Vietnam War Vet Honors the Dead and Saves Lives at the Mexican Border Avery White and Joseph L. Boswell - VICE
go to original May 29, 2017

They install water stations and grave markers for the people who try to enter the US illegally via the treacherous Sonoran Desert (Avery White)

It's 110 degrees in the Sonoran Desert as Alvaro Enciso digs a hole in the dirt. He fills the hole with water and cement, then gently secures a handmade cross. Beside the grave-marker he places several water bottles for future border-crossers, "just in case," he says.

Over the past 17 years, the Tucson Corridor has seen a surge of Central Americans and Mexicans making the journey across the border by way of the desert. Enciso is marking the death sites of nearly three thousand bodies found in the desert as part of a conceptual art piece that spans 20,000 square miles.

The 71-year-old immigrated to the United States from Colombia in the 1960s. He was drafted into the US Army and served in the Vietnam War. Afterwards, he returned to the US to study cultural anthropology and was later hired by the US government as an expert in Latin American culture to work with the growing Spanish-speaking population. After retiring, he moved to Tucson in 2011 and dedicated himself to the plight of immigrants. First displaying his socially conscious found-object art work in the galleries of Tucson, he eventually started installing grave-markers in the Sonora Desert for people who've died trying to cross the border.

"I'm one of the lucky ones" he says. "I'm an example that there are people other than 'bad hombres,' who make a life for themselves and who participate in the American system and contribute to the American way of life. That's why I do this. It's solidarity. I'm part of la raza." Enciso has already installed around 500 crosses, but his work is far from over as the death count continues to rise.

"So far in 2017, we've had 42," explains Dr. Gregory Hess, the Chief Medical Examiner for Pima County, the final destination for most unidentified migrant bodies. We meet Dr. Hess at his Tucson office where we survey the data associated with migrant deaths, best shown by the "death map." This open-source, interactive map that Enciso and other "water droppers" use catalogues the 2,802 known locations where human remains have been discovered since 2001. "Prior to 2000, migrant deaths weren't on our radar. It was maybe ten to 15 remains found per year in the desert. But then in 2000, that number was 75, and then basically from 2002 to 2015, we averaged about 170 per year."

We ask Dr. Hess what drove this surge in deaths. "There was Operation: Gatekeeper and Operation: Hold the Line. Those were policies under the Clinton Administration that tried to decrease the number of illegal crossings. They put up quite a bit more fencing and tried to make it more difficult to cross in major populated areas, but what they did was push the [migration] routes into more remote areas like Southern Arizona. People are gonna still come if they have to."

To better understand who attempts this difficult journey and why, we visit Juanita Molina, Executive Director of Humane Borders, a 17-year-old aid organization founded in response to this region's rise in deaths. "The federal government said they thought the desert would be a natural deterrent. People would die, news would get back home, and people would stop crossing. That was not the case for a few different reasons. One reason is that the federal government completely underestimated the desperation of the people and the severity of their situation. The second reason is that they overestimated their knowledge. Coyotes in Mexico will say, 'see those lights over there, that's New York, we just need a day walk or so.' And really it's a ten-day walk just to Tucson."

Read the rest at VICE

Related: War Is Messy. Honoring Military Sacrifice Should Never Be So. (STLtoday.com)

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