LOS ANGELES — In the story of undocumented migration across America’s arid southern border, two things I hadn’t really considered stand out. The first is the water bottle. Water is a necessary element for survival in the southern desert, and black water bottles are now being made in northern Mexico to reduce reflectivity. The second is the tire. Dragged in the back of Border Patrol vehicles, they level dirt and sand along the many roads and paths that migrants might take. This makes it easier to spot fresh footprints along the surface.
The water bottle and the tires are part of the articles of Hostile Terrain ’94: The Undocumented Migrants Project, on view until July 9 at LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes. The show takes its title from a 1994 U.S. government policy of “Prevention through Deterrence”, which discourages migration through urban ports of entry and into hostile desert terrain.
The policy name comes from the first national border patrol strategy documentwhich states:
The prediction is that with the disruption of traditional entry and smuggling routes, illegal trafficking will be deterred or forced into more hostile terrain, less suitable for crossing and more suitable for law enforcement.
Hostility manifests itself in various forms throughout the show. At the entrance are 3,816 toe tags, each representing a person who died crossing the border between the mid-1990s and 2021. Built with the help of volunteers, the installation lays bare the scale of the loss, effectively serving as a memorial to those who’ve passed away.
Abandoned, discarded or simply abandoned objects form an additional memory room. Embroidered tortilla warmers, baseball caps, shoes, underwear and toys are featured as part of the undocumented migration project. Although not technically a memorial – it is unclear whether these items belong to people who are still living or not – they function as a testament to humanity.
Converse All Stars, a church t-shirt, candy wrappers and a copy of the New Testament give insight into the lives of people who might have owned them. “These artifacts,” the exhibit notes, “are both the material representation of the experiences of millions of cross-border commuters, as well as a crucial archaeological record of the often violent social process of undocumented migration.”
Uncertainty is one of the most painful aspects of the experience of undocumented migration. Sometimes, as in the case of a disappearance, the families do not even have the certainty of death. The Undocumented Migration Project, with support from the Colibri Center for Human Rights (Colibrí means “hummingbird” in Spanish), is also collecting missing person reports and DNA samples from family members. A look at these reports reveals the names, faces and nationalities of the missing people, as well as when and where they were last seen.
The toe tags return towards the end of the exhibition, where visitors are invited to write about the objects they would take with them on the long journey. One writes that they would take a picture of their family, “because I want to feel they are there with me on my journey.” Another said they would bring their hopes, dreams, faith and will.
One visitor who seemed to have made the trip was more philosophical, writing in Spanish that he would take all feelings, not just the positives but also the negatives: “No hay en realidad nada muy especial porque cuando yo vine aqui no traje nada.” Pero las memorias y el camino siempre se quedan.
(“In reality, there is nothing very special because when I came, I did not bring anything. But the memories and the path always remain.”)
Hostile Terrain ’94: The Undocumented Migrants Project continues at LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes (501 North Main Street, Los Angeles) through July 9. The exhibit was curated by Jason De León, Executive Director of the Undocumented Migration Project, Inc. (UMP), Michael Wells, UMP co-curator and photographer, and Austin Ella Shipman, UMP deputy director and co-curator, with the LA Plaza curatorial team led by Karen Crews Hendon.
