Wednesday, December 14, 2016

“It’s a Family Thing”: Organized People Smuggling as Villains within Urrea’s The Devil’s Highway

“It’s a Family Thing”: Organized People Smuggling as Villains within Urrea’s The Devil’s Highway
            When ascribing ultimate responsibility for “largest death-event in border history” many who have studied the incident often see villainy everywhere they look. To be sure, we can place blame on the socio-economic conditions that motivate the walkers to undertake such a dangerous journey. We can possibly blame NAFTA, U.S. border policies, Migra, or even the immigrants themselves. However, to focus the lens of culpability in a strictly legal sense we must look at the highly organized criminal enterprise that contributed more to the tragedy than any other element. In Luis Urrea’s heart-wrenching story The Devil’s Highway, the Cercas family people smuggling operation constitutes the book’s villain by operating a predatory criminal enterprise that valued profit above human life and thus deserves the blame for the migrant’s deaths.
            Throughout the book, we learn of a corporation of evil. The corporation is centered within one family; the Cercas. They are the predators who benefit from the border policies that need to be changed to prevent deaths like those experienced by the Yuma 14, but more importantly to embrace the positive economic contributions of Mexican immigrants. There is an irony embedded within this conversation. That being that there are factions that would not want border relations to improve or change in any way. The Cercas would be out of business. They distill their “tides of money” from the immigration controversies; from the parts of the fences protected by single strands of wire or nothing at all. They parasitically hitch themselves to the “American Dream” by extracting every last peso from the poor far from the border region.
            Chief among the author’s villains is the head of the criminal enterprise that lured the Yuma 14 into the desert. Luis Cercas is likened to “Tony Saprano” of the popular HBO series (Urrea, 61). Crime syndicates operate within established hierarchies that isolate the upper levels of power from the transgressions committed by the foot soldiers, but they are no less culpable. From Phoenix, Cercas calls the shots through his brother (Daniel) in Hidalgo (61).
            Daniel Cercas, or “Chespiro,” holds the reins of power south of the border. Again, the structure is highly organized in order to protect those at the top; “…he never met the bottom-feeders of the gang face-to-face; he kept in contact via cell phone” (62). All criminal enterprises revolve around money and Chespiro is the hub of the wheel. He makes all payouts and takes in all the payments making sure the family’s profit machine runs smoothly (62).
            Any effective organization needs a competent administrator; for the Cercas, that was Chespiro’s unnamed sister-in-law. Working from Phoenix, she organizes the movements of “human deposits” once they arrive in the U.S.; shuffling them from safe house to safe house until they can be disseminated into the rest of the country (62).
            Following the corporate analogy, “middle management” belonged to Luis’s brother-in-law, El Negro, the “dreaded enforcer and manipulator of Sonoita, Sonora (62). He commanded a small army of soldiers; the drivers, guides, coyotes, runners, and lookouts (63). They upper levels of the crime-family have no regard for their lives just as they have none for the walkers as long as the money keeps flowing.
            As “a walking ad for the American good life,” Don Moi Garcia was the tip of the criminal spear in Veracruz. He was a fixer and recruiter for the coyotes (47). Finding clients among the disadvantaged poor in the south was not very difficult. He would ask them, “How much is your future worth to you?” while setting the fee at what amounted to a year’s wage (49). As many did, they could borrow the money from loan sharks, or Don Moi himself, if they didn’t want to wait and save. The allure of Moi’s big belly, fancy car, and cell phone sealed their fate. They put their lives in his hands and were sent northward through the interconnected family enterprise knowing not what lay in store for them.
            Medez and Ramos may have actually led the walkers into the Sonoran Desert. Yes, they abandoned them promising to return with water which they never did. Many place the blame on these foot soldiers of the people smuggling operation. However, that attribution is misdirected just as it would be wrong to place responsibility solely on a Gambino or Capone foot soldier. They are merely a cog in the Cercas criminal machine; guilty yes but not solely.
Ultimately, as in any organized crime syndicate, the responsibility is at the top. The Cercas family was effectively “taken human lives to turn them into a commodity” as Border Patrol spokesman Rene Noriega put it (Dell'orto). Urrea speaks to the group’s legacy in the final chapter “Home,” “The Yuma 14 changed nothing, and they changed everything” (211). The “nothing” is the cold truth that until conditions change, there will always be an incentive for criminals like the Cercas. The “everything” is that there has been so much attention drawn to the plight of the smuggled, the vulnerable migrant, that the much-needed conversation concerning the complexities of border issues has been advanced exponentially. If the attention is too much for the Cercas then another family will take their place. The poor will look north. The money will change hands and criminal will profit, however evil their enterprise. Through his Pulitzer Prize winning story, The Devil’s Highway, author Luis Urrea follows exhaustive research processes to reveal the true villains behind the tragedy known as the “Yuma 14;” the Cercas family and their criminal people smuggling business.
Works Cited
Dell'orto, Giovanna. “14 Illegal Immigrants Die in Desert.” Washington Post, The Washington    Post, 24 May 2001.
Urrea, Luis Alberto. The Devil's Highway: a True Story. New York, Little, Brown, 2004.

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