Mad Max in Borderland -- Overnight With the Minutemen
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Mad Max in Borderland -- Overnight With the Minutemen
News Feature//Photo Essay//, Words: Russell Morse//Photos: Ryan Furtado//Video: Josue Rojas, Russell Morse and Cliff Parker,
YO! Youth Outlook Multimedia and New America Media, Feb 17, 2006
Editor’s Note: Since 9.11, individuals calling themselves "Minutemen" have formed loosely structured volunteer associations that patrol the Southern U.S. border and have been vilified as racist vigilantes for their armed actions against undocumented immigrants. After camping out with the Minutemen of Campo, Calif., Russell Morse discovers the unexpected, even conflicting, reasons these men spend their lives in the desert. Morse, Furtado and Rojas are editors at YO! Youth Outlook Multimedia a Project of New America Media. Parker is a video producer for New America Media.
I’m waking up to gunshots. It’s six in the morning, the sun is just peeking over the border fence 100 yards away and someone is shooting.
I grunt and roll out of the tent, peeking my head out far enough to see Ryan, our photographer, with a rifle to his shoulder, letting off rounds with our new friend Jawbone. Before I can stretch or crawl out of my sleeping bag, a border patrol helicopter zips over our camp, blasting my eyes with sand and setting a small team of California Minutemen into action.
Bandit, who hasn’t slept all night, yells into his radio, leaps into his battered camouflage Suburban truck (known lovingly as Gonzo) and speeds after the chopper, his tires spitting desert rocks in every direction. Josue, our wheelman and linguist, wakes up at the helm of his Honda jeep and instinctively fishtails into Gonzo’s dust cloud as Ryan and I climb in, tying shoelaces and rubbing eyes . . .
This is Campo, Calif. -- Borderland -- an hour east of San Diego, where a handful of volunteers is anchoring a border watch operation. The stretch of rocky desert they patrol is a busy thoroughfare for people coming into the United States from Mexico illegally. Breaks in the border fence, a network of hidden trails and a series of canyons make the area a safer point of entry for immigrants. However, mountain lions, helicopters and Bandit on your ass keep it far from leisurely.
Beyond the guns and trucks and high speed chases, though, are idle hours and a group of men who believe they’re protecting America, giving their lives to the work, they say, their government refuses to do. Most of them are ex-military, Vietnam Veterans, retirees, unmarried, from rural corners of California who were looking for something to belong to and found it in the desert.
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The day before, we left San Diego for Campo with a phone number. I dialed as we drove and when the call went through, I was connected to a Minutman phone tree. Seconds into the recording, a soft voice said, “press four to join us on the border." I was transferred to T.S. McMullen (Bandit), who was in the field on his cell phone. I explained rather frankly that we wanted to talk to them about what they were doing out there and he said “sureâ€
