Read Online The Short Sweet Dream of Eduardo Gutierrez by Jimmy Breslin - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Jimmy Breslin
Tags: General, Social Science
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being carried. A person with a backpack of marijuana rubbing, cutting into the shoulders has his feet sinking deeper into the ground than some little illegal carrying only his hopes, who skims across the dust, leaving the imprint of a grasshopper. To desert trackers, the term backpacker means a drug carrier, not some Ohio State student on summer break.
Sensors are often made futile by all these centuries of hunting and tracking that run in these border agents. Carlos points out that whether a track is fresh or old can be seen immediately. If the prints of a desert rat are on top of the footprint, it means the footprint is not fresh.
The ones the agents want come across with drugs strapped to their backs. It is usually marijuana, weighing from fifty to seventy-five pounds. The backpackers are usually wrecks who come slogging along until they hit this long stretch of scrub, under a remorseless sky that has them gulping water every few yards. At the start of their trek—back where it was slightly cooler and the paths softer—they can do two miles without stopping. Soon they are down to a mile. Now, outside Sells, they do only a half mile before dropping their packs and collapsing.
They pray to Jesús Malverde, the patron saint of drug peddling: “Let my legs be strong. Let the border guards lose their eyes. Help others know that we carry the good. Nothing that is harmful. Our marijuana causes songs. The Border Patrol kills.”
And behind them are the natives with badges, tracking them.
Carlos looks at the bits of branch that have been knocked off bushes by a backpacker lumbering through. He feels the leaves. If they are moist, then somebody just went through. If they’re dry, it was a while ago.
The coyotes traveling with the backpackers usually try to cover the track by taking branches and sweeping over the trail, as if theywere scrubbing a saloon floor. Always, the sweep marks are a better trail to follow than the footprints.
The coyotes tried tying pieces of carpet to everybody’s shoes, causing a smoothness where there was supposed to be footprints. Noticing this, the trackers began to sift the dirt. They found colored fabric strands from the carpet. They followed them. Next, the drug packers used mop rope, with strands the color of sand, but it still showed fresh and bright in the agents’ eyes.
The drug haulers left signs where they sat to rest. One time, there were traces leading up to the start of mountains, and then on the rocks they found a small boulder dislodged, another overturned when somebody slipped and kicked it. Soon the agents were on four backpackers sitting with five huge packs of marijuana. Bothof was waiting for them to say they didn’t know anything about the extra pack. Instead, one of them said it belonged to a group that was just over the next small slope. Which they were. On that day, there were thirteen arrests, and hundreds of pounds of marijuana were confiscated.
Over the course of a year the unit seizes 640,000 pounds of drugs. They are tremendous. They stop a third of what comes across. Because of his ability, Kevin Bothof was sent to Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan to show the police of these states, once part of the Soviet Union, how to track people trying to smuggle nuclear weapons to terrorists in places like Pakistan. When Bothof arrived, the police thought he was going to have sophisticated technology to show them. Instead he said he worked only with a stick and a knife and a lot of walking and bending. Any day now, his expertise will have him back in Uzbekistan.
Yet with all the history and energy, you still have as much chance of stopping drugs as you do of swimming to China. An hour and a half’s drive away, in the Mexican town of Nuevo Nogales, there was a dispute over a dispute, and somebody walked acrossthe street to the border crossing station and announced that there were two bastards coming across in their pickup truck with cocaine. By the time the word was passed along,
Sensors are often made futile by all these centuries of hunting and tracking that run in these border agents. Carlos points out that whether a track is fresh or old can be seen immediately. If the prints of a desert rat are on top of the footprint, it means the footprint is not fresh.
The ones the agents want come across with drugs strapped to their backs. It is usually marijuana, weighing from fifty to seventy-five pounds. The backpackers are usually wrecks who come slogging along until they hit this long stretch of scrub, under a remorseless sky that has them gulping water every few yards. At the start of their trek—back where it was slightly cooler and the paths softer—they can do two miles without stopping. Soon they are down to a mile. Now, outside Sells, they do only a half mile before dropping their packs and collapsing.
They pray to Jesús Malverde, the patron saint of drug peddling: “Let my legs be strong. Let the border guards lose their eyes. Help others know that we carry the good. Nothing that is harmful. Our marijuana causes songs. The Border Patrol kills.”
And behind them are the natives with badges, tracking them.
Carlos looks at the bits of branch that have been knocked off bushes by a backpacker lumbering through. He feels the leaves. If they are moist, then somebody just went through. If they’re dry, it was a while ago.
The coyotes traveling with the backpackers usually try to cover the track by taking branches and sweeping over the trail, as if theywere scrubbing a saloon floor. Always, the sweep marks are a better trail to follow than the footprints.
The coyotes tried tying pieces of carpet to everybody’s shoes, causing a smoothness where there was supposed to be footprints. Noticing this, the trackers began to sift the dirt. They found colored fabric strands from the carpet. They followed them. Next, the drug packers used mop rope, with strands the color of sand, but it still showed fresh and bright in the agents’ eyes.
The drug haulers left signs where they sat to rest. One time, there were traces leading up to the start of mountains, and then on the rocks they found a small boulder dislodged, another overturned when somebody slipped and kicked it. Soon the agents were on four backpackers sitting with five huge packs of marijuana. Bothof was waiting for them to say they didn’t know anything about the extra pack. Instead, one of them said it belonged to a group that was just over the next small slope. Which they were. On that day, there were thirteen arrests, and hundreds of pounds of marijuana were confiscated.
Over the course of a year the unit seizes 640,000 pounds of drugs. They are tremendous. They stop a third of what comes across. Because of his ability, Kevin Bothof was sent to Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan to show the police of these states, once part of the Soviet Union, how to track people trying to smuggle nuclear weapons to terrorists in places like Pakistan. When Bothof arrived, the police thought he was going to have sophisticated technology to show them. Instead he said he worked only with a stick and a knife and a lot of walking and bending. Any day now, his expertise will have him back in Uzbekistan.
Yet with all the history and energy, you still have as much chance of stopping drugs as you do of swimming to China. An hour and a half’s drive away, in the Mexican town of Nuevo Nogales, there was a dispute over a dispute, and somebody walked acrossthe street to the border crossing station and announced that there were two bastards coming across in their pickup truck with cocaine. By the time the word was passed along,
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