Border Communities and their Social Justice Movements Photographs by David Bacon
78 Photographs, 6 Text Panels All captions and text in the show are bilingual English/Spanish
San Francisco Public Library, Jewett Gallery Main Library, 100 Larkin St., Civic Center February 12 to May 22, 2022
Show opens Saturday, February 12, 1pm Panel Discussion: The Media, Art and the Border
The border is not just geography, or a wall or a river. For people crossing it, it is a passage of fire, an ordeal that must be survived in order to send money from work in the US back to a hungry family, to find children and relatives separated by earlier journeys, or to flee an environment that has become too dangerous to bear.
Some do not survive, dying as they try to cross the desert or swim the Rio Bravo. To them the border region has become a land of death. Every year at least 3-400 people die trying to cross, and are buried, often without names, in places like the graveyard in Holtville. Agents of the U.S. Border Patrol have been found guilty of beating and even shooting people. And the massive detention and deportation of 3-400,000 migrants every year is a form of economic and social violence as well.
But the border is also a land of the living. Over the past half-century the once-small towns of Ciudad Juárez and Tijuana have become cities of millions. A huge part of the industrial workforce of southern California, South Texas and New Mexico lives and works, not on the US side of the border, but on the Mexican side - part of the production and supply chain that delivers products to US consumers. There people build homes out of cardboard and shipping pallets cast off by the factories-the maquiladoras.
The dirt streets of their barrios often end at the border wall itself. Many neighborhoods have no sewers and flood when it rains. Electricity is stolen by hooking up to power lines, while drinking water comes in a truck, and people must pay to fill the tank in front of their homes. And often the living conditions for poor and homeless people in border cities like Tijuana are no different that those endured by migrants who have crossed the border to live in the U.S.
The border has always been the scene of some of Mexico's sharpest social struggles. Workers in border factories organize independent unions. Miners in the huge copper mine in Cananea, just a few miles south of Arizona in Sonora, have been on strike for over a decade. Mexican farmworkers struck the fields of Baja California, while their relatives organized unions and walked out of fields in California and Washington State.
The border is a vast area with a vibrant social history. Over decades it has also become a powerful social symbol, especially the wall that's been built in fits and starts, underlining the separation of our two countries. The border played a big part in electing Donald Trump president, whose campaign rallies featured chants of "Build the Wall!" and promises to deport millions of people.
This exhibition explores these aspects of the border region. Taken over a period of 30 years, the photographs trace the changes in the border wall itself, and the social movements in border communities, factories and fields. The photographs have been taken by David Bacon in a collaborative project with the Binational Front of Indigenous Organizations (FIOB), the Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras, and California Rural Legal Assistance. The project is being published by the Colegio de la Frontera Norte in a bilingual book, More Than a Wall.
The purpose of these photographs is to provide a reality check, to allow us to see the border region as its people, with their own history of movements for rights and equality. By providing this, the exhibition seeks to combat anti-immigrant and anti-Mexican hysteria, and develop an alternative vision in which the border can be a region where people can live and work in solidarity with each other.
The photographs in this exhibition are among those in a book coming soon, published by the Colegio de la Frontera Norte, titled More Than a Wall/Mas que un muro.
The photographs are part of the larger archive of David Bacon's photographs, held in the Green Library at Stanford University, and are accessible online here.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA - Demonstrators oppose the U.S. drive to go to war with Russia over the Ukraine and the expansion of NATO. The demonstration at the Ferry Building was organized by Code Pink and Veterans for Peace. For the full set of photos click here. PHOTOESSAY ON POVERTY IN TULARE COUNTY WINS SF PRESS CLUB AWARD
This series, and two additional ones, also swept the first place awards for photography from the California Newspaper Publishers Association. COMING EXHIBITIONS
IN THE FIELDS OF THE NORTH / EN LOS CAMPOS DEL NORTE February 18 – March 20, 2022. San Joaquin County Historical Society and Museum 11793 Micke Grove Rd, Lodi, CA Library event on March 12
MORE THAN A WALL - THE SOCIAL MOVEMENTS OF THE BORDER February 12 - May 22, 2022 San Francisco Public Library 100 Larkin St., Civic Center Library event on February 12 Online Interviews and Presentations
Exploitation or Dignity - What Future for Farmworkers UCLA Latin American Institute Based on a new report by the Oakland Institute, journalist and photographer David Bacon documents the systematic abuse of workers in the H-2A program and its impact on the resident farmworker communities, confronted with a race to the bottom in wages and working conditions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXKa2lHJXMs
There's More Work to be Done Housing Assistance Council and National Endowment for the Arts This exhibition documents the work and impact of the struggle for equitable and affordable housing in rural America, inspired by the work of George “Elfie” Ballis. https://www.thereismoreworktobedone.com/david-bacon
Exhibited throughout the pandemic in the Cecil H. Green Library at Stanford. The online exhibition (https://exhibits.stanford.edu/bacon), which includes additional content not included in the physical show, is accessible to everyone, and is part of an accessible digital spotlight collection that includes significant images from this body of work. For a catalog: (https://web.stanford.edu/dept/spec_coll/NonVendorPubOrderform2017.pdf)
IN THE FIELDS OF THE NORTH / EN LOS CAMPOS DEL NORTE Photographs and text by David Bacon University of California Press / Colegio de la Frontera Norte 302 photographs, 450pp, 9”x9” paperback, $34.95 (in the U.S.)
order the book on the UC Press website: ucpress.edu/9780520296077 use source code 16M4197 at checkout, receive a 30% discount
Illegal People -- How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (Beacon Press, 2008) Recipient: C.L.R. James Award, best book of 2007-2008 http://www.beacon.org/Illegal-People-P780.aspx
