'Aihue ◆ Welcome

This intaglio is unique for Southern Arizona because there are so few of them out here. The closest I’m aware of are further south, in Mexico. This intaglio is actually etched into the same lava field as those intaglios—it’s at the northern edge of El Pinacate, a young volcanic field studded with crater-like maars, volcanic cones, and lava flows.

El Pinacate likes to hold its water in secret and unexpected places. You will find centuries-old footpaths leading seemingly to nowhere, stumbling along a vast black plain that even the cacti haven’t quite found a foothold in. And then suddenly the land collapses, a sheer ravine opens like a crack in mud, and there it is: a dense thicket of ironwood trees enclosing a tinaja. This is a basin in the bedrock that can hold rainwater for months, if not years.

These tinajas are part of an assembly of springs, seeps, charcos, and arroyos that make the Sonoran Desert a rich and nurturing place for those who know how to find water. The intaglio itself is just south of a playa, a salty flat where rainwater collects for a short time after it rains. Rain often comes in dramatic but spotty bursts out here, hammering one mountain range and completely missing another just a few miles away. Being able to read where rain has fallen (and not fallen) allows people to access resources that are otherwise unavailable to them. I imagine that Las Playas were very special places in years when they were a riot of wildflowers and spring color.

The location of the intaglio is certainly not accidental. It’s wedged between two places of seasonal bounty, and it also belongs to a wider landscape of trails going to and from the Sea of Cortez, another place of plenty. This region is like the gateway connecting Central America to North America. Everything must pass through here. How beautiful is it that, in a place that holds no water for many months out of the year, we are reminded of its constant power and presence? Water was here and will be here again. People were here and will be here again.

The intaglio is described as fish-shaped, and that’s probably one of our better guesses of what it represents. Fishing in the Sea of Cortez was (and still is) an important source of food. But the intaglio was maintained by people dabbling in a mix of Patayan, Hohokam, and Trincheras regional styles, with a particularly strong Patayan slant. What is interesting to me about Patayan art is that their designs are often highly abstract. People sometimes dismiss these abstractions as “primitive,” merely squiggles and shapes compared to the more literal representations of people or animals found in other parts of the Southwest. But to me, these are highly sophisticated designs because they defy outsider interpretation. How much knowledge had to be passed from person to person to interpret and recreate these symbols? How much of it embodies cultural perceptions of beauty or the natural order of the world? Is it the process of etching that takes precedent over the outcome? I see that abstraction mirrored here, and that is part of what makes the intaglio so compelling to me.

And there is so much to be said about the intaglio’s design. There are several large stones strewn about the surrounding lava field. Some were deposited naturally, and some were moved around. Many of the stones within the bounds of the intaglio were undisturbed, and seem to have been incorporated into the design itself, or at least worked around. Was this part of the siting intentional, too? Was this place chosen because of these stones? While painting the intaglio, I struggled to interpret where the design begins and ends, because it is beautifully fluid with the landscape. I ultimately chose to incorporate those surrounding stones, which are represented in the painting as pale nodes in the outline. In doing so, I noticed that the northernmost chain of rocks resembles the Big Dipper. In O’odham, this constellation is the Kuipud, or cactus hook, a long, cross-shaped tool that is used to gather saguaro fruit. The harvest is an important precursor to the summer rain ceremonies, and the act of hooking down saguaro fruit is likened to hooking down the clouds that give rain. Is the resemblance a happy accident? Intentional? I don’t know, and it’s beautiful that I don’t!

The intaglio is oriented almost perfectly North to South, with its body slanting slightly east. It lines us up nicely with El Pinacate and the Sea of Cortez. It also makes me wonder what the sky must look like in different parts of the year out there, because the North star is the spoke around which everything turns, celestially. Was that an anchor for the design? Or just a tool to locate north and communicate something essential about the two directions? The orientation is surely intentional, but we can only guess at the “why.”

The Martynecs mention many faint trails inside the intaglio that are not very visible from these aerial images, and are best viewed on the ground at sunset. What else was in the landscape that we can no longer see today? The intaglio itself defies the human eye. It’s set in flat lava plains and low basins with few high points to look down on it. It was created on the ground, and yet people never would have experienced it the way many of us do today, in aerial imagery.

Its location, scale, and aesthetic abstraction lends to its subtlety. Prior archaeological surveys missed it. Western archaeology has only known about it for 20-odd years. Others who might have known about it haven’t identified themselves, and probably with good reason. Like so many sensitive cultural sites, it has been safe in obscurity. Now it finds itself on an arbitrary line and that safety is compromised.

During the construction of the primary border wall, the Martynecs and co. went to a lot of trouble to protect the intaglio:

The Martynecs wanted [the intaglio] preserved, so they recruited some friends and set about encircling it with small rocks, along with an adjacent gravesite that would definitely encroach on [the Roosevelt reservation, a 60 ft. strip adjacent to the U.S. Mexico border set aside for border security.] The construction supervisor arrived and demanded to know what they were doing. They explained, and he left. When he returned, he was accompanied by a crew. To the Martynecs’ surprise and delight, the contractor ordered large boulders to be arranged around the site to protect it. In addition, they diverted the road fifteen feet, to secure the grave.

I love this anecdote, I think it’s so illustrative of our common humanity and the value of educating each other. It’s true, there are hazards that come with knowing, sometimes things are safer when they remain unknown. But we also can’t protect what we don’t know about, and this was a victory in a time of excruciating loss.

The same efforts have been made during the construction of the secondary barrier. The Tohono O’odham nation, Cabeza Prieta staff, archaeologists, and concerned community members have all converged to protect this intaglio. I wish the story had ended here. I had naively believed that I would someday see this little intaglio that I had read and talked so much about. If I do see it, I will see it in fragments. We have lost something precious and irreplaceable and there is so much now that we will never know.

But I also am not willing to sing funeral songs for something that is not yet lost. After I learned of what had happened to the intaglio, I was gutted, I knew that I cared about it but not to what an extreme extent it would affect me. It was like the stages of grief hit me all at once. And I am not even in close proximity to it! How devastating must this feel to those who have seen it themselves? To those who came ahead of the construction to see it, to run and to pray for it? To those who fought so hard to protect it through the devastation of the last wall, and now this one?

But in that sadness I was also overwhelmed with this powerful, almost uncontrollable compulsion to try to paint it. I didn’t know why at the time, it seemed absurd and arbitrary, but I think I get it now. The Las Playas intaglio was maintained by people choosing to retrace it, to remember it. And although we have lost so much, it is still here with us—transformed, transfigured, split in two, but still here. And how infinitely worth remembering! How beautiful! How resilient! How critically important to carry into the future! The loss is incomprehensible and yet commensurate with the joy. That is what I felt, painting and reading about the intaglio. I found I could not let go of my sadness any more than I could stop this uncontrollable joy and affection from entering me.

There is still time, after all, for this to be the final injury of the border wall. So much remains along the border that is worth the joy and heartache of fighting for. 25 miles to the east, the sacred oasis A’al Vaipia (Quitobaquito Springs) remains, a silent witness in the shadow of the previous border wall. It has endured so much, and I know it will endure what may come, but that enduring will require allies that are as willing to give for its life as it has given life to all who visit it.

edit: forgot to put her contacts in ): the former sibyl has inverted irises and sclera. but i like both versions so you're getting both versions.