Harper's has a great piece by Cecilia Balli on what happens to border crossers who are apprehended. I didn't know this, but the Mexican government has established an organization called "Grupo Beta" to provide migrants with food, shelter, and (apparently) really long lectures. I also didn't know that an estimated ninety percent of border crossers are robbed Mexican and Central American "bandits" at some point of their journey.On the fiction side, I'm currently reading The People of Paper by Salvador Plascencia; its main characters are a father and daughter who make the crossing from central Mexico, via Tijuana, to a town in California called El Monte. It reminds me of Gabriel Garcia Marquez at a magical-realist peak, with very entertaining shifts in narrator and perspective. Some snapshots: a woman created out of paper by a self-taught origami "surgeon"; a flower picker who decides to wage a (non-violent) war against Saturn; a Tijuana mechanic who, instead of fixing cars, makes little mechanical turtles. I'm not done yet, but still perfectly comfortable recommending it.
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