The Road Through San Judas

by Robert Fraga

  Another more serious clash erupted at a gas distribution center near San Judas. A couple of MS-13 thugs ambushed a settler named David González. They beat him about the head and body with a baseball bat. The attack was so grievous that González was confined to a wheelchair for several days. This is how he arrived at the Ciudad Juárez police department, accompanied by friends and family, to press charges against the men who had beat him. The settlers were told that the police chief could not take action until they had spoken directly to Carlos Banda, the Schmidt family’s representative.

  Several weeks later. José Bernal spotted Carlos Banda in a street of San Judas. He accosted the lawyer in a non-threatening manner: “Why are you doing this?” he asked. “God is going to punish you for what you’ve done.”

  Banda scoffed: “By the time your God gets to me, I will have done what I have to do.”

  Banda was in San Judas to direct the demolition of an apparently abandoned house. A bus driver who lived in San Judas with his family drove past at that point. His name was Luis Guerrero. He rolled down the window of his truck and yelled at Banda: “Son of a bitch! Leave us alone.”

  Banda lost his cool. He turned to the men of his demolition crew and screamed, “Let the motherfucker have it!”

  Banda’s men dragged Luis Guerrero out of his truck and began beating him with anything that lay at hand: pipes, shovels, pickaxes. They hollered as they worked him over. Guerrero offered no resistance. He sought only to protect his face and body. The skin on his hands was being shredded by the beating he was taking.

  “It all happened in a blur,” José Bernal recalled later. He raced back to his car, which was parked nearby and retrieved a gun from the glove compartment. It was a pistol that one of his friends had insisted on giving him. He crawled back across the hard scrabble earth and took cover behind a pile of debris. When Banda’s men realized that José had a shooter, they opened fire on him. José took a bullet in the left leg. He could feel the bullet’s sting. A trickle of blood coursed down the inside of his calf.

  Now it was José’s turn: he began shooting, first at Banda’s men, then at Banda himself. He took careful, ever so careful, aim and pumped two slugs into the lawyer’s belly. Banda’s glasses slid off his nose. A rust-red stain spread over his immaculate white shirt. Globs of mucous-laced blood gushed from his mouth. When the demolition crew realized that their boss had been shot, they hustled him into one of their cars and spun off, spewing pebbles behind them.

  Settlers took Guerrero and Bernal to a nearby hospital. José was released the same day. Guerrero’s situation, however, was critical. He was suffering from internal bleeding. The pain was excruciating. The doctors said that further X-rays would be needed to determine the location and extent of his injuries. Despite the care he received, Guerrero died two days later.

  “This is a tragedy no one expected,” his wife cried. Never in his life had Luis Guerrero been in a fight.

  Still the authorities refused to intervene. “We have asked for calm,” said the mayor. “But we are not judges.”

  What are you, Señor el Alcalde? said Father Joe to himself when he found out what had happened and what the mayor had said. Was the mayor no more than a lackey of rich businessmen?

  Pablo Schmidt asserted that while doing their work his men had been roughed up by a small group of drunken settlers. Carlos Banda was alive, he said. That was all. Pablo gave no indication of his whereabouts.

  In fact, Banda was never seen again. He vanished into thin air.

  NOT THE CAVALRY BUT STILL SOMETHING

  His was like the second coming. The people alongside his route saw not just a Zapatista leader. They saw Jesus on a motorbike. They saw the Messiah on a two-wheeled donkey. Subcomandante Marcos was driving across Mexico, across the Chihuahua desert into Ciudad Juárez.

  He spoke everywhere to the people who lined his path. He spoke in parables and riddles that no one could make sense of but which everyone understood. At least they understood what he meant them to understood.

  The initials EZLN for the Zapatista movement were painted in red across the handlebars of Sup Marcos’s motorbike. He had named the motorbike Sombraluz (Shadow Light). The Zapatistas’ penguin/genetically modified chicken rode behind Sup Marcos. The animal—whatever it was—squawked disconsolately and twisted its neck to gaze into the dust storm generated by the passage of the motorbike.

  The Sup’s odyssey across Mexico began in San Cristóbal twelve years to the day after the ragtag Zapatistas had seized that city in the 1994 uprising. Fifteen thousand supporters greeted his appearance ecstatically. “A new stage of the political struggle of the EZLN has arrived,” proclaimed one of Marcos’s comrades. “Delegate Zero (the Sup) will blaze the trail and open new doors.”

  “I have been chosen to go out across the country to test the road,” said the Sup when his turn to speak came. The Zapatista movement was abandoning the armed struggle to try something different, “to reorganize the nation from below and to the left.” The head of the country’s Catholic Church approved. “It’s a good thing,” he said.

  “We don’t fear to die struggling,” Marcos said. “The good word has already been planted in fertile soil, in the hearts of all of you, and it is there that Zapatista dignity will flourish.”

  Sombraluz hiccupped its way across Ciudad Juárez. Past the boarded-up shops of the center. Past the iron-grilled windows and bolted doors of houses. Past the burned-out street lights that lined the streets. Up to the border where street vendors were selling tamales and elotes and tacos to the men and women and flavored ice popsicles and licorice to the kids.

  Marcos brought his bike to a halt. He dismounted in a haze of diesel fumes. The masked man wore a fraying army cap with a star emblazoned above the visor. He walked halfway across the Stanton Street Bridge. Troopers had blocked the bridge at both ends, solely for this occasion. Marcos looked out over the hump in the roadway down into El Paso’s Segundo Barrio. This was the neighborhood that Bill Sanders and his partners had sought to gentrify. It was now packed solid with fervent Zapatista supporters. They were standing shoulder to shoulder. Some were waving the EZLN flag. The midday heat was suffocating. Sweat streamed down the faces of the people and dripped into their eyes.

  Sup Marcos addressed the masses, just as the Son of Man had once spoken to the multitudes from some unidentified mountain top in Palestine two millennia before. But Marcos was speaking not from some mountain top but from the hump in the middle of the Stanton Street Bridge, on a day in early summer when the temperature had soared into the 90s Fahrenheit in the shade, and he spoke these words:

  La Otra Campaña proposes to cross to the other side of the frontier. That’s how we answer the U.S. war of conquest and its attempt to convert Mexico into one more star on its flag. We plan to go the other way around: we shall cross the frontier when Mexico takes its rightful place in the world.

  Marcos gestured to the now blocked bridge between Mexico and the U.S.:

  Let this be a symbol: we dedicate this closure to all those who have disappeared for political reasons. We have met with the committee of mothers of those in Juárez who have disappeared. They tell us of the pain of losing a son or a daughter. They tell us of their struggle.

  He asked his audience to recall the concept of the war of conquest:

  With the Indians of Mexico, we’re launching a reconquest. Before now, the armies came with horses, muskets, and canons. Today it’s political parties with their laws and their flunkey politicians.

  A Black Hawk helicopter from the border patrol roared overhead. Hearing Sup Marcos’s words was difficult, but the helicopter could not drown out the passion of his speech. It could not quell the anger of his listeners.

  La Otra Campaña considers the other side here as part of Mexico, as part of ourselves, the way our blood is part of ourselves, and our fight doesn’t recognize this helicopter, it doesn’t recognize this line, it doesn’t recognize the flag waving above us. Comrades, there is no othe
r side. Those on the other side are sitting in that helicopter, sitting in the White House, and sitting in the Presidential Palace of Mexico.

  The crowd, numbering more than two thousand, went ballistic. “Viva, Zapata!” they roared.

  Zapata was alive today, alive in Sup Marcos’s words, alive in his presence and in his voice, alive in the response of those who heard him, a people of one blood, one heritage, one nation.

  “What do we want?” he went on when the crowd had quieted down. “A Juárez where young people are not murdered, where their lives do not end at an international bridge. That is the fundamental challenge of La Otra Campaña. It doesn’t matter what river they cross, be it the Rio Grande or some other that we are asked to accept, as if they were walls and not the fountain of life that they should be.”

  A student from the University of Texas at El Paso stretched over the crowd to shake Marcos’s hand. “It’s important to contact people struggling for a better world, to share with them our own struggles,” she said. “What makes Marcos special is that he represents more than just himself.”

  Among the many young people in Marcos’s audience was José Bernal. He listened intently to the Zapatista leader. His eyes squinted in the intense sunlight. He felt the sweat trickle down his spine and darken the center fold of his shirt. But José seemed not to feel the heat of the day. From time to time, he balanced on the toes of his construction shoes to see above the heads of the people in front of him. When Marcos appeared to have finished his remarks, José elbowed his way forward to shout at the Subcomandante, “What about the situation in San Judas? Do you know about it?”

  Marcos had, in fact, been told something about the problem, but he frowned. He grew peevish and complained that he knew nothing of the struggle.

  Friend, forgive me for saying this, but I hear you talking about San Judas, and no one has had the courtesy to tell us what is going on there. And we have heard about other problems, and we didn’t even know about those. If La Otra Campaña in Juárez doesn’t let us know what is happening, then who will?

  In response to this testy remark, José and his friends arranged a special audience for Marcos with settlers from San Judas. The meeting took place in Lucy Carrillo’s tiny living room. While the colonos talked to the Sup, a crowd of silent neighbors stood vigil outside her cinder block house. They waited and sweltered under the early summer sun, not exchanging so much as a word among themselves, not even swatting away the flies that buzzed around their faces.

  The colonos’ tales of harassment and forced eviction from their homes offered Marcos another example of class exploitation. Marcos sympathized with the colonos. But what could he offer them by way of concrete help? He wasn’t there to lead the resistance to the Schmidt family. Sup Marcos was, by choice, long on riddles and—by necessity—short on practical suggestions. But he had one piece of advice: “You need a lawyer,” he said. “And I can put you in touch with one.” The colonos had a lawyer, but there was distrust between them and him, and the lawyer would soon be leaving the scene of action in any case.

  At long last the world was paying attention to what was happening on the western edge of Ciudad Juárez.

  “Urgent Action,” demanded Amnesty International (AI). It cited an instance of harassment in San Judas: men on horseback had surrounded a resident of the barrio. It was, in fact, Manny, the gallant of Alfred Von Bachmayr’s insulation project. He was returning from a meeting when the horsemen threatened to beat him up. As he walked home, another man in a pickup truck drove past and spat at him: “What the fuck were you doing in that meeting?” Manny knew that his daughter was waiting for him, alone in the house, and he did not want to pick a fight with any of the Schmidt goons. He smiled sheepishly and mumbled something noncommittal.

  Amnesty International asked people to write the authorities. To say what?

  To protect the residents of San Judas.

  To order an impartial investigation into the attacks on them.

  To stop any attempt to drive people off their land.

  AI also appended to the appeal addresses of the governor of Chihuahua, the Mexican minister of the interior, and the mayor of Ciudad Juárez.

  Still, the Schmidt juggernaut ground on. Slowly but inexorably. It aimed to crush the colonia of San Judas, one house at a time. The neighborhood was disappearing, one street after another. Because the MS-13 stopped trucks from coming into the community, Evaristo and Lara could not stock their grocery store. The commercial suffocation of the neighborhood obliged them to close their shop and accept the family’s offer of a small parcel of land a mile away. There they rebuilt their tienda de aberrotes with cinder block and metal sheeting. Other small shops in San Judas followed suit. San Judas was left without businesses of any sort. Within an hour of Evaristo and Lara’s decamping, bulldozers screeched up to what had been their little grocery store and smashed down its walls, its roof, its two tiny windows with their ornamental grills. They overturned the begonias in coffee tins and splintered the shelves and display cases that now stood empty. Then they spread a thick layer of soil over what had been a home and a business, leaving no trace of human industry and habitation.

  In the fall of 2008, a group of activists from Las Cruces, New Mexico, buttonholed the governor of the state, Bill Richardson, to ask him to intervene in the San Judas dispute. The governor promised to do what he could. The activists sought support online and supplied the email addresses of officials like the governor of the state of Chihuahua and a sample letter to anyone who would write the governor to ask for his intervention. A few days later, the same group interrupted Governor Richardson’s tour of southern New Mexico, where he was stumping for local Democratic candidates, to urge him to do something about the situation on the border. Despite numerous entreaties over the previous year, the governor seemed not to recall the treatment of the colonos in San Judas, although Father Joe’s allies in southern New Mexico had jammed the governor’s phone lines with messages of support for the settlers for days on end. Activists gave him a packet of information about the atrocities at San Judas, including the murder of Luis Guerrero, the cutting off of electricity and water to the barrio, and the destruction of homes by the White Guards. The governor continued to go around glad-handing people in the audience. Then he made a brief speech before returning to the Las Cruces activists to admit that he now remembered hearing about the troubles on the border. In the heat of the current campaign, they must have slipped his mind.

  “What do you want me to do?” the governor asked. “I want to do something more than just make a public statement about it.”

  Contact the governor of the state of Chihuahua, the activists urged him. And stop all binational projects until the rights of the residents of San Judas are respected. The problem arose directly from what developers were doing and were hoping to do around the proposed port of entry at Sunland Park. Settlers from San Judas had wanted to come and speak to Governor Richardson in person, and so he was told, but they were too scared to leave their homes for fear that the thugs of MS-13 might destroy them in their absence. Supporters in southern New Mexico made a request on their behalf for gallon jugs of water, flashlights and batteries, kerosene lamps, walkie-talkie radios, and cell phone chargers.

  They had reason to be fearful. About the time the activists from Las Cruces were hounding Bill Richardson, a resident of San Judas was preparing to feed his animals. His name was Rafael Piñon. A squad of soldiers smashed their way into his house. They threw the seventy-three-year-old man against a wall. Piñon had an illegal firearm in his house, the soldiers said. Pablo Schmidt had tipped them off. Then the soldiers turned the place upside down and “found” a sack of marijuana and an automatic pistol.

  “You brought that with you,” Piñon stated.

  This remark seemed to enrage the soldiers who threatened to shoot him.

  “Go ahead,” Piñon told them.

  His courage gave the soldiers pause. “You’ve got guts,” said their commanding officer
.

  The soldiers hustled Piñon into the rear of a truck, where they blindfolded him and kicked him in the ribs. The colono had no idea where they were taking him. He never did find out, either. The soldiers stripped him of his shoes and shirt. Then they released him in the desert outside Ciudad Juárez. Piñon limped back to the house where he had lived for thirty-five years. There he found that his nonfunctioning television and his mattress had been stolen.

  Piñon pressed charges against the soldiers at the local police station. A few days afterward, the police asked him to come down to the station to reactivate his complaint. “When I got back home,” he told a journalist covering the story, “I found that my house had been leveled and all my animals stolen.”

  Rafael Piñon had built his house with his own hands. He had kept four dozen hens, ten roosters, three hogs, and a slew of rabbits. Now they were all gone: house and livestock. Even the photographs of his children.

  “All I had left were the clothes on my back,” he wailed. “They knock down our houses and steal our animals, and then they go back to their camp and make a barbeque.”

  Piñon’s property had been appraised at more than $20 thousand. Pablo Schmidt offered to buy it at a tenth of that price. That, in Raphael’s words, “was a joke.”

  Rafael Piñon was a bitter man. He had thought about killing his tormentors, but, as a good Catholic, he could not bring himself to commit such a crime. Still … “Sometimes there are moments,” he mumbled.

  The North American Human Rights Delegation is an umbrella group comprising a number of U.S. organizations. These include the National Lawyers Guild and La Alianza Latinoamericana. The delegation spent a week in the Ciudad Juárez/El Paso region in the spring of 2008. It interviewed residents of San Judas and El Paso’s Segundo Barrio and wrote a report on its findings. On one occasion, MS-13 denied members of the group access to the contested area on the pretext that they were not Mexican. (A week before the delegation visited the region, the same thugs had set upon a human rights official for the state of Chihuahua and beat him up. The man had been attempting to make an official inspection of the situation in the barrio.) After citing instances of outrageous behavior on the part of the Schmidt goons and the delinquency of civil authorities, the delegation concluded its report by observing that: