Milestones at the End of the World
Living every day like it’s my last.
It is no secret I am self-deporting from the USA after 25 years — At this point I have shared with folks through my writing, interviews and socials.
Around this time last year the notion that trump could win dawned on me and with that knowing set in, I got to work. Wether Prophetic dreams or an overanxious mind remains to be seen. I was in my exploration era: figuring out what I wanted to do and learning: I was in a prestigious fellowship and a restaurant business incubator program dreaming of establishing some food related businesses and had a full schedule of speaking engagements and client work for the year. Besides putting a pause on possibly going into another business venture and cutting down expenses, I set to make sure I spent more time with loved ones and talked this through before announcing it and overall setting up a exit strategy.
Everyone I spoke with, although respectful of my valid concerns did not share them. I understood early on that we just weren’t then (nor at any other point in my time in the US undocumented) on the same page or with the same sets of concerns, a hard pill to swallow as election discourse heated up to a pitch when pop stars that claimed to care about the trans community came out drawing false equivalencies between the only two candidate options available in the USA. I’ve griped before about the misguided American left before, I find them to either be young and naive enough to fall for that or like Chappelle, too privileged to care. I can also see now the reactionary, “burn it all to the ground” attitudes that makes one think that abstaining from voting is a revoultionary act and not a selfish one that harmed Me personally is being worn like a badge of honor still. Additionally, there is a good enough amount of bad faith actors out there, particularly white leftists, who for the past four years were itching for the chaos a Trump presidency afforded them. The elections solidified what I’ve known since 2021, that the performance of praxis was not appealing to me. I am tired of the chronically online leftists posting about ICE kidnappings one minute, about trans people being attacked an hour later and yelling into the void of their status updates how everything would be exactly the same if Kamala was elected and anyone saying otherwise is a democrat shill. Personally, I do not consider myself a communist, leftist, even democratic socialist as I’ve done in the past, I never considered myself a democrat first of all.
Working these past four years with pragmatic people from all walks of life has afforded me this new, humanistic and enviromentalist approach to politics and relations that are build on non violence and respect. I put my sword down long ago, all I have is my pen now.
I finished my fellowship project strong with my partner Lynda the weekend before election. Between then and today, I teeter between great despair, depression and downright fear. If I sit around with my own thoughts or every day’s news, an assault on an already delicate nervous system, I could just be paralized. Instead I chose to commit every day to working toward my new goal of leaving the USA safely back to Uruguay.
Thankfully, most of my speaking engagements for this year have accommodated a virtual offering of my lectures, workshops or sermons. With Rooting DC in March under my belt (I was the volunteer coordinator for this 1,200+ people urban garden conference in which we passed out over 10 thousand seeds!) and the Words, Beats and Life Festival Toward 2040 Fellowship’s capstone project, Time Capsule: A Link to the Past co-curated with my cohort to be a celebration of Hip Hop’s history, present presence and the future we envision together. My focus now shifts towards another great event in DC’s diy space Rhizome, where myself and my friends from the Art Mart diy music era are putting together a fundraiser for rematriation on 4/20 and a restrospective show in May.
Every month here since January feels like a victory. I tried being in a safe house and not home, but no matter where I go in the USA I am not safe. Just a couple of weeks ago, DC scrubbed the word Sanctuary City from all its websites, leaving us residents to wonder what is going on. We know we are not safe: Since January ICE has showed up in metro stations, schools and done raids at businesses and neighborhoods and Virginia’s own governor has given the police a green light to carry out and support deportations. Every day outside of a detention center is a blessing and every day here is an answer to the prayer: give me one more day/month/season here…
Leonina Arismendi is an award winning Uruguayan artist, human rights advocate and environmental justice activist in the process of rematriation from living in the USA for 25 years back to their Motherland of Uruguay. Support their safe transition: https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-the-arismendi-family-in-their-return-to-uruguay
