Existe una zona oscura donde convergen el poder y el dolor, tangente al límite de nuestras capacidades humanas y propensa a ser presa del olvido. Es ahí donde, despojados de ideologías y nacionalismos, podríamos reconocernos como especie; no una hegemónica y avasalladora, sino frágil y vulnerable, al margen de los credos religiosos e integradora a la vez de todos ellos. El hombre.
El fotoperiodismo en su esencia más noble acude a las tinieblas y procura despojarlas de su velo. No siempre ha de conseguirlo, mas en la voluntad de hacerlo radica su espíritu, semilla de luz que pretende iluminar nuestro camino, regalarnos mejores vías.
Juárez, México, abril 30, 2020
At Casa del Migrante in Juarez, the wrists of Estela Magdalena Simon Esteban, 23 years old, and her three-year-old daughter, Zaida. These numbers are their place in line to apply for political asylum at the El Paso port of entry. Ciudad Juárez, November 16, 2018. Photo: Julián Cardona.
Young men and boys from southern Mexico light votives and pray for a safe crossing into los Estados Unidos before leaving the Sonoran town of Altar. Soon they will be loaded into vans and trucks and ferried North toward La Línea. Photo: Julián Cardona.
Telegraph office, Altar, Sonora. Immigrants line up to receive money from relatives in the United States to pay for the remainder of their journey. Photo: Julián Cardona.
A massive dump site in the Upper Altar Valley, Arizona; illegal immigrants meet representatives of their smugglers (coyotes) after a forty-mile walk through the desert; they are told to strip; dump their old clothes, packs, and jugs of water; and put on new, more “American”-looking clothes before traveling on to an urban stash house. April 2006. Photo: Julián Cardona.
Children forage in the blood-strewn aftermath of the massacre of ten patients at the Anexo de vida –Annexe of Life– drug rehabilitation clinic in Ciudad Juarez, one of many such massacres in rehab centres. September 2009. Photo: Julián Cardona.
To make extra money, a maquila worker collects metal scrap left by U.S. workers building the border wall in Anapra. Ciudad Juárez, April 4, 2017. Photo: Julián Cardona.
Manuel, an inmate of Vision in Action asylum for the mentally ill in Ciudad Juárez, tried to kill his mother during an attack of schizophrenia. He lost his mind after years of drug abuse. Photo: Julián Cardona.
Patio of the House of Death. On January, 2004, Mexican Federal Police unearthed 12 bodies from this court. Guillermo Eduardo Ramirez-Peyro, a.k.a. Lalo, an undercover informant on the payroll of the U.S. Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is implicated in the murders. At least the first murder to take place in this house was audio recorded and the tape was provided to ICE agents in El Paso. These events only came to light when DEA agents in Juárez were mistakenly targeted by police working with narco-traffickers. Photo: Julián Cardona.
Mixtecs perform the “Danza de los diablos” (Dance of the Devils), traced to African slaves in Oaxaca who worshiped the god Ruja after the Spanish conquest of México. The dance is interpreted as a spiritual quest for freedom, asking for an end to slavery. The best-known version of the dance is from Santiago Collantes, Oaxaca. Arvin, California. June 2006. Photo: Julián Cardona.
Felicitas Ruiz Ramos, 88, stands in front of the house built by her son Gerardo Pérez Ruiz, who lives in the United States. San Andrés Ixtlahuaca, Oaxaca, November 2006. Photo: Julián Cardona.
Dulce Yolanda Gálvez, 19, from Jonacatepec, Morelos, tried to reunite with her parents and two brothers, who migrated to Minneapolis, Minnesota over an eight year period. Her aunt and cousin were in the same group attempting to cross through Las Chepas, near Palomas, Chihuahua. She almost died after being left behind by the group; a Border Patrol rescue team saved her life. September 2006. Photo: Julián Cardona.
The cotton field where the bodies of 8 murdered women were discovered on November 6-7, 2001. Photo: Julián Cardona.
In an example of the underground economy in Cd. Juarez, two men dressed as clowns juggle at a busy intersection to earn money. Many prefer this kind of work-selling food or toys, doing small performances, washing windows-to working in a maquiladora for the equivalent of $4 or $5 a day. Photo: Julián Cardona.
Mexican farmers block for three days the commercial lane of the Zaragoza International Bridge, in the El Paso/ Juarez area (the Rio Grande is on background,) in protest of the recently signed North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA.) They fear their crops will be displaced by highly subsidized American agricultural products. NAFTA took effect on January 1st, 1994. Photo: Julián Cardona.
Police photograph evidence in the murder of a man who had been stabbed about thirty times. He was found on the territorial boundaries of the La Fama and Los Calaveras gangs, in Colonia 16 de Septiembre. In Cd Juarez, an estimated 40 percent of the homicides in recent years can be attributed to gang violence. 1995. Photo: Julián Cardona.
Hosiery discarded by El Paso shopkeepers is bought, mended, dyed, and dried in the sun by a Cd. Juarez woman living in Colonia Puerto de Anapra, who then resells the stockings for the equivalent of about $1. Photo: Julián Cardona.
National Day of Action for immigrants’ Rights rally. Phoenix, Arizona. April 10, 2006. Photo: Julián Cardona.
Sisters of Sagrario González and friends of her church choir. Photo: Julián Cardona.
Paula Flores, mother of 17-year-old Sagrario González who was murdered in April 1998. On February 18, 2005, state police arrested José Luis Hernández Flores, a friend of Sagrario’s brother, and charged him with homicide. Hernández told the police that he had asked Sagrario to be his girlfriend but she turned him down. Later, he and a smuggler and another man kidnapped Sagrario, attacked her and disposed of her body in Loma Blanca, a desert area in the Juárez valley. In 2006, Paula’s husband, Jesús González, committed suicide. Photo: Julián Cardona.
Hermelando Ramírez died after a tree crushed him, October 21, 2006, while on the job for a logging company in Eureka, California. Tierra Blanca, Oaxaca, November 2006. Photo: Julián Cardona.
Julián Cardona
Portrait of Julián Cardona. Photo: Michelle Macfarlane.
Desde 1993, Julián Cardona comenzó a documentar fotográficamente, desde la frontera con Estados Unidos, la violenta entrada de México a la globalización: los efectos de la crisis causada por los bajos salarios de la industria maquiladora, el desgaste social de una frontera controlada por estructuras de poder económico a favor de los intereses financieros de Estados Unidos, los efectos del narcotráfico y los asesinatos de mujeres.
Nacido en la ciudad de Zacatecas, a los pocos meses de edad su familia emigró a la frontera, donde creció y estudió. En los ochenta, desde su puesto de técnico herramentista conoció el duro trabajo que desempeñaban las mujeres en las líneas de producción de las maquiladoras de Ciudad Juárez, hecho que marcaría su línea como fotoperiodista. Abandonó la industria y a los 31 años se mudó a su lugar de origen para enseñar Fotografía básica en el Centro Cultural de Zacatecas. En 1993 ingresó a El Fronterizo, en Ciudad Juárez y ese mismo año fue llamado a ingresar al equipo de fotógrafos de Diario de Juárez.
Cardona fue curador en 1995 de la exhibición Nada que ver, en la que participaron varios fotoperiodistas de Diario de Juárez (hoy El Diario), punto de partida para la posterior publicación del libro Juárez: The Laboratory of our Future (Nueva York: Aperture, 1998), con textos de Charles Bowden, Noam Chomsky y Eduardo Galeano.
El trabajo de Julián Cardona ha sido presentado en diversas obras y exposiciones en México y en el extranjero. Títulos publicados incluyen: No One Is Illegal, con textos de Justin Akers Chacón y Mike Davis (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2006); Exodus/ Éxodo (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008) sobre la histórica migración de mexicanos hacia Estados Unidos y Murder City (Nueva York: Nation Books, 2010), que aborda la explosión de violencia en Ciudad Juárez a consecuencia de la militarización ordenada por el presidente Felipe Calderón, ambos en colaboración con el escritor Charles Bowden. Se desempeñó como corresponsal de Reuters en Ciudad Juárez de 2009 a 2012. En septiembre de 2015, su proyecto actual, Abecedario de Juárez, en colaboración con la artista estadounidense Alice Leora Briggs, recibió una mención honorífica en el Premio Dorothea Lange-Paul Taylor, patrocinado por la Universidad de Duke. Será publicado en el otoño del 2021 por la University of Texas Press.
Julián Cardona, de 59 años, es fotoperiodista independiente y reside en Ciudad Juárez, México.
