Here in California, with both ends of the state engulfed in catastrophic fire, matters of basic survival are at the forefront of our minds. For those of us living with the comfort of hot water, a warm bed and a roof over our heads, it doesn’t take a crisis to take our lives for granted. Of course for refugees, whether from fire, or for migrants seeking asylum, life is an ongoing crisis. This month I had the unique opportunity to talk to two San Franciscans who risked their own comfort to cover the migrant communities at the U.S./Mexico border.
Mabel Jiménez. Portrait by Ekey Kitpowsong/Current SF.
Photographer Mabel Jiménez was moved to personally investigate the migrant camps and shelters growing in Tijuana. Over the last several years the border town has been a landing spot for refugees from around the world, particularly from Haiti and Central America. Additionally, LGBTQ migrants from around the globe have banded together in their own communities where they can find shelter, acceptance and safety. Jiménez gained the trust of these travelers at risk: Many of them are fleeing violence and poverty in their home countries, only to find further complications in Mexico. I hope you’ll read her full story and see some of the intimate portraits she shot at CurrentSF. An exhibit of her photos in on view at City College of San Francisco through November 9.
Jorge Argueta. Portrait by Kevin N. Hume/S.F. Examiner
Jorge Argueta is a poet, author of children’s books and a librarian in his home country of El Salvador. His migration to San Francisco in the ’70s during El Salvador’s civil war landed him in the center of a growing and active Central American community in the Mission District where he pursued writing. Forty years later, he returned to San Salvador to meet with migrants headed for the U.S. border, hoping to encourage them on their journeys. Of course the migrants encountered all forms of difficulty during their caravan to the north and were ultimately turned away or separated from family. Argueta turned one of those stories into a novel in verse, Caravan To The North. I hope you’ll read more of his story in my San Francisco Examiner column, SFLives.
Though the poet and the photographer have life experience that’s vastly different, they have a common heart and a common goal: They love life and the world around them. Both Argueta and Jiménez are very much engaged in their work, in their immediate communities and matters of global importance. They help where help is called for, then they step back and use their gifts to further their causes and share their stories with others.
Everyday is a crisis for someone, somewhere in the world, but I didn’t want our present disruption to deter from sharing my stories about about two extraordinary San Franciscans and their stories, with you. I hope you’ll read both and take something from them to carry with you as we move together through this beautiful catastrophe called life.
Read more about Jorge Argueta in the SF Examiner
Read more about Mabel Jiménez in Current SF
Filed under: anti-capitalist, anti-war, Arts and Culture, Books, photography, Poetry, San Francisco News, El Salvador, habla español, Jorge Argueta, Mexico, migrants, photojournalist, poet
This week San Francisco’s literary festival, Litquake, is celebrating 20 years of supporting writers, publishers, bookstores and the literary arts here in the Bay Area. The festival’s co-founders, Jack Boulware and Jane Ganahl are my kind of people: Journalists by trade, they dared to dream beyond the newsroom and share their love of the writing life with their immediate community. As their cohort of writers grew to include novelists, memoirists, biographers, sexperts, technologists and performance poets, the festival grew and grew, blossoming into its current incarnation as a 10-day event with international offshoots of the culminating night’s promenade, LIt Crawl.
Denise Sullivan 