La Cuenta Turns One!
One year and 92(!) mounting costs of surviving in this country while Undocumented
It’s a big week for La Cuenta. We are celebrating our first full year as a publication!
This is a bittersweet celebration—each week has centered the voices and expertise of individuals labeled as undocumented in the U.S. Our name, La Cuenta, is meant to evoke the mounting costs extolled on the spirits and bodies of individuals in the undocumented community. These are symbolic costs—what dollar amount could you possibly affix to the cost of love or of child separation or of the challenges of living in Florida right now? However, in the spirit of sharing a bill, we offer a preliminary list of just some of the costs described by our contributors over the past year.
La Cuenta Year One
The Costs of:
Acting; Activism, &; Advocacy, &; Aging; Art, &; Art-healing praxis; Baking; Being a role model; Being multilingual; Borders; Child separation, &, &, &; Climate devastation; A college degree, &; College education; Community Support; Convenience; Creating a network; Criminalization; DACA renewal; Divorce; Dos and Don’ts; Driving to the grocery store; Dropping out; Dying; The emergency room ; The “English Learner” label; Entreprenuership, &; E-verify, &; Family reunion; Fatherhood; Federal custody of children; Filmmaking; Generation 1.5; Giving birth; Giving thanks; Graduation, &, &; Human imagination; Illunon; Immigration policy, &; Inhumane treatment; Labor, &, &; Learning English; Lessons about immigration in schools; Life beyond a degree; Living in Florida; Love, &; Loving America; Medical care, &; Mentorship; Motherhood; Nightmares; “Not being like other immigrants”; Not having DACA; Not making resolutions; Offering support; The ones we left behind; Organizing, &; Passport privilege; Paying taxes; Poetry, &; Shadows; Stereotypes, &; A STEM degree; Survival; Unaccompanied Alien Children; The “Undocu-” label; Visibility; Vocabulary; Writing, &, &, &; Worker co-ops
(note: & represents multiple entries related to this cost, each & is a unique link.)
That’s more than ninety costs shared in just this year! And yet we can safely say we haven’t even scratched the surface of what the undocumented community accumulates in societal debt.
We are deeply grateful to the many contributors that have made this first year of La Cuenta such a powerful testament to diverse undocumented experiences—thank you all.
We have some exciting publication plans for Year Two here at La Cuenta. If you are interested in contributing to our still growing publication, we welcome your voice. Please check out our contributor guidelines here and get in touch.
Propina
In two weeks, we (Alix and Antero), will be presenting on the origins of La Cuenta and the role of research in our work.
In an invited talk for Illinois State University’s Creatively Critical Tech Symposium, we will share our approaches to designing La Cuenta and some of our research methodology. The talk will skew toward an academic audience but we encourage anyone interested in learning with us to register for free here.
We’ll see you next week!