I carved the block from which this print was made over a year ago, during a residency on the Oregon coast. The text reads “Dicen que la lucha no se termina en las fosas comunes” which translates, more or less, to “They say that the struggle doesn’t end in mass graves”. If you think about that a bit, you can find a few possible currents of meaning.
The phrase here consists of 43 letters, one for each of the student teachers from the Ayotizinapa college who were kidnapped and presumably murdered in 2014 by what seems to be elements of the Mexican state, in collusion with cartels. However, the line between those two entities has never been particularly clear, and this case has shone a harsh light on that unpleasant fact. There’s very little truth available in the drug conflict in Mexico, but what remains is found in the words and actions of the families of those who vanish into it. Here’s a blog post with some further information.
A portion of this edition went to a fundraiser for the families of the Ayotizinapa students.
