El Paso: "Spirit Without Borders"

"Ánimo Sin Fronteras." "Spirit Without Borders." El Paso, Texas. October 2016. Artist:El Mac.

October 2016.

Look at the man's power and determination.

He's a real person - his name is Melchor Flores. His son "was disappeared" by police in Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico, in 2009. Mr. Flores has been looking for answers ever since.

Melchor Flores. Credit: Mac-Art.

His son, also named Melchor, was a tourist entertainer named the Galactic Cowboy (El Vaquero Galáctico), a robot. Below is one of several videos of young Melchor in action:

\

The mural, created in the graffiti method, struck me when I first saw it. But I didn't know its story or its artist until I researched the Borderland Jam.

The artist is El Mac. (Miles MacGregor) And below is the story about the making of Ánimo Sin Fronteras, along with its companion piece in Juarez, Juarense y Poderosa. Note that the interviewer identifies both El Mac and "Grave," his friend and fellow artist, as graffiti artists. (The Borderland Jam article features Grave.)

Juarense y Poderosa depicts a real woman named Diana.

Both Diana (surname unknown) and Mr. Flores lost family members to violence in Mexico; both participated in the Caravan of Peace with Justice and Dignity, which passed through El Paso in 2012, en route by way of a number of US cities, to Washington, D.C.

The Caravan's destination was Washington, D.C. because the participants believe that the so-called drug war has not only failed, but it has cost the lives of tens of thousands of lives in collateral damage.

Graffiti art - one form of civil protest.