UC Berkeley

Issues regarding Undocumented Border Crossers continue to remain an area of engagement and research among forensic anthropologists, specifically in the border states of Arizona, Texas, and California (Anderson and Spradley 2016). Work has focused primarily on the identification and repatriation of these individuals (Bartelink 2017:132–133; Gocha et al. 2018:144; Martínez et al. 2014:11; Reineke and Halstead 2017:52). While the identification of these individuals is and will continue to be important, it can be argued that the political, economic, and social issues prompting these migrations would be worthy of study (Bartelink 2017; Gocha et al. 2018, Martínez et al. 2014; Reineke and Halstead 2017). An area of more limited area of study are the structures of violence, both direct and indirect, that lead many of these individuals on the treacherous journey to cross the border, and their long‐term effects on health. In continuing with this line of research, it is key to understand the socio‐political context of why individuals and specific communities migrate, why the United States was chosen, and the biocultural outcomes of living in context.

This research looks at the at the skeletal, material culture, and ethnographic evidence of structural violence in Latin America, and how this leads to immigration. Structural violence can be seen in these various avenues and used in conjunction with one another in providing a better framework that is not necessarily driven by the researcher’sinterpretation but by the individuals who experienced this structural violence firsthand. This portion of the research will home in specifically on the material culture associated with crossing of the United States/Mexico border. Many, if not all the individuals crossing the United States/Mexico border, carry with them religious, sentimental, nutritional, or protective items. Each of these items may be indicators of the life the individuals are leaving behind, in combination with the one they are hoping to achieve in the United States. The bigger picture here is that this crossing is long and dangerous, so whatever they decide to take with them must have some type of value or importance, be it for survival or emotional and physical support. This study offers a different perspective on the material culture associated with crossing the border in that it allows for the individuals to speak for themselves rather than have the researcher make their own interpretations.