Tucson Sector Deaths 2000–2001 Quilt, from the Migrant Quilt Project
Jody Ipsen hikes remote Arizona migrant trails with members of Los Desconocidos (the “unknowns”), cleaning up campsites and recycling cans and water bottles left behind by migrants. She sends discarded items of clothing to members of the Migrant Quilt Project, who use the fabric to create works in honor of those who’ve perished in the borderlands. The quilters research names to find out more about each person, then sew the names on the quilts. Betty Kersting talks about the Tucson Sector Deaths 2000–2001 quilt. “Each name I embroidered, each milagro placed on a name, each rose made for the Shrine of Our Guadalupe called me to mourn the loss of family, the pain for the mothers, fathers, sisters. . . . The loss for our human race.”
