Pubdate: Sat, 03 Dec 2005
Source: San Francisco Chronicle (CA)
Copyright: 2005 Hearst Communications Inc.
Contact:  http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/388
Author: Tyche Hendricks, Chronicle Staff Writer

On The Border

FOR THE TOHONO O'ODHAM, THE U.S.-MEXICAN BORDER IS A RECENT AND 
DIFFICULT DEVELOPMENT

In this part of an occasional series, The Chronicle examines the 
unique life of this tribe.

San Miguel, Ariz. -- Driving the red clay roads of the Tohono O'odham 
Indian Reservation, Harriet Toro passed an adobe house with a fence 
of dried ocotillo and jounced over a cattle guard that marks the 
border with Mexico.

When it reaches the reservation, the Mexico-U.S. border fades to a 
few strands of barbed wire.

But here the border is even more than an international dividing line. 
It divides a people.

The Tohono O'odham, or Desert People, hunted deer and harvested 
acorns, wild spinach and prickly pear for 6,000 years on this 
unforgiving high desert before the border was scrawled across it in 1853.

Now, the Tohono O'odham reservation is on the front line of the 
battle over drug and immigrant smuggling, and that is costing the 
tribe scarce resources and impeding its ability to move freely back and forth.

Many Indians cross the border regularly. Residents of the Mexican 
state of Sonora visit their doctors at the tribal health center in 
Sells, Ariz. Indians on the American side trek, as their ancestors 
did, to summer camps in Sonora. A few children wait each morning at 
the cattle guard, known as the San Miguel Gate, for the O'odham 
school bus to take them 25 miles north to school in Sells.

 From Page A1 | Minutes after crossing into Mexico, Toro pulled up at 
three small houses surrounding an outdoor kitchen -- Harry Noriega's 
place -- just as Noriega, 69, had climbed into his pickup to fetch 
some ice from the nearest settlement, six miles across the border in Arizona.

Noriega stepped back down, and the two chatted softly in a mixture of 
English and the lilting, sibilant speech of their native language, 
O'odham, punctuated by "K" and "T" sounds. Around them, cicadas 
chirred in the mesquite trees, and the heat climbed this summer day.

A Life On Both Sides

"I've spent half of my time on this side and half on the other side," 
Noriega said, a quick smile lighting his leathery face. "I was born 
right where the road crosses over the border. All that's there now is 
a hump of dirt."

With his tribal identity card, Noriega is entitled to cross at the 
San Miguel Gate, which is not a formal port of entry into the United States.

But it's not straightforward anymore. As border controls toughened in 
urban areas beginning in 1994, illegal immigration and drug smuggling 
shifted to this remote land, forcing U.S. Border Patrol agents here 
to try to stem the flow of marijuana and human beings. Some locals 
say the agents have harassed them in recent years.

"One day a policeman stopped us and told us, 'Next time, go through 
Sasabe,' " Noriega recalled.

That's a 140-mile journey, most of it over rough dirt roads -- a long 
way for a bag of ice.

Tribal police Sgt. Vincent Garcia accepts the presence of the Border 
Patrol. Veteran agents get familiar with Indians' vehicles and wave 
them through the gap in the barbed-wire fence and down the hard clay 
road. But many O'odham people dislike the Border Patrol, Garcia said, 
because newly arrived agents often stop them and ask for their papers.

"Citizens get upset. They feel they're being harassed by the agents," 
said Garcia. "They see themselves as O'odham first and American or 
Mexican second."

Funds Stretched

The tribe has augmented its modest revenue with proceeds from three 
casinos it began operating in the 1990s, but it still struggles.

The immigrant surge has mushroomed into an expensive problem for the 
tribe, costing an estimated $7 million, roughly 10 percent of the 
tribe's annual budget, in emergency medical care, trash cleanup and 
police services, tribal officials say.

"That's money that should be spent on health, education and 
development for our people," said Vivian Juan-Saunders, Toro's boss 
and chairwoman of the 28,000-member tribe.

Per capita income on the reservation was just over $8,000 in 2000, a 
fraction of the national figure of $22,000 and also well below the 
average for all Indian tribes, $13,000, according to the U.S. Census 
Bureau. Fewer than half of O'odham adults have completed high school, 
the lowest rate for all U.S. Indian tribes.

Toro, a 58-year-old mother of six with straight salt-and-pepper hair 
falling to her waist, visits the border often in her work for the 
tribal government. With Mexican-born grandparents, she feels a strong 
affinity with those like Noriega whose lives straddle the line.

"The places where we would traditionally pick our saguaro fruit are 
right around here," Toro said, pointing toward the horizon. "My 
family would go to the other side of that mountain there."

The tribe's terrain once stretched from Hermosillo, 175 miles south 
of where the border is now, all the way north to the Gila River in 
Arizona and from Tucson west to the Colorado River. Today's 
reservation encompasses a much smaller area, a 2.8 million-acre chunk 
of Arizona the size of Connecticut. But people who identify as tribal 
members still live as far as 90 miles south in Mexico.

Toro asked Noriega to guide her to a chapel about a mile away. A 
cloud of dust rose behind his truck as he left and drove north for the ice.

A Deepening Impact

The little church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, tucked among the 
creosote bushes, is seldom used because permanent residents are 
scarce in the hot, dry plain between the Mexican towns of Sasabe and 
Sonoyta, and they're getting scarcer.

But the church door is always unlocked, and locals keep the white 
stucco sanctuary clean with a corn-straw broom they prop in the 
corner. The door opens to the east, in the tradition of Sonoran 
Catholicism, a blend of O'odham religion and the Catholicism brought 
to the region by missionaries in the 17th century. The altar is 
decorated with tissue paper flowers, magenta streamers and an arc of 
plastic roses over a statue of the Virgin.

"The last time we came here, you could tell a lot of I.A.s had been 
here, from the little things they left on the altar," Toro said, 
using the tribe's shorthand term for illegal aliens. She said many 
stop to pray before starting the perilous hike into the United States.

The deepening impact of immigrants is clear everywhere on the 
reservation, including Toro's home, where a group recently stopped by.

"They wanted food and we were eating so we gave them a couple of 
plates," she said. "We thought they'd be on their way, but they 
grabbed a bag of clothes on the way out. They want to dress like 
Americans to blend in, so they stole my grandson's clothes right 
under our noses."

Before visiting Noriega, Toro had led Garcia into the mesquite scrub 
to show him a pair of immigrant encampments she had recently 
discovered near her house. First they saw trash: empty tuna cans and 
Gatorade bottles, discarded toothbrushes and deodorant, abandoned 
blue jeans, brassieres and backpacks. The immigrants had collected 
some of the debris into black plastic trash bags, but more was 
scattered across the ground.

Then Toro pointed out a pair of low shelters built of branches, just 
big enough for a clutch of immigrants to hide from Border Patrol helicopters.

"It's funny," she said. "They look kind of like our traditional homes."

Garcia, a burly 42-year-old in his 17th year on the force, said it 
was about two years ago that he began spending more time coping with 
illegal immigration.

"Sometimes I'll stop a group of illegals, and I'll call the Border 
Patrol, but they'll say they won't have anyone available until the 
next shift in six hours," he said. "So I'll let the people go and 
tell them which way to Phoenix. I try to estimate the kilometers for them."

Dead and dying immigrants have become a common sight, especially 
during the brutally hot summer months, when desert temperatures 
routinely surpass 110 degrees. In fiscal year 2005, a record 473 
people died crossing the border from Mexico, 144 of them in the 
stretch of Arizona that includes the reservation.

"Yesterday we picked up a dead illegal alien," said Garcia, shaking 
his head. "He was probably 75 yards from a residence."

Drug Traffic

The Border Patrol seized more than 130,000 pounds of marijuana on the 
reservation last year, according to Border Patrol spokesman Sean King.

Traffickers recruit unemployed Indians on the American side to run 
carloads of dope to Tucson, luring them with the promise of big 
money, Garcia said.

"These are kids who've never had more than a couple hundred dollars, 
so when they get $3,000, they'll do it again," he said. "They get 
hooked. You see a house that's poor, and it has a new car in the 
driveway, a big-screen TV. ... They know you know. But things get so 
bad out here."

Garcia's own brother was arrested trying to run a load of marijuana 
across the reservation with his wife and kids in the car. He spent a 
year in federal prison and is serving five years on probation.

"He wanted the easy money," Garcia said.

A fence, like the 15-foot-high steel walls the federal government has 
erected in Douglas and Nogales and Tijuana, would make Garcia's job 
easier. But he's not in favor of dividing the land that way.

"I wouldn't like to keep the wildlife from doing what they do 
naturally," said Garcia, an avid hunter.

Toro recalls stories her mother and aunt would tell about the 
family's winter camp near Baboquivari Peak, the sacred mountain that 
is the mythical home of I'itoi, or elder brother, who made the 
O'odham people out of clay and gave them the gift of the crimson sunset.

In the dwindling light, she crossed back into the United States. 
Nighthawks swooped past, chasing insects, and a roadrunner scurried 
in front of the car -- a sign, the O'odham say, that you have 
forgotten something.

Toro had a meeting with the chairwoman back in Sells but made a 
detour to the home of 90-year-old Jesus Antonio Lopez and his 
daughter Mariana, whose flour tortillas are known as the best on the 
reservation. The day's tortillas had been sold, so Toro accepted a 
cold grape soda and a seat in the kitchen. Before long, Mariana Lopez 
was serving a meal of refried beans, Mexican cheese and her family's 
portion of tortillas.

On the drive back to Sells, storm clouds began spitting rain on the dry land.

Dusty and tired from a day on the road, Toro entered Juan-Saunders's 
office, where baskets woven from strands of yucca and devil's claw 
depict I'itoi walking through the maze of life.

Toro sat down heavily. The chairwoman, too, looked weary.

The tribe has approved the installation of vehicle barriers along the 
border on the western part of the reservation, she said, because 
that's where drug runners and cattle rustlers from Mexico cross most 
often. But she doesn't want to wall off the reservation.

"We have concerns about the needs of tribal members to go across," 
she said. "There are sacred sites and cemeteries that people need to 
have access to."

Lightning flared across the desert outside.

"The border issue is not going to go away. We didn't ask them to 
place it here, and we were not consulted," says Juan-Saunders. "All 
we ask for is a seat at the table on policies that affect the 
border." Tohono O'odham Nation

The tribe has 28,000 enrolled members, of whom 1,400 live in Mexico. 
In addition, 3,000 Mexican citizens have applied to be recognized as 
tribal members. The reservation is 2.8 million acres, the size of the 
state of Connecticut.

Length of the border:

Tohono O'odham reservation: 75 miles

U.S.-Mexico: 1,952 miles

Deaths of illegal immigrants*:

West Desert corridor, which includes the reservation: 144

U.S.-Mexico border: 473

Arrests of illegal immigrants*:

West Desert corridor, which includes the reservation: 191,515

U.S.-Mexico border: 1,171,305 Part 1 / Nov.27

Mission, Texas: Factories on the Mexican side of the border draw 
people from both Mexico and the United States toward new jobs.

Part 2 / Nov. 28

Elsa, Texas: Young people balance American individualism with Mexican 
American family traditions.

Part 3 / Dec. 1

Nogales, Sonora: Hospitals in southern Arizona hope to reduce their 
cost of caring for uninsured immigrants by improving hospitals across 
the border.

Part 4

Sells, Ariz.: An Indian tribe's ancestral lands are bisected by the 
border and affected by its problems.

Part 5

Jacumba, Calif.: A night with Minutemen patrolling for illegal immigrants.

Part 6

Progreso, Baja California Norte.: Building power plants across the 
border affects the environment in both countries. Sources: Tohono 
O'odham Nation, U.S. Border Patrol, *From Oct. 1, 2004 to Sep 30, 2005
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