Home to about 19 million people, the U.S.-Mexico border spans 1,954 miles, four U.S. states, six Mexican states and 26 federally recognized tribal nations. There are 150 Native American tribes located in the region, as well as seven Indigenous homelands that are bisected by the border. 

But despite the region’s rich history and diversity of peoples and cultures, the border is often described as a place of chaos, crisis and fear. President-elect Donald Trump made divisive and fear-laden rhetoric on immigration a cornerstone of his campaign, vowing to drastically increase enforcement, including enacting mass deportations, ending President Joe Biden’s humanitarian programs and resuming construction of the border wall. 

Countering Trumpism’s dark border narratives will be of prime importance for social justice funders in the coming months and years, and it’s heartening to see that the Mellon Foundation was already taking on that challenge even before Trump’s victory. 

During a recent discussion on creativity and culture in the borderlands, which took place before the election, Mellon Foundation President Elizabeth Alexander described the border as “a physical barrier that represents centuries of racialized policies and policing, and remains an ongoing site of contestation and separation. Given its remarkable geographical and political range, the region is a regular focal point on American debates around immigration and national security.”

Those debates, however, often erase the histories and cultural traditions that have been passed down through generations and minimize the artistry and innovations of communities in the region, Alexander said. 

To counter this, the Mellon Foundation recently launched its Frontera Culture Fund, a $25 million investment to support the work of artists and cultural leaders living and working along the U.S.-Mexico border region. Launched prior to Trump’s election win, the fund’s goal is to show the “dynamic cultural landscape of border communities” and support more authentic representations of the borderlands. Crucially, the fund supports transborder collaboration and organizations on both sides of the border. 

“This is a recognition, frankly, of the historical neglect on the part of arts and culture philanthropy in both countries in terms of providing support for this work,” said Casandra Hernández Faham, program associate for arts and culture at the Mellon Foundation, in an interview with Inside Philanthropy. 

The Frontera Culture Fund was created in collaboration with artists and cultural leaders from the border region and will provide flexible funding for grantees, which includes artist-led projects, cultural organizations, grassroots community groups, as well as Indigenous and Black networks that foster regional and cross-border knowledge exchange and work to defend cultural rights. 

The fund has awarded grants to an initial cohort of 32 organizations, and will be doing an open call for proposals next year. Grantees include the Chicano Park Museum and Cultural Center in San Diego, California; the Haitian Bridge Alliance in San Diego, California; Indigenous Alliance Without Borders in Tucson, Arizona; Fandango Fronterizo in Tijuana, Baja California; and Azul Arena in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua. 

“There is no shortage of harmful narratives about the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, especially during the election cycle,” Hernández Faham said. “We wanted to support artists and cultural workers because they know the truth about the border… It was really important for us that these communities know that the Mellon Foundation sees them and values their work.”

Building relationships in the border region

The Frontera Culture Fund is both a continuation of the Mellon Foundation’s work as well as an expansion into new areas. Hernández Faham pointed to the foundation’s efforts to center social justice under Alexander’s presidency — efforts that went into high gear in 2020 when the bellwether arts, culture and humanities funder announced a “strategic evolution” to prioritize social justice in all its grantmaking. 

“She’s really defined and deepened this work. Across all programs, we’re looking at what the inequalities in funding support look like at a structural level. We’ve done this work in terms of support for artists…We’ve done this work in terms of entire regions that have not been supported as the major art cities in the country,” Hernández Faham said. 

At the same time, Mellon has sought to look at the geography of philanthropic funding throughout the U.S. and to be strategic about where its investments could make the most impact. Mellon has an initiative, for example, to support artistic and cultural work in Puerto Rico.

“I am from the border region. I worked there for a long time, so I knew firsthand just… how little national support the region receives,” Hernández Faham said. “It was very aligned for us in the arts and culture program to really do some research and start understanding the history of support, or lack thereof, for artistic and cultural production in the region.”

Often, philanthropic support for the borderlands is exclusive to the U.S. side of the border. Mellon is looking to be responsive to the needs of the region, and that involves funding organizations that could have cross-border impact. “It’s a very fluid region,” Hernández Faham said. “Despite the physical border, despite the rhetoric that we hear, people are constantly sharing resources [and] are working across these borders. And so we wanted to create a fund that could acknowledge that and could also support people in the way that they already work.”

Mellon’s funding also aims to recognize that there are groups within the region who face even greater structural challenges and whose histories and contributions have been further erased. These include Indigenous, Black and LGBTQ communities.

While the majority of the fund’s initial grantee cohort are already new to the Mellon Foundation, the fund will be launching an open call next year so that funding will be available to a greater number of groups and organizations. 

“We’re not thinking of the initiative as having a shelf life because our intention is to use this opportunity to build relationships in the region that can translate to long-term support,” Hernández Faham said.

Cultural empowerment for borderland Indigenous communities

One of the fund’s grantees is Alianza Indígena Sin Fronteras (ASIF), which is dedicated to strengthening the cultural, linguistic, historic and ceremonial ties between organizations and communities divided by the border. ASIF was founded in 1997 as a response to the law enforcement abuse experienced by Indigenous people living along the U.S.-Mexico border. It includes members and allies from the peoples of the Hopi, Yoeme, Zuni, Navajo, Cherokee, Apache, Maya, Nahua, Zapotec and Kickapoo, among others.

ASIF has two major projects alongside other, smaller initiatives. The first is its Indigenous Languages Office (ILO), which provides interpretation services for 17 Indigenous languages and 13 non-Indigenous languages, produces videos in Indigenous languages for use in shelters and legal defense organizations, conducts research, and advocates for Indigenous immigrant rights.

“Anywhere from 17% to 22% of the folks who migrate through the U.S.-Mexico border… don’t speak English or they don’t speak Spanish. They actually speak their Indigenous language. As a response, the ILO is now focusing on Indigenous language interpretation,” said Lourdes Escalante, executive director of ASIF.

ILO Director Sebastian Quinac and volunteers work in migrant shelters and ensure people can obtain the services they need, such as medical and legal referrals, and help connect them to where they need to go. ILO also documents the information it gathers. In 2020, it published a report that shed light on some of the human rights violations occurring in places like Tohono O’odham Nation, which exists both in Arizona and Sonora.

ASIF hopes to expand the report to include research on climate migration, which will continue to have a major impact on Indigenous peoples. “Climate change is really affecting a lot of these Global South countries where Indigenous people are being directly impacted… Their natural resources have been taken away from them over the past few centuries and it’s led to this, where now, they are migrating to the United States,” Escalante said.

ASIF’s other big project is its Plant Cruzer, which distributes plant medicine to Indigenous organizations. The Plant Cruzer helps Indigenous peoples focus on their relationship with the earth, with water, with the plants, in particular traditional plants. ASIF also holds workshops — tequios, which is a Nahuatl word for communal work for community good — as a way to gather resources for community projects. The Plant Cruzer’s work is provided free of charge.

“We operate on the belief that this knowledge shouldn’t be gatekept from our Indigenous community, and that we all deserve healing, especially indigenous people, because a lot of us have intergenerational trauma,” Escalante said.

“A place of hope”

Contrary to the prevailing narrative that the border is a place of chaos and danger, Hernández Faham describes the region as a place of beauty with landscapes and rich cultural histories. It is a place where oppression is fought and a place of radical imagination, she said. 

During the recent Mellon-hosted conversation on the borderlands, Latino Community Foundation CEO Julián Castro said, “I think of [the border] as a place of hope, as aspiration, where generations of people have come with huge dreams and love of their family, their country, a recognition that we need one another.”

Hernández Faham said the Mellon Foundation is seeking to better understand the structural barriers that the region’s artists and cultural workers face when trying to access support, and is trying to find ways to contribute to an infrastructure that can last beyond the life of the Frontera Culture Fund. Mellon hopes that with time, the border region won’t be a place that receives one-time or occasional funding, but rather a place that receives continuous support from philanthropy. 

Given the incoming administration’s proposed attacks on the border, it’s more important than ever for funders to support efforts to shed a light on the reality of the communities that live in the region.

“We cannot understand American society or Mexican society without understanding the U.S.-Mexico border region,” Hernández Faham said. “So if our work is about providing a more complex understanding of our contemporary society, we have to have relationships in the region and we have to be supportive of the work that is coming out of there.”