Mennonite Central Committee

The Devil’s Highway offers a look at the complexity of the U.S.-Mexico border as presented by Luis Alerton Urrea. It tells the story of a harsh and often inhumane reality, and the unjust policies that support it. You are invited to reflect on the book and leave a comment on our blog.

Urrea offers an investigative report and an account of the journey of twenty-six men who attempted to cross the U.S.-Mexico border into the desert of southern Arizona. The region they walked through is known as the Devil’s Highway. Only twelve men survived the journey.

Urrea states the importance of the book as it “attempts to reveal the many layers of complicity in the border chaos.” In the Devil’s Highway, Urrea specifically:

1. Shows the faces of the undocumented migrant.
2. Introduces the Border Patrol agent who is often disrespected and demeaned.
3. Reveals the complexities of the international crime syndicates that are now selling human flesh as if it were bags of marijuana.

The desert is unforgiving. But the lack of economic opportunities drives many to walk through the desert to the United States in hopes of providing a better future for their loved ones.

Enrique Landeros Garcia was thirty years old. His wife, Octavia, was only twenty-three. They had a son named Alexis. He had recently turned seven, and he was ready for school, but Enrique and Octavia didn’t have the kind of money school required…Enrique made his way to Don Moi’s (coyote fixer) table for little Alexis –a small illegal venture to pay for a more straightforward chance at a future. (p. 52-53)

Coyotes live by smuggling migrants to the United States. They remain in business by “guiding” migrants across the border. Urrea lays out some of the conflicting beliefs about the role of coyotes and their work along the Southern U.S. border:

1. Coyotes have no vested interest in migrants; they are doing the job to earn money:

   
   

   For the Coyotes Your Needs
   Are Only A Business And
   They Don’t Care About Your Safety
   Or the Safety of Your Family.
   DON’T PAY THEM OFF WITH YOUR LIVES!!!

   -Sign posted by the Mexican government at Sasabe, Sonora




2. Coyotes are liberators:

   
   

   …it was quite attractive to be a Coyote. You could tell yourself you were a kind of civil rights activist, a young Zapata liberator of the poor and the downtrodden. In short, a revolutionary. (p. 77)




3. Coyotes are co-victims:

   
   

   Urrea tells the story of Jesus Lopez Ramos, a coyote also known as Mendez. Mendez was sentenced to sixteen years in prison for smuggling immigrants. He allegedly left a group of migrants to die in the desert. Of course, Mendez appears to be a victim of poverty as well. Urrea tells his story in first person as follows:

   
   

   Since my childhood my parents have always been of very low economical resources. My parents had to make great efforts just to feed us each day. I was forced to leave school because they didn’t have enough economic means to send all four of us children to school. So I decided to leave my family and look for work, and make some good money to help my family…. I worked legitimately at a factory making roof tiles in Nogales, Sonora. The wages were truly low, and that was my reason for getting involved in the smuggling business. (p. 189)

Urrea also offers a unique look at Border Patrol agents. It was the Border Patrol agents who rescued the twelve men. In writing the Devil’s Highway, Urrea discovered “humanity” in the Border Patrol agents he got to know.

Why would these men choose to leave their loved ones behind and walk through the desert? Why do coyotes choose to do such work? Why does Border Patrol exist? Who is to blame? No one can fully answer all of these questions but Urrea sheds light on the issues involved:

The border makes number crunchers go mad. It’s harder to cross, so there are more Coyotes; the numbers of crossers, in spite of $5.5 billion spent to stop them, keep swelling; deaths increase; wildlife is endangered; landscape is ruined; and supply and demand rule –Coyotes charge more every year, and because of this, fewer Mexicans are willing to return to Mexico. (p. 180)

Later, she [U.S. official examining the bodies] calculated that the dead men’s flight alone had cost over sixty-eight thousand dollars.
“What if,” she asked, “somebody had simply invested that amount in their villages to begin with?” (p. 199)

Consul Flores Vizcarra says it isn’t the desert that kills immigrants. It isn’t the Coyotes. It isn’t even the Border Patrol. “What kills the people,” he says “is the politics of stupidity that rules both sides of the border.” (p. 214-215)

Policies on both side of the border must be grounded in justice. As followers of Christ, we are called to “love our neighbor as ourselves.” The continued death and suffering of our neighbors deserves our response reflected in policies that are respectful of human rights and human life, and provide reasonable, legal provisions for immigration, so that the deaths in the borderlands may be significantly reduced, if not eliminated.

• Devastating Picture of Immigrants Dead in Arizona Dessert
• One Survivor is Arrested in Smuggling of Migrants