Kadir van Lohuizen is travelling from Chile to Alaska, covering 15 countries along the Pan-American Highway, investigating contemporary migration in the Americas.
Kadir left Tierra del Fuego in southern Chile in March 2011 and will reach Deadhorse in northern Alaska in March 2012. You can follow Kadir via his blog (click here).
On this page we present a selection of some of the stories he has documented along the way. For the full experience, you can download the iPad application of the interactive project in the Apple store (click here).
ViaPanam is an elaborate interactive project, presented along the way in public talks by the photographer and widely published in the international media. For the latest news, follow this link: http://www.viapanam.org/viapanam/news. Kadir also shares his experiences on the I AM Nikon blog (click here) and in radio documentaries hosted by VPRO (in Dutch). You can listen to his broadcasts by clicking here.
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The Via PanAm iPad application is available in the Apple App Store, you can access the store by clicking here.
For $5,99 the app takes you on a journey with Kadir and offers free weekly updates with material from the 40 week trip. The app contains blogposts, video- and audio material and the many photo stories that Kadir produced along the way.
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El Salvador has been called the most Americanized country in Latin America. It has been estimated that a third of its citizens live in the U.S. – often illegally. A significant part of El Salvador's national income is made up of the money which these emigrants send back, and American culture has penetrated this small Central American country.
El Salvador, November 2011
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More than 200,000 of the six million people living in Honduras have roots in Palestine. They are the third largest (after Chile and the United States) Palestinian community outside of the Middle East.
Honduras, November 2011
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In many cases immigration means a definitive break within a family. Even if the distance is not so great, as is the case for many Nicaraguans in Costa Rica, a visit to the family members who stayed behind is expensive and time-consuming.
Nicaragua, September 2011
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Central America is a favorite destination for moderately wealthy retired North Americans who want to leave behind the rat race in their own country, and make their money go farther, some of them have chosen to settle in Nicaragua. It is the second poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere – but also one of the safest.
Nicaragua, September 2011
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As a prosperous country, Costa Rica is a popular destination for migrants. Nicaraguans in particular go there in search of a better life. One of them is the 26-year-old rapper Douglas “Transformer” Contreras. After years of criminal activity, he has settled in the Costa Rican capital San José to begin a new life.
Republic of Costa Rica, September 2011
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Panama is home to the largest colony of Chinese in Central America. The first 1600 immigrants arrived in 1854. Nowadays, the 200,000 Chinese in Panama have acquired considerable economic power in the country, but rarely intervene openly in the political sphere.
Panama, August 2011
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Kuna Yala (San Blas) consists of a long narrow strip of land and an archipelago of 365 islands, of which 36 are inhabited.
Due to the rising sea level the Kuna's have to evacuate to the mainland; the islands became to dangerous to live on. On August 2012 the first four islands will be evacuated.
This is the territory of the Kuna, indigenous people who have fought and won their autonomy in 1925.
Panama, July 2011
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The armed conflict in Colombia has been going on for nearly half a century now. The FARC guerrilla movement and the paramilitaries carry on an unending struggle for the control of territories of economic interest, areas where there are mines and where coca, the basic ingredient for cocaine, is grown. The inhabitants of the countryside, the poor and farmers, are merely in the way. They are driven off their land and become refugees. As this is being written, it is estimated that Colombia has at least three million internal refugees.
Colombia, July 2011
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On 17 December 2010 the town of Gramalote was swallowed up by the earth. Landslides caused by heavy rainfall left almost no houses standing. The whole region was ravaged by violent storms and flooding, leaving many thousands homeless.
Colombia, July 2011
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A family recently fled from the south of Colombia to Ecuador. They now live with 22 family members in a one room house. They fled by crossing the river, which marks the border between Ecuador and Colombia. Every month around 120 Colombians ask for asylum in the border area with Ecuador according to UNHCR.
Ecuador, June 2011
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Ecuador has over a million Blacks, who make up about 8% of its population. Most of them live in the coastal province of Esmeraldas. The enclaves in the Chota Valley, hidden in the mountains and ignored by the government for centuries, never even appeared on maps of the country. People have only learned of their existence in recent years, thanks to several top soccer players who have come from the region. The most famous of them is Ulises de la Cruz.
Ecuador, June 2011
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Ecuador had never been a popular destination for its neighbors from the richer Peru. That changed radically after 2000, when Ecuador introduced the dollar as its official currency. While Ecuadorians themselves were emigrating massively, tens of thousands of Peruvians were drawn to the dollar economy. Many found work in Ecuador's rice fields, receiving regular wages for their work. Their dream is to lease a piece of land of their own, where they can permanently build a new life.
Ecuador, June 2011
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Since the late 1990s Chile has been a popular destination for Peruvian guest workers. There are more jobs to be had, and anyone prepared to work hard is able to earn more in a week than they could earn in a month in Peru. The vast majority are women who in order to provide a better future for their family, leave their own home and children behind to work in the homes of someone else. Almost all the money that they earn thousands of kilometers away is sent back to Peru.
Chile, Peru, April > June 2011
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A little more than a decade ago about a dozen families from the indigenous Shipibo tribe moved to Lima from Peru's eastern Amazon region. They ended up in the city's Cantagallo district, in the middle of the capital and close along the Pan-American Highway. In this overcrowded neighborhood, their Shipibo language and customs are under serious threat.
Peru, May 2011
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Kadir continues his journey along the Pan American road. This story covers the gold mining industry in Peru. Peru is the World's fifth producer of gold and the Peruvian Amazon houses most of it. It lead to a real gold rush, where nowadays an estimated 40,000 miners are looking for luck, most of them from Cusco. Almost all mines are illegal.
Peru, May 2011
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Chapare lies in the heart of Bolivia. The region is famed for the production of coca. Traditionally the leaves were chewed, but they are also the most important ingredient in the production of cocaine. For years the Bolivian army used heavy-handed methods to try to suppress its production. But in 2006 President Evo Morales called a halt to the repression and permitted families to cultivate small fields for personal uses, such as chewing, tea and medicines.
Bolivia, May 2011
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The mines in Siglo XX, Bolivia, opened in 1900, attracting thousands of workers from all over. The government closed them in 1986 but cooperatives decided to operate the mine. Nowadays about 5000 miners work again in the mine attracted by the high tin price. The conditions are dangerous, equipment is not functioning, there is hardly light in the mine and the old shafts sometimes collapse.
Bolivia, April 2011
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The Salar de Uyuni is the largest salt lake in the world. The salt layer is at least 130 meters thick. Recently the biggest lithium reserves of the world were found in the salt layer, which could be very promising for Bolivia's future. Lithium is used in most batteries and promises a big future since cars are becoming slowly electric and use lithium batteries.
Bolivia, April 2011
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The Atacama Desert in the north of Chile is justly called the driest place on earth. Yet for centuries people from all corners of the earth have been drawn to this empty space. Attracted by the wealth hidden under the sand, such as nitrate and copper, they braved the harsh climate.
Chile, April > May 2011
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The Mapuche are the biggest group of native indigenous in Chile. Once a nation that stretched from the West to the East coast across what is now known as Chile and Argentina. Today Mapuche only make up 4% of the Chilean population. In the past years increasingly violent Mapuche activism is being prosecuted under counter-terrorism legislation originally introduced by the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. In 2010 this led to hunger strikes by Mapuche activists in an effort to change anti-terrorism laws.
Chile, March 2011
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On Tierra Del Fuego, the starting point of the Via Panam project, Kadir van Lohuizen has compared the booming town of Ushuaia, Argentina with the desolate towns of Isla Navarino and elsewhere in Tierra del Fuego, where locals and migrants try to make a living from fishing, sheep sheering and small-scale gold digging.
Argentina, Chile, March 2011
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