Juan Ortiz, Interviewed by Marriot Davis
November 2020
Q: When did you wish to become an artist?
A combination of things that were really about trying to raise a family and put food on the table. So I didn’t get to think of what I wanted to do personally. My instinct to create was always there.
So I knew that if I got a chance to go to college, that I would go to college for something that I could feel fulfilled. As I took more coursework around issues of art, the more I started realizing it would be within the arts. The majority of my life I had to work at things that were not art related and it never worked out so when I had my chance I took it.
Q:How would you describe your background of growing up?
The border. The border is defining the good part of my life and for generations. Because we come from ancestral people, we come from indigenous people to the Borderlands. So as far back as any one can remember, that's been our reality, a bordered reality.
So my family went back and forth between sides of the border as far as we can remember.
It only been a few generations since our family started having to require documentation to cross. The first one that was actually required to become documented was my great, great grandmother. For people who marry into our family, people we've been around, childhood friends, extended relatives have all had to deal with immigration issues, with issues that arise from being on the border. So social social ills, like the war on drugs, have come to define a lot of the border. We've been here since before there was such an issue. Now issues around immigration, that have all become really exponentially more intense and much more on the national forefront.
Q:Would you say that immigration and the border has been your biggest influence in becoming the style of art you present and its meanings?
Yes, politically conscientious art through murals, has been really important to the fabric of who we are and every other form of political art that's come since, I think has been defined the most by Mexican muralism and Chicano muralism. But, of course, I think I am not necessarily defined totally by that art form alone because I practice a different kind of art from them. I certainly think the socially critical aspect of it is something that I use.
Q: What would you say are the biggest policy changes that are just ineffective or, don't agree with?
I think the general public knows about all these things, but not to the extent where they could actually detail what the problem is, or are too knowledgeable about the particulars of these issues, because they're kind of complex and historical. The biggest change that's happened is issues around deportation. The first step they took in that direction was when they criminalized immigration. Now immigration is seen as a criminal infraction, before it was treated like a civil infraction. When you criminalize immigration of people that cross the border, you are criminalizing a lot of people legally seeking asylum. The U.S. under international law is supposed to verify you through due process through the court system if you have a real legitimate claim to asylum. Then while your asylum claim is being processed you're allowed to stay in the country, until they verify your claim. So that's by international, right. But that is only one issue. It's important to sideline that. Because the big issue that happens when you criminalize immigration, and you start going after people under criminal cases is that you wind up invoking the criminal justice system, which means that you have to safeguard people's rights under the US Constitution. Yes, that applies to everyone. That's why you have situations in which children and toddlers are having their rights read to them by a judge, as if he had committed a crime.
So criminalizing the parents, criminalizing children, meant that you have to house boundaries, people under the criminal justice system. That's when the family separations started happening, because you can't house adults with children. That's what happened with family separation. So now you have toddlers, by the thousands that need legal representation, and most of them don't even understand what you're telling them. Then came overcrowding and long periods followed by releasing folks in mass onto the streets of El Paso, which is where our group started working.
Q: What does your art represent to you?
As an artist, I am having to become much more aware of the things going on around me because they affect us so deeply. But I also had to be able to make my art respond to the situations at hand. So in many ways I am dealing with the reality that we're living in personally and through my art as well. Since I express myself through art, my art is reflecting all of these things that we are going through. So my art has become so much about being in service to the communities as I am. So in that way, it's really become a very contemporary kind of art that many people would refer to as social practice. My true art form is community organizing.
But in my career it has been very detailed, I can go through each one of the ways in which I've had, say, an exhibition, like the ones in Baltimore, that were specifically created, through community organizing, but also have the added benefit of producing artwork that I was able to exhibit both personally and through the community.
Few have been successful enough to be able to definitively say, yes, my art helped create the situations in which social transformation is possible. It has cost me a lot to be able to say that my art has been relevant and creating transformational change that I don't say that lightly, because we've incurred a high cost. But I can definitively say I feel it's true.
Q: Do you mind me asking what type of stuff was related to that high cost?
For example, here in El Paso at the height of everything that was going on, I was a victim of a very serious crime. I was beaten very badly for publicly talking about my politics and certain dislikes and I was attacked by a group of racist folks. So for a good part of the year I was in and out of the hospital, and in long term care wheelchairs. And that was shortly before the shooting. And I think that's why the case -- or what happened to me -- was highlighted a lot, because I had made a social media posts shortly before the shooting in El Paso warning the community that things are becoming very serious for activists. And after the shooting, people really became aware of how serious the situation has gotten.
Also our physical space, because our coalition was formed to fight the children's detention center. Cosecha is what work group is called. Our physical space that we bought to work out of that we still have to this day, called Casa Carmelita was attacked by a white supremacist from the Infowars group. Kind of wearing blue, he parked outside after we were having a vigil. Days after the shooting, we had a vigil to remember the victims, and a white supremacist showed up with blue clothes armed with a knife and gun. And kind of it was intimidating everyone in front of our building -- an image that made national news as well.
So it's when we were helping people out in the Greyhound stations where they were just being dumped and left to their own devices. And under really dangerous conditions. We got a lot of national exposure. And so we were trolled by some of the most professional right wing extremists, especially out of the info wars camp, the ones that have now become synonymous with q anon and others. And during some of our actions in protests, we've had people charged with crimes, like felonies for the border patrol.
We had 30 people charged and we fought those and got the trial over. The majority of those are already won -- we haven't actually had one conviction on principles of like exerting our civil rights. So when I say high prices, it's really been a high one.
Q: So you would probably say that infowars and other groups are your strongest, your biggest opposition that you've had with your work?
The phenomenon of the proud boys and all these other groups that have now become synonymous with white supremacy groups, basically. And in El Paso there were street militias too, forming around us. It's like 85 to 90%, Mexican American and Mexican people. We've never had a white supremacists presence. So this was all a direct result of what's happened during the short time period in which this administration has been in power. And that's one of the things that people really, especially here started understanding that this was the zone for a call to God. And that's why when white supremacy groups showed up to basically kill white folks, we knew that was coming. Anybody who was here knew that something violent was on the horizon. And I think that was just a prelude to the other racialized violence that we've been living in.
Because of the work I was doing in Baltimore, it led me directly to being invited to help at Standing Rock. And then from Standing Rock, I came here, and that's when everything started happening here in El Paso. So since that time, you were outlining earlier, I've lived in places where this kind of racialized violence and hate is something that we are living through and dealing with. We've just been living with the repercussions of an increasingly racist time in the country. My art form is to reflect that, and that is why I transitioned from doing art that was more about myself and the issues that I lived with, to one in which she was in service of the community and resistance, because we're the whole country as a whole in particular, color resistance.
Q: So what would you say is your best representation of that struggle? Like is there a specific piece that you think really shows the colors of that like, very definitely?
There was an exhibition artwork that was the culmination of a year's worth of workshops around conversations on race and racism. And not only in those workshops, giving people anti racism training, and knowledge, but we'd also produce artwork together that we then then exhibited. But in reality, that was community organizing because we were organizing a committee of folks through the vehicle of those workshops to create a committee of local community members that would create these workshops, and provide each other conversations and organization to continue to work on issues of race and racism through a program called Neighborhood Voices. That was one that I felt was really successful, highlighting how it is that we can use art to organize communities and also to talk about important issues.
The second one was when we used the art I created to blockade the children's detention center on New Year's Eve three years ago. I actually created a Christmas tree out of water gallon jugs, wishing that no more deaths be brought back from the desert, wishing they would feed my grown folks water and attend to their needs out in the desert so they won't die. And that's for me was the perfect way in which I like that it was artistically a very small piece of artwork that we used in a very creative way, to shut down an international port of entry and the children's detention center. Because the children's detention center is in an international port of entry. And that we could have potentially faced federal charges for doing so. It was a very intense action, it garnered a lot of national attention. And shutting down that border during the shift changed at the children's detention center, we actually stopped about 25 to 30 commuter buses that were all in line in a single lane road, to come into the camp. That was the culmination of a series of actions in which we were basically kept outside of the detention center to try and get a shot.
The final one has been this last one we did about six, seven months ago. In Louisville, we shut down the Second Street Bridge and put up a huge banner. On the side of the bridge, our climbers climbed way up higher to make sure it was very high on the bridge, which was extremely dangerous. And also created a blockade with an altar down at the base. So we shut interstate commerce down for the day. It was tightly choreographed, and then we unveiled this beautiful banner that was done in black and brown solidarity that was a face of Breonna Taylor, because we were in Louisville, because Black Lives Matter Louisville had invited us, because they knew we had this experience in doing creative direct actions. And so we were there in solidarity with them to try and get justice for police brutality. But there were people out of St. Louis, Baltimore, people from across the border there to support Louisville, Black Lives Matter folks. And erecting that huge banner and shutting down the bridge for the day, that was seen as a really defining moment for that group. And they were really appreciative. It built a lot of solidarity between our sister cities. They just are places of resistance. And so we've continued that relationship to this day.
Those are all really powerful ways of doing resistance work. That's both direct action and it's meant to be disruptive. And also garner attention for things. We've done creative resistant actions that get attention and are disruptive. And that's what we're looking to do.
Q: Has anyone's responses to your work, like really hit home with you, or really shown that your art, how it's helping make a change?
I think that especially what we did around the children's detention center, helped propel that issue onto the national forefront, really made us real, even though it was a really small Direct Action. And it's meant to be disruptive and also garner attention for things. And we definitely do that -- we've definitely done creative resistant actions that get attention and are disruptive. And that's what we're looking to do.
So we were willing to pay the high cost of doing those. So that we could have an effect on the politics of the country. And that's the same with the bridge action and all of these high consequence actions that we've been doing. And it's gotten to the point now, because of reputation, and because of the work we're doing, we've been invited to more areas where people are struggling to resist. And it's usually a small group, just like it's always been throughout history, a small group of people that pay the high price for everyone else. Everyone else kind of sits and chooses to sit in the sidelines. And then this, this group kind of drags the rest of the nation kicking and screaming into a better place. And that's to me, the way it's always been. The change makers in our culture have always paid a high price for changing this country, including their lives. And that's why when people ask what side are you on? That's what they mean, is that these moments in which people have to decide morally, culturally, politically, like what side are they on, because these things require us to do so. There is a right and wrong to them, and a sense of urgency. And as people see now, across the country, especially Gen Z, they grew up with a sense of urgency and their politics that hasn't been seen in a while, in many generations, because of the existential ecological threat, because of the existential threat to social justice issues that have come to a head.
And then art is an inherent way in which we could bring people together to highlight issues. It's also one that's important for me, it's been important in my life, it's also a really powerful tool to organize and resist. A really powerful one.
Q: I mean, I can only imagine it seems a lot of these issues are just so big and broad. And so many people just like to oversimplify it. And it's just, that's just not possible. simple solutions don't fix complicated problems.
Exactly. And they took a long time to create them, so it's going to take a long time to even just to try and alleviate them. It's going to take a lot of commitment. And like that's one of the things our group has the most committed to: a deep sense of commitment.
And most human relationships that we find sacred are of great importance are all around. And mind you, I still live my life, I still have a family with all my obligations. I'm a PhD student. We've gotten to the point where we get nominated for most of the grants we receive now, we don't even apply for them. Because there's this recognition. And the importance of the time we're in by a lot of folks, even in cultural institutions are recognizing for our work. And the people support us in many ways, including sending us donations from across the country, through organizations like Immigrant Families Together. And that's a really beautiful thing -- yes, we're kind of at the head of some of these things. But we are actually only able to do this through the support of our family, our community over extended communities, our network and each other. Because we're in active resistance together, and we're paying, like I said, a high price for it. We’re heavily dependent on each other, to at this point survive. I mean, it's it's incredible to me that I still have to .... like I was still a PhD student doing all my work while still doing all these things all over the country now. Super intense work, but super satisfying and rewarding. That's why I tell you, it doesn't come easily for me to say but I can say it definitively because we've had to pay the price. It's taken a lot of hard work to make it substantive, to make it as impactful as it is. It's not happenstance, it took a lot of thought, sacrifice and hard work.
Q: Is there anything that I missed that is important for people to understand about your work?
I guess there's just like a small part of the spectrum of issues and things that we're having to tackle. But most importantly, for people to understand, these are things that have been thrust upon us, and historically have been, so I tell people, what makes it interesting about us being indigenous people, and us being from a continuum of resistance is the I recognize it is just the latest iteration of a struggle that's been there all along for my family. My family was in the Chicano movement. My family was in the Mexican Revolution, like all of these issues here have been long and ongoing.
It's just that we, like the precepts, people perceive them as just contemporary problems. And now it's Americans having immigration issues. In reality, El Paso has always been a hotbed of resistance, because we are basically at the tail end of US immigration law, US drug law, mass incarceration. So that's why we've had to react basically. But it's not been because we've chosen any of these things. The nation state has decided to create those policies and those structures, and we've just basically had to live with the consequences. It's been one that's been imposed, and therefore it brought all of these issues. It's brought all these issues since then, and supporting people realize that this has been an ongoing, continual problem. And like you said, That's super complex and transnational in nature.