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

Yuma and Nogales. Several accounts say they crossed at a tiny burg called Los Vidrios, not to be confused with the Vidrios Drag.
    A woman named Ofelia, or Orelia (depends on who you ask), Alvarado runs a small truck stop at Los Vidrios. Many walkers stop at her store before they cross over. Near Mrs. Alvarado’s store are signs that warn walkers “USA Prohibido!” Walkers see them, scratch their heads, and continue. At best, the signs imply, in bad Spanish:
    TO USE IS PROHIBITED!
    To use what? The trail? The sign? The desert? Spanish? Nobody, it seems, told the Yanquis who put the signs up that in Mexico, “USA” is spelled “EEUU.”
    Mrs. Alvarado never saw the Wellton 26. She told reporters that a young man had gone a few days before they did, and he’d returned, burned black and vomiting blood, after they’d left. He told her God was coming to get him.
    So Los Vidrios, as generally reported, was not their crossing point.
    Most of the survivors say they crossed at El Papalote. That would be a tiny scatter of wrecks and huts whose name translates as “the kite.” The trail probably led them into the Quitobaquito Hills. These confusions and guesses should suggest why it’s so difficult to enforce immigration law on the border. Of the men confirmed to have survived from the group, none can agree on where, exactly, they entered the United States. Perhaps only one person knew where they were trying to go once they were here, and that was their Coyote.
    From El Papalote, it seems like the myth of the big bad border is just a fairy tale. One step, and presto! You’re in the EEUU. Los Estados Unidos. The Yunaites Estaites. There’s nothing there. No helicopters, no trucks, no soldiers. There’s a tarantula, a creosote bush, a couple of beat saguaros dying of dry rot, some scattered bits of trash, old human and coyote turds in the bushes now mummified into little coal nuggets. Nothing.
    The smugglers tell the walkers it’s just a day’s walk to their pickup point. If they are crossing into Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, it’s literally a walk in the park. A couple of hours, heading north for Ajo, Arizona. Cold soda pop and a ride to work.
    How bad can it be? A day of thirst, some physical struggle—they’ve lived like that all their lives. The place may be alien to them, but the situation feels like home. After all, they tell themselves, America’s a country with a state called Nuevo México. Other states are called Red, Snowy, Mountain, and Flowery; several of them were going to Flowery, and some of the others were going to Northern Caroline to see about making cigarettes. The state of Nuevo México even has a capital city called Holy Faith: Catholicism, New Mexico.
    And then there’s the hilarious Chi-Cago. (“Piss.” And, “I Shit.”) It’s funny until they feel the cold of winter.
    Illegal entry is the sole reason for Sasabe’s or El Papalote’s or Vidrios’s existence. The vans lined up under the spindly cottonwoods have driven from Altar, Sonora, full of walkers. Don Moi was quite familiar with Altar. The bus stopped there, and he often hit the cell phone to check with his bosses: should the walkers hop off in Altar and grab a guide for the Sasabe line, or should they go on to Sonoita, to take part in a more complex conspiracy? Several of our Wellton 26 stopped over in Altar, and it was the merest whim of the head Coyote that put the Yuma 14/Wellton 26 on the bus to Sonoita instead of in a wasted Ford van heading for Organ Pipe. Maybe the Big Man was watching MTV; maybe he was heading for the toilet, or looking for a smoke. He had his phone in one hand, he spoke one word, and on they went to their ordeal.
    By the time they were finally rescued, they could have been in Miami.
    The ne’er-do-well fence jumpers that galloped into El Paso and San Diego on a quest for chocolate shakes and Michael Jackson cassettes are no more. The New-Jack Coyote is largely the inadvertent product of the Border