All posts by cantore

Feed the Fire

Reflections

Throughout our time here in Texas, we have discussed lessons that we have learned, areas where we have done well, and areas where we can improve at the end of each night. During the lab analysis portion of this season, a lot of these lessons reflected on the education that we have received at the University of Indianapolis. Before our time in the lab at Texas State University, I hadn’t fully realized just how much I have learned during my graduate career. And being able to apply that learning to such an important cause honestly felt amazing.

Team members working in the lab.

With this being my second time participating in this work in Texas, I have not only been able to apply my education from UIndy but also my experiences from the previous trip in January. In January, however, we were only in the field and did not do any of the analyses in the lab. Therefore, my fellow students and I really had to draw from our education and experience from casework in Indiana to problem solve. And I think we did a fine job. We knew we had a lot to accomplish in our short time in the lab at Texas State and we were determined to exceed expectations. This required a lot of critical thinking and problem solving but I believe that the education and experience that we have all received at the University of Indianapolis really helped us in this regard.

It was a great experience being able to be a little more independent in these analyses, which of course also came with more responsibility. None of us shied away from this, however. We each worked together to figure out the best way to complete each task and by the third day, we had really found our groove. I really believe that in addition to everything we have learned under the guidance of Dr. Latham and Dr. Nawrocki at the University of Indianapolis, our ability to work so well together as a team to problem solve helped us to accomplish everything that we did during this Texas season. And being able to use our skills to contribute as much as we can to a real-world crisis situation that needs all the help it can get really feeds the fire to continue to work hard and stay involved as much as possible.

Erica

Five people in a cemetery holding up five fingers.

Day 5 (Field): The Heat is On

Environment, Human Rights, Migrant Death

And with that, another field season in the books! And it wouldn’t be a Texas trip if we didn’t end it on the hottest and most humid day of the week! Today’s high was a mild 103 degrees with a heat index that reached 112 degrees right around noon. Thankfully, we did have some cloud cover today that made the temperature a little more bearable but we knew that we had to hit the ground running this morning before it got too warm. Fortunately, for a team like ours, this was no problem.

Two team members excavating a burial.

The beginning of the day involved moving a lot of dirt. A LOT of dirt. We had at least a couple of feet of hard, rocky clay to remove in order to uncover and remove the last burial in the area. Additionally, we had to remove a lot of the extra loose dirt around the burial so that it wouldn’t all just fall back on top and recover it. In our normal, and now very practiced fashion, we were able to efficiently complete this arduous task by utilizing our rotation system so that no one was getting to wiped out early on in the day. By 10:30 am, we had uncovered the final burial in area 2 of the Rio Grande Cemetery.

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By this point, our pit had taken on quite a weird shape. In order to get in and out we had to create a large step in the back of the pit for us to climb up and down. This made removing the remains quite an interesting task. We all got together to come up with a plan for how we were going to go about this. Because of our preparedness, and critical and creative thinking, however, we were able to remove the remains from the pit very smoothly, completing the fifth and last burial in our area.

In order to be thorough, however, it was decided that we should dig a trench in the back wall of our pit in order to ensure that there were no other burials in this area. This was no small task, as the back wall was approximately 5-6 feet high.

Haley fitting perfectly within our test trench
Haley fitting perfectly within our test trench

We decided to rebuild our ramp (more like a slide) and start the trench with the step we had built into the back wall. We resumed our rotation system and each took turns using the mattock (see: awesome pickaxe tool) to dig our trench. After digging to almost six feet again in the heat we felt confident that there were no other burials in this area. And with that, area 2 was closed!

We finished off the day cheers-ing our Mexican cokes and ate our lunch in the air conditioned hotel. Tonight, we will be heading down the road to join our Texas State comrades for a pool party at their hotel! It’s been another great trip here in Texas, and it will be bittersweet to be leaving tomorrow. But I know that all of us are proud of what we have accomplished these last ten days and I am excited to see what the future holds in South Texas. Hasta luego!

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Erica

STAY TUNED FOR MORE POSTS OVER THE NEXT WEEK!

Five people with bottles of coke holding up one finger.

Day 1 (Field) – Mud, Clay, and Rocks

Community, Human Rights, Migrant Death

What. A. Day. We went into today knowing that we had our work cut out for us but, true to form, the day was still full of surprises.

Flooded parking lot.
The flooded hotel parking lot

Not least of all of these surprises, our first night in Rio Grande City was accompanied by severe thunderstorms and flash flooding. As much as I was enjoying sitting by the window and watching the thunder and lightning, as the parking lot of the hotel began to flood, I knew that this likely did not bode well for our work in the morning. Sure enough, upon arriving at our area of the cemetery, it was mud, mud, mud.

Fog in a cemetery.

Going into our work in area 2, we were informed that there were five unidentified individuals possibly buried there. According to Silvestre, the man who buried them, all of the individuals were buried 5 feet deep. From prior experience, however, we were doubtful that they were actually buried that deep, as many people often exaggerate or overestimate such dimensions (digging is hard work, after all).

We began the day following the plan that we had set out the night before – clearing trash and debris from the site, measuring and mapping, Team members using a tape measure to map.“shovel-shining” (really just removing the mud and grass, with most of it stuck to our shovels and boots), attempting to probe the ground (somewhat unsuccessfully, due to the very hard cement-like clay that the rain had created), A team member trying to get a t-probe in the ground.and then proceeding to strategize our approach to uncovering the burials. Digging through the peanut-butter like clay was definitely hard work and we were grateful for the overcast skies during the morning. Later on, we were even more grateful for Silvestre and his back-hoe. He offered to help us out and ended up removing about three feet of dirt. As the sun began to peek from behind the clouds, we resumed digging.

Haley excavating as Dr. Latham watches.

Silvestre, however, was adamant that these burials were 5 feet deep. So he brought the back-hoe back around and ended up creating a very large and very deep pit for us. Backhoe digging a pit.And sure enough, it appears that the first burial we uncovered may indeed have been buried 5 feet deep, just as Silvestre said. The day ended up going a little longer than we had originally planned because we needed to be there to monitor the heavy machinery. I know we are all quite exhausted but also very eager to get right back at it tomorrow morning!

Erica