this week on "moyers "moyers & co" -- >> the border ran down the apartment. the kitchen was the united states. the living room was mexico. walter cronkite was the ambassador to both countries. >> funding is provided by carnegie corporation of new york. celebrating 100 years of philanthropy and committed to doing real and permanent good in the world. the colberg foundation, independent production fund with support from the partridge foundation, a john and holly guf charitable fund. the clement foundation, park foundation dedicated to heightening public awareness of critical issues. the herb albert foundation, supporting organizations whose mission is to promote compassion and creativity in our society. the bernard and audrey rappaport

foundation, the john d. and katherine t. mcarthur foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. more information at macfound.org. and gumowitz, the hkh foundation, barbara g. fleishmann and by our sole corporate sponsor, mutual of america. designing customized individual and group retirement products. that's why we are your retirement company. >> welcome. there is no stretch of territory in the world quite like the borderlands between the united states and mexico. a vast swath of terrain, a long and tortured history and an endless stream of humanity both separate and join our two countries. it's as complex a coupling as you will find anywhere. on the gulf of mexico, the border runs along the rio grande

river to intersect with the continental divide where it turns toward tijuana and san diego on the pacific ocean. 1,969 miles snaking through desert and desolation. dividing towns and cities. marked now by stretches of steel and concrete fence, infrared cameras and sensors, natural guardsmen and border patrol agents. nearly 100 million people cross this border every year one way or another. one day in may, 11 years ago, 26 mexican men set out across the murderous stretch of desert known as the devil's highway. heading for arizona. and hopefully for work. 12 of them made it. 14 were scorched alive by the torrid sun. their story became a stunning work by the author luis alberto

arraya. no one writes more tragically about the border culture than the son of a mexican father and anglo mother. born in tijuana and raised in san diego, he grew up in both worlds, and they appear and reappear in his acclaimed novels, essays and poems, 14 books in all. including his most recent, "queen of america." luis arraya remains close to the people and places of the border. from the garbage pickers he knew in tijuana to the desperate travelers on the devil's highway. welcome. >> thank you. >> i'm delighted to meet you. >> i can't believe i'm here. >> you must grow weary of talking about the devil's highway. >> tired of it. >> which is a classic. but anyone who's read it can never forget those 26 men setting out across that inferno, can feel the heat of the sun on

the sand, can sense the foreboding of the mountains, can experience the thirst on their lips. and it still awes me today and humbles me to think what they will go through to try to get here. >> it's unbelievable what people go through. and, you know -- >> what's the mirage that seduces them? >> life. we have this illusion that they're criminals or they're coming to steal welfare or, you know, take our jobs, you know. i've got to say, if you at all travel the country and you see the jobs that people do that come here, i'm not going to do those jobs. and for example, a couple of years ago, the strawberry crop came in in washington state, massive strawberry crop, the

same year that the undocumented didn't show up, the work crews for whatever reason stopped coming. those crops rotted on the ground because they couldn't get u.s. citizens to come out and just pick them. even for free. take them. people wouldn't do the effort. that's, you know, it's shocking to me. i feel like, you know, if people just stopped for a second and looked at what those guys first do and second accomplish when they get here. what fascinates me is the people who are the most angry at those walkers seem to be kind of social darwinists, you know, post-rand fountain head atlas shrugged kind of characters who see these foaming hordes of alien critters coming in here. you know, the truth is that the entrance exam is so stringent and so incredibly brutal that the people who do make it here, i think, have proven themselves

to have mettle and to have vision and strength and the kind of discipline that's hard for us to even imagine. >> many who don't get here, out of the 26 who went along the devil's highway in your book, only 12 came out. it still grips me as to why these men would endure this inferno, temperature, you're right, at midnight is 97 degrees. to come to this country to do stoop labor. >> people don't know that these folks are often recruited. these guys were -- most of them had small plot coffee, traditional little coffee stands in the hills their family had passed down. and they could augment their work with coffee and coffee prices took a dive. the mexican economy took a dive. one of the men was a bottler at a pepsi-cola plant. he carried bottles around. and so they were in trouble.

and these guys sent this character known as a hooker. not a hooker as in prostitute but an angler. he went in there and he made his presence felt. and he rooked them. he told them, look, we'll send you to the united states. and one summer we're picking oranges. how hard can that be? that's not hard. and we make you all this money. and they said we can't afford the trip. and he said, we'll lend it to you at a high interest rate. these are men who have never had credit cards. so they sold themselves to the company store, basically, like to a shark, it was a mafia operation. and then they come to the u.s. and they're turned over to guides. the experience guide didn't show up, so the inexperienced guide being macho and bold says, i'll take them. and the walk really isn't harrowing. the walk is up a ridge. you walk for basically two days, mostly at night. and you get to a ridge above

arizona. you can see the town below. and they wait till the border patrol is gone. and they walk down the hill. the guy calls on a cell phone. cars come out of the reservation, pick you up and take you to phoenix. you go to a safe house with an attached garage. garage door opens. the car drives in, it closes, no one ever sees you. you get sent to florida the next day. now, what happened is, the guy got lost, and they're in hell, and they can't find their way out. but more and more people died that way. and the criminal element that started taking over -- when i was a kid, coyotes were sort of captain jack sparrow, you know, these sort of amusing little pirates. and then they started getting creepier. and then when the narco world started taking over and organized crime started taking over, i think there's a generation of coyotes and smugglers that got really dangerous. and it's hard sometimes because the free operators, the sort of rogue, charming guys are still

there. but they're getting regulated out by the hardcore criminal. >> does it ever occur to you as a writer that other people are suffering for your material? >> oh, yeah. oh, absolutely. but i try to do honor to them. in fact, when i went down to start researching the devil's highway, the first guy i spoke to was the mexican consul in tucson. and he was not happy that i was there. and the only reason he spoke to me is that i have family in the mexican government. one of my cousins is an ambassador. so he let me in. and he listened to my case. and then he said, you know what? you don't care. your publisher doesn't care, and americans don't care. you're here because it was a catastrophe. so it's, you know, saleable. it's big. but this tragedy happens every single day, one person at a time, and no one's down here to write about them. and, you know, that was one of those wake-up calls. and i had to be honest.

i said, you're right. nobody cares. that's why i'm here. because this is a titanic. maybe people will care. maybe we'll make them pay attention because of this spectacular story, and they'll start to care about the smaller story which i think in a lot of ways has happened. >> but earlier, before the devil's highway, you went back to tijuana as a missionary. >> well, yeah, i guess relief work. i call it missionary. but yeah, it was a group out of a baptist church. and people had been telling me about this pastor, pastor vaughn. you've got to go see pastor vaughn. and they'd always tell me, you know, you won't like him that much because his politics are to the right of attila the hun. oh, great. that's tempting to me. a baptist preacher who's a right-winger. but turns out that vaughn was just the most real and wise -- i call him a zen baptist. >> i know them. it seems to me that you were the one who was converted when you

went back to tijuana. even today when you talk about those garbage pickers -- >> oh, yeah. >> -- and the kids eating dogs and they're looking out and seeing the american dream like a mirage across the border, it seems to me that you flipped to see the world. >> i did. >> as they saw it. >> i did. because you can be from a place but not know it. do you know what i mean? sure, i was born in tijuana. and i had known tijuana my whole life. but that doesn't mean that anybody i knew had ever gone to that tar paper or cardboard shack. nobody had ever gone to the garbage dump to talk to the pickers. in fact, if i was radicalized, which i think i was in some ways, the radicalizing moment came when i was a little boy with my dad and my aunt and some of my cousins in downtown tijuana. and we had gone to a restaurant to eat. we were going to eat chicken,

mexican style braziered chicken. it was a big deal. and we were walking in. and there was an indigenous woman on the sidewalk, what they call marias. she had the outfit. and she had the baby. i still remember her. and she had that, you know -- [ speaking spanish ] put her hand out. and my aunt kicked her. she said -- [ speaking spanish ] get the hell out of here. dog. and kicked her. and went inside. and i was so shocked because, you know, this was my auntie, right? what's this violence? and i was embarrassed. and i was moremortified and horrified. we went inside to eat. it was very clear to me that here we were the white. this is where i started understanding. we were superior. and that was a dog. and my cousin, margarita, we were all eating. and i noticed she was taking the food when no one was looking it and putting it in her lap in the

napkin. and she snuck out and fed the woman. that haunted me. it still haunts me to this day, that moment. so when i walked into the tijuana garbage dumps and one of the women -- mostly indigenous people -- one of the women put her arms around me. she said you know why i love you? you're not afraid of us. how can you not change? and pastor vaughn was very sly. he saw what i was like. i had my hollywood hair and all this stuff. you know the first job he gave me? washing the feet of the garbage dump pickers. that will transform you. you think you're doing something nice for them. and you realize that you're on your knees washing these feet. and you start wanting to cry because these people are trusting you. they end up blessing you instead of you blessing them. it's the weirdest thing. >> describe the garbage pickers and the world they live in every day. you do it beautifully in many passages. in fact, it's confusing to me as to why you started writing about

them because american writers don't make money writing about people like this. john steinbeck might have. >> it took him a while. >> it took him a long time. these are the lost and depraved of the world. you deliberately chose to write about them. you described them sleeping in boxes, picking trash, eating dead dogs, selling their bodies. what are they like? who are they? >> you know, i love them. they're my friends. they're people i truly -- they're for the grace of god, right? i mean, who's to say we won't fall into bad times? >> the grace of a border. >> the grace of a border. yeah, i always tell people, if i had my choice, i'd have been born in hollywood. i'd have been jimmy stewart's grandson, but that wasn't the choice. you know, here's the scenario. as the dump, for example, exists today. the one i write about in the first books was in a different location. it moved to this place which is actually in a weird way

beautiful. it has a view of the ocean. and there are islands off the shore. and it used to be a canyon. kind of an edward abby desert canyon with a little seasonal waterfall, deer, quail down in there, coyotes that fed out to the ocean. there's a hill here, okay? to the west. and then there's this canyon. and then there's an arc of graves. and at this far end there's a crematorium that burns human bodies. on this hill is the potters field for babies. anyone can bury a child who has died. you dig a hole and stick your child in there. the haunting thing is the headstones are often their cribs with their names painted on them. the canyon fills with garbage which becomes a plain and then becomes a mountain of garbage. and on the other side of the arc of graves is the community where

the people have built homes to live. that's the modern dump as it is now. now, the garbage technicians who drive the tractors and so forth is a humanitarian act, bring out the backhoe once a month, and they scoop out 7 or 14 holes. so anybody can bury anybody. that's the world they're in. they are mining for glass. they're mining for copper. they're taking out cans and so forth. >> didn't an editor say to you when you proposed writing about these people, nobody cares about starving mexicans? >> yeah. direct quote. and i have to tell you -- >> it's true, isn't it? >> it is true. i was kind of stupid. i was naive, you know, i thought -- honestly, i thought, if i write a book about people nobody cares about, it's going to be a hit. because everyone will read it. what was i thinking? but here's what happened. i wanted to be stephen king or led zeppelin.

i didn't care. i was a poor boy. i wanted to be famous because if i was famous, i'd be rich. i would never worry about money again. i would never eat a ketchup sandwich on white bread again. i would never watch my mother and my father tear themselves apart. lifetime of no dentistry because there was no money. none of that would happen. and i went into that world with vaughn. and vaughn is the first one who proposed it to me. he said, you know -- >> the pastor. >> the pastor. he said, nobody who has access to this world writes books. you do. and you should write about -- you should give witness to these people. and i thought, wow, that's a really -- because it hadn't occurred to me. and it certainly had not occurred to me to wrin nte nonfiction. so i started keeping notes. and i was keeping notes. the moment. you talk about -- this is my damascus road moment, i'll confess to you. you, me and, you know, the viewers. >> and for the benefit of the

rise of generation of atheists in the secular world, that damascus moment is when -- >> oh, yes. >> paul is converted in a blinding flash on the road to damascus and becomes the apostle who changes the world by preaching the gospel. >> for better or worse. >> your damascus. >> this is my damascus road. >> you said it, i didn't. >> it was a blinding flash of smoke, pretty much, not light. but i was at this place, the brickyard. it's outside of tecate where our beer comes from. a wonderful bucolic border town that i just adore. and these folks live on an adobe plain where they can dig up their ground and make bricks. that's their industry. anyway, i'm there. and i'm keeping my notes. i was writing in my journal. and a man was walking by. and he was looking at me. he was a worker, completely black, covered in oil, diesel fuel. and he had a handkerchief on his

head, four corners tied in knots like a skullcap. tied in sticks. and he was walking over to me. [ speaking spanish ] what are you doing? i'm just writing in my journal. what's a journal? i said, you know, it's a diary. oh, good, yeah. what's a diary? i said, well, it's a book. and i write. what are you writing about? i'm writing about what i do, what i see. he said, wait a minute. you're writing about this place? and i said yep. you're writing about the people here? i said yeah. i guess. and he said, are you writing about me? and i said, i probably am now. and he said, is anybody going to read this? and i said, i hope so. and the man said to me, you know, that's good. that's good. write about me. write about me. he said, i was born in the garbage dump. i've spent my entire life picking trash. and when i die, they're going to bury me in the garbage.

he said, so you tell them i was here. i don't know if that was a blessing or a curse, right? >> well, you did learn from it because you went on into the beautiful north, which is one of your memorable stories. you make heroes out of undocumented people. and reading it, one has to wonder why if a people who are so godforsaken in one sense is god so important to them? why does that hold on down there? >> i think people who are godforsaken seem to cling to god very strongly. i mean, you know, look at the roots of scripture, right? those guys weren't high rollers. i don't know what it is. it's an unbreakable bond of faith. fascinating to me. i think partially a shift in my

own perception from working on things like the hummingbird's daughter and being deeply embroiled in the indigenous world in mexico as well and realizing that there's a kind of an absolute faith that is based on experience rather than church. they feel that they see god everywhere in every way and that god loves them perhaps because they have to. but you think of someone who is despised, despised at home. and they come here and are despised here as well. sometimes to their great shock. so out of those folks that come here thinking, i'm going there to serve them, i'm going there to help, i'm going there to work hard, and they're shocked that they're hated. where else do you turn? you can't just absorb and swallow the belief that you're

nothing, that you don't have right to your place on this earth and that, you know, you are completely abandoned in the universe. and so they cling to god. you know, you need someone to hold on to. and i think our culture, our literature lends itself to magical realism, for example, because i think so many times magical or inexplicable or sort of almost supernatural things seem to happen by rote in our world that that is evidence to people who have no other hope that someone cares. >> well, you refer often or frequently to miracles, to grace. >> yeah. >> i'm wondering where you are. i mean, i know that you had a tough ten years. you started writing, you were broke, right? down and out? and for a whole decade, you got one rejection note after another. >> my sunny disposition hides, i

think, a black desert with a howling wind inside because i've come through, you know, a long, tough journey. but everybody does. and i realize that's part of the message, i think, that everybody -- you and i -- deal with somewhere in their lives has had the tijuana garbage dump experience. even if it was -- >> i think that's exaggerated. i haven't had a tijuana garbage experience. i'm very lucky. >> but everyone has lost someone dear to them or has faced heartbreak or is sitting on cancer. or everyone has had what i call the tijuana dump experience. not that extreme, certainly. >> tomorrow can bring something different. but for the garbage pickers, tomorrow brings more garbaggarb. >> unless pastor vaughn comes. there's always a tomorrow. the whole point of this, i think, is hope. when the hope ends, your life

ends, i believe. there's a lot of death. there's a lot of suicide. there's a lot of giving in to sniffing glue, you know, taking drugs. so the hopelessness -- the hopelessness is the struggle. it's not hunger. it's not poverty. it's the hopelessness. and as long as they have some semblance of hope -- and it might be a terrible delusion, right? you have a hope that's going to get better, and you eke out another couple of years. >> it can be a drug, can it not? >> hope? >> hope? >> oh, absolutely, i think so. >> in your most recent book, "terracita" who was at one time queen of the indians, right? >> that's what they said. >> and she had dreams of being queen of the world. and when she comes to this country, she says, you have to have a different dream in america. a different hope. what is that american dream for people like terracita?

>> the things about the united states that intoxicate people. i mean, if people understood, i think, the people i write about are enacting a love letter to america, not an evil assault, this is hope. you know? for example, this sounds like i'm not answering your question, but i'm trying to answer it the way my mind works. there's a scene in "into the beautiful north" where the people come to san diego. and they see lawns for the first time. that was me. i didn't see lush green lawn until fifth grade. and when we went up to claremont, san diego, claremont, little blue-collar community, i saw these green lawns. and i thought, oh, my god, americans are rich! americans are -- i had never seen anything that beautiful in my life. as the stupid little lawns.

because they were so green. because we could throw water away. so, you know, you could come to a place where your children can be healthy, where you can have access 24 hours a day to stuff that you can't have elsewhere, where you can, you know, lead the good life. yeah, that is expressed in physical stuff. better underpants. better hygiene products. whatever. tv. all that stuff. yes. but also, a clean street, you know. a pretty garden. a culture where there's not a potential death squad coming after you. if people had called this propaganda war about illegal aliens something different, what if the people had been called refugees? what if the people had been called pilgrims? that might have been a

completely different mindset. >> conquistadores. >> i always tell people, you know, my family, the original illegal aliens. they were conquistadores. they came here uninvited. they hit peru first, the arraya brothers and burned their way up to mexico. we were undocumented for sure. >> that's quite a lineage from visigoths. >> it is. the visigoths hit northern spain. the arraya family came out the visigoth invasion. they say that the genetic packet came from, let's say, involuntarily received visigoth genes. if that is politically protect. and then they came to the new world, and they set this journey north. you know, i talk about this in several books, but one has to understand that our manifest destiny pointed west. we have a long, broad continent, and we wanted to go west to get stuff. their manifest destiny went

north and south because they have a long, narrow continent. it made sense that they kept going north. we didn't like their manifest destiny. we liked our manifest destiny. i write columns for orion magazine now. the next one coming up is called manifest destiny. and it's about a moment that is germane to our conversation that really changed some of my feelings about a lot of this story. and that was driving west. we went to south dakota, which i love. i have a lot of brothers, pine ridge reservation. for whatever reason, i'm really close to a bunch of ogalala guys. we were heading to see some of those guys and heading to the badlands. they had original sodbuster huts, preserves. and my wife and i both love history. she's a journalist. i said, let's go see the sodbuster huts. this is great. and we went in. and i'm walking in american

history, american pioneer history. we entered into the sodbuster hut. and it was as though you had hit me in the face because it was in every detail, in every detail including the residual smell, this far later, the shack of a tijuana garbage picker. the same color. the same beat-up wood. the same homemade improvised furniture, the same newspapers put up on the walls, the same dirt floor. even the same bugs. they just had a sod roof. but otherwise it was the exact same dwelling, the same size, the same darkness, the same odor. everything was the same. and it was -- it was like somebody put the world on a spinning pivot because i thought, holy cow. this sad little shack is heroic to us because it's our myth. but that shack is depraved and

filthy because it's not our myth. you see what i mean? >> so why is this subversive literature? somehow i wasn't surprised, being familiar with your work, that two of your books were among those banned earlier this year by the tucson school district that declared an end to mexican-american studies and then actually went into the classroom, if i heard the story right, went into the classrooms and in front of the children took away the books that were about the mexican-american experience. and two of yours, "by the lake of sleeping children" and "nobody's son" were included in those -- >> and that one. >> "devil's highway" as well? >> they told me last year at the tucson festival of books, i was stopped by a tv camera crew, one of those gotcha moments, you know. what do you feel about superintendent blah, blah, blah going to ban "the devil's

highway"? i said what? why? and the reporter said, well, it's been called anti-american, and it has "devil" in the title. and i thought, you know, this is a comedy, right? it's ridiculous. anti-american? you know, it's being taught to border patrol agents at the academy. so if it's good enough for the border patrol, they're hardly marxist, you know, invaders. and i said, as far as "devil" in the title, it's on the map. are you really going to try to change history and remove things that you don't like off the maps? you can't do that. and i didn't take it seriously. so later on, this thing happened. now, the tucson unified school district's take on this is that you weren't banned, you were boxed. >> what do they mean by that? >> they didn't really ban it. they just took it out of brown hands. they banned mexicans, basically. they got rid of mexican-american studies. they put all of the books that

they took away from students. they boxed them and put them away. the catch-22 seems to be that anybody who's not from that ethnic studies world could teach it. but that there would be disciplinary action, as i understand it, if anyone complains about those being taught. so in essence, they've been what i call a soft banning. they're out of the picture. and -- >> but just look at the books. i brought a list of the titles. chicano, the history of the mexican civil rights movement, boxed. critical theory by delgado and stepanic, boxed. 500 year history of pictures, boxed. occupied america, boxed. rethinking columbus, the next 500 years, boxed. the oppressed, boxed. and then howard zenness, the people's history of the united states? >> he's a lefty. >> sandros cisneros, zapata's

disciple, feminism is for everybody, jonathan kozel's savage inequalities, luis rodriguez is always running, by the lake of sleeping children and nobody's son. you have to help me understand this. >> they got sherman alexi, they got rid of shakespeare. >> the tempest because it deals with race and class? >> yeah. they got rid of thoreau. let's celebrate that because he's been banned nonstop. they took away the poet, the papago tribe who's a macarthur grant genius grant winner, you know. how should that not be taught? you know, here's the situation. it's not about books. it's about ethnicity. it's about the power in phoenix, what i call the arpaio hip pypoy

and that whole crowd. if the tucson school district does not comply with what the big boys, the big bullies tell them, they're going to lose $15 million in funding. then what happens? so everybody's between a rock and a hard place. >> what effect has this had on the kids? >> it's heartbreaking. they cry, you know. when you come into something like ethnic studies and mexican-american studies, there's a good chance that you're slightly disenfranchised to begin with. you know, you're in a population that's frowned on by the power structure. you're an ethnic student, mexican-american or indigenous american or black american. you're probably not wealthy. you're often from that other side of town like i was. and you come into a world where you will be expected to read the great gatsby or something like that. and it's sometimes a very large

gap. and so you go to ethnic studies which give you literacy through themes that you understand and are comfortable with. and it is a gateway. if i had anything i could tell the tusd people or governor brewer, even though she'd never listen to me, it's a gateway into americanness not out of americanness because literacy opens your world. sure, it's not going to be 100% incorporated college attendance, but if you look at the numbers of that school district, you know, those kids were doing well in tests. they were doing well in placement. the teachers were award-winning teachers. that it's all gone. because of this craziness. and it's about mexicans. that's what it's about. let's face it. it's about that other. >> so what's happening now, luis? i mean, you've got alabama passing a severe

anti-immigration law. you've got the turmoil in arizona. you've got the -- whatever they call it, book banning, saying kids can't read these books. tell me what you see is happening. >> i have to say, my usual, you know, sunny facade is cracking because i'm starting to feel just it's hopeless, you know. i know it isn't, but in my da darkest hours, i just think -- and maybe this is what they want. but if these people could go out and see the effect on these beautiful, beautiful kids, the heart break and the -- you know, you live your life like this at a flinch, you know, you see kids who think the color brown is bad. you see kids who feel like there's no place for them. that is heartbreaking.

that is like -- i feel like the world is being taken over by villains from dickens. you know. all i can do -- i've tried everything. i think we have all tried everything. all i've got is art. and i keep flinging art at it and flinging art at it. and people are listening. things happen in small ways. and perhaps that ultimately, you know, is the answer. >> do you have sympathy for the anglos in arizona who say, we don't want to change our community? >> their community? >> well, this is what they say. we don't -- we want our neighborhood as it was. what do you say to those people when -- you must talk one on one with some of them. >> all the time. >> tell me about that. do you see their plight? >> oh, yeah, absolutely do. i'll put it in microcosm. i was in missouri. i was speaking at truman state.

>> college there, right? >> yeah, great college. and there was a poetry reading. and my host said, because it was a typical student poetry with a lot of outrageous stuff. and my host said, wow, the limbaughs aren't going to like this. and i thought, the limbaughs? oh, that's funny. yeah, rush limbaugh's from here. they said no, the limbaughs. they're over there. and i looked over there, and there was this family listening to this stuff. and i thought, holy cow, really? yeah, that's rush limbaugh's cousin. so i thought, wow, you know? and they were kind of, like, you probably don't want to talk to them. you should leave them alone. the next day there was a barbecue at a fact ulty house, and the limbaughs came. colonel john limbaugh, fine army colonel. he said, how do you do, sir? he said, you can call me john. you know, i'm a military son. i said, no, sir, you're a colonel, and i'll call you sir. and he looked at me and said, you know, i've been reading this

"devil's highway." and i've been trying to figure out your agenda. and i haven't found a liberal agenda. and i said, well, i am a liberal, sir, but my agenda was to tell the truth even if i didn't like it. and he warmed -- you know, and then we sat and spent the afternoon to the great shock, i think, of some of my pals having barbecue. and i think if we can -- the limbaughs and me, unlikely pals, having barbecue in missouri, how can that not be a fantastic bridge? and they came to the reading. you know, we had a really good time. i think in america, we forget that we love each other. we are forget we need to love each other. and part of the task, i think, is being able to speak. and that is fully aware of the horrors of civil rights. >> but if what you say, luis, is true, why is the rhetoric so feverish? why is the anger so poisoned?

if we really love each other? you can't say that about the people who pass the law, banned the books in tucson. >> i think people forget. people forget. my ultimate message is always, there is no them. there is only us. and we function so well having a them. we always have to have a boogie man. there's always somebody that's a bad guy lurking. part of the issue with the latino, of course, it stabs me. it hurts me. and it outrages me. i'm angry about it. but i understand that part of what's happened is a relentless propaganda war. illegal, illegal, illegal, alien, alien, alien. often, you know, the angriest people i confront are people who are good christian churchgoers. and i always ask them, let's open the bible together. and let's find out how many scriptures tell you to kick

around the widow. how many scriptures are there that tell you do not care for lost travelers or wanders or the hungry or the poor or the oppressed or the downtrodden. how many tell you, do not care for the orphan? let's see. let's see how many bible scriptures tell you to go out there and kick the butt of a poor person wandering in the desert. let's see that. >> so what's behind it? what's behind the -- you know, propaganda is propaganda because it works. words change reality, right? they can change reality within us even if they don't change the reality around us. so you've got this incredible vitriolic conflict going on. what is it in human nature? >> i don't know. it's a poisonous thing. i grew up with it. i was born in tijuana. and then when we moved north just a few miles to this little suburb called claremont, which i write about sometimes, i suddenly -- i didn't know i was

another until i got there. i did not talk with a tijuana accent, you know? i thought people were called vato. >> vato meaning -- >> dude. >> dude. >> it comes from the spanish conquest where the spaniards apparently in those days called each other chivato which means goat. i chivato. and it became vato, and it went passed down through the ages as dude, guy. but, you know, i had that talk. and i had that accent. though i looked irish. and we got to this neighborhood. and suddenly i went to fifth grade. and i was in the restroom my first week of fifth grade. and this spectacularly white boy, you know, freckles, bright red hair, epitome of who i'd be with from now on. said to me, you're a greaser wetback. and i thought, what is that? and i said, i'm a what? he said, you're a greaser

wetback. and all the boys laughed at me. walked out of the bathroom. and i remember sitting there thinking, well, you know, you're a kid. and you internalize these things. and you take them concretely. and i was convinced somewhere on my back there was a patch of greasy couldn't find, right? and i was looking for the grease. i couldn't find it. that was the most spectacular moment for me, when i realized i was other. i hadn't known it before. >> well, now, that's a common experience for immigrants in america. spick, all of that. how do you process it? >> i came home that day. my father processed it for me. his may be partially why i'm a writer. i got home. my father worked in bowling alleys, night crew. he was a very smart, litterate man who had achieved quite a bit in mexico, couldn't get there in the united states. he couldn't find his way in a lot of ways. you know, he knew english was

paramount. so he memorized the dictionary. five pages a week. i had to give my father english tests. but i got home, and my father was getting ready to go to the night shift. and he always smoked pall malls. he would tip his head. he was looking at me, what's the matter with you? nothing. meho. nothing. i can see you're upset. what are you upset about? they called me a name. really? what name did they call you? i said, they told me i was a greaser. and he looked at me just for a second. and i knew because he went like this. i thought, oh, here it comes. and what i thought was going to happen didn't happen. because i thought he was going to go on a diatribe about these people. and he says to me, meho, in the western expansion across the united states, the americanos came in covered wagons. the wagons were made of wood,

entirely of wood. the axles was made of wood, meho. so they would get to about texas. and the friction would heat up the wood. the wagons would burn down. he said, you know who the only people in the world with the technology to grease the axles? mexicans. i was looking at him. he said, so when they call you a greaser, hold your head up because it's a term of pride. and i knew my dad was lying. i knew he -- but it was so brilliant. i even as a fifth grader, i saw my father take a moment of shame and through a story, right, turn it into something to try to lift his kid up. and then he went off to the bowling alley to clean toilets all night. >> now, he was born in mexico? your mother was born on staten island? >> my mom -- >> in new york? >> my mom was from originally --

yeah, she was born on staten island, but the family are virginians. >> but here's this paradox. many paradoxes in your story, in your life. your parents battlebattled. >> yes. >> over your ethnicity. your mother used to scream at you. what did she say? >> i can't repeat it on the air, but she would get so flustered, you know. she was a lady, you know? she was a junior league lady with those roots in virginia. but she was under siege by poverty and mexicans and spanish. she could not make me understand that i was something other than a border rat. so she would basically say, i'm so sick of your mexican, we shall say shenanigans. and she called me louis, or dear boy. she would always move her hand like this and say dear boy. she'd make me use a cup and all the fineries, and my mexican relatives thought, what is that? americans drink coffee out of doll cups. they didn't get it.

>> and your father, what did he think about this? >> didn't like it. luis, luis, mexicano. and as their marriage got worse and worse, you know, people wonder why i write about the border. it's not just that i came from the border. it's at the border, i always tell people this, the border ran right down the middle of our depressed little apartment. the kitchen was the united states. the living room was mexico. walter cronkite was the ambassador to both countries. that's the only time we came together is we would sit down to watch walter cronkite. and my father had a chair that never moved. and my mother had a chair that never moved. so much so that the little holes from the legs were sunk in the carpet. they never moved. they never got close to each other. there was a little table in between with a bowl of fritos and cashews and a glass of thunderbird, or sherry. and everybody sat there watching the television.

very tense. they had separate bedrooms. they got more and more separated. so i felt like this weird border ran down the middle not only of the apartment but of our lives. so part of the time i was an american boy. part of the time i was a mexican boy. and they didn't cross. >> they did not meet. >> they did not meet. have you decided on which side of the border you really belong? >> i'm an american, aren't i? i mean, this is where i live, you know? i consider myself american. i was educated here. i love it here. i choose english as my chosen -- you know, craft. now, when i go to mexico, if i'm there a couple of days, i start dreaming in spanish. isn't that interesting? so i am very proud of my roots and my cultures that i share. but see, i have this illusion from the way i was raised that i believe everybody is at least

bicultural. but my task i think all my life as a writer has been to find that common ground, that communication zone where we can talk and we can get our souls together, you know. >> you keep trying to take that fence down metaphorically. >> bridges are better than fences. >> is that deliberate? >> yes, sir. it is. it's not necessarily that fence. like i said, you know, the fence went through my house. the fence -- the mexican border is a physical metaphor for everything that separates human beings. and all you have to do is turn on any debate, turn on fox news, you know, turn on rush. and you'll know that there are fences everywhere, on the right, left, white and black, gay and straight, christian, muslim, jew. the fence is everywhere, and any audience i speak to has border fences everywhere. >> i brought just a page from

"devil's highway." would you read it? >> i would. oh. >> tell me about it. >> i think that human details are haunting. and tell stories all by themselves. and when i realized that these men who died were people, like i said earlier, that were disparaged at home and certainly disrespected here and were disrespected after their death, on the american side, mocked, you know, used for political gain. on the mexican side, i thought, you know, hypocritically used as suddenly folk heroes. oh, our heroic suffering brothers and they were given this big state return of the corporati corpses. then as soon as the bodies were out of camera range, that was it. the families were abandoned and left to their own devices. they were victimized over and over again even in death. and when i started the investigation, the angry mexican consul allowed me into his death

archives which were the endless piles of paperwork of all the dead. and in these files, manila file folders, there are ziploc baggies with whatever they took out of the pockets. whenever you open the baggies, the stench of a rotting corpse comes out. one of the first things i got was a guy's comb. and it had hair. and it looked like brylcream. he's gone. that's all he has left in the world. and they don't know his name. and i'm smelling him. and the women are lighting candles. and i think in my naivety, they're doing a religious -- and it's because it stinks. jasmine, vanilla. they're all, you know, supermarket scented candles because they don't want to smell that, that crushed me. and i realized that if i could somehow make people understand, this is what's in the man's pocket. maybe it would make him alive to

you even though he's gone. so that's what this pass j is about. somebody had to follow the tracks. they told the story. they went down into mexico back in time in the head, into paupers' graves. before the yuma 14, there were the smugglers. before the smugglers, there was the border patrol. before the border patrol, there was the border conflict. before them all was desolation, the desert itself. these are the things they carried. john doe number 36, read "underpants. mesquite beans stuck to his skin. john doe number 37, no effects. john doe number 38, green socks. john doe number 39, a belt buckle with a fighting cock inlaid, one wallet in the right front pocket of his jeans. john doe number 40, no effects.

john doe number 41, fake silver watch. six mexican coins. one comb. a belt buckle with a spur inlaid. four pills in a foil strip, possibly advil. or allergy gel caps. john doe number 42. furor jeans. "had a colored piece of paper in pocket." john doe number 43, green handkerchief, pocket mirror in right front pocket. john doe number 44, mexican bills in back pocket. a letter in right front pocket. a brown wallet in left. front pocket. john doe number 45, no record. john doe number 46, no record. john doe number 47, no effects. one tattoo, "maria."

john doe number 48, converse knockoff basketball shoes. john doe number 49, a photo i.d. of some sort. apparently illegible. they came to the broken place of the world and taken all together, they did not have enough items to fill a carry-on bag. >> luis arraya, thank you very much for joining me. >> thank you. it's an honor. >> you'll want to hear more from luis. and this week you'll have a chance when he joins us for a special live chat on our website, billmoyers.com. go there for more information and to start asking him your questions. i'll be reading what you and luis have to say.

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