Title
Esto es un Río
Creator
Website
Description
Serigraph on paper, 22 in. x 30 in. Desert Triangle Print Carpeta. "Esto es un Río is a memory of growing up on the border. As a child, I would remember crossing the bridge from El Paso to Juárez and watching people cross the river in makeshift inner-tube rafts. People with jobs in the U.S. side and who didn’t want to get wet would pay lancheros to ferry them across the river every day. I see this as the universal experiences; we all have people who cross boundaries and blaze paths to reach our goals, whatever they may be. For years, political graffiti has been painted on the concrete banks of the border. I decided to use “Esto No Es Una Frontera/ Esto es un Río” as one of many messages painted on the concrete banks for years. The quote is from [The Liberator of Venezuela] Simón Bolívar, who alluded to the use of borders to divide communities instead of uniting them. Bolívar suggested that the overreaching powers in place politically at the time benefitted from the ensuing chaos that occurred once divisions were made and enforced. He further suggested that if one community suffered, the other 'opposite' community suffered, as well. Another graffiti tag appears on one of pillars that support the international bridge. The message was painted by the family of Sergio Adrian Hernandez Guereca, who was shot and killed by a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent through a barbed wire border fence near El Paso, Texas. At the time of the shooting, Guereca, a 15-year-old-Mexican national, was standing on the Mexican side of the Mexico-United States border, while the agent was on the American side. The agent claimed after the shooting that he had used deadly force because Guereca had been throwing rocks." — Jesus “Cimi” Alvarado
Subject
Date
Contributor
Access Rights
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