These series is part of a bigger project about Central American migrant women crossing Mexico on route to the U.S. Women migration has increased dramatically in the last years, due to violence, and luck of economical opportunities, in Central America. This violence follows them in the journey, where they encounter not only the difficulties of the migrant route, but also their gender makes them particularly vulnerable. Women become targets for the Maras, local criminals, authorities and other migrants. They are raped, kidnapped and force into the sex industry, disappeared and killed.
The Other Side of Migration: Central American Women
During the last years Latin-American migration to the United States has changed drastically. A decade ago migratory flows in this region were comprised mostly of Mexican border-crossers. However, the largest group is currently constituted of women and men from the Central American countries of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador.
There are many suggestions as to why their migration has increased, but the majority of experts have concluded that it is not only due to heightened levels of violence but also to a market demand in the US that has come to depend on these vulnerable workers. Moreover, impunity and corruption have grown with many groups being left vulnerable, particularly women and minors. The region currently has the highest rate of gender-motivated killings in the world.
Due to its strategic position Central American migrants are forced to transit through Mexico that, in effect, serves as the largest migrant corridor between the Global South and North.
Due to pressure and increased border cooperation between Mexico and the United States, Central American mobility has been criminalized throughout the Mexican territory. Migrants are thus relegated to the migrant route, where they travel covertly towards the US border aboard rickety freight trains that are not meant for carrying passengers.
Likewise, the journey has increasingly become controlled by organized crime and transnational gangs that demand a “cuota†(ransom) for migrants to continue on their journey, or otherwise risk being killed. According to the Mexican Commission for Human Rights (CNDH) during 2010 in a period of just six months, over 11.000 migrants were reported as kidnapped for ransom, often in liaison with corrupt authorities, which constitutes a multimillion-dollar enterprise.
Marta Sánchez from the Mesoamerican Migrant Movement (MMM) organizes caravans for mothers searching for their disappeared migrant family members in Mexican territory. She estimates that up to 70,000 migrants have disappeared in a period of 10 years.
I noticed how representations of migrants often left out the deeper understanding about gendered violence and the effects immigration policy has had on women - whose stories in the same manner have been excluded from common understandings about transit migration and the embodied consequences of current forms of these policies. Being this the main reason of my interest in this particular project.
With the intention to bring light to unreported stories, using photography as a tool to highlight the hardship women migrants have to endure, and to understand the reasons for which they are forced to leave their countries. To document the impact of the violence inflicted on them in this journey and the effect that this experience has in their own lives.