Coyotes: A Journey Across Borders With America's Mexican Migrants

I am a bilingual teacher living and working among recent immigrants to the US, and I found this book very enlightening and well written. This book spoke directly to my heart.

"Coyotes" is the name given by Mexicans to the men who smuggle them into the US and transport them illegally within the US. Traveling with Mexican farm workers, writer Ted Conover crossed twice into the US. He worked with them, picking oranges in Arizona, and drove with them to farm jobs and harvests in Idaho and Florida. Conover writes with a clear eye and doesn't disguise his feelings for his subject matter. He is able to create and sustain suspense over many pages, including a days-long journey through a blizzard in a broken-down car, crossing miles of Arizona desert on foot by night, being pulled over by police in Utah and jailed under suspicion of transporting illegals -- a felony. In an episode both foolhardy and hilarious, he helps four of them get from Phoenix to Los Angeles by escorting them on their first-ever airplane flight. "Coyotes" is a book about friendship and winning trust, and Conover shares his pleasure in becoming a trusted friend of the men he comes to know. He even makes a pilgrimage to the Mexican village his friends come from, where we meet their families and relatives. After reading this book, it's difficult to maintain one's stereotypes of alien workers and illegals. And when you read the headlines and see TV coverage devoted to stories about border control, you feel you have a better idea of what it's like to be walking in their shoes.

Having recently read NEWJACK: GUARDING SING SING, I was motivated to look into other Conover works. The impression he left with Newjack was to be reinforced by the flawless COYOTES. Conover, the authour, goes where no American would dare. He befriends and lives along side Mexican immigrants who cross the border every year to find agricultural jobs. He details several occassions of crossing the border, a series of hardships and dangers. In his tales the reader is given first hand accounts of brutal mexican police, pesky immigration officers, and the ruthless and dangerous coyotes who smuggle illegals over the border and throughout the border territories. For Conover, interviews were not enough, he walked more than a few miles in their shoes.Not only does Conover do the adrenaline pumping crossings but he lives life on both sides of the border. He spends season in citrus groves in Arizona, California, and Florida. He spends the offseason in a mountainous Mexican ranchero, among what most of us would consider poverty. Through it all he does a moving and mesmorizing job of painting the picture of the migrant worker.The book is more than investigative non-fiction, it is a flowing story, encompassing a struggle few have accurately documented. The book reads fast, simultaneously entertaing and interesting the reader. This stands as a favorite in any non-fiction collection. Five stars and then some.

This book was both moving & thought provoking as it explains just a few illegal immigration stories. What you realize by the end of the book is that these are more than stories...these are people's lives. Filled with all the feeling and emotion that REAL PEOPLE experience, the reader comes to know that these experiences aren't just another immigration story filled with all its hardships and obstacles. It's about loss, yearning, looking forward to the future, friendships, and the upstanding of people you have no reason to trust. A definite good read.

Conover travels with various groups of illegal immigrants and immerses himself in their world. His firsthand accounts cover an impressively broad set of immigrant experiences--the small Mexican towns filled with adventure-seeking youth, journeys to the border, negotiations with smugglers, run-ins with police, finding work in the U.S., and adjusting to a new life. Through it all, Conover maintains his point of view as a middle-class American Everyman, making the book accessible to the average Joe. Yet he always keeps his eyes and ears open to the people and events he encounters.The book makes it apparent that a criminal industry of smugglers, thieves and corrupt cops has sprung up to take advantage of cash-carrying immigrants before they even leave Mexico. Meanwhile, the relatively small Border Patrol is spread too thin to turn back all but a few crossers, who with a little persistence can try their luck the next night.Though the media tends to portray illegal immigrants as simply the latest generation of noble achievers looking for the American Dream, Conover's work shows how the current wave of immigration from Mexico is different. The new immigrants are often more loyal to their homeland than to their adopted country, travel back and forth with ease, and can find ethnic comfort zones where they can make American dollars but never have to learn American culture. The book describes events that happened in the mid-1980s, but it's more timely than ever as continued high immigration levels keep this issue on the front burner.