Eddie Canales

Eduardo Osiel Canales ((1948-01-12)January 12, 1948–(2024-07-30)July 30, 2024), known as Eddie Canales, was a human rights advocate and former union organizer who advocated for the welfare of migrants crossing the border into South Texas. He set up nearly 200 water stations along routes taken by migrants avoiding a checkpoint along U.S. Route 281, dozens of whom die each year from dehydration and temperature extremes. He also helped coordinate rescue missions, and sometimes assisted in the recovery of remains, when people's loved ones went missing in the area; Texas programs for identifying the dead are notoriously under-resourced, and migrants are sometimes buried, unidentified, in mass graves. He founded the South Texas Human Rights Center, a nonprofit intended to prevent the death and suffering of migrants on the border. He died July 30th, 2024, after a months-long battle with pancreatic cancer.

Eddie Canales
Born	(1948-01-12)January 12, 1948
Died	July 30, 2024(2024-07-30) (aged 76)
Known for	Human rights advocacy

Early life

Eddie Canales' parents were migrant farmworkers from the Rio Grande Valley, but he grew up in Corpus Christi, Texas. He was bilingual, and learned to read from a young age. He worked to help to support is family as a child, shining shoes, sweeping a barbershop floor, and cleaning up a cafeteria. As a child he attended schools in South Texas, including Sam Houston Elementary School in Corpus Christi. He graduated from W. B. Ray High School in 1966 and then worked a job cleaning airplanes for Eastern Airlines while attending Del Mar College. By 1968 he was a student at the University of Houston, where, spurred by the United Farm Workers and the Delano grape strike, he became involved in union organizing.

In popular culture

• He appears in a 2020 documentary called Missing in Brooks County.

Further reading

Obituaries and tributes

• Nickas, Katie (1 August 2024). "Edward 'Eddie' Canales, Corpus Christi advocate for migrants and laborers, dies at 76". Caller Times.
• Tamez, Ana (1 August 2024). "Immigrants' rights advocate Eduardo 'Eddie' Canales dies Wednesday". KIII.

• Muro, Nanzi (7 August 2024). "Eddie Canales ¡Presente! A Longtime Human Rights Activist Has Died". People's Tribune.
• Del Bosque, Melissa (21 August 2024). "A Visionary in the Borderlands". Texas Observer.
• Pope, Pachatta (31 July 2024). "Texas migrant advocate, civil rights activist Eddie Canales dies at 76". KSAT-TV.
• "Honoring the life of Eduardo "Eddie" Canales". National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. 31 July 2024.

News coverage while living

• Del Bosque, Melissa (16 June 2014). "Tyrant's Foe: Eddie Canales Is Saving the Lives of Undocumented Immigrants". The Texas Observer.
• Hennessy-Fiske, Molly (19 July 2014). "Migrant crisis expands north from border, into arid Texas wilderness". Los Angeles Times.
• Davies, David Martin (30 December 2019). "The Dead In The Desert: Water Stations Save Lives". Texas Public Radio.
• Isacson, Adam (30 October 2020). "Preventing Migrant Deaths at the U.S.-Mexico Border". Washington Office on Latin America.
• Gibson, Michael (4 June 2021). "South Texas Human Rights Center calling for immigration policy changes". KIII.
• Monroe, Rachel (2 August 2022). "The Missing Migrants of South Texas". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X.
• Sanchez, Sandra (15 July 2022). "Watering stations a lifeline for migrants wandering under intense heat of South Texas". Border Report.
• Cabrera, Kristen (15 August 2023). "Life-saving water stations along migrant routes in South Texas brush go missing". Texas Standard.

Oral history

• Canales, Eddie (30 June 2015). "Oral History Interview with Eddie Canales" (Interview). Interviewed by Enriquez, Sandra; Robles, David.{{cite interview}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: interviewers list (link)