Memory and Counter-Memorials: Adriana Corral’s Unearthed: Desenterrado on the United States-Mexico Border

Abstract:This article focuses on Texas-based artist Adriana Corral’s temporary memorial Unearthed: Desenterrado (2018), a white cotton flag hoisted sixty feet above the site of a former bracero processing center located near the United States-Mexico border in Socorro, Texas. For the three months that it flew above Rio Vista Farm, Unearthed: Desenterrado acknowledged the contributions of braceros who helped to build the United States’ infrastructure and cultivate its crops between 1942 and 1964. This article situates Unearthed: Desenterrado within contemporary art trends that address the racially motivated exclusion of Mexican and Mexican American histories and individuals from mainstream narratives in the United States. Building from memory studies and borderlands arts pedagogy scholarship, the paper investigates artwork produced to contest the contours of US history by inserting lesser-acknowledged accounts into the public sphere.