Once the crown jewel of the maquila miracle that was going to be the cornerstone of Mexico’s development, Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua is being abandoned these days by those who were lured there with promises of decent, well-paid jobs.
The city’s fate is now in the hands of rival drug gangs who operate with absolute impunity in their quest for control of transshipment routes to the United States. Ordinary Mexicans, who are targets of extortion quotas, robberies and drug related violence, no longer stand a chance of living a normal life in Juárez.
So on May 5, 2010, at 6:00 a.m., with their hopes up, and after having previously loaded their furniture on a moving van supplied by the state of Veracruz, Mauricio Campos, 25, and Guadalupe Ordinola, 26, left Ciudad Juárez. They packed their three children, Luis, 8, Edwin, 4, and Angel, 2, and their remaining belongings into the back seats of a 1988 Dodge Caravan with 172,000 miles on it and returned to their hometown of Tres Valles, Veracruz to live with Guadalupe’s parents.
View the slideshow to explore images from the Campos Ordinola family’s journey back home.
Photographs © Keith Dannemiller (www.keithdannemiller.com).
