Place makes us

 just as we make place. 

Chiricahua peoples named themselves by the names of their places--a recognition of not only connection to places but a sacred obligation to stewardship--while white settlers gave names and made claims in an effort to impose unilateral order. An order that failed to account for the existing patterns of life.

The "inexhaustible water supply" of the borderland desert speckled with yucca, home to newly inaugurated locales: Palomas, Columbus, Deming, La Ascensión, New Mexico, Chihuahua, the United States, México.

It's no wonder that the international line west of El Paso is among the border's most violent excesses.