story & photos by Valarie James*

One day in the winter of 2021, Cecilia, a mother, a migrant, and an indigenous weaver from the mountains of Guerrero in Southern Mexico, saw a busted broomstick handle tossed aside at the border shelter in Nogales, Sonora. From that day on, she scoured the grounds of the shelter for other sticks and broken branches, determined to build a backstrap loom with anything she could find.

ABB volunteer Kat Smith helps Sister Lika pull to keep tension on the backstrap loom. Coordinator Ana Delia looks on as Cecilia teaches.

As volunteer facilitators of Tucson’s Grace St. Paul’s Episcopal bi-national arts ministry Artisans Beyond Borders (ABB), not a day goes by that we are not blown away by the instinctual human drive to create against all odds. And as an artist-weaver myself, I also couldn’t help but recognize Cecilia’s ‘needle-weaving’ in the embroidered mantas she had shyly presented to us to sell through ABB. For many indigenous weavers, there is little distinction between embroidery and weaving. Both are branches of the same healthy tree of life.

Inspired by Cecilia’s dedication, volunteers and staff at the Casa de Las Misericordia shelter quickly figured out ways to help. Sister Lika, the Director of the shelter and Ana Delia, the Craft coordinator hatched a plan to help build a loom for Cecilia, and ABB put out a call to the members of the Tucson’s Hand Weavers and Spinners Guild to see if anyone might have a backstrap loom to donate. UCC Conference Minister Reverend Dr. William M. Lyons visited the shelter and was also inspired to help, so together UCC and ABB purchased 2 backstrap looms from indigenous artisan colleagues in Central America, one for Cecilia to have for her own and one for her to use to teach others at the shelter.

Artisanal weaver Cecilia Martinez’s panel, near completion

As soon as the looms arrived, Cecilia began to weave while Sr. Lika and Ana Delia worked to fashion the wood for the kind of larger backstrap loom Cecilia had grown up weaving on. Sister Lika, an accomplished artist herself, decided to try her hand at weaving and became Cecilia’s first student. Members from the Tucson Guild and the Bisbee Fiber Arts Guild donated two more backstrap looms and other equipment to experiment with.

Together, Sister Lika and Cecilia wove each day, warmed by the sun streaming through the small window of the shelter’s maker space that staff had created for the embroiderers to come in from the cold. I imagine the long hours waiting for asylum melting like warm honey in the fullness of such contemplative practice.

In just two months since Cecilia’s been able to weave again, she’s visibly changed. When we first met, she was quiet and rarely met anyone’s eyes. Now, she smiles easily, and moves with confidence and agency, enthusiastically teaching others, pointing out shapes and symbols that represent the lush flowers and animals of her beloved mountains. In the precious work of her hands preserving her cultural and familial arts, Cecilia feels at home at last. Grace abides in each mending stitch and every pass of the shuttle through warp and weave in the la Casa de las Misericordia trauma-informed arts and activities program.

You can support trauma-informed arts programs on the border and the ministry of La Casa Misericordia in Nogales through your generous contributions to Southwest Conference. Mark your gift ARTS at https://swcucc.app.neoncrm.com/np/clients/swcucc/donation.jsp

You can also preserve these cultural arts by donating to the Artisan’s Beyond Borders Maker Fund to purchase ‘made in Mexico’ thread and cloth that is preferred by the artisans and benefits the local economy in Nogales: https://artisansbeyondborders.org/

*Valarie James, Founder of Artisans Beyond Borders is a longtime resident of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. A former Clinical Art Therapist, she was coordinator of the all-volunteer Trauma-informed Arts & Activities Program at Tucson’s Casa Alitas Migrant shelter. Her writings on arts and immigration can be found at America Magazine, Open Democracy, Yale’s ISM Review, and EpiscopalMigrationMinistries.org, and as a Benedictine Oblate, she writes at The Global Sisters Report. Artisans’ Profiles in Courage and Creativity can be read at Art and Faith in the Desert. Currently, James is the lead curator for the traveling exhibition “Bordando Esperanza – Embroidering Hope: Devotional Retablos of Asylum” Email Contact@ArtisansBeyondBorders.org for more info.