2501 migrants

www.2501migrants.com

the abq film festival was/is this wkend. yesterday i watched "2501 Migrants", a 54 min. film about a painter named Alejandro Santiago who sculpts a statue for every resident from his hometown, Teococuilco (Oaxaca, Mexico) who has left the town in search of better fortunes elsewhere. besides my fascination with watching the statues get made by local residents who had never considered themselves artists before this experience, my favorite part was when Santiago interviewed a long-time resident, who barked at him: "I resent you calling our town a ghost town! We still live here and we still have strong traditions!" 

seeing all those statues at once also reminded me of the power of visual representations to connect statistics to reality. the media quotes so many numbers at us that we become numb to their significance. yet if there was some way to install a statue for every life lost in iraq and afghanistan (over 6,000, and that's just U.S. casualties) in every front yard and government office in this country, i wonder how long we would stay complacent about our country's continuing involvement overseas. how about a statue for every person who's died attempting to cross the border into the U.S.? i'd put them in front of the Capitol building as a reminder to legislators of the effects of their immigration policies- no judgment, just a crowd of stone faces that grows larger every day.