People With No Names - The Undocumented #16

This is another of my "ladder paintings". I have noticed that ladders are a recurrent image in many of my paintings, due to the fact that many jobs such as gardenwork, painting houses, cleaning houses require the use of a ladder. The ladder is a metaphor for the journey. I will walk step by step up, from down in Central America to El Norte to find opportunity and work for my family. I will leave the comfort and safety of terra firma (my culture, my family, my language). If I am short in stature (as are many indigenous people) I will take more steps. I will start at the bottom of the ladder: walking, weeding and waiting. I will prop my ladder against a wall of opportunity, possibility and hope. (Note that I painted this in squares, merely focusing on the beautiful colors in each quadrant of the image, because many pieces have to come together for these people to gain a chance at a new life. Also I purposely decided not to let the ladder come all the way to the ground to indicate the precarious position that the immigrant is always in.)