Borderlands
Borderlands
Francesco Anselmi
December 13, 2017
“On a hot day in April, as me and my travel comrade Giacomo were crossing the Sonoran desert on a dusty smuggling route, we encountered Gabriel, 23, waving his hands amid the vegetation. After a brief discussion between us, considering the risks of stopping in such an area, we decided to turn our vehicle and see what was going on.
Gabriel told us his aunt Marilena was stuck a few hundred meters from there, heavily dehydrated with her legs’ muscles paralyzed, as they walked in the desert for several hours after being abandoned in the middle of nothing by a cartel's smuggler.
‘There were 8 of us, but everyone ran in a different direction’, he told us in Spanish.
In the first seven months of 2017 the International Organization for Migration reported 232 cases of deaths during attempts to cross the US-Mexico border, 17 per cent more than 2016. Since the election of Donald Trump migrants are apparently taking more dangerous paths fearing the intensification of controls along the border.”
See Francesco Anselmi’s series about the US-Mexico border in LFI 1/2018
Gabriel told us his aunt Marilena was stuck a few hundred meters from there, heavily dehydrated with her legs’ muscles paralyzed, as they walked in the desert for several hours after being abandoned in the middle of nothing by a cartel's smuggler.
‘There were 8 of us, but everyone ran in a different direction’, he told us in Spanish.
In the first seven months of 2017 the International Organization for Migration reported 232 cases of deaths during attempts to cross the US-Mexico border, 17 per cent more than 2016. Since the election of Donald Trump migrants are apparently taking more dangerous paths fearing the intensification of controls along the border.”
See Francesco Anselmi’s series about the US-Mexico border in LFI 1/2018
Francesco Anselmi+-
Born 1984 in Milan, Francesco lives between New York City and Athens. He graduated at Istituto Italiano di Fotografia in 2008 and at the International Center of Photography attending the photojournalism program in 2010. Francesco was recipient of the New York Times Company Foundation Scholarship. In 2012 he started a long term documentation of the consequences of the Greek economical crisis. Francesco is among the 2014 Leica Oskar Barnack finalists. More