Environmentalists, veterans of the Standing Rock protests and Carrizo/Comecrudo tribal members are vowing to stare down the president’s bulldozers.
Activists raise their fists atop the levee overlooking the Eli Jackson Cemetery, the exact
location of Trump’s impending border wall.
The 154-year-old Eli Jackson Cemetery sits about a mile from the Rio Grande, south of the Hidalgo County town of San Juan. Encompassing just a single acre, it hosts the remains of some 150 South Texans. Just a few feet north rises a sloped earthen river levee, which the Trump administration soon plans to transform into a 30-foot concrete and steel border wall. South of the wall, the feds plan to clear a 150-foot “enforcement zone,” raising fears that bodies will be exhumed, and most of the cemetery razed. But the dead have new company: a small group of Native American activists and allies who say they’ll stand in front of the bulldozers and refuse to move.
On Wednesday, about 15 people milled about a makeshift campsite at the cemetery where they’d recently erected 10 tents. Over the last three weeks, they’d cleared out Johnson grass and other weeds that had overgrown many of the graves. As I approached the site, Juan Mancias, a long-time environmental and Native American rights activist, came out to welcome me to what he called “Yalui Village.” Mancias, 64, is the tribal chair of the Carrizo/Comecrudo, a group Indigenous to South Texas and Northern Mexico that claims about 1,500 members but isn’t recognized by the federal government. “Yalui” means “butterfly” in the Carrizo/Comecrudo language.
Juan Mancias during a prayer song at the Eli Jackson Cemetery. GUS BOVA
Last month, Mancias met with descendants of those buried in the cemetery and hatched the encampment idea. Now, he’s leading a coalition of Carrizo-Comecrudo members, Valley residents and allies hailing from South Dakota, Colorado and Missouri in a last-minute bid to stop the border wall. Mancias, who grew up in North Texas but whose family is from the Valley, believes that unmarked graves of Native Americans would be unearthed during wall construction. He’s also a distant descendant of some buried in the cemetery. Around seven people are currently camping overnight at the site, while more come during the day. The group has pledged to engage in civil disobedience if necessary. “We’re here, ready to protect the environment and our rights as the original people of this land,” Mancias said. “What are they gonna do? Run us over?”
Some of the activists are veterans of the Standing Rock protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline. One Lakota/Dakota activist, DuWayne Redwater, came from South Dakota to join the Texas encampment. On Wednesday, Redwater led the group twice in prayer songs. Asked why he traveled so far, he rebuffed the question. “Being from where I’m from, it’s kind of our job,” he said, “to be landlords and caretakers of this land.” Others are locals, like Patricia Rubio, who works as a plant nursery technician at the nearby National Butterfly Center, which is also threatened by the wall. Rubio said she plans to grow plants near the cemetery to attract bees and butterflies. The group also plans to set up camps on other properties in the area, depending on how wall construction advances.
Like this? Click to receive free updates
