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

by Luis Alberto Urrea

            Luis Alberto Urrea's Across the Wire offers a compelling and unprecedented look at what life is like for those refugees living on the Mexican side of the border—a world that is only some twenty miles from San Diego, but that few have seen.  Urrea gives us a compassionate and candid account of his work as a member and "official translator" of a crew of relief workers that provided aid to the many refugees hidden just behind the flashy tourist spots of Tijuana.  His account of the struggle of these people to survive amid abject poverty, unsanitary living conditions, and the legal and political chaos that reign in the Mexican borderlands explains without a doubt the reason so many are forced to make the dangerous and illegal journey "across the wire" into the United States.
            More than just an expose, Across the Wire is a tribute to the tenacity of a people who have learned to survive against the most impossible odds, and returns to these forgotten people their pride and their identity.  

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, Memoir, Sociology, Short Stories, History, Latinx

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 2, 1993

About the author

Luis Alberto Urrea is the award-winning author of 13 books, including The Hummingbird's Daughter, The Devil's Highway and Into the Beautiful North (May 2009). Born in Tijuana to a Mexican father and American mother, Luis has used the theme of borders, immigration and search for love and belonging throughout his work. A Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2005 (nonfiction), he's won the Kiriyama Prize (2006), the Lannan Award (2002), an American Book Award (1999) and was named to the Latino Literary Hall of Fame. He is a creative writing professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago and lives with his family in the 'burbs (dreaming of returning West soon!).

Reviews

[Karimi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had to use several of the chapters in this book for a social psychology essay. I decided to read the entire book and was not disappointed. I really enjoyed Urrea's writing style. He mixes his personal experiences with in depth character analysis of the people he interacted with.

I think this book is necessary reading for anyone who lives in an American state near the border of Mexico. This book gives a unique account of the lived experiences of Latinos living in the borderlands that is much to often ignored in many Mexico-America related conversation.

I also think this is necessary reading for anyone interested in sociology, social services, global development, poverty, women's studies, chicano studies, Mexico, or human rights.

[Kurt Reichenbaugh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Started reading this morning and finished this afternoon. Published in the early 90's and told as a series of real stories, this book reports the lives of people living in and around Tijuana and the border between Mexico and California.

[Tana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Luis Alberto Urrea gives readers a vivid description of what life is like for those living in the dirty, vermin-infested, & often violent "dompes" (garbage dumps) of Mexico. I thought I knew hardship growing up, but after reading Urrea's tales of misery, I realized my life could have been worse. I was blessed enough to be born on the "right side" of the border, a clueless Mexican American. Yes, I learned all about my culture as far as music, food, language, & holidays; but I had no idea of the suffering of many whom I considered my fellow race. While I have been aware of the suffering that goes on around the world since I was a young adolescent, I have never read such a candid, heart-breaking account of what goes on right beneath my nose. I spent my summers playing near the Rio Grande, listening to stories about Emiliano Zapata, Pancho Villa, & my heroic great-grandfather, & traveling to Juares for various bits of merchandise, never truly knowing what others were experiencing beyond the border. While Urrea's work was written some years ago, his words are still true today. While the stories are hard to read (sometimes stomach-wrenching), they are, I know, much harder to live. I have come away from this reading with a new found respect for the people living in such situations. I have also come away with a new understanding of politics/propaganda involved in keeping much of the world uninformed as to the gravity of the situation in Mexico. The blinders have been lifted, & I can no longer ignore what I know. All of the sudden, it doesn't matter what I'm going to wear or eat tomorrow, or where I'm sleeping tonight.

[Holly · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 stars. Even though the author’s writing and storytelling have improved vastly in the 25 years since the writing of this book, it still contains lines that are so magical ... so stunning ... so jarring ... that it warrants a 5 star rating (and this long sentence).

[Professor Weasel · Rating 5 out of 5]

A non-fiction classic. Brutal and beautiful.

[Caroline · Rating 4 out of 5]

Urrea tells stories from his time spent working as a translator for missionaries in and around the Tijuana garbage dumps. The author wasn't doing it for God, but for the people, as he got sucked into it by a charismatic man named Pastor Von:

One of Von's pep talks revolved around the unconscionable wealth in the United States. "Well," he'd say to some unsuspecting gringo, "you're probably not rich. You probably don't even have a television. Oh, you do? You have three televisions? One in each room? Wow. But surely you don't have furniture? You do? Living room furniture and beds in the bedrooms? Imagine that!

"But you don't have a floor, do you? Do you have carpets? Four walls? A roof! What do you use for light--candles? Lamps! No way. Lamps.

"How about your kitchen--do you have a stove?"

He'd pick his way through the kitchen: the food, the plates and pots and pans, the refrigerator, the ice. Ice cream. Soda. Booze. The closets, the clothes in the closets. Then to the bathroom and the miracle of indoor plumbing. Whoever lived in that house suddenly felt obscenely rich."

It helps readjust our vision in this year of the 99%.

The more of Urrea's books I read, the more I can see him circling within and between his books, looking for a safe place to land his private moments of pain and joy. He tends to sneak them in near the end. Last time I checked, his talk given at UW was available in full on Youtube; it makes an interesting companion to this book.

[Barbara Lovejoy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Learned about this book after reading Devil's Highway--a book by the same author. Just as the Devil's Highway tugged at my heart this one did, too.

[Liz Mandeville · Rating 5 out of 5]

An eye opening look at life for the many poverty stricken people living just over the Mexican border told by someone who witnessed the struggle first hand. Luis Alberto Urrea is a journalist who spent most of his life living in California, but he has also done quite a bit of missionary work in this horribly depressed area near Tijuana. He tells the story of many individuals he met, helped, lost and found in his work, distributing food and helping the charity to better some lives, if only a little bit.

I actually forgot that I'd read this book until I was reading Carlos Santana's autobiography and he mentioned his Milagro Foundation. Carlos started the Foundation because he grew up poor in Tijuana Mexico and he wanted to give back to the community.

There are people so poor in this area that they live on a garbage dump. Many people have scavenged the materials and built crude houses on the dump and they eke out a living recycling the things others have thrown away. There are deserted buildings that house unwanted, homeless boys. These children are so desperate and hungry that they huff glue or paint to try to escape their hopeless lives. Many turn to crime and most don't live long. The Milagro Foundation was started to help these same children.

Across the Wire is a stark look at the reality these people face every day and explains why some people will do anything to get across the border to try for a better life. It really made me appreciate all that I have and the entitled life most Americans live. I think it's important to understand our neighbors, even if the view isn't pretty and the life they lead is difficult to share if only for a few pages. The first step to empathy is understanding.

[Kathy Piselli · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wish I could put this book under "History". It's one of the most sad books I've read. At the beginning of the book, Urrea seems to revel in it, but a distance opens up as the vignettes progress. His ending, perhaps an attempt at rescuing the despair of it all, was too little, too late for me. The best thing for me was the semantics, the slang he reports (I wondered how it must have changed since this book came out). A sample of how he writes, after describing the muddy floodplain of the Tijuana River and a cardboard shack settlement there: "...Cartolandia was swept away by a flash flood of tractors. The big machines swept down the length of the river, crushing shacks and toppling fences. It was like magic. One week, there were choked multitudes of sheds; the next, a clear, flat space awaiting the blank concrete of a flood channel. Town - no town."

[Eredità · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just as raw and brutal and necessary as the first time reading, and one I keep coming back to.

In the 30 years since its publication, it's hard to reckon with how much has changed along the border, and also how nothing has changed at all.

Thank you, Luis.

[Genevieve Grace · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book stuffed in a cabinet at work and read it during breaks. It is a series of portraits: easy-to-read vignettes telling tiny parts of the stories of some of the poorest people on the Mexican side of the border. It is from the 1990s, and sometimes seems purposefully vulgar and other times pretentious, but the critical takeaway is that it is terrifying.

[Lars Guthrie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Since my enthusiastic reception of Urrea's 'The Hummingbird's Daughter,' my Dad has cheerfully assigned a couple of collection of essays by that author to me. It's an assignment I have cheerfully met, although I can't say reading this one was always cheerful. Just across the border in Tijuana, his home town, Urrea worked with evangelical missionairies to give aid to people living in the most severe kind of poverty--the kind of poverty we associate with India or Africa, not somewhere next to San Diego. These are the people who live in Tijuana's garbage dumps. It was sometimes hard to keep reading Urrea's portrayals of these people, unflinchingly honest about disease and decay and and violence and malnutrition. This is not to detract from his well-crafted writing, nor to deny his always respectful and dignified treatment of his subjects. It's just that the hopelessness of their situation is so depressing, and those of us who are better off seem more concerned with keeping 'aliens' out than recognizing our neighbors' suffering. There is some comic relief in an essay about a day spent with a Tijuana cop, a digression with the story of the death of Urrea's mysterious father, and a final episode of hope, when a radio station organizes the presentation of Christmas gifts to the kids of the garbage dumps.

[Jeaninne Escallier · Rating 5 out of 5]

Though written 25 years ago, this little book stands as a huge testament to the realities of border life in Tijuana, Mexico. Even this many years later, these true stories are timely and important. If you haven't read any of Urrea's books, you are missing out on some pretty profound experiences written in almost perfect prose. I studied writing with Luis for five days at a writer's workshop in Tomales Bay, California, last fall because I wanted to glean some of his magic. Before you read any other of his amazing books, this book would be a good place to start.

Luis grew up on the mean streets of Tijuana, so when he takes you on a little journey each chapter, you feel the utter, open-wound rawness of what it's like to live in abject poverty. The beauty of these stories is that Luis also makes the reader feel the universal oneness of simply being human; and, if we scratch off the veneer of economic status, we will find something to relate to with the humans featured in this book. In today's climate of immigration reform, I think it's important for all of us to put names and places to the people many want to condemn, simply because they want to find a better life. Some of these stories may be hard to ingest, but life is messy. Bravo, Luis!

[Patrick O'Neil · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mexican border towns are strange, confusing, and sometimes wonderful, and Luis Urrea takes us there. His essays in Across the Wire, exemplify that jumble of emotions and experiences that make up a land caught between so many different dominating factors - money, poverty, politics, and race, to name but a few. With his elegant non-judgmental style of writing Urrea portrays the residents of garbage dumps, forgotten barrios, shantytowns, and abandoned hillside houses filled with glue sniffers. Some of the chapters are sad, some are horrific, some so beautiful you want to cry - but they're always amazing in that Urrea captures the wonders of the people as they live through it all.

[Liz · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you want a reminder of how fortunate you are, read this book. I've been to Tijuana and seen the masses of poor children at the border. My own dad, who was born in Mexico City, has mentioned searching through trashcans for food when he was younger. But no part of my imagination EVER pictured what the reality of these people really entails. The personal stories included in this book are eye-opening. There's so much more I could say about it, but I don't want to get into politics so I'll leave it at that.

[Jenny · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had to read this for an university social work class. While full of crass language and unpleasant stories, I found it full of important information that helped me to better understand a side of immigration that Americans should know. I wouldn't want to read it again, but I will never forget some of the lessons I learned. Many of Urrea's experiences are heartbreaking.

[Mano (Leslie) · Rating 5 out of 5]

A series of vignettes from this Tijuana born writer, shows a heartwrenching and often difficult to read portrayal of poverty and the struggle for life on the border.

[Diana Ptaszynski · Rating 5 out of 5]

You cannot go wrong with anything written by Luis Alberto Urrea.

[Whitaker · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really great book shows us how everything is great and worth to die for

[Rich · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was published in 1993 and is still completely relevant today. I very much enjoyed Urrea’s writing style. He was humorous, profane, sad, and realistic about the disparities between our side of the border and Mexico’s. Poverty, famine, and death are all daily occurrences in Tijuana. I discovered Urrea in the foreword of Charles Bowden’d book The Red Caddy and despite him being a tiresome commie leftie in his perspective it does not detract from the fact he is a powerful writer. Early in the book he comments on the language barrier between English and Spanish and it is hilarious. “For example, Mexicans are regularly amused to read TV guide listings for Spanish TV listings. If one were to leave the tilde off the word anos, or years the word becomes plural for anus. Many cheap laughs are had when The Lost Years becomes The Lost Buttholes.” Comical and so very typically gringo. The book documents his experiences assisting missionaries in the dump in Tijuana that over looks San Diego and discusses the squalid living condition of the “pickers.” Those who make a living sorting through the Tijuana trash to eek out a very meager existence. As one can imagine it is fucking gross. Lice, scabies, and various types of pestilence are a fact if daily life. Murder for a pair of shoes is commonplace. While I prefer they stay in their country reading a book like this makes me realize I would not stay in the shit hole that is Tijuana myself. A well written book and one I recommend.

[Tommy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a series of stories about the author's time in the 90s working with missionaries providing food and health services to people living around a dump outside of Tijuana. He did a good job expressing the heartbreaking casualness of violence and suffering experienced by the people living there as well as the commitment, love and overwhelming pressure on those trying to help. I loved how he connected to individuals and provided fixed snapshots that still resonate as I'm reading this decades later.

I also appreciated his revisiting the same place years later in the Christmas story and being able to find and reconnect with Negra. It was a very moving story, and great example of how immensely meaningful things are anchored to place and time, and yet aren't frozen or fixed. The people, shacks and actual dump itself changed, shifted, evolved and yet the poverty, suffering and needs remained.

[Kenneth Chanko · Rating 4 out of 5]

A timely reread. Urrea's on-the-ground report doesn't pull any punches. This one and his "The Devil's Highway" -- which I just started (another reread) -- are indispensable nonfiction accounts of what it's like to live along and cross the border. In starting last month a reread of "Across the Wire," and taking in anew Urrea's volunteer work and its impact, I was inspired to hook up with the New Sanctuary Coalition and train to do Immigrant Accompaniment. If you're looking to do more than merely rail on Facebook and/or mutter curses as it relates to Trump's inhumane immigration policies, check out this rewarding volunteer work through New Sanctuary, especially if you live in NYC: http://www.newsanctuarynyc.org/accomp...

[Eavan Hooke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having read Urrea'S BOOK hOUSE OF ANGELS I understand where his characters come from, his family. This book is about Tijuana, Mexico and the unbearable life of the refugees living in misery and poverty. It's right across the US border and it's a different world. As I read his narratives I felt sick to my sick because of the sub human conditions that these people live in, anger at our government for the immigration policies, and ended by just wanting to cry when I read his Christmas story.
Luis Urrea was just starting out as journalist when he wrote this book. He devoted his time working with the people in his hometown of Tijuana. He has collected the plight of the displaced and shone light on their lives.

[Nadia Contreras · Rating 4 out of 5]

urrea’s way of writing so much despair into beautiful, heart breaking, and hopeful stories will never cease to amaze me. i will never understand how life is so different and so much crueler on one side of the border, while the people on the “right side” are clueless. despite the suffering, they find a way to be hospitable and live as normal human lives as they can. this book will make you grateful for your own life, while offering powerful insight into a completely different world.
another thing i really liked was urrea’s inclusion and explanations of “border-speak”.
“poverty ennobles no one; it brutalizes common people”

[Donna · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is filled with short, fascinating true stories if the author's experiences living and helping the poorest of the poor in Tijuana, Mexico. He tells his stories with great love for the people living and working in the garbage dumps and other poor rough areas of the city. Some of the stuff is a bit gruesome but somehow more interesting to read than you would expect. One interesting thing is that the last novel I read was so influenced by this book that the other author used some names and phrases from these stories and incorporated them into his fictional story.

[Christy Chermak · Rating 4 out of 5]

I recently read Urrea’s Devils Highway and loved it and have since bought a few of his books, including this one. This one is a compilation of various stories from his time working with a ministry that served men and women in colonias and living in the dump in Tijuana. His writing builds empathy and understanding for Hispanic immigrants and a better grasp on the conditions and challenges just across the border. This was an engaging read, I appreciate how he tells hard stories and will continue to read through some of his other works.

[Brent Morris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent memoir of the author's time in the trenches of good samaritan work for the most impoverished on the border. Though written in the early 90's, it is still very relevant today. The author has gone on to write many excellent novels and works of non-fiction since. This gives you a great sense of where he comes from and the challenges facing those navigating the nebulous border world between U.S. and Mexico.

[Jerry · Rating 5 out of 5]

From the Author's Preface:
"This is a book of fragments, stories of moments in the lives of people most of us never see, never think about, and don't even know exist. . . . I offer an introduction to the human value in these unknown lives, a story of hope in spite of the horror and pain. What you read here happens day and night; the people you meet here live minutes away from you. Learning about their poverty also teaches us about the nature of our wealth."

[Jenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.25 Reading this book in 2022, I am struck by how Urrea's essays seem like they could have been written yesterday rather than 3o years ago. This book may be a collection of vignettes, but the pieces together paint a picture so strong and send a message of empathy and compassion that will continue to resonate with today's readers. A must read for anyone interested in what goes on at the U.S. / Mexican border.

[Laurie Parsons Cantillo · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an important read to better understand the abhorrent conditions that exist just across the U.S. Mexico border, and why migrants are motivated to escape the depths of poverty. Urrea takes us to a series of ramshackle shanties at garbage dumps and brings us anguishing and sometimes uplifting stories of those who live there. I read this after Urrea’s The Devil’s Highway, which is an incredibly powerful book, worthy of 5 stars. The bar was already set very high.