White Woman in the Barrio

Julián LeBarón has the soul of a Mexican, and it might kill him.

Let me explain.

Julián LeBarón was born in Mexico and lives in a town called Colonia LeBarón in Chihuahua, a Mexican border state where thousands of men, women, and children have been  slaughtered in a “drug war”  that  is increasingly difficult to comprehend or even define.

It began in 2006 as President Felipe Calderón launched an ongoing attack against some enterprising drug cartels who made billions selling coke and heroin and speed and pot to the largest consumer of drugs in the world — the United States of America.

So far, at least 16,000 people have died in that war.

That’s according to  a great study called Drug Violence in Mexico, published by the Trans-Border Institute at the University of San Diego.

The  bloodbath is inchoate, incomprehensible. The average Mexican may not  know who is on what side. Is the soldier really working for the narcotrafficker? Is the narcotrafficker really working for the government? And God knows how many have joined  the splinter (often coked out or tweaked out) gangs of kidnappers and for-hire murderers  in military outfits who kill and torture just to make a few bucks for themselves.

Of all the states in Mexico, Chihuahua endured the most killings in 2009 — Mexican newspaper reports range from 3,637 to 2,079, according to the Trans-Border Institute.

That death toll includes Julián’s brother, Benjamín. He had refused to pay a $1 million ransom for his kid brother, who was kidnapped near town.  The kid brother was eventually released unharmed and without ransom by the perplexed kidnappers, but they didn’t like Benjamín’s tough-on-crime attitude.

Benjamín organized his  extended family (it’s a very large extended family,  we’ll get to why soon) against kidnapping and killing and thuggery and wanton violence in  Colonia LeBarón. Then masked men  broke into his home, kidnapped him and a brother-in-law,  and shot them to death.

Besides Benjamín and his brother-in-law, Julían tells me over the phone, five others have been murdered, and Julián has gotten death threats and  was recently assaulted by four masked creeps  in the middle of town in the middle of the day and everyone knows who they were but no one’s done anything about it.

“I’m not safe at all,” he tells me. “I am threatened with death all the time. At least five people have told me I’m on a hit list.”

He refuses to run, to give in to the bad guys.

He could go to the United States, where he holds dual citizenship with Mexico. But he’s always been more comfortable in the country where he was born. So instead of running, he writes. In  early January, he  published a manifesto against violence, in Spanish, on the Internet.

In this manifesto, he proposes a non-violent national organized opposition to violence.

Mexicans are strong courageous people who should rise up and say “BASTA” to the slaughter, the manifesto says.

“You might think I’m crazy,” Julián tells me, “but it can be done.”

The manifesto serves another purpose — it attracts press attention, spotlights Julián’s predicament. The more  publicity, perhaps, the less danger.

And to think that just a few years ago, Colonia LeBarón was a peaceful little town.

“The (Calderón) drug war is not something most Mexicans agree with,” he says.

In the old days, before the Drug War, drug dealers were seen as Robin Hoods who sold “poison” to the gringos who deserved it because they screwed Mexico with trade agreements that made people even more poor than they already were, he tells me. And he makes sure I know that he doesn’t believe gringos should be poisoned with drugs, and that he has never had any association with drug dealers or drugs.

The problem now is that Mexicans themselves are consuming the “poison” that they were selling to gringos, he says.

I’ve seen newspaper photos of the little desert farming town where he lives. It’s got a lot of pecan orchards. It sits near mountains. It’s  called Colonia LeBarón because it is inhabited mostly by LeBaróns, who trace their roots to fundamentalist Mormon polygamists who moved to Mexico in the 1880’s. They came south in part to escape growing controversy and outrage over their lifestyle, which was espoused by the founding Mormon prophet, Joseph Smith.

The  LeBaróns have cousins  in places like Colorado City, Arizona and Hildale, Utah and ElDorado, Texas. These fundamentalist polygamous Mormon cults have been disavowed by  mainstream Mormons since polygamy was outlawed in the 1890’s. Such  standoffish polygamous sects in the American West face increasing scrutiny and several cult leaders have been sentenced to prison in connection with marrying underage girls.

In the history of fundamentalist Mormons, the LeBarón name isn’t without controversy. An ancestor, Ervil LeBarón, died in prison in 1981 while serving time for  murder. He issued dicta from prison that allegedly set off a killing spree of  his enemies.

This, of course, has nothing to do with Julián LeBaron, who was a baby  at the time of the killings and who tells me he despises everything  about Ervil LeBarón.

Julián is a devout Mormon fundamentalist, and belongs to a religious group that believes in the practice of polygamy, also called “plural marriage.”  (He has never practiced it himself, and doesn’t intend to, and doesn’t want his name associated with it, he says.)

According to Julián, the  Chihuahua LeBaróns may believe plural marriage but they  differ from their gringo counterparts in a number of ways. The sister wives at Colonia LeBarón don’t wear prairie dresses and pull their hair on top of their heads. The guys don’t marry underage girls. They own land and property individually, instead of communally. And there’s no strict ban on alcohol — Julián himself downs a cold one every now and again, although he points out he’s no drunkard.

Julián is thirty-two years old, and for many years he traveled north to the United States to earn a living as a bilingual framer.  He saved his money, sent it down to Mexico to his family, just like a lot of Mexicans.

He tells me he’s  framed  buildings “all over the country,” including in New Orleans right  after Hurricane Katrina. His first job in New Orleans: Repairing  a funeral home. There were so many dead bodies.

Now he’s trying to stay alive, keep himself from being a stiff in a funeral home.

Julián knows he could come to the United States and run away from the violence.

But he won’t, because Mexico is in his soul.