The events that occurred were awful. I think Ramos covered the topics he did with sensitivity. I give three stars for the -style- he chose in his writing. The first time I read this a few years ago, I had never heard of the tragedy. I was heartbroken, chilled, and infuriated all at once. I didn't have the emotional capacity to put my thoughts into words, so I didn't review the book. It took two days for me to process it emotionally, that first read. Now, I wondered if I could, so here I go.

Ramos, in the introduction, says he's telling the story that four survivors told him. He makes a big deal of saying readers should check out court stuff and various other things related to the tragedy...and thens pends half the book detailing the things he said he wouldn't cover. I was glad for the information but annoyed that he forgot immediately he'd stated differently in the introduction. On second read, I read it as an ebook. I didn't want to wait, and it was available immediately, so. The ebook formatting was not one I responded to well, to such a degree that if affected my reading experience and I lowered the rating a little. Nothing to do with Ramos' writing. He seems to hold back in terms of--something. Both times I read this, I couldn't help but think how well he'd probably write a short story. His writing is vivid and speaks of details he may have possibly edited out for brevity. I don't know journalism, so don't quote me on that. He clearly chose, to my mounting annoyance, to be incredibly repetitive every few pages, with entire paragraphs being similar except for synonyms. Often, he mentioned something he'd detailed in a few pages previously. Did he thing readers were losing interest or something? I was not. Did he think readers forgot things? Not really.

This was not told in chronological order. It flipped back and forth several times per chapter. Ramos used cultural differences between the US and the Central American countries the late immigrants were from to further humanize the tragedy. It worked. He'd abruptly switch, though, into another aspect of the investigation, and it was tiring after awhile. Another thing he did throughout the book that got on my nerves was, he'd write straightforward factual sentences and then ask a question after. You're the journalist. You tell me. These were often tragic sentences, too, and then he'd--the following questions were clumsy, bordering on insensitive, sentences designed to drum up emotions. It's already sad! Quit asking if I am sad. Quit trying to made me sadder with your questions when your facts already are.

Ramos chose to portray a wife-beater as a misunderstood guy and "both sides"-es the issue of domestic violence. He spends two sentences on the fact that the wife-beater also kidnapped--took without permission or knowledge of his wife, who was the biological mother of--his child. This action led to his son's death, as they were both in the truck. Paragraphs upon paragraphs are splattered in this book about what a loving father who just made a bad choice, this man is. To quote playwright Philip Dawkin's play "Charm": "The best gift a man can give is to respect his child's mother." That was not present, and I was enraged at Ramos' apologia. Due to it, I won't and haven't read any of his other books.

How he chose to end the book was no doubt supposed to be emotional, with quotes from people involved in different ways, but it made me weary. ( )

In 2003, 19 would-be migrants, mostly from Mexico, died of heat (estimated to have reached over 150 Fahrenheit in the Texas summer) in a hermetically sealed, uncooled transport trailer. In writing this book, the author interviewed four of the survivors as well as the mother of Marco, aged 5, the youngest of the migrants and the only minor to die. Incidentally, Marco was a victim of parental abduction as well as the venality of human smugglers; by the time his mother learned that he had been removed from Mexico by her estranged husband, the child was already in the fatal truck.

Although published two years after the debacle occurred, this book reads as if it had been rushed into print. First, Ramos relied very heavily on only four interviewees who originally appeared in a TV documentary with him. I do not know whether additional informants could have rounded out the book, but I suspect it would have helped. Certainly delaying publication until the trials of the smugglers were complete would have given the book some closure. There was much mention of the fact that the prosecution was seeking the death penalty for the driver of the truck, an atypical development in a human trafficking case, but the book ends without any further detail on the fate of Tyrone Williams. From my internet research I learnt that apparently his trial, unlike the single trial that had occurred when Jorge Ramos wrapped up the book and sent it to the publishers, was rather dramatic and revealed information about the victims' last hours that Ramos did not have, writing that it "would be impossible to prove one way or another [as only] Willams and his companion, Fatima Holloway, know what they heard." It is an understatement to say that the book suffers from this omission.

Less importantly, but still frustratingly, Ramos also fails to give much of a sense of the survivors' lives in the aftermath, beyond the bare fact that they have nightmares.

The thought which the author wishes us to take away from the book is found on page 149-50: "If, instead of hunting down immigrants and penalizing illegal border crossings, both countries could find a way to regularize the entry of immigrants in an orderly fashion so that Mexico might provide the US economy with the workers it needs, border deaths would become a thing of the past, and the countries would finally legalize something that occurs every single day, regardless of the law." ( )

My review was deleted somehow (not the first time!!! what's with this app!?!?) and I'm not going to re-write it but I'll summarize with a quick: wow... hard book to listen to but great story, great narrator (audiobook). Recommend. ( )

By the end of the book one it is just as upsetting that the author, the immigrants, & Mexican officials blame American immigration policies for the deaths rather those responsible. Those crossing the border illegally are breaking the law & they know the risks involved.
I am in no way saying that they deserved what they happened to them, but over seventy-five percent of the immigrants crossing over on the ship William Brown who died tragically & they were entering the country legally. Is it not to be considerd one of "the worst immigrant tragedies in American history" just because it was so long ago? ( )

Surprisingly boring.

On May 14, 2003, nineteen people died while en route from a small Mexico/Texas border town to Houston, Texas, in what at the time was called the "greatest illegal immigrant tragedy in modern history." An estimated 73-84+ undocumented immigrants – most of them Mexican citizens, with a small minority hailing from other Latin American countries, such as Honduras – were packed into the back of a hermetically-sealed, locked-from-the-outside tractor trailer, without water, air conditioning or fresh air. Over the course of four hours, 17 people asphyxiated to death before the truck's driver finally pulled over to rest. When Tyrone Williams – who was contracted by coyotes to transport the immigrants to Houston, on what should have been the final leg of their trip - opened the trailer and discovered the dead, he fled from the scene. Most (if not all) of the immigrants were apprehended by local police and ICE, and were given temporary work visas so that they could remain in the U.S. and testify against their human traffickers. Two more immigrants died at the hospital, bringing the death toll to 19. The coyotes were charged with a variety of offenses, including murder.

Jorge Ramos, a native of Mexico and anchor for Noticiero Univision, weaves survivor, witness and official accounts of the tragedy together in DYING TO CROSS. The bulk of the story is told from the perspective of the half dozen or so survivors who were willing to speak to Ramos. The account of the perilous four hours spent in the trailer, for example, are primarily survivor accounts, with liberal use of direct quotations interspersed with medical explanations of what the victims' bodies and minds would have been going through, given the circumstances. Ramos also offers brief biographies of a few of the immigrants, as well as accounts of how they came to buy a spot on that fateful trailer. The book concludes with a description of the aftermath, however, as there was no real trial to speak of, this section of the report is almost anti-climactic. Ramos attempts to use this tragedy to illustrate failings in U.S. immigration policy as well as U.S./Mexican political relations, but his analysis seems a little scattered and superficial. (It's not that I necessarily disagree with his conclusions, rather, I don't feel as though he made a very comprehensive argument in favor of a more open and humane border policy.)

Given the book's subject matter, DYING TO CROSS is surprisingly boring, and I can't really pinpoint why. It seems as though the survivors' accounts of the trailer ride should have been more nail-bitingly suspenseful – but, not so much. There was a lot of talk about prayer, Satan worship, God-begging, etc., which got really tiresome, really fast. Case in point: all of the women passengers survived; one of the surviving men attributed this to the fact that the women started praying to God immediately, while the men "wasted" their energy on "frivolous" activities – like banging on and rocking the trailer, in a failed attempt to get the driver's attention. Um, yeah. Trying to stop the truck – what *were* they thinking!? Plus, the women's 100% survival rate couldn't possibly be due to the fact that women's bodies tend to retain more water than men's, for a variety of reasons including menstruation and oral contraception, right? (Ramos loses major cred for failing to counter these superstitious claims with scientific explanations.) Naturally, the survivors all thanked God for sparing them, proclaiming it a "miracle," etc., which begs the question of why God favored them and not the nineteen who died – one of which included a 5-year-old boy. But hey, maybe that's just the cantankerous ole atheist in me.

http://www.easyvegan.info/2009/04/16/dying-to-cross-by-jorge-ramos/ ( )