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A Conclusively Final Trip to Chihuahua - Arizona Range News: News

E.M. Hendricks for the Range News | Posted: Wednesday, June 20, 2012 12:00 pm

In February, I saw I had a few days I could be gone from the homestead here in Cochise County. I thought I'd visit the ranch deep in the Sierra Madres in Chihuahua where I'd spent so much time years ago. Cieneguita de la Barranca, a community of several dozen people, is located in the pine forests above the deep canyons of the Batopilas and Urique Rivers. A geography not too dissimilar to the Grand Canyon region of Arizona but inhabited. The home of Tarahumara Indians and isolated ranchos far from roads and towns.

Sure, I knew that there were risks. The military is deployed to supplement civil law enforcement and the murder rate is extreme around Ciudad Juarez. Instead of crossing in the afternoon and spending the night in Casas Grandes as I ordinarily would, I crossed before dawn and allowed a long day to reach the Sierra. I wanted to take the old route through the eastern flank, the shortcuts I knew, through the small towns where I had had little adventures over the years.

From Agua Prieta, Sonora to Janos is a highway I have used since it was newly paved in the 1970s. It crosses the continental divide at the San Luis Pass and descends into the ranch country of Chihuahua where American interests once had huge spreads. This is Villa country. There are still vast ranches, good grass and small communities. Closer to Casas Grandes are Mennonite campos and Mormon farms.

Some 200 miles south is the municipio of Guerrero. I suspect that I was noticed in the town of Guerrero and followed out. My main misgiving in the planning was that had only a late model pickup truck. A four wheel drive, eight cylinder Toyota. It attracts too much notice in poor rural country and makes it hard to stop and talk to people.

Four o'clock in the afternoon. A Jeep SUV suddenly stopped just ahead of me on the two-lane highway, on a curve at KM17, up against a rock face. One individual walked up and muttered something about �get out�. No, I said, I wasn't getting out. It got a little heated. He said that he needed the truck. No, I wasn't giving up the truck.

We call them asaltantes, car-jackers. They are after newer trucks. Years ago there was a steady supply of trucks stolen in the United States and brought south. Chuecos, they were called, crooked in the sense that they had no license or registration. Increased vigilance at the border has sharply reduced the supply. Traficantes need fast trucks.

I shifted to reverse and backed up at high speed for a ways then spun around and headed back north at high speed. They were right on me and, at speeds of seventy or eighty, fired shots.

I'd hoped to outrun them to San Pedro or to the town of La Junta but I came up on a slow moving pickup and my pursuers forced me off the road. I called to the driver of the pickup. He emerged but saw the four men with guns and prudently drove off.

My assailant reappeared at the driver's side window, now greatly incensed and had a pistol in hand. The door was locked from the outside and he couldn't get it open and I knocked away his hand as he reached in. He called to his companions to help get this guy out of the car, looked me in the eye and said you're going to die. He then stepped back and raised the pistol.

That was the moment I thought I'd run out of ideas. I'd hoped to make it so difficult to carjack me that they'd give up.

Suddenly soldiers approached in a single truck from the south and sounded a siren. He quickly jumped in the jeep and they took off. I waved the soldiers on after them and followed a ways to see the outcome. They turned off the highway with the soldiers in pursuit and I stopped. I thought it might be awkward if the asaltantes ducked the pursuit and came back out.

I continued on to Creel, once a thriving tourist destination, the gateway into the Copper Canyon region. There are many large and well-appointed hotels that now stand nearly devoid of clientele. It is a busy town but the engine of progress has stalled. Few families have been untouched by violence.

I asked around until I located Ramon, the son of the family I'd intended to visit. He was glad to see me but appalled that I was there. You can't come here like that anymore, indicating my vehicle. Things have changed. Then I told him the story.

We spent the evening going over what I should do now. His son would take me out to the ranch the next day. Getting out of the mountains safely was a problem. He described a number of murders and hijackings around Creel in the last few weeks and described the municipio of Guerrero as particularly dangerous now. I asked how business operated. How people moved about. He said nighttime travel is out of the question and mornings and afternoons were dangerous. Midday in a convoy of several vehicles was only moderately life-threatening. His own son had been shot and killed by local police and part of my trip was to deliver to Ramon photographs I had of that son as a young boy.

I'd known Ramon since he was a teenager. He remembered how I had walked, driven and roamed on horseback around the mountains and canyons where he grew up. I know his entire extended family and dozens of mutual friends. I'd slept alone on trails and in many remote ranch houses. Word would always precede my return to his mother's house of where I'd been, what I'd done. Passing Tarahumaras would deliver news faster than I could travel. It was all of another era, he said, you can't do it anymore.

His mother had passed away since I'd been down there last, but his aunt and uncle were still out in Cieneguita and declined to move to town.

In the morning I returned and picked up Ramon. He directed me to the army post on a hill above Creel where we explained my predicament to the commander. I admitted that I now knew I had no business here and wanted out. After an hour or so of consultation up the chain of command, they decided on an escort out to the Cuahutemoc barracks. The regional commander, an army colonel, wanted to interview me.

The military vehicles are Dodge trucks with a mounted, belt loaded automatic rifle extending over the cab. Six men seated on benches, one standing with the rifle and two inside. The local commander rode with me. We talked of my trips, who I knew and how things had changed. He'd gotten the report of the previous afternoon and was well aware of how the character of the sierra had changed. He knew military control would fail. There is too much money not to start a corrosive action among officers. This is a police function. The state police were thoroughly corrupted and have probably been largely disbanded by now. The federal police are concentrated at checkpoints and on the border. Local officials fear for the lives of themselves and family. Thirty soldiers in Creel could not even claim civil control of town much less the area deeper in the sierra. Ramon had told me that beyond Creel out toward the ranch there is no law at all.

I suggested that it was a pity that the rescuing soldiers had not shot the malditos in pursuit. He said yes, but it was a delicate human rights issue for them to open fire on civilians. They had gotten away.

At San Pedro they turned me over to two trucks from the next district and we drove to Cuahutemoc. At the military base the colonel saw me right away. He'd received a report of the incident and had the description of the Jeep. He questioned me closely as to the appearance of the individuals, the manner in which I was stopped and whether shots had been fired. I especially noted the cold steady eyes of the gunman. The colonel was apologetic that I'd been threatened and admitted that he could offer no security. He did say that in civilian clothes he would not drive those highways at night.

I emphasized that I was headed out via Chihuahua city and that I did not intend to return. There was never a hint of making it difficult or expensive to close the incident. No soldier ever asked to open baggage or examine the truck until the checkpoints near the border.

Mexican presidential elections take place later this year. The term of Mr. Calderon was focused on confrontation with narcotraficantes. That the initiative has largely failed is likely to influence the selection of a new administration. There is a wider political issue involving U.S. policy on guns and drug smuggling with no clear focus. Some think there is a deliberate effort to keep Mexico, indeed all of Latin America, from first world status. Others blame the character of Mexicans themselves. As the breakdown of public security continues to play out in the northern states of the Republic, failed state conditions prevail.

(EM. Hendricks is a resident of Northern Cochise County.)

Years ago I used to drive 600 miles south of the border to Baccarac lake pulling a boat and tenting on the shore. In the small mountain villages east of Los Mochis, we would stop and give the matrons some cloths we collected by donations for them to give out. We also bought tubs of candy at Price Club... no elect or phones but somehow all the kids knew we were coming and would be out on the dirt roads... grab a handful and toss while going by.

I always threatened my kids I would take them to see the joy of a kid getting a penny candy, next time they cried for not getting the latest video game.

Don't know if you could get there and back now.

Kent

I was a readin' away in what turned out to be mighty fine thread, when I gazed on this jewel. I blew fluid, or leaked from every port of my body.

Good grief man, that is funny.

seemed appropriate, at the time.

I think some 'Adult Beverage' may have been involved in that posting.

GTC

Hey, it was buried pretty deep in the thread too. Things were progressin', a few short, but harmless jabs had been thrown, and a lot of informative posts were keeping me scanning along, when - WHAMO!

Set 'em up, and knock 'em down. I'm still wobblin' to my senses.

In 86 87 dating a girl in TX who had family deep in Mexico in the Sierra Madre Used to go down and visit them.

Wonderful people.