2020Ponce-Rojas_Alejandra

The work I would like to focus on is Lopez piece Who's the illegal alien PILGRIM?. This piece really resonates with the rhetoric of illegal immigrants that I have been hearing for a decade now. Of course, she is highlighting how Europeans and Spanish had colonized the land, displacing the native population that the land had belonged to and had been taken care of by. The piece is interesting to me because of the strong and powerful language and stance of the man in the image. The pointed finger reminds me of the posters made of Uncle Sam, calling for recruitment into the army or war. A reference to that military and violent power is called out by using language like Pilgrim. The Pilgrims of the US were European and the 'original settlers' of the US. But in reality, the land had always been occupied. The reference to Mesoamerica is made in this piece, given that California was originally part of Mexico, and was not until the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ceded that land as US territory. Besides all the historical context and references the piece makes, which is why it really called my attention, the image is powerful in calling out colonization and xenophobic rhetoric that Americans used to reinforce a racial hierarchy among peoples of varying communities. Overall, this piece is outspoken and I want a copy of it for my collection.