The Border Fence, Brownsville 
A Tale of Two Cities
To residents of Presidio and Ojinaga, the international border that separated them had always seemed irrelevant. They crossed it easily, spoke the same language, and considered themselves part of the same community. When Mexican authorities wrongly imprisoned a Texas grocer in April, that relationship changed dramatically—and it hasn't been the same since.
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García Gámez had quietly withstood Baca Magaña's piercing remarks that afternoon, but then his patience broke. Ignoring the presence of a reporter in the room, he issued a stunning declaration. "Look," he shot at Baca Magaña with a long, knowing stare, "so you won't break your head, you know where this is coming from." The room was dead silent as three people waited for his revelatory words. "This isn't coming from here. You know how things work."
"This," said Baca Magaña, ceremoniously holding up a piece of beef he had just sheared off an enormous T-bone steak, "is just in case the attorney general decides to throw me in there with El Junie." Then he shamelessly devoured it. That is Baca Magaña's style: frank, audacious, sarcastic. It suits him well as an attorney. In court he is imposing—intimidating, really—and he likes to pontificate and make rambling statements punctuated by rhetorical questions and metaphorical allusions. Sometimes he may even employ a popular Mexican dicho, or "saying." He scoffs at everything—the law, the press, Americans. He is a wealthy rancher and along with his father, one of the most prominent lawyers in Chihuahua. Tonight he was clad in Wranglers, a short-sleeve Tommy Hilfiger cotton blend, and pointy black cowboy boots. In the courtroom he wears expensive suits. When asked if it's true that he has represented some of Chihuahua's most notorious narcotraffickers, he gave a lawyerly response: "Well, they were accused, but nobody proved anything." But then he started ticking off names of his other clients, including the infamous drug lord Amado Carillo Fuentes, Pablo Acosta's successor and the so-called Lord of the Skies, who died mysteriously in 1997 while undergoing plastic surgery.
This time Baca Magaña had an innocent client—"The only one in my career," he said only half joking. An old schoolmate of Herrera's brother-in-law, he took on Junie's case after the family fired its first attorney. Ironically, it may prove to be Baca Magaña's hardest case yet. Though in public he exuded confidence, his brother said that privately he appeared frazzled, distressed over the mysterious forces that were keeping Herrera in jail. "Legally, it's an extremely simple case for me because the prosecution has no evidence, no testimony, no scientific proof—nothing that implicates my client in the crime," Baca Magaña said. Then he added, "But there's something there. There's something."
On paper Mexico has strong criminal laws, including a detailed constitution that grants its citizens civil rights that are similar to what Americans possess in the United States. According to the law, prosecutors carry the burden of proving a suspect's guilt. But there is one significant difference. In Mexico there are no jury trials. The judge single-handedly directs the collection of evidence, applies the law, and hands down judgments. It's a system that has matured over 71 years of one-party rule, and one that works especially well for drug lords and other criminals. It is difficult to influence or outright buy an entire jury; judges are a much easier matter. President Fox has pledged to clean up the system, but that job will take decades of work. And Fox can't even touch the state governments. The people of Mexico are well aware of that, and even in Presidio one family expressed its frustration by taunting him on an enormous piece of canvas they draped over one side of their house: "Señor Fox, if Mexico has truly changed, give Junie back to us. He's innocent."
Baca Magaña, then, had two separate jobs: to prove Herrera's innocence and more important, to figure out how to get him out of prison. The problem was that it was impossible to determine who his true adversary was. He had gone to see Attorney General González Rascón, who had admitted he lacked evidence to win a sentence, but González Rascón said he had to support his subordinates. That would seem to narrow the field to his assistant attorney general who had headed the investigation, the state judiciales who had arrested Herrera, and the district attorneys who had collected the evidence. From the American side, U.S. consul general Edward Vasquez met with the Chihuahua governor and the chief Supreme Court judge, but all he got was an assurance that Herrera would get his due process. It was yet another layer of silence in the Mexican justice system.
The longer officials remained mute, the louder the protests became. As June dragged on into July, Ojinaga's radio talk-show hosts continued to demand Herrera's liberty, and callers expressed outrage at the entrenched corruption of their justice system. The indignation perhaps was deeper in the southern border town since the stakes there were arguably higher: Mexicans live this reality every day. "The attitude is the same in both places because this is the border," said Jorge Pando, a young Ojinaga professional who is one of Herrera's friends. "Unfortunately, a lot of injustices are committed here." Even the Ojinaga mayor, a member of the state's minority party—the National Action Party, or PAN—called for Herrera's freedom.
In Presidio residents could barely contain their anger. They held nothing against the people of Ojinaga. But how to forgive and forget? It was a messy job to disentangle their personal loyalties from their newfound distrust of the Mexican government. Where citizenship had always been a second thought, now those north of the Rio Grande fiercely asserted their nationality, to the point that Presidio's fight for Herrera at times resembled an international war. The night Judge Estrada Rascón announced that Herrera would be held for trial, some three hundred enraged protesters blocked the bridge that links the towns and came face-to-face with Mexican law enforcement authorities right where a crack in the pavement demarcates the limits of the two countries. Herrera's friend Rene Molinar was asked by a member of the Mexican Federal Preventive Police to cross that line and call Junie from an office and verify that he was fine. But Molinar was too cynical—or perhaps too smart—to take one step onto what now seemed uncharted grounds. Ojinaga law enforcement officials responded to the blockade with a warning to Herrera's friends, delivered through the Presidio County sheriff: Don't cross the border or there could be trouble.
Judge Estrada Rascón, word had it, was not crossing north either. Seeing the fury of Herrera's supporters in his own courtroom, now he too was afraid of what might await him on the other side.
As Chely Baeza often said to her brother in jail, something had to give. Baca Magaña decided to place his bets on the Chihuahua Supreme Court. In Mexico a judge's declaration that a person is a probable suspect can be appealed even as the prosecution unfolds. On Thursday, July 5, Magistrate Rosa Isela Jurado Contreras accepted Herrera's case. Baca Magaña worried, though, that the following Friday, July 13, the court system would shut down for a two-week vacation. If nothing was resolved before then, Herrera would face at least fourteen more days of agonizing uncertainty. Any rational person would not have expected Jurado Contreras to reach a decision within a week, when the process of issuing an appellate ruling normally takes months. But life no longer was rational. On Thursday, July 12, those who attended the Rosary of Liberation tacked on a word to their prayer: "Jesus, free Junie tomorrow." Friday, July 13, was the longest day the Herreras will ever remember. Nerves frayed like an old carpet, Junie's mother and sisters decided to wait it out with Herrera, whom the jail guards had allowed to stay in the administrator's office. When they had heard nothing at four o'clock, their hopes began to fade. It was three-thirty, then four. Nothing still.
Then, at about four-thirty, Baca Magaña's son burst into the office from the municipal compound and told Herrera, "You've got your freedom." Twenty minutes later, a court clerk walked in with a faxed copy of the judge's order to let Herrera go.
It seemed that God had heard Presidio's and Ojinaga's prayers. The prison guards slapped each other's backs, and the inmates who had been Herrera's sole companions for two months cheered as if they were the ones going home. As the guards helped pack his belongings, the deejay at one of Ojinaga's favorite radio stations repeated the news to listeners on both sides of the Rio Grande. By the time Herrera squeezed into the back seat of his brother-in-law's white Yukon, people had congregated outside their homes and were honking their horns throughout the city. In just a few minutes the big SUV approached the narrow bridge that links the two towns, and Herrera now says that he was overcome when the U.S. Customs agent asked him for his nationality. It was a declaration he had made countless times during a lifetime of crossing the border, but on this occasion the words came out deliberately and heavily: U.S. citizen. Nearby, a deputy sheriff grinned as Herrera drove away and said, "It's good to have you back home."
After 76 days, Herrera was finally free. Baca Magaña said it was because he had managed to have the appeal assigned to a single judge: his old college classmate, Magistrate Jurado Contreras. He said that he had kept her informed of the prosecution's maneuvers even before she took the case and that she had already decided that it was "nonsense." Jurado Contreras delivered her decision in roughly a week.
Still, attaining his freedom cost Herrera and his family a small fortune. His mother said they incurred between $100,000 and $120,000 in expenses. Baca Magaña said he was paid $70,000 for his services. Lucia Herrera said that the family also paid $12,000 to their first attorney and several thousand to a third lawyer who assisted Baca Magaña. Asked about the high expenses, Herrera's sister Marta replied, "With the anger that I still feel at this point, I'd rather not comment." It will take Junie Herrera years of work to scrape together the cost of being innocent.
And then there are all those unanswered questions—why Junie?—which the Herreras, like other victims of the Mexican justice system, will simply have to let go. The personal scars also will take time to fade. Chely was beginning to shed her anger by the time dozens of friends poured in to see Junie the weekend after his release, but her older sister, Marta, was still furious. Herrera had trouble adjusting to the cold of an air-conditioned home and continued to fidget nervously in his chair. He was wary of being alone on the streets, and he had to be cheered on by his friends after every smile.
It is a conflict that, for the Herreras as for the rest of Presidio, will have to be resolved internally, deep down in the heart. Nearly every day during Herrera's imprisonment, Marta was reminded that Ojinaga had always been a second home—a place where, in her teenage years, she spent long days at the movies and then walked back to the bridge with her sister. The memories hurt. "We used to have a lot of friends from across the border," she reminisced. Junie was also worried about the future. While he maintained deep affection for his southern neighbors, who made up the majority of his clientele and who showered him with support during his imprisonment, he wondered whether he could ever step back into Mexico without fear or cynicism. To date, he has not returned.
"Whoever did this doesn't know how much they killed my brother's spirits," Marta said one afternoon.
Then she thought twice. "Our people's spirits. On both sides of the border."
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