Sonoran Desert Research Paper

I am volunteering with No Mas Muertes in the Sonoran Desert on the Tohono O’Odham reservation, leaving water and medicine for migrants making their way through US-Mexican border territory: it is territory which is inhospitable, if less heavily securitized. Characterized by rattlesnakes, extreme temperatures, and a complete lack of drinkable water, it is a geography described by former Commissioner of Immigration and Naturalization Service Doris Meissner as a “natural ally” to US Border Patrol, producing tens of thousands of migrant corpses annually. I place three gallon jugs at the designated station and take a photograph. Nearby, there are remnants of old tires, a backpack containing three pairs of socks, a filthy doll which has faded in the sun. There is a pile of empty water bottles which have been slashed open and now lie, useless. What originated as a gift is now garbage, but bears, still, the intentions of anonymous benefactors: “Barreras pueden ser puentes.” “Dios sea contigo.” A heart and the Cross. …show more content…
It is also impossible to know whether the bottles were destroyed by border militia groups or individual members of the Tohono O’Odham nation. What is clear to me on this broiling summer day is that though they are no longer physically present, spectral traces of several things exist in the discarded items I find in the Tohono borderlands of Arizona: I see in them the effort to allow bodies to survive (and alternatively, to make them die), conflicting ideologies regarding who ‘belongs’ and who does not, and a perpetually waged, ever-evolving struggle over and against sovereign state