Teens Tell Stories of Their Families’ Arrivals in U.S.

If she had not asked, Marisol Pina might never have learned how she got to Los Angeles, riding at age 2 with her 6-year-old sister in the car of a stranger, a coyote her family had met on the way from central Mexico to the border.

Prompted by a class project, she asked her mother about their past. Then she put pieces of her story, along with stories from her classmates, into a dance and set it to music. Earlier this month, the students performed the dance, which represented their families’ journeys to the United States.

The performance was the result of “Arrivals,” an 11-week workshop sponsored by the HeArt Project, a nonprofit group that links artists and teenagers.

“We try to take in issues that are relevant to dialogues that are taking place in our city,” said Cynthia Campoy Brophy, director of the HeArt Project. “Art is a powerful vehicle to bring these issues to their attention.”

The classes were held at five Los Angeles Unified School District continuation high schools and involved about 100 students. Students enroll at continuation schools as a result of poor grades, excessive absence or bad behavior at regular campuses.

Professional artists in the HeArt Project -- the unusual spelling aims to show how art and heart merge -- helped the young people interpret their stories through dance, poetry and visual arts.

“I think the theme, ‘Arrivals,’ is definitely about having pride in who you are and where you came from,” said artist June Edmonds, who joined the HeArt Project this year. “It’s also about staying connected to your own story, your own life history.”

The HeArt Project, which began 12 years ago, operates on a $400,000 annual budget, financed through government and private grants and fundraisers. Two other workshops -- on music and architecture and on art and social issues -- took place this year.

At Central High School/El Centro del Pueblo branch in Echo Park, Pina, 17, and her fellow students performed the 10-minute dance to instrumental music and their recorded voices, which repeated such things as where their families came from and their age at the time. They were guided by professional choreographer Kristen Smiarowski, who rehearsed with them at a church where they take their classes.

“We talked a lot about movement as a metaphor,” Smiarowski said. For example, the students formed a circle, linked by bamboo sticks that they held at different angles to symbolize a mountain range their parents might have crossed to get to the U.S.

Smiarowski said creating the dance reflected a “bittersweet experience” -- of parents deciding whether to stay in a country torn with violence, such as El Salvador, or to become illegal immigrants in the U.S.

The art produced in the program is not meant to celebrate or condemn illegal entry of immigrants but simply to have teens explore personal histories, said Julie Glaser, the project’s communications director.

Pina said she connected the dance to her family’s struggle to get to the United States and make a life here.

Her father had arrived before his wife and children, who started out to join him by bus from a town in Guanajuato, Mexico, in 1988. Their plan was to slip into the country unnoticed, but they were caught and sent home.

Traveling with four children was difficult, and supplies were running out. Finally, Pina’s mother paid a coyote $500 to take her daughters over the border, and she continued on with her sons.

Pina’s part in the dance included a movement in which she was pushed and pulled in opposite directions.

She related those movements to her mother’s efforts to put food on the table and care for her children once they reached this country. The family is now being sponsored for legal status by Pina’s aunt, who is a U.S. citizen.

In another scene in the dance, Ernesto Bonilla, 17, was tossed into the air three times.

“The dance is pretty cool,” said Bonilla, whose family overcame hardships to emigrate from Guatemala. “I enjoy the part where I’m getting tossed in the air.... I guess it represents getting over -- not giving in.”

On the third toss, he was flipped onto his feet -- signifying success in reaching the U.S. -- and he took off running across the stage, hopping over crouched classmates.

At the Central High School/Silver Lake branch, which is located inside a Citibank, students worked with artist Edmonds. The class created an oversized book of five thick pages with images of their heritages.

Eliana Mendoza, 17, whose parents are from Guadalajara, worked with Mexican American classmates to illustrate their parents’ journeys to California.

“This one, it’s a good project,” Mendoza said, “to be able to show where we come from, that we are more than just” American.

The focus also turned to U.S. foreign policies in Iraq and Afghanistan and the immigrants who are among U.S. military casualties there. The artwork included newspaper photos of soldiers killed in the conflicts.

In the same classroom, 16-year-olds Adul Seng, who is of Cambodian background, and Tarechai Saelak, of Thai and Mexican parentage, worked together.

The center of their piece is a picture of a tattoo of Angkor Wat temple in Cambodia. The tattoo is on Seng’s brother’s back. It has been a tradition in Seng’s family to be tattooed with Cambodian images and Seng will get one, too.

“The first thing [Seng] talked about was his brother’s tattoo,” Edmonds said. “That is such an arrivals story -- it’s a connection, their home connection.”

Seng spoke to his mother about Cambodia and found out more about how she came to the U.S. to escape the genocide of the Pol Pot regime.

“She’s the only one who made it out of [her] family,” Seng said. “We’re lucky.”