Maternal Touch in Pilar Rodiles's Bidún (Undocumented)

Maternal Touch in Pilar Rodiles's Bidún (Undocumented) Yeon-Soo Kim is Assistant Professor of Spanish at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. She specializes in Spanish Cultural Studies. Her forthcoming book, The Family Album: Histories, Subjectivities and Immigration in Contemporary Spanish Culture, interrogates the role of the family album as a critical and ethical tool through which to reevaluate the complexities of twentiethcentury Spanish history. Her current project analyzes the different moral weights assigned to Asians and Arabs in the contemporary Spanish cultural imaginary. S ami Na'ir, in his La inmigración explicada a mi hija (2001), claims that Spain has become a country of immigration during the last decade and quotes the statistics that there are more than 300,000 undocumented immigrants residing in Spain, in addition to the 100,000 who acquired legal status in 1991 (18). While Nair's statement reflects the irrefutable social reality of what Spain has recently become, Javier Casqueiro's report about racism in Spain, published in El Pais on January 26, 2001, suggests that the sudden increase in the number of immigrants has largely produced negative reactions among native citizens. Casqueiro claims that according to research conducted in 2000 by the Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas, 49.4% of Spaniards consider themselves racists and 48.6% feel somewhat or absolutely intolerant of other ethnic groups and foreign customs. The latter statistic is alarming, the journalist notes, because it reflects a 13.6% increase from a study performed in 1994 by the same institute. These data reflect an intensification in xenophobia in Spanish society, concomitant with an upsurge in immigration, and reveal an attitude that challenges the belief in an accepting, multicultural society based on mutual deference. In tune with more populist public sentiment, a divisive discourse that hierarchizes Europe over Africa and native citizens over immigrants occasionally issued from the mouths of political figures. For instance, as reported in El Mundo on December 2, 2002, the government sub-delegate to Tarragona, Angel Sagardy, made chauvinistic comments, referring to African immigration as an invasion: "AquÃArizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies Volume 8, 2004 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies necesitamos gente, pero no a toda Africa." More well-known and vigorously disputed racist statements are those Marta Ferrusola, wife of the former president of the Generalit ät, Jordi Pujol, made in February 2001. She condemned Kurdish immigrants who arrived on the French coast for being difficult in spite of the host country's hospitality because they requested a diet that observed the rules of their religion. Ferrusola also lamented Catalonia's generous social assistance to North African immigrants who have no interest in learning the region's cultural history. Both Sagardy and Ferrusola's comments point to an underlying mentality that the host country's self-interest takes precedence over hospitality and when munificence is offered, immigrants need to comply with the cultural codes of their new homeland and conceptions of its historic mission. One problem this formula poses is that immigrants are perceived as indebted to generous native residents. In contrast, many non-governmental organizations led by both Spanish and immigrant social activists and journalists have been working robustly to thwart social hostility toward immigrants and to promote a critical understanding of immigration among their fellow citizens since they first witnessed the dead bodies of African immigrants appearing on Spanish shores on November 2, 1989.' Numerous artists and intellectuals also lent their voices to the call to resist xenophobia and ignorance by creating works that bring this social issue to the fore. Among them are authors Juan Goytisolo, Gerardo Muñoz Lorente, Adolfo Hernández Lafuente, Eduardo Mendicutti, and Nieves GarcÃ-a Benito; film directors Montxo Armendáriz, Imanol Uribe, IcÃ-ar BollaÃ-n, Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón, Chus Gutiérrez and Carlos Molinero; and photographers Nuria Andreu and Rick Dávila, to name but a few.2 In this essay I add Pilar Rodiles to the aforementioned list because this Canarian painter provides a unique perspective on the discussion of immigration with her 2000 collection of paintings, Bidún (Undocumented).3 While many artists have attempted to represent immigrants with respect and equality, disavowing any hierarchical relationship, Rodiles...