The Sheriff Who Went to Pot
Hidalgo count’s top cop, brig marmolejo, was a champion of law and order—until mexican drug smugglers made him an offer that even he couldn’t refuse.
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By this time, word had reached Marmolejo that Joe Garcia had told federal agents about the produce shed. He also knew that Beltran was dealing with federal prosecutors. And later that summer, Marmolejo now says, he received a disquieting pone call from a San Antonio associate who had something to tell him in person. With chief jailer Salinas in the passenger seat, Marmolejo drove north and met the man more or less halfway, in Hebbronville.
The source, who had received some information from a federal agent, spelled out the grim details. “They’ve got a lot on you, and they’re gonna do whatever it takes to get you,” he said. The acquaintance added, “There’s three million dollars to be made if you take the rap that you did certain favors for Homero Beltran. I’ll get a million, you’ll get a million, and [a Beltran intermediary] will get a million.” The money was from Beltran, who obviously was worried that Marmolejo might prevail in court and thereby jeopardize the trafficker’s reduced-sentence deal. The source did his best to convince Marmolejo that the scenario Beltran offered was more reasonable than facing a trial. “You can go to Mexico,” he said, “or stay here and get the charges reduced to something else.”
It was a vintage Rio Grande Valley deal: Take the money, keep things quiet, leave things in the hands of powerful friends, and wait patiently while justice warps like plastic under the South Texas sun. Oscar McInnis would have approved of the deal—which, if it truly existed, was the best offer Homero Beltran had ever sent Brig Marmolejo’s way. Yet it was one deal too many. The sheriff had long since abandoned his integrity, but his swagger had not altogether deserted him. He laughed and, in a voice that must have sounded about eighteen years younger, told the attorney to get lost.
On January 18, 1994, a federal grand jury in McAllen indicted the sheriff on eight counts of racketeering, money laundering, and federal bribery. A warrant was issued for the arrest of Marmolejo, Salinas, and two other Hidalgo County officers. In a raid of Marmolejo’s property federal agent failed to find the $147,000 in bribes that the sheriff had allegedly received from Beltran over the last two years. Nor did they find the two Rado watches. The agents did, however, discover farm equipment on the sheriff’s ranch that belonged to Eleazar Morin, a drug trafficker who had been in custody at the Hidalgo County jail.
When the secret federal audit of Marmolejo’s many real estate properties leaked out, even the most jaded Valley insiders had to chuckle with amazement. The fair market value of his properties totaled more than $900,000. That wasn’t a bad pile for a man of the people—particularly one making an annual salary of $46,305.
The seven-day trial this past July, United States v. Brigido Marmoejo, Jr., et al., was a dramatic and melancholy spectacle of justice deflowered. Because the case amounted to a primer on how things work in the Valley, every witness’ motives were inherently suspect. A host of information was deemed inadmissible by U.S. district judge George Kazen and kept from the jury. Even so, the twelve Laredo jurors knew enough to know when to smirk at the testimony, and so they did: at Beltran’s insistence that the prosecution had offered him no deals; at Guardado’s unctuous assurance that his drug-dealing broth-in-law had urged him simply “to tell the truth”; and at Marmolejo’s boast that “no one can bribe me.”
Local reporters, along with several federal agents and members of Marmolejo’s immediate family, watched with growing numbness as the body of evidence accumulated. Assistant U.S. attorney Surovic had built a classic Al Capone-style racketeering case: no drugs, no money, just a well-marked paper trail. In contrast, defense attorney Tony Canales brought forth almost no witnesses, instead urging the jurors to weigh the respected sheriff’s word against that of a dope dealer. This rather unenergetic strategy incensed Marmolejo’s supporters, who conjectured ridiculously that Canales had been pressured by IRS agents to roll over. In truth, whatever hope the defense harbored seemed to fade the moment Brig Marmolejo took the stand.
The sheriff’s voice was smooth and impassive, with its usual quality of easygoing fatalism. But his testimony was a tangle of contradictions and nonsense. “I don’t trust anybody, really. But I do trust people. In my job, you have to.” “I have a policy that I do favors, but I don’t like to ask for favors.” “Since Juan Antonio Guardado always said, ‘Anytime you need anything, just call me,’ I didn’t see anything wrong with borrowing from him. It was a fine line, but I needed the money…” It was as if the Hidalgo County sheriff had become the official mouthpiece of Rio Grande Valley double-talk. The more he spoke, the clearer it became that regardless of what Brig Marmolejo had or had not done, his word could be trusted no more than that of the felon Homero Beltran.
In his closing argument, Canales did everything but drop to his knees as he beseeched the jurors: “Was the sheriff a fool? I think he was. I think we all agree….But is there anybody in this room who hasn’t befriended someone who goes sour? Is there anyone in this room who hasn’t been had?
“Guardado pushed and pushed,” he moaned. “Gave him watches. Foolish. Foolish. But it was a gift, not a bribe. And a gift isn’t a part of the indictment.”
Again Marmolejo’s attorney said it: “My client was a fool.” Ironically, Canales had been a young U.S. attorney when Marmolejo brought him the information that Oscar McInnis was soliciting a murder. Canales knew the kind of man his client was back then. But much had changed over the years, and not just for Marmolejo. Now Canales defended, rather than prosecuted, Valley drug smugglers and crooked politicians, and was himself far removed from the days when Brig Marmolejo stood for something other than the Valley’s tortured ethics. Canales chose not to dredge up the old heroics. No character witnesses had been called to bring forth a more gallant era. The jury had already heard too much about behavior in the Valley to imagine great things of the rotund man who now sat glassy-eyed and red-faced while his lawyer fought to save him by casting him as a buffoon.
The jury took all of five hours to decide that Marmolejo was guilty of everything the federal government had accused him of.
With the Martinez network dismantled in Hidalgo County and federal investigators sweeping through Starr County, with Zapata County expunged of its crooked leaders, with trafficking being pushed upriver to Webb and El Paso counties, with all this reform in the air, it would be comforting to imagine the Valley in a newfound state of purity. Yet there are signs that this will never be. Two powerful drug-smuggling families have sprung up in Weslaco, just east of Donna. Four bodies, two of them identified as the corpses of Mexican reporters, were discovered this past summer in the Hidalgo County town of Monte Alto. Since the passage of NAFTA, the number of border trucking companies has increased by more than 700 percent, while the opportunities for currency laundering in the free-trade zone have become seemingly limitless.
And even as new players in the drug trade spring up daily, the old smugglers remain as symbols, if nothing else, that justice does not come easily in the Rio Grande Valley. The information provided by Ramon “El Lechero” Martinez and Homero Beltran all but ensures that the two Hidalgo County traffickers will someday be back on the streets. They will return to find a new sheriff; and they will doubtless remember that once upon a time, Brig Marmolejo was a new sheriff as well.
“There’s more corruption in South Texas than Brig Marmolejo,” says a veteran attorney and lifelong Valley resident. “And Brig’s not necessarily the most corrupt among them.”
A FEW MILES NORTHWEST OF Edinburg, a middle-aged Hispanic gentleman sat outdoors with his visitor, sipping Mexican beer and talking about his old friend Brig Marmolejo while the sun retreated from view. His ranch property was cactus-snaggled and thoroughly unmanicured, yet not without its own wild beauty. Ribs and sweetbreads roasted on the barbecue nearby. Nothing stirred except for the crackling of the fire.
The man, who had once been a prominent elected official in Hidalgo County, spoke of the fallen sheriff with fondness. Now and again his voice grew solemn, but for the most part he conversed in a tone of airy unflappability, as if all was inevitable and all would be put right in the future. Brig Marmolejo spoke in such a voice, even on the witness stand. It was a melody peculiar to this part of the world—and, like this part of the world, strangely seductive.
“Just a few weeks ago, after the verdict, I had a pachanga for Brig here,” the man was saying. “And it was like old times. People telling jokes, having a few drinks, eating barbecue, listening to the musicians.”
Reflecting for a moment, he then flashed an ironic smile. “It was almost like not acknowledging that someone had died.” He changed his tone, as if to correct himself. “The point was not to judge,” he said. “You know, you don’t turn your back on someone who was weak. This is how the culture functions. We’re all like cousins. And what we were all trying to say was, ‘We don’t know enough about what really happened. We only know what we read in the paper. But regardless, we’re here.’”
The gentleman chewed thoughtfully on a rib for a while. Then, under the Valley’s darkening glow he said softly, in that voice of almost hypnotic fatalism: “The only purpose was to say, ‘We’re still the same.’”
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