The Dead: Scenes of Disturbance and Disarticulation

In this chapter, Álvaro Enciso leads volunteers as they travel to the interior of the Sonoran Desert and plant crosses to honor migrants who died attempting the militarized border crossing. Using GPS technology, they visit the site where a person’s remains were found and perform a ceremony to offer the dead sanctuary. This chapter highlights the tensions between the living’s urge to offer the dead rest and the dead’s desire to resist closure. Largely unidentified and anonymous, their bodies disarticulated and spread out on the desert floor, the crowd of the dead is restless and unruly. In their haunting, they prompt volunteers to deal with the violence in the borderlands and unfinished losses in our personal lives. The dead escape forensic care and humanitarian desires for closure. Álvaro himself nurtures this haunting, returning every Tuesday with a shovel and cross in hand. In his words, “así los chingo.”