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diggCapturing kids on the border PHOTOS
a photo show
Four ASU photojournalism students spent their spring semester documenting the daily lives of Mexican children who live near the border. This slide show features some of the images the students captured. Jeremiah Armenta traveled to San Luis, Mexico, just south of Yuma, where many children live in cardboard shacks on the edge of a dump. Other kids help support their families by getting up at 4:30 a.m. to work the agricultural fields before going off to school. Brandon Quester details the lives of 11-year-old twins from a poor family in Agua Prieta, Mexico. One is disabled, and stays home in bed, unable to get around. Her sister attends school at a girls’ orphanage, where she can get regular meals and has a bed to call her own. | |
 Children of the Dump(Jeremiah Armenta) Houses made of cardboard dot the dump’s landscape. There’s no electricity, so potable water, no medicine, few cars. Most families can’t afford to send their kids to school because the uniforms and fees are too high. Teen pregnancies are common, yet Armenta says the kids are like children elsewhere: curious, resourceful, irritating and funny, playing with toys and arguing over games. | |
 Children of the fields (Jeremiah Armenta) Children, mostly between the ages of 14 and 18, rise at 4:30 a.m. six days a week to work the farm fields near Yuma. The children work 10-hour days, with one 30-minute break, and earn about $9 per day. After working all day, many attend night school from 3 to 9 p.m., sleep a few hours, and rise again to work. | |
(Brandon Quester) Twins Lupita and Fatima, 11, lead very different daily lives. Lupita was born severely disabled and lives with her parents and two brothers in an Agua Prieta shanty. Lupita cannot walk, speak or eat without assistance. Her sister, Fatima, lives in a girls’ orphanage, La Divina Providencia, across town, where she receives meals and sleeps in a bed of her own. “I tried to show that despite their drastic differences, they are still bound by family and a hope for a better life,” Quester says. “”I wanted to show that even within a single family, opportunities for every member are not equal and often unfair.” | |
 Keeping traditions alive (Danielle Peterson) Perhaps because they live so close to the United States, children along the U.S.-Mexico border are quick to adopt American culture, but many still experience the traditions of Mexico. Photographer Peterson documented the quinceanera celebration of 15-year-old Cecelia from Magdalena, Mexico. “I was with Cecelia as she dressed in an elaborate pink gown, got her hair done and rode to the church in a car complete with a giant pink bow,” Peterson recounts. “I watched with her family and friends as the parish priest read from the Bible and reminded her of her duties as a woman.” | |
 School in another country (Kelley Karnes) Julia Zepeda, a single mother of four daughters, drives two of her children across the border daily so they can attend school in Nogales, Ariz. Their days include long waits at the crossing, endless paperwork and monthly tuition for Sacred Heart Catholic School, where most of the children are U.S.-born, but live in Mexico. Back home, Zepeda’s daughters teach her English while they do their homework. “Watching them together, I couldn’t help heeling that this home, while nearly bare of furniture, is filled to the brim with love and hope,” says photographer Karnes. | |
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