SDXCO Massachusetts 2024 Ethnography

Karen Gonzalez-Machuca
Argenis Hurtado Moreno
Latinx Migrant Narratives in the United States

Art of Pain

A book that hasn’t gotten out of my mind is Drawing Deportation: Art and Resistance among Immigrant Children by Silvia Rodriguez Vega; this book provides a variety of drawings from immigrant children; these drawings share these children’s hardships, experiences, and dreams for the future. It’s a heartbreaking book where children are finally given the space to share their feelings as immigrants living in the anti-immigrant society of the United States. While reading this book, I started thinking about the people in my community back home, with many unauthorized kids and teenagers trying to navigate school, jobs, and personal struggles in a new world. What would they draw if they were given the space and time? Have they ever had the opportunity to sit and draw their vulnerabilities? Or have they just been pushed to the side?

My high school has a more significant Latinx population than the white population, which some consider odd since it’s located in a predominantly white area. They seem to always forget about El Jebel, a town where a lot of Latinx people and I call home. We are considered a part of another municipality than where my school is located, but the commute to the school is shorter than the other ones we have, so we have all been enrolled in it. Many newly immigrated children enroll in the school every year; in my school, they have been labeled “newcomers.” “Newcomers” is a term that has been thrown around several times, for example, “you’re friends with the newcomers “or “you’re dating that newcomer?” This label has separated these kids from the student population; it reminds me of the term “others” placed on unauthorized people. It’s as if they are part of a whole different student body than ours. Unauthorized kids in my school are rarely represented in the student body; not only that, they aren’t given the proper resources to navigate school, where the only language spoken is English, so they struggle with their classes and best believe tutors or other forms of support
are never provided. Most of these kids have traumatic and painful backgrounds, but most can’t access therapy, or they have a job that doesn’t give them the time to access such resources. Have these kids just been set up for failure? Drawing Deportation made me realize how immigrant children are set up for failure.

If they go through a traumatic experience, like their parent or another family member being deported, they don’t have access to resources to help them navigate this trauma. These experiences can then lead them to develop post-traumatic stress disorder or depression, which affects their behaviors, relationships with others, or personhood. Continuing a cycle of kids never dealing with their trauma and once again being pushed to the side when they are viewed as “flawed.” I wonder what the “newcomers” would draw if given the chance because these are kids with stories that don’t define them but can help explain who they are as a person. My school is a small example of a bigger problem; the anti-immigrant society of the United States, and how it intentionally sets up these kids for failure. Even if my school is an example of a bigger problem, actions can and will be made to better support the immigrant student population, even if it’s as simple as tutoring or using non-othering terms to describe them. Hopefully improvements like this can help solve the bigger problem that comes into play.

Bibliography
Rodriguez Vega, Silvia. Drawing Deportation: Art and Resistance among Immigrant
Children. New York: New York University Press, 2023.