Infrastructures of Control

Calvary Cemetery, Douglas, AZ
31.334186, -109.541211
Remote Video Surveillance System (RVSS)
Dugan Meyer, May 2024

A Remote Video Surveillance System (RVSS) tower in Douglas, Arizona. Manufactured by General Dynamics (and subcontractors including International Towers LLC), these towers can range from 60 to 200 feet tall and support a sensor system equipped with electro-optical and infrared cameras, radar, laser illuminators, spotlights, and sometimes loud hailers.

Douglas is a small border city in southeastern Arizona, adjacent to Agua Prieta, Sonora. Since the late 1990s, this region has been a hotbed for anti-immigration vigilante groups, though the tradition of border vigilantism in the area stretches back more than a hundred years and echoes an even longer history of paramilitary violence that produced the modern American West. Although it may be reassuring to imagine these groups as operating on the fringes of mainstream society, vigilante groups in Cochise County have long enjoyed the support—sometimes implicit, sometimes more direct—of local ranchers and even the Cochise County Sheriff’s Office.

Less the 1/2 mile from the Remote Video Surveillance System (RVSS) pictured in the photograph above is another product of the General Dynamics Corporation, a General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon, on display at the 8th Street Veterans Memorial Park (at 31.340515, -109.537980).

Field offices location for Barnard Spencer Joint Venture, a partnership between two of the largest border wall contractors, Barnard Construction Company, Inc. and Spencer Construction LLC, about two miles east of Calvary Memorial Park on land owned by the City of Douglas. A Remote Video Surveillance System (RVSS), at 31.346183, -109.476383, is visible atop D-Hill. May 2024.

A Remote Video Surveillance System (RVSS) tower, at 31.346183, -109.476383, is visible atop D-Hill to the east of Douglas, Arizona. May 2024.