Meet my little uncle, Jonathan. He was shot in the head nine times last night in Medellín, Colombia. He was only 27, and a month away away from getting his nursing diploma. His girlfriend is pregnant with a little girl. Jonathan got killed because he refused to join any of the gangs that operate in his neighborhood, where drug thugs and remnants of the paramilitary army are fighting over control of territories.
My grandfather is 71 and he’s just lost his baby, the youngest of his children. My mother has lost a brother. A little girl is about to be born without a father; the sad picture of a pregnant widow.
This happens in Colombian cities EVERY DAY. The violence didn’t end because a war president fought cockroaches with grenades. It’s still there and it will remain there as long as most people are poor and hopeless, while a few have it all and more.
Jonathan had an opportunity to get an education and he took it, but amidst a violent and resentful society, being good is just as good a reason to die.
So, dear Colombian, don’t fret about a couple of well-paid prostitutes in Cartagena making the country look bad. We have bigger problems.
payne park, sarasota FL
Reggae Festival @ Grand Central Park (Miami) Feb 18, 2012
chocolate milk
“The Emigrant Immigrant.”
This project works to progressively explore and expand traditional concepts of the immigrant identity. Through documentary photographs and video, environmental portraiture, and interview, people from all parts of the world are portrayed in this series as representatives of the expansive emigrant community. Marking a change in the traditional lifestyles and societies that we typically identify, this project is about individuality, but it is also about community, exploring alternative lifestyles whether developed by choice, out of desperation, or in hopes of something more. The lives of immigrants, ex-patriots, refugees, the modern nomad, and long-term travelers are all explored in this series, as the definition of what makes a modern day immigrant is questioned.
Emigration: To leave one’s place of residence or country to live elsewhere (Merriam-Webster Dictionary).
Immigration: To enter and usually become established; especially: to come into a country of which one is not a native for permanent residence. (Merriam-Webster Dictionary).
car camping, el bizcocho, san rafael, colombia
finca camping
