BAW/TAF had exhibited in 'IN-SITE 94' and a submission for their Maclovio proposal had again been selected for funding. The title of the project, 'Twin Plant: Forms of Resistance: Corridors of Power' related the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) by which multinationals can set up factories at the border as long as one is in the USA and one is in Mexico. In effect, while the US plant might employ 50 people the Mexican one employs several hundred. With wages in Mexico for factory workers running at a tenth of those in the US, the economic advantages are obvious. Samsung and Coca Cola sit alongside Hyundai and employ many people from Maclovio who are also fighting for union recognition, improved health and safety conditions in the maquiladoras (literally machine shops)and wage increases.

Householders across the USA, for security and convenience, are in the process of replacing their old wooden garage doors with automatic, aluminium ones. The discarded doors have become a major item in the construction of squatter homes. In January of this year, on one day's trawl around builders' yards in San Diego, we picked up eleven of them. More collections doors, re-cycled play equipment and other goods have been taken across the border as 'art materials' under the umbrella of IN-SITE, thus avoiding duty and the interest of an often difficult customs post. The doors, measuring 16' x 8' (this is the USA with its double garages) were to be at the core of the art project for they were to be used to construct buildings which, after the exhibitions, could be used by the community as it felt fit. As Josef Beuys would have described it, this was Social Sculpture in action. Any contribution to community development, to expanding facilities and developing the infrastructure of Maclovio, might just help to prevent the forcible eviction of the people. 1997 is the tenth year of their settlement of the land and, under the Mexican constitution, that would normally result in their being awarded ownership. The government counters that this will not be the case, so the stand-off continues.

The surfing on the net not only revealed the existence of Maclovio, but also its links to the Zapatista National Liberation Army and its charismatic and mysterious leader Sub-Commandante Marcos. Many of the people who live in Maclovio are from the southern states, including Chiapas, the centre of the insurgent activity. The seventy year hegemony in Mexico of the ruling PRI party is beginning to show some cracks with the success of the opposition PRD in this year's elections and the winning the powerful mayorship of Mexico City. This has not been without a price. Four hundred members of the opposition party have been killed since 1989. Marcos also conducts his rebellion through the Internet and by fax attempting to complete the revolution begun by Zapata and Pancho Villa. In Maclovio streets are named after them. Their photographs and painted images along, inevitably, with that of Che Guevara, decorate the walls of the community centre. Marcos has exhorted every community in Mexico to build a cultural centre as a forum for democratic conventions "to discuss and agree on a civil, peaceful, popular and national organisation in the struggle for freedom and justice." He has called these meeting places 'Aguascalientes' (hot springs) a reference also to the city which hosted Zapata's first democratic convention. The construction of an 'Aguascalientes' became central to the project in Maclovio. Working with the elected leaders of the community a group of young people was formed to work on the planning and execution of the project. For this and other voluntary work for the community they would each receive in return a plot of land on which they could build their own houses. The project proposed to construct buildings to house exhibitions of installations, photography, video and audio work and to paint murals. In Mexico and in the Latin American and Afro-American neighbourhoods throughout the USA, political mural painting remains a thriving art practice. In my first visit to BAW, in 1984, I documented the murals of the Chicano people of Barrio Logan in San Diego. The construction of the great soaring Coronado Bridge across the bay had destroyed many Chicano homes and the city was planning to develop an industrial site on the land under the bridge. But the local people occupied the land and eventually succeeded in turning it into a park. Now it is well known as Chicano Park where every bridge support is painted with murals of Chicano history, symbols and imagery.