The Line Becomes A River

Authenticity is becoming scarcer in American society. Not so within the pages of this book. I've been to and worked along the Arizona border where the author spent part of his Border Patrol time. I've seen and lived some of what he did--as a civilian by foot, horseback, and automobile--from the mid-1970s, up to today. So, I could not be tricked by a manufactured narrative. It's more than a read, it's an experience. But what kind is up to the reader.

“The Line Becomes A River: Dispatches From the Border” (2018 publication; 256 pages) is a non-fiction (and debut) book from author Francisco Cantu, who spent 4 years (2008-12) as an agent in the US Border Patrol. The book is divided in 3 parts: in the first part, the author tells us what his day-to-day work was like actually being dispatched to the border in Arizona to corral illegal immigrants and get them processed back into Mexico. In the second part, the author moves to a more administrative position in El Paso, and in the third part, we learn of what comes after he leaves the Border Patrol.

Couple of comments: it is nigh impossible these days, given the poisonous political atmosphere in the country, to have any meaningful and reasonable debate about immigrants. As it happens, I myself am a legal immigrant (originally from Belgium) and have long ago become a US citizen. I went through all of the required procedures. I do not feel that people coming into this country illegally (or coming in legally and then overstaying their visa) should have the same legal standing as legal migrants. At the same time, I don't see this need to "build a wall" or needlessly hunting down illegals that are here already, I also do feel that people fleeing countries at war should be granted asylum easier than it is the case now.

As to the book: I was surprised, given the critical acclaim this book has been getting, how disappointed I found myself with the book. What is the point exactly of this book? I never felt a there was an overall narrative that drove the book. The author simply retells of his days as an agent in the US Border Patrol. Things get a little better in the last part of the book, but by then I had already more or less tuned out emotionally. There are many tales to be told about what is going on at the US border, and for me this book simply does not hit the bull’s eye. A missed opportunity.

Started out ok but then storyline kinda dragged and then centered on specific illegal immigrants plight. No matter how sad that plight is - we have laws and if they’re not enforced or selectively enforced- it becomes a real slippery slope.

Brought to you by OBS Reviewer Jeanie

Francisco Cantú grew up as a child of the border, and like his mother, the border is in his blood. His great-grandfather brought his family to the US when his mother was a young child. They lived near the US – Mexico border and had visited Mexico over the years. When Cantú graduated from college, he went to work for the US Border Patrol. He saw a side of the border that would haunt his dreams and heart long after returning to college.

Cantú shares a well-researched history of the Southwest border from the mid-1800’s and challenges met as the boundary continued to change. He also shares about the past leadership of Mexico. The reader of this relevant memoir is shown, through the eyes of someone who had hoped to effect positive change, how the system has responded to drug dealers and mules. Many mules are those who paid less to be smuggled across, carrying drugs so they could be reunited with their families. There is no question about the human and drug trafficking that occurs. There is no question that change needs to come. And there is no question that someone could read this deeply moving book and be unchanged.

To avoid hours of tracking and paperwork, there are times that agents take the drugs left behind in the desert without attempting to round up the traffickers. There are other times they find the remains of those who were abandoned by the group they were with and died of exposure to the heat and dehydration. The remains are kept until a family member contacts authorities, perhaps determining through bits of clothing or other personal items whether their loved one was found dead. He writes of those who try to cross and are caught and return yet again, and of catching a young couple who are pregnant with their first child.

Cantú later takes an “inside” job when the nightmares are too frequent, too real, but he misses being out under the open sky. After returning to college, he becomes friends with a hardworking man with a wife and children. His friend goes across the border to see a dying family member and doesn’t return. Francisco learns, up close and personal, challenges faced by those trying to return to take care of their families on this side of the river as he relentlessly works on behalf of the family.

Cantú includes pertinent information from various authors, including the various types of wars enacted, including drug wars. Of particular interest is the article about moral injury, the cause, and effects. It is hard to imagine just what those who live across the border live with, circumstances in which they fear for the lives of their children and themselves; it is also hard to imagine just what the border control agents endure each day, each shift, on the job.

Cantú has written about real people, changing names or other identifiers for the privacy of those involved. It is in many ways a difficult book to read, as the truth often is, as there is currently no one solution for every person attempting to cross. This is a memoir that should be read by every man or woman who is charged with writing the immigration laws. It is a book that shows some of the untold stories, one that not one person can read without being challenged in their views about the fluid, living border.

Since Trump got in office the Border Control has become like an entity unto itself. They don't seem to listen to governors, senators, or elected representatives. In one case early on it seemed they didn't pay attention to a judge's order. So I was interested to read this narrative from someone who had been a Border Control Officer, to see it from the inside as it were. While I understand they have a job to do, do they have to urinate on peoples' belongings and overturn water jugs putting peoples lives at risk? Its crude and unnecessary and I don't understand it. I know the Border Control heroically performs a very necessary job. But a little class would be nice. This is a well-written book and worth the read especially in today's world. Will we ever find out what happened to Jose or is the story still unfolding?

MEMOIR/IMMIGRATION
Francisco Cantú
The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border
Riverhead Books
Hardcover, 978-0-7352-1771-3, (also available as an e-book, an audio book, and on Audible), 256 pgs., $26.00
February 6, 2018

They come from Michoacán and Guadalajara, from Oaxaca and El Salvador. Men, women, children, entire families. Some are heroin mules, “coyotes,” and cartel scouts; some are pregnant women, children escaping gangs, and fathers who want to feed their kids. One man offers to clean up around the station while he waits for the bus that will return him to Mexico. Sometimes the migrants’ backpacks are dumped on the desert floor, the water drained, the clothes and food burned. Other times, the migrants’ blistered feet are washed and bandaged. There are abandoned drug loads and abandoned people, extraordinary cruelty and ordinary kindness, paranoia and compromising situations, kidney failure and the comatose and the dead. The Southwestern desert is a vast graveyard. A Texas sheriff notes, “For every one we find, we’re probably missing five.”

The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border is the first book from Francisco Cantú, a former U.S. Border Patrol agent. His writing has appeared in Harper’s and Guernica, among other publications, and Cantú won a Pushcart Prize and the 2017 Whiting Award. The Line Becomes a River is a profoundly disturbing memoir of Cantú’s years in the Border Patrol during years of breathtaking violence, when Felipe Calderón was president of Mexico and challenged the cartels.

Cantú, whose family came from Mexico, spent time growing up in West Texas, his mother a park ranger. He left the desert for Washington, D.C., and earned a degree in international relations, studying the southern border. Seeking to add practical experience to his academic studies, Cantú entered the Border Patrol academy. “The government took my passion and bent it to its own purpose,” his mother warns him. “Stepping into a system doesn’t mean that the system becomes you,” he parries.

Divided into three parts, The Line Becomes a River is composed of a series of vignettes, sometimes approximating stream-of-consciousness. Cantú is conflicted and dreams of wolves and disintegrating teeth; Jungian psychology provides context. He alternates between the anecdotal and the empirical, fitting human faces to the facts and figures—all those numbers—and providing a history of the line—all those broken treaties. Cantú has read his Charles Bowden and Molly Molloy and Sara Uribe.

After Cantú left the agency to attend graduate school, he learns that a friend with whom he shared breakfast almost every morning, José, has been arrested re-entering the country after visiting his dying mother. It’s the first time Cantú visits anyone in detention, attends the court hearings, witnesses the slow-motion ripping apart of a family. The last part of The Line Becomes a River is related in José’s voice, a very effective technique, visceral and instructive: “The U.S. is making criminals out of those who could become its very best citizens.”

The Line Becomes a River seems an honest examination of conscious, a reckoning on Cantú’s part. Though he occasionally strays into melodrama, I admire Cantú’s writing and was moved by the stories he relates. Still, The Line Becomes a River leaves me unsettled, troubled by something I can’t quite put my finger on. Cantú wonders whether his shame can be redeemed, spiritual sickness healed. I wonder at the costs to human beings of what sometimes seems a personal experiment on the part of Cantú.

Originally published in Lone Star Literary Life.

Francisco Cantu has done a wonderful job of bringing to light the conflict and contradictions of the US/Mexican border problems. I think you have to spend some time here to truly understand the conflict of conscious that all we locals feel as this boondoggle escalates over time and without a true compass to guide us into an acceptable solution.

Cantu is a third generation American of Mexican heritage. There are many many second and third generation Americans with parents and extended family who have lived here in the US for 30 or 40 years without documentation, and those families are subject to the removal of their loved ones at any time. These illegals don't have to do anything wrong - most illegals tip-toe through life, trying not to make waves or even a shadow. In their defense, it was a much different world on the border even 20 years ago - easier to get across, harder to get to a place where documentation was handled properly, and American farmers and stockmen were always needing help they could afford. Add to that the fact that many families have been here four or five generations and are the go-to for their Mexican relatives when a bright child - or one on the wrong path - will be lost into Mexico's cycle of poverty if they can't get a proper education or a clean lifestyle without being sucked into the gang mentality that is the brightest light offered to the youth of Mexico. And therein lies the problem.

Juarez, Mexico is about an hour and ten minutes away from my home, in a small New Mexico town of about thirty thousand. I have lived in or near the borderland for 70 years. There is a hard kernel of truth at the core of that old saying, 'it takes a village to raise a child'. Gangs were once a big city problem. Now they are everyone's problem - but the majority of Mexicans who cross over illegally are simply looking for jobs and a safe place to raise their family. Period. Most have attempted to come over legally before they made the dangerous decision to rely on a Coyote to bring them and their family into the US. And the reason they feel they must come over is simple. There were 25,339 reported homicides in Mexico in 2017, a 23% jump from 2016 (CNN). There were 120 reported murders in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, sister city to El Paso, TX, in the month of June, 2018 (El Paso Times). Unfortunately cartel members and the kids in gangs including MS13 can slip in right along side the family's looking for safety. We have to be able to vet the immigrants we admit to the USA. ALL the immigrants. There are some Middle Eastern and Europeans who also use the Coyote system of illegal entry through Mexico.

There is no easy solution, no snappy answer to this problem. And the Wall - Berlin had a wall for many years. Look at the misery that entailed. No one has come up with a solution that is both humane and safe. But finding that path is crucial and we need to find it NOW.

Cantu brings all of this into play in The Line Becomes a River - both from the side of protecting the border and the hard decisions families have to make about their illegals and the unacceptable life offered south of the border. And make no mistake about it - it is the honest, hard working families, those people that would be an excellent addition to any community, who are paying the price every day that we don't come up with a solution.

“You cannot give up just because you think someone is against you, because it is difficult to face them.”

I found this book about a second generation Mexican American who becomes a border guard moving and enlightening.

His humanity in this situation was wonderful and his Spanish speaking ability was able to put people at ease. I think this should be a requirement for the border patrol.

The best part of this book was about a friend of his who gets caught up in the system when he goes back to Mexico to be at his mother's deathbed. His letter to Mr. Cantu explains the predicament of the Dreamers and all laborers who come to America. There are no good jobs in his area. He would have to work for the Mexican mafia or not at all. He would prefer his children stay in America where they have a better chance of a safer life. He will continue to attempt to return to America, a land he has lived in for over 30 years because it is where his family lives and where the jobs are. There are no solutions to this mess.

When I was a waitress in California 40 years ago, we had a dishwasher who would get picked up by immigration and taken back to Mexico. He would return in about 2 months and be rehired. He was one of our best workers. Now they have rules in place that an employer cannot rehire an undocumented worker with out getting fined. I wish our country could understand that the majority of Mexican workers are the best that you can be. Only a few are drug dealers and some of those do it because of the immigration policies in this country.

I highly recommend this book as a look at the other side of the immigration dilemma. I checked this out at my local library.

I decided to read this book because it covered the timely topic of illegal immigration on the US-Mexico border and because I grew up in New Mexico. During a visit last month to visit my sister's family in Las Cruces, we had to go through a Border Patrol checkpoint northof that city on I-25, heading back north to Albuquerque. I wondered what exactly were they looking for? Cars with Mexican license plates? Cars with Mexicans? Cars with license plates on a watch list? Our vehicle, with Virginia license plates, was casually waved through the checkpoint.
Okay, back to the book .Frankly, I didn't like this book that much until the story of Jose Martinez came up at about 2/3 mark in the book. At first, the book seemed like a mishmash of topics and issues: history of the border area, psychology of dreams, the author's strange dreams, his relationship with his mother, the politics of immigration, Mexican violence and narcotrafficking, and of course, the author's short stint with the border patrol. First, I found the narrative difficult to read without quotation marks. The reader doesn't know who's saying what: is it Paco, his mother, Morales, Jose, etc. or is the author just THINKING these words, instead of saying them? Now there ARE quotations in the book, when the author borrows from various history, psychology and sociology texts. But in his own narrative, he doesn't use quotation marks. It seems to be stream-of-consciousness writing, as if the author is quickly writing down his thoughts and events in a diary without proper punctuation, for fear of losing the memories or ideas. Why didn't the publisher correct this?
Secondly, there was even some mistakes in his Spanish. In the Kindle version, for example, on page 140 Paco writes about a family remembering trips to Mexico. The son used the word "acuerdo". "Acuerdo" means to agree. The word should have been "recuerdo", to remember. (I studied Spanish at the University of New Mexico.)
I was going to give this book 3 stars, then the section about Jose Martinez began. I was completely drawn in by his and his family's sad experiences, as he tried to make his way back to his family in Arizona from Mexico. Jose's personal testimonial from Mexico was so sad that it made me want to cry. His story was so intensely personal and touching that I bumped my rating to 4. Frankly, I found him more interesting than the author himself. However, I thank Mr. Cantu for bringing this story forward during this relevant time when the US continues to struggle with the issue of the US-Mexico border and illegal immigration.

This is one of those books that will surprise you with its complexity and subtlety. Francisco Cantu is a Mexican American who grew up American Southwest, his mother a Park Ranger. Upon leaving college, Cantu becomes a border patrol agent, first working in the field to prevent illegal crossings from Mexico and then in a field office. The issue of immigration is a complex one and what I most appreciate about "The Line Becomes a River" is how Cantu's life and the story he tells never simplifies this complex issue. I found myself continually intrigued by his life choices and deeply thinking about all sides of the immigration issue more deeply.

Cantu's journey and constant reflection on the many challenges faced by immigrants and non-immigrants alike doesn't look to demonize or use hysterics to turn non-believers into believers or demonize anyone. It is rare to read a something on such a contentious topic that can appeal to those with such differing viewpoints and perspectives.

Cantu's book shows both how vast as well as how narrow the line that divides two countries can be. Whatever side of the political spectrum you fall on, "The Line Becomes a River" is the type of thoughtful reflection that should provide everyone with something to think about.

THE LINE BECOMES A RIVER dispatches from the border between the United States and Mexico, and shares insights into what story is behind each migrant and Border Patrol agent. Author Francisco Cantú is able to talk about this divisive matter as a five-year Border Patrol agent, but also as the grandson of Mexican immigrants who crossed the border generations ago.

Informed and with a sense of humanity, Cantú may be a lone, rational voice on the Southern Border --- bringing experience from both patrolling the desert and reminiscences from family. But THE LINE BECOMES A RIVER is far from a modern “both sides” argument: Cantú feels something was wrong with the way things went while patrolling the border, and has been in touch with Mexican subjects for which he feels empathy. He was troubled by, though very successful at, his job as a Border Patrol agent, and now expresses these feelings as a full-time writer in a savvy and intelligent nature.

Cantú has had to collect the bodies of those who perished in the heat of the summer desert. He has rescued a pregnant woman who had walked for days, only to process her case and see her deported. It has resulted in memories and nightmares that linger with him today. Cantú has the irreplaceable and superb ability to uncover how the way the border has been patrolled for years resulted in violence for so many in the United States and Mexico. He explains how the border is more than just a barrier; it is a symbol and place of interaction where cultures, countries, generations and stories can meet and collide. He proves through a series of personal experiences that the story of the border is one that will always be shared by both Mexicans and Americans from the United States.

THE LINE BECOMES A RIVER is personal and emotional, not some everyday debate about immigration. It has nothing in common with an insufferable shouting match on television. The details are rough and the story is real, yet the contact between Cantú’s own story and those of the Mexican migrants is dignifying. Words flow from memory to prove how the history of immigration and the topic of identity are irremovable from the policies made, or that should be made, for the border. The humanity in his language is more familiar to poetry than anything else, but he is an adept writer with a faculty for prose. Cantú is in a better position than perhaps anyone to provide a balanced look for all involved in immigration, even though he was a Border Patrol agent, and an effective one at that.

It is a rare border story that connects more than divides, yet Cantú incorporates compelling immigrant stories to which every American family can relate in some way. He approaches this American border from many angles, and he is a product of that border, just as the border is a product of the movement from generations between the United States and Mexico.

Reviewed by John Bentlyewski

It is coincidence that after reading the refugee-crossing border themed novel, Exit West, that I next picked up The Line Becomes a River, which is a non-fiction account of being a border guard, chasing down those trying to cross illegally into the United States, and the awful, untenable inhumanity of the truth behind the foul, hyperbolic, bigot-baiting political blather being spoken today.

This is a gut-wrenching take from one man who worked as a border guard and, too, one man he knew on the United States side who had entered illegally, lived here for decades productively, contributing to the culture and economy, raising a family, and then, crossing back over the border to visit his dying mother, cannot get back into the country. He attempts to do so illegally and is caught. And eventually, despite the efforts of many good people, he is deported.

This is every bit as unpleasant an account to read as you might imagine, and, when one realizes that one, as a United States citizen, is in part culpable for this, and that it is becoming worse and worse, the slamming-guilting impact of that knowledge is the stuff of nightmares. But, our nightmares don't compare to the living-terrors these immigrants suffer.

Caveat, the writing is serviceable but not up to the power of the story it tells. I longed as I was reading for the insight and incisive assaying reportage of a Joan Didion.

A memoir written by a patrol officer manning the Mexico/US border. This is a frankly written memoir about how the job of patrol officer can both wear you down as a human being and lead to nightmares and mental trauma. Francisco, in a series of anecdotes, shows the terrible unfairness that closed borders create. He and many of his co-officers are human first and police second but nonetheless have a job to do. The backstory to many of the "illegal" crossers are grim and make their desperate efforts fully understandable but invariably they get caught and sent back only to try again. It is wearing to read but clearly so much worse to be the officer physically carrying out this task every day. Franciscu clearly feels this and gets a posting, away from the front line, into electronic surveillance. But even this becomes too stressful and he opts out to run a simple coffee shop only to find a close friend - an illegal Mexican immigrant of 30 years standing with a wife and 2 kids - gets into trouble when he crosses back into Mexico for his mother's funeral. Basically, he finds he can't get back into the America and the system beats him. Of course there is justification in having a frontier but this book argues a strong case for controlled immigration as otherwise all involved suffer the consequences.

I really, really liked this book. It is told from the point of view of a former Border guard, who joined the Border Patrol after college. He then exits that job to go to graduate school for writing. Taking a part time job, he makes friends with a man who works at the restaurant and whom he later learns is an undocumented immigrant. The book was beautifully written and gives insight from a human perspective how difficult and complex the problem is. Set in Arizona and the city of El Paso, I loved reading about the experiences of the author from the points of view as one enforcing the law and then one befriending a lawbreaker, and the human side of both.

A thoughtful and largely compelling read, this book reveals much about those who cross our borders and those who guard them. A few of the side stories are a bit distracting, but as a whole the book is full of heart and deep insights.

Just as Cantu’s writing demarks the light and shadow sides of the US Mexican border “control “ of human passage, it reveals the spectrum of light and shadow within each of ourselves. Everyone who walks on this earth is complicite in humanity’s ugly vicissitudes, which Cantu reveals with more than a touch of grace.

If anyone has interest of border and US and Mexican relations, they should read this book. The author masterfully creates deeper meaning and context for the reader of why such complex exists as it does. A must read!

This book was well written, and I learned so much about the plight and utter devastation of the migrants searching for freedom and reunification of families. If more US politicians would understand this dilemma and find solutions for the ability to cross legally then maybe we, as US citizens, would benefit from hardworking people striving for naturalization.

A Line Becomes a River, by Francisco Cantú, details the experiences of one border patrol agent’s life from the beginning of his career on the border to years after the end of his career as a border patrol agent. It is the tale of Francisco Cantú’s life from his perspective looking back on it many years after the events in question. I was fairly happy with this book as I was pretty confident I would like it after reading a short excerpt in a class. The book did turn out to be a bit slower than what I believed it too be. I felt that the book did a great job at showing multiple sides of the problems that it brought up. It never felt like it was pushing for one mind set or demonizing anyone, outside of the cartels of course. The book did a rather poor job with using time though as some parts would cover large stretches of time while others would take up the same number of pages yet cover insignificant amounts of time. It made it rather hard to keep track of where and for how long Francisco had been in a certain situation. This made certain ideas, such as that of the border slowly corrupting people such as Francisco, a rather large theme of the book, have less of an impact and seem less noticeable. The book was rather informative on the topic of immigration and border security. The information surrounding these topics was mainly introduced through statistics, logos, or stories of people that lived on the border, pathos. I never questioned the credibility of the author throughout this book as he never appears to mess with any of the information within the book to support his biases. He leaves most of the thinking up to the reader, mainly sticking to giving evidence and context for events. Francisco asks the reader to think about immigration, especially illegal immigration along the US-Mexico border. The many facets to this issue are what the book focuses on with its many pathos and logos based evidence. Francisco mainly serves to inform people on this issue, leaving much of the deciding of what is good and what is bad to the reader. He very intelligently works his evidence all throughout the story and does a great job at getting the reader to sympathize, if not agree, with most of the people Francisco meets throughout the book. This approach to informing people of the border allows for the conversation around the border to be opened to many more people as this book expects you to know little more than the fact that illegal immigration does occur along this border. This book is great for anyone interested in the US-Mexico border and those looking for an introduction into border policy within the United States of America.