Inducing Forgetfulness: Essays on Orwellian Reality, Ethics, and Anthropological Subsections by Elle Lane Marston
“The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones” –
William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
It is often said evil supersedes death. That we carry our goodwill to our grave while our injustices live on, despite our corporal disappearance. It is often told a lie gets halfway across the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes. I believe no where is it more prevalent than in contemporary discussions of migrants and immigrants.
As such, legacy and memory are central themes in Jason De León’s The Land of Open Graves, especially the manner which people remember and forget. This theme is particularly important given the topic that The Land of Open Graves revolves around: the cruelty migrants are subjected to while crossing the southern American border.
Migration, despite what recent figures declare, is a basic phenomenon crucial to human history and understanding, present throughout many disciplines and eras. This process is demonized, othered, and most of all vilified. I argue that the collective forgetfulness of the American public, the, “historical amnesia” (26) De León mentions regarding the humanitarian crisis at the Southern Border is no forgetfulness at all: it is a deliberate war, waged through doublethink, simultaneously accepting two contradicting beliefs as correct. An Orwellian form of reality distortion that effectively unpersons someone, excising them from public memory.
Effective doublethink is common in today’s world, specially regarding marginalized populations, and migrants are treated no differently, they are simultaneously termed terribly strong monsters and narcotraffickers who seek to destroy the American way of life and weak lazy freeloaders too unwilling to bear the circumstances back home. What this effectively does is dehumanize the migrant population, and once you no longer see someone as human, it is much easier to sign off on their death, to subject them to atrocities. This is clear when an online commenter states, “…take some of those dried out corpses, hang them at the places where they [migrants] are known to cross with a legend, ‘This may be you in a couple days’ ” (27). In this way, it is not the environment or the desert that erases traces of migrants the most, but the people who subject them to such cruelties. As De Leon quotes, a key assumption of federal immigration policy is that “violence will increase as effects of strategy are felt” (33).
Yes, the desert landscape can swiftly consume remains, and scavengers may scatter the little that’s been left, making them unidentifiable, but it is not the desert that kills, for it has no will of its own. The desert is a process, a transient state, a shifting mound, but a killer it is not. The real killers are those that employ memory against us, to make us forget, first each other, then ourselves. Superficial qualities are deemed essential, sociopolitical categories more important than our shared humanity, these are the foundations of Prevention Through Deterrence (PTD).
The violence of the migrant trail is an open secret, and De Leon does not shy away from this reality. This is perhaps most clear in his decision to include graphic photographs of Marisella Ahguipolla, a 38 year old woman who died attempting to cross the Arizonan Sonoran Desert. The image is graphic, depicting Marisella face down, already undergoing early stages of decomposition. It is an uncomfortable reality that the reader has to confront.
Despite being unnerved by its inclusion, I believe it was the right call to include the photograph uncensored. From an ethical and psychological perspective, the photo has two main effects, 1. Forcing the reader to confront a violent reality that is common to migrants, and 2. Embedding itself into the reader’s memory through the phenomenon known as a flashbulb memory, a vivid memory about an emotionally charged event. The topic of the book is grim and depressing, De Leon makes no attempt to hide this fact. We read The Land of Open Graves fully understanding what subject it is about, so I believe it is not just justified to include such a picture as it is necessary. Too often media and topics are sterilized in order to preserve comfort and convenience. This is a reality few can afford, for most, reality is harsh, violent, and complex. Given the situation and De Leon’s expertise, I would have done the same were I in his circumstances.
Overall, I believe it is mostly the human actors which contribute to the “constant forgetting” of migrant stories and experiences, the presidents and judges, the congressmen and law enforcement agencies, they are the ones who erase history the most. That is not to say, of course, that the natural world does not make remembering difficult, but often times it is not remembering that is difficult, it is knowing in the first place. The desert erodes skin and muscle and scavengers scatter bones. This makes it difficult to know, to learn about migrant stories and experiences, but it is the powerful actors of the world which often make remembering difficult, that erode camaraderie and kinship, forcing us to engage in existential sociopolitical doublethink. These are the consequences of Prevention Through Deterrence (PTD).
Bibliography Jason De León. 2015. The Land of Open Graves : Living and Dying on the Migrant Trail. Oakland, Ca: University Of Califonia Press.
About the Author
Elle Lane Marston is a junior majoring in cognitive neuroscience, behavioral psychology, and comparative politics who grew up in the hick territories of the Everglades.
She is a part-time writer for her college’s newspaper and an editor for the Ocean Stars Review.
She may be reached at tldusername@gmail.com or elmarston.official on Instagram.
