The Desert of the Dead
PAMELA COLLOFF in the November 2006 issue of Texas Monthly: "His name was Ezequiel Amaya Escobar, although no one knew who he was when his body was discovered one morning last August under a mesquite tree. He was lying five and a half miles from the nearest paved road, in a stretch of South Texas scrubland that Spanish explorers once called El Desierto de los Muertos, or the Desert of the Dead. The austere landscape, which extends from Kingsville to Raymondville, is a patchwork of ranches that includes two of the largest in the country: the King Ranch, to the north, and the Kenedy Ranch, to the south. A Border Patrol checkpoint stands roughly in the middle, on U.S. 77, and Ezequiel had died trying to walk around it. When he was found, his head was resting on his backpack, as if he had stopped in the wilderness to take a nap. He almost looked alive; he had thick black hair that fell just below his ears, and his face was soft and round. But his lips were cracked, his eyes wide open. He was thirteen years old."
P.S., President Bush today signed into law the Secure Fence Act of 2006, but "a leading House Democrat, Rep. Silvestre Reyes of Texas, who served with the Border Patrol for more than 26 years before running for Congress, charged today that the bill 'represents the worst in election year politics.' Reyes, a member of the House armed services and intelligence committees, called it 'an empty gesture for the sole purpose of sending a false message about the security of our nation.'"