chapter 7-quiz.pdf

CHAPTE R 7 The Crossing EN TUCSON When my cell phone rings and registers an unknown Arizona number, a flood of mostly negative thoughts come to mind. Are they dead? Did someone in the morgue find my business card in Lucho’s pocket? Are they now looking for next of kin? Did la migra catch them and are they now calling from detention? This is a moment when Memo would undoubtedly remind me to be more positive: “No te preocupes. Todo va a estar bien.” Perhaps they finally did make it. Two weeks have gone by since I left them in Nogales. Two weeks of radio silence. I’ve been checking my phone incessantly for a missed call. Nothing. When this one finally comes in, I am so nervous that I almost don’t answer it. “¿Bueno? ¿Bueno?” The person on the other end of the line yells out, “We are here! We are here!” Memo excitedly tries to fill me in on all of the details over the phone. He reassures me that the disposable cameras I have given them are safe and full of undeveloped photos. I tell him that I want to hear the stories in person and will come to them. I land in Arizona a week later and call Lucho for directions to his house. “It’s really close to where la migra are,” he says. He’s not exaggerat- ing. On my way from the airport I pass almost a dozen Border Patrol perreras and two deportation buses. I pull up to a modest home in a dusty trailer park. A wobbly screen door swings open and Memo pops out to greet me with a giant smile. He is wearing clothes I don’t recognize and has a warmth to his face that conveys deep 167 This content downloaded from 97.124.39.228 on Fri, 02 Oct 2020 06:59:24 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 168. EL CAMINO happiness and relief. He looks like a changed man. I climb out of my rental car and we quickly hug. It feels as though we haven’t seen each other in years. In a deadpan voice I whisper, “Oye, mano, I brought you a present,” and reach into the backseat. I pull out a bottle of real apple juice and shove it in his hand. We both start cracking up like little kids. Lucho hangs his head out of the trailer door and grins. “Hurry up and get in here!” he commands. I step inside and encounter a tiny place with the characteristic patina of a bachelor pad. The living room is clean and tidy, but you can tell that only hom- bres live here. There is a fútbol game on the television playing at full volume (of course) and a small mountain of empty Natural Light beer cans on the glass coﬀee table. The two of them have been prepartying in anticipation of my arrival. I flop down on a well-worn pleather couch and proceed to spend the next ten hours drinking beer and listening to what happened to them en el camino. If you are not a researcher working along the border, getting the opportu- nity to hear a migrant’s story is rare. Many do not like reminiscing about their time in the Sonoran Desert hybrid collectif. Who can blame them? Even when their crossing is successful, the event can be traumatic and have lasting emo- tional, psychological, and physical eﬀects. The act of remembering can conjure pain, fear, and despair. Among American families with undocumented mem- bers, it is not uncommon for the topic of their crossing to be a forbidden sub- ject. A former undocumented woman once told me: “I came here illegally thirty years ago when I was about four years old. We are citizens now. My mom, brothers, and I crossed a river and my aunt came through the desert. It’s a taboo subject in our household and never talked about.” In the second half of this chapter I outline Memo and Lucho’s final crossing attempt using a combination of interview excerpts and photos they took en route. These data are unique, to say the least. I am privileged to include their stories here along with images shot from their perspective, but it is important to note that millions of others have crossed the desert whose narratives will never be heard. Some died along the way, and many others don’t want to recall painful memories, or their tenuous social position as undocumented people robs them of a public voice to tell their stories. Like other immigrant groups before them, these Latino families may have to wait one or more generations before reaching a status in US society that allows them to vocalize their migra- tion experiences without trepidation or shame. The worry, though, is that with the passage of time these histories may become sanitized, edited, or forgotten This content downloaded from 97.124.39.228 on Fri, 02 Oct 2020 06:59:24 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms United Colors of Benetton (BK-3 site near Lobo Peak, Arizona). Photo by Michael Wells. This content downloaded from 97.124.39.228 on Fri, 02 Oct 2020 06:59:24 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 170. EL CAMINO altogether. Examining the archaeological fingerprint of this clandestine social process can provide a diﬀerent and perhaps safer approach to the excavation of these hidden narratives. RESIDUES OF THE RECENT PAST Walk out into the wild and uninhabited areas surrounding the town of Arivaca and you are likely to come across objects that border crossers have left behind. It’s a breadcrumb trail of ripped clothes and bone-dry water bottles. It is Amer- ican immigration history in the making. For years these items have been at the center of public discourse regarding the detrimental impact of undocumented migration. Migrant “trash,” as it is often referred to, has become the physical evidence used by anti-immigrant activists to demonstrate that Latino border crossers are destroying America. As one reader posted on the comment section of a 2012 article about desert crossings: “Mexico is a DUMP and they [Mexi- cans] turn anywhere they go into a dump, starting in our deserts, and then the communities they settle.” This comment is emblematic of the dominant tone used to discuss the things migrants leave in their wake. It’s part of a simplistic discourse which posits that these items are garbage with little cultural, histori- cal, or scientific value. The general public often has diﬃculty grasping the idea that the things people throw away or leave behind today are the artifacts that archaeologists will study in the future. Although some of these items are refuse, many of the things border crossers drop in the desert are valued objects not meant to be left behind, such as pocket Bibles, family photos, and love letters. For these reasons, I avoid blanket terms such as trash when referring to them. Reducing these things to “garbage” is not only a value-judgment; it also com- presses a diverse range of materials into a problematic category that hides what these artifacts can tell us about the crossing process. In recent years, a growing number of archaeologists have argued for the rel- evancy of the discipline in understanding contemporary social issues. Drawing inspiration from William Rathje’s Tucson Garbage Project, which as early as the 1970s showed that archaeology had much to contribute to modern society, this movement known as archaeology of the contemporary is demonstrating how this type of approach can provide new insight into recent histories that we often erroneously assume are well understood. Researchers are deploying excavation, site mapping, and other archaeological methods and theories to better comprehend the relationship between artifacts and various sociopolitical This content downloaded from 97.124.39.228 on Fri, 02 Oct 2020 06:59:24 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Woman in front of hotel. Weatherworn picture found in Ironwood National Monument, Arizona. Photo by Michael Wells. This content downloaded from 97.124.39.228 on Fri, 02 Oct 2020 06:59:24 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 172. EL CAMINO contexts and themes. As “the archaeology of us who are alive,” this paradigm is deeply entrenched in the unpleasantness of the postmodern world, including the emotional distress and trauma that accompany the global devastation of humans, animals, and the environment that is now part of our planet’s everyday life. A focus on the material traces of ongoing contested social phenomena such as political violence, homelessness, and warfare can oﬀer fresh perspectives distinct from the dominant narratives often written by those in power. Alfredo González-Ruibal oﬀers a compelling rationale for this approach: “Much his- torical archaeology is justified by the belief that we need alternative stories— that oral and written data do not tell us everything about the past, that there are other things to be learned from artifacts and other experiences that have to be accounted for.... Archaeology... can do more than produce alternative stories: it can also tell stories in an alternative way.” An archaeological approach can foster engagements with the recent past and its material remains in novel and meaningful ways and produce new informa- tion that may be lost in narrative translations of history, collective memories, or accounts of individual experiences. Moreover, as British archaeologist John Schofield astutely points out, “We can use archaeology to question the distinc- tions that exist between what we are told, and what actually happened.” This is especially true regarding polemical topics such as undocumented migration in which the stories of participants are often ignored, downplayed, or selectively edited. As I note in chapter 4, journalists writing about immigration often want extraordinary tales and tend to avoid more mundane, ambiguous, or compli- cated narratives. In the context of migration, archaeology can get at elements of the process that are overshadowed by exceptional incidences of trauma or vio- lence, and can help decenter the story away from the perspective of outside observers, such as journalists who shadow border crossers. THE CROSSING In this chapter I highlight the archaeological approach that the Undocumented Migration Project has used over the years, including our typology of migrant sites, analyses of wear patterns on recovered objects, and the absolute and rela- tive dating techniques that have helped illuminate how the social process of clandestine migration has evolved over time. I put these archaeological data into direct conversation with the narratives of Lucho and Memo’s final border crossing. My intent is to superimpose an ethnographic scale of analysis, which This content downloaded from 97.124.39.228 on Fri, 02 Oct 2020 06:59:24 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms THE CROSSING. 173 tends to be individualized and temporally truncated, on an archaeological data set that is both polyvocal and ambiguous, as well as more spatially and tempo- rally expansive. Rather than seeing these data sets as distinct or disparate, I envision the photos and stories that Memo and Lucho provide about their trip as breathing life into the countless number of objects that have been left in the desert and that represent millions of crossing stories. The following account is constructed from a combination of field notes, interview excerpts, photographs that Memo and Lucho took, and discussions when they provided me captions for their images. To highlight the connec- tions and tensions between the material record and migrant voices, I have jux- taposed their story and photos with data from archaeological surveys con- ducted in the Sonoran Desert. When relevant, I provide a brief discussion of the archaeological evidence or comment on its absence. Meet Ángel Jason: You guys were in pretty bad shape when you got to the shelter after the third trip. Memo: Yeah, dehydrated. Jason: How many days did it take you to recover in Nogales? Memo: Like two weeks. It was a while, huh, Lucho? Like ten days, but we stayed three more because we found a job. Lucho: That is when that dude Ángel showed up looking for me. He went to Grupo Beta to find me, and they sent him to the shelter. He showed up at the shelter and I recognized him. I’d met him before because he was dating my girlfriend’s daughter and she was with him. He said, “Hey, Lucho, I’ve been looking for you because we’re gonna cross. Let’s go! I’ll take you across for free.” He didn’t have any money, though, or anything with him. Jason: Why was he there? Lucho: He was hanging out with his girlfriend in Nogales. She drove down to Mexico to see him and they were getting drunk in a hotel for four days. She told him that I was stuck in Nogales. He came looking for us and wanted to leave that night, but we needed to wait until we got paid for the construc- tion work we had been doing. Memo: We stayed that night in the shelter and left the following morning when Ángel showed up for us. Lucho: They wouldn’t let him stay at Juan Bosco. Everyone could tell he was a malandro [punk]. He showed up the next day really early, but was hung over. He didn’t have anything with him. We had to give him some clothes. This content downloaded from 97.124.39.228 on Fri, 02 Oct 2020 06:59:24 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 174. EL CAMINO Memo: Yeah, we found him a backpack in the shelter. Samuel gave us some clothes for him. Lucho: We bought food and stuﬀ and got ready. We went to the same store that we took you to before when we crossed the third time. Memo: We went to the main bus station, and from there we hitchiked to Santa Cruz [a small town about 45 kilometers east of Nogales, Mexico]. From there we got a ride in the back of a pickup truck to the line. Waiting Game Jason: Did you run into any military? Lucho: Yes, we ran into soldiers while we were walking. Memo: Yeah, two times! Lucho: The first time their lietunatent searched us. He asked what we were doing and if we were carrying drugs. Then he started searching Memo’s bag. We said we weren’t carrying anything, that we were just trying to cross the border. He said, “That’s dangerous to not be carrying anything because the bajadores will kill you if you don’t have anything.” Then they left. Jason: What did Ángel say? Lucho: He didn’t say nothing, but they stole his cigarettes. [laughs] They walked away smoking his cigarettes. Memo: That was one time. The other time happened right before we crossed the line. Another group of soldiers showed up. Like ten or twelve guys and they talked to us. Lucho: We waited in Mexico to cross the line. We waited for four hours until it got dark and then we crossed. We walked until about 3 A.M. and then rested for a little while. This was not the first time that Memo and Lucho had stopped at the bor- der for a time before crossing. They described how during their previous crossing attempt, they had spent an entire night waiting: Lucho: Memo walked down to la linea [referring to the border fence] to check on stuﬀ. A pollero came out of nowhere and started yelling, “Hey, what are you doing? I hope you’re not a bajador because if you are, we are gonna fuck you up!” Memo: Yeah, he got superaggressive with me. Lucho: Memo was like, “No, I’m just checking to see if we can cross.” The po- llero was yelling, “You’re not checking nothing! Let’s go! Get the fuck over there.” He had like fifteen or twenty migrants with him who were waiting. We went and sat with them. This content downloaded from 97.124.39.228 on Fri, 02 Oct 2020 06:59:24 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms THE CROSSING. 175 Jason: You sat with them? Lucho: Yeah, we ate some food and waited with them for a while. Later, this old lady came by with a bunch of bags of food and he said, “Get over here!” The pollero had an assistant, and he was like, “Go grab that old lady!” and the guy said, “No way, you do it.” She just kept walking. She was carrying food for another group that was farther down the line. She walked from Nogales to bring food to the polleros. Memo: This old lady might have been bringing food for the mafia. Lucho: Later, this group of three vatos ran by us. The pollero who yelled at Memo started shouting at them saying, “Hey! Where are you going? Stop!” They yelled back, “Don’t worry, we are drivers [for the mafia]. We work for—” They mentioned somebody’s name who was a mafia guy. Jason: So you spent the day with a group of migrants? What did you guys talk about? Lucho: We just all chatted and hung out. We stayed the night there. Finally, groups started leaving in the morning. First, the guy who yelled at Memo left with a group. Then another group went and then another. Finally, we left. We were the last ones to cross the line. TYPOLOGIES The Border Patrol uses the generic phrase layup to describe the many places where migrants eat, rest, seek shade, and hide from law enforcement. The Undocumented Migration Project (UMP) has conducted detailed analyses of diﬀerent sites created and repeatedly used by people while en route. Our results indicate that border crossers are doing more than simply “laying up” in the brush and hiding from immigration oﬃcials. These site types are archaeologically distinct and signal diﬀerent types of behavior and engagement with the environment. Sometimes these behaviors can easily be gleaned from artifacts, and other times the perspectives of migrants are needed to correct archaeological interpretations or fill in the details for proc- esses that leave no material trace. Rather than labeling all locations “layups,” we have developed a typology to distinguish between sites where people camp for long periods, briefly rest, get picked up, practice religion, get arrested, and die. During four archaeological field seasons between 2009 and 2013, the UMP collected material and spatial data from 341 locales associated with undocu- mented migration and border enforcement in the Nogales-Sasabe corridor. This content downloaded from 97.124.39.228 on Fri, 02 Oct 2020 06:59:24 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 176. EL CAMINO Migrant religious shrine. Photo by Michael Wells. Based on location, site features, artifact inventories, and interviews with migrants, we were able to divide sites into various categories including (but not limited to) campsites where people congregate and rest for a period ranging from few hours to an entire night; rest sites where people stop briefly and con- sume food and beverages; pickup sites where migrants dump all of their desert supplies and get picked up by smugglers in vehicles; and religious shrines where oﬀerings are left to ensure a safe journey. We have designated the locations just This content downloaded from 97.124.39.228 on Fri, 02 Oct 2020 06:59:24 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms THE CROSSING. 177 ¡Puro monte! Photo by Memo and Lucho. beyond the boundary line on the Mexican side where crossers wait border stag- ing areas. These locales can be relatively simple (containing just a few empty food cans and bottles) or more complex, with fire pits, sheltered sleeping areas, substantial religious shrines, and large amounts of clothes and consumables. Migrants, smugglers, and drug mules can spend anywhere from a few hours to several days waiting in these locations for the right time to cross. One woman interviewed in 2013 reported that her group slept for nine days at a border staging area. En Route Lucho: Here are the mountains that we walked over. Remember, Memo? At this point we are standing just over la linea. We have just crossed the border and are looking at what we have to do. We have to go between those two peaks in the distance. Jason: What are you thinking about when you look at something like this? Lucho: We are thinking just how far we actually have to walk. I mean look at all of that! We gotta cross all of that to get to Tucson. All of that. Jason: It’s hard to imagine. That’s a lot of mountains. Memo: Too much! This content downloaded from 97.124.39.228 on Fri, 02 Oct 2020 06:59:24 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 178. EL CAMINO Lucho: It’s all mountains! [¡Puro monte!] We crossed all of that. But look at the diﬀerence between here and Sasabe. Here there is grass; you can see life, trees, and all that. Places where you can hide. On that other side, near Sasabe, there is nothing. Just cholla cactus. Here there is more chance for success than over there through Sasabe. There it is just pure desert and rocks. Jason: How did you know this route? Lucho: Ángel knew the route. He was a guide for polleros and for burreros [drug mules]. But we still got lost. Instead of crossing through this pass, we ended up on the wrong side and had to double back. For that dude Ángel it was nothing. He had crossed a lot, like four or five times. Memo: This was the first and only time we crossed through there. Lucho: From Santa Cruz to Tucson there are lots of trees, plants, and stuﬀ. From Sasabe it is diﬀerent. Through Arivaca it is all bald, naked land with small rivers. The way we went, there are big trees, arroyos full of water. Ángel knew all of the cattle tanks, and he would say, “OK, this gallon of water will last you until the next cattle tank.” At the next tank he would say, “OK, with this gallon of water you just have to drink a little bit at a time because we are going to walk a long way to get to the next cattle tank.” That is how it was. He knew more or less where to go. Jason: How did he learn this? Lucho: He was a guide for drug mules. The guide has to know all of this to lead a group. Memo: I imagine that he was a burrero first to learn all this stuﬀ, and later he became a guide. Lucho: He would say stuﬀ like “Look, this is where burreros rested. They just crossed through here a little while ago.” On multiple occasions, Memo and Lucho remarked that Ángel had work experience as a pollero and a burrero, which is why he knew the route. However, on a few occasions they described him in much scarier terms. The following is an excerpt from my 2009 field notes just a few months after they successfully got to Arizona: After beginning their trip, Memo and Lucho learn that Ángel is actually a bajador who makes a living robbing drug mules in the desert at gunpoint. They seem to be genuinely scared of the guy. He told them stories of almost killing drug mules in the desert, coming up behind them to hide his face, and putting a gun to their heads. Memo is convinced that this guy has done some really bad things to people. This content downloaded from 97.124.39.228 on Fri, 02 Oct 2020 06:59:24 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms THE CROSSING. 179 Migrant architecture. Photo by Michael Wells. Most of the sites used by migrants are also opportunistically utilized by drug mules. This includes humanitarian water drops, religious shrines, and resting areas. Still, compared to migrants, drug smugglers leave a light archae- ological footprint, some of which is ambiguous. Distinguishing between these two groups is complicated by the fact that some work as burreros to pay for their crossing fees and people involved in both activities may be wearing the same types of clothes and carrying the same basic equipment. The clearest archaeological signature of contraband smuggling that the UMP has identi- fied is the homemade backpacks constructed of burlap sacks used to haul bales of marijuana. More ambiguous evidence of drug smuggling is the informal architectural features that people construct in the desert out of tree branches and rocks. Empty burlap sacks, along with food and camping supplies, have occasionally been found inside these structures. During interviews with migrants who were shown photos of these locales, they commented that bur- reros or lookouts who had more time and necessity for long-term shelter were primarily responsible for building these hideouts. These people, however, also reported sometimes using these shelters to get out of the sun or avoid detec- tion when they came across them in the desert. This content downloaded from 97.124.39.228 on Fri, 02 Oct 2020 06:59:24 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 180. EL CAMINO “This cabron is taking pictures of me sleeping! Maybe he’s in love with me?” Photo by Lucho. Lucho: Look, I took that photo! That pinche güey [referring to Memo] is passed out! [laughing] Memo: This cabron is taking pictures of me sleeping! Maybe he’s in love with me? [laughs] We had walked pretty far already. This is where I started getting cramps. I had to rest because of the fucking canyon that was full of black rocks. Lucho: Yeah, that was where we stopped to drink water quickly, and Ángel was like, “Let’s go! Let’s go! No stopping!” We were rushing through this canyon. Memo: That is where my blood pressure started dropping. Lucho: It’s because we went down into a really steep canyon and started climbing and climbing to get out of there fast. Memo couldn’t breathe. It was rough. It was like midday and very hot. Memo was dehydrated and vomiting up foam. USE WEAR Identifying evidence of the physical suﬀering, such as dehydration and bleed- ing blisters, experienced by crossers in the archaeological record has proved diﬃcult. This is partly because injuries often produce traces that either are biodegradable, such as blood or vomit, or leave no footprint at all (e.g., exhaus- tion). To identify pain and bodily trauma materially, I have employed the This content downloaded from 97.124.39.228 on Fri, 02 Oct 2020 06:59:24 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms THE CROSSING. 181 Migrant shoes recovered in the Tumacácori Mountains. They have been repaired with a bra strap and cord to reattach the soles to the uppers. Photo by Michael Wells. dusty archaeological concept known as use wear, which refers to modifications to objects that occur when people use them in various ways. I have subdivided this concept into two categories: wear patterns, resulting from an item’s use in intended tasks, and modifications, changes made to improve an object’s func- tion or to repair damage. For example, a shoe found in the desert that has holes worn through the sole suggests that a person’s feet experienced intense trauma from walking, while a shoe whose sole has separated from the upper and that has been subsequently repaired with a bra strap indicates that the owner was desperate to keep her footwear functioning so that she could continue moving (see photo above). Those who can’t keep up with a group because of blisters or worn-out shoes are often left behind, which can be a death sentence. Knowing about this phenomenon of abandonment and then recovering destroyed or haphazardly repaired shoes in the middle of the desert can often be an emotionally challenging moment of archaeological interpretation. This content downloaded from 97.124.39.228 on Fri, 02 Oct 2020 06:59:24 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 182. EL CAMINO General physical pain and desperation can be inferred from these use-wear patterns, but it is only when paired with ethnographic data that these objects come to tell more nuanced stories. On multiple occasions I encountered indi- viduals at Juan Bosco limping around with heavily bandaged feet in hospital- issued sandals. These women and men reported that their shoes were stolen by bandits or that they broke down in transit. Some even reported trying to walk barefoot or in socks across the spiky desert floor. Although items such as distressed-looking shoes don’t provide names or specific details about a par- ticular crossing experience, they do hint at a generic phenomenology of suﬀer- ing shared by many. RANCHEROS Jason: You guys took a lot of photos of cows. Why? Memo: [laughing] That was when we were cracking ourselves up chasing cows around. People who read this book are gonna think we are cowboys or own a pinche rancho! Lucho: We were chasing cows around and Memo was trying to grab their tails. Ángel grabbed one by the tail and it was dragging him around on the ground! Memo: We were entertaining ourselves and making all kinds of noise laugh- ing. Those are the moments that you forget what you are actually doing. Lucho: We only had a little bit of food at this point. Memo: This was when the three of us shared a tuna [prickly pear]. Jason: Tunas you found in the desert? Memo: Yeah, nopales [cacti]. It was full of spines and dried out. It was all bone [puro hueso], but we ate it! We ate some plants we found as well. We were starving and it was so good! Lucho: We found some plants that were OK to eat. They were plants that my grandmother used to eat in Mexico. We put a little bit of salt on them. It was from what they feed to cattle. Jason: Really? Memo: Yeah. [laughs] There are these blocks of sal in the desert. We cut little corners oﬀ of it. Man! Or remember when we ate that piece of maguey [plant]? That hurt so bad. It gave me these fucking awful cramps. I was in pain. Lucho was like, “No worries, have another piece. There is plenty!” [laughing] Lucho: We didn’t really have any food left at this point. This content downloaded from 97.124.39.228 on Fri, 02 Oct 2020 06:59:24 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms THE CROSSING. 183 Rancheros. Photos by Memo, Lucho, and Ángel. CHRONOLOGY Memo: We had walked for several days when we took these photos [see p. 184]. Lucho: We were exhausted. I remember that we dropped down into an arroyo and lay in the sand exhausted until it got dark. We just tried to rest for like half an hour. Memo: Here I am exhausted. It feels really incredible to lie down for a little while using my backpack as a pillow. Lucho: It looks like Memo is dead there. Memo: This was a day before the rock climbing. 6/25/2010: Green Valley, Arizona The smell of grilling meat hangs thick in the air. It makes everyone’s stomach grumble and resent the soggy ham sandwiches awaiting us in the back of the truck parked down the street. Whoever fired up the Coleman is also jamming out to a Tucson classic rock station and probably sipping an icy This content downloaded from 97.124.39.228 on Fri, 02 Oct 2020 06:59:24 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 184. EL CAMINO Memo and Lucho rest during the crossing. The bottom photos are of migrant campsites documented south of Green Valley, Arizona. Photos by Memo, Lucho, and Michael Wells. beverage on this oppressively hot afternoon. Steely Dan’s “Reelin’ in the Years” plays loudly from their patio and provides a soundtrack to our clandestine archaeological fieldwork. The person cooking lunch is completely unaware that six of us are digging through the thick brush that lies less than 1,000 feet from her backyard wall, which demarcates the southern boundary line of this Green Valley, Arizona, retirement community. We are documenting a site we have designated Snake Pit, its name based on the abundance of reptiles we encountered on the initial survey of the area. I counted four in the first twenty minutes of being on-site. We are here because I met a female Border Patrol agent in Arivaca who joked, “Just walk out into the trees south of that retire- ment community in Green Valley. You’ll see that the illegals have made little condominiums out of brush.” The features we record at Snake Pit include clothes and other items neatly laid out on the ground. These in situ objects give the impression that the owners left just prior to our arrival. I wonder if This content downloaded from 97.124.39.228 on Fri, 02 Oct 2020 06:59:24 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms THE CROSSING. 185 their stomachs growled while they waited for nightfall and for their ride to show up. Collecting archaeological data on clandestine human behavior that may have occurred just minutes or hours before you arrive on the scene generates a strange sensation. Sometimes you feel as if you’re studying wild animals who have just been scared away; this feeling makes you question whether you are only further contributing to the dehumanization of undocumented migrants. “Scientifically” recording footprints and the remnants of someone’s recent meal may bring you physically close to them but can also contribute to a strong sense of estrange- ment. You find yourself constantly asking the question, “Should I be doing this?” As with all archaeological research endeavors, chronology has proven cru- cial for the Undocumented Migration Project (UMP). Dating sites is impor- tant for understanding how technology, material culture, and people’s physical encounters with the desert have evolved over time, and we have relied on both absolute and relative dating techniques. Absolute (calendric) dates, are inferred through time-stamped documents, such as bus tickets, deportation slips, or food expiration dates. Relative dating usually relies on the degree of rust, if any, on metal goods, the structural integrity of items such as plastic bottles, and the preservation of biodegradable materials such as meat, fruit, and other foods. Some artifacts are unique or reflect styles whose initial appearance have a fixed date. These horizon markers provide a chronological baseline. For exam- ple, the black water bottles mentioned in chapter 6 were first manufactured in late 2009 and indicate a date no earlier than that year. Given the fragility of the migrant archaeological record and the rapid decomposition of paper items such as bus or airplane tickets, it is crucial to document these sites while they are relatively “fresh” (again conjuring unfortunate analogies with wildlife biol- ogy). This means literally following in the immediate footsteps of people who are doing everything in their power to leave no trail behind. When you do discover a recently occupied camp, the feeling is unsettling. Compare the photos of Memo and Lucho lying on the ground with those of features from the Snake Pit site, where people constructed beds out of clothes and backpacks (previous page). The newness of these deposits and the configu- ration of material culture give the feeling of stumbling upon a crime scene where the body has only recently been removed. While some critics are uncom- fortable with the political implications of an archaeology of undocumented migration, I am personally more troubled by the issue of timing, given that UMP researchers have likely walked into sites and made enough noise to cause This content downloaded from 97.124.39.228 on Fri, 02 Oct 2020 06:59:24 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms “You see how much he is drinking in this photo? That’s why he ran out of water!” Photo by Ángel. This content downloaded from 97.124.39.228 on Fri, 02 Oct 2020 06:59:24 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms THE CROSSING. 187 occupants to quickly flee before being seen. This means that the anthropologist is partly responsible for the construction of these archaeological freeze frames and is also occasionally the source of distress for people already in a precarious position. Unlike ancient sites buried under stratigraphic layers of dirt and gravel, these migrant archaeological contexts are alive and dynamic. What is recorded today may drastically change tomorrow as a locale is destroyed by environmental conditions or modified by other people passing through. “DON’T STOP! KEEP GOING!” Lucho: I think it’s better to walk during the day because Border Patrol can see you at night with those cameras. During the day there is more heat and it is harder to see people with the [infrared] cameras. Memo: But it’s harder and you walk much slower during the day. You end up drinking more water. Lucho: Like, Memo, man, he drank all his agua. I tried to sell him some of mine. [laughs] Memo: Yeah, he had a lot left. I was like, “Lucho, give me some water!” He replied, “Why’d you drink all of yours?” I was out because I had been shar- ing my gallon with all three of us. Pretty soon I realized that it was all gone. The only person who had water left was Lucho. I walked like more than three miles with no water. I asked again, “Hey, Lucho, give me some water, man; I’m thirsty.” He grabbed the galón and said, “I’ll sell you some.” I said, “Cabron, I don’t have any money!” Then he told me, “OK, I’ll loan you some so you can buy it from me.” [laughs] I grabbed the bottle and took some little sips. Lucho: You see how much he is drinking in this photo? That’s why he ran out of water! [laughs] I remember that around this time we crossed an arroyo and then one of the roads used by Border Patrol. It was like midnight when I heard a Vicente Fernández song playing at high volume all through the canyons. It was coming from a truck, but it was hard to see what kind. Memo: Border Patrol plays music like that to trick people into asking for a ride because migrants think it’s a paisano [Mexican]. Fuckers! [laughing] Lucho: Yeah, also polleros doing pickups will whistle in the dark and call out to people, “Vámonos!” La migra will do the same thing to trick people into thinking they are smugglers so that migrants will come out of the woods and walk toward them. Memo: Border Patrol also makes animal noises like birds or coyotes. These are signals that smugglers sometimes use. This content downloaded from 97.124.39.228 on Fri, 02 Oct 2020 06:59:24 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 188. EL CAMINO - Mountain climbing. Photo by Memo. Lucho: We were just about out of water. Pretty soon we had to start drinking from cattle tanks. Memo: At this point I started thinking that we needed to keep moving for- ward with as much energy as possible. We had just climbed this giant hill, and below us we could see la migra was passing by. That was right after the javelinas came out. We ran into javelinas with their babies. We didn’t know whether to run or climb up a giant mesquite tree because they came back and tried to attack us. There were some branches and we used them to fend them oﬀ. We were picking up rocks and throwing them. They finally left... Lucho: Our feet were bad and hurt a lot. Memo: Lots of blisters. Lucho: And giant rocks. We found a mine near Patagonia Lake. There was dark soil there and a little bit of water. We were so thirsty and wanted to drink it, but Ángel said it would make us sick. It was full of chemicals. Memo: That was when we saw the bear, right? Lucho: Oh yeah. Jason: You ran into a bear? Memo: Yeah, a big black bear. We saw his giant footprints. Lucho: Ángel said that if we start getting chased by a bear, we should throw our packs down because all he wants is the food. This content downloaded from 97.124.39.228 on Fri, 02 Oct 2020 06:59:24 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms THE CROSSING. 189 Jason: [incredulous] But you really saw a bear? Lucho: Yes, we saw one bear and then later saw footprints of another one near a lagoon. Memo: He was probably there drinking water like us. Jason: What did you do when you actually saw the bear? Lucho: We ran. [laughing] We ran down an arroyo and up the other side. Eve- ryone was yelling, “Don’t stop! Don’t stop! Keep going!” Memo: We got to the other side of the arroyo, and the bear was standing on the other side looking at us. Lucho: He was just staring at us but couldn’t do anything. Memo: I think he might have been more afraid of us. We were yelling, “Keep running! He will get tired!” Jason: When you are climbing stuﬀ like this, what are you thinking about? Lucho: We are thinking about how they are not going to catch us up here. It’s like we were climbing a mountain there. Memo: And the drop was crazy! Man, so crazy! Jason: How is it for la migra? Lucho: La migra doesn’t go up there! They’re afraid. [laughs] The road is really far from there. They have to walk like two miles to get where we are in this photo and leave their car on the road. Their car won’t make it in that far. That’s why they hardly ever go into that area. Memo: Man, that is farther than two miles! Jason: Do you think you learned some stuﬀ on that third crossing before this one? Lucho: Yeah, we learned a lot. Memo: Walk oﬀ the trails as far as you possibly can. Lucho: You need to put yourself into the most diﬃcult places that you can where people can’t get to. You understand? Where there are lots of trees, mountains, rocks... oﬀ the trail. That’s where you need to go. If you walk in the easiest places, they will catch you quick. Jason: But that’s gotta be harder for you guys. Lucho: More diﬃcult, but more diﬃcult for them too. At this point we’ve been out like four days in the desert by the time we got to those rocks. When we climbed that, we were almost to Elephant Head [Mountain]. This is about the time that I called my family on my cell phone. We walked another three hours from this point, and as it was getting dark, we could see Tucson in the distance. We could see all the lights. Memo: We climbed up higher and saw Tucson. We said, “That is where we need to walk to.” This content downloaded from 97.124.39.228 on Fri, 02 Oct 2020 06:59:24 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 190. EL CAMINO A migrant’s personal effects left in the desert. Photo by Michael Wells. Lucho: Ángel started getting excited and yelling, “Yeah! We are almost there!” Memo: We kept walking and walking. Then we stopped and just threw every- thing away. We made a giant pile out of the jackets, clothes, and socks we brought.We kept just an extra pair socks for each of us and one backpack. We tossed everything else. We couldn’t carry it anymore. Lucho: We couldn’t carry anything anymore. Memo: All we ended up with was one backpack and Lucho’s Bible. This content downloaded from 97.124.39.228 on Fri, 02 Oct 2020 06:59:24 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms THE CROSSING. 191 DEPOSITION A common racist assertion by anti-immigrant activists is that border crossers, and Latinos in general, have little regard for the natural environment and are prone to litter. This point was undermined on numerous occasions when I showed migrants photos of piles of backpacks and clothes only to hear people lament about how sorry they felt for throwing stuﬀ on the ground or in many cases losing their personal possessions in the desert. There are generally three reasons people leave objects on the trail. First, some things (empty water bot- tles, food wrappers, worn-out socks, broken backpacks) are discarded because they are no longer of any use. Second, as Memo and Lucho mention above, after many days of walking, people may be too tired to continue carrying a heavy pack. UMP researchers have often found full backpacks on or just oﬀ trails that still contained food, beverages, and clothes. It is not uncommon to come across bleary-eyed migrants in the desert with nothing but a water bottle. In addition to exhaustion, people can be startled by Border Patrol or ani- mals and, in the confusion of fleeing, leave objects behind. Law enforcement oﬃcers may also force a person to abandon all her belongings before being loaded into one of their vehicles. We frequently recovered backpacks with food, medication, clothes, and identification documents in areas where border crossers had recently been arrested. These areas, designated apprehension sites, are also usually littered with disposable handcuﬀs and other items associated with the Border Patrol, including chewing tobacco tins, expended alkaline bat- teries for GPS units and walkie-talkies, bullet casings, and fast food wrappers. In 2013 I watched a Border Patrol agent arrest three men on a dirt road in Arivaca. When I drove by the area twenty minutes later, three full backpacks of clothes, food, and personal eﬀects had been left lying in the dirt. The most common reason, however, for leaving things behind has to do with the final stage of movement out of the desert. Although layup is a generic term used by law enforcement to describe any and all places where migrants hide and where artifacts associated with crossing are deposited, usually when people use this term, they are referring to the areas where large amounts of clothes, back- packs, and other items have accumulated. These locales, which we call pickup sites, represent the end of a multiday trip and are near rendezvous points where coyotes have arranged for vehicle transportation. Between 2009 and 2013 we docu- mented forty-eight of these sites, which yielded hundreds of thousands of objects. These areas contained high proportions of backpacks and clothes, as well as This content downloaded from 97.124.39.228 on Fri, 02 Oct 2020 06:59:24 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 192. EL CAMINO Monsoon. Photo by Lucho. diverse assemblages of hygiene, cosmetic, electronic, and personal items. Typi- cally when people arrive at pickup sites, their smugglers tell them to clean up their appearance (e.g., brush their teeth, put on deodorant, and change into clean clothes) so it is not apparent that they just wandered through the desert. This shedding of clothes and backpacks is an attempt to discard all incriminating evi- dence that would signal someone as an undocumented migrant. Unfortunately, during the often rapid and chaotic process of changing clothes and climbing into vehicles, people may unintentionally lose personal items they were carrying with them. This can include identification cards, photos, and other valuables. EMPTY BOTTLE Lucho: We stayed in a cave that [second-to-last] night. Memo and Ángel went inside and I stayed in the front. Those pinches vampires [referring to bats] wouldn’t let me sleep. [laughing] They kept flying all around my head. We got up at 6 A.M. and started walking. We were out of water at this point, but as soon as I saw Elephant Head, I knew where we were because I had worked out there before. We passed a golf course, but we couldn’t drink from the sprinklers because the water has chemicals in it. There was a house that was under construction. We got to the house at like 3 P.M. We soaked This content downloaded from 97.124.39.228 on Fri, 02 Oct 2020 06:59:24 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms THE CROSSING. 193 ourselves under that hose! We were dying of thirst. I was hallucinating at that point. We were surrounded by dirt but I kept seeing water everywhere in the desert. Memo: Lucho kept saying he could see water, but there was no water. Lucho: It was just dirt. There was nothing. Jason: This was after four or five days? Memo: Yeah, we had no food, no water, nothing. Just an empty bottle. Three miles after we stopped at the house that was under construction, it started to rain. Lucho: This is when we got to an arroyo. The water was running really hard and we got stuck. It was running quick, and if you fell in, it was up to here [points to chest]. It was raining really hard in Sahuarita [Arizona]. At this point we were almost there. We were really happy and finally energized. It was also easier because we had water at this point. Memo: Yeah, we were making so much noise laughing and yelling. We were screwing around acting like we were on a picnic. Man, that was right when it started raining. We only had one raincoat left, because we had thrown away our things. Lucho: It was like 9 P.M. We sat down and it started to rain. Memo: Poor Lucho, he didn’t have a raincoat. I said, “Put mine on and we can share it.” I found a plastic bag and put that on. We were sitting in the rain while Border Patrol was looking for us. We could see them driving by. Lucho: We were energized at this point because we were so close. We were walking in the dark and ran into a lot of trees. Lots of giant mesquites. It was dark and hard to see. Memo: We got into a field of mesquite trees and struggled to get through it. Lucho: It was like 8 or 9 P.M. at night when we finally got picked up. Lucho: We walked the whole day, something like fifteen or eighteen hours walking. We walked from Elephant Head to Sahuarita [a distance of more than twenty miles]. It was a long time. That’s far, huh? My family was wait- ing for us. I had called them and told them we were coming and that we were starving. They took us to the house and they had made us food. There was carne asada, rice, sodas. We got there soaking wet. Everyone was so happy that we made it safely. Memo: We were so happy to finally be in a house and out of danger. Man! It was so nice. I remember, though, that I was starving and my throat was burning. It was so hard to swallow, but I had a hunger you can’t imagine. Lucho: [softly whispers] Yeah. Very hungry. Memo: I remember when we first sat down and were eating dinner. I looked over and said, “Hey, Lucho! Look at this soda!” All I wanted was a really This content downloaded from 97.124.39.228 on Fri, 02 Oct 2020 06:59:24 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Home. Photo by Memo. This content downloaded from 97.124.39.228 on Fri, 02 Oct 2020 06:59:24 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms THE CROSSING. 195 cold Coke. It wasn’t a Coke. I remember that it was Fanta. I still remember how good that cold soda was. Lucho: We probably walked like fifty miles, all at night. The rest of it we walked during the day. We crossed in only the most diﬃcult areas. There were no roads or trails. That is why I think we didn’t get caught. Puro monte. Giant rocks and mountains. Places where Border Patrol doesn’t really go. MEMORIES Jason: You guys tell a lot of jokes when you talk about the desert, and you laugh a lot when you are crossing. It gets serious sometimes, though. Memo and Lucho: [in unison] Yeah. Lucho: [in a low voice] Those javelinas... Memo: It’s because you need to find ways to keep yourself motivated. You can talk about stuﬀ like it’s a joke, but it’s something dangerous. It’s dangerous, but you can’t let it slow you down. You’re tired. [snickers] It’s like that cow stuﬀ. When we got to that point we were exhausted. Totally exhausted. But it calmed us down because that crazy Ángel... Those jokes, man! He was cracking us up. Lucho: Yeah, we forgot how tired we were. He got us motivated with those pende- jadas. Jason: After these experiences, how do you guys feel about the desert? Lucho: Well, some are traumatized, and later you have dreams about it at night. Yeah, you have dreams about walking in the desert or dreams that you are being chased. Memo: Yeah, those first days back. Lucho: Sueños about the police and la migra and all that. It’s like you’re trauma- tized. Memo: In the middle of the day it will sometimes feel like you are still living the crossing. Jason: Do you still feel like that? Lucho: Yes. Memo: Right now, no, but in the beginning, in those first few days, yeah. Like the first eight days. Lucho: For me it sometimes still feels like it. Still... Jason: Like nightmares? Lucho: Right on, like nightmares. When I am sleeping, I see them. Like I’m being persecuted and chased and I’m hiding. All the things that happened to me in the desert. This content downloaded from 97.124.39.228 on Fri, 02 Oct 2020 06:59:24 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 196. EL CAMINO Memo: Later, we’d be sleeping, and Lucho would wake up and say, “Hey, I had another dream about the crossing.” I’d say, “Shut up! I don’t want to think about that stuﬀ for a while.” [laughs] Lucho: Forget it, man! Those memories! Jason: There is always the possibility that you would have to cross again right? Lucho: Yeah, for whatever little thing they can grab you. You never know when. They can grab you and be like, “Let’s go!” Then you gotta cross again. Memo: Yes, but now you have more experience. Lucho: No, no, no, no, no, no. I don’t want to have more experiences out there. “BACK TO LIFE” It is 2015 and more than five years since Memo and Lucho last crossed the border. Since that time, their lives have remained relatively steady. They, along with thousands of other undocumented Latinos in Arizona, continue to live and work under the radar of immigration authorities while they eke out a liv- ing doing odd jobs and temporary contract work. After two decades of toiling in the agricultural fields, Memo is proud that he has learned new construction skills, including how to put up drywall, lay flagstone, and pour cement. Still, the transition back has not been easy. For the first year or so, Memo and Lucho lived together in a small trailer park, taking any available work while hitting the bottle hard. On numerous occasions, I watched them get drunk and argue for seemingly no reason and often found myself trying to break up fights. Lucho eventually separated from his wife. She gained possession of the trailer, which forced the two of them to move out. Memo moved in with friends, while Lucho stayed with relatives. Both men continued to drink heavily and on New Year’s Eve 2010, Memo got drunk and fell down a steep drainage canal behind his house. He lay at the bottom of a ditch with a broken ankle until daybreak because none of his neighbors could hear his screams over their loud music. For months afterward, Memo was confined to crutches and unable to work. It was at this point that he and Lucho decided to temporarily give up drinking, which dramatically improved their friendship. Soon after the accident, they moved into a one-bedroom apartment in the greater Phoenix area where they currently reside. They managed to weather the economic downturn of the past few years and are enjoying semipermanent employment that keeps a roof over their heads and food on the table. They are both currently single but have active social lives. Their apartment is located in a neighborhood where they are This content downloaded from 97.124.39.228 on Fri, 02 Oct 2020 06:59:24 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms THE CROSSING. 197 surrounded by friends. Despite their constant struggle to find work, Memo and Lucho are seemingly content. Memo even saved up enough money to buy a car. The only hints of unhappiness I have ever noticed have occurred when I was driving with Memo and we passed a police oﬃcer or a Border Patrol vehi- cle. He will immediately stiﬀen up and look forward. Once when this hap- pened, he told me to “act normal and not show any fear.” It is clear that five years after the crossing Memo’s and Lucho’s memories of the event and the months spent in Nogales have been aﬀected by the passage of time. Some of the more painful parts of the story have been edited to seem less dire, while other moments have evolved to accentuate humorous or posi- tive elements of the journey. Memo’s telling of the story continues to get fun- nier, while Lucho often gets serious and morose upon reflection. My sense is that they reminisce now about their crossing only for my benefit. Over the years, I have had to remind them of certain details, and in other instances new information has arisen. Given their many experiences in the desert, the stories have started to blur together and some parts have been forgotten. Like all memories, theirs are evolving. Using Memo and Lucho’s final crossing as a backdrop, I have shown that an archaeology of undocumented migration can provide new insights into border crossings and can improve our understanding of both the diﬀerent types of engagements people have with the desert hybrid collectif and the material traces of these interactions. There is compelling evidence that archaeology can help preserve fragments of these historical events that are for various reasons either fading from peo- ple’s memories or partially locked away in America’s undocumented society. Archaeology may also help correct erroneous characterizations of the crossing process that are written by those in power or by those invested in demonizing Latino migrants and distinguishing them from previous generations of “noble” immigrants. Still, persuading the American public to recognize the importance of the material traces of clandestine migration is no easy task for a host of reasons. In 2011 the popular magazine Archaeology published one of the first international articles about the Undocumented Migration Project, in a piece called “The Journey to El Norte.” Several angry readers subsequently wrote letters to the editor complaining about the story, including the following: This content downloaded from 97.124.39.228 on Fri, 02 Oct 2020 06:59:24 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 198. EL CAMINO Decay. Photo by Michael Wells. I am appalled that you could even consider publishing an article like The Jour- ney to El Norte. It casts a romantic light on illegal immigration. To compare these criminals to the millions of Europeans who immigrated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries is an insult to their memories and eﬀorts to give their children better lives. My grandparents came to this country legally. They wanted no handouts, learned English, and eventually owned their own com- pany. To document the trash heaps of these current illegal immigrants as arti- facts, as if they are sacred, is beyond credibility. This comment exemplifies the historical amnesia many have regarding the experiences of early European immigrants in America. It also illustrates the typical, race-based value judgments many make about modern immigration history and contemporary archaeological heritage. The hypocrisy of this read- er’s letter is easily illuminated by taking a quick historical glance back at how new European arrivals to the United States were viewed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. One hundred and fifty years ago, Matthew Hale Smith published a book about the children of Five Points, New York, then an infamously poor neighborhood heavily populated by new arrivals from Europe. Hale lamented the societal impact of the children of first-generation immi- grants: “Their parents are foreigners. They are too dirty, too ragged, and carry This content downloaded from 97.124.39.228 on Fri, 02 Oct 2020 06:59:24 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms THE CROSSING. 199 too much vermin about them to be admitted to public schools. Their homes are in the dens and stews of the city, where the thieves, vagabonds, gamblers and murderers dwell. With the early light of morning they are driven from their vile homes to pick rags and cinders, collect bones, and steal.... They are familiar with every form of wickedness and crime. As they grow up they swell the ranks of the dangerous classes. Our thieves, burglars, robbers, rioters, who are the most notorious, are young persons of foreign parentage.” Another issue undermining the conservation of this immigration history is the fact that we live in an era when undocumented people increasingly exist in a “state of exception.” Immigrants are tolerated when they do the jobs that citizens won’t, but the American public has little interest in hearing their voices, preserving their history, or aﬀording them any rights. This “exceptional- ism” pervades all aspects of undocumented life and calls into question our country’s notion of democracy. As Doty writes: The less extreme manifestations of exceptionalism should not be dismissed as unimportant. They can and do have devastating eﬀects on the individuals and communities subjected to them. They raise important questions about the depth and breadth of our professed democratic values and about how we attri- bute worth to human beings with or without documents and citizenship.... This exceptionalism works its way into people’s daily lives, aﬀecting their most basic elements of existence and relationships. It creates a group of people set oﬀ from the rest of society, considered “others” and at least potential enemies of the rest of the population. This exceptionalism is even working toward erasing the archaeological record of migration. Border crossings leave physical traces, but there is no guarantee that future generations of scholars will be able to access this archaeological record. Since the early 2000s, there has been a concerted eﬀort by federal, state, and private organizations to “clean up” the desert. Over more than a decade now, hundreds of tons of material associated with migration have been removed annually. A 2011 report from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) highlights the logic of these eﬀorts: “The cleanup and remediation projects were focused in the area within 100 miles of the United States border with Mexico.... Major impacts of smuggling and undocumented immigration include the accumula- tion of trash along smuggling corridors, the creation of illegal roads and trails and look out points throughout the border landscape. Disturbances to the natural and cultural landscape fragment wildlife habitat, damage archaeological This content downloaded from 97.124.39.228 on Fri, 02 Oct 2020 06:59:24 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 200. EL CAMINO Recuerdo. Photo by Michael Wells. and sacred sites, cause erosion, and increase the presence of invasive plant species.... [T]he eﬀects of this have begun to be reversed as trash is removed.” Federal guidelines generally do not recognize anything less than fifty years old as “historically important,” which means no law is in place to protect the artifacts that migrants leave behind. Ironically, the above statement from the BLM highlights how the bureau’s eﬀorts to “clean up” migrant sites are directly This content downloaded from 97.124.39.228 on Fri, 02 Oct 2020 06:59:24 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms THE CROSSING. 201 linked to its attempts to protect other “archaeological sites.” In this instance, the government perspective that migrant material culture is trash means that it can be justifiably erased. If we could fast-forward fifty years, these materials would be classified as “historic” and be protected. There is currently little inter- est, however, in preserving this ongoing historical record because of its politi- cal volatility and what it represents in terms of human suﬀering and govern- ment culpability. Viewing the traces of undocumented migration as an environmental blight that needs to be sanitized shapes the formation of the archaeological record for future generations, much of which has already been destroyed before it could be recorded. Site formation processes, like taphonomy, are political. Histo- rian Ewa Domanska might be on to something when she writes that those interested in understanding the manipulation of the past and its associated rel- ics in contemporary political discourse might be able to “forthell the future.” As memories of border crossings fade with time, physical evidence is being systematically removed by the political system that created this phenomenon. This erasure, much like the destruction of dead bodies, is the tail end of the violence produced by the hybrid collectif. This process seems to confirm Paul Farmer’s remark that “erasing history is perhaps the most common explan- atory sleight-of-hand relied upon by the architects of structural violence. Eras- ure or distortion of history is part of the process of desocialization necessary for the emergence of hegemonic accounts of what happened and why.” Sitting with Memo and Lucho in their cramped living room, I hold out hope that some of the narratives of border crossers and the things they leave behind can be salvaged before all is forgotten or lost. I ask Memo how he feels after so many crossings: It’s something that I really value. I truly value the experience. I always feel hor- rible for the people who come walking through the desert, who arrive beat up just to get ahead, to make progress. It’s so horrible when they get detained, or assaulted, or killed. It’s something so ugly. People get left behind and no one knows where. When you finally arrive here, it’s like, “Thank God!” You are reborn. That’s the point for me where you come back to life. For this reason we always go to church to thank God that we are OK and to keep moving forward with the people who come here to struggle. For me, my goal is to be here for a little bit and then go back to Mexico. But only when I have something that can help me survive. Right now it is very dangerous to cross... I keep this backpack as a memento of that last trip. This content downloaded from 97.124.39.228 on Fri, 02 Oct 2020 06:59:24 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms This page intentionally left blank This content downloaded from 97.124.39.228 on Fri, 02 Oct 2020 06:59:24 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

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