Tag Archives: incarcerated children

When Are Children Considered Dangerous?

When I get stuck in my painting, I can usually find my way back into a creative space by either drawing or its closely related cousin, printmaking. I’ve been working out ideas through engraving, a technique of directly scribing an image onto a plate. The beauty of engraving is the act of drawing at its most physical and direct. And then, you get to create variances through ink, paper, wipes, etc. The Migrations series isn’t done with me, though I had hoped I could move on, and so I have been spending time in the print studio working.

detail of the plate for the print above

I pulled a proof today, black ink on chine colle. The colle is a pixilated antique map of Santiago de Cuba. Can you see the body against the map in the print? 

I think of this figure as an archetypal hero, arms raised to banish false freedoms. Santiago has always been central to Cuban independence and freedom. The birthplace of El Titan de Bronze, the home of Frank Pais, and it was from a balcony in Santiago that Fidel Castro declared the revolution a success on January 1, 1959.  Santiago de Cuba is also where La Trampa was sited, the camp for political dissidents I was carted off to at the age of 6 with my family. My brother was 8. We must have been so dangerous to Cuba’s freedom and revolution! 

When I think of my catastrophic experience of Cuba’s “freedom” I’m overwhelmed with gratitude to be here, in the USA as an American citizen. It’s true that I have found freedom here, that it is here that I fell in love with my California sunshine– my husband Scott– as red-blooded American homegrown as they get. In my heart and mind, I think of the USA as the land of the free and the brave. How tragic that now I can’t help but also think of the young Latinx children incarcerated at the border…they must be very dangerous to the American way of life, to the USA. Like my brother and I were to the Cuban government?

When did we become the bad guys?