For years now another group of photographs have been calling me to tell their story. It all began in 1994, when after spending one month in San Miguel on vacation, my husband and I purchased property on which we spent the next 2 years building a house. It was through an invitation from a worker on this house that we visited our first rural village 30 miles out side of SMA. This small community of 30 families is situated on the banks of a river in a picturesque arroyo. Their home was the most humble I had ever seen. However the hospitality was grandiose. It was through this community that I was introduced to life in rural Mexico.
As we became more ensconced in the community I became involved with another rural community, Agustin Gonzales. I was introduced to this village again through photography but this time is was to chronicle a craft cooperative of Rug Hookers which was in the early stages of development. www.rughookproject.com. I became enamored with the people and the project and have been assisting them with marketing since 1999.
During the same time frame the concern about illegal immigration in the USA had turned into an uproar. There was a disconnect between what I was seeing and hearing from my Mexican friends and what was being reported in the US press. What I saw, in the majority of the people I knew, were migrants, people passing back and forth. But what I heard and still hear in the press is about immigrants, people that come to stay. The people I knew that had worked in the US at one time or another came home.
I then came across the books "Beyond Smoke and Mirrors" and "Crossing the Border" by Douglas S Massey, Jorge Durand and Nolan J. Malone. The authority of these books derives from the ambitious, multi-decade Mexican Migrations Project that studied population movement. This study mirrored my personal experience. The majority of Mexicans are migrants. All the numbers we hear about in the news are about people entering the USA. There is virtually nothing about the millions that return to Mexico every year. These books validate both figures.
And what do they return to? Family, friends, community and a fascinating ancient culture.
I had been chronicling the lives of these two rural villages for years. My images showed a full and compelling life. They also told of the struggle, especially to get ahead. They portray how money earned from work in the US was raising their standard of living and improving their communities.
I decided I needed to tell the story of life in rural Mexico. I wanted to shed light on the true experience of the the migrant worker but most of all to show through imagery the land and home and culture that keep most Mexicans in Mexico and draw those that have traveled to the US for jobs to come home, back to their Rich Roots.
