The truck judders over weeds and shrubs, bushwhacking on a barely visible track, kicking up dust alongside. I know where we are now and I know where we’re heading and once again I feel hope burn inside.

‘This is the way?’ Turrón leans his head out of the window. In the rear-view mirror Benjamín catches my eye and quickly draws his seatbelt over his lap. Equally quickly, I do the same. At the click Turrón pulls his head back in. ‘I said, you sure this is the right way?’

‘This track leads to the old mining road, and from there to the town,’ Benjamín says.

‘Oh, and what makes you the tour guide?’

Benjamín says nothing.

El Turrón snorts. ‘Once an illegal always an illegal, huh?’

‘I’m an American citizen.’

‘Sure you are.’ Turrón laughs mirthlessly. ‘So where are you from, Mr American Citizen? Los Angeles, New York, Chicago?’

When Benjamín doesn’t answer, Turrón turns the gun on him. ‘I said, where are you from?’

‘Nopalillo.’

‘And that’s where you’ll always be from, a shithole town in the south. You’ll never be an American citizen. Look in the mirror, border bunny; unless that’s fake tan or; your face, you’re not the right colour. Brown people work for white people. Isn’t that right, Alicia?’ He slides his tongue around my name and, despite the heat, I feel bumps rising on my skin.

I’ve never felt threatened by a man before. Oh, sure, there’s always some guy opposite you on the underground or eyeing you up in a deserted petrol station, but this fear is corrosive and it eats away at my insides.

‘You pollos are all the same.’ Turrón sucks air through the gap in his front teeth. ‘You think that’s what it’s all about. To be an American citizen! For what? So you can go to the United States and scrub toilets? Me, I am proud to be Mexican. And now your friend, Señor Duval, I hear he wants to be a Mexican too. Isn’t that right, A-lic-ia? He wants to be a coyote!’ He laughs bitterly. ‘Americans!’ His mouth twists in disgust. ‘You steal our land, you use our people to clean up your mess, and now you want our jobs too.’ His voice takes on a reedy edge. ‘You think I couldn’t have dealt with your professor a long time ago?’ He strokes my cheek with the gun. ‘Oh, any time, baby, any time. But I have respect for my brother, I tried it his way first. Oh yes, and you know why? Because I have respect for other men’s work, that’s why.’