Artist Statement

BREATHE, The 2021 exhibit at the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art

Walking meditation. Take a breath, in /out. One step at a time, Breathe. One foot in front of the other, Breathe. 2,698.9 miles to go, Breathe. There are smugglers on the road; rapists, kidnappers, gang members, people are disappearing. BE CAREFUL. Stick together. We’re safer together. God willing. We will get in.
Gracias a Dios. Respirar.

It’s October, 2018. I’m aware of the caravan coming from Northern Central America, thousands of people from Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. Trump has made it perfectly clear; he will stop them from entering the U.S. if he has to send in “15,000 troops.” It’s his big reason to vote against the Democrats in the upcoming mid-term elections, November 6th. “The Democrats are the problem,” he says in a tweet, “they want illegal immigrants to pour into, and infest our country.”

 Trump is crisscrossing the country ahead of the elections, lambasting the caravan in rallies. Up for grabs are thirty-five of the 100 seats in the U.S. Senate and all 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. “A large group of people,” he yells, “very tough criminals in that caravan – middle Easterners, MS-13, you’re going to find them there…” But a day after the elections, that’s it. His months of rants about the caravan and the Democrats are over. He’s accomplished only fear and falsehoods. The elections have turned out a big win for the Democrats and the caravan is still coming-- and the people in it are not rapists, murders, terrorists, and gang members. They are men, women, and children – the poorest and most vulnerable – families hoping to find the “American Dream” of safety, opportunity, work, and freedom from fear. They are people fleeing from poverty, violence, corruption, oppression, extortion, repression, hunger, and the effects of climate change – fleeing to save their lives.

 I’ve been in touch with Gretchen, my sister-in-law. Gretchen Kuhner is the director of IMUMI (The Institute for Women in Migration). IMUMI will set up a portable office in the stadium in Mexico City, where the members of the caravan will be offered a few days to catch their breath, recuperate, and regroup before they move on to the U.S. border. IMUMI lawyers will give people legal advice and process whoever wants to take up Mexico’s offer to grant them asylum, jobs, and housing if they will stay in Mexico. I tell Gretchen I want to be there to photograph these people when they arrive. I want to show the world that these asylum seekers are not what Trump says they are. With her help, I begin to fit the pieces of information together that I’ve learned and heard for decades, but which never was all that important to me. I want to know everything. All the gory details of history and of my country’s role in helping to create the political, economic, and social conditions these people are escaping from.

 Three weeks later, on the morning of Thursday, November 1st, Gretchen calls. She says the caravan is scheduled to arrive in Mexico City on Sunday and if I still want to photograph, I have to get to there by Saturday. 7000 people are coming. The government is already setting up huge tents, portable toilets, and 500-gallon vats of water. Dozens and dozens of non-profits, religious charities and ordinary citizens are preparing food, donating clothing, shoes, pharmaceuticals, supplies and mobile dental and eye exam units are arriving. She says I need to come now if I want to document freely before a multitude of international media and newscasters arrive. Trump has shined a light, bright and dark, on this group of people. Now, the whole world wants to know their stories. It’s the yin to his yang. Now, we’re going to see who these people really are – maybe even start to understand the tragic results of U.S. policies that have contributed to the chaos, insecurity, violence, and corruption of their countries of origin. I’m going. I take a big breath, get my plane tickets, pack, and leave.

Eli’s Story

“ I left Honduras because of poverty and crime and because I was tired of suffering. If you don’t get involved with the gangs and crime, then you and your family are threatened… I lived among poor people in broken down houses and couldn’t go to school. People were sometimes violent and I was stabbed a couple of times once. I still have the scars from that. I didn’t want to do stuff like that to survive. I didn’t want to be a lawbreaker and have the police kill me for doing things I shouldn’t do. That’s why I joined the caravan. I followed my family up here [to the U.S.] for a better life.

 I turned myself in at the point of entry in Tijuana. Because I was an unaccompanied minor, 16 years old, I was sent to an O.R.R. Shelter in Chicago (Office of Refugee Resettlement). I was in the shelter for eight months. I had a room that I shared with a roommate. There were lots of rules. They taught me about some of the customs, how to greet and be respectful. We had classes, good food, even desert. It was a good place and they treated me well.

 I was living with my family and had a lawyer in Indiana. But I left and went to Florida when Covid happened. So, I lost my lawyer. I felt threatened by a guy I met also from Honduras. He was a bad influence. He was really involved with drugs and wanted to get me involved with taking them and maybe also selling them. He threatened me and said if they deported him back to Honduras that he would harm my family in Honduras. So, I moved to Florida to get away from him.

(Eli’s lawyer has no idea what transpired to have him leave and is looking into this to see what she can do to help him.)

Flora’s Story

“One day, Ricardo, my husband and I were watching the news on the TV and all of a sudden they said that a Caravan had left for the U.S. We hadn’t decided to leave yet because it is a long and dangerous journey and no one knows what can happen. That day, we saw that the caravan had made it very far through Mexico. So, we decided on the spot that we would leave and catch up to it. We left our little daughter with my mom because I was too scared to bring her with us. I had heard that in Mexico they kidnap children. It really broke my heart but I decided to leave her behind until we could send for her. We hitch-hiked to Guatemala in a container truck. I think we traveled about a day and a half in that container. In Guatemala my husband and I got some work. He worked as a “pollero”, someone who helps people cross from Guatemala to Mexico by boat across the river, and I worked at a take-out restaurant. With the money we made, we were able to take a taxi up until getting to a highway and from there we walked and walked until we found a bus that took us closer to where the caravan was. We had to get off the bus before arriving at where the caravan was because there were police ahead. We didn’t know exactly where we were going. We slept on the street, sometimes under the rain, but we kept going until we caught up to the caravan. We travelled with them and night after night we slept in parks. We would walk from 4am in the morning until 5pm in the evening. Some people tried to get rides in trucks and cars and were killed. It was a very difficult journey.

 Once we got to Mexico City, we saw that Mexico was giving asylum to people in the Caravan. We wanted to ask for asylum but our plan was to continue on to the U.S. This was where we also met Linda. She was a great person who supported us. When we needed money or anything else she gifted it to us. We stayed there several nights. The Mexican people were really great people. They treated us very well and were very understanding of our situation. We were at a point where we didn’t know if we could bear to go on. I found out I was pregnant in Mexico City. Thank God we found Linda,  and God gave us the encouragement to go on.

 We stayed in Tijuana for a few months. We had to find work there because we didn’t have any money left. We were afraid if we both turned ourselves in they were going to send us back to Honduras. We decided I would turn myself into immigration at the border. They left me cross because I was pregnant and have a sister in the U.S. Ricardo tried to cross by foot. Immigration caught him and deported him back to Honduras. He returned and tried a second time to cross on foot in Reynosa, and was successful that time. He joined me at my sisters.

 My brother-in-law brought our daughter to the border and another person who was willing to cross with her brought her into the U.S. That person took care of her and turned her into immigration and they let her in because I was already here. But they detained her for 15 days in San Antonio, Texas and then turned her over to my custody. She was eight years old at that time. She was very brave. Before the pandemic she was in school. She liked her school and is excited to learn English. More than anything I am happy that I am reunited with my daughter. I suffered a lot along the way from the fear and concern of leaving her behind. I cried and cried so much when I had to leave her. Now she is here with me and I am so happy. All I want for the future is to be able to pay for a lawyer and fight for my daughter and family to stay here and get documentation. We both have work. I work cleaning houses and shops and he works painting houses. Right now, because of the pandemic everything is on hold so I don’t know when I will have a hearing in court. My baby boy was born in the U.S. He is one year, four months old. He is a U.S. citizen.”

(Since our interview in January 2021, Flora’s life has gotten a lot more complex. She fell in love with another man. She had never married Ricardo, the father of her baby boy, born in the US. Flora phoned me to tell me that Ricardo has gone to the authorities to turn her in for working and has kicked her out of the house with her baby and daughter. She is in need of money to get an immigration lawyer. My contacts in Mexico say that she is in better shape than Ricardo, since she is documented, but he is not. We have referred her to services in her city for immigrant women who are experiencing domestic violence and homelessness. Funds to help Flora can be transferred through me to her.)

All photos on this page are not the images of the people in these stories