How would you feel if you immigrated into another country with hopes of a

better life, then having everything ripped away from you in a matter of months?

In “The Tortilla Curtain,” written by T. Coraghessan Boyle, a story about a

couple who immigrates to the United States

in hopes of finding work for a better

life than their home country of Mexico. The couple some how becomes entangled

with the rich, white “Liberals” of the Arroyo Blanco Estates, who seem more and

more conservative by the day. Boyle shows how the attitude of the upper class

Americans can deny the simple needs of the immigrants because of how they look

and who they are, illegal “aliens.”

Candido and America is an immigrant couple from Mexico who moved to the suburbs

of Los Angeles, looking to raise enough money to afford an apartment in the

States. The couple is camping in the forests of Topanga Canyon, below the rich

homes of the Arroyo Blanco Estates, because all of their money is robbed from

them as soon as they cross the border in to the United States. From the get go

the immigrants are dealt nothing but bad luck. While on the way back from the

labor exchange, from looking from work, Candido is hit by a car… the car of a

so-called-Liberal Delaney Mossbacher. The paths of the two couples have collided

and now they are entwined, whether or not they even know it. Delaney follows the

man down in to the canyon, when they finally do meet he pays off his victim with

twenty dollars and plunges into a spiraling resentment of immigrants with each

successive assault endured by his white Acura. His live-and-let-live philosophy

becomes further twisted to the right with each immigrant incident, until his

wrath and lack of warps him beyond all sense. He can’t be an old-school liberal

and live his cozy life, so he chooses to protect his standard of living at the

expense of other living things – like the Mexican immigrants who seem to have

gone unnoticed prior to their contact with his car. Candido and America have to

work their asses off just to survive, while Kyra is trying to profit by keeping

them out. Every time Candido takes one step towards progress it seems that he

has to take two steps backwards. Candido and America plan to take a trip into

the city after the labor exchange closes down so they can find work. They stop

and eat at a restaurant and meet a Mexican man who offers them a place to stay

for a couple of nights. Candido goes to check it out with the man, he is

ambushed and all of the apartment money is taken. They have to resort to eating

out of the dumpster in the back of the restaurant.