people & places

spain

When I was a teenager living on our ranch in western Colorado, I discovered a book named Cante Hondo (Deep Song in English) and a record by a Spanish guitar player named Luis Maravilla.

I still use this book to mark off places I want to visit and I eventually met Maravilla in his tiny guitar store on Calle Leon in Madrid some forty years later. We became friends in the last years of his life and I told him that he had been the major force in my love of flamenco music.

Since then I have probably made close to one hundred trips to Spain and also lived in Barcelona for four years. It’s the wandering around that is most important, the ability to stop the car when you see something or someone unusual, the fact that these casual encounters are often repeated on subsequent trips until a friendship emerges.

We had just arrived in Madrid, rented a car, began driving south and saw windmills on top of a hill near the small town of Puerto Lapice. A narrow road circled through an olive orchard and led us to this windmill just as the sun was breaking through the fog.”

Driving around. That’s a big part of being in Spain and that is how I spotted these three guys seated by the road in Arquillos, ( pop. 1,500).My goal has been to give them a print but I have never seen them at this corner again.

Although neither a Catholic nor a churchgoer, I have been going to Semana Santa or Holy Week processions in Spain for more than twenty years. This Easter Sunday procession in Guadix ( pop. 18,000) is my favorite.

Once I had a fantasy of buying a farm in Spain so we visited this farmer, Salvador Carrasco and his wife near Grazalema (pop. 2,000). They wanted to sell but I realized that I just wanted to take photos.

We were on a back road from Granada to the small town of Montefrio when we spotted this man with his shotgun and rabbit.

This gentle woman, Piedad Garrido lived in Baza, Spain ( pop. 20,000) and made her living by weaving esparto grass into baskets that she could sell. The photo on the wall is of her ( on the left) and her sister. It’s very common to see beautiful photos of family or weddings on the walls of very modest homes like hers.

Near Marchena, Spain ( pop. about 20,000), this farm gateway has always fascinated me and I want to drive up the dirt road and see what is on the other side of the hill. Unfortunately, on our last two trips, I have been unable to find it. A challenge for our next trip.

Street corner, Arquillos, Spain

Mother and daughter flamenco dancers in the Sacromonte district, Granada.

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migrants

Up until 2018, my border focus had been on documenting and helping those who lived permanently on the Mexican side as well as the leaders of a number of humanitarian organizations there, mostly in the Juarez area as well as tiny Palomas some sixty miles to the west.

In those earlier years the numbers of migrants crossing into the US had declined significantly but this began to change rapidly in 2018 as rhetoric heated up about the wall and whether or not to expand it.

My wife, Sherry and I began exploring the wall in the Anapra, Mexico/Sunland Park, New Mexico area, spotted migrants running across, talked to the militia in their last days there and began assisting La Casa del Migrante in Juárez and then Respettrans as well as the Tierra de Oro shelter in Palomas and Colores United in Deming, New Mexico.

The plight of these migrants is heartbreaking – the extraordinary violence in countries like Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, the poverty and corruption and now the increasing impact of climate change on those in the agricultural sector. For the many women with small children who make these dangerous and costly journeys to our borders, asylum seems the logical and fair outcome. At the same time, I believe that we are the ones who have to control our borders.

These photos are a reflection of what we continue to see as we travel there.

Boy

This little boy was at La Casa del Migrante, waiting while his mother registered their family.

Fernanda was a young girl from Honduras waiting with her mother at Respettrans for their asylum hearing. There are always several mothers there who organize classes for the kids, with a special emphasis on teaching them some English. The kids love this and, like Fernanda, are highly motivated.

These are little kids at the Respettrans shelter in Juárez. We visit almost monthly, bringing needed supplies and food, and always marvel at the warmth of the migrants who wait there for their initial asylum hearings.

This young woman and her brother were at La Casa del Migrante also in Juárez but because they were from Brazil and spoke only Portuguese, I was unable to learn their story.

“No human being is illegal” is what it says on the wall here at La Casa del Migrante, the largest and best-established migrant shelter in Juárez.

As you can see, this family is exhausted and terrified. They have just arrived at La Casa del Migrante after a harrowing and expensive journey from their home country, Honduras and they have no idea what to expect next.

Michoacán is one of the most dangerous states in Mexico and for a number of months, migrants from there flooded downtown Juárez and lived on the streets in makeshift tents.

I spotted this desperate looking man from Nicaragua wandering the streets of Juárez, hoping for donations or food.

A local man named Pedro would come down to the Michoacán encampment near the international bridge in Juárez and organize games to amuse these kids.

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flamenco

I’m not a musical person, have never learned how to play an instrument and can’t sing. Nonetheless, flamenco music somehow struck me at an early age when I found the record of the guitar player, Luis Maravilla and used to play it over and over again in the summer evenings after work on our ranch in western Colorado.

Here is something about this that cannot be explained because I actually met Luis in Madrid some forty years after first hearing his music and we became good friends in the last few years of his life.

Now photographing flamenco is more important to me than just watching; my goal is the unattainable one of taking the perfect photo. Fortunately we live in Santa Fe which, despite its small size, hosts some of the world’s finest flamenco artists.

Agujetas

Carmen Montes and Juani de la Isla.

Farruquito and brother, Barcelona, Spain

Fuensanta La Moneta, Granada, Spain

Illeana Gomez, Torres Bermejas, Madrid, Spain

La Emi, Santa Fe, New Mexico

Manolete, dancer and teacher, Granada, Spain

Manuel de los Santos Pastor, Agujetas, singer

Manuela Carrasco, dancer

Mercedes Amaya

Rancapino and sons, Manuel and Luis. Chiclana de la Frontera, Spain

Chuscales

Maria Elena

Miquela

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vision
in action

Vision in Action is what I would call a mental asylum and it’s located in the desert on the west edge of Juárez, Mexico. I learned of it via Charles Bowden’s book, Murder City, Ciudad Juárez and the Global Economy’s New Killing Fields and first visited in February 2011.

I’ve always been involved in mental health issues and immediately knew that I would be documenting and assisting this project on into the future. In fact, since 2011, I have visited at least once a month ( with the exception for COVID) ever since, have written dozens of articles about it, its founder, José Antonio Galván and about many of the patients I have come to know. My wife, Sherry and I have also raised funds to renovate and expand the facilities with a special emphasis on the needs of the women patients

On one of my earliest visits, Pastor Galván said to me, ‘ No son basura humana; son tesoros escondidos.” These are not human garbage, they are hidden treasures.”

It is this sense of humanity that has kept me involved.

“Elia and Leticia Zoto are sisters who were sent to live with neighbors when their parents died. The neighbors chained them up and sold for sex until they were rescued by the police and taken to Vision in Action. Leticia is deceased now but Elia, although unable to talk coherently, has a knack for sensing when other patients are suffering and is always the first to console and calm them."

"Blanca on the left is welcoming Marta, who was a new patient. Blanca cannot speak coherently but is always praying for others, even me.”

"Leticia is with another woman patient next to the wall of the patio.”

"This is Elia Zoto with another woman patient named Lety. Neither can speak coherently but they somehow have their own bond of friendship.”

"Román, this striking looking older man wanted to leave Vision n Action but it was impossible because he had no place to go, no family.”

"Miguel Angel was in this cell when I first met him and I was told that he was dangerous and that I shouldn’t get close to him. He changed, however, and we became friends and he would ask me about my favorite jazz musicians. Then he disappeared. Why would he escape after so many years at Vision in Action and with no place to go?”

Elia, Nubia and Sarai at Vision in Action.

Sarai holding photo taken earlier

“Cinthia Ramirez’s situation continues to haunt me because she was a talented attractive woman who simply could not deal with her drug problem. The police would bring her to Vision in Action so incoherent and aggressive that she would have to be placed in a cell. She would gradually recover, leave with high hopes but soon be back again and the cycle would start all over. Then she disappeared and I recently learned that she had been murdered.”

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on the
road

When I drive my car – a battered Subaru Forester – I have a destination obviously but also a goal which is to spot unusual people. Driving south to the Mexican border, for example, I always cut through Socorro, New Mexico, for example. It’s a fertile “hunting ground.”

Unfortunately, these are mostly sad encounters. Men alone but generally with a destination, no matter how far away and unrealistic.
One of the photos is of Bobby. I ran across him maybe six times – near Truth or Consequences, New Mexico; in Pueblo, Colorado in a snowstorm: on the outskirts of Salida, Colorado several times; in Santa Fe where he said he was going to visit the Governor. Always with his array of battered suitcases. He is gone now, probably either dead or in an institution but I miss him and his big smile.

These photos are a tribute to them in hopes that they will reach their destinations safely and that the journey will have been worth it.