An Image Created in the name of Dignity
This is a repost of my Buwaya Print Fundraiser, opened July 19th, 2025. Fundraiser has since been closed.
Why shame yourself for making art during crisis when you could use your skillset for good?
This print was solely sold for fundraising.
The proceeds from this print will go directly to someone impacted by the ICE raids in Los Angeles. This person is the father of a close friend of mine.
He works in Los Angeles’ Los Callejones aka Santee Alley. It is a hotspot for ICE raids. Many who work in Santee Alley have been taken, and many more have been unable to work in fear of being stolen by the state.
This money will be going to him and his wife. They have had the expense of immigration lawyers for years. His inability to work impacts their access to immigration lawyers, their access to food and rent which are basic human rights.
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LOS CALLEJONES aka Santee Alley
Santee Alley is one of the places I think of when I think of LA. It’s where I used to hang out with my friends as a teenager. We would shop for shoes and sunglasses from the vendors. I got my prom outfit in the Fashion District. When I moved back to this area, I passed the flower district on the bus and thought about how lucky we are to have it.
Los Callejones is a place where many undocumented people go to make a living. There is community there. Many of these people vend crafted items, they vend affordable clothing that are the blueprints for many larger clothing companies that you probably buy from. They provide electronics so that people in the neighborhood can communicate with their loved ones or enjoy media at home. They sell toys and stuffed animals so that kids can be kids. Vendors take up city blocks worth of flower shops to create beauty in this city that is sometimes needing the softness of flowers. People celebrate their loved ones with these flowers, sometimes they honor their grief with these flowers.
My friend’s dad is indigenous to his homeland, and for his own reasons that are shaped by colonization, he came to the US as a youth. He is incredibly skilled at what he does. I know he is valued in his circles, I know he is loving. More deeply, I know that he has helped to cultivate an environment where my friend could grow up to be a beautiful person who does so much for the youth in their community.
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The Political Use of the Alligator and the Crocodile
If you’re here, you likely already know about the hell that is Alligator Alcatraz. It is a prison that was rapidly constructed in the Everglades in Florida.
The land is extremely unique in its biodiversity. I learned about the everglades on an educational PC game in the 90s and have always dreamed of going there. Now it is being used to house the government’s rapid and horrific construction of a concentration camp that has cost people like us millions of dollars, and cost many psychic and physical trauma. The fauna of the land is being used as the specter of natural deterrent for the people imprisoned there to free themselves; alligators are posed as a psychological and physical threat to the peoples safety so they must remain locked up. The narrative is that the land and nature is against us, but that is a narrative manufactured by the state.
This is not the first time that large reptiles have been used as rhetoric of deeply racist violence. I learned recently of anti-Black imagery used in the past where people were being harmed by alligators.
Before the construction of Alligator Alcatraz, I drew this Buwaya diety.
I know that alligators are not crocodiles.
We all learned that in second grade, and we hope that with the current administration, future generations will have an education good enough to learn the differences, similarities, and significance of these special species.
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Crocodiles and the Philippines
Crocodiles in the Philippines are revered. Sometimes they are seen as ancestors, as guardians of the dead on their journey, and are an omen of good harvest.
When Spain colonized the Philippines, they attempted to rewrite the narrative on crocodiles, the same way that any colonizer aims to stomp out entire indigenous belief systems to subjugate them.
Filipinos are an animistic people. There is an inherent reverence and respect to living things, as everything is believed to have a life and spirit. White supremacy and colonization has no respect for land, people, and creature. It decimates. It sees the natural world as a site for wealth extraction, it sees those living on the land as a threat or a tool.
Spain’s demonization of crocodiles is just one facet of colonization. I drew this imagined diety. This deity is not in the pantheon of our gods, but is a creation of my own desire to relate back to culture and to nature.
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An Image Created in the Name of Dignity
This Buwaya diety is made in the image of the crocodile. The diety is at home in the company of buwaya. The crocodiles are depicted as friendly and as curious. The moment they are in is silent, but so much can be witnessed in their relationship with one another.
The piece is an exercise in imagining our collective filipinx past with dignity. Humans are a part of the nature, and are in harmony with the natural world. We are supposed to respect the power and strength of crocodiles and alligators. They are not to be used against us to benefit the white supremacist agenda.
