Newspaper clippings add authenticity and immediacy to the narrative. One, from the Arizona Daily Star, recounts the deaths of thirteen refugees abandoned in the scorching desert by the coyote paid to take them to safety. Another, from the Arizona Eye, tells of the survivors of the trek through the desert who were forced to drink shaving lotion, deodorant, and their own urine in order to avoid dehydration. Bencastro integrates other true incidents into his fiction, several of them quite recent and recallable. In one, a rookie policewoman fires on a Salvadoran man in Mount Pleasant, a heavily Salvadoran section of Washington.
Several immigrants witness the scene, and immediately rumors begin to fly.
Some say the immigrant was executed. Some say he was abused. Riots break out, and the violence attracts hoards of television crews, focusing national attention on the plight of the refugees. Calixto and Juancho wind up taking different routes toward adapting to life in the United States. Juancho becomes enamored of an American girl, turns away from his culture, and insists on being called Johnny.