Joel Merino, the first photographer to document the journey of the Guadalupana Torch to New York

Joel Merino is proudly from Puebla and was the first photographer to document the journey of the Guadalupana Torch through New York, a trip he made on different occasions.

He decided to capture this journey with his lens to narrate the social phenomenon, because in an interview for pueblayork.gob.mxHe assured that he was not devoted to the Virgin of Guadalupe and even less believed in all acts of faith.

However, his concern to narrate in images everything that happened in this pilgrimage of the group of migrants from Tepeyac arose when one of his brothers, who lives in New York, told him about this trip and also told him the ugly part.

Because Afro-Americans, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans and people from various countries, including Latin America, discriminated and even sabotaged the Guadalupana Torch, they exercised so much violence against Mexicans that that is why he decided to tell about this situation in photos.

The first time he made the journey was in 1999, and since then more colleagues have joined him. Here is the full story: https://bit.ly/3q2irpc.

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