Immigration has become one of the most important and contentious issues of our time. But even as policy makers in the United States and Mexico argue over what to do about the half million or more Mexicans who cross the border illegally each year to work in the United States, one fact has become indisputable. Illegal immigration has enhanced the lives of poor people more than any policy attempted by either the U.S. or the Mexican governments. Immigrants sent home $23 billion dollars in 2006 alone, rivaling what Mexico earned from selling oil. But the human cost of migration is equally high. Border crossers risk injury, attack, rape, and death, while undocumented workers often toil under dangerous and exploitative conditions in the United States.

These harsh realities constitute the heart of Exodus/Exodo, a powerful collaboration between writer Charles Bowden and photographer JuliAn Cardona that puts a human face on the issue of illegal immigration. Expanding on their award-winning 2006 Mother Jones article titled "Exodus: Border-Crossers Forge a New America," Bowden and Cardona take us to border towns, in which impoverished men and women hire "coyotes" to get them across the line; to Ciudad JuArez, where hundreds of young women maquiladora workers have been murdered and their families still seek justice; to Minutemen camps along the border, where citizen vigilantes keep watch; to New Orleans, North Carolina, and California, where migrants find back-breaking work in construction, agriculture, and other industries; to protest marches, as immigrants assert their right to stay in the United States; and to villages in Mexico, in which remitted dollars are building homes as lavish as the dreams that fuel the migrations.

Just in time for the 2008 election and the national immigration debate, this searing documentary of the largest single transnational migration in history forces us to face the tremendous human cost of a failed Mexican state and a relentlessly globalizing world.

About the Author

Charles Bowden is one of today's premier writers on social issues along the U.S.-Mexico border. His recent books include A Shadow in the City: Confessions of an Undercover Drug Warrior; Down by the River: Drugs, Money, Murder, and Family; Blues for Cannibals: Notes from Underground; Blood Orchid: An Unnatural History of America; Desierto: Memories of the Future; and Inferno (with Michael Berman). He lives in Tucson, Arizona.

JuliAn Cardona is a photojournalist based in Ciudad JuArez who has documented the devastating effects of globalization along the U.S.-Mexico border since 1993. He was the force and imagination behind the original JuArez photographic exhibition that resulted in the book JuArez: The Laboratory of Our Future, in which his images were extensively featured. Cardona's work has been exhibited in Mexico, the United States, and Europe. In 2004, he was awarded the prestigious Lannan Foundation Cultural Freedom Fellowship.

Book Information
ISBN 9780292718142
Author Charles Bowden
Format Hardback
Page Count 295
Imprint University of Texas Press
Publisher University of Texas Press
Weight(grams) 1928g
Dimensions(mm) 241mm * 298mm * 30mm