麻豆影院

(MJour鈥�13) 鈥⑻齎isual Journalist 鈥⑻鼵o-founder of Transborder Media

Not long ago, Griselda San Martin travelled to Mexico City to claim a second-place award for her short film,听Soldiers Without a Nation, in a competition sponsored by the Mexican government and the United Nations.

The film tells the stories of permanent U.S. residents who fought for the American military only to be deported to Mexico for later criminal offenses. The deported veterans听feel lost in the middle and San Martin believes their stories are too.

San Martin, originally from Spain, lived in several countries and always enjoyed taking pictures of the people and places she saw in her travels. When she came to CU-麻豆影院 to pursue a master鈥檚 degree in journalism, she wanted to tell stories鈥揳 certain type of story. 鈥淚 don鈥檛 like hard news,鈥� she says. 鈥淚 like in-depth stories.鈥� Some of the stories San Martin wanted to explore in-depth were the lives of immigrant and their communities in the United States.

鈥淲e鈥檙e trying to tell stories from beyond the mainstream.鈥�

- Griselda San Martin

San Martin鈥檚 favorite class in her first year at CU-麻豆影院 was Media and Diaspora, a media studies class that explored how media portray and impact immigrant communities. After learning how the mainstream media reported on marginalized immigrants, San Martin completely changed her own approach. Rather than talking about immigrants, as many in the media do, she realized the best way to fight stereotypes and report a more truthful story was to let immigrants tell their own stories.

San Martin teamed up with classmate Elaine Cromie and travelled to Tijuana, Mexico to meet and interview many of the deported U.S. veterans living there. The duo have since returned many times and have produced several short videos about the veterans. 鈥淲e鈥檙e not activists. We鈥檙e not taking sides,鈥� says San Martin. 鈥淲e鈥檙e trying to tell stories from beyond the mainstream.鈥�

To further that goal, San Martin, Cromie and a third collaborator鈥擝iana Fortis鈥攈ave founded听, a company dedicated to producing written and visual media that crosses borders. Currently, San Martin is documenting the Garifuna community in New York City in portraits and a documentary. Because the Garifuna immigrated from the Caribbean and Central America, they speak English, Spanish and their own language. San Martin is translating her work into all three, as part of her dream to tell stories 鈥渢hat transcend borders.鈥�