Tecate, Mexico — Flaming White Sage Norma Meza Calles gathers guests at a Mexican spa in a semicircle facing Mount Cochama and asks everyone to close their eyes and feel her presence.
“This is as sacred to us as the church is to all of you,” said Miza Callis, a leader of the Kumeyaai Nation, who explains that in his creation story, a shaman turned into a mountain. “The mountain is our healer, our psychiatrist.” “Here we gather strength to live in this difficult world.”
Then invite a moment of contemplation. But the silence is broken by the crunching of rocks. US federal contractors are blasting and bulldozing the city of Cochama, which straddles the two countries, to make way for new sections of the area. wall Along the border between the United States and Mexico.
Indigenous leaders say that as the Trump administration rushes to build border walls, contractors are committing sacrilege Native American Sacred Places And cultural sites at an unprecedented pace, after more than 170 years of international borders that divided the lands of dozens of tribes.
Wall construction has intensified along the 1,954-mile (3,145-kilometer) border. Even with the decline in illegal crossings to its lowest historical levels. Many of them started this year after the US Department of Homeland Security Waiving cultural and environmental laws.
In California, explosions at Cochama sent rocks falling on its Mexican side.
“We feel it in our DNA,” said Emily Burgueno, a member of the Kumeyaay Nation in California, adding that the words “body” and “earth” are the same word in the Kumeyaay language. Some tribal leaders have met with DHS officials to urge them to protect Koshama and are considering legal action.
“No one approved or supported the use of dynamite on the mountain,” Borgino said.
The nation consists of more than a dozen tribes in California and Baja California, Mexico.
In Arizona, Department of Homeland Security contractors last month carved a massive 1,000-year-old fish-shaped carving called “Las Playas Intajlio.” The rare drawing, etched into the desert floor like the Nazca Lines in Peru, was created in a lava field in what is now Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge.
The Tohono O’odham tribe said it identified the site on its ancestral land for contractors to avoid.
“This was a devastating and completely avoidable loss,” Tohono O’odham Chairman Verlon Jose said in an April 30 statement. “There is nothing more important than our history, which is what makes us who we are as O’odham. The site was also an irreplaceable part of United States history, a part that none of us can ever get back.”
US Customs and Border Protection said in a statement that a contractor “inadvertently disturbed” the site west of Ajo, Arizona, on April 23, but pledged to protect the remaining portion. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott is speaking with tribal leaders to determine next steps.
Members of the Arizona Tribal Association, which represents 21 tribes, traveled to Washington last month to lobby against construction of a 20-foot (6 meter) secondary wall along that part of the border, in addition to a 30-foot (9 meter) primary wall planned on Tohono O’odham tribal lands. They met with the Minister of Homeland Security Markwayne MullenThe Tohono O’odham Nation, a member of the Cherokee Nation, listened but made clear its intention was to build more border walls as quickly as possible, the Tohono O’odham Nation said in a statement.
The Trump administration says the barriers are necessary to prevent people and drugs from entering the United States illegally. It wants walls to cover at least 1,400 miles (2,250 kilometers) of the border.
“Trump” Big, beautiful bill More than $46 billion has been allocated to this effort.
CBP has awarded contracts or begun construction on more than 600 miles (966 kilometers) of new border wall, with accompanying surveillance technology. A double wall is planned or under construction for another 370 miles (596 kilometers).
In Arizona, where the Patagonian mountains slope down to the border, heavy machinery crawls along newly paved roads to extend a double wall that could block a wildlife corridor for endangered wildcats and jaguars. Jaguars have long coexisted with the Tohono O’odham, who consider the species “spirit guardians,” Austin Nunez, a tribal leader, said in a 2025 lawsuit that challenged the DHS exemptions.
In Sunland Park, on New Mexico’s border with Mexico, crews this year carried out blasts on Mount Cristo Rey, a pilgrimage site topped with a limestone cross.
CBP is seeking to seize a strip of the mountain owned by the Roman Catholic Church to build the wall. The Diocese of Las Cruces asked a judge this month to reject the land transfer as an affront to religious freedom and “faithful who seek to commune with God on Mount Cristo Rey.”
In West Texas, the federal government in February notified ranchers on the Rio Grande east of Big Bend National Park of its interest in their lands bearing images and petroglyphs in Canyonland, said Raymond Skiles, a retired ranger at Big Bend National Park.
“There are pictograms and paintings of shaman figures and different things that we don’t know how to explain,” Skiles said, describing the drawings found in his family’s pastures.
After community backlash, CBP’s online planning map showed plans for a 30-foot wall had been scrapped for surveillance technology, patrols and some vehicle barriers. Part of the national park and neighboring Big Bend Ranch State Park will rely on technology alone.
CBP says it recognizes the importance of natural and cultural resources and is working to minimize the impact of construction, including leaving drainage gates open on wildlife corridors for animals to pass through. The agency says illegal border crossings have led to the dispersal, pollution and trampling of sensitive habitats.
CBP also says 535 miles (860 kilometers) of rugged, remote border terrain will rely solely on detection technology.
Many tribes prefer it on walls.
Tribes along the border “are all suffering from the same tragic desecration of our cultural and sacred sites,” said Borgino, president of the Kumeyaay Diegueño Land Conservancy, a California nonprofit that works to protect Kumeyaay lands. “This is a great example of the federal government not following federal laws.”
Desecrating a sacred Native American site on U.S. federal or tribal land is a felony punishable by imprisonment and fines. In 1992, the National Park Service listed Mount Cochama, also known as Tecate Peak, on the National Register of Historic Places, giving it limited protection. “To destroy or disturb the natural state of the mountain would be tantamount to desecration,” she noted.
At 3,885 feet (1,184 m) above sea level, the Cochama area has also captured the interest of non-indigenous people.
Sarah Livia Brightwood Szekely said her father, Edmund Szekely, felt the mountain’s healing energy when he arrived in Tecate, Mexico, as a Hungarian Jewish refugee during World War II, and established the famous Rancho La Puerta Spa, which she now runs.
“There are all these people who have a deep connection to the mountain,” she said.
Meza Calles leads walking tours of Rancho La Puerta teaching guests about Kuuchamaa.
She added that traditionally, young men spent 40 days at her base celebrating their coming of age before becoming warriors or priests. The ritual of the day is shorter. She said that people suffering from death, debt, divorce or other difficulties seek Koshama’s healing.
“It is sad that they are destroying the mountain,” she said. “We’ll see how far they go. Fate is fate. But the battle’s not over yet.”
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Lee reported from Santa Fe, New Mexico.