Torture Trial in Tucson

Two "Anglo " brothers are accused of persecuting Mexicans

Down U.S. Highway 80, past Wyatt Earp's haunts, past a dreary town called Tombstone, lies the border city of Douglas in Arizona's sparsely populated Cochise County. Signs pointing to Mexico dot Main Street, and an estimated 10,000 of the 15,000 residents of Douglas are Mexican Americans. Most of them have relatives living across the border in Agua Prieta, or "AP," as the locals say.

Some 250 miles east of where the party of illegal immigrants died in the desert, Douglas was the site of an episode that reflects another bitter and brutal aspect of the problems stemming from aliens crossing the border. Two ranching brothers--Patrick Hanigan, 26, and Thomas Hanigan, 23--were on trial last week in federal court in Tucson, charged with beating and robbing three Mexican aliens in 1976. The case has divided the city of Douglas and inflamed passions on both sides of the border. Many ranchers of Anglo-Saxon descent--the "Anglos"--insist that the Hanigans are being unfairly persecuted, while many Mexicans and Mexican Americans argue that the alleged crimes of the two brothers reflect the racism that pervades the region.

The Hanigan case began on a hot August morning in 1976, when three Mexicans set out from Agua Prieta to seek work in Arizona. The trio--Manuel Garcia, Bernabe Herrera and Eleazar Ruelas--slipped across the border and soon stopped to refill their water jug on land leased by the Hanigans. A man, later identified by the Mexicans as Thomas Hanigan, drove by in a pickup truck and yelled out, "Hey, wetbacks, where are you going? Are you going to steal or rob?" Hanigan allegedly forced the Mexicans into his truck at gunpoint and then summoned his father George, 67, and brother Patrick, who accused the Mexicans of robbing his trailer home the previous month. The Hanigans, according to police, next stripped and tied the Mexicans and beat them with pistols and a metal rod. The cattlemen were alleged to have scorched the soles of Ruelas' feet with a hot poker and threatened to castrate and hang the trio. Finally the captors freed the aliens, pumping shotgun pellets into their backs and legs as they scrambled across the border to Agua Prieta.

Two weeks later the Hanigans were indicted on charges of kidnaping, robbery and assault. The news stunned Douglas. The Hanigans were one of the area's most prominent families. Besides his cattle ranch, George Hanigan owned a string of Dairy Queen stores throughout the state. "They were very good people, never in trouble," says Dolores Zavala, a Mexican American who runs a grocery in Douglas.

George Hanigan never lived to stand trial; he died of a heart attack in March 1977. The Hanigan sons were tried in a county court in October 1977; the all-white jury found them not guilty. The outcome incensed Mexican Americans and Mexicans alike. "Racist, frontier justice," charged Raul Grijalva, a Tucson school district board member. In Mexico, ballads lamented the fate of the aliens, and President Jose Lopez Portillo criticized the outcome. "There was a pretty hot feeling," George Patterson, a civil engineer in Douglas, told TIME Correspondent Diana Coutu. "People were afraid to cross the line into Mexico because they were after the gringos."

A coalition of Mexican-American groups pressed the U.S. Justice Department to bring federal charges against the Hanigans. At first, Government officials refused, contending that the civil rights statutes did not protect illegal aliens. The decision so angered Antonio Bustamante, a Douglas native studying at the Antioch College of Law in Washington, D.C., that he started a campaign resulting in a federal indictment of the Hanigan brothers for violating the Hobbs Act, which prohibits interference in interstate commerce. By torturing the Mexicans, reasons the indictment, the Hanigans prevented the aliens from working in the U.S. The case marks the first time the Hobbs Act, usually reserved for prosecuting mobsters, has been used in a civil rights case. If the Hanigans are convicted, aliens will for the first time have legal redress against harassment by U.S. citizens.

Thus the trial, now in its fourth week, is being closely monitored by Mexican Americans. Every day they pack the courtroom's ten benches. Others march outside, carrying signs reading PROSECUTION, DO YOUR JOB and JUSTICE FOR ALL. Mexican Americans resent the fact that the jury again is all white and criticize the Government attorneys for not better preparing the three aliens for the witness stand. Meanwhile, the Hanigan brothers sit impassively in court, scribbling endless notes as they listen to testimony. Their defense is simple: they contend that they were elsewhere when the aliens were tortured. If convicted, the Hanigans face up to 20 years' imprisonment.

Many in Douglas feel that if the brothers did beat the Mexicans, they were justified in doing so, for the region has long been plagued with burglaries committed by aliens. "Many ranchers feel they get burglarized all the time, and they feel it's about time someone did something about it," observes Milton Jamail, a University of Arizona researcher. Patrick Hanigan's trailer home had indeed been robbed a month before the alleged tortures took place. Others argue that the Hanigans, guilty or not, have suffered enough. The Hanigan home for example, has been peppered by rifle shots. "It's water under the bridge, and people don't even remember the details of the alleged crimes any more," claims Grocer Dolores Zavala.

Others remember all too well. Says Sister Corina Padilla, a Dominican missionary nun in Tucson: "This kind of violence isn't unusual. In fact, it's quite normal." Adds Ruben Sandoval, a San Antonio attorney observing the trial: "This is still the kind of place where white supremacy reigns, and others have to fight to survive. This is the wild, wild West."

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