Read Online The Short Sweet Dream of Eduardo Gutierrez by Jimmy Breslin - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Jimmy Breslin
Tags: General, Social Science
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crossing. As only one or two guards are available to a courtroom, the Mexicans are always shackled like dangerous animals. All day long, courtrooms are filled with the chiming of chains.
At border crossings like Tijuana and Laredo there are signs up saying that there have been four hundred thousand, five hundred thousand—who knows how many—pounds of pot seized at this location. It is something to be satisfied about, like bridge painting. Upon finishing, you turn and start back, chipping and stroking. With drug arrests and seizures, you catch Mexicans and their drugs; meanwhile the majority of drugs come into the country from Puerto Rico. Drug users are supposedly impoverished and despondent and helplessly addicted, and will steal the nearest silverware. Drug rehabilitation can’t possibly be effective with these derelicts. The only thing to do is put a million in prison.
And far away from studies and statistics are the people who use drugs because they are fun. Do I use cocaine? You bet. Am I addicted? Don’t be silly. Then why do you use it? I told you. Because it’s fun.
The community of Sells, Arizona, sits alone in the border desert on the three-million-acre Tohono O’odham reservation, with its Customs Service patrol. The name Tohono O’odham means “people of the desert.” They have been at this place since the sand began. Their ancestors were the Hohokam, who can be traced back to 300 B.C. Agents in this unit must be at least one-quarter Native American.
Here are the two agents from this headquarters pulling up to the three strands of barbed wire that make up the border fortifications. They are Doug Bothof, of the local tribe, and Kevin Carlos, a Sioux from South Dakota. They are here on account of drug smuggling, not illegal aliens. The three strands of wire are the fence that is supposed to be keeping all of Mexico’s immigrants and marijuana out. It isn’t even government wire. It has been put up by rancherson the reservation. The top strand has been cut and the end hooked once around the post to hold it up, as if it had not been touched. The second and third strands were the same. Unhook all three and this part of the wire fence becomes a gate.
The two agents watch a van parked just on the other side of the wire, in Mexico. A woman is selling water to the immigrants about to sneak across and whisky to members of the Tohono O’odham tribe who cross over because tribal laws do not allow whisky on their lands.
The agents drive along the wire at five miles an hour, hanging out the windows and training on the ground below the most complex, miraculous technology: eyes that have been trained by their blood since time began to look at the ground and see great pictures and precise diagrams in the empty dirt.
They stop and get out. Bothof looks down at the tire marks of a vehicle that has come right through the wire.
“They’re old. You can see people walked across them the next day.” The outline of a foot is over that of the tire treads. Then he mutters, “Look at these people. See?” In one spot, a second set of treads suddenly runs over the first set. “They crossed here in two vehicles. Vans, I guess.”
“Drugs?” Indicating the footprints.
“Immigrants. The footprints over the treads are too shallow for somebody carrying a heavy pack.”
The agents are stocky, with equipment bringing Bothof to about 200 pounds and Carlos up to 260. They carry Steyrs, Austrian rifles with a thirty-round clip, plus another clip on their belts, a radio, receiver, a big Magnum handgun, and a flashlight.
Border areas like this one are speckled with buried sensors that pick up people walking, sometimes even their speech. Any activity lights up on terminals back at the base. But so often the metallic technology isn’t worth the air its signals soar through. Whoever passes over the sensor can be gone before anybody gets out to thespot. So the agents track. The depth of the footprints indicates the weight
At border crossings like Tijuana and Laredo there are signs up saying that there have been four hundred thousand, five hundred thousand—who knows how many—pounds of pot seized at this location. It is something to be satisfied about, like bridge painting. Upon finishing, you turn and start back, chipping and stroking. With drug arrests and seizures, you catch Mexicans and their drugs; meanwhile the majority of drugs come into the country from Puerto Rico. Drug users are supposedly impoverished and despondent and helplessly addicted, and will steal the nearest silverware. Drug rehabilitation can’t possibly be effective with these derelicts. The only thing to do is put a million in prison.
And far away from studies and statistics are the people who use drugs because they are fun. Do I use cocaine? You bet. Am I addicted? Don’t be silly. Then why do you use it? I told you. Because it’s fun.
The community of Sells, Arizona, sits alone in the border desert on the three-million-acre Tohono O’odham reservation, with its Customs Service patrol. The name Tohono O’odham means “people of the desert.” They have been at this place since the sand began. Their ancestors were the Hohokam, who can be traced back to 300 B.C. Agents in this unit must be at least one-quarter Native American.
Here are the two agents from this headquarters pulling up to the three strands of barbed wire that make up the border fortifications. They are Doug Bothof, of the local tribe, and Kevin Carlos, a Sioux from South Dakota. They are here on account of drug smuggling, not illegal aliens. The three strands of wire are the fence that is supposed to be keeping all of Mexico’s immigrants and marijuana out. It isn’t even government wire. It has been put up by rancherson the reservation. The top strand has been cut and the end hooked once around the post to hold it up, as if it had not been touched. The second and third strands were the same. Unhook all three and this part of the wire fence becomes a gate.
The two agents watch a van parked just on the other side of the wire, in Mexico. A woman is selling water to the immigrants about to sneak across and whisky to members of the Tohono O’odham tribe who cross over because tribal laws do not allow whisky on their lands.
The agents drive along the wire at five miles an hour, hanging out the windows and training on the ground below the most complex, miraculous technology: eyes that have been trained by their blood since time began to look at the ground and see great pictures and precise diagrams in the empty dirt.
They stop and get out. Bothof looks down at the tire marks of a vehicle that has come right through the wire.
“They’re old. You can see people walked across them the next day.” The outline of a foot is over that of the tire treads. Then he mutters, “Look at these people. See?” In one spot, a second set of treads suddenly runs over the first set. “They crossed here in two vehicles. Vans, I guess.”
“Drugs?” Indicating the footprints.
“Immigrants. The footprints over the treads are too shallow for somebody carrying a heavy pack.”
The agents are stocky, with equipment bringing Bothof to about 200 pounds and Carlos up to 260. They carry Steyrs, Austrian rifles with a thirty-round clip, plus another clip on their belts, a radio, receiver, a big Magnum handgun, and a flashlight.
Border areas like this one are speckled with buried sensors that pick up people walking, sometimes even their speech. Any activity lights up on terminals back at the base. But so often the metallic technology isn’t worth the air its signals soar through. Whoever passes over the sensor can be gone before anybody gets out to thespot. So the agents track. The depth of the footprints indicates the weight
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