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¡Caballos! Colonia Postal and the surrounding neighborhoods are a maze of paved and dirt roads that intertwine and crisscross through hilly terrain. As the summer of 1999 wore on, I became more familiar with the shortcuts, connections, and networks near my casita. I also started to become part of the barrio in more ways than one. After I gave up driving for the Bandit Lady, I had more time to explore the neighborhood. Since moving into the casita, I had found three primary heroin connections in the surrounding neighborhoods: dealers in the neighborhood of La Quinta Loma, and the local dealers Marcos and Polo. Marcos’s place was down the hill from the casita, just within the perimeter of the maze of unpaved streets. Polo’s was deeper inside the maze itself. La Quinta Loma was a bit farther away, but still within walking distance. I usually started at the closest connection, since I always wanted to cop a fix and return to the casita as quickly as possible. The Juárez police patrol the backstreets and pathways of the barrios on horseback, and when I walked the streets, I was always on the alert for fresh horse manure or the sound of hooves. Around the connections, if anyone shouted, “¡Caballos!” (“Horses!”), it was time to either run or act as though you were doing something besides trying to buy drugs. Whenever the dope ran out and a group of junkies were waiting for the dealer to re-up, some junkies would be so sick from withdrawal that they wouldn’t even try to run. Then it would be up to the mounted patrol officers whether to take them in. Sometimes the cops just rode by as if nothing were wrong. This was because the cops were often paid off to leave the dealers and customers alone. Once the flow of heroin (chiva) began, or when it was consistently available, a lot of junkies shot up close to the dealers’ locations. Some of the dealers didn’t let this hapThree D ow n a n d Ou t 32 Border Junkies pen, while others let it happen right on their property or even right on the premises. If a horse patrol came around when junkies were outside shooting up, the group would make a mad dash and the chase would be on! Some junkies would get caught and others would escape; the caballos conducted these roundups in conjunction with the campers. To avoid these dragnets, I always got tight with the local dealers. Because I bought from them every day, they often tried to protect me, or at least warn me, when things got hot. Marcos, who lived down the hill from the casita, was the closest connection. He used to live in Los Angeles, California, and spoke good English. An old-school West Coast junkie who identified as a Chicano, Marcos was married, or living with a woman, and together they had about seven kids. Marcos’s story was one of the many tragedies that I witnessed in Juárez. Getting tight with Marcos wasn’t too difficult, because he spoke good English and was an honest dope dealer. Since I was a steady customer, it didn’t take long for me to become an insider in his world. Relationships between pushers and junkies usually take some time to develop, and dealer-customer trust issues aren’t the same in Juárez as they are in the United States. For example, there was no way that Marcos was going to worry about me, an American, being an undercover cop. One morning I went to Marcos’s place when I was so sick from heroin withdrawal that I could barely walk. He invited me in and sold me some dope in his kitchen. Then, since he was the only one there, he let me shoot up there. As the days passed, Marcos and I developed a reciprocal trust, but it lasted only as long as there was a steady supply of dope. Marcos, his wife, and the kids lived in the rearmost casita of three within a compound that was fenced in by plywood and pallets ; the shared outhouse was at the very front of the compound. A visitor entering the gate had to pass by the other casitas to get to Marcos’s, which was half kitchen and half sleeping area; the family all slept in one room. The place was hot in the summer and cold in the...

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