ULA Marks 21 Years Of Immigrant Advocacy

Songs and art of hope and strength came to Bregamos Community Theater as international hip hop artist Ana Tijoux headlined an afternoon and evening of food, history, and artistic vision — for an event put together by Unidad Latina en Acción to celebrate 21 years of operation as an immigrant rights activist group. 

That event took place Sunday at the Fair Haven community theater space at 491 Blatchey Ave. 

“It’s a community event,” said John Jairo Lugo, ULA’s community organizing director. 

Founded by Guatemalan immigrants in 2002, ULA, in addition to perennially supporting New Haven’s immigrant community, put itself at the center of immigration questions in New Haven. In 2006 it helped make New Haven a sanctuary city and supported the creation of the city’s ID card for undocumented immigrants. When Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) staged raids in Fair Haven after the city issued the cards, ULA joined a coalition of groups suing the feds, claiming that the raids were retaliation for the city’s policies.

But ​“we’ve never celebrated an anniversary of Unidad Latina,” said Lugo. 

Last year — the 20th for the organization — came and went, and Lugo figured that with the 21st year upon them, ​“we’re now adults,” he joked. The anniversary could also give ULA a chance to reflect on their core mission of ​“building power, voice, and dignity for immigrant workers and families,” as the organization’s website states. For Lugo, that meant, in part, returning to the work of ​“political education … educating minds, helping people to understand why [we] should keep fighting,” especially as it seems like ​“nothing is happening on the immigration side.”

“Right now we’re thinking about how we can keep our people connected with the realities that they left behind,” Lugo continued. That guided ULA’s thoughts on how to celebrate.

Lugo connected with Tijoux through a mutual acquaintance, who mentioned that Tijoux (who lives in France) was visiting the United States. After learning about ULA and its mission, Tijoux agreed to perform. ​“She’s a big figure. A lot of people in Latin America know her,” and ​“a special segment of people know her music.” For Lugo, it was fitting ​“for her to talk to our community” regarding ​“her politics and the message that she has in every song.”

“I was educated with Chilean music,” Lugo said, in particular nueva canción, which played a pivotal role in left-wing movements across Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s. Tijoux’s activist family left Chile with the rise of dictator Augusto Pinochet — who took over the elected government of Salvador Allende in 1973 in a coup d’etat — and fled to France, where Tijoux was born. Tijoux grew up and fell into hip hop. ​“The first time I heard her music was 15 years ago,” Lugo said. ​“I was in Chile and there was a particular group I liked, and she was performing with them.” He became a fan and has followed her ever since.

“For me,” he said, Tijoux is among ​“the new wave of musicians who continue” the work of the nueva canción singers, with songs that contain messages about ​“why the people should be fighting for their rights.” The transition from folk to hip hop, moreover, felt right and part of the evolution of the tradition, an artistic movement that — as Sunday’s event showed — stretches across media, from print and graphics to music and dance.

The day began with an exposition of posters from Mexican graphic designer Omar Inzunsa — a.k.a. Gran Om — whom Lugo called ​“one of the most important radical graphic designers in Latin America right now.” 

Lugo had already begun collecting some of Inzunsa’s artwork when he learned that the artist planned to visit the United States. Inzunsa and Tijoux are friends, which meant he was happy to design the poster for Sunday’s event. Lugo would also like to commission Inzunsa to paint a mural at the New Haven People’s Center. 

“I think that is the best opportunity with a really important artist to do something that will stay there, and also portray the reality of the immigrant community” — in particular as the People’s Center ​“was created by immigrants” in the first place. Audience members could also pick up the latest issue of El pueblo hablando from El Molino Informativo, focusing on indigenous women working in the United States.

The audience arrived, sampled a wide selection of Latin favorites, and settled in for a conversation between Lugo and Tijoux, translated from Spanish to English by Megan Fountain, ULA’s coordinator of advocacy and partnerships. To set the tone, as Fountain put it, ​“the way we organize is by taking to the streets, demanding change.” In so doing, ULA carried on a tradition of agitation across Latin America and the United States in the fight for agrarian and labor rights. ​“We keep alive our own histories of struggle here in the empire,” Fountain said. Lugo considered music and art to be a ​“fundamental” part of that effort; it ​“inspires and accompanies us during our struggle.” 

Tijoux was a living embodiment of that. Music allowed her, she said, to declare who she was in the face of systems of oppression; it was a tool to understand herself and the world. She noted that as she traveled across these ​“disunited states,” she encountered other groups like ULA. She then connected the problems the United States faces with the international situation. ​“We see it in Europe,” she said through Fountain. In the United States, ​“we are in the belly of the beast of the empire,” and what happened here ​“gets exported to the global south” and elsewhere. European countries are dealing with their own rising sentiments of anti-immigration and tilts toward greater authoritarianism. ​“We can’t be afraid to use what we know, take to the streets, and demand what is just,” she said.

Tijoux also connected herself to the greater immigrant community she grew up among in France, including large Senegalese and Moroccan communities. She ​“fell in love with the barrio,” she said, its food, its liveliness, its sense of humor, and its formation of a ​“permanently hybrid people” who felt they belonged nowhere and found unity in the common oppressions they lived under, and at the same time learned to begin ​“dreaming of new worlds.” As Lugo suggested, the folk songs of the nueva canción era were integral to her development, but so were other revolutionary musicians across Latin America and Africa, such as Nigerian Afrobeat innovator Fela Kuti. It was all ​“part of our DNA,” she said.

Rapper Rodstarz warmed up the stage with a set of high-energy songs. Also Chilean by descent but born and raised in the Bronx, Rodstarz’s songs kept on point regarding the struggles of immigrants, police brutality, and the systemic injustices of the United States in both domestic and foreign policies. His amiable delivery spoke of hope in the face of struggle, but the star of his set turned out to be his young son, who he invited onstage for a duet. As father and son traded bars, the audience cheered. When the son broke into breakdancing, it brought down the house. Rodstarz shared his set with fellow rapper Hordatoj, who likewise won over the crowd with thoughtful lyrics and energetic delivery.

Tijoux then retook the stage as a fiery performer, rolling sharp commentary, lessons from the past, and declarations of defiant hope into a single burning musical vision. The audience was all in, stomping out the rhythms of Tijoux’s music with their feet and answering her shoutouts when she called on them. With each passing song, the concentration built in intensity. Tijoux’s music gave the audience strength and catharsis, all rooted in a shared sense of history and community.

The event served as a reminder of the need for fun and resilience given the work ahead for ULA. From Lugo’s perspective, immigration policy in the United States has worsened over the decades of his adult life. He pointed out that Ronald Reagan — ​“one of the most horrible presidents,” he said, ​“especially in terms of foreign policy” — was the last administration to provide sweeping amnesty for undocumented immigrants; the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act allowed any immigrant who had been in the United States for four years to apply for legal status. Under it, almost 3 million people became lawful residents of the United States. ​“Since that time, every president” — Republican and Democrat — ​“has worsened immigration policy,” Lugo said. The media publicized George W. Bush’s ICE raids and Trump’s separation of families. But ​“Clinton is the one who militarized the border,” Lugo said, and despite the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, initiated in 2012, ​“Obama is the one who deported more immigrants than any other president,” also almost 3 million people. Biden, he said, ​“promised so many things, and he didn’t do anything.”

In the discussion before the show, Tijoux expanded further on that idea. ​“People in power don’t care,” she said; we don’t live in a democracy, but a ​“corporate oligarchy” that ​“makes you think your vote matters to keep you from taking the streets.” She didn’t single out the United States in this; In response to a reflection that this year marked the 50th anniversary of the Chilean coup that forced her family into exile, she observed that for Chilean officials it had been 50 years of impunity and exonerations. She noted the rise of fascist elements worldwide, the renewed hatred of migrants among the extreme right. Now, she said, ​“being a Nazi or being racist is called freedom of expression.”

“How does history repeat itself?” she said. In response, she said, ​“we need to be a giant, rising tide,” of people ​“who believe in a different world.”