The Undertaker of the Desert for 1843 Magazine

Last year I joined writer Matthew Bremner to work on a story weaving together different realities of the origin, transit and destination of part of the irregular migration towards the US for the Economist's 1843 Magazine.

“César Ortigoza looked out over the Arizona desert and sighed ‘It’s not easy out there,’ he said. He is the co-founder of Armadillos group, a volunteer organisation which helps families find the bodies of the many migrants who disappear in the US-Mexico borderlands. Since their founding, Ortigoza estimates that his organisation has found hundreds of bodes. He once located 12 in a single day.

In 2018 he started searching for the bodies of three migrants who had been reported missing. It would end up taking him months.”

We followed Ortigoza on one of his searches along the US-Mexico border and later on we visited the relatives of the small group who perished in the border in their hometowns in the Mexican state of Sinaloa to document their environments and what they left behind.