Luis Alberto Urrea said he initially was reluctant to write "The Devil’s Highway," his 2004 non-fiction book that became a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize the next year.
Urrea, who was the 1996 writer-in-residence at UL Lafayette, is the author of 13 books. They include novels, nonfiction, poetry and a collection of short stories.
The son of a father from Mexico and mother from the United States, Urrea already had written extensively about the Mexican-American border when an editor from Little, Brown and Company, a publishing house, approached him.
It was August of 2001, three months after a group of 14 Mexican coffee farmers died after being led into in the Arizona desert by an unscrupulous and inexperienced human smuggler, or coyote. The editor asked Urrea if he wanted to write about the tragedy.
The writer quickly declined, telling the editor: “I’ve done all these border books, and the responsibility is too great. All these people died. What I didn’t say is, ‘I’m scared of the border patrol, and I don’t want to get involved in this.’ ”
Urrea was swayed by one question posed by the editor. “He said the most incredible thing to me. He said, ‘If not you, then who will write it?’”
The writer was given free rein to tell the story, with one caveat. The editor urged Urrea “to make people in Iowa City understand the border as if they lived in El Paso,” Urrea said. “I said, ‘I’m not sure how to do that, but I can try. I’ll give it a shot.’ ”
"The Devil’s Highway" won the Lannan Literary Award and the Pacific Rim Kiriyama Prize.
Urrea discussed the book, and his research and reporting work, last week at UL Lafayette’s Oliver Hall Auditorium. The talk was one of several appearances the writer made in Acadiana, including a dinner at the Petroleum Club in Lafayette, where he discussed the relationship between his writing and his search for identity.
At the UL Lafayette event, Darrell Bourque, English professor emeritus at the University, described Urrea as “a remarkable writer” whose ability to transcend nationality, race and politics was evident in "The Devil’s Highway."
“Luis is as careful and tender and generous to the people in the border patrol as he is to that group of people who suffered that great tragedy,” Bourque said.
A review in the "Washington Post" called Urrea's book “a painstaking, unsentimental and oddly lyrical chronology of the traveling party's horrific trek.”
The journey began when a recruiter showed up in the Mexican state of Veracruz, driving a Cadillac and wearing flashy jewelry, Urrea said. The man wowed impoverished farmers in the region with tales of financial security that could be had after a summer spent picking oranges in Florida.
Many of the 26 men who attempted the journey had never been photographed, much less traveled to another country. Their naiveté led them to sign contracts that would become death warrants for more than half of them, Urrea added.
“They were recruited by Mexican criminals to come to the United States illegally,” Urrea said.
When one of the two smugglers who were to lead the journey failed to show up on the day of the trip, the other smuggler, a 19-year-old, decided to lead the men by himself.
He eventually led them into a box canyon, where they slept as a heat wave closed in on them. The next morning, in temperatures greater than 100 degrees Fahrenheit, the group attempted to find its way with nothing more than a crude road map scribbled onto paper with an ink pen. Many of the men were without water.
Urrea said the tragedy presented an opportunity to tell the story of three worlds: those of smugglers, walkers and border patrol agents.
“When you talk to some of these people, you realize what a burden they carry,” he said.
Urrea also read an excerpt from "The Devil’s Highway" at the event, which was hosted by the College of Liberal Arts and the Friends of the Humanities.
Friends of the Humanities was established in 1989 as a non-profit organization dedicated to enhancing the role of the interdisciplinary humanities at UL Lafayette and in Acadiana; supporting the College of Liberal Arts; and strengthening the resources of the University’s humanities program.