"Drug cartels imperil immigrants in the desert," by Sacha Feinman, Los Angeles Times
19 Jul 2009 14:07:00 GMT Source: Pulitzer center
by Sacha FeinmanLos Angeles Times July 19 2009Photograph, David Rochkind Reporting from Altar, Mexico —
On a cloudless afternoon in northern Sonora, migrants and drug runners
lounge in equal numbers under scattered
mesquite trees, playing cards
or sipping water. The sun climbs high and the temperature rises well
over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. In such heat, nothing, human or otherwise,
moves more than required.
Known
as La Sierrita, this otherwise unremarkable patch of Mexican desert is
a final stop for those looking to enter the U.S. illegally. The Arizona
border is only a 40-minute walk north. As
soon as the sun sets,
everyone here will be gone.
It is not difficult to distinguish between those trying to smuggle themselves and the burreros
looking to haul marijuana or
cocaine. The former wear ill-fitting pants
and keep their eyes cast toward the ground. The latter dress head to
toe in black, a curious fashion choice for a trip through the desert.
Some wear ski
masks.
Angel de Jesus Pereda, the local coordinator for the governmental immigration agency Grupo Beta, approaches one of the burreros.
With a weary sigh, he asks the man to
stand up, lift his shirt, and
turn around. The man complies; Pereda finds no weapons. He tells the
young man to be careful in the desert. The man spits and turns back to
his card game.
"My specific mission is to look for and protect
migrants, to try and convince them to turn back," Pereda said. "There
isn't anything I can do about guys like that. They might just be
moving
drugs, but they might also be planning to assault the others."
It
was not always like this; migrants and drugs once occupied separate
worlds. But tougher border enforcement
has pushed the groups into the
same obscure parts of the desert. The close company adds a new element
of danger to migrants' already perilous journey, and may be responsible
for a drop in immigration
and economic decline in towns that depend on
the migrants.
"The burreros sit there together with the
migrants during the day and then attack and rob them after they move onat night," said Pereda, sliding into his government-issued pickup
truck. "That's one reason why they have the masks."
Tighter space
Beforearriving at La Sierrita, a migrant looking to cross this section of the
border must pass through Altar, also in Sonora state. Once a sleepy
agricultural outpost, Altar has reorganized its economy
around human
smuggling. Rows of stores sell backpacks, canned goods and
electrolyte-infused soft drinks, while headhunters slip up behind the
shoppers, whispering that they can arrange for a competent
guide and a
safe journey into the U.S.
During busy years, as many as half a
million migrants pass through this town of 10,000, according to Grupo
Beta. But fewer are coming through, and
Altar is hurting.
Arrests
in the Tucson border area were down by nearly a third between October
and April, according to U.S. border officials. The Mexican government
reports a 25% dip in
its emigration rate. The recession is largely to
blame, but analysts in the U.S. say the lack of jobs offers an
incomplete explanation for why immigration in the region is apparently
dropping.
Mexico's drug cartels have become a more formidable presence
here, taxing the coyotes and threatening their human cargo as they make
their way to the border.
As drug smuggling groups find
their
profits pinched by tighter border enforcement, they have moved into
human smuggling, according to U.S. law enforcement officials. And with
good reason: The average migrant pays about $1,300 to
$1,800 to be
smuggled past the bolstered Border Patrol as well as fences,
surveillance towers and other new security measures. What once was a
wildcat operation with marginal profits has become big
business.
"It's
always been a cat-and-mouse game with the narcos," said Danny
Rodriguez, a spokesman for the U.S. Border Patrol's Tucson sector. "As
we seize more firearms
and narcotics, they rethink their business. They
are improving their operations while we improve ours."
The
residents of Altar worry about the local economy, and talk of little
else.
The town's entrepreneurs are convinced that the cartels have
scared off much of their client base.
A flophouse, one of
dozens scattered throughout the town, sat empty, three blocks off
the
central plaza. Its four tiny rooms resemble prison cells: concrete
walls and tightly arranged bunk beds. Guests pay about $3 a night for a
plank of plywood and a tattered blanket. A pit-bull puppy
is leashed
next to the open-air shower.
"When we're full, we'll have 100
migrants staying here at a time," said the manager, who, like many
businesspeople here, asked not to be
identified for fear of
retribution. "This year, we haven't had more than 40 people in a single
day."
Early on a recent workday, a man and his wife set up their
pushcart in the
central plaza, offering instant coffee and tamales to
the migrants waiting to head to the border.
"I used to make
1,000 pesos [about $75] a day; now I make about 100," said the
husband.
"I used to work with a coyote, too, getting people across the border.
Not now, though; it's too dangerous."
Risking retribution
The
plaza
empties by 1 p.m. Those who remain seek refuge under sparse
shade. They are mostly migrants stranded for another day. A few are
headhunters.
"Five, 10 years ago, I would bring
trucks of
migrants into the U.S. through the Papago reservation," said one
headhunter. He wore cowboy boots and a beat-up baseball cap, and
carried two cellphones attached to his belt. "I
had to pay $100 per
truck to the Indians. They didn't ask me any questions. I brought
people, marijuana, cocaine . . . It was all the same to them. But you
can't do that anymore."
Nearby, drivers get impatient as their rusted, seatless vans languish half-empty.
"We're leaving, we're leaving, we're leaving, 2 for 1, 2 for 1, 2 for 1, let's go, let's go, let's
go!" they shout.
Before
making the trip, these drivers say, they must tell a local
representative of the drug cartels how many people will be inside each
of the vans, which are
marked with stenciled numbers. They pay 1,500
pesos -- about $110 -- per head, depending on the migrant's country of
origin. Cartel members wait along the road, taking careful inventory.
Vehicles
without authorization or with more passengers than reported
risk violent retribution.
"In the last two to three years,
there have been fewer customers, less money, and I don't plan
on doing
this much longer," said a guide who goes by the name Martin. A slight
man lacking his two front teeth who looks almost sickly, Martin
chain-smokes Marlboro Reds.
"I've
been doing this for eight
years, and it used to be much easier. Today there is more Border Patrol
in the area, which makes it harder, and more violence in the desert,
which makes it more dangerous.
Each year, we have to pay a higher tax
to the narcos and be more careful about the routes we move through. You
have to be very smart to be a guide these days. You have to know your
routes, or you can
get killed."
The vans creak with the weight
of up to 30 people, and prepare to move out along an unpaved road known
locally as "the route of death."
If all
goes well, two bumpy,
uncomfortable hours later the vans will arrive in the border town of
Sasabe. The migrants and their guides will disembark and make their way
to remote ranches such as La
Sierrita.
Stories of trips gone
wrong are legion. "There are stories you hear all the time, about trips
that end in violence," said Marcos Burruel, who runs Altar's only freeshelter for migrants. "If you haven't paid the correct tax, they will
stop you, make everyone get out, drive the van to the side of the road
and burn it."
Whispers of bloodshed
along the road and its
surrounding areas move from one migrant to the next, straddling the
fine line that separates anecdote from urban myth. But they are
credible enough to give some people pause
before leaving Altar.
One
migrant tells of a friend of a friend whose group witnessed a shipment
of marijuana while waiting outside Sasabe for nightfall. Cartel members
held them for a
week, he said, keeping them from making phone calls
while the drugs were rerouted. Another migrant speaks of chauffeurs
murdered for underreporting the numbers they carried.
"It's
no
surprise that the presence of the cartels is affecting business in
Altar," said David Kyle, sociology professor and research director of
the Gifford Center for Population Studies at UC Davis.
"A migrant has
historically calculated risk by considering the classic dangers of
random crime and the desert environment. Those aren't so different than
the risks against him in Mexico, so they
can be rationalized. But not
criminal syndicates. The nature of that risk is probably unacceptable
to most, because the fear isn't that they just go after you, but that
if you cross them, they are
powerful enough to go after your whole
family, your whole village."
Back at La Sierrita, two migrants
leave a card game and seek out their own patch of shade. They lie on
their
backs, tired and sunburned, surrounded by liters of warm water
and an empty bag of potato chips. Nearby, proprietors of a tiny bodega
drink cold beer and keep an eye on the burreros and the
noisy card game. Everyone does their best to mind their own business and watch their own backs.
Cartel members are expected by sunset. The burreros need their loads before they
can set out for Arizona.
In the increasingly complex structure of operations here, the cartels are the border's executives. The burreros are the employees, and the migrants
represent a hybrid of client and product.
Each group has its own goal. None trusts the others. A prison-yard tension hangs over the desert.
Once they cross the line, they
will part, each to a new set of perils. First, they wait together for darkness.Sacha
Feinman is a freelance writer. This story was researched and reported
under a grant from the Pulitzer
Center on Crisis Reporting. This article is part of the Los Angeles Times' Mexico Under Siege series. See article as it appeared in
the Los Angeles TimesSee related reporting by Sacha
Feinman and photographer David Rochkind here.
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