, knowing it. So I re-begin this blog that was so close to my heart that I had to stop writing it with an exhibition that is no longer up but, I believe, still speaks.

Los Brincos

 
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This show pulled together several artists-- Erika Harrsch, Miguel Luciano, Esperanza Mayobre, Omar Pimienta, Favianna Rodriguez and Judi Werthein--on the topic of migration. Though none of the pieces were collaborative, the resounding theme across the show was one of flight. There were kites and butterflies, most particularly the Monarch butterfly—which, because it migrates between México and North America and takes several generations for each migration, is an apt symbol for Mexican-Americans—altered passports and paper currency that invoked dreams of the ease of motion across borders that butterflies have. Collectively, the exhibition set about imagining a new geopolitical geography, erasing limitations and exploring the freedom of flight, of superseding borders.

  
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Pimiento, Harrsch and Wertheins’ installations all directly addressed the politics and physical limits of the borders. Pimiento works primarily with expired passports, which he takes and alters, granting the holder citizenship to Colonia Libertad in Tijuana. His simple inclusion of all into the Colonia defined by transition and passage extends the reach of Colonia Libertad to all the places in the world where Libertad citizens reside and grants the holder movement to move freely across all the earth’s landmasses. While Pimiento imagines passage into a borderless world, Harrsch sets forth a united North America, a borderless union of Canada, the United States and Mexico, “similar to NAFTA yet, in this case, actually providing equal social, political and economic benefits to all citizens of these regions.” She, like, Pimiento, also designs passports; hers, however, are embossed with a monarch butterfly, as is her flag of The United States of North America. Her installation features a series of passports mounted on the wall with history, law and hopes of her fictional land inscribed on them as well as a “Wheel of Fortune,” which attendees could spin to determine if and how they could pass, with the potential to land on illegal alien, non-citizen, caution, try again, citizen, you are not eligible.

 
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Werthein’s “Los Brincos” was one of my favorite pieces here. She created the shoes (for that is what Los Brincos are: a pair of shoes in the likes of Air Jordans—meaning, “the jumps,” the athletic shoes play on the high cost and coveted status of some athletic shoes) specifically for a pathless journey through the desert: they come equipped with compass, flashlight, map of crossing-routes on the bottome and painkillers in case of injury. She designed them toe-forward towards the U.S.: the Aztec eagle is embroidered on the heel and the American eagle on the front. She sold them in San Diego and NYC galleries for 215 dollars and distributed them for free to migrants.

United States of North America-Passport Installation

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Rodriguez, Luciano and Harsch, in another piece, all literally used wings in their pieces. Rodriguez created “Migration is Beautiful,” a mural of butterflies flying upwards and out from three children. It comes with a poster featuring a single butterfly, based on the monarch butterfly, but the markings, in this case, outline faces. Hers is a celebration of the “beauty, pride and resilience” of migrants. Luciano, with his “Dreamer Kites” performs a similar celebration. He used images of Dreamers—students who are undocumented but wish to study—, made kites out of them and mounted them from the ceiling, literally giving them wings.

Imagining the Death of NAFTA

I wish that I could have seen this installation: A Future Memorial for NAFTA. 20 black flags planted at the border field between Tijuana and San Diego. Each flag mourns a year that NAFTA has been in effect and looks towards the future death of NAFTA.

As the artists' website acknowledges the increase of migrant deaths since NAFTA and the attempt to stem the flow of people though the amount of migrants increase because of the drastic economic downturn in Mexico, the black flags also commemorate the massive amount of death and social upheaval.

It is a beautiful site that nods towards a larger movement.

A few no-brainers

I have been taken down by that horrid flu going around. Instead of blogging about art, I am supplying some links to Mexican American news.

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During the 20^th year of NAFTA, the first non-documented lawyer was admitted to the state bar. You can check it out here.

University of Texas is set to create a Mexican American history course for its public schools, which, considering how Arizona has banned Mexican American history and this was ruled constitutional, is a much needed step.

blog on hold

Dear readers,

I am putting a hold on this blog for awhile. As much as I love exploring the border, meeting artists and talking to them about their vision, about what in the world moves them to make art, I have to focus on some other areas of my life right now.

I look forward to being back!

xo
Michelle

Healing the Rift in Gloria Anzaldúa's Borderlands/La Frontera

I just picked up Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera again and realized how much of what I am doing now is directly related to the first time that I read her book. The rift of the border though the book, geography, peoples and her psyche and the resulting ambiguous identity that she believes define Chicana/os resonated with me, as did her call for healing. The reading series that I curate and the collection of shorts that I am writing I wouldn’t have begun if not for reading Borderlands/La Frontera.

 The U.S.-Mexican border winds its way through Borderlands/La Frontera, a sort of auto-history, in which she “puts history through a sieve, winnows out the lies,” (104). In winnowing out the lies, Anzalúa, establishes Aztlán as ancestoral homeland, reclaims powerful females in history, reinstates the creative power of female gods, pushes the mestiza towards a new consciousness and sets out the potential for  a new culture. This new culture comes by way of balancing cultural dualities (male/female, Spanish/English, Mexican/white/Indian, rational/intuitive) through—not the uneasy juxtaposition of two parts—but a powerful synthesis of cultures into something whole and new. To Anzaldúa’s thinking, the conflicting dualities of Mexican-U.S. border culture creates an unhealed wound across the land, an open wound replicated in the psyche of the people who live on or are affected by the geo-political border: Chicanos.

Anzaldúa makes the case that being constantly tugged at by opposing cultures and principles, by living straddling the border, understanding both sides, but never knowing which one to choose, is the psychic equivalent of the rift that is the border, the un-natural divide forged through war, sustained by violence and subterfuge, continued through the “constant state of mental nepantilism” (100), the divide that occurs when people are caught between ways of being.

At the heart of Borderlands/ La Frontera, Anzaldúa looks to mend these rifts, “the agony of inadequacy” (67) that plagues the Chicano community and the individuals that make it up. She isolates and then deals with each aspect of Chicano culture that affects the feelings of inadequacy in each chapter in the prose section of Borderlands.. In drawing out the many contradictions within Chicano culture, and then resituating them, Anzaldúa sets up the potential for the new mestiza consciousness that she is after.

Ambiguity and duality are central characteristics of borderland culture, as conflicting cultural expectations, norms and languages pull at people in opposing directions, causing physic rifts.  Anzaldúa proposes synthesis for healing these rifts, a melding of two wholes into something entirely new and integral. Within Borderlands/ La Frontera, Anzaldúa employs many of the characteristics of borderland rifts—ambiguity, duality, and contradictions of language—in her writing, to create the essence of the borderlands and prove the possibility of her argument: that opposing sides of a border can seamlessly synthesize into something else entirely.

Sueños quebrados:…y no se lo trago la tierra

Con el Tratado de Guadalupe-Hildalgo en 1848 la gente vivía en Texas se convertiaron de mexicanos hasta mexican-americanos, pero no tuvieron el bienvenido en los Estados Unidos. Aún asi que ellos ambos vivían en las tierras de Texas, California y New Mexico antes del tratado y que, con el tratado, se convirtieron en ciudadanos de los Estados Unidos, los gringos (uso gringo en esta esayo por los estadounidenses quienes son blancos y quienes tienen el poder en el libro) los trataron como ellos fueran imigrantes ilegales. Después del tratado, hay muchas leyes en Texas que hizaron facil que los gringos pudieron arrebetar las tierras de los Mexican-americanos. De repente, los campesinos Mexican-americanos se convertieron de nuevo, hasta migrantes que tuvieran mudarse con las cosechas, sigiendo trabajo. Sus vidas eran sin riquesas, vivido debajo de los gringos. Contra esta fondación, Tomás Rivera pone su coleción de cuentas, dicho de la perspective de un niño. Rivera pone sus cuentas en la frontera, donde las relaciónes entre gringos, mexican-americans y los migrantes mexicanas eran más complicadas y conflictadas, especialmente con las vidas migrantes de las mexican-americanos.
Las vidas en la colección son llena solamente con esperanza y sueños de una vida mejor. Con …y no se lo tragó le tierra, Tomás Rivera hace el mundo de la frontera uno en que la realidad brutal quebra todos los sueños que traen la gente. Con “Los quemaditos,” Rivera realiza el tema de los quebrados por medio del maltratamiento de los gringos.

The Border Fence, Tijuana, MX

Avenida Internaciónal become Calle Al Aereopuerto west of el centro de Tijuana in its run along the south side of the border. It passes the airport and continues east towards Tecate.

I wanted to return to a particular section of the border fence, just behind the airport. I’d seen it yesterday while Oscar Ortega was driving me over to the site of his newest sculpture.

The border fence stands more prominent in the lives of people who live south of it. In the U.S., cities stop well north of the border, far enough away that the border fence remains out of sight unless you go looking for it. I stand on a hill in Colonia Reynosa, and look west, the fence continuing out into the Pacific, rising and falling with the desert hills. On the U.S. side, all I see are hills spotted with low desert shrubs; on the Mexican side, urban landscape continues right up to the wall. On the southern side, cities roll right up and crash into the border. In Colonia Federale, I have seen garden plots cultivated in the shadow of the fence, vines growing up the fence itself.

People have draped and decorated the fence with their prayers and fears and criticisms, with wood and paint and cloth, with sculpture and words and image, turning it into a veritable alter.

At this particular point, a series of artworks cascade into each other. An anonymous photographer has captured images relative to the border, to Tijuana, and transferred them to cloth, which s/he then draped over the fence for nearly a half mile.

The images are all black and white, and repeated several times before the next print begins its run. The images reveal many perspectives of the fence in haunting simplicity. The back of a woman and her children, sitting on a hill that overlooks the border fence accompanied by the sunburst aura of Guadalupe, empty space where the saint herself would normally be. A collection of silver jewelry against black velvet. A man climbing over the fence. Shadows of people waiting. Men in cowboy boots and hats in an airport, looking overwhelmed and confused.

One after another the images line the fence itself, giving depth to what the fence is, what it means in people’s lives. The printed cloth blows in the wind, and will hang there until the weather tatters it and it falls off.
Further west, but beginning just where the prints end (or begin), simple wooden crosses hang. They have been painted white, and assembled with the crosspiece not always at right angles. In black paint, names of people who have died crossing the border have been painted on the crosses, and desconoscido for those who died anonymously and were discovered anonymously.

These desconoscidos make me think, more than the named crosses, of who it was that found the body and who waits, at some point south, for contact, reassurance, a note, a postcard, something, anything, from this person? It is those crosses desconosidos that make me painfully aware of the webbed links of each person’s life, of how many people, however far away they are, the fence has affected.

In seeing the border itself, it is difficult to understand what it stands for, but these two installations make the human implications of the fence painfully clear.

McCarthy's Blood Meridian or, The Evening Redness in the West

In Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy tells tales of the U.S.-Mexican border that today, is long forgotten. He picks up the story of the forming of the Glanton gang, a group of felons hired by the Mexican government to annihilate the Apaches, for that matter, any remaining American Indian, just after the treaty of Guadalupe-Hildago, 1848 that cemented the U.S.-Mexican border where it is today.

Blood Meridian is a historical novel, bringing to light not just the tumultuous history of U.S.-Mexican relations, but the nebulousness of the border, the ease of crossing back and forth, and the American Indians that lived on and near the border.

The Glanton gang was formed in 1849 and did, as the story tells, traverse the Chihuahua-Texas area, scalp hunting. As brutal an act as scalping is, in the world of the novel, it becomes an almost serene act of violence against the unimaginable violence, brutality and cruelty that occur on nearly every page of the book. Their work was possible only in the complete lawlessness that existed at the time. The violence, horrific in both its high frequency and in its ruthlessness, characterizes the novel, and the border.

Focused on the border at Ciudad Júarez and El Paso, McCarthy foretells the ongoing violence at these border towns. In the novel, just before the Glanton gang begins their scalp hunting foray into Mexico, a Mennonite tells the boy, the only name the main character ever has, that if they cross over the border they will wake “the wrath of god…hid a million years before men were and only men have the power to wake it” (40). After the ambiguous ending (was the boy murdered? What was there to see so terrible in the jakes that couldn’t be spoken on these pages that have described in gruesome detail horrors I didn’t even know man could wreck?), the epilogue describes what seems to be a man making post holes for a fence, and fire comes with each post hole. With him are wanderers searching for bones. These two scenes seem to indicate Ciudad Júarez now, haunted by the brutal and epidemic femicides. It seems to me that the Mennonite’s warning of what the Glanton gang will set into motion the violence that we still know of today. I read the hole-augurer as setting out the border fence, cause for more violence and the unending hell. The wanderers looking for bones brings two images to mind: one of the myriad migrants that don’t make it across and end up dead in the desert, only to be found later and the bodies and bones in the desert around Júarez.

The border has been rife with violence since its inception and will be defined by violence until it is no longer. For me, the importance of the border story that McCarthy tells is important in how it points to the continuation of the story in today’s border violence.

Ortega's border sculptures

         Oscar Ortega is currently working on a series of sculptures that will stretch along the length of the border, each one documenting the time and place of its site. The energetic and affable artist began this series with La esquina de un mundo (The Corner of a World) in Las Playas, the most northwestern corner of Tijuana and “the last, or first, depending on your view, corner of Latin America.”

The next sculpture in the series, Entre ventana y puerto (Between a window and a door), sits on a meridian in the center of the main thorough fare out of Tijuana and into San Ysidro, about 100 feet from the border crossing. Here, there is always traffic, and men and women walk among the cars, peddling food and drink, puppies and piñatas, magazines, jewelry, entertainment by way of juggling and acrobatics, anything that could turn a dollar.

With Entre ventana y puerto, Ortega combined many elements of the border: the industrial aspects, the motion, the traffic, the cultures coming together, so the sculpture has elements of Aztec and U.S. culture, suns and stars and stripes; cement tire wheels jutting out from the edges.

Ortega took me to view the site of his newest work, in Otay Mesa, the industrial center of Tijuana. When we went, all there was was a deep hole, with a rebar structure that would help to stabilize the cement base once it was poured. The area seemed desolate, with abandoned big rigs and windowless industrial buildings set on massive plots of land, though we were just a few minutes away from the chaos of Tijuana.

The model of Ortega's newest work

The base of this sculpture will mimic a large cog and wheel, but Ortega will mosaic symbols – letters, numbers but also the ubiquitous symbols of today; the circle with a line through it that is now always on the “on-off” button on electronics – and will boast a cityscape at the top, with a mosaic of people in buildings, office buildings and maquiladoras, showing the variety of positions that people hold.

As Ortega works his way across the border, each of his sculptures will represent the specific area that it resides in. In the end, Ortega will have captured the characteristics of a specific time for each place through his work.

Ingrid Hernández

Ingrid Hernández is a young Tijuanense photographer who speaks carefully and works in earnest. The main characteristics of her city as she sees it inspired her work. She sees her city as in a state of flux and conflict. Out of these two, have risen the unincorporated colonias, the neighborhoods that have sprouted up around Tijuana, built by people who have arrived in Tijuana with nothing.

She focused mainly in Nueva Esperanza, inspired by the homes built by their owners. She is drawn to the creativity in using objects in new ways, refrigerator doors as walls, for example, and by the mix of Mexican cultures present in the same neighborhood.

She rarely photographs people, instead revealing them through their homes and surroundings. In her photo essay, Tijuana Comprimida, Hernández captures the neighborhood that she has come to know over her year of work there. The essay reveals much about the inhabitants without ever presenting them; in frame after frame it feels as if a person is there, just out of the reach of the frame, and I begin to want to be welcomed in to the community . Hernández has done her work well: in these forgotten and traditionally undesirable neighborhoods of Tijuana, she has made access to them desirable by personalizing them. 

To see her work, visit her website,http://www.ingridhernandez.com.mx/ 

Diario de Tijuana

Sábado, 17 de abril de 2010

            Fui a Tijuana temprano y caminé por el centro. Vi el arco de la calle revolución y “La Bola,” el Centro Cultural de Tijuana. Caminé por el Río Tijuana, que está pequeña ahora. Descubrí un “restaurante:” una mujer pone tres mesas en la calle cerca de su casa y cocina afuera y entonces gana su vivenza. Su comida y aguas frescas son ricas y sencillas. Comí con gusto. Pero asi es Tijuana: sin planificación urbana, la gente contruye sus casas donde puede, y crea trabajo. Hay casas en que sus propriatarios venden ropa, jugetes de niños, las cosas electrónicas, más ropa, el equipo deportivo, comida y más afuera de sus casas. También la gente vende sus servicios de lavar ropa o casas, arreglar los carros, cuidar de los niños.

Caminé por la Colonia Federal, que cambia en la comunidad del arte. Visité una galeria que se llama La Casa del Túnel. Hube una apertura inaugural de una exhibición internaciónal, pero a mí me gusta solamente el trabajo de un artista, Clark Fox de Neuva York.

 

Él es American Indian, y todo su trabajo toma la historia de los American Indians y los estadosunidenses de su subjecto. Subimos al techo donde está un bar y de donde pudimos ver Tijuana y San Ysidro a la misma vez.

         
  Cerca de las cinco de la tarde, regresé a San Diego y visité mi hermano y encontré mi sobrino; que viaje tan llena!

diario de Tijuana.

Viernes, 16 de abril de 2010

            Llegé en Tijuana al mediodía para encontrar Óscar Ortega, otro artista tijuanense. Él tiene 50 años y habla sin parar. Tiene pelo negro con una mancha de gris al frente. Es muy alerto y casi nunca para hablar.

            Tiene muchas obras del arte pública. Su primera escultura que hizo conocida está por Las Playas, el parte más oeste de Tijuana. Esa escultura es el inicio de una série de esculturas por la frontera. Todos son demonstrativas de las características del lugar donde está. Por ejemplo, la segunda escultura en la séries está en el centro de las carreterras que van al norte. Estas siempre están llenas de tráffico y su escultura representa el movimiento hasta al norte y al sur, tiene símbolos de los dos países.

 Fuimos a su taller, donde me mostró los planes para la escultura de Otay Mesa y pude ver el proceso de hacer el “mold” para las partes decorativas de la escultura. Su taller está en una casa pequeña en el centro de Tijuana. Detrás de su taller hay una de los casas más viejas de Tijuana. Está construida de adobe, en vez de cinder blocks que son el material más usado en Tijuana hoy.

Fuimos al sitio en Otay Mesa, que está tan cerca de la frontera que recibí llamadas en mi cellular. Ahora donde va a estar su escultura hay solamente un hueco grande y el inicio de su fundación de rebar. Ortega dice que no quiere hacer una declaración con su arte, quiere hacer los representaciones de un lugar y un tiempo.

Regresamos al centro por la carretera del aeropuerto, la carretera más al norte de Tijuana que corre por la pared. He visto un mural de tela, con imagines de la gente esperando cruzar, escalando la pared, corriendo.

Almuerzamos juntos y regresé a San Diego.

Diario de Tijuana

Jueves, 15 de abril de 2010
Llegé a San Diego hoy y manejé directamente a la frontera. Estacioné mi carro en uno de los estacionamientes y caminé hasta Tijuana. De le puente que cruza la frontera, se puede ver las colinas de San Diego de un lado y Tijuana por otro lado. La colinas están cubiertas en chaparral, con muchas piedras y están verdes y amarillos ahora. No se puede ver nada al norte, excepto por esas colinas. Al sud, los edificios y las calles de la ciudad acaban (o comenzan, depende de su perspectiva) actualmente hasta la pared de la frontera.
Tijuana es una ciudad grande y está llena de energía. De la puente, se puede ver el arco que marca el inizio de Calle Revolución, que corre por el centro de la ciudad, el Río Tijuana, que era más grande pero ahora es solamente un riachuela, y “La Bola,” como se llama el Centro Cultural tijuanese.
Mi primo día en Tijuana, quería caminar por la ciudad para conocerla, pero no hubo bastante tiempo. Tuve una entrevista con Ingrid Hernández, una artista tijuanese. Nos encontramos en el restaurante Samborns. Ella tiene 35 años, pelo negro, liso y corto, y una manera afable. Sonrié fácilmente.
Hablabamos sobre su arte. Tomó las fotografias de las partes de Tijuana que son no incorporados, son ciudades hecho de mano y faltan electricidad y aqua y otros cosas de infraestructura. En estos lugares vive la gente que viene de otras partes del país y, algunas veces, de otros partes de Américalatina. La gente ahí son muy pobre y construye sus proprios casas. Usa la basura de las maquiladores para construirlas. A Hernández le encantan las casas por el textura y colores, las cosas que siempre atraen los fotógrafo, pero a ella le interesa la gente y como subrevive cada día, las tradiciones que trae y su modo de riciclimento.
Le pregunté, ¿qué son las cosas que definen Tijuana? Me contestó que la frontera, el sobreviver y ingenio.
Hablamos por algunas horas, hasta seis. Tuve otro cita con un escritor que vive en San Diego. Caminé hasta la frontera y la cruzé con una multitud de gente. Hay solderos en pie por el edificio de la frontera que me intimidaron. La migra¨¨ me pusó muchas preguntas sobre donde fui, con quien hablé, porque estuve en Tijuana, qué es el nombre de la artista, porqué escribir sobre el arte. Hablamos por casí diez minutos antes de que me dejó pasar.
Fui a otra entrevista, con un artista estadounidense, Nathan Gibbs. Antes, Gibbs vivía en Tijuana con su esposa pero ahora viven en San Diego. Su esposa crecio en un barrio del tipo de que Hernández hace la fotografias. Cuando Gibbs vivía en Tijuana, cruzaba la frontera cada día porque trabajaba en San Diego. Por esa razón, quería hablar con él para saver más sobre la vida de la frontera.
También él me habló de que la sobrevivencía carateriza Tijuana y como la gente tiene una ingenio para hacer las cosas quotidianas. Hablamos casi hasta medionoche y después me dormí.

La Familia rota: Sin nombre

La familia rota: Sin nombre

Los viajes hasta la frontera de México-Estados Unidos están siempre llenos de dificultades y peligros. Aún asi, más de 500.000 personas de México y 300.000 de la América Central y del Sur hacen el viaje hacia el norte cada año. La gente va a los Estados Unidos por motives de la familia, motivos ecónomicos y por el sueño de un futuro mejor  para su familia. Aún si el migrante logra llegar a los Estados Unidos, su futuro no es cierto. Una existencia exitosa en los Estados cuesta muchos sacraficios.

Los viajes al norte rompen las familias y dejan los migrantes (las personas que hacen el viaje de sus casas hasta los EE.UU. en busca de una vida nueva) verdaderamente solos; sin relaciones y un proprio lugar en una communidad, los migrantes unen con el río de gente hacía al norte. Y eso es el juego de Sin nombre, por Cary Fukunaga. Con Sin nombre, Fukunaga da una identitdad a algunos migrantes. Por ellos, Fukunaga hace la vasta cantidad de migrantes sin nombres más humanos.

Sin nombre sigue el viaje de una chica hondureña, Sayra, desde Guatemala hasta los EE.UU. y su relación con Willy (o Casper), un miembro de una pandilla. Sayra se une con su padre y sus tíos en Guatemala. Cuando ellos comienzan su viaje, caminan hasta la frontera diciendo ad nauseum el número de teléfono de su contacto en los EE.UU. Sayra dice que todo va a estar bien; no tenemos todos que aprendar el número porque todos van a llegar juntos.

A la vez, Willy está ayudendo uno chico, Smiley, entrar en su pandilla. Willy trata mantener escondida su novia de la pandilla para salvarle del peligro. No lo dice a ella porque no puede encontrar sus amigos, ella esta sospechosa y va a un encontramiento de la pandilla. El líder, Lil’Mago, trata de estuprarla, pero ella lucha y él la mata. Cuando dice esto a Willy, dice que ella se fue con el diablo, su modo de decir que ella murió. Lil’Mago revela el caracteristica más fuerte de su vida con esa frase; a él y a su pandilla dios no tiene lugar pero el diablo, si.

Lil’Mago lleva ambos Willy y Smiley para robar los migrantes que llenan los trens que van hacia el norte. Sayra y su familia está en el techo del tren que atacan los tres pandarilleros. Ellos llenan una bolsa de dinero, joyas y otros cosas valiosas cuando Lil’Mago encuentra a Sayra y va a estuprar ella. Pero, cuando se agacha, Willy venga su novia y lo mata con su machete. Smiley regresa a la pandilla, quien empieza a buscar Willy, para matarlo.

Willy se queda en el tren y Sayra comienza una amistad con él, aunque su familia lo ha prohibido. Algunos díos después, Sayra sigue Willy, dejando su familia en el tren. Los dos viajan juntos hasta la frontera y, cuando llegan, son amigos de verdad y prometen estar juntos en sus vidas nuevas. Cuando Sayra está por el río, los panderilleros llegan y mata a Willy.

Mientras tanto, su padre está muerto y su tío deportado. La película termina con Sayra, en una parquiamento grande y vacio, llamando el número del teléfono con que empieza la película.

La película comienza con el romper la familia de Sayra cuando ella, su padre y su tío se van dejando atrás los demás. En la calle, ellos ya no tienen familia más que los tres y se pierdan también. Fukunaga no nos da el nombre de la familia; es como con el romper la familia, la gente que va hacia al norte perden el nombre, sugiendo que, sin relaciones, la gente perden sus proprios títulos como “hermana,” “hija,” “nineta,” “tío,” “padre.” Los nombres familiars pierden su importancia.

Primero Fukunaga establece ese flue non-frenable de los migrantes. Usa las escenas con mucha gente, sin incluir los personajes que conocemos para dar la experiencia de ver la multitud de  migrantes sin nombre. Por ejemplo, vemos los migrantes en el sur de México, apena llegados de Guatemala. En esa escena, los pandarilleros les roban y estupran los migrantes. Porque no conocemos ni un personaje en el grupo, sentimos un horror, un triesteza, una compasión en general, pero porque no tenemos una relación con una persona, lo que sentimos no es muy apasionado. Hay otras escenas: una cuando hay muchos niños que gritan y tiran las naranjas a los migrantes; otra con la gente apoyando a los migrantes; las escenas en que los migrantes tienen que correr de la policia. En todas las escenas así, Fukunaga constuye el personaje de los migrantes por los ojos de los otros. Podemos conocer la multidumbre y la gente que ve, pero no entrar en la multidumbre y conocemos los individuos. Por eso, tenemos Sayra.

Conocemos a Sayra y su familia; conocemos Willy y sus amigos aparte de sus viajes como migrantes antes de que Fukunaga los mete en el río de migrantes. Eso es importante, porque tenemos compasión e interés en el logro de ellos. Por esa compasión por los individuos, podemos estar más apasionados por todos los demás migrantes, por sus historias y sus logros. La multidumbre sin nombre se hace más de migrantes; se hace humano.

Entonces, cuando Willy, Lil’Mago y Smiley suben el tren para robar los migrantes, tenemos aprahesión por los migrantes, pero, estamos con los tres pandarilleros, estamos enrollados en sus historias y podemos ver los migrantes en el tren como hacen ellos: como una multidumbre sin nombre. Pero, cuando Lil’Mago trata a estupra Sayra, muy de repente, con su lucha, ella da un nombre a las mujeres para la frontera entre Guatemala y México, y a todos los demás que están en el tren. Esta funciona asi porque ella está haciendo el mismo viaje por todo los demás y porque conocemos ella. El personaje de Sayra funciona como una metáfora metynomica: una parte que representa la multidumbre.