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Perhaps nowhere else could such a road sign have been born.

A ghostly silhouette of a mother, father and little girl running, their bodies leaning forward as if into the wind. The child's pigtails fly behind her as the family dashes across a stark yellow background, accompanied by one word: CAUTION.

Caltrans posted several of these signs along San Diego freeways beginning in 1990, when the city was a funnel for undocumented immigrants headed north. The signs were intended to warn drivers they might encounter people frantically darting across lanes of traffic as they tried to evade border security.

The characters have been reinterpreted carrying surfboards and wearing Pilgrim hats. One depiction shows them being followed by a man with a gun.

The image has become a Rorschach test for how people feel about illegal immigration and immigrants in general. Some have claimed it as a symbol of Latino identity. Others wear it as a badge of anti-immigrant sentiment.

"It has become an icon that signals immigration and the political issues surrounding immigration, which are far from resolved in our society," said Otto Santa Ana, a professor of Chicano studies at UCLA.

And yet some see it as nothing more than a quirky regional souvenir.

"Come to San Diego," one T-shirt reads. "Bring your family."

The assignment to create the road sign landed on the desk of Caltrans graphic artist John Hood in the late 1980s. He was asked to design an image that, in the blink of an eye, would alert drivers to the unexpected sight of pedestrians in their headlights.

Text signs that had been posted on Interstates 5 and 805 near the border, urging "Caution Watch for People Crossing Road," proved too wordy to register with motorists. Meanwhile, close to 100 undocumented immigrants had been killed on county freeways over a five-year span.

One particularly deadly spot was on Interstate 5 at Camp Pendleton, south of the Border Patrol checkpoint. Immigrant smugglers would stop their vehicles and order everyone out, instructing them to cross the freeway toward the beach. The idea was for the immigrants to walk north and then, once they had skirted the checkpoint, cross the freeway again to the vehicle, which would be waiting on the other side.

People who had never seen a freeway were crossing up to eight lanes of traffic, often at night, with little idea how fast the tiny, distant headlights they saw would be upon them.

Parents were killed in front of their children, children in front of parents. Drivers who hit these people were left emotionally wrecked. One was haunted by the sight of an anguished face flying across the windshield. Another swore he had hit a bear.

Before Hood began drawing the sign, he and his supervisors met with Highway Patrol officers and saw photos of accident scenes. What got to him most were the deaths that involved families.

"Graphically, I wanted to show a family," said Hood, who lives in San Diego. He chose to include a pigtailed girl, rather than a boy, because "there is something about a little girl running across with her parents that we are more affected by."

Imagination at work

"When you are looking through headlights, that is what you see," Hood said, "an outline of the image itself."

As he sketched, Hood tried to imagine the despair that might drive such a family across the border and onto a forbidding foreign highway.

He drew from his own experience fighting in Vietnam, where he had seen families run for their lives as villages were attacked. He remembered stories his Navajo parents had told him about ancestors who died trying to escape as U.S. soldiers marched them onto reservations.

The drawing was finished in a week. Even without faces, the characters conveyed a sense of urgency in their flight.

"It doesn't just mean they are running across the freeway," Hood said. "It means they are running from something else as well. I think it's a struggle for a lot of things, for opportunities, for freedom."

The first signs were unveiled in September 1990 at Camp Pendleton. Almost immediately, reaction came from all sides. Some Latinos felt insulted by the faceless silhouettes, which they found reminiscent of animal-crossing signs. Anti-illegal immigration advocates were angry that a state agency would be trying to protect people who had broken the law. Some people feared the signs would be misread as indicating safe places to cross.

"Either you liked it or you hated it," said Steve Saville, a veteran Caltrans spokesman. "It was an extraordinary measure to deal with an extraordinary situation."

T-shirts and surfboards

Entrepreneurs liked it, sensing the makings of a good California souvenir. It helped that the image is public property, so no one had to pay Caltrans to use it. By the mid-1990s, the running family was turning up in gift shops throughout the state.

Bemused Caltrans employees from San Diego began seeing the image emblazoned on T-shirts, stickers, even tote bags, while traveling as far north as San Francisco and Monterey. In Laguna Beach the characters had silhouetted surfboards tucked under their arms, as if sprinting toward the waves.

Today, a hipster boutique on Los Angeles' trendy Vermont Avenue stocks a couple of T-shirt versions, including one depicting the immigrants in place of the grizzly bear on the California state flag.

In San Diego, the characters are found on T-shirts and stickers sold in souvenir shops. They carry surfboards on mini-road signs that locals have posted in some beach communities.

Those who make and sell these items say they don't dwell on the road sign's history or the controversy surrounding illegal immigration. To such novelty T-shirt manufacturers as Jake Haughty, owner of San Diego-based Chingón Gear and Accessories, the sign is just a quirky slice of Southern California life.

"When I first moved here from the East Coast, I thought that was one of the funniest signs I had seen," said Haughty, whose company prints a version of the characters carrying surfboards. "I don't really know what it means, other than it's just kind of funny."

Still, the running family on a T-shirt doesn't amuse everyone. When first-generation Mexican immigrant Juan Ruiz spotted one in a Los Angeles gift shop last year, he didn't see local color or generic silhouettes. He saw himself.

Ruiz was riding in a smuggler's car late one afternoon in 1987, headed for Los Angeles after crossing the border in San Diego. Suddenly the car screeched to a halt. The smuggler ordered everyone out onto what Ruiz thought was "a very wide avenue" and barked orders to run. Ruiz ran blindly, his heart beating in his throat.

"I didn't know if I was coming or going," said Ruiz, now 48 and in the country legally. "I lived it. So, when I see these things, they make me sad."

People familiar with the hardships that drive many immigrants to leave home aren't likely to laugh at the image on a T-shirt, said Jorge Mariscal, director of the Chicano studies program at UCSD.

Yet, for others, the desperate action the image depicts is so far removed from their own reality that it is incomprehensible, and the characters become mere cartoons.

"It depends on how privileged you are," Mariscal said. "If you are pretty privileged, it is very amusing. It can only be received humorously if you don't understand the dire situation of these people running across the freeway."

Protest art

The grandchild of immigrants, Mariscal was taken aback when he saw the image on a T-shirt in a La Jolla souvenir store. But he admits he was amused when he saw a different version on a T-shirt for sale more recently, this time during a festival at Chicano Park.

"I did perk up," he said, "when I saw the one with the Pilgrims on it."

In that version, the silhouettes are drawn in Pilgrim attire, with the father wearing a tall hat, a sly poke at the Mayflower passengers' lack of permission from Massachusetts natives to move in. It's just one way in which Latinos have turned the image into protest art, embracing the running family as their own.

In El Mercado, a cavernous three-story shopping center in East Los Angeles, a stall sells car window stickers of the original silhouettes with a logo that reads "Powered By Mexican."

"It's against la migra," said sticker vendor Jesús Flores, who sells them mostly to second-generation kids in their late teens. "It's like a sign of rebellion for them, like, 'Let people say whatever they want (about us).' "

Latino artists have incorporated the figures into paintings, cartoons and other works, portraying them as Day of the Dead skeletons, even as religious figures.

Los Angeles painter Rosa M. Huerta-Williamson depicted them as a modern-day Jesus, Mary and Joseph in 1994 when she painted "La Sagrada Familia en Aztlan," which features the characters running beneath a flaming sacred heart and cross.

"What I was trying to do was indicate that this could be the sacred family and we wouldn't recognize them," said Huerta-Williamson, who sold the painting to a Mexican-American professor and his wife. "As long as these people don't have faces, white Americans don't have to think about the fact that they have feelings."

At the opposite end of the illegal immigration debate, others not so sympathetic have imbued the image with their own meaning.

A Web site called xtremerightwing.net sells T-shirts, coffee mugs, hats, aprons, even men's boxers printed with a version of the running family almost true to the original, except the characters are being followed by a man with a gun.

"It's an AK-47, which is typically associated with terrorists," said John Martin, the Livermore entrepreneur who owns the site. "The man with the gun is not stalking the people; he is following them in. The point of the design is to illustrate how porous our borders are."

Seen as metaphor

That a piece of highway safety art has come to mean so many things to so many different people indicates the image has achieved icon status, said UCLA's Santa Ana, who studies how Latinos are portrayed in society and media.

"When it becomes iconic," he said, "is when people pick up and run with it."

Some people literally have picked up and run with a sign. At least one has been stolen. One woman recently called Caltrans to ask whether she could have one.

Caltrans isn't giving them away. But there are no plans to replace stolen signs or to install new ones as the originals age.

Not long after the signs went up, Caltrans placed tall fences in the center divider on I-5 at Camp Pendleton and farther south to deter freeway crossers. And beginning in late 1994, the federal government started Operation Gatekeeper, which fenced off the border south of San Diego and has pushed the brunt of illegal immigration – and its casualties – east.

Highway maintenance crews sometimes find a belt used as a handhold dangling from a divider fence. But the Border Patrol can't recall any immigrants having died crossing local freeways since the late 1990s. The road signs have become relics.

Peter Liebhold, a curator for the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History, said the museum wanted to acquire a sign for its permanent exhibit on transportation, which opened a year and a half ago, but curators found the 5-by-7-foot sign too large for the allotted space.

The Smithsonian settled on a photo of the sign instead. It hangs one floor down from the original 1813 Star Spangled Banner, the flag that inspired the national anthem.

"It transcends its local history," Liebhold said. "Its importance is as a metaphor for undocumented immigration into the United States."

Hood, the Caltrans artist, a modest man by nature, didn't set out to create anything of the sort, just a road sign to help save lives.

Over the years, he has watched the transformation of his simple creation into souvenir, protest art, icon and metaphor with a mix of amazement and amusement, wishing only that some of the money being made from it today were generating funds for public safety.

Hood earns no royalties. He's lost track of his original sketches. His wife filed them away, but he's not sure where. Not that it bothers him. His road sign, or at least some version of it, isn't hard to find.

"That was my baby," he said. "It has its own life now."

This one issue that I believe most American are on the same page regardless of political stance. I alos believe most politicians out also on the same page but not the same one as the people they represent.

This situation really baffles me.  I think it's true that many people from both side agree this is an issue, but why is nothing being done about it?  Are politicians somehow profiting from all of the illegals?  Or are they too afraid to take a stand against illegal immigration?  I know there are folks who are against doing anything, but I'm pretty sure they are a small percentage.  Sooooooo, once again, I just don't get it.

No surprise here. Do we even have a thing called Home Land Security or is it just a title of some org we don't have the money or time to deal with?  Our borders are not secure and terrorism is worse than ever.   Can we get some people with brains in the White house?  The border patrol is doing the best they can and they are doing some good according to them... I still disagree that minutemen help the border patrol.  I know some of the border patrol guys that work near the AZ/MX border that constantly complain about them and how they get mistaken for illegals... kind of just get in the way.  But at least they care!!!   It's true over 80% of America want something done about this and YET.. nothing.    Is it the Mexican voters that politicians are more concerned about?   If so that's kind of stupid... there are more American voters than Mexican voters and Border Control will be high on my list when I vote in 2008.

 Blaze yep, we do agree on this fully.  ($#&^$%*   I hear ya buddy. (smile)

The way I see it, it's just another case of Dubya "taking care of business." BIG business. If the illegal population were to be deported & the borders closed, how many people in this country would step in & take up the slack (for the $ the illegals work for)? Not many folks I know would be willing to pick grapes for pennies to the pound, for instance. Business is the only group that benefits from the way we handle the borders now.

This is one issue that I happen to agree with Bush & his cronies. We need a major overhaul as to how we bring guest workers into this country. Once we've established how to monitor these folks, then we can shut down the border anyway the neocons would like, AFAIC. Except the ones who think land mines would be effective: those folks are just plain nuts!

We should also be cracking down on the employers who look the other way when an illegal comes knocking for work. For the most part, we have the laws in place to handle the problem. We just need to enforce them early & often, and take advantage of the technologies we've developed since Reagan had his hand at handling this dilemma back in the '80s.

That's why I said "for instance", Jim. It was an example of why the administration seems to be going against public opinion on this issue.

Those illegals making $15-$35/hour are still making less than if those employers were forced to hire documented workers. Whether it's home builders or hotel owners or farm/ranch owners, they all benefit from officials looking the other way & allowing them to break the law to hire these workers.

Yes, terrorists are also crossing the border to enter our country illegally. Like I said, once we've got a guest worker program in place, then it'll be a matter of our government closing down the borders & monitoring our shores to stop the terrorists from getting in. But we can't deal with that problem until we admit that the jobs they are doing here are worth more than their getting for them, now.

I just can't buy the idea that lawmakers are letting illegals cross the border in order to garner their votes. Lawmakers don't think that way - they think with their pocketbooks.

Yeah, I'm starting to see what you mean oochild.. it's not about votes.  it can't be, like i mentioned earlier there are many more American voters.  OK so we let the politicians have guest workers to fill their pockets..  I suppose this will help large corporations and small businesses alike But, can't they do that already?  I don't know of anyone who is opposed to guest workers.... is there? I mean this isn't a racist thing that I know of.  Is this what the holdup is about, figuring out how to monitor guest workers?  Geez maybe we can go help them with that.. lol

Speaking of borders... are we doing anything at all to secure the Canadian border?   

.

I only have a few words on this issue..OUT, OUT, OUT! All of the illegals!  No other countries allow this to go on. They throw you out when your stay has expired. Lots of people have worked hard to become  American citizens and learn the English language, and "melt" into our melting pot, study the Declaration of Independence, learn about our history and do it the legal way.  Meanwhile. Most Americans cannot even go to Mexico and buy land there legally (without loopholes).

BTW, I am not just talking about Mexico. I don't care what kind of flag you like to wave, if it isn't American, get  the haydeez out of our country and go to that oh so special place that you so proudly flag wave around and march down our streets with while you speak in a language other than English. Sorry if that's harsh but it is how I feel, and this issue burns me up. Why do we have to be so politically correct on this issue? If you are illegal, you are illegal. There's no dilemma, you aren't supposed to be here in the first place.

I may be totaly off on this but how many illegal Canadians are there sneaking into the country? I think their Canada country treats it citizens pretty good so security at the border can be of minimum security; you know checking passports etc. As far as Mexico one of the problems is their own country doesn't want them and encourages them to come up here for all the bennie's.

I agree get them OUT and Shut down the border do what it takes to keep them out; other than hurting them; check all paperwork for authenticity, no one should pass without proper documentation and keep the trucks out why we have to open up to international trucking is beyond my thinking that in itself opens the doors to problems.

I think initially the impact of loosing all those illegals will hurt us at first but in the long run those jobs will be replaced by legitimate workers, open up jobs for people who are unemployed and cost us less over the long haul, if you think about all the free services so many of the illegals are taking from our people.

In these times of uncertainty it's better to be safe than sorry ......So close um-up.

Luv I get your point but can't terrorist come across the Canadian border as well?   Perhaps even easier than the Mexican border?   I understand what most of you are saying.. big companies are paying off the politicians.. I am also finding that some Americans are helping to smuggle alians across the border for money as well...like this article indicates  http://www.ice.gov/pi/news/...  it's not just politicians and big compainies who want illegal immigrants to continue obviously.   I guess it's true what they say, Money talks.

I agree with Lori and Jim, illegal is illegal but I do not believe that illegal Mexicans will kill us either... I"m more concerned about terrorist killing us which means we need to secure both borders, correct?   If I were a Terrorist I would come via Canada... there are miles and miles and miles of unprotected border over there.

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About jimr Member Since: July 01, 2006 Last Signed In: May 04, 2008 Profile Views: 6630 Blog Views: 20048 View Profile Send a Message Send To A Friend Sign Guestbook Add as a Friend Previous Posts PRISON EXPANSION THREATENS OUR QUALITY OF LIFE! BEWARE OF PHONE-Y CALLS! WHEN YOUR HUT'S ON FIRE! URGENT NEWS FOR ALL CITIZENS! THE MAYOR'S PERSONAL AGENDA! BUYING THE PRESIDENCY! HILLARY'S DONATIONS SUSPECT! THE CAB RIDE! TONIGHT'S THE BIG NIGHT, PEOPLE! IT'S YOUR CITY - AND YOUR MONEY! Archives August 06 September 06 October 06 November 06 December 06 January 07 February 07 March 07 April 07 May 07 June 07 July 07 August 07 September 07 October 07 November 07 December 07 January 08 February 08 March 08 April 08 May 08 June 08 July 08 Subscribe! RSS 2.0 How does this work?

jimr - > TEHACHAPI SAFETY, SECURITY AND POLITICAL ISSUES -> VENEZUELAN TERRORIST CAMPS!

VENEZUELAN TERRORIST CAMPS! larger view Like Iraq and Afghanistan, our borders only get worse by the day. The only people who seem to care about it is The Minutemen and the American Public! Our so-called Legislators are only interested in their own pork barrel projects, which of course, wind up in their pockets.   U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigations have revealed that aliens were routed from the Middle East to staging areas in Central and South America, before being smuggled illegally into the United States.   Members of Hezbollah have already entered the United States across the Southwest border.   U.S. military and intelligence officials believe that Venezuela is emerging as a potential hub of terrorism in the Western Hemisphere. The Venezuelan government is issuing identity documents that could subsequently be used to obtain a U.S. visa and enter our country. Jim Richards Leave Comment Subscribe to comments Posted in these Groups: Topics: TAKE A STAND! posted by jimr on Friday, March 30, 2007 at 09:03 AM Report a Violation Viewed 965 times 36 comments from 13 users <Reverse Sort Order> 1 2 3 posted by jewels on Mar 30, 2007 at 09:20 AM So...i live in San Diego and they have these signs down here that are really trippy.  I will upload a photo when i get one.  You know how they have "deer crossing" signs in Tehachapi that depicts a deer leeping across the road?  Here they have warning signs that show a woman and a child running across a road.  Warning people that there are people "crossing" be careful.  Whats really crazy is that some of them are on the freeway.  Report Violation posted by Blaze on Mar 30, 2007 at 09:29 AM Jim, this is an issue that truly bewilders me. It is one of the few that both the left and the right seem to come together on. We have debated this subject here in the past and even people from the far left (like Sparks) agree with the far right (like me). We all want our borders controlled and secured. But for some reason that I can't figure out, nobody in Washington with the exception of Tom Tancredo will do anything about it. In fact we have now put three border agents in jail for justifiably using their weapon in the line of duty! They are America's first political prisoners! Report Violation posted by jewels on Mar 30, 2007 at 09:39 AM Highway safety sign becomes running story on immigration By Leslie Berestein STAFF WRITER April 10, 2005