STRUGGLING TRIBE TOO OFTEN TURNS TO SMUGGLING POT

Tucson -- The door to the warehouse near the Tucson airport swings
open and a musty-mint odor is instantly recognizable: It's pot. Lots
and lots of pot.

Inside, neatly stacked bales of marijuana stand like faceless chess
pieces -- the evidence from a game of extremes played every day along
the nearby Arizona-Mexico border. Anthony Coulson, the U.S. Drug
Enforcement Agency official in charge there, says that as much as 20
percent of the marijuana brought into Arizona last year was
discovered in one location: the Tohono O'odham reservation, where
abject poverty and the opportunity for a fast buck torment the
American Indian nation.

In 2000, according to the DEA, some 50,800 pounds of marijuana were
seized on Tohono land. By last year, the figure had soared to 192,225
pounds. Other authorities put the number higher. More and more Tohono
themselves, meanwhile, have been caught up in the drug trade.

"Young Indians," says Coulson, "carry it over to drop houses" from
which the pot eventually finds its way to the streets.

While Indian tribes in other places have hit the jackpot with a
lucrative gaming trade, the Tohonos' casino in Tucson has generated
little revenue for the reservation residents, and 50 percent still
live in poverty, more than 40 percent are unemployed and misery
abounds. Young people see little in their futures.

Not long ago, 17-year-old Jared Antone was discovered hanging by a
rope from a horse trailer, an apparent suicide. In Jared's bedroom, a
candle burned on the floor. "We took the bed out to let the spirits
escape," says his aunt, Verna Enos. Outside, near the horse trailer,
she struggles to lift her face toward a twilight sky laced with
rose-colored clouds.

On a map, the Tohono O'odham Nation sits like a clenched fist between
Tucson and the Mexican border. The U.S.-Mexico boundary is a thin
70-plus-mile bracelet across the wrist. Near the southeast corner of
the reservation are the twin gulches of Sasabe, Ariz., and Sasabe,
Mexico. A gas station and a stylish port of entry are the main
attractions on the Arizona side. On the Sonora side, a crucifix
towers over a migrant's tiny chapel. Lighted at night, it's a beacon
in the desert for another unstoppable diaspora that ebbs and flows.
The border here is so flimsy and porous that it defies belief. No
wonder that illegal immigrants -- many carrying drugs in burlap sacks
as a means of paying for their passage -- stream across.

One spot, called San Miguel Gate, is a 20-foot-wide cattle grate. No
door, no lock, no guard, except, that is, for 66-year-old Olivario
Listo Enos. He patrols by himself in his dirty Dodge pickup.

"At night when my hounds bark, or in the day when dust rises in the
south, I grab my guns, jump in my truck and outsmart 'em," Olivario
says. "A blast or two over the hood and they stop. When they freeze,
I give 'em a choice: 'Your women, your drugs or your keys.' "

Smugglers, he says, always leave the keys. Olivario keeps them in a
plastic bag, and on this day he shows off 11 vehicles left on his property.

"When the Border Patrol comes, they knife the tires so the smugglers
won't come steal the cars back," he explains. "When the vehicle
department in Tucson declares my cars 'abandoned,' I sell 'em for hay
to feed my cattle and working horses."

Every family, it seems, has been touched by drugs, including some of
the reservation's most elite.

In September, Tohono O'odham police stopped a 1996 Chevrolet Lumina
for speeding and discovered six bales of marijuana under a blanket in
the trunk. The driver, 39-year-old Nicholas C. Juan, was arrested and
now awaits trial. He is the brother of Vivian Juan-Saunders, the
Tohono chairwoman.

He isn't the first member of the chairwoman's family to be caught
drug-running. Her sister, Mary Juan, was arrested in May 1999 by U.S.
Customs officials after they discovered 15 bales of marijuana stashed
in her Pontiac Grand Prix and in a shed on her property. Mary once
had been a tribal judge. She was convicted in federal court and spent
a year and a day in jail. She's out now, raising her three grandkids
- -- her daughter-in-law, busted with her six years ago, moved off the property.

Mary lives on a parcel that has been in the family for four
generations. Standing outside her small, brown stucco house, she
withholds her reasons for marijuana smuggling behind a nearly
expressionless face.

"It's better not to bring up the past," she says, wiping a tear from
her eye. "It makes me think it's happening all over again."

Coulson, the DEA agent, says he isn't surprised that Mary's place
doesn't look like that of a drug dealer.

"There's little collective wealth from drugs in evidence on the
reservation," Coulson says. "Drug running is not enough to get the
Tohono out of poverty -- but just enough to kill them."