AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
Eagle Pass, Texas, would like you to know a different side of their city. Eagle Pass is at the southern border, and the community is often overshadowed by immigration politics. Residents want to tell another story through art. Here's Marian Navarro of Texas Public Radio.
MARIAN NAVARRO, BYLINE: Since last summer, a line of floating red buoys with razor wire now occupy parts of the Rio Grande, separating Eagle Pass from Piedras Negras, Mexico. The city has been at the epicenter of Texas Governor Greg Abbott's multi-billion-dollar border security crackdown, Operation Lone Star. A popular local park that used to be a place for families and festivals is now filled with concertina wire and Texas National Guard soldiers in Humvees. But many of the 28,000 residents here say immigration is part of the city's history and identity and part of what makes Eagle Pass unique and vibrant. The new "The Border Is Beautiful" art exhibition that opened earlier this month hopes to show that.
YOCELYN RIOJAS: I would describe it as our own form of protest, finding the beauty of what is our home versus, what is the media just saying?
NAVARRO: Yocelyn Riojas is assistant director of the Eagle Pass Digital Arts Society and a coordinator of the exhibit. She says Eagle Pass still has a strong culture, despite the tensions around immigration enforcement and the legal fights between federal and state authorities.
RIOJAS: We are so much more than that, and I believe this art exhibition reflects that.
NAVARRO: Local artist Santos Polendo is a member of the Kickapoo Traditional Tribe of Texas, based in Eagle Pass. His painting, titled "Shelby," pays homage to the Indigenous roots of Shelby Park, which was thrust into the spotlight after the state seized control of it. The artwork features a tribe member dressed in a traditional headdress. He's taking a picture with his phone of losing Confederate Colonel Joseph Shelby fleeing to Mexico and sinking the Confederate flag in the middle of the Rio Grande. Polendo says the painting puts an ironic twist to an overlooked part of the city's history.
SANTOS POLENDO: We celebrate the Confederate part or the American part of it, but we neglect the Indigenous part of it, the Native people who lived in this area, and that's what the piece is about. It's about stirring up that conversation.
NAVARRO: The exhibit features the artwork of nearly 50 artists from the Texas border region. Each celebrates the artist's own interpretation of what it's like to have roots in communities that are bilingual, binational and bicultural. Artist Abel Ortiz's artwork details his experience immigrating from Mexico to the Texas border city of Del Rio as a first grader. His painting features a picture of his elementary self - a boy in glasses wearing a serious expression. The line of the U.S-Mexico border is painted red across his face. The smiling logo for the Mexican snack company Sabritas, owned by Pepsi, is on the left-hand side.
ABEL ORTIZ: You can see that even logos, iconography, from one country can immigrate, just like people do, and they assimilate into the culture where it's now existing. And so that's where this painting sort of is based on, my own personal experience of assimilation.
NAVARRO: As you walk through the exhibit, a bright pastel painting depicts the chaos of workers on a construction site. Another black-and-white sketch memorializes Sarita's Tortilla Factory, a landmark tortilleria in Eagle Pass. Ortiz says the exhibition offers artists an opportunity to tell their own stories.
ORTIZ: The border really requires expression beyond words, and this is where art can provide that. Images are powerful, and images give you experiences that you won't forget.
NAVARRO: The nonprofit Eagle Pass Border Coalition has fought against Governor Greg Abbott's focus on border enforcement. The coalition worked with the Digital Arts Society and the city to bring the exhibit together. Eagle Pass native Jesse Fuentes is a coalition board member.
JESSE FUENTES: This is like a healing solution. Come. Visit. Reminisce. Remember what was and what can be. And what kind of future do we want?
NAVARRO: Organizers want to keep the momentum going and turn "The Border Is Beautiful" into a traveling exhibition that can be showcased in communities across Texas. For NPR News, I'm Marian Navarro in Eagle Pass, Texas. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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