TEEN'S DEATH ILLUSTRATES THE DANGER OF BORDER MILITARIZATION

This month, families across the country will gather to celebrate their
children's graduations. But one family, instead of marking a son's high
school achievements, will observe the one-year anniversary of his death.

On May 20, 1997, Esequiel Hernandez of the border town of Redford, Texas,
became the first U.S. citizen killed by U.S. troops on U.S. soil since Kent
State.

The high school senior was stalked, shot and left to bleed to death by a
four-member Marine unit in camouflage. He had been tending his goats as he
did each day after school, carrying his grandfather's antique .22 to
protect the animals from dog attacks. The Marines' faces were blackened and
their bodies were covered with burlap and material from bushes. Ironically,
a Marine recruiting poster hung in the boy's room. Hernandez was known for
his steller performance in school, his respect for authority and for his
deep religious faith.

The troops were part of the elite drug-fighting unit, Joint Task Force Six
(JTF6), established under the Bush administration as part of a program
called Operation Alliance. JTF6 provides all manner of support for the U.S.
Border Patrol, allegedly for drug-interdiction efforts in the border region
and beyond. Support includes electronic intelligence, raid planning and
weapons and interrogation techniques. Much of what these operations involve
are known only to high Pentagon officials, as JTF6 has no external
reporting requirement.

Timothy Dunn, in his book ``The Militarization of the U.S.-Mexico Border,
1978-1992: Low Intensity Conflict Doctrine Comes Home,'' documents the way
the Border Patrol has adopted military rhetoric, strategy and technology as
part of an overall low-intensity warfare framework. He estimates that at
any given time there are 200 to 300 troops, and on occasion up to 900
troops, deployed to the border. This does not include National Guard
troops.

Hernandez's death so galvanized human rights groups across the country that
the Pentagon was forced temporarily to withdraw armed troops. The Redford
Citizens Committee for Justice went to Washington D.C. where they met with
high-level officials such as Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey, Immigration and
Naturalization Service Commissioner Doris Meissner and Assistant Secretary
of Defense H. Allen Holmes. They also met with the Hispanic Caucus and Rep.
James A. Traficant Jr., D-Ohio, who advocates the deployment of 10,000
troops to the border (at a cost of $650 million a year, according to the
Defense Department's estimate).

For years civil and human rights organizations have been documenting the
mounting law enforcement abuses along the border that have victimized both
U.S. citizens, legal residents and undocumented persons alike. Countless
reports have been issued by the American Friends Service Committee,
Americas Watch and the Advisory Committees of Arizona, California, Texas
and New Mexico to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission.

These groups fear that Hernandez's death is just the beginning of a new
wave of violence in the border regions as the line between military and
civilian law enforcmenet continues to blur.

For more than 100 years, the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 protected U.S.
citizens from having their own military used against them. This statute has
been changed by three administrations from 1981 to the present time,
weakening the letter and the spirit of an act so fundamental to the
liberties we enjoy and that so much of the world envies.

On the one-year anniversary of Hernandez's death, human rights and
religious groups across the country will pray for Ezequiel's family and
call upon the U.S. government to permanently end all military operations in
the border region. We must seek true solutions to the problems that plague
our communities. We must redirect precious resources toward the health and
well-being, not the destruction, of our young people.

Attorney Isabel Garcia and novelist Demetria Martinez are members of
Derechos Humanos Coalition of Arizona, a human and civil rights monitoring
and educational project in Southern Arizona.

The anniversary of Hernandez's death will be observed with an interfaith
service tomorrow at 7 p.m. at El Tiradito, next to El Minuto Restaurant.

Checked-by: jwjohnson@netmagic.net (Joel W. Johnson)