Previous
Part 2
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 discusses ideas from the psychoanalyst Carl Jung. At the end of his life, during the Cold War, Jung wrote that people had grown to project their own shadows—all the dark things about themselves that they repressed—onto “the other,” which in the context of the Cold War meant people on the other side of the Iron Curtain.
Cantú implies that Jung’s arguments are applicable to the modern-day treatment of migrants in the United States. Every human contains darkness, he suggests, and in the present day in the United States, many people project their own darkness onto migrants, particularly those from Mexico and other Latin American countries. Cantú argues by implication that the U.S.’s inhumane treatment of migrants will not end until the American people recognize and learn to stop repressing their own inner darkness.
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Jung added that the governments of modern nation states encourage this “othering” attitude, aiming to bolster their own power by atomizing their populations into an “us” and “them” mindset, and encouraging them not to reckon with the darkness in themselves and their own societies that lingered after World War II.
Again, Cantú implies that the dynamic Jung describes also applies in the present day in the U.S. and Mexico. Specifically, he argues that the human instinct to repress the shadow side of the psyche has been co-opted by the institutions of power in the United States—such as the government and its agencies, including Border Patrol—in order to sustain the existing power dynamic by uniting citizens around an external enemy.
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However, Jung wrote, shadow is universal to every individual and every society. In his view, the only route to wholeness involves reconciling one’s own light and dark sides. On the level of individual psychology, dreams can help with this, since they allow repressed feelings to be expressed. If you dream of a “savage bull, or a lion, or a wolf,” Jung wrote, the best response is to say to it: “Please, come and devour me.”
Cantú is at the coffee shop where he now works. He arrives each morning at 6:30 a.m. and carefully sets up the shop, ready for customers. The coffee shop is in a shared plaza, and Cantú describes some of the other workers he meets there, including a maintenance man from Oaxaca named José.
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José and Cantú become friendly. José is considerate, asking Cantú about his life, including his mother and his graduate studies. In turn, he tells Cantú proudly about his wife and three sons.
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José knows that Cantú used to work in Border Patrol but rarely asks about it, and, suspecting from a certain gravity in his manner that José has had his own immigration problems, Cantú doesn’t ask José about his immigration status.
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One day at the end of Cantú’s shift, José asks him why he left Border Patrol, guessing that the money must be better than what he earns at a coffee shop. Cantú is awkward, finally saying the work wasn’t right for him.
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Cantú adds that he’s studying writing now to try to understand what he’d seen on the border. Finally José understands the decision to leave, enigmatically saying he’s seen many things, too, and could write many books about them.
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José and Cantú often discuss the drug wars, violence, and chaos in Mexico. When the drug lord El Chapo Guzmán is arrested in 2014, José studies photos online, telling Cantú he doesn’t look like a drug lord; he doesn’t look that bad. Cantú tells him: “Violent people look like everyone else.”
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Every morning, José shares his breakfast with Cantú. One day, he brings Oaxacan food that his wife cooked, and Cantú tells him of the time he arrested two men from Oaxaca and they gave him their food. José is very excited to hear about food from his home.
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Cantú tells José that they also shared their mezcal, and José grows serious, saying that he used to drink too much, but he’s been sober for 15 years now—since his first son was born. Cantú goes on to say that every day for two years, José came and shared his breakfast with him.
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One day, Cantú asks José about where he’s from. José describes a peaceful village in the jungle, where the violence of the drug war hasn’t reached yet. Later that day, José shows Cantú the local church and his mother’s house on Google Earth, smiling fondly as he reminisces.
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In an interlude from his account of José, Cantú describes his first trip to Mexico. He was too young to remember, but his mother took him after splitting up with his father, wanting Cantú to know the border and not fear it and wanting to show him and herself that she could trust people enough to travel safely as a single woman.
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Cantú describes how accepted his mother felt in the small town they visited, where the local mothers took her into their group, and archaeological workers at some local ruins allowed her and Cantú to walk through the site even though it was closed. The workers played cowboys and Indians with Cantú, and his mother said she felt completely calm and trusting of the place and the people.
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One hot summer’s day, José doesn’t come to work. Cantú and Jose’s boss, Diane, tells Cantú that he went back to Oaxaca for two weeks to be with his dying mother. Diane says she understands completely: it was very important to her to be with her own mother when she died.
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Two weeks later, Cantú asks Diane about José, and she tells him he’s having trouble re-entering the country. Diane suspects he is undocumented. Cantú seems distracted by the news, telling Diane that “getting back across isn’t what it used to be.”
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Diane tells Cantú that the last she heard, José was at the border, trying to cross. Cantú immediately grows very worried, since it’s the middle of summer and too hot to cross safely. He closes his eyes and sees images of swollen bodies and blackened skin. He whispers “not José” to himself.
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Cantú calls José’s home and talks to his son, then his wife, Lupe. Lupe tells him José was arrested by Border Patrol trying to cross the border and has a court hearing later that day. She sounds exhausted.
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Cantú calls Morales and asks about the court process for a friend. Morales makes fun of him, saying, “a few years out of the patrol and suddenly all your friends are mojados” (meaning “wets,” a slur for a Mexican living in the U.S.). It takes Cantú a while to think of a comeback.
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Cantú asks if the court process will be open to the public, and Morales says yes, that protestors often go along. He tells Cantú that José’s family will be safe to go though they might not be documented, and he explains where to sit in the courthouse so that José will see him, since they won’t be able to speak.
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Cantú meets Lupe, her and José’s three sons, and their pastor outside the courtroom. In the courtroom, he recognizes the familiar old scent of bodies that have been toiling through the desert for days. Despite this scent, the courtroom is grand, like a cathedral, and the judge sits at the front in black robes, beneath the seal of the United States of America.
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Cantú and José’s family sit, and the judge addresses all 40 of the defendants at once about their charges: two crimes, of which one charge will be dropped if they plead guilty to the other. The men strain to hear the judge, but he asks them to stand up if they understand, and they all stand.
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The judge discusses the possible penalties the men face. Cantú catches the eye of a Border Patrol agent, who glares at him like an enemy while the judge tells the migrants that their sentences are lenient this time, but if they’re caught trying to cross the border illegally again, they could serve years in prison.
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The defendants go up to the judge five at a time, chained to one another and with their wrists bound. The judge rapidly asks each defendant the necessary questions, while court-appointed attorneys flit between their multiple clients.
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After questioning each defendant about their plea, the judge announces the sentence: 30 days imprisonment for each in the state detention center. One of the few women in the group says she’s pregnant, and the judge simply says he will add a note to her file.
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Watching the defendants, Cantú thinks about how he himself has arrested many people to send them here, and the people he arrested always looked different than these defendants: less diminished. He concludes that out in the desert, they still had some flicker of hope, or life, whereas here, in the grand courtroom, among foreign, suited men, that spark has been lost.
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Though they can only see the defendants’ backs, José’s pastor and family see him in the lineup. Lupe is devastated and starts rocking. When José turns, Cantú sees how lost and hopeless he looks. When he sees his family, he is so shocked that he starts shaking.
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A week later, Cantú meets José’s court-appointed attorney, Walter, back at the courtroom. José is the only one of the 40 defendants to get a follow-up hearing—the rest went directly to prison. Walter has been thinking about José’s case—it’s a very common story, but it’s unusual for someone in José’s position to have so much support at the courthouse.
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José’s sons run down the courthouse hallway. Cantú brought them to the hearing, since Lupe is undocumented and can’t safely go to court. Walter says seeing them makes him think of his own son, and that no father should be kept from his family in this way.
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Cantú looks at the courthouse and realizes that he has little idea what happens here despite sending many migrants here over the years.
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Cantú asks Walter why he intervened in José’s case, and Walter says it’s because unlike most migrants, José has children in the United States, which gives him a claim to citizenship. He hopes to give José a chance to find a real immigration lawyer, which Cantú confirms his friends have done. Walter explains that José will have to serve his time in prison; then he’ll be free to launch a legal case for citizenship.
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Not knowing Cantú used to work for Border Patrol, Walter says a lot of people in the immigration system, including Border Patrol, lose sight of people’s humanity. Cantú mentions that he’s friends with Morales, and Walter says he knows him from the courthouse and thinks he’s callous.
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Walter says he once represented a Border Patrol agent who was framed for brutality by his colleagues for showing too much compassion to migrants. He says the agents he knows never “express any humanity,” and wonders aloud, “How do you come home to your kids at night when you spend your day treating other humans like dogs?”
Along with José’s sons, Cantú again watches José at the courthouse, pleading guilty to illegal entry, which is the first step toward the process of applying for citizenship. The judge repeats the exact words used at the sentencing a week earlier.
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Outside the courtroom, Walter tells Cantú that if José hadn’t gone home to see his dying mother, he might have been protected under President Obama’s new immigration laws, which grant provisional status to U.S. citizens as long as they don’t have a criminal record.
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A U.S. marshal leaves the courtroom and approaches José’s sons. He gives Diego his marshal pin and says he’s sorry about his dad. Walter is surprised by the show of compassion.
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In an interlude, Cantú discusses his mother’s background. Her mother was Irish and German, and her father was Mexican but left when she was young. Her mother raised her to be ashamed of her Mexican identity and to think of it as lazy.
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Cantú’s mother had a single photograph of her father, in traditional Mexican dress. She romanticized him as a kind of ideal Mexican archetype: adventurous and strong. At 17, she drove to his home and met him, finding a man who never took any risks and lived just miles from his siblings. She was still ashamed to be Mexican, though now for different reasons.
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However, later, as an adult and a park ranger, Cantú’s mother came to understand that loyalty to a place and to traditions—the kind of conservatism she’d rejected in her father—could be strengths, making people feel rooted and love the land.
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Cantú’s mother confessed to a friend her lifelong shame of being Mexican. The friend tells her it’s always this way: the second generation of migrants often rejects or feels distant from their parents’ culture, as they try to integrate into the new culture. In later life, they often feel a lack of something like authenticity. Cantú’s mother tells Cantú she wanted to make sure he only ever felt pride in his heritage.
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Cantú goes to a meeting with José’s immigration lawyer, Elizabeth, as well as Lupe, their pastor, and Diane. Elizabeth says José’s situation isn’t rare, but it’s rare for someone in his position to have so much support.
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Elizabeth tells the group that José’s case will be hard. He has no chance of being granted legal status, and because he was deported in 1996, his options are limited.
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Elizabeth asks Lupe about José’s character and history, such as whether he has ever been in trouble with the law. Lupe says he used to drink but hasn't in 15 years.
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Elizabeth tells Lupe their first option is to try applying for asylum, which would require proof that he fears returning to Mexico. Lupe says of course he fears returning, because of the violence and corruption, but Elizabeth corrects her: ordinary fear isn’t enough. He would have to prove extraordinary, personal danger, such as death threats from cartels.
The second option, Elizabeth says, is to ask for deferred deportation under President Obama’s executive actions, though the fact José has been legally removed from the country more than once will make this difficult. Elizabeth repeats that the best-case scenario will simply be for José to return to living in the shadows with no work permit.
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Elizabeth tells Lupe she will need documentation proving how long José has been living in the U.S. (30 years), documentation about their sons, and letters from people who know José, attesting to his good character and to how hard his deportation would be for his family. She will also need half the $4,000 fee upfront, of which Diane offers to pay half. The pastor says the church will help pay the rest.
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Elizabeth says if the case fails, José will be deported with a five-year ban on re-entry. And if he tries to enter again, there will be more jail time and longer re-entry bans each time he’s caught. Finally, Elizabeth gives Lupe José’s prison details, though Lupe won’t be able to visit herself because she’s undocumented.
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One morning before dawn, Cantú drives through the trailer park where José’s family lives. He picks up José’s oldest son, Diego, and they go to the prison where José is being held. Though they arrive at the time posted on the website, the guard on duty tells them they’re two hours early.
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Cantú and Diego go to a local diner to wait, but when they return at 9 a.m., the specified time, visitation has been canceled because of a riot in the prison.
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Cantú meets Lupe after working a shift at the coffee shop and helps her sort through a huge bag of the documents Elizabeth requested. Sorting through the extensive paperwork, Cantú pieces together a picture of José’s life since he arrived in the U.S. 30 years ago.
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As Cantú and Lupe leave the plaza, a woman greets Lupe and reveals that Cantú used to be in Border Patrol. Lupe is surprised. The woman says Cantú is helping now to make up for his previous work, and Cantú wonders if he really is trying to pay a reparation. He wonders what true “redemption” would look like.
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Cantú knocks on José’s family’s door in the morning again. He collects Diego and José Junior to visit their father in prison and drives to the facility with them again.
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After passing through various security checks, Cantú, Diego, and José Junior are taken to sit in a waiting room, where two women are already waiting, exchanging banal small talk. Cantú passes the time by looking at the posters in the room, many of them highlighting staff members of the Corrections Corporation of America. He considers what he has in common with these people, including the ways their work damages the spirit.
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After passing through even more bureaucracy, they arrive at the building where José is being held. José Junior says he doesn’t know if he can handle talking to his dad in jail, but they press on.
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At the doorway to the visiting room, they’re told they have 45 minutes to talk, through a phone on the wall. The guard sharing this information speaks only to Cantú and the two women visiting their loved ones; he doesn’t look at the boys once.
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Cantú watches José talk to his sons, smiling and tilting his head, but he can’t hear anything he says behind the glass. Cantú also notices other mundane details, like the guard heating up his lunch in a microwave and snippets of the other visitors’ conversations.
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After talking to his sons, José asks to speak to Cantú. The scene ends with them greeting each other warmly over the phone device, and Cantú calls José his brother.
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While Cantú is at work one day, Lupe drops off a bundle of letters—testimonies to José’s character from members of his community. She seems nervous around Cantú since learning he used to be in Border Patrol.
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After his shift, Cantú drives to the lawyer Elizabeth’s office, and sits in the parking lot reading the letters. In letter after letter, friends, family members, and members of José’s church community describe him as a family man, a religious man, a hard worker, and someone who always has a smile on his face.
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Lupe’s letter describes José as a devoted husband and father and says they want the best for their sons, which is to live in the U.S., where the boys have lived their whole lives.
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José’s sons write letters directly to their father, expressing how much they love and miss him. His eldest son Diego writes of his father’s hard work for the family and how much they rely on him, and he pledges to score goals in José’s honor at his soccer matches.
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Cantú is driving home from a shift at the coffee shop when Diego texts him to say his father’s case has been unsuccessful and he will be deported. The lawyer, Elizabeth, confirms, and notes that the authorities will not explain why the case was rejected. Elizabeth adds that José’s case had more supporting evidence than any other she has ever seen.
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In the evening, Lupe asks Cantú to call the lawyer so that José can visit their son, who has broken him arm, in hospital before he’s deported. Cantú has to explain that it’s too late—José is already on the way to the border.
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Later that night, Cantú walks his neighborhood and calls his mother. She senses he is being evasive, like when he was in Border Patrol, and says she can’t face their relationship changing again.
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Sometime later, Cantú speaks to Lupe on the phone. She tells him José is staying on the border, preparing to cross again. Cantú wants to tell her he shouldn’t try, but he knows José has no other options.
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A week later, they speak again. Lupe tells Cantú an uncle took the two eldest sons to visit José, and that José is planning to cross that weekend.
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Days later, Lupe tells Cantú that José was due to cross, but she hasn't heard from him in days. A few days after this, she tells him his group was chased by Border Patrol, but José escaped and is back in Mexico, recovering.
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Cantú dreams that he is at the coffee bar when he sees José wandering aimlessly. He goes to him and sees that his face is dark and old. He tells Cantú he’s been in the desert.
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Cantú runs into Diane, who asks him to take some gift certificates to Lupe and her sons for Christmas. When Cantú takes the gift, Lupe doesn’t want to accept it. While Cantú is with Lupe, she tells him José has been caught by Border Patrol again and bused to far away in Mexico. She adds that there has been some trouble with coyotes—the human traffickers who bring people across the border. Men came to Lupe’s door demanding $1,000 to get José out of a safe house, and she gave it to them, but when she spoke to José later, he said he had never been in a safe house.
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Lupe adds that when José confronted the men who had smuggled him, they threatened to kill him if they saw him again. Now, he’s back near the border, but he’s scared to go out much in case he runs into the men.
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Cantú asks Lupe if José is planning to cross again, and she says yes, but he wants to wait until he meets someone he trusts. Cantú wishes he had the courage to smuggle José through the desert himself and bring him all the way home.
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That Christmas, Cantú stays with his mother. On Christmas Eve, as they stay up talking and drinking eggnog, she says he seems distant again, and he tells her he’s hurting over José and his part in the machine that crushes people like him.
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Cantú’s mother tells him it’s fine to feel sad about José, but Cantú says José is just one person, and this happens to millions of people. Cantú’s mother agrees, but adds that it’s fine to feel sad over José because this sadness, and the particulars of José’s story, are what make those millions of others real for Cantú.
Cantú’s mother tells him a story about her first job, which was at a desert museum. As an animal lover, she tried to rescue a ground squirrel due to be fed to the snakes, but it ended up slowly dying in her care, and she had to kill it in order to end its suffering. She says the point is that humans learn violence by watching it, and then it enters them, becoming part of who they are.
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Cantú tells his mother about his dream of José returning, and she tells him maybe he needs to go to José and listen to his story.
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A new section begins, now in José’s voice. He says that where he’s staying now, you have to be very careful what you say and do, because the local narcos (people involved in the drug trade) run the place.
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José says he has thought of bringing Lupe and his sons to live in Mexico, but the boys don’t want to move, and as a good father he knows he could never bring his boys there. He says young children play murder games in a local school playground. He doesn’t want his children to absorb violence in this way.
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It’s all too easy for young people to fall into the drug trade in Mexico, too, José adds. The country is full of young people with potential who have ended up in the drug trade, and a government simply can’t care for its people when the country is controlled by the mafia. For these reasons, he says, he will never bring his sons to live in this country.
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In the United States, José says, the system is organized and not corrupt, so that people can get an education and not die in hunger. This is why he teaches his children to respect authority.
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José tells his story of working at a Chipotle, working his way up the ranks from maintenance worker to main cook, and befriending the local policemen who ate there.
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Diego wants to switch classes because he thinks his teacher is racist, José says, but José told him he has to keep working hard to become someone in life, and that he can’t give up because he thinks someone is against him.
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José shares his deep belief that families should be together. He says that he met many other people in jail who, like him, got stuck across the border after visiting a dying family member. He’s seen people get depressed or sick after being separated from their families, like his and Lupe’s family has been.
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José says politicians in the U.S. believe that deporting a parent will make the whole family return to Mexico, but in fact, the most devoted parents would not bring their families to Mexico because it’s too dangerous, and so they will instead keep trying to get back to their family in the U.S. He says “the U.S. is making criminals out of those who could become its very best citizens.”
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José says he owes a lot to the U.S. and is grateful to it, but he must keep trying to cross the border out of love for his family. He feels that the government is tearing his family apart.
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José says he loves his mother and had no choice but to be with her while she was dying, and that it’s barbaric that he’s being punished because he loved his mother.
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José talks about how much harder it is to cross the border now than it used to be. He says he has considered running drugs for a cartel, because it’s cheaper than paying human traffickers. The risks of doing this are very high, though: he could be arrested as a drug trafficker and ruin any chance of getting legal status in the U.S., while also setting a cartel against him.
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José says that in some places, the only way to get someone to guide you across the border is to carry drugs for them, because the cartels also control human trafficking. He says there are many mass graves in the desert: the bodies of people who refused to carry drugs.
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José says that he met a man in jail who crossed in a group that started with 85 people and gradually dwindled. A girl of five years old died, and her mother died a few hours later. When they were collected in trucks, two migrants fell off a truck that was chased by police and were never heard of again.
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The same man told José he was taken to a drop house, which was raided by police. The smugglers were arrested and the migrants were processed for deportation. The man told the arresting agents about the girl and the mother who died in the desert, and they found the bodies, which were already decomposing. The man told José that though he was a peaceful family man, if he ever met the human traffickers, he would kill them.
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José tells Cantú that though he risks his life every time, he has no choice but to keep trying to cross. He says he dreams that he’s with his family, but then he wakes up and remembers he’s in Mexico. He says he would—and will—do anything to rejoin his family, and he will keep trying to cross until he makes it.
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