Children of the Cane
(With the exception of the Esequiel Hernandez photo and the military picture of the helicopter, the images included here are from my long-time friend and fellow traveler, Greg Smith. We have known each other 40-plus years and often found ourselves working the same news stories. Greg was employed by global wire services, national magazines, newspapers, and various publications, and was widely respected for capturing the essence of the larger story with his images. His photos speak for themselves. Retired now, his career’s body of work can be found at the Dolph Brisco Center for American History on the University of Texas campus in Austin. I am grateful for his generosity, talent, and friendship. - JM)
Along Ranch Road 170, just west of the tiny border town of Redford, Texas, a bladed gravel road veers off the chip sealed caliche pavement and bends toward the north bank of the Rio Grande. A few minutes through the desert dust, an even lesser track appears on the left and leads to a low plateau. Up top, there is a sweeping view of a broad valley cut by the ancient river, colorful mesas towering over the horizon to the north and west, and the eternal waters of the Rio San Carlos coming down from the Sierra Madre Oriental of Northern Mexico, flowing into the river course that marks the separate sovereignty of two nations. The lonely plateau, scored by millennia of wind and heat, is also the site that might be the saddest piece of the earth I have ever trod.
I only went to the Redford graveyard to see where 18-year-old Esequiel Hernandez was buried. When the phone rang in my office in Austin one day in May of 1997, I was told by a friend in West Texas that it appeared a teenaged goat herder had been shot dead by a U.S. Marine on an anti-drug deployment. Esequiel had wanted to be Marine and had a recruiting poster hanging above his bed. When it was confirmed he had been killed by a Marine sharpshooter, Esequiel’s younger brother tore the picture from the wall in their parents’ adobe home. News of the tragedy was still moving through the 90 people who lived in Redford when we arrived with our TV cameras. We were told much later that the young man’s mother became a secondary victim and had remained in a state of shock until she died.
The only marker on his grave was a humble wooden cross and his name had been misspelled with a “z” instead of an “s.” A few baskets of plastic flowers had been left on the rocks that had been spread across the hard ground above where he lay. When I turned around and scanned the countryside to the south and west, the location where Esequiel had been shot by a sniper, which was next to an old, disused water cistern, was visible in the shining distance. His family home, as colorless as the desert dirt, was not far from the church that had held his funeral. In fact, every moment of his shortened life had been spent within the range of my vision from the foot of his grave. He had never been on an airplane or listened to music in Austin or eaten at a restaurant in El Paso. Esequiel spent much of his youth just herding the family’s goats through the cholla and ocotillo and canebrakes to get them water down at the big river.
His death was supposed to add value to our understanding and politics of the border, but he lies forgotten. Esequeil would likely be married and a father by now, had he been given the chance to live. Instead, he became a victim of bad policy decisions and a lack of understanding about life and commerce along la frontera. An alliance between the military and law enforcement, called Joint Task Force 6, was deployed to interdict drug runners. Corporal Manuel Banuelos, a Marine only four years older than Esequiel, was hiding in the sage, disguised in a ghilli suit that made him look like a part of the desert vegetation. The boy goat herder, riding his burro, was carrying a .22 rifle used to shoot coyotes and keep them away from his animals. Banuelos claimed two shots were fired in his direction but more likely Esequiel was trying to scare off predators, which he did every day.
A radio transmission from JTF-6 headquarters in El Paso gave Banuelos authorization to engage and he put a bullet under the boy’s arm, which passed through his heart. There was nothing justified about clothing active duty soldiers in camouflage and sending them out into civilian environments with guns, a clear violation of the Posse Comitatus Act banning the use of military against U.S. citizens. Banuelos was as much a victim of bad politics, though, as Esequiel was of the Marine’s rifle. A grand jury did not indict Banuelos and there is no publicly available information on his status. He seems to have disappeared almost as certainly and permanently as Esequeil and undoubtedly carries psychological wounds from which he may never recover.
We do not learn, though, and public officials have made no great effort at rethinking policy or understanding that the border is just a singular environment, and a river runs through it. The people who live on either side of the Rio Grande see it as a seam where one culture and two countries are sewn together to bind families and businesses on both sides. They are not divided by the river; their governments are. There is also the historically ignored fact that about a third of the country north of that river belonged to Mexico until the U.S. launched a war against against its neighbor that Congressman Abraham Lincoln described as a land grab that was "unnecessarily and unconstitutionally commenced by the President." James Polk, using unverifiable information as President, insisted Mexico had “spilled American blood on U.S. soil.” Deception is a tactic that has been overused by our imperialist politicians ever since, most recently from Vietnam to Iraq.
I have spent much of my life traveling, writing, reporting, and living on the U.S.-Mexico border, and like most Americans, I feel helpless to do anything more than lament the ongoing deterioration of the friendship between our two countries. The modern day body count of immigrants and innocents has dramatically accelerated since the governor of Texas decided to spend billions on blatant militarization of the region. Beginning in March of 2021, his “Operation Lone Star,” burned taxpayer dollars faster than a drunk at a blackjack table to erect razor wire and floating barriers between our two countries while also dispatching thousands of National Guard soldiers and state troopers, all carrying arms against the helpless. His orders authorized high-speed chases of vehicles suspected of carrying immigrants, which has resulted in at least 106 fatalities and 301 injuries as of February 2025. The dead include a 7-year-old child who had gone for an ice cream cone with her grandmother, just one of many bystanders exposed to the dangers of a politician’s performative art.
The barricades run counterintuitive to the complex interdependence of the two nations. The U.S. Department of Commerce (which still exists as of this writing) estimates that a billion dollars in trade daily crosses the border. Two of the largest land ports on the planet, Laredo and El Paso, make possible much of the robust economy of which the Texas governor consistently brags. While the American president toys with destroying lives and economies, Texas political leadership salutes the man whose tariffs could cost the state $47 billion dollars if they are instituted against Mexico and Canada. Federal government figures estimate 7 million jobs in this country are connected to commerce with Mexico. The number of undocumented immigrants living in Texas from south of the border is estimated at just under a million, and combined legal immigrants, reportedly pay around $2 billion in taxes and add about $20 billion to the gross state product. More than half of the construction jobs in Texas are held by Mexicans without papers. They likely built your house.
The numbers are mind-numbing but tell the story Americans refuse to accept; our economy is deeply dependent on the cheap labor of disadvantaged immigrants. Another alarming figure, though, is the new deployment of 3,000 U.S. troops to the border as the Secretary of Defense, (a man whose judgment is reputedly and frequently affected by alcohol consumption), has privately told Mexican officials that an American action against cartels inside their country is a real possibility. Will we invade Canada, too, and make it the 51st state? While we string razor wire and point our guns at the poor, the current administration plans to sell citizenship to immigrants who have $5 million dollars.
Combat teams on the Texas border are at-ready with Stryker vehicles, eight-wheeled, armored personnel carriers armed with .50 caliber machine guns and grenade launchers. A general support aviation battalion has also been positioned there with an unknown number of UH-60 Black Hawk attack helicopters. Mexico has reacted by turning over 29 imprisoned cartel leaders to the U.S., including Rafael Caro Quintero, who ordered the murder of undercover D.E.A. agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena. The Mafioso mobster in the White House has responded with his version of a concession by saying, “Maybe the tariffs against Mexico won’t be so bad.”
The total of active duty U.S. soldiers is planned to rise to 9,000. The figure adds to the 16,500 Border Patrol agents, 2,200 federalized National Guard personnel, and 4,500 Texas state National Guard troops. There are also a couple of thousand Customs and Border Patrol officers stationed at ports of entry and more than a thousand Texas Department of Public Safety officers. In February, immigrant apprehensions were at an historic low of just over 8,000, which means the number of law enforcement and military personnel outnumber the border crossers by about a four to one margin. The Texas governor, spending billions on border barriers and ignoring teachers and schools, has also failed to mention a word about the 17 Texas Guardsmen who have died during their absurd deployment, including at least three suicides.
While American government leadership demonizes immigrants, we remain largely oblivious to our cultural contradictions and hypocrisies that have contributed to their desperation. If our population were not consuming billions of dollars in fentanyl and other narcotics, Mexican traffickers would have no market. Our war on drugs is over, and drugs won. We blame Mexico because there has never been adequate legislative ingenuity in Congress to come up with laws that bring down our consumption, nor has there been sufficient American will to quit. Our demand appears insatiable, and until that changes, no wall nor river nor militarizations will stop the constant flow of narcotics across the border, regardless of tariff threats by the Russian asset living in the White House. The market will be supplied what it desires with increasing levels of violence, technology, and cleverness.
Life for American citizens living on the border, meanwhile, is transforming. ICE runs about profiling anyone who looks Mexican and they are often stopped with post-Weimar Germany demands of, “Let me see your papers, please.” The object is not to deport and arrest criminals; the goal is to intimidate and spread fear. El Paso Matters recently reported on two Honduran immigrants, a brother and sister, who were arrested without cause. Pedro, 18, and his sister, Elizabeth, 19, (surnames withheld) were riding in the back of a pickup on their way to work at a farm when it was pulled over by an unmarked ICE vehicle with lights flashing. When they gave their names to officers, as demanded, they were told a warrant was out for their arrests. The two were held for two weeks without charges being filed or no record of probable cause for stopping the truck. They had both entered the country in 2021 as unaccompanied minors and had proper documentation. According to their attorney, ICE had twice tried to have them deported but the Department of Homeland Security denied the requests.
U.S. citizens going to the corner store now run the daily risk of being stopped for driving while brown. Their communities begin to look like armed camps with military vehicles appearing on local roads. Businesses, meanwhile, are worried about how tariffs will change local economies, but they know no good will come of the levies against imports. Investment capital is frozen and jobs are going unfilled because the Orange Overlord is injecting his insecurities into the Americas. Global enterprises considering investing billions in near-shoring plants in Northern Mexico are contemplating going elsewhere to avoid tariffs. Automobile manufacturers, who moved plants to Mexico for cheap labor under NAFTA, are being told by Washington to move back to the states, a multi-billion dollar burden that cannot be carried by any business. The 260,000 workers in maquiladora manufacturing facilities across from El Paso in Ciudad Juarez have no idea the jeopardy their employment is facing because of tariffs.
Eight years ago when the first wave of unaccompanied minors began crossing the river in the Rio Grande Valley, I was summoned by economic and social organizations to help the country understand their perspective. A huge number of minors had ridden north on top of a train that came to be known as “the beast,” and had made their way to Reynosa, across the border from McAllen. Thousands went up river and waded across at the Anzalduas Bridge near Mission and where Border Patrol vans waited to take them to processing. National media called it an immigration invasion, but I argued it was a humanitarian crisis, which it was, and still is.
And it has grown much bigger than the one that took the life of Esequiel Hernandez.
(I continue to try to broaden the reach of my work and perspective. If you think it’s worthy, please subscribe, paid if possible, but free is fine, too. Also, consider sharing. Information is our best weapon against autocracy. - JM)
The stories we did about Esequiel haunt me still. Thanks for keeping him in our view.
I say "like," but you know what I mean. On a day like this, it's exceedingly hard to be proud to be an American. All I know to do is to keep moving forward, one day at a time; on some days, 15 minutes at a time.
Thanks for writing.