Guadalupe Maravilla’s “Mariposa Relámpago" | Art21 "New York Close Up"

(suspenseful music)

- The name came to me very naturally.

I was in Oaxaca and I had a dream

that kind of shook me up.

I remember seeing a lot of butterflies

and lightning bolts together in the storm.

And that morning I got
up, I was at a red light,

and there were two abuelitas,

and they were talking about

how this healer would often
come and heal the town.

Her name was Mariposa Relámpago.

That's when I said, "Oh, wow.

I just had a dream about
butterflies and lightning bolts."

That's where the name comes from.

"Mariposa Relámpago."

(wind whooshing)

(harmonica blowing)

This is spirits playing right now.

(gentle harmonica music)

Sound is really powerful.

There's a universal way
of experiencing healing,

and it's by using sound.

And everyone feels it.

Everyone that's alive feels
it. The plants feel it.

The animals feel it. The babies feel it.

I think everyone needs to heal something.

(bell chimes)

What's happening in the
border in the United States

is a major impact in who I am.

I was an undocumented unaccompanied child

coming from El Salvador,
escaping the Civil War.

I migrated here in the '80s.

For me, the border is not
just the physical wall

that's separating Mexico
and United States,

but a whole journey that
asylum seekers take.

(dramatic music)

A lot of the work that
I have done for myself

is to actually confront
those cities and those towns

that I traveled as an
undocumented unaccompanied child.

(suspenseful music)

The bus culture growing up in the '80s

was really big in El Salvador

because we would have these blinged out,

formerly American yellow school buses.

I was fascinated by these buses

because they were highly decorated.

And I was obsessed with
looking at all the details,

all the shiny objects,
all the handmade things,

all the absurd things.

So the whole idea for
me came that I wanted

to bring a school bus from El
Salvador to the United States,

and I wanted to have
the same migratory path

that I had as a kid.

(suspenseful music)

In order to turn it to a gong,

we have to first flatten it out.

Like it has this giant ding here

and a few imperfections there,
but I think we can get it.

(birds chirping)

For me, it's always been important

to make my own instruments.

Even when I'm making sculptures,

I'm always really thinking about

using recycled materials for them,

and repurposing objects.

Thinking of animism and the energy

that these materials
hold is really important

to what I'm exploring.

(birds chirping)

When I was a student in New York City,

there weren't that many role
models that I could look up to.

I realized that my teachers didn't know

what I had gone through and how important

healing was for me.

The main influence that
I had was looking back

at my ancestry, the Maya, the Curanderos.

Okay, go for it, Billy.

They were the healers.

They were the ones that could
write and draw and sculpt

and also create rituals.

Directly connected to them,

I was like, "I want to
make healing rituals."

(gentle harmonica music)

It's a vibrating bus.

It's a vibrating healing instrument.

"Mariposa Relámpago"
has around 700 objects.

Every object has a meaning for me.

Part of the work is to
actually find the objects.

(bell chimes)

I was in Mexico City

and I saw a pair of
metallic silver slippers,

and it looked like a
child had been walking

for a lot of time.

I almost got emotional when I saw it,

and I felt the energy of the walking

and all the unaccompanied,

displaced children that
were traveling with me.

There's been thousands of people

that have experienced "Mariposa Relámpago"

in all these different cities

that it's traveled through.

I really wanted to bus to tour the border

as much as possible.

(gentle music)

(crowd chattering)

Everyone, thank you for coming.

Think of being in the
park or being by the ocean

when you sit there and
just listen to the birds.

You don't have to be
an expert in meditation

to feel the experience.

Just listen to it.

(gentle ambient music)

When I'm doing a ceremony

and we're producing sound,

it doesn't feel like I'm
even playing an instrument.

Sound can be used in different ways.

The power of "Mariposa"
can be felt around the bus,

but also inside of the bus.

You can sit or lay on the bus

and feel the vibration

and the healing qualities that it has.

I had so many mixed feelings
going to the ceremony.

(gentle music)

It was open to the general public,

but also we had border patrol agents

on the bus during the ceremony.

Being in Marfa, an
environment that is similar

to the same lines that I
crossed when I was a child,

I think I was in tears at some point.

And it's a very scary space.

There's certain roads you gotta show ID

and tell them that you're a citizen.

There's actually a blimp
that travels in the area

looking for refugees to
arrest them and deport them.

My community sees them
as very threatening,

but I realized that I
wanted to do a ceremony

for border patrol agents

because it's not just about healing those

that have been hurt,

but also healing other more
complex situations as well.

(gentle ambient music)

- [Irlanda] The camp
that I was working at,

it's a place where unaccompanied children

that cross the border,

first, they go to the
border patrol center,

and from there, they get sent to a camp.

They are just kids,

so it makes it very
hard to see them worried

so it makes it very
hard to see them worried

and see their sadness.

They are some of the most resilient kids

I've ever met in my life.

I was on the phone with my coworker

and I'm telling her about you.

"Dude, this guy, he's a grownup version

of the kids we were taking care of."

- It's funny that you said that

because yesterday,

I was talking to law enforcement
that works at the border.

When she started talking to me,

she was talking to me like I
was that 8-year-old little boy

that she encountered, you know?

She was like, "Yeah, I
wanted to embrace you,

I wanted to hold you, but I couldn't."

(bell chiming)

(wind whooshing)

(waves splashing)

(gentle harmonica music)

As a child in El Salvador,

I would be constantly drawing
the New York City skyline.

So when I look at that skyline,

it just symbolizes the journey
through the United States.

That journey still continues to this day.

Healing is gonna be happening
for the rest of my life.

Sound is medicine.