Friday, September 2, 2011

Holtville Pauper's Cemetery

Aired the weekend of September 2, 2011 on NPR's Latino USA:

www.latinousa.org/961-2/


(scroll down, it's the third piece)


And on The California Report Magazine:


www.californiareport.org/archive/R201109021630/c


Pauper's cemeteries aren't new. They're where unclaimed and unidentified bodies, or those of families too poor to pay for funerals, are buried. But in the southeastern corner of California, in a small rural town called Holtville, a "John Doe" cemetery tells a larger story about the state, and nation. It's where the bodies of nearly 700 undocumented immigrants are buried -- immigrants who died trying to cross the border.