This archive report was first published on 20 July 2019.
Art in the Face of Adversity: Migrant Youth's Resilience at Detention Camps ¶
Between June 2018 and January 2019, nearly 3,000 unaccompanied minors were confined at the Tornillo Detention Facility in Texas. In this harsh environment, the Chihuahuan Desert, imagination and faith helped them make it through. The inventive artworks by children who wound up in Tornillo are the subject of a haunting exhibition, 'Uncaged Art: Tornillo Children's Detention Camp,' at the Centennial Museum and Chihuahuan Desert Gardens at the University of Texas at El Paso, through October 5.
The exhibition features 29 paintings, drawings, costumes, and elaborately detailed dioramas crafted from humble materials like bottle caps and Popsicle sticks. Among the pieces is a Honduran national park with a fountain crafted from upside-down cups, and a cut-cardboard cathedral wrapped in vibrant aqua tissue paper with Popsicle stick pews for the faithful.
These artworks were salvaged before the camp was closed in January, thanks to the intervention of Rev. Rafael Garcia, a Jesuit priest who was one of a handful of priests allowed inside the facility to say Mass. The pieces now on view were destined for the trash heap, too, until Father Garcia intervened.
These artworks reflect a sense of joy and beauty in the face of adversity. Despite their circumstances, the children's work was often infused with buoyancy, wit, and prideful affection for landmarks of their native countries. As Camilo Pérez-Bustillo, the former director of advocacy and research for the Hope Border Institute, noted, 'They could recover their identities and not be reduced to numbers on a wristband.'
Overcrowded conditions continue to await migrant children in detention. Between September 2018 and May this year, six migrant children died in federal custody after becoming ill in crowded temporary holding areas. Recent drawings by three children at the Catholic Charities Humanitarian Respite Center in McAllen, Texas, showed figures in border patrol custody in cages, some of them upside-down.
