Free The Devils Highway: A True Story by Luis Alberto Urrea Page A

Yuma is looked on with respect; Ken Smith, at Wellton, is mentioned as a kind of patriarch of the wasteland. The Wellton boys like the Calexico consul and the Yuma consul, and they have a pretty good feeling about the Mexican Beta Group cops, who are the elite agents investigating narco and Coyote crimes on the Mexican side. Aside from that, they seem to see lots of the other Mexicans as communists and thieves.
    But the two things that most unify the two sides are each one’s deep distrust of its own government, and each side’s simmering hatred for the human smugglers, the gangsters who call themselves Coyotes.
    The sign is printed in black and blue and red on a white banner.
    It faces south.
    They have spent good money on it.
    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 sign has been posted by the Mexican government at Sasabe, Sonora. It is as absurd a placard as might have been posted by the U.S. government. Policy wonks in Washington, D.C., are as ineffectual as policy wonks in México, D.F.
    There is no real border here, just a tattered barbed wire fence, a dusty plain, and some rattling bushes. Walkers face the Brawley Wash and the Sierrita Mountains coming up from Mexico.
    Don Moi never bothered with Sasabe. He wasn’t a walker. For Don Moi, the conspiracy was a thing of buses: the Tres Estrellas and Transportes Norte del Pacífico bus lines. Then a quick night tossing and turning in a Sonoita or San Luis or Douglas motel. A wad of colorful Mexican pesos and a nice lunch, and back home on the bus. It was all
Playboy
s and American cigarettes, a tequila and maybe some girls. And so long, boys! I’m going home!
    The border was the problem of others.
    The Sasabe sign, which many of the walkers can’t read, is the only thing Mexico is doing to try to stop them from crossing. The Mexican army patrols the borderlands, sort of, though nobody can find them, probably because the Coyotes pay the soldiers off. Coyote gangs have more money than the Mexico City sign painters. What do Mexican soldiers care if
alambristas
(wire-crossers) walk into Arizona? Any one of the soldiers might very well head north himself at some point.
    For a while, the Mexican government offered the walkers survival kits with water and snacks, but the uproar from the United States put a stop to that. Americans saw these attempts at life-saving as a combination invitation to invade and complimentary picnic basket. They were further astonished to learn that Mexico City officials put condoms into the boxes. Of course, Mexico City claimed this was a gesture of deep consideration for the health of all involved. Gringos were deeply alarmed that the illegals were not just coming over to work, but to get laid. They’re coming for our daughters! They’re coming to make welfare babies! They’re coming to party, party, party!
    Fifteen hundred walkers a day depart from under the Sasabe sign. The writer Charles Bowden, on a visit to Sasabe in 2003, counted five thousand walkers in one afternoon.
    Although our Wellton 26 did not cross at the sign, their trail leads to the region surrounding it. The Lukeville/Organ Pipe border was too busy for them, so they scooted off to the side and tried to backtrack to the Lukeville paths once they were in the United States.
    No matter where they entered, they had only to step over a drooping bit of wire fence, or across an invisible line in the dust. Near the legendary crossing at El Saguaro, there is often no fence at all. Along the Devil’s Highway near Tinajas Altas, there is nothing but a dry creek bed and a small sign telling walkers:
Y’all better stay out or else we’ll be, like, really really bummed!
    Tucson’s newspapers described their entry as having been “somewhere between Yuma and Nogales.” This is a safe bet—a cursory glance at a map will reveal that most of the state lies between