-
8. Memorial Marches
- University of Arizona Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
151 chapter eight Memorial Marches Cultural geographer Wilbur Zelinksy has observed that “as the organizing symbol of [the United States] . . . the flag has preempted the place, visually and otherwise, of the crucifix in older Christian lands” (196, emphasis in original). A casual inspection of most public places would no doubt validate Zelinsky’s thesis. But even as the cross no longer occupies the nave, as it were, of a pluralistic society, it has remained a powerful symbol in political discourse. In 2005, when protesters planted two thousand crosses outside President George Bush’s Texas ranch to mark the deaths of US troops in Iraq, a local resident took umbrage and knocked them down with his truck (Glionna). Similar displays in Ohio and Georgia met the same fate, indicating that the cross is anything but moribund as a symbolic force, and its formal elegance is capable of plumbing emotional fathoms from serenity to rage. Crosses are also the most ubiquitous symbol across the events sponsored by immigrant advocacy groups in Tucson. Many times, the cross appears in print form. Samaritans and No More Deaths both use a Greek cross (i.e., with arms of equal length) in their logos, each in the tradition of that symbol as a shorthand for emergency medical assistance; the list of the dead in the Humane Borders ramada includes small crosses between the names; and publicity for the Migrant Trail includes a logo that depicts a cross planted in a desert landscape. But the most common crosses among immigrant advocates are small, handheld objects that take the “Christian” or “Latin” form, in which the horizontal beam intersects a vertical post just above the midpoint. They 152 • Chapter 8 measure approximately one foot by one and a half feet and consist of two thin pieces of wood nailed together and painted white. Each is inscribed on the crossbeam with the name of a deceased migrant, along with the date his or her body was discovered. In the many cases where the remains were not identified, the inscription reads “desconocido” (unknown). These crosses are especially prominent in performative commemoratives among immigrant advocates that may be called memorial marches, which are the most symbologically bountiful of any collective expressions among the groups. Though the marches vary in length and locale, they hold to a fairly consistent itinerary. In the first stage, participants gather for a program that includes the distribution of crosses. In the second, they leave the gathering site and journey to a new location. In the third, they hold a concluding program, similar in content to the opening, and the crosses are either retained by marchers or collected for future use. This chapter discusses how three memorial marches, the Día de los Muertos Pilgrimage, the Memorial March for Migrants, and the Migrant Trail, serve as acts of identification and relation with migrants. Memorial marches serve immigrant advocates’ constant struggle to cultivate sympathy among onlookers and to self-reflexively depict themselves. They draw on extant traditions of mourning and remembrance, particularly crosses, recitations of the names of the dead, and pilgrimages, but imbue these meanings with significance relevant to immigration policy and border enforcement under the Gatekeeper Complex. In doing so, the rhetoric of the events prophesies and rehearses a better world to come, sometimes using Christian terms to compare that future to a resurrection. Common Elements of Memorial Marches Crosses are the most conspicuous example of how immigrant advocates construct memorial marches from the existing cultural archive of mourning traditions. For centuries in the West, the cross has ineluctably been associated with Christianity, and as a burial marker it simultaneously references the resurrection of Jesus and the eternal life of Christian souls. The use of crosses in memorial marches has precedents in other kinds of vernacular mourning, most notably roadside shrines. In the Southwest, the practice dates to Spanish colonists, who employed it when a traveler died in the course of a journey and the body could not be conveyed to consecrated grounds for a proper burial. The cross, then, would hail passersby to say a prayer for the deceased in order to hasten the soul’s movement [18.222.67.251] Project MUSE (2024-04-17 21:32 GMT) Memorial Marches • 153 from purgatory to heaven (Griffith, Beliefs and Holy Places 100). By the mid-twentieth century, the concept was being applied in the aftermath of fatal automobile accidents on rural roads and in some urban areas as well, marking not the actual body, but...