Devil Highway Twenty-Six Men Walked In, Twelve

Devil Highway

Twenty-six men walked in, twelve got out to tell the story. The numbers are pretty good, considering these men were walking the Devil's Highway. Human trafficking is a phenomenon that testifies to the political and social inequities and injustices that currently plague Mexico and have since the conquest. Therefore, the existence of the Devil's Highway can be easily traced to the time of the Conquistadors. In the Florentine Codex, which is reproduced in part in Michael Johnson's Reading the American Past, the Nahuatl account of the invasion illustrates the extent to which the Spaniards oppressed the natives with the use of brute force. The descriptions of the iron swords are followed soon by even more saddening depictions of the plunder. The Spaniards "went everywhere, scratching about in the hiding places, storehouses, places of storage all around. They took everything that pleased them…" (cited by Johnson, 2009 p. 30). After the plunder, the killing and raping began. The history of Mexico was a bloody one. Unfortunately, the bloodshed and lawlessness that defined so much of the country's past continues to shape its present and future. Law enforcement is weak, and so too is the central government in terms of being able to provide a viable framework to create genuine economic growth. Collusion with trans-national corporate interests has prevented the entrenchment of grassroots economic infrastructure and political activity. Political and economic corruption and mismanagement has led to social unrest and the legitimacy of a strong black market economy. As a result, there are few methods by which the vast majority of Mexicans can make a living in their country and scores risk their lives to flee northwards. If the Devil's Highway looks like a reasonable road to freedom for some, it is only because of the truths that lie buried in the nation's past. Mexico's history, moreover, is closely linked to American history. When answering the question, "How did it get this way?" It is important to examine North American history with the scrutiny of social, economic, and political criticism.

Two aspects that Urrea addresses in The Devil's Highway include humanitarian issues and immigration policy issues. Both these issues can be traced to historical precedents. The Mexican-American border has been riddled with Devil's Highways since Mexico's independence from Spain. War between the United States and Mexico broke out in 1846 and lasted several years. According to PBS, the Mexican-American War "marked the first U.S. armed conflict chiefly fought on foreign soil." The war also highlighted the weaknesses already inherent in Mexico's political institutions. At the time, Mexico was "politically divided and militarily unprepared," ("Mexican-American War," 2012). The United States had been cultivating a grandiose vision of manifest destiny over the past century or more, leading to unabashed incursions into Native territories. When American ambitions abutted Mexican borders, the strategy for further Westward expansion came down to military struggle. What started as a few border skirmishes along the Rio Grande resulted in Mexico losing a third of its territories, "including nearly all of present-day California, Utah, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico," ("Mexican-American War," 2012). Many Americans in the 21st century reading Luis Alberto Urrea's book The Devil's Highway scarcely know that the land they lived in was once part of Mexico. The irony is that several generations ago, the men and women who would cross the very same lands would have simply been traveling. "Families and communities that had for generations been part of Mexico suddenly found themselves in the United States, or divided by a newly defined U.S.-Mexico border," (Ewing, 2012, p. 3). About 75,000 Mexicans lived North of the Rio Grande River at the time the Mexican-American War broke out. Today, those numbers are much greater.

Mexicans are a common heritage with Americans, and in fact consider themselves as "American" as people from the United States. However, immigration policy between the United States and Mexico reveals disturbing discriminatory trends. A report from the Immigration Policy Center confirms, "the contours of the U.S. immigration system are often shaped more by public fears and anxieties than by sound public policy," (Ewing, 2012). The fact is that "for more than a century, the U.S. economy has grown increasingly intertwined with the Mexican economy, and increasingly reliant upon workers from Mexico," but immigration laws "have tended to impose more legal limits on immigration from Mexico," throughout the twentieth century (Ewing, 2012, p. 2). The result has been a humanitarian crisis, only part of which is revealed in Urrea's The Devil's Highway.

The immigration policy towards Mexico has been contradictory at best, discriminatory at worst. After the Second World War, the United States actively recruited five million field workers to help stimulate farming and agro-business in light of the need for more farm labor (Ewing, 2012). The farmers from Mexico worked "frequently under horrendous working conditions," as they do today (Ewing, 2012). However, workers from Mexico were so eager for the opportunity that many poured across the borders without the proper paperwork: representing some of the first few waves of undocumented Mexican immigrants. As today, the undocumented immigrants were turned away or deported; and many of the deportations impacted legal immigrants and U.S. citizens of Mexican descent (Ewing, 2012, p. 5).

Situations like that explained in The Devil's Highway occur regularly. Demand for cheap labor remains high, but access to a supply of legitimate labor pools is low. Therefore, farms and other businesses across the nation rely on undocumented workers. The problem with the current system extends far beyond the extreme conditions of the Sonoran Desert and its deathly heat. Workers are exploited because they are illegal immigrants. Employers know that they have the upper hand, leading to gross human rights violations.