They are strange. Eerie. Haunting.

Over two thousand ceramic sculptures of misshapen, forlorn people watch the plaza silently. They stand by the side of the street and watch the living people pass by. They do not interact. They are the people who are seen in the mind’s eye but who are not there.

The artist is Alejandro Santiago. According to his statement, he enlisted the participation of more than twenty-five people from his village over a period of several years to complete this work. He says these sculptures “represent the men and women who leave their villages to travel to the United States.”

The people are no longer here, but their shadows, cast in ceramic, remain.

One shop owner tells us that these are people who have died while trying to migrate to the US, or who have been killed by organized crime in Mexico. In Mexico, he assures us, his American customers, not in the United States.

There is something about these figures that lends credence to the idea that they represent those who have died, though the artist’s statement doesn’t say so. Many of the statues show corpses on their backs.

They line the street outside the grills of the shop and restaurant windows. Silently, they watch us, who are still here.