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TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN AND TO THOSE WHO CARE
Before anything else, thank you.
To those who’ve crossed paths with me over the years ~ whether you saw me perform at a red light, collaborated with me on a project, or simply shared a quiet gesture of solidarity, this is for you.
To those who hired me for your projects, paid me fairly under the table, offered food, gift cards, rides, or simply shared your resources in quiet solidarity ~ I see you. You treated me as an equal. You didn’t look away. You knew the risks I carried and still made space for me. Your actions weren’t small. They were everything. Because of you, I kept going.
When I first came to the United States, I didn’t come chasing a dream, I came with the heart of an artist and the curiosity of an anthropologist, determined to explore how far an undocumented artist could go in this country. Over time, I built a life from that question. I performed in the streets, created theater, shared poetry, told immigrant stories on the radio, and turned resistance into presence.
And in the middle of all that, I found something bigger than success. I found love, I got married, I became a father. That changed everything.
Now I’m taking a step forward in my life and career, I’m starting college, I’m committed to becoming one of the known undocumented voices inside the academic world to bring my experience into a space that has long excluded people like me. If you’ve read my writing, seen my work, or heard me speak, maybe you carry the same hope I do ~ that this future is possible, through that path I want to give back, to uplift and to build something real for the community that raised me.
I’ve been in this process of trying to regularize my status for over three years. Since the Trump era, the system has only gotten more complicated. The forms have changed, the timelines are broken, and even with legal support, nothing is guaranteed. My immigration status remains questionable, which places me at constant risk in a time when we are all witnessing the return of inhuman immigration raids. These aren’t about targeting criminals!! ~ they are targeting brown people with accents, which is bizarre, especially in the year 2025, in a city called Los Angeles.
That’s why I’m asking for support, not because I gave up, but because I’m choosing to keep going in this country.
If you’ve ever smiled at a juggler at a traffic light, if you believe art belongs to everyone, and if you know what it means to build something beautiful without safety nets, I hope you’ll stand with me now.
Every dollar helps me cover legal aid, upcoming bills and just as importantly, protect my mental health in this uncertain time, because the truth is, we don’t know when this will end ~ but I’ll be ready when it does. I will return to the streets of Los Angeles to make people laugh again, with shows that have always had one clear premise: to offer free access to art in the most segregated and marginalized neighborhoods of this city.
A good way to support is also by sharing this GoFundMe. If you know of safe jobs or gigs, I’m ready. My CV is available here:
www.ddla.art/bio
And if you want to support an undocumented artist through art itself, I invite you to read what I write. I just published a piece on Substack, a poem I wrote for Father’s Day, which is also my birthday. It’s called Forgive Me for Destroying Your Nation
Thank you for reading, thank you for caring, and thank you for believing that artists like me belong here, too.
With love,
Diego de Los Andes
Organizer
