Nansi Guevara
The Magic Yali
The Magic Yali is an animated short based on a young girl who is both shy and adventurous. Her home is the Rio Grande Delta in South, Texas, an interdependent ecosystem. On one of her adventures, she witnesses history repeat itself, threatening her home. She channels a part of herself to protect the place she loves.
*Background: “The Magic Valley” was an early twentieth century marketing campaign created by wealthy investors and anglo settlers in order to profit off the land and Mexican labor. More anglo settlers moved south, growing anti-mexican narratives and rhetoric grew, justifying the stealing of land from Mexican ranchers supported by the state and the Texas Rangers. The Rio Grande Valley is currently going through another wave of extraction and environmental exploitation with the building of a SpaceX testing site right next to the Rio Grande Delta, endangering animal species, biodiversity, and interdependent ecosystems.
Story excerpt: Yali is walking by the delta, and starts to notice something different, perhaps even dangerous.
Contributor Work
The Magic Yali, Story excerpt, (n.d), Written & illustrated by Nansi Guevara. Edited and revised by Dolissa Medina, Moana Ulu’ave, and Xandra Treviño.
Contributor Profile
Photography Assistants: Ash Ponders, Caitlin O’Hara
Nansi Guevara is an artist & educator based in Brownsville, Texas. Originally from Laredo, Texas, she holds a bachelor’s in Fine Arts in Design from the University of Texas at Austin and a Master’s in Education from Harvard University. She is currently focused on shifting harmful narratives of the South Texas-Mexico border through examining untold history in relation to current environmental destruction in the Rio Grande Valley. She is a designer, an illustrator, and a textile/rasquache based public artist. She runs her own freelance illustration & education practice, Corazón Contento, based out of Brownsville, Texas.