The Line Becomes a River by Francisco Cantú review – life as a US border patrol agent

In January an Arizona humanitarian organisation issued a report citing numerous instances of border patrol agents slashing water containers left for undocumented migrants crossing the desert on foot. The agents’ actions have been officially disowned, but the US’s arid southern borderlands have long been deployed as a natural barrier against unwanted incomers. In 1994 the Clinton administration instituted a strategy called Operation Gatekeeper, the purpose of which was to “harden” security in towns close to the Mexico border, thereby funnelling those determined to cross unofficially into more arid and isolated parts of the desert, where they were more likely to die. The wanton waste of lifesaving water, in other words, is consistent with preserving the desert’s lethality.

In his memoir of his nearly four years as a border patrol agent, Francisco Cantú describes the borderlands and his work there with a raw-nerved tenderness that seems to have been won from both the landscape and the violence he was implicated in. Told in three increasingly soul-searching parts, The Line Becomes a River frequently feels momentous.


Source : theguardian