A grassroots, collaborative effort of artists, quiltmakers, and activists to express compassion for migrants from Mexico and Central America who died in the Southern Arizona deserts.

The Migrant Quilt Project is grassroots, collaborative effort of artists, quiltmakers, and activists to express compassion for migrants from Mexico and Central America who died in the Southern Arizona deserts on their way to create better lives for themselves and their families. Materials used in the quilts were collected at migrant layup sites used for rest and shelter on established trails in the Sonoran Desert. Between 2004 and 2005, a record number of 282 migrants perished in the Tucson Sector, the border region between New Mexico and Yuma. The increase in deaths moved Jody Ipsen to take action to alleviate the tragic loss of life. As she hiked remote migrant trails with fellow humanitarians, they collected clothing, cans and water bottles left behind by migrants. Initially, they recycled some items and threw away the dirty clothes until Jody realized that the textile-based discards could be used to make quilts to communicate the reality of migrant deaths. She reached out to quiltmakers and artists to create quilts from the blue jeans, bandanas, work shirts and embroidered cloths she gathered in the desert. Quilts would represent deaths from each year since 2000 when the Pima County Medical Examiner’s Office began documenting the names of deceased migrants. Each Migrant Quilt lists the deaths for a specific federal fiscal year, coinciding with the U.S. government’s record-keeping. The name of each individual who died that year is inscribed on the quilt, with the word “unknown” or “desconocido” used to designate an unidentified person’s remains. Quiltmakers are free to design their quilts however they desire. The Migrant Quilt Project shares the quilts at exhibits and immigration conferences and on its Facebook page. The Migrant Quilts carry the stories of those who died so that viewers of the quilts may understand the real, personal, and fatal results of inhumane policies, including NAFTA, CAFTA, Operation Gatekeeper, Safeguard, and Hold the Line. In 2016, Peggy Hazard, a quiltmaker and former museum curator, joined forces with Ipsen to create a traveling exhibit of Migrant Quilts, to share their stories with audiences across the United States. As of 2019, over 3,300 people have perished in the Tucson Sector and over 6,000 across the entire U.S./Mexico border. Migrant Quilt Project www.migrantquiltproject.org 

The following bilingual text is from the exhibition Los Desconocidos / The Unknowns by Jonathan Gregory and Lydia Neuman at the International Quilt Museum, Mar 15 – Jun 24, 2019. Spanish translation by Jill Gnade.
^©2019, International Quilt Museum, University of Nebraska Board of Regents

INTRODUCTION
The “Tucson Sector” encompasses most of the state of Arizona, including 262 miles of its border with Mexico. This territory, designated by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, is part of the Sonoran Desert—an ecologically diverse, spectacular landscape of rough terrain and extreme conditions. Water sources are scarce. Temperatures frequently rise above 100 degrees and fall below freezing at night. Violence on both sides of the border—at the hands of “coyotes” (human smugglers), sex traffickers, and Border Patrol agents—is also a threat.

Despite these dangers, entrenched violence and poverty at home motivate many Mexicans and Central Americans to try to cross the border into the United States. Many perish on the journey, often from heatstroke. In The Devil’s Highway, author Luis Alberto Urrea describes this kind of death: “Your temperature redlines—you hit 106, 107, 108 degrees. Your body panics and dilates all blood capillaries near the surface, hoping to flood your skin with blood to cool it off. You blush. Your eyes turn red: blood vessels burst, and later, the tissue of the whites literally cooks.”

Between 1997 and 2017, U.S. Border Protection reported more than 2,700 deaths in the Tucson Sector. Human remains that cannot be identified are labeled “unknown” or desconocido/a in Spanish. The Migrant Quilt Project calls attention to the humanity of those who die trying to cross the Mexico-U.S. border—the would-be immigrants whose names and personhood are often missing from abstract conversations about illegal immigration.

INTRODUCTION – Spanish translation
El “Sector Tucson” abarca la mayoría del estado de Arizona, incluyendo 262 millas de la frontera con México. Este territorio, el cual la Agencia de Aduana y Protección Fronteriza de los Estados Unidos designa como parte del desierto de Sonora, tiene una gran diversidad ecológica, paisajes escabrosos espectaculares y condiciones climáticas extremas. En esta zona el agua escasea y las temperaturas frecuentemente suben a más de 100 grados Fahrenheit durante el día y caen bajo cero durante la noche. La violencia es una constante amenaza de los dos lados de la frontera por parte de los “coyotes”, traficantes de sexo y los agentes de la patrulla fronteriza.

A pesar de estos peligros fronterizos, es la violencia arraigada y la pobreza en sus hogares y países lo que motiva a bastantes mexicanos y centroamericanos a intentar cruzar la frontera de los Estados Unidos. Muchos fallecen en el camino debido a golpes de calor. En el libro “The Devil’s Highway” (“La carretera del diablo”) el autor Luis Alberto Urrea describe esta muerte: “Tu temperatura corporal sube extremadamente, llegando a 106, 107, 108 grados Fahrenheit. Tu cuerpo entra en pánico y los capilares sanguíneos se acercan a la superficie de la piel, intentando inundarla con sangre para enfriarla. Se enrojece la piel. Tus ojos se vuelven rojos, las vesículas irrumpen y luego los blancos de los ojos se cuecen literalmente.

Entre 1997 y 2017, la Agencia de Protección Fronteriza de los Estados Unidos reportó más de 2.700 muertos en el Sector Tucson. Los restos humanos que no pueden ser identificados se etiquetan como “desconocido/a.” El proyecto Colcha de Retazo del Migrante pretende llamar la atención sobre la humanidad los estos seres que mueren en el intento de cruzar la frontera México-Estados Unidos, los mismos cuyos nombres muchas veces no figuran en conversaciones abstractas sobre la inmigración illegal.

Materials & Materiality
The Los Desconocidos quilts incorporate a wide variety of material: utilitarian apparel like blue jeans, work shirts, and bandanas; commercial fabrics; a strip of handwoven Guatemalan fabric; traditional textiles like embroidered bordados cloths; a huipil—an indigenous Mexican or Central American women’s garment similar to a tunic. Most of these fabrics are collected from the desert, where they have been lost or abandoned by migrants.

On top of these backgrounds, the Migrant Quilt Project artists embellish the quilts with personal items and the iconography of both sides of the border: skeletons, skulls and santos; crucifixes and coffins; orange sunsets and Saguaro cactuses; the open road and the American flag; rosary beads and milagros—small, metal charms offered in prayer or thanks.

Among so many talismans, the word desconocido/a—“unknown”—appears again and again as a way to insist that the dead are counted even when they cannot be named. Surrounded by such an abundance of personal material, the awful, impersonal statistics acquire a three-dimensionality. The quilts represent the dead with specific, tangible evidence.

Materiales y la “Materialidad”
Las colchas de retazo de “Los Desconocidos” incorporan una gran variedad de materiales: prendas utilitarias como las mezclillas (jeans), camisas de trabajo, pañuelos, telas comerciales, telas guatemaltecas bordadas a mano y finalmente huipiles –prendas similares a túnicas que llevan las mujeres indígenas mexicanas y guatemaltecas. La mayoría de las telas y prendas fueron recogidas en el desierto en donde las dejaron abandonadas los migrantes.

Encima de estas prendas, los artistas del Proyecto Colcha de Retazo del Migrante han embellecido las colchas con efectos personales y con iconografía de los dos lados de la frontera. Por ejemplo, hay esqueletos, calaveras y santos, crucifijos y ataúdes, crepúsculos anaranjados, cactus saguaros, una imagen de un carretera vacía, la bandera estadounidense, cuentas del rosario y milagros --talismanes pequeños de metal que se ofrecen en un rezo o en agradecimiento.

Junto con muchos talismanes, la palabra “desconocido/a” aparece una y otra vez como una forma de insistir en que los muertos han sido contados aunque no pueden ser nombrados. Alrededor de tal abundancia de efectos personales, las estadísticas terribles e impersonales adquieren un aspecto tridimensional. Las colchas de retazo de los desconocidos representan la muerte con evidencia específica y tangible.

Quilt Projects
Quilts have long been used to document lives, labor, and memories. As early as the 1800s, quilts were inscribed—first in cross-stitch and later in ink—with the names of those who made or owned them. Family, community, and church members often worked together to make quilts as signs of friendship or fellowship, or as fundraisers. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, quilts were made as activist vehicles to support social and political causes including the abolition of slavery, the temperance movement, women’s liberation, and opposition to the Vietnam War.

In the last 35 years, the quilt form has continued to be a vehicle for consciousness raising. The NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, the Monument Quilt, the United in Memory 9/11 Victims Memorial Quilt— each is actually a number of quilts: 48,000 panels in the case of the AIDS quilt, 142 in the case of the 9/11 quilt. These are events or installations as much as objects. Deployed in different locations and configurations, these quilts pay tribute to the dead, and their display creates spaces in which communities can express grief and anguish.

Los proyectos de hacer colchas de retazos
Las colchas de retazo han sido usadas tradicionalmente para documentar vidas, labores y recuerdos. Inclusive a comienzos del siglo XIX, las colchas fueron inscritas –primero con puntos de cruz y después con tinta— tanto con los nombres de los que las hicieron como de a quienes les pertenecieron. La familia, la comunidad y los miembros de la iglesia muchas veces trabajaban juntos para hacer las colchas de retazo como símbolos de amistad y compañerismo o para recaudar fondos para proyectos comunitarios. En los siglos XIX y XX, las colchas de retazo fueron elaboradas como herramientas activistas para apoyar causas sociales y políticas incluyendo la abolición de la esclavitud, el movimiento de la prohibición de alcohol, la liberación femenina y la oposición a la Guerra de Vietnam.

En los últimos 35 años, la forma artística de la colcha de retazo ha seguido siendo un vehículo para crear conciencia. Ejemplos son el proyecto de los nombres fallecidos de SIDA, llamada la “Colcha conmemorativa sobre el SIDA”, o la colcha llamada “Colcha Unidos en el recuerda del 11 de septiembre”. Cada una compone un gran número de retazos: 48.000 retazos en el caso de la del Sida y 142 de la del 11 de septiembre. Estas colchas pueden ser consideradas eventos o instalaciones, al mismo tiempo que son meros objetos. Puestas en diferentes ubicaciones y configuraciones, las colchas de retazo dan tributo a los muertos y su exposición crea espacios para que las comunidades expresen su luto y su angustia.