(Trends Wide Spanish) — Monserrat Morán looks at her color palette restlessly, deciphering what combination to use for Frida Kahlo’s eyebrows. His mother, Jovita Gutiérrez, helps him open a tube of red acrylic paint. Morán holds the thinnest brush in his arms and dips the tip into the palette. He adds a few stitches of paint and, staring at his canvas, he begins to paint.
Morán, like many artists, has a meticulous eye when it comes to colors. But unlike other artists, he has no hands.
“Monse”, as her mother calls her, was born in Izúcar de Matamoros, Puebla, in Mexico, with phocomelia, a congenital malformation of the extremities. In her case, this condition consists of shortened arms and legs and the absence of hands. “But it’s not a disability, it’s a different ability,” says Morán.
Morán, now 35, was unable to go to school in Mexico because special needs education was too expensive for her mother, who also feared bullying. “I went, I spoke with the teachers and they told me that they did not want me to put her in school because the other children were going to traumatize me,” Gutiérrez said. Despite not going to school, Morán learned to read and write at home with her sisters and her mother. “I had a nephew who was almost the same age as me who did go to school,” Morán said. “I would take his books and read them.”
Monserrat Moran.
When Morán was 14, he emigrated with his mother to the United States, in search of better education and health programs. They both moved to Little Village in Chicago, where another of Gutiérrez’s sons was located. There, Morán entered the eighth grade at Kanoon Elementary School, where he studied for two years. “It was a bit difficult to get to a place where the language was very different,” Morán said.
“I was crying. The language was a very difficult thing for me, ”she recalls.
While he was in school, one of his teachers saw potential in Morán in drawing and helped with the paperwork to get him into Curie Metropolitan High School to expand his artistic techniques. “He showed me a world that I didn’t know, which was the world of art,” Morán said. “And I like. Because I felt useful, I felt that for the first time I was useful for something”.
Other people also recognized Morán’s talent. Among them is Hilda Burgos, a community activist who in 2015 read an interview about Morán and decided to contact her. “We discovered that he had a lot of drawings, a lot of talent,” Burgos said. “But the more than 100 drawings of him all kept in the dark, there in a little corner.” Morán says that Burgos motivated her to show her art and participate in “mercaditos”. “My job was just for me – until I met Hilda,” added Morán.
On December 31, 2022, relatives brought Morán and her mother to Houston to help support them, as Gutiérrez has since been receiving treatment for breast cancer. Morán said that, despite having the support of her mother, her relatives did not let her continue with her art.
“Monse”, as her mother calls her, was born in Izúcar de Matamoros, Puebla, in Mexico, with phocomelia, a congenital malformation of the extremities.
“I felt very sad,” Morán said. “I felt that if I continued to stay there I was going to die of sadness, because I was being denied the same opportunity to continue with my work of painting and weaving.” Gutierrez said she was the one who decided to bring her daughter to Chicago. “It hurt me a lot to be treated like that,” Gutiérrez said. “That’s why we had to return – also because of my illness, because here I have access to doctors and medicines.” On March 5 of this year, Morán and his mother returned to Chicago. However, this time they find themselves without a home in which to live, knit and paint.
Morán resides in the United States under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which includes a work permit. Since that benefit, which is renewable, expires in June, the artist has spent the last few years raising money from the sale of her art to pay for the cost of the renovation. But not having a home creates a new obstacle to the recovery process. “If you are going to apply for a job, they are going to ask you for an address – an address that I don’t have right now,” Morán said. “If I want to apply for the DACA renewal, I must have a stable address because all the documentation has to come to me.”
Currently, Morán is looking for a home to continue making art, renew her DACA and support her mother with treatment. Friends and activists alike have helped her get a temporary stay, post her art on social media, and support her fundraising campaign.
Finishing painting Frida Kahlo’s eyebrows, Gutierrez leans closer to see her daughter’s canvas more clearly. “She finally has eyebrows,” Gutiérrez said. “Frida without eyebrows is not Frida!” Morán smiles and looks at his mother. The two laugh.
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/Hoda-kotb-cries-savannah-gutherie-secret-santa-today-show-122624-5c3f5353534f4001aaadaa57102a21da.jpg "Hoda Kotb fights tears opening Savannah Guthrie’s gift on ‘Today’")
Currently, Morán is looking for a home to continue making art, renew her DACA and support her mother with treatment.
“Right now we are going back, we are happy, although we have nowhere to live, but I have faith that God is going to prepare a place for us to be – and the two of us together,” said Gutiérrez.
