Holy Week 2016 and "El Buen Pastor"

Luis Jiménez, El Buen Pastor (1999)

This image seized my attention even before I moved to California.

I saw it in the "Fires Will Burn" exhibition at DePaul University in Chicago.

It jolted me into thinking, "What is happening in the rest of the Americas is not as far away as we like to pretend."

Now that I live in California -- and need only look out my back window to see palms like the ones in the picture -- the truth of that insight is only more obvious.

El Buen Pastor by Luis Jiménez depicts Ezekiel Hernandez -- a shepherd who was shot by U.S. marines in the area around the US-Mexico border as he was tending his sheep. The artist has said, "having [marines] patrolling the border in the 'war on drugs' is 'an accident waiting to happen.'" (See "Courting Dialogue, Not Controversy")

" . . . not as far away as we like to pretend . . . . "

Food for thought as we enter Holy Week 2016.


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