By Tim Gibbons
Recently I had the opportunity to explore the theme of emigration with the students of an art class that I help teach. The Saturday morning class from Taller Rufino Tamayo - about 30 kids ages 5 to 15 and four teachers - took a field trip out to Suchilquitongo, a town 2 hours north-west of Oaxaca City, to the workshop and ranch of artist Alejandro Santiago.
Santiago has been receiving international attention for a huge project he recently completed titled “Los Ausentes” -- “The Absent Ones”-- which is currently on display in Monterrey at the Forum Universal de las Culturas. For the project, he spent years sculpting 2501 waist-high ceramic figures, each representing one person who has emigrated away from the artist’s home town of San Pedro Teococuilco, a small pueblo in the Sierra Norte area outside Oaxaca City. Some have moved in search of work to larger Mexican Cities like Oaxaca City, Puebla, or Mexico City, but the majority has emigrated to California, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and other parts of the United States. One of these 2501 figures is a self-portrait of the artist, since Santiago himself emigrated from Teocochilco to Oaxaca City with his family at age 8.
The artist says that today Teocouilco is practically a ghost town, since over half of the town’s previous population has moved away. Most of the working-age men and their families have emigrated, leaving mostly the elderly and a handful of women and children. Santiago says he hopes to eventually use the statues to metaphorically ‘re-populate’ Teocouilco, putting the figures in public spaces and homes that were once inhabited by the emigrants they represent.
The emigration situation in Teococuilco is not an exceptional one; in fact it is quite common. Alejandro said he could have done the same project about nearly any small town in Oaxaca, or most other Mexican states for that matter. Emigration rates from Oaxaca state are exceptionally high, though: Oaxaca is one of the poorest states in Mexico, and the fallout in the agricultural industry over the last few decades, largely attributed to free-trade agreements like NAFTA and competition from heavily-subsidized U.S. cornpanies, has devastated the area's corn-based farming economy.
Santiago showed us around his ranch. Around every corner there were statues of “the absent ones”, los ausentes, -- hundreds in total. They populated the fields around his house, the chicken coop, the goat barn, the outhouse. It felt a bit eerie, almost as if they were standing vigil, watching over the land until the emigrants they represented someday return. He explained that these were figures that weren’t included in the final collection that was shipped off to Monterrey, and I imagined how powerful if would be to see all 2501 “emigrants” complete and on display in one place. Finally Santiago brought us to his studio and gave each of us a lump of clay so that we could make our own “mini- emigrants.” The kids got to work immediately, excited to create and get muddy. As we worked, we started to chat about migration; about siblings living in the States, uncles who come home once a year for Christmas bearing fancy American gifts, and a couple students who had actually been to the U.S. to visit family members.
I asked two sisters about the figures they were sculpting: One was making a man jumping the border fence, and the other was a man waiting on a bench for a coyote to smuggle him up North. I was surprised at first how familiar these kids were with immigration; the ins-and-outs of how to cross the border and find work, and some of the challenges immigrants face in the States. Some students even knew about the Minutemen, the anti-immigrant vigilante group that patrols the border and organizes against undocumented immigrants. The more time I spend in Oaxaca, the more I am learning the extent to which everyone here, including the young students in my art class, is touched and affected by emigration.
For more info about Alejandro Santiago’s ‘Los Ausentes’ project:
http://www.2501migrants.com/
