Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Line Becomes a River, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Trauma and Emotional Detachment
Natural Migration vs. Human Boundaries
The Value of a Human Life
Nature, Beauty, and Humanity
Institutional Violence
Summary
Analysis
Cantú describes a dream in which he is in a cave sorting through severed body parts and looking for identifying features.
The violence and gore that make their way into Cantú’s dreams indicate that the trauma of watching people die on the border has filtered through to his subconscious and is changing him as a person.
Themes
In the dream, Cantú is told to visit a wolf in a nearby cave. When he finds the wolf, he is terrified, but his mother gestures for him to offer the wolf his hand. The wolf puts its hands on Cantu’s chest, leans close, and starts licking the inside of his mouth. Cantú wakes up.
By giving his hand to the wolf, which symbolizes violence, Cantú signals his understanding that the violence on the border and the violence he has internalized from working there will only worsen if repressed. Instead, he must befriend the “wolf”—to sit with all he’s seen and experienced to try to make sense of it.
Themes
Cantú is driving across the grasslands of New Mexico to a night out with some of his classmates from Border Patrol Academy, when they hear that another classmate, Santiago, has dropped out of the program. Cantú calls him and tries to persuade him to stay, though Santiago is an underdog and a figure of ridicule, partly due to his thick Spanish accent. Santiago refuses, saying it’s not the work for him.
Cantú and his classmates have entered into a period of institutionalization, which is immediately uncomfortable for some. For others, like Cantú, the effects of institutionalization will be slower and more insidious. Even now, there is an inherent violence in the ridiculing of a vulnerable member of the group.
Themes
Over drinks that night, Cantú’s classmate Hart complains about his previous life in Detroit, where he was disrespected as a black man with tattoos working at a car rental booth at an airport. He complains about the winter in Detroit and says the heat in Arizona, where the new recruits will be stationed, sounds nice.
Cantú indicates that some of those who join Border Patrol have been socially disadvantaged before. This may predispose the organization to a certain amount of cruelty, as those previously disadvantaged individuals now gain social power that can be exploited.
Themes
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Hart can’t understand why anyone would want to cross the border, through the desert, in 115-degree heat. Finishing his beer, Cantú explains that migrants used to cross in the cities until politicians militarized the borders there, forcing migrants into more dangerous routes over mountains and through deserts.
The recent militarization of the border begins to flesh out the idea that there’s nothing natural or essential about the boundary these men will be paid to enforce. Hart’s ignorance of the background of the border suggests that those enforcing it often don’t have the required context to understand the people they will apprehend.
Themes
Hart loses interest in Cantú’s explanation, and their fellow recruit Morales seems quieted by it. Cantú apologizes, explaining that he studied the border in college. On the way home, Hart asks Morales about his family, and Morales describes life in his border town and his relatives below the border.
The jarring idea of Morales policing a border that divides his own family underscores that the U.S.–Mexico border is entirely arbitrary. And again, Cantú’s fellow recruits’ glaring disinterest in the information he shares suggests that the institution of Border Patrol could easily be perverted, since its officers seem uninterested in the context of the border.
Themes
A spin class is just beginning. Robles, a teacher at the Border Patrol Academy, is barking instructions at the trainee agents, pushing them to work harder on their stationary bicycles. He tells them their bodies are the most important tools they have, and that they will have to rely on them even after reaching exhaustion.
This punishing physical training reveals an institution with little interest in comfort or the limits of the human body—attributes that could also pave the way for cruelty and callousness inflicted on migrants.
Themes
Robles shares a story from his early days in Border Patrol, when he and his partner chased a group of migrants from El Salvador. After a tussle, Robles knocked one of the men into a canal, where he drowned. Telling the story, Robles grows detached from his surroundings. He adds that a few years later, he saved another drowning migrant, but he still thinks of the one he killed every day.
Robles displays a trauma response to his work in Border Patrol, foreshadowing the impact the work will have on Cantú’s own psychological state and suggesting that the institution’s violence harms agents and migrants alike. It’s also possible that Robles’s harshness with the recruits is informed by the trauma he’s carrying, and thus that the institution of Border Patrol creates a self-reinforcing cycle of suffering.
Themes
Robles snaps out of the story and starts picking on a recruit again. Cantú watches Robles on his bicycle and wonders what kind of tool his own body is being made into.
This is the first sign that Cantú is becoming wary of the ways Border Patrol might use him and change him. He has no choice but to obey Robles, which means he is powerless to resist the change in himself.
Themes
One afternoon, the class gets a presentation from a firearms instructor. As a way to show the aspiring agents what they’re up against, the instructor shows them grisly photos of bodies mutilated in Mexico’s drug war.
The agents’ training requires them to become accustomed to witnessing violence. This process of normalization muffles the agents’ natural, empathic human responses to such suffering, thus ingraining a degree of callousness about the value of human life in the institution of Border Patrol.
Themes
Cantú lists the seven classmates who have left his Border Patrol Academy cohort of 50. One leaves for another job, one because he’s injured, others because they can’t stand the training.
The training is the first stage in the institutionalization of the new recruits, and the fact that some are unable to withstand the training indicates the overwhelming intensity of the institution of Border Patrol.
Themes
Hart’s roommate, Dominguez, quits after repeatedly failing a test, and Cantú criticizes Hart for not supporting him. Hart points out that Cantú is being condescending: Dominguez has a degree and ran his own business, but he failed his test because he spent all night talking to his family.
Cantú enters Border Patrol as an idealistic young man, convinced he can help everyone, including Dominguez and the migrants he will meet. With Dominguez, he is already learning the limits of his own power, as he journeys into an institution that will make him feel utterly powerless.
Themes
Cantú’s mother flies in from Arizona for Christmas, and she and Cantú go to stay at a cabin in the mountains. Late at night, over eggnog, the pair end up talking about Cantú’s work, which his mother thinks is below him.
Cantú’s close relationship with his mother is already becoming strained, signaling that he is slowly coming unmoored from his principles and sense of self—the first step toward the emotional detachment he will suffer in the Patrol.
Themes
Cantú tells his mother that he’s tired of studying the border in books, like he did in college—he wants to understand it up-close, even if it’s dangerous. Cantú’s mother is incredulous: the border is already part of him, she says, because she worked hard to raise him with a sense of his Mexican heritage. Cantú replies that this isn’t the same thing.
Cantú is struggling to understand what the border is. Neither his mother’s ideas about natural migration and heritage nor the theory he learned in college feel adequate, because they don’t account for the life-and-death status of the modern-day U.S.-Mexico border.
Themes
Cantú’s mother points out that he’s aligning himself with a paramilitary force, and Cantú replies that Border Patrol isn’t full of white racists—half of his classmates are Hispanic. People join the agency, he says, because it offers stability and an opportunity to serve.
Cantú’s mother fears him being caught up in an institution that is impersonal and powerful and thus inherently violent. Cantú’s youthful idealism makes him deaf to these worries: he focuses only on the morality of individuals, not the institutional framework.
Themes
Although he doesn’t agree with every aspect of U.S. border policy, Cantú says, he wants to understand it, and maybe someday he will study law and help to change policies. And as a bilingual agent who knows Mexican culture, he will be in a position to comfort and be kind to the migrants he apprehends.
Cantú again reveals his good intentions and youthful idealism: he believes that he will be unchanged by working in Border Patrol and emerge unscathed to continue his life. In truth, he will learn that the power of institutions has the power to crush any individual within them.
Themes
Cantú’s mother tells him that he must remember he is joining an institution that doesn’t care about people, but Cantú assures her that he won’t forget where he’s come from. They open a Christmas present each and go to bed.
Cantú’s mother serves as a voice of wisdom, external to Border Patrol, and she is thus able to point out its pitfalls even as Cantú gets sucked in.
Themes
The next morning—Christmas Day—Cantú and his mother eat lunch in town then climb to a lookout tower, where his mother points out a cloud of sand swirling in the distance.
The cloud of sand symbolizes the difficulty Cantú will face in his coming years in Border Patrol, as he is changed by institutional violence. By pointing out the natural phenomenon, his mother is again positioned as a point of connection with wisdom and the natural world.
Themes
At Cantú’s graduation ceremony, he and his classmates stand in full military-style uniform to hear speeches about the importance of their duties and to swear the oath of allegiance.
This formal ceremony represents the strict conventions of the institution of Border Patrol, which are violent because they obey their own internal logic, rather than serving the interests of migrants.
Themes
Two days after arriving at their patrol station, Cantú and his fellow new recruits are out with senior agent Cole when they find evidence of migrants. They comb the desert for five miles until they find several discarded bundles of drugs and backpacks filled with food and clothes. Cantú asks if they should try to find the migrants, and Cole says no—if they capture the drugs alone, without humans, they won’t have to fill out as much paperwork.
Immediately after graduating, Cantú is presented with evidence that the Border Patrol officers’ work is not always carried out in good faith. Cantú’s youthful idealism is beginning to find friction with the way things are actually done in the agency.
Themes
Cantú watches his classmates laugh as they rip and urinate on the backpacks’ contents. Cantú himself finds a prayer card of Saint Jude among the discarded belongings. As they head back to their vehicles, a tortoise stops to watch them.
The prayer card of Saint Jude highlights the migrants’ humanity, while the recruits’ vandalism of the belongings reveals that the institution of Border Patrol seems to make them feel they have license to ignore that humanity and disrespect the migrants. The tortoise that watches them suggests that such depraved behavior is unnatural and inhumane.
Themes
One night, the recruits surveil in the dark with Cole for several hours before laying a spike strip in the road and settling to watch from their vehicles. Cole explains that he got his nickname, “Black Death,” by accidentally running over and killing an “Indian” asleep in the road. He laughs, and the recruits laugh uncomfortably.
Cole’s laughter signals a profound disrespect for the value of a human life. The new recruits’ uncomfortable laughter suggests that though they are still in closer touch with the value of human life, they are on their way toward being institutionalized to ignore that value.
Themes
Just after midnight, a truck passes, its tires catching on the spike strip. The agents follow and find the truck abandoned, containing just a few bundles of drugs. They search the hillside for the drivers but don’t find them. Cole tells the recruits the truck is only a distraction, and Cantú knows he won’t bother to report it to the tribal police whose jurisdiction they’re in, because he won’t want to deal with the paperwork.
Again, Cole’s lax attitude to filing paperwork highlights that the Border Patrol does not always operate as it should: that sometimes its agents serve their own self-interest instead of the agency’s stated goals.
Themes
One night after sunset, Morales spots 10 migrants. They disperse, but the recruits find them one by one. Cantú speaks to an older migrant from Michoacán, a region he has visited. The migrant tells Cantú how much desperation there is in Mexico.
This moment of connection with a migrant contrasts starkly with the disrespectful treatment of migrants seen elsewhere in the book, which reveals just how much institutionalization interferes with human connection.
Themes
At the station, Cantú processes the older man for deportation, and the man asks if there’s any work for him to do. Cantú explains that he’s about to be deported, but the man says he knows, but he’s there to work and he wants to show Cantú that he’s not a bad person. Cantú tells him that he knows.
This exchange reveals that the border line is not based on merit or justice. Instead, the book suggests that it’s simply an arbitrary invention that keeps hardworking people from pursuing their goals and has no respect for the value of the human lives it impacts.
Themes
Out in the field again, sometime later, Cole squirts hand sanitizer over a cholla cactus and sets light to it. The recruits stand around as it burns, laughing and taking pictures.
As a senior officer, Cole is more thoroughly institutionalized than the recruits. His vandalism reveals that the process of institutionalization has cost him his respect for the beauty of nature—and, by extension, has cost him his humanity.
Themes
On another occasion, Cole radios behind to the recruits, who are wandering in a rowdy pack behind, to warn them there’s a mountain lion nearby. When they hear the lion hiss close at hand, they draw their weapons, and Cantú is terrified—not of the lion but of his fellow recruits’ carelessness and armed arrogance.
In Cantú’s book, nature is associated with wisdom, complexity, and beauty, and therefore with humanity at its best. Cantú’s fears about what his fellow recruits might do to this mountain lion signal his fears that as they advance into Border Patrol they are losing touch with their humanity.
Themes
In a reflective interlude, Cantú considers how he would explain to an outsider the things he is learning to do: such as the practice of slashing water bottles and destroying and urinating on belongings they find abandoned in the desert, in the hopes that this will persuade migrants to give up on progressing further and find a way to turn themselves in.
Cantú recognizes the immorality of the things he is expected to do in the course of a day’s work, yet since he’s powerless to oppose them, he has no choice but to swallow the institution’s flimsy justifications. As he splits internally, he suffers moral injury—which is a kind of institutional violence perpetrated against people within the institution—and detachment from his own judgment, which makes it difficult for him to retain a sense of emotional wholeness.
Themes
Cantú observes that though he knows the logic behind this practice, he has nightmares about people dying slowly in the desert with no food and water and of finding their bodies decaying.
The fact that these worries have filtered into Cantú’s dreams indicate that the feelings he’s repressing in order to do his work are harming him subconsciously, and that this harm might someday spill over into his waking life.
Themes
In a historical interlude, Cantú writes of an Italian priest, Father Kino, who led the first European expedition to Baja California in 1706. The desert they cross (the same desert Cantú is now working in) seems like “a bad country” to the Europeans, but the Native people knew how to respect it.
Cantú highlights that the nation now policing the border has only occupied the land for a few centuries, thus underscoring the arbitrariness of the border. In addition, he suggests that the European cultures that colonized the region lacked the Native people’s respect for the landscape and wildlife—and that this lack of respect tcontains the seed of disrespecting human life, too.
Themes
After finishing his field training, Cantú is paired with a young recruit named Mortenson, who stresses that with just four years’ experience as an agent, he doesn’t have the wisdom to be a good mentor, but the recent hiring push is speeding up everyone’s ascent through the agency. Both Cantú and Mortenson are 23 years old.
The agents’ youth and inexperience reveals the ways in which Border Patrol molds impressionable and sometimes idealistic young people to serve its ends—a form of institutionalization that can damage people who don’t yet have sure senses of themselves and thus damage the people over whom they wield power.
Themes
Before dawn one morning, Mortenson takes Cantú to the official port of entry, where they see a young couple trying to cut a hole in the fence. The man escapes, but they catch the woman, who tells them it’s her birthday: she’s turning 23.
The shared age of Mortenson, Cantú, and the migrant they apprehend underscores how differently American culture values their lives. Though she’s lived as long as Cantú, this woman is treated like she’s worthless simply because of where she was born.
Themes
When Mortenson leaves Cantú alone with the woman briefly, she tells him that she’s tried to cross four times already, but she promises to stay away this time. She gives Cantú her fake green card to hide from other agents, and he accepts it. On the drive to the station, she sings to them, and they enjoy it.
By appealing to Cantú for help, the woman signals that she recognizes some humanity in him—that he hasn’t yet been fully institutionalized. As such, the rules of the institution of Border Patrol are revealed to be inhumane and to negate the value of human lives—and even more so when the woman shows her individuality by singing.
Themes
One night after he earns the authority to patrol alone, Cantú sits in the desert, watching three storms converge.
The converging storms symbolize the difficulties on the horizon for Cantú, as he progresses further into Border Patrol. Yet by watching the storms converge, he reveals that he’s keeping in touch with his awe for nature and thus his humanity.
Themes
On another night, Cantú is sent to a local Native American reservation to follow reports of two migrants. He finds them in a church: they’re a couple, exhausted after being abandoned in the desert by their guide and group. Cantú tells them that the border can be a very bad place, and the man says it’s worse where they’re from.
The man’s response highlights that the journey across the border is never undertaken lightly. People know that they are taking their lives in their hands by crossing, and yet it’s precisely because they value their loved ones’ lives as well as their own that they decide to cross and escape the troubles at home.
Themes
Cantú sees that the woman is pregnant. She grew up in Iowa and speaks perfect English; she moved back to Mexico to take care of her family. It was her idea to try to cross back to the U.S. for the sake of their child.
The woman’s story suggests how arbitrary the border is. Her previous, easier crossings made her unprepared for the new, militarized border that Cantú is paid to enforce, and in turn, these memories of more natural, porous borders make Cantú’s job almost impossible.
Themes
The man asks Cantú to just take them back to Mexico without reporting them, but Cantú says he can’t. While caging them in the van, Cantú introduces himself and asks their names. When he starts driving, he sees the woman crying in the rearview mirror, and for a moment, he feels very lost. At the station, he processes them for deportation and then later realizes he’s forgotten their names.
Cantú carries out his duties as expected of a Border Patrol officer, and yet he feels a strong sense of friction with his human instincts. He feels lost because, through the process of institutionalization, he is losing touch with himself and his ability to connect with humans. Though he is not violent or cruel, he is changing internally as a result of working for an institution that shows itself to have little regard for people.
Themes
In another historical interlude, Cantú describes the process used to first mark the U.S.–Mexico border in the mid-1800s. Initially, the border was meant to follow the Gila River across Arizona, but the agreement was rewritten so that the border followed a straight line, adding 30,000 square miles to U.S. territories. The new commissioner, William H. Emory, oversaw the establishment of 47 new monuments along the California–Mexico border.
Be detailing the involved process of first marking the U.S.–Mexico border, including the decisions made in conference rooms thousands of miles away, Cantú highlights the extreme arbitrariness of the border he is paid to enforce, consequently calling into question the border’s merit and the point of enforcing it.
Themes
Cantú is instructed to wait by the hospital bedside of a man who was caught after he fell ill crossing the desert in July heat. One of his crossing companions is dead, and another is in the ICU. Cantú talks to the man, who tells him in timid, bad Spanish that he comes from a Native farming village and was trying to cross to be with his daughter in California, the eldest of his seven children.
Families split by borders, like this migrant’s, highlight the tension between people’s natural migration and the militarized borders that separate them. As long as the border divides families, people will try to cross it, thus making jobs like Cantú’s challenging, if not ultimately fruitless.
Themes
When the man is discharged, there is no shirt among his belongings. Cantú removes his undershirt and gives it to the man. On their way to the processing center, Cantú stops at a McDonald’s and buys him a burger. As they drive, the man whispers about the jungle he came from.
Giving the man his shirt and buying him a burger appear as to be acts of generosity on Cantú’s part—proof that Cantú hasn’t lost sight of the value of this migrant’s life and dignity. And yet despite his awareness of the value of migrants’ lives, Cantú can only perform his acts of generosity within the context of his job—that is, while driving to the processing center, where the migrants’ dreams will be shattered. This reveals the violence of institutional power, which undercuts individual humanity.
Themes
One day while looking for migrants in the desert, Cantú sees a snake trying and failing to get through the border fence. He guides it to an opening so it can cross.
The snake’s difficult illustrates that the desert is a natural migratory landscape, and human attempts to control it are at best foolish and at worst actively harmful. When animals’ migratory corridors are cut off (for instance by border walls), species can go extinct. By extension, separating human habitats with walls can also harm the human species.
Themes
While Cantú is driving near the border, a woman flags him down from the south side. She is distraught—her son has gone missing while trying to cross, and she asks Cantú if he can help. Later, he doesn’t remember how he replied. That night, he calls his mother to let her know he’s doing fine.
Cantú calls his mother because he projects himself into the position of this missing boy and imagines how distraught his own mother would be. As such, he reveals his awareness that the lives lost on the border every day are just as valuable as his own.
Themes
In another historical interlude, Cantú tells of a series of conventions in the 1880s that were necessitated by new settlements and mining along the border. The conventions called for more monuments along the border to more clearly demarcate the line. Once established, these monuments were separated by 2.6 miles on average, making this the first time in history that someone crossing from Mexico to the U.S. was likely to see evidence of a border.
Again, Cantú highlights the involved process of marking the border, thus insinuating that there’s nothing natural or inherently true about the boundary, and therefore efforts to enforce it might be misguided. This is particularly true since the border had, until that point, been unmarked without major problems.
Themes
Morales and Cantú arrest two men in their mid-20s, walking through the desert at night. The men reveal they’re from Oaxaca and invite the agents to try the Oaxacan delicacies they’ve brought. The four men stand around talking, laughing, and eating for a while until it’s time to go to the processing center.
The migrants’ generosity contrasts with the institutionalized rejection they meet in the United States, highlighting the impersonal violence of border enforcement. And the natural rapport between Morales and Cantú (U.S. citizens who both have Mexican family memberss) and these migrants highlights how commonplace migration is and how futile attempts to police it are.
Themes
At the end of a shift, Mortenson asks Cantú to stay late and help translate for two girls of nine and ten years old who’ve been picked up alone and are scared. Cantú tries to explain the situation to the girls but then tells Mortenson he can’t help anymore and has to go home. Driving home, his hands start to shake, and he feels an urge to call his mother.
These young girls embody the innocence of most migrants Cantú meets, who are simply seeking a better life. His physical and emotional reaction to being unable to help them signifies how trapped he feels in border enforcement, and thus the damage institutionalization is doing to him. The strength of his reaction also signifies that he’s suppressed a lot of emotion in order to get through each day, and that this emotion is now finding a release. This suppressed emotion perpetuates the cycle of pain found at the border.
Themes
One night long after sundown, Morales and Cantú respond to a report of migrants picked up by sensors. They station themselves at the bottom of a mountain pass and wait, but nobody comes. Eventually they decide to leave, but on their way to their vehicle they stop and are awe-struck by a satellite crossing the starry night sky. Cantú reflects that the migrants they were tracking are likely huddled around and watching the same stars.
Since people through the ages have used stars to navigate, this passage contextualizes migration as an age-old human practice and thus implicitly questions the validity of border enforcement work. In addition, the natural beauty and grandeur of the starry sky puts into perspective the small-mindedness of border enforcement and the guarding of resources that often drives it.
Themes
One day a call comes over the radio: a dead body has been found in the desert. Dreading the smell of a dead body in the summer heat, Cantú goes to the site, where he finds Hart waiting with two boys. They haven’t been able to talk because Hart doesn’t speak Spanish.
Cantú’s response to the news of a death signals that working in Border Patrol has normalized death for him, which has made him less in touch with the value of a human life. In other words, Border Patrol is inflicting a form of violence on Cantú by severing him from his empathy and respect for life.
Themes
The two boys tell Cantú that the dead man is their uncle. He took various energy-enhancing substances, including “caffeine uppers,” which migrants commonly use for energy, and not long after, he collapsed. Cantú gently examines the body, which is already stiffening with rigor mortis.
The militarization of the border forces migrants to cross in increasingly dangerous ways, for instance by relying on stimulants and crossing the desert during the height of summer, which results in inevitable deaths. This is one such way that an institution’s rules can inflict violence on individuals.
Themes
The boys ask Cantú what will happen to their uncle: whether they can bring his body back to their village, or go to the hospital with him. Cantú says no, the consul will be responsible for repatriating the body, and maybe the boys can get some documentation when they go to the consul.
The bureaucratic handling of this migrant’s death signals an institution that has lost sight of the humanity of the people it processes and their human needs, such as the opportunity to mourn their loved ones. In addition, the impersonal handling of the body suggests a lack of respect for migrants’ lives and dignity.
Themes
Just as Cantú is beginning to worry that the boys won’t in fact get a chance to go to the consul, Hart says transport is coming and requests their belts, shoelaces, and other personal effects.
Hart’s procedural requirements interrupt Cantú’s human concern for the boys’ ability to grieve, thus enacting a familiar dynamic: the institution of border enforcement curtailing humanity and human instincts.
Themes
A junior agent arrives and starts taking photographs of the dead body. One of the boys stares absently. Cantú tries to explain that the photos are needed for the report, but the boy doesn’t seem to process what he says.
Again, the boy’s humanity, and Cantú’s efforts to make space for it, are crushed under Border Patrol’s institutional and bureaucratic requirements.
Themes
Cantú apologizes to the boys for their loss and tells them that if they ever cross again, they should never do it in summer because it’s too hot, and they should never take the pills the guides give them. The boys thank him, and Cantú drives off into a storm, leaving Hart to guard the body.
The storm Cantú drives into symbolizes the continuation of fatal border crossing in the future. By likening this future trouble to a storm, Cantú highlights that migration is unstoppable because it’s a powerful and natural phenomenon.
Themes
At the end of his shift, Cantú sees Hart at the station, and Hart tells him there was nobody to collect the body, so he was instructed to just note the coordinates and leave it. They discuss what might happen to the body in the desert at night, and then they go home.
The treatment of the migrant’s body has become a marker of Border Patrol’s disrespect for the value of human life. Institutional failings mean that this man’s body will be left to rot in the desert.
Themes
Cantú dreams that he is grinding his teeth out and searching for someone to show them to.
Again, Cantú’s dreams reveal that his work is having a profound impact on his subconscious. In this dream, grinding his teeth symbolizes stress and repressed inner turmoil.
Themes
In another historical interlude, Cantú recounts reports from the first U.S. teams sent to survey the newly defined border in the 19th century. He notes that they invariably found the desert region “sterile” and even full of “loneliness and desolation,” and that they commented on the arbitrariness of the border line they were paid to mark.
Again, Cantú uses historical accounts to highlight that there’s nothing natural about the border: it was laboriously agreed upon and marked, and a profoundly unnatural phenomenon such as this is ultimately impossible to enforce in the face of humans’ natural migratory patterns. In addition, the survey party’s assessment of the landscape indicates the violence of colonialism: these people failed to see the desert’s natural richness, meaning that they were altering and claiming land they did not understand.
Themes
Cantú describes a particular survey group of around 60 that set out from El Paso in 1892, along with a 50-strong military escort. Break-out groups studied new settlements along the border and noted that U.S. settlers tended to overreach and spill over the border, while Mexican officials were very courteous.
Again, Cantú highlights that this this laboriously marked border was manmade and artificially constructed—in other words, it goes against nature and the natural rhythms of life—and so enforcing it is ultimately fruitless.
Themes
Cantú notes the physical difficulty and danger of the task of marking the border. The survey group often passed gravesites of earlier travelers on the same route, and finding access to water was always difficult.
Cantú again stresses how laborious the task of marking the border was, thus calling into question the viability of enforcing it.
Themes
The survey group’s work ends when they meet the Rio Grande, which forms a natural border between Texas and Mexico. Their report points out that the river naturally changed course over time, so despite their work to mark a firm border elsewhere, the border would never be entirely fixed.
This passage suggests that as a natural border, the Rio Grande contains more complexity and wisdom than the manmade border, and that remembering the complexity of nature can enhance one’s humanity.
Themes
One night at the end of a shift, Cantú joins a group of agents chatting. Beech, a former prison guard, tells them about an inmate who cut himself compulsively, including on his penis. The other agents laugh and groan.
This instance of camaraderie between Border Patrol agents revolves around mocking a vulnerable person for whom an agent was formerly responsible—a clear example of how the environment within Border Patrol is one of callousness and bullying, which goes hand-in-hand with institutional violence.
Themes
Another agent, Navarro, tells of a young man he was stationed in Iraq with, who had a pierced penis and wanted to have surgical work to fork his penis. The agents groan and laugh until Navarro tells them that the man was blown up. Everyone falls silent in “awkward shame.”
News of the man’s death reminds the agents of the value of his life and makes them feel ashamed of having been momentarily swept up by Border Patrol’s institutional callousness.
Themes
One day, Morales finds an overweight teenage boy—a migrant—alone and hysterical in the desert. Cantú arrives, and together they calm the boy down enough to get him to the truck, calling him gordo. The boy tells them he was planning to go to Oregon to sell heroin, and that being lost in the desert was the first time he’d ever prayed.
The boy’s hysteria and prayer underscore his individuality and the magnitude of the loss of life on the border. In addition, by giving him the pejorative nickname gordo, meaning “fat,” Cantú and Morales reveal that they have succumbed—at least somewhat—to Border Patrol’s tendency to treat migrants with disrespect.
Themes
Morales is in a motorcycle accident, and Cantú is too scared to visit him in the hospital, afraid of seeing him vulnerable or confused. When he finally goes, more than a week later, Morales is surrounded by friends and family, but he seems changed, somehow distant. Cantú excuses himself as he feels tears start to form. Outside, he swallows his tears and resolves not to go back to the visiting room.
Cantú’s unwillingness to cry indicates that he has become accustomed to suppressing his emotions as a result of his emotionally taxing work on the border. This, in turn, hampers his ability to live a full human life, for instance by crying for an injured friend. In addition, the contrast between the unceremonious deaths of migrants on the border and Morales’s condition in a hospital, surrounded by friends and family, speaks to the different value given to human lives depending on what side of the U.S.–Mexico border a person comes from.
Themes
While driving through a local Native American reservation one day, Cantú is flagged down by a man named Adam and his wife, who tell him of strange occurrences in their quiet village on the reservation: strange cars passing through; menacing, unknown men knocking on the door and demanding food and water; and a Mexican and a Native American man going from door to door after their van broke down in the village.
Cantú indicates that the arbitrary imposition of manmade boundaries doesn’t only affect migrants: these manmade, legally enforced borders encourage unlawful crossing and negatively impact surrounding communities, such as Adam’s.
Themes
Cantú promises to go take a look at the van. Immediately afterward, he stops a vehicle containing a woman and two men. They are hostile, and one of them is drunk. Cantú calls their details in to the station and discovers one is wanted by the sheriff for drug smuggling. He handcuffs this man and, since they’re on Native American land and the man is a tribe member, asks for assistance from the tribal police.
Cantú’s powerlessness on the Native American reservation reveals how arbitrary his power is at all times. The limits of his jurisdiction highlight that the regulations he’s enforcing aren’t universal or informed by natural laws, thus calling into question their validity.
Themes
Cantú searches the other, tattooed man and the vehicle. The tattooed man is hostile. Cantú finds a knife but no other contraband, and so he is forced to release the tattooed man and the woman. Soon after, he discovers that the Native man’s offence can’t be prosecuted on the reservation, so he can’t be arrested. Instead, the tribal police officer takes him to a cell to sober up.
Again, the limits of Cantú’s power undermine the validity of his work, by highlighting how arbitrary his jurisdiction is. In addition, the tattooed man’s hostility is further evidence of the violence of institutional power, which creates friction between the people in uniform and those they are paid to police.
Themes
Cantú goes on to Adam’s village and sees the minivan he mentioned. It’s empty, with evidence that people have abandoned it to head into the desert, but Cantú can’t trace their tracks.
The effort to trace the people’s tracks recalls wildlife hunting, again signaling that migration is a natural phenomenon that Cantú is powerless to control despite his job description.
Themes
Before ending his shift, Cantú calls Adam and says he couldn’t find the men. He wants to tell Adam to gather up his family and move away from their village on the border, at the intersection of drug and smuggling routes, but instead he asks Adam why the village is known as the vampire village. Adam says he doesn’t know and starts to laugh, and Cantú joins in but doesn’t know why.
Here, Adam emphasizes how dangerous his life near the border has become. Human boundaries create criminal zones, Cantú implies, in ways that natural ones do not. In addition, the unexpected outburst of laughter suggests that, like Cantú, Adam is suppressing emotion related to the border, which sometimes finds a surprising expression.
Themes
That night, Cantú arrives home after his shift, at around two in the morning. He sees a tattooed man standing on his street corner, and Cantú gets scared that he’s waiting for him. He drives around his neighborhood and checks that the man’s gone before going home.
Cantú begins to feel that his own life is in danger. The fact that he doesn’t know whether to trust his suspicion about this man indicates that his work has emotionally destabilized him, severing him from his instincts.
Themes
In his apartment, Cantú calls the police and tells them about the man waiting on the corner. When he tells them that he’s an agent, they promise to send a police officer immediately.
The speed with which the police promise to send an officer when they learn that Cantú is an agent suggest that his life is valued more than a typical citizen’s and certainly more than any of the migrants whose lives are lost daily on the border.
Themes
Alone at a firing range one afternoon, practicing his gun skills, Cantú sees a small yellow bird land on his target stand. He tries to scare it off but then shoots it instead. Afterwards, he worries that he’s going insane, and he buries the bird.
Reverence for nature was a core component of Cantú’s upbringing. Shooting the bird thus symbolizes not just a simple act of senseless violence, but his severance from the values that have formed a key part of his identity.
Themes
Cantú’s mother visits for Christmas. On Christmas Eve, they stay up talking, and she asks Cantú if he likes his work. He is evasive and curt, deliberately avoiding telling her about his anxiety dreams and shooting the bird.
Cantú copes with the trauma of his work by suppressing his emotions, which also leaves him unable to have an open, honest relationship with his mother. As such, the trauma of the work deeply impoverishes his human experience and, by extension, his ability to act in a humane manner.
Themes
Cantú’s mother tells him that she’s worried about the way an institution can break a person and destroy their sense of purpose, and that she felt it happen to her even in the National Park Service. Cantú changes the subject.
Cantú’s mother recognizes that institutions change people, often violently, and that Cantú’s hopes of coming through Border Patrol unscathed were naïve. By changing the subject, Cantú tacitly suggests his agreement.
Themes
One night after dark, Cantú gets a report of a group of 20 migrants. He and his fellow agents go to the designated spot and follow the migrants’ tracks but don’t find them. Cantú becomes furious with himself knowing that they’re out in the desert and he’s powerless to help them.
Cantú’s fury with himself suggests how dark his emotional state has become and how difficult the job of policing this manmade border is, leaving those paid to enforce it with a sense of deep futility.
Themes
