The Land of Open Graves: Living and Dying on the Migrant Trail

De León met Memo and Lucho, who are male, uneducated and fairly typical of the migrants who try to cross the border, at the Albergue Juan Bosco in July 2009, after they had been deported. The Albergue is a place where De León conducted many of his interviews and would also volunteer. There, he learned how deportees are treated by the media, humanitarian groups, and other agencies.

De León believes that these border-crossing men’s chingaderas—Mexican “‘play routines’” that are laden with humor, expletives and sexually-charged double entendres—are important, because this “humor reflects an understanding of people’s own precarious social positions and at times functions as ‘a weapon of the weak’ as migrants discursively resist the power of the US federal government to stop them from crossing” (89; 92). As a Latino male from a working-class background, border-crossers respond to De León in a more natural, unfiltered manner than his white, middle-class counterparts.

The men, who were “amigos de camino” had crossed the US-Mexico border illegally multiple times, with Memo making fifteen crossings (94). Both Memo and Lucho were determined to cross the border at any cost, feeling that there was nothing for them in Mexico.