Nine thousand Mexicans left the United States for Mexico in a long procession earlier this month. Photographer Jeoffrey Guillemard traveled along and captured the festive reception of the endless ‘Christmas caravan’.
The concrete area around the Sames Arena event hall in the Texan border town of Laredo is almost completely filled with cars on a Thursday morning in mid-December. Yet no one shows up. These 2,800 packed sedans, overflowing vans and overloaded pickup trucks make up the 15th annual Christmas caravan of homebound Mexican migrants.
More than twice as many Mexicans live in the United States as Dutch in the Netherlands: 37 million Mexican Americans. They came for work, they fled the cartel violence or were born there. For Mexico, the emigrants are worth gold, last year they sent home almost 50 billion euros. That is why the Mexican government cherishes the paisanos, the compatriots abroad. The annually growing caravan is received with all due respect.
This time, the French photographer Jeoffrey Guillemard (36) is also among the nine thousand travelers. His mission: to record this Christmas story. He can ride in the pickup of Reymundo (51) and Edgar Vega (20). Father and son work in construction. Senior has been living in the US for three decades, junior was born there. With dawn, the endless procession trickles across the border. Guillemard watches his driver shake off the American straitjacket and the Mexican in him emerges. “This feels good, this feels free.”
Just like the hundreds of thousands of migrants who make the journey to the US every year, often traveling in large groups, the Christmas returnees seek safety in the caravan. The danger lies mainly in the northern Mexican states, where drug organizations rule the roost. But on this journey, the migrants receive police escort. And even the mayor of the central Mexican mountain town of Jalpan de Serra, where most of the Christmas visitors go, is traveling along.
Shiny American barges cruise the vast Mexican north, loaded with riches – coffee tables, couches, televisions, clothes. Here kings of the north ride with gold and myrrh on their way to their stable. At home, the self-made Mexicans are welcomed with mariachi music, balloons, roses and flags. Pimped cars flicker like jukeboxes, the green-white-red and the stars and stripes flutter at the back.
Father Vega is going to enjoy Mexican food for a few weeks as only his old mother cooks it. Wouldn’t he like to return for good, asks photographer Guillemard. ‘One day,’ says the migrant, ‘in a coffin.’ First he left for the US to earn money for the family he left behind. Then children came and now he lives there for them. It is hard work, a life of service to others. Those shiny cars, they are for the picture, behind them lies the real Christmas story.