Transcript

Mónika  00:07 Welcome to Our Latina Lens Podcast where we elevate the work and stories of Latina and Latina photographers in the US. Last episode we heard from Mabel Jiménez, a photo journalist whose career has been focusing on documenting the stories of the people of the Mission neighborhood in San Francisco. She now mentors visual journalists at community media outlets throughout California through her work at CatchLight. If you haven’t heard it yet, make sure to go back to episode two, and listen to her story.

Mónika  00:39 Today’s episode is a little bit different. Each of the photographers that I interview will also be taking us behind the scenes to their experience and the context of their most significant images. If you want to see the images that we’re talking about today. Go ahead and click on the link in your show notes and it’ll take you to our website or go to ourlatinalens.com. The images will be included in the descriptions for each episode. Mabel’s first image is about transition and loss. She photographed the farewell celebration and removal of a beloved community mural in the Mission neighborhood. And she shares some of the economic and social forces that brought this moment and to be and how the community reacted.

Mabel Jiménez  01:28  When I first moved to San Francisco, and I stumbled upon the Mission, I really felt at home. This is a little Mexico neighborhood, it has the best food, best weather in the city, no contest. It’s got a really vibrant art scene, activism scene, poetry, like there’s just so much exciting stuff that happens specifically in the Mission District. But because it’s such a cool place, a lot of people want to be there. A lot of people from the tech industry really happen to like our neighborhood and our newer neighbors have the unintended consequence of raising property values. Which can sound good if you’re a homeowner. But it also has a gentrifying effect, right? Where slowly the people that have grown up in the Mission that used to be one of the working class neighborhoods in the city has become one of the most you know, unaffordable.

Mabel Jiménez  02:39 We’re looking at this wall. So it’s a public facing mural. The mural itself consists of different characters. Some of them are historical characters. And then some of them are kind of like local figures. Each figure each person is kind of has like their individual portrait. And it’s almost like you took photos of different people and then you took those photos and you kind of spread them out on a table like a deck of cards, like a deck of photos of different folks. And so you have Frida Kahlo somewhere you have Cesar Chavez, you have Nelson Mandela. But then you also have like all these local folks, you have like a trio of mariachis that used to play in the Bay Area, you know, in the 60s and 70s. And you have people that started institutions in the mission with all these figures, and there’s a line of Aztec dancers, danzantes, and one of them has a group of feathers in his hand, like a bouquet almost, or a fan made of feathers. And he’s touching kind of caressing the wall with these feathers, specifically on the part of the wall that displays Frida Kahlo’s face. So it’s kind of like he’s giving her a soft caress on the cheek. And what’s happening here is that the community is saying goodbye to this mural, this mural has existed since 1985.

Mabel Jiménez  04:14  So this was the the goodbye ceremony for the community. So it was very public, very open to the community. This is actually you’re looking at the corner of 24th and York Street and 24th Street happens to be a major artery in the Latino Cultural District. In fact, it’s you know, it’s called Calle 24  Latino Cultural District because so much of it is concentrated on this street. So this is just off the 24th. And if you were to keep going, if you look at the frame to the left side, and if you were to keep going that way, you’ll see the front of Brava Theater, one of the institutions that actually received one of these cutouts, Brava Theater had a big hand in facilitating and hosting the ceremony. And so you had a lot of Aztec dancers more than the ones we’re seeing in the frame here, as the dancers are so magnetic. If you’re walking around the street, and you can hear drums, and you hear shells that they wear on their feet, and you can see it in the photo, they’re all wearing them. So every time they take a step, you hear cashish cashish. And so everywhere they go, you just kind of turn your head, see what is that and you kind of start like, feeling the rhythm, you know, so when you’re standing, and witnessing Aztec dancing, going on, at least for me is really hard not to kind of like, want to move my body, like my body wants to follow the rhythm of the drums and the rhythm of the sounds that they make when they move. There’s the regalia and all the traditional feathers and shields and all these items that have a significance. And I don’t have that that kind of deep knowledge and understanding. But I know that there’s distinctions and roles that people play, there’s different roles for different people and what they bring to their Danzante group. And so all of that is expressed through the colors that they wear through the sizes of the feathers, all those things led to youth and people of all ages, because you have the the OGs, you know, that were young when this mural first came about. And the folks that and the artists that were already, you know, already OGs, this snippet was made a few decades ago. So they’re the super superduper OGs. And then all the children, you know, that have come through and Aztec dancers, and really young Aztec dancers, that’s just that was actually a beautiful gathering. But you know, it was hard, it was difficult and sad reason for people to be gathering but I think that people need at least I feel like people in our culture, we need some kind of ceremony sometimes to mark these moments, and especially the difficult ones.

Mabel Jiménez  07:19  This particular story around this building and this mural, kind of told a lot about the history of the Mission. The business itself, that you know, is was housed behind this wall itself struggled, and how this business owner had to pivot to go from a laundry mat, which is not a viable business anymore to condos, marke-rate condos, which seems to be the one way that some folks and business owners are able to survive.

Mabel Jiménez  08:00  And people became attached to this mural and everything that it represents. And all the people that grown up around this area and the almost 40 years to have something that’s always been there your whole life kind of see it disappear. The compromise that was made was to take out the mural, piece by piece. And so one of the artists, the original artists of the mural did like a like a GoFundMe and raised money to be able to get some contractors with electric saws like sawing into the wall and cutting out pieces of these portraits so that they could be preserved. For example, the the portrait of Frida that we’re seeing now is now housed in I believe in Bravo Theater, which is a theater nearby that corner that focuses on women performing artists, so very appropriate. I think the cut out of Cesar Chavez was given to a nearby restaurant, a beloved community restaurant called Tio Chelo’s. And so all these pieces have found different homes as a bit of a compromise. It was a very sad moment to witness.

Mabel Jiménez  09:26  The dancer that we’re seeing that’s caressing Frida with the feathers. His name is Arielle Vargas. And he himself when he was a youth in the 90s helped retouch the mural and one of its many changes and iterations. And so he’s a person that has a very particular connection and one that really really had close ties to the community to the mural specifically, and who himself has felt the impact of gentrification. He’s a person that grew up in the neighborhood but can no longer afford to live here. He said I, “I mourned the gentrification of my barrio a long time ago.”

Mabel Jiménez  10:21  Having reported on it and interviewed, so many people that had connections to this mural also kind of helps you see that there’s certain ways certain things that are kind of inevitable or, you know, once certain forces are in motion, like gentrification is hard to, for the regular folks to stop them. But there’s things that you can do around them. And there’s ways that you can react and preserve your culture as much as you can. And so, I think that that’s what all the people in the story were holding on to like, we’re literally holding on to the pieces of these mural. It’s just like we’re, you know, hanging on to our culture in the face of gentrification.

Mabel Jiménez  11:08  And then, a few, a week after this photo was taken, when, you know, contractors were actually cutting murals out of the wall, that was a very different feeling. A lot of folks that walked by, when contractors were cutting out these pieces of the mural from the wall, they didn’t know that, that this building was going to be demolished this so they found out as they’re seeing people cut it out of the wall. And so it was like, people are just going about their Saturday routine, and then they just stop on their tracks watching what’s going on.

Mabel Jiménez  11:39  ¿Qué está pasando? ¿Dónde se van a llevar este mural?  ¿Qué está pasando con este edificio?  ¿Por qué pasan estas cosas aquí?  (What is happening? Where are they taking this mural? What is happening with this building? Why do these things happen here?)

Mabel Jiménez  11:53  And the contractors have to take this role of like explaining what’s going on, and telling people this is been a long time coming, but we’re preserving them we’re not, you know, cutting them out as a sign of disrespect, but it’s with the hope to preserve them, watching in real time, people grapple with pieces of their neighborhood and their culture disappearing. So it was really real, you know, and at first I was just going to photograph these but the more I talked to folks, I felt like the full story of this mural really had to be told. I guess, it’s another way of trying to hold on to something while we still have it.

Mabel Jiménez  12:36  This picture is taken in 2020. People are wearing masks. It was that very surreal year. So people are dealing with the pandemic, people are dealing with loss, a lot of loss, and you know, financial, health wise, family wise. And so this was another instance of loss really. As we remember from earlier in the pandemic, when people would die, you could not go to the funeral. They were there was so many Zoom remote funerals. so people couldn’t even have a mourning process and share that mourning process with the support of your community. So I feel like a lot of other things were expressed on this day that was bigger than just we’re losing this mural, but it was kind of like, we’re losing a lot right now.

Mabel Jiménez  13:38  2020 was a year of a lot of rethinking in our society, right. GeorgeFloyd was a big catalyst and he paid with his life. There was a lot of learning and I think a lot of eye opening in 2020. And it was also the year of questioning ourselves. What are these historical figures that we admire? Right? and a lot of monuments to raciast colonizers came down in San Francisco, the statue of Columbus came down, and other monuments really representing oppression of Indigenous peoples. And so during this wave of considering what are we actually putting on pedestals, that statue was taken down, but there wasn’t a lot of notice. There wasn’t a ceremony, like the statue was there one day and then notand this activist I remember, she was saying to me, like as much as we were happy that this thing has gone. It would have been good to let us know, so that we can gather and we can have our process. This was something that when this mural came down, at least people were able to have that process. It’s interesting how these kinds of ceremonies really help us cope. And you know, make sense and be able to process and heal and if we can’t process we can heal. (music)

Mónika  15:17  Next Mabel shares about her experience reporting at the southern border at Friendship Park a bi-national park at the edge of San Diego and Tijuana and the Pacific Ocean. According to friendshippark.org on their history page, it says “In 1971, the surrounding area in the United States was inaugurated by First Lady Pat Nixon, as California Border Field State Park. On that occasion, Mrs. Nixon declared I hope there won’t be a fence to long here. And then asked her security detail to cut the barbed wire on the border so she could step into Mexico and greet an adoring crowd. She also announced the intention of the governments of both nations to create International Friendship Park modeled after the many such parks on the US Canada border.” That dream is still alive for many people, but the reality has become much different. Listen as Mabel takes us behind the scenes of her image capturing a “pinky kiss” at the border. Please note that this reflection does describe families who have been separated.

Mónika  15:17  A reminder that you can see the image that Mabel has just discussed by clicking on the link in the show notes. And on our website, ourlatinalens.com. In the show notes, you will also find a link to the article that Mabel wrote on the community mural for El Tecolote, the bilingual community paper where she worked as a photo editor for 10 years.

Mabel Jiménez  16:51  And I also spent a lot of time just at the border fence itself and seeing how people on both sides of the border interact with this horrible architectural feature of Tijuana/San Diego. This photo in particular, you can see a blue metal grid that’s starting to rust. And as part of this metal grid, there’s like this, I guess you could call it a mesh where one can the spaces in between this mesh, this metal fence are only big enough to put your fingers through them, they’re really restrictive. And this happens to be at a very specific place along the US-Mexico border. It’s all the way to the west end of the border line. And so this is the part where the border actually goes into the ocean, the border fence and there’s a little park right there on the beach called Friendship Park. And it’s a very special place because Friendship Park half of it sits in the US side of the border and the other half on the Mexican side in Tijuana. And so the border wall kind of crosses through that park. And it’s supposed to be a place of gathering. For many years now it’s been a place where people on both sides of the border meet. For example, if I’m a person in Mexico, and I have relatives in the United States, and they’re not able to leave and I’m not able to go on their side either, then people kind of meet on opposite sides of the fence. And it used to be that there was enough space in between these border fence beams, there was enough space to stick your arms through. And you could actually hug somebody on the other side of the border. And as the border has become more and more militarized this area and the amount of contact that people can have with each other has been more and more and more restrictive to where we see it. Now in this photo, there’s no way to fit your arms and to hug or shake someone’s hand or even pass a letter through to the other side. The only thing that fits is your finger and not even any finger your pinky finger- your smallest finger.

Mabel Jiménez  19:09  And so now the people that gather on both sides of the border, the only physical contact that is possible is to touch each other’s pinky fingers and there’s even a term that the locals have have for this type of physical contact which is a Pinky Kiss. Most of the frame is filled with this with the grate of this border fence, it’s painted blue, but you can see rust coming through and you’ll see one person in the foreground you can see a woman’s head wearing a beanie and her nails very nicely done white nails touching someone else on the other side of the border. And we can’t see the other person’s face because of this such a restrictive grid and you can see though that from the other side, another pinky finger with another beautifully styled nail is poking through. This happens on weekends usually is the only times that Friendship Park, at least the U.S.-side of Friendship Park is open is Saturdays and Sundays I think from 10am to 2pm. So it’s a very, very limited window of time that people have to see each other. So this was, I want to say early March, really pleasant weather, the one is really warm and nice sun shining, there’s also church service of a national bilingual church service that was this also goes on to all

Voice in Spanish at church service  20:41  Dios ayudasnos a orar, a predicar y bendicir su amor para todos.

Voice in English at church service  20:41  Sproice in ed your love to all.

Voice in English at church service  20:41  Forever and ever.

Voice in Spanish at church service  20:41  Por siempre de lo siempre.

Mabel Jiménez  20:51  Right before Friendship Park is opened up, you have a priest that’s on the US side giving a sermon in English. And then there’s an interpreter standing on the Mexican side with a microphone. And so the priests will say, you know, a couple sentences in English and then the other person translates it to Spanish. And the whole sermon is that way,

Priest  21:12  we see that they need to run away for their lives.

Voice in Spanish at church service  21:16  Vemos que tienen que huir por sus vidas.

Priest  21:19  King Herod was the king back then.

Voice in Spanish at church service  21:21  El rey Herodes era el rey en ese entonces.

Priest  21:26  And he, if Jesus had staid there, would have killed baby Jesus.

Voice in Spanish at church service  21:30  Si Jesús se hubiera quedado, el rey hubiera matado a la criatura  Jesús.

Mabel Jiménez  21:37  I’m not a religious person at all, I am like the least religious person, but something about hearing this sermon, and it was about how Jesus was a refugee. And that’s, I think that was the name of his ser, his sermon. And he talks about how this is part of your set of beliefs. It talks about how Jesus as a young baby, you know, the he was being chased and trying to be murdered and his parents, Mary and Joseph had to move back then describing that experience of having to flee the place where you’re from,

Priest  22:08  along with his parents, Jesus was someone who had to seek asylum

Voice in Spanish at church service  22:13   Jesús, igual que sus padres,  fue alguien que tuvo que solicitar asilo

Priest  22:20  Some of us here today might be refugees.

Voice in Spanish at church service  22:23  Algunos de nosotros que estamos presente, podríamos ser refugiados pidiendo asilo

Priest  22:28  Some of us here today might be far from home.

Voice in Spanish at church service  22:31  Algunos estaremos lejos de nuestra casa

Priest  22:34  Some of us today might be seeking asylum.

Voice in Spanish at church service  22:37  Algunos posiblemente estaremos buscando asilo

Priest  22:41  And we see in the story that Jesus, Mary and Joseph, they did it too

Voice in Spanish at church service  22:45  Y vemos en la historia que Jesús, María y José, también estuvieron buscando asilo

Mabel Jiménez  22:52  And there’s just such a, such a rejection in this country for refugees, especially if they happen to be Black or Brown. And they are so often made to feel unwanted. And for this priest to basically tell them you are sacred too and what you’re going through is a sacred journey as well.

Priest  23:14  We know that he he can see that, and he’s been through it before

Priest  23:18  he understands what it means to be on the run.

Voice in Spanish at church service  23:18  Él lo puede ver, porque Él lo ha sentido en carne propia también

Voice in Spanish at church service  23:24  Él entiende lo que es tener que huir

Priest  23:28  He understands what it means to be far from home

Voice in Spanish at church service  23:30  Él entiende lo que es estar lejos de casa.

Priest  23:34  he understands what it means to have his life in danger.

Mabel Jiménez  23:37  It was just really touching and I was nervous that I was photographing people’s personal moments, even though they’re out in the public view, I just had to be careful in how I approached them. Most people didn’t really even turn back to look at me because they’re so focused on their loved one that they don’t want to waste a second and really dealing with me.

Voice in Spanish at church service  23:37  Él entiende lo que es temer por su vida

Priest  23:40  So as you come to the fence, find someone across the fence and give them a pinky hug

Voice in Spanish at church service  24:03  Asi es que cuando se acerquen al murro, busque a alguien al otro lado del murro y dele un beso de meñique.

Priest  24:14  And once you’ve done that, place your hands on the fence

Voice in Spanish at church service  24:17  Y despues pongan sus manos en el murro

Mabel Jiménez  24:21  And when I was there, this happens to be a very kind of touristy part too of Tijuana, there’s a beach right there. So there’s food vendors, at least on the Tijuana side. There’s very different realities on each side of the border. In the Mexican side. You have food vendors, you have musicians playing songs, you have all kinds of activity families walking around the pier, taking photos, frolicking on the beach, dogs. All that kind of life that one would expect at a nice beach but um, the song that was being played was very specific to missing someone and the lyrics are about like if you could only see how much I miss you, you know and how much I remember you and I can only hope you remember me to same.

Musical Break  25:06  Singers: Si viera, yo como te recuerdo, le pido a Dio que vuelvas (If you could see, how I remember you, I ask God that you return)

Mabel Jiménez  25:21  It was really hard to take photos because I think of all the documentation and sites I visited at the border, this was probably the hardest one, because you really see that separation play out in real time, I saw this man who I could see was meeting with a young boy and a woman on the other side on the US side. And so I got the sense that maybe this was a father on the Mexico side, and that his son, and his son’s mom lived in the U.S. side. And so I just saw him play with this action figure, you know, and they couldn’t even pass the action figures to actually really play with each other, they could just sort of push it up against the fence and show it to each other. And that was really hard to witness.

Mabel Jiménez  26:16  I also met a couple, they had kind of a complicated immigration story where they came to the U.S. without documents back in the 90s. Then they grew older, and they had kids and now their kids are adults and have their own children. And at one point, the father is a pat… mom in Mexico City became so ill that he had to make this tough decision that as an undocumented person, if you leave the States is not a guarantee that you’re going to be able to make it back in. And so this man couldn’t see his mom die alone in Mexico City. So he left the U.S. and about 10 years ago and has not been able to reenter. And so all of his grown kids and grandkids are in California, and he’s in Mexico City, and he travels to the border. And so when I met this person, he was taking photos, he was like sticking his phone right up on the border fence and just trying to line up that lens of the camera on the cell phone with one of those tiny little holes where a pinky barely fits so that he could get a picture of his grandkids who he was meeting for the first time. So watching this grandfather meet his grandkids for the first time and not be able to hug them and hold them was just, uh, it’s just kind of one of those things that honestly, like it kind of broke me in that moment. It was like I had to fight tears, you know, honestly, like through taking photos and like wiping my eyes so that I could see what I was photographing, because this was really hard.

Mabel Jiménez  28:00  Take that story of that man meeting his grandkids. And you take that story of that father trying to play with his son on the other side and multiply that and there was so many people with similar stories of people that lost contact with family members, and they just go to the border every week with the hope that maybe their loved one will also have the same idea.

Mabel Jiménez  28:23  I think people want the rest of the world to know what’s what’s happening here. Because it’s, this is the only physical contact that’s possible anymore. So this kind of really tells you this is so you get it’s important to me now, even three years later, because now the Biden administration has confirmed that they plan to close Friendship Park. So even this little bit of physical contact, such as the pinky kiss is not going to be possible anymore, you’re not even going to be able to see or talk to people on the other side is going to be completely sealed off. And so as hard as it was standing there and watching people kind of hold on to these sort of crumbs of contact that are available there. Now it’s going to be even more restricted. So now that even won’t be possible. So that’s why I really wanted to bring that up because it feels that while we had Trump as president, it was really easy to be alarmed and to feel the urgency of the moment. And because Biden is not so openly awful, it’s kind of there’s a complacency now where we’re allowing all this stuff to continue. I really wanted to take this opportunity to bring this up again, because Friendship Park is going to be closed or you know, hopefully something will happen between now and whenever that’s supposed to be completed. Hopefully that will not be the case.

Mabel Jiménez  29:56  It was kind of hard to get a pinky kiss. Because I’m trying to get visually very close without actually getting physically too too close and interrupting those moments. But something about this one, like without necessarily showing a person’s face, and maybe, you know, raising any privacy issues, it still just by seeing the garments, the hair, the styled nails, the ring, it feels like it gives me a feeling for who this person might be. And I kind of relate to her, even though I can’t see her face. And I can’t see the face of the person standing in front of her that’s actually facing the camera because because of this border wall. And it’s just that moment, just just that moment of contact, right. It’s not before it’s not after. It’s just that very quick touch. And I think there’s a lot of different stories that one could imagine here. And even if the story that one imagines doesn’t fit this particular what was going on in this frame, I think it’s, there’s a 1000s 1000s of stories that that happen right in this spot on both sides of the fence. And so I think it allows for a lot of a lot of understanding of what a moment like that might feel like. (music)

Mónika  31:51  It is such an honor to hold the experience and stories like Mabel’s and I look forward to sharing more stories from more diverse Latina and Latine photographers across genres, locations, heritages and life experiences. Be sure to sign up for our newsletter at our website. This is a new project and three quick and free ways you can support us are to rate and review us on Apple or Spotify, share this episode with your family and friends, and follow us on social media@ourlatinalens. Images discussed today and show notes are available at our website ourlatinalens.com. Gracias for listening.

Mónika  32:33  Today’s show was recorded, produced and edited by me, Monika Aldarondo images were taken by Mabel Jiménez and the recordings that you heard at the border were also created by Mabel Jiménez. Podcast art was created by Tumpa Mistry and our theme song was created by Mattijs Muller.

Mónika  33:02  Laancla Creative