Born in Lubbock, Texas, James Drake moved to El Paso as a teenager and spent many years there before moving to his current home in Santa Fe, New Mexico. In El Paso, Drake learned Spanish and assimilated into Tex-Mex culture while he worked in his family’s import business. Drake earned his B.F.A. from the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles. In the 1960s, he returned to El Paso, where the border culture, with its neighboring Mexican city, Juárez, continued to influence his work. His career has been filled with politically charged works of art, dealing with issues such as drug trafficking and border tension between the United States and Mexico.
Juárez/El Paso (Boxcar) is a political response to a 1987 Mexican border incident. A transporter, or “coyote,” smuggling illegal immigrants into the United States for a large fee locked his cargo of 19 men in a boxcar outside the town of Sierra Blanca, near El Paso. As temperatures reached 130ºF, all of the immigrants suffocated except one, who managed to pierce a breathing hole through the floorboard of the boxcar with a railroad spike. The authorities did not find the men until 14 hours after they had been locked in the car.
Drake powerfully memorializes this tragedy with a large charcoal drawing of the isolated boxcar. The ominous tone is heightened by the physical presence of coal, a substance that often serves as fuel for railroad engines, piled up on the floor in front of the drawing. A crowbar and railroad spikes (objects that were in the locked boxcar with the immigrants) are thrust into the mound of coal, suggesting a makeshift grave. The charcoal drawing is smudged with blackened handprints, evoking the presence of the men who perished in the boxcar.
According to Drake, this poem was found on one of the bodies of the victims in the boxcar, and he has requested that it always be included in the installation of Juárez/El Paso (Boxcar):
Qué lindo es los Estados Unidos, [How beautiful is the United States,
Illinois California y Tenesi. Illinois, California and Tennessee.
Pero allá en mi país But over in my Country
Un trozo de cielo me pertenece a mí. A piece of the sky belongs to me.
Adiós Laredo, Wéslaco y San Antonio. Goodbye Laredo, Weslaco, San Antonio,
Houston y Dallas están en mi cancíon. Houston and Dallas are in my song.
Adiós El Paso, he vuelto Chamizal. Goodbye, El Paso. I am back Chamizal.
Ha regresado tu amigo el illegal. Your friend the illegal has returned.]
Drake’s use of charcoal to depict the boxcar unifies the various media of this installation. The charcoal in the drawing echoes the pile of coal assembled on the floor both in color and in texture. Drake also utilizes other objects connected with the story, such as the railroad spikes and crowbar. The isolated boxcar serves as a strong metaphor for the forgotten immigrants. Without any narration or direction, the viewer is compelled to acknowledge and sympathize with the victims of this incident.
Tension has existed along the U.S.-Mexican border since Texas achieved its independence in 1836 and subsequently was annexed by the United States. The friction has been exacerbated recently due to factors such as the great disparity in wealth between the two nations, the dispute over the water supply in the desert region, attempts by the Border Control to regulate immigration, and drug trafficking. El Paso, bordered by the much larger city of Juárez, is a hot spot for both cultural exchange and conflict.
