William Snyder This is an intimate, well-done story that documents refugees journey from South America to Mexico and the US. Could have used one less "river crossing" photo but otherwise, it's a very good set of images.
In Latin America, lack of job opportunities, access to education, political corruption, and impunity have persisted for generations fueling circles of violence and displacement that are both the symptom and the cause of disrupted societies. For four years, I have traveled along migration routes documenting the journey of refugees and migrants from Venezuela to Colombia and from Central America to Mexico and the United States. This series is the most recent chapter of the project that I called Exodus, and the result of 8 months of travel, in 2021, from Central America to the United States.
In 2021, after hurricanes Eta and Iota hit Central America, I traveled to Honduras. There, flooding and mudslides had affected 4.5 million victims, fueling one of the most significant migrations towards the United States of the last decade. This recent wave came on the heels of years of other migrations from Central America to the U.S., often fueled by political instability and uncontrolled gang violence.
Expanding an already existing body of work, I have traveled for eight months in a row between Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, and the United States.
Following migrants directed to the north from different countries, I have seen countless stories of loss and separation merging into a single narrative. After three years documenting the Venezuelan migration to Colombia, I was surprised to see so many Venezuelan migrants walking along the same Mexican routes people from Honduras and Guatemala traverse to enter the United States in Texas. I have documented their journey keeping in mind the diversity of reasons that push each population to emigrate, but with a sense that human mobility defines the continent’s societies. Decades of civil war, endemic poverty, or violence in Latin America make it hard for migrants to find better conditions than those fleeing. As the unstable environment doesn’t change at their destination, many continue to move, often on foot, hoping to find a place where they might start a new chapter of their lives in the United States. Some never reach their destination, as for 13 migrants from Guatemala allegedly killed by the Mexican police while they were trying to cross into the United States, in the Tamaulipas state. In March, I traveled to Guatemala to document their funeral after the bodies were repatriated to their village.
Continuing this project, It became clear that I would have to expand my investigation to the entire continent to understand the complexity of this unprecedented exodus.