Thread: Immigrants honored for Day of the Dead at Mexican museum

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Immigrants honored
Chicago pupils use Day of the Dead exhibition at Pilsen art museum to recall Mexicans who died while coming to U.S.

By Oscar Avila
Tribune staff reporter
Published September 22, 2006


Sixth-grader Alexis Salgado broke out the popsicle sticks and clay to craft skeletons around a homemade altar for the Day of the Dead, a Mexican holiday that remembers deceased loved ones.

But those child's tools are tackling a grown-up subject --illegal immigration--in an elaborate Pilsen museum display that has a political edge.


In an exhibit opening Friday evening, the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum is using the popular folk holiday to honor the hundreds who die crossing into the United States from Mexico each year.

Day of the Dead shrines can range from sad to spooky to funny, often mixing current events with the age-old themes of death, the afterlife and remembrance. But this is the first time in 20 years the museum will devote an entire wing to political works, reflecting a year in which illegal immigration has become a national flashpoint.

Around their altar, the pupils from Talcott Fine Arts and Museum Academy poured sand and deposited suitcases symbolizing the immigrant's journey. They hung dozens of empty plastic water jugs that look like warrior's masks. In front, they strung up a small chain-link fence.

The Talcott pupils and their parents see the dangers of border crossings as both personal and political. From the vice principal to new mothers, nearly all know loved ones who have made harrowing journeys.

The U.S. government reports that a record 472 Mexicans died in fiscal 2005 shortly after crossing into the country. Cristina Salgado, Alexis' mother, said Chicagoans can no longer look the other way.

Salgado said her brother-in-law nearly died after being bitten by an animal and suffering an infection in the desert. He lives in the Chicago area.

"All of us who came here did it with the idea of living the American dream," said Salgado, who came to the U.S. with a visa. "Some of our people didn't succeed. We have to remember them."



Not morbid

The art display is a new twist on the Day of the Dead, which combines pre-Hispanic traditions with Catholic rituals and is celebrated Nov. 1 and 2. The feast day is celebrated Nov. 1, All Saints' Day for Catholics.

In homes throughout the Chicago area and Mexico, altars feature the favorite foods and music of the deceased to reinforce the idea that the dead are still present, and welcome, in their homes. Families don't view the day as morbid but as a chance to celebrate life.

Cesareo Moreno, the exhibition's co-curator, said the museum's Day of the Dead exhibits typically focus on folk art, with only the occasional contemporary political work. He said this year's broader political flavor reflects the intensity of the immigration debate.

"Artists are always responding to the world. Naturally, this topic is going to become a source of inspiration. It's on everybody's mind these days," Moreno said.

One of the pieces, "Axis Mundi," is a woodblock print created by a Tijuana artist that mixes aerial photographs, maps and sketched skeletons in various states of war. The title comes from a Latin phrase that describes the mystical concept of the center of the Earth.

Another work, "Run, Jane, Run," is a cotton weaving that incorporates a yellow caution sign found in many U.S. border states. The sign shows a family fleeing, hand in hand, as a warning to motorists that illegal immigrants might be crossing freeways to get to safety.

"I thought things would get better as time went on, but the border is only getting worse," weaver Consuelo Underwood said. "There are dead dogs on the highway and now we're one of them. We need to get in people's faces and make them see it."

But the Talcott project has taken on a life of its own.

Families sliced milk jugs in half and hung them to represent the water that immigrants carry through the desert. The jugs also invoke the columns of skulls common in Aztec times, Moreno said.

The pupils sprinkled fake monarch butterflies on the sand and the jugs. Monarchs freely migrate between the United States and the Mexican state of Michoacan each year, and in the shrine, they are meant to represent the spirits of deceased immigrants returning home.

This is poetry. It's social justice. It's political. Metaphorically, this is just beautiful," Moreno said.



Gripping stories



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Lilli Reyes, a 3rd-grade teacher, said she didn't realize how much these stories resonated until pupils wrote about how they arrived in the U.S. Several Mexican pupils had gripping tales of illegal crossings.

"This one fell in the sand. This one got hurt. This one was in a trunk," Reyes said. "It was shocking to read."

Even Vice Principal Sonia Mercado has her own story of crossing the border illegally at age 11. Her father crossed separately in a tractor-trailer so packed that riders passed out. All in the family made it and Mercado is now a U.S. citizen.

The thread runs through many families, making it easy to recruit dozens of parent volunteers to work on the exhibit. Mercado hopes the art project will boost parent participation, a key to strong academic achievement.

Teachers also will use the museum display to explore the crossings in the Arizona desert to teach geography and science.

Alexis didn't know much about the border deaths until his classes.

As he packed up his supplies at the museum Tuesday, he hoped visitors took away lessons too.

"I hope they learn that people suffer coming here," he said, "and they should be grateful that they are here already."

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oavila@tribune.com

The Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum's 20th annual Day of the Dead exhibition, "Rooted in Tradition," opens Friday with an event at 6 p.m. The exhibition runs through Dec. 10 at the museum, 1852 W. 19th St. More information is available at www.mfacm.org.


http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/loca ... slocal-hed

"I hope they learn that people suffer coming here," he said, "and they should be grateful that they are here already."

People have always suffered and died to get here. That's why legal citizenship is so valued. The last part of the statement I don't quite get. It's as if "we" should be grateful they are here. No...you should be grateful you are here and for legal immigrants....they are. Maybe I'm reading this wrong but seems the gratitude is a bit backwards.

Absolutely CB. They are trying to make lawbreakers out to be some sort of heroes or even martyrs.

"I hope they learn that people suffer coming here," he said, "and they should be grateful that they are here already."

You want to talk about suffering? How about the millions of dead soldiers and patriots who suffered throuhout the years to protect our way of life and America. They certainly didn't suffer so you can make a mockery of it!