"There they were, provoking him indecently, showing their arms open in a cross, clenching their fists, saying to the other side; you need us. We come to the border because without us your crops will rot, there is no one to harvest them, there is no one to help in the hospitals, care for the children, serve in the restaurants unless we lend you our arms"

The crystal frontier by Carlos Fuentes

...the caged walkway is a hangout area for different kinds of people: people without the proper documentation to go across the border, sellers of all kinds of trinkets, and people without a place to go. It's a world of its own; not Texas, not Sonora, it is the "between", the "never never land"; it is the State of Suspended Animation. While working on this project a baby was born on the bridge. It was born to Mexican parents just past the official border marker on the American side, making the the baby girl a full-fledged American citizen. On Wednesday nights people line up at the middle of the bridge and sleep here; in the winter they light small fires trying to keep warm. Early on Thursday mornings the U.S allows a certain number of workers to enter for the day. On any day at any time you can see U.S.Border Patrol guards escorting groups of illegals back to the Mexican authorities.

Over the week of crossing back and forth with strange materials in the back of my car, the word got around that the "gringa with the greencard" was a crazy artist doing a project on the bridge. At one point I was told that once the shirts were painted they would become art and so would be subject to taxation when entering the U.S.

When we finally installed the shirts, it gave me great pleasure to hang the ones from Cd.Juarez on the American side and the ones from El Paso on the Mexican side. The shirts remained in place for fifteen days, during which time they were viewed by at least 50,000 people a day. Only one shirt was removed,which reaffirms my conviction that if the creative process is deeply rooted within the community, the community will respect and protect it.

"People do not need only to obtain things, they need above all the freedom to make things among which they can live, to give shape to them according to their feelings, their own taste, their own imagination."

Ivan Ilich