I got my copy of “The Devil’s Highway” through trusty Amazon and had finished reading it two evenings later. This is one book I don’t think anyone can put down, whether they are familiar with the U.S. / Mexican border or not. A few of the details might be a bit off the mark but this certainly doesn’t detract from the story and what it is meant to convey. The Devil’s Highway, written by Luis Alberto Urrea, reminds us, in case we have forgotten, that for many centuries immigration has been and still is a matter of life and death for many people around the world. This is the true story of 26 men who crossed the border on May 19 of 2001 and got lost in the Arizona desert: the Yuma 14 or Wellton 26. Five days later, fourteen of them had died, twelve survived.
The story begins with a general history of the region and in particular that of the Devil’s Highway, some of the most remote and undeveloped desert in the United States. Urrea’s vivid descriptions of the area’s physical characteristics, the heat, the true history and the myths are very compelling. At the beginning of the book, he also draws some interesting parallels: in the 1880’s a very large number of Chinese went from Mexico to the U.S. to work on the railroads because of the higher wages and the availability of jobs. “Americans panicked at the ‘yellowing’ of America. A force known as the Mounted Chinese Exclusionary Police took to the dusty wasteland. They chased the ‘coolies’ and deported them.”
The trip of the 26 Mexican men into the desert is meticulously chronicled from beginning to end. It starts in Veracruz, the home state of the majority of them. Veracruz had been very prosperous for quite some time. As little as fifteen to twenty years ago, immigration issues there still consisted of illegals from Central and even South America coming into the country for low-paying jobs. Then, mostly due to the collapse of coffee prices and its resulting downward spiral,
Veracruzanos were looking north for well paying work. This created a perfect opportunity for those willing to profit from other people’s misery: the ruthless recruitment of workers willing to risk their lives to be able to support their families and their transportation to the United States. This became big business involving lots of people: the recruiters in the home states, the loan sharks who offered to finance the desperate would-be immigrants for a stiff price, the transportation crews, the “guides”, the coyotes or polleros, the people running safe houses, the bus drivers, etc., etc.; where there is a demand, the supply is not far behind.
Enter Don Moi, (short for Moises – imagine the irony!) and the rest of the Cercas mafia. Here is where the story becomes intensely personal. The “walkers”- those who cross the border and the desert on foot so as not to pay the additional cost of a ride to the recruiters and coyotes – are described in vivid detail and thus come alive for the reader. But so do Don Moi, the recruiter who fills potential clients’ minds with stories of how easy it is to cross the border and be within easy grasp of the “American Dream”, his boss Chespiro the loan shark who lends money at a 15% monthly compounded rate, El Negro, “dreaded enforcer and manipulator of Sonoita”, his driver El Moreno, in charge of immigrant transport to the launching pad, and then the “guias” who take the immigrants from there into the desert. The reader gets to know all of them intimately. Urrea brings alive every one of the 26 walkers as complex characters. He describes their families, the circumstances that lead them to embark on the journey, and their humble aspirations once they get to the U.S. – work hard until they have enough money to go back home and put up a small business, repair their homes, or build on an extra room. He describes the Border Patrol in such a way that you feel you have spent time with them; you know what their vehicles look like on the inside, you know what it is like to find illegal entrants in the desert, you know what their days are all about, you can feel the heat.
Once Don Moi arrived in Sonoita with the walkers after a very long bus ride, Jesus Lopez Ramos - code name Mendez - and his two partners took over. “The leader of the Wellton 26 group was a nineteen-year- old boy from Guadalajara.” He had been recruited easily; he was poor, alone, looking for a better life, and willing to take risks. To Mendez, being a coyote was cool, macho.
He had money, was part of a gang, carried a cell phone, had a girl, and had dangerous people looking out for him. After some minimal “training” in Sonoita, Mendez and two other minor coyotes were put in charge of the group.
Things went wrong from the start. They got to the drop-off point too early and, instead of waiting until the customary time, started walking – and drinking their water. The plants “began to tear at their arms and legs.” As they crossed the drags (made by a bundle of tires pulled by a truck which “irons” the sand into a smooth surface), one of the polleros brushed away their tracks, a sign easily identified by the Border Patrol. At Blue Bird, Mendez took a wrong turn. He decided to stick to the high country to avoid the Border Patrol and started to get lost; “The highway’s right over the hills” he kept saying, but it wasn’t. The group veered into the Growler Mountains and tried to climb over the peaks several times. They lost sight of the Ajo lights and stumbled around walking 40 miles without getting anywhere. Here things go from bad to worse.
I think one of the most horrifying parts of the book is the description of “the six known stages of heat death, or hyperthermia… Heat Stress, Heat Fatigue, Heat Syncope, Heat Cramps, Heat Exhaustion, and Heat Stroke” (p. 120). It is brutally graphic and we suffer with the walkers, whom we have come to know, through each stage. By Sunday, only one day after the group had started out, some of them had run out of water and what water they had was hot. They were all in dire straits; “Reymundo’s black pants had become a torture device, cooking his legs when he was exposed to the light.” “There was no thinking evident, no reasoning process at all. Mendez walked and his herd followed. They were now going in the exact opposite direction that they had come.”
At this point, Santos, one of the polleros, told Mendez that he wanted to go back but Mendez refused. After some arguing back and forth three to five men joined Santos and started back. They were never found. Those who followed Mendez had been walking now for thirty hours with only a short break the night before. They arrived at the Granite Mountains. They were out of water. Here Urrea again gives us a more intimate look at the different members of the group;
Jose de Jesus Rodriguez, Enrique Landeros, Reyno Hernandez, Lorenzo Ortiz, Reymundo Barreda, 56, and his son Reymundo Jr. 15, Nahum Landa, Jose Antonio Bautista, his nephew, Julian Malaga… He describes how each one of the men obtained the money for the journey, how they were faring at this point in time: “even Mendez knew they were all going to die”. He told them they were “doomed unless he went to get help for them.” After relieving them of what money they had left, Mendez took off with Lauro. When the group realized they were not coming back, they began “to succumb to the heat, to fall apart into disparate groups, and to die.”
Urrea’s narrative detail leaves no doubt as to what happened next. One of the mysteries of the story is that the walkers set a fire so that the Border Patrol, an airplane, or anyone, would find them but no one did. This is where they realized that there was no hope. And it is here where Urrea starts giving the actual GPS coordinates of where each of them was found, alive or dead. The way the author tells this part of the story paints a vivid picture of death in the desert: “when Reymundo died and slid from his father’s arms, his father lurched away into the desert, away from the trees, crying out in despair. Some of the men said he took the American money he had saved for their trip and tore it into small bits…. He threw himself into the sunlight” and died.
Border agent Mike F. saw them on Wednesday as he was cutting the Vidrios Drag and “within ten minutes of finding the lost men, the Migra was already fully engaged in rescue.” Rita Vargas, the Mexican consul in Calexico, played a key role in getting the dead identified and flown back to their home states. Mendez was identified as the head pollero; “he knew his life was already over. He was only nineteen…” He went to jail in Phoenix. The living told their stories and a full scale hunt for the Cercas gang went into effect. Many of them were caught. The survivors were rewarded with immunity in trade for their testimony.
The hardship, the anguish, the horror as we watch them die are all told with compassion and this story shows us all, on both sides of the border, the true face of the undocumented, the international crime organizations involved in people smuggling, and those who try to keep them from crossing the border.
Last year, some 550 Mexican migrants died attempting to cross into the United States. During the three previous years, another 1,500 died. The patrolling of the border is becoming more intense all the time and the migrants choose ever more dangerous routes through the desert with all the inherent risks. Most of the Mexicans who died last year did so from hunger, thirst, and exposure to the relentless sun. Others drowned in the Rio Grande or suffocated in trucks.
Every year, some half million Mexicans successfully cross into the United States despite the fact that anti-immigrant sentiments in the U.S. are becoming worse. More walls and fences are being erected along the line, the number of raids is increasing, and more states are preparing laws which limit the rights of undocumented workers and their health care and education. Many of the presidential candidates have spoken out in favor of stricter immigration laws and have let the public know that they are not planning to legalize undocumented migrants. There is a lot of controversy and debate over whether the immigrants are good or bad for the U.S. economy, but it seems that most sources believe that their impact is positive. In the meantime, the Mexican authorities have not been entirely ineffective. In November, they announced that two more consulates would open in the U.S., which brings the total to 52 (Norte de Ciudad Juarez newspaper). All consulates will strengthen their legal teams in order to assist immigrants. There will be campaigns in the U.S. media to improve the image of the immigrants and on the Mexican side of the border help centers will be set up to assist deported migrants.
The deaths of the Yuma 14 received tremendous media attention but only because of their number. But death on the border is an everyday occurrence and it should be the cause of outrage for the governments and citizens of all countries involved. The endless discussion about the pros and cons of illegal immigration and new laws is quite pointless; it is a given that people will go wherever there is a possibility for them to be better off. But we would all be better off if immigration were accepted as a fact of life and treated as such – by channeling it effectively. Immigration is not just a Mexican / U.S. border problem; it is a global problem and has always been, historically speaking.
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