The Guardians

Gabo is Regina’s 15-year-old nephew and one of the novel’s narrators. He is a thoughtful, contemplative teenager who is kind and “polite to the point of being antiquated” (10). He sets himself apart from fellow students at school with his mature behavior, and his teachers characterize him as a gifted student. He is sensitive and kind to animals as well as people, as evidenced by the injured hawk he finds and takes the time to bury. Part of Gabo’s commitment to kindness is rooted in his faith: He is a devout Catholic who hopes to join the priesthood when he finishes school. The portions of the text that he narrates take the form of prayers, and he notes at one point that “sweeping is [his] favorite quehacer […] because it allows [him] time to contemplate God’s eternal love” (18). Regina worries that his religious beliefs are a coping mechanism and that they reveal a deep melancholy at the loss of his parents, but Castillo depicts Gabo as a truly devout believer. He enjoys reading the Bible, but his interests are diverse; he also reads Upton Sinclair, The Communist Manifesto, and various works of Russian literature. This emphasis on intellectualism within the context of Catholicism positions Gabo as a Jesuit, an order that was widespread in Mexico/New Spain.

Like his father, Rafa, Gabo is also contextualized against the backdrop of cartel violence in the Borderlands. He lost his mother as a young boy, and the novel begins with his father’s disappearance. Both ultimately died during failed border crossings, and Gabo’s story is representative of the violence that is unfortunately common along the US-Mexico border. Tiny Tears, Jesse, and El Toro are true threats to Gabo, but he is drawn to them in hopes that they can help him find Rafa. Gabo dies as a result of being sucked into the violent underworld of the El Paso/Juárez area, and his death is meant to speak to the many innocent lives lost because of proximity to the cartels and their brutality.

Despite his character’s connection to Borderlands violence, Gabo embodies the novel’s interest in family, community, and belonging. Regina cares deeply for him, as do Miguel and El Abuelo Milton, and he is shown to be embedded within multiple support networks throughout the novel. In addition to Regina, Miguel, and Milton, Gabo’s teachers recognize his skills and abilities, and they value his presence in their learning community. Father Juan Bosco also understands that Gabo is special and nurtures his burgeoning interest in serving God through a career in the clergy.

Rafa is Regina’s brother. He never appears in the novel, but its events revolve around his disappearance and Regina’s search for him. He is characterized in part by his status as a repeat migrant. Born in Mexico, Rafa firmly identifies as Mexican and does not want to be seen as a “gringo.” He chooses to live in Mexico but crosses and re-crosses the border to perform seasonal and temporary work in the US. Rafa’s cross-border movements speak to the porosity of the US-Mexico border, as well as to the lived experience of many Mexicans and Mexican Americans for whom the border represents little more than a line in the desert sand. Rafa’s family and community are spread out along both sides of the border, and he crosses it to spend time with one group or the other. The border does not truly divide anyone in The Guardians; it merely demarcates a violently enforced national boundary.

More so than any other character, Rafa speaks to the violence that plagued the Borderlands region during the turn of the 20th century. He lost his wife to organ traffickers, who killed her during an attempted border crossing, and he falls victim to cartel violence during a crossing of his own. Rafa is disempowered, both because of his class position and because of his status as a migrant without working papers. Because of this, he is especially vulnerable to organized crime in the area. Through Rafa’s character, Castillo hopes to highlight the unequal conditions that immigrants must contend with and draw attention to the risks that migrants take to have the opportunity to live and work in the US.

Miguel is one of the novel’s narrators. He is a history teacher who works with Regina at the school where she is a teacher’s aide. He is characterized initially by his interest in politics and social justice, and he is the only character who “calls himself Chicano” (13). Through Miguel’s interest in Chicanismo and in the civil rights movements of the 1960s, Castillo introduces the idea of Chicano as a political identity. Miguel embodies the notion that for Chicanos, cultural identity is inseparable from the struggle that Mexican Americans face for equality, recognition, and acceptance in the US. For Miguel, the personal is political, and he hopes to raise awareness for various social justice causes through his teaching and writing. He evidences his keen intellect in the connections he draws between the goals of the American Indian Movement, the struggle for Black liberation, and Chicano civil rights. Although he has not yet finished his PhD, his dissertation covering the US “dirty wars” in Central and South America further speaks to this novel’s interest in social justice.

Miguel is also a flirt and a self-described (possible) narcissist. He admits that his toxic behavior was likely the cause of his marriage’s failure, he dates quite a bit after his divorce, and he is half-heartedly interested in the much older Regina. He takes care of his appearance and strives to look dapper. Regina often takes note of his fancy boots, Stetson hats, and dressy attire. Despite this, Miguel is a complex character and a man of substance. His friendship with Regina is authentic, and his desire to help her find Rafa is genuine. He wants to be a positive role model for Gabo and the rest of his students, and even in his post-divorce relationship with his ex-wife, Crucita, he is kind and attentive.

Tiny Tears, Jesse, and El Toro are young people whom Gabo befriends. They are connected to the local gang Los Palominos and are active in petty criminal circles. Their characters represent a threat to Gabo and his family, and Jesse in particular is shown to be duplicitous and manipulative in his interactions with Gabo. That Jesse pretends to know someone who can help Gabo locate his father but asks for Gabo’s new shoes in exchange for the information speaks to his callous nature and dishonesty; he takes Gabo’s sneakers knowing that he does not actually know anything about Rafa’s whereabouts. El Toro, because he is connected to both the region’s gangs and the shadowy underworld of the cartel, speaks to the climate of violence that characterized Juárez and El Paso during the 1990s and early 2000s.

Tiny Tears is a tragic, complex character who is both “a very scary girl” and a victim of the complex trauma that characterizes her family (46). Tiny Tears, whose given name is Maria, does not have supportive parents, and when she becomes pregnant, she is unable to care for her child. The surrogate family that she finds in Los Palominos further victimizes her. When Miguel and the police locate Crucita, they find that she has been held captive, naked and drugged, in the coyote’s house alongside Tiny Tears. Tiny Tears’s status as a gang member did not protect her from their violence, and her character is meant to demonstrate the complexity of gender-based violence in Borderlands communities: No woman or girl is safe from the violence, even those who are connected to it.