Somos Los Otros

Albuquerque, New Mexico

Mission

We use music and theater to provoke thought and promote dialogue around the issues of immigration, human rights, differences and community.

Somos Los Otros . . . and they are us!”

A collaborative sponsored project of the Albuquerque Center for Peace and Justice, using music and theater to educate, empower, and promote dialogue among Albuquerque’s diverse communities.

Community Context

Like elsewhere, immigration trends in Albuquerque are often presented as a matter of Mexican people moving north. Yet we have a number of different communities who were driven here by difficult situations at home, from Southeast Asian to Central American refugees, as well as the Pueblo and other Native American communities and cultures that have survived Spanish and Anglo imperialism and are working hard to maintain their cultural heritage and languages.

Somos los Otros

We live in difficult times, watching our communities driven apart by fear rather than brought together for our common good. We can resist this divisiveness and renew our communities. We know from experience that music and theater can reach closed-off and fearful minds, inspire and galvanize down-trodden individuals, and transform an uncomfortable gathering into a strong, joyful, focused community. In Gandhi’s tradition of “experiments with truth,” we are experimenting with the power of art to transform ourselves and our communities into the people and world we want for our children.

Somos los Otros is a new collaborative project between a number of Albuquerque social justice and immigrant rights organizations and advocates. To counter the growing national and localized anti-immigrant hysteria and the manipulation of that fear and hatred among the general public, we remind ourselves and our communities of our traditional values of compassion, hospitality, and neighborliness. Music and theater can help us breach those barriers and remind our communities of the best in our cultural heritage and in ourselves.

We use songs, role plays, and skits to provoke thought and promote dialogue around the issues of immigration, human rights, differences, and community. The founding collaborators are: the Albuquerque Center for Peace and Justice, El Centro de Igualdad y de Derechos, Ricardo Magallanes, Daniel Erdman and Dair Obenshain of the musical ensemble L@SOTR@S, and Riti Sachdeva, co-founder of Kalapani Productions community-based theater.

Somos Los Otros began when a group of rights promoters from El Centro de Igualdad y de Derechos were inspired by a musical presentation by the musical group L@SOTR@S. Together with the musicians, the group re-wrote the song “Saber ante la Migra” (“What to Know When Facing the INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service)”) to reflect the contemporary situation in New Mexico. [Read song lyrics in Spanish and English] . The song was originally written in response to raids and exploitation of immigrants in the San Francisco Bay area in California, and adapted to confront misinformation and abuses in New Mexico. A local radio station agreed to record the very non-professional choir, and El Centro has begun using the song in their organizing workshops. Members of El Centro , the musicians of L@SOTR@S, theater activists, and friends involved in the Albuquerque Center for Peace and Justice saw the excitement generated by cultural activities tied to positive organizing work and launched Somos Los Otros … and they are us!

In its initial stages, the work is centered around the on-going efforts of El Centro to educate, animate, and organize the immigrant community around their rights. Musician-organizers and theater activists attend and participate in those workshops and lend their expertise and advice to amplify El Centro ’s effectiveness and to brainstorm methods of breaching emotional and other barriers to reach out to diverse cultural communities. Aside from the largely-Anglo membership of the Peace Center, a number of middle-class Anglo church congregations have also shown interest the project. Check in with us again in the future to see how our outreach efforts are going!

As a relatively new organization, we are taking small steps toward our ambitious plans. Musicians and theater activists are attending the worker-rights and immigrant-rights workshops of El Centro de Igualdad y de Derechos to give advice and brainstorm with El Centro 's organizers about more effective use of music and theater in their workshops. El Centro 's workshops for immigrants typically consist of, first, explaining a few key practices (i.e., you have the right to remain silent and insist on a lawyer, though that may mean you will be taken to jail until you have access to a lawyer; do not lie to authorities—that usually gets you into more trouble; you do not have to allow police or immigration officials into your house or allow them to search your car unless they have a warrant; etc.); second, having several skits involving 'audience' members role-playing situations involving the police or immigration; third, answering particular questions; and finally, summarizing the issues involved, singing the song to keep things fresh in mind, and announcing upcoming workshops.

Somos Los Otros is also organizing monthly sing-along sessions, arranged through both the non-immigrant and immigrant communities, to help people get to know each other and learn of each others' rich musical heritages. Many things can come of this (we have a lot of ideas!), but we are going to see what develops naturally from the people involved.

We are also planning on sponsoring free or modestly priced screenings of films that address popular struggles in Latin America. As a means of outreach, we plan to present the films in community centers or churches already frequented by immigrants, with follow-up showings at the Albuquerque Peace Center, so that people who were galvanized by the film can bring their friends back to see it again. We have recently sponsored a concert by a progressive musical group, Emma's Revolution, which served the project both as a fundraiser and to announce ourselves to the mainstream peace and justice community.

Our efforts within the immigrant community are targeted at raising spirits and reminding community members of their human and civil rights. In the more affluent, powerful community of U.S. citizens, our focus is on, “Who are we? What are our values?” and, “Who are our neighbors?” Our immigrant neighbors remind us daily, by example, of the values we used to cherish in our own communities: putting the welfare of children above all else; helping those in need; hospitality; etc. When we get to know our neighbors and see the deception in the stereotypes we’ve believed, we can recognize how our fears allow us to be manipulated and drive us away from our better selves.

Somos los Otros is a collaboration, with each actor bringing different experiences, strengths and community connections to the table. The organizers of El Centro de Igualdad y de Derechos have been working with the Latino immigrant community for years. L@SOTR@S has always envisioned their musical presentations as bridges between communities, reminding us to be allies, not enemies or competitors, with other marginalized communities. Our theater activists, themselves immigrants from South Asia and the Caribbean, have used original theater to educate around historical and contemporary issues of justice. And the Albuquerque Center for Peace and Justice serves as an umbrella for many progressive groups and individuals to regularly come together.

The social justice activists and organizations who co-founded Somos los Otros recognize that music and art can work magic. We want to tap that magic for greater intensity in our work, greater joy in our collaborations, and to reach new communities. The artists participating in the project know that while one-time concerts and plays are important and can be inspirational and provocative, our collective concerns about social justice can be met much more effectively when music and theater are joined with on-going dialogue and organizing. Finally, we all know that all issues of social and environmental justice are linked. Not only do we resist being divided among any lines (racial, national, ethnic, class, gender or gender identity, etc.), but we know that the broader our coalitions and deeper our links, the stronger and more effective our collective work will be.

When we remember the best in ourselves and our cultural traditions, we no longer fear our neighbors. We ask others who are concerned about these issues and want to strengthen our links across communities to join us. There are many options:

— participating in workshops;

— inviting us to address congregations and meetings;

— co-sponsoring events that help bring our diverse communities together;

— becoming members of the Peace Center and El Centro , which makes this work possible; and

— other collaborative possibilities you may imagine that we haven’t yet envisioned.

Learn more

Visit the websites of El Centro www.elcentro-nm.org, where our “Migra” song is posted to hear and share,

and the Peace Center,

www.abqpeaceandjustice.org/projects.html,

for more information.

Contact

Dair Obenshain

3022 Barcelona, SW

Albuquerque, NM 87105

505.877.5883

dair_o(at)yahoo.com

or

Ricardo Magallanes

505.268.0014

somoslasotras(at)hotmail.com

Photos

From the first collaborative Somos Los Otros project, recording the song "Saber ante la Migra" for use in workshops and for airplay on the radio. Everyone is a volunteer; the radio donated the studio time and materials.

Photos, Rachel LaZar of El Centro de Igualdad y de Derechos, courtesy of Somos los Otros.

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