La Línea, Ambos Nogales

The Sonoran Desert of Southern Arizona has become a vast

killing field where thousands of people have perished since 1999.

The vast majority of these people were undocumented migrants

who died slow, painful deaths from dehydration and exposure.

The United States intentionally militarized and fortified the U.S.

- Mexican border to force tens of thousands of border crossers

into the killing desert. In 1996, the U.S. built a wall made from

surplus landing mats between Nogales, Arizona and Nogales,

Sonora (Ambos Nogales). In 2011, they constructed an improved

higher wall of steel bars. People of conscious organized No More

Deaths/ No Mas Muertes to help alleviate the human suffering

in this desert. They put gallon jugs of water along remote desert

trails and aid deportees in Nogales, Sonora. My wife, Ruth Van

Dyke and I have joined this humanitarian effort in Nogales,

Sonora. Our work with deportees brought me into daily contact

with the border wall and the human cost of that wall. As an

archaeologist, the materialization and rematerialization of the

border intrigued me as a material process. My almost 50 years’

experience crossing the border at Nogales and my interactions

with the citizens of Ambos Nogales, migrants and deportees led

me to ask questions about the consequences of the material

border for people’s lives. Before, my activism had flowed from my

scholarship but in Nogales my scholarship sprang from my

activism. PUBLICATIONS