Montes Family/Yuma, Arizona

This project illustrates the correlation between the troubled history and unfortunate present condition of my family of origin, and the history of the place they live in, the town of Yuma, Arizona. My parents came to the United States from the state of Michoacan in Mexico in the early 1970s to work as farm workers. My siblings and I grew up moving from place to place, following the harvests of fruits and vegetables. Eventually my parents bought a home in the town of Yuma, a town in the southwest part of the state of Arizona, close to the California and Mexico borders.

In the United States our family has experienced almost all the adverse social conditions that have a detrimental effect on people’s lives. These include poverty, violence, addiction, physical and mental health illness, and incarceration. These conditions have become the norm for three generations of our family. We seem to be trapped in cycles of misery, this is especially true of the women in my family. Through education and reflection, I have become aware that the conditions and challenges we have had to contend with are in large part the result of historic and systemic discrimination, as well as the intentional oppression and exploitation of marginalized communities by white supremacists through policy and action. Policy and action that are extensions of the colonial ideology which continues to shape our society. 

This ideology is currently expressed as disinvestment in the infrastructure of our communities, lack of resources for education and healthcare, exploitation of our labor, inequality in housing, lack of economic opportunity, and over-policing among other things. These attitudes and actions against our communities are woven into American society and government. They have been normalized to the point that they have become invisible, but in my family, and in families like ours throughout the United States, the harm inflicted by white supremacist attitudes, action, and policy is real. This project intends to illuminate this reality.

I have personally been able to move beyond the circumstances and environment that I grew up in and I have been working on this project for approximately fifteen years. I began by documenting my family and their home to address and understand my memories and feelings about my traumatic childhood and adolescence. Over time the work became more intentional and more conceptually layered. This was due in part to my becoming more educated about American history and in part to the development of my practice as an artist. I continued to photograph my family and the town of Yuma, Arizona, I have interviewed family members, I have written about my childhood experiences, and I have collected archival family photographs and documents. In the last two years I have formalized the work on this project by collecting all the materials I have produced and gathered, editing those materials into a body of work, and developing a plan for the continued work and completion of this project. I am also carrying out historical and contemporary research about the town of Yuma, Arizona in order to make and convey the connections between the history and present state of the town and the many challenges my family continues to face.

This project is conceived as a body of work that includes photographs, writing, information graphics, reproductions of family photographs and documents, and reproductions of historical images and documents. It is important to have this work seen widely so it can function as a counter to historical and prevailing narratives about the social order in this country that continue to perpetuate colonial ideology.