Through the Lens: The Side of Mexican Immigration That You Need to See Raul Roman - The Huffington Post
go to original October 24, 2015

UBELONG Expedition in Mexico: Immigration Through the Lens (UBELONG)

I co-founded UBELONG in 2009 with my friend Cedric Hodgeman to empower ordinary citizens through high-impact international volunteering and learning opportunities.

In November 2014, we did something really special: a UBELONG Expedition titled Mexico: Immigration Through the Lens, a 10-day trip to help humanize the immigration debate through citizen photojournalism. I co-led the expedition with Lonnie Schlein, a former New York Times photojournalist who was part of the Pulitzer Prize-winning team for 9/11 coverage. Our team - 11 people from six nationalities - worked in Yucatan, a non-traditional migrant-sending Mexican state with one of the fastest-growing rates of migration to the United States.

The core of our project was to bring light to the human side of immigration - a hot policy arena that tends to ignore the social, cultural and emotional dimensions of the phenomenon. Instead of focusing on immigrants in the United States, we went the opposite way to understand what's happening across the border.

We conducted the fieldwork in three communities about two hours away from Merida, the state capital: Cenotillo, Hoctun and Tunkas. In the past 15 years, these three rural communities, classified by the Mexican Government as "highly marginalized," have lost a significant percentage of their population to the United States. Our team interviewed and photographed 35 families.

The product of our teamwork is now a photography exhibit at the Cervantes Institute in New York City. You can see below a selection of pictures and stories on display until October 24. It shows a side of Mexican immigration that Americans need to see.

Read the rest at The Huffington Post

Related: Deportations Down, But Fear Persists Among Undocumented Immigrants (The Huffington Post)

A behind the scenes look at the UBELONG Expedition in Mexico: Immigration Through the Lens, led by UBELONG Co-Founder Raul Roman and veteran New York Times photojournalist Lonnie Schlein. (UBELONG)

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