The Devils Highway - Luis Alberto Urrea [82]
El Negro, in a headline: “Come and get me!”
A Cactus Cop in Arizona who may or may not be involved in BORTAC operations took the news calmly.
“Don’t sweat it,” he said. “He’s cooked.”
Associated Press, November 3, 2001: “A man who brought a group of illegal immigrants across the U.S.-Mexican border, leading 14 of them to their deaths in the southern Arizona desert, pleaded guilty Thursday to 25 smuggling counts. Jesús Lopez Ramos, a 20-year-old Mexican national from Guadalajara, had been scheduled to go on trial Nov. 6 but changed his plea during a hearing before U.S. District Judge Susan R. Bolton. A federal jury on May 28 indicted Lopez Ramos on 14 counts of illegal immigrant smuggling that resulted in death and on 11 counts of illegal immigrant smuggling that resulted in serious bodily injury. …”
Each count carried a maximum penalty of death or life imprisonment, five years supervised probation after that, and a fine of up to $250,000. Mendez might not have been a great guide, but he was a survivor.
It was a move that startled everyone, including Gerald Williams. Mendez had woken up near the morning of his trial and pled guilty to all counts. His offer was simple: if you don’t kill me, I’ll admit to the whole thing. Mendez was taken away, not to see the light of day for at least sixteen years. But sixteen years, man, it beat being executed fourteen times.
He had sat out his birthday in jail. He had lost touch with Celia, with his mother, with Maradona. He had seen the evil anniversary of his disaster come and go.
There was no life left for Mendez, and he knew it. His luck had never been all that good. Even in his high times as a gangster, he’d been busted over and over again. The angry walkers in his lost group were right: he was an asshole. Did he believe he had a shot at a successful outcome in Arizona?
He folded.
The survivors had played the game brilliantly. They bucked up, and in the face of their grief, their rage, their horror, they stuck together. They had lost family members and friends. They had seen things they could never find the words to explain. They were hurt and scared, physically damaged, perhaps psychically damaged as well. But they were not stupid.
In trade for their testimony, they were rewarded with immunity. The U.S. government plays by these rules: if you have something to offer, you can stay. The American taxpayer saw to it that Nahum and his boys got to stay in Phoenix; they moved into an apartment building together; they were given gainful employment. One government official promised they “would never have to work in the hot sun” and they were found jobs in a refrigerated meat-packing plant, where they grind cows into hamburger. The effects of their ordeal in the desert have not abated. Rita Vargas reports that one of the men sustained nerve damage to his extremities. He’s a hazard to himself at work, since he can’t always tell if he’s about to cut off his fingers or not. One terrible day, he was cooking, and he put his hand on the griddle. He didn’t notice it frying until everybody smelled the stink.
The other guys are hoping to get him home.
Since that May of 2001, the filth and depravity of the border churns ahead in a parade of horrors. The slaughtered dead turn to leather on the Devil’s Highway, and their brothers and sisters rot to sludge tucked in car trunks and sealed in railroad cars. The big beasts and the little predators continue to feed on the poor and innocent. Hope began to glimmer for a short period as presidents Fox and Bush courted each other. A kind of border accord loomed, and the sacrifice of the Yuma 14 helped stir the leaders of each nation to pity.
Fox had wisely approached the United States in a fresh manner—not with hand-wringing, not with accusations and uncomfortable cries about human dignity and human rights, but with the promise of big profits. The message was clear: Mexico represents billions of dollars in profit. Washington was moved to wonder, Border? What border? Sweeping change was coming over the horizon.
But the atrocities of