I Found My Family in a Border Record

Reclaiming Surveillance Photographs as Family Memory


Words by Mayra Garza

My mom, tía, and tío on Christmas Day, circa 1976

By the time I was born, many of my family’s stories had already unfolded. My tias were mothers and my cousins were already teenagers or adults. My abuelita had already become the version of herself I would always know. I often felt that I had arrived after the most vibrant chapters of our history. I became obsessed with our photographs, constantly searching for clues about the years I missed. Each image felt like a thread in an incomplete fabric. Photographs became my bridge into years I never lived. Through them, I tried to understand where I came from. 

When my mom and her sisters immigrated to California, the photographs they left behind in Mexico were eventually lost forever – a quiet erasure in our family’s history. The few photographs that survived from my mom’s childhood and early family life have not aged well. Some are bent or torn. Others have faded after decades of handling and moving. They weren’t stored in acid-free boxes or protective sleeves. Instead, they lived in drawers, shoeboxes, and yellowing envelopes. 

My abuelita working as a bartender (left) and at a dance (right)

Through that loss, I learned how fragile memory can be, how easily images and stories disappear. And I started to wonder why some things survive while others fade. Those questions followed me years later when I began my MLIS program, as well as my internship at California Revealed. At first, I believed I had chosen a path defined mostly by standards, metadata, and digitization workflows. I did not yet realize how personal this work would become. 
 

Less than a month into my archivist journey, my manager spoke about FamilySearch and how those records—census schedules, border crossings, and identification cards—were made accessible online. 

That night, I opened my laptop and began searching. I typed in family names I heard my whole life; names that mostly existed in stories. 

Border records of my bisabuela and abuelita from 1944 (top) and abuelo from 1952 (bottom)

For years, I had hoped to find more photographs of my mom’s family when they were young. My abuelo passed away when my mom was only four years old, and I had only ever seen one photograph of him. When I looked through pictures from their hometown, I often scanned the backgrounds, wondering if they might appear somewhere unnoticed. I always hoped to catch a glimpse. And then, through FamilySearch, I found them. 

Photographs of my bisabuela, abuelita, and abuelo appeared on the screen. The images were in border crossing records through Mexicali, Baja California. Their faces were framed inside bureaucratic boxes. Typed lines hovered above and beside them. They listed remarks, height, complexion, and occupation.

The state recorded their bodies in careful detail. The photograph was not taken to honor them – it was created to process them. 

My abuelita at a restaurant in Mexicali

When I saw those images, I felt both gratitude and anger. I was grateful to see a moment in our history that I had never seen before. But I was also angry that the photographs existed only through surveillance. This contrast was impossible to ignore as I continued to search. Our family archive had always been always fragile, shaped by poverty and migration. The government archive, on the other hand, built to monitor border movement, was much more durable. Our prints faded. The microfilm endured.

Immigrant families have always preserved memories. We pass down stories across kitchen tables, during long car rides, and in crowded living rooms.

What evolves is not our desire to remember, but the way we reclaim records that were never meant for us.

As my archival work at California Revealed deepened, I learned the language of provenance, original order, and preservation standards. Alongside these technical lessons, I began asking harder questions: Who created this record? For what purpose? Whose lives were documented, and whose were ignored? These questions showed me that archives are not neutral. They are shaped by systems of power. Finding my family in a border record made that reality undeniable.

My mom with my bisabuela in their childhood home

I found my bisabuela and abuelita in a system designed to regulate people like them. I found my abuelo in records that described him clinically before he was remembered as loved. This archive was never meant to preserve my lineage. It was created to document entry and exit. Its purpose was to measure, categorize, and control.
 

Decades later, I encountered those same images as inheritance. This is where the idea of evolution lives for me.

My bisabuela paid a photographer who was passing by to take a photo of my mom and tía after playing in the streets

My mom and tío

Finding my family in a border record revealed to me that records can change meaning when communities reclaim them. These photographs were taken to assert authority over immigrants. Now, I hold them with care. The record lists their height and complexion. I remember my abuelita’s laughter and her strength and I remember the evenings we spent together watching her favorite telenovelas. The state documented their crossing. I remember their belonging. 

There is something deeply transformative in that shift. A document created through surveillance becomes an altar image. A record stored in a database moves into a family group chat. A photograph meant for categorization becomes part of a living archive of care. What once was evidence of suspicion becomes evidence of lineage. 

At a time when immigrants continue to be framed as violent threats, when archives and public memory face political pressure, and when historical truth feels contested, I return to that moment of discovery, a moment enabled by the very systems built to control. I reflect on how those systems can inadvertently preserve fragments of our histories, and how communities like mine can reinterpret those fragments on our own terms. We do not have to accept the meaning assigned to our records. We can evolve them.

My abuelita dressed for a school dance

My abuelita and abuelo holding their godson at the baptism

My abuelita's local identification card from Mexicali, Baja California

I entered this field as someone searching for the years I had never seen. I remain in it because I believe preservation is not only about safeguarding materials, but also about redistributing power and ensuring that our histories are understood through our own voices. 

The border record did not return my family to me; they were never lost in spirit. But it gave me a version of our history that poverty and migration made difficult to access. It filled a gap. It complicated my understanding of archives. And it strengthened my commitment to memory practices rooted in community, care-centered, and resistant to erasure. 

For me, evolution looks like this: a child studying faded photographs becomes an archivist navigating digital records. A surveillance photo becomes a family heirloom. A system built for control becomes, in our hands, a tool for connection. 

The archive processed my family, but I remember them.

My abuelita and her children during a Christmas in Mexicali

A family portrait of my abuelita with all her kids at my tía's quinceañera, 1984

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