Hostile Terrain 94 @ ECU

MARCH 1 – SEPTEMBER 1, 2021

RIS HALLWAY, 1st FLOOR JOYNER LIBRARY, ECU

Scheduled events (all dates are 2021):

March 22:               Art of Migration Opening, featuring work by the artists Susan Harbage Page and Sally Jacobs (Faulkner Gallery, Joyner Library, ECU)

March 25, 4 pm:    Virtual Lecture by Dr. Gregory Hess, Chief Medical Examiner, Pima County, AZ “Management of Undocumented Border Crosser Remains”  Click here to watch recording (password: 4kV3b7J*)

April 8, 4 pm:        Virtual Lecture by Juvencio Rocha Peralta, Director of AMEXCAN “NC Latino Immigrants: Making the Invisibles Visible” Click here to watch recording

April 21-23:      Virtual Screening of Border South – login information can be found here. For more background on the documentary and its link to HT94, check out this discussion with the producers from last July sponsored by the Santa Fe Center for Contemporary Arts.

April 29, 4 pm:        Virtual Screening of At A Stranger’s Table and discussion with directors Sally Jacobs and Scott Temple

Be sure to check out Sally Jacob’s Bus Sculpture at Alice F. Keene Park (4561 County Home Rd, Greenville, NC 27858)

Can’t visit HT 94 in person? Scan the QR code or click on the image using your mobile phone for the virtual exhibit:

What is HT94?

In 1994, the United States Border Patrol launched the immigration enforcement strategy known as “Prevention Through Deterrence” (PTD). This was a policy designed to discourage undocumented migrants from attempting to cross the U.S./Mexico border near urban points of entry, funneling them towards more remote and depopulated regions where the natural environment would act as a physical deterrent. It was anticipated that the difficulties experienced while traversing dozens of miles across the Sonoran Desert, which the Border Patrol deemed as “hostile terrain,” would eventually discourage migrants from making the journey. PTD failed to stop border crossers and, instead, more than six million people have tried to migrate through the desert of Southern Arizona since the 1990s, and at least 3,200 people have died, largely from dehydration and hyperthermia. PTD is still the primary border enforcement strategy being used on the U.S./Mexico border today. The Hostile Terrain 94 exhibit is supported and organized by the Undocumented Migration Project, which is directed by Jason de León, Professor of Anthropology and Chicano/a Studies at UCLA, author of The Land of Open Graves: Living and Dying on the Migrant Trail (UC Press 2015), and former MacArthur Fellow (2013-2017).