Author: rayela

Brazil 18years + Chicago 20yrs + Paducah since 2005 These have shaped my path and interests. I spent many years as an active artist (ceramics and textiles) but have focused on promoting the creative community online since 2010. My current projects are Artizan Made and this site, Creative PlaceMakers.

The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 was enacted under President Reagan, allowing undocumented immigrants in the United States to apply for a fast path to Citizenship.  Applicants could choose to take the Citizenship test or go through a 10 week program, two days a week, that taught the basics about the Constitution, US History, the English language and cultural information.  I worked at “Por Un Barrio Mejor” (for a better neighborhood), a community organization serving Mexicans in Little Village, for about a year as one of the teachers.  The photo at the top is from that time, with me as the Nordic looking one in the middle.

This experience was life changing and impactful for me.  The classes had about 30 students of all education and career levels, from illiterates to PHD’s, from shy, frightened peasant women to outgoing, flirty young men.  Finding a way to communicate to all of them posed a unique challenge.  I ended up bringing in lots of props to illustrate ideas about Indigenous, African American, and Asian cultures. I brought in American pop music, bumper stickers, cartoons and anything else I could think of to look at culture and introduced discussions of what was similar in Mexico, what was different, what was incomprehensible…. I always started the first class having each person tell their story: where they were from, why they came to the United States, and what their long term goals were.

One day, a tall, thin man, maybe in his 40’s told us about his journey to the United States. I wish I had taped it! If you know anything about magical realism in South America, his story was that: full of adventure, near escapes from fire and floods, angels appearing and guiding him. He was uneducated, heartfelt and mesmerizing. We all sat there, mouths gaping.  I let him take up the whole class for that day as it was so fascinating to watch him in action.

Little Village abutted an African American neighborhood, divided by a big avenue, Mexicans on one side, Blacks on the other. They competed for the same factory jobs and pretty much despised each other. One day, one of my students, told me that he wanted to thank me. He was one of those Old World types of a natural elegance, probably in his 50’s. Calm spoken, the type who might tip his hat….  He told me that our classes had made him think a lot about the racial tensions they experienced. He worked in a factory where he had worked for a long time at a station next to a Black man. They had never spoken and he decided to greet him every day. The Black man started to greet him back. One day his machine broke down and his neighbor hopped on over to help him get it fixed.  This man told me that if it hadn’t been for the class, he would have never made that change and now the work environment was much more fun and relaxed.

stereotypes

I grew up in Brazil and had never met a Mexican until I moved to Chicago in 1984. What we knew of Mexican culture came from American cowboy movies and cartoons.  Mexicans were lazy, bandits, drunks and they played mariachis….  Speedy Gonzalez was a favorite!

Many of these stereotypes truly tickle my funny bone…   “We don’t need no stinking badges!” has become a recurring joke.  I don’t know if Mel Brooks was the first one to coin the phrase in Blazing Saddles, but it’s made its way into many movies.

El Guapo (“the handsome one”) shows off his superior intellect to one of his bandidos:

culture

My horizons expanded in Chicago.  I had a large group of friends from all over the world. Our parties felt like a little United Nations! Music, dancing, food, jokes, and happy times.  Almost all of my friends were undocumented and there was always that fear of being caught. Two of my Brazilian friends were married to two Mexicans. The four of them were inseparable. They eventually became citizens and all four had careers of service for decades.

We had no preconceptions of people and where they came from.  We were young, loved to get together and everybody was displaced from whatever country they had left. Their family, friends, memories and history were wrapped up in the need to look for a better life, for academic and professional opportunities.

travel

One of my friends was a Mexican artist, Jose Gabriel Lopez, who became like a brother to me.  We are still in touch, but he lives in Austin, Texas, with his family and I am in Paducah, Kentucky.  We haven’t seen each other in years.  Our love for Mexican folklore brought us together as we were both selling handmade crafts from different places.  You can see his story here.   I went with Jose to Mexico on a buying trip.  We explored Mexico City, Puebla and Oaxaca, visiting lots of artisans and markets. Meeting the people and seeing their studios was unforgettable.

Nelson Rockefeller was one of many Americans and Europeans who took a great interest in Mexican art and folk art in the 1940’s and 50’s.  Tourism to Mexico in search of authentic folk art, music and food generated massive amounts of money into local economies, creating new industries that funded a creative renaissance in Mexico that continues until today. As with Native American art, there are the crafters who churn out fast products for the tourist market and then there are the masters who dedicate their lives to creating masterpieces and preserving historical methods and meaning.   Rockefeller and his wife traveled the world and ended up with one of the most stunning collections of folk art ever seen. Their focus was on Latin American folk art which they donated to the San Antonio Museum of Art:

The Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Latin American Art houses the Museum’s collection of approximately 10,000 works of Latin American art. This collection spans almost 4,000 years of history and includes objects from nearly every region of Latin America.

The Museum opened the three-story, 30,000-square-foot Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Latin American Art in 1998. The center has eight gallery spaces, which include two focus galleries, two atrium spaces, and four main galleries, each dedicated to one of the Museum’s major collecting areas in Latin American art: Art of the Americas pre-1500, colonial Latin American art, modern and contemporary Latin American art, and Latin American popular art.

It will take decades to catalog all of it!

how we treat those mexicans….

Reagan’s immigration policy introduced my young self to the Mexican community in Chicago.  His parting words were quite moving:

That was the ONLY good thing Reagan did in my book! He gutted social services and created poverty not seen in the US for decades. His “leadership” started this whole movement towards “Christian Nationalism”.  I remember so well how Chicago changed over night under him.  So many programs had to close down and all of a sudden, the streets were filled with homeless people.  I was working at a Lutheran mission at that time where we had a food pantry and other programs.  So many of these homeless people were Vietnam Vets!

I lived in a Puerto Rican gang neighborhood in Chicago for 20 years. I saw bad things happen. When I worked at Chicago Uptown Ministry, I did many home visits and saw a poverty of spirit and conditions I had never seen in South America. Yes, we have many problems in our society, but we also have so many blessings and Americans need to open their eyes to our bounty and realize that we have enough.  We have enough to feed everybody, to invest in the best schools, to provide decent housing for everybody and to see that our diversity, equity and inclusion are our strengths.  People are marching together, rejecting the horrors that are being inflicted on our Mexican neighbors.  We do not accept this!

When we came back to the United States in 1980, I went straight to college but my brother and sister finished out their high school years in a rural town in Wisconsin. In the summers, they worked at a green bean factory to make extra money.  Now ALL of those jobs, all of the dairy farms, all of the labor there and in so many places in the United States are done by Mexicans.  Trump is so far removed from our daily lives that he even found the word “groceries” to be archaic.  Most of these old men in Congress live in a bubble away from reality.

Trump has created an artificial crisis.  During his campaign, he promised to target undocumented people who had criminal records.  Instead, they are grabbing men, women and children from schools, churches, community areas and their jobs, even legal citizens.  None of this is necessary.  Instilling fear in our Mexican communities could crash our economy.  We depend on their labor.  We should be honoring them and creating easier paths to citizenship or granting work visas.  Instead, we have chaos and fear.

Los Angeles is the test ground.  Five other cities, including New York and Chicago are next.  To what end?

I leave you with Carlos Cortez, a wonderful printmaker from Chicago.  I had the joy of visiting with him several times.  Soft spoken, gentle man, who stood for workers rights and for peace.

we are of the earth

we are not illegal