A View from Both Sides: Stories of Migration by Photographer Encarni Pindado

By Asmara Pelupessy

A young man hitches a ride on top of a cargo train from Arriaga, Chiapas to Ixtepec, Oaxaca in southern Mexico. In addition to the risk of falling off the train (amputations and death are common), gangs frequently extort migrants and charge them $100 to ride. They face threats of being thrown off the train, kidnapped, raped or trafficked if they do not pay. Photo by MigraZoom participant.

Photographer Encarni Pindado has been living and working in Mexico for the past three years, covering social issues with a focus on gender and migration. Journeying alongside migrants and collaborating with shelters, local non-governmental organizations, human rights activists and other journalists, she has gained the trust and access to tell integrated, truthful stories about migration.

Pindado is especially passionate about confronting the issue of violence as experienced by women migrants. As she explained to me during a recent Skype conversation, while the top forces driving people to leave their homelands are often economic and environmental, for the women she documents, it is violence — whether structural, cultural and/or physical — that shapes both their decision to immigrate and their experiences of migration.

Stories of migration have been reported in the media from many different angles, but rarely told by the migrants themselves.

Every year, over 400,000 people cross Mexico’s southern border. That they make this journey northward to Mexico despite the extreme economic costs, physical demands and dangers, gives us some indication of the conditions in their home countries, their vigorous ambition, desire, strength and capacity to dream, and the lure of U.S. living standards. These men and women are profoundly vulnerable to the increasing violence and impunity of Mexico’s narco-trafficking networks. On what is already a dangerous, arduous route in which people ride on top of cargo trains known as La Bestia (The Beast), they are forced to navigate and survive the thriving business that organized crime has made out of migration.

Recently, Pindado has expanded her practice — photographing migrants as well as encouraging them to represent their own experiences of migration. As Pindado shared with me, she was motivated by the fact that stories of migration “. . . have been reported in the media from many different angles, but rarely told by the migrants themselves. There is a gap in knowledge about what migrants actually experience, as well as a stigma and misconception about migrants, especially in the communities they have to cross through.”

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