Erika Radich

In 1948 there was a plane crash in Los Gatos Canyon, California. Twenty-eight Mexican farmworkers died as they were being deported to Mexico. The New York Times reported the accident as the death of 28 nameless “deportees.”

This exhibit celebrates and dignifies each person with a small shrine. A name of one of the deceased is attributed to each print.

The collage prints are meant to evoke a reverence for each individual… they are designed to resemble statuary, witnesses to the deaths.

Fundamental to who we are, what our identity is, is our name. In this exhibit, we remember who they were, and in the process, who we are.

Deportees: A Tribute

I have had the privilege to spend significant time in Mexico, Guatemala, and the Dominican Republic and have experienced people there directly and fully. To my mind, there could not be kinder, more gracious, hardworking, wise and generous humans. I have huge respect and admiration for these cultures and for their maintaining a sense of grace through unspeakable hardships and challenges. When I see how asylum seekers are currently treated at our border, how they are mistrusted, maligned, herded, separated from their families, it is difficult to describe the depth of my emotional reaction. I feel a sense of shame that our elected government has been doing this, in our names. The atrocities at our border are personal to me because my daughter works in Guatemala for the US Agency for International Development, and deals directly with the shattered lives that are a result of child/parent separation, death, illness, and unspeakable conditions good people are forced to experience.

My goal is to address one aspect of this ongoing tragedy, that of migrant farmworkers and others seeking survival and asylum, and to make a statement, in a small way honoring the human beings that we have so mistreated. The desperate people currently seeking entry at our border are being turned away, with often tragic outcomes.

In 1948 there was a plane crash in Los Gatos Canyon, California. 28 Mexican farmworkers died as they were being deported to Mexico. The migrant workers were buried in a mass grave with only a single plaque, referring to them only as “Mexican Nationals.” The New York Times reported the accident as the death of 28 nameless “deportees.” The disrespect and insensitivity in this report angered songwriter Woody Guthrie and he wrote a powerful and memorable song, honoring the names of the actual people on that plane who died. This timeless song, “Deportees,” has been subsequently performed by many, including Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, and Bruce Springsteen. It is a beautiful hymn that humanizes the people who died.

This exhibit celebrates and dignifies each person with a small shrine. A name of one of the deceased is attributed to each print. The collage prints are meant to evoke a reverence for each individual… they are designed to resemble statuary, witnesses to the deaths.

…And the lives. The 28 prints are a symbol of the preciousness of each individual and also an embodiment of the importance of each life that approaches our border “wall.” By connecting the viewer and including his/her own losses… my hope is that the exhibit may become “personal” to each person experiencing the exhibit.

Fundamental to who we are, what our identity is, is our name. In this exhibit, we remember who they were, and in the process, who we are. A percentage of the proceeds from this exhibit will be donated to Project Home, Keene, NH. Project Home is a grassroots solution for Asylum-Seekers. 

“Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. You must wake up with sorrow. You must speak to it until your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth.” Naomi Shihab Nye

~Erika Radich

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