Project

Up Against the U.S./Mexico Border Wall

Mexicans call it El Muro de Verguenza, The Wall of Shame. To this day, few people north of the border ever ask, what does the wall look like from Mexico? What do Mexicans think about it, not just ordinary Mexicans but Mexicans whose homes literally touch the U.S./Mexican border wall?

Now President Trump’s pledge to build a bigger wall, forcing Mexico to pay for it, has rubbed salt in old wounds south of the border. Mexican families in Tijuana live in houses backed up against the border wall. They have stories to tell us.

James Whitlow Delano returns to Tijuana to document the lives of these families living up against the wall. They are generally impoverished, but ordinary, families, sometimes deportees. They are not drug or human traffickers, criminals or “coyotes.” 

To view previous projects from three decades of working along the border, please click here.

Life on the Border

James Whitlow Delano explores what life is like for Mexicans living next to the U.S. border.