Local music group, Marimba Mejor Melodia de Oakland, plays to an enthusiastic audience. Credit: Hiram Alejandro Durán for El Tímpano/CatchLight Local/ Report for America corps memberPosted inInside El Tímpano
East Oakland residents reflect on the fifth anniversary of COVID through art and storytelling
The “Rays of Resilience” event celebrated the local Latino and Mam communities’ collective strength through visual art, poetry, oral histories, and music.
On Saturday March 15th, hundreds of people gathered at Josie de la Cruz’s Carmen Flores Recreation Center in Oakland’s Fruitvale district to reflect on the last five years of the COVID-19 pandemic. The event, Rayos de Resiliencia, or Rays of Resilience, in partnership with Eastside Arts Alliance, brought together artists, poets, storytellers, and musicians to offer community members avenues to reflect, heal and witness their collective strength.
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March 11 marked the 5th anniversary of the World Health Organization declaring COVID-19 a global pandemic. Five days later, Bay Area counties issued shelter in place orders. Even though we’ve come a long way from the early days of the pandemic, the impacts still linger, especially for the Latino and Mayan immigrant communities who were among those most adversely impacted and incurred among the highest rates of hospitalization, death and income loss. Rayos de Resiliencia offered participants a moment of pause and reflection—not only to assess and heal from the losses, but importantly, to understand the source of their strength.
El Tímpano and Eastside Arts Alliance invited a variety of artists and artistic mediums, all with the purpose of providing community members with diverse options by which to express themselves. The muralist collective, Los Pobres Artistas constructed sacred phone booths to ignite conversations, Voice of Witness recorded oral histories as a way to capture a time capsule, and El Tímpano invited attendees to write their pandemic struggles on a paper cloud and their source of strength during the pandemic on a paper sun. In the weeks leading up to the event, El Tímpano and Eastside Arts Alliance also organized a series of poetry workshops, culminating in an intimate reading of participants’ poems at Rayos de Resiliencia.
After tremendous rain had fallen on the Bay Area earlier in the week, the clouds parted in time for El Tímpano’s Rayos de Resiliencia event, and indeed the sun’s rays shone bright, much like our community’s resilience.
El Tímpano’s Hiram Alejandro Durán captured the day in photos.
Members from the artist collective, Los Pobres Artistas, paint a mural with a sun and clouds for Rayos de Resiliencia. Credit: Hiram Alejandro Durán for El Tímpano/CatchLight Local/ Report for America corps memberARTogether, an organization that provides art programs for refugee communities, offered art workshops and activities for attendees. Credit: Hiram Alejandro Durán for El Tímpano/CatchLight Local/ Report for America corps member
(Left) El Tímpano invited attendees to use paper suns and clouds to write about how their lives changed during the last 5 years of the pandemic, and what gave them strength. Credit: Hiram Alejandro Durán for El Tímpano/CatchLight Local/ Report for America corps member
(Right) Celia recites a poem to an intimate group inside the Carmen Flores Recreation Center. Two weeks prior to the Rayos de Resiliencia event, El Tímpano offered poetry workshops with Oakland-based poet Arnoldo Garcia. Credit: Hiram Alejandro Durán for El Tímpano/CatchLight Local/ Report for America corps member
Chalk-drawn sun, clouds and rainbows adorned the cement walkways leading up to Josie de la Cruz’s Carmen Recreation Center. Credit: Hiram Alejandro Durán for El Tímpano/CatchLight Local/ Report for America corps memberLa Familia’s mobile health clinic offered blood pressure and diabetes tests along with COVID and flu vaccines. Credit: Hiram Alejandro Durán for El Tímpano/CatchLight Local/ Report for America corps member
(Left) Sal “Chamuco” Cortez, a community based healer, spreads the copal essence at the Rayos de Resiliencia opening ceremony. Credit: Hiram Alejandro Durán for El Tímpano/CatchLight Local/ Report for America corps member
(Right) El Tímpano staff members Vanessa Flores and Madeleine Bair watch as a young attendee spins the wheel for a prize. Credit: Hiram Alejandro Durán for El Tímpano/CatchLight Local/ Report for America corps member
Children interact with drums as the Peaceful Warriors’s drumming circle continue their beats. Credit: Hiram Alejandro Durán for El Tímpano/CatchLight Local/ Report for America corps memberA young Rayos de Resiliencia attendee adds her touch to Los Pobres Artistas’s tin can telephone booth installation. Credit: Hiram Alejandro Durán for El Tímpano/CatchLight Local/ Report for America corps memberCrecencio Ramirez of the Facebook page Radio B’alam broadcasts a livestream of the event for the local Mam community. Credit: Hiram Alejandro Durán for El Tímpano/CatchLight Local/ Report for America corps member
(left) El Tímpano reporter Ximena Loeza records a mother’s oral history as part of the Voice of Witness storytelling booth activity. Credit: Hiram Alejandro Durán for El Tímpano/CatchLight Local/ Report for America corps member
(Right) El Timpano volunteer Michael Alvarenga hands a burrito from El Huarache Azteca to a child. Credit: Hiram Alejandro Durán for El Tímpano/CatchLight Local/ Report for America corps member
Xochitl Nevel Guerrero, an Oakland-based muralist and artist, assists children with their mask creations. Credit: Hiram Alejandro Durán for El Tímpano/CatchLight Local/ Report for America corps memberEl Timpano ambassador, Felicitas, helps participants write their reflections on the pandemic on paper suns and clouds. Credit: Hiram Alejandro Durán for El Tímpano/CatchLight Local/ Report for America corps member El Tímpano ambassador Rebecca places clouds and suns on El Tímpano’s blue sky backdrop. Credit: Hiram Alejandro Durán for El Tímpano/CatchLight Local/ Report for America corps member
