Marco Saavedra

Artist & host Marco Saavedra was born in San Miguel Ahuehuetitlán in the indigenous Mixteca Baja region of Oaxaca. Due to poverty, hunger, and free trade agreements, his family was displaced into the United States. He has fought deportations, reported on immigration abuses, and secured the release of dozens of detainees that were denied due process, depicted in the Sundance award-winning docu-thriller The Infiltrators and Eclipse of Dreams (2007). In 2021, he was granted political asylum, setting a precedent for immigrant advocates who face disappearance and death for their work in Mexico. During the pandemic, his family’s Michelin-listed Oaxacan restaurant, La Morada, began a mutual aid kitchen where they have been providing 650 free community meals daily. In collaboration with Ale Delano's haikus Marco is adding his allée painting series to build a treescape for 2023 and on. He is co-author of Shadows Then Light and “Make Holy the Bare Life”: Theological Reflections on Migration Grounded in Collaboration with Youth Made Illegal by the United States.