Death and Tucson

Someday, should you grow tired of crack-spanging quarters on Decatur Street and splitting tall boys between groups of eight, you may develop an interest in the fabled hospitality of the Union Pacific Railroad.  Primarily famous for not being the Burlington Northern & Santa Fe, Union Pacific is known for both the Chicago-Oakland “Overland” Route and its somewhat less prestigious “Sunset” route. The latter runs from New Orleans to Los Angeles, which veritably guarantees that only the basest and most detestable of North America’s traveling community will ever find cause to ride its dry and barren rails. Yet sometimes, this is the path you must take to escape the questionable joys of New Orleans.

The Sunset route is no easy foe, and for one reason or another, you may find yourself asking for a time out. The Train gods nod approvingly at dogged determination, but desert exposure is a reality, and the tracks are littered with the bones of the fallen. Driven mad by the scorching borderland heat, the numerous INS checkpoints, or the impenetrable void of 2000 miles of the Southwest, you’ll likely be interested in finding a low-profile, traveler-friendly town to seek brief respite before resuming your trail of tears.

A number of peculiarities garner notice in Tucson, Arizona. There are countless murals extoling the virtues of collectivist poverty. The Mexican barrios there were occupied 100 years before Arizona became a state. Watching the sun set in the mountains gives the undeniable sense of the Earth turning beneath you. Above all else, though, what is most noticable about Tucson is the total ubiquity of death.

There are shrines to the dead on every street corner. Children’s Dick and Jane books teach the words for death and knife alongside house and flower, barrio walls are painted to depict eight-year-olds holding hands with skeletons, and legends abound of the dead interacting freely with the living, pushing the limits of apocryphal, populist Catholicism.

Much as Mardi Gras informs New Orleans’ attitude all year round, Dia de los Muertos seems to lurk in Tucson’s periphery at all times. As a middle-aged shopkeeper told me, “I used to put the skeletons and sugar skulls out in September, for the holiday. But they began to ask for them earlier and earlier, and now I leave them out all year. People never stop celebrating.”

In a very real sense, Tucson’s cultural identity remains more Mexican than American. El Tiradito is the only shrine in North America dedicated to the soul of a sinner murdered on unconsecrated soil. Spanish for “the cast away”, opinions of what it truly memorializes vary widely. No two stories are the same, but they all revolve around three things: Romance, Sin, and Murder. In one common story, El Tiradito was a man who fell in love with his fiancée’s mother. He and the mother embarked on a dramatic affair behind the fiancée’s back, until the husband interrupted them one evening and shot El Tiradito dead. The young man could not be buried in a Catholic cemetery and so was interred clandestinely in the family’s backyard.

Shortly thereafter, the women of Barrio Viejo began appearing at the site, lighting candles, leaving flowers, and saying prayers for the young man’s soul. To this day, many feel like he was a victim, and that his crime was not greed or violence, but only the misfortune of loving the wrong woman. According to Catholic doctrine, every prayer and every candle lit serves to free the dead from some amount of time in Purgatory, and women have made offerings in his name ever since, petitioning God to spare his soul.

I spent two days in Tucson asking everyone I met how they felt about death. Mexicans and Mexican-Americans seemed far more comfortable with death than whites, who shied away from the subject. After a few days of searching, I found an explanation in the words of an articulate Mexican woman when I asked her what was with all the comical skeleton drawings. “We do that on purpose,” she said, “dress them up like the rich. Look at you now. Who cares about your clothes? You’re still dead, aren’t you?”

I left for the train yard at midnight on a Wednesday, hiding in the brush outside the fence and carefully watching the train traffic, plotting my plan of attack. A doublestack pulled in from the West, crawling to a halt with a rear locomotive about a quarter mile down. The fence was high and time was short. As the train aired up, I sprinted in the unit’s direction, hoping to find a hole in the fence to gain access. Instead, I came upon a tree. One branch reached over the fence, covered in flowers and ribbons.  As I climbed up and over, into the yard, I saw a funereal picture of a young man looking up at me from a small cross. He had probably killed on the spot in an accident. I wheezed out a “thanks” and ran to board my ride back home.

Photos by Christopher Kilbourn.