The Devil's Highway

“They were aliens before they ever crossed the line” 

The landscape is described as an alien region, not unlike Mars. Therefore, its inhabitants can rightly be seen as aliens. However, the word “alien” does double duty in this context. An alien is both someone from another country, but also someone from another planet. Not only that, the word alien connotes an otherness. The men who crossed that line were already from another country, they existed in an alien landscape, and they were already, at least to the people on the other side of the border, aliens in a legal sense. 

“For the coyotes your needs are only a business and they don’t care about your safety or the safety of your family. DON’T PAY THEM OFF WITH YOUR LIVES!!!” 

The seductiveness of the Coyotes, combined with the sometimes desperate needs of the aspiring immigrants creates a lucrative business. The insidious nature of the problem is most apparent when the Coyotes are making their sales pitch. They act as if they care more than anything, while not caring at all. Not all transactions with a Coyote involve paying with “with your lives,” but enough do that it should give pause to anyone considering paying a Coyote. The fact that anyone continues to pay them in any form is an indictment of the grim situation many Mexicans face in their country.  

“I worked legitimately at a factory making roof tiles in Nogales, Sonora. The wages were truly very low, and that was my reason for getting involved in the smuggling business”

This quote is taken from Mendez’s letter of apology to the judge in his case. The letter is reproduced in full in a later chapter. It is ironic that Mendez acts as if the only path to a better life was to become a Coyote, when the people he led into the desert were pursuing a better life by walking the Devil’s Highway. He had other options, and the people who made use of his services were the clearest example of the fact.

“Mendez and the walkers didn’t know they were invisible: on the Devil’s Highway, you had to almost die for anybody to notice your face” 

On the Devil’s Highway, there is no such thing as identity. Until they are almost dead, they are of concern to no one but themselves. 

“In this milieu, it was quite attractive to be a Coyote. You could tell yourself you were a kind of civil rights activist, a young Zapata liberator of the poor and downtrodden. In short, a revolutionary. Coyote-as-Che” 

The work of the Coyotes was exploitative and dangerous. It was much more attractive as a recruiting tool to pitch the job as a sort of liberation. 

“The bones come right out of hiding, as if the dead feel there is nothing to lose” 

The desert buries its dead, but there are suggestions throughout that the dead do not want to remain silent. They want to have their stories told through their tracks, their remains, and their bones. The living have everything to lose, but too often their identities are known only in death. 

“The cutters knew many things about a person by the nature of his tracks” 

The Devil’s Highway is a book about journeys. If you look at the journeys a person chose to make, you will learn something about what mattered to them. And if you follow their tracks, you will learn what became of them. Sometimes it is possible to learn more about a person by pursuing them than by walking alongside them, or facing them. 

“The heat sizzled at the edges of things, then slammed into them, instant and profound” 

The heat is presented throughout as a living thing and a physical presence. 

“In the desert, we are all illegal aliens” 

There are suggestions throughout the book that the natural laws of the desert are too harsh to encourage life. Nothing can thrive there. This line implies that the desert is subject to its own laws, and that anyone who steps onto the sands has subjected themselves to a set of unknown rules. 

“Experts can’t give a definitive schedule of doom. Your own death is largely dictated by factors outside your control, and beyond accurate prediction” 

No amount of planning was every going to be enough to guarantee the safety of the entire group. Life, physiology, and biology are messy businesses, and the more human variables introduced into a group, the more fragmented and chaotic the group is likely to become. Planning and strategizing work best in an environment that can be controlled to a greater extent than an inhospitable desert.

“Everything was repeating itself” 

The Devil’s Highway is a book about cycles: the cycles of violence between governments, the endless game of cat and mouse between Border Patrol and the Coyotes, and the cycle of death that replays itself endlessly in the desert. The Devil’s Highway is a suffocating place endured by people fleeing an often suffocating existence. These cycles add to the feeling of hopelessness on each page, and of inevitable doom. 

“I will never forget the sadness in my nephew’s eyes when he looked at me, shedding tears, and I was unable to do anything except to tell him not to die” 

It is not clear who speaks these words, but it is one of the walkers. One of the harshest revelations of the desert is that no one can protect another under the most severe conditions. There is no amount of familial love or willingness to sacrifice that can save someone unless they are willing to keep fighting. 

“With enchantments and deceptions, they led us” 

Jose Antonio Bautista speaks these words when it becomes obvious that they are in trouble. He is furious with Mendez. The parallel between the delirium the desert heat induces and the delusions of safety and a brighter future that people let themselves believe is heartbreaking. The walkers believed that the Coyotes could lead them to a better life because they wanted to believe it.

“Men stumbled away towards illusion in the brutal light. Men thought they were home, walking into their front doors, hugging their wives, making love. Still, they walked. Men were swimming. Men were killing Mendez. Men were on the beach, collecting shells and watching their children splash. Their women stood naked before them, soft bellies, hands on ribs, breasts. Men hid their faces from a furious God. And they walked” 

No matter what their fantasies are while their minds deteriorate, the men feel that what has happened is their responsibility, not just that of Mendez. Their thoughts turn to God, but God is angry with them for transgressing, for coming where they do not belong. There is no peace in his presence. 

“Mendez and Lauro: they were prepared for the desert, and the walkers were not” 

After all of their promises to keep the walkers safe and prepare them for their journey, Mendez and Lauro justify abandoning the walkers because they were unprepared. They find a way to blame the walkers for something that is their fault. 

“By dawn, the fires were sputtering, the ash gave up thin ribbons of smoke. They waited. Waiting again. It was all suffering and waiting. Their whole lives” 

The men light the trees on fire as a beacon, but no one sees it. The quote “their whole lives” implies that they have never done anything but suffer and wait. It is this suffering and waiting that led them to risk the walk in the first place. 

“The sign of the dead could be ghostly and haunting. One of the men tore off his shirt and tried to bury himself. The hither thither he left all around him showed violent kicking and arm flailing, as if he were swimming. He managed to get the top half of his torso buried in the ground, where he either smothered or passed out. The relentless heat baked him, literally cooking him into the ground. His face bloated and came loose from the bones, tender as barbecued pork” 

Perhaps no other passage in the book reveals the inhumanity of the Devil’s Highway. The ground itself is capable of cooking a man until his body cannot sustain its own flesh. 

“It was not uncommon for illegals to rehydrate, catch a nap, eat some hospital food, then walk out the doors and into the United States”

This quote suggests another reason why walkers retain hope. If even getting arrested and hospitalized can lead to a successful crossing, they have yet another incentive to attempt the journey.

“While charming and funny, endearing when it was appropriate, she was not afraid to stand up to both the Border Patrol and her supervisors” 

The quote describes Rita Vargas, Mexican Consul, who is presented as an effective official who is beyond intimidation. The implication is that if more officials were less afraid, real change with respect to border security—and greater safety for those who continue to attempt illegal crossings—might be possible.

“Cops didn’t scare anybody” 

When the walkers are recovering in the hospital, they are interrogated by American cops. The cops flex and strut, preening with their badges and talking tough. But the walkers have seen too much. Fear—especially fear of a posturing cop—may be an alien concept to them from now on. 

“I promise not to bring illegals across anymore and I am truly repentant, and ask the judge’s pardon and forgiveness” 

This is the conclusion of Mendez’s letter to the judges. It is only because of the walkers’ deaths that Mendez is being prosecuted to this extent. If, as sometimes happened, he had merely been caught with walkers, it is possible that he would have received nothing more than a slap on the wrist. The fact that he is responsible for so many deaths—and that he abandoned his clients—almost makes asking for forgiveness and pardon laughable. 

“He was the first Mexican Chief of Migratory Affairs. The men looked up at him as he was photographed talking to them. He told them they were heroes of the republic” 

In an incredibly cynical political move, the survivors are made into symbols of hope and defiance. They survived, which makes them heroes, and now politicians can use their suffering to their own ends. No one seems to care about the circumstances that made them attempt an illegal border crossing in the first place.

“The survivors had played the game brilliantly. They bucked up, and in the face of their grief, their horror, they stuck together. They had lost family members and friends. They had seen things they could never find the words to explain. They were hurt and scared, physically damaged, perhaps psychically damaged as well. But they were not stupid. In trade for their testimony, they were rewarded with immunity”

This quote is a callback to Chapter 1, The Rules of the Game. The walkers knew the rules in the beginning, at least insofar as the Coyotes explained them. The game took an unimaginably bad turn, but it was still a game. Because they had stepped onto the board, they did not get to determine when their involvement in the game would end.