Agarwal

Neel Agarwal
1st Lang 3-Kelley
The Devils Highway Interactive Reading Log
Chapter 1 The Rules of the Game
All the agents seem to agree that the worst deaths are the young women and the
children. Pregnant women with dying fetuses within them are not uncommon; young
mothers have been found dead with infants attached to their breasts, still trying to nurse.
A mother staggers into a desert village carrying the limp body of her son; doors are
locked in her face. The deaths, however, that fill the agents with the deepest rage are the
deaths of illegals lured into the wasteland and then abandoned by their Coyotes. When
the five dying men told Agent F. theyd been abandoned, he called in the information.
(20)
A lot of what is spoken throughout the introduction seems that its purpose is to numb the
reader and prepare them for the harsh details of the book. People dont want to get involved with
business that could get them in trouble, illegals moving in and out are ignored and unwelcome by
most, because with them comes the Agents. Now by describing the harsh conditions that even
the most fragile of people will travel in, for example, Pregnant women with dying fetuses
within them are not uncommon, Urrea pushes the sense of unimportance for human life when it
comes to the desert and the Coyotes. To add to his message, he also established a connection
between the reader and the Border Agents by explaining that the Agents real battle is against the
Coyotes, and inferred with, The deathsthat fill the agents with the deepest rage are the deaths

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of illegals luredand then abandoned by their Coyotes, that their goal is to protect the illegals
from attempting to make treks through such fatal locations.
Chapter 1 The Rules of the Game
National stories focused on the Devils Highway as a great metaphor for the horrors of
the trail. But the agents who saw it all simply refer to it as what happened. As in: what
happened in May, or what happened in the desert. Nothing fancy. Somebody had to
follow the tracks. They told the story. They went down into Mexico, back in time, and
ahead into paupers graves. Before the Yuma 14, there were the smugglers. Before the
smugglers, there was the Border Patrol. Before the Border Patrol, there was the border
conflict. Before them all was Desolation itself. (31)
By using repetition of the word before, and going back with one simple sentence at a
time, Urrea transmits a sense of peeling each layer of the onion back, until you get to the very
center. Within this metaphor, desolation is the center, and has existed from a time before all
other conflicts and emotions and will always exist. This is what our author is trying to get across.
That and it seems that in this situation, its the Border Agents job to peel back all these layers,
past the differences, and look at the real world, where those who are lost and gone must be
found, and even though there is desolation, it is there firm belief that balances the system: the
belief that everyone has a right to basic humanities, whether they are alive or dead. Urrea
commits his tone to sound nonchalant in some ways, because it is the job of the Border Agents to
follow and tell the stories of those who are gone, but it takes a serious turn to try and convey a
deeper meaning of what each part of the conflict is for, and how each is part of the other.

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Chapter 2 In Veracruz
Perhaps he could build a better house. Add a room. Send the children to school in good
pants, with new backpacks, known as mochilas. Maybe he could buy Irma new furniture.
The rumors said he could get to Florida, where it was warm like home. Pick oranges.
How bad could that be? He liked oranges. He wasnt afraid to work. He added his name
to the list. (53)
All that parents and spouses can hope is to do the best that they can do for their family,
and make the best out of a bad situation. The tone shows extreme amounts of optimism
throughout this excerpt, and allows the reader to examine the thought process in some areas.
Urreas different active amounts of perspective is also very apparent as he seamlessly switches
between an objective 3rd person point of view, and the eyes of one of the men who made the
decisions to risk his life based off of what he feels he must do as a father and a husband. By
opening into more global themes, Urrea allows the reader to pathologically connect to one of the
illegals, instead of isolating him emotionally because of his (probable) unique situation. This also
shows the thought process of how easily enticed most illegals become by thinking of the paradise
the greener grass must be, and instead of thinking of the journey and all that could go wrong,
they think only of the destination.
Chapter 4 El Gua
It didnt take long for El Negros agents to find Mendez-he was exactly like the walkers
he would later lead. Poor, alone, looking for a better life, willing to do what it takes. Like
them, he was recruited. Like them, he was welcome to die for the Cercas brothers. There

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were many more waiting to take his place. There were so many more of him that he
didnt even exist. Mendez and the walkers didnt know they were invisible: on the
Devils Highway, you had to almost die for anybody to notice your face. (70)
The people that these Coyotes take over the border are not anything to them but a way of
scamming good people out of their lives and their money. Anyone could be replaced, even the
coyotes. To the Cercas brothers, they were all the same, whether it's an illegal trying to start a
new life, or a Coyote who wants to live life in the fast lane. Its a very harsh statement to say that
the only thing that separates the Wellton 25 from most of the illegals is the fact that 14 of them
died but on the Devils Highway, it's impossible to be noticed among so much of nothing. And
this truth of pure desolation, this motif, speaks directly to what the author is wishing to
accomplish. His writing dictates the opinion that human life is not valued everywhere, and that in
some places, there is so much death that life can be hard to find.
Chapter 6 In Sonoita
The whole way was a ghost road, haunted by tattered spirits left on the thirsty ground:
drivers thrown out windows, revolutionaries hung from cottonwoods or shot before walls,
murdered women tossed in the scrub. Into the Sierra Madre Occidental, the opposite side
of their continent. It was a dream of speed for men who had not sped before. An
avalanche of details and bafflements: army patrols in green trucks, dead donkeys bloated
to the point of exploding beside the road, armadillos, empty broken white buildings,
crippled children writing in their chairs and taking the afternoon sun in small dustsmoked town squares. Walls whitewashed and painted blue, red, peach, green. A black
freight train struggling toward Durango, seemingly covered in old oil, heavy as a

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mountain as it scraped down the rails. Mexican towns full of Mexicans, so like them, yet
so different from Veracruz. (94-95)
Descriptions of the world outside of America, the way that less fortunate people see their
homes, and the causes for why they want to so desperately immigrate to the United States are
apparent in this. Urrea uses a very heavy mode of description, and lists item after item in this
detail to allow the reader to imagine the area very clearly. The verbs the he chooses, such as
tossed, hung, scraped, all have a very emotionally dense connotation to them along with
others. The tone that was picked had almost no form of relief to the reader, to put them in that
place, and not allow them the happiness that those who see this are deprived of as well. Urreas
purpose is to allow those who are not accustomed to locations like this, or seeing objects and
events that have been described here, to truly feel a pain they will realize from having to see this
as well.
Chapter 9 Killed by the Light
In the spring, on that Sunday morning, still between Easter and the start of summer, the
sunrise was deceptively gentle in its first manifestations. Many morning in the western
desert start like this. An immense stillness, vast as the horizon, yet somehow flat,
echoless, leaning against the ear like deafness. It was not as if the sounds of the world
had been swallowed by the desert-it was as if the sounds of the world had somehow
failed to enter the land. (116)
Urrea once again manages to capture a new way of describing the vast amount of
emptiness that fills such a large piece of land. Using similes and descriptive words such as

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deafness, flat, and echoless gives me a sense of how open, and still the world mustve
seemed. As if it was a bubble from the rest of the world. Anything could happen and no one
would know. It shows the beauty, and terror of the land and how the two contrast. Urreas tone
here is also somewhat plain but has a touch of solemnity to it, and compliments the deep
descriptiveness of the excerpt.
Chapter 9 Killed by the Light
Your muscles, lacking water, feed on themselves. They break down and start to rot.
Once rotting in you, they dump rafts of dying cells into your already sludgy bloodstream.
Proteins are peeling off your dying muscles. Chunks of cooked meat are falling out of
your organs, to clog your other organs. The system closes down in a series. Your kidneys,
your bladder, your heart. They jam shut. Stop. Your brain sparks. Out. Youre gone.
And the men headed deeper into the desert. (128-129)
The bodys functions deteriorate over time, through the lack of nutrition; your body soon
begins to use itself for fuel. Your own body fights against itself, in an effort to survive, when all
it does is worsen the current state of our bodies. By using an actual process of what happens to
the body over time without water, food, and moderate temperatures, to show how we start to
destroy ourselves. Urrea uses this as a metaphor to show how we turn on ourselves, especially in
our time of desolation. The pace is slow, and begins to speed up to add to the drama of the body
destroying itself, until the Urrea achieves the purpose of showing how much people will sacrifice
for their goals.
Chapter 11 Their Names

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Julian wore his favorite good-luck red-striped soccer jersey. He was planning to make
money to build cement walls for his mothers house. He was recently married, and he and
his wife were expecting a child that October. His father said Julian had promised to
always behave with respect, and that he would do nothing to cost his father his feelings
of pride. He had a note from his bride in his pocket. (148)
This entire piece caused the most emotional relation from myself to this book, because
every detail that is included here, expecting a child, he would do nothing to cost his father his
feelings of pride, he was planning to make moneyfor his mothers house, are all actions of
selflessness, good intentions, or pureness of heart. Anything good and happy is here, and all that
is left in the end, is the knowledge that something so good can be gone. By using words that
translate happiness, Urrea has the ability to give hope, and then snatch it away by ending with
something so simple, yet so dark. The significance is this is to explain how there is no mercy in
the world, and that not everyone can be protected. Even the best of people cannot live without
risk.
Chapter 12 Broken Promises
Coyotes always collected the money from their pollos before leaving them to die. They
always said they were going for help. They always said they would be back shortly, then
failed to return. They always demanded dollars. Why not? They were going to Phoenix to
smoke dope and pick up hookers. Pesos would mark them and be beneath the gangsters
level of cool. What made Mendez different? In the eyes of law enforcement and the
prosecutors, there was nothing. Nothing at all. Mendez walked like a duck and quacked
like a duck. (154)

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Pollos, the word most Coyotes apparently use to describe the illegals they help over the
border. In English, it means chickens, which obviously has no positive meaning on those they
help. Its as if theyre just animals that theyre leading around until its time for their end. This
triggers anger in me because the Coyotes know what path to take, which way to go, but when
theyre tired, then can drain all of them dry and then leave them to bake in the sun. They always
demanded dollarspesos would mark them and be beneath the gangsters level of cool,
enriches the response of emotion by summarily telling that what matters the Coyotes isnt even
that they have money, its that they be accepted by others because they cant make it as anything
else in life, so all that matters to them is a cheap thrill while they waste away their life that they
stole from someone who couldve lived it properly.
Chapter 13 The Trees and the Sun
Nobody knows the name of the man who took off all his clothes. It was madness surely.
He removed his slacks, folded them, and put them on the ground. Then he took off his
underwear, laid it neatly on the pants. He removed his shirt and undershirt and squared
them away with the pants. As if he didnt want to leave a mess. His shoes had the socks
tucked in them. They were placed on the clothes to keep them from blowing away. He lay
on his back and stared into the sun until he died. Later, Kenny Smith, from Wellton
Station, said, This poor guy just crossed his ankles and went to sleep. (167)
For most, I think the hope is one of the most powerful forces there are. Its a paradox
actually, because we control what we think and how strong our sense of hope is in any given
situation, but that sense of hope controls how far were willing to go in said situation, so in a way
the control we have over hope isnt any form of control at all. For example, this excerpt depicts

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the complete and utter lack of hope, and shows how willingly this person was ready to go. Even
though he was still physically alive, his mind had already made the choice of going no further,
and because of that, the aspect of survival was no longer of importance. He instead had time to
focus on the little things. Perfectionist actions, for example: laid it neatly on the pants, As
if he didnt want to leave a mess, makes the switch in priorities visible immediately. The tone
emitted is one of blatant truth, and depression, but instead of sounding sad, it comes across as
more void of emotion than anything, which can emotionally shock the reader, especially
combined with the simplicity of the actions he was taking, and how little it seemed he cared that
nothing he was doing would matter.

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Works Sited
Urrea,Luis Alberto. The Devils Highway. New York: Back Bay Books/Little, Brown and
Company, 2005. Print.