Article: In May of 2001, 26...
In May of 2001, 26 men were lost in the Arizona desert trying to cross illegally into the United States from Mexico. Cutting through this region is an ancient and ill-fated path known as the Devil’s Highway or El Camino del Diablo. A major swath of that area is on federal land and it’s almost impossible to penetrate it. Legally.
In spring of 2002, I had started researching this book. The work consisted of interviews and sifting through documents and studying photographs and the personal effects of the dead. But I felt the need to stand on the ground. Tucson mystery writer Brian Andrew Laird has a tough four-wheel-drive Scout. We headed out of Tucson early one morning going west toward Yuma. When you get to the town of Wellton, you can leave the freeway and skirt the prohibited Barry Goldwater Bombing Range. Edward Abbey had famously penetrated the bombing range and gone for a long illegal hike that he crowed about in one of his books. Charles Bowden has also gone hiking in the bombing range. In fact, it’s become a kind of Tucson macho tradition for writers of a certain ilk to penetrate the bombing range.
Laird and I drove down a long dirt road and turned and crossed the barrier. We thought we were cool outlaws until we came across an armed Marine patrol. Laird kicked up a huge cloud of dust as he spun the Scout around and sped back toward the main gates. But, being a self-respecting macho Tucson writer, he couldn’t leave without some glory. So he went off-road and we suddenly found ourselves in an axle-cracking cross-country jaunt.
At one point, we were standing in the middle of a huge flat space when we suddenly realized that there were mysterious pipes sticking out of the ground and they were leaking a constant stream of fetid air. With visions of underground bunkers, helicopters and jet bombers coming after us, we decided it would be prudent to leave and we made our way back toward Tucson.
After a ghastly lunch at Gila Bend at my favorite restaurant -- the one that looks like a UFO with space-age UFO baseball caps next to the rubber scorpions for sale in the gift shop -- we headed into the desert. It was late afternoon and just in front of us, an old 4-door sedan pulled over onto the right shoulder. Brian gunned the Scout and went to pass them when they abruptly turned left into our path.
After the crash, we got out of the Scout and walked back to their car. We were astounded to find out that we had crashed into a couple of Mexican drug smuggling mules. One of them held a white cube wrapped in plastic, which he tried to hide from us. And the other kept reaching under his shirt. Apparently, he had a gun tucked into his pants.
That’s when I realized that this book was going to be something special.
Copyright © 2004 by Luis Alberto Urrea