Abran James Mendiola
Mrs. Bunker
AP Language & Composition
31 Oct 2018
Humanity and Illegality in The Devil’s Highway
Luis Urrea’s The Devil’s Highway is a narrative about Mexican immigration into the United States. Urrea retells the true and tragic story of twenty-six men who from May 2001 embarked on a life-threatening journey through the deadliest region on the North American continent located in the desert of Arizona and infamously referred to as the Devil’s Highway. Out of the twenty-six men who entered the region, only twelve survived the journey that resulted in the largest group of border deaths in history. The depiction of humanity and illegality in the world of The Devil’s Highway is inversely proportional and had a major impact on outcome of the journey aforementioned. Humanity vs. Illegality is a major factor looked at today when the border policies are brought up. The term “humanity” as used here refers to the quality of benevolence or being humane, which is cultivated through the recognition of the humanness of every person. Conversely, illegality is defined as the quality of being forbidden by or going contrary to the law.
The first instance of the notion of illegality encountered in the book is where Urrea provides the historical and contextual backgrounds of uncontrolled immigration. Urrea elaborates on the roots of the immigration problem and how immigrants eventually came to be labeled and perceived as illegal. Notably, the author notes the irony of how white Europeans inhabiting the United States today grieve over the immigration problem when the same issue was caused by their ancestors. He states that “Immigration, the drive northward, is a white phenomenon” because “Europeans conquering North America hustled west” whereas “The Europeans setting Mexico hustled north, where the open land was“ (22). For example, in the 1880s, Americans incentivized immigration when the railroad barons preferred to use foreign, cheap, skilled labor to help further their endeavors on the continent (22). They would hire hordes of Mexicans and Chinese laborers for cheap because these groups of immigrants could earn more in the United States than in Mexico, even at the reduced rates. It was the job openings and the economic opportunities for immigrants in America created by the white settlers that generated the drive for the movement of immigrants northward. Furthermore, even before the immigration of the 1880s, Mexicans had already ventured north from the Mexican mainland to Baja, California through the Devil’s Highway following the gold rush of the late 1840s (25). It was the white European’s call of treasure that similarly incentivized the migration of thousands of people to America, many of who succumbed to the hostility and harsh conditions of the Cabeza Prieta. However, it was only after the Civil War that the same white Europeans living in the United States began complaining about and bemoaning immigration. Urrea indicates that the association of immigration with illegality commenced during the period after the Civil War because the Americans “Panicked at the “Yellowing of America“ (22). Racial undertones such as this informed the subsequent adoption of an unfavorable legal stance towards immigrants in the broader American society regardless of the fact that the migration phenomenon was not only created but also incentivized by the same American society. Therefore, the author’s exploration of the historical underpinnings of the immigration phenomenon and its evolution from being perceived as an economic advantage to being perceived as an illegality challenges the rationale upon which the American society views and addresses the issue of immigration. According to the author, associating immigration with illegality is unfair because it ignores the history underlying the phenomenon and also impacts the northward journey of immigrants negatively, thereby contributing to the undesirable and adverse outcomes of the perilous journey of immigrants into the United States.
Additionally, the concept of illegality impacted the outcome of Urrea’s journey by contributing to the “othering” of immigrants. Associating immigration with illegality provides the means by which the immigrants venturing north into the US are viewed as aliens and, thus, not welcome in the country. For instance, after word got out regarding the economic opportunities available in the US owing to the demand for cheap labor in the 1880s, the Chinese increasingly began migrating to America (22). The dynamic threatened the white Europeans in the United States, resulting in the “othering” of the incoming immigrants based on their race. Consequently, the Chinese immigrants became the first targets of the Americans’ racial “othering” through the Mounted Chinese Exclusionary Police (22). As its title suggests, the sole intent of the force was to exclude the immigrants by means of law enforcement because they were considered to be a threat to the country’s security. The same notions of “othering” exist today in the legal frameworks designed to deal with the phenomenon of immigration. Urrea indicates that some Border Patrol agents view immigrants at the border as people who are “Always up to something” and who, therefore, ought to be stopped from gaining entry into the country (28).” The Border Patrol lingo, which refers to the process of dealing with the so-called illegal aliens as “Getting bodies” and to the immigrants as “Wets” and “Tonks,” reflects the dominant belief that the vast majority of immigrants consists of criminals who are intent on breaking the law and bringing their unwanted criminal tendencies with them into the US (Urrea 28). These perceptions create a relentless border war that has deadly consequences. Sometimes, Border Patrolmen take prisoners from among the captured immigrants into the desert and rape and molest them, even murdering their handlers. Texas Rangers are also said to drown some immigrants in the desert’s irrigation canals (29). Therefore, the notion of illegality impacted the outcome of Urrea’s journey by influencing the social construction of both immigrants and the Border Patrol thereby affecting the immigrants’ view and interaction with the pertinent law enforcement agencies, negatively.
Conversely, the narrative’s theme of humanity emerges primarily in the author’s description of the Border Patrol agents. Urrea depicts the human side of officials on both sides of the border who were concerned both publicly and privately about the wellbeing of the “illegals” that they were tasked to apprehend. The author explains how the Border Patrol agents struggle with how to offer the dignity and recognition which are inalienable to the people who make the perilous journey of The Devil's Highway. He states that “You’d be hard pressed to meet a Border Patrol agent in either southern Arizona sector who had not encountered death” and so the vast majority of agents worried about the dangers to which the immigrants faced in the desert because “It was equally their duty to save the lost and the dying” (30, 31). They all agree that the worst deaths are the young women and children, and are deeply enraged by the demise of immigrants who are lured into the wasteland and then abandoned. All the agents also speak Spanish and the vast majority of them are married to Mexican women as an indication of their recognition of the Mexican immigrants’ humanity (35). Notably, the author comments that agents at the Wellton station are “good guys” as evidenced by Urrea’s encounter with them when they saved his life and those of his fellow immigrants.
The depiction of humanity and illegality in the world of The Devil’s Highway is inversely proportional. Therein, more emphasis on illegality implies the dehumanization of immigrants and vice-versa. Overall, the author’s purpose of combining both elements in his text appears to be to provoke a meaningful reflection among the readers regarding the human side of all those who are involved in the immigration problem.