In Coyotes: A Journey Across Borders with America’s Mexican Migrants, Ted Conover lives and travels with Mexican migrants as they pick oranges in Arizona and Florida. Conover vividly depicts the journey of Mexican migrants from their remote towns in Southern Mexico into the United States under the guidance of coyotes. Coyotes are paid to get migrants across the border. Conover’s commitment to this story is truly wild to me. He crossed the border multiple times in brutal conditions, and he documents the unsavory characters involved in the passage (both official and unofficial). 

Conover originally wrote the book in 1987, and he released an updated version in 2013. The border problems have largely stayed the same, and I appreciated the coverage of the migrant’s story. Their desire to be in the United States and the lengths they go to make it here are incredible. The book dovetailed nicely with The Snakehead in illustrating the unimaginable costs individuals are willing to bear while also showing the underbelly of border politics and an economy dependent on migrant work.

Conover spends multiple months living in Ahuacatlan, Mexico to see the hometown of his colleagues. This portion of the book showed a true cost to the families of the men who stayed behind while they worked seasonally in the United States. A priest describes his parish as a church of elderly, widows, and children because a vast majority of the able-bodied men in Ahuacatlan work in the United States during the growing season (April-October). Children grow up fatherless, marriages are wrecked, but the men can earn more in one day in the United States than they can make in a month in Ahuacatlan. 

I love Conover’s immersive writing style, and I mostly cannot believe the personal risk he undertakes to tell his stories. In Coyotes, he lives with Mexican migrants for good and bad. He faces the same challenges in work camps, and he deals with the same shady people to make it across the border. Despite the serious nature of the problems encountered, Conover tells hilarious stories (many involving romantic pursuits of his colleagues) and paints a vivid picture of the characters he meets. 

Quotes

“Immigration is something Americans feel warmly about as history but nervous about as a current event.”

“Back to your question,” he said. “Externally, yes—having men leave to work in the States benefits us. They send money home, and now we have better houses, clothing, highways, cars. More people can afford farm animals. The parts of life that you can quantify are better. “But how much of life is that? I will say it again: not since the conquest have we suffered such a disaster. And here is why. Seven out of ten households here lack a husband, a father—they’re all gone, working somewhere else.”

“Aaaah,” said the big man. “I see!” That seemed, in his mind, to settle everything. “Hermano,” he said, smiling, “I don’t care if you killed your own mother with a pitchfork, for one hundred and twenty dollars we can do business.” Capitalism, I thought, in its starkest form: no moral considerations.”

“The work is backbreaking, the conditions are mean, but many Mexicans prefer orchard work to any other. The reason is fairly simple: where it is difficult to be seen, it is also difficult to get caught. Invisibility and an unlimited supply of free oranges are the dubious perquisites of orange picking.”

“When the judiciales come to town,” Jesús explained, “official bandits replace the unofficial ones.”