Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

I bought this book in an effort to learn more about the Hispanic in my community and state (Colorado). With 8 million illegal immigrants in the US, this book is a must read for anyone wanting to truly study these people and their culture and motivation in coming to el Norte. There are numerous parts of the book that drammatically questions your views on immigration. The fact that many of them only come up north for a few months each year was one of them; many of us believe that the majority of the illegals move here permanently. These are a hard working people who take our worst jobs, do it very well and have to hide in hidden trailers in the middle of an orchard with none of the support structures that we take for granted. While his stories are exciting, watch carefully for his description of the difference between the 'gringos' and the 'chickens'; they reveal a lot about both cultures. I will never drive by a fruit orchard on the Western Slope again without wondering about the city of illegals hidden amongst the trees doing the same thing I am; trying to make a good living for my family. Finally, it is a great source for lot's of Mexican slang - just be careful where and how you use it! Great Read - this one stays on my bookshelf while others go to the used bookstore.
A great Quote from the foreward: "....the terms of the debate have tended to dehumanize the Mexicans, turning them from people into "illegal aliens". But because we as Americans control their destiny in so many ways, it is urgent that we know more about these people who ask little more than to wash our dishes, vacuum our cars and pick our fruit".

"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.

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.

This book offers a first-hand testimony of the lifes of Mexican undocumented aliens, on both sides of the border. The author has spent a year working alongside, living with and ultimately befriending them,while picking fruit in Arizona and Florida. Ted Conover even spends the off-season in his new friends' village in Mexico and crosses the border with them twice.
It is an amazing testimony, in turn hilarious, riveting and sometimes sad, of what goes on in this underground world, of which we actually know very little aside from some bits of information sometimes featured in the news about the Immigration border patrol.
The author goes where very few "gabachos" ever have been and depicts other little known characters, such as coyotes, the judiciales, border patrol agents, occasional smugglers keen on making extra income as well as US employers. He also sheds light on the unbelievable conditions inherent to illegal border crossing.
Once a (documented) alien myself, now a naturalized US citizen, I couldn't help but find this testimony very poignant.
This account doesn't aim at debating over the legal and political issue of illegal aliens. Rather, it puts faces on those hard-working, decent, silent, anonymous and almost invisible people who work incredibly hard to put produce on our supermarket shelves, clean our houses, maintain our gardens and wash our cars...
A must-read!

Ted Conover does a great job of getting himself on the inside of a world rarely seen by blue eyes. His dedication to his task is commendable. His humor and willingness to work, travel and live like his subjects earns him their respect and mine.Through it all he allows the story to tell itself, without belaboring the political, social and economic issues. These points become self-evident as the stories and characters unfold in this entertaining and thought-provoking book.

This is an important book, particularly in today's charged political climate. It is very easy to deal in absolutes when one deals with abstract ideas, but what Conover does well, is to humanize those ideas. While many speak of illegal imigration, Conover speaks of specific imigrants. He shares their perspectives,not condemning them, not glorifying them, but merely letting them tell their stories.

Aditionally Conover is remarkable for the amount of energy he put into getting to know his subject. Half of the worth of the book is the story of the migrants, the other half certainly is Conover's own story.

This story rivets the reader to the writer's acceptance (guarded) by poor Hispanics as he seeks to be an Imbed with them when they cross the border at a couple of different sites. There was the interception by Mexican border police and their payoff; then life beyond the border on the way to nearby farms serviced by Coyotes (travel guides and job finders) and potato fields of Idaho (serviced by the same dependable families year after year).
It gives many glimpses of that struggle to pass on a better life to the kids.

The writer may influence many who would become investigative reporters.