En Memoriam
"Los que viven en la memoria nunca mueren."
(They who live in memory never die)

A collection of digital paintings of the twelve known asylum seekers in 2019 who did not survive the trials and tribulations of the American border.  Many of their faces are well known now, and I wanted to honor them in some way all together.  I created digital portraits of each one, then incorporated them into a  master background painting of Tucson's iconic El Tiradito (The Castaway) Wishing Shrine. To view and learn more about who they were, see the photo gallery below and click on their pictures. Their stories are in my blog.

 La Rendición (Surrender)

Young Honduran mother with baby girl.  I was totally captured by the gaze of the child....
​Inspired by an image from 2014 by Rodolfo Gonzalez.

​La Aplicación (The Application)

The last in my series honoring asylum seekers for a while, this is a study of the bond between parent and child. The mother's face shows her ancient Mayan bloodlines.  The 45th presidential administration is world renown for its genocidal treatment of asylum seekers - child separation and abuse in particular. 

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*  La Corúa  was a large, fierce looking but benevolent water serpent that lived in springs of water and protected them. They say it had a cross on its forehead and cleaned the veins of water with its long fangs or tusks. It was a shy creature but could sometimes be caught sunning on the rocks of the spring.  According to Sonoran folk beliefs, if one killed the Corúa, the spring would dry up.  Vanishing water sources and  economic pressures have pushed the folklore of La Corúa  to the dustbin of history on both sides of the border, but La Corúa remains in the minds and memories of elders in the Pimería Alta.

Serpents have been sacred for millennia to indigenous peoples throughout the Americas and are respected as guardians of water sources and bringers of rain.

* Beliefs and Holy Places - A Spiritual Geography of the Pimeria Alta  -  James S. Griffith, University of Arizona Press, 1992

Background painting:  Baboquivari Peak - the monolith landmark defining the Baboquivari mountains southwest of Tucson. The center of Tohono O'odham cosmology, it is sacred and is the home of I'itoi, their Creator and Elder Brother. The peak is visible from Casa Grande in the northwest, south into Mexico.  (I'itoi is also the figure in the O'odham 'Man in the Maze' basket design.)
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