The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border

Francisco Cantú's memoir about his experiences along the border as a child, then in four years of service in the Border Patrol, and then afterward, as a conflicted intellectual trying to help migrant families deal with the border, is one of those well-written, well-meaning intellectual exercises that leaves the reader mired in a morass of ambiguities and vapid, academically-correct analysis. If you read it with a sympathetic ear for the plight of migrants and a hostility toward the US Border Patrol, you probably will like it. If you are a sympathetic, compassionate conservative like me, you will probably find it's tone muddy, sometimes infuriating and mostly inconclusive. And if you are a hard right-winger with no sympathy for illegals, you may be pleasantly surprised by some of this but mostly hate it -- especially the way it ends. But you figure out early on in the book, when Cantú expresses dismay that some of his Border Patrol peers treat the migrants they capture "like criminals", where Cantú is going with this. Apparently, committing a crime like crossing the border illegally doesn't make you a "criminal" in the mind of our progressively-minded author... It's a warning shot for where this book takes you in the end.Full Disclosure: Although I lean conservatively, I have lived and traveled on both sides of the border, worked with Christian ministries in Mexican border towns from La Playa Tijuana to Agua Prieta, and north of the border from San Diego, CA to Douglas, AZ. I spent six summers camping with my family in the El Hongo/La Rumarosa area east of Tecate. I have ministered inside Mexican prisons and rehab centers, speak reasonable Spanish and I have many friends on both sides. I am also an Army Veteran who spent 20 years working for an agency dealing with "transnational threats." I support a hyper-vigilant, strong security posture at the border yet I also support a path for citizenship for those who were brought to the USA as minors, and a migrant workers program for non-citizens to live and work in the US.Why do I bother disclosing all that?Because extremists at both ends of the debate on border issues most often lack hard experience with life along the border and thus reject the opinion of anyone who doesn't embrace either their virtue-signaling, liberal-puritan posture or their knee-jerk, anti-intellectual jingoism.Cantú's book is mostly well-crafted. He is a writing professor and political science academic and it shows. It is really three books. The first one is a dreamy, literary memoir of Cantú's experiences with his mother, with his time in the Border Patrol, and with his dream-life. It's a marvel and very well-drawn... except the author spends way too much time psycho-analyzing his dreams to sort out his emotions. This was pretentious and juvenile.I did like his journalistic digressions into International Border and Border Patrol history -- very well-done.He also kept bringing up a story of St. Francis and the Wolf as a parable of some kind. All I got from it was that a weak-kneed Francis chose to appease the Wolf with a lifetime of free stuff rather than simply putting the beast down. This did suggest to me that Cantú was not cut out for a law-enforcement job like the Border Patrol... as the next two parts of the book suggest about his ultimate worldview and conclusions.The second book is an overwrought story about Cantú's post-Border Patrol time as a graduate student working in a coffee shop. His likable, seemingly law-abiding, hard-working, family-man co-worker, Jose, an illegal alien, returns to Mexico to attend his mother's funeral. Of course, Jose can't return now and keeps getting into trouble with the US Border Patrol and the Mexican coyotes who can't seem to bring him back across the border. It's a poorly conceived tear-jerker meant to stir a reader's sympathy for "migrants" so they will swallow the final episode of the book, a lengthy epilogue written in an academic style that evokes the worst cliches and racial scientific theories of a community college Chicano studies program. It ruined, what for me, was an initially thoughtful, almost surrealistic memoir that captured Cantú's conflicted soul so well. By the end you realize, Cantú is expunging his Border Patrol sins at the expense of the honorable law enforcement veterans he served alongside (For a much different perspective I recommend "Dangerous Red Flags: My Life as a Border Patrol Agent" by Eugene Davis).I can't recommend this. I am glad I read it for its good parts. But the bad parts are glaringly bad. I share Cantú's passion for the desert hell-scape that is our border. I also love the Mexican people. But I am not naive about the evil-doers among them -- especially the narco-terrorists who have rendered a large part of Mexico a war zone -- just as I am not naive about the bad apples in the US immigration system. But the border is a black and white line in the sand. To turn that into ambiguity while drawing all kinds of hard, ugly conclusions about non-Latino Americans or "the system" is just plain wrong.There are many Border Patrol memoirs and books out there that draw different conclusions about the system than this one. But Cantú (and his five-star fan-boy reviewers) demands that people embrace his murky conclusions and academic-analysis simply because he is a well-meaning, intellectual Hispanic with a heart of gold. Sure. Except my Hispanic friends feel very differently about these issues than Cantú. Are they to be dismissed because they don't get a media or academic bully pulpit to voice their opinion? Of course not. But their non-politically correct view won't be tolerated by the people who swallow Cantú's conclusions hook, line and sinker.In the end, Cantú simply lets the reader down.

This book provides a unique perspective on the border controversy. First, the writer speaks from his experience spent working in Border Patrol, both as an on-the-ground agent and someone working behind the scenes at a desk. Second, his family is of Mexican descent, thus giving the author a view that most of us will never have of this issue. I admired his ability to look at this issue from differing sides and all of the work that he did to help someone in need toward the end [without giving away too much or providing spoilers].My only issue with this book is the lack of quotation marks. There were pages of conversations in this book, without a quotation mark to be found anywhere. What's the deal? The author had a Bachelor's as of the writing of this book and was contemplating a Master's. I KNOW he had to have done papers requiring quotations somewhere in his college experience. Also, was there no editor?The Master's he was contemplating was something to do with writing or English, if I remember correctly, too. Sir, you need to brush up on your high school level English first.Otherwise, very good book. I highly recommend picking it up if this is a subject that you are interested in. And if the lack of quotation marks won't drive you nuts. ;)

As a strongly conservative person, I was ready to delve into this book anticipating a strong liberal bias that would label me a bigot. I was ready to feel outraged as yet another person would, in print no less, tell me how I just don’t understand what is going on with regards to the immigration issue. While I know that I can’t fully understand Jose’s plight, I can surely empathize and sympathize with him and for him. It was a relief to me to be surprised by Francisco Cantu’s book.I lived in the Rio Grande Valley for 47 years and have seen firsthand the complexities involved in this issue. My brother was killed when a group of Mexican teenagers and their polleros were evading the police. The car they were in T-boned my brothers car at an intersection and cut him in two.A very good friend of mine, Hispanic as well, is a Border patrol agent. He qualified himself to work on the Rio Grande River in boats, on ATV out in the field and has also worked at the US Border Patrol sector headquarters. We spoke often, way before this book, about the things he has seen and done throughout his years as a CBP agent. How they are always being watched by lookouts from the south side of the river as they patrol the US side. He described the smell of decomposing bodies left behind in the brush land, or finding people under the full effect of heat stroke. He has told me about the taunts they receive as the polleros just escape back across the river. Cantu’s book reminded me a lot of my friend’s recollections. It also help me understand a little more of why he won’t speak too much about his feelings. I sense he is empathetic towards those he has stopped and believe he has genuine sympathy for them, but he also insists that what he is doing needs to be continued. He feels that even if stopping 1000 crossers only yields a few really dangerous people, he has improved life for His family on the US side.Living in Dallas for 3 1/2 years now, I have seen how much of it is being built by undocumented people. I know people, who like Jose stay under the radar by working and going home, day after day, and strive to live in peace. Some of them submitting themselves to unjust treatment because it is a better alternative than going back to their home country. I have been surprised at this treatment because it comes, many times, at the hands of Latinos who are fortunate enough to have legal status.This issue is very complex, and it angers me when people and politicians distill it down to platitudes. This has been done for far too long by people on every side of the argument. Usually, it has been done for personal gain and without any real knowledge of what it is like to live in an area affected by this, or any real knowledge of the people living through this.Thank you Mr. Cantu for writing this book, I wept through many sections and it has given me some resolve to help where I can. If anyone has strong feelings on either side of the immigration and citizenship problems of the US, I urge you to add this book to your references on the subject.

I did not like the book for the first part,far too much detail that was going nowhere. Perhaps he meant it as a background. The rest of the book was very well written. It certainly increased my awareness of the struggle the migrants face trying to get a better life for themselves

De entrada, dos sorpresas para destrozar mitos: Un ex-policía compasivo, un ex-policía que sabe escribir y lo hace muy bien. Recomendable para usamericanos y para mexicanos pues su lectura nos acerca un poco más al conocimiento de lo que nos divide y de lo que nos une.

Was actually a really good read, I related to the character as I, too, come from one background and nationality but work for "the man" opposing them at times.

It is a touching compilation of anecdotes and experiences from the author. It is more of a diary than a policy paper, quite enjoyable if I might say.

Interesting but wandered a bit philosophically although an enjoyable read and ending.