US-Mexico border migrant deaths and the desert memorial project, Digi Mart USA News (Mexico-US border): The border between Mexico and the United States has become what the publisher describes as the largest migrant cemetery in the world. According to the report, more than 7,000 sets of remains of people from Mexico, Central and South America, the Caribbean and other nations were found between 2014 and 2024.
The article says the deaths were caused by dehydration, drowning, low temperatures, insect bites, snakebites, violence by smugglers, traffic accidents and falls from the border wall. The publisher argues that these figures contradict the Mexican government’s position that migration has reached zero, noting that thousands of Mexicans continue to migrate because of poverty, family reunification and violence from cartels.
The article cites records from the International Organization for Migration’s Missing Migrants Project, which counts more than 6,600 migrants who died or went missing on the land border between Mexico and the United States since 2014. Other organizations, according to the report, consider that figure conservative because it reflects only located remains, and say the true death toll could be double or triple, including deaths on the Mexican side where organized crime controls crossings.
In the Arizona desert, the report says, thousands of colorful crosses have been placed by volunteers to honor and remember migrants who died. Colombian artist and academic Álvaro Enciso, who emigrated to the United States, leads the project “Donde Mueren los Sueños” (Where Dreams Die), which aims to address the anonymity of desert deaths.
According to the article, Enciso has symbolically placed more than 20,000 wooden crosses in the deserts of Sonora-Arizona, Texas, New Mexico and California. Each cross is installed at the exact geographic coordinates where authorities or rescue groups recovered a migrant’s remains, creating what the article describes as a conceptual and physical cemetery along the border.
In a post dated October 30, Enciso wrote that he returned to the site where he had planted a cross about ten years earlier for Rafael Ángel Calixtro Celaya, an undocumented migrant whose body was recovered on March 20, 2005. Enciso said Calixtro was 26 years old and died from a gunshot wound to the back, likely while trying to flee, and that he does not know the circumstances or whether the person responsible was identified or detained.
Enciso wrote that the cross, though faded, remains firmly planted, and that it reflects his early work, when he was still learning the proper proportions and decorations. He added that while he was there, he tried to recall what he was doing at the age of 26.
