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Heart and Soul: Arizona's desert crosses

Arizona's desert crosses

02/12/2022 GMT

BBC World Service - Heart and Soul, Arizona's desert crosses

The artist planting crosses in the desert in Arizona to memorialise dead migrants.

Alvaro Enciso is a Vietnam veteran, and an artist.  He arrived in the US from Colombia in his 20s, and now lives in Tucson, on the south-eastern edge of the unforgiving Sonoran Desert.  If you’re a migrant, this is one of the deadliest places to cross the border from Mexico into the United States.  Every Tuesday, Alvaro does something extraordinary.  Together with a group of volunteers, a GPS, cement and shovels, he journeys off-road through the dust and the cacti.  He has a map provided by the County’s Medical Examiner.  On it, there are thousands of red spots - the locations where human remains have been found over the last two decades.  When he arrives at one of them, Alvaro and his team dig a deep hole, fill it with cement, and place a decorated wooden cross in that spot... A testament to a life lost, and a visual remembrance of someone’s struggle to fulfil their human potential. 

So far, Alvaro Enciso has placed 1300 crosses in the Sonoran Desert.  At first, he didn’t want to use a Christian symbol, but then he started to look more deeply at the history of the cross.  He researched how crucifixion made death as painful as possible in Roman times, so that those who were crucified died in excruciating circumstances with no access to food or water.  Alvaro Enciso saw a parallel with the way migrants expire on their journey north.  For Heart and Soul, Linda Pressly journeys into the Sonoran Desert with Alvaro and his team.    

Producer: Tim Mansel and Linda Pressley

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