Rating: 
Summary: Death on one of the world's deadliest borders
Review: "Mr. President, tear down this wall."Some day, perhaps, an American president will have the courage -- or a Mexican president will have the honesty -- to go to the wall between Mexico and United States and demand its removal in the name of freedom. Until then, the Sonoran Desert will continue to be the site for hundreds of unbelievably agonizing deaths every year. Within the last 10 years, more people have died here than those who tried to cross the Berlin Wall. Until then, as Urrea makes abundantly clear, Mexicans will continue to create networks that in a few years will be the great criminal syndicates of the United States and Mexico. It's happened before. Prohibition was a great "holier than thou" movement, and it generated many vicious criminals. It took the courage of President Franklin Roosevelt to end its rampant hypocrisy. Some day, if Americans ever elect another president with the courage of Roosevelt, a border solution will be found. It's agonizing to be slowly baked to death in the sun. Thousands of desperate people risk it every year; this book tell of 14 who didn't make it in May 2001. The reporting is excellent, the writing is superb. Don't read it unless you have a strong stomach; the deaths of "Los illegales" and the pure greed of Mexicans who recruit and deliver then to the US is a gruesome story. (Keep in mind, this is also a major route for deadly drugs.) It took a man from Chicago to write this book. Few in Arizona, where people hire illegals with the casual unconcern of buying a drive-through taco, care about the human cost. Arizona cities actually run drive-by labour centers to facilitate the hiring of illegals by homeowners and business people. The media generally ignores desert deaths unless it is groups of a dozen or more; "big" news in Arizona is the opening of a new shopping center or the latest exploits of a Britney Spears. But then, who ever wrote a book exposing rum runners? John Steinbeck immortalized Okies in 'The Grapes of Wrath," but they had a cakewalk compared to what Mexicans now risk to get low wage US jobs. Urrea has done a superb job citing facts about one of the world's deadliest border crossings; read this book, and you'll cry in sorrow and rage at what people endure to reach the US. I've hiked the area where these men died; three hours without water, even in the cool (only 85 degrees F) winter, is enough to produce the first signs of dehydration. It's a tough, unforgiving, brutal land. Mistakes are seldom forgiven. Few, if any, Arizona writers know the desert well enough to describe it as accurately as Urrea. For most Arizonans, illegal aliens -- like federal spending -- makes their state cheap, easy and lazy. It took a man from "the city of big shoulders" to write this book. As you read it, keep in mind that a child or grandchild of any one of these migrants could well become another Urrea (provided they get out of Arizona). It's what America is all about, and it is why people will literally "walk through Hell" for days on end, even when they know the only job they'll ever get is scrubbing toilets. Read it, and you'll scream in anger, rage, sorrow and frustration. Of course, if you're from Arizona, where chain gangs are still policy and jail inmates are housed in surplus army tents during summers which easily reach 115 degrees, your only reaction will be, "So what? That's the penalty for breaking the law." Maybe it's time to reconsider the Gadsden Purchase. Read it. This book will shake anyone's conscience. Read it. Learn what courage and greed mean in today's world.
Rating:
Summary: Death on one of the world's deadliest borders
Review: "Mr. President, tear down this wall." Some day, perhaps, an American president will have the courage -- or a Mexican president will have the honesty -- to go to the wall between Mexico and United States and demand its removal in the name of freedom. Until then, the Sonoran Desert will continue to be the site for hundreds of unbelievably agonizing deaths every year. Within the last 10 years, more people have died here than those who tried to cross the Berlin Wall. Until then, as Urrea makes abundantly clear, Mexicans will continue to create networks that in a few years will be the great criminal syndicates of the United States and Mexico. It's happened before. Prohibition was a great "holier than thou" movement, and it generated many vicious criminals. It took the courage of President Franklin Roosevelt to end its rampant hypocrisy. Some day, if Americans ever elect another president with the courage of Roosevelt, a border solution will be found. It's agonizing to be slowly baked to death in the sun. Thousands of desperate people risk it every year; this book tell of 14 who didn't make it in May 2001. The reporting is excellent, the writing is superb. Don't read it unless you have a strong stomach; the deaths of "Los illegales" and the pure greed of Mexicans who recruit and deliver then to the US is a gruesome story. (Keep in mind, this is also a major route for deadly drugs.) It took a man from Chicago to write this book. Few in Arizona, where people hire illegals with the casual unconcern of buying a drive-through taco, care about the human cost. Arizona cities actually run drive-by labour centers to facilitate the hiring of illegals by homeowners and business people. The media generally ignores desert deaths unless it is groups of a dozen or more; "big" news in Arizona is the opening of a new shopping center or the latest exploits of a Britney Spears. But then, who ever wrote a book exposing rum runners? John Steinbeck immortalized Okies in 'The Grapes of Wrath," but they had a cakewalk compared to what Mexicans now risk to get low wage US jobs. Urrea has done a superb job citing facts about one of the world's deadliest border crossings; read this book, and you'll cry in sorrow and rage at what people endure to reach the US. I've hiked the area where these men died; three hours without water, even in the cool (only 85 degrees F) winter, is enough to produce the first signs of dehydration. It's a tough, unforgiving, brutal land. Mistakes are seldom forgiven. Few, if any, Arizona writers know the desert well enough to describe it as accurately as Urrea. For most Arizonans, illegal aliens -- like federal spending -- makes their state cheap, easy and lazy. It took a man from "the city of big shoulders" to write this book. As you read it, keep in mind that a child or grandchild of any one of these migrants could well become another Urrea (provided they get out of Arizona). It's what America is all about, and it is why people will literally "walk through Hell" for days on end, even when they know the only job they'll ever get is scrubbing toilets. Read it, and you'll scream in anger, rage, sorrow and frustration. Of course, if you're from Arizona, where chain gangs are still policy and jail inmates are housed in surplus army tents during summers which easily reach 115 degrees, your only reaction will be, "So what? That's the penalty for breaking the law." Maybe it's time to reconsider the Gadsden Purchase. Read it. This book will shake anyone's conscience. Read it. Learn what courage and greed mean in today's world.
Rating:
Summary: Magnifico!
Review: Amazing book! I couldn't put it down and read it from cover to cover in one day. Urrea has a gift for language and he applies it here. This is the story of 26 men from Veracruz. Urrea could have recounted the story of how 14 of them died in the desert and left it at that. This would still be a book worth reading... but he went way beyond those confines. He took the story of those 26 men from Veracruz and put it in historical, cultural and geographical context. He opened a window onto other worlds and onto our own. He portrays the immigrants, the border patrol and even the coyote, without judgment. He allows the reader to come to her/his own conclusion. Powerful, poetic and unforgettable. I finished it and got back on line to order everything else he has published.
Rating:
Summary: Magnifico!
Review: Amazing book! I couldn't put it down and read it from cover to cover in one day. Urrea has a gift for language and he applies it here. This is the story of 26 men from Veracruz. Urrea could have recounted the story of how 14 of them died in the desert and left it at that. This would still be a book worth reading... but he went way beyond those confines. He took the story of those 26 men from Veracruz and put it in historical, cultural and geographical context. He opened a window onto other worlds and onto our own. He portrays the immigrants, the border patrol and even the coyote, without judgment. He allows the reader to come to her/his own conclusion. Powerful, poetic and unforgettable. I finished it and got back on line to order everything else he has published.
Rating:
Summary: A must read
Review: I just want to add my voice in recommending this book. As others have said, Urrea writes like a lyricists and masterfuly alternates plain exposition with poetry to tell us the saga of 26 (more or less, nobody is sure of the exact number) men who made their way from Mexico in search of work and found death and disolation instead. The book indeed reads like a novel, a pageturner (I read it in about a day, I couldn't put it down), but it never allows you to forget that it is a real story, that those people dying in the sun are human beings, and that others - whose names and faces we'll never know - are following in their steps and dying their own desert deaths.
Rating:
Summary: Just go get it NOW!!!!!!!
Review: I never, ever read non-fiction but got interested in this book from a blurb in a magazine. It is life-altering, mind changing, perhaps life saving.I never imagined what a horrible world these migrants go through. I'd always assumed Mexican crossing was one guy trying to cross the Rio Grande, getting caught and "oh, well, better luck tomorrow! " NO! This is life and death!Urrea did such a wonderful job of bringing this issue up front.He discusses the politics/economics behind the crossing on both sides and doesn't place blame on any one group.We are ALL guilty here!
I felt the heat, often wanting a glass of water while reading, and wanted to hug every Mexican I saw after reading this book.Like the quote on the back of the book says" EVERYONE should read this book!".
Rating:
Summary: A Masterpiece
Review: Luis Alberto Urrea earned the moniker "the Voice of the Border" through his unflinching portrayals of life in the slums of Tijuana in his books Across the Wire and By the Lake of the Sleeping Children. In his latest and best effort yet, the Devil's Highway, he chronicles the tragic voyage of the "Yuma 14" -- the fourteen illegal Mexican immigrants who perished in the blistering heat of the Cabeza Prieta desert in an ill-fated attempt to enter the United States. The goal of these pour souls was simply to earn enough money to feed their destitute families in their remote native Mexican villages. But the Devil's Highway is far more than just the account of what happened to these fourteen unfortunate walkers. Urrea also details the near-death experience of the surviving walkers, as well as the human smuggler who lost them in the desert. This coyote abandoned them in the baking sun after taking all of their money - in exchange for promises of water and an eventual rescue. Even in the case of the coyote, however, Urrea manages to write a heartfelt and impartial account of every player in the tragedy. In the course of the Devil's Highway, the stereotypes of the evil Migra are dashed when Border Patrol agents turn out to be humanitarian lifesavers, paying from their own pocket to help save walkers. The image of the opportunistic coyote is also defaced by the revelation that he is just a young man in love, making a modest wage in a very dangerous line of work. In the final analysis, it becomes obvious that every person involved in the tragedy is exactly that - a human being. If anyone is to blame for the tragedy, we are all to blame. It is in that sense that the ultimate finger of blame has to eventually point at the U.S. and Mexican governments. Their efforts to end the dilemma could be considered laughable, if not so disastrous: from the Mexican side there are signs telling walkers not to walk, and on the U.S. side there are preventive walls and fences that discourage them from crossing where it might actually be safe to do so. In order to make the passage, the immigrants are forced to traverse a hostile desert. Yet, as Urrea so successfully demonstrates, the two countries are in truth extraordinarily codependent. Through prose that reads like poetry, and reality that is shockingly surreal, Urrea puts the reader in middle of the arid barrenness that delineates the U.S.-Mexican border. More than only a physical divide, the border created the by heat and desiccation of the wasteland that separate the two countries is exposed to function as a symbol of all the imagined differences that separate us. With a passion that permeates every word of the story, Urrea illustrates that the only place that none of us belongs is to be lost along the Devil's Highway. "In the desert, we are all illegal aliens." The Devil's Highway is essential reading for socio-political relevance, passion, compassion, imagery, and the sheer beauty of its prose. It is also unquestionably Luis Alberto Urrea's crowning achievement - a masterpiece.
Rating:
Summary: Real life.Real humanity.Real tragedy.Another Urrea Classic
Review: Luis Urrea only writes classics.As another writer who writes about the borderlands,I assure you ,he is the best purveyor of the human condition on the planet.You cannot read this,or any of his books, without changing your view of the world;changing your view of "right" and "wrong" and without changing the contents of your own heart.
In Luis Urrea's world there are few villains,few stereotypes and few "blame-games".But there is a mountain of reality that every person in North America needs to consider----what worlds,political and economic, have we created that push humans into impossible journeys,folly,even death,just to earn enough to eat and send their kids to school? What borders have we imposed--both geopolitical and cultural, that separate human beings so completely as to compell the events of this book?And,for God's sake, what does any of us gain from it? The Devil's highway is about the desperate saga of a group of poor Mexican immigrants....and it is about all the rest of us who perceive ourselves as "not part of the problem". The US/Mexico border has become a stake through the heart of humanity.No one intended it that way,but it pierces the hearts of millions just the same.This is a book that every high school and college kid in America should be assigned.Period.
Rating:
Summary: The Devil's Highway
Review: One reviewer described author's Luis Alberto Urrea's style in this book as "...controlled, righteous rage". This is an apt description. Urrea is fair-minded and searching in his appraisal of the tragedy which beset a group of 26 men in the Sonora Desert in May 2001 most of whom were from Vera Cruz and Guerrero. While remaining suspcicious of American and Mexican immigration policies and the border officers who apply them, he nonetheless does not fall into kneejerk stereotyping. They, like most who work in or for government bodies, are caught between festering popular political rage, skewed immigration policies and the reality of the people's lives with whom they must contend each day. In Urrea's depiction many of the border officials are far more humane than those political or economic actors who are responsible for designing the policies in the first place. Urrea's true rage is unleashed towards the conclusion at the international economic actors and the forces they unleash, political leaders for whom immigration is simply another issue to score cheap political points and univocal America firsters and their ilk who fail to comprehend the depths of the problem. Measuring the tragedy of human lives lost in mere dollars (and inaccurate figures on top of that!) is profane in the true sense of that word. Reading "The Devil's Highway" only leads me to support responsible efforts to find common ground on institutional levels which lead to the demise of "the border" as a meaningful political entity.
Rating:
Summary: The Devil's Highway
Review: One reviewer described author's Luis Alberto Urrea's style in this book as "...controlled, righteous rage". This is an apt description. Urrea is fair-minded and searching in his appraisal of the tragedy which beset a group of 26 men in the Sonora Desert in May 2001 most of whom were from Vera Cruz and Guerrero. While remaining suspcicious of American and Mexican immigration policies and the border officers who apply them, he nonetheless does not fall into kneejerk stereotyping. They, like most who work in or for government bodies, are caught between festering popular political rage, skewed immigration policies and the reality of the people's lives with whom they must contend each day. In Urrea's depiction many of the border officials are far more humane than those political or economic actors who are responsible for designing the policies in the first place. Urrea's true rage is unleashed towards the conclusion at the international economic actors and the forces they unleash, political leaders for whom immigration is simply another issue to score cheap political points and univocal America firsters and their ilk who fail to comprehend the depths of the problem. Measuring the tragedy of human lives lost in mere dollars (and inaccurate figures on top of that!) is profane in the true sense of that word. Reading "The Devil's Highway" only leads me to support responsible efforts to find common ground on institutional levels which lead to the demise of "the border" as a meaningful political entity.
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