What Is Home?
A young girl from a Mexican migrant family rides the bus in Wilson, North Carolina on her way to perform as an angel in the Nativity play at a senior care facility.
Keith Dannemiller has called Mexico City home for 33 years. But since 2017, the U.S.-born photojournalist has aimed a bicultural lens at a growing Latino community in North Carolina. Ahead of a post-pandemic exposition, Dannemiller shares a series of portraits from his return to the U.S. South, and contemplates notions of “home”
Photographer Keith Dannemiller spent decades chronicling Latin America for U.S. publications like Time and National Geographic magazines. But he’s perhaps best known for his intriguing photographs that capture the daily lives of average people on the streets of Mexico City.
Those images are the focus of his acclaimed book, “Callegrafía,” along with his moving depiction of migrants from Central America and Mexico seeking new, and safe, homes in the United States.
As Dannemiller says in his video, "The Dialectic of Displacement" (on Vimeo), throughout his career he has sought to document the plight of those who "ain't where they belong to be at," borrowing the words of a character in Flannery O'Connor's short story, “The Displaced Person.” A "complicated equation of injustice, economic inequality, discrimination, prejudice and political instability," Dannemiller adds, "contributes to conditions that force people to leave their place of origin, to migrate and seek refuge, even though, in many cases, no one will have them."
But even more than displacement, Dannemiller's images have sought to portray "the individuals who suffer the cruel consequences" of that.
Central American migrants hoist a toddler onto a freight train called “La Bestia” in southern Mexico.
Take, for example, the screaming baby boy being lifted onto the top of "La Bestia," the freight train that runs from southern Mexico to the U.S. border. The image is among those that punctuate his documentary series on Central American migration to the USA, which followed other projects about the Guatemalan Mayan diaspora of the 1980s; the first Palestinian intifada; campesinos in the southwestern Mexico state of Guerrero, driven off their land by drug gangs; and "Juarochos,” about migrants from Mexico’s Veracruz state (commonly known as jarochos) who sought a new home in Ciudad Juárez, on the border with Texas.
Today, Dannemiller is working on a new photo documentary, looking at the other side of the coin: how Latin American migrants are finding a place, a home, and establishing a community in the South of the United States.
Dannemiller, who has made his home in Mexico City for over three decades, was born in Ohio and educated in the South: attending grade school in Kentucky and then Vanderbilt University in Tennessee. "If there was a Latino population there then, I was not aware of it," he said.
His new project is preparing a portfolio and an exhibition to complete a residency program he launched in 2017 in Wilson, North Carolina, called "Eyes on Main Street.” He knew there was a significant, and growing, Latino community (10% - 12% of the population) in and around Wilson, a city of some 50,000 people not far from Raleigh. He was interested in exploring how migration from Latin America (mostly from Mexico) to this Southern town -- with its vestiges of slavery, Jim Crow and systemic racial inequality (and an economy built around growing and marketing one crop, tobacco) -- was affecting social structure and community relations.
Inspection time at the Horizon, Ltd. tobacco warehouse, one of the largest in Wilson, North Carolina. Mexicans now work in the local tobacco industry, which once was the driving economic force in town.
Dannemiller's show, "Homesweet, Homeland," was supposed to open this year. The pandemic derailed that plan, and now the show opens March 17, 2022 at Barton College in Wilson. Until then, excerpts from his portfolios can be found on Dannemiller’s website.
Dannemiller plans additional trips to North Carolina before the exhibition opens. Meanwhile, he paused to contemplate questions from palabra. about the new documentary and his own rediscovery of a region he once called home.
Identity and belonging
Manuel Rivera arrived in the US from his home in Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico after crossing the border near Douglas, AZ in 2003. He worked in Florida picking fruit and vegetables but now lives in Wilson working construction.
palabra: Of the growing Hispanic population there in Wilson, the majority is Mexican. Was that an attraction to you?
Keith Dannemiller: Definitely. It dovetails with a lot of the other stuff I've done around immigration, movement, that idea of "home" and "homeland," as well as patria, identity and belonging.
The work in North Carolina is like an aftermath to the theme of deracination -- people settling again and making a new home. So before, I was looking at people leaving; now it's looking at where they get to.
palabra: How do you think the growing Latino population of this corner of North Carolina is redefining the community?
Dannemiller: The old and the new. I prefer not to draw any hard and fast conclusions about the demographics and the society and assimilation, but I hope some of the photographs speak to that.
For example, the little angel on her school bus going to a Christmas show in a nursing home. All of the people in the home are white or African-American, while the little girl is Mexican. She hadn't been there long and spoke very little English.
Then you get the other side of the coin, in the photo of the white kid in a Mexican restaurant with the charro sombrero and cake on his face. I'm sure this kid knew nothing about the mordida when he got there -- someone must have had to explain. So the white population is slowly but surely learning about some of the traditions of their new neighbors.
A white teen in Wilson, North Carolina, celebrates his birthday in a Mexican restaurant, with a “mordida” -- “bite” -- a face full of icing that’s a fun tradition at Mexican birthday parties.
And there was a march in December for the Virgin of Guadalupe and it went right through town. It didn't skirt the main streets. So there are small things happening in terms of that attempt at assimilation, at being part of a larger community.
Maybe when this current generation of kids gets to be more numerous and a little more confident of their roles in schools, workplaces and the larger community, there will be a society that reflects its actual makeup.
palabra: What is the Latino population's idea of home?
Dannemiller: I asked the question: Where do you feel is your home? Most Latinos are very willing to talk about these ideas and some answered, "This is my home, this is where my daughters were born, my kids got married here, I've been here for over 25 years."
I think this is quite an amazing thing given the strength and pull of Mexican roots and culture, to be able to go to a foreign country and be part of the new, in contrast to the old. I think it's definitely a challenge and very laudable. On the other hand, there are those that say they will never feel at home in the U.S.
A community in flux
palabra: In our talk you said: "A lot of the notions I brought with me to Wilson and the South after so many years (away) were either modified or changed completely." How so?
Dannemiller: The idea that there is now an African-American mayor. There is movement, and there are attempts to recognize the role of the Black community in the history of Wilson. And I think that's something that was not very prevalent before. The history of Wilson and the South has been written by the white population, who control the purse strings.
So the Black participation in the larger society surprised me a little bit. I expected to see hard and fast rules about where people went to eat, and how they were treated. But that has relaxed somewhat. There are still problems, but it's changing.
palabra: What did you learn about the history of the African-American community in Wilson?
Dannemiller: There is a historical precedent of oppression, subjugation, and separation. It's the South. The vestiges of those evils are still present.
There is still separation and segregation held over from slavery and from Jim Crow, such as in the school system. It's almost as if two separate societies exist in Wilson. This reminded me of where I went to high school in Kentucky. There was a creek that ran from east to west through town and the main street of town that ran north-south. The northeast quadrant was pretty much the Black area of town, and whites occupied the rest. That type of division is similar to what you find, still, in Wilson.
That's one of the reasons I wanted to look at the Hispanic influx which started in the ’80s and carries on today, of a grupo ajeno (outsiders) that arrives and wants to establish itself in this socially rigid, traditional community. It explains to me why there's that sort of reticence on the part of the Hispanic community. It's very difficult to settle there because, to a certain extent, Wilson's society is closed.
palabra: Are most of the Latinos in Wilson legal residents? Do they span generations? And how does all that affect assimilation, or the shaping of a new community?
There are lots of people without papers. The first wave of migration was around the U.S. Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. It made it illegal to hire undocumented workers, but it also had an amnesty clause, especially for agricultural workers, like those who had made their way to Wilson. Once someone was legally in the U.S. through amnesty, it let them bring family members in. So there was a large increase in the number of Hispanic workers and families in Wilson in the 1980s. Then, those that came in the ’90s tended to do so without papers.
Teenagers in Wilson, North Carolina getting ready for a performance of “Oklahoma!”
So there's a mix. And still others are trying to figure out their legality. ...
I came across celebrations for the Virgin of Guadalupe. A lot of the younger kids of Hispanic origin spoke English. They want to do that. But age 30 and above prefer to speak Spanish. There are lots of kids because of DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), who came when they were very young with their parents who were emigrating.
Part of the Hispanic community in Wilson is somewhat hidden. There may be fear among some Hispanics to present themselves, especially if they don't have papers. But there is also the difficulty of outright rejection and a tortuous application process on the part of the U.S. government. So, assimilation in a traditional, white-dominated society of the South, for many different reasons, is a bit lacking.
palabra: From your photographs I see religion plays an important role in Wilson. Can that be a bridge to a new, more unified community?
Dannemiller: The number of churches in Wilson is incredible! Everything from storefront preachers to formal Episcopal or High Anglican. There are two Catholic churches that are prominent. One is St Mark’s, but referred to locally as La Guadalupana. But it’s not really Catholic, it's Episcopalian. I went in there numerous times and you cannot differentiate the service from a Catholic Mass. The church opened its arms when the Mexican population started to grow. And, the traditional Catholic church there has a congregation of somewhere around 500 or 600 people, many of whom are Mexican, and Mass is given by a Spanish-speaking priest.
The laying on of hands and prayers in one of Wilson’s many churches.
Coming home a foreigner
palabra: You have said your experience in North Carolina was as though you became a foreigner in your own country -- did you identify with the Mexicans more after having lived for three decades in Mexico?
Dannemiller: Yes. I was attracted to that segment of the population. It was the community I navigated toward. I too was, in a certain sense, like an immigrant. I had been away for so long and had lost contact with the nitty-gritty, everydayness of life in the U.S. ... But it's not really a dilemma. I have no problem saying Mexico City is my home, and that I was born in the U.S., which is my homeland.
Nina Simone said: "Sometimes I think the whole of my life has been a search to find the one place I truly belong." And I identify with that. Maybe this trip to Wilson was to see how much of me remains in the U.S. -- how much of my heart is still there, and how much I have integrated into Mexican society and my community in Mexico City.
Photographer Keith Dannemiller, at home in Mexico City.
palabra: It is interesting to have someone with your bicultural vision exploring a new diversity that is reshaping a part of the U.S. South. Where do you see that trend going?
Dannemiller: My overarching question in all of this is: Is it possible to create community? Does it develop organically over time, or can groups -- who are attempting to change housing patterns, access to credit, integration of schools, availability of better jobs -- create community?
I don't know if I can answer that. But it begs to be asked. And especially in Wilson.
There are some in Wilson who consider the existing community their birthright. They say, "Those people are outsiders and will never be part of my community."
Is this idea of community a zero-sum game? If somebody from outside comes in, does that reduce my portion as a traditional member of the Wilson community?
That possibility scares some citizens there. Hopefully the photos might touch on a few of those ideas. I still have a lot to photograph and a lot to think about before I go back at the end of the summer, and maybe another trip before the end of the year.
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Barbara Kastelein is an author and independent journalist. She worked in Mexico City for the Toronto Star, The Mexico City Times, the BBC and South America’s TV Globo, and covered the environment in Mexico for the Bureau of National Affairs in Washington. Her books include “Mexico Chic” and the forthcoming “Heroes of the Pacific,” about Acapulco’s iconic cliff-diving community.