"Highway Camp, 1989"
Highway Camp, 1989
Don Bartletti
Media: B&W Selenium Toned Silver Gelatin (vintage print)
Two brothers and 3 friends from Huehuetenango, Guatemala spend the night on a terrace carved in the dirt above Interstate 5 in Encinitas, California on July 25, 1989. Weeks ago, after crossing the border from Tijuana, they walked 45 miles north along the freeway to get here. In order not to reveal their clandestine home, they go to and from the distant shopping center on Encinitas Blvd. only when it’s dark. In the daytime they wait on the sidewalk for drive-by offers of work from construction contractors and homeowners. One man said of their primitive hideout, “We don’t live like this back home. We have houses, we have beds, we have parents and children, we have faith. But we don’t have jobs, or enough money for food.”
