SECRET ARMIES
46
small villages of
will find
La Tuxpena and Esperanza
two more
in
Campeche, they
secret airports.
The Mexican Government knows
that arms are being smuggled
in through its own ports, across the Guatemalan border, and
across the wide, sparsely inhabited two-thousand-mile stretch of
American border. Both American and Mexican border patrols
have been increased, but it is almost impossible to watch the
entire region between Southern California and Brownsville. Few
contraband runners are caught, apparently because neither the
American nor Mexican Governments seem to know the routes
followed or
On
who
February
the leading smugglers are.
12, 1938,
Jos
Rebey and
his brother Pablo,
who
Sonora and know every foot of the
desert, drove to Tucson, Arizona, where they met two unidenti
fied Americans. On February 16, 1938, Jose Rebey and Fran
cisco Cuen, old and close friends of Gov. Roman Yocupicio,
drove a Buick to the sandy, deserted wastes near Sonoyta, just
south of the American border where one of the two unidentified
Americans delivered a carload of cases securely covered with sheet
metal. As soon as the cases were transferred into Rebey s car, he
turned back on Sonera s flat, dusty roads, passing Caborca, La
Cienega, and turning on the sun-dried rutted road to Ures, which
live in the Altar district of
parched and dry in the semi-tropical sun.
Ures is the central cache for arms smuggled into Sonora by
lies
Yocupicio, and the Rebey brothers and Cuen are among the
chief contraband runners. The load they carried that day con
sisted of Thompson guns and cartridges, and the route followed
A
the one they generally use.
secondary route used by one of
s chief aids, a
police delegate from the El Tiro mine, lies
over the roads to Ures by way of Altar.
is
Cuen
If in
time of war
to deflect
becomes necessary for guard or patrol work
from the army, or ships from the navy, it is
any troops
it