Power In Portraits - The Lizbeth De La Cruz Santana Episode

Step Off! Radio

Like clockwork, with every election cycle immigration becomes a lightning rod for politicians on both sides of the aisle to take advantage of and exploit. Beyond the empty often vitriolic rhetoric, seldom are the nuances, intricacies, and perhaps most importantly the shortcomings of the nation's immigration ever system truly explored in-depth by our public leaders and officials. However, for decades artists have taken to a plethora of mediums to explore not just the effects of the U.S. immigration system, but what it means to be an immigrant in the U.S.. Art is not only a reflection of our society. It is also a means by which we air our frustrations, channel our grief, and collectively document the general sentiment that is often held at a given time. In our latest episode, we are joined by Dr. Lizbeth De La Cruz Santana, an assistant professor of Chicano Studies in the Department of Black and Latino Studies at Baruch College in New York City. Dr. De La Cruz Santana is also the director of both the Playas De Tiajuana and the El Paso del Norte Mural Projects, as well as a researcher for the Humanizing Deportation project. A community-based digital storytelling project and the world’s most robust public qualitative archive that documents the human consequences of contemporary migration and border control in the U.S. and Mexico. Dr. De La Cruz Santana joins us on Step Off! Radio to not only share her work as an academic but, also as someone who regularly spends her time on the ground at the border to work with disaffected communities. All too often the conversation around immigration is told by people who don’t come from immigrant backgrounds, who are not from border communities, and people who simply do not understand the complexities and nuances of what is the busiest and most consequential border crossing on the entire planet. So here to discuss that and so much more we are proud to present to you our conversation with Dr. Lizbeth De La Cruz Santana.