Customer Reviews

Across the Wire: Life and Hard Times on the Mexican Border

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I am a former United States Border Patrol Agent and I read this book while working the fixed positions we often manned along the Arizona-Mexico border. I was so moved by this story, I cried. I cried as I read this book, right there in my Border Patrol vehicle on the very line separating two very different worlds! This book is an easy read and can be taken a little at a time. Its impact is incredible and your heart will be broken. It is a must read! I am not compromising my stance on immigration laws here, I am just expressing my heart-felt pain for some of what the beautiful people of Mexico must face in their lives. God bless!

I'm basically writing this review because I feel that the comments posted here do not reflect how beautiful this book actually is. It was assigned reading during a Chicano Studies course I took last quarter, and quite literally changed the way I look at the Mexican-US border. Too often we on this side of the border are shown a VERY diluted picture of life on the border, and NEVER a complete picture. I felt that this book helped to fill in the gaps in my own bias. There is nothing cruel, nothing romantic, nothing emotional about this book. It presents a sring of events told objectivly by the author, for our own emotional responses to perceive however we choose. A fairly short book made of extraordinarily powerful yet short anecdotes, you'll find it VERY hard to not finish this in one sitting. HIGHLY recommended; one of my favourite books of all time, that has not been given the mainstream acclaim it deserves.

people who read this book need to understand that this book is going to be biased. in the beginning the author explicitly states that this book is going to be his personal account about his experience of the border life in Tijuana. people who want truth about the hardships these people face need to pick up this book and read it. i read it for a class that i am interning for and i work in a homeless youth shelter in the city of Tijuana and i see so many similarities of this life. i see the children and have to ask myself where and how did these children end up on the streets. why have they chosen this life, a life of hardship and chaos? Never knowing when your time is up or who that person down the street is beating up or for my case, how can there be a drug house next door to these children? this book is a very emotional account of those that have gone as far as they could only to end up a step closer to that freedom. this book definitely opened my eyes to those who have come this far only to continue to struggle. searching in the dumps for food, living on a piece of land where you could be kicked off in a instant, only to be more homeless than you already are. this is a story, a true srory, that will hopefully open the eyes of all who read this book. it is an account of hope and survival, quite often things that you or me need not to worry about. the people who are talking about immigration reform and who are hoping to make it alot more strict because they feel "their country" is being overrun by illegals, need to pick up this book. you need to step out of your bubble and volunteer with a group that goes across the wire to the other side, the true other side. not revolution avenue, but go into the city, go to houses on the hills. go and see the way these people live and then ask yourself if you have the right to complain about those people who are trying to make a better life for their families and themselves.

You'll be tugged into a fascinating world that cannot be as close as it is, cannot be as dire as it is nor cannot be as tender as it is. But it is. And each word you read will tug you to stand up and DO something about it, shout out in frustration at the unfortunate happenings of people you will grow to care about as much as the author does. The beauty of it all is that the author never sentimentalizes or forces it at you. He just says it as he sees it. And he has a beautiful set of eyes.

This book is a must read for anyone who cares to understand Mexico's border life. Pieces of his stories will haunt you for days, months, or years. He writes in such a manner that innocently seeks your mind but in the end it will garner oh so much more. I only wish he could then tell us how the other side of Mexico lives or can live with such abject poverty (In Mexico, over 40 million out of 90 million live in poverty--17 million live in severe poverty, NAFTA, ye all shall be free..).

This is a heart wrenching book that attempts to describe what it's like to be one of the poorest of the poor in the world. The author outstandingly introduces to people, some of whom are his close friends, who live in an entirely different world and yet have the same desires and dreams as we although they are often too discouraged to dream them.

The author, a reasonably intelligent man with a good education and experience, is also wise enough to know that there are no easy remedies to the poverty that afflicts the people in his book and so many others.

The saddest part of the book is actually in Urrea's follow-up book, "By the Lake of Sleeping Children". In it, he describes how people have contacted him about the region seeking to do research, write articles or event o a television show. "Very few," he wrote, "want to send money." Sending money is not the solution to poverty, but writing a check is the easiest thing to do to temporarily alleviate some of their suffering. So go and have a good cry. Then, after you get down on your knees and thank God for the blessings you have, consider putting your compassion into action.

As an ESOL counselor who works with these children on a daily basis, I found the book to be a wonderful resource. I especially liked the beginning of the book where he describes the actual conditions at the border. I have read this to several educators in presentations and it really lets them know what our kids have been through.

This book, plain and simple, is about truth: the truth about the distribution of wealth in the world and the truth about the abject poverty our own hoarding of wealth produces. Those reviewers who find it simply an indictment of Americans "who work hard for what they get" insult the five or so billion people in the world who work just as hard as we allegedly do--and probably more--yet end up living from hand to mouth, day to day. It is an incredible pathology of the rich, lazy and fat that they attribute their incredible wealth (relative to say, Tijuana) and the poverty of others to such things as "work" and "initiative". This book clearly shows how fraudulent these claims are. You want initiative and hard work? Try picking through the trash dump every day to feed your family--as opposed to simply saving up for a new home theater system.

I totally disagree with the reader from San Diego. This book was not just to manipulate emotions. I believe that he was trying to tell the story of people who would have otherwise never been known to exist. It is important to know that they do exist. Time and chance is all that stands between them and us.

No matter what your position is on the immigration debate, this insightful and well-written book will give you lots of food for thought. While I disagree with the author's observation that Americans are unconscionably wealthy, I am moved by the way he brings the poverty of Tijuana's most wretched to life. And you should be too. Luis Urrea articulates the reality of life at the bottom on the border in a way most of us could never imagine. But if that situation is ever to permanently improve, the improvements will have to be implemented by the Mexican people and their governments. No amount of money and gifts from "across the wire" can ever do that.
In reading the reviews of Across The Wire, it seems to me that a lot of people took their political biases (in both directions) with them into the reading of the book thus cheating themselves of the opportunity to understand the nuances of the picture that Urrea paints. In my opinion, the author is just trying to give the reader a real feel for what life is like in the dumps and the most wretched barrios in Tijuana, not to make him/her feel guilty about the way we live in a developed nation. By introducing us to various people he met there, he puts a human face on their poverty, misery and despair but also on the hope and determination that manages to animate some of them despite the odds. Urrea's stories, while sometimes depressing, can also be quite entertaining. His wit and sometimes his anger have a way of keeping the reader glued to the book until the last page is turned. Those who think that Urrea uses the book as an opportunity to bash the United States should re-read the book and see that he overwhelmingly blames the systematic corruption and arbitrary violence of the Mexican Establishment for the way the subjects of this book live. Just look at what happened to his father!
I grew up in San Diego and as a youth went many times south of the border seeing from a safe distance the things Urrea describes. I remember seeing the miserable hovels from the Ensenada motorway not knowing at the time that I would later read about them in this book. I even occasionally encountered corrupt Tijuana cops who wanted money in exchange for my avoiding arrest for an imagined offense! But that is nothing in comparison to the indignities faced and the fear felt by the city's poor on a daily basis. So I highly recommend Across the Wire as a challenge to anything you think you may already know about the way our poorest neighbors to the south live. This should even be required reading for any American applying for welfare or food stamps so that they can see how lucky they are to be here. Check it out, the subject matter is as compelling today as it was when this was first published!