Traveling across the desert between the US-Mexico border, many undocumented immigrants know they must be prepared to survive and even die.
A water bottle covered with an old garment to keep the liquid as cold as possible is essential. It is a must to wear comfortable shoes, if they are tennis shoes it is better for a long walk and a dirt road. A hat is always needed to cover the head in extreme or hot winds.
On the path full of obstacles, anything can happen; if it’s not a scorpion or a snake bite, it could be the heat itself that kills a person.
And then, there the journey ends for many.
Abelardo de la Peña Jr. looks at some leaflets of people lost in the hostile terrain of the border.
(James Carbone)
The American dream is abandoned, as are tennis shoes, hats, shoes, backpacks with important personal documents and even photos of loved ones.
Between the 1990s and 2022, nearly 4,000 migrants died trying to cross Arizona’s Sonoran Desert and the number is increasing day by day.
Seeing some of these objects, the names of the deceased and even their photos is a shock to many, but it is necessary for the community to know what is happening on a daily basis at the border as governments make the question of death only political, experts say. .
The Plaza de Cultura y Artes, located next to Placita Olvera in downtown Los Angeles, gives a voice to many of these migrants trying to cross this adverse terrain, but the creators of the Hostile Terrain ’94: The Undocumented Migration Project exhibition would like not having to keep creating these images.
The multimedia exhibition records the travels and testimonies of irregular immigrants who try to cross this dangerous stretch through photographs, abandoned objects and recordings.
Additionally, a 15 x 12-foot map of the Arizona-Mexico border is displayed with hanging labels depicting people who died crossing the border between the mid-1990s and 2022. The labels are geolocated showing the locations exactly where the remains. They were found.
The map commemorates the deceased and invites viewers to reflect on those who have lost their lives.
Jason De León, an anthropologist at UCLA and executive director of the Undocumented Migration Project (UMP), which directs the exhibition, said his ideal would be to never have planned the exhibition, much less to do so because it is so painful.
“We are talking about the thousands of deaths that have occurred since 1994,” said De León, who works in collaboration with the Colibri Center for Human Rights and the creators of the Undocumented Migration Project (UMP) on the exhibit.
“There is a lot of talk about border security and the issue becomes polarized, it becomes politics, yet no one really understands what is happening in those places, and the dramatic increase in deaths that occurs through a policy that no one talks about,” said De Leon.
The anthropologist refers to the date of 1994, when the US border patrol formally implemented the anti-immigration strategy known as “Prevention Through Deterrence” (PTD).
The policy was designed to discourage undocumented immigrants from attempting to cross the border near urban ports of entry by leaving hostile terrain or dangerous gates such as Arizona’s Sonoran Desert open.
“However, this policy was nothing more than a weapon against migrants. They have not been discouraged and continue to die. At the end of the day we would like not to do these exhibitions because these deaths do not make sense, “said the professor, noting that in the 1980s there were no more than a dozen deaths per year, but according to the new policy, the deaths increased. hundreds.
At least from the early 1990s to September 20, 2020, some 3,939 migrants had lost their lives, largely from dehydration and hyperthermia, while attempting this journey through southern Arizona.
De León started going out into the desert in 2009 and recovering abandoned artifacts to learn about the social process of migration, which led him to get everything from clothes to tires, border patrol cars, now part of the exhibition.
Michael Wells, co-curator and photographer of the UMP, said that what is striking about the exhibition is its varied content, since people can not only view images with photographs, but also drone videos of different environments in which they people cross such as Honduras, Chiapas, Mexico and the Sonoran desert.
In addition, the community can see the clips that migrants themselves make during their travels and what they say.
“The goal is to show different angles and perspectives so that there is a complete immersion of the community, since there are those who have only heard about the subject, but do not know how sad and surprising the images and stories are” , Wells said.
As part of the exhibition, the public visiting the place can create tags for the recognition of missing or found corpses in this particular year 2022.
Karen Crews Hendon, curator of LA Plaza Lordship, said the project hopes to raise awareness and aims to offer a healing opportunity to families who have suffered the painful loss of loved ones due to an inhumane system.
“This is a humanitarian crisis and a political issue that has affected thousands of families. If we don’t see it and talk about it, there can be no change, ”she said.
“Policies and laws can also cause a lot of pain and, as we see here, deaths. These deaths could have been avoided. “
De León hopes that the voices of migrants will be heard by politicians and that the voices of those who have crossed these hostile terrains have an impact.
WHERE: LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes, 501 North Main Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012. The exhibit will be on the second floor of the museum. The exhibition was inaugurated on Saturday 17 September 2022 and will run until 9 July 2023.
