An immigration attorney will soon be filling the Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley’s Humanitarian Respite Center in McAllen with color, imagination and enhancing access to valuable information in multiple languages.
Carolina Rubio-Macwright, a Colombian immigration attorney and artist, is planning a mural that will be painted inside the center to welcome different communities and cultures who pass through.
“We devised something that would help people not only leave the center understanding that they are welcome and that they have rights, but also to make it joyful,” Rubio-Macwright said last week.
The mural is only one of several creative projects Rubio-Macwright is working on as part of the nonprofit organization she founded, Touching Land, or Tocando Tierra. The attorney/artist was on her fourth visit to the Valley since last summer.
“I don’t like the idea of going to a community and extracting, but actually giving to the community. And I’m here for the long haul. I will be here with Sister [Norma Pimentel] for the foreseeable future making sure that we pivot in whatever way, shape or form is necessary in order to serve the community.”
She has combined her love of art, social justice and immigrant education to create imaginative outreach efforts.
Last summer, the organization served over 7,000 ice cream treats and each flavor was connected to an immigrant, environmental, or tenant right.
“So people can have joy and they can connect feelings and information to their bodies,” Rubio-Macwright said.
The strategy to associate information to a physical experience carried into other projects that included cooking workshops and mass ceramic-making interactions.
As a Colombian immigrant herself, Rubio-Macwright believes in reaching out to other immigrants, providing education, and building welcoming environments.
The mural will be drafted by young people from all kinds of cultural backgrounds.
“When you cross here — and there’s so much uncertainty — that being able to see lovely colors like the colors in the center, is a way of expressing joy in the in-between,” the attorney said.
During her visit to the center last Tuesday, a volunteer with the organization was talking to immigrants as part of a different collaboration that aims to provide access to a vast set of resources for those newly-arrived to the U.S.
The website is still in the beta phase, but the organization makes progress on multiple fronts a little each day. Information-sharing, however, is the throughline in all her work.
“You’re sort of thrown into the thrust of America with no information,” Rubio-Macwright said. “In Central and South America, for instance, you can’t go to the hospital if you don’t have insurance. Much different than here where if you have COVID you can go and get help or if you or if you’re having a heart attack you don’t have to die outside of the hospital.”
In a couple of months, Rubio-Macwright is hoping the mural will be developed. They’re also planning to come back for an artist ‘happening’ where immigrants will be able to use ceramic clay while they absorb immigrant rights information.
Rubio-Macwright hopes the projects will be fruitful and helpful to welcome the hundreds who continue searching for safety and prosperity in the U.S.
