I know from growing up as part of a diaspora that our histories are not the dominant narrative. The dispersion of people means decentralizing the keepers of history and losing stories for future generations. But decentralized history-writing also means that the story is ripe for the taking, reclaiming narratives often shaped by the powerful.

“Thus We Advance, Harvesting Our Caravans” not only documents the architecture of the Mexican diaspora between Chicago and Mexico but also reclaims narrative. It posits architectural expression not as happenstance but as a means of transnational self-determination.

Entering the MAS Context Reading Room in Chicago, there’s a sense that things are indeed, as the title suggests, on the move. Off-the-shelf clips and brackets mounting the work visibly await their disassembly, migration, and reconstruction. The freestanding chain-link fence bisects the space diagonally—a barrier visitors must move along and around to view the work. The co-curators brought together the work of Leticia Pardo and Inés Vachez Palomar, each of whom has captured one end of the ongoing transnational architectural exchange through photographs, drawings, models, and writing.

Pardo’s work renders how the Mexican immigrant community in Chicago wraps new skins around existing buildings by layering photographic fragments of the new atop elevation drawings of the old. Each piece travels with an unfolding plywood cart, in and of itself an exhibition on wheels. On alternating walls in conversation with Pardo’s work, Palomar’s photographs and writing capturing Vista Hermosa reveal the changing built environment as the influence flows in reverse from the United States to Mexico.

Two things struck me. One, that diaspora doesn’t flow in one direction (outward). Distant places and people are in constant dialogue. And two, that architecture is not static or tied to a geographical location. A place lives in the physical world and in our minds and memories. The exhibition provides a glimpse into the life and architecture of the Mexican diaspora, and is undoubtedly critical to filling in the gaps of diasporic narrative.

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