The 15th Military Zone
by
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One busy morning, as was usual, the morning mail pouches were kicked off the mail truck onto the busy open-air courtyard of the 15th Military Zone headquarters in downtown Guadalajara. The fat, balding, middle-aged truck driver usually accented the kicks with animal related verbal slurs about the sexual habits of the waiting young mail clerk with his generals and then would slowly drive away laughing. The mail clerk would silently scream his indignation by making a gesture with his middle finger as the driver pulled through the large wooden gates. Mumbling to himself that he’d one day make the gesture to the driver’s face, the clerk would adjust his oversized uniform, grab the cords of the heavy mail pouches and, with authority, retreat to the mail room, dragging his pouches behind him. After the mail was sorted it would be delivered by five messengers, one for each floor. The third floor messenger delivered a letter at his fourth stop with a notation in the lower left corner that read, "Attention Departmente de Mota" or "Attention Department of Marijuana." Several misspelled words in the letter made it evident the writer was uneducated, but its contents also made it evident he was well informed. The location of 15 tons of marijuana and a jungle landing strip were given in detail. The unsigned letter, scribbled by a very young or very old hand, also gave the names of two American smugglers and an enterprising Mexican farmer who had finally grown tired of barely growing enough food to feed his family of nine. The report seemed authentic enough, so late that same night two enclosed soft drink delivery trucks full of soldiers and plainclothes army agents bumped along a dusty back road a few hours west of Guadalajara. Just before sunrise the trucks approached the sleeping jungle valley mentioned in the letter. The thirsty soldiers quenched their thirst by draining their last liter of Mescal as they stumbled out of the trucks, complaining about their sore behinds. They urinated and exchanged rude comments about the bright pictures of lovely ladies that were painted on the sides of the trucks, each one holding a soft drink to her pretty lips. The agents loaded their secondhand Czech burp guns and the soldiers, pulling out their World War II vintage rifles, all readied for a day’s work. They quietly formed up and followed the rutted trail that curled up and around several small hills to a decaying hacienda that had been new in another century. The agent in charge had expected 15 tons of marijuana, two gringo smugglers, a landing strip, and one ambitious farmer. But all he found was one large gunnysack or costale of marijuana, a crude landing strip with three hundred gallons of aviation fuel, and an old farmer with his teenage daughter. After picking through the hacienda and surrounding grounds, the jefe, or chief, came to the conclusion that the raid had not been a success. Most of the agents and soldiers smoked mota and had a costale of their own at home, it was only the large quantities of marijuana for exportation to the United States for which the army received "cash prizes" from the gringo drug agency. Gringo smugglers were good for a cash prize, too. The vehicles or airplanes that were found were used by the agents or traded to their superiors for the favor of a promotion. But this time, the jefe had taken a hard bumpy ride for nothing, and that made him mad, yet he managed to calm his anger and decided to try a friendly approach. His clean, starched, yellow dress shirt and shining shoes, plus a chrome-plated .45, helped compensate for his thin frame, as did his front tooth of polished gold that glittered when he spoke. Once he had been told – by a prostitute who desperately needed a pimp – that his voice had a strong, sincere tone that added assurance and trust to his words. "Where are the gringos?" he asked in his best pimp tone aimed at the frightened young girl. But after being rudely invaded, seeing her father’s head cracked open with the butt of a rifle and pinched by most of the invaders, the girl could only answer with a mumbled Hail Mary. The jefe’s voice then shifted to a tone of rage similar to the one he had used when he found his whore had held out on him. "Where are the tons of mota?" he demanded, "and the gringos? Tell me, puta!"
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About the Book
The state of Jalisco, Mexico marks the boundaries of the real 15th Military Zone, and its sweetheart or hub is Guadalajara. In the mid-seventies, around Guadalajara, Enrique Camareno, a DEA agent, was kidnapped, tortured and executed by Mexican Special Agents. This book begins several years before the Camareno affair, when psychedelics, free love, and a haze of happy smoke fulfilled our desires. A true story, The 15th Military Zone is an animated narrative, dialogue and narrative combined, told in a Runyonesque third person voice, toned with dark-humored irony. There are moments when the third person’s eye has a glimpse of his own soul and finds it’s a mirror of every man’s soul. Experience is the rock that every man stands on to view his future dreams.
About the Author
I grew up around Echo Park in the 40s and 50s. I was in my first gang fight when I was eight years old, I started smoking grass when I was fourteen and went to prison when I was eighteen for less than an ounce. I was released when I was twenty-one with a degree in crime. When I was twenty-two I was arrested for international smuggling of marijuana and sentenced to forty years, which on retrial was reduced to ten years. I did the ten years on McNeil Island Federal Penitentiary and was released with an international degree in smuggling this time. It was the late 60s and the whole world, it seemed, was smoking the good herb. I went into the jungles and hills and bought crops from the growers. I fell in love with a girl from Guadalajara. We married and had a son. After my deportation and six months of screaming nightmares, I enrolled at Cal State University. Seven years later I graduated with a degree in Comparative Literature. I now have three sons and am an investigative paralegal for seven attorneys. My smuggling days ended when I was deported.