The Tortilla Curtain

Content Warning: This section contains a reference to rape.

Throughout the novel, the coyote often appears as a symbol of the undocumented Mexican immigrant, and the battle against the coyote population mirrors anti-immigrant rhetoric. At the start of the novel, one of Kyra’s dogs is killed by a coyote who jumps the six-foot tall fence around the Mossbachers’ backyard. Later, the fence is replaced with eight feet of chain-link, which does nothing to stop another coyote from running off with the second dog. Delaney, who supposedly supports living in harmony with nature and people from around the world, writes a column about coyotes using language that echoes what other characters use when discussing immigration. He writes that he “has begun to feel that some sort of control must be applied” (219) on the coyote population, using a sensationalized story of a baby taken from a patio as an example of the apparent danger. He argues that coyotes are “cunning, versatile, hungry and unstoppable” (221), similar to the threatening language that other residents in Arroyo Blanco use to warn of the danger of undocumented immigrants.

América also employs the symbolism of the coyote by equating herself to the wild dog, although not for the same reasons as the likes of Delaney and Kyra. Deep in her depression after being raped, América sees a coyote and stares at it until she imagines “herself inside those eyes looking out, […] know[ing] that men were her enemies” (184). Like the coyote, América means the world no harm but feels hunted and threatened by men. Among the men she has been harmed by is the coyote who helped her and Cándido cross the border from Mexico. Coyote is Mexican slang for people who guide undocumented immigrants across the border into the US, some of whom rob, abandon, or otherwise exploit their charges. The bilingual pun underscores the coyote’s liminal status in The Tortilla Curtain: a figure that crosses boundaries and sometimes causes harm, yet whose activities are the result of the pressures put on them by the unfair and prejudiced policies of rich white Americans.