Pubdate: Sun, 22 Jan 2006
Source: San Francisco Chronicle (CA)
Page: B - 3
Copyright: 2006 Los Angeles Times
Contact:  http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/388
Author: Don Bartletti, Los Angeles Times
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Cannabis)

STRUGGLING TRIBE TOO OFTEN TURNS TO SMUGGLING POT

Tucson -- The door to the warehouse near the Tucson airport swings 
open and a musty-mint odor is instantly recognizable: It's pot. Lots 
and lots of pot.

Inside, neatly stacked bales of marijuana stand like faceless chess 
pieces -- the evidence from a game of extremes played every day along 
the nearby Arizona-Mexico border. Anthony Coulson, the U.S. Drug 
Enforcement Agency official in charge there, says that as much as 20 
percent of the marijuana brought into Arizona last year was 
discovered in one location: the Tohono O'odham reservation, where 
abject poverty and the opportunity for a fast buck torment the 
American Indian nation.

In 2000, according to the DEA, some 50,800 pounds of marijuana were 
seized on Tohono land. By last year, the figure had soared to 192,225 
pounds. Other authorities put the number higher. More and more Tohono 
themselves, meanwhile, have been caught up in the drug trade.

"Young Indians," says Coulson, "carry it over to drop houses" from 
which the pot eventually finds its way to the streets.

While Indian tribes in other places have hit the jackpot with a 
lucrative gaming trade, the Tohonos' casino in Tucson has generated 
little revenue for the reservation residents, and 50 percent still 
live in poverty, more than 40 percent are unemployed and misery 
abounds. Young people see little in their futures.

Not long ago, 17-year-old Jared Antone was discovered hanging by a 
rope from a horse trailer, an apparent suicide. In Jared's bedroom, a 
candle burned on the floor. "We took the bed out to let the spirits 
escape," says his aunt, Verna Enos. Outside, near the horse trailer, 
she struggles to lift her face toward a twilight sky laced with 
rose-colored clouds.

On a map, the Tohono O'odham Nation sits like a clenched fist between 
Tucson and the Mexican border. The U.S.-Mexico boundary is a thin 
70-plus-mile bracelet across the wrist. Near the southeast corner of 
the reservation are the twin gulches of Sasabe, Ariz., and Sasabe, 
Mexico. A gas station and a stylish port of entry are the main 
attractions on the Arizona side. On the Sonora side, a crucifix 
towers over a migrant's tiny chapel. Lighted at night, it's a beacon 
in the desert for another unstoppable diaspora that ebbs and flows. 
The border here is so flimsy and porous that it defies belief. No 
wonder that illegal immigrants -- many carrying drugs in burlap sacks 
as a means of paying for their passage -- stream across.

One spot, called San Miguel Gate, is a 20-foot-wide cattle grate. No 
door, no lock, no guard, except, that is, for 66-year-old Olivario 
Listo Enos. He patrols by himself in his dirty Dodge pickup.

"At night when my hounds bark, or in the day when dust rises in the 
south, I grab my guns, jump in my truck and outsmart 'em," Olivario 
says. "A blast or two over the hood and they stop. When they freeze, 
I give 'em a choice: 'Your women, your drugs or your keys.' "

Smugglers, he says, always leave the keys. Olivario keeps them in a 
plastic bag, and on this day he shows off 11 vehicles left on his property.

"When the Border Patrol comes, they knife the tires so the smugglers 
won't come steal the cars back," he explains. "When the vehicle 
department in Tucson declares my cars 'abandoned,' I sell 'em for hay 
to feed my cattle and working horses."

Every family, it seems, has been touched by drugs, including some of 
the reservation's most elite.

In September, Tohono O'odham police stopped a 1996 Chevrolet Lumina 
for speeding and discovered six bales of marijuana under a blanket in 
the trunk. The driver, 39-year-old Nicholas C. Juan, was arrested and 
now awaits trial. He is the brother of Vivian Juan-Saunders, the 
Tohono chairwoman.

He isn't the first member of the chairwoman's family to be caught 
drug-running. Her sister, Mary Juan, was arrested in May 1999 by U.S. 
Customs officials after they discovered 15 bales of marijuana stashed 
in her Pontiac Grand Prix and in a shed on her property. Mary once 
had been a tribal judge. She was convicted in federal court and spent 
a year and a day in jail. She's out now, raising her three grandkids 
- -- her daughter-in-law, busted with her six years ago, moved off the property.

Mary lives on a parcel that has been in the family for four 
generations. Standing outside her small, brown stucco house, she 
withholds her reasons for marijuana smuggling behind a nearly 
expressionless face.

"It's better not to bring up the past," she says, wiping a tear from 
her eye. "It makes me think it's happening all over again."

Coulson, the DEA agent, says he isn't surprised that Mary's place 
doesn't look like that of a drug dealer.

"There's little collective wealth from drugs in evidence on the 
reservation," Coulson says. "Drug running is not enough to get the 
Tohono out of poverty -- but just enough to kill them."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom