MADreads

The border from many angles

May 20th, 2008 Liz - Central Library

Our book group just finished reading and discussing The Devil’s Highway by Luis Urrea.  It’s a book I’d checked out a couple of times, based on good reviews, but had never gotten around to reading until our book group met.

I’ve spent quite a bit of time on the Texas/Mexico border, visting each year for a week or so in October for about 8 years (for my hubby’s work.)  So I was familiar with how different border life was, and how fluid the border was there in the late 90s and early 00s.  The Devil’s Highway focuses on an actual event where 26 crossed the border into the desert of Arizona, and only 12 survived.  And it is a miracle even they survived.  This is Urrea’s fourth border book, and as a Mexican-American who was born in Tijuana, Baja California, you’d expect him to have a strong bias.  Even he admits openly he expected to be very anti Border Patrol going into the book.

What I found so impressive about this book was his ability to present multiple points of view.  He writes often in the first person, and uses the slang of the Border Patrol when writing about them/as them and in the style of the various demographics of the illegals when he’s channeling them– he sounds like a 50 year old sometimes, a teen other times.

Most of the illegals that crossed that day were middle aged men from Veracruz.  He writes about them in a different style and vocabulary from the coyote that led them (who was a 19-year-old, hipster-type with a shock of rooster red hair.)

Nearly everyone in the book is given a detailed, nuanced portrait.  There are no caricatures here.  Not even any stereotypes, really, as he has worked so hard to research and present the nuances (down to the belt buckles each wore.)

Entry Filed under: Nonfiction