Mexico: Guerrero and the Disappeared

March 26, 2015 | The New Yorker

Matt Black

A family in El Chuparosa, Guerrero. When rain poured through their roof, the father said, “The house is crying.” Image by Matt Black. Mexico, 2014.

A street in the town of Cochoapa el Grande, Guerrero. Image by Matt Black. Mexico, 2014.

Clouds drift down the mountains in El Chuparosa, Guerrero. “Something so pretty hides such horrible things,” a man said. Image by Matt Black. Mexico, 2014.

Women at home in Cochoapa el Grande, Guerrero. Image by Matt Black. Mexico, 2014.

A child sleeps on a corn sack. El Chuparosa, Guerrero. Image by Matt Black. Mexico, 2014.

A farmer harvests corn on his hillside plot. El Chuparosa, Guerrero. Image by Matt Black. Mexico, 2014.

An “auto-defensa” group in Apantla, Guerrero. “The only thing that we ask the government is that they leave us alone,” one member said. “If they cannot take control of security of our people, of our state, of our region, then leave it to us.” Image by Matt Black. Mexico, 2014.

A street in Moyotepec, Guerrero. Over a quarter of Guerrero’s population has migrated to the United States. Image by Matt Black. Mexico, 2014.

A member of the Movement of the Families of the Disappeared rests by an open grave near Iguala, Guerrero. Hundreds of “disappeared” people are thought to be buried in clandestine graves in the hills above town. Image by Matt Black. Mexico, 2014.

Vultures sun themselves near Ayutla de los Libres, Guerrero. Image by Matt Black. Mexico, 2014.

A Day of the Dead procession in San Miguel Amoltepec, Guerrero. Image by Matt Black. Mexico, 2014.

The cemetery in San Miguel Amoltepec, Guerrero, after a mudslide. Image by Matt Black. Mexico, 2014.

A coffee farmer at home in San Marcos, Guerrero. Image by Matt Black. Mexico, 2014.

A farmer and his wife in Tecuantepec, Guerrero, the home town of the missing student Abel García Hernández. Image by Matt Black. Mexico, 2014.

A child’s handprints at a home in El Chuparosa, Guerrero. Image by Matt Black. Mexico, 2014.

A Day of the Dead procession in San Miguel Amoltepec, Guerrero. Image by Matt Black. Mexico, 2014.

For years, the photographer Matt Black has been documenting life in impoverished indigenous communities of southern Mexico, for an ongoing project called “The People of Clouds.” Last year, while Black was working in the regions of La Montaña and the Costa Chica, in the state of Guerrero, forty-three students from the Ayotzinapa Normal School, in the nearby city of Iguala, went missing. (Francisco Goldman has written a series of reports on the abductions and related upheaval in Mexico.)

Many of the students came from the same regions that Black had been photographing. After their disappearance, he spoke with some of the students’ family members, and with citizens who are struggling to defend themselves against the rampant crime and poverty that loom over their state. As one man told Black, of the clouds that shroud the mountains of Guerrero, “Something so pretty hides such horrible things.”

Matt Black's photo essay and film were highlighted as one of "The 10 Best Photo Essays of the Month" on Time Magazine's Lightbox.