Run for the Border

Vice and Virtue in U. S. -Mexico Border Crossings

Steven W. Bender

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780814723227
• Topic: Jura
• Subtopic: Einwanderungsgesetz

Mexico and the United States exist in a symbiotic relationship: Mexico frequently provides the United States with cheap labor, illegal goods, and, for criminal offenders, a refuge from the law. In turn, the U.S. offers Mexican laborers the American dream: the possibility of a better livelihood through hard work. To supply each other’s demands, Americans and Mexicans have to cross their shared border from both sides. Despite this relationship, U.S. immigration reform debates tend to be security-focused and center on the idea of menacing Mexicans heading north to steal abundant American resources. Further, Congress tends to approach reform unilaterally, without engaging with Mexico or other feeder countries, and, disturbingly, without acknowledging problematic southern crossings that Americans routinely make into Mexico. In Run for the Border, Steven W. Bender offers a framework for a more comprehensive border policy through a historical analysis of border crossings, both Mexico to U.S. and U.S. to Mexico. In contrast to recent reform proposals, this book urges reform as the product of negotiation and implementation by cross-border accord; reform that honors the shared economic and cultural legacy of the U.S. and Mexico. Covering everything from the history of Anglo crossings into Mexico to escape law authorities, to vice tourism and retirement in Mexico, to today’s focus on Mexican border-crossing immigrants and drug traffickers, Bender takes lessons from the past 150 years to argue for more explicit and compassionate cross-border cooperation. Steeped in several disciplines, Run for the Border is a blend of historical, cultural, and legal perspectives, as well as those from literature and cinema, that reflect Bender’s cultural background and legal expertise.

PART I
Running for the Border to Escape Justice

The phrase “run for the border” originated long before its use in Taco Bell fast food advertising. As examined herein, it represents the familiar image of the treacherous Mexican outlaw running south for the Mexican border to escape justice in the United States. In the last few decades, the phrase also came to connote border passages in the opposite direction— undocumented immigrant Mexicans headed for the United States to work in jobs across the lower-income spectrum in fields, factories, and at fast food restaurants that ironically include Taco Bell. Although U.S. residents tend to associate running for the border, in either direction, with Mexicans afoot, U.S. residents have made their own border runs for years, whether for vices such as alcohol or sex or for economic advantage. Chapter 1 addresses the statistically few southbound border runs by fugitives to escape justice, including the stereotypical Mexican fugitive fleeing U.S. authorities, while later chapters detail the more common motivations for border crossings in both directions.

Despite the media and societal focus on Mexicans, Anglo fugitives too have fled south for the Mexican border in fact as well as in fictional settings. Conversely, Anglos have run north for the safety of the U.S. side of the border in numerous slices of pop culture, as well as in real life. Before achieving fame on reality television (and then infamy for his racist tirades), bounty hunter Duane “Dog” Chapman fled prosecution in Mexico by racing for the U.S. border after he apprehended a wealthy U.S. fugitive in Puerto Vallarta, which Mexican authorities regard as a form of kidnapping. Fictional runs north for the U.S. border are a favorite of country music, including Bobby Bare’s “Tequila Sheila” (1980) in which Bare beats a card dealer in Juárez and runs for the U.S. border after his lover Sheila betrays his location to the federales (Mexican federal police). On the literary side, best-selling author Robert James Waller’s Puerto Vallarta Squeeze: The Run for el Norte (1995) follows the journey from that Mexican resort town of an Anglo writer hired by an Anglo killer to drive him north in what the publisher calls “a hair-raising run for the border.”

The main contrast in conceptions of Mexicans and Anglos crossing the border is whose passage is cheered and whose is jeered. When fictional Anglos race north for the Mexican border pursued by authorities, or even a jealous husband,¹ and on many occasions when they flee south as outlaws, U.S. audiences applaud their flight to the finish line of sanctuary. In contrast, the image of the criminal Mexican that dominates media ensures that no one roots for the Mexican who flees U.S. authorities. In the current climate, some xenophobes can even justify killing innocent border crossers headed north in search of economic opportunity if they cross without authorization, as illustrated by a Kansas lawmaker who in 2011 suggested shooting undocumented immigrants from helicopters as he would feral hogs damaging Kansas farms. In these hostile eyes, a Mexican crossing south to escape justice in the United States deserves the same punishment.

While seemingly unique in motivation from the economic and legal differences that drive most other border runs, fugitive border runs nevertheless share some similarities to vice tourism which aims to escape more restrictive U.S. laws. Differences in death penalty laws between the two countries are little known among fugitives and therefore are not the primary motivation of border flights from justice. Yet the aim to elude capture by escaping from one legal regime to another no doubt plays a role in inspiring the border run. Although presumably subject to extradition if caught, most southbound border fugitives assume they can better elude their fate within the interconnected U.S. law enforcement network by fleeing to Mexican terrain that is less internally connected, and in any event mostly disconnected from the U.S. system. In this way, border fugitives share the ideal with the vice tourist of enjoying some pursuit—here freedom—that is less available within the United States.

The following chapter focuses on southbound border passages by fugitives rather than northbound crossings to escape justice in Mexico. Despite the perception that many Mexican immigrants flee to the United States as criminals, the reality in Mexico that only some 1 or 2 percent of crimes result in conviction and jail time² suggests there is little imperative for Mexican criminals to leave their country to elude justice and to continue a crime spree into the United States.

1
El Fugitivo

¿Que pasa, señorita? ¡I am el fugitivo!

—Cartoon character Calvin practicing for a border
run with his imaginary tiger Hobbes after doing
something awful to his father’s car¹

Taco Bell’s “Run for the Border” slogan tapped into a rich and longstanding vein of bandido imagery in U.S. media. The cinematic Mexican bandido dates to the silent “greaser” films of the early 1900s, depicting Mexicans as dirty, oily, and gap-toothed in appearance, and as treacherous and soulless in character.² They slung guns, swilled tequila, and terrorized gringo men, women, and children while prowling the borderlands terrain. As one writer put it, Mexican bandits “robbed, murdered, plundered, raped, cheated, gambled, lied, and displayed virtually every vice that could be shown on screen.”³ In the silent Cowboy’s Baby (1910), for example, a Mexican villain tossed a child into the river to drown, while in 1910’s Broncho Billy’s Redemption, a Mexican stole money that was intended to save a dying man. Mexican bandidos became a staple of commercial advertisement, too, most notably the late 1960s’ Frito Bandito (misspelled from bandido), who brandished a pistol and menaced anyone who had Fritos Corn Chips. This media construction of savage bandidos helped cultivate the image of Mexicans as crossing into the United States to commit violent crimes and then running back for the Mexican border with blood money or bloody hands.

Mexico is also perceived in media and by the U.S. public as a haven for any criminal escaping justice—el fugitivo. Whether in music, literature, or cinema, Mexico became the destination of choice for Anglos and Mexicans alike to flee authorities and elude capture. In music, examples of the lyrical run for the border include Johnny Cash’s maniacal “Cocaine Blues” (1968), describing the cocaine-fueled killer of his U.S. lover who ran too slow, leading to his capture in border town Juárez, Mexico; Jimi Hendrix’s murderous Joe (“Hey Joe,” 1967) who killed his “old lady” and ran to Mexico where no one would find him; Billy Joe and Bobbie Sue who headed down south after Billy shot an El Paso man they robbed in the Steve Miller Band’s “Take the Money and Run” (1976); and Christopher Cross’s rousing anthem “Ride Like the Wind” (1980), where the son of a lawless man gunned down ten and rode for the Mexican border. Actor Jack Nicholson as a horse thief in Goin’ South (1978) crossed the Rio Grande into Mexico on horseback with a Texas posse in pursuit, exclaiming: “Viva Mexico! This here’s Mexican dirt, you can’t touch me.” In 2001’s Super Troopers, a highway patrolman pretends to be an outlaw stealing a police car to scare three stoner youth in the backseat, questioning, “You boys like Mex-ee-co?” At the conclusion of 1972’s The Getaway, fugitive bank robbers Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw cross the border from El Paso (Spanish for the pass) into the sanctuary of Mexico in a hijacked pickup truck. Beloved by audiences, the movie Thelma & Louise (1991) features the fated run for the border of two women who decide to “haul ass” to Mexico after one kills an attempted rapist.

A happier ending is 1994’s critically acclaimed The Shawshank Redemption, in which a wrongly convicted inmate escapes and heads for coastal Zihuatanejo to open a hotel on the beach and operate a charter fishing boat. Drawn to the Mexican coastline, the escapee crosses the border at Fort Hancock, Texas, toward “a warm place with no memory.” Another candidate for happiest ending in the cinematic run for the border sweepstakes is 1994’s The Chase, with Charlie Sheen as a wrongly accused fugitive who kidnaps a politician’s daughter and heads for the border by car with a convoy of police giving chase. Improbably escaping from authorities, the fugitive and his hostage-turned-lover share the closing scene sipping drinks on a sunny Mexican beach. Similarly, Martin Lawrence as an affable jewel thief in Blue Streak (1999) escapes to Mexico with a $17 million diamond.

Literary runs for the border include the Mexican fugitive detailed in the novel Border Town (which inspired the 1935 film Bordertown starring Bette Davis and Paul Muni). After killing his rancher employer and his foreman in California’s Imperial Valley, fictional Juan “Johnny” Ramirez headed south of the border for Mexicali to launch a new career as a border smuggler of drugs and booze.⁴ Although not without some anxiety, the fugitive Ramirez successfully crossed the border at California’s Calexico: “[Ramirez] walked toward the International Boundary, calm save for a rapidly beating heart, excited rather than fearful. Had they heard of the murders? Were they waiting for Juan Ramirez to try to pass the border? Once across the border he was comparatively safe. But if they suspected him of the murders, the border was where they would look first.”⁵ In contrast to the cinematic tragedy of Thelma and Louise, no doubt readers cheered the demise of the Mexican Ramirez when his speeding car tumbled down a cliff as U.S. police gave chase on his final border run toward Mexico.

Media imagery of Mexicans running south for the Mexican border as desperados with the law in pursuit does not fully match history’s lessons. The realities of U.S.-Mexico border crossings to escape authorities extend to other groups in addition to Mexicans. Moreover, as described below, some of the crossings by Mexicans were prompted by circumstances much different from the familiar media images of the marauding, heartless bandido driven by depraved greed and bloodthirsty savagery.

Some crossings even implicated the savagery of Anglos, as in the case of considerable numbers of runaway slaves escaping from their ruthless Anglo owners and crossing into Mexico from Texas before the Civil War. By the 1850s, more than 4,000 slaves were thought to have fled to Mexico.⁶ Mexico abolished slavery in 1829, and once under U.S. control, Texans urged the U.S. government to adopt an extradition treaty with Mexico to require our neighbor country to surrender fugitive slaves back to their U.S. owners.⁷ Encompassing murder, arson, rape, robbery, and other crimes, a treaty that Abraham Lincoln signed with Mexico in 1862 rejected extradition of runaway slaves caught in Mexico.⁸ Because the Mexican government refused to cooperate with them, Texas slave owners turned to private means to apprehend their slaves, advertising in newspapers and offering rewards, as well as hiring the equivalent of today’s bounty hunter to chase their former slaves inside Mexico. In 1857, Texas went as far as enacting a law (titled an “Act to Encourage the Reclamation of Slaves, Escaping Beyond the Limits of the Slave Territories of the United States”) authorizing the Texas state treasury to reward persons capturing and returning runaway slaves to their U.S. owners.⁹ The aftermath of the Civil War brought some sanity to the region with slavery constitutionally outlawed, but the legacy of fugitive slave crossings to escape the brutality and inhumanity of slavery in the United States was soon lost in the media construction of fugitive Mexican border crossings.

The flip side of the crossings by fugitive slaves came at or near the conclusion of the Civil War in 1865, when many Confederates from the U.S. South—an estimated 1,000 by summer 1865—fled to Mexico, some to avoid imprisonment.¹⁰ As the New York Daily News summarized the exodus: “The unsatisfactory state of affairs in the South, added to the great bad feelings exhibited by the Northern men and [news]papers to Southerners, have made many of the latter conclude to leave the country. In several places whole families are assembling to emigrate to Mexico.”¹¹ At the time, the French controlled much of Mexico and had appointed as Emperor of Mexico the Austrian Maximilian, who reigned from 1864 until he was executed in 1867 after the French were defeated. Maximilian welcomed the Confederates, whose short tenure in Mexico was doomed on several grounds, most notably for their affiliation with the vanquished Maximilian. Other perils the Confederates faced during their time in Mexico included the cessation of employment on the U.S.-Mexico railroad, uprisings from Mexicans whose cultivated land some of the Confederates had usurped, and attacks from Mexican bandits who perceived the settlers as wealthy despite their relative poverty. Within a few years, many of the Confederates had left Mexico, some for other countries such as England and Canada.¹²

A couple of decades later, another exodus from the United States brought Mormon polygamists to northern Mexico, particularly the state of Chihuahua. Fleeing potential prosecution in the United States after Congress passed the Edmunds Act of 1882 establishing polygamy as a felony, the Mormon immigrants formed productive colonies to farm Mexican land. Their practice of polygamy, however, alienated many Mexicans. At the same time, the prosperity of these colonists and their extensive landholdings in Mexico clashed with the principles of the Mexican Revolution in the early 1900s, prompting the flight of many colonists back to the United States.¹³ According to one of the Mormon colonists, in the revolutionary atmosphere of the time, plundering Mexican bandits made it “uncomfortable and extremely dangerous for them to remain longer.”¹⁴

The image of the Mexican bandido dates from the mid-nineteenth century, during which time cattle rustling, horse thievery, and other border banditry were rampant in the upheaval that followed the loss of considerable Mexican territory to the United States and the subsequent struggles for control of Mexico’s government. Cavalries, posses, and the notorious Texas Rangers routinely pursued bandits into Mexico, sometimes with permission of the Mexican government, other times not.¹⁵ Despite the dominant narrative of the bandits as lawless and menacing Mexicans, some commentators have documented how the border bandit emerged from the displacement—physical, cultural, political, and economic—that Mexicans faced in the southwestern United States and Mexico during and after the Mexican-American War. One sociologist questioned why Anglos viewed Mexican Robin Hoods of the time in such negative terms: “[I]f an Anglo took the law into his own hands, he was generally labeled a hero or revolutionary, but a Chicano who engaged in lawlessness was somehow a bandit.”¹⁶ Indeed, that sociologist suggests some of the alleged Mexican thieves were merely recovering their own livestock previously stolen from them by Anglos.¹⁷

Some Mexicans were transformed into outlaws by U.S. law enforcement, particularly the Texas Rangers who terrorized Mexicans, and who were said to have forced their sometimes innocent targets into the terrible choice of being killed if they failed to defend themselves, and arrested and hung if they did.¹⁸ The subject of a famous corrido (a Mexican folk song), Gregorio Cortez well represented this legacy, having shot a Texas sheriff in 1901 while resisting the sheriff’s attempt to arrest him on trumped up charges of stealing horses.¹⁹ Cortez rode ...