The Land of Open Graves by Jason De Leon

Author:Jason De Leon
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780520282742
Publisher: University of California Press

Migrant religious shrine. Photo by Michael Wells.

¡Puro monte! Photo by Memo and Lucho.

En Route

Lucho: Here are the mountains that we walked over. Remember, Memo? At this point we are standing just over la linea. We have just crossed the border and are looking at what we have to do. We have to go between those two peaks in the distance.

Jason: What are you thinking about when you look at something like this?

Lucho: We are thinking just how far we actually have to walk. I mean look at all of that! We gotta cross all of that to get to Tucson. All of that.

Jason: It’s hard to imagine. That’s a lot of mountains.

Memo: Too much!

Lucho: It’s all mountains! [¡Puro monte!] We crossed all of that. But look at the difference between here and Sasabe.15 Here there is grass; you can see life, trees, and all that. Places where you can hide. On that other side, near Sasabe, there is nothing. Just cholla cactus. Here there is more chance for success than over there through Sasabe. There it is just pure desert and rocks.

Jason: How did you know this route?

Lucho: Ángel knew the route. He was a guide for polleros and for burreros [drug mules]. But we still got lost. Instead of crossing through this pass, we ended up on the wrong side and had to double back. For that dude Ángel it was nothing. He had crossed a lot, like four or five times.

Memo: This was the first and only time we crossed through there.

Lucho: From Santa Cruz to Tucson there are lots of trees, plants, and stuff. From Sasabe it is different. Through Arivaca it is all bald, naked land with small rivers. The way we went, there are big trees, arroyos full of water. Ángel knew all of the cattle tanks, and he would say, “OK, this gallon of water will last you until the next cattle tank.” At the next tank he would say, “OK, with this gallon of water you just have to drink a little bit at a time because we are going to walk a long way to get to the next cattle tank.” That is how it was. He knew more or less where to go.

Jason: How did he learn this?

Lucho: He was a guide for drug mules. The guide has to know all of this to lead a group.

Memo: I imagine that he was a burrero first to learn all this stuff, and later he became a guide.

Lucho: He would say stuff like “Look, this is where burreros rested. They just crossed through here a little while ago.”

On multiple occasions, Memo and Lucho remarked that Ángel had work experience as a pollero and a burrero, which is why he knew the route. However, on a few occasions they described him in much scarier terms. The following is an excerpt from my 2009 field notes just a few months after they successfully got to Arizona:

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