Conference seeks to change border perceptions

SAN LUIS, Ariz. - Every day it seems, there's something in the news about illegal immigration or drug smuggling or, however likely, the possibility of terrorists entering the country from Mexico.

All that exposure is creating a negative image, one without merit, of the border and of the U.S. and Mexican cities that neighbor one another, says Richard Kuczek

Kuczek is a member of a planning committee that hopes to change that image through an academic conference and arts festival tentatively scheduled for next year in San Luis.

Many Americans look to the border as a buffer between them and Mexico when, in fact, they should embrace it as just the opposite, he told the audience at a recent meeting of the San Luis Corporation for the Arts and Humanities.

It is on the border where the art and culture of two nations come together in a rich hybrid form from which we, as border residents, benefit, Kuczek said.

"We want to celebrate the border and the blending of culture," he said.

The corporation is planning a two-day academic conference and a weeklong performing and visual arts festival in San Luis, said Michael Trend, the city's community development director and corporation board director.

The events, the themes of which are tentatively titled "What is Border Life," will examine how two nations' cultures fuse on the border, Trend said.

"It's not wholly American, it's not wholly Mexican. It's an alloy, if you will."

In the academic conference, authors, intellectuals and others from various places in the United States and Mexico would gather to examine and debate issues related to the border.

The arts festival, in turn, would consist of music and dance performances, other performing arts, as well as visual arts and presentations by writers and poets.

The city of San Luis and the Yuma Community Foundation, through the Sturges Family Trust, have provided funding for a pre-conference sometime in early 2010. Participants would plan and otherwise lay groundwork for the events that would follow about a half-year later, Trend said.

The conference represents a new phase in the mission of the corporation, formed two years ago to promote arts and culture programs in the Arizona border city, said Everardo Martinez Inzunza, a corporation board director and director of Arizona Western College's south county campus.

Its two most notable achievements have been overseeing the painting by Guadalajara artist Adriana del Rocio Garcia of a mural in the San Luis Cesar Chavez Cultural Center that depicts the border city's culture, plus the creation of Teatro San Luis, a theater group that teaches residents directing, production and acting techniques, he said.

But, Martinez added, "We don't want to rest on our laurels. We want to move forward."