The Guardians

51 pages • 1 hour read

The Guardians

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2007

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-2

Chapters 3-4

Chapters 5-7

Chapters 8-10

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Chapters 5-7Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 5 Summary

Regina

Gabo is hiding out at Father Juan Bosco’s house. Regina has never been a fan of their local priest, and she is dubious of Gabo’s choice to stay with the man. She goes to see her son, but the priest tells her that Gabo does not need to see her and that he is going to remain with him until he is ready to enter the priesthood. He judges Regina for having “let” Jesse, El Toro, and Tiny Tears befriend him and feels that he can keep the boy safer than she can. As she is leaving, Gabo pokes his head out of the door to tell his aunt that he is fine. She reflects that losing both of his parents to treacherous border crossings must have been traumatic for him and that he has clearly found solace in God.

Gabo

Gabo thanks God for delivering him from a prisoner’s fate. El Abuelo Milton picked him up from the police station and allowed Gabo to drive his truck on the way back to his house. He disparaged El Toro and Los Palominos, and Gabo had to admit that Milton was right: Jesse claimed to be his friend but took his shoes as “payment,” and El Toro took Gabo’s Saint Christopher medal, his only keepsake from his father.

The next morning, Milton makes him breakfast and calls Regina, explaining that Gabo stayed at his house the night before and will be staying with the priest thereafter. Regina is upset, and Gabo is unsure what to say to her. He and Milton talk about the region’s fraught history. Gabo reflects that most adults he knows are interested in where their family histories intersect with those of famous historical figures like Pancho Villa, a Mexican revolutionary. He thinks of his father, who didn’t want to become another “invisible” Mexican working low-paying jobs on the northern side of the border. Gabo wonders where his place is in either the US or Mexico.

Regina

Insects plague Regina, and she is always warding off one infestation or another. She invents a “moth destroyer” that sucks up the creatures, but Gabo objects. Miguel comes over to help her deal with bugs, and she catches him looking at her body. She realizes that she is in a skimpy outfit and not quite fit for company.

Miguel

Monsoon season comes hard and fast, and Miguel observes that the rains are especially heavy this year. He helps Regina when he can and also does chores around the house for Crucita. He reflects that this house, which he still pays for, is no longer his. The two still see each other for their children’s sake, and “family dinners” have become a new part of their post-divorce life. Crucita surprises him at one such dinner by asking if he would like her to ask around about Regina’s missing brother. He wonders if she has sensed his interest in Regina and can’t quite tell, but he is grateful for her offer of help.

Chapter 6 Summary

Regina

Regina is in the Grupo Beta offices to inquire about Rafa. The organization, which operates out of an office in Juárez, Mexico, aims to stop undocumented immigration to the US by encouraging would-be border crossers to remain in Mexico. She learns that crossings have become more difficult because of the violence of the coyotes and trafficking rings. She is sure that Rafa, who knows the desert well and could cross on his own if such things were still allowed by the narcos and their cartels, has fallen victim to the coyotes who led him across. Edwina, a worker at Grupo Beta, explains that if this is the case, there is no way to determine what happened to him. Regina recalls her own first crossing and the difficulty that she and her mother had getting their papers in order. All immigrants, she reflects, just want legal status. They know that without it, they are not truly considered “human” in their new country.

Gabo returns to Regina’s house, not because he wants to but because Father Juan Bosco disappeared. He apparently went to Rome, and Regina speculates that he is in trouble with the Church and has been ordered to appear before his superiors. Gabo begins sleepwalking, and the doctors say that it is probably the stress of his father’s disappearance causing this alarming new habit. He has also taken to sitting outside at night in a trance-like state, praying. Gabo characterizes his religiosity as passionate, but Regina thinks that obsession would be a better descriptor.

Miguel

The minutemen, a group of racist, anti-immigrant crusaders, have traveled from Arizona to patrol the border in Sunland Park near Cabuche, New Mexico. They claim to be patriots who want to help out border patrol, but Miguel and his neighbors don’t think that border patrol truly needs help. They harass and racially profile people, and last week, they demanded papers from El Abuelo Milton. Miguel is deeply opposed to the minutemen, and so are the rest of the townspeople, but there is little they can do.

Miguel gets a call from Milton: Ten bodies were found in the desert and are now being held at the morgue in Juárez. At first, Miguel does not want to admit that one of these men might be Rafa. Milton cautions him that even if the truth is hard to bear, knowing is better than not knowing.

El Abuelo Milton

El Abuelo Milton grew up in northern El Paso. He recalls that the Rio Grande, which runs through El Paso and Juárez, used to change its course regularly; the same patch of land would be in Mexico one year and the US the next. The two governments remedied this problem by running the river through a concrete channel, officially demarcating the US-Mexico border. There are still problems in the town. Drugs and violence are endemic, and Milton has lost count of how many tunnels he has heard about over the years that were constructed to transport drugs and people across the border. For a long time, he worked behind the bar in a cantina and encountered all kinds of criminals. This is how he knows to recognize Tiny Tears as a real threat to Gabo: She clearly has her sights on him, and she already has a criminal record.

Chapter 7 Summary

Regina

Regina finds out that El Abuelo Milton has taken Gabo across the border to the morgue in Juárez to look for his father. Gabo does not have papers, but Milton is well-connected, and many people owe him favors. Regina supposes that Milton could be relatively sure that the two could make it across and back safely, but she knows that the trip is not entirely without risk.

El Abuelo Milton

El Abuelo Milton knows that he took a risk bringing Gabo across the border, but he feels that he needs to help the boy. The morgue is upsetting. The bodies are decomposed and difficult to identify. One mother is identified only because she has three fingers remaining on one hand, each wearing one of her rings.

Regina

Regina tries to prepare a variety of teas and traditional, herbal remedies to help Gabo with his sleepwalking, but nothing is effective. Miguel also brings by a small pouch of roots that he acquired in Taos, New Mexico, but that also fails to stop Gabo from wandering at night.

Miguel

Miguel is still at work on his history of the “dirty wars” in the Americas. He is interested in the way that US government policy impacts Latin America and wants to explore how American intervention has destabilized the region. He is also interested in the way that American consumer habits drive the drug trade, and he blames the US for the rise of cartels like the one that now controls much of Juárez. When he was younger, Juárez was a relatively safe party town where teenagers could go to drink on the weekends. A few years ago, he and Crucita witnessed a terrifying shooting in Juárez, and he reflects that times have changed since his youth. He and Crucita are both interested in finding out what happened to Rafa, but Miguel is increasingly sure that he fell victim to violence at the hands of cartel-connected traffickers.

Regina

Gabo organizes a party for Regina’s birthday that she thoroughly enjoys. At it, he performs a beautiful song, and she and the rest of the partygoers are moved to silence. She reflects on how enjoyable it is to spend time with Gabo, Miguel, and El Abuelo Milton.

Chapters 5-7 Analysis

These chapters further develop the character of Father Juan Bosco. He is part of the novel’s broader discussion about religion in the Borderlands, and his characterization in particular speaks to Catholicism’s fraught history in the region. As the local priest in Cabuche, Father Juan Bosco should be a role model, a man of faith who leads by example. However, he lives “in sin” with a woman whom he claims is his housekeeper but whom the entire village knows is much more. Regina judges him for his hypocrisy, thinking, “Who in Cabuche doesn’t know that Herlinda Mora is his mistress and not there just to look after him” (98). Father Juan Bosco’s characterization is meant to call into question the notion that clergy are above suspicion and to further cast doubt on the assertion that religion is always a positive influence in the lives of individuals and their communities.

Gabo is increasingly reflective and thoughtful in this section, and he learns hard lessons through his interactions with Los Palominos. After his arrest, he and El Abuelo Milton have the opportunity to discuss crime and the adverse impact that Jesse has had on Gabo’s life, and moments like these are meant to add to Gabo’s characterization and showcase his moral development. In this way, Gabo himself becomes a kind of foil for Father Juan Bosco because although he looks up to the priest, Gabo is more contemplative and ethical than his religious mentor. Gabo takes seriously the idea of being Christ-like in his behavior, and at various points in the novel, he demonstrates his commitment to “right action” in addition to “right thought.”

Gabo and Milton also discuss bigger-picture ideas such as regional instability and the way that the border impacts both individual and cultural identity. Gabo learns from Milton that the shifting course of the Rio Grande was used to alter the US-Mexico border and it was not until the river was rerouted through an artificial concrete riverbed that the boundary was truly set. This discussion of the Rio Grande makes the river into a symbol—its natural fluctuations represent the true nature of the landscape, while the concrete river symbolizes the artificial nature of national borders. Gabo reflects on the implications of this and realizes that in the Borderlands, it is difficult to characterize any person, place, or community as solely Mexican or solely American. Gabo wonders what his own place is within this history and thinks further about the way that he, his father, and his aunt define themselves as Mexicans and Americans. This meta-awareness of Identity in the Borderlands becomes a key part of Gabo’s characterization and further demonstrates his intellectual growth as an adolescent on the cusp of adulthood.

Likewise, this section engages more overtly and explicitly with the politics of immigration through Regina’s conversation with the staff at Grupo Beta. Here, she learns more about the impact of cartel violence and organized crime on migrants and broader trends in migration. She is told that “migrants are having to try more often to cross without being apprehended and are using different routes to do so which are more dangerous” (116). Regina understands these changes on a personal level because she lost first her sister-in-law and now her brother to border violence. The woman with whom she speaks at Grupo Beta also confirms another unpleasant fact of which Regina is already aware: Migrants are seen as less than human by many in the US. These kinds of harmful stereotypes and dehumanizing characterizations—shown in the narrative through the organization’s propaganda posters—are part of why Regina chose to establish herself legally in the US and why she so often urged Rafa to do the same for himself and Gabo. She understood that becoming “legal” was the only real path toward equality and recognition in her new homeland.

Miguel further explores the fraught politics of the border and immigration through his reflection on the increasing influence of the cartels in the region. He makes explicit the connection between US policy and practice and the drug trade: It is US foreign policy that destabilizes Latin America and US consumption that fuels the growth and production of drugs like marijuana, opium poppies, and coca. Without the US government’s intervention in the affairs of sovereign nations and American consumption of illicit drugs, the violence that is understood as a Borderlands problem would not exist. Miguel places the blame for the region’s violence not only on the cartels but also on the US, and his work continues to be a way for Castillo to provide vital historical context in her narrative.