Here's an excerpt from David Bacon's latest photo essay:
IF SAN PEDRO SULA IS MURDER CAPITAL OF THE WORLD, WHO MADE IT THAT WAY?
By David Bacon
The American Prospect, June 13, 2019
https://prospect.org/article/if-san-pedro-sula-murder-capital-world-who-made-it-way
https://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com/2019/06/if-san-pedro-sula-is-murder-capital-of.html
Refugees flee this Honduran city, which has long been a vast, American-owned sweatshop.
Women and children in one of the poorest barrios of San Pedro Sula.
A 30-second search on the internet produces at least two dozen stories from U.S. newspapers and other media about San Pedro Sula in Honduras. "Honduran City is World Murder Capital," announces Fox News. Business Insider calls it "the most violent city on earth." In an attempt to explain the motivation for migrant caravans traveling to the U.S.-Mexico border, NPR labels it "one of the most violent cities in the world."
This wave of media attention has been going on for at least half a decade, as tens of thousands of Hondurans arrive at the border seeking refuge. President Trump's rhetoric portraying the caravans as a threat has focused even more attention on this Honduran city.
Fear of violence is a completely legitimate reason for leaving home and making the dangerous journey north. Violence and gangs, however, are often presented by U.S. media as the only explanation for the exodus of Hondurans from this metropolis. Yet more than a century of history connects the city with the United States, in a close but unequal, and usually abusive, relationship, at least for Hondurans.
Over that time, San Pedro Sula has been the capital of banana exports, a city wracked by war and death squads, and a factory town for the garment industry. Most recently, it has become a community hit by deindustrialization as hard as any textile town in New England. The media almost always ignores this history, yet it is this long relationship that has produced the migration with which the media seems obsessed.
That "murder capital" narrative, however, is being challenged increasingly by U.S. organizations calling for a deeper look. Some of them started as defenders of migrants incarcerated in U.S. detention centers, and now seek to clarify the root causes of migration as a way to support migrants and their home communities.
A recent four-page spread in The New York Times Magazine described in detail the lives of young people in San Pedro Sula's Rivera Hernández neighborhood. Its author, Azam Ahmed, explained to readers that he wanted to "bear witness," "to capture just how inescapable the violence was," in the context of "tens of thousands fleeing the region." Honduras's state of crisis, he wrote, is a result of "warring gang factions."
Accompanying the article were Tyler Hicks's dark photographs of gang members, their faces wrapped in bandannas, one holding his gun loosely by his side. Both text and images present these young people as the "other"-a vision to frighten comfortable middle-class readers with what seems an inside look into an alien and violent world.
The Timespiece is only the latest of many that paint this picture. Four years ago, Juan José Martínez D'Aubuisson wrote an even longer article about the same neighborhood. Pastor Daniel Pacheco arranged the meetings with the gangs, as he did for Ahmed and Hicks. That article, appearing in InSight Crime, concluded: "The violence here is difficult to understand. ... The people live with the violence without thinking about it, like how the Eskimos spend their days without thinking about the snow that surrounds them."
Steven Dudley, InSight Crime's co-founder and a former bureau chief for the Miami Herald, at least acknowledged the link between violence in San Pedro Sula and U.S. deportation policy. "Gangs' emergence in the mid-1990s," he wrote in another article, "coincided with state and federal initiatives in the United States. ... The number of gang members deported quickly increased, as did the number of transnational gangs operating in [Central America]. ... With the deportations, the two most prominent Los Angeles gangs-the Mara Salvatrucha 13 and the Barrio 18-quickly became the two largest transnational gangs."
[. . .]
Exhibition Schedule
Exhibitions of photographs are scheduled for the following venues and dates:
In the Fields of the North / En los campos del norte
Scheduled exhibitions:
June 16, 2019 - August 18, 2019
The Museum of Ventura County's Agricultural Museum, Santa Paula
September 1, 2019 - December 22, 2019
Hi-Desert Nature Museum, Yucca Valley
January 5, 2020 - March 1, 2020
Community Memorial Museum of Sutter County, Yuba City
March 21, 2021 - May 23, 2021
Carnegie Arts Center, Turlock
In Washington’s Fields
Scheduled exhibition:
February 5, 2020 - July 15, 2020
Washington State Historical Museum, Tacoma, WA
More Than a Wall - The Social Movements of the Border
Scheduled exhibition:
August 29,, 2020 - November 29,, 2020
San Francisco Public Library
In the Fields of the North / En los Campos del Norte
Photographs and text by David Bacon
University of California Press / Colegio de la Frontera Norte
302 photographs, 450pp, 9”x9”
paperback, $34.95 (in the U.S.)
order the book on the UC Press website:
ucpress.edu/9780520296077
use source code 16M4197 at checkout, receive a 30% discount
En Mexico se puede pedir el libro en el sitio de COLEF:
https://www.colef.mx
Los Angeles Times reviews In the Fields of the North / En los Campos del Norte - clickhere
En los campos del Norte documenta la vida de trabajadores agrícolas en Estados Unidos -
Entrevista con el Instituto Nacional de la Antropologia y Historia
http://www.inah.gob.mx/es/boletines/6863-en-los-campos-del-norte-documenta-la-vida-de-trabajadores-agricolas-en-estados-unidos
Entrevista en la television de UNAM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdSaBKZ_k0o
David Bacon comparte su mirada del trabajo agrícola de migrantes mexicanos en el Museo Archivo de la Fotografia
http://www.cultura.cdmx.gob.mx/comunicacion/nota/0038-18
Trabajo agrícola, migración y resistencia cultural: el mosaico de los “Campos del Norte”
Entrevista de David Bacon por Iván Gutiérrez / A los 4 Vientos
http://www.4vientos.net/2017/10/04/trabajo-agricola-migracion-y-resistencia-cultural-el-mosaico-de-los-campos-del-norte/
"Los fotógrafos tomamos partido"
Entrevista por Melina Balcázar Moreno - Milenio.com Laberinto
http://www.milenio.com/cultura/laberinto/david_baconm-fotografia-melina_balcazar-laberinto-milenio_0_959904035.html
Die Kunst der Grenze
http://www.nrhz.de/flyer/beitrag.php?id=24304Notruf für "eine andere Welt"
http://www.nrhz.de/flyer/beitrag.php?id=24087
Die Apfel-Pflücker aus dem Yakima-Tal
http://www.nrhz.de/flyer/beitrag.php?id=23990
"Documenting the Farm Worker Rebellion"
"The Radical Resistance to Immigration Enforcement"
Havens Center lectures, University of Wisconsin, click here
San Francisco Commonweallth Club presentation by David Bacon and Jose Padilla, clickhere
EN LOS CAMPOS DEL NORTE: Farm worker photographs on the U.S./Mexico border wall
http://us7.campaign-archive2.com/?u=fc67a76dbb9c31aaee896aff7&id=0644c65ae5&e=dde0321ee7
Entrevista sobre la exhibicion con Alfonso Caraveo (Español)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJeE1NO4c_M&feature=youtu.beTHE REALITY CHECK - David Bacon blog
http://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com
Cat Brooks interview on KPFA about In the Fields of the North
https://kpfa.org/player/?audio=263826 - Advance the time to 33:15
Book TV: A presentation of the ideas in The Right to Stay Home at the CUNY Graduate Center
http://booktv.org/Watch/14961/The+Right+to+Stay+Home+How+US+Policy+Drives+Mexican+Migration.aspx
Other Books by David Bacon
The Right to Stay Home: How US Policy Drives Mexican Migration (Beacon Press, 2013)
http://www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2328
Illegal People -- How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (Beacon Press, 2008)
Recipient: C.L.R. James Award, best book of 2007-2008
http://www.beacon.org/Illegal-People-P780.aspx
Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006)
http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100558350
The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border (University of California, 2004)
http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520244726
En Español:
EL DERECHO A QUEDARSE EN CASA (Critica - Planeta de Libros)
http://www.planetadelibros.com.mx/el-derecho-a-quedarse-en-casa-libro-205607.html
HIJOS DE LIBRE COMERCIA (El Viejo Topo)
http://www.tienda.elviejotopo.com/prestashop/capitalismo/1080-hijos-del-libre-comercio-deslocalizaciones-y-precariedad-9788496356368.html?search_query=david+bacon&results=1
For more articles and images, see http://dbacon.igc.org and http://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com
and https://www.flickr.com/photos/56646659@N05/albums
Recipient: C.L.R. James Award, best book of 2007-2008
http://www.beacon.org/Illegal-People-P780.aspx
Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006)
http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100558350
The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border (University of California, 2004)
http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520244726
En Español:
EL DERECHO A QUEDARSE EN CASA (Critica - Planeta de Libros)
http://www.planetadelibros.com.mx/el-derecho-a-quedarse-en-casa-libro-205607.html
HIJOS DE LIBRE COMERCIA (El Viejo Topo)
http://www.tienda.elviejotopo.com/prestashop/capitalismo/1080-hijos-del-libre-comercio-deslocalizaciones-y-precariedad-9788496356368.html?search_query=david+bacon&results=1
For more articles and images, see http://dbacon.igc.org and http://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com
and https://www.flickr.com/photos/56646659@N05/albums
