Blackness

On December 11, 2006, former president Felipe Calderón declared the so-called war against drug cartels and it has continued under Enrique Peña Nieto's administration. According to official figures, more than 234,000 people have been killed and more than 38,000 have disappeared. The Mexican government, with its failure to carry out security tasks and allegations of constant human rights violations, has been called a failed state, and the distrust of citizens has led to the creation of self-defense groups and even death squads formed by victims to seek revenge on those who killed or disappeared their families.

This series of photographs follows armed groups of sicarios and those who look for them in the different narco-territories from the northern tip of the country to the south coast. It shows the dark and blurred scenes that can be seen in the most devastated regions of the country, where little information escapes to the outside world, where violence has become so ubiquitous that victims can be chosen at random, and the questions of who death is coming for and why are usually a dead end where many of those left behind stay stuck with no answers.

Emmanuel Guillén Lozano

Emmanuel
Guillén Lozano