Volunteers from around the world reading out names of those who have perished while crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.
Hostile Terrain 94: A Moment of Global Remembrance
Thousands of people have died and disappeared while crossing the U.S.-Mexico border since the mid-1990’s. This tragic loss of life is the direct result of the U.S. border enforcement policy known as Prevention Through Deterrence (PTD). These lives are being memorialized through the global participatory exhibition Hostile Terrain 94 (HT94). HT94 is organized by the Undocumented Migration Project, a nonprofit research-arts-education collective dedicated to raising awareness about migration issues around the globe.
During the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, we sought ways to safely engage with those who are committed to remembering the thousands of people who have died and disappeared along the U.S.-Mexico border in search of a better life. We asked people to film themselves reading the name of a person who has died crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in Southern Arizona, along with the details of that person’s death. We understood that it may be difficult to speak these things out loud, but we hoped that this could be a way for people to both bear witness to the harsh realities of U.S. Border Patrol policies and keep the memories alive of the thousands who have died in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona. Through this digital participatory event, communities from around the world came together virtually in a global moment of reflection.
Our goal was to capture as many individual voices as possible reading out loud the names of the dead who are memorialized in HT94. We compiled these recordings into a single public video that we hope visually and aurally speaks to the immense loss of life that has been caused by U.S. border enforcement policies.