Into the Beautiful North by Luis Alberto Urrea and the US-Mexico Border

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Into The Beautiful North
In the novel “Into the Beautiful North” by Luis Alberto Urrea, focuses on Nayeli is a nineteen-year-old girl, who leaves Tres Camarones, a Mexican village and goes to the United States through Tijuana to find her father who was last known to be n Kankakee, Illinois. Nayeli is inspired by the movie Magnificent Seven and is concerned with the ongoing drug trade in Mexico and crime, where she is accompanied by her friends Yolo and Vampi and Tacho. Into the Beautiful North also highlights that anyone can make positive change in the society as is the case with Nayeli and female characters who embrace changes. The novel’s position is that borders are necessary to reinforce ownership, but they also symbolize exclusion and separateness.
The people of Tres Camarones are averse to change and trying separating themselves from others and put borders so that they are not influenced by others. “Traditionalists voted to revoke electricity, but it was far too late for that. No woman in town would give up her refrigerator, her electric fan, or her electric iron….. The modern era had somehow passed Tres Camarones” ( Urrea 4). For some in the town, there was a need of some of borders to keep out those who are not from the area, but as men left the area heading to the US for work, the drug smugglers found the place ideal for continuing their drug operations. Some of the residents at Tres Camarones are far removed from the U.S. border, but erect borders to keep the community inside because of fear of the unknown.
Nayeli and her friends seek migratory work in the US, but they still face many obstacles because there are language barriers and cannot find well paying jobs having crossed illegally. The US-Mexico border is tone of the major barriers major barrier that Nayeli and her group have to cross to live in the US, but while there is no sense of belonging as they are outsiders who do not integrate into American life. “ICE agents, customs agents, soldiers in camouflage, Border Patrol agents, agents with DEA on their windbreakers, EMS ambulance techs, dogs, white men” (154). To Nayeli, the Mexican American border, Border Patrol and the immigration officials all represent a border that separates her and father as she had to go through the officials to get closer to her father.
Physical barriers are at times an emotional response to fear, which ignores how communities are interconnected and the barriers highlight separateness ad ownership of a place. Migration is increasingly an emotive issue in the US and as people move into the US, there are changes in the demographics of their adopted home. Urrea mostly focuses on the physical barriers at the border and how immigrants from the Mexico and Central America go through a treacherous journey to be in the US. "What is that?" Nayeli asked, gesturing at the barrier with her frozen treat. "Are you kidding?" the man asked. She shook her head” (Urrea 104). It is when people realize the barriers that are ahead hat they become more informed about the challenges ahead and what they have to confront as is the case with Nayeli.
A border is a dividing line that signifies where places belong and for one to bridge the border they need to take risks. The U.S.-Mexico border wall has over time reduced illegal crossings, but this has also benefited the coyotes (migrant traffickers), and Nayeli and her friends explore this option to cross to get to the US. For some on both sides of the border, they have to depend on each other to survive, and even the places are interconnected the border represents a different culture and people on different sides protect what they own both physically and culturally. The four fri...