“America, Again” is a year-long project by the photographers of VII, an exploration of some of the most important issues facing American voters as they head to the polls on November 3rd. This is Chapter 6: American Imperium which includes essays by Suzy Hansen, Anthony Loyd, and Jill Filipovic as well as photo stories by Hector Guerrero, Stefano De Luigi, Nichole Sobecki, Valentina Sinis, Leonardo Carrato, Forough Alaei, and two essays curated for this chapter from the VII archive.
Introduction essay by Suzy Hansen
In May of 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent his vice president, Richard Nixon, to visit Latin America. By then, over a decade into the Cold War, the Americans wanted to win hearts and minds in the so-called Third World. But when Nixon toured Venezuela, a crowd erupted in protest. “Get out, dog!” they cried, “We won’t forget Guatemala!” The protesters threw rocks at Nixon’s car, shattering the car windows. Eisenhower recognized that the Americans had a public relations problem. In a meeting with his national security advisers, the president observed that “capitalism, which means one thing to us … clearly meant to much of the rest of the world something synonymous with imperialism.” He suggested they come up with new phrases for the American project. Among them were “free enterprise,” the “free world,” and “freedom.”¹
If American propaganda failed to convince Venezuelans, or Iranians, or Chinese, it succeeded in shaping the collective worldview of its own citizenry. Of the many ways the United States government has insulated its citizens from responsibility for their role in the world, the use of language may be the most pernicious. It is still common, for example, to hear pundits, journalists, and politicians attribute the invasion of Iraq to “idealism,” the genuine belief that the Americans could bring the Iraqis “freedom.” Rarely in these discussions are Americans compelled to consider what that word had come to mean by 2003, or its long, deceptive history. James Baldwin once identified that white Americans and Black Americans had different “systems of reality;” a similar condition exists between Americans and the rest of the world.
Americans still not only rarely hear how the world speaks of American power, they know little of its effect on individual lives, not only from wars or invasions, but economic policies, international laws, and political whims. The photographs in this series address this gulf: Iranians separated from their loved ones because of Trump’s travel ban; migrants lured by America’s promise trapped at the border; women whose bodies are politicized by American policies; the possibility that China and the U.S. could enter a Cold War with as deleterious repercussions as the one with the Soviets. The photos not only help to understand the way American actions impact millions of lives across the globe. They remind us that the Americans and the rest of the world are connected by American power, that every U.S. election affects the world as much as Americans, that we live in a shared reality.
It is striking how many of these photos of today’s America do not echo the story Americans like to tell themselves about America: the melting pot, Ellis Island, bring me your tired. These photos often tell a story of exclusion. Today, America’s president uses words like “freedom” to mean the liberation of the American people from the humanity beyond its borders. One series of photographs here, however, remembers WWII, when Americans left their own shores to assist a foreign people against a fascist foe. Superimposed on the photos of American war veterans, and American gravestones, are the jarring, isolationist words of America’s current president. The effect is sobering, and of course, might inspire Americans to feel nostalgic for a more honorable time. But I wonder if we might also look at the composition as an act of questioning: What was in that honorable history that was a myth? What was lurking within us that led us to Donald Trump? Might the rest of the world know something about ourselves, our long history, our shared reality, that we Americans stopped being able to understand so long ago?
[1] The author would like to credit historian Alex von Tunzelmann’s wonderful book “Red Heat: Conspiracy, Murder and the Cold War in the Caribbean” (Henry Holt, 2011) for this passage.
Border Wars
Photos and essay by Hector Guerrero
Guatemala, October 19, 2018: Honduran migrants who had made their way through Central America gather at Guatemala’s northern border with Mexico despite President Donald Trump’s threat to deploy the military to stop them from entering the United States.
I Miss You, America
Photos and essay by Stefano De Luigi
Afghanistan: 1998–2012
Essay by Anthony Loyd and photos from the VII Archive
The fighter in the rocks with the gun in his hand had jail time in his memory, shrapnel scars in his gut, and said he was tired of killing, but was ready to kill some more. A mid-level Taliban commander, whose war alias was Khalid Agha, he said that he was sure of victory, and there was no compromise in his narrative of impending triumph.
“We haven’t been shedding blood all these years with the intent of sharing power with the Kabul government,” he said, tapping his PK machine gun as dust devils whirled across the Afghan plain. He laughed too, though the noise sounded more like contempt than mirth. “We fight for sharia, for the Islamic Emirate, not to make deals with democrats in the time of our victory.”
Just nine days earlier, on February 29, 2020, the Americans had signed the Doha Agreement with the Taliban to lay down the conditions for a phased U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. As these images bear witness to, made by VII photographers across more than three decades, there was no shortage of reasons to end the war.
Afghans were exhausted by four decades of conflict and deserved the peace they craved. Over 100,000 civilians had been killed or wounded in the past decade alone. Understandable too was the U.S. wish to leave its longest ever conflict, which across 19 years had cost it more than 2,400 American lives and a total investment of up to $2 trillion, for so little obvious result.
Yet the Doha Agreement seemed flawed from its inception, a charade advertised as a peace deal yet likely to precipitate further violence. Essentially, the agreement acquiesced to the Taliban’s main demands, without giving anything concrete to the Afghan government. Women’s rights? Democracy? Human rights? They had no meaningful mention in Doha.
Gifted the narrative of victory over a superpower, in the wake of this accord the Taliban’s mood was boosted from one of dogged endurance into a belligerent triumphalism. The sons of men who had fought the Russians saw the Doha Agreement as little more than a fig leaf to allow the Americans to withdraw before the Taliban recommenced their fight to seize the country, much the same as their mujahideen forebears overthrew the Afghan communist government in 1992, three years after Soviet forces had withdrawn from Afghanistan.
“We have just defeated a superpower,” smirked Khalid Agha, his men gathered around him.
March 2001: A group of armed Taliban in a jeep. Prior to every mission, Talibans receive training in one of the many different camps in the Afghan mountains. The training includes suicide attack education. © Franco Pagetti / VII.
February 15, 2001: An Afghan family seen preparing the body of an 8-year-old boy who died from the cold at the Maslakh refugee camp near Herat, Afghanistan. The boy’s uncles place the body on a white sheet as family members look on. © Alexandra Boulat / VII.
April 2, 2001: Photos and essay by Daniel Schwartz.
November 13, 2001: Northern Alliance soldiers show off Taliban prisoners-of-war on the Old Road to Kabul. © Ron Haviv / VII.
November 2001: Ghulam Ali, Parwan Province. Osama bin Laden on television before the fall of Kabul. The broadcasting of tapes claiming the survival of bin Laden emphasized the Coalition’s failure to capture him. Ironically the message was delivered via a medium, television, outlawed by the Taliban. © Seamus Murphy / VII.
November 11, 2001: The first two women to register at Kabul University since 1995. © Gary Knight / VII.
April 2003: U.S. troops taking part in Operation Valiant Guardian in the village of Loy Kariz, near Spin Boldak, Afghanistan, on the hunt for Al-Qaeda and Taliban. © Ed Kashi / VII.
April 24, 2003: (left) A U.S. trooper searches a local Afghan man for weapons during Operation Valiant Guardian. (right) A member of the U.S. Armed Forces covers the head of an Afghan fighter who is being arrested in the village of Loy Kariz, near Spin Boldak. © Ed Kashi / VII.
November 2003: (left) A makeup class organized by Pangea, an Italian NGO, in Afghanistan. (right) Students take a sculpture course at a university in Afghanistan. © Stefano De Luigi / VII.
October 2004: View of a neighborhood with heavy war damage in Kabul. © Danny Wilcox Frazier / VII.
April 6, 2005: Specialist Adam Burk, 22, from Indiana, USA, waves to new members of the Afghanistan Army as they pass a depot which contains destroyed tanks, weapons, and planes from Afghanistan’s war with the Soviets as well as the Northern Alliance war against the Taliban. The history of war and fighting has long been a part of Afghan society. © John Stanmeyer / VII.
October 9, 2006: (left) A man prays in front of the King’s tomb. The King’s tomb is located on a nearby hill overlooking Kabul. For hundreds of years, it served as a traditional burial place for Afghan royalty. Due to its strategic position, it has been one of the key places for artillery positioning. During the years of unrest and strife between different Mujahideen factions, following the fall of the Soviet-led government, it was heavily shelled and destroyed. October 12, 2006: (right) An Afghan boy sits on the edge of a swimming pool. Large swimming pools were built by Russians on one of the numerous hills overlooking Kabul. It was used as an artillery position against the Russians and during the combats between different Mujahideen factions. People come here in the afternoon to escape from the city dust and the terrible traffic. © Ziyah Gafic / VII.
July 21, 2006: A uniformed soldier guards the former presidential palace in Kabul. © Espen Rasmussen / VII.
June 2009: French soldiers from the 1st Infantry Regiment were in the Uzbin Valley for six months. They were directed to take the valley, a place where ten months ago a dozen French soldiers were killed. But while they were there, they never used their weapons; they never saw the Taliban. It was like fighting a ghost. There were attacks but they never knew where they came from… they never saw the enemy, which only intensified their fear. © Eric Bouvet / VII.
August 20, 2009: Women line up to receive their ballot cards at a polling station in central Kabul. The election resulted in victory for the incumbent Hamid Karzai, who won 49.67% of the vote, while his main rival, Abdullah Abdullah, finished second with 30.59% of the vote. © Nichole Sobecki / VII.
November 23, 2010: These images are from the series ‘Seeing in the Dark,’ shot during an embed with the medevac crew from Company C, 101st Combat Aviation Brigade at Camp Dwyer along the Helmand River Valley. I found that there was so little light on night missions that I was struggling to make pictures, and began experimenting with holding night-vision goggles up to the end of my lens. They’re strange, and otherworldly, and also the only images I shot while embedded that look the way I felt being there, and witnessing this (perhaps not) forever war. © Nichole Sobecki / VII.
No Choice
Essay by Jill Filipovic and photos by Nichole Sobecki
For hundreds of millions of women the world over, their safety, options, and opportunities hang in the balance of an election they don’t get to vote in.
The Trump administration has transformed America’s handling of international women’s rights, and its treatment of women themselves. For women fleeing extreme violence — a common “push” factor for women leaving Central America, where women are often the victims of domestic abuse, rape, and murder, and where police do little and sometimes participate — Trump’s America is not a safe haven. The administration’s cruel family separation policy ripped children from their parents, leaving some children and their mothers alike vulnerable to abuse behind bars. The president’s attorney general, William Barr, tried to remove domestic violence as grounds for asylum; Trump’s proposed new rules for asylum-seekers would end gender-based asylum claims, allow judges to refuse grants of asylum without a hearing, and make an already complicated system even more Byzantine.
One of the first things Trump did in office was reinstate, and then radically expand, what opponents call the Global Gag Rule. Under the rule, U.S. funds are cut from any organization abroad that provides abortions with its own non-U.S. money, refers women for safe abortion services, or advocates for safe, legal abortion. It doesn’t apply to U.S.-based institutions, because in America, it violates First Amendment free speech protections. Groups that provided family planning tools, HIV treatment, prenatal care, even malaria treatment and aid to orphans lost U.S. funding for engaging in work that is legal in their own countries, and would be legal in the United States. We don’t have hard numbers yet, but the Trump cuts have likely translated into millions of women losing access to contraception, which means that millions of them became pregnant when they didn’t want to be. Many have had children they can’t afford to feed. Many have had abortions, some safe and many not. Some have died.
While U.S. funds were being pulled from basic development work in some of the world’s most fragile places, the Trump administration was also undermining the ability of the international community to even discuss women’s health: After a UN Security Council meeting in 2019, the U.S. Ambassador to the UN announced that the U.S. would not accept the use of the term “sexual and reproductive health.” While abortion has long been controversial among UN member states, the objection to sexual and reproductive health — a widely-recognized need, not to mention a thing that simply exists — was a stunning and Orwellian change. The U.S. delegation to the UN has objected to basic women’s and LGBT rights at nearly every turn, often siding with some of the world’s worst human rights abusers to fight any advocacy for women and sexual minorities. One State Department report on global human rights took out all references to reproductive health and rights, and even removed statistics on maternal mortality.
American politics reach so wide they circle the globe. When U.S. voters cast our ballots on Nov. 3, it’s not just America’s future we’re voting for — we’re shaping the destinies of women we’ll never meet, whose bodies are politicized and whose rights are so often up for debate, and who have so much more to lose than an election.
Riohacha, Colombia, September 25, 2018: Silvana Hinestroza Mendoza, 43, holds her grandson as they nap in their home in Colombia. It’s been seven years since Silvana Hinestroza Mendoza first spoke publicly about being raped by members of a guerrilla group who kidnapped and tortured her when she was a young woman. More than 15,000 Colombian women and girls were raped or otherwise sexually abused during the country’s civil war; many remain too terrified or ashamed to tell anyone. Finally speaking the truth about what happened, Silvana said she feels good, even powerful — like a layer of shame peeled back with each telling. But each telling also means exposing painful scars, literal and metaphorical.
Cox’s Bazaar, Bangladesh: (left) Miscarriages can be induced by inserting the roots of a local tree vaginally and securing with a piece of string. Honduras and Nicaragua: (right) The leaf of the hyptis verticillata plant is used to induce abortion in Central America.
Made in China
Photos and essay by Valentina Sinis
With China’s efforts to become the world’s economic superpower, the U.S.-China battle has been underway for years. Four years ago, Donald Trump came to power as a deal maker. He even claimed that trade wars are good and that he is the master of winning them. But in reality, he hasn’t won this battle; instead, the tension between the two superpowers is at its highest in years.
I’ve lived in China for the past 15 years. I watched the country and its youth move closer and closer to the West. For nearly half of that time, President Xi Jinping has talked about a Chinese Dream of global dominance, a return to the grandeur of past dynasties that inspires many Chinese. But from what I saw and experienced among Chinese millennials — particularly among the artists’ circles I was part of — the American Dream holds far more influence on young people than past and future visions of Chinese greatness.
As China and the U.S. move toward a new Cold War, I worry about them. I fear that Chinese millennials are trapped between two worlds — and that any wrong move could destroy their fragile dreams.
Chengdu, China, May 2017: A Chinese girl attends The Strawberry Music Festival, one of the country’s biggest outdoor music festivals in Chengdu. The Chinese government deploys a few hundred police forces to be present at this event. While the young audiences enjoy the event, they are aware of the officers around the site. China’s government believes that any imported cultural product should not disrupt Chinese social/political order and threaten the unity of the state.
Hong Kong, October 2, 2017: Lily and Karl in their living room in Hong Kong. They own a small tattoo studio and express their inner feelings through their line of tattoos. Despite their passive role in politics, they consider themselves Hongkongers and being seen as Chinese is out of question. The future for many young Hongkongers like Lily and Karl is dependent upon the ongoing trade war between Beijing and Western states such as the UK and the United States. They may be the ones who will pay the price for these political/economic battles.
Here Without You
Photos and essay by Forough Alaei
“My hopes for a new fantasy life, suddenly became a nightmare,” my friend said, while her eyes filled with tears. Maryam had married her classmate, an American citizen, and she planned to go with him to the U.S. after their wedding in Tehran. But the newlyweds’ plans ran smack into the travel ban imposed by Donald Trump as one of his first acts after taking office in 2017.
After hearing Maryam’s story, I began to look for the stories of other Iranians whose lives had become entangled with the political views of the new president of the United States. There are literally thousands of people in my country whose visa applications have been refused since the ban was imposed. Many are seeking waivers, a procedure which may take years, while they are separated from their loved ones.
They are families, ordinary citizens, whose lives have been turned upside down by Trump’s foreign policy. They include the baby girl who has been in the U.S. for medical treatment while her father still waits for a visa; the mother who sleeps on her son’s bed, just to remember his scent — something she has done since 2015, when he went to Boston to study mechanical engineering; the family of four who can only gather via Skype. There are so many more.
Note: The families included here were photographed and interviewed between 2018 and 2019; some of them have been granted U.S. visas recently. Names have been changed at their request.
Behzad’s son Parsa stayed in Iran for the summer with his father. Behzad had not been living with his family for nearly five years. His wife and son immigrated to the U.S. a few years ago, while he had been waiting for a visa. “I cannot plan for my future, my son doesn’t talk to me and he even denies looking at me,” Behzad said.
To Break the Ties
Photos and essay by Leonardo Carrato
Things were going well in Macaé. A small Brazilian city along the Atlantic Ocean, oil was discovered here in 1974, bringing with it rapid economic development and urbanization — and the national oil company Petrobras, which made its headquarters here. Over the next 30 years, Macaé became Brazil’s national oil capital, and while development was messy and unequal, the gleam of prosperity didn’t dim.
Then, in 2014, Macaé came face to face with a two-headed monster: the plummeting of global oil prices, and Operation Car Wash. The embezzlement investigation into Petrobras spanned the country, but its epicenter was Macaé, reducing the city to survival mode. The investigation rocked Brazil’s political and business establishment, leading to the imprisonment of former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva — a move that barred him from reelection and paved the way for a win for far-right Jair Bolsonaro. A feeling of decay and abandonment took over Macaé.
The operation was hardly a Brazilian-only affair though. A trove of leaked documents — co-analyzed by The Intercept and the Brazilian investigative news outlet Agência Pública — reveal that Operation Car Wash was a secretive collaboration between the Brazilians and the U.S. Department of Justice that may have violated international legal treaties and Brazilian law. The documents also reveal clear misconduct and political bias by the judge and prosecutors who handled the case against Lula, and critics have argued that the U.S. had undue influence here.
For many Brazilians, it’s yet another dark reminder of the U.S.’s history of intervention in Latin American politics, particularly in light of the close relationship between Bolsonaro and Trump. For those left in Macaé, all that remains is a grim reality, and the last, fading vestige of hope.
(Left) At the window of his house, Edmilson reveals how he is coping with the serious crisis faced by the city of Macaé. In the 2000s, he left everything and came to Macaé in search of a better life. A former butcher, he was seduced away by the promise of prosperity and a good life. After the fall of the oil market and cases of corruption involving local companies, Edmilson lost his job and now survives through the help of close friends. He reports that he has already gone through serious psychological problems and today considers returning to his city and reuniting with his family. (Right) In the main square, Marciolínio awaits the arrival of other colleagues for their daily meeting. He says that he comes to the square every day in search of work. This is the meeting point for a group of tankers who are unemployed and hoping for a place in the job market. Marciolínio, also known as Mestre, is another case of those who left everything behind and came to Macaé to pursue the promise of prosperity in the former national oil capital.
The Mighty Dollar
Essay by Nichole Sobecki and photos from the VII Archive
The 1950s in America was a decade of suburbia and segregation, the Chevrolet and Mad Men advertising — and the rise of the U.S. dollar as the world’s dominant currency. That America’s role as the sole financial superpower has endured for the past 70 years is remarkable, especially considering that the U.S. economy declined from nearly 40 percent of world GDP in 1960 to just 25 percent today. It’s also given America astonishing, and at times terrifying, power over other countries’ destinies. The images here, made by VII photographers, illuminate the implications of this often misused influence from the symbolic (and waist-expanding) association of fast food with success, the ubiquitous presence of Hollywood and Bieber, the way our national pastime of baseball has championed the values of the American dream abroad, and the high cost to Africa of well-intentioned used clothing donations. And still, the dollar endures. When the COVID-19 crisis hit, there was a record-breaking rush to get dollars, and the U.S. Federal Reserve has been sending billions to banks the world over in a process known as “swap lines” that help stabilize the global economy, and boost America’s financial hegemony. But the images also point to ways in which the dollar’s status will be tested by the rise of China, and President Donald Trump’s heedless use of financial warfare. Abroad, U.S. rivals and allies alike are looking for ways to liberate themselves from the mighty greenback. What would that world be like, and how would it change Americans’ place in it?
At the Bunker Bar, just outside of the massive Turkish Incirlik Airbase near Adana, Turkey, a local Turkish man shows off his money. The “alley” is a strip filled with bars, restaurants, and trinket shops to attract U.S. military personnel. This airbase hosts as many as 5,000 U.S. forces and military equipment including nuclear warheads. October 2002. © Ed Kashi / VII
Accra, Ghana, July 2017: (clockwise from top left) Men sell sunglasses on the Oxford Street shopping strip outside the Osu branch of KFC. Since 2015, the fast-food giant has opened multiple restaurants in the city and beyond to meet Ghana’s rising demand for Western-style fast food. People outside a new KFC outlet in Accra. A woman sells doughnuts outside a KFC outlet in Dansoman, Ghana. The outlet serves 7,000 people a week, including 4,200 through their drive-through. Men load freshly imported soap outside a KFC outlet in the Tema Harbour area, outside of Accra. © Ashley Gilbertson / VII.
(left) Hollywood, California, February 2004: A Japanese TV presenter reverentially holds an Oscar to the camera on the red carpet during the final preparations for the ceremony on the morning before the Oscar’s main event. © Jocelyn Bain Hogg / VII. (right) Hollywood, California, February 29, 2004. Donald Trump and Melania arrive at the post-Oscar InStyle magazine party. © Jocelyn Bain Hogg / VII.
Hollywood, Florida, August 29, 2019: At the Midtown Manor Assisted Living Facility, 30 employees care for 100 residents of all ages and for all reasons. Caregiver Sherly Aguilar makes beds and visits with some of her favorite residents. She has worked there for seven years and is from Nicaragua, a legal immigrant who studied care-giving after arriving in the U.S. She feels you cannot do this job without heart. Miami, Florida, March 7, 2012: (right) Actress Adriana Fonseca studies her lines as the director and floor manager check for the next scene of Telemundo’s new telenovela CORAZON VALIENTE filmed at the posh Coltorti Boutique. As Hispanic audiences in the U.S. continue to grow, more and more telenovelas are being made in Miami, making it the new Latin Hollywood or Hispanic Tinseltown. © Maggie Steber / VII.
Northern Iraq, 1991: An American soldier offers a young Kurdish girl a Barbie doll. Without the Allied presence in Iraq, Kurdish autonomy would have been crushed by Saddam Hussein’s military. © Ed Kashi / VII.
Contributors
Introduction by SUZY HANSEN, a journalist based in Istanbul and New York. Her first book Notes on a Foreign Country was a Finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction, and the winner of the Overseas Press Club’s Cornelius Ryan Award for Best Nonfiction Book on International Affairs.
Essay by ANTHONY LOYD, English journalist and noted war correspondent. He began reporting for The Times during the Bosnian War in 1993 and since then he has reported from a series of major conflict zones, including those in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya.
Essay by JILL FILIPOVIC, a Brooklyn-based journalist and author of OK Boomer, Let’s Talk: How My Generation Got Left Behind and The H-Spot: The Feminist Pursuit of Happiness. She is also a weekly columnist for CNN and a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times.
Photo editing by SARAH LEEN, former Director of Photography National Geographic Partners and founder of the Visual Thinking Collective for independent women editors, teachers, and curators.
“AMERICA, AGAIN” | CHAPTER 1: IOWA
“AMERICA, AGAIN” | CHAPTER 2: THE ENVIRONMENT
“AMERICA, AGAIN” | CHAPTER 3: AMERICAN DREAMS
“AMERICA, AGAIN” | CHAPTER 4: INTERRUPTED
”AMERICA, AGAIN” | CHAPTER 5: AMERICAN MYTHS
”AMERICA, AGAIN” | CHAPTER 6: AMERICAN IMPERIUM
”AMERICA, AGAIN” | CHAPTER 7: AMERICAN HOPE, AMERICAN FEARS