For my art project, I tried to encompass my experience hear at UCSD with my interview recording. I was able to record a local family friend who was born in El Salvador and immigrated to the States when she was eight. She told me that she lived in Mexico for about a year before coming to the US in order for her family to earn some money to pay for the traveling expenses. The reason that her family left El Salvador was due to the Salvadorian Civil war that began in 1980. She told me about her upbringing here in the States as a child learning English and being surrounded by a new environment. Her reason for leaving El Salvador is similar to the violence that brings many immigrants to the states today. Families are continuing to flee for safety, yet in some cases they are being denied entrance to the states. Currently, the US attorney general Jeff Sessions has ruled that the United States will no longer be an asylum for victims of domestic abuse and gang violence. This ruling directly overturned a 2016 decision where a woman from El Salvador was allowed to stay due to her partner’s violence.
Violence and a denial to basic human rights have always been an issue. This year as a freshman at UCSD I took the DOC series that taught me about protests that occurred on campus, George Winnie, Angela Davis, and the Black Panthers. I also was able to take a Bob Dylan class where I listened to his more political albums. One song that stood out to me was “Blowin’ in the Wind” which was released in 1963. This song rose to the top of the charts and became the unofficial anthem for the Civil Rights Movement that was occurring at the time. In the song Dylan asks many rhetorical questions to solidify the idea that war, violence, and unequal treatment should have ended long ago. I think it’s a good song that still captures the fact that life has’t changed drastically and there is still a lot of change that has to occur.
