Coyotes (book)

[1][2][3] After his experiences traveling the rails with Mexican migrant workers during his undergraduate ethnography research on American railroad hoboes—which resulted in the publication of his first book, Rolling Nowhere—Conover was inspired to try his participatory journalism method in a new context.

To discover what becomes of Mexicans who desperately slip into the United States, Ted Conover disguised himself… walked across deserts, hid in orange orchards, waded through the Rio Grande, and cut life-threatening deals with tough-guy traffickers….

[6]In the fifth chapter of Coyotes, Conover writes about the four months he spent living with his migrant worker friends in their family homes in Ahuacatlán de Guadalupe, in Querétaro, Mexico.

[1] He also writes about his experiences living, cooking, and teaching English in crowded temporary housing with these migrant workers in the United States, where he captures the challenges, lifestyles, and dreams of these men and the wives and girlfriends who occasionally accompany them.

[1] At various points throughout the book, especially during encounters with American and Mexican law enforcement officials, Conover struggles with his own fears of the legal implications inherent in traveling and living with the migrant workers.