This photographic exhibition offering an intimate perspective of socioeconomic conflicts and political pressures driving migration from contemporary Guatemala toward the U.S. The exhibition highlights the powerful work of award winning documentary photographers James Rodríguez, Rodrigo Abd, and William B. Plowman, who have an intimate working knowledge of the stories, landscapes, and human suffering illustrated.
Push Factors will immerse visitors in the realities of life in Guatemala during the post-war 2000’s. ?Resource exploitation, genocide, poverty, drought, femicide, gangs, corruption, and racism have coalesced into an architecture of institutional violence in Guatemala, the framework of a failed state, and the push factors for migration,? said Heidi McKinnon, curator of the exhibition and Executive Director of Curators Without Borders. Through the use of powerful imagery and honest discussion on the root causes of migration, Push Factors asks visitors to rethink the popular discourse on migration in the media today and encourage tolerance of both documented and undocumented migrants who through hard labor and sacrifice sustain the economy of communities on both sides of the border.