Hitting close to home

After having lived in Arizona for four years, I have certainly heard my share about illegal immigrants. I won't tell you on which side of the "big argument" I lie, but I can tell you the one thing that is a travesty is the number of people that lose their lives in the desert trying to make it to the promised land that I get to call "home."

I just finished reading The Devil's Highway: A True Story by Luis Alberto Urrea, which details the story of the infamous Wellton 26, a group of immigrants that tried to take the journey through one of the deadliest stretches of land into the United States.


Only 12 of the 26 men survived.

"The dead...are stretched in angular poses, caught in last gasps or shouts, their eyes burned an eerie red by the sun...like wax-and-paper torsos in a gas station Dungeon of Terror." Not for the faint of heart, Highway is a riveting account of the 2001 border crossing of 26 Mexican men into the stretch of Arizona desert commonly called the Devil's Highway -- a nod to its ghastly history of rotting corpses and scorching conditions. Urrea's exhaustive research and incisive analysis provide searing sociopolitical context, while his poetic prose viscerally captures the group's horror at being abandoned by their guide and the ritualistic death march that claimed 14 lives.

-review by Raymond Fiore

Check out this interactive map, for an idea of the conditions these immigrants were facing.

If you've ever been to southern Arizona, you will understand that the idea of crossing that much territory in the dry heat is absolutely crazy. It's a beautiful, but deadly land. Who knows how many lives it's claimed.

Song of the day: "Coyote Song" Conor Oberst