Daniel Ibn Zayd

One of the events marking Israeli Apartheid Week: Beirut was the presence of visiting artist Juan Fuentes. Under the auspices of our artists' collective along with the IAW committee, some students and I brought Juan to the Bourj Al-Barajneh Palestinian camp. Juan's work stretching back these past decades is well known for its activist nature, and the Palestinian cause was often a theme of his work.

I will be honest and say that there was a lot of tension upon our arrival. I knew where it came from: the trepidation that we were yet another NGO, another group, another media event, another user of the camps for our own purposes. Later we would find out that no one in the camp had a high opinion of the NGO that we had contacted and whom we were working with. We sat around the table, students, camp residents, NGO workers, our art materials out, no one really speaking. It was interminable, the silence; torturous, the tension.


Works from the mid-'70s, in support of Palestine,
as well as Palestinian and Lebanese children

At one point I suggested that perhaps Juan could speak about his work; a student offered to translate, and Juan started discussing his life and its influence on his art. He told them about how his grandparents were Mexican, living in what was then Mexico, and then, after the war with the United States, they became American residents against their will. Despite this citizenship, they were forced to live in labor camps; they were seen simply as slave labor for the farms and ranches of the newly acquired territories of the expansionist American enterprise.

As children, Juan and his siblings moved from labor camp to labor camp; later his father would pass away from the illness of the lungs brought on by being sprayed with pesticides while picking crops. Juan spoke about the border where now there are plans for erecting a huge concrete barrier to stop the flow back and forth across the Rio Grande; Juan mentioned that previous to this the border was an inconsequential notion; the river was a demarcation of nature and not much more. Now this was being closed off permanently by the wall coming in.

As he spoke, and as his words were translated, these translated words resonated with everyone in the room, in their great weight, as they summed up the Palestinian experience as well: War, border, camp, wall, slave labor force. The tension broke; everyone started looking again at the examples of his work. One of the women took one of the visitors around to show her the murals, artwork, and crafts that they have been working on. Students started demonstrating various techniques: stencil, collagraph, calligraphy. The ideas, art, creativity were all there; we were simply facilitating.

If I've taken a year to write this down it is because much of what we resolved that day was a result of our visit and what we learned: The refusal to actively mediate our work; to utilize intermediary NGOs; to speak outside of the presence of those we engage with; to start a project that does not have as a goal a continuous engagement. All the same, I feel it is important to recognize the common struggle that is resistance to global capitalism, and how it is possible to form bridges and connections across cultures, languages, and regions.

Juan Fuentes stands as a testament to a lifetime of struggle and resistance, and we thank him again for his inspiring presence, his instruction and sharing of knowledge, and, as he put it, his "coming home" to Palestine.

Link to artist's work:
http://www.juanrfuentes.com/