Mellon Foundation Announces the Frontera Culture Fund - a $25M Effort to Support Artists and Cultural Leaders in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands

NEW YORK, Oct. 16, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, the Mellon Foundation – the nation's largest funder of arts, culture and humanities – announced the Frontera Culture Fund, a $25 million commitment to support the creative and historically rich work of artists and cultural leaders living and creating in the U.S.-Mexico border region and tribal communities. 

The U.S.-Mexico borderlands, home to millions, stretches nearly 2,000 miles from east to west, spanning four U.S. and six Mexican states. This region has long been the home of twenty-six federally recognized tribal nations, numerous unrecognized Indigenous communities, and at least seven Indigenous homelands divided by the border. Despite the borderlands' rich artistic production, heritage practices, and cultural histories from binational and Indigenous communities, the region is frequently reduced to harmful and inaccurate rhetoric about immigration, migrants, and border communities that stoke fear of both the place and its inhabitants.

In contrast, the Frontera Culture Fund aims to amplify the voices of artists and cultural leaders who continue to shape the borderlands as a place of beauty, imagination and collective action. The fund seeks to highlight the expressive life and dynamic cultural landscape of border communities, while supporting a more nuanced and authentic representation of the borderlands and investing in regional and transborder collaboration. 

"The U.S.-Mexico borderlands are home to an abundance of cultures and creative traditions, yet remain a region minimally funded by arts philanthropies in the United States," said Elizabeth Alexander, President of the Mellon Foundation. "Our long-term support for the artists, culture-builders, and stewards of creative expression among these communities will help amplify and sustain the profoundly varied arts and histories taking place in the borderlands."

Designed in collaboration with artists and cultural leaders from the region, the Frontera Culture Fund will provide flexible funding for grantees spanning the U.S. and Mexico, including artist-led projects, cultural organizations, and grassroots community groups. The fund will also support Indigenous, binational, and Black networks that are facilitating regional and cross-border knowledge exchange and working to defend cultural rights.

The inaugural group of grantees for the Frontera Culture Fund were selected based on their vital contributions to the region's cultural life and their integration of arts with essential community needs, including racial and climate justice, migrant and refugee rights, LGBTQ+ rights, Indigenous cultural sovereignty, public memory, and community health.

Select Frontera Culture Fund grantees include:

• Chicano Park Museum and Cultural Center (San Diego, California)
  The Chicano Park Museum and Cultural Center, located in the heart of Barrio Logan—San Diego's oldest Mexican American neighborhood—preserves and interprets the history of Chicano Park and the borderlands. Mellon funding supports the assessment, conservation, cataloguing, and digitization of two significant archives that document the work of generations of Chicanx artists and activists at the park and beyond.

• Carrizo Comecrudo Nation of Texas, Inc. (Floresville, Texas)
  The Carrizo Comecrudo Nation of Texas (Esto'k Gna), though federally unrecognized, wields a strong political and cultural presence in the region. Mellon funding supports a Community Land Trust protecting 170 acres of Rio Grande riverfront ancestral land— new model for regional conservation. It also supports an Esto'k Gna Education Center to preserve culture, teach lifeways, and address Rio Grande delta environmental degradation.

• Fandango Fronterizo (Tijuana, Baja California) 
  The Fandango Fronterizo is an annual event at the Tijuana-San Diego border that brings together musicians, dancers, and community members in a celebration of poetry, dance, music, and humanity through son jarocho. Mellon funding facilitates organizational and programmatic capacity for the annual event and provides support for son jarocho elders and contemporary practitioners.

• Alianza Indígena Sin Fronteras (Tucson, Arizona) 
  The Alianza Indígena Sin Fronteras/Indigenous Alliance Without Borders (Alianza) is a twenty-six-year-old organization that supports a network of Indigenous organizations and communities divided by the border, and works to strengthen cultural, linguistic, historical, and ceremonial ties between them. Mellon funding bolsters organizational sustainability and cultural programs, including memory projects and Indigenous healing practices.   

• La Semilla Food Center (Anthony, New Mexico)
  La Semilla Food Center operates a community farm that promotes agroecology and food sovereignty through land-based programs and regional arts and culture initiatives. Mellon funding supports development of shared narratives, story-mapping, and La Semilla's Chihuahuan Desert Cultural Fellowship, which supports artists and culture bearers whose practices uplift the desert bioregion.

• Haitian Bridge Alliance (headquartered in San Diego, California)
  The Haitian Bridge Alliance (HBA) advocates for fair and humane immigration policies, focusing on Black migrants and asylum seekers from Haiti, the Caribbean, and Africa. As Haitian immigrants face renewed attacks, HBA continues to uplift the voices and stories of those impacted, working to create a culture that values and defends Black immigrant lives. Mellon funding supports a significant expansion of HBA's artistic partnerships and storytelling.

• Azul Arena (Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua) 
  Azul Arena, a gallery and project space located miles from two international border crossings, provides a platform for artists and cultural producers to develop and exhibit work while collaborating with curators, writers, and academics to document and preserve contemporary narratives about the Chihuahuan region. Mellon funding provides capacity for Azul Arena as it grows its artistic programming, binational collaborations, and archive of artistic production.

"The history of the border is one of generational trauma in which the stories and truths of Indigenous Peoples have been ignored, invisibilized, and framed from the Western imagination and settler colonialism, but despite this reality, Indigenous peoples remain strong and in resilient continuity," said Lourdes Escalante, Executive Director of Alianza Indígena Sin Fronteras. "Since 1997, Alianza has united Indigenous communities affected by the U.S.-Mexico border, documenting human rights violations, defending Indigenous migrants, and opposing border militarization. We sustain cultural ties predating the U.S. and Mexico and promote healing through programs centered on Indigenous knowledge, memory, and language."

"For years, the creative production in the Ciudad Juárez-El Paso region has suffered underfunding and neglect from the public and private sectors. Artists and cultural workers have adapted to the situation, creating networks of support that have allowed us to realize our ideas and practices in service of border communities," said Edgar Picazo Merino, Creative Director of Azul Arena. "The support provided by the Mellon Foundation has allowed us to set the foundation for a stronger, dignified creative infrastructure as we continue to produce art for positive social change."

About The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is the nation's largest supporter of the arts and humanities. Since 1969, the Foundation has been guided by its core belief that the humanities and arts are essential to human understanding. The Foundation believes that the arts and humanities are where we express our complex humanity, and that everyone deserves the beauty, transcendence, and freedom that can be found there. Through our grants, we seek to build just communities enriched by meaning and empowered by critical thinking, where ideas and imagination can thrive. Learn more at mellon.org.

SOURCE The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation