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Maras is a small village that lies within the sacred valley of Peru. A walk down the roads will bring you a glimpse into the traditional Andean life. The salineras, or salt pools, which lie a 45 minute walk away from Maras, have been worked by the same families since Incan times. With over 4,000 pools to maintain, the 280 families unite to scrape, bag, pound, and sort the salt. It is backbreaking, poorly paid work in temperatures over 90 degrees. The sun reflects off the blazing white salt. It echoes the snow capped peaks in the distance. Silhoutted against shining crystals, chicha is generously poured.
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In the north of Peru lies a city named Huancabamba. It is there that people from all walks of Peruvian life flock to see the renowned curanderos, or healers, and bask in the sacred water that surrounds the area. The curanderos use many unconventional methods to cleanse, purify, and read your body and soul. The ceremony went into the hours of dawn. Blessings danced on the tip of my tongue. Medicines were administered, futures were read, spirits balanced on the beam of reality.
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Every year tens of thousands of people congregate at the gates of Fort Benning in Columbus, Georgia. They raise their voices together against a government subsidized school called the School of the Americas, or the SOA. In 2001, the SOA was renamed Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, or WHINSEC. WHINSEC teaches their students counterinsurgency, sniper training, warfare, and interrogation tactics. Many of these graduates are notorious in their native Latin American countries in waging war against their own people using the very same tactics taught to them at WHINSEC. Each cross represents a life ended at the hands of a WHINSEC graduate. |
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Whether it is an angry man in Honduras coming after me with a stick for taking his photograph, or the sight of children playing in the local water fountain in Urumbamba, Peru, these pictures capture a moment. They consider all aspects of an encounter and make it a moment frozen in time. |
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