Posted on 11/17/2005 4:09:45 AM PST by Crackingham
The high-top sneakers cost $215 at a San Diego boutique, but the designer is giving them away to migrants before they cross to this side of the U.S.-Mexico border. These are no ordinary shoes. A compass and flashlight dangle from one shoelace. The pocket in the tongue is for money or pain relievers. A rough map of the border region is printed on a removable insole. They are red, white and green, the colors of the Mexican flag. On the back ankle, a drawing of Mexico's patron saint of migrants.
On this side of the border, the shoes sit in art collections or the closets of well-heeled sneaker connoisseurs. On the other side, in Tijuana, it's a utilitarian affair: Immigrants to be are happy to have the sturdy, lightweight shoes for the hike - or dash - into the United States. Their designer is Judi Werthein, an Argentine artist who moved to New York in 1997 - legally, she notes.
On recent evening in Tijuana, after giving away 50 pairs at a migrant shelter, Werthein waved the insole and pointed to Interstate 8, the main road between San Diego and Phoenix.
"This blue line is where you want to go," Werthein, 38, said in Spanish.
"Good luck! You're all very courageous," she told the cheering crowd of about 50 men huddled in a recreation room after dinner.
"God bless you!" several cried back.
Werthein has concluded that shoes are a border crosser's most important garment.
"The main problem that people have when they're crossing is their feet," Werthein. "If people are going to cross anyway, at least this will make it safer."
Only 1,000 pairs of the "Brinco" sneakers (it means "Jump" in Spanish) have been made - in China, for $17 each. The shoes were introduced in August at inSite, an art exhibition in San Diego and Tijuana whose sponsors include nonprofit foundations and private collectors. Benefactors put up $40,000 for the project; Werthein gets a $5,000 stipend, plus expenses.
Some say Werthein is encouraging illegal immigration - but she rejects the criticism, saying people will cross with or without her shoes.
Eloisa Haudenschild, who displays a pair of the sneakers at her resplendent San Diego home, said the shoes portray an uncomfortable reality about the perils of crossing the border.
"It's a reality that we don't like to look at," she said. "That's what an artist points out."
Somebody please tell me this woman can be deported.
I don't know if she is in San Diego or in New York, but she needs to be given the boot out of the U.S.
Their designer is Judi Werthein, an Argentine artist who moved to New York in 1997 - legally, she notes.
As if we didn't already have enough far left-wing, deluded artists in the U.S....
Well, I don't know when someone came up with this saint, but this website says the patron saint of migrants is Santo Toribio Romo, and this website says it is Juan Soldado. (Maybe Soldado and Romo are one and the same person?)
I know there have been illegal aliens "crossing" for dozens and dozens of years, but I can't believe they have a saint for breaking the law (and in 2005 it most certainly is breaking the law).
A corrupt country like Mexico needs all of the help it can get.
Why doesn't she use her money to sponsor these people legally? Oh, she doesn't really want to be involved?
Though I keep hearing we are at war so invasion of the USA during war time probably is a felony...
Though this is a little like hiring a security company to harden your house so they beef up the front door while leaving the back door open...kinda makes one wonder why?
Great argument! Can I play?
If people are going to smoke anyway, at least this will make it safer. Let's give 'em cigs.
If people are going to have sex anyway, at least this will make it safer. Let's give 'em condoms.
Who want's to play?
ping
If people are going to steal your stuff, let's make it safer. Let's take away your guns and leave your house unlocked!
Hey, easy game!
susie
Maybe the daughter of a WWII German who escaped to Argentina before the end of the war?
How does she know she's not aiding and abetting Al Queda to enter the U.S.?
Idiot....
Protect our borders and coastlines from all foreign invaders!
Support our Minutemen Patriots!
Be Ever Vigilant ~ Bump!
If she actually cared about Mexicans, she would have her shoes prodiuced in Mexico!
Let her give these shoes away, I hope no one actually buys them. Her spirit of donating to lawbreakers might cool off when her profits decline. She sure got some publicity, probably her real reason for doing this.
One of these days this polite, generous, stay at home mother is going to go ballistic and become the female version of Michael Douglas in "Falling Down." Tomorrow, will I hear on the news that some armored vehicle company will be parking transportation with keys in the ignition at the border so that those breaking and entering will have safer travels? Or better yet, maybe the illegal lovers can dig some tunnels and install people movers to get the "sneak-ins" here quicker?
This is so far out of hand.
I hope her profits completely dry up, and I wouldn't doubt you're right about her motivation; I sure will remember her name; she's been added to my boycott list.
This is essentially conspiring to help another knowingly commit a crime. Is this not illegal?
Not that legality ever mattered much to these folks, of course...
Let me do the math here -- they used sweatshop labor in China, and even then, they still had $23,000 over, plus 1,000 shoes to sell? She must have a lot of "expenses"!
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