What is a Coyote?

On the cover of The Coyote and a One-Armed Man, you’ll see a coyote. In this case, the animal we’re all familiar with. However, that is not what the word coyote refers to in the title. The coyote that Lefty encounters walks upright on two feet. The use of coyote here describes a person who helps smuggle humans across the border. A coyote specifically smuggles people across the Mexican border into the United States.

While the use of the word coyote to describe a human smuggler may be recent, the concept is not. US companies in the early nineteenth century hired middlemen to smuggle laborers across the Mexican border. One industry that used this technique was the railroads, as they built the tracks across our country. These middlemen were called enganchadores, which is translated “hookers”. We’ve hijacked that term in more modern times equating it with prostitutes. The enganchdores may have been the precursor to the coyotes.

Why the term coyote to describe a human smuggler? I came across several plausible reasons. The word coyote is the same in English and Spanish. And both refer to the four-legged creature that roams most of both countries.

The word coyote has an Aztec root of cóyotl, which is translated as trickster. This is a fitting name for a human smuggler, as their goal is to trick the border patrol and get their cargo into the United States. And it adequately describes the four-legged animal. They are smart, crafty predators. I’d say a human smuggler is also a predator. They prey on the hopes and dreams of people that are struggling in Mexico. These predators charge enormous amounts of money to bring families into the United States, often dumping them over the border and leaving them on their own from that point on.

On Quora someone suggested that immigrant smugglers must be smart, wily, and sly to get their people across the border and not get caught. This definition can also describe the animal coyote, except in the case of Wiley Coyote, who tries to catch the roadrunner but always fails. Natural coyotes are survivors and good adaptors. They live in all kinds of environments and can live undetected amongst many people. An attribute of the human coyote is the need to go undetected.

In my book, there is one character who is a coyote. We meet him in the prolog as he brings the Placido family across the border. Miguel, the father of the family, has paid this coyote a considerable amount of money. It’s a larger than normal sum because Miguel used to work for a cartel in Hermosillo, Mexico. Part of the fee is for the coyote and part is for the release of his duties to the cartel. The coyote is also employed by the same cartel. This is common. Coyotes are often associated with cartels. It’s a big business. While many coyotes are smuggling people like Miguel’s family that want a better life in the United States, others are smuggling girls being sex trafficked, people carrying drugs for the cartel, and criminals coming into the US to do the cartel’s bidding.

Often, coyotes do not work alone, but in large organizations. In The Coyote and a One-Armed Man, Ricky has several people that work with him to help him transport families across the border. In real life, a coyote organization can often be a large, hierarchical organization. There are interior coyotes that are stationed in a town in Mexico, often their hometown, where they have influence. They recruit people from their hometown. These predators find people unhappy with their situation and convince them to pay their organization a lot of money to be transported to the US, where they are promised a better life.

There are border, or exterior, coyotes who live near the border and are the ones that help people cross the border. There are people in the organization, often US children, who are used as distractions, like throwing rocks at border control agents. They also put spikes in the roads. US children are recruited for this because the penalties if they are caught are much less severe.

The use of coyotes has increased over the last years due to the heightened security on the border. People trying to cross on their own are often caught. The methods coyotes use to get people across vary. The method I chose to use in my book is via a tunnel in the desert away from any population and away from the usual patrol areas.

Ricky, the coyote in The Coyote and a One-Armed Man, is seen later in the book as well as in the prolog. He has a small, but important part. Why did he get the headline on the title? For no other reason than I thought it made a good title. Let me know what you think. Do you like the title? When you read the book let me know if you agree that it applies.

Of course, being fiction, nothing is as simple as Ricky helping the Placido family across the border. There’s a catch. And this catch drives the last half of the book. What is it? You’ll have to read the book to find out.