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Themes In The Devil's Highway

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C) Bare-Life Prevention through Deterrence The following two main concepts are explored: prevention through deterrence and spaces of exception. These concepts are a consistent theme throughout the book, The Devil's Highway. First, for this section, the concept of prevention through deterrence is explored. To briefly summarize, prevention through deterrence is sacrificing the life of an undocumented migrant to save the lives of citizens. Since the life of the migrant is unimportant it often times remains anonymous. Urrea (2004) illustrates this point in the following passage: "John Doe#36: red underpants, mesquite beans stuck to his skin. John Doe #37: no effects John Doe #38: green socks John Doe #39: a belt buckle with fighting cock on belt, one wallet in the right front pocket of his jeans" (Urrea, 2004, p. 31). …show more content…

The rescuers who came to look for them did not know who they were rescuing. The dead were coordinates on topo maps, identified by GPS numbers. They were all collected in the same general subset of coordinates; they were all within a region bound by N.32/W. 113. Some Of the bodies of the dead were never identified by name. At best, names were given when the survivors identified them later in the wild free-for-all that followed the rescue operation as everyone fell upon the health center in Yuma (p.

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