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PHOTOGRAPH BY VICTORIA RAZO
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The photographs show a Haitian migrant being apprehended, on the U.S. bank of the Rio Grande, by a Border Patrol agent, who was mounted on horseback. Ratje's image, which was widely distributed by AFP, went viral.
It is easy to see why.
Little in its stark composition detracts from the central drama. A Black man, dressed in a T-shirt and shorts, struggles to escape the grip of a white man with bridles on horseback, who towers above him, while wearing a military-style flak jacket and a cowboy hat. The horse's muscles strain to keep the animal planted amid the chaos. Fear, desperation, and anger are palpable. The issues of race, power, and inequality—flashpoints of American politics—are unmistakably present. So is the question: How should we respond to this image?
While dismay over the migrant's plight was almost universal, the more engaging responses came from people who saw beneath the photograph's surface. Many African Americans, for instance, connected the violence on the border to their country's history of racist violence. Angela Byrd, a resident of Washington, D.C., told BBC News that the photograph was "very disheartening, because of the historical connections that we—whether it be Haitians, Cubans or African Americans—have with a man, on a horse, with a whip." The NAACP made the connection between southern slave patrols and the Border Patrol visually, tweeting an early 19th century illustration of a mounted white man whipping a Black man in chains (below), labeled "Then," presented side by side with a cropped version of the border photo, labeled "Now."
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