MURAL INVIERNO 2019
MURAL MURAL is a trilingual publication at the University of Chicago that seeks to embrace and celebrate Latin American perspectives through written and visual arts in our magazine. Throughout the year, we host and collaborate with organizations on campus to bring diverse cultural events and programing, including open mics and art fairs. We seek to create artistic avenues that break from the normative use of language and explore the dynamism of latinidad. MURAL is looking for writers, artists, editors, translators, designers. Send us an email at muralzine@gmail.com if you would like more information. And of course, we are seeking readers to continue to share in and support the work of MURAL and our community. Enjoy! MURAL es una publicación trilingüe en la Universidad de Chicago que busca celebrar perspectivas latinoamericanas a través de las artes escritas y visuales en nuestra revista. Organizamos y colaboramos con organizaciones para traer diversos eventos culturales y programación como open mics y ferias de arte. Creamos vías artísticas que rompen con el uso normativo del lenguaje y que exploran el dinamismo de latinidad. MURAL busca escritores, artistas, editores, traductores, diseñadores. Escribenos a muralzine@gmail.com para obtener más información. Y por supuesto, buscamos lectores que continúen compartiendo y apoyando el trabajo de MURAL y nuestra comunidad. ¡Disfruten! MURAL é uma publicação trilíngue da Universidade de Chicago que busca celebrar perspectivas latino-americanas através das artes escritas e visuais em nossa revista. Organizamos e colaboramos com organizações para trazer diversos eventos culturais e programações como open mics e feiras de arte. Criamos vias artísticas que rompem com o uso normativo da língua e que exploram o dinamismo da latinidade. Mural procura escritores, artistas, editores, tradutores, e desenhistas. Se quiser mais informações, escreva para muralzine@gmail.com. E estamos sempre procurando leitores que continuem a compartilhar e apoiar o trabalho de MURAL e da nossa comunidade. Aproveitem!
Editorial Board and Staff Editor in Chief Romina Vargas Bezzubikoff Managing Editor Roman Ruiz Layout Manager Kristen Izquierdo Translations Manager Stephanie Alejandra Ortega Media Manager Kathia Rodríguez Treasurer Alina Gutiérrez Community Coordinator Emilio Balderas Secretary Adrián Morquecho Staff Silvia Diaz Yesenia Almazan
contenido borders Diaspora in Continental Drift Reema Saleh Es decir Ayling Zulema Dominguez Existing in the in-between Hannia Frias Pรกjaro enjaulado Roman Ruiz On a bench across an art museum at 4 PM... Dayan Vizoso Sister Cities Ayling Zulema Dominguez Ay linda Romina Vargas Bezzubikoff Una frontera sin forma Roman Ruiz Sunday Peace Reema Saleh
I Don't Even Speak Spanish Christina Ford Los papeles Adriรกn Morquecho
a r t e v i s u a l
y
f o t o g r a f i a s*
Ayling Zulema Dominguez Emilio Balderas Kristen Izquierdo
*These are distributed throughout the issue
agradecimientos
borders
San Jose del Pacifico Emilio Balderas
Diaspora in Continental Drift Reema Saleh you can build borders without stones across land & sea, two halves drift apart divergent boundaries from continental split leave molten misery & boiling blues in the space that parts your lips when you can't recognize your mother tongue too foreign for here, too foreign for home here in your own benign demilitarized zone a waiting room where you sit & they fight over custody between where you’re from & where you’re “really” from & why you’ll never be from either but still wondering which will stake its claim diaspora is thinking you're blessed enough to change things & a debt whose interest will always outweigh the stitching in your pockets that you're convinced you can repay (along with other lies your mother taught you to tell yourself) diaspora is community holding hands in the whitest counties of their new homes & visa applications left in limbo diaspora is your aunts reconciling after decades forced apart & your grandfather's face falling when he realizes, generation after generation being strangers in a strange land, will leave them lulled by a rhythm of assimilation Into grandchildren and great-grandchildren with names he recognizes but lives he does not diaspora is ill-timed WhatsApp calls & cash transfers to dubious places & your body rejecting food the first time you visit your father's hometown diaspora is being your family's only "American” & knowing there are hundreds upon thousands of here-born souls like you diaspora is constantly revisited asylum accounts to justify why your parents left & ties between strangers with the same pattern of consonants in their names an identity forged between fragments of what was abandoned & left behind & what came of choices that were never yours a wall built across your grandfather's back is constantly repaired, repolished, rebuilt, reclaimed a mosaic patchwork of disparate identities is graffitied on clean stones plants grow in the stony ground beneath the skin, they say when you come to imaginary nations they all contradict & keep you second-gen.
Es decir Ayling Zulema Dominguez To be born to a family who defies borders is to be at once blessed and distressed to maneuver the maíz maze of identity and State-imposed hurdles and restrictions on your barrio and community to have hotdogs for lunch and pozole for dinner to have the privilege of refunfuñar when your mamá says (teléfono en mano, rolos in hair, and bata de casa puesta) “aquí esta! ay te la pongo!”
Untitled Emilio Balderas
Existing in the in-between Hannia Frias Mexican-American is a complicated identity. In the United States, it is at least understood, if not accepted. In Mexico, it’s understood as a different way of being Mexican, subtly different, but paisa nonetheless. The proximity of pure American and pure Mexican to each other means that there is a way to understand their intersection. This means that if you are a Mexican-American in the United States, you know that people will understand you (even if on a superficial level) and have concrete opinions about your existence. This gets exhausting, and I got exhausted of the discourse and having to justify my existence. I was tired… of going to a majority white, majority upper-class university, and constantly seeing people who didn’t look like me having very resolute opinions about people like me. I was graduating, and I was done with it. This made me decide to pack up and get the fuck out. I was going to live in Australia for a year. It was partially a way to avoid making Adult Decisions, and a way to chase optimistic notions of a sunny paradise where no one was in a hurry, and everyone was too isolated from the rest of the world to care about people’s differences. What can I say. Naïveté is naïveté. This was not what I found. Turns out, the parts of Australia that aren’t the remote Outback have seasons that are just as inhospitable as frigid Chicago. From humid Tasmania, to torrential rains in Cairns, I settled in Melbourne, the city that gets four season in one day; a city that reminded me so much of Chicago it hurt. I decided I’d had enough of UChicago’s elitism, and got a job as a waitress (because my degree doesn’t mean I’m above any job, come on). Well, let me tell you that there’s no better way to learn about a place than by learning about its people, and for 60-plus hours a week, all I did was talk to people. This is where I discovered, that unlike all of my life up to that point, I’d landed in a place that didn’t understand me. Sure, I’d traveled before, but traveling is different from living. When traveling, people will ask you where you’re from, and you can either tell the truth or lie and people will not question you; they’ve no reason to. They know you’re never going to see each other again. When you live someplace, this is all complicated. You have a job, an apartment, people you have to see more than once. Furthermore, as I quickly learned, when you work as a waitress, people will quickly start to think that aside from a smile and prompt service, you owe them your whole life story. If you work in a nicer restaurant, as I did, you can’t refuse your story. The thing about White Australia is that they think they’re not racist. They think that writing that they “acknowledge the original owners of the land” on official
documents means they’ve paid their reparations to the Aboriginals. They think that they don’t have any prejudices, all the while forgetting that their country is overwhelmingly white. Their version of being open-minded comes in the form of a white woman whispering to me that she misses the year she lived in Canada because she “misses the blacks and ethnic people”. It comes in the form of a coworker jokingly asking me if I was “illegal” when I told him my family is Mexican. The racism happens every day at work that someone asks me where I’m from. “The United States”, I usually answer. Sometimes it’s just “Chicago”, depending on my mood. “I know that, but what’s your background?” “What’s your ethnicity?” Nine times out of ten, that is the question that follows. The existence of this follow-up question means that the original question wasn’t “where are you from?” so much as it was “Why aren’t you white?”. British coworkers do not get asked, American coworkers do not get asked; I am expected to provide my life story multiple times a day to any random person who asks. Beyond that, upon mentioning that I was born in Mexico, my whole life in the United States is instantly discounted. “I would’ve thought you were Colombian/ Venezuelan/Argentinian/Cuban/etc.” They smile, trying to speak some bootleg Spanish phrases they’ve heard, telling me about how they know so-and-so who is from Mexico, or how beautiful Mexico is. They loved their vacation there, they say as they drink their overpriced wine. Mexico is a beautiful country. It just is not where I am from, not really. I wish it was. Then it wouldn’t feel like lying when one of the incessant question askers has a Mexican friend with them, and I have no way to comfortably say that our experiences with the Mexican identity are very different. Not only did I spend the vast majority of my life in the United States, most of that was spent in the American South, where that Mexican identity was looked down upon, reviled and mistrusted. I spent 17 years of my life trying to be more American to fit in and it worked. Now I was in a place that heard me identify as an American and that promptly decided not to care what I thought I was. “You’re American?” they said, “No, where are you REALLY from?” It’s not that they mean any harm, necessarily. It’s just that Australia and by extension, Australians, are pretty sheltered. It’s a country/continent in the middle of the ocean that managed to destroy most of its native inhabitants with some colonialism and has done the bare minimum to atone for it. It’s not that they have any problem with Mexican-Americans, it’s just that there aren’t any. A country that cannot manage to pinpoint how it feels about its own colonialism cannot be expected to understand an identity that is the byproduct of colonialism somewhere else. When they ask where I’m really from, what they’re really saying is that in their mind, “American” means White, just as I’m sure they think “Australian” means white. But let’s face it; it’s not as if American media does a good job of showing non-white Americans either. How can we blame this country in the middle of nowhere for not understanding that people can be
from two places at once? Oddly enough, this experience brought me closer to Americans. I had left the United States because I wanted to escape American politics and racism and felt suffocated by the inability to effect meaningful change. I arrived here and found that many of the Americans here felt the same way; by nature of familiarity and shared traumas, I was able to connect on a deeper level with some of these Americans than anyone else. It’s curious to come from a country where you can get shot anywhere, where you struggle to survive while working full-time and suddenly land in a place where these problems either don’t exist, or exist in a much smaller capacity. This experience is a shared experience, a place to come together as much as it is a shared trauma. Sure, it makes Americans paranoid, but it also means we understand each other. As much as I understand the impulse to get out and not look back, I’ve tried that, and it wasn’t for me. Sure, it was nice to walk down the street late at night feeling infinitely safer than I ever did in Chicago but I also felt a bit selfish. It is an indelible truth that the majority of Americans do not have that option. Most people do not have the option to move to a different country when it starts to get rough and too many of the people who have left forget that too easily. I wish we didn’t have to worry about mass shootings, and the wage gap, and income inequality, and the ice caps melting, and increased warfare because of global warming, and the rise of right-wing fascist ideologies. I wish that wasn’t the reality we live in, but it is. I went to Australia thinking there was some way to escape some of these things, if only for a while, but inequalities and microaggressions will follow you to the opposite end of the Earth. I left the United States wanting to get out, but there is no “out”, only through. I am coming back. I am coming back because I have not given up on the ability of good people to break down these issues. It isn’t anyone’s job to stay and fight, but if all the capable people leave the country, then all America will have left is the ideologue nuts and I have not given up. I’ve decided I would rather fight to break down barriers in an America that won’t respect my identity than live somewhere that has decided my identity doesn’t exist.
Untitled Kristen Izquierdo
La alambrada de flores Kristen Izquierdo
Pájaro enjaulado Roman Ruiz Pájaros enjaulados, ¿Cómo llegasteis detrás de esas rejas metálicas? ¿Cómo se han entiesado vuestras alas? En mirarlas, me pregunto ¿Adónde os han llevado? Cantadme de aquellos sitios. Cantadme de los caminos a donde os han guiado. Cantadme la canción de los viajes. Cantadme la canción de las historias. Cantadme la canción de la alegría. De la exuberancia. De la juventud. De la oportunidad. De los sueños. Cantádmelos. Cantadme la canción de la libertad. Pero lástima; no lo podéis. Porque estáis enjaulados. Y ahora, se han silenciado esas canciones. En verdad, no hay pájaro que se siente correcto en una jaula, ¿cierto? Quizá porque en allí no pertenece. Quizá porque ningún pájaro desea enjaularse. Estar en vuelo es ser, Pero no es así cómo os quieren, ¿cierto? No quieren que seáis pájaros. Porque nunca os creían pájaros en primer lugar. Ahora estáis, El mundo siguiendo revolviendo, Dejándoos atrás. Viendo, percibiendo, sintiendo, Inmóviles, impotentes, inciertos. Que clase de existir. Cesáis de ser, justo lo que pretendían. Ahora, En vuestras jaulas, Cantadme vuestras tragedias Cantadme de cómo os sentís Con la libertad a la vista, Pero por siempre fuera del alcance.
On a bench across an art museum at 4 PM... Dayan Vizoso It feels so good to have the sun Stare at you in winter; as if it didn’t Intend to; as if its glare was a Mistake, and it confused which Days to shine. It feels so good to feel the warm Spark of a summer’s ray of sunlight, yet All the while your skin is scattered with Bumps that come with wild and Frigid winds that winter ushered in. And bask in light as the corona Shines above you and illuminates the Mangle of a canopy whose leaves Fell long ago and scattered far Away from here. And stare at stone-cold bricks that House the colors of love—the colors That the solitary paint with—the colors That sing solidarity and cry—the colors Of those doomed yet clinging on survive. But close your eyes once again to Find yourself in songless days, where Clouds descend to stall the hours and Stall your thoughts and maybe – if you’re Lucky – stall your breath. It feels so good to have the sun Stare at you in winter, as if you Called it here; as if it listens to a Whisper of a dream – so you can learn That as it sets and hides, you can call it again.
Still Waters Kristen Izquierdo
Padre nuestro que estรกs en el cielo,
Sister Cities Ayling Zulema Dominguez
santificado sea tu Nombre;
venga a nosotros tu Reino;
hรกgase tu voluntad
En la tierra
como en el cielo.
*all photos were taken in the sister cities of Nogales, Arizona and Nogales, Sonora, MĂŠxico.
Ay linda Romina Vargas Bezzubikoff ay linda por quĂŠ has alzado esta pared entre nosotras pared tan transparente que me choco cada vez que intento acercarme
Un frontera sin forma Roman Ruiz Las fronteras se conciben comúnmente como demarcaciones oficiales que indican los límites de la jurisdicción de un estado soberano. Son simbólicas; aún en la ausencia de estructuras físicas, estas líneas, ya sean visibles solamente en un mapa, tienen una presencia, casi engendrando para nosotros una forma física. Sin embargo, las fronteras existen en formas mucho más diversas que esta de delineaciones entre estados modernos. De hecho, las fronteras son, a grandes rasgos, fines––sirven para distinguir, apartar, y categorizar. Las fronteras hacen aparentes los límites del ser; establecen lo que es y lo que no es; lo incluido y lo excluido; el uno y el otro. Esto, y la observación precedente en que prestamos legitimidad al concepto de las fronteras, aun sean espacialmente inexistentes, son los puntos en los cuales me quiero centrar. Las percepciones acerca de las fronteras tienen a menudo una influencia muy real y tangible sobre nuestras perspectivas del mundo; quizá esto sea debido al absolutismo que apoyan las fronteras. En el concepto de la frontera, hay poco espacio para el solapo; o una entidad está dentro los límites de la frontera o está fuera de tales. Quisiera hablar acerca de mis experiencias con las fronteras, pero no en cuanto a las líneas formales y oficializadas que definen el reino de la soberanía en la construcción de la nación, sino en cuanto a una forma de frontera que es imprescindible en nuestro estudio de las realidades sociales: las fronteras, sistémicas o percibidas, en la movilidad social, la pertenencia y la accesibilidad. Desde que nací, he crecido en el Lado Sur de Chicago. Durante mi vida entera he sido estudiante de las Escuelas Públicas de Chicago. Soy hijo de un padre camionero y de una madre cosmetóloga y ama de casa. En la prepa, me creía sin límites. Aunque retrospectivamente, mi escuela primaria fue pobre, infradotada y sin suficiente personal, nunca lo supe. Crecí en un barrio cuestionable, pero siempre lo ignoraba; mis padres me habían mantenido ignorante de las condiciones en las que vivíamos durante mis primeros años en la escuela para que mis hermanos y yo no nos preocupáramos de nada aparte del aprendizaje. Desafortunadamente, muchos de mis compañeros fueron introducidos a las realidades de la vida en las zonas marginales desde una edad temprana. Mientras que a mí me encantaba leer, aprender del mundo y soñar con verlo todo, muchos de mis compañeros, ya desde el sexto grado, se estaban resignando a su ambiente. Yo tenía el privilegio de tener padres que se esforzaban resueltamente por asegurar que yo siguiera mirando adelante, hacia al futuro, pero muchos de mis compañeros tenían que confrontarse con problemas que les forzaban fijar la vista en su presente y nada más. Para ellos, una frontera existía y aunque no era física, era igual de potente que las estructuras de cemento; fueron los obstáculos de la vida en un ambiente de crimen, pobreza e inaccesibilidad a recursos necesarios. Somos a la vez productos de nuestro ambiente y actantes en el mismo;
nuestras lógicas, nuestro modo de pensar y de razonar, se informan y se manifestan por las experiencias vividas. Es fácil decir que “nuestras predisposiciones y actitudes tienen que cambiarse,” pero esta conclusión falla en considerar que aún si fuera así de fácil, las realidades percibidas, las experiencias y estructuras que forman esas percepciones, tienen una influencia mucho más palpable en las actitudes y los comportamientos de la gente que cualquier ‘realidad objetiva.’ Las fronteras abstractas no terminan allí. Aunque yo fui privilegiado comparado con muchos de mis compañeros, yo también he percibido una frontera imaginaria entre mí y las oportunidades que se me han concedido, especialmente en los tiempos antes de y durante mis primeros años en la Universidad de Chicago. Aun cuando me di cuenta de que fui aceptado a la Universidad, y aun cuando decidí matricularme, algo en mi interior me decía que fue un error. No entendía por qué, pero estaba convencido que no podía ir a la Universidad, que no era para mí, que no era para las personas como yo. En mis primeros meses en la Universidad, me sentí como un fraude, alguien que no pertenecía en un ambiente tan intelectual. Percibí una frontera invisible entre mí y mis compañeros que impedía que yo alcanzara “su nivel.” Creía que ellos tenían un cierto algo que no tenía yo, que ellos tenían oportunidades y recursos que los preparaban para su destino en la Universidad y que todos los esfuerzos que yo hice en mi vida para llevarme a este punto no podían reunir las demandas de la Universidad. Sentí que aun después de superar los obstáculos del pasado, tomando cada oportunidad para mejorarme y avanzar, todavía no era suficiente para que yo fuera digno de estudiar en una universidad tan prestigiosa. Tomó mucho para salir de ese modo de pensar. Aunque ahora me he asegurado más de mi pertenencia en esta institución de aprendizaje y de erudición, a veces sigo esforzándome para superar sentimientos de incompetencia e insuficiencia, y dejar de ver esa frontera invisible.
Untitled Paula Carcamo
Love in the Shadows Kristen Izquierdo
Sunday Peace Reema Saleh Sundays are days of peace for her. On lazy summer mornings, she found that her kids had already tired themselves out the night before and wouldn’t make any more noise until half-past nine if she was lucky. Her husband had collapsed on the coffee-stained couch a few hours ago and his work boots stuck off the worn-down arms. She was master of the house on Sundays. Each morning, she’d find herself waking with the sun’s rise and inching herself out of her bed covers to bring order to the house. By the time she made some progress, the kitchen stank of peeled tomatoes, clean laundry spilled into the hall, and the sun breached past the cracks of the blinds and burned her where her skin felt dry. She glanced at the clock and yelled for her two children – a skittish little girl that still clung to her arm in crowded streets and a tall, gangly boy still growing into his limbs and attitude – to get dressed for church. After three calls and a minor fit of screaming, they lumbered into the kitchen in clean dress clothes, and she wiped her hands on a towel and walked them down the street. This Sunday as she sat in the church pew, she found herself distracted. She began fidgeting her hand and picking the skin around her fingernails as soon as the preacher mentioned that they were starting a collection for the family of the man down the street – the man whose luck ran out after driving without a license and found himself sent to the other side of the border. She dreaded the day her son would come home and ask questions – at what hospital? do you remember the nurse’s name? where is it so I can photocopy it for school? – all questions that had answers, but none that he’d want to hear. Sometimes, she’d wake up in the middle of the night, sick with sweat clotting by her sheets because she’d dreamt him mouthing off to an officer and not realizing he didn’t have that one piece of paper – like the one sitting for his younger sister in the back of her closet next to all the papers that had the audacity to say she belonged. When she came home, she pieced through photograph after photograph that she kept there as well, gingerly touching the faded images and placing them one by one on the frayed rug. “All pictures of you look sad,” her children always say. “Why are you always frowning?” She picked one from each of the scattered patches, and she would wonder when she’d see the elderly looking man smiling in a sea of his own daughters and holding himself up by his cane, the older boy who never smiled for a camera but still had the laugh lines to show for it, the woman who’d disappeared long before she could remember her but still stand above them all as guardian, savior, and beacon in the crowd. If she wanted, she could walk into her son’s room, pick up the atlas he begged for last Christmas,
and trace the miles that kept them apart with her finger, but she’d rather close her eyes and imagine them sitting in her living room, one where she finally managed to keep out the thin layer of dust that coated everything and she could make everything perfect. Her older brother and sisters scattered away from each other years ago, but she can’t help but wonder when she can force them to be in the same room together. Maybe they’d meet their niece and nephew, maybe they’d call every day, or maybe they could figure out how to help each other from miles apart. She breathed in sharply and wondered when she’ll start forgetting them. When she sat her daughter in her lap and her son lay on the rug, she found that she could not name stories, dates, years, who took this photo and where. It would strike her with fear and come at her from all sides, but there was nothing she could do to fight the passage of time. Then the kettle would whistle from the kitchen and demand her attention. The breeze stopped drifting like dead air, and her children grabbed her attention again. She knew there were no answers but standing still is impossible. She’ll remember the wrinkles of her father’s smile that went unmarred by the aging photograph, the smell of coffee drifting around her childhood home, and her older brother’s hand resting on her shoulder, but someday little else. The details will fade, but for now, she can still trace the shape they’ve made.
I Don’t Even Speak Spanish Christina Ford ¿Dónde está la biblioteca?1 That’s all I can say; I’m embarazada2. Maybe if I read my notes I would know That I shouldn’t describe my brain as largo3. My knowledge of Spanish is abismal4 I don’t know any of these words en actual5. See, one day I fell en mi carpeta6 And I sustained quite the injuria7. I told the doctor el cuento bizarro8, About how I tripped on a domino. He didn’t know what I was trying to say And asked me if I was sensible9 To which I respond of course I’m practical. But of course my Spanish was laughable.
Where is the library? Looks like embarrassed. Spanish for pregnant. 3 Looks like large. Spanish for long. ⁴ Looks like abysmal. Spanish for enormous. ⁵ Looks like in actual. Spanish for in current (not grammatically correct). ⁶ Looks like on my carpet. Spanish for in my folder. ⁷ Looks like injury. Spanish for insult. ⁸ Looks like bizarre story. Spanish for brave story. ⁹ Looks like sensible. Spanish for sensitive. 1 2
Los papeles Adrian Morquecho “ya soy legal! ya soy americano!” En un caluroso día de verano, pude oír los pequeños sonidos de pura felicidad que salían de mi teléfono. Era mi padre, finalmente aliviado por haber recibido su tarjeta de residente permanente de su abogado veinte años después de haber llegado a los Estados Unidos en busca del sueño americano. En esos veinte años, él ha ayudado a construir rascacielos y hogares para familias y él ha remodelado mi vida y la vida de mi hermana, llevándonos de la miseria al éxito. Me sentí tan feliz como él cuando oí esta gran noticia, pero luego, sentí una fuerte tristeza. Al mirar la gran imagen de la tarjeta verde que mi padre me envió, empecé a sentir resentimiento por nuestro gran gobierno estadounidense. Antes de hoy, mi padre había sido discriminado debido al hecho de que no tenía esta tarjeta turquesa de 8 por 5 en su poder. En lugar de esta tarjeta, él ha sido propietario de las cicatrices que adquirió al cruzar la frontera y al sacrificarlo todo por trabajar en los Estados Unidos por un futuro mejor. Sin embargo, para sus empleadores y para el gobierno, eso simplemente no es suficiente. Sin esta tarjeta, el gobierno veía a mi padre inmigrante como infrahumano, como simplemente otro inmigrante perezoso que merece que le paguen menos por su trabajo. Como simplemente otro despiadado violador de reglas que merece vivir cada hora del día temiendo que ICE llegue a su puerta y le separe de sus hijos. Aun así estoy feliz por mi padre. Estoy feliz de que finalmente pueda subirse a un avión y visitarme en Chicago sin temor que ICE lo detenga en el aeropuerto. Me alegra que pueda regresar a Ecuador y casarse sin tener que recibir una prohibición de regreso de diez años del gobierno estadounidense. Estoy feliz de que él pueda aprovechar los beneficios del gobierno que se merece después de haber trabajado tan duro durante las últimas dos décadas. Estoy tan feliz de que finalmente pueda relajarse y vivir fuera de las sombras, sin miedo. Pero me doy cuenta de que a partir de hoy, hablo desde un punto de vista privilegiado. Aunque mi padre ya no corra el riesgo de ser deportado, hay miles de inmigrantes y sus hijos en Estados Unidos que aún corren ese riesgo. Hasta que ICE sea abolido y hasta que el gobierno de los Estados Unidos se dé cuenta de que 1) las fronteras son una construcción social creada para oprimir a los pueblos nativos y a inmigrantes que huyen de sus países por razones económicas, políticas o sociales y que 2) los inmigrantes y sus hijos son humanos y no merece un "castigo cruel e inusual" por simplemente existir, personas como mi padre
seguirán viviendo en las sombras. ¿Cómo puede el gobierno esperar que su gente sea patriótica cuando oprime a las personas de color a diario y las considera menos que humanas?
agradecimientos
thank you, to the the Center for Identity + Inclusion, the Center for Latin American Studies, the Katz Center for Mexican Studies, the Organization of Latin American Students, and the Romance Languages and Literatures Department for supporting and believing in this publication to the editorial board for the hard work, enthusiasm, and commitment and to you, for reading!
Interested in getting involved? EscrĂbenos a muralzine@gmail.com 2018-2019 meetings: Wednesdays 6:00PM Harper 135