What happens when you cross?
Not the act of stepping over a geographical line—the other crossing. The one that happens the moment you decide to leave your home, your life, your language behind. That second when hope outweighs fear.
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This isn’t a story about borders. It’s about everything that breaks—before, during, and after the crossing. El Cruce is a living archive of memory. A refuge for the stories that don’t make the headlines. Stories of those who left without wanting to. Some with documents, others with nothing but a backpack and faith. Some walked for days, some carried their children, some were carried. Every single one left something behind. And none came back the same.
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Here, we listen to what is so often silenced: Voices that passed through deserts, jungles, and rivers— and still tremble, even after reaching “the other side.” Because the crossing doesn’t begin at the border, nor end there. t begins with loss, and often continues in silence, and in an endless mourning.
This project exists to give those absences a name—even if it’s just a word.
To preserve what hurts, and what endures.
So that those who crossed—and those who never could—
have memory.
And voice.