MILITARY BULLDOZERS IN DRUG WAR

LAREDO-- Border towns have long implored the nation's lawmakers to send
money and manpower their way, reasoning that their shared boundary with
Mexico puts them at a social and economic disadvantage.

But the nearly 800 troops dispatched last month to the Texas- Mexico line
to clear roads, construct helicopter pads and build barracks for future
anti-narcotics operations have split this city and sparked a lawsuit by the
Mexican-American Legal Defense Fund that aims to halt the projects.

"Seems to me like we're under some sort of martial law here," said Louis
Bruni, a Laredo city councilman, who in a bitter debate over whether to
allow the military to build a road on city property predicted that "water
won't be the only thing flowing down our river."

Engineering is not a new role for the military. The Army has completed
hundreds of so-called training missions since 1990 under Joint Task
Force-6, an El Paso-based command that allows the military to undertake
certain noncombat duties in the fight against drugs.

But Operation Laredo Sands, as it is called, and two similar missions in
the border towns of Del Rio and Candelaria, represent the first major
military operations along the Texas-Mexico boundary since Marines on an
anti-drug patrol shot and killed a high school student in a West Texas
border town last spring.

The Pentagon has since suspended armed patrols. Still, the death of
Esequiel Hernandez has overshadowed the military's return to the border,
complicating a mission entirely devoid of arms.

After considerable discussion, the city in January gave the Army permission
to build a road on its property. But Bruni and other leaders opposing the
projects have joined forces with environmentalists who say the projects
threaten the habitat of the Rio Grande. Together, they continue to mire the
military mission in controversy.

"This is the first step in the militarization of the border," said Bruni,
predicting that Laredo would be the next Redford, the town where Hernandez
was felled by an M-16 while herding his family's goats.

Still, there is not a weapon to be found at the Army's Laredo base camp,
which is located on the 70,000-acre Galvan Ranch about 50 miles northwest
of town. Nearly half of the soldiers deployed to the border currently, are
part of a Fort Lewis, Wash., engineering battalion working near Laredo.
They are trained to build, not fight, and they have put up 50 tents
including a command post, mess hall and showers.

Nevertheless the troops are an imposing presence. The base camp itself
looks like a Hollywood set for a war movie. Soldiers in fatigues mill
about. Camouflaged Humvees ply the nearby roads.

The Laredo battalion is building 10 helicopter pads, barracks and nearly
100 miles of road that the Border Patrol says will allow its agents to
respond to calls more safely and quickly. Two more helicopter pads are
under construction up river, as are about 150 miles of road. The projects
are expected to be completed in the next two months.

Some see the construction as the continuation of a decade-long border
buildup, one which has included scores of intelligence- gathering missions
by air and foot and at times put the military in the arena of domestic law
enforcement.

Others, even past critics of the military's role in the drug war, view
these undertakings as a cost-efficient way to seal the international
boundary.

"This is good training and it's free," said Lawrence Korb, a senior fellow
at the Washington-based Brookings Institution and a former Reagan
administration official who has long argued against the type of armed
patrols that were involved in the Hernandez shooting. "It's sort of like
having the Army Corps of Engineers fix up your beach."

The nonmilitary nature of the Laredo deployment has caused some to consider
the cries of Councilman Bruni and his allies an overreaction. Even MALDEF,
apparently acknowledging the Army's strict engineering role, bases its
lawsuit almost exclusively on environmental grounds.

(Late Friday, the court denied MALDEF's motion seeking a temporary
injunction to halt the operations, but the group's lawsuit continues.)

Nina Perales, a MALDEF lawyer, allows that the roads and helicopter pads
are certain to lead to more ground and air patrols, intensifying the
law-enforcement climate around Laredo. But Perales says the group's main
concern is the potential damage the construction of several miles of road
along the Rio Grande might cause the river.

"The Army did not conduct an adequate environmental assessment," Perales
said. "The roads threaten to destroy the habitat along the river."

Such a risk is quite real, says Jim Earhart, a Laredo Community College
biology professor who has spent the better part of his career working to
preserve the Rio Grande. A plaintiff in the MALDEF lawsuit, Earhart says a
six-mile levee road under construction just north of downtown could forever
change one of Laredo's last greenbelts.

"You start destroying that little band and you're destroying something
unique," Earhart said. "There's a lot of beauty and history here, but
unfortunately not everybody can see it."

Earhart's chief concern is erosion. He says the military's plan to build
caliche roads will result in the clearing of brush along the river banks,
threatening endangered species such as the ocelot, and perhaps more
importantly causing soil to wash into the Rio Grande.

The upshot, Earhart says, would be a river bank wasteland and further
degradation of the already polluted water that the sister cities of Laredo
and Nuevo Laredo rely on.

George Gunnoe, assistant chief patrol agent in Laredo, counters that the
caliche roads will stabilize the soil. He has sought a compromise, leaving
alone a mulch-covered portion of the river road that doubles as a nature
trail. (Gunnoe has also pledged to honor concerns that certain
archaeological sites and artifacts not be disturbed).

Still, Gunnoe and his adversaries view the Rio Grande from fundamentally
different perspectives, making resolution difficult.

Earhart sees the river as a repository for natural history. Councilman
Bruni views it as a sort of bridge to neighboring Mexico. Gunnoe meanwhile
sees the Rio Grande as the front line in the war on drugs.

"The brush negates any element of surprise," said Gunnoe. "It slows us down
and allows alien traffic to get into the United States."

In addition to the river road just north of downtown, critics of the
military projects are concerned with road improvements in Rio Bravo, a
community just east of town that backs up to the Rio Grande. A former mayor
and councilwoman there joined the MALDEF lawsuit as plaintiffs, arguing
that increased patrols there would pose a threat to the mostly
Mexican-American community, which could be mistakenly targeted.

But while MALDEF argues that these residents underscore a community at odds
with the military and federal agents, there are no signs of a popular
groundswell against the road improvements.

Blas Garcia, who works as the city secretary, says the government has long
been an ally to the town, a colonia which was only recently incorporated.
He salutes the effort to close the border.

"The Border Patrol is working for us, not against us," Garcia said.
"Nothing that's done to improve the road is going to cause ill feelings."

Copyright 1998 Houston Chronicle San Antonio Bureau