The Devil S Highway

Ellingson 1

Amanda Ellingson

Writing 101.22

October 7, 2008

The Devil’s Highway

Throughout history, there have always been predicaments at border where the

United States meets Mexico. In the beginning, most of the dilemmas had to do with where the border would actually be, since the U.S. kept trying to rob Mexico of land that was rightfully theirs. In the present, there is more trouble than ever with the U.S. border policy.

The border has become a central gateway for smuggling of not only drugs, but also undocumented entrants. In the book The Devil’s Highway, Luis Urrea presents this crisis in surreal manner when narrating the true desolation and death story of the Yuma 14. In The

Devil’s Highway, Urrea uses a one of a kind style while he recounts this tragedy; he presents his characters in an intimate way, illustrates the terrain, and incorporates both nations’ languages. He also brings sound into a place that has no sound at all.

In this novel, there are many characters from all the men who are traveling to the

United States for a better life to the Border Patrol agents who are trying to stop them from reaching their destination. With each new character that is presented Urrea does not vaguely describe them like in many Ellingson 2 other books, hoping that the characters will become more familiar over the course of the story. With each new individual that joined the walkers, he depicted them in such a way that the reader would feel as if they were another walker going to the United States right beside them. For example, Urrea portrayed the first walker, Reymundo Barreda, like this, “

He was a mature man, a strong, hard worker with a cowboy’s aspect-he favored western wear; his favorite belt buckle, for example, was in the shape of a silver spur…He was a soda bottler by trade when he wasn’t not tending his land. He has resolved to go to the north to expand and reroof his small house as a gift for his wife. A summer of orange picking was all he had in mind…Florida. It was warm like Mexico, sunny, pleasant.” Another character that was exposed in detail was the “top” Coyote, “Don Moi Garcia drove around Veracruz in his big American car, smoking his American cigarettes, patting his Mexican belly that everyone suspected was full of American cheeseburgers. Don Moi was a walking ad for the good life.”

It was not only the characters that he familiarized his readers with but also land that the

Yuma 14 would take their journey through.

In The Devil’s Highway, the piece takes place in nowhere else but Devil’s Highway, a strip of deadly desert along the U.S.-Mexico Border. In many novels, the author will be able to state the setting of where the account is taking place, New York City, Sacramento, and so on. Urrea could not simply write Devil’s Highway because a majority of the population is not even aware this horrible place. As the walkers began on their trip to the north, Urrea illustrates the terrain in such a way that the reader feels as if they are personally walking Ellingson 3 through this hell. In the beginning not even the walkers were prepared for this terrain,

“They walked straight up a steep hill. Most of them were in good shape, but it was still brutal. The sand was deep enough that they slid back a half step for every step they climbed…They were breathing heavily, though to do so this early in the walk seemed like a terrible admission of weakness.” On the second day of the walk, May 20th, it only got worse,

Urrea writes, “He repeatedly tried to climb over the Growlers, dragging the crew up until they foundered, and then fell back, to hit the burning grit and bake as they rested. Then another slog north until a mild-looking slope presented itself, and they tried again, only to be foiled by the heat and the deceptive nature of these desert mountains. Just as they were topping the summit, a higher ridge would appear.” As the readers get farther into the book it appears that Devil’s Highway is an endless amount of jagged mountains, burning stretches of sand, swarming with Border Patrol agents. Urrea does not only present a new environment in this book, but he also includes a foreign language.

While some stories contain slang or maybe a southern accent, in The Devil’s

Highway Urrea enhances the novel by adding Spanish, the walkers’ native language, into it even though it is written in English. Not only does this technique improve the writing, but it also helps combine the two cultures discussed in the story. Urrea may throw in Spanish in the middle of a sentence, use a whole a paragraph of Spanish, or use the English and

Spanish version of a word interchangeably. One of the times he exercises this method is when Mendez said, “Oye, huevon! Pinche buey! Orale, pendejo! Levantate, cabron”, when Ellingson 4 pounding on Maradona’s door the day of the big trip. Another time this is used to enhance the book is when Urrea’s characters use various terms for the walkers. People in Mexico may call them tonks, while the Coyotes call them chickens or pollo. In America, they may get called wetbacks or taco benders. In The Devil’s Highway not only does the language enhance it, but also the sound.

One of the most significant approaches Urrea took when narrating the story of the

Yuma 14 was when he took a place, like the desert, that is, for the most part, a very quiet place, and made it seem as if it was as loud and chaotic as the stock market on a Monday morning. This was used continuously throughout the journey. Towards the end of the journey one of the walkers, Rafael Temich, reported, “That’s when he took his money out and started tearing it apart. And he took off alone and I was also demented. I was demented. I couldn’t help him. I couldn’t carry him. Then he threw himself into the sunlight, and that’s where he stayed.” At this part of the novel, it is as if you can hear the suffering immigrant sizzling in the sun. The part of The Devil’s Highway that shows the best use of sound is when Urrea writes, “The dead men were loose now. Their feet bobbled when the carts bumped into each other as they were lined up, like they were tapping their feet, or walking up. Most of their eyes were open. Small sounds escaped from a couple of the bodies as gases moved through them. Almost sighs. Rustlings in their bags. If you listened you could hear them whispering. We’re coming home.” Ellingson 5

All the way through The Devil’s Highway, a captivating style is used that makes readers not want to put down the book. As Urrea tells the true story of the Yuma 14 he makes readers feel close to the characters as if they are walking side by side through the desert. He also introduced a terrain so horrid it is unimaginable and assimilates the languages of the countries north and south of the border. Lastly, the author brings sound into this place of desolation and death. Urrea exposed the failure of the U.S. border policy and many other problems that are present at the border. As Urrea has said in other pieces of writing, immigration is a phenomenon, it cannot be stopped, it would be better to just surrender, and learn how to deal with what is going on.