Events
Otrxs Dreams en Acción: Historias de aquí y allá
Friday, December 8, 2023 | 5PM EST
The Hemispheric Institute is excited to announce the upcoming visit of Otros Dreams en Acción (ODA), an organization dedicated to mutual support and political action for those who grew up in the United States and are now in Mexico due to forced return and deportation, deportation of a family member, family separation or the threat of deportation.
ODA seeks to initiate meaningful dialogues that address the complexities of border politics, facilitating exchanges that enable individuals to learn from one another and collaboratively effect positive change in the aftermath of deportation and exile. Through empowerment and arts, communities seize control of their own narratives and express them through poems, photography, collages, and various art forms. They advocate for the right to belong to two countries, embracing the concept of belonging aquí y allá, here and there.
This in-person event will be in Spanglish. A recording will be available soon after.
Bios
Otros Dreams en Acción (ODA)
Otros Dreams en Acción (ODA) is an organization dedicated to mutual support and political action for those who grew up in the United States and are now in Mexico due to forced return and deportation, deportation of a family member, family separation or the threat of deportation.
Pocha House
Pocha House is a cultural space located in Mexico City that celebrates and claims the new hybrid and multifaceted culture in Mexico; that of Spanglish, exile, of simultaneously being from here and there.
Miriam Alvarez
Miriam Alvarez is a software developer and a textile art enthusiast using it as a primary medium within her artwork. She grew up undocumented in Florida unaware of her status for 12+years and returned to Mexico with her family at the age of 14. She’s currently a fellow within ODA’s Florecer fellowship program and enjoys learning new ways to express herself as well as teaching others how to create using threads and needles.
Luisa Martinez
Luisa Martinez is a cultural organizer, artist, and educator from the border region of so-called Tijuana-San Diego. She looks to understand and question borders beyond the constraints of geographical parameters. Luisa was one of Otros Dreams en Acción’s (ODA) inaugural Artivists in Residence in 2019, she was the 2021 California Arts Council Administrators of Color Fellow for the region of San Diego, and currently co-creates and coordinates the Florecer Aquí y Allá program at ODA—a program that centers community narrative change and creativity. Her work focuses on radical imagination and explores tensions of belonging as a strategy of resistance, solidarity, and world building.
Maria Liliana Ramirez
Maria Liliana Ramirez is a mixed media visual artist and current Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Irvine in the Department of Anthropology. Her academic research examines the politics of artistic production by undocumented and previously undocumented immigrants in the U.S. and Mexico. As an undocumented woman with DACA, Liliana uses autoethnographic digital collages and embroidery to explore notions of migrant childhood, home, and return.
Baruck Racine Arellano
Baruck Racine Arellano is an activist, community organizer and geographer, he is part of the returnee community haven immigrated with his family from Tecomaxltahuaca, a Ñuu Savi pueblo, from the northwestern part of Oaxaca, right now he co-coordinates Pocha House which is ODA’s Cultural and Artistic Space, where the work that they develop has expanded across borders.
