It is an experience of a lifetime. It may sound cliche but for an Indian artist to go to the US-Mexico border and do an art project with the undocumented immigrants is something not done everyday.
Even after coming back home, we are overwhelmed by the whole experience of working with people who have come across the border without any documents. The arduous journey from central American countries such as Guatemala, Honduras or Al-Salvador to US is not easy.
According to the experts working on the subject of human trafficking explains that at times people walk for months to reach the US-Mexico border. On the one hand they are running from gang wars in their own countries and pay the human-traffickers to help them reach the US border, once they cross the border, no one knows what is going to happen.
When they are caught by the Border petrol, they go through the legal procedure and during that procedure, they may or may not get asylum depending upon their case. Those who enter US without getting caught, live and work in this country illegally.
There is another group that stays on the US-Mexico border waiting in long queues for many weeks in order to present themselves to the Border petrol and seek asylum. Border petrol send them to the judicial process.
We worked with an organization named La Posada Providencia that provides food, shelter, English language training and legal help to undocumented immigrants who are in their judicial process. Since many of them have no relatives in US, they have nowhere to go during the legal process. The process runs for months at times.
There are many organizations like La Posada working with the undocumented immigrants. We got in touch with La Posada through Professor Jennifer Clark who teaches in South Texas college and is an expert of human trafficking.
On the first day we had decided to work with Air dry clay as the organization wanted us to work with something which works as a therapy for them. We have been told not to photograph the faces of the people as they are in the judicial process.
We were aware of such things and decided to work on. Language was another problem. Most of the people we worked with didn’t speak English and we couldn’t speak Spanish but as you know in art, language seldom matters.
Mee started making Butterflies as she thought about the idea of boundaries and butterflies but then people made whatever they can think of. From butterflies it went to a cup cake, superman, batman and fishes.
One of the borders between US and Mexico
We worked with them for three days and on the final day installed the work on doors.
We talked to the people we worked with and got to know their stories. We can’t authenticate what they said about their journeys but still we are sharing few experience they told us about.
A family of four with two young girls
The family came from a central American country and the mother said that it took five months to reach the US border. They travelled on foot, bus, train and crossed the border. According to the mother they took the whole journey as an adventure and didn’t face any problem.
A pregnant women from an African country
The lady was traumatized as we talked to her. She could speak english but she was not able to formulate. She drew a map to show where she came from.
The father and son
On our second day this guy came and talked to us in broken English which he learnt while he stayed. He came with one of his sons from a Central American country. He was sad and missed his family back in home. He wants to bring the family here. He asked us about how poor people in India are and we explained that we have poor people but their life is not in danger as in Central America.
Another Lady with a four month old baby
She was reserved and didn’t talk much but later she told Mee that she is alone with the baby. Her husband was in a gang and used to beat her up. If she had stayed back, she might have been forced to work for a gang and that is the reason she ran away.
There are hundreds of such cases where people from Central American countries fled to US in search of a better life or simply to save their lives from the gangs operating in these countries.
According to Monica who works with these people in La Posada, “We know that all of these people are not saints but many of them come to US to save their lives. We help them survive during their legal process. We have sympathy for them as human beings.The decision to grant asylum lies with authorities.”
Monica says that it is distressing to hear their stories. She said that they have to write (for the court) why they have come and how they came and at times you can see the trauma on their faces recollecting the dangers they have faced. There is one mountain in Panama which everyone has to cross and while crossing many people die.
Borders are a reality and the immigrants crisis is humanitarian. Why it happens is a big question.
