Nowhere is the futility of national borders more apparent than in artistic culture. Poetry, music, literature, photography, art, film, and the media reflect the cross-border fertilization of culture. Even if immigrants are made invisible, immigrants’ labor and cultural contributions are imbedded in the achievements of U.S. know-how.

This special issue of Network News showcases art and culture and immigrant rights. In these pages you’ll find the work of Salvadoran, Mexican, Xicano, Korean, Filipino, Indian, South Asian, immigrant, and mestizo artists, writers, activists, film-makers, photographers, and poets. It has examples of cultural activism for immigrant rights and is a modest sample of the cultural ferment and confluence taking place between immigrant and non-immigrant communities, between immigrant labor and non-immigrant consumers, and among regional, national, and global cultures locally.

Listening to the song “I’ll Never Leave” by Los Jornaleros del Norte, or reading Jean-Claude Martineau’s poem “Sin Fronteras,” you hear immigrants’ assert their own reality: We struggle to stay and have our rights upheld. We also struggle for the right to stay until return with dignity is possible.

Eileen Tabios’ poem “This Existence” is testament to the price paid by families who suffer separation and denial as a result of immigration policies. Michael Jaime-Becerra’s poem, “Day Labor,” depicts an episode both contradictory and commonplace in the U.S. Los Jornaleros del Norte, day laborers and musicians, tell their own story. Jacque Larrainzar demonstrates -- not without a grain of humor and irony -- how film and video are grappling with the human dramas and stories of migration. Our art expresses the need for community and culture that has room for all cultures and communities.

A Cultural Movement, With or Without Documents

Immigration, the movement of people across borders, is evidence of the changing nature of nation-states and their inability to ever control who “their” people are. For the less than 5% of the world’s population living in the U.S., 95% of the world is “foreign.” Yet we in the U.S. consume over 30% of the world’s energy resources. Our discussion of culture, and its significance to immigrant rights, has to be put in this context. What should the cultural norm be? Citizen or non-citizen, American or foreigner, white or nonwhite, documented or undocumented, employed or unemployed, legal or illegal, skilled or unskilled, national or stateless, right-to-work or human rights, permanent or temporary, migrant or fixed, normal or exotic, consumer or servant, worker or human? The demographic revolution taking place in the U.S. means that all communities, nationalities, ethnicities, social classes, borders and their cultures are undergoing redefinition. Cultural change and fusions, just like immigrants, exist with or without documents.

Immigrants also have the dubious honor of being witnesses to and the object of new forms of made-in-the-U.S.A-racism. Our response to the anti-immigrant hysteria should be as simple and complex as the words of Jorge Rodríguez, a child-poet featured in this issue: “In my dream, Blacks and whites / are as equal as two hands.” Or immigrant artist Daniel Camacho’s painting, “La titeretera” [The Puppeteer - see this page], depicting the domino-effect of Prop 187: what befalls children befalls the present and future.

Expanding the social, economic, and political compact to include immigrants means immigrants will also help determine the future of our country. And that means embracing -- or at least tolerating -- a cultural diversity that would multiply and transform the political, spiritual, linguistic, and social attributes of our country. But right now everything is headed in the opposite direction. English-only states predominate in the U.S. southwest where the majority cultural community speaks, or at least is fluent in, a language other than English. Bilingual education is virtually outlawed in California with the passage of Prop 227. There is growing support to prohibit education, social, and health services for the undocumented and certain legal residents. The poetry of individuals like second grader Jorge Rodríguez will be illegal, teachers will be sued, and the muzzle of monolingualism will attempt to homogenize the unhomogenizable.

Immigrant Rights Art?

What do we want our words, our colors, our images, our talks, our poems to resemble? The art of immigrant rights and inclusion. Isn’t part of our immigrant labor meant to re-assemble our original selves in the new space within U.S. borders? Or are we a vessel for a U.S. which embraces our economic selves but rejects our cultural womb? Immigrant rights advocates cannot afford to ignore the importance of art, music, poetry, theater, literature, writing, and other forms of artistic/cultural activism and organizing.

Our movement is at heart as much cultural as political. Activists and organizers cannot dream with politics alone. This special issue of Network News provides offerings of cultural workers in the thick of the art of immigrant rights.

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Guest editor Arnoldo García works for the Urban Habitat Program in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is a founding member of the Comité Emiliano Zapata, organizing solidarity and humanitarian aid to the Zapatista communities in Mexico. A long-time poet, musician, writer, and activist, Arnoldo will record in 1999 a CD of poetry, Xacaranda: In Flower & In Jazz.