PICTURES OF PAIN Mex. border mural for the tragically deported
TIJUANA, Mexico — Lizbeth De La Cruz Santana returned Friday to the Mexican beach where her father entered the U.S. illegally before she was born, this time to put final touches on a mural of adults who came to the U.S. illegally as children and were deported.
Visitors who hold up their smartphones to the painted faces are taken to a website that voices first-person narratives.
There is a deported U.S. veteran. There are two deported mothers with children born in the U.S. There is a man who would have been eligible for an Obama-era program to shield people who came to the U.S. when they were very young from deportation, but was deported less than a year before it took effect in 2012.
The project blends Mexico’s rich history of muralists with what can loosely be called interactive or performance art on the 1,954mile U.S.-Mexico border.
De La Cruz Santana, 28, conceived the interactive mural as part of a doctoral dissertation at University of California at Davis.
“Technology is one of the best ways and venues for people to tell their stories,” said De La Cruz, whose parents obtained legal status through former President Ronald Reagan’s amnesty law.
With a $7,500 grant, De La Cruz, who was born and raised in California, directed about 15 people who painted on polyester canvass at a Tijuana art gallery. She partnered with Mauro Carrera, a longtime friend and a muralist who lives in Fresno, Calif.
Last year, many Central Americans in a large caravan of asylum seekers gravitated to the beach, which is downhill from a light tower, bull ring and restaurants.
De La Cruz Santana is struck by the lively atmosphere on the Mexican side and quiet in the U.S.
“If you look past this wall on the U.S. side, there’s nothing,” she said. “I wanted to erase the border.”