Lys Verduzco was born in Morelia in central Mexico in 1976 to a Mexican father of indigenous and Spanish descent and an American mother whose parents were Russian Jewish and Italian Catholic. When she was 5 years old, Verduzco fled Mexico with her mother and her sisters after their father, who suffered from schizophrenia, built a bonfire outside their home and began slowly burning everything they owned, including his children's clothes.

Verduzco and her family entered the United States by way of Tijuana, where they managed to get ahold of an American car through the relative of a friend. Because of the quick escape from her husband, Verduzco's mother had no papers when she crossed the border. "I think it helped that my mother is American and both my sisters were very blond as children," Verduzco wrote recently in her journal.

Verduzco began keeping the journal in 2008 when she started attending workshops led by artist Chrissie Orr at Santa Fe's bilingual high school, now called Tierra Encantada. Students and members of their families were encouraged to chronicle their individual stories in journal entries and art projects.

The stories culminated in a public art project of the Seton Village-based Academy for the Love of Learning called El Otro Lado — The Other Side: The Stories that Connect Us.

Today, the academy will launch a citywide community art installation based on the stories of some of the workshop participants.

Each participant is a member of the Santa Fe community. Each participant came here from somewhere else or is part of an intergenerational family with members who came from another country, another state and/or another culture. Their stories are part of Santa Fe's legacy of cross-cultural heritage.

Their stories will be told on 4-foot by 6-foot aluminum panels, with photographs of each person's hands (by Orr) against a backdrop of pages from their journals. The panels are placed at sites around the city. On the back of each panel is a telephone number (505-204-7064) that passers-by can call from their cell phones to listen to the story in English and Spanish. Each story is accessed through an item number followed by the pound key. Some stories are anonymous, depending on the immigration status of the participant, but most are read by the participant. Verduzco was responsible for several of the translations.

The first of the panels was placed outside City Hall on Monday near the corner of Marcy Street and Lincoln Avenue. Others were installed at the Cross of the Martyrs, East Santa Fe River Park, De Vargas Park, St. Anne's Church, the Bicentennial Pool, Frenchy's Field, the Southside Branch Library, Genoveva Chavez Community Center, Las Acequias Park and the Santa Fe Railyard by Station Fine Coffee and Tea.

"The group of people who have participated in this project are largely invisible members of the community," said Aaron Stern, executive director of the academy, a nonprofit that fosters "the natural love learning."

"This was both an opportunity to help make visible parts of the community but also to help instruct all of us about how important it is and meaningful it is to find our places and to be seen and heard," he added.

"This kind of gives people a face," said Verduzco, who came to Santa Fe six years ago to attend massage school.

Her journey, she said, is a story of crossing the border illegally out of desperation. "We had to do it in secret because my mother tried leaving a couple of times and he caught us," she said of her father. Now in her 30s, Verduzco has dual citizenship with Mexico and the United States.

Because of her Mexican and American heritage, Verduzco has struggled to adapt to two different cultures while feeling that she did not quite fit into either one. "Nobody really knows where I'm from," she said. "Mexicans will still speak to me in English. They kind of don't accept the fact that I might be Mexican because I don't look Mexican — even though, if you really understand Mexico, they're not all indigenous. That racial stereotype is there with both sides," she said.

Helga von Sydow Ancona, a public radio host whose son Pablo is the sound technician for the project, said her story was going to be on display at the Bicentennial Pool. Ancona, the daughter of a Brazilian mother and German father and now a U.S. citizen, came to the United States from Brazil. She described the difficulties of growing up in a household with two distinct cultures. "My father was very severe, and we had to speak German in our home even though we were in Brazil," she said.

"In Brazil, people have kept their language for more generations than here in the United States. In the United States, there is this perception we have to really change things and become Americans," Ancona said.

That the project happened in Santa Fe seems significant, said Ancona, because the city, like many of the people who have participated in El Otro Lado, has a multicultural legacy. Santa Fe also has a reputation for being friendly toward illegal immigrants. "For me, it's the only place in the United States where I would want to be," she said.

The panels will remain at their various sites until October, when they will be moved to Seton Village, where the academy plans to open a new center in 2010. El Otro Lado represents the first grass-roots project the organization has sponsored in Santa Fe since its restoration of Seton Castle ended abruptly in 2005, when a fire consumed the building.

IN THEIR OWN WORDS

To listen to the stories of Lys Verduzco and Helga Ancona, call 505-204-7064 then press 32# for Lys and 24# for Helga.