The Devil is leaving his Cave - In 1990, a year before the armed revolt of the
Zapatistas, Wendy Ewald was invited to give photography classes to
Mayan, Ladino and Tzotzil children living in Chiapas, the southernmost province
from Mexico. The responsible organization was the Mayan Writers' Cooperative,
Sna Jtz-ibajom (the writers' house). If cameras and
Camcorders are not new in Chiapas, they are generally used
by tourists whose shots reinforce their own prejudices
cultural. Ewald did not take any photographs; instead, she guided her students through
that they themselves take pictures of their daily life, their dreams,
their desires and fantasies. These memories resonated with the importance
given to dreams in Mayan culture, which considers them as real as
waking life. The resulting project, The Devil is leaving his Cave, is
a unique insight into the daily realities of life in Mayan communities
just before the ravages of the Zapatista uprising. This book brings together the project
Ewald's original and a new work done in collaboration with fifteen
young Mexican Americans living in Chicago, coordinated with the help of the
Centro Romero, an immigrant support organization. These images deal with
much of the same subject matter as that done by Ewald's students
in the 1990s, with the emphasis now on capturing life
inner and dreams in order to take into account unexpressed experiences
of immigration. The themes of restriction and self-reflection that have
emerged from this new work were intensified by the fact that it was carried out
partly under the control of COVID. Together, the Chiapas and
Chicago traces the differences between growing up in different
Mexican geographies with diverse histories, while clinging to the joys and
to the universal pains of childhood.
