De León Jason - Arizona;Arizona (Etats-Unis);États-Unis;Förenta staterna;Mexico;Mexiko;Mexique;North

US-Mexico border near Sasabe, Arizona. Photo by Michael Wells.

Unidentified human remains from the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner. Photo by Michael Wells.

Juan Bosco Shelter, Nogales, Mexico. Photo by Michael Wells.

Migrant campsite near Green Valley, Arizona. Photo by Michael Wells.

Storytelling, 2014. Photo by Michael Wells.

Jos Tacuri with his sister and niece, Cuenca, Ecuador. Photo by Michael Wells.

Flies.

I mostly remember the goddamn flies.

Its funny how memory works. I made a thousand mental notes of the sceneand wrote a good many of them down soon after the eventbut only a couple of years later they now seem to be forgotten, buried, reduced to background noise. After spending just a few weeks on the US-Mexico border hanging out with the desperate people looking to breach Americas immigration defenses, I quickly learned that death, violence, and suffering are par for the course. It all started to blur together. Disturbing images lost their edge. As an observer, you grow accustomed to seeing strangers cry at the drop of a hat. Tears no longer had the impact they once did. Tragic stories repeatedly told under the strain of a cracking voice transformed into well-worn hymns that lost their provenience and became difficult to seriate. I fought sensory overload so as to not lose sight of the big picture or the brutal details. I tried to write it all down so that I could later connect the observed realities to larger structural forces. This, at least, is what I kept telling myself I needed to do during my five years of fieldwork on the Arizona-Mexico border and later as I wrote this book. Its what I told myself in this first encounter with death. Its easier said than done. It didnt matter, though, because on this day in July 2009 none of it could be comprehended, much less theorized. All I could do was stare at the flies and wonder how the hell they had gotten there so quickly.

It happened on my first day conducting ethnographic research in the border town of Nogales, Mexico. I had spent the sweltering morning sitting in the Still, the next time is going to be different. There is a husband waiting in Carrboro, North Carolina. A guaranteed job painting houses in Phoenix. A little girl with an empty belly back in the tiny village of El Manchon, Guerrero. Si Dios quiere, voy a pasar. The next time is going to be different.

I dont remember what he looked like when he was alive. In fact, I didnt really notice him at all until I was making my way toward the convenience store a block from where I had been conducting interviews down on la linea They were landing on his milky eyeballs and crawling in and out of his open mouth. His head was turned and facing the crowd of migrants. He seemed to be staring right through everyone. We watched flies lay eggs on this mans face for what seemed an eternity.

Finally some Good Samaritan showed up with a Dallas Cowboys bedsheet and covered him up. A paramedic and a few of the neighbors milled around the corpse chatting, but no one seemed to be fazed. Death lay there like a casual summer breeze. I thought to myself that maybe this guy was headed to Dallas to wash dishes at an Applebees. Maybe he hated the pinches Cowboys after spending too many years in Philly doing landscaping jobs and rooting for the Eagles. No one seemed to know him. They just knew that he needed to be covered up to keep the flies away. I turned to Chucho for some insight into this spectacle. He shrugged and said, This happens all the time. Some people get tired of trying to cross the border after many failed attempts. Some turn to drugs and alcohol to kill time. Who knows what killed him? Reading the worry on my face, Chucho continued, You watch. No one will remember this tomorrow. Its like it didnt even happen.