Monthly Archive for November, 2010

[slidepress gallery=’dominicbracco_lifeanddeathinthenorthernpass’]

Hover over the image for navigation and full screen controls

ESSAY CONTAINS EXPLICIT CONTENT

Dominic Bracco II

Life and Death in the Northern Pass

play this essay

“There are two ways of thinking about living here; either you go on every day and when it’s your turn to die you die, or you live every day in fear.” – Daniel Gonzalez, 26, a resident of Ciudad Juarez who later moved to El Paso, Texas.

May 4, 2010 1:51 am – EMT workers Adrian and Jorge hardly stop to lower the Delilah Radio Show blaring over their two-way radios from El Paso. “What – what did they say?” Jorge responds, “Two dead by firearm.” Later Adrian and Jorge find a couple murdered minutes earlier idling in their small white pickup.  The woman was far into her pregnancy. Adrian declares them dead. The couple’s heads touched in a last embrace. A single bullet entered the man’s skull and took all three lives (opening picture above)

Sprawled across the tail end of the Rocky Mountains where the starved Rio Bravo pushes mud through a barren desert valley sits Ciudad Juarez, one of most violent cities in the world ­– historically known as El Paso del Norte or The Northern Pass. Over the past three years over 5,000 people have lost their lives in a struggle for power thats roots reach deep into Mexico’s history. Here Mexicans are still fighting the same class war that led them into a revolution in 1911, as droves of unemployed and disillusioned youth turn to crime to move up in a society that’s class lines are firmly drawn.

Mexico’s past is filled with class-based conflicts and violence.  Mexican Independence from Spain in 1810, The Caste War of the Yucatan, The Reform War, The Mexican Revolution, the Zapatista uprising, The Actael Massacre, the Tlatelolco Massacre, and finally the current conflict between cartels and the Mexican government have all been rooted, in sorts, in the frustrations of an underrepresented and impoverished underclass that lacks economic mobility and genuine political voice.  Ciudad Juarez, the Mexican city that has seen the greatest amount of violence, serves as a microcosm for what is happening across the entire country. Despite a robust economy and relatively large middle and upper classes, the city has seen the drug war demolish its infrastructure (material and human) as Juarez continues falling deeper into a recessive pattern of violence, economic hardship, and social injustice. A statistic released five months ago stated that every three hours someone in Ciudad Juarez is executed. Since 2007 more than 5,000 individuals have lost their lives. The violence in Juarez is sporadic and faceless, making it difficult to pinpoint; this is the epicenter of a type of violence that is spreading across Mexico like a plague.

Without law and order the residents of the city have no faith in their government. Thousands of businesses have closed due to high extortion rates and a depressed market with aftershock from the international financial crisis. The combination of poverty, frustration, and unemployment continue; with less jobs, residents turn to crime. As a result of the violence, many individuals, families, and businesses see no future in Juarez, and flee to the United Stated or other parts of Mexico, leaving fewer opportunities for those that stay and struggle to live in the city.

In Juarez the war goes beyond the cartels and Mexican authorities, it is a conflict that involves citizens as well. It is impossible to live in the city without being effected. I make photographs of the peripherals of violence while focusing on what is happening to the average citizen of Ciudad Juarez. I spend time with factory workers, the unemployed youth and the average citizen hoping to somehow humanize the situation. I hope that my work will show a human side of a tragedy that is often ignored.

Bio

Dominic Bracco II (b. 1986, Texas USA) specializes in documenting the effects of Mexican and North American policies on the border region where he was raised. He has degrees in journalism and Spanish literature from The University of Texas at Arlington. He is a regular contributor to The Washington Post, where he was selected for a six-month internship in 2008, and The Wall Street Journal. He is currently based in Mexico.

Related links

Dominic Bracco II

[slidepress gallery=’michellefrankfurter_destino’]

Hover over the image for navigation and full screen controls

Michelle Frankfurter

Destino

play this essay

Drawn to the frontier edginess and melancholy of the region, I began photographing along the U.S. – Mexico border in 2000, shortly after reading Cormac McCarthy’s, The Crossing. The novel begins with a boy finding a wolf caught in a trap on his family’s Arizona ranch. He treks across the Sierra Madres into Mexico to return the wolf to her native land. The story has every narrative element that’s captivated my imagination since I was about ten years old: a cast of characters that includes sinners, saints, and pariahs, an epic journey across a hostile wilderness, a bond between boy and dog, a multitude of dangers, themes of salvation and redemption.

My project, Destino focuses on undocumented Central American migrants traveling through Mexico in an attempt to reach the United Sates. In many ways they resemble the protagonists of adventure novels and epic tales. In an odyssey of wandering, they travel on foot, often relying on a network of freight trains lurching across Mexico. With their small backpacks filled with essential belongings, they leave behind homes and families to exist in a land of nomadic purgatory. Many are in their teens. Spirited as yearlings, they often appear oblivious to the harsh realities that accompany this journey.

In 2009, the worst economic recession in decades made work scarce for undocumented immigrants living within the United States. As in Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala are currently plagued by drug and gang related violence and a high incidence of domestic abuse. Crippling trade policies have further exacerbated the situation for the poor of these nations. Central American migration, while slowing down has not stopped entirely.

In Mexico, where racism towards Central Americans is prevalent, these undocumented migrants are vulnerable to a host of dangers: the police who routinely rob and beat them, immigration officials who detain and deport them, and bandits and gang members who prey on them along the train route. Many have been injured or killed falling off moving trains. More recently, Los Zetas, a renegade battalion of a military unit initially deployed to combat drug trafficking, now operating as the armed wing of the Gulf drug cartel, has established a kidnapping ring targeting Central American migrants. From these adversities, migrants find respite in a loose system of shelters run by Catholic priests and through the benevolence of sympathetic Mexicans in the towns and villages along the way.

Bio

Born in Jerusalem, Israel, Michelle Frankfurter is a documentary photographer who lives in Takoma Park, MD just outside of the District of Columbia. She graduated from Syracuse University with a bachelor’s degree in English. After graduating, she worked for three years as a staff photographer for daily newspapers: The Herald – Journal and Post Standard in Syracuse, New York. Before settling in the Washington, DC area, Frankfurter spent three years living in Nicaragua where she worked as a stringer for the British news agency, Reuters and with the human rights organization Witness For Peace documenting the effects of the contra war on civilians. In 1995, a long-term project on Haiti earned her two World Press Photo awards. She has worked for a number of editorial publications, including The Guardian of London, The Washington Post Magazine, Ms., Time, and Life Magazine. Her personal documentary work has been featured in juried exhibitions at The Washington Project For the Arts, the Arlington Arts Center, Shots Magazine, and the Photo Place Gallery in Middlebury, Vermont. For the past ten years, her personal work has focused on themes of migration and life along the border region between the United States and Mexico.

Related links

Michelle Frankfurter