Deathtrap

Thirteen aliens die in desert

It is an infernal place of Gila monsters, scorching earth, mesquite and giant cactus. For centuries, the section of southern Arizona now designated as the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument has been crossed by people risking death in hope of finding a better life: Spanish explorers, missionaries, men drawn by California gold. They come now, still seeking the golden dream, from Mexico and Central America, an illegal but relentless stream. Last week the desert--beautiful to those who know it, deadly to the unprepared--claimed 13 more victims.

They were part of a group of 45 people from El Salvador, aged 13 to 35, who boarded an air-conditioned bus on June 28, hoping to join the mounting exodus from their overcrowded, violence-torn country. About July 2, they reached the border at the southwest corner of Arizona. They were being shepherded by four or five Salvadoran and Mexican "coyotes"--men who sneak aliens across the border for as much as $2,000 each.

Some of the Salvadorans thought they were going to be flown directly to Los Angeles, more than 200 miles away. When no planes came, 14 of the group decided to stay in Mexico. But 31 agreed to cross the lightly guarded border farther east, where seven border guards must patrol a 70-mile stretch.

Accompanied by the smugglers, the group slipped through the barbed wire fence on the night of July 3 and entered the U.S. Aliens are often picked up by trucks or buses after crossing on foot, but no one met this group. The 31 started to blunder through the park. They were ill equipped to walk a mile. They carried suitcases filled with winter clothes, Bibles and perfume. The party had only 20 1-gal. plastic water jugs.

By noon, the temperature was 110DEGF. The desert floor, which gets as hot as 150DEGF, blistered their feet. Some abandoned their shoes and wrapped their feet in rags soaked in the little water they had. The next night, three men were found near Highway 85. They insisted they were alone, apparently afraid of acknowledging they had left others behind. Says Border Patrolman Hector Ochoa: "If they had told us the truth, we could have saved most of them." Not until Yolanda Estela Hernandez, 20, was found beside the highway the next afternoon did authorities learn that others were in the desert.

Using helicopters, horses and dune buggies, the patrolmen found eight men that evening--two dead, the rest barely alive. A ninth man, who may have been the chief Salvadoran smuggler, had fallen behind and was lost.

Next morning the rescue party found three women alive under a paloverde tree. Sprawled about them were the bodies of ten women and a smuggler. Suitcases had been ripped apart in a search for anything with moisture. The group had drunk perfume and aftershave lotion. Some had been hallucinating, swallowing sand they thought was water. One woman cried: "The coyotes stole my baby!" The agents scrambled to find the infant, only to learn days later that the child had been left in El Salvador.

Some of the four women among the 14 known survivors claimed that the smugglers had robbed and raped them, but later withdrew the accusations that apparently had been the result of hallucinations. One of the survivors continued to insist that she had tried but failed to stop the smuggler--who later died--from strangling four women who had begged to be put out of their misery.

At week's end Salvadoran Elias Nunez-Guardado, 26, and Mexican Mateo Preciado, 58, were being held on charges of transporting illegal aliens. Another smuggler made his way north to the town of Why and disappeared. Two other members of the party remain entirely unaccounted for.

The residents of Ajo, where the survivors were taken, are normally indifferent to the plight of aliens, but they collected money for the Salvadorans. The Legal Aid Society plans to go to court to foil any plans by the Immigration and Naturalization Service to expel them, and Arizona's Senator Dennis DeConcini asked the Administration to permit the aliens to live in the country that they had tried so desperately to make their home.

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