The Devil's Highway

Luis Alberto Urrea’s book, The Devil’s Highway, tells the story of a disastrous border crossing between Mexico and The United States. The Devil’s Highway refers to a particularly brutal stretch of desert. In the past, it was not used as often as other routes, but as the story shows, the development and proliferation of the Border Patrol has made it necessary to use this dangerous route.

The story is divided into four sections: “Cutting the Drag”, “Dead Man’s Sign”, “In Desolation”, and “Aftermath”. In Part One, a group of men stumble out of the desert, burned almost beyond recognition and close to death. The reader knows immediately that, even though these men made it, the majority of the group did not survive. This lengthy opening section introduces the logistics of working for the Border Patrol and the brutal history of the desert. Folk legends—generally centered on the many lives the desert has consumed—set the scene for the world in which the walkers will find themselves.

In Part One, little attention is paid to the walkers themselves. They are treated as a group, or as the desires and aspirations of the group. Scant time is spent on their backstories, or even their personalities. All the reader needs to know about them is that they are trying to cross the border in order to profit from The American Dream. They are known as the Wellton 26, then, after many of them die, as the Yuma 14. For most of the book, they are merely numbers. They are people who take their lives into their own hands, but they are acted upon more than they are actors.

In Part Two, more space is devoted to the Coyotes and the hierarchy of the criminal enterprise that profits from the walkers. The Coyotes are the guides that recruit walkers and then lead them across the desert. A Coyote named Mendez is the most developed character in the story, and it is through him that the reader learns how both a border crossing agreement is made. Part Two is the story of how a group of people fall for false promises, delivered by seductive criminals. It is immediately apparent that most of them will be in over their heads. Part Two also examines the history of the Border Patrol and their relationship with the walkers.

Part Three details the walk itself. It goes wrong immediately and gets worse by the hour. Mendez, the guide, starts walking too early, the first of many mistakes. Blow by blow, the group disintegrates and the walkers begin to die. Mendez leaves them and promises to return with help, a promise he does not keep. It is in Part Three that we hear the walkers’ stories. The reader gets to know them more intimately right before they die; a heartbreaking but effective authorial choice.

Part Four considers the aftermath of the walk. The survivors, including Mendez, are interrogated by the police and become something of a national cause. They are seen as either heroes or derelicts. But the individual walkers are still not given as much space as the question of immigration. Most of Part Four is dedicated to revisiting the challenges inherent in immigrating, and in enforcing immigration. Some policies changed as a result of the Yuma 14, but many did not.

The Devil’s Highway is, in essence, a cautionary tale and a lesson in political and social history. It presents two challenges—border security and the need to cross the border, even illegally—that are so intractable as to be almost unsolvable. Border Patrols pay lip service to their ideals, or they overcorrect. Coyotes continue to recruit walkers who still believe that their stories will be different from the disasters and disappointments that have preceded them. The major themes are immigration, mortality, desperation, and the entanglements of bureaucracy that can exacerbate these issues.