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Braiding and honoring migration dreams and stories

Growing up on the border certainly shaped the worldviews, visions and life trajectories that brought four mujeres fronterizas [border women] together to create the project What Remains. 

What Remains draws together artistic production and academic research to reframe the migrant experience as a global and timeless human experience, one that occurs before, during and after the passage itself. It is a tribute to those who have taken this journey but have been silenced, or whose voices were never heard. Our main mission is to incite broad social change through art and research in order to turn awareness into practices and actions of solidarity, compassion and support for those who endeavor in the global and timeless phenomenon of migration. 

We both spent many years capturing stories of migration; Mónica through photography and Adriana through research in schools. We dreamed of collaborating across our work toward social justice and the topics of migration and border crossing. The presence of children in Mónica’s work always moved me in profound ways thinking these are the children I now work with in schools and with their teachers.

In 2019 the dream of working together became a reality when we joined the Renée Crown Wellness Institute at CU Boulder and worked on the Trust and Belonging research study, which focuses on the relationships between Latinx families and school districts. Mónica’s photography captured research findings visually and supported the multimodal testimonios of families, children and youth, illuminating the realities and the invisible borders they continue to face after political and geographical borders have been crossed. 

In 2022, Mónica and the team (a Canadian organization that supports art projects focused on social justice) visited a remote part of the border wall between our hometowns of Ciudad Juárez, México and El Paso, Texas, and discovered a graveyard of abandoned objects that included clothes, backpacks and toys. The objects laid discolored and dusty in the desert carrying the unknown stories of their owners who at one time stood there and were forced to leave their remaining belongings behind. It was disheartening, especially seeing the stark presence of children. The team rescued these abandoned objects with the hope to honor the owners and their unknown stories.

At the same time, our Crown Institute team was working with a group of sixth graders in the Authoring Our Stories research study. The group of students used their own multimodal testimonios (created the year before) as inspiration to write a bilingual children’s book that also conveys a special message to other children at their former elementary school. These stories addressed relevant topics in their lives and shared messages of hope, dreams and resilience. The result was a selection of bilingual children’s books, written by and for Latinx children from immigrant backgrounds, which are now on display at the Crown Institute on CU Boulder’s campus.

In one of our interviews, a mother in our project shared that one of the most difficult moments during their long journey was when the coyote (the person paid by migrants to guide them across the border) demanded that her 9-year-old daughter drop the precious toy she had been carrying since leaving her hometown in Honduras. With tears and heartbreak, her daughter had to leave her fluffy toy and the comfort it gave her behind. Our hearts dropped knowing one story behind the many toys abandoned in the desert. 

We wanted to find a way to weave together the objects of families who have made the journey with those objects abandoned during the crossing as a symbol of solidarity and unity. We asked families from immigrant backgrounds across Colorado if they had an object or piece of clothing to share that represents their migration story. The mother whose daughter had to abandon her toy, brought a blanket out and told us, “I give you my best friend along the way, it protected us from the cold, and it dried our tears.” The Trenza [Braid] was born the moment the mother sat down with her two daughters to braid their stories and dreams together.

In 2023, we brought all the items, both abandoned and donated, to the dry riverbed in El Paso, Texas, and we braided them together. When I sent a photo of that moment to the mother who gave us her blanket, she told us she was very moved to see her blanket now uniting her with other people’s stories and dreams. During our next visit, our team gifted her a new blanket to fill with all of their new dreams and hopes. With tears in her eyes, she turned to her daughters and said, “Sus sueños no se quedarán en el vacío” [Your dreams will not remain in emptiness].

This summer we had our first full exhibit at the International Meeting on Human Mobility hosted by the Office for Human Rights of the state of Nuevo León, México. The exhibit included the Trenza, Mónica’s photography and the research studies at the Crown Institute, including the children’s books. We hope to continue to humanize and bring awareness to the many unknown journeys of resilience and hope.

The What Remains team includes Adriana Alvarez, a CU Boulder alumna (PhDEdu’17) and assistant professor at CU Denver, Iris Morales, Mabel Weber, and Mónica Lozano.

The team wishes to acknowledge the Renée Crown Wellness Institute, ArtsEverywhere and the Ilse Nathan Foundation for believing in and supporting the What Remains project. 

They also wish to thank the entire Trust and Belonging Team at the Crown Institute: Leah Teeters, Michelle Shedro, Emily Gleason, Julia Zigarelli, Kathy Schultz, Adria Padilla-Chavez and Blanca Elena Aguilar Trejo.