I’m gonna talk today about how
anthropology can help us put names faces
and stories to immigration statistics in
the United States when I teach
anthropology 101 students in the
beginning often ask me what is it that
anthropologists actually do and then I
show them this picture and say well we
sit around gamble we hang out here my
wallets on the table because I’m losing
all my money to these guys but this is
no ordinary poker game I’m playing poker
with a guy named Victor and a guy named
Miguel Victor and Miguel have spent 20
plus years living in the United States
and had been recently deported temptin
to to Mexico I spent three weeks with
them in a migrant shelter hearing their
stories learning about what it was like
to be undocumented for so long in the US
what it was like to have been deported
back to Mexico to a country that they
they no longer really even knew and how
they were mentally and physically
preparing to undertake a border crossing
and over the course of those three weeks
are hanging out playing poker laughing
trying to find some humor in this whole
process we became very very good friends
and Trust was developed at the end of
the third week I went shopping with
Victor and Miguel
I watched them buy water food and a few
other items and pack their bags here
Victor is showing me a bag of garlic in
his backpack and he’s saying Jason
migrants rub this on their clothes when
they go into the desert because it helps
to keep snakes and other animals away
supposedly to say goodbye to Victor I
jokingly wrote a little message on his
backpack here and it says in Spanish
don’t forget that you owe me an apple
juice because we would sit around
playing poker we had they had no money
there was no beer it wasn’t really kind
of a party scenario but these guys would
say look when you come to my house
eventually in Arizona we’re gonna hang
out we’re gonna we’re gonna we’re gonna
grill we’ll have some beers but you
being this young guy you were the baby
you’d get to drink apple juice only so
and so I wrote this message for these
guys you know but it was a very sad
moment for me I walk with them down to
the border and all of we get down to the
fence
and Victor starts saying hey take some
pictures of this we’re getting ready to
go take pictures and I’m on the verge of
tears at this point I said you know what
I don’t want to take pictures of this
this is making me sick to my stomach
because I know we’ve developed this this
friendship over these three weeks I know
quite well what could happen to you out
in the desert I don’t it’s just too hard
for me to put on the scientist had right
now and Victor saying no one’s gonna
believe you your students are gonna
believe you unless you take a picture so
do it
so I reluctantly take out my camera and
start shooting photographs of these guys
we say we hug we say goodbye and I
walked I watch them walk off into the
desert and I basically break break down
in tears these are two two men in a sea
of millions of people who have gone
through the Arizona desert and many of
whom have been caught Victor and Miguel
have attempted to cross this border
multiple times and are part of the 4.5
million that have been apprehended in
southern Arizona alone that was one of
the hardest parts of this research when
I first began it but this it’s been many
many difficult moments while trying to
understand undocumented migration last
summer the the hardest thing I had to do
was make a phone call and say Marysol I
found her she was the 41 year old mother
of three whose body I encountered in the
desert she’d only been dead about four
days to call the family and say I was
with her in the end we put a blanket on
her to try to restore some dignity in
the desert and my students and I sat for
seven hours waiting for law enforcement
to come and pick up her body and take
her away that was that’s been still to
this day one of the most difficult
things that I’ve ever had to do as a
researcher and as a as a human being
Marysol is one of about 5600 bodies that
have been recovered in the desert and in
the southern border since 1998 so one of
many many people and I’m gonna argue
that this number is actually quite low
what this project has tried to do is
offer a counter to the dominant sort of
way that Americans think about
undocumented migration typically we get
our information from some primary media
sources
most of which focus on issues of
legality and perspectives from law
enforcement and what this project has
tried to do is say okay what does it
look like from the other side all right
what do the people themselves say about
this process and who are that who are
these these millions of undocumented
people and what are their stories
and I would argue that border crossing
is poorly understood and archaeology and
anthropology can help us understand this
process and to humanize it at the end of
the day so since 2009 I’ve been doing
this project and looking at what happens
to these gentlemen and men and women and
kids out in the desert some of whom I’ve
actually had to take photographs with
disposable cameras for an anonymous
publication so most of the blurry photos
that you’re going to see or the ones
that are obviously shot on film and not
digital or once taken by migrants if you
don’t know just quickly the bulk of
people coming to the United States
currently uh illegally undocumented come
through southern Arizona it’s impossible
virtually to cross near urban ports of
entry but we’ve essentially left the
back door in southern Arizona open in an
attempt to use the the desert
environment itself as a form of
deterrence
the federal policy is called prevention
through deterrence the thinking being
that if we funnel migrants through this
really inhospitable environment where
they’ve got to walk 50 60 70 miles over
rough terrain where temperatures can be
115 degrees many people will get hurts
people will die and eventually word will
spread that is a dangerous social
process and don’t try to do it we know
that that has not been very effective
and what I’ve been trying to look at
lately is how are people actually
preparing for this stuff what happens in
during the process and what happens
after when they fail when they succeed
or when they try again the bulk of my
work happens it’s just south of Tucson
where I start is in a tiny little town
called Alta or Mexico alt R is a jumping
off point for hundreds of thousands of
migrants every year if you go to
downtown alt R you’ll see this big mural
of the local baseball team called the
clay up this of all tar clay and Spanish
is euphemism for smuggler so this town
basically just revolves around smuggling
and everybody knows it migrants go there
they prepare themselves they hop on a
bus drive down to the border and then
walk into the desert if you go to the
vendors in al thar they specialize in
certain types of goods camouflage
clothing hiking boots first aid
equipment all the things that migrants
need to get across the desert is a
highly specialized economy in northern
altern people are making millions of
dollars every year off of this process
and it’s what people need to get across
this big vast desert how would you
prepare yourself to to engage in a
terrain that is just incredibly
difficult to get across on foot luckily
for me
a former archaeologist and
anthropologist sometimes I’m able to
draw on my old skills in archaeology and
my current skills in socio-cultural
anthropology but I talked to migrants as
they prepare to go into the desert I
follow them around as they go shopping I
have them take photographs and then I
interview them once they’ve come back
whether they when they’ve been deported
so I talk to family groups I talk to men
and to women about what happened in the
desert what did they experience you know
tell me what did the terrain look like
how did you experience it on an
individual level what was it like to try
to cross mountains in Nike sneakers
carrying a very heavy backpack
what were your engagements with nature
were there snakes were there are
scorpions were there bandits who robbed
migrants systematically did you
encounter them what was Border Patrol
like was it a relatively friendly
encounter or was it a violent one so
recording the narratives of migrants who
go through this process
lucky for me people leave a lot of stuff
behind in the deserts at places that
we’ve termed migrant stations so here
you can see someone under a tree with
his backpack there and people leave
stuff while they’re walking across the
desert and we’ve come in and tried to
look at it from an archaeological
perspective I mean this could be the
archaeology of ten minutes ago literally
some of these sites are small old pair
of pants submit some empty water bottles
some of these sites can be quite large
and I would argue that this is a rich
repository of archaeological data this
is an American history in the making and
we can use the tools of archeology to
come in and systematically record these
sites so I’m an expert in water bottles
I’m an expert in backpacks and knockoff
Nike sneakers I have a typology for can
lids everything that people are going to
consume out there I pretty much have
done some sort of Syrian on it and I
train lots of students to do this as
well and for me the real joy is to trick
people who who would never think
archaeology was interesting at all who
are interested in social issues or or
Latin American history and to say haha
we as archaeologists can actually have
get involved in this conversation so I
take a lot the students down every year
and I’m always grateful to them for
further help and support when we look at
the actual stuff migrants leave behind
we can get little windows into
individual stories the ironic symbols
that end up on clothing that people
leave behind like the Statue of Liberty
shirt the personal items the photographs
the the the love letters the Bible’s the
rosaries that are accidentally left
behind
worn-out sneakers and then also
sometimes a little bit of humor so this
person is one of my favorite things I’ve
ever found this illegal alien card on
the bottom left that someone had in
their wallets
so even migrants are trying to make
light of this very grave situation at
times and the archaeology can be really
helpful to get at these stories and then
to combine them with the narratives of
migrants themselves and we can able we
can also use our key ology to look at
change over time sometimes just a couple
of years so in the beginning migrants
used to carry around these big plastic
water jugs that are very white and in
the desert they will say Border Patrol
can see you a mile away carrying one of
these things so what you want to do is
you want to paint it black with shoe
polish or you want to perhaps cover them
up with a black plastic bag and in late
2009 some enterprising individual in
northern Mexico says you know we can
make an extra dollar on these bottles if
we start producing them out of black
plastic the idea is that this is
supposed to help you stay camouflage it
actually doesn’t really work but I think
it’s interesting that it’s become this
routinized that there’s a full-blown
industry and people who are responding
to consumer demands in northern Mexico
and we and there’s been hundreds of
thousands of these deposited in the
desert every every year but I started
really thinking about this
ethnographically and archaeologically
and and in last summer I really started
to think more about those who do not
make it across the desert and thinking
about how can forensic science help me
to understand this very hidden deadly
process lots of people go missing in the
desert many more than have been counted
as dead and I spend time in shelters
talking to families about looking for a
daughter or a husband occasionally I’ve
come across fragmented human remains
like this this worn-out pair of shoes
associated with some human rib fragments
that had been gnawed on by animals it
was this and an arm an arm fragment we
know that we we have speculated for a
long time that the desert does a really
good job of destroying people’s bodies
but the problem has been that it’s all
been speculation because no one has done
any systematic research on the actual
process of decomposition
so last year in the beginning of the
summer I drew on previous forensic
research using pig carcasses as proxies
for the human body to try to understand
decomposition
I took some pigs I
dressed him up in clothes similar to
what migrants would wear in the desert
and I’d put them into different
environmental conditions and monitored
them with motion cameras this pig here
we left out for three weeks it sat there
for about two weeks basically
decomposing relatively naturally and
then vultures showed up about six or
seven of them so this is our one of
vulture arrival and this is at the end
of 24 hours so things have moved
incredibly far many things are
completely missing we went back and
survey the area and you know important
parts of the skeleton had just
completely gone missing including the
identification and stuff that we have
put into the pants
so really signaling that this stuff is
disappearing really quickly and it’s
difficult to to recover our
archaeologically when I had that phone
call with with Mattie Souls family it
was I struggled to to find something
positive to say to them over the phone
you know I’m calling to you know because
I know that if my loved one had gone
missing in the desert I would want to
know as much as possible about what had
happened and so when I picked up this
phone and said you know I’m the person
who found my tea sold and I just want to
let you know that we that we sat with
her for a long time that we waited and
we got there before the birds could get
to her and you know and for me this
really brought home the importance of
the forensic research because I started
the the pig project two weeks before we
found her and then when we came across
her body you can already see birds
beginning to circle her many stories end
as badly as Mattie Souls but then
occasionally too there are there are
other stories that give me a little bit
of hope or at least remind me about the
the strength of the human spirit three
weeks after I watched Victor and Miguel
go into this tunnel I get a phone call
and says hey we’re in Tucson I got your
apple juice you know come on down so I
go over to I go to their house and you
know we’re sitting around and I’m like I
don’t really have my research or head on
anymore because I was just like you know
I thought you guys were dead I didn’t
know what was going to happen and and
and Victor says hey I want to show you
something and he goes into the into the
closet and pulls out this bag and says
we says we lost the other one that you
wrote on because it was too big and
bulky so we just at the end of six days
of walking and
250 miles we put all her stuff in a
smaller bag to keep going but but I kept
the bag he says this bag reminds me
about the the previous six or seven
times that I’ve come across this desert
how I almost died on this last one by
falling down a ravine and having my
blood pressure just completely drop
incredibly low and almost being left
behind in the desert II says I this is a
reminder to me of of that history of
those stories and and I will cherish it
forever and you know signaling to me
that it’s not just archaeologists who
are interested in the stuff that that
people leave in the desert it’s many of
these migrants whose stories it can be
told through these objects and I just
want to conclude with just a few numbers
like I said 4.5 million people have been
caught in the Arizona desert since 2000
with current statistics today we
estimate about 330 people will be caught
today in southern Arizona coming through
we know that we average about 373
recovered bodies a year and I’ve shown
you that that’s probably a low estimate
but if you do the very simple math and
when thinking about migrant fatalities
that gets us to about one death every
single day thank you
you
anthropology can help us put names faces
and stories to immigration statistics in
the United States when I teach
anthropology 101 students in the
beginning often ask me what is it that
anthropologists actually do and then I
show them this picture and say well we
sit around gamble we hang out here my
wallets on the table because I’m losing
all my money to these guys but this is
no ordinary poker game I’m playing poker
with a guy named Victor and a guy named
Miguel Victor and Miguel have spent 20
plus years living in the United States
and had been recently deported temptin
to to Mexico I spent three weeks with
them in a migrant shelter hearing their
stories learning about what it was like
to be undocumented for so long in the US
what it was like to have been deported
back to Mexico to a country that they
they no longer really even knew and how
they were mentally and physically
preparing to undertake a border crossing
and over the course of those three weeks
are hanging out playing poker laughing
trying to find some humor in this whole
process we became very very good friends
and Trust was developed at the end of
the third week I went shopping with
Victor and Miguel
I watched them buy water food and a few
other items and pack their bags here
Victor is showing me a bag of garlic in
his backpack and he’s saying Jason
migrants rub this on their clothes when
they go into the desert because it helps
to keep snakes and other animals away
supposedly to say goodbye to Victor I
jokingly wrote a little message on his
backpack here and it says in Spanish
don’t forget that you owe me an apple
juice because we would sit around
playing poker we had they had no money
there was no beer it wasn’t really kind
of a party scenario but these guys would
say look when you come to my house
eventually in Arizona we’re gonna hang
out we’re gonna we’re gonna we’re gonna
grill we’ll have some beers but you
being this young guy you were the baby
you’d get to drink apple juice only so
and so I wrote this message for these
guys you know but it was a very sad
moment for me I walk with them down to
the border and all of we get down to the
fence
and Victor starts saying hey take some
pictures of this we’re getting ready to
go take pictures and I’m on the verge of
tears at this point I said you know what
I don’t want to take pictures of this
this is making me sick to my stomach
because I know we’ve developed this this
friendship over these three weeks I know
quite well what could happen to you out
in the desert I don’t it’s just too hard
for me to put on the scientist had right
now and Victor saying no one’s gonna
believe you your students are gonna
believe you unless you take a picture so
do it
so I reluctantly take out my camera and
start shooting photographs of these guys
we say we hug we say goodbye and I
walked I watch them walk off into the
desert and I basically break break down
in tears these are two two men in a sea
of millions of people who have gone
through the Arizona desert and many of
whom have been caught Victor and Miguel
have attempted to cross this border
multiple times and are part of the 4.5
million that have been apprehended in
southern Arizona alone that was one of
the hardest parts of this research when
I first began it but this it’s been many
many difficult moments while trying to
understand undocumented migration last
summer the the hardest thing I had to do
was make a phone call and say Marysol I
found her she was the 41 year old mother
of three whose body I encountered in the
desert she’d only been dead about four
days to call the family and say I was
with her in the end we put a blanket on
her to try to restore some dignity in
the desert and my students and I sat for
seven hours waiting for law enforcement
to come and pick up her body and take
her away that was that’s been still to
this day one of the most difficult
things that I’ve ever had to do as a
researcher and as a as a human being
Marysol is one of about 5600 bodies that
have been recovered in the desert and in
the southern border since 1998 so one of
many many people and I’m gonna argue
that this number is actually quite low
what this project has tried to do is
offer a counter to the dominant sort of
way that Americans think about
undocumented migration typically we get
our information from some primary media
sources
most of which focus on issues of
legality and perspectives from law
enforcement and what this project has
tried to do is say okay what does it
look like from the other side all right
what do the people themselves say about
this process and who are that who are
these these millions of undocumented
people and what are their stories
and I would argue that border crossing
is poorly understood and archaeology and
anthropology can help us understand this
process and to humanize it at the end of
the day so since 2009 I’ve been doing
this project and looking at what happens
to these gentlemen and men and women and
kids out in the desert some of whom I’ve
actually had to take photographs with
disposable cameras for an anonymous
publication so most of the blurry photos
that you’re going to see or the ones
that are obviously shot on film and not
digital or once taken by migrants if you
don’t know just quickly the bulk of
people coming to the United States
currently uh illegally undocumented come
through southern Arizona it’s impossible
virtually to cross near urban ports of
entry but we’ve essentially left the
back door in southern Arizona open in an
attempt to use the the desert
environment itself as a form of
deterrence
the federal policy is called prevention
through deterrence the thinking being
that if we funnel migrants through this
really inhospitable environment where
they’ve got to walk 50 60 70 miles over
rough terrain where temperatures can be
115 degrees many people will get hurts
people will die and eventually word will
spread that is a dangerous social
process and don’t try to do it we know
that that has not been very effective
and what I’ve been trying to look at
lately is how are people actually
preparing for this stuff what happens in
during the process and what happens
after when they fail when they succeed
or when they try again the bulk of my
work happens it’s just south of Tucson
where I start is in a tiny little town
called Alta or Mexico alt R is a jumping
off point for hundreds of thousands of
migrants every year if you go to
downtown alt R you’ll see this big mural
of the local baseball team called the
clay up this of all tar clay and Spanish
is euphemism for smuggler so this town
basically just revolves around smuggling
and everybody knows it migrants go there
they prepare themselves they hop on a
bus drive down to the border and then
walk into the desert if you go to the
vendors in al thar they specialize in
certain types of goods camouflage
clothing hiking boots first aid
equipment all the things that migrants
need to get across the desert is a
highly specialized economy in northern
altern people are making millions of
dollars every year off of this process
and it’s what people need to get across
this big vast desert how would you
prepare yourself to to engage in a
terrain that is just incredibly
difficult to get across on foot luckily
for me
a former archaeologist and
anthropologist sometimes I’m able to
draw on my old skills in archaeology and
my current skills in socio-cultural
anthropology but I talked to migrants as
they prepare to go into the desert I
follow them around as they go shopping I
have them take photographs and then I
interview them once they’ve come back
whether they when they’ve been deported
so I talk to family groups I talk to men
and to women about what happened in the
desert what did they experience you know
tell me what did the terrain look like
how did you experience it on an
individual level what was it like to try
to cross mountains in Nike sneakers
carrying a very heavy backpack
what were your engagements with nature
were there snakes were there are
scorpions were there bandits who robbed
migrants systematically did you
encounter them what was Border Patrol
like was it a relatively friendly
encounter or was it a violent one so
recording the narratives of migrants who
go through this process
lucky for me people leave a lot of stuff
behind in the deserts at places that
we’ve termed migrant stations so here
you can see someone under a tree with
his backpack there and people leave
stuff while they’re walking across the
desert and we’ve come in and tried to
look at it from an archaeological
perspective I mean this could be the
archaeology of ten minutes ago literally
some of these sites are small old pair
of pants submit some empty water bottles
some of these sites can be quite large
and I would argue that this is a rich
repository of archaeological data this
is an American history in the making and
we can use the tools of archeology to
come in and systematically record these
sites so I’m an expert in water bottles
I’m an expert in backpacks and knockoff
Nike sneakers I have a typology for can
lids everything that people are going to
consume out there I pretty much have
done some sort of Syrian on it and I
train lots of students to do this as
well and for me the real joy is to trick
people who who would never think
archaeology was interesting at all who
are interested in social issues or or
Latin American history and to say haha
we as archaeologists can actually have
get involved in this conversation so I
take a lot the students down every year
and I’m always grateful to them for
further help and support when we look at
the actual stuff migrants leave behind
we can get little windows into
individual stories the ironic symbols
that end up on clothing that people
leave behind like the Statue of Liberty
shirt the personal items the photographs
the the the love letters the Bible’s the
rosaries that are accidentally left
behind
worn-out sneakers and then also
sometimes a little bit of humor so this
person is one of my favorite things I’ve
ever found this illegal alien card on
the bottom left that someone had in
their wallets
so even migrants are trying to make
light of this very grave situation at
times and the archaeology can be really
helpful to get at these stories and then
to combine them with the narratives of
migrants themselves and we can able we
can also use our key ology to look at
change over time sometimes just a couple
of years so in the beginning migrants
used to carry around these big plastic
water jugs that are very white and in
the desert they will say Border Patrol
can see you a mile away carrying one of
these things so what you want to do is
you want to paint it black with shoe
polish or you want to perhaps cover them
up with a black plastic bag and in late
2009 some enterprising individual in
northern Mexico says you know we can
make an extra dollar on these bottles if
we start producing them out of black
plastic the idea is that this is
supposed to help you stay camouflage it
actually doesn’t really work but I think
it’s interesting that it’s become this
routinized that there’s a full-blown
industry and people who are responding
to consumer demands in northern Mexico
and we and there’s been hundreds of
thousands of these deposited in the
desert every every year but I started
really thinking about this
ethnographically and archaeologically
and and in last summer I really started
to think more about those who do not
make it across the desert and thinking
about how can forensic science help me
to understand this very hidden deadly
process lots of people go missing in the
desert many more than have been counted
as dead and I spend time in shelters
talking to families about looking for a
daughter or a husband occasionally I’ve
come across fragmented human remains
like this this worn-out pair of shoes
associated with some human rib fragments
that had been gnawed on by animals it
was this and an arm an arm fragment we
know that we we have speculated for a
long time that the desert does a really
good job of destroying people’s bodies
but the problem has been that it’s all
been speculation because no one has done
any systematic research on the actual
process of decomposition
so last year in the beginning of the
summer I drew on previous forensic
research using pig carcasses as proxies
for the human body to try to understand
decomposition
I took some pigs I
dressed him up in clothes similar to
what migrants would wear in the desert
and I’d put them into different
environmental conditions and monitored
them with motion cameras this pig here
we left out for three weeks it sat there
for about two weeks basically
decomposing relatively naturally and
then vultures showed up about six or
seven of them so this is our one of
vulture arrival and this is at the end
of 24 hours so things have moved
incredibly far many things are
completely missing we went back and
survey the area and you know important
parts of the skeleton had just
completely gone missing including the
identification and stuff that we have
put into the pants
so really signaling that this stuff is
disappearing really quickly and it’s
difficult to to recover our
archaeologically when I had that phone
call with with Mattie Souls family it
was I struggled to to find something
positive to say to them over the phone
you know I’m calling to you know because
I know that if my loved one had gone
missing in the desert I would want to
know as much as possible about what had
happened and so when I picked up this
phone and said you know I’m the person
who found my tea sold and I just want to
let you know that we that we sat with
her for a long time that we waited and
we got there before the birds could get
to her and you know and for me this
really brought home the importance of
the forensic research because I started
the the pig project two weeks before we
found her and then when we came across
her body you can already see birds
beginning to circle her many stories end
as badly as Mattie Souls but then
occasionally too there are there are
other stories that give me a little bit
of hope or at least remind me about the
the strength of the human spirit three
weeks after I watched Victor and Miguel
go into this tunnel I get a phone call
and says hey we’re in Tucson I got your
apple juice you know come on down so I
go over to I go to their house and you
know we’re sitting around and I’m like I
don’t really have my research or head on
anymore because I was just like you know
I thought you guys were dead I didn’t
know what was going to happen and and
and Victor says hey I want to show you
something and he goes into the into the
closet and pulls out this bag and says
we says we lost the other one that you
wrote on because it was too big and
bulky so we just at the end of six days
of walking and
250 miles we put all her stuff in a
smaller bag to keep going but but I kept
the bag he says this bag reminds me
about the the previous six or seven
times that I’ve come across this desert
how I almost died on this last one by
falling down a ravine and having my
blood pressure just completely drop
incredibly low and almost being left
behind in the desert II says I this is a
reminder to me of of that history of
those stories and and I will cherish it
forever and you know signaling to me
that it’s not just archaeologists who
are interested in the stuff that that
people leave in the desert it’s many of
these migrants whose stories it can be
told through these objects and I just
want to conclude with just a few numbers
like I said 4.5 million people have been
caught in the Arizona desert since 2000
with current statistics today we
estimate about 330 people will be caught
today in southern Arizona coming through
we know that we average about 373
recovered bodies a year and I’ve shown
you that that’s probably a low estimate
but if you do the very simple math and
when thinking about migrant fatalities
that gets us to about one death every
single day thank you
you
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