Mexico drug gangs muscle border tribe out of homes

Sun Dec 2, 2007 9:29pm EST

By Tim Gaynor

CU:WI I-GERSK, Mexico (Reuters) - Just as he drove his pickup truck north over the U.S. border, Indian community leader Julian Rivas heard the rasp of automatic weapons fire, then three bullets ripped into the cab and tailgate.

"I just carried on driving ... and I didn't go back to my village in Mexico," he said.

Rivas, a member of the Tohono O'odham tribe, whose ancestral lands straddle the Arizona-Mexico border, is among tribe members from villages in Mexico who say they are being driven out by an influx of violent Mexican smugglers.

The tribe, whose name means "Desert People," numbers around 24,000 people. Their lands extend from Casa Grande, south of Phoenix, to an area of remote desert north of Hermosillo, the capital of Mexico's Sonora state, and members cross back and forth through informal "gates" in the border.

In recent years, members in Arizona have increasingly been caught up in the fallout from drug and human trafficking through the sovereign Tohono O'odham nation, which lies on one of the most active smuggling corridors on the U.S.-Mexico border.

South of the line, in Mexico, tribe members have long been squeezed by a lack of jobs and services, and the number of villages has dropped to nine from 45 in the mid 19th century. Remaining residents complain they are now being harassed by heavily armed Mexican smugglers who have muscled into the area.