Like clockwork, with every election cycle immigration becomes a lightning rod for politicians on both sides of the aisle to take advantage of and exploit. Beyond the empty often vitriolic rhetoric, seldom are the nuances, intricacies, and perhaps most importantly the shortcomings of the nation’s immigration ever system truly explored in-depth by our public leaders and officials. However, for decades artists have taken to a plethora of mediums to explore not just the effects of the U.S. immigration system, but what it means to be an immigrant in the U.S.. Art is not only a reflection of our society. It is also a means by which we air our frustrations, channel our grief, and collectively document the general sentiment that is often held at a given time.
Obviously, this can be applied to a myriad of different topics. However, many have lamented that the single perspective that gets the least amount of attention when it comes to political art (and art in general) is the story of immigrants and immigration stories as a whole. If you live in a community with a large immigrant diaspora, or perhaps have family members or you are even an immigrant yourself, artistic expression is often viewed as a luxury that is unfortunately all too often not afforded to immigrants and their kin. Especially people who are undocumented, and live in the shadows of society, often working extremely laborious jobs and physically taxing jobs.
In our latest episode, we are joined by Dr. Lizbeth De La Cruz Santana, an assistant professor of Chicano Studies in the Department of Black and Latino Studies at Baruch College in New York City. Dr. De La Cruz Santana is also the director of both the Playas De Tiajuana and the El Paso del Norte Mural Projects, as well as a researcher for the Humanizing Deportation project. A community-based digital storytelling project and the world’s most robust public qualitative archive that documents the human consequences of contemporary migration and border control in the U.S. and Mexico. In recent years both Republicans and Democrats have competed to outdo one another in an effort to prove who can conjure up the most militaristic and draconian border policies. But amid these debates, while political pundits discuss immigrants, asylum, and immigration reform, what is often lost in the rhetoric and grandstanding is humanity. The reality is that behind the tens of thousands of data points, and every news report or death at the border there is a human being. Real human beings who leave behind family members and loved ones left to deal with devastating realities in the wake of migration to another country, their deportation at the hands of ICE or Border Patrol, or sometimes unfortunately even deaths attempting to come to the United States.
On today’s episode, Dr. De La Cruz Santana joins us on Step Off! Radio to not only share her work as an academic but, also as someone who regularly spends her time on the ground at the border to work with disaffected communities. All too often the conversation around immigration is told by people who don’t come from immigrant backgrounds, who are not from border communities, and people who simply do not understand the complexities and nuances of what is the busiest and most consequential border crossing on the entire planet. So here to discuss that and so much more we are proud to present to you our conversation with Dr. Lizbeth De La Cruz Santana.
Featured above is the full video version of our interview with Dr. De La Cruz Santana and below is the audio version available through our official SoundCloud page. You can listen and subscribe to Step Off! Radio on your preferred podcast streaming service by visiting our Podcast page. You can follow Dr. De La Cruz Santana on Instagram and Twitter (X). Please make sure to rate and review the show!
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