What is the climax of The Devil's Highway?

The Devil's Highway is a nonfiction work that follows a group of men from Veracruz, Mexico, to a desolate stretch of desert near Ajo, Arizona, far west of Tucson, Arizona, and far east of Yuma, California. The men become known as the Yuma 14 because there are fourteen men who die crossing this area, part of the Yuma Border Patrol area, one hot day in July. The climax comes when the whole group of twenty-six men and their shiftless coyote (guide), Mendez, begin to realize they are in serious danger. Because the narrative alternates between present and past, and follows Border Patrol agents, the coyote, and the Tucson coroner's office as well as the Yuma 14, the climax is difficult to pin down. As the narrative surrounding the demise of these men plays out, a chapter on the six stages of heat stroke provides context on how and why heat kills people. The chapter on heat stroke is not the narrative climax, but it does provide information to contextualize the men's deaths and therefore becomes intertwined with the story's climax. The deaths of these men in chapters 12 and 13 is the true climax of the story, but the sequence of events begins in chapter 10, when Mendez becomes desperate himself, tells the men he'll return, and abandons the group in what is an obvious attempt to save himself.

What is the climax of The Devil's Highway?

This is a difficult question because The Devil's Highway is told in a kind of flashback. For example, chapter one says five men come out of the desert and are found by a Border Patrol agent; then it backtracks to how they arrived and we meet those five men again in chapter 14. It is also difficult because this is a story of a series of tragedies and missteps, some deliberate and some accidental. If the climax is defined as the moment when everything changes, the author himself says it is when some immigration or other vehicle shines its lights on the nearly exhausted group near Bluebird Pass and they scatter (chapter 8). For me the climax is two chapters later, when their Coyote guide Mendez starts to lose his own reasoning power, collects (perhaps by force) the men's money, and then walks away, promising to return for his group. Of course he had no intention of doing so, and this act clearly marks the beginning of the men's death march. 

What are specific details about the setting, including place and time, in The Devil's Highway by Luis Alberto Urrea?

Journalist Luis Alberto Urrea wrote The Devil's Highway in an attempt to draw attention to the problems on both sides of the border between the United States and Mexico. To make the story more meaningful, Urrea takes the true account of twenty-six border crossers and gives them names and faces, families and dreams, so his readers can no longer think of those who try to come to America as non-entities. In doing this, Urrea is also able to identify the problems on both sides of the border which must be addressed in order to solve the problem of needless deaths at the border.

The setting in America is an area in Arizona known as the Devil's Highway, a place with a long history of death and destruction as part of a migratory path for many different cultures and people groups. This story is set in May of 2001, when the group known as the Wellstone 26 become twelve survivors and the Yuma 14, those who do not survive. The desert setting is harsh and cruel; between the heat and the terrain, it is not surprising that it is named for Satan.

Nothing soft here. This world of spikes and crags was as alien to them [the Mexican crossers] as if they'd suddenly awakened on Mars. They had seen cowboys cut open cacti to find water in the movies, but they didn't know what cactus among the many before them might hold some hope. Men tore their faces open chewing saguaros and prickly pears, leaving gutted plants that looked like animals had torn them apart with their claws. The green here was gray.

This is a dusty, deadly, dangerous place--and that is even without the heat. Coyotes (paid guides for groups of crossers) who do not know this place well will not be able to maneuver it, and that is what happened here. There is no water on the American side because that might encourage people to attempt a crossing, so those who do make the trip must survive without it or get picked up quickly.

The second setting of this book is a little more complicated to describe, because Urrea takes us to the various homes of each of the hopeful Mexican men who will comprise the Wellstone 26. Wherever they live, they need--not just want--more for their families and their lives, and their own country cannot or will not provide them with opportunities to get those things, like education and adequate houses. That is why they leave, and they have every intention of coming back because that is where their families are.

What I can describe is the conditions on Sonoita, the men's last stop in Mexico before they pile into a bus and cross the border. People are crammed into filthy, overcrowded, outrageously expensive hovels without any food. Everyone in town is aware of these conditions and regularly profits from it, which makes them complicit in this crime against humanity.

The book describes the Border Patrol in the United States, and many of them are portrayed as caring individuals who have a job to do. It is the government which is primarily at fault, according to Urrea. The Coyotes are hated by authorities in both countries:

But the two things that most unify the two sides are each one's deep distrust of its own government, and each side's simmering hatred for the human smugglers, the gangsters who call themselves Coyotes.

It is the arrogance and selfishness of these guides which is mostly responsible for these fourteen deaths.

The deaths the Yuma 14 suffer are horrific (see chapter nine), most caused directly or indirectly by the heat, and they could all have been prevented. 

What five sentences from Luis Alberto Urrea's The Devil's Highway highlight the setting's importance?

Luis Alberto Urrea’s nonfiction account of the deaths of 14 men who crossed the Mexican border into the United States and attempted to walk towards a better life, The Devil’s Highway, is full of references to the treacherous nature of the terrain across which these tragic individuals passed.  One need only read the first chapter, titled “The Rules of the Game,” to be assaulted by nonstop depictions of as unforgiving a section of land as exists anywhere in the world.  While the student posting the question requested five sentences that help develop the importance of the setting (in addition, of course, to the book’s title), what follows are seven sentences drawn from early in Urrea’s book, as each contributes to the theme of foreboding that eventually and inevitably leads to the deaths of those people.  Urreau devotes his opening chapter to physical descriptions of the setting, as well as early history during which the desert swallowed up many who challenged it, as the essential precursor to the tragedy that follows.  By devoting so much time to minutely describing the setting, the author ensures that the reader is fully conversant with and can visualize the forbidding terrain across which so many destitute people have crossed in an effort at escaping the poverty and conflicts of their native lands.  With that, Urrea’s descriptions follow:

“Five men stumbled out of the mountain pass so sunstruck they didn’t know their own names, couldn’t remember where they’d come from, had forgotten how long they’d been lost.”

“Visions of home fluttered through their minds. . .Rivers.  Not like this place, where they’d gotten lost.  Nothing soft here.  This world of spikes and crags was as alien to them as if they’d suddenly been awakened on Mars.”

“Cutting through this region, and lending its name to the terrible landscape, was the Devil’s Highway, more death, another desert.”

“Ten trees a quarter of a mile apart can look like a cool grove from a distance.  In the Western desert, twenty miles looks like ten, and ten.  And ten miles can kill.  There was still no water; there wasn’t even any shade.”

“Much of the wildlife is nocturnal, and it creeps through the nights, poisonous and alien: the sidewinder, the rattlesnake, the scorpion, the giant centipede, the black widow, the tarantula, the brown recluse, the coral snake, the Gila monster.”

“One more secret of Desolation.” (Referring to the man-made markers dotting parts of the desert)

“Thousands of travelers went into the desert and piles of human bones revealed where many of them fell.”

[Note: page numbers are not available, as this educator used an electronic form of the text.  As noted above, however, the first chapter of the book establishes the setting.]

What is the rising action in The Devil's Highway?

The Devil's Highway tells the true story of the Wellton 26, a group of illegal immigrants who cross over the US-Mexico border into the Yuma Desert and get lost when the man smuggling them in, Antonio “Mendez” Lopez Ramos, makes some serious mistakes. Fourteen of these men end up dead in the desert.

Urrea begins with a significant amount of background material so that his readers can better understand the situation. He speaks about the issues of illegal immigrants, describes the activities of the US Border Patrol, and introduces some of the narrative's primary players. He explains how Don Moi Garcia lured the Wellton 26 into illegal immigration through promises of wealth that they could use to care for the families they left behind. He also presents Mendez and his life as a smuggler.

The action begins to rise as Mendez picks up the Wellton 26 at the safe house and leads them out into the desert. Temperatures soar into the triple digits but cool as the group walks along in the dark. Mendez becomes frightened by sudden bright lights, and he leads the group off course and into territory he doesn't know. By the second day of the journey, the group is completely lost.

The action continues to rise as the group runs out of water and begins to experience the effects of the desert's extreme heat. Mendez is going entirely in the wrong direction, but he doesn't know it. Mendez and one of his assistants leave the group to try to find water and help, but they don't return. The group decides to continue moving rather than to wait for Mendez, but members soon begin to die. Finally, five of the stronger men split off to go get help if at all possible. They find the Border Patrol, and the rescue mission begins. Herein lies the story's climax, and what follows resolves the narrative.