The Dark Side of America’s Gleaming Skyscrapers Susannah Jacob
Photographs by Daniel Shea
In 2014, at age 19, Eric Mendoza left his farming village outside Mexico City and crossed the Rio Grande. Once in the United States, he worked construction jobs to pay his way across the country. From Texas, Mendoza traveled to rural North Carolina, where he built homes. At a Metro PCS store, he bought a cellphone for $100 so he could call his mother, Elizabeth, who had come to the U.S. when Eric was 8.
On his new phone, Eric told his mother that he had finally arrived. He said North Carolina’s open fields reminded him of home. “He told me, ‘Mom, why can’t you come to me here?’” Elizabeth recalled recently, speaking through a translator. Her life was in New York, she replied. So Eric traveled to Florida, where more construction jobs helped him save for the $700 journey to New York in a
Immigrant laborers have been dying tragic, sometimes grisly deaths on construction sites across the country. Their deaths tell the story of an industry indifferent to the lives of its workers.
The Dark Side of America’s Gleaming Skyscrapers Susannah Jacob
Photographs by Daniel Shea
In 2014, at age 19, Eric Mendoza left his farming village outside Mexico City and crossed the Rio Grande. Once in the United States, he worked construction jobs to pay his way across the country. From Texas, Mendoza traveled to rural North Carolina, where he built homes. At a Metro PCS store, he bought a cellphone for $100 so he could call his mother, Elizabeth, who had come to the U.S. when Eric was 8.
On his new phone, Eric told his mother that he had finally arrived. He said North Carolina’s open fields reminded him of home. “He told me, ‘Mom, why can’t you come to me here?’” Elizabeth recalled recently, speaking through a translator. Her life was in New York, she replied. So Eric traveled to Florida, where more construction jobs helped him save for the $700 journey to New York in a