Label
Label from 2014.Art for Social Change:
On May 20, 1997, eighteen-year-old Esequiel Hernandez was herding his family’s goats outside his home in Redford, TX, near the Mexican border. Carrying a rifle to ward off wild dogs and rattlesnakes, he was shot to death by four marines on patrol, who thought he was a drug smuggler. According to Jiménez, “No one would dream of taking away Robert E. Lee’s gun or George Washington’s sword, but somehow the thought of a Mexican with a gun is seen as a big threat.”
El Buen Pastor or The Good Shepherd memorializes this horrific event, protesting, as the print says, “the country’s insane and racist border policy.” To emphasize the boy’s innocence, in both senses of the word, Jiménez shows him as Christ, the Good Shepherd, with his hand raised in a traditional gesture of blessing. Chillingly, his halo is marked by the cross hairs of a rifle.