Alex

Two things stand out now that I am processing the photos I took of descansos in New Mexico: First, New Mexico residents really, really believe in building descansos to honor their dead, and second, New Mexican media really, really doesn’t seem to document road-related deaths.

The former will become obvious when I finally publish the dozens of photos I took in the two days I was in the state. The latter is frustrating since I feel like there are a lot of good stories behind the photos but I will never know what they are.

Take Alex “Grandpa” Cordova, for example. The hard hat suggests that he was a road worker, perhaps killed by a passing car.

“Zero Incidents” says the helmet which, if my theory is correct, would be pretty damn ironic. But I have no way to know if Alex was a contractor working on the road or just worked somewhere else and this is just a piece of decoration.

Not that it matters, I suppose. Even though I find myself curious, I’m not taking the photos to necessarily document deaths; the photos are to document the beauty of the resulting memorials.

Still, I’m curious.