Arivaca wonders if 'live, let live' let girl, 9, die http://www.azstarnet.com/metro/297952
Killings of child, father are woven into a tapestry of drugs in this town of loosely close-knit people By Tim Steller Arizona Daily Star 06.21.2009 ARIVACA "Live and let live" the phrase arises often when Arivaca residents talk about their little town. Many people come here to live together in a vast, arid landscape, but not so closely as to be in their neighbors' business. After the May 30 home-invasion murders of 9-year-old Brisenia Flores and her father, Raul Flores, some wonder whether they have been intrusive enough. After his murder, authorities said Flores, known as Junior, was a well-known marijuana trafficker. Maggie Milinovitch, who co-owns the local bar, La Gitana, and runs a monthly publication, Connection, said she and some other Arivaca residents feel guilty over Brisenia's death. "We're a community that shares parenthood we watch out for each other's children whenever we can, and the loss of a child is a failure in being aware of the danger," she wrote in an e-mail. Local residents remained emotionally raw last week over the murders. In the bar and at the taco stand, residents broke into tears when asked about it. Anthony Coulson, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration's Tucson office, said he thinks the girl's death resulted from a community failure. "Raul Flores was a drug trafficker," Coulson said, noting that his agency was actively investigating Flores as a central player in the area's smuggling. "I think the majority of the people there are sympathetic and tolerant of the trafficking that goes on." But others say the situation is not so clear-cut. Arivacans, they say, have long worked to balance the anarchistic local tendencies with community standards, if not always laws. Sandy Rosenthal, commander of the Pima County Sheriff's Department's Green Valley District, said Arivaca residents "do report to us and do help us and are involved in their community." What makes Arivaca tick To understand Arivaca, you have to understand that most people who live there chose it. They came to escape the city. They came for the loose but friendly community. They came for the oasis quality of this low, green spot in the high desert. When hippies began migrating to the area in the early 1970s, the population could be counted in the low hundreds, and the hippies were not welcomed. Today, the area's population may exceed 1,000, and the aging hippies run many of the unincorporated town's institutions. "They didn't want us here when we first got here, but we've outlived them," said Michael Armour, who came to Arivaca with his brother, Danny, in 1973. Both sat on the patio at La Gitana last week, enjoying an afternoon drink in this spot about 13 miles north of the Mexican border and 45 minutes' drive from the nearest Sheriff's Department office. The area's relationship with contraband goes way back, as local librarian and Arivaca native Mary N. Kasulaitis found while researching the 1870s Arivaca mining boom. E.B. Gage, a mining superintendent in the area, wrote in a letter: "There is a great deal of smuggling between Sonora and Tucson, which would naturally be done nearer the line if it could be. In this respect it might not be profitable to have a military post too near us." For the intervening decades, smuggling has remained a fact of life around Arivaca, especially after the marijuana trade picked up in the 1970s. In that era, the new Arivacans learned to police themselves, Danny Armour said. When a sheriff's deputy began aggressively patrolling the area in 1997, some residents protested vociferously, saying he had crossed the line from enforcement to harassment. Smuggling remains economically significant, bringing new money into an area with few other sources of income. But in the 21st century, the "military post" Gage referred to has finally arrived in the form of a constant Border Patrol presence, highway checkpoints and "virtual fence" towers being built around town. "Maybe six years ago, I would have told you that Arivaca is an island of private land surrounded by state and federal land that you can get out and enjoy," said Roger Beal, co-owner of the town's grocery store, the Arivaca Mercantile. "Now it's changed. If you went out in the desert, you'd probably be challenged as to why you're there." On June 11, about 12 miles southeast of town, three employees of the Arizona Game and Fish Department and Pima County were fired upon by four men wearing camouflage. Arivaca, Beal said, "is getting less remote." Outsiders coming in Smugglers and government agents aren't the only outsiders appearing in the Arivaca area. Humanitarian groups such as the Green Valley Samaritans, which patrol area roads to help border crossers, appear regularly in town. During lunch at the taco stand last week, Samaritan member Bethia Daughenbaugh said the group has had an almost exclusively positive response from local residents. South of town about five miles and up a rutted, rocky drive, younger members of No More Deaths camp on private land with the owner's permission. They take desert hikes looking for endangered border crossers, camping on and crossing private property they've been allowed to use. "I've never had a bad encounter," said Jimmy Wells, a veteran of several summers working for the group. While many locals sympathize with these groups, relatively few seem to support the more hard-line border-watch groups, such as those bearing the Minuteman name. Two of the people charged with the home-invasion murders, Shawna Forde and Jason E. Bush, led a small group called Minutemen American Defense based in Everett, Wash. Investigators say they carried out the attack as the beginning of a violent campaign to steal money and drugs from drug traffickers. The group planned to use its haul to fund its activities, investigators said. Such people occasionally show up in town on the way to camp-outs closer to the border, several residents said. But they hang around only rarely. Forde appeared a few times at La Gitana recently, customers said. "Most people who live here can't stand the Minutemen," Robin Warren said as she worked at the Gadsden Coffee Co.'s cafe. Said Beal, of the Arivaca Mercantile: "There's not an Arivaca border watch at all." The "meth heads" Another group of occasional interlopers is what locals with equal measures of disdain and sympathy call "meth heads." They first appeared in the mid-1990s and have sprung up occasionally since, in cycles that usually end in self-destruction, Danny Armour said. Tucsonan Jay Ramsey, 30, said he's had to deal with the meth heads around Arivaca. Ramsey showed up at the Mercantile last week on an ATV, wearing a pistol in a holster and flip-flops on his feet. He spends about half his time in Arivaca, he said, where his parents have retired. His parents love Arivaca, he said, but they had to shoo off methamphetamine addicts who set up a trailer on their property. Meth addicts also started living on a neighboring property that belongs to Robert Devine, a longtime Arivaca resident in prison for killing his girlfriend in 2001. Ramsey's mother, Susan, struck up a correspondence with the prisoner about the problem, she said. In the community spirit typical of Arivaca residents, Devine gave Susan Ramsey power of attorney over the property. "He thought meth was a horrible drug, and he wanted to help get it out of Arivaca," she said. That sort of cooperation might seem unusual in some places, but it's not so strange in a place where people are used to working things out without getting the authorities involved. "You're in charge of your own destiny out here," Beal said. -- Contact reporter Tim Steller at 807-8427 or at tstel...@azstarnet.com. . --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Sixties-L" group. To post to this group, send email to sixties-l@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sixties-l+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sixties-l?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
