Immigrant tales take flight in La Casa mural

SOUTH BEND — No matter what the weather is now, a monarch butterfly is hatching at the corner of the La Casa de Amistad building, alongside immigrants who are likewise morphing from brave travelers into South Bend citizens.

That’s the story that a brand new mural tells, greeting kids and adults of many nationalities as they step through the door they use daily — embedded in the mural — along with motorists whizzing by at 3423 S. Michigan St.

“We always knew we wanted a mural on this building,” La Casa Executive Director Juan Constantino said at the mural’s dedication Monday. “It was only a matter of when and who.”

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The idea

Mike Hebbeler, program director of the University of Notre Dame’s Center for Social Concerns, had viewed the white-washed exterior walls of La Casa’s new headquarters, where it moved in June 2021, as “literally primed for a mural.”

So, early this year, he suggested that Notre Dame and Holy Cross College students could visit and cultivate inspiration for the painting from immigrant students in La Casa’s citizenship class. The college students, he said, would seek “stories of pain and loss, of courage, hope and resilience.” The citizenship class has worked with immigrants from 80-plus countries over the years.

La Casa quickly agreed.

Working through staff, students channeled the tales to South Bend artist Freddy Rodriguez. The 10 college students were in the Art and Social Change course, where they work alongside local artists to explore issues of justice and “manifestations of dignity,” Hebbeler said.

“Public murals are meant to be a dialogue, not only in the final product but also in the creative process,” he said.

Rodriguez painted this autumn, as at least 25 students and family and community members helped to apply brushstrokes, the last of them on Saturday.

Constantino said that one of the many youths in La Casa programs asked her mother if she was the little girl painted in the first panel. In reality, none of the people in the mural portray anyone in particular.

But Constantino, who notes that La Casa and Rodriguez were intentional about the brown skin tones, said, “It’s good that students see themselves represented in the mural.”

Hebbeler added that one Notre Dame student, Rebbeca Gilpatric, told him, "People are meant not only to be seen, but to be seen as beautiful.”

The artist

The artist, 33-year-old Rodriguez, grew up hiding in another South Bend mural. In fact, the likeness of him as a boy is still peering from behind his mother, who’s in a red dress, in the Western cowboy scene that local artist Dave Blodgett had painted decades ago on the side of Chico’s Mexican Restaurant at 2418 W. Western Ave.

Rodriguez’s father, a retired fire chief, has owned Chico’s for several years. When he was young, Rodriguez and his family lived in the upstairs apartment there. That experience, he said, inspired him to paint things on the walls of his room (with his dad’s encouragement) and “definitely made me lean heavily to art.”

Before he earned a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from Holy Cross College in 2013, he painted Our Lady of Guadalupe on the side of Rosales Supermarket on Western and also worked with La Casa kids to paint a mural on the back side of the charity’s prior home on Meade Street.

He and his family have long been involved with and had an affinity for La Casa. He even served on its board for a couple of years as he graduated from college. And his two kids, 8-year-old Layla and 12-year-old Federico, who sometimes partake in La Casa programs, eagerly enjoyed seeing their dad’s progress when he’d come home from working on the project.

"I want to leave a better world for them,” he said, “... to show them you can do this, you can brighten the world.”

Rodriguez does art as he “organically” gets the chance. His full-time job is as an outreach coordinator for bilingual services in South Bend schools, a role where, in a summer program for students from migrant working families, he teaches kids about new ways of doing art.

The mural

Rodriguez said he used the simple-line style that you see in the mural on La Casa’s old storefront building on Meade Street, a mural that local artist Bill Tourtillotte crafted in 1995 with help from Latinx youths. It features an Aztec pyramid, symbols of family and nature and the face of a Holy Cross priest, the Rev. John Phelan, who founded La Casa in 1973.

La Casa sold the building on Meade early this year, Constantino said. It’s apparently vacant, though the mural remains.

The new mural is on three connected walls. It features the metamorphosis of a monarch caterpillar into a butterfly since the monarch is often used as a symbol of Latin American migration. Beloved in Mexico, generations of the monarch butterfly make their 3,000-mile journeys between Mexico and the United States each spring and summer.

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On the first wall, a Latinx girl holds a monarch caterpillar and represents the youth. She’s tucked into a circle where black lines form the silhouetted image of a raptor, which Rodriguez said is adapted from the white eagle with a crown that’s seen in the Polish flag. He said it broadly alludes to the range of eastern European people who’d immigrated to and settled in South Bend.

“I hope it will inspire kids walking by to ask questions,” he said.

The story progresses as you move to the second wall. Starting on the left side, there are layers of rough waters, sand and dark green mountains. Then there’s a man with a backpack and red T-shirt bearing the emblem of the Farmworkers Movement of the 1960s. The migrating man holds up a monarch in chrysalis, in its transition between caterpillar and butterfly.

“It’s held up like a lantern,” Rodriguez explained. “He’s illuminating his way. Like a caterpillar, he’s still finding his way.”

Then the painting transitions to the sun, breaking through colored bricks of the wall, which is seen over calm water.

“You go through your journey and now you’re breaking through,” he said.

That leads to a woman who is holding her pregnant belly with one hand — a sign, Rodriguez said, of a place of security, where you can raise a family — while she’s using her other hand to hold up the torch from the Indiana flag.

“I want this (Indiana flag) to be a point of pride for students coming through that door,” he said.

Just below the torch, a monarch butterfly emerges from its chrysalis.

Moving into the third wall, you see landmark buildings of downtown South Bend’s skyline along the St. Joseph River. In a circle with the patriotic backdrop of the United States flag, a woman in a hijab represents different religions, cultures and ages, Rodriguez said. She and a Black boy lift their hands toward a monarch butterfly in flight. The mural ends with the city of South Bend’s flag, of which he said, “You are here.”

“It was cool to see how Freddy made it more personal and put faces in it,” said Holy Cross junior Stephanie Nu?ez, whose parents came from Mexico, reacting to how he translated stories into art. “You can see the dignity.”

South Bend Tribune reporter Joseph Dits can be reached at 574-235-6158 or [email protected].

This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: La Casa de Amistad mural tells immigrant stories with Notre Dame help