South Sudanese refugee producer, filmmaker community activist and co-producer of Bidi Bidi Media Lab. His work explores conflict and statelessness in northward Uganda’s refugee archipelago.

 (now) that protests are not the most effective ways to convince those in power to, as my mom would say, 

 (be conscientious, think of others, change).

To the contrary, protests—whether they are in the form of a march, press conference, public comments, social media, or a mural in the middle of the Rio Grande’s embankment or in our barrios—are often seen by those in power as a reason to double-down.

The beauty of protests lies in their ability to change the way people see themselves, their struggles, their worth, and their own power.

The work of LxsDos, protests injustice by placing the working class people of our border at the center, celebrating them as ingenious protagonists. The ingenuity of the people, el pueblo, is manifested in their ability to survive harsh working conditions and inhumane and hypocritical immigration policies and practices—all laden with the belief that the working class people of/at our border are exploitable, dispensable and easily replaceable. The work of LxsDos defies these beliefs.

The protagonists featured in LxsDos’ murals are both ingenious and boldly indigenous. They have beautiful dark, brown skin both from their indigenous and mestizo ancestry and from working under the relentless sun. Their indigenous features and stoic defiance exude this truth: their very existence is an act of resistance.

There is no denying that placing Black, Brown, and Yellow skin on a beautiful, “larger than life” art piece is a form of protest, particularly now and particularly along the Mexico/Texas border. The two LxsDos murals that I will be referring to are “Operation Hold the Line” and “

The Operation Hold the Line is a mural of a woman laying down on her side, cradling a child. Her skin is the color of the earth and her body stretches along both sides of the border. She is the desert, the desert is she. She is covered by inhumane immigration policies dating back to 1993, when Customs and Border Patrol (CPB) implemented Operation Hold the Line. Her shirt shows the desert at its most fertile when its vegetation can shield both migrants and Border Patrol agents. Her pants show a caravan of families and also skulls, because the desert has become a shallow graveyard for thousands of immigrants who have not survived the dangerous journey to the “American Dream.”

The Border Patrol’s white and green suburban is flanked by a CBP agent wearing a green uniform and a jaguar mask, symbolizing the agent’s own Latinx/immigrant ancestry and duality. Indeed, along the southern U.S. border and certainly in El Paso, federal law enforcement is one of the best paying employment opportunities for Latinx youth, many of whom come from working class families, speak some Spanish, and accept the nickname of “Dream Crushers.”

Recruitment starts early in the law enforcement classes taught in over 900 high schools in Texas. Three of these schools are in El Paso County and featured in the documentary “At the ready”, directed by Maisie Crow. Operation Hold the Line was established in 1993 in El Paso by then Sector Chief Sylvestre Reyes, a native El Pasoan of Mexican descent. Reyes ordered his officers to form a human and vehicle blockade along the border, placing four hundred agents and vehicles every 100 yards from one side of El Paso to the other. Apprehensions dropped by 72%, prompting the federal government to invest and focus on “intercepting and preventing illegal entries at the border” instead of finding and deporting immigrants who had already crossed the border. As the surveillance and militarization of the U.S.- Mexico border grew, so did the number of immigrants who died from drowning, heat exhaustion, hypothermia, and injuries in the dangerous terrain into which they were pushed as they tried to avoid CBP. From 1998 to 2022, more than 8,000 immigrants died along the U.S. Mexico border.

As if this wasn’t enough, in March of 2021, Texas State Governor Greg Abbott launched Operation Lone Star, using over $4 billion in state funds and the Department of Public Safety and Texas National Guard to arrest and detain immigrants, most of them asylum seekers from Venezuela, on trespassing charges. In July 2023, Governor Abbott ordered the placement of orange river buoys with serrated saw blades on the Rio Grande and concertina wire to prevent immigrants from reaching U.S. soil to surrender to CBP agents as part of the asylum process.

Texas, the state with the highest number and percentage of Hispanics in the construction industry (61 percent), has just prohibited local rules that mandated water breaks for construction – this during the hottest summer on record. Again, for those in power, BIPOC are disposable whether they are on their way here or on the job.

Meanwhile, across the border in Cd. Juarez, Central and South American immigrants struggle to survive harassment by the cartels and law enforcement. On March 27, 2023, forty immigrants died in a fire at a federal detention center while law enforcement officers did nothing to save them. Prior to the fire, the mayor of Juarez had asked the public to stop giving the migrants food and money so that they would be motivated to work and ordered police to arrest the migrants.

While these efforts have been aimed at pushing immigrants south, the U.S. has failed to address what is pushing immigrants north. As Ramon Cardenas explains, “This mural also makes reference to the effects of imperialism—meaning the effects of decades of US foreign policies, sanctions and interventions in Latin America and the Global South in favor of a free economy—that are showing up at our door in the form of caravans of hundreds of thousands of people who have been forced to leave their homes due to extreme poverty, climate change, corrupt governments, drug and human trafficking.”

This mural is based on a vendor who used to sell her merchandise on the Santa Fe International Bridge. She and other vendors used to benefit from the long passenger vehicle lines heading north into El Paso at the various ports of entry. LxsDos interviewed her and other street vendors who have recently been displaced from the bridge by Mexican officials and are only allowed to sell further south on Avenida Juárez, making them more vulnerable to gang and cartel quotas, and being mugged because they rely on a cash economy. In addition, such restrictions make it harder to earn a living as it pushes them away from buyers.

The street vendors are just like any other person who isn’t born into a trust fund and has to work—they hope their work can provide for the “now” and the “later.”

The “now” probably consists of having: a consistent schedule and paycheck; work and life balance; the ability to afford a safe and healthy home, reliable transportation, daycare, healthcare, food, and recreation; access to regular bathroom and lunch breaks; little to no exposure to work hazards, like pollution and close proximity to vehicles, harassment, cartel threats. The “later” probably consists of having: the ability to retire at a reasonable age; a retirement or a pension plan; a home that is paid off; children who have better opportunities than you did; a body that hasn’t been completely broken by your work. Street vendors in Cd. Juarez lack all of these things and yet, rather than facilitate what is honest, hard work, the government has chosen to make their work even harder.

Despite that, the vendors still muster the enthusiasm required to deal with sales and constant rejection. Their ingenuity is showcased in the ways their bodies function as a mobile store, piling for instance, hats on top of hats on top of their heads. The source of this resilience is tucked away in the pockets of the woman’s shirt in the form of people—her people —including those yet to be born, those who depend on her to survive, and her ancestors, symbolized by the indigenous masks she carries.

Gráfica Libre

LxsDos: Ingenious + Indigenous

 is a product of a cultural research expedition. In May 2021, 

 project’s team of explorers, documentarians, and artists from Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan carried out an expedition from the source to the mouth of the Chu river. The expedition was a part of Adamdar/CA's eco-cultural project 

The group traversed over 2,500 kilometers along the winding Chu river, from the source beneath the glaciers in the Naryn region of the Kyrgyz Republic to its mouth in the steppes of Kazakhstan’s Jambyl province. The group gathered many stories about the river, its meaning, its past, present and the future. Some of these stories made it into the documentary film 

, the film premiered in June 2021 at the annual festival in Almaty, Kazakhstan.

Recitation from an excerpt of “Manas”, “Ilgeri-Ilgeri” by ZERE, “Sululyq” by Nasiafromasia (written by Kazybek Spanov, JCS), “Bir án salam” by Qonyratbay Fam

 and may not be republished without expressed consent.

JerSu

River of Nomads

Inspired by the fragility of natural world and the desire to push the limits of interdisciplinary performance, 

 is the brainchild of choreographer Michael Spencer Phillips and architect Dino Kiratzidis. Following the pandemic, the co-producers set off for northern California's majestic redwood and sequoia forests to create an immersive multi-channel performance installation that juxtaposes the grandeur of the ancient groves against the increasing of naturally-occurring wildfires in scenes that are at once sumptuous, prophetic and troubling. 

Phillips' choreography and Kiratzidis' attention to detail leaves the audience with the impression that the film to unfolds in a single movement, like one long breath. 

 is neither a documentary nor performance art, but a visual stimulant that draws us into its nook, shares its stories in whispers and acknowledges our sorrow.

 features music composed and arranged by Polina Nazaykinskaya for all ballet sequences. Immersive soundscapes were created by Darian Donovan Thomas.

The Anthropocene

Megaflora

Seventeen years after the end of the U.S. Secret War in Laos (1964-1973), I was born in a beautiful, beguiling land littered with war trash. Millions upon millions of tons of unexploded cluster bombs were buried beneath the soil of my childhood. When I was around 10 years old, I asked my father permission to show a few friends the bomb that was wedged between two boulders at the foot of the mountain near our house. I didn’t wait for him to answer, and we were already on our way when my father realized what was happening and yelled out that I should stay away. It was too late. I’d been boasting about it to my friends for a while, and I wasn’t about to lose face, especially given that we’d each sworn an oath not to poke it.

The unveiling was a little disappointing; it looked like any old, dead, rusty bomb. Still, we were terrified because no one knew if just being near it would cause it to detonate. It goes without saying that we survived, but that was not a foregone conclusion at the time, as my father knew well. That bomb must have been there for more than thirty years when I took my friends to see it in 2000, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s still wedged between those rocks today.

To exist within an environment riddled with unexploded ordnance (UXOs) requires at least a modicum of cognitive dissonance. Over time, the detritus of war—bombs, missiles, landmines, downed aircraft—gradually underwent a phase of transmogrification, evolving into menacing, lifeless, invasive species that were subsumed by the natural ecosystem. The jungle devoured some, the rivers others, and the farmlands the rest. But they were never digested. Three generations of Laotians have been raised within this “contaminated” ecosystem. In the most heavily-bombed regions of Laos the prevailing sentiment is that the most effective way to quiet your fears is to act like there is nothing to fear. It may seem preposterous to outsiders, but only when a new field needs to be plowed or farmland reclaimed from the jungle do villagers generally report UXOs to bomb clearance teams.

I grew up at a time when mass media was nonexistent and there was very little information about UXOs. I remember representatives from UXO Laos coming to my school on a few occasions as part of a campaign to educate rural children about the risks of unexploded bombs. The UXO Laos agents played games with us and performed puppet shows that taught us not to touch cluster munitions (“bomblets”) and to immediately tell an adult if we spotted one. It was an excellent effort by the government, undermined by the isolation and poverty of postwar Laos.

Economic desperation, an abundance of a raw material, and few other options provided an ideal setting for bomb harvesting to take root near the Ho Chi Minh trail in the 1970s and ’80s. There was little commerce and almost no industry in Laos at the time; very few people were wage-earners. The vast majority cultivated rice, raised a few cattle or buffalo, hunted wild game, and occasionally foraged for fruit or tubers in the forest. Scrap metal, on the other hand, sold for around 1,000 kip ($.10 USD) per kilo. A large haul of cluster bombs could be worth the equivalent of what a poor farmer might earn in a decade, given that the per capita income of Laos hovered around US$300 throughout the 1980s and ’90s. It was little wonder that a scavenging industry emerged in the area most heavily-bombed during the Secret War. Few could have predicted that a Ho Chi Minh Trail gold rush would change the trajectory of so many thousands of lives—a few for the better, far more for the worse.

Harvesting unexploded ordnance is entrepreneurial by nature. First, a cache of bombs or scrap metal must located and carefully removed from the soil or riverbed. The heavy matériel is then transported in bags or by cart back to a workshop, where the munition casing is dismantled and the detonator removed to disarm the bomb. Harvesters then either smelt down the raw material and rework it into products that can be sold to the local community—farm equipment, household goods, or building materials—or sell the scrap metal to Vietnamese merchants who regularly visit town.

The prevalence of this postwar cottage industry is evident in the thousands of villages across central and eastern Laos, where it’s common to see bamboo houses and granaries raised atop eight-foot-tall cluster bomb pillars, metal shells with USAF markings interspersed with bamboo fencing, and vegetables growing out of planter’s boxes welded from shrapnel. Now fifty years after the war, the following series of vignettes paint a portrait of life growing up in Laos surrounded by war trash.

When I was 16, my older brother and I accompanied our father on a field project to map a remote corner of Attapeu Province near the borders of Cambodia and Vietnam. The team set up camp in an area of the jungle far from any known human settlements—a place where king cobras, elephants, tigers, clouded leopards, sun bears, and the last rhinos in Laos still roamed a largely-undisturbed natural habitat. As the weeks passed and the animals became familiar with our presence, we burned clusters of dried bamboo at night to ward off any marauding predators. When heated, the pressure builds in the cavity of the bamboo shaft until it explodes like a pile of firecrackers.

One afternoon after having just finished lunch, a huge explosion about 300-400 meters away from camp jolted everyone to their feet. We cautiously went to investigate what happened and discovered that we had dug our fire pit right on top of an unexploded cluster bomb and the heat from the smoldering fire had evidently triggered the detonator.

Three months later, as we were wrapping up the project, we set off to survey an unmapped mountain nearby. We all descended into a deep gorge, waded across a shallow river, and climbed up the slope on the other side. When I reached the ledge near the summit I froze before a sight I will never forget. I have never felt fear like that in my life. The entire mountaintop was carpeted in bomblets and cluster bomb shells. We would have to tip-toe through the mine field to accomplish our task. Fortunately, the mountaintop was exposed rock, devoid of trees or soil, and most of the bombs were wedged in crevices that we could easily avoid. There was a local guide-labourer with us and I remember him marvelling at the scene, remarking that he could earn good money harvesting the metal. He suggested that we take some small pieces home to use as ash trays or serving bowls for

Keo Ou Don (Don) grew up in Khammouane Province, not far from my village. When she was 10 years old, she and a group of friends decided to scour the jungle in search of an aircraft rumored to have crashed nearby during the war. They carried with them spades, shovels, and a couple empty 50 kilogram rice sacks. Nearly frozen with fear, young Don summoned the courage to follow the other children down a shady forest path. All the while she thought of her older brother who lost his life when the yellow (BLU-3) “pineapple” bomb he was trying to fashion into a lamp detonated in his hands. He died before Don was born. Her mother told her that her brother survived the initial explosion, only to succumb to his injuries a few days later.

Don comes from a family of bomb hunters. Three other relatives died when they inadvertently triggered an entire cluster bomb they were trying to crack open. She marvels how times changed. “Back in the 1980s, people were very poor and nearly every household had at least someone involved in the trade.” Scrap metal was hard currency that could be traded for buffalos, bicycles, radios, watches, or other commodities. Don shakes her head in disbelief: “A buffalo back in those days cost the equivalent of a bicycle or a radio!”

The most money Don ever made was 50 kip, which was a fortune for a kid her age, and it had taken her several days to find those bombs. “I only collected bombs that were already exposed and cracked open. It was very difficult carrying the heavy load on my little back, but the money was worth it.” In time, she learned how to “safely” crack open the bombs from some of the older hands in the village whom she trusted.

. “That was what I thought back then. But I’m glad that I’m still here today.” Don did what most other kids did with the steel pellets, she used them as projectiles for her slingshot. “They are such fancy bullets. Perfect for bird hunting or shooing away buffaloes when they get into your rice paddy.”

Somsanouk’s parents moved to the sleepy riverside town of Thakhek from the bustling capital Vientiane when he was six years old. The family settled in Ban Goot (Village of Cripples), named in honor of the soldiers and peasant victims maimed during the relentless bombing campaign and from UXO explosions. The war left many without limbs, while the UXOs left others blind. It was a village of half-broken bodies where it was not uncommon to see residents with missing legs walking around on handmade, scrap metal prosthetics or children collecting water from the well with buckets made from bombshells.

“As a kid, I made a toy gun out of an old missile I found near our house. I used to play war games with it in the temple yard,” remembers Somsanouk. “While we were all running around, hiding from a friend, I noticed some old bombs rusting away behind the temple grounds. I honestly didn’t feel any fear because it was normal to see them. I knew if I didn’t kick it or light a fire near it, I’d be fine.” He shakes his head at the memory. “At the time, I was only afraid that my friend would find me.”

Years later, while on site for a planned infrastructure project in Boualapha district (the second most bombed area in Laos), Somsanouk was walking through a bamboo forest when he came across a field of bomblets scattered across the jungle floor and instantly stopped in his tracks. He looked down and realized that he was standing on an unexploded cluster bomb. One, perhaps two, more steps and the last thing he would have felt was searing heat exploding from the soil and his body rising from the earth.

On another occasion, not far from Boualapha, Somsanouk and his team were surveying a trail that would be used to install high electrical transmission lines. Aware that they were working in an area known to be dense with UXOs, they waited for a clearance team to arrive. “I made the call to start working a little early because the deadline for our contract was approaching. It was my fault. I thought we could designate the benchmark at the proposed site quickly and save us some time. When the UXO team arrived the next day, they found a UXO right next to the wooden pole we had used as a benchmark. They told us we’d missed hitting the bomb by about 5 centimeters.”

Chanthalavong “Thao” Phet is a renowned bomb metal artist who designs jewelry and handicrafts out of his workshop-gallery in Luang Prabang. Born into a poor family in Xieng Khouang in 1980, his father farmed and made money on the side as a blacksmith. He’d sold machetes and metal tools that he could sell in town for as long as Phet could remember. There was never any talk of artistry; he recycled the war trash—the steel and explosives—strewn about the village and rice paddies into something useful because it was abundant.

As trade normalized over the next decade, the price of raw materials became cheaper and factory-produced metalwork phased Phet’s father out of the market. Not long after, he fell ill. As the months of convalescence stretched into years, Phet’s family slowly sold off their assets—land, cattle, buffaloes—to pay for his father’s medical care. By the time Phet reached 18 years old, the time had come for him to step up and provide for his family. Unsure what to do, he revived his father’s old craft. He picked up a spade, rented a metal detector, and walked into the jungle toward an uncertain fate.

What Phet learned from welding bomb metals as a young man has served him well later in life. back in 2010, Phet sensed that a healthy tourism industry was beginning to take root in Laos and decided to set up a village handicraft collective in Xieng Khouang near the Plain of Jars with a few friends and the support of Helvetas, a Swiss NGO. Seventeen local families have since joined the cooperative, and their products are now sold in the Luang Prabang night market, souvenir shops across Laos, and a handful of international boutiques. Phet’s family earnings have increased by 80 percent since they started the collective 11 years ago, and handicraft production now comprises the main bulk of their income.

Reflecting on his journey, he offers a humbled story of success. “I was lucky to have survived back when I was a farmer. Twice I accidentally hit a UXO buried beneath the soil while I was plowing our rice paddy.” He actually cracked one with his hoe. Fortunately for Phet, both bombs were defunct. He knows it was luck of the draw. “Many of the people I knew in those days eventually lost limbs or died not far from my home.”

Few designers think about risk or responsibility in the way that Emi Weir and Cleménce Pabion do. As co-founders of Ma Té Sai, a Laos-based jewelery and handicrafts cooperative that works with bomb art and fosters partnerships with artisans in rural areas of the country, trust and safety are a requisite part of decision-making.

Weir and Pabion met more than decade ago in Luang Prabang while Pabion was “working in development in remote communities” and Weir was visiting the enchanting UNESCO World Heritage site. Sitting on the banks of the Mekong River, they conjured an idea to “source products around Laos to increase the income for rural families by sending the tourist dollar further out from Luang Prabang.” Wait explains, “we select and co-create handmade textiles, homewares, and handicrafts made from bomb scrap metal by people from villages across Laos.” Some MTS-affiliated artists and designers live in rural highland regions, others are lowland farmers or young people from disadvantaged backgrounds who came to the Luang Prabang to find work and develop a marketable skill.

Sengmany is a 30-year-old weaver who has worked with Weir for years. Her story is not dissimilar to others—the money she earns through Ma Té Sai gives her some financial breathing room. “When I got married and moved into my parents-in-law’s house, the [extension] was my contribution to the family, which came from the income I earned weaving.” The opportunity to earn a living back as an artisan has rippled across the Mekong, according to Sengmany, inspiring some women working in Thailand to return home and take part in the budding local industry. One of Ma Té Sai’s lasting legacies will be legitimising and showcasing the work of local artisans. Sengmany’s work, for example, is a known quantity. She sends her products directly to customers and buyers all over the world without fear her designs will be stolen.

The world changes at different speeds and in different ways. There is not one progress. Luang Prabang’s glittering night market is one reality. Another is that tomorrow morning in Khammouane Province, hundreds if not thousands of capable young men and women will wake up in a small village, eat some breakfast, pick up a shovel, a metal detector and an empty 50 kilo sack of rice, and walk into the jungle to test their luck. Weir and Pabion’s work is important because it offers hope and agency to generations of Laotians who grew surrounded by the remnants of war.

Art + War

War Trash

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United States

Yunnan

Oaxaca

La Frontera, US-Mexico Border

West Nile, Uganda

Global

Sichuan

Myanmar

East Africa

United Kingdom

Central Asia

North of Ireland

Eelam, Sri Lanka

Euskadi, Spain

Laos

Honduras

Canada

Tibet

Portraits of sacrifice from the U.S.–Mexico borderlands.

What Remains

Documentary films, podcasts and graphic reportage from the world’s first permanent city of refugees. 

Bidi Bidi Media Lab

A photojournalism series documenting the twilight of Nuosu culture.

The Cold Mountains

Eco-ethnographic art and documentary films from southwest China.

Breathing

Dispatches from Myanmar and stories of wars gone by.  

Reportage + Art + Activism