Goodbye Alberto

Alberto Mijangos, founder and director of Salon Mijangos, died of lymphoma on June 19, 2007. The text below is excerpted from an interview Alberto did with the Smithsonian Institute in 2003.

So then all these dreams about the United States and my experience in Mexico gave me so much energy, and as I was in the river looking at the other side, there were a couple of guys there, also trying to cross the river — and they were workers, people from ranches or people that work in agriculture and they’re strong and powerful people. So I asked them, “What are you doing?” And they said, “We’re going to cross,” and they said, “You want to join us?” And I said “Yes.” They asked me, “You know how to swim?” “Yes.” And so we put our clothes on top of our heads and we start swimming and cross the river and then they guided me a little bit to different places, and we ended up in some area close to McAllen or Edinburg, Texas; something like that. But outside because we didn’t want to go to the city, and they wanted to do some agricultural work, so we end up in a place where they were picking oranges. And I asked for a job and they gave me a job there picking oranges.

And I discovered that there was no place to stay. We had to make a hole and sleep there and, we gave them a little money to bring us some food, and I never tasted a flour tortilla in my life. They were bringing flour tortillas and some kind of bologna or cheese or funny things. So anyway, I spent I would say like two or three weeks, and one time the truck came to pick up the merchandise and I went and looked at my face in the mirror and I got scared. I looked terrible. I’ve been there three weeks, no shower, I hadn’t shaved, and I hadn’t combed my hair or anything. My clothes was just all beat up and I got scared, so I went to the owner of the place and I asked for my money and he gave me my money and I just run away.

I walked to some place where I found some noise and it was getting dark and all of a sudden I began to see these beautiful little houses with lights inside. Beautiful to me at that moment, but they were kind of poor people living there, but the light inside and the warm, and I began to cry there, so I’m saying, gosh, what am I doing here?

I kept drinking, but it was some kind of an escape, really — my drinking. I felt this real hole inside of me of not knowing who I was. And that horrible secret that I kept within me about I know that I am not good in school, that I am not very intelligent, that I am lost completely, that I am not really an artist, but I’m pretending just because I don’t know what art is all about. And I know that one day perhaps I will find out what art is all about and then I’m going to fill the hole within me, and that’s what kept me going. And I will go and drink and get in fights and get in trouble and continue.

My father told me one time, he said, “Do you see that there’s two directions? One direction is open, it’s beautiful, and the other one is full of thorns and problems. And you stop, look, and you see that you can go here, but you prefer the other one. Why?” And my answer, I said, “I don’t know.” But that’s what it really has been all my life. That — now I related it with some of my own philosophy, my own feeling of looking for some power in the dark. Some awareness or some awakening in the dark, and I think the same problem of painting. If you don’t look for these areas, the softer, easier way is not going to put anything in the canvas. Because usually when you surrender, when you have all these problems, when you don’t really know what to do and you say okay, you tell me — and you talk with the canvas and then something happens. And I think that’s what — sometimes I feel that when you are in that position and you go through all these processes in working on the canvas, there’s always some energy that remains there, that makes the piece transcendental. Swim and come out the other side.... Half dead, but on the other side.