Basketball Court diagram

In 1992, anthropologist Jayne Howell was interviewing migrant farmworkers at the Seneca Castle Camp, and noticed a small group creating miniature buildings made of wooden popsicle sticks. An incurious eye might have dismissed them as simplistic, but during conversation the three men--brothers Diodoro and Samuel Gonzelez Perez, and their cousin Avelino Gonzalez Perez--described something much more complex.

It turned out that all of the objects were "figures with the objective of remembering something of my village," according to Diodoro. "We started with the idea that if this is the basketball court, then there have to be little houses." Thus, improvised models of buildings had an immersive, mnemonic relation to their village of Chincanaque de Pinabeta, Chiapas. The image here is Howell's diagram of that basketball court whose original no longer exists.

Two years later Geneseo Migrant Center Director Sylvia Kelly encountered Samuel at Franjo Farms and saw him teaching the popsicle art to other migrants. He gave her a mariposa-decorated house that still is extant, perhaps referring to another location in his village.

Howell, Jane

Composite image of front-and-back drawing

8.5 x 5.5 in.