{"id":18565,"date":"2020-07-23T08:13:52","date_gmt":"2020-07-23T12:13:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=18565"},"modified":"2020-11-24T08:15:41","modified_gmt":"2020-11-24T13:15:41","slug":"dave-ortega","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2020\/07\/23\/dave-ortega\/","title":{"rendered":"In \u2018Dias de Consuelo,\u2019 Dave Ortega Recounts His Grandmother\u2019s Immigration Story"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article was originally published at DigBoston<\/a>:<\/em><\/p>\n

“Dias de Consuelo,”<\/a> Dave Ortega<\/a>\u2019s nonfiction comic book account of his grandmother Consuelo Casta\u00f1on Herrera\u2019s childhood, begins with the courtship of her parents in Fresnillo, Zacatecas, Mexico, a bit north of Mexico City. Their romance is formal and drawn out, but it is 1914 and the Mexican Revolution has soldiers stopping people in the streets, so they hasten their plans and are married that May. Consuelo arrives in December.<\/p>\n

The title translates as \u201cDays of Consuelo,\u201d but it\u2019s also a play on words as Consuelo means \u201ccomfort,\u201d so the title can also be read as \u201cDays of Comfort.\u201d<\/p>\n

Between Ortega\u2019s first issue, which he published in November 2015, and the sixth and final issue, which has just arrived (daveortega.storenvy.com), the series has become a story of three generations of women\u2014Consuelo and her mother and grandmother\u2014navigating the tumultuous years of the revolution and subsequent clashes between the Mexican government and Roman Catholic Church.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo as war does, it disrupts norms,\u201d the Somerville author and artist says. \u201cYou see the family broken up. You see these women on their own in a community during wartime.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"From<\/a>
From “Dias de Consuelo” by Dave Ortega. (Courtesy)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Ortega\u2019s story offers glimpses into the history of the era while he focuses on the details of his family\u2019s story. Their men go off and don\u2019t come back. Consuelo\u2019s grandmother runs the family shop for a while and teaches and cares for Consuelo. Her mother becomes a seamstress and struggles to keep up with the work. Young Consuelo attends school and does what she can to help.<\/p>\n

When Consuelo talked about her mother and grandmother, Ortega recalls, \u201cthere was this kind of glow around them.\u201d Traditionally, he says, \u201cwomen are very revered in Mexico,\u201d tracing back through Catholic traditions as well as Aztec customs. Ortega says, \u201cThese women did need to band together in kind of a nontraditional way.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDias de Consuelo\u201d follows Consuelo and her family until they cross the border into the United States in 1925 when she was 10. \u201cA border,\u201d Ortega writes, \u201cnot just between countries, but between two parts of her life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ortega says the comics began simply a way to get to know his grandmother better, when she was already in her 90s. \u201cIt started with me collecting information from my grandmother, giving her a call every so often, and getting her life story down. I was feeling guilty about not knowing any of it,\u201d Ortega says. \u201cI didn\u2019t really have a project in mind.\u201d<\/p>\n

He did take notes.<\/p>\n

\"Dave<\/a>
Dave Ortega. (Courtesy)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Ortega grew up in El Paso, in desert western Texas, right along the US-Mexico border, and moved to the Boston area after college, in 2000. He works as the programming coordinator and production assistant at the Somerville Media Center. Invitations to teach workshops at Boston\u2019s Institute of Contemporary Art and Museum of Fine Arts in recent years encouraged him to pursue an ambitious project.<\/p>\n

So Ortega took on the responsibility of being a keeper and teller of the family story. He typed up his notes. He mapped out pages in sketchbooks, scanned them into his computer, printed out the designs on Bristol board. He inked them with brushes and Micron pens that give his drawings their signature fine line. He scanned the drawings, colored them in his computer, and had them all printed as comics by California\u2019s RA Comics Direct.<\/p>\n

\u201cStarting this project before Trump took office, there was this kind of Obama optimism that everyone had,\u201d Ortega recalls. But after Trump\u2019s election \u201cthere was this tonal shift in the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Trump administration had spent their campaign demonizing immigrants,\u201d Ortega says. \u201cSo he felt he needed to act on it. \u2026 He took a very anti-immigration position.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ortega says, \u201cYou saw immigration clamped down. You saw kids in cages.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAll this was going on as I was writing my grandmother\u2019s immigration story,\u201d Ortega says. Despite the United States\u2019 long tradition of racism against brown people, he says, \u201cthat was a more humane immigration scenario compared to 2020. \u2026 These are dark days for the country in general, but especially for immigration.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOfficial history as we know it is largely the story of men\u2014and white men at that,\u201d Ortega says. \u201cGetting more stories about immigrants out there and marginalized voices, these really are the voices we need to be listening to now.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWith the rise of Black Lives Matter in the past month, it is important to let these voices be heard without the introductory white voice that\u2019s always there. It\u2019s time for the white voices to step aside and ask what the Black and brown stories are. It\u2019s time for them to just be told. And just more of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

In referring \u201cto white people as a group,\u201d Ortega writes, \u201cI mean the cultural gatekeepers (publishers, art institutions, curators, programmers) who\u2014more often than not\u2014frame Black and brown narratives defaultly through a white lens. As important as needing more people of color creators, we need more people of color in important gatekeeping positions (CEOs, boards of directors, curators, publishers) to finally change practices that often present these works as specially presented windows into the \u2018other\u2019\u2014sectioned off and under banners of diversity\u2014that exist outside of the regular offerings. I\u2019m sure I\u2019m not the first to say that artists, readers and audiences need to feel as though they aren\u2019t just being fed scraps when being offered \u2018a place at the table.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Consuelo Casta\u00f1on Herrera died in July 2018 at age 103. \u201cShe saw four issues fully published and she saw a draft of issue five. \u2026 She was thrilled the way anybody would be when someone is taking the time to tell the story of your life,\u201d Ortega says. \u201cShe loved it. So I did something right.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMy grandmother\u2019s story is a testament on why immigrants are the backbone of the country,\u201d Ortega says. \u201cImmigrants have been and they always will be convenient political scapegoats. \u2026 It\u2019s hard to be optimistic when kids are still in cages, frankly, but I\u2019m optimistic that people will see through the con job of the Trump administration and more humane days are ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

If this is the kind of coverage of arts, cultures and activisms you appreciate, please support Wonderland by contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And sign up for our free, (hopefully) weekly newsletter<\/a> so that you don’t miss any of our reporting. (All content \u00a9Greg Cook 2020 or the respective creators.)<\/em><\/p>\n

\n
\"From<\/a>
From “Dias de Consuelo” by Dave Ortega. (Courtesy)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article was originally published at DigBoston: “Dias de Consuelo,” Dave Ortega\u2019s nonfiction comic book account of his grandmother Consuelo Casta\u00f1on Herrera\u2019s childhood, begins with the courtship of her parents in Fresnillo, Zacatecas, Mexico, a bit north of Mexico City. Their romance is formal and drawn out, but it is 1914 and the Mexican Revolution […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18568,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[191],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18565"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18565"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18565\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18574,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18565\/revisions\/18574"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}