Bearing Witness Theme Analysis

“The triumvirate of Desolation—walkers, smugglers, and Migra—were all worthy of witness,” Luís Alberto Urrea writes in the Afterword to The Devil’s Highway. His inspiration for the book was the act of bearing witness not just to the stories of the Wellton 26, but also to the stories of the people and circumstances that led them there. By taking a holistic approach to the act of bearing witness, Urrea argues that the only way to responsibly tell a story as complicated as that of Wellton 26 is to tell the whole story—the story of the place and its history; the story of its Native people and the story of those who live and die there now; the story of the men who died, the men who lived, the men who rescued them, and the men who set the whole tragedy in motion to begin with. Ultimately, Urrea even includes his own story—the story of how his radical approach to bearing witness came to be, and the story of how that witness has had political and social uses and benefits he never imagined, for himself and for the individuals whose stories he told.

His firsthand investigation into the lives of the Wellton 26 and the circumstances that led them into Desolation reveals as much about Urrea as it does about the subjects of his text. As he endeavors to carefully, thoughtfully, and respectfully bear witness to the tragedy of the Wellton 26, Urrea himself becomes a character in the book. The passages in which he thoughtfully and imaginatively explores the aspects of his characters’ stories that, in some instances, Urrea never witnessed directly—their innermost thoughts, the intricacies of their daily routines, their ways in which they died—are tinged with Urrea’s own writerly embellishments, and his curious, nonjudgmental brand of empathy. Urrea himself is folded into the pages of this narrative—the ways in which he describes Melchior Díaz’s longing for home while on assignment in Desolation, Mendez’s roaring headache on the morning of the fateful walk, or the screams of Reymundo Barreda, Sr., as his son died in his arms, all announce Urrea as not merely a witness to but a participant in the stories he bears witness to.

This approach to storytelling—considering the entire picture of an event, and using radical empathy in order to bear witness to even private or unremembered moments of it—allowed Urrea to accomplish his mission of allowing others to bear witness to the events of the Wellton 26’s ordeal. In his Afterword to the text, Urrea writes that readers of his book have ranged from students to Border Patrol officials to family members of the 26. In one anecdote, Urrea reveals that, at a book-signing event in Oregon, a reader revealed to Urrea the fact that he was undocumented—the reader’s wife, standing nearby, overheard and expressed her shock and disbelief. This is one small-scale piece of evidence which demonstrates how Urrea’s own act of bearing witness has inspired others to seek out people to bear witness to their own stories. In another anecdote, Urrea describes how the Wellton Station, which was made “infamous” in large part due to The Devil’s Highway itself, now employs about three hundred agents—at the time Urrea was researching the book, the station only employed thirty-two men. Urrea’s act of witness lead to others bearing witness—and taking action. Though immigration numbers in the area have declined in the years since the Wellton 26, bearing witness to the severity of the situation in the Yuma desert effected actual political change—moreover, Urrea writes that he still corresponds with many Wellton agents, who continue to provide him with a “constant flow of witness” as to the goings-on in their sector.

 “It is a stunning and terrifying experience to sit with the autopsy reports of fourteen men who are the nameless subjects of op-eds, TV jokes, raging radio blather, and know you will be their only witness,” Urrea writes in the text’s afterword. The thought of being the “only” witness to such a horrific story—and to contemplate the horrific incidents which take place day after day with not even one witness—drove Urrea towards his unique, big-picture stance on what it means to be a witness. As Urrea contemplated the isolation that the survivors must have had to contend with in the aftermath of their ordeal, he recognized his own isolation, too—he was isolated in his status as one of the few people patient enough, angry enough, and desperate enough to make sure that the story of the Wellton 26 (and, by proxy, the story of the Devil’s Highway itself and all the lives that have been lost in crossing it) would be told, seen, and heard in the way it deserved to be—in a way which validated and championed the “worthiness” not just of the stories of the dead, but of all involved. In his commitment to bearing witness to the entire ecosystem of the U.S.-Mexico border—immigrants, Coyotes, and Border Patrol agents alike—Urrea makes the argument that every facet of a story is “worthy” of being explored, and it is necessary to examine all sides of a thing in order to understand its complexity. Unable to bear witness to the plight of all immigrants, he instead uses this one story—the story of the Wellton 26—to enlighten his audience as to the severity of the tragedies that continue to unfold daily along the border, and, hopefully, to light a spark that would affect political and social change where the world of the border was concerned. To understand what happened in this “notorious” incident, Urrea knew it was necessary to witness the story in its entirety, and to have empathy for even those characters who might have initially seemed undeserving of it. In doing so, he was able to enact real change not only in his personal life but in the political and social sphere of the U.S.-Mexico border, solidifying his own argument that all stories are “worthy” of witness, and that bearing witness has the power to affect meaningful change.