Card workshop serves as therapy
http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/miami/16261.html
BY JULIETA MART?NEZ
Lunes 12 de diciembre de 2005
TIJUANA.- Women staying at the Casa Madre Assunta migrant shelter in Tijuana have a new vocation: they are making holiday cards, both as a means of
income as well as a way of expressing the pain of their experiences.
Sister Luz from the Casa Madre Assunta is the author of the project. She said she got the idea after observing the sadness and anguish of women who
had left their families behind in order to try to enter the United States. Handicraft is one of her own pastimes, so she thought she might try to
implement a holiday card-making workshop as a form of occupational therapy.
She opens up a card made by a woman named Rita. Two cardboard triangles glued to the paper represent the mountains she had to cross on her journey
from El Salvador. There?s also a fringe of blue cloth, depicting a river left behind in her hometown. And then there are two, bold parallel lines,
representing the border of the United States.
The scenario is criss-crossed with a series of fingerprints, which Rita said are the footprints she's made during her travels. There are three
additional fingerprints on the card, and those represent her three children, left back in El Salvador while Rita went in search of better economic
opportunities.
In addition to the holiday cards, women at the shelter also design tiny 5 cm-square cardboard boxes that hold miniature rosaries.
The cost of each card or rosary box is 15 pesos, and though sales have been slow to begin with, Sister Luz says that more an more customers are
recognizing the beauty and sensitivity of the objects.
"All of the creations are beautiful, although some reflect the authors sadness at having left their homes behind," she said, noting one card that was
completely blackened with ink. Its creator said that the blackness represented not only her entire experience since leaving her home, but also her
future.
The Casa Madre Assunta, currently under the director of Mother Gemma Lisot, has been in operation since 1994. Since it began serving migrant women, it
has attended to 9,456 individuals from all over Mexico, as well as from Central and South America, and even some from Europe, Asia and Africa.
At least a third arrived at the shelter after being deported from the United States, said the facility?s social worker, Mary Galv?n.
In 2004, there were 775 migrant women served by the Casa Madre Assunta, an average of two new arrivals per day. And while many arrived alone after
leaving their loved ones behind, others came with one, two or three children, said Galv?n, and one woman even arrived with nine little ones in tow.
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