The Devils Highway - Luis Alberto Urrea [2]
— Raymond Fiore, Entertainment Weekly
“A horrendous story told with bitter skill, highlighting the whole sordid, greedy mess that attends illegal border crossings.”
— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Take a walk on the dead side. The largest folk movement in human history is taking place on the U.S.-Mexican border. Nobody talks about it. This slaughterhouse fries and mangles at least 400 people a year. Nobody talks about it. The Devil’s Highway is coming to Main Street. Open your ears and eyes, wash the blood over your hands, and read Luis Urrea. We gotta talk. Now.”
— Charles Bowden
“Urrea can cut loose and surrealistic when the story warrants it, but just as nimbly rein in to focus on facts. … Those familiar with Cormac McCarthy’s western novels will undoubtedly hear familiar tones in the mythic ring of some of Urrea’s phrasing.”
— Kathleen Johnson, Kansas City Star
“With great wit and pathos, the author skillfully recreates the events leading to the walk across the border that killed so many so mercilessly. … A poignant and harrowing story everyone should read.”
— Vivian Lake, Puerto Rico Sun
“A stunning work of narrative journalism that puts a much-needed face on a notoriously divisive issue.”
— Marc Ramirez, Seattle Times
“Artful. … Confident and full of righteous rage, Urrea’s story is a well-crafted mélange of first-person testimony, geographic history, cultural and economic analysis, poetry, and an indictment of immigration policy.”
— Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Powerful. … A harrowing journey from the streets of Veracruz to a morgue in Arizona. … What The Devil’s Highway does is personalize human misery on so vast a scale that it is usually portrayed exclusively in statistics.”
— Edward Morris, Bookpage
“Shocking. … Urrea is able to recreate the ill-fated crossing with the startling accuracy of an eyewitness. … The Devil’s Highway is a stunning contribution to the literature of current affairs and has all the potential to incite outrage and, most hopefully, change.”
— Rigoberto Gonzalez, El Paso Times
“A border story sung in the voice of a true border son, a fronterizo. … Urrea’s voice soars with polished ease from cynical to lyrical. … The Devil’s Highway will haunt you.”
— Judy Goldstein Botello, San Diego Union-Tribune
OTHER BOOKS BY LUIS ALBERTO URREA
Nonfiction
Across the Wire: Life and Hard Times on the Mexican Border
By the Lake of Sleeping Children: The Secret Life of the Mexican Border
Nobody’s Son
Wandering Time
Fiction
The Hummingbird’s Daughter
In Search of Snow
Six Kinds of Sky
Poetry
The Fever of Being
Ghost Sickness
Vatos
For the dead, and for those who rescue the living
Coyote’s gone with most our money
And all our hope.
Left us just this side
Of Mexico.
Home feels like heaven
Compared to this.
I know the buzzards overhead
Hold salvation in their kiss.
It’s this bad, crazy sun
That makes me think like that.
I lost my mind
And I lost my soul
And I know
That I’m never going home.
—THE SIDEWINDERS
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This account was based on many sources. Interviews and travel, of course, provided many insights and testimonies. I was granted unusually generous access to documents and governmental reports from both Mexico and the United States; these were central to the collection of stories. Border Patrol reports, sheriff’s department reports, Mexican consular reports, Justice Department reports, legal documents, testimonies and trial documents, correspondence, and many hours of taped interrogations and confessions went into the research. Due to concerns about the personal safety of the survivors, their actual depositions were sealed. I spent hours in federal defenders’ offices, in various consulates, in Border Patrol stations, with Samaritan groups, in diners over cups of coffee, in Migra trucks, and on