AHORITA FRAMES

From September 2001 to April 2002 Nan and Nancy along with other Latin American women worked for the asbestos company “Branch,” cleaning the luxury apartments, offices, and banks of Manhattan in the hermetically sealed zone of “Ground Zero.” The women had neither residence permits nor work permits in the USA, and their dust masks had no filter for asbestos.

At the PedWest border crossing in Tijuana refugees perform their stories. They play asbestos workers, American soldiers, Red Cross staff, and firefighters. Migrants from Guatemala and Venezuela and Mexicans who were deported from the USA to Tijuana: they are all stuck at the border due to the “Remain in Mexico” policy.

Ahorita Frames moves the stories of the asbestos workers from New York in 2001 across the border to Tijuana in 2019, thus reconfiguring the political cartography of power relations.

The film not only describes the devaluation of migrant women, but also a system of cultural symbolism and its colonial narrative.