Previous
Prologue
Themes
and Colors
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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One night after he earns the authority to patrol alone, Cantú sits in the desert, watching three storms converge.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Cantú dreams that he is grinding his teeth out and searching for someone to show them to.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.”
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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.
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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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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