The Devils Highway - Luis Alberto Urrea [94]
The Devil’s Highway seems to present all sides fairly. Were you deliberately trying not to advocate a particular point of view when you started this project? Or was that something that developed in the course of writing the book?
When the research began, Jesus Lopez Ramos was presented to me as the “bad guy.” Soon his defenders made a strong case for the Border Patrol being the “bad guy.” Law enforcement made a strong case for the smugglers being the “bad guys.” And I knew that popular culture, as expressed in talk radio for example, considers the “illegals” the “bad guys.” It was my field experience with supervisory agent Ken Smith that led to the epiphany. If I was going to write a book hoping to deal with this issue fairly, how could I write it with a prejudice toward Ken and his brothers in forest green? Once that key turned in the lock, the tone of the narrative opened for me. I have to trust my readers to make up their own minds. Even if that means reaching decisions I didn’t intend for them to reach.
You’ve talked a lot about the response from the Border Patrol, but how have Mexican Americans responded to your book?
I think that my own standing in the community affects how people respond to the book. Illegal immigration is much more complex for us Mexican Americans than the dominant culture realizes. Feelings about coyotes are complicated. Feelings about the Border Patrol are complicated. All of those elements went into the writing of The Devil’s Highway, but also go into the Mexican-American readers’ response to the book. For example, I, like many of my readers, am very close to a number of undocumented entrants into the United States. As a writer, I want to represent their humanity and let the facts speak for themselves.
One example of an uncomfortable response to my book is something that happened in Seattle. A Chicana in the audience told me she was deeply concerned that I had revealed walking paths of the undocumented in my text and that as a result the Border Patrol could now catch people on these paths. This was a funny moment for me because I had to tell her that it was the Border Patrol who taught me about those very paths. Over all, people have been very positive about the book. No matter their personal views.
In your earlier books about the border (Across the Wire and By the Lake of Sleeping Children), you illuminated what life is like for those who live along the Mexican border. Was The Devil’s Highway intended to show a natural progression for these people?
When I began, I didn’t have a plan. I certainly didn’t expect to be the voice of the border. The natural progression I have seen is from obscure writer to talking head. That being said, Across the Wire was intended as an introduction to the human face of the invisible. I wanted Americans to understand what might drive someone to cross that line. The Devil’s Highway moves the focus ahead to the actual crossing. I suppose if I were going to commit fully to this border chronicle, I could write a book about the lives of the undocumented in the shadows of the U.S. In a way, I guess I started that process in an op-ed piece I wrote for the New York Times at Christmas 2004.
I’d like to share a story that might illuminate some of this process: For me, like the walkers in my book, this has been a journey across unexpected terrain. One revelation came near the Badlands of South Dakota. We were driving cross-country and we saw signs advertising a preserved sodbuster’s hut. We thought it would be interesting to learn how the heroic American pioneers had lived. Imagine my shock when we pushed into the hut and I discovered the familiar dirty-paper-wall, improvised-furnishings of a garbage picker’s hut in the Tijuana dump. I stood there in stunned silence, realizing that I had eaten rancid beans and old tortillas in virtually the same structure. I saw those western pioneers as if they were ghosts passing through the two rooms and here’s where it hit me: These brave people heading west, imposing