Hope, Despair and the Distant Promise of America
Edgard Garrido
Reuters
Before their 2000-mile journey as a “caravan” of migrants through Mexico turned into an international diplomatic incident, before President Donald Trump’s furious tweets against “illegal hordes” heading for the U.S. border unleashed a media storm, they were men, women and children, fatigued, dehydrated, filthy and frightened, who gathered discreetly on town squares, with packs on their backs, to trek for hours in the burning Mexican sun, crossing territory controlled by drug cartels.
One by one, family by family, they had fled El Salvador, Guatemala, or Honduras, for different reasons: an economy in ruins, domestic violence, political persecution or threats to their lives.
Preview
“In my country, it is a crime to be young,” said a farmer from El Salvador, echoing the grim sentiment of many people from his country. With just one change of clothes for each member of the family, he had fled with his 19-year-old son and 20-year-old nephew who had only two options in El Salvador: to be recruited or to be killed by one of two brutal gangs, the Barrio 18 and MS-13 who have carved up the country into fiefdoms.
Edgard Garrido followed the caravan on the epic journey, seeing the larger picture and the personal experience. He was there by day when at rare stops to rest, they could splash in water to wash away the dirt, sweat and nightmares; and at night when they fell in exhaustion, or in prayer, on the floor of a church; and in the middle of the night, while they were dreaming, sleeping fitfully, piled together on a bus; and when holding on for dear life, clinging to a freight train so perilous that migrants call it “El Tren de la Muerte.”
Their feet turned black, their skin peeled. Children would cry and fall sick. And what little money some had managed to pocket before fleeing dwindled with each new leg of the journey. When they reached the California border, families were split apart, some heading for U.S. detention facilities and asylum, others to be deported, returned to the violence and ruin they had just fled.
Over weeks of travel, Garrido was there with his camera. After years of experience covering often brutal politics and the many and varied levels of violence in Mexico and Central American countries, he was there with the caravan in the midst of the intense and at times intensely painful moments, capturing the terror, boredom, salvation and stubborn persistence, offering dignity to individuals too often reduced to a voiceless mass in the international debate raging on immigration policy.
“I remember taking that photo,” said Garrido. It is a picture of Alexandra, a transgender person, about to board a freight train, a halo of light shining behind the suitcase she is carrying on her head, as she weaves through the shadows of the moving crowd. “I feel that it evokes the timelessness of human migration, and the quest for a better life.”
