Soldiers of Misfortune
For as long as the U.S. military has patrolled the border in search of drug smugglers, there has been the possibility that an innocent civilian would be killed. The government insists the chance is worth taking. Tell that to the family of EzequielHernandez, Jr.
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BY LAW, THE MILITARY IS REQUIRED to gain permission from a landowner to conduct an exercise on private property. Unlike the other border states, Texas is composed of very little public land, and the difficulties involved in securing landowner permission therefore help explain why less than 10 percent of JTF-6’s approximately 3,300 missions have taken place in our state, according to Bossch. The mission at El Polvo presented the worst of all possible scenarios. The military indeed received permission to encamp on acreage just downriver from the crossing. Unfortunately, the landowner resided in Kermit, 221 miles north of Redford, and seldom visited his border property. The other townsfolk had no way of knowing that the Marines would be descending on El Polvo. For that matter, the Presidio County Sheriff’s Department didn’t know either. And because there was no one to tell Redford about the Marines, no one, conversely, told the Marines about Redford. Colonel Kelly of the Camp Pendleton unit would later tell the press, “We key off of law enforcement. They have a good feel for the community. They live it, they breathe it, and they’re part of it. So we depend upon law enforcement’s judgment as to what there is to find.” This kind of communication did not occur. Kelly also said that military intelligence gatherers actually visited El Polvo three to four days before the unit was deployed there. And, of course, either JTF-6 or the Border Patrol visited the crossing and buried a sensor. Yet throughout all this preparation, the military never gathered the one bit of information that everyone in Redford knew, the one kernel of intelligence that would have saved both the mission from being aborted and, incidentally, a life—nearly every afternoon from about five to six, a young man named Ezequiel Hernandez, Jr., brought his flock of goats to the riverbank.
On May 12 an advance team of Camp Pendleton officials arrived in Marfa and set up shop in a mobile home on a lot behind the sector headquarters of the Border Patrol. Two days later a C-130 airplane conveyed the remainder of the 5th Batallion to Marfa. Of the 120 or so soldiers, about 10 would remain at the command center on the Border Patrol lot—where, among other things, they would receive signals of movement from the sensor buried by El Polvo. Sixteen of the remaining Marines would be deployed at four designated LP/OP sites, 4 soldiers per location, rotating every few days to keep the troops fresh. The following day, May 15, 16 Marines were sent to their posts, officially, if secretly, inaugurating the military’s fourteen-day mission.
Unit 513, stationed near El Polvo, consisted of four noncommissioned Marine corporals: Ronald Wieler, Jr., Ray Torres, Jr., James Matthew Blood, and the team leader, San Francisco–native Clemente Bañuelos. For the next five days, the four young men (all of them between the ages of 19 and 22) lived day and night in the mesquite brush of a country where temperatures routinely soar into the triple digits. Each wore a ghillie suit, camouflage that covered him from head to toe in stringy brown and green burlap strips, their M-16 rifles similarly obscured, with their faces darkened, so that the Marines looked like nothing so much as large blobs of foliage—or, as some would later suggest, Bigfoot. While living on military rations and sweltering in their bulky garb, they looked through their binoculars, listened to the sensor reports on their radios, and in general came to know the world of the border through the eyes and ears of trained warriors.
“Every night they saw vehicles crossing,” Rodriguez told me. Of course, this wouldn’t surprise Redford residents, most of whom had family on the other side and routinely crossed over themselves. Furthermore, El Polvo has long been a corridor for contrabandistas—though the goods in question tend to be clothes, electronic wares, or frozen chickens being ferried into Mexico. So what, exactly, was there for the Marines to see? According to Rodriguez, on the third or fourth night, Unit 513 observed the crossing of ten illegal aliens, who were subsequently apprehended by the Border Patrol. But they weren’t carrying drugs, and they bore no connection to El Cubano’s smuggling scheme. According to David Castañeda, the Marines never once observed any backpackers; and though El Cubano was arrested a month later, credit for his apprehension would go to the Mexican police rather than anyone on the American side of the river.
In short, Unit 513 saw and did nothing during its five-day observation period at El Polvo to fulfill anyone’s notion of an anti-drug mission. But on the afternoon of Tuesday, May 20, while encamped at their “hide site” near the banks of the Rio Grande, the four Marines did see someone. It was a Mexican man on horseback, across the river, gazing at America and waiting.
THERE IS NO WAY TO KNOW FOR CERTAIN whether the horseman was the same man beside a parked truck I saw 22 days later, when I visited El Polvo and watched the father and brother of Ezequiel Junior take the goats to the water. There is also probably no way to know for sure what he was up to. We do know that he unwittingly triggered the calamitous accident that was waiting all along to happen. The sighting of this man prompted the four Marines to move to higher ground—within view of Hernandez, who stood watch over his flock with a rickety .22 in hand, prepared to fire on the pack of wild dogs from town that had recently mutilated one of his goats.
The world of fact grows murky here. Did the teenager see the Marines? And if so, could he tell who or what they were? (Said Colonel Kelly at the press conference: “It is the team’s impression that there is no mistake that they were identified as humans.”) Or, considering their bushy camouflage and the standard duck-walking movements of stalking Marines, did he believe them to be dogs? Border Patrol officials confirm that a Marine radioed word that they had been fired upon—twice, according to two Marines in their statements. The Marines say that they then shadowed Hernandez (for how long is unclear) and that he not only did not retreat but eventually raised his .22 to fire at one of them. The Rangers have already expressed doubt over this scenario, considering that Bañuelos shot the right-handed Hernandez in the right side, which would not have been exposed to the team leader if Hernandez had been aiming in the other Marine’s direction. Instead, judging from the entry point of the single lethal bullet, one might conclude that Hernandez was turning to go back home with his goats.
Regardless, Bañuelos fired his M-16 once. According to the Marines, Hernandez staggered, then fell backward into a three-foot fire pit. That, at least, is where the Border Patrol found him 22 minutes later. The Marines made no attempt to revive Hernandez, though, as the autopsy would later establish, he bled to death; in other words, he did not die instantly. Did the Marines let him die because they were not required to save his life? Or was it in their best interests, judging by what happened at El Polvo, that Ezequiel Hernandez be prevented from describing his version of the events?
We know this: The Marines at no time told him, as a lawman might, who they were and what their business was. Citing the windy conditions of that afternoon (though that, too, is a matter of dispute) that would have made verbal communications difficult, Colonel Kelly told the press, “In order to get the attention of the individual, they would’ve had to expose themselves. And there was no requirement under the rules of engagement about having to do that.”
We also know this: Though at the time of his death Ezequiel Hernandez actually had a U.S. Marines recruiting poster tacked to the wall of his bedroom, he did not know that the Joint Chiefs of Staff Standing Rules of Engagement applied to the world that was his back yard.
HERE IS THE REST OF ALL I KNOW. Twenty-two days after Ezequiel Junior was shot to death, I sat on a rock beside El Polvo and said, “Buenos tardes” to his father as he passed me on horseback. “Buenos tardes,” replied Ezequiel Senior, as did Noel, and then they followed their goats uphill toward home. But the man across the river on the Mexican side continued to stand beside his truck for almost an hour. He looked at me, and I looked at him. Neither of us seemed to be in any imminent danger.
Then, at about six-thirty, I heard the sound of an engine coming from the north. Looking up, I saw a large vehicle slash and jiggle its way through the brush-clogged dirt road. It was a large flatbed truck, piled at least six feet high with contraband—which, I could plainly see, consisted of nothing more than some seventy automobile tires precariously tied to the bed. Slowly, inexorably, the truck advanced upon El Polvo. It plowed noisily through the river, spraying water everywhere. A minute later it was across. Only then did the lone man beside the truck move. He waved to the driver of the contraband, hopped into his own vehicle, and drove off after him.
While watching the tire contrabandistas vanish into the Mexican interior that afternoon, it occurred to me that somewhere in somebody’s headquarters, a sensor signal had been transmitted. Maybe somebody would hear the signal. Even if he did, the battle would be joined too late.
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