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By Root 524 0

out of Texas was always a welcome source of information: Ray is the Xicano Drudge Report— even has a cool fedora. Of all the papers covering the border, the Daily Star of Arizona and the Arizona Republic are the invaluable sources, and the Star’s Web site offers a constant stream of illuminating border stories. For portraits of the Veracruz home and the relatives of the Yuma 14, the Tucson Citizen is of interest. Border Patrol Web sites and officer’s union Web sites were also of great interest. Mike McGlasson provided me with a healthy flow of Yuma sector press releases. The Samaritans e-mailed me their minutes after every meeting. And, of course, the aforementioned AP and LexisNexis services. My maps were U.S. Geological Survey topo maps that divided up the entire region into detailed sections. For a quick overview of the state of Arizona, the Arizona Atlas and Gazetteer from DeLorme Mapping was extremely handy. If anyone wishes to learn about the Devil’s Highway region, they need only step into Tucson’s Map and Flag Center, where Mr. F. Keith Trantow and the staff will orient and guide with a sure hand.

Thanks to P. K. Weis of the Citizen for his excellent photographs.

Several reports and monographs, from both the Right and the Left, were eye-opening. One of the most interesting was the Population Council’s December 1, 2001, report, “Death at the Border: Efficacy and Unintended Consequences of U.S. Immigration Control Policy,” by Wayne A. Cornelius. Another was the Center for Immigration Studies Forum press conference from the Nixon Center in Washington, D.C., in August 2002. (Transcript available from the Federal News Service.) The Border Information Outreach Service can be accessed via www.us-mex.org/borderlines. The Mexican Migration Project (MMP) has done some interesting research into the issue. An outgrowth of this research is the valuable book Beyond Smoke and Mirrors: Mexican Immigration in an Era of Economic Integration, by Massey, Durand, and Malone.

For those who want to keep an eye on the Mexicans, there are three excellent Web sites that pull back the tortilla curtain and make secrets visible. They are invaluable for anyone seeking to do thorough homework. These are: El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, www.colef.mx; Instituto Nacional de Estadistica, Geografía e Información, www.inegi.mx; and Consejo Nacional de Población, www.conapo.mx.

For a liberal/humanitarian angle on the border, interested readers should look into Humane Borders and Derechos Humanos and the American Friends Service Committee.

Anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the border might want to read the excellent anthologies put out by Cinco Puntos Press, in El Paso. Both The Late Great Mexican Border and Puro Border offer insights into the world of the Coyotes and the rich and troubled border world. The latter has an invaluable dictionary/lexicon of Coyote and pollo slang.

Certainly, anyone looking into the Devil’s Highway region must begin with John Annerino’s text, Dead in Their Tracks. Perhaps the earliest book about the Devil’s Highway region, barring the conquistadors’ chronicles, is Nils and Dorothy Hogner’s Westward Ho! High, Low and Dry. If you find a copy, let me know. Charles Bowden’s books are an invaluable source of border/desert information; of particular value to the writing of this book were Blue Desert and Desierto. Both Bowden and Annerino feature versions of the Melchior Díaz story. Rubén Martinez has written a classic of border literature, Crossing Over. Anyone who wants to understand the world of the undocumented entrant could do worse than to start here. For the bad-Mexicans and evil-Arabs crowd, Michelle Malkin’s alarmist screed Invasion is satisfyingly hair-raising.

Aron Spilken’s Escape! is a study of a similar tragedy to the one described in this book; it took place in the same general area. For some sense of the awfulness of the Devil’s Highway region in cowboy days, readers are wise to read the last half of Cormac McCarthy’s apocalyptic historical novel, Blood Meridian. Many other border/desert writers are