The world grieves the loss of Pope Francis as he was buried in Rome on Saturday, with President Trump in attendance at his funeral. The pontiff often criticized Trump’s border policy, while advocating on behalf of those displaced by persecution, poverty, and political violence.
In response to Trump’s rhetoric in 2016, Pope Francis visited Ciudad Juarez in Mexico, on the U.S. border and said, “A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be located, and not building bridges, is not a Christian.”
Sadly more than nine years later, the President has not only fortified the border in San Diego, but brought the border to university campuses, leading to the deportation of students, and even exporting prisoners to El Salvador.
While concrete borders and prisons may seem impenetrable, they can be brought down through words or images, whether it is the words of the pope, or the pen or paint brush, or at times with arts that combine both words and images, the comic arts and protest art.
In comics or manga, the panel is the “border” that wraps around a single moment or scene, containing an illustration that puts forth an idea or moves the story forward through action. Essentially, comics are defined by borders that let us transcend the borders of our imagination.
In May 2024 the Comic-Con Museum opened the exhibition “Border Blitz: Artistas del Cómic de Tijuana,” allowing artists to use comics as a means of expressing the border with Tijuana as a space for creation, evolution, inspiration, and experimentation.
Not too far from that museum, another comic of sorts is the protest art featured in “Borderlands Visions: Anti-Border Futures Exhibit,” which opened at the Centro Cultural de la Raza in Balboa Park and will be on display until July 27. One drawing there features the words, “We did NOT cross the borders, the borders crossed US.”
Etching by Lerida ArmendarizThis is Lerida Armendariz’s sublime etching of a black border separating the U.S. and Mexico. The description states: “It echoes the forced displacement and dehumanization resulting from arbitrary lines on maps, lines that disregard the inherent dignity and rights of all.”
The “arbitrary lines” could easily describe the borders created by the British and French out of the collapsing Ottoman Empire after World War One, resulting in the creation of the Lebanon, Syria Iraq, and Palestine mandates.
In terms of the Palestine mandate, there is an irony as the grandparents of Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador, came from Bethlehem. In 2014 Pope Francis visited Bethlehem to pray beside the controversial separation wall, touching a symbol of division while silently praying for unity.
Bukele, a descendant of the displaced from Bethlehem, a city where a displaced couple once witnessed the birth of Jesus, now presides over El Salvador’s notorious maximum-security prison, the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo. It holds Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a man deported from Maryland without due process. Bukele’s El Salvador — the “Savior” in Spanish — hosts a place not of salvation, but damnation.
At the University of San Diego, the Kroc School of Peace Studies is hosting Artivism in the Borderlands, a course on artivism, the blending “art” and “activism” as a peaceful yet transformative means of addressing social issues at our border. An exhibition of students’ work will be held at the Kroc IJP Theater and Rotunda on Tuesday, April 29, from 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.
All three events contribute to the “border gnosis” of our local region. “Gnosis” is the ancient Greek concept that is the etymological root of “knowledge.” For example, to be “agnostic” is to be literally “without knowledge.” All three events in San Diego employ visual images to convey a “border gnosis.” And this raises the question of “What is a border?”
Borders can be perceived geographically, such as the massive metal wall that extends into the Pacific Ocean, or by natural landmarks, such as a river, or military checkpoints. Borders can also emerge in our imagination, ways of thinking, and in the cultural spaces where the differences are addressed. They are both physical monstrosities and abstract concepts.
“Artivism” confronts the struggles of communities on both sides of a border, whether it is the struggle to cross one, or the struggles found after crossing the border.
Confronting these images and issues makes one a “border gnostic,” where you carry knowledge that borders are both physical and mental, imagined and biological.
Ironically, Pope Francis had opposed gnostic Christianity, an early form of the faith later deemed heretical as the Catholic Church came into being in the 4th century. Yet he was a “border gnostic,” in that he challenged the notion of walls that divide a common humanity.
Ibrahim Al-Marashi is an associate professor of history at Cal State San Marcos and a visiting scholar at University of San Diego and San Diego State University. “Artivism in the Borderlands Exhibition,” at the Kroc School of Peace Studies Rotunda and Theater will take place on Tuesday, April 29.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Opinion: Art and activism in San Diego echo Pope Francis’ teaching on borders )
Also on site :
- Mass shooting in Myrtle Beach tourist hotspot leaves 11 injured, suspect killed by police
- At Least 11 Dead After Driver Plowed Into Crowd at a Filipino Festival in Vancouver
- Fragile peace shattered: Kashmir attack pushes India, Pakistan to brink