creativetime:

Ammmeeeeeeerica, what a beautiful scary place to be
but then living in fear is normal for us
we are all scared shitless of the immediate future
by the way, are you scared of me?
of my accent, my strange intelligence,
my obnoxious capability to articulate your fears?
an articulate Mexican can be scarier than a gang member
que no?

Guillermo Gomez-Peña,“On Fear of the Other”

From the Creative Time Archive:

“El Mexterminator” was an interactive performance series in 1998 that traced a new ethnographic and cultural map of Mexican New York. In part, artists Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Roberto Sifuentes’s extensive series included a live Internet chatroom, as well as a radio call-in show, during which individuals were encouraged to participate as their “favorite cultural avatars.” They discussed both their fears and desires of the cultural “other,” as well as reflected on the horror of a country perceived to be under seige by immigrants and people of color.

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(Source: creativetime.org)