A Day of the Dead altar for fallen migrants on the US-Mexico border wall

Artist Nanzi Muro in front of her Day of the Dead altar installation

San Diego resident Nanzi Muro, 42, calls herself an artivist.  That is, she considers herself both activist and artist. On the Sunday before the presidential election that brought an anti-immigrant president back to power, she was on hand to guide visitors through her Day of the Dead installation. The installation memorializes migrants who died trying to cross the border to find a better life.

Muro assembled her installation in a horse trailer. It was located in an aid station along the border fence in the Tijuana River Valley, adjacent to an open air detention facility managed by Border Patrol. You could’ve found it without too much trouble, if you were looking for it. 

In the installation’s central altar were the kinds of things often found near the bodies of migrants.  Packs of cigarettes. Water bottles. Shoelaces. A rosary. 

But a closer look reveals that the rosary was made of skulls.

Above the altar hung a list of 8,300 migrants who died trying to cross the border. It was one of many posters telling the story of the border crisis writ large. But the altar includes the photo of a single migrant, Diego Perez, who died in his attempt to cross the border. 

Muro had the support of local nonprofits to create her Day of the Dead altar, or ofrenda.

“We started planning this all  with Friends of Friendship Park,” she said. She also worked with the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) and their Art of the Borderlands initiative.

AFSC runs the border station along the secondary border fence, where detained migrants can reach through the fence posts to obtain food and water so they themselves don’t become statistics. 

“When they find a body and they don't know the name, they want to show that they’re just they're not just numbers,” Muro said. 

To express the desire that migrants be remembered, it is common to put crosses in spots where migrant bodies have been found. 

Accordingly, Muro’s installation has several crosses within it as well.

“We have to remember all these people that were coming for a better life, and their dreams, their goals,”  Muro said