These five short extracts from the novel Texas, by James Michener, describe the awful conditions in which mexican migrants who cross Rio Grande to get to the US, commonly called wetbacks, arrive to the "land of opportunity" at the hands of illegal organisations that leave them to die on their own.
The story is told by an external narrator who however describes everything from the immigrants' point of view. That way, we can see migration the way migrants themselves live it, we are on their side. These people cross Rio Grande swimming, get put into a trunk like animals sent to slaughter, pay an amount of money (fifty dollars) which is huge to them, and then they finally see their hopes broken when the organisation which was illegally helping them to the US plays a trick on them and they find themselves alone in the desert, without any food or water. The heartless sugglers simulate a problem in the motor to make them leave the truck and then flee to avoid any responsibility over their lives. In less than one day most of the wetbacks die, even one of the main characters, Manuela, for a stronger shock in the reader. This scene causes a great impression as the characters die sentence after sentence untill less than half the group still survive in a desert where even a knowledge of plants and survival techniques are unuseful.
This document talks about people who have to endure torture just to move from one place to another in order to have a better life. Il is a criticism to the huge difficulty of mobility through selective borders, where the authorities, by closing the access to the US, end up failing to stop migration and allowing the kind of abuse described in the novel to happen every day. Wetbacks and other illegal international migrants are left behind in the globalised world, forgotten by the open borders that let everything in, everything except people
OK Clara. A very good choice.
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