By Susana Vera

Luismi Astorga clasps his hands as he lifts his head up to the sky. He’s waiting to take the stage at a music club in Madrid where his dance group, Fusionarte, is taking part in a charity gala.

Astorga closes his eyes and begins to pray. The click of my camera breaks his concentration and he smiles at me as he proceeds to tell me, “Waiting makes me nervous.”

It’s not the first time Astorga has faced the thrill of performing for a live audience. He has been dancing with Fusionarte since Argentine choreographer and dancer Pau Vazquez formed the group six years ago with the aim of introducing dance to people with special needs.

Around 20 adult men and women with different intellectual disabilities make up the group. They rehearse every Saturday for an hour and occasionally they perform.

“The galas are the highlight for all of them. Many times we perform at places that are not really fit for dancing, but (that) does not matter to them. They feel special on any stage,” Vazquez says.

This show was one of the many Astorga has participated in, but experience never fully beats his anxiety. The waiting room next to the stage was packed with other members of the group as well as other performers in the gala. A man dressed as the Genie from Aladdin walked past us and sat nearby. “You have to ask for a wish,” Astorga told me. “Mine is to become a professional dancer to dance with famous people,” he added.

As I was thinking of my own wish, the squeaking sound of a door opening emanated from the speakers and Jaime Saez, Jose Maria Matamoros and Pablo Ruiz Larrea jumped on the stage. It was “Thriller” time.

Despite some coordination problems, the trio won the audience’s hearts. The smiles they wore throughout the whole performance made up for any mistakes. Michael Jackson would have approved.

Having a good time and showing people what they are capable of doing was the group’s goal – they were not really after perfection. Vazquez is the driving force behind Fusionarte. She put it together to provide its members with an option for leisure and art that they are frequently denied in mainstream society.

Three other instructors help her in this endeavor. They all have learned to cater to the needs of each individual and make do with little, since they get no subsidies. They rent a dance studio weekly for seven euros an hour and pay for the clothes or props when they perform at galas like this one.

Whitney Houston, flamenco, rap, and salsa followed before the group’s grand finale: the Little Mermaid’s “Under the Sea” song. The Fusionarte dancers held their noses as if they were underwater and moved their legs and arms like mermaids. The stage was so small that they could barely fit, let alone dance. But the lack of space did not seem to bother them. They gave it all they had.

The sight of the dancers feeling so empowered on the stage made me think of my own 65-year-old uncle, Toni, who also has an intellectual disability. I wonder how different his life might have been had he been exposed to experiences like Fusionarte early on. Would he have been better prepared to articulate feelings and emotions? Probably. Would he have dreamed of being a professional dancer like Astorga? Who knows. But I bet he would have gotten a kick out of wearing a fedora hat like Michael Jackson’s. He loves to dress smart.

With the sound of the last note, all the dancers held hands and bowed their heads. Luismi Astorga took the microphone from the hands of a teary-eyed Lorena Torres, one of the instructors, and started a long list of thank-yous with a special one for Pau Vazquez, who had checked into a hospital that afternoon to give birth to her first child.

When the speech was over, the dancers left the stage accompanied by the cheers of their devoted audience. “How did we do?” Astorga asked me. “You rocked,” I replied. And he gave me a heartfelt hug.

No one felt more special that afternoon than me.

By Brian Snyder

Almost universally, when I told friends or family that I was going to cover the 67th annual Eastern Athletic Association for the Blind track and field tournament hosted at the Perkins School for the Blind, they asked some variation of “how?” Not that it couldn’t be done, but how exactly?

I had no doubt that it could be done, having covered other assignments at the Perkins School. What I found at the track meet though was a mixture of ingenuity, common sense, and some traits common to any student-athlete. Events ranged from sprints to distance races to field events such as shot put or softball throw.

Some of the student athletes were not completely blind, and could navigate a black track with bright white lane markers.

While the athletes who were completely blind had guide runners running with them for the distance races.

Often these guide runners were coaches, but in some cases they were fellow teammates and classmates who had a little more vision.

For the sprints, they held onto handles on cables that guided them down the track.

Personal bests, a marker and motivator for runners and athletes regardless of ability, were a big part of the track meet. These personal bests could be a time or distance…

…or just finishing – in the case of Hannah, who competed in the 50 and 75 yard dashes but who otherwise spends most of her life in a wheelchair.

There were kids from six different schools for the blind and visually impaired who wanted to win and loved competing.

But who also cheered on athletes from other schools.

By Toru Hanai

Chubu Electric Power Co.’s Hamaoka Nuclear Power Station in Japan is located at water level next to a beach. It is also widely reported to be one of the world’s most dangerous nuclear plants as it sits close to a major fault line – not unlike the one that caused the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

I had an offer of an exclusive tour of Chubu Nuclear Power Station where an 18-meter (60 ft) high and 1.6 km (1 mile) long tsunami defense wall has been built at a cost of $1.3 billion.

Being located beachside I immediately thought of basing the main photo for this trip on this famous “ukiyoe” print by the artist Hokusai:

-The Great Wave off Kanagawa-

Hokusai (1760-1849) was a ukiyoe painter and printmaker during the Edo period. I guess that many people have seen this ukiyoe print.

I left Tokyo early with waders for fishing and a compact digital camera in a waterproof housing to get the photo I wanted. I was in time for the high tide.

I entered the sea with my compact camera protected by its housing and my most favorite camera, a Canon 5D Mk3. The waves moved much more quickly than they appeared to from land. It was so strong it was hard to stand, much less take a photograph.

Wonderful white waves crashed only a little in front of me, and I moved towards them for the picture regardless of the danger to my equipment.

The white spray lasted for only an instant. I had to decide whether to aim for “a good photograph” with my waterproof compact camera which is less responsive, or chose the more responsive camera and risk drowning it?

I chose to use my 5D Mk3.

Photographers get absorbed in their work when a good subject is in front of them.

A good wave came.

It crashed into a pillar standing in the sea and splashed high enough to hang over the building of the No. 5 reactor. The wave crashed on me, too.

I got wet through – fortunately it was only me. The camera was safe.

By Marcos Brindicci

Former Argentine dictator Jorge Rafael Videla died on May 17 at the age of 87 inside his cell in a prison near Buenos Aires, where he was serving a life sentence for crimes against humanity. He was the first President and most emblematic figure of the military junta that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983, during the so-called “Dirty War” years. Human rights organizations claim that around 30,000 people disappeared during those years, and Videla never repented about the kidnappings and murders ordered by the state.

His death of old age got me thinking about one of my first memories of him, and also, one of my last ones.

When I was about five years old my mother took me to Iguazu Falls for a winter vacation and we ended up staying at the same hotel where Videla, as president, was staying. I was running all around the hotel and, at one point, I was stopped by members of his guard and led back downstairs. My mother later told me what was going on and that Videla was the guy I had seen on TV. It is a candid memory of someone I learned to loathe for what he had done and what he represented, as most Argentines do.

That former army commander was sentenced to life in prison in 1985 for human rights abuses under his rule, but was pardoned in 1990 by then-President Carlos Menem. Some years later, when I became a photojournalist and more Dirty War cases were opened in Argentina, I got a few chances to take pictures of him, usually through the window of a car as he arrived at a courthouse or from a distance as he was led out of it.

But one time, in 2010, when I was in Cordoba covering the Volleyball World League finals, I was also assigned to cover a hearing there of one of his trials inside the courthouse. The ideal situation for a photographer is not to be noticed at all but, even when I know this is not very ethical, this time I admit that I wanted him to see me. It is well known that he and most of the so-called “repressors” on trial don’t like being photographed in that situation.

I had my 400mm lens for the volleyball matches and decided to take it to the court, even though I expected to be as close as a few feet from him. It was nothing compared to what my colleagues had the opportunity to shoot during the dictatorship – society’s repudiation of him and his fate in the hands of Justice. But just noticing that he was bothered by my presence and my weapon (my camera and massive 400mm lens), and getting the close-up shots I wanted, felt like a small victory in front of a man who made life and death decisions over an entire country.

Lahore, Pakistan

By Damir Sagolj

A man wearing traditional white Pakistani clothes disappeared from the window back into the burning building. A minute later, a different man wearing black emerged from inside but it looked like someone was holding his lifeless body. The body was slowly pushed over the edge of the window and then released. Twenty seconds later the man in white came out again. He sat calmly for a few seconds in the open window with his back turned outwards and then just fell.

GALLERY: MEN FALL FROM BUILDING INFERNO

And that was it; both men were dead in less than a minute. After several long hours of fighting a raging fire (or were they short hours? Time gets twisted in extreme situations like this), this part of the story ended in the way I had feared from the beginning – the worst possible way. I shot pictures of people falling from the building to their deaths, of others crying on the ground, of desperate and helpless rescue workers.

It was supposed to be an easy pre-election day in Lahore. We did expect some heat as the campaign of the two main candidates was coming to an end but what happened that Thursday still haunts me without any signs of easing. What started as an easy day for me and poor government workers in their modern office building in Punjab’s capital ended with more deaths than in election violence across the country over the next few days.

Earlier in the day, just after arriving in Lahore I received a short text message saying that a fire had broke out on the seventh floor of a government building and that there could be some people trapped inside. I was on my way to the hospital where Imran Khan, the former Pakistani cricket player and rising star in politics, was recovering from an injury. He was big in the news and there was a possibility for journalists to see him but a building on fire, with people trapped inside, is always the priority. I put Imran aside for a while and headed toward the LDA Plaza.

As expected, the scene around the building was as chaotic and mad as in your darkest nightmares. The “do not cross” yellow line served only to make our pictures more dramatic. Hundreds of onlookers around the building stood in the way of already confused rescue teams showing no signs of fear or respect for the situation. Later, the rumor spread that the building had cracked and it may collapse – nobody either cared nor moved back an inch.

Inside the building, the situation was much worse. Above the seventh floor where the fire originally broke out, there were scores of people trapped. Obviously, they couldn’t make their way out of the building and had to be evacuated. It was not such a high building – only nine floors – and was accessible from three sides so one would think there must have be a way for all of the government employees to be rescued.

Unfortunately, that’s not what we witnessed over the next several dramatic hours.

Those who made it to the roof – some of them climbing ropes and cables up the facade of the building – were saved by helicopters. The aircraft hovered low above the burning building making the fire go wilder and launching a dangerous storm of debris that flew into people’s eyes and our cameras. But, for the people on the roof that was a salvation – one by one they were taken to safety. I could read the relief in their body language, no matter how small they looked through my lens as the helicopters flew away.

For others who were not lucky enough to make it to the roof, what seemed like a manageable fire soon turned into an inferno. At some point, more based on what I saw around me on the ground, I realized there was a minimal chance for these poor people to be saved. I’m not an expert in rescue procedures but this operation didn’t look very promising from the very beginning.

I focused my mind and cameras on two men, both sitting on the windows of the seventh floor, their legs hanging outside and faces wrapped in scarves to block the heat and the black smoke – one on the east and the other one on the south side of the building. For hours they both frantically gestured towards firefighters who could not do much except spray the building and cool victims with water from afar. Time was running out and the gestures of people trapped became weaker and weaker.

I quietly told a friend of mine, another journalist at the scene, afraid to hear it myself “they will jump”. He just closed his eyes; we both knew it will happen.

What happened later I had to carefully reconstruct – frame by frame in my head and pixel by pixel in my pictures. The final image was mind-blowing and very disturbing. But, it’s not really important what I say here – did they really jump to their deaths or just fall? For two men from the south side of the building the raging and approaching fire was too much – they could not stand the heat and smoke anymore. The man from the east side was still hanging onto the window for a long time but his movements were weaker and weaker. At some point he stopped showing signs of life.

In total, 25 people died in the terrible accidental fire at LDA Plaza in central Lahore on that day, local media reported later. The elections that brought me to Pakistan were relatively quiet and Imran Khan was still in the hospital.

By Siegfried Modola

To descend into the Danakil Depression is to step into another world.

The thick warm air, the hazy sky and the rugged empty mountains that gradually give way to the immensity of a white, shimmering salt desert all leave the traveller in awe of this cruel yet fascinating landscape. Overlapping the Afar region of northeastern Ethiopia, Eritrea and Djibouti, this is the lowest point in Africa and one of the hottest places on Earth.

Venturing deep into this inhospitable land requires a well organized plan. Getting stuck with no back-up vehicle, no satellite communication or simply not enough water could become life threatening within a matter of hours.

I started my trip from the city of Mekele in the northern Tigray region of Ethiopia. I had not come to explore the area as a tourist. Instead, I was there to document the caravans of thousands of camels which for centuries have descended deep into the depression to extract salt. Mekele was the place where I had to find a good 4×4 vehicle, a driver and enough water and food to be on the road for six days. Most importantly, I had to find a reliable fixer, someone who knew the region well and spoke the local language but who also had to be familiar with the salt trade and could maneuver well within complex Afar clan dynamics.

I had briefly met Mohammed on a previous trip some years back, and we stayed in touch ever since. His company for this assignment proved to be invaluable as he translated interviews, and negotiated with government officials and clan elders. After a four-hour ride from Mekele, we arrived in the small but fast expanding desert town of Berahile in the Afar territory in the afternoon. This is where the camel caravans drop their loads of salt after marching for days across the depression.

From Berahile, trucks collect the mineral and transport it to the city of Mekele from where it is distributed to the rest of the country.

On the way, I was astonished at how far the construction of a new paved road had come along. Just a few years back in 2010, most of the journey to Berahile was on a rough steep route, but now I traveled on freshly laid tarmac for half the way. I couldn’t help thinking about how this new road would affect the region. Surely it will bring some much needed development, helping with the transit of goods, businesses and infrastructure. But what about the thousands of Muslim Afar and Christian Tigrayans from the highlands who depend on the old ways of the salt trade? Would trucks one day replace camels, mules and donkeys and be part of a new, more efficient way of transporting salt from the desert to the highland?

As thoughts became questions, Mohammed explained that he believed this would never happen. All aspects of society in this region come down to clan politics; everything is decided by clan leaders and the local administration. For this reason, Mohammed believed that the community would never allow the caravan trade to disappear, as that would affect the thousands of people who depend on it. After meeting and introducing myself to the clan elders and administrators in the town, it was decided that I would depart by foot with the caravans the next morning.

For protection against possible bandit attacks and for assistance on the way, I was introduced to Hussein, my guide for the next few days and to Mussa, an armed police reservist who in his younger days was a rebel fighter with the Afar Liberation Front. We walked with countless caravans of camels through the day across vast dried valleys and canyons. Hussein explained the vital importance of the river that we followed through the afternoon, saying it was the lifeline of the region. Once you leave it and head into the salt plains, drinking water is impossible to find.

That evening we made camp in the company of a caravan by the banks of the river. We shared coffee and a quick dinner of pitta bread and noodles, then were quickly carried off to sleep by our exhaustion. At 6a.m. we were back on the road, taking advantage of the cool temperatures to cover as much distance as possible. Luckily for us, a car was waiting at the end of the valley for the last 20 kilometers (12 miles) of rocky, flat terrain before reaching the great salt plains of the depression.

I felt that having been on the road with the caravans for a day and a half was enough to be able to understand the difficulties of the journey that the salt merchants faced on a daily basis. We reached Hamad-Ile in the afternoon, a small village on the edge of the desert, which is the last outpost for water and food before proceeding east into the depression. This was going to be a comfortable base to spend the night compared to the rocky terrain where we had woken up the previous morning.

At dusk the next day, we witnessed a spectacular scene of thousands of camels, mules, donkeys, herders, salt merchants, salt shapers and extractors venturing together into the vast, endless plains. They were all trying to reach a suitable spot where the salt was compact enough to be extracted. It was a march of several hours deep in the desert. The sooner they reached the spot, the more time they had to extract as many slabs of salt as possible, load them onto their animals and start the two days’ journey back to the town of Berahile.

The landscape here was incredibly different from when I had started my trip a couple of days back. It was a shimmering white expanse, with water mirages on the horizon playing tricks with your mind. The white hazy sky melted with the whiteness of the desert, giving a surreal feeling that sky and earth had touched and become one reality, indistinguishable from one another. Amid this feeling of spectacular emptiness, the salt caravans moved in a slow but constant procession, cutting across the whiteness of the cracked desert.

It was hard to imagine that they would stop somewhere in the desolate plains and work through the day in temperatures sometimes exceeding 50 degrees centigrade (122 degrees Fahrenheit).

The price: thousands of slabs of salt to sell and to transport to the four corners of the country in a matter of days. This is the “white gold” of Ethiopia, as it used to be called when salt was used as a form of currency throughout the region.

By Petar Kujundzic

I took a trip to the port city of Tianjin after China Central Television (CCTV) reported on a sheep with an artificial heart developed at TEDA International Cardiovascular Hospital. According to CCTV, the hospital recently unveiled a new artificial heart, which was implanted in a sheep two months ago. The sheep lived healthily for more than 62 days, a new record among similar experiments in the country.

This sounded like a very good reason to leave Beijing for a day and report about such an extraordinary achievement. Upon arrival we met the hospital’s administration director who told us that this was not really an artificial heart but a ventricular assistant device (VAD), which is basically a mechanical pump that’s used to support the heart’s function and blood flow in people who have weakened hearts. He didn’t know why CCTV had reported differently.

After being disappointed for a couple of minutes we decided not to go back empty-handed, so they took us to a low-rise building next to the hospital where the star of the experiment was located, a ram nicknamed Tianjiu (Everlasting). The three-year-old ram carried a VAD, which was designed by the hospital to enhance cardiac pumping by using magnetic suspension technologies from state-of-the-art aerospace science.

It smelled like a zoo, and we had to put on scrubs (they weren’t my size but I had to follow the rules). Inside a room two rams stood in their enclosures. Tianjiu was connected to a laptop-looking gadget that monitored his heart rate. The other ram was just there to keep him company. Apparently, Tianjiu was sad about being alone so they brought him a companion.

Tianjiu was calm, reasonable and well aware of the environment, looking into the camera while his mate wanted to eat parts of my clothes and have a quick horn fight. In the meantime more journalists arrived so it became a bit overcrowded and difficult to work. Luckily, Liu Xiaocheng, the leader of the project and president of the Tianjin TEDA International Cardiovascular Hospital, decided to take Tianjiu out for a walk. In order to leave the room Tianjiu wore a multi-pocketed vest filled with cables and gadgets to help his VAD pump the blood through his body.

Outside his enclosure Tianjiu was pretty lively. Passersbys couldn’t believe their eyes: a doctor being dragged by a ram wearing a strange vest while journalists ran around trying to take pictures and video. We ended up on some grass outside the hospital where Tianjiu was left alone for a while.

He ate some grass and leaves and was posing for pictures even more – definitely enjoying the freedom. I said goodbye to Dr Liu and left the place thinking about the fact that the ram was the 18th experimental and only successful subject who has lived long enough to prove that the device that takes blood from a lower chamber of his heart and helps pump it to the body and vital organs, works just as a healthy heart would.

Good luck, Everlasting.

By Jason Reed

Any news photographer that has been in the business for a decent length of time may say to you that he or she has “seen it all and done it all” or that “there is nothing new that hasn’t been shot already.” Until this week, you could also paint me with that same brush.

But for a moment in time on May 14, 2013, I was a wide-eyed kid again, thankful that my job as a photographer afforded me access to witness a world-first. The U.S. Navy made aviation history by catapulting an unmanned jet off an aircraft carrier for the first time, testing a long-range, stealthy, bat-winged plane that represents a jump forward in drone technology.

Gathering at sunrise in Norfolk, a handful of press ranging from military industry reporters to network TV crews received a safety briefing that detailed, among other things, how to exit our crashed helicopter in the event of a water landing (a little unnerving) to wearing double ear protection, helmets and goggles at all times during our 45 minute flight out onto the deck of the U.S.S. George H. W. Bush, a nuclear-powered Nimitz-class supercarrier in the Atlantic Ocean. Upon first sight, that 103,600 ton ship was just a small dot on the horizon, the full reality of its might only realized when we touched down on the deck over three football fields in length.

That experience alone was worth the 5am alarm, but the real reason was sitting there right on the deck — the X-47B, an object so obscure and futuristic, you’d think you just stepped onto the film set of Battlestar Galactica. The folded wings brought flashbacks of a seven-year old seeing that first Star Wars movie when Luke Skywalker’s X-wing fighter attacked the Death Star. This bat-winged, tailless unmanned combat aerial vehicle, developed by the military hardware supplier Northrop Grumman is designed to take off and land on aircraft carriers.

The future of pilot-less aviation really struck home when we were able to photograph up-close the two “pilots” in charge of launching the drone off the deck. In-flight suits and face masks, they appeared as if they were ready to hit the skies themselves. But this is one aircraft without pilot seats, no canopy and no joystick. Strapped to the pilot’s right arms were remote controllers that relied on hand gestures to maneuver the drone into the steam-powered catapult, the same sling shot that still launches F/A-18 Hornet fighter jets and previous to those, the F-14A Tomcats made famous from the Tom Cruise movie “Top Gun.”

With its incredibly loud jet engine screaming through two layers of ear protection, the catapult officer, wearing a yellow vest with the word “Shooter” on his back, began an elaborate dance of hand signals to a pilot who, for the first time, was not watching from a cockpit but was standing alongside him. In the controlled chaos of an aircraft carrier launch, at this point it’s a matter of holding steady and trusting that the camera panning technique you’d honed in the past, shooting formula 1 motor racing and other sports, didn’t let you down. There are no do-overs when you’re shooting at a 1/60th of a second to capture the motion blur of the drone as it is launched from the ship out at sea. That point-of-no-return moment came when the drone was launched down the deck, going from zero to 165 miles per hour in about 2 seconds, (zero to 266km/h). It gave me goose bumps as I am sure it did the Northrop Grumman VIPs who were there to witness their multi-million dollar baby’s launch over the cold Atlantic Ocean.

After circling our carrier a couple of times, the X-47B disappeared into the skies and landed at an air field on the U.S. mainland shortly after.

As humans we can’t help but marvel at giant strides in technology. The invention of the wheel, the steam engine and the jet engine were all giant, revolutionary strides in the human endeavor but I have one last thought after witnessing this historic event – we are probably less than a generation away from never needing to train another Navy jet fighter pilot. I wonder if this new generation of flying robots will adopt cool names like “Maverick”, “Goose” and “Ice Man”.

X-47B just doesn’t roll off the tongue as well.

By Eric Thayer

I’m running through the desert outside a tiny town called Encino with a Texas Department of Public Safety helicopter flying above me. As I move through trees and bushes, the sand is soft and every step is an effort. It feels like I am running on the spot as I hold my cameras close so they don’t swing into my sides. Border Patrol agents are all around me and the only noises are the helicopter above, my own labored breathing and the sound of footsteps in the sand.

GALLERY: SCENES FROM THE BORDER

In south Texas, the Rio Grande River separates the U.S. from Mexico. It is a brown river that varies between 50 to 100 yards across. On the surface, the water looks calm as it meanders through the brush, but it hides swirling currents – just one of the many hazards faced by those who cross. The line between the two countries is imaginary here, but if you could see it as it appears on a map, it would be right in the middle of the river.

At this moment, the border is about 60 miles south. I’m with the U.S. Border Patrol after a report from a local rancher of a group of people crossing over his land. If they make it across the river, through the brush and past the Border Patrol there are vehicles that will take them north. From this part of Texas, there is basically just one checkpoint left, called Falfurrias. If they are able to bypass that, they can move up into other parts of the state and to the rest of the country.

Ahead of me, a Border Patrol agent chases four men and I dash to keep up. They are running from a country, from a war and towards a better life. They are running for freedom. But sometimes it’s not that simple. That’s the thing about it down here – nothing is simple about this.

The border has always fascinated me. It’s a line on a map, but when you’re down by it sometimes you can’t even tell it’s there. Other times it’s glaringly obvious, marked out by fences, walls, checkpoints and security cameras.

People who decide to make this journey face a myriad of hazards on their way. Many never make it, and the numbers of those who don’t have been rising. In Brooks County, for example, sheriff’s deputies found 129 bodies in 2012, around twice the number tallied in 2011 and six times the amount recorded in 2010.

At the Casa del Migrante in Reynosa, a border city plagued by drug violence, people’s faces show fear and apprehension, but also a quiet determination to cross or, in some cases, to return.

There are stories of people being deported, their families still in the States, as they try to return home. But there are newcomers too, who are crossing for the first time, some from parts of southern Mexico, many from Central America. They stop here after being deported or before they go over the border, in order to eat, sleep, do laundry and regroup before heading north.

More than 80 miles north of Casa del Migrante, in the town of Falfurrias, Texas, there is a small section of the Sacred Heart Burial Park devoted to those who died in Brooks County and whose remains have not been identified. There are small mounds of dirt here, marked with tiny metal signs showing dates and words like: “Unknown Female Remains” or “Male Remains”.

No matter what your politics are on this issue, you can’t ignore the numbers. Death doesn’t care about politics.

The Border Patrol and the ranchers are on the ground, and they realize this is going to happen. The ranchers see the impact on their land and the Border Patrol has a job to do. They mitigate the problem as much as they can, building emergency water stations or even an emergency beacon that alerts officers when someone presses a well-marked button to be rescued. Their first priority is to protect human life.

Here in the cemetery, I find a grave with a sign that merely reads, “Bones”, a case number and a date. It’s the mark of a long journey that ended unceremoniously, a life that stopped somewhere in the vast expanse of desert, a human being swallowed up by a harsh landscape.

By Carlos Barria

“They’re not scared of you. They’re scared of what you represent to them.”
“Hey, man. All we represent to them, man, is somebody who needs a haircut.”
“Oh, no. What you represent to them is freedom.”
– from the movie Easy Rider

A girl arrives at the parking lot wearing tiny leather shorts and sits on the back of a bike with a horse power of more than 1,000 CC. Next to her a man gets ready to ride, wearing a skeleton mask. It’s more than a fashion show, it’s an extravaganza on two wheels along Chinese roads.

Last weekend, around 1,000 Harley Davidson enthusiasts from all over China met at the exclusive resort of Qian Dao Lake, in Zhejiang Province, southeast of Shanghai, to celebrate the 5th Harley Davidson National Rally in China, as part of the company’s 110-year anniversary.

Riders told me that for Chinese consumers, owning a Harley is more than a symbol of freedom, as conceived in the 1969 movie Easy Rider. In China, they said, Harleys confer status and turn heads.

“For me (it) represents freedom, total freedom,” said Phillip Chu, from Shanghai. “And actually it is a tool, a tool that offers you attention. You attract a lot of attention from others when you ride, even when you start the engine and the sound. People around you will note it .. ah, this is a Harley Davidson.”

SLIDESHOW: China’s Easy Riders

When Jack Nicholson and Dennis Hopper were talking about freedom as they rode across the United States, they probably couldn’t have imagined that one day their bikes would have an enthusiastic following on the other side of the planet, or that these aficionados would have to contend with a whole different set of obstacles as they sought freedom on the open road.

Major Chinese cities ban motorcycles from circulating on highways and major avenues. Harley Davidson motorbikes are considered by Chinese tax authorities to be luxury items, so they are taxed at extremely high rates — sometimes the taxes alone are equivalent to the bike’s U.S. price tag. Traffic and transportation authorities have also weighed in, putting Harleys in the same category as electric bikes, horses and bicycles, meaning that they can’t be on highways and major avenues. Some Chinese owners argue that Harley Davidsons should be treated as a transportation vehicle, like cars, because Harley engines are the same or sometimes more powerful than cars.

In a statement over the weekend the company said, “As a member of China’s motorcycle industry, we call for a re-examination of the current motorcycle regulations, so as to ensure an appropriate position for motorcycles for urban consumers, in their commuting and leisure activities. As Harley-Davidson China Company, we call for a differentiation of respective regulations, between motorcycles for transportation, and for leisure riding,” the statement continued.

For its part, the company sees China as an important potential market if regulations ease. Unlike the United States, where a large number of owners are close to retirement age, or have already retired, in China the brand attracts younger people looking for adventure on the open road. As China’s young, middle class continues to boom, that could mean a long and lucrative ride.