The Devil’s Highway, by Luis Alberto Urrea is the true story of 26 men who attempted to cross the Mexican border through the bleak Sonora Desert in May of 2001. Urrea describes the lives of the men who attempted to cross, what happened to them, and the response of the people working on the border and who encountered them. He explores the issue by describing both the personal experiences of people trying to emigrate from Mexico to the U.S., and of people working on the border. The story was made both realistic and compelling through the information gathered and research conducted for a full year prior to writing the story.
In this paper I will explore how the U.S. government developed such strict laws and attitudes regarding Mexican immigration. In order to fully understand the current situation of the Border between the United States and Mexico, we must first begin by understanding the history of this relationship.…show more content… Following Mexico’s independence from Spain in 1821, the government struggled with poor political, social, and economic conditions. This left the country vulnerable to the effort of the United States to take over parts of Mexico. Creating the condition that began the Mexican American War in 1846. The United States particularly wanted to take over Texas for it’s agricultural benefits, and California for its proximity to the Pacific Ocean. The war lasted for two years and ended in 1848 with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, through which the United States paid Mexico $15 million and agreed to a new border between the two nations set at the Rio Grande, the present day border between Texas and Mexico. Mexico ceded what is now California, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah and parts of Oklahoma, Wyoming and Colorado. This was almost half of the land that comprised Mexico after its independence from