What is La Cuenta?
La Cuenta is an ongoing exploration of the costs incurred by roughly 11 million individuals in the United States that are labeled as undocumented.
Each week, we offer an itemized breakdown of some of the unseen costs that slowly burden immigrants with debt—financial and otherwise. We invite you to join us in this recounting via subscribing to this free newsletter and by getting in touch if you have ideas you’d like to share.
Why now?
Immigrants living in legal precarity in the U.S. are often written about and framed as cartoonish pariahs or as helpless victims. These narratives are crafted about them, not by them. For too often the individuals at the center of immigration debates and media stories are uninvited to actually share in the media or at the policy table. But we are neither voiceless nor powerless.
The general public might assume a general understanding of the hardships or challenges of living as someone with a stigmatized label in the U.S., but the actual costs of undocumented living in this country are vast and often overlooked. From healthcare to education to familial loss, La Cuenta slowly tallies the accumulated debts incurred by undocumented individuals everyday.
Who are we?
La Cuenta is created and curated by Alix Dick and Antero Garcia with editorial and research support from Laura Villalobos.
Alix Dick is an artist and storyteller living in Los Angeles. Originally born and raised in Sinaloa, Mexico, her contributions as a producer and filmmaker have screened at film festivals across the globe. She is a leading voice and organizer around issues of immigration, homelessness, and human rights and has worked closely with leading activist networks and founded a non-profit focused on supporting homeless communities in California.
Antero Garcia is an Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University. Prior to completing his Ph.D., Antero was an English teacher at a public high school in South Central Los Angeles. His research explores the possibilities of speculative imagination and healing in educational research. He has authored or edited more than a dozen books about the possibilities of literacies, play, and civics in transforming schooling in America.
Laura Villalobos is an artist and a student from Los Angeles exploring storytelling devices. She documents the social realities that undocumented communities in the U.S. experience. As an advocate, she works to empower and uplift marginalized voices, exposing the hidden dimensions they are forced to exist in.
Get in touch!
If you are interested in contributing to La Cuenta or suggesting a topic for the newsletter, please get in touch. And if you know anyone else who might benefit from seeing the ongoing costs of undocumented living tallied from one week to the next, please share La Cuenta with them.
