PHOTO OF THE WEEK: April 25-May2, 2008
Stuck in Juarez, colonia Avicola-1989
The Silva family came to Juarez with the intention of crossing the border, into the U.S. and then traveling to the Midwest, where a family member had preceded them. They intended to work in agriculture in the wheat fields of Kansas. A dream. The American dream. It wasn’t to be their dream.
They knew a little about farming. They had not been farmers. But they had heard that skilled workers could make ten to twenty times more money than they had made back in their home state of Jalisco.
These were hard days for migrants. The price of a guide, or a “coyote,” was rising in direct proportion to the difficulty of the journey and the journey was getting quite difficult with increased border surveillance, both human and electronic, and an increasingly hostile attitude to the migrants, making the trip not only difficult but dangerous.
So the Silva family decided to try and stay in Juarez, squatting on vacant land on Juarez’ west side. They planned to get jobs in a maquila factory, build up their reserves and then decide whether or not they would make the journey to el norte, or remain in Juarez, which Guadalupe Silva, the family’s leader and matriarch, preferred.
“No me gusta Juarez,” she said, “todo feo (I don’t like Juarez, everything is ugly).”
The Silva family never did move on. They added onto their house (in this photograph it is made of truck pallets and tar paper) .
This photograph was made in 1989. Their story is being repeated -verbatim- today, except for two differences: it is very difficult to squat on land, in Juarez now. It is more valuable and the poor are in competition with the middle class (and, as always, with the upper class) for land because development interests in Juarez are coveting all unused land for their plans of multi use residential and industrial projects, and, the journey across the Rio Bravo/Rio Grande river -and then north- is even more dangerous and hostile today than it was almost two decades ago.
