Walker/Pollo Analysis in The Devil’s Highway

Walkers, or illegal immigrants crossing the desert by foot, are often throughout the text referred to as “pollos,” or “cooked chicken” in Spanish.

Walker/Pollo Quotes in The Devil’s Highway

The The Devil’s Highway quotes below are all either spoken by Walker/Pollo or refer to Walker/Pollo. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:

You’d be hard pressed to meet a Border Patrol agent in either southern Arizona sector who had not encountered death. All the agents seem to agree that the worst deaths are the young women and the children. 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.

Related Characters: Luís Alberto Urrea (speaker)

Related Symbols: Coyotes and Chickens

Page Number and Citation: 20

Explanation and Analysis:

Though Urrea has, in this chapter, discussed the ways in which some members of the Border Control mock or discount the humanity of illegal immigrants, in this passage, he highlights the concern and anger many Migra agents do in fact feel on behalf of the illegal immigrants who become lost in the deserts they patrol. Though the deaths of women and children affect them greatly, they are most enraged over the deaths of those immigrants who have been purposefully cheated and left to die by those entrusted with caring for them and shepherding them to safety. This stark contrast between Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam con

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. 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. How bad can it be? A day of thirst, some physical struggle- they've lived like that all their lives.

Related Characters: Luís Alberto Urrea (speaker)

Related Symbols: Coyotes and Chickens

Page Number and Citation: 57-58

Explanation and Analysis:

El Papalote—in Spanish, “the kite”—was allegedly the point along the border at which the Wellton 26 crossed into the United States. A “tiny scatter of wrecks and huts,” El Papalote is a quiet and mild section of the border which no doubt made the walkers feel as if all their fears about the crossing had been for nothing. At least for a moment, having feared the “myth” of the terrible border must have seemed like an overreaction. The men think they are prepared to face the desolation that lies ahead of them—after all, they are used to desolation and desperation, Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem

The Mexican government’s border sign near Sasabe doesn’t actually say “Coyotes.” It uses the hipper slang of the border. It says, “Los Polleros.” A pollero would be a chicken-wrangler. The level of esteem the smugglers hold for their charges is stated plainly. They’re simply chickens. Of course, if you know Spanish, you know that the word for “chicken” is gallina. “Pollo” is usually reserved for something else. A pollo, as in arroz con pollo, has been cooked.

Related Characters: Luís Alberto Urrea (speaker)

Related Symbols: Coyotes and Chickens

Page Number and Citation: 60

Explanation and Analysis:

The humanity of illegal immigrants is discounted along the border, just as it will be where they are headed—in the realm of the Border Patrol agents who refer to them as “tonks” and “wets.” Another cruel nickname is employed by the smuggling gangs: “pollo,” which refers to cooked chicken. Polleros, or guides, are hardly held in higher esteem than the “meat” they are charged with transporting. They are not even referred to as Coyotes, but as lowly chicken-wranglers, defined solely by the cargo they are tasked with transporting: illegal immigrants who are seen as burdensome, gullible, and already “cooked.”

Part of the idea was to foment discussion. Make us think a little about those people who are “like, illegal.” But the deeper idea was to bear witness—we saw an exodus straight from the biblical template, and it felt that no one was paying attention. As I started the work, I will confess, it was all about the good men who died. But it didn’t take long to see that the story was really about all humans—all of us in those ancient deserts are lost wanderers.

Related Characters: Luís Alberto Urrea (speaker)

Related Symbols: La Cabeza Prieta

Page Number and Citation: 222

Explanation and Analysis:

Urrea’s mission in writing his book was to create a productive discussion around the issue of the U.S.-Mexico border. This mission could not have existed without another mission: to bear witness to the stories of the dead. In doing that, however, Urrea realized that their humanity was not the only humanity being denied, and their stories were not the only narratives in need of an empathetic witness. In realizing that everyone along the border—smugglers, Migra, and “lost wanderers” of all kinds—deserved to have a witness to their stories, Urrea’s book took on a new mission: to radically and indiscriminately validate Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae

The border makes me happy. Hard to believe. But, after all, I’m from there. Is the border all hate and fear and bad craziness? No. Of course not. Just like the Border Patrol agents aren’t all racist monsters looking to crack beaner heads. Just like the smugglers aren’t all savage beasts looking to slaughter innocents for filthy lucre…well, not all of them. Just like the walkers aren’t slobbering rapists and murderers—in spite of the blazing sign we float over their heads: ILLEGAL.

Related Characters: Luís Alberto Urrea (speaker)

Page Number and Citation: 233

Explanation and Analysis:

Urrea’s mission to bear witness and to help all three groups which define the border—the Migra, the smugglers, and the “illegals”—is born of his own desire to show the shades of grey that define not just humanity along the border, but humanity everywhere. By acknowledging stereotypes and then refusing to deal in them, Urrea urges his audience to complicate their own notions of issues relating to the U.S.-Mexico border. It is an in-between space, a meeting place, and a world which is frequently and deeply misunderstood. Urrea, writing this missive ten years after his book’s initial publication, implores his readers Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque e

Walker/Pollo Term Timeline in The Devil’s Highway

The timeline below shows where the term Walker/Pollo appears in The Devil’s Highway. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.

...displaced pebbles, twigs, and dirt (called “hither thither”) help to tell the story of a “walker’s” journey. Cutters can discern what time of night walkers crossed a drag by observing the... (full context)

...to “pay them off with [their] lives.” The sign is ineffectual, not least because many walkers can’t read it, and yet it is “the only thing Mexico is doing to try... (full context)

...like Sasabe, Urrea writes, exist only for illegal entry. There, buses and vans “full of walkers” line up at the border each day. In Sasabe, reportedly, as many as fifteen hundred... (full context)

...by code names, and they wear “bad clothes” so that they blend in with their pollos, should the group be caught or apprehended. Many guides dope their walkers with cocaine or... (full context)

There are innumerable “heinous” stories of walkers being abandoned, abused, or otherwise compromised by their polleros. In Mendez’s letter to the court,... (full context)

...looking to catch illegals, including human rights groups who wander around hoping to “save dying walkers,” as well as prospectors, drug smugglers, journalists, INS agents, park rangers, military police, and splinter... (full context)

...use the landscape to navigate, and the two-day walk went off without a hitch. Their pollos all made their buses to Phoenix. (full context)

...Negro had the entire business of routing the smugglers down to “a science.” After the walkers arrived in Sonoita by bus, they would stay in one of the fleabag hotels until... (full context)

At the safehouse, the walkers are beginning to wake up. They eat a meager breakfast, then Mendez, Santos, and Lauro... (full context)

...station, Mendez urges the men to “look normal” while he bribes a bus driver. The walkers must pay fifty pesos each for passage to the border, and the bus driver takes... (full context)

What Mendez does not tell the walkers is that they have arrived at the big rock a couple hours ahead of schedule—normally,... (full context)

...that perhaps “civilian border patrols” were out that night, attempting to entertain themselves by chasing walkers. Urrea states that, whatever may have happened, a Border Patrol vehicle would never have shone... (full context)

...stumbling and falling, the cutters were able to piece together what went wrong as the walkers made their way through no man’s land. (full context)

...desert temperature is still at ninety degrees. Some men begin to fall behind, and one walker announces that two companions have become lost from the group. Mendez tells the group that... (full context)

...time on their own journey north. Urrea speculates that the two of them knew the walkers would be dead by the time they reached help, and planned to save only themselves,... (full context)

Myth, Religion, and The Spirit World Theme Icon

After climbing a mountain, the abandoned walkers spot a lone Migra truck patrolling the desert. They scramble toward it, but there is... (full context)

...the Migra are already “fully engaged” in a rescue mission. Mike F., with the lost walkers in his car, drives through the desert, cutting for more sign. Far above him, a... (full context)

...risks of this undertaking were foreseeable” to Mendez even if they were not to the walkers. (full context)

...case on his behalf, trying to imply that the Border Patrol agents who lit the walkers up at Bluebird Pass did so intentionally, and were the same agents who rescued the... (full context)

...and violence that still occurs. American Border Patrol agents are shot by warring drug smugglers, pollos bake alive in the trunks of cars as they attempt to cross the border, FBI... (full context)

...middle of the Devil’s Highway, and designed “lifesaving towers” which serve as emergency checkpoints. Lost walkers who come upon the tall, glimmering towers—which are visible day and night—are greeted with instruction... (full context)

...to eventually have the rescuers open up to him. He writes that the “triumvirate of Desolation—walkers, smugglers, and Migra—all were worthy of witness.” (full context)

Walker/Pollo Term Analysis

Walker/Pollo Quotes in The Devil’s Highway

Chapter 1 Quotes

Chapter 3 Quotes

Afterword Quotes

Walker/Pollo Term Timeline in The Devil’s Highway