Alinka Echeverría, Becoming South Sudan – The Eye of Photography

Prior to South Sudan’s independence from the Republic of Sudan in 2011, forty years of internal conflicts and two protracted civil wars had permeated the history of the country. Established in 1956 at the end of the Anglo-Egyptian colonial rule, the Republic of Sudan had its borders drawn by European powers with little concern for the cultural and ethnic reality of the region. South Sudan’s independence allowed the borders to be reconfigured. Regardless, the world’s newest nation remains in shambles. Its short history has demonstrated that internal solidarity along the ethnic lines has long lost its echo among the rivalries within the country’s ruling party, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM).