Eight Days On The Rio Grande

Dozens of sharp reports bounce off the deep canyon walls, and I instinctively take cover behind a big boulder, as do the other paddlers that soon arrive. “What the hell’s going on?” one says, as the gunfire continues unabated. “Where are they?” another asks frantically. We don’t know if it’s directed at us, but the gunfire is frightening and relentless—coming in fully automatic bursts as well as single, well-spaced shots. Scurrying beside me in my little protected crevice, Marc barks out to Tom, who is carrying our rented satellite telephone. “Fire that baby up and call 911 the second a bullet hits anywhere near us!” Finally, scanning the top of the Texas-side rim with binoculars, someone spots the Deliverance-type characters. “There’s at least four of them, maybe 1,000 feet straight up,” Gary says. “They’re standing at the very edge of the cliff.” I borrow the binocs to look for myself—and see a figure in a cowboy hat, peering back at me through the telescopic sight of his rifle.

“I bet they’re those Minutemen,” says Larry, who at one time owned a ranch near the border. “I used to know a few of ‘em. They volunteer to stake out places like this, known wetback crossings in rough country where the Border Patrol ain’t likely to be. They figure they’re doing their civic duty by scaring the foreigners back where they belong.”

“Do we look like a group of Mexicans about to cross into the U.S.?” someone asks incredulously as World War III continues unabated on the rim. “Well, maybe from way up there we do,” he replies with a wry chuckle. “Especially if them boys are bored and have been drinkin’ too much out there in the hot sun.”

Eventually we figure we can’t stay cowered behind the rocks all day; if these trigger-happy morons wanted us dead they could have easily succeeded by now. So we carry on with the sweaty portage as fast as possible. By the time we’re back in our canoes and paddling feverishly downstream, it’s already late in the day. That evening, while the red beans, rice, and Tex-Mex sausage are simmering and the hush puppies are frying, we again gather in our genteel lawn chairs around the warmth of the fire, munching popcorn and sipping cheap wine. Our talk centers around the desperate Mexicans and trigger-happy vigilantes that lay behind us, and the day-and-a-half of paddling that still lies ahead. But when the chatter pauses for a bit, an introspective hush sweeps over our little band of boaters. The murmur of the river, right at our feet, is the only sound we hear, fluid and reassuring.

But what of those whackos on the canyon rim? I do a little investigation on border vigilante groups once I return home to the “Dallas Alps.” The Texas Minutemen is the most prominent in a constellation of citizen vigilante groups. Their Web site solicits private landowners on the border for a place to hold their “border watch activities.” The land above Upper Madison is private. I’m not sure if such activities include firing weapons and pointing firearms in the general direction of canoeists, and when I call the contact number on their site to inquire, dozens of messages go unreturned, as do calls to the landowner.

Officially, the Minutemen’s mission is to protect the borders from crime. “Sheriffs in border counties are overwhelmed by all the crime caused by illegal aliens,” Minutemen president Shannon McGauley told the Dallas Morning News in 2005. “But the government refuses to help.” Then he plays the conservatives’ ultimate trump card—terrorism. “What’s going to stop someone from coming across with a nuclear bomb?”

I do find out that the Texas Minutemen encourages ACLU observers on its patrols to prove they aren’t doing anything illegal or unethical, and has publicly distanced itself from more fringe elements, encouraging its chapters to vet volunteers for character and background. “Can you imagine if somebody does shoot somebody down here and it turns out they have two aggravated-assault-with-weapons charges?” McGauley said in the same interview. So it might not have been the Texas Minutemen up there shooting at, or near, us. And it’s not likely anyone would fess up even if I found them. As for law enforcement, that’s not much help either. On my way home, I’d stopped off at the Chisos Basin campground in Big Bend National Park. The park is nearly empty this time of year, as is the small nearby visitor center. I find a uniformed park ranger sitting behind the brochure-filled counter. After some small talk I recount the shooting incident at Upper Madison Falls. To my surprise, the ranger acts only mildly interested. He asks some perfunctory questions—where and when it happened, how many shooters were involved, was anyone injured—but when all is said and done, he merely shrugs his shoulders. “In some areas outside the park, automatic gunfire is a common sound,” he says, matter-of-factly.

“I’m not saying the Park Service condones the kind of behavior you encountered, not at all. Most of the land above the riverbank there is privately owned, and we don’t have any jurisdiction there. Unless a crime was committed, and from what I hear from you there wasn’t, there’s not much we can do.” Back home, whenever I call the Brewster County Sheriff, the polite woman who answers the phone tells me he’s out. As are all the deputies. Then later they’re all in court. “It’s a good day to commit a crime in Brewster County,” I comment at last. She doesn’t think its funny. Then again, neither do I.

There are solid points of view on both sides of this debate—those disinclined to support illegal immigrants with social services like medical care and school, and those who point out that our economy might grind to a standstill without the low-wage workers who illegally cross our borders every day. And if current political wranglings are any indication, no simple solution will be forthcoming any time soon. In the meantime, people like the three Mexicans we met on the Rio Grande will continue to cross the border illegally in search for work, and the Border Patrol will continue to stop them, assisted for better or for worse by groups of armed private citizens. I just hope no canoeists get caught in the crossfire.

BIO: Based out of Buena Vista, Colorado, LARRY RICE is a contributing editor for Canoe & Kayak magazine. He has paddled a canoe on all seven continents, none of which are any more foreign than what he found deep-in-the-heart of Texas.