The Devils Highway - Luis Alberto Urrea [29]
El Negro apparently worked his way up from an early life as a guide. It was said he never crossed into the United States for any reason once he achieved middle-management status. At the time, he was about twenty-eight.
El Negro, dreaded enforcer and manipulator of Sonoita, Sonora, had a driver known as El Moreno. The Black Man and the Dark Man. Scary. El Moreno affected the black border mustache like his boss, and his round face had a scar slanting down the left side. The combination of the scar and the ’stache made him a really convincing bandido. El Moreno was described as “robust” in the investigation documents.
In Sonoita, El Negro and El Moreno lived together in criminal bliss in a house described as being “around the corner” from an evangelical temple on the west side of town. Local directions are simple: go to the road to San Luis Río Colorado; El Negro’s house is there, between the templo and a disco called Angelo. Jesus Christ on one side, and party hardy on the other. El Negro sometimes danced at Angelo with his girlfriend, Lorena. Lorena seems to be one of the only people in Sonora not involved with the smuggling gang.
Immune to prosecution, Chespiro oversaw El Negro and El Moreno via long-distance cell phone, and they in turn commanded a small army of soldiers. These were secondary drivers, guards, enforcers, and guias (“GEE-yahs”), or guides. Today, these guides are what we used to think of as Coyotes.
They actually cut sign, make trails, and lead the walkers into the desert. Young men, mostly, who are as disposable as the pollos. They can die as easily as the walkers, and the organization will not be hurt. There are always more fools willing.
Smugglers pay locals, like drug lords in the inner city pay off shorties and grandmothers, to cover their operations. Runners. Lookouts. Imagine living in a burning cement brick oven in Sells, Arizona; a guy comes along and offers you two hundred dollars to let him park his van behind your house for two days. Maybe he offers you five hundred dollars to go sleep at your mom’s trailer while he waits. You’d be crazy not to take it.
The Cercas crew had a favorite illegal entrant pickup spot in the United States: mile marker 27, on Highway 86, on the O’Odham reservation. Or mile marker 27, or 21, on Highway 85. No one can agree. The Devil’s Highway forecasts are always for sun, heat, and impenetrable fog.
But wherever the pickup spot was, when a load of walkers was due, a woman named Teresa would drive up and down the road after dark. Thin, with long black hair, she is our Mata Hari. Teresa must have been bold—even cops don’t like to be out there in the dark. The guía would gather his chickens at the mile marker post, and Teresa would then spot them on the drive-by. She’d speed-dial a transport on her cell phone, and one or two vans would depart from their prearranged parking spots.
The walkers, squeezed out of the urban corridors, are relying more and more on the reservation. They cost the Indians millions of dollars a year in cleanup, rescue, enforcement, and land restoration. Hundreds of pounds of garbage accrue yearly: bottles, pants, tampons, paper, toilet paper. Corpses. And the Migra barrels through in their trucks.
This may help to explain some of the frayed relationships between the Border Patrol and the O’Odham people on the rez.
The Cercas gang’s western operation centered on Yuma and Wellton, their central operation delivered walkers to the Mohawk rest area on I-8, and the eastern operation—which ultimately killed the Yuma 14—targeted Ajo.
Ajo (Garlic) is a small mining town not far from Why. (Locals quip: “Why not!” And: “Good question!”) It’s near the reservation. And it’s a straight shot to Gila Bend in one direction, and Tucson in another.
The Cercas drivers got Teresa’s call and sped onto 86, mindful of Border Patrol vehicles or the unlikely sheriff’s cruisers. Cut north on 85, pull up at marker 27, throw open the doors, and hustle ’em in, slam the doors, and be