Quaker group responds to DHS statement and root causes of migration

PHILADELPHIA, PA (January 5, 2016) In the wake of a series of controversial immigration raids to detain and deport Central American asylum seekers, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson released a statement defending the Obama Administration’s actions. The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), an organization that has worked with immigrants and refugees for almost a century, says the justification for raids fails to address root causes of migration or offer real solutions, and that the raids must be stopped.

Over the last 15 years, the number of migrants from Central America has steadily increased, as people flee violence in their home countries. The recent round of raids are directed at individuals who have arrived in the U.S. within the last two years; the majority are families who presented themselves to law enforcement at the border and asked for asylum.

“The asylum system is vital for many people fleeing persecution, but without access to legal counsel, families and children with a legitimate claim to asylum are much more likely to have their claim denied,” said Kathryn Johnson, AFSC’s policy impact coordinator. “The decision to go after families applying for asylum discourages people who are fleeing persecution from coming forward.”

Secretary Johnson asserts that the agency must enforce the law consistent with its own priorities. But according to AFSC’s Human Migration and Mobility Director Layla Razavi, “the president has prosecutorial discretion to create enforcement priorities. Unfortunately, the administration has chosen to focus on people who are most vulnerable and who fear being returned to a country where they face persecution. It’s an intimidation tactic of the worst kind.”

DHS has said the raids will be carried out carefully. “The notion that there’s a way to conduct a raid that would not be traumatizing for families and young children is pure fantasy,” says Razavi. “Coming into the homes of families in the early morning and whisking away loved ones inherently traumatizes the individual who is deported, along with everyone who is forced to bear witness—especially since many of the people apprehended in these raids have already suffered various forms of trauma and violence.”

DHS also touts its increased enforcement tools along the border. But advocates say that the money the agency has poured into U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) over the past 15 years has resulted in the militarization of communities along the border — leading to violations of the human rights of immigrants and people living in border communities, but failing to address the reasons migration happens in the first place.

DHS points to U.S. aid to Central American countries, asserting that this aid is an effort to address the root causes of migration. According to AFSC’s Kathryn Johnson, U.S. military and economic policy in Central America play a major role in driving migration, and until these policies are changed, people will continue to leave their home countries in search of refuge.

“Based on past experience, we have little faith that either U.S. security or development assistance to Central America will effectively address poverty or insecurity. The U.S.-led drug war and security policies in Central America have bolstered the influence of criminal gangs and contributed to astronomically high homicide rates in each of these countries. Development assistance has been distributed with a top-down, one-size-fits-all approach which does not respond to local needs or contexts, but instead bolsters U.S. foreign policy objectives.”

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 The American Friends Service Committee is a Quaker organization that promotes lasting peace with justice, as a practical expression of faith in action. Drawing on continuing spiritual insights and working with people of many backgrounds, we nurture the seeds of change and respect for human life that transform social systems.

Mexican/American/Mexican

Curated by Laura Migliorino

Featuring

Selma Fernandez, David Maung,

Jill Holslin, Jorge Santiago

 Opening reception Saturday, June 20th, 2015

6pm to 9pm

Show runs through September

Photographer Laura Migliorino has curated a show of photographers that are exploring the connections between the United States of America and Mexico.

Two of the photographers are Mexican but live in the United States, the other two are American but live in Mexico. The juxtaposition of these pairings are compelling, and explores the influence that immigration and perspective have on ones work. How is each photographer exploring the bi-national border between these two countries?

 Selma Fernandez Richter

Fernandez Richter was born in Oaxaca, Mexico. As a photographer, she explores themes related to identity through connection with place, adaption, and religion in Mexico and the United States. Fernandez Richter’s project, The Ache for Home, is a series that explores the refugee communities in Minnesota through the lens of her own experience of immigration and adaption. She is currently a recipient of the 2015 McKnight Foundation Grant.  Selma Fernandez Richter.com

David Maung

Maung was born in Chicago and grew up in Minneapolis, and after 20 years of living in Tijuana, he is exploring his perceptions and experiences beyond being a photographer, but now as a resident. Through this understanding, Maung seeks to find a sense of place, order and beauty in the Tijuana chaos. In many ways Tijuanenses have more in common with their gringo neighbors than with the rest of Mexico. Many learn English watching U.S. television, buy jeans at Old Navy or Target, freely use pesos and dollars in the same purchase, and cross the border each day to study or work. This unique identity that is truly Tijuanense is what fascinates Maung.  Lightstalkers.org/david-maung

Jill Holslin

Holslin was born in Morris, Minnesota and has lived in Tijuana since 2011. Since 2008, photographer Holslin has explored the contradictions and paradoxes of the border walls that try to separate the U.S. from Mexico. In San Diego the first 14-mile border wall was built using metal aircraft landing mats in 1994. The iron is now decaying, and Holslin captures tiny scrawled messages and details invisible from a distance. These “traces” left by migrants as they passed over the border wall: drawings, names, romantic gestures, emblems of their hometowns, are messages that open our eyes to another reality of migration. The wall keeps people out, but at its very presence invites people up close who use the wall as a compass to orient them in their journeys, as a place to rest, as a surface to record their thoughts.  www.attheedges.com

Jorge Santiago

Santiago grew up in Guelatao de Juárez, a village of about 500 people in Oaxaca’s Sierra Norte Guelatao, famous as the site of the annual Basketball competition, Copa Benito Juárez. In the Sierra basketball is king, not soccer. Santiago’s photos explore the way in which basketball reinforces indigenous identity. The basketball court is the fulcrum of activity, the center of the fiesta. Here bulls are slaughtered, bands play in massive group concerts, dances are held, and the names of the migrants sponsoring the fiesta are read aloud.  JLSantiago.com

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Jill Marie Holslin (Morris, Minnesota 1960)

I am a photographer and writer and I have lived in Tijuana, Baja California since 2011. Born in Morris, Minnesota, I moved to San Diego in the 1980s and studied Renaissance Literature and Culture in the Ph.D. program at UCSD, specializing in the history of borders–cultural and political–between Europe and the Middle East in the 16th century. Since 2008, I have reframed my interests, looking at the modern border between the U.S. and Mexico through the lens of my camera. My work has been published in books and magazines both nationally and internationally, and my photos have appeared in gallery exhibitions in Chicago, San Diego, Tijuana and Tecate, Costa Rica, Guatemala and El Salvador.

Since 2008, I have explored the contradictions and paradoxes of the border walls that try to separate the U.S. from Mexico. In San Diego the first 14-mile border wall was built of metal aircraft landing mats in 1994. A second wall was erected of massive concrete filled iron bars in 2009. The wall cuts through the urban fabric of the city, through wilderness areas, delicate desert chaparral habitat, and sacred lands. Border walls are the new trend worldwide, constructed by nations as a symbol of the state’s power to protect its citizens. Their symbolic use give borders and border walls a theatrical quality–the border is a national stage, where we Americans play out our deepest fears about violence, about security, about our way of life. Walls project the aura of a guarded fortress, but their very existence simultaneously signals the state’s own weakness and desperation. We need walls precisely because the state has failed to “keep out the bad guys.” It has failed in its performance of power. Thus, in the very attempt to signal absolute power, walls are fraught with contradictions and paradoxes.

My photographs play with this tension between the strength and the vulnerability of the border wall itself. The first walls were made by taking military aircraft landing mats and mounting the heavy iron panels on posts. The iron is now rusting and crumbling with age. Drawing up close to the surface of the metal wall, I shoot close ups to capture the material texture of the rusting metal. There I find tiny scrawled messages and details that from a distance are invisible. These “traces” left by migrants as they passed over the border wall: drawings, names, romantic gestures, emblems of their hometowns, the messages open our eyes to another reality. The wall keeps people out, but at its very presence invites people up close who use the wall as a compass to orient them in their journeys, as a place to rest, as a surface to record their thoughts.

DHS rejects Congress’s “Secure Our Borders First Bill”

In a statement released yesterday by the press office of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, DHS Secretary Jeh C. Johnson called out the Congress for proposing a border bill that he claims will actually undermine border patrol capacity to adapt to emerging threats.

Secretary Johnson further claimed that the border bill “is extreme to the point of being unworkable; if enacted, it would actually leave the border less secure.”

With Representative McCaul touring San Diego today, it is important that he understand that San Diego residents will not support legislation that is out-of-touch with reality and could harm the livelihood of millions of border residents.

And the border patrol doesn’t support this out-of-touch legislation either.

We are all hurt by legislation that doesn’t allow DHS to be effective.  What we all need is good legislation to restore accountability, to help DHS do it’s job better by supporting the communities it serves.

“Representative McCaul’s border militarization bill will only exacerbate systemic abuses because it fails to address border agent misconduct, and it will place in danger civil rights with the expansion of drone surveillance,”  stated Pedro Rios, Director of American Friends Service Committee.

Here, the full statement by DHS:

STATEMENT BY SECRETARY JEH C. JOHNSON CONCERNING H.R. 399, THE SECURE OUR BORDER FIRST ACT OF 2015

The “Secure Our Border First Act of 2015” voted out of the House Homeland Security Committee last night is not a serious effort at legislating border security – and its authors know it. The bill is extreme to the point of being unworkable; if enacted, it would actually leave the border less secure. The bill sets mandatory and highly prescriptive standards that the Border Patrol itself regards as impossible to achieve, undermines the Department of Homeland Security’s capacity to adapt to emerging threats, and politicizes tactical decisions.

In the meantime, the bill does nothing to provide what the Department of Homeland Security really needs from Congress – appropriated funding to pay for vital homeland security initiatives. That includes both the additional resources we put on the border last year, and the additional technology, equipment and other resources we need from Congress to further secure the border. As long as the Department of Homeland Security continues to function on a continuing resolution, as it is now, we are limited in our ability to deploy these critical tools, along with other resources vital to homeland security.

Unfortunately, H.R. 399 is unworkable, plain and simple. I again encourage Congress to support the homeland security professionals at this Department with the resources they need, without provisions that would micromanage their work or restrict their flexibility in dealing with the nation’s critical homeland security efforts.

The bill is a misguided attempt at addressing a false narrative about border communities, despite the fact that border communities are some of the safest cities in the United States. Some of the more extreme measures the bill proposes include:

• A requirement for near-constant drone surveillance within 100 miles of the Southern Border
• Deployment of the National Guard
• War assets and other enforcement tools authorized by Congress to be deployed within 100 miles of the Southern Border
• Establish a biometric exit data system to screen all people and cargo leaving the country
• Grant Customs and Border Protection unrestricted authority to supersede and waive all environmental laws on federal land within 100 miles of the Southern Border to build additional border walls.

With Representative McCaul touring San Diego today, it is important that he understand that San Diego residents will not support legislation that is out-of-touch with reality and could harm the livelihood of millions of border residents.

“Our border communities are not ‘theatres of war’ to be experimented on with military equipment. Our civil and human rights are at stake when a military solution is sought to address economic and social disparities in border communities,” stated Alor F. Calderon, Director of Employee Rights Center.

“Representative McCaul’s border militarization bill will only exacerbate systemic abuses because it fails to address border agent misconduct, and it will place in danger civil rights with the expansion of drone surveillance,” stated Pedro Rios, Director of American Friends Service Committee.

Since 2007, San Diego Immigrant Rights Consortium (SDIRC) has worked to bring together leaders from the faith, labor, and legal communities to advocate policies that promote the civic and human rights of immigrants and is comprised of 20 organizations from throughout San Diego County.
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Contact:

Ricardo Favela, (760) 468-4519

Gabriela Posada del Real and Camino Verde community leader Alma Teresa Carrillo

Slide show and discussion on Saturday, October 11 at 7:00 PM in San Diego’s Art Produce Gallery, on University Avenue in North Park

Tijuana is thriving. And you see this mostly in Tijuana’s neighborhoods, its rows of new master-planned communities decorating the landscape, “For Sale” signs on every corner.

An event coming up this weekend, Saturday night October 11, at Art Produce Gallery in San Diego’s North Park neighborhood will engage with this scramble for land, streets and sidewalks, and roof overhead.

It’s part of a six-week binational art installation, performance and lecture series called The Fence/La Barda curated by San Diego’s Feminist Image Group and Tijuana’s Distrito 10 gallery.

On Saturday night, October 11, beginning at 7 pm, Gabriela Posada del Real will present a talk and slide show  “Art as a Public Safety Intervention in Border Communities.” With a three-year grant from US-AID, Posada del Real has been managing a host of community projects in Tijuana’s neighborhoods of Mariano Matamoros, Granjas Familiares and Camino Verde. The program is grounded in the urban development method of CPTED, a strategy for crime prevention that relies on urban studies expert Jane Jacobs’ concept of “eyes on the street.”

Good urban development should encourage city-dwellers to get out and walk around, Jacobs argued. People need to be able to occupy their streets and parks and sidewalks. When local community members get involved and get to know each other, their very presence in the street drives away crime and violence. Slowly people can start making positive changes in their own space.

Tijuana artist Ariana Escudero paints a family portrait mural on the side of the family’s home

Under the guidance of Gabriela Posada del Real, Tijuana’s local architects, urban planners and artists have worked since 2012 to organize people like Alma Teresa Carrillo and her neighbors in Camino Verde.  Camino Verde is an enormous neighborhood in central Tijuana, with a population of 42,000.  It was settled by “paracaidistas” or “parachuters” –a form of settlement common in many Tijuana colonias. New factory jobs and explosive population growth left hundreds of families–newly arrived from Michoacán, Durango, Guerrero and other southern Mexican states–with nowhere to live.  Local political and labor leaders would organize families into a movement, and together they would “invade” an area of the city, rapidly building dozens of simple dwellings.

Camino Verde was founded in 1984 as “Grupo Mexico” by PRI leader Alejandro Herrera Bejarano, his wife Roxana Soto Agüero who continues as the current political leader of the delegation.  Working closely with the PRI (the ruling political party), Bejarano and Soto offered protection to the new settler families. Rather than being kicked out by the police, the people were able to put down roots, and these leaders earned the veneration and gratitude of the new neighbors in Camino Verde.

Camino Verde, central Tijuana neighborhood

But this form of personal leadership came with a price. The neighborhood soon earned a reputation for harboring criminals. Because the people feared that the police would come to push them out of the neighborhood, the police were never allowed to enter.  And so criminals sought out Camino Verde as an ideal spot to disappear and escape prosecution.

Political leadership based on personal protection has made the people very passive and conformist, according to neighborhood leader Alma Teresa Carrillo, who migrated from Durango, and moved to Camino Verde with her family when she was teenager in the 1980s. “All the streets were named after the members of the Bejarano family: my mother lived on Roxana Soto Street and I lived on Ziria Roxana and the next street was called Alejandro Soto.”

Carrillo remembers her mother warning her to keep her opinions to herself: “These people have ears everywhere, this is not a game. You don’t want them to hear you complain.”

And decades of living with basic instability and fear of dislocation has created a culture of conformity that has been hard to change, says Carrillo.  “The people in general are very conformist when it comes to the economy. As long as they have enough to eat, they just say, “God will provide for tomorrow.”

After years of pushing, things are beginning to change, but there is a lot left to do, notes Carrillo. There are elementary and secondary schools in the neighborhood, but not a single high school for a population of 42,000 people.

In 2011, with funding from the local and state governments, Camino Verde’s built environment began to change. A program to put cement floors into people’s homes was funded by the Department of Urban Development.

Gabriela Posada del Real and her partner artist Garzón Masabó developed a project to paint homes and murals, and succeeded in painting 1000 homes in the neighborhood.  This project gave rise to the current initiative, helping to build capacity and mobilize the people to help themselves.

Under Posada del Real’s leadership, the program Convivencia Ciudadana is working to help people map and evaluate their own neighborhood.

Julia Cerrud (center) presenting the Camino Verde project at the Festival Entijuanarte at CECUT, Oct 2014

In Camino Verde, the architecture firm Amorphica and it’s non-profit branch Comunidades Emergentes (Emergent Communities) under the leadership of Julia Cerrud has worked to help organize community projects since 2013. People begin by doing surveys and making maps of their own streets. Then they identify problems in the built environment–like abandoned lot, broken street lights, or spots with no sidewalks.

Through genuine long-term commitment and engaged local participation, the program has helped build cohesion and empower community members to take actions to improve their neighborhood on their own.

Art interventions like mural painting help mobilize young people and build community pride.  When people see the neighborhood transformed, they get more involved, and the work continues.

Join us this Saturday, October 11, to learn more about these ongoing projects in Tijuana.

THIS WEEK October 11, 2104 at 7:00 PM: “Art as a Public Safety Intervention in Border Communities” by Gabriela Posada del Real, Tijuana

October 18, 2014 at 7:00 PM: “Occidente Nuevo: Recycled Tijuana” by Minnesotan photographers Laura Migliorino and Anthony Marchetti

EVENTS at ART PRODUCE GALLERY  

Located in North Park at

3139 University Ave

San Diego, CA 92116

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Historical Sources:

“Camino Verde” Red de Coaliciones Comunitarias. <http://www.coaliciones.org/camino-verde/es>

Carrillo, Alma Teresa. Personal Interview. July 4, 2014.

Hillyard, William and Guillermo Arias. “City of Castoffs” Earth Island Journal. Spring 2010. <http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/eij/article/city_of_cast_offs/>

“Noticias Estatales” El Mexicano.  June 11, 2014 <http://www.el-mexicano.com.mx/informacion/noticias/1/3/estatal/2014/06/11/761247/politica-y-politicos>

Simon, Joel. “The Last of the Caciques.” Santa Fe Reporter.  May 2, 1990. <http://www.newspapers.com/newspage/7743200/>

It is estimated that 6,627 migrants have perished on the US side of the US-Mexico border.

San Diego, CA:  On October 1, 1994, the federal government implemented Operation Gatekeeper along the California border with Mexico, as part of a larger border enforcement strategy. Gatekeeper had the intention of pushing the migrant flow away from urban areas and into less visible, but inhospitable and harsh terrain.

Today, on its 20th anniversary, the San Diego Immigrant Rights Consortium, a coalition of more than twenty San Diego-based organizations working to support immigrant rights in the County, calls on the federal government to shift away from failed enforcement strategies that exacerbate border deaths and instead prioritize its resources for life-saving measures that will prevent the loss of life along the borderlands.

Migrants attempting to enter the United States continue to make treacherous journeys crossing through mountainous and desert landscapes, where they succumb to extreme temperatures in great numbers.

Border wall cuts through the mountains near Tecate Peak in San Diego County.

Since Gatekeeper’s implementation in 1994, border deaths have increased substantially despite a drop in unauthorized border crossings.  It is estimated that 6,627 migrants have perished on the US side of the US-Mexico border, and the remains of another 1,000 migrants are unidentified, buried in pauper’s graves or waiting to be identified in overflow refrigerated rooms.

Border enforcement measures attempting to control the the flow of migrants has been costly, both in human lives and in budgetary expenses.  According to the Migration Policy Institute, well over $186 billion dollars in the past 26 years has been spent on immigration enforcement.

In spite of this, Congress and the President have failed to act on any meaningful immigration policy reform that could alleviate the lives of millions. Deportations are at record levels during President Obama’s terms, and this means that many who have died in the desert are attempting to return to their families, causing irreparable separation and harm to entire communities.

The San Diego Immigrant Rights Consortium has advocated for the placement of rescue beacons along the “corridors of death” in Arizona and elsewhere along the US-Mexico border as a life-saving measure to mitigate the needless loss of life.

The San Diego Immigrant Rights Consortium has also advocated for policies and initiatives that prioritize human rights and revitalize border communities, instead of the overwhelming emphasis on militarization that burdens the quality-of-life for border communities.

Pedro Rios, director of the American Friends Service Committee’s US-Mexico Border Program in San Diego, states:

“Operation Gatekeeper has created a human rights disaster along the border and our policymakers are silent about it.  It is a shameful legacy that represents a failure in policymaking when militarization is prioritized over human needs.  Immediate life-saving measures, such as rescue beacons, and long-term solutions, such as reforming our nation’s immigration policies, need to be made in order to avoid further tragedy along the US-Mexico borderlands.”

Rios is also an Advisory Board member of the San Diego Immigrant Rights Consortium.  For twenty years the American Friends Service Committee has spoken out against the tragic consequences that Gatekeeper has had along the US-Mexico border.

Christian Ramirez, director of the Southern Border Communities Coalition, states:

“Operation Gatekeeper signifies two decades of ill-conceived and failed and wasteful border enforcement policies that paved the way for the current out-of-control policies that have diminished the quality-of-life for an entire generation of border residents. Without doubt the real tragedy lies on our government’s willingness to purposely divert at least 7,000 men, women and children to their deaths. The border death toll must weigh heavily on our consciousness as a society. In order to preserve the most basic values of a democratic society, federal policy makers have the moral and political obligation to reverse course and end the shameful practice of using military might to address social and economic issues.”

Vicente Rodriguez, representative of the search and rescue group Aguilas del Desierto, shared this about the 20th anniversary of Gatekeeper:

“After 20 years, the results of Operation Gatekeeper are in. There are many people lamenting the loss of their brothers, sisters, widows and children, those who perished crossing the deserts to make a better life for their families. Those who sponsored and implemented Operation Gatekeeper, which led to over 7,000 migrant deaths in the United States, need to be condemned and held accountable.”

Karen Plascencia, representative of the Human Rights Council of Oceanside, and Advisory Board member for the San Diego Immigrant Rights Consortium, commented the following:

“In 1994 Operation Gatekeeper aggravated the dangers of crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. This inhumane initiative has dramatically increased the number of deaths at the border. The damages and burdens brought on by Operation Gatekeeper on migrant communities thus far cannot be repaired; but we continue to advocate, fight and hope for change and policies which would respect the rights of migrant workers.”

Healthy cities, like healthy relationships, thrive on good communication and active, engaged dialogue. Ciudad en Diálogo (City in Dialogue) is a new series by Miguel Buenrostro, director of Reactivando Espacios (Reactivating Spaces) and cultural critic and musician Juan Carlos Reyna. Like many cultural leaders in Tijuana, these two work in a style that crosses boundaries: Buenrostro produces photography and video projects, has developed new real estate ventures in downtown Tijuana, and runs a non-profit organization focused on urban development. Juan Carlos Reyna is cultural theorist, writer and composer of music who collaborates with Nortec Collective. Through conscious pairing of speakers from different disciplines, the pair hope to foster just this kind of dynamic and critical dialogue among architects, artists, and the business community in Tijuana.

Since the late 2000s, a new movement in Tijuana has developed: younger, entrepreneurial thinkers and social agents engaged in a critical reshaping of Tijuana, from the inside out.

“This new attitude toward Tijuana’s social fabric and public space has been a guiding factor in the evolution of a new urban imaginary that consists of a self critical point of view,” says Rene Peralta, Tijuana architect and urban theorist. “After decades of external signifiers that have some way or another shaped the perception of the city, certain social groups are interested in forging a new type of citizen with a critical and self-referential point of view.”

The forum will meet on the first and third Thursday of each month in the new HUB Stn, located on Av. Revolución between 6th and 7th, in the newly restored Mexicoach Bus Station building on the second floor.

THIS WEEK: Itzel Martinez del Cañizo, El Hogar al Revés, The Backwards Home (2014) and Rene Peralta, architect and urban theorist
TIME: Wednesday, July 2, 7-10 PM
LOCATION: HUB Stn, In the old Mexicoach Bus Terminal (second floor) on Av. Revolución between 6th and 7th streets
MAP: HUB Stn

The first of the series will meet on a Wednesday, and will feature filmmaker Itzel Martinez del Cañizo (Ciudad de México, 1978), director of the documentaries Triples/Trillizos (2014), Que suena la calle (2006),Ciudad Recuperación (2005) y Salón de Baile La Estrella (2000). Presently she works as Programming Director of the Documentary Film Festival Bordocs. She will present her current film El Hogar al Revés, The Backwards Home (2014).

Interviewing the filmmaker and leading the discussion will be René Peralta (Tijuana, 1968), architect, urban researcher, director of the Master’s degree program in Landscape Urbanism at Woodbury University of Architecture in San Diego, and professor in the Department of Urban Studies at UCSD. Peralta is co-author of the book Here is Tijuana! (2006). Peralta has participated in Architecture and Urbanism Biennial in Shenzhen, China among other international forums.

Martinez del Cañizo believes that City in Dialogue is a forum that is much needed in Tijuana. And, she says, she is very excited to be the first presenter invited to speak, in particular because she will be in dialogue with Peralta. “Rene Peralta has been an important reference for me from the beginning of “El Hogar al Reves,” a project that has taken a long time and has traveled down many roads to get here,” Martinez del Cañizo reflects. “I’m excited to see my work finished, and to hear from the perspective of architecture and urbanism what I have seen and felt as a filmmaker.”

El Hogar al Revés, trailer. from itzel martinez del c. on Vimeo.

Coming Next:

31 July José Jiménez Ortiz

14 August Úrsula Fuentesberain

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Ciudad en diálogo es una iniciativa de Miguel Buenrostro y Juan Carlos Reyna.

Ciudad en diálogo en un foro de debate interdisciplinario en el que serán presentados los trabajos más recientes de artistas destacados dentro y fuera de la ciudad cede. Cada primer y tercer jueves de mes un artista será entrevistado por un colega de otra disciplina con el fin de generar un debate crítico alrededor del efecto que las diferentes prácticas artísticas ejercen en la comunidad.

Próximamente en Tijuana:

31/JUL José Jiménez Ortiz

14/Ago Úrsula Fuentesberain

Boundary Monument 122 and mural in Nogales, Sonora, one half block from the spot José Antonio was shot and killed by a border patrol agent.

UPDATE: January 5, 2015   Former CBP Internal Affairs Chief describes surveillance video of the border shooting. In September 2014, Border Patrol Agent Lonnie Swartz was indicted by a federal grand jury for second-degree murder.

In an interview with Telemundo, James Tomscheck, the ousted former head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s internal affairs office, gave what is likely the first public account of the surveillance video that captured the 2012 fatal shooting of Mexican teenager Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez by a Border Patrol agent in Nogales.

In the interview with Telemundo, Tomscheck tells Diaz-Balart that after visiting the scene he concluded that “the distance from where (Elena Rodriguez) was was such that no projectile he might throw could possibly clear the border fence.”

ORIGINAL POST:

On the night of October 10, 2012, a Border Patrol agent in Nogales, Arizona fired at least 10 shots from his assault rifle at a teenager walking down the street below in Nogales, Sonora. Teenager José Antonio Elena Rodriguez was struck 10 times–hit in the head and multiple times in the chest and was killed.

The Border Patrol claimed the agent fired in self-defense after rocks were thrown at agents who were pursuing two drug smugglers. Their brief statement issued the following day notes that the agent “discharged his service weapon” and “one of the suspects appeared to have been hit.”

The Border Patrol’s account was disputed from the beginning, eye-witness accounts and the simple topography of the area reveal clear problems with the Border Patrol’s story.

Late last month, under increasing pressure from the media, the ACLU, immigrants rights groups and members of Congress, the Border Patrol released a report prepared by the Police Executive Research Forum, the agency tasked with evaluating strategy and policy of police departments nationwide. The PERF report, which reviewed 67 cases resulting in 19 deaths, found that Border Patrol agents have put themselves in harm’s way to justify use of force. In response to the report, the Border Patrol Chief Mike Fisher released a revised handbook detailing new rules on use of force for Border Patrol agents.

On August 11, 2012, two months before the shooting, I happened to be in Nogales, visiting the area for a national border conference. I spent half a day on the south side of the U.S.-Mexico border in Nogales, Sonora, taking photos of the border wall. Then I crossed the border and met my friend Scott Nicol, and we walked around and drove around Nogales, Arizona, taking photos of the border wall from the north side.

The spot where the body of 16-year-old José Antonio Elena Rodriguez was found, shot in the back with 7 bullets, was near the corner of Ingenieros and Internacional, streets that butt up against the border, in Nogales, Sonora, and I have photos of this area from both sides of the border from that day. This spot is across the street from the new bollard style border wall and a half block east of the Boundary Monument 122 pictured here.

I took the feature photo above of Boundary Monument 122 and mural from the street level on the Nogales, Sonora side, about a half block west of the corner of Ingenieros. Note the steep cliff face.

International Street in Nogales, Sonora, Mexico side, facing west. Note the watchtower overlooking the border wall in the distance on the left side of the photo.

The boy was killed about 100 yards from the watchtower in this photo. The surveillance video that was recorded that night has not been released to the public, nor to José Antonio’s family. CBP delivered the video to the FBI who are now keeping it as evidence.

I took this photo (facing west) about a block and a half east of the site. Jose Antonio’s body was found right about where the dark blue Volkswagen is parked on the far left center of the photo. As is apparent from the photos, the street here is two car lanes wide, plus an extra 10-15 feet wider because of the diagonal parking spots along the north side. The border wall is high up on the cliff above the street.

VIEW from the US SIDE OF THE BORDER in Nogales, Arizona

Scott Nicol, Co-Chair of Sierra Club Borderlands Campaign and Chair of Lower Rio Grande Valley Chapter of the Sierra Club

The spot where José Antonio was shot and killed is directly south of border and a half block east from N. Hereford Dr, on the US side. Here you see Scott and I walking on the north side of the border– near N. Hereford Dr. to take photos of the border wall, to take photos of Boundary Monument 122. I took this photo of Scott Nicol, and I was facing west looking up the hill toward the boundary monument. Notice the watchtower in the distance visible directly above Scott’s left shoulder.

Directly underneath the Border Patrol Watchtower, N. Hereford Drive, Nogales, Arizona.

This photo is taken looking west, standing directly underneath the watchtower, which can be seen on the far left edge of the photograph. At this spot, the area on the US side is flat, but directly south of the border wall in Mexico, the wall is built on the top of a sheer cliff face, as noted in the first photo of the set.

Boundary Monument 122, view from the US side looking through the gaps in the border wall. Visible below, the street corner where José Antonio was shot.

At the site of the watchtower, you can look through the bollards of the border wall and get a view of Boundary Monument 122. Looking more closely, you can see how far it is down to the street below. This view is from the US side, looking through the bollards of the border wall down below into the Internacional Street of Nogales, Sonora, Mexico.

Boundary Monument 122 is placed at the highest point along that street, between Ingenieros Street and Prof. Rodolfo Siordia Street.

Google Maps street view of the site. Border wall high up on the cliff on left side of photo.

The cliff face is extremely steep and high, and it appears highly unlikely that anyone could climb up that cliff and at the same time throw rocks. In addition, seen clearly on the Google maps, there is a watch tower at the very top, above the monument.

In light of recent reports of Border Patrol abuse of child migrants and systematic coverups on the part of the agency tasked with holding the Border Patrol accountable, it is more important than ever for the public to demand some answers.

Tijuana artist Once Cero Dos discusses the challenges of freedom of expression in public art.

Most people think they are more creative in the morning. Well, this morning Tijuana tested the theory with its second “Creative Mornings” event.

Tijuana’s second monthly Creative Mornings talk hosted 82 participants.

At 8 AM at the offices of the advertising agency Fotográfika in downtown Tijuana, the creative community of the city gathered for gourmet coffee, delicious fresh breads, fruit and yogurt, and a stimulating discussion by local artist “Once Cero Dos.” (Based on the number 1102 and pronounced in Spanish “Ohn-Say Say-Ro Dose”). This month’s theme–determined by the global organizers–was freedom.

Once Cero Dos, one of Tijuana’s most recognized and beloved urban artists shared his thoughts on the issue of freedom of expression. Once’s work is challenging to many viewers: drawing upon the “grotesque” and “monstrous,” Once works with characters and figures.

The work reveals the hidden charm and personality of society’s most invisible population, the homeless, drug addicts, prostitutes and others who live on the streets. Growing up in Tijuana, Once developed a fascination with drawing from his older brothers, and began as a young child to draw in order to express the feelings of frustration, anger, and conflict that we all experience as children. As a teenager, he would steal away to the Centro, downtown Tijuana, and sit in the plaza in front of the Cathedral of Our Lady of Guadalupe, watching the street people and drawing characters.

Boys fly kites in the empty lot below Once’s piece in the Tijuana colonia Camino Verde.

On freedom, Once admits to being “egoistic”– his drawing is a process that serves him, helps him express his emotions and work out the deeper questions of humanity. In this sense, he doesn’t paint for an audience. Leaving his works untitled, Once prefers to leave his pieces open to the interpretation of passersby.

>>>>> Check out this video by Paulina Casmur on VIMEO <<<<<

Creative Mornings Tj from Paulina Casmur on Vimeo.

>>>>>> <<<<<<<< And many have seen Once's work throughout the city. Throughout the late 2000s, Once posted hundreds of "wheatpaste" figures and murals on freeway overpasses, on side streets, in locations grand and humble. His work have become part of the visual language of the Tijuana street. [caption id="attachment_2642" align="alignright" width="300"] Collaboration between Once Cero Dos and El Norteño, on a private residence, commissioned by the home owner.[/caption]

“CreativeMornings” was started in 2008 by Tina Roth Eisenberg in New York City to bring together a community of creative people once a month for a simple breakfast and a talk. The event has grown into a worldwide phenomenon, with eighty-two cities participating from Aarhus to Zurich and representing every continent on the globe. In a kind of creative time-space compression, the organizers suggest monthly themes, and each of the 82 cities meditate and discuss the same theme each month ranging from money, food, urbanism, art + technology, sex, to this week’s theme, freedom.

Jacu Brew Bar serving its unique blend of Veracruz/Oaxacan/Guatemalan coffee.

Tijuana’s CreativeMornings enjoyed the patronage and support of a wide variety of local businesses including Pastuerizada Jersey providing yogurt, Quesos Don Carlos who offered delicious cheeses, and my personal favorite Jacu Brew Bar, who served delicious gourmet coffee to the guests.