Migra!. Kelly Lytle Hernandez
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officers, their violence carried new meaning by unfolding in the field in which illegality was being defined. When Border Patrol officers shot, killed, arrested, hung, eliminated, or otherwise brutalized Mexicanos, the violence that had so long defined the differences between whites and Mexicans in the borderlands—those of conquest, land ownership, employment, and so on—became inscribed within the violence that marked the differences between being legal and illegal.
But the legend of Lon Parker must be read as a matter of both fact and fiction. As historian Alexandra Minna Stern has observed, Border Patrolmen of the 1920s and 1930s actively embraced, among other things, a “primitive masculinity” whereby they forged their institutional identity in the image of frontier cowboys and other pioneering conquerors of the American West, namely, the Texas Rangers.76 Such notions elided the complex personal and employment histories of the early officers—the tram drivers, the mechanics, and the Texas Rangers included—but it was a powerful narrative that officers carefully projected to one another and to the world around them. Whether or not their predecessors had actually engaged in the exploits that comprised the legends of Lon Parker, they spent years swapping stories of having brought a more primitive and manly form of justice to some smuggler, some night, at the hands of some Patrol inspector. The legends of Lon Parker were a form of cultural production in which Border Patrol officers defined themselves as inheritors of a masculine and highly racialized renegade tradition of violence in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands.
The life, career, and celebrated lethality of Patrol Inspector Charles Askins Jr. was another source of bravado for the early officers. Askins is heralded as one of the twentieth century’s greatest gunfighters. At the time of his death in 1999, a hesitant but admiring obituary in the gun-enthusiast magazine American Handgunner described Askins as a “stone cold killer. For those of us who knew him, there was just no gentler way to put it.”77 Askins himself listed his official body count at “Twenty seven, not counting [blacks] and Mexicans.”78
Askins was not from the borderlands. He was born in Nebraska and grew up in Oklahoma before moving to Montana, where he took a temporary job fighting fires in Flathead Forest.79 He then moved down to New Mexico, where he again worked fighting fires, this time on the Jicarilla Indian reservation. When fire season ended, he worked in logging camps. By 1929, he was working full-time as a forest ranger in the Kit Carson National Forest. In 1930, Askins’s friend, George W. Parker Jr. recruited him to the U.S. Border Patrol. Parker had boasted of “a gunfight every week and sometimes two.”80 Always in search of a gunfight, Askins “succumbed to the glowing reports from my amigo Parker who was having a hell of a good time in the Border Patrol.”81 Stationed in El Paso, Texas, Askins had plenty of opportunities to do battle with contrabandistas attempting to bring liquor into the United States. Askins disagreed with Prohibition—“an ill-fated attempt to force the thirsty American public to give up John Barleycorn,” as he described it—but liquor control presented him with the opportunity to engage in the “sport” of human hunting.82
Askins recounted his life of guns, violence, and immigration law enforcement in his autobiography, Unrepentant Sinner. Recalling his first day on the job as a Border Patrol officer, Askins explained that there was “no training school for recruits. . . . I was handed a badge and since I had my own shooting irons I did not draw the old .45 Colt Model 1917 nor one of the next to worthless Enfield rifles.”83 With his own weapon and a U.S.-issued Border Patrol badge, Askins headed out for his first “tour of duty.” That evening, at about 9:30 P.M., Patrol Inspectors Jack Thomas and Tom Isbell “ran into an ambush and killed a smuggler.” Askins had not been at the fight, but he arrived soon after and helped to collect the body of the dead contrabandista.“I was enthralled, I’ll tell you!” exclaimed Askins, “I hadn’t fired a shot but I’d been close to the smell of gunpowder and I thought, ‘Boy, this is for me!’ ”84
Askins eagerly pursued gunfights with the smugglers and reveled in the Border Patrol’s besting of the contrabandistas. He estimated that while Border Patrol officers killed five hundred smugglers between 1924 and 1934, the Border Patrol’s Honor Roll listed only twenty-three officers lost in the process.85 Askins so enjoyed the sport of battling the liquor smugglers that he seemed to forget the primary function and authority of the United States Border Patrol. “Actually the primary job of the Border Patrol was not alcohol at all but illegal aliens,” he said.86 “The BP was part of the Immigration Service and, believe it or not, was part of the Department of Labor.”87
When Askins did engage in immigration law enforcement, his methods were rough. “I was really in favor of banging a suspect over the ears with a sixshooter and then asking him when he crossed out of Mexico,” explained Askins, “This I found reduced the small talk to a few syllables and got a confession in short order.”88 Although he was transferred from the El Paso station after the district director read one too many gunfight reports that included his name, Askins believed that his chief patrol inspector sanctioned his excess and aggression because “only those jazbos who had not been raised along the border, were not happy with this system.”89
Over the years, Askins was promoted for his enthusiasm, expertise, and knowledge in firearms. First, he was tapped to organize a pistol team. Under his tutelage, the Border Patrol Pistol Team won multiple regional and national competitions. While Askins routinely complained about the average patrolman’s inexperience with guns, the success of the Border Patrol Pistol Team helped brand the organization as an outfit of straight shooters. In 1937, Askins was appointed as the firearms trainer at the Border Patrol Training School in El Paso, Texas, boasting that this position made him the highest paid officer in the U.S. Border Patrol. That Askins not only survived but prospered in the patrol during the 1930s is particularly significant because it was an era of reform in federal law enforcement.
In 1929, widespread concerns regarding crime and crime control, focused on issues emerging from Prohibition, prompted President Herbert Hoover to establish the National Committee on Law Observation and Enforcement, popularly known as the Wickersham Commission. The Wickersham Commission assessed the causes of crime, concentrating on the rise of organized crime and efforts to stem liquor consumption and trafficking, and examined the many problems of enforcing Prohibition. As the Wickersham Commission examined the enforcement of Prohibition, it uncovered patterns of police corruption and brutality that exposed all arms of federal law enforcement to increased scrutiny.
In 1930, the Department of Labor began to investigate corruption and excessive violence within the Border Patrol by compiling a list of all criminal charges that had been filed against Border Patrol officers since July 1, 1924.90 The officers had been convicted of everything from murder to speeding. Then, in 1933, the Department of Labor reorganized the Immigration Service and Naturalization Service by forming the joint Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and attempted to clean out the Border Patrol by firing all officers and rehiring them on a temporary basis. To secure a permanent position with the Border Patrol, the officers had to appear before a board of officials from the Department of Labor and the Immigration Service, popularly remembered as the Benzene Board. Dogie Wright explained that the board’s function was “to cut out the men who were doing a lot of gun fighting, too prone to use their guns.”91 Some were removed, but many of the officers, including Charles Askins, made it through.
As suggested by Askins’ retention, the impact of the Benzene Board was limited. The country was in the depths of the Great Depression, and jobs were hard to come by. The board made a quick pass over Border Patrol personnel, but even someone as unrepentant as Charles Askins must have spoken wisely and judiciously before the Benzene Board. Further the board depended upon local law-enforcement systems to expose and document cases of corruption and brutality. However, as in the case of Gregorio Alanis, local law enforcement typically buried incidents of Border Patrol violence.
Just a few months before the Benzene Board began, the death of Miguel Navarro exemplified how local law enforcement concealed Border Patrol violence. On August 18, 1932, two patrol inspectors and a special state ranger heard that some liquor smugglers were going to try to cross the border illegally that evening at the Las Flores crossing near La Feria, Texas. At around 9 P.M., they hid behind a tree