Only two hours from Paris by plane, Tunis is a city of ancient Roman ruins, chaotic Middle Eastern markets and grand French boulevards. At times, Tunis can feel like any other large European city, with modern technology companies sprouting out of new developments on the outskirts, with freeways and trolly lines criss crossing the city. Yet sometimes, between the last call to prayer and the sip of a hot mint tea in an ancient cafe, it feels distinctly North African. Tunis is not only compelling for visitors with of its assault on the senses, it is also the scene of some of the most important moments in 21st century politics and history.
Tunisia was the first and, so far, only successful democratic revolution to come out of the Arab Spring. After decades of dictatorship, young Tunisians brought down the regime and are now in the process of building a new, democratic Tunisia. However the direction of the country is yet to be determined. In the dusty coffee shops and cafes of the medieval medina, locals argue over the pros and cons of democracy, dictatorship and Islam. Did the stability of the dictatorship help keep unemployment low? Did the revolution give power to Islamist groups? And if so, what does that mean for Tunisia’s liberal and secular youth? One would be hard pressed to find another city in the world where these different world views are being so openly discussed.
By Walker Dawson
Sunset over the medina of Tunis, a vast district of winding lanes, shops, mosques and mausoleums.
Street musicians performing on Avenue Habib Bourguiba, named after the country’s first president after independence from France in the 1950s.
Lined with open air coffee shops and restaurants, Avenue Habib Bourguiba is considered the Champs-Elysées of Tunis. The avenue was the epicenter of mass protests in 2011 when the Arab Spring began.
Weeks of sustained protests finally led to the downfall of the dictatorship, ushering in a new area of democracy.
A local resident on one of the medinas back alleys.
The front steps of the Al-Zaytuna Mosque, the heart of the medina quarter.
The Al-Zaytuna Mosque, which was built in 732 using pieces from the ruins of Carthage.
Typical Tunisian door fronts. The tradition of nail-decorated doors was originally introduced to North Africa by the Andalusians of Spain. The Tunisians mastered this art and now these painted doors became one of the characteristics of North African homes.
Café du Souk, located in the heart of the medieval quarter, attracts young folks looking for a place to watch soccer games, smoke shisha and drink tea or coffee.
Traditional North African bath houses are an integral part of the regions culture. Bath houses in Tunisia go as far back as 145 AD during the Roman period in Carthage.
El-Kachachine Hammam has been around for over 400 years, a holdout from the Ottoman era when Turkish bathhouses peppered the medina quarter.
However, the bathhouse has fallen on hard times since the Arab Spring. Foreign tourism is down in Tunisia. For more on the situation of traditional Tunisian bathhouses, check out this article by Simon Speakman Cordall: http://www.tunisia-live.net/2014/01/19/a-tale-of-two-hammams/
On the outskirts of Tunis, the expansive Bardo National Museum houses one of the largest art collections in the Middle East.
Housed in a 15th century palace, the museum contains one of the finest and most extensive collection of Roman mosaics in the world. Tunisia was once an integral part of the Roman Empire.
Barbed wire surrounding the French embassy in downtown Tunis.
Cathédrale Saint-Vincent-de-Paul de Tunis, built in 1897. Tunis is a city of mosques, catholic cathedrals and even a Jewish synagogue.
Although far from the chaotic borders of Central Europe, Sweden is at the center of the European migrant crisis. Most migrants traveling to Europe are attracted to Sweden because of its tolerance toward immigrant groups, a fact made clear by the Swedish government which states it will grant automatic residency for any Syrian arriving in the country. Although Sweden has taken in more migrants per capita than any other country in the European Union, immigration to Sweden is not new. Swedish cities, large and small, have been home to immigrants from all over the world for many decades, with most coming from Finland, Iraq, Poland, Iran, the Former Yugoslavia and Syria.
Born and raised in San Francisco, Walker then majored in International Relations and Chinese at the New School University in NYC. He began traveling during a high school exchange to Argentina, and hasn’t stopped since. Walker has always sought out the more unusual and off the beaten path locations and is combining his love for photography and travel to kickstart a career as a journalist, striving to redefine the profession in rapidly changing world.
In a summer of anti-Mexican rhetoric, dramatic drug lord jailbreaks and an international migration crisis, I traversed northern Mexico by myself to see what the real story was. I wanted to go beyond the anger and the divisive language to understand the context of the debate. Political candidates in the United States have said that Mexicans are rapists and murderers, and that we need to seal our southern border. Yet others point to the success of NAFTA and to the growing middle class in Mexico in reducing the poverty that fuels the crime and the desire to emigrate to the United States. I heard rumors in the United States that the destructive drug war in Mexico was coming to an end. What I found was far more complicated and unexpected.
Located in southern Sonora, Ciudad Obregón’s bus station is a major point for commercial buses traveling to Los Angeles, Phoenix and Tucson. The state of Sonora is a major transit point for travelers headed to the U.S. from all over Mexico.
The Mexican Army patrolling the streets of Los Mochis, Sinaloa. Known as Mexico’s breadbasket, Sinaloa contains some of the most productive agricultural land in the country, yet the Sinaloa Cartel is using nearby foothills to grow poppies to meet the growing heroin demand in the United States.
Juan is a taxi driver in Culiacán, the capital of Sinaloa. He traveled a few years ago to Salinas, California, an agricultural city near San Francisco to pick strawberries for a season. But he said the backbreaking work wasn’t for him, he came home after eight months. “It’s hard work, they don’t pay you much, but the güeros (gringos) don’t want that work. They won’t do it, so us Latinos do it. But I loved America, even though the work was so tough.” He felt relatively safe in Culiacán, even though he and many of the local residents still talk about the “Battle of 2008”-a federal and military siege on the city that attempted to combat escalating rampant crime. “You should have seen Culiacán back in 2008, things are so calm now. But still, if you look at one of the narcos the wrong way, or by accident bump into his car, you are done.”
As we swerved through the blazing streets of Culiacán, Juan pondered the risks we were taking by entering the Jardines de Humaya. “Well, it’s early enough in the day, none of the narcos should be there. Just make sure you don’t get seen, keep a low presence.” I put my head down as we drove through the entrance to the cemetery.
“The narcos are continuing in death the luxury they had in life, they are trying to keep their power even when they are dead, it’s absurd” says local journalist Javier Cardenas who has courageously covered the drug war in Sinaloa. Many of the tombs contain wifi, kitchens, spiral staircases to second or third stories, plasma flatscreen TVs and air conditioning.
Culiacán is what Medellin and Cali were to Colombia during the 1980s and ‘90s. Narco culture reigns supreme with narcocorridos (drug ballads) blasting from black, tinted-window Cadillac Escalades. This cemetery is the unofficial burying ground for the Sinaloa Cartel which is headed by El Chapo Guzmán, the recently escaped drug kingpin.
The Sierra Madre Mountains, and other rural regions of Northern Mexico, have also been dramatically affected by the drug war. Local residents, many of whom depend on income from tourism, have seen a sharp decline in visitors. The Tarahumara indigenous people have inhabited the highest reaches of the Sierra Madre for more than 400 years. They are one of the largest indigenous groups in North America.
For hundreds of years they have lived a sustainable lifestyle, living in cave dwellings, growing corn and beans, and practicing the world famous tradition of long distance running- sometimes up to 200 miles at a time.
During the 16th Century, the Tarahumara evaded the Spanish conquistadores by retreating into the high Sierra of Chihuahua state.
Today, there are over 100,000 Mennonites in Mexico, 90% of whom live in the state of Chihuahua. Fleeing religious persecution in Europe and Canada, thousands of Mennonites (a strict religious offshoot of Protestantism) settled in rural Chihuahua in the 1920s in search of freedom and economic opportunities. The Mennonites still maintain a traditional lifestyle, practicing a strict religious code and speaking Plattdietsch.
However, the increase in drug trafficking to the United States has traversed their lands.The economic success of the Mennonites has attracted unwanted attention from the drug cartels, leading to extortion, robbery and sometimes kidnapping. Whether to save themselves from further harassment or to cash in on the lucrative trade, some Mennonites have been caught smuggling cocaine from Mexico to Canada, where it can be sold for twice the amount as in the United States.
Facing environmental challenges and the threat of cartel violence, Mennonites are exploring the idea of returning to their ancestral homeland in Russia and the plains of Eastern Europe.
The Mexican frontier-an arid and sparsely populated region- became the home for thousands of Chinese who were driven from the United States by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. The Mexican government encouraged them to settle in harsh regions of the country where European settlers had failed to succeed. By the 1920s, the Chinese in Mexicali, one of the largest cities in Mexico’s north, had outnumbered Mexicans 10,000 to 700 and by mid century thousands more arrived, fleeing the brutality of the Chinese Civil War. Today, Mexicali, the capital of the northern state of Baja California, boosts the largest Chinatown in Mexico.
A vibrant upper-middle class Chinese community thrives in Mexicali today, with language schools, Chinese festivals, calligraphy classes, restaurants, farming and successful entrepreneurial businesses.
Luis Gonzalez takes me through the hallways of the Hotel for the Deported Migrants in Mexicali, stopping to show me one of the dormitories where the deportees used to sleep. “Since the state government has no money, we haven’t been able to provide electricity. It’s just too hot, nobody can stay here.”
The Hotel for the Deported Migrants stands less than two blocks from the US border. When the hotel has electricity it houses hundreds of Mexican and Central American migrants who have been deported from the United States. On the day I visited, with temperatures outside nearing 120 degrees fahrenheit, the hotel was mostly vacant because. The conditions were unbearable for most deportees who chose to sleep on the streets of Mexicali instead of suffering the heat inside. The migrants, many of them from Central America, are caught in limbo, some spending decades working in the United States, only to be deported for oftentimes minor offenses. Some migrate back home, and others wait for another opportunity to cross again.
While on a long bus ride, I met a young man named Edgar. Edgar began his journey north in the conflict ridden state of Michoacan, where rival cartels are battling each other and the Mexican Army at the same time. Edgar was traveling to Tijuana, where he was waiting to get his papers to cross the border north. It’s been years since he’s seen his mother, who works in the orchard fields of the agricultural San Joaquin Valley of California. Given his young age and his prominent tattoos, Edgar was constantly searched at the military checkpoints that the Mexican government has set up in an attempt to disrupt the flow of drugs and human trafficking heading north. For 36 hours we shared our interest for Molotov, a Mexican rock group, and other Latino bands. Snacks at local corner stores broke up the 36 tedious bus ride.
A sign on the border between San Luis Río Colorado and Nogales, Sonora. Illegal Mexican immigration to the United States has plummeted in recent years, with Central Americans now representing the largest group. Illegal immigration remains steady, but for the first time in decades there are more Mexicans leaving the United States than coming in. The Great Recession north of the border and the decrease in demand for low-wage workers in agriculture and construction have been leading factors. Mexico’s economy and the middle class continue to expand as well, with the Mexican government investing more in schools and manufacturing at home to create an educated populace with more opportunities. The OECD (The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) and WTO (The World Trade Organization) both rank Mexican workers as the hardest-working in the world in terms of the amount of hours worked yearly.
During the hight of the drug wars, Tijuana was a sinister and frightening place. Avenida Revolución, Tijuana’s main street, was nearly abandoned, with many shuttered store fronts and patrolling military convoys. Today the city is teaming with a newfound energy and people fill the streets, bars and cafes at night, listening to music, dancing, eating diverse street food and watching outdoor boxing matches.
Starting at the icy tip of Tierra del Fuego, traversing the Andes, the Amazon and the Caribbean, Latin America meets the United States in the city of Tijuana. For many people I met in Mexico, the American dream was real, it was a place where they made money and set up roots. Others saw it in a different light. “It’s all a lie isn’t it?” one man quietly said to me. “It isn’t real, it’s an illusion.”
On weekends man families gather at the beach for picnics, swimming, and a glimpse through the fence to the U.S.
“You wanna take a picture of me exercising?”
Many Quinceañeras are celebrated at the fence.
It was time for me to go home, to head north to San Francisco. I spent my last pesos on a taxi ride from the beach to the San Isidro border crossing. “Right over there, that’s where I crossed the line,” Hector points to the US-Mexican border, known here as “La línea” or the line. “In the early 1990s all you had to do was wait until the patrol car faced the other way, they can’t be patrolling only one spot, they have to move, you know?” Hector crossed at night, in the middle of a heavy rain storm, following well trodden paths north to Los Angeles. He told me that he stupidly got involved in criminal activity, and was eventually deported, vowing to never get involved with “cosas chuecas” (criminal activity) again. “My two nephews work as hired assassins for the cartel in Tierra Caliente in Michoacan; whatever you do, don’t go to Michoacan, it’s a war.” The war Hector is referring to is a bloody conflict between rival drug factions that has been raging for many years and has claimed thousands of lives. Hector says his nephews make more in a few hours of work than he could make in a year, “but I won’t go back to that, I swore to never get involved with cosas chuecas again. I drive my cab, I make $20 USD a week, and I am happy. There’s no need to go back to those things. Not anymore.”
With just my passport, a mere piece of paper, I was able to walk across la línea—a border that so many try their entire lives to cross.
Born and raised in San Francisco, Walker then majored in International Relations and Chinese at the New School University in NYC. He began traveling during a high school exchange to Argentina, and hasn’t stopped since. Walker has always sought out the more unusual and off the beaten path locations and is combining his love for photography and travel to kickstart a career as a journalist, striving to redefine the profession in rapidly changing world.
The colonial heart of Quito Ecuador may be the most impressive concentration of historical buildings in the entire Western Hemisphere. Nestled between the snowcapped Andes, hundreds of years of history are packed into the narrow cobblestoned streets, the chaotic plazas and the aging churches of this Latin gem. The old town contains enough sights to occupy a few weeks of your time, but the real joy of Quito is to simply wander and let the city guide you. Stop for a canelazo, a warm cinnamon and citrus alcoholic drink, somewhere along a cobble stoned back alley, or sit in the numerous plazas and just watch 500 years of Ecuadorian life pass you by. Markedly more developed than most South American capital cities, Quito provides to perfect mix of history, Latin grit and international sophistication. Besides being a fascinating city unto itself, Quito provides a perfect base for exploring the pint sized Ecuador.
Born and raised in San Francisco, Walker then majored in International Relations and Chinese at the New School University in NYC. He began traveling during a high school exchange to Argentina, and hasn’t stopped since. Walker has always sought out the more unusual and off the beaten path locations and is combining his love for photography and travel to kickstart a career as a journalist, striving to redefine the profession in rapidly changing world.
Everyone will tell you how European Buenos Aires feels, they even go as far as to call it the Paris of South America. This is true to a certain extent, but that’s not telling the full story. Buenos Aires effortlessly blends European sophistication with Latino edginess. The city is both romantic and gritty, chaotic and cosmopolitan all at the same time. There is an energy here on the streets that Europe could only dream of. Fresh immigrants from Nigeria, Paraguay and Korea are adding new faces to the once traditional Italian and Spanish neighborhoods. Restaurants and nightclubs are popping up in neighborhoods that were once considered too dangerous, and while the peso remains low to the dollar, there isn’t a better time to go. Come for the incredible steaks, the wine, and energetic nightlife, but stay for the diverse neighborhoods, the crumbling architecture, and most of all, the people. Beautiful, confident and creative, the Argentines will be the highlight of your trip to this world class city.
Born and raised in San Francisco, Walker then majored in International Relations and Chinese at the New School University in NYC. He began traveling during a high school exchange to Argentina, and hasn’t stopped since. Walker has always sought out the more unusual and off the beaten path locations and is combining his love for photography and travel to kickstart a career as a journalist, striving to redefine the profession in rapidly changing world.
Born and raised in San Francisco, Walker then majored in International Relations and Chinese at the New School University in NYC. He began traveling during a high school exchange to Argentina, and hasn’t stopped since. Walker has always sought out the more unusual and off the beaten path locations and is combining his love for photography and travel to kickstart a career as a journalist, striving to redefine the profession in rapidly changing world.
