September 9, 2012
All through Battery
Park, living “Statues of Liberty” stand on milk crates and invite people—mostly
foreign tourists—to have their pictures taken with Lady
Liberty. These statues are mint green from head to toe, from their
billowy robes to their faces to their crowns. They stand for hours, never speaking
but beckoning with outstretched arms to any passer-by whose eyes they can
catch, cloaking willing subjects in a giant American flag and giving them a
smaller one to wave. Only after the cameras finish clicking do the statues
speak, informing their customers that they owe them money for the snapshots.
On a recent hot and
humid afternoon I spied one statue sitting on a park bench and gathering his
green robes onto his lap so the harbor breeze could cool his thick,
muscle-bound legs; he peeled off his green mask to dry the sweat on his caramel
skin and jet black hair. Like his fellow statues, he is here from Mexico
or Central America, trying to eek out a living.
I wonder how many
photos these statues need tourists to take with them in a day to make enough
money to pay their rent and support their families. I wonder how they survive
in the snow and rain when it is too cold and wet to stroll through Battery Park
looking for kitschy tourist treasures. They stand for the symbol of America’s
embrace of immigrants, and yet, I wonder how embraced they feel at the end of
the day, when they are no longer wearing their crowns.
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