Word: colombia
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...unwittingly armed. Afghanistan In the 1980s anti-Soviet mujahedin got Stinger missiles and Chinese-made AK-47s, later used by the anti-U.S. Taliban turkey Turks got 100 Black Hawk and Cobra helicopters from the U.S. before Gulf War I, and used them against the Kurds Colombia M-16s that the U.S. gave to the Colombian army in the 1990s to combat drug trafficking are now in the hands of terrorist groups engaged in human-rights abuses nicaragua American arms transferred to anti-Sandinista contras in the 1980s are now used by active death squads across Central America
Munera’s passion to produce a testament of his country stems from childhood. Growing up in the city of Medellín, he showed early talent as a photographer. In 1998 he won the First National Prize of Photography in Colombia, and he has garnered numerous other distinctions despite a national climate politically and economically adverse to artistic endeavor...
...photographs now on display communicate a clear political message at once deeply rooted in Colombia and applicable worldwide. A series of prints entitled “Recyclers, Cartucho St.” captures individuals rising like pillars from the poverty and violence that surround them. In the text alongside these pictures, Munera explains that just months after he produced the prints, his subjects—victims of an armed conflict in the country—were expelled from their street. The event coincided with the ascension to power of Alvaro Uribe Velez, the current president of Colombia...
Falconi pointed out in his gallery talk on Wednesday that Munera does not erase himself from the picture. Instead, every picture presents a portrait that arises from a negotiation between photographer and subject. Because merely carrying a camera can be risky business in Colombia and Munera’s interest is in capturing people as they are, he often sets up private studios where his subjects can feel at ease...
When asked what reaction his camera receives in Colombia, Munera replied that at first, it is met with great joy. The photographer says he observes that people are eager to see themselves as they really are, just as he is interested in portraying Colombia as it really exists. He believes that the desire to know what we look like will encourage Colombians to identify one another as brothers, and to come together under more than a flag and a government...