In The Guardians by Ana Castillo, one of the main themes present in the novel is that of family. In Latino culture, family is an important part of life, and therefore is foremost in the novel. One of the main characters, a teachers aide named Regina, is a strong woman taking care of her nephew Gabo, an illegal teenager from Mexico. She is taking care of him because she wants him to succeed in school, and have all the chances in the world to live his life how he wants. But something big, something monumental happens to the aunt and nephew: Rafa, Regina's brother and Gabo's father, never makes it to Regina's house, like he was supposed to (4). He has been missing for a while in the story, never making, it seems, over the imaginary border into the United States.
The story follows the efforts of Regina, Gabo, Regina's co-worker Miguel, and Miguel's grandfather Milton, as they embark on a journey to find out just what happened to Rafa. What they find is a gruesome picture of the Mexico-USA border, and the realities of life there. All Rafa wanted to do was travel to America to support his family, and instead he had to deal with the coyotes that rule the land. It was because of the coyotes, and their sense of importance that split Regina's family apart forever.
In The Devil's Highway, the coyotes have a greater presence in the lives of the people. Coyotes are people that are paid to take people across the Mexico-USA border illegally. The Devil's Highway was not a fictional novel like The Guardians, but a story based on a true account. In it, men from Mexico follow a young, semi well-intentioned youth into the desert, hoping to provide a better life for them, and their families. The men, known as the Yuma 14 or Wellton 26, went on the journey across the border to try and make money to support their loved ones in Mexico. Unfortunately, it was not to happen for them. Instead, a coyote by the code name Mendez led them deep into the desert called Desolation, where they became lost, disoriented, and many died. All for the purpose of making money for the men who ran the border.
The border between Mexico and the United States is a line, drawn on papers and in actuality has hundreds of miles of fencing and surveillance to keep the people on “the other side” out. But when people come to the United States illegally across the border, it does more than just symbolize a new country: it represents the fact that families are no longer together. There is distance between them, a wall, and the coyotes that split apart families for a profit.
One thing I really liked about The Guardians is that it didn’t sugar coat anything about what happens at the border. You really feel the desperation of Regina and Gabo in their search to find out what happened to Rafa and the unavailability of information on him. One of the most tragic event in this book for me was finding that if they had broken into the Coyotes place a week earlier than the police did Rafa would have been alive, but the family would still not have been together as he would most likely have been deported; tearing their family apart just as they found each other again.
ReplyDeleteFamily is very important in Latino culture, and the splitting of these families because of immigration and the border is a very delicate situation for many. I think that people (americans) really have lost their sense of family, most of the time American's spend is at work, by the time they get home, everyone is doing their own thing, so the family structure is lost in many homes. For Latinos, they actually take time out for family, do things as a family. This is very important because I think the laws that are preventing people from coming to the U.S. shows us how we really disregard the family sphere, we do not see how it affects others' families. Thats ashame!
ReplyDeleteI appreciate your comparison of the two stories, and the way in which both a factual account and a fictional one can so accurately describe a situation. I also think it's very astute of you to highlight the way in which family gets separated. For me, it's so easy to get caught in the logistics of it (how they crossed, what the coyotes are doing, etc.) that I forget about the backstory present in The Devil's Highway, for instance. I forget about the reasons all of them left in the first place, to make money to improve some aspect of their family's lives.
ReplyDeleteOne thing you make me wonder about, however, that I'd like to hear you discuss more is the coyotes sense of importance. That may be similar to machismo, but I think there is a distinction, and that's a topic no one has really addressed.
Rikki,
ReplyDeleteI like your comments about how the border separates families. It seems very silly to me that it should cause such monumental issues. After all, slipping up into Canada is no problem. It seems crazy to me that someone living right near a border to an allied nation like Mexico should have such difficulty visiting family on the other side.
If national security is the issue, it seems like the way we are handling things now is pretty ineffective anyway. Hundreds of thousands of people are crossing over the border illegally each year according to the Pew Hispanic Center, so it doesn't seem like our current laws are being effective in possibly keeping away those who might break US laws.
It seems like it would be best to make it very easy for those with good intentions to cross the border (the vast majority). However, I think illegal labor is essential for many business models. Also, xenophobia contribute a lot to it.
Anyways, it seems like many families are being victimized by political realities outside of their control. Hopefully the irrational fears and abuses that created these policies will be more fully revealed as Latinos increasingly become close to people in communities across the US.
One of the unspoken forces behind the separation of families here is poverty--poverty inspires men to leave their families in Mexico to send back money, or else to eventually move their families to the USA where education is free. Poverty also propels people like Jesus "Mendez" into the role of Coyote. The desire to make money and escape a life of hardship and drudgery is never far from the immigration issue. Making it more difficult to cross the border does not solve the problem of poverty in Mexico, or the Capitalist need for cheap, illegal labor to make doing business in the USA profitable. (There's also the issue of US companies who have moved their plants to places like Burma--since even Mexican labor is too expensive for the profit margin.) As we sympathize with the individuals in the books we read, let's not forget to look a bit farther to see the pressures that drive their lives.
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