The Photographer Who Rode North With Train-Hopping Migrants
Michelle Frankfurter spent years documenting economic migrants’ perilous journeys. From South and Central America to the U.S., “Destino” records the rides, the risks and the resilience.
Editor’s note: This is the fifth in a series profiling Catchlight Activist Award winners. Photographer Michelle Frankfurter was a finalist for her series Destino.
Words and photos by Michelle Frankfurter
Destino portrays the perilous journey by cargo train of Central American migrants in pursuit of a better life in the United States. For the past six years, I have traveled with migrants along the network of freight trains crisscrossing Mexico to tell the story of a generation displaced by conflict, in a landscape that is becoming increasingly dangerous.
Unlike Mexican migration to the United States — which dates back to the 1880’s — Central American movements began a full century later, the consequence of bloody civil wars, U.S. Cold War-era intervention in the region, and crippling international trade policies. The resulting legacy of drug and gang violence, combined with high instances of poverty and domestic abuse, led to an unprecedented wave of migrants headed north.
According to U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, the number of unaccompanied minors apprehended while attempting to cross illegally into the United States has tripled since 2008. Government officials and child welfare advocates attribute the alarming spike in child migration to rising gang violence in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.
Gang members in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador use threats in an effort to forcibly recruit to their ranks. Faced with an untenable situation, many children choose to flee, seeking out the safety of a life in the United States. But the numbers reported by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, and the Office of Refugee Resettlement, only represent the number of children caught trying to cross into the U.S. The actual number of unaccompanied minors and single mothers with small children attempting the journey across Mexico is substantially higher.
In Mexico, where racism towards Central Americans is prevalent, undocumented migrants are vulnerable to a multitude of dangers that have escalated dramatically in recent years. Police routinely rob and beat migrants. Corrupt immigration officials detain and deport, and bandits and gang members lurk along travel routes. Many have been injured or killed falling from moving trains.
Heightened security along the nearly two thousand-mile long U.S. border has made the crossing more dangerous than ever, as smugglers lead migrants through increasingly isolated terrain in order to avoid detection. From these many adversities, migrants find respite in a loose system of shelters run by Catholic priests, and from the benevolence of sympathetic Mexicans in towns and villages along the way.
The issue of migration is current; the story of migration, however, is timeless. Having grown up on the adventure tales of Jack London and Mark Twain, and later Cormac McCarthy’s border trilogy, for me there is no storyline more compelling than one involving a youthful odyssey across a hostile wilderness. With a singularity of purpose, and a kind of brazen resilience, migrants traverse deadly terrain, relying mostly on their wits and the occasional kindness of strangers — much like the anti-hero protagonists of my favorite literature.
In documenting a journey both concrete and figurative, I convey the experience of individuals who struggle to control their own destiny. With Destino, I hope to engage the public — especially in border states — in a measured discussion that addresses the root causes behind the current wave of Central American migration.
Michelle Frankfurter is a photographer from Takoma Park, Maryland. Her first book, Destino was published in 2014 by Foto Evidence.
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