Skip to main content

Recuerdos: Borderland Dreams

Support Provided By
recuerdos
"Climbing Wall." | Photo: Courtesy of Rael San Fratello.

In partnership with Boom Magazine Boom: A Journal of California is a new, cross-disciplinary publication that explores the history, culture, arts, politics, and society of California.

This article was originally published in Boom Magazine.

Since 2000, we have been traveling along the United States-Mexico border, collecting memories and stories of the places and people we have met, and documenting a series of scenarios, real and imagined, along the border wall.

Together they tell a very different story of what has been the largest construction project in twenty-first-century America -- a story that is different from what you see in the news. Almost exactly the distance of the Grand Tour, the tourism route for upper-class Europeans that went from London to Rome, this journey stretches for 1,931 miles along the border with the United States. This Grand Borderlands Tour traces the consequences of a security infrastructure that stands both conceptually and physically perpendicular to human mobility. The artifacts that Grand Tourists would return home with--art, books, pictures, sculpture -- became symbols of wealth and freedom. Our border wall has become a barrier to movement that would create art, books, pictures, sculpture, wealth, freedom.

On this journey, our collected experiences are represented in the form of snow globes: souvenirs, or recuerdos -- a Spanish term that defines both the trinkets one might purchase at tourist shops and memories. The recuerdos gathered along our border are tragic, sublime, and absurd, occasionally hyperbolized, but in all cases based on our own experiences and actual events in the liminal space that defines the boundary between the United States and Mexico.

Cemetery Wall | Photograph Courtesy of Rael San Fratello
"Cemetery Wall." | Photo: Courtesy of Rael San Fratello.
Confessional Wall | Photograph Courtesy of Rael San Fratello
"Confessional Wall." | Photo: Courtesy of Rael San Fratello.
Volley Ball Wall | Photograph Courtesy of Rael San Fratello
"Volley Ball Wall." | Photo: Courtesy of Rael San Fratello.
Burrito Wall | Photograph Courtesy of Rael San Fratello
"Burrito Wall." | Photo: Courtesy of Rael San Fratello.
Wildlife Wall | Photograph Courtesy of Rael San Fratello
"Wildlife Wall." | Photo: Courtesy of Rael San Fratello.
Xylophone Wall | Photograph Courtesy of Rael San Fratello
"Xylophone Wall." | Photo: Courtesy of Rael San Fratello.
Teeter Totter Wall | Photograph Courtesy of Rael San Fratello
"Teeter Totter Wall." | Photo: Courtesy of Rael San Fratello.

Dig this story? Sign up for our newsletter to get unique arts & culture stories and videos from across Southern California in your inbox. Also, follow Artbound on Facebook and Twitter.

Support Provided By
Read More
An 8mm film still "The Kitchen" (1975) by Alile Sharon Larkin. The still features an image of a young Black woman being escorted by two individuals in white coats. The image is a purple monochrome.

8 Essential Project One Films From the L.A. Rebellion Film Movement

For years, Project One films have been a rite of passage for aspiring filmmakers at UCLA's School of Theater, Film and Television. Here are eight Project One pieces born out of the L.A. Rebellion film movement from notable filmmakers like Ben Caldwell, Jacqueline Frazier and Haile Gerima.
A 2-by-3 grid of Razorcake zine front covers.

Last Punks in Print: Razorcake Has Been the Platform for Punks of Color For Over Two Decades

While many quintessential L.A. punk zines like "Flipside," "HeartattaCk," and "Profane Existence" have folded or only exist in the digital space, "Razorcake" stands as one of the lone print survivors and a decades-long beacon for people — and punks — of color.
Estevan Escobedo is wearing a navy blue long sleeve button up shirt, a silk blue tie around his neck, a large wide-brim hat on his head, and brown cowboy pants as he twirls a lasso around his body. Various musicians playing string instruments and trumpets stand behind him, performing.

The Art of the Rope: How This Charro Completo is Preserving Trick Roping in the United States

Esteban Escobedo is one of only a handful of professional floreadores — Mexican trick ropers — in the United States, and one of a few instructors of the technical expression performing floreo de reata (also known as floreo de soga "making flowers with a rope"), an art form in itself and one of Mexico's longest standing traditions.