Crosses through the desert: honoring the unidentified

More than 60,000 migrants from all over the world have died while undergoing the dangerous trek north to step foot into the United States, that’s according to Colibri Center for Human Rights.

Tucson artist Alvaro Enciso, a migrant from Latin American migrated to the United States in search of his own American dream. He walks the harsh terrains of the Sonoran Desert every Tuesday with a group of volunteers to honor migrant lives.

“There are no happy endings here, nothing is happiness here. It’s all about tragedy and suffering and broken dreams,” said Enciso.

Alvaro then discovered a map with three-thousand red dots, that’s the current number on record on Colibri Website, each one signifying a migrants’ death.

“What they have in common are the red dots because that dot is what you see on the map where a person died and it is just to show the location, but what I’m doing is bringing the red dot from the map to where the actual tragedy happened,” said Enciso.

Alvaro hopes that with every cross that is placed is a symbol of hope for every migrant that comes across one of his crosses.

“That cross should give them a little faith, that someone cares for them to come out here and put across here for you, but it should also give them some pauses that this is dangerous,” said Enciso.

Alvaro said he does not see the light at the end of the tunnel to end these tragic deaths occurring but he will continue coming out in freezing and scorching hot temperatures until he can’t take another step again.

“There is no talk about immigration reform. Now everyone is talking about a crisis at the border, there is a humanitarian tragedy taking place, parents are being separated, people are dying out here, people are being held in detention centers, that is the crisis we need to fix,” said Enciso.