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Latino Artist Uses Paintings to Counter Anti-Immigrant Attitudes

Kulsoom Khan

   CHICAGO - Mexican-Americanartist Ricardo Santos Hernandez fondly
   recalls his boyhood in Nogales, Arizona, a border city where young
   Latinos like himself grew up able to cross to and from Mexico and enjoy
   the best of both worlds.

   "My experience growing up in Nogales was a beautiful one,where we had
   the privilege to go back and forth[to Mexico]," he said. "Back then,
   border policies and immigration were lenient as opposed to what is
   happening now."

   Sohe saidhe was "startled and frazzled" by some of the anti-immigrant
   rhetoric that accompanied the launch of Donald
   Trump'spresidentialcampaign in 2015, including a now infamous remark
   that Mexicans entering the United Stateswere "bringing drugs. They're
   bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people."

   But rather than just feel angry, Hernandez decided to use his skills as
   an artist to try to provide a counternarrative. "I started an art
   project with the artists from the border in response to the negative
   rhetoric that was highlighted everyday on the mainstream media," he
   recalled while sitting in his basement studio in the Edgewater
   neighborhood of Chicago.

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