Nueva York es la Frontera

Pablo Baeza

This installation is a part of Listening Through Time and Place: An Interactive Oral History Exhibit, OHMA's multimedia interactive popup exhibition of stories, which will take place at the Social Hall at Union Theological Seminary on April 28, 2016 at 5:00 pm.

Nueva York es la Frontera is a multimedia oral history project that engages the life stories of Latina immigrant activists working in New York immigrant communities - as social workers, lawyers, educators, anti-detention activists, documentarians, and cultural promoters, among other roles - and engaging within the growing local and global migrant justice movement. The stories of these women, born in Mexico, Honduras, Colombia, Ecuador, and the Dominican Republic, convey a diversity of perspectives on immigrant Latinidad, growing up across cultures, and the personal experience of coming to support other immigrants. At the exhibit, in addition to listening to these oral histories and reading autobiographical writing, viewers will be able to dialogue about their own relationships with immigration by showing their or their family's journeys to New York - and their own thoughts about immigrants and home.

Nueva York es la Frontera es un proyecto multimedia de la historia oral que involucra a las historias de vida de activistas latinas inmigrantes que trabajan en las comunidades de inmigrantes de Nueva York - como trabajadores sociales, abogados, educadores, activistas en contra a la detención, documentalistas y promotores culturales, entre otras funciones - y la participación en el creciente movimiento por la justicia migrante local y global. Las historias de estas mujeres, nacidas en México, Honduras, Colombia, Ecuador y la República Dominicana, transmiten una diversidad de perspectivas sobre la Latinidad inmigrante, creciendo a traves de varias culturas, y la experiencia personal de venir a apoyar a otros inmigrantes. En la exposición, además de escuchar estas historias orales y la lectura de la escritura autobiográfica, los espectadores serán capaces de dialogar sobre sus propias relaciones con la inmigración, mostrando sus o su familia de los viajes a Nueva York - y sus propios pensamientos sobre los inmigrantes y el hogar.

Pablo Baeza is a writer, activist and oral historian currently getting his MA in Oral History at Columbia University. Raised in Santiago, Chile and suburban Maryland, Pablo moved to New York from California, where he attended Pitzer College in eastern Los Angeles County, where he did interview-based research on downtown revitalization politics in Ontario, CA, and on border art communities in San Diego and Tijuana. More recently, he taught creative writing and literacy to immigrant elementary and middle school students in San Francisco. Pablo first became interested in oral history and documentary work in the summer of 2012, when he supported a team of youth recording testimonials of south Louisiana and east Texas environmental justice communities. He is also a poet who enjoys long walks, good music, and childrens' literature.