“In A Guide to Infrastructure and Corruption, urban infrastructure is a gear of political power. Its aim is to conquer the territory of the city and hold dominion over certain city relationships.
Public space is more than just a polygon delineated by coordinates, it is a factory of social realities. There would be nothing problematic about
this power if it weren’t exclusive. Those who build the city exercise a regulatory power over our mindset and our everyday experience. The
rhythms that regulate our hours, “our place” in society and the type of roads we take on our daily commute are manifestations of this control.” Ximena Peredo

The photographs and interviews were taken in Valle de Bravo and Ojinaga, Mexico, as well as Presidio, Texas; Catskill, New York and in New York City. They are places Teresa lived in or where she was seen. They are also places that Teresa might have visited or imagined. It’s unsure whether she ever made it to New York. In the end, we have abandoned what follows as detective guesswork. No person photographed can ever claim to be truly seen. The photographs have been included to show what Teresa might have been and to offer some sense of why she left Valle Bravo all those years ago.

“The smart thing about Los Sumergidos is the way these images of nights, roads, red lights, and tired faces link to the images we already have in our heads. And then we project characters (Teresa, her mother Luisa, her absent father) and narratives onto the people we see and the story takes shape. The introductory text helps with this (the journal text less so) as do the multiple narrative strands. All things are possible in Los Sumergidos for Teresa, it’s just that some things are more possible than others. And that’s what the pictures tell us”. — Colin Pantall for the Photographic Museum of Humanity

Published by Los Sumergidos

Almost daily between 1993 and 2004, Alejandro Cartagena would commute on a suburban bus from Monterrey to the suburban city of Juarez and back. Working at his family’s restaurant, he watched the gradual changes happening in Juarez. Between 2000 and 2005, the city went from a population of 66,000 to 144,000. He watched Juarez be eaten up, all through the window of the bus.

On those trips, he read, fell asleep, daydreamed of owning a car, and lamented being stuck in this metal creature in the 40-degree heat of northern Mexico. 12 years later, and now a photographer, he decided to take the bus once again to capture the experience thousands of blue-collar suburbanites have every day. What he saw made him reencounter the unintended mental and physical anxieties produced by the unplanned urban development. This book is a story about people wanting a better life in a city characterized by lack; the lack of proper roads, the lack of enough buses, the lack of security inside the buses. Furthermore, 91.6% percent of women experienced sexual assault at least once while traveling on public transport in the Monterrey Area.

“The precarious situation of public transportation, and of mobility in general, remains ultra-underrepresented in public debate, as a matter condemned to languish on many public ‘to do’ lists. This means that the work of Alejandro Cartagena takes on specific political importance in making visible the costs of this inaction on the quality of life of people living in the Metropolitan Area of Monterrey”. — Ximena Peredo