(Sidebar: Timothy Dunn chronicles America's longstanding efforts to station
soldiers along the Rio Grande in his book "The Militarization of the
U.S.-Mexico Border" $12.76 from Amazon.com.

The El Paso-based professor explains how "complex international issues such
as undocumented immigration and illegal drug trafficking are reduced to
one-sided, domestic border-control problems, and framed as threats to
national security, which in turn require strong law enforcement, or even
military responses."

Even as Banuelos was struggling to prepare his team for mission JT414-97A,
U.S. Rep. James Traficant, D-Ohio, was pushing a 1997 bill that would have
put 10,000 troops on the U.S.-Mexican border. Traficant reintroduced the
troop plan this year, and tore a page from Dunn's book when he said on the
House floor: "The border is a national security issue, and, by God, the
Congress of the United States better start securing our borders." The House
passed the Ohio congressman's amendment in June, along with proposals for
bigger fences, fancier technology and more agents along the border. The
Senate nixed the Traficant plan, but moved to swell the ranks of the Border
Patrol from 6,200 to more than 20,000 agents.

"It's an easy, simple and politically safe target," says Kevin Zeese, who
heads the nonprofit group Common Sense for Drug Policy. "Shout 'drug war'
as loud as you can and you sound like you are protecting America's youth.")
....................

Part 2: Drug War Masquerade

"Fire Back"

Esequiel Jr. got home from school about 4 p.m. on the day he died. He
thanked the driver of the big yellow bus and walked down the lane to his
family's little rancheria. He studied his driver's handbook, then he helped
his father unload some hay. After that it was time to walk the goats.
Banuelos led his men out of the hide site even earlier that afternoon. It
was three full hours before nightfall. They hadn't even seen the goats yet.
They were hot, tired, hungry, dehydrated and still dressed like shrubs.
They looked forward to being relieved shortly after dark.

As Team 7 crept toward the observation post, Banuelos spotted a man on a
horse on the Mexican side. The corporal put his team in a halt. Just then,
Esequiel and his goats crested the small bluff. The soldiers -- who had
been warned to expect armed lookouts and "unfriendly villagers" -- saw a
young man of Latino descent carrying a .22 rifle.

Banuelos whispered into the radio: "We have an armed individual, about 200
meters from us." A time-stamped recording of the radio traffic showed it
was 6:05 p.m. "He's in front of the old fort. He's headed toward us. He's
armed with a rifle. He appears to be in, uh, herding goats or something."
Hernandez saw something move in the brush at the bottom of the far ravine.
He had warned friends and family members of what he would do if he ever
found the wild dog he believed had taken his goat.

The goatherd may have fired once, as Banuelos and Blood claimed. (One spent
shell was later found in the rifle.) Or he may have fired twice, as Torrez
and Wieler recalled. Or he may not have fired at all, as the lack of
gunpowder residue on his hands later suggested. What is certain is that the
four tired soldiers believed they had been fired at by a drug smuggler.
None was hit. Banuelos ordered the men prone. Face down in the hot gravel,
he told them to "lock and load."

Hernandez stood on his toes. He peered across the desert. Torrez recalled
he was "bobbing and weaving ... like when you look at something in the
distance, you stand on your tippy-toes and try to move your head around to
see."

"We're taking fire," Banuelos radioed at 6:07 p.m.

Capt. McDaniel was working out in a gym at the Marfa compound when he heard
the news. He sprinted to the nearby operations center. He and his fellow
officers immediately began debating what actions were authorized under the
JTF-6 rules of engagement.

Banuelos and his team mates were still carrying the ROE flash cards they
were given a week earlier. The first of six points listed was: "Force may
be used to defend yourself and others present." The second and third points
were: "Do not use force if other defensive measures could be effective" and
"Use only minimum force necessary."

But Banuelos didn't have time to reread his card. Nor was he aware that
McDaniel and the other officers were in the midst of an intense debate
about what he could and could not do. At 6:11 p.m., he radioed the
operations center: "As soon as he readies that rifle back down range, we
are taking him."

Lance Cpl. James Steen was manning the radio in Marfa. He replied: "Roger,
fire back."

McDaniel exploded. He and the other officers in the operations center
believed Steen's authorization to "fire back" was wrong, according to
written statements. Steen was pulled off the radio. Sgt. Dewbre took the
chair. But the order to "fire back" was neither corrected nor withdrawn.
Dewbre radioed at 6:14 p.m.: "Just give us an update."

To keep the boy within his line of sight, Banuelos led his team down
another stony arroyo and up the opposite bank. From the top of the next
plateau, the soldiers could see in all directions. Banuelos told Dewbre:
"We have a visual."

Dewbre replied: "You're to follow the ROE."

Banuelos did not acknowledge Dewbre's order. Nearly four minutes had passed
since the incorrect order to "fire back" was issued. McDaniel and the other
officers discussed whether or not Banuelos had heard Dewbre. But they did
not retransmit the instruction.

Worse Than Drugs

The war that Esequiel Hernandez wandered into is not confined to the
U.S.-Mexican border. The Pentagon spends about $1 billion a year fighting
drugs. JTF-6 has conducted missions in 30 states and the Caribbean
territories. An estimated 4,000 National Guard troops are involved in 1,300
counter-drug operations nationwide. And 89 percent of police departments
now have paramilitary "SWAT" teams, which primarily serve drug warrants.

In spite of all this, the drugs are winning. The availability and potency
of hard drugs such as heroin and cocaine has skyrocketed over the past
decade. At the same time, street prices have fallen. The United Nations
estimates the annual revenue generated by the illegal drug industry at $400
billion. That's 8 percent of the total international trade, or about the
same size as the global automobile industry.

The war has not proved either as easy, simple or politically safe as its
proponents had hoped. Days after he waved the plastic bag of crack on TV,
Bush was embarrassed by revelations that it was not "seized" in Lafayette
Park -- but in fact had been purchased for $2,400 by an undercover agent
who had lured a drug dealer there.

The seller was baffled by the agent's request. On a DEA tape of the phone
call, the 18-year-old dealer asked, "Where the fuck is the White House?"

"We can't even keep drugs out of prison," says Zeese of Common Sense for
Drug Policy. "To think we could keep them out at the borders is absurd."
Common Sense for Drug Policy argues that drug abuse is a social problem
that requires a combination of social, not military, solutions. The
evidence bears them out. Where drug use has fallen, experts attribute the
difference to lifestyle changes, not law enforcement.

Reagan's Secretary of State George Shultz, right-wing economist Milton
Friedman and broadcaster Walter Cronkite all make the same case. They are
among the hundreds of signers of a June 1998 letter urging the United
Nations to abandon the War on Drugs. The signatories hailed from 40
nations, and included federal judges and Nobel laureates from across the
political spectrum.

Published in the New York Times and elsewhere, the letter was blunt: "We
believe that the global war on drugs is now causing more harm than drug
abuse itself. This industry has empowered organized criminals, corrupted
governments at all levels, eroded internal security, stimulated violence,
and distorted both economic markets and moral values," the letter stated.
"These are the consequences not of drug use per se, but of decades of
failed and futile drug war policies."

Death in the Desert

Border Patrol agent Johnny Urias was picking up undocumented immigrants 15
miles away when he heard the 6:07 p.m. radio call: "They're taking fire
from a man with a rifle at position three ... Please assist position
three." Urias and partner Rodolfo Martinez sped back to the Presidio
station. They dropped off their suspects. They picked up M-16 rifles and
protective vests. Two other agents arrived, and did the same. Within
minutes, the four agents were speeding toward Redford, lights and sirens
blaring. Urias radioed Banuelos, who told him that Hernandez was at the old
fort. "He's armed with a rifle, a .22," the corporal said. Banuelos and his
team were atop a plateau about two football fields away from Hernandez.
They knew the Border Patrol was only minutes away. But Banuelos wanted to
be closer. He handed the radio to Torrez, then waved for Wieler and Blood
to follow him into the next ravine. From that moment on, Banuelos was out
of radio contact with both McDaniel and the Border Patrol.

The next arroyo was steeper than the last. Wieler stumbled several times.
He scraped his hands on the sharp, loose gravel. He didn't understand what
Banuelos was doing. He said later that he "would have stayed and let the
Border Patrol handle the situation." Instead, he followed orders. Once atop
the next plateau, the Marines moved toward the abandoned fort. Soon they
were within 130 yards of Hernandez. They scurried forward one by one, in
short rushes. They crouched low among the waist-high greasewood bushes.

Banuelos watched Hernandez through the scope on his M-16 as his men moved.
At 6:27 p.m., Banuelos believed he saw the boy raise his old .22 and aim
toward Blood. (Neither Torrez nor Blood were watching Hernandez. Weiler
initially stated he didn't see Hernandez move, then later testified that he
did.) The corporal, an expert marksman, squeezed the trigger. The bullet
entered Esequiel Hernandez Jr. beneath his right arm. It fragmented and cut
two trails through his chest, destroying every organ in its path. Torrez
looked up just in time to see the boy's feet fly in the air.

Myth of the Frontier

The books in Lucia Madrid's library tell many stories. They tell of the
soldiers who came through Redford, and of the powerful men who sent them.
But these books do not explain the shooting of Esequiel Hernandez. Enrique
Rede Madrid still lives in the white stucco home where his recently
deceased mother built the library. An anthropologist, he has spend much of
his life resisting the military. Way back in 1967, he was the first student
at the University of Texas to return his draft card. A gutsy move for a
young Chicano from La Frontera. He waged a three-year court battle
challenging the constitutionality of the Vietnam War. Today, he translates
books and works at a community college.

Sifting through the artifacts of his life, Madrid pulls out newspaper
clippings and photographs. One picture shows President Bush awarding his
mother her medal of honor. Another shows her reading to a group of village
children. At the center of that photograph is a squirmy little boy, hamming
a grin for the camera. The boy is Esequiel Hernandez Jr.

"Isn't it schizoid?" he asks, fingering his mother's silver and gold
medals. Madrid speaks through a clenched jaw, as if he is holding back
anger. "Two presidential medals and an M-16 bullet in a kid's chest. She
received these medals for educating Esequiel. "America has a schizoid
mentality about the border," Enrique continues. "We address the problem
with the wrong tool. It's a failure of our ability to test reality. ... A
psychiatrist would call it a psychosis of some sort."

Richard Slotkin, a historian who has spent the past 25 years studying the
stories that Americans tell each other, calls it America's oldest and most
powerful story: the myth of the frontier. Slotkin argues that "regeneration
through violence" is the heart of the myth. The United States has pursued
violent regeneration through a series of "savage wars" fought first against
Native Americans, and later against competing settlers such as the
Mexicans. This century, distant enemies such as the Soviet Union filled the
savage shoes. These heroic tales of men with guns have been handed down
through literature, culture and ritual for three centuries.

The repetition of this mythology is easy to spot in dozens of newspaper and
magazine reports on Esequiel's murder. Rather than describing a quiet
little village of alfalfa and pumpkin farmers, many thrilled readers with
exaggerated descriptions of a rough-and-tumble Wild West border town
populated with "drug lords" and "illegal aliens." Likewise, these myths are
at the heart of the many western movies filmed at the Contrabando Creek
movie set, a faux village just downriver from Redford.

"The reporter's role is to see the reality in terms of the established
myth," Slotkin says. "The reporter goes back and tells the tale to a
congressman, who is prepared to believe it because he already knows the
story. It has the power of familiarity. It confirms what we've known all
along." The war on drugs has invoked the myth of savage war to rationalize
its illogical use of violence. "Here the myth of the frontier plays its
classic role," Slotkin says. "We define and confront this crisis -- and the
profound questions it raises about our society -- by deploying the metaphor
of 'war' and locating the root of our problem in the power of a 'savage'
enemy."

Following Orders

Corporal Banuelos was standing over Hernandez's body when the Border Patrol
arrived. Agent Urias recognized the boy he had warned only three months
before. Hernandez had dragged himself 10 yards through hot gravel after he
was shot. From atop the old Army watering hole, Hernandez could have seen
see the adobe home where he was born, the lush green oasis that fed his
family, the cinderblock schoolhouse where he had dreamed of becoming a
soldier, and the village graveyard, where he soon would be buried. A desert
thunderstorm approached. More cops arrived. Texas Rangers. A justice of the
peace. The district attorney. FBI. Marines.

They trampled through the evidence for hours. Then the storm rumbled
through. Hard rain washed over the body, the gun, the scene. Team 7 was
driven back to Marfa, put in a motel room, given a six-pack of beer, and
told to write statements. The story that emerged was that Banuelos was not
"pursuing" Hernandez -- as prohibited by the rules of engagement -- but was
"paralleling" the goatherd out of fear that the boy was running a "flanking
maneuver." Banuelos was frank and forthright about what he had done. He
reportedly concluded one interview by stating: "I capped the fucker." The
Texas Rangers investigated the shooting.

The Justice Department investigated the shooting. JTF-6 investigated the
shooting. And the 1st Marine Division investigated the shooting. All
concluded that Banuelos followed orders. All concluded that he committed no
crime. A county grand jury refused to indict Banuelos on criminal charges.
A federal grand jury refused to indict Banuelos. And a second county grand
jury, given substantially more evidence than the first, also refused to
indict Banuelos.

All concluded that Banuelos followed orders. All concluded that he
committed no crime. Banuelos was under investigation for more than a year.
But the orders that sent him to El Polvo in May, the orders that put him in
the field with an under-prepared team, and the incredible order to "fire
back" -- these were never put on trial. And by agreeing to pay the
Hernandez family a mere $1.9 million, the Navy and the Justice Department
effectively closed the most viable legal route through which the family or
the village could have put those orders on trial.

Human rights activists fear the settlement will clear a political path for
JTF-6 to resume armed border patrols in the near future. And if they take
such missions, future Marines will follow orders just as Banuelos did.

In a response to the scathing Coyne report, Gen. C.W. Fulford Jr. noted
that even the best trained Marines would likely behave much as Team 7 did.
"Indeed," Fulford wrote, "it is probable that a superbly trained team of
infantrymen would have immediately returned fire." Clemente Manuel Banuelos
is no longer a member of the Marine Corps. His promising military career
died the same day Hernandez did. The 23-year-old now struggles to support
his young wife, Luz Contreras, in their modest Southern California home. He
is looking for work as a physical therapist.

Rounding Up The Goats

On the day Esequiel Hernandez Jr. died, his father brought the goats back
from the river. Hernandez Sr. was chopping wood when he saw the crowd of
Border Patrol agents, sheriff deputies and other authorities gather on the
hill across from his adobe home. He drove the old white pickup over to see
what was happening. Not knowing who he was, a deputy sheriff asked whether
Hernandez Sr. might be able to identify the victim. The old man stared
curiously at the soldiers, still dressed in their ghillie suits. The
leather-faced father was then shown the lifeless body of his son. He wept,
and wailed, in Spanish.

The Hernandez family was kept away from the murder scene that night. Pushed
back by sheriff's deputies, sobbing family members shared their grief and
anger within the privacy of the Hernandez rancheria. Later, the old man
went down to the river to round up the goats. Ten-year-old Noel went with
him. After the goats were put away, Noel marched into Esequiel's bedroom
and tore the Marine recruiting poster from his dead brother's wall.

Monte Paulsen (mpaulsen@aminc.com) is national editor of SanAntonio Current.

Checked-by: Pat Dolan