Questions turn border tragedy into mystery

By Suzanne Gamboa AmericanStatesman Staff

REDFORD One by one, Maria De Luz Hernandez pulled the snapshots of her
son, Ezequiel Hernandez Jr., from a tightly clasped envelope.

Ezequiel atop his nameless horse in Presidio's last onion festival parade.

Ezequiel smiling after helping his young niece fill a basket with Easter
eggs they collected in the hills.

Ezequiel handsome in a white westerncut tuxedo with a brilliant violet
cummerbund he wore to his younger sister Becky's quinceanera.

"I wanted you to see that he was a normal boy," Hernandez said, through
tears that still flow a month after Ezequiel died. "He was just a normal
boy."

Like other mothers who lose sons in war, Maria Hernandez mourns a death she
cannot understand. Yet 18yearold Ezequiel Hernandez was killed by an
American soldier on American soil.

"He was an innocent who never did anything to anyone," his mother said. "He
was a teenager who didn't drink, didn't smoke, who wasn't a troublemaker.
He was a teenager whose only goal was to help us and to go to school so he
could be better off one day."

Six weeks ago, one of four Marines patrolling against drug smugglers shot
at Ezequiel known to his family as "Juni," for Junior because he was
named for his father as he herded goats near his home. The military said
Ezequiel shot at the Marines with the .22caliber rifle he normally carried
as he herded and was killed by return fire.

But what seemed to be a case of a Marine defending himself has turned into
a mystery that has pitted the U.S. military against the Texas Rangers,
compounding a family's tragedy and a community's fear, distrust and anger.

What really happened on the ridgetop a short walk from Ezequiel's front
yard may never be known.

Did he fire on the Marines or just into the desert? Was he readying to fire
again, as the Marines allege, or had he raised his gun at all? Did Ezequiel
even know the camouflaged Marines, dressed to look like desert scrub, were
there? Or did he mistake their movements for a coyote or rattlesnake or
other animal coming after his precious goats?

And why did the Marines wait so long to call an ambulance, and why wasn't a
military helicopter ambulance that was stationed a few miles away
immediately dispatched?

For many people who live along the lazy, shallow Rio Grande as it flows
past Redford, and even beyond, Ezequiel's death calls into question the
decision eight years ago to use U.S. troops with highcost, hightech
equipment to fight smugglers crossing the U.S.Mexico border.

"I think everybody needs to back off and go back to the drawing board and
come up with a better plan," said Dan Bodine, Presidio County justice of
the peace, who pronounced Ezequiel dead six days after the young man's 18th
birthday. "The border is very different and is very hard to comprehend
unless you come out here and see it yourself and realize that river flowing
down is not really a border."

Lingering questions

Redford is a simple, serene town, despite the complexities of the
international border that is its neighbor.

At times you can wade across the river, a boundary that may divide two
nations but not a culture. Perhaps 100 people live here, many with
relatives across the river who legally cross to visit or shop.

In the morning shadow of the mountains that announce Big Bend National Park
50 miles or so to the east, the village is a mere flash for tourists racing
over twolane FM 170 on their way to the park.

"It's very tranquil here," said Elida Evaro, 54, who owns Redford
Convenience Store with her husband, Rosendo, and has raised four children
here.

A bullet from Marine Cpl. Clemente Banuelos' M16 shattered that
tranquillity at 6:27 p.m. May 20.

Texas Rangers are piecing together the events leading to the deadly
confrontation between the teenager, whose playground was this ragged
desert, and a 22yearold Marine, for whom the landscape was a training
ground for war.

Texas Rangers have questioned the military's recounting of the shooting.
Ranger Capt. Barry Caver, the lead negotiator last month in the Republic of
Texas standoff outside Fort Davis, said the investigation shows "a lot of
little things don't quite fit."

Ezequiel had taken his goats to a ridgetop so they could feed on the
greenerthanusual desert scrub, carrying with him his grandfather's
antique .22caliber rifle. Military officials allege Ezequiel fired twice
on the Marines, who were camouflaged to fade into the desert underbrush,
and was about to fire a third time when he was shot.

But Caver has said the angle of the wound indicates Ezequiel would have
been firing away from the Marines. An autopsy performed by the Bexar County
medical examiner indicated the bullet entered the chest of Ezequiel, who
was righthanded, on the right side before blasting to his left side in two
fragments.

Maureen Bossch, a spokeswoman in El Paso for the military operation
conducting drug surveillance along the border, said the Marines contacted
the Border Patrol immediately after shots were fired. "They tried to
maintain visual contact with him, and then when he raised his rifle to
shoot again, they fired.

"They perceived that someone was shooting at them. They did not identify
him as an 18yearold boy."

She said troops can shoot back if they are fired upon.

"They have the right to selfdefense," she said.

Should the Marines have determined before shooting that Ezequiel might have
mistaken them for a wild animal or drug traffickers?

"I don't know how you would ever know that," Bossch said.

Before shots were fired, however, the Marines had radioed that they were
observing a young man herding goats and carrying a rifle, The Associated
Press quoted Caver as saying. The Rangers also said the Marines followed
Ezequiel for 20 minutes and said Banuelos fired through brush and mesquite
trees from at least 75 yards away.

A medical helicopter was not called until the Border Patrol arrived 20
minutes after the shooting. Ezequiel's body was removed from where he fell
in a well and placed on flat ground. A patrol agent could not find a pulse.

A Presidio County grand jury plans to review the case in July.

The military's investigation has a different focus from the Rangers':
reviewing whether policies and procedures were followed.

Banuelos is back at Camp Pendleton with his unit. A Marine Corps attorney
declined an interview on Banuelos' behalf.

He also declined to provide any background information, citing privacy
laws, except to say that Banuelos is from California, is married and turned
22 the day after Ezequiel turned 18.

A hard life

In Redford, serenity masks a hardscrabble existence.

Many in the village, including the elder Ezequiel Hernandez, are farm
laborers who endure the Chihuahuan Desert's unforgiving sun to bale hay in
area fields. When the seasonal farm work ends, some find work in Presidio,
16 miles northwest, or at the nearby Big Bend Ranch State Natural Area to
the north of town. But some townspeople head for six months to Odessa or,
like Ezequiel's father, to Dallas for temporary jobs, said 51yearold Dora
Marquez, a resident.

"There are no jobs here," Marquez said. "If we have cows, that's good,
because there is so much grazing land."

Simple adobe or concreteblock homes and trailers dot small plots, where
vegetable and flower gardens brighten the desert.

Like many of their neighbors, clustering their homes for several
generations of a family, the Hernandezes share a small stretch of land with
Maria Hernandez's parents and with her married children.

Running water came to Redford homes about two years ago, and a government
grant will help bring flushable toilets to many.

Against this background, Ezequiel herded goats that would contribute to a
goat cheese cooperative the community hopes to create for goodpaying jobs.
Ezequiel's father served on the cooperative's board of directors.

"We are not drug dealers in Redford. We are not terrorists," said Enrique
Madrid, a archeological steward for the Texas Historical Commission who had
worked with Ezequiel on a history project to make a model of a Spanish fort.

Former President Bush honored Enrique Madrid's mother, Lucia Mede Madrid,
for starting a library in Redford that served children on both sides of the
border.

Madrid said Ezequiel was one of the biggest users of the library.

"This is what Redford really is," Madrid said, "hardworking, humble farmers
and families, and we are trying to educate the children."

Shattered tranquillity

But law enforcement officials see the expansive area around Redford as a
notorious drugsmuggling route. No one accuses townspeople of drug
trafficking, but U.S. Border Patrol, military and other authorities call
the area ideal cover for traffickers.

"This was an area known to have better than average amount of trafficking
of both narcotics and aliens," said Joe Harris, an assistant chief patrol
agent with the Border Patrol's Marfa sector, which is responsible for the
Redford area.

At the village, with its frequent border crossings, smugglers can move into
the United States as normal traffic, Harris said, and the grand stretches
of the Big Bend are difficult to patrol.

That's why the Border Patrol requested military assistance to watch for
trafficking in the area through Joint Task Force Six, a military operation
begun in 1989 to dispatch reserve and activeduty troops from all four
military branches to parts of the border.

Bossch, the JTF6 spokeswoman in El Paso, said federal law will not allow
soldiers to make arrests or conduct searches, only to watch.

"We provide, in these types of missions, eyes and ears," Bossch said.

Banuelos was on a patrol dispatched by Joint Task Force Six.

Many Redford residents say they have never seen drug smuggling or been
bothered by drug traffickers, and many never even knew that the military
trained so close. They now fear that the tranquillity they thought existed
here may not exist at all.

Dora Marquez's 14yearold son, David, who sometimes grazed his goats with
Ezequiel and who joined him on horse rides atop his burro, sold his goats
at his grandfather's prompting.

"We are afraid now," Dora Marquez said.

As investigators continue their work, Maria Hernandez is left with
Ezequiel's collected treasures: pictures of horses and Pancho Villa on his
wall; an ink drawing Ezequiel made for her of a man and woman trying to
move a stubborn burro; a box of coins, military buttons and belt buckles he
found in the hills.

The horse he always rode and the goats he was feeding when he was shot
remain penned at their home. He had planned to increase his herd and one
day have a ranch that would give his family a better life.

"So many memories," Hernandez cried.

She cannot understand why her son was not shot in the leg or arm by these
trained soldiers. Isn't that what the people who are enforcing the law
should do because they are the law, she asks.

Hernandez is pleading for justice, but she doubts she'll ever see it.

"The only defect (Ezequiel) had was he was Mexican," she said. ""He had
parents who were from Mexico. We immigrated here. But we are not going to
get justice because we are Mexicans."

In his room, Ezequiel had pinned up a Marine poster after hearing so much
about them in school, she said.

"After this happened," his mother said, "my youngest son took it down and
ripped it apart."