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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. On page 120, why is Beto upset?

2. What happens to Jose's middle son that Jose tells Cantu he is worried about on page 168?

3. What is Cantu's grandfather's name?

4. What does Cantu's old contact in Border Patrol tell him about Jose's family being able to speak with him at the courthouse on page 179?

5. What does Jose share with Cantu every morning?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does POW stand for at Border Patrol?

2. What does Cantu do to try to help Jose when he has trouble with U.S. immigration after leaving the U.S. to visit his dying mother in Mexico?

3. How does Cantu get to know Jose, and how does their friendship grow?

4. What did Mexican president Felipe Calderon base his campaign on?

5. What are the three categories of metaphors that sociologist Jane Zavisca identified in media coverage of migrant deaths?

6. On page 135, what does Cantu say became the hallmark of Ciudad Juarez sometime around the mid-1990s?

7. What does the woman whose feet Cantu bandages tell him about himself pn page 154?

8. What does Beto tell Cantu he thinks is a harbinger of death in his family on page 120?

9. Who asks Cantu to help Jose when it becomes clear he is having trouble getting back into the U.S.?

10. What does the sicario tell the interviewers started to happen in his personal life after years of working for the cartel?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

How would you describe Cantu's feelings about his Mexican heritage? Do his feelings about his own background change during the course of the book? Write an essay explaining your answer, citing specific references to the text to support your arguments.

Essay Topic 2

When Cantu is transferred to a desk job in intelligence at the Border Patrol Office in Tucson, Arizona, he has a difficult time adjusting to the work. Write an essay analyzing Cantu's feelings about the change in his job duties and why it is so difficult for him to transfer from field work to desk work.

Essay Topic 3

Soon after Cantu starts his field work with Border Patrol, he begins to get a sense that the work is not what he expected. He quickly becomes demoralized and disturbed both by what he sees and by the structural limitations of the job itself. Write an essay discussing how Cantu's earliest experiences performing field work with Border Patrol contradict his hopes and expectations about what the job would be like and what he may have been able to learn from it.

(see the answer keys)

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